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 15, 2014
Obama spoke to the nation about ISIL, the terrorist group today operating in Iraq and Syria. Justifying his decision to send more U.S. military might into the region, he said: “ISIL has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.” He said: “They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape and force women into marriage.”
And further, he accused them of setting one ethnic or religious group against another, provoking genocide and driving masses of people into exile.
All true. But it begs the real question: What gives the U.S. the right to condemn this terrorist organization for actions which the U.S. itself has carried out, many times over?
Killing children? The U.S. is the specialist in this atrocity, raining bombs, drone attacks and missiles into areas packed with civilians–that means children, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of children over the years of the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact is, bombs don’t distinguish, drones don’t distinguish between “terrorists” and children.
Driven into exile? More than a million Iraqis were driven from their homes by the three U.S. wars on Iraq.
Rape? Hundreds of U.S. women serving in the military can talk about that. But it’s much worse for Iraqi women. They have thousands of tales to tell about brutalization at the hand of U.S. troops.
Don’t believe it? Just ask those who have been there.
Execution of prisoners? For that lovely task, the U.S. handed over its prisoners to dictators whose police specialize in torture, maiming and killing of prisoners.
And yet, the U.S. pretends to have clean hands!
Playing on ethnic and religious divisions? That’s what the U.S. did all through the Iraq war, leading to a bloody civil war, and dozens of militias just like those that formed ISIL.
Nearly a million people have been killed in the course of the last three wars the U.S. carried out against Iraq.
The U.S., in fact, today stands as the number one terrorist in the world. Won’t change your regime? We’ll bomb you! Won’t agree to our terms for your oil? We’ll bomb you. Won’t let our oil companies drain your countries of your own wealth? We will invade you.
Are there terrorists in the world? You bet! Do they want to target the U.S.? You bet.
The actions of the U.S. provoked them into action–when the U.S. itself didn’t arm them for action in an earlier war the U.S. carried out.
Have you forgotten that al-Qaeda got its start with the help of U.S. weapons and intelligence it provided when the U.S. wanted to use those terrorists against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan?
ISIL itself came out of, in part, the Sunni Awakening that the U.S. funded in order to reestablish its control over Iraq, when Shiite militias seemed to be getting the upper hand.
Clean hands? Uncle Sam stands with blood dripping from his hands.
We pay the price for all this mayhem. Money that should be going to our schools, our neighborhoods, our lives instead goes to bomb another people. U.S. soldiers sent to “police,” that is terrorize, other countries often come back paying the price of their own sanity. Our children’s future is sacrificed so the weapons makers can make more money on more wars.
This is the price we will go on paying so long as U.S. imperialism is left in place, so long as the U.S. corporations and banks that today dominate the world are left with free hands to do what they want.
It has to stop. And there’s no one but us to stop it. The power to stop U.S. imperialism rests with the working people of this country.
Sep 15, 2014
In early September, the Baltimore Ravens football team released Ray Rice from his contract. And the NFL has indefinitely suspended Rice from playing football. The former running back was shown on video knocking unconscious his fiancée, who is now his wife. The video has driven home in a dramatic way the ugly reality of the all too common abuse of women.
If it were only the question of Rice and his wife, we could say Rice acted like a thug, and a football star fell off his pedestal. But it is not just a question of one man.
It is not even just the hypocrisy of the NFL commissioners pretending they didn’t understand last February that there was a problem. What they care about is the image of their billion-dollar industry, not the beating of a woman.
In fact, the real problem is reflected in the fact that Rice was cheered like a hero when he came back from his original two-game suspension last season. If domestic violence were not a pervasive problem throughout this society, Rice would have been booed for his disgusting actions.
The problem certainly is reflected in the way professional sports treats women. But sports are only a mirror of this class society, which considers women to be property. In the U.S. one of every four women reports violence by an intimate partner. It’s more in reality, because many women fear to raise the problem. And it is not just a question of beatings. More than a thousand women are killed in the U.S. by a spouse every year. One of every three rape and sexual assault victims under the age of 18 has been attacked by a male in their family. Two of every three homeless women report domestic abuse.
It is an epidemic of violence against women. The grisly statistics show an underlying attitude by way too many men that women are not people. An enormous number of men seem to think women are “things,” property that can be treated any way they choose, including beatings, rape and murder.
The problem is exacerbated around the world by the men leading all the world religions. It is estimated that throughout the world one in three women faces domestic abuse, particularly in countries loudly proclaiming their adherence to one of the world’s main religions. The Catholic Church has treated women as evil beings since it consolidated its power after the fall of the Roman empire. Orthodox Jewish men pray to thank their god that they weren’t born female. The Hindu custom was to burn women to death when their husbands died! And many devout Muslim men demand women remain in the home, completely covered, without education.
Women around the world have waged numerous fights against their second class citizenship and the enormous abuse they have received from men. These attitudes date back thousands of years to the beginnings of class society. And they will only be completely wiped out with the overthrow of a society based on classes. But women’s fight to defend themselves must be a part of that fight.
Sep 15, 2014
How violent is football, a game which millions enjoy watching?
The damage to players includes concussions, internal injuries, broken bones, brain damage and even early death for some players.
The NFL says the average career lasts just six years. In that time, a player could be so hurt that their health is affected and their lives are cut short.
Sep 15, 2014
In the past 15 years, police seized more than 2.5 billion dollars in cash from motorists not charged with any crimes, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.
Police stop motorists on busy highways for minor traffic violations, such as tinted windows, improper signaling and speeding, and then search the car under those pretexts. The police seize the money they find.
Police call this practice “highway interdiction.” The police unabashedly advocate this practice. A former deputy sheriff, Ron Hain, of Kane County, Illinois, explains in his book that “All of our home towns are sitting on a tax- liberating gold mine ... turning our police forces into present-day Robin Hoods.” Hain’s company Desert Snow is a leader in training the police for highway interdiction and turning profit out of this scheme. The seized cash since 2008 forms more than 20 percent of the annual budgets of these agencies and cash-strapped municipalities.
Since fighting the government in court to recover the seized cash can easily take more than a year and cost more than the money that was stolen, most people don’t contest this highway robbery.
The majority of the motorists targeted for the cash seizure were black, Latino, or other minorities, according to the court records, which isn’t a surprise given the racist attitudes in most police departments.
“Highway interdiction” is just another means of taxing working people and the poor.
Sep 15, 2014
The continuing anger and protests against the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson have pushed the Ferguson City Council to reduce somewhat the municipal court fees that had overwhelmed many of the city’s 21,135 residents. The council offered a limited amnesty for those facing insurmountable bills from the city.
City officials in Ferguson had come to depend increasingly on municipal court fines to pay for the functioning of the city. About 20 per cent of the city’s 12 million dollar budget now comes from fines, making it the second largest source of income for the city. To boost this income as much as possible, authorities had encouraged the police to write as many tickets and citations as possible–in effect, to bleed the working class and poor.
News reports have shown how the city has passed more and more ordinances that provide cops with any excuse to stop people and issue a ticket. Cops regularly ticket people for walking down the street, which they say is jay walking. There is even an ordinance to fine young people for wearing baggy pants. And cops are known to stop anyone driving an older car, just looking to find something to write a ticket for.
This is part of the situation that led to Michael Brown’s murder. A big part of the population in Ferguson, which is already squeezed for money, hasn’t been able to afford to pay these fines. But not paying a fine provided the courts the excuse to multiply the cost of the original ticket with more fees and fines on top of each other. And it gave the court the excuse to issue bench warrants for “failure to appear” in the court. This has become so widespread, on average last year, the court in Ferguson issued three bench warrants for every single household in the city.
Along with bench warrants comes the possibility of jail time. And because most other cities throughout the region are doing the same thing, ordinary people can have bench warrants in several places. So, after they are picked up, they serve time in not just one jail, but many jails, being passed from one to the next ... and then to the next.
In other words, ordinary people just trying to drive to work or going to the store are treated like criminals, often dragging down their entire family.
The people of Ferguson, responding to the murder of Michael Brown, shone a light on this filthy practice. To one degree or another, all over the country, municipalities are slashing corporate taxes and searching to make up the difference with oppressive fees and fines, which target the working class and poor.
Sep 15, 2014
On Labor Day week-end, five candidates in Michigan’s November election, running together on a common program, kicked off their campaign in the Detroit metropolitan area: Sam Johnson, running for Congress in Michigan’s 13th congressional district; Gary Walkowicz, running in the 12th district; Mary Ann Hering and Kenneth Jannot Jr., running for the Dearborn School Board, which also oversees Henry Ford [Community] College; and David Roehrig, running for Wayne County Community College District #2.
Proclaiming that “workers should not pay the cost of the crisis the bosses created” they called for a working class fight, based on a working class policy.
In contrast to all those politicians, Democrats and Republicans, false friends and open enemies of working people, these five candidates said what everyone knows: an election can’t overcome the problems we face. For that, a fight is necessary.
But the five candidates believe that by putting themselves forward, even if no one else does, they can let the workers’ voice be heard. Sam Johnson, Gary Walkowicz, Mary Ann Hering, Kenneth Jannot Jr. and David Roehrig want to give working people a chance to vote for something they really do agree with, to show that they, too, understand the need to fight.
The campaigning went well, with several dozen people circulating among people who crowded into various Labor Day events. Hundreds and hundreds of people stopped to talk over the three days–a good start to the campaign.
For more information, look up workingclassfight.com on the internet.
Sep 15, 2014
This article is from the September 12th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The militias of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL) attacked Dhoulouiya, a town located on the banks of the Tigris River on September 8, bringing their fight closer to the capital Baghdad. The offensive began in January with attacks by these fundamentalist militias in the west of Iraq. In early June, they captured Iraq’s second largest city Mosul.
Their violence has made headlines around the world, with the barbarous execution of two U.S. journalists. But ISIS had already been spreading terror in conquered towns, pushing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to flee elsewhere for refuge.
The media argues these fighters are especially barbaric thanks to their religious fanaticism. But this conceals the truth: ISIS is above all a product of imperialist interventions.
ISIS first appeared in Iraq after the war the U.S. began waging in 2003, which was followed by years of military occupation. ISIS was created from various militias connected to Al Qaida, which gained adherents by claiming to defend the Sunni minority against the Shia majority.
Iraq is composed of 54% Shia Muslims, 22% Sunni Muslims, and 24% mostly Sunni Kurds. These various groups had lived and worked together before the U.S. war on Iraq, but the policy of the occupying armies was to divide and rule. The U.S. and their imperialist allies created a confrontation, relying on certain militias and then on others, in order to rebuild a state apparatus in place of Saddam Hussein’s.
ISIS developed because of the vacuum created by the destruction of the state apparatus of Saddam Hussein and the struggle for power it ignited. Like similar militias created on a religious or ethnic basis, this militia played on the hatred aroused by the violence of imperialist armies, in particular the U.S. bombings such as those that killed thousands in Fallujah in 2004.
The flight of Iraqi Sunni fundamentalist groups to Syria as early as July 2011, that is, three months after the beginning of the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad, played an important part in the development of this tendency in Syria. The war there provided Syrian and Iraqi fundamentalist militias an opportunity for recruitment and training. In April 2013, some members formed ISIS, independent of Al Qaida in Syria.
U.S. imperialism wanted to weaken the Syrian regime so as to make it more malleable, without provoking a collapse that would have been dangerous in the powder keg of the Middle East. It did not intend direct intervention, so it let its local allies act. The Western allies gave the nod to the Persian Gulf countries, Qatar in particular, for them to provide money and weapons to the fundamentalist militias.
ISIS fighters came back to Iraq after gaining experience in the war against Assad in Syria. They were able to destabilize an Iraqi region, Al Anbar, near the Syrian border. Then they launched an offensive on Nineveh, with the aim of moving against the national power in Baghdad.
ISIS is still gaining ground, taxing people in the areas they conquer, smuggling oil, collecting weapons and equipment abandoned by the defeated Iraqi army. In June, their chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed a “caliphate” on both sides of the border that separates Iraq and Syria. ISIS wants to evict all the other communities from its Sunni “state.” It wants to impose its rule with beheadings, lynching women accused of adultery, and the enslavement of women.
ISIS developed in part thanks to the weapons that U.S. allies supplied it and in part because 10 years of imperialist occupation drove part of the population into its arms.
Imperialism, determined to preserve its domination of the Middle East, is responsible for the growing barbarity of society.
Sep 15, 2014
This article is from the September 5th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
For a few weeks, the U.S., France and now Germany have been providing the Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq with weapons, ammunition and food. And the U.S. Air Force has bombed to help these fighters hold or gain ground.
The French government states that these Kurdish forces are the only ones able to stand up to the terrorists of the Islamic State (ISIS). The Kurdish chiefs, for now interviewed favorably by Western journalists, see this fight as the beginning of their national existence, the creation of a true Kurdish state.
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, it was divided into zones of influence, in particular between France and Britain. This colonial “peace” was obtained thanks to military interventions, the repression of national revolts and, of course, the denial of the rights of various ethnic groups, including the Kurds.
Eventually, the unfortunate Kurdish people were barred from having their own state. The Kurdish population was divided among four countries: Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.
Since then, the Kurds have had to fight to assert their identity. The Iraqi Kurds were ignored when Saddam Hussein was an ally of the West, but then encouraged by U.S. leaders to rebel against the dictator. They were abandoned when Hussein bombed their areas in 1991, and then supported by the West again during the second war in Iraq in 2003.The U.S. army of occupation has allowed the Kurds some control of the area where they live—in exchange for them protecting the areas where oil is being extracted to benefit Western corporations.
Today, imperialist powers allow the Kurds to serve as guards around the oil fields, where they can be killed fighting the militias of ISIS.
In the Middle East, ravaged by the wars of imperialist intervention, that’s as much independence as the Kurds have been offered.
Sep 15, 2014
On August 18, municipal workers invaded Quebec’s town hall before a council meeting to protest the government’s attack on their pensions. The mayor hid in his office, while elected officials called the workers hooligans, comparing them to the separatists in the Ukraine! Forty-four workers, including 30 firefighters, face suspension without pay. Another 24 employees, including the head of a Montreal public workers’ union, face sanctions. And the police were criticized for NOT beating the demonstrators!
These workers are protesting the attack of the Quebec government against their already low pensions. A new law was passed to force current workers to increase their contributions to the pension plan and to harm those already retired, by not allowing an increase in their pensions when prices rise.
Among the reactions to the government’s attack were fire brigade and police vehicles covered with stickers that said, “WE stole nothing,” referring to a scandal involving construction bids and the administration of Montreal.
There have been demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec, as well as other towns. A similar bill is being prepared by legislators to attack private sector pensions and university workers’ pensions.
If there is a deficit, it is thanks to the 2008 financial crisis and its impact in cutting local budgets. But the government of Quebec serves capitalist interests well by transferring the impact of the crisis onto the workers. The press has even accused the workers of being “privileged”–because they still have pensions!
Meanwhile, the mayor of Montreal gets an annual pension equal to about $79,000 per year. No crisis for him!
The workers of Quebec made it clear they have no intention to just stand by, tolerating his policies.
Sep 15, 2014
Forty-three veterans of an elite Israeli military intelligence unit have publicly declared they will no longer “take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians” during their reserve duty. They say the kind of information they collected while on active duty “harms innocent people ... is used for political persecution, does not allow for people to lead normal lives, and fuels more violence, further distancing us from the end of the conflict.”
Among the things they did was to collect information about medical conditions and the sexual orientation of Palestinians who were being held in detention and easily subjected to threats, harassment, injury or torture to force them to spy for Israel.
And these were Israeli intelligence agents–revealing just a little bit about the filthy war Israel’s military carries on every day against Palestinians in what used to be their own lands!
Sep 15, 2014
After 31 years in prison on death row, Henry Lee McCollum, 51, and Leon Brown, 46, have just been released.
In 1983, these two half-brothers were rapidly charged and sentenced for raping and killing a young girl. The charges relied upon their confessions to the crime, confessions which had been dictated by the police following intense pressure. The brothers’ claims of innocence were ignored. The fact that they were mentally disabled and that Brown was only 15 did not prevent them from being sentenced.
All the material evidence that exonerated them was hidden away. The DNA of a cigarette butt found at the crime scene eventually proved them innocent. This DNA is that of a man, living 100 yards from the crime, who was also sentenced for a similar rape and crime he had committed four weeks before the first one. In 1983, neither the district attorney nor the police tried to relate both crimes.
The district attorney who prosecuted them, Joe Freeman Britt, boasted he could double the number of death sentences he was involved in, 48 in all, which made him hold a sinister record in the Guinness book of records.
When the state’s Innocence Inquiry Commission asked the Red Springs police for the evidence of the crime scene (hair, etc.), they said they no longer had them … until a Commission investigator found them in the police station.
In brief, this judicial error was not really an error. It was part of the racist way the U.S. “justice” system works and has sentenced to jail or to death hundreds, thousands of men, most of whom are black, for crimes they did not commit.
The “Innocence Project” has found innocent 146 prisoners on death row. How many more innocent men will never be exonerated? Today, there are more than 3,000 on death row, including 152 in North Carolina alone. Since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, 1386 people have been executed.
The U.S. may claim the rule of law applies, but poor, black people in particular are the first victims of a system that is a travesty of justice.
Sep 15, 2014
The 57-year-old son of the Ilitch family was recently picked up on a drug charge, possession of crack cocaine. Ilitch family members are the multi-billionaire owners of the fourth largest pizza chain in the country, the Detroit Tigers baseball team, the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, part owners of a casino, and among the biggest recipients of Michigan and Detroit tax breaks and subsidies.
Unlike all those young black men picked up on exactly the same charge, who usually spend years in prison, even on the first offense, Ilitch was given only probation, with one week of community service attached.
There has long been a disproportion in drug sentencing: possession of cocaine, the drug of choice for the wealthy, has usually resulted in little more than a slap on the wrist–if that. Crack cocaine, the cheaper drug used by the poor, leads to long sentences, even for a first offense. Authorities claim it’s because crack is so much more dangerous.
Except, of course, when your papa is rich and one of the movers and shakers in the area.
Sep 15, 2014
Maryland’s transportation department, Baltimore City, and CSX finally backed down from plans to build a 24-hour rail-to-truck transfer facility in residential Morrell Park-Violetville after more than two years of opposition by these working-class communities.
CSX planned to run 150 trucks a day, as many as 40 an hour, through an area the size of almost 50 football fields. Maryland offered to help CSX with 32 million dollars of the set-up costs.
The huge number of trucks was sure to mean dangerous diesel fumes, traffic safety problems, disruptive noise, night-time lighting, and hazardous waste spills. Morrell Park and Violetville already have higher than average death rates from cancer and respiratory disease.
Neighbors held many community association meetings and rallies, collected more than 1,000 signatures, got the support of 20 other neighborhoods. But for two years public officials ignored them and CSX officials refused to answer their questions. But the community protests grew!
Finally announcing the withdrawal of the plan, Maryland’s Transportation Secretary admitted, “The political will of elected officials usually doesn’t collapse of its own initiative; it usually collapses because the community revolts and says it just doesn’t want it.”
It seems a few more revolts are in order. Quite a few!
Sep 15, 2014
There was a free dental clinic at the University of Maryland early in September. First come, first served. One thousand people were turned away just on the first day.
Most health insurance, including Medicare, does not cover teeth. So there is an enormous need. Teeth are part of our bodies and an important part of our digestive system. Dental care, which is a necessity, is being treated like a luxury.
Sep 15, 2014
Year after year, Chicago Public Schools has been cutting the amount of money that goes to the schools. This year, neighborhood schools lost 67 million dollars in funding. Last year, CPS closed 50 elementary schools. Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, claims that things will only get worse in the future—in each of the next two years, CPS will face a billion-dollar shortfall. Her solution is to attack teacher pensions. Otherwise, she says, the schools will face even more drastic cuts.
But it is obvious that there is an enormous amount of money in Chicago. The Loop has one of the most impressive collections of corporate skyscrapers in the world and houses the headquarters of many huge companies like Boeing, United Airlines, and MillerCoors. The Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, and many other neighborhoods are dripping in wealth. So when they say there is no money for the schools, it is obvious they are lying.
The reality is that the mayor and his cronies have been stealing money out of the public school budget in many different ways for many years, and squirreling it away to hand over to these very same wealthy corporations.
One of the biggest ways they do this is through Tax Increment Financing, or TIFs. These TIFs are supposed to help poor neighborhoods recover from blight by taking a portion of their tax money and using it for development. But the way TIFs actually work is that huge chunks of the tax money that is supposed to go to the school budget, along with the budget for parks and other public services, gets diverted into a slush fund controlled completely by the mayor.
TIFs sucked 412 million dollars out of property taxes last year and the TIF slush fund now has about 1.7 billion dollars in reserves. To put this in perspective, in 2012, taxpayers paid 457 million dollars into TIFs, while the city put 386 million into pensions for all city workers. So when Byrd-Bennet says the only way to save the school system is to cut teacher pensions, it is a big fat lie.
And the TIF funds do not go to help blighted neighborhoods. Recent TIF funded projects include 55 million dollars for a hotel near the McCormick Place convention center, millions more for an upscale grocery store in Greektown, a commercial center with a Whole Foods in wealthy Hyde Park, and a riverfront plaza downtown. Some TIF money does go to schools—but not to neighborhood schools. Emanuel has pledged 14 million for an expansion of the highly selective Walter Payton College Prep High School and another 60 million for a new selective enrollment high school named after President Obama, both on the very wealthy near north side, both reserved for a very small number of students who do exceptionally well on placement tests, most of whom come from privileged families.
Chicago is not broke. There is plenty of money in this city to provide every single student with an excellent education—like the education Rahm Emanuel’s children get at the University of Chicago’s Lab School with its $28,000 a year tuition. But we can see by the direction that politicians like Emanuel have taken in Chicago that they want to use every penny of the city’s budget to serve the big corporations.
Chicago’s children could have the education they deserve—but only if that money is taken back from the wealthy.
Sep 15, 2014
Chicago Public Schools privatized the management of custodial services for the entire school system last spring. Aramark, a huge multinational corporation, won a 260 million dollar contract. They sold the board on the idea, saying schools would be cleaner, for less money. What a crock. No, less than six months later, hundreds of principals and even more teachers protest that their schools are filthier. No wonder–Aramark laid off hundreds of custodians–though the exact number is not clear.
Aramark has also shifted custodians around, moving some with decades of experience in their school. This itself has a negative impact: custodians are often key members of the school community. They know details for each room and each teacher, some serve as informal counselors, some coach. So the privatization disrupts the school community at the same time it leaves the schools filthy. At Kelly High School, one of the largest in the city, there’s a bathroom that is now cleaned only once a week–imagine how bad it looks at the end of the week!
Aggravating the problem, each Aramark “manager” is responsible for 20 or so schools–so the manager is rarely in any individual school building. An elementary principal explains: “For something as simple as making sure the air-conditioning is regulated, you have to make ten phone calls and send five emails before anything gets done.” She said, “You can’t just simply go to your engineer and say I need this done because then they have this whole new system and they have to put it in the computer and they have to call their FM and they have to get it approved, and then we have to get three quotes.”
This further destruction of the schools providing education for workers’ children should come as no surprise–the corporate vultures want to get every bit of money they can out of the school system. The politicians who run the system are only too happy to let them.