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
Apr 22, 2024
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is busy assuring the U.S. public that the war in the Middle East is calming down. He says that the U.S. is “committed to deescalating” the situation.
This in the wake of over 34,000 Palestinian deaths and rising. This in addition to the continuing starvation, daily bombing, and massacres imposed by Israeli forces, in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.
The chances of ever-widening war in the Middle East are increasing by the hour and the U.S. military is responsible. By its own actions and by enabling Israel’s aggression, the U.S. government is escalating the chances of engulfing the entire region in war, playing with matches in a tinderbox.
The 300 missile barrage Iran launched at Israel gave the U.S. government the opportunity to showcase its dominance in military affairs in the entire region and to take the spotlight off the continued killing in Gaza and the West Bank. It was the U.S. military that coordinated the plans to repel Iran’s expected attack. Two U.S. fighter squadrons, two U.S. naval destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, and anti-missile systems at a U.S. military base in Iraq shot down the majority of the Iranian drones and missiles.
To sum it up, in the words of U.S. General Alexus G. Grynkewich, as reported by The Intercept, “We take whatever assets we have that are in theater … under our tactical control or in a direct support role across the joint force and coalition, and we stitch them together so that we can synchronize the fires and effects when we get into that air defense fight.”
The “assets” used in this latest operation are just a small part of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. The U.S. already had military bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, naval warships in the Mediterranean, and air bases in Germany and throughout Europe that can fire on the Middle East. After Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the U.S. government sent more warships into the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and near Iran.
It is the U.S military network that stood behind Israel as it repeatedly bombed Gaza without fear of retaliation by surrounding Arab states. It is what allowed the April 1 Israeli airstrike which destroyed the Iranian embassy in the Syrian city of Damascus, killing 16 people including some leading Iranian generals. Blinken and his boss, Joe Biden, were obviously advised of this planned, blatant attack. For all their belligerent rhetoric about the Iran missile barrage, noticeably the U.S. government said nothing about Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy which prompted Iran’s response.
Yes, Israel is engaged in the attacks. But as a proxy, an armed wing, of the U.S. military. The Israeli military function is special: it is Top Gun for U.S. imperialism, always protecting U.S. corporations’ access to the oil and resources in the Middle East. It receives the highest levels of U.S. military aid of all countries for weapons of war, paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars. After all, the oil riches are taken away from the millions of workers and poor in the Middle East to serve the interests of a tiny global ruling class. The U.S. reserves its right to go to war against any Middle East regime which is not fully aligned with U.S. imperialism.
When war spreads, it will not be limited to the borders of the Middle East. It will not only be the people of the Middle East who are at risk. At the same time sinking the working class deeper into poverty, they are ready to draft troops directly into the Middle East or elsewhere.
The U.S. government is moving the world closer to a world war—a war in which no one in any country will be safe. It will be a war that will be against the interests of working people of this country and of every country.
The working class, truly international and with interests directly opposed to capitalism, can use its collective power to stop the descent into war being brought by capitalism. By engaging an international revolutionary fight to bring down imperialism.
Apr 22, 2024
Over the last couple of months four major companies—Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, Amazon, Starbucks, and the Trader Joe’s grocery chain—have each started a legal process to end the existence of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), with the claim that the NLRB is “unconstitutional.”
The NLRB was created by Congress back in 1935 as the federal agency that “regulates labor relations.” It is supposed to decide whether or not to officially recognize a union that workers organize, or whether a company—or a union—is carrying out “unfair labor practices.”
Over the last couple of years, the NLRB has charged all four companies with myriad instances of “unfair labor practices.” Against SpaceX, the NLRB brought a complaint for illegally firing eight employees after they circulated a letter exposing rampant sexual harassment by management, including by Elon Musk himself. Against Starbucks, the NLRB has already brought 19 formal complaints, and is investigating more than 250 other charges that workers have brought, such as spying on workers, intimidation and closing stores in retaliation for unionizing. At Trader Joe’s, the NLRB charged the company with illegally retaliating against workers for union organizing. And, finally, the NLRB charged Amazon with illegally retaliating against workers at a massive Staten Island warehouse. These workers had successfully formed a union recognized by the NLRB two years ago and have been seeking a contract ever since from Amazon, which has been stonewalling them.
There is no reason to believe that any of these actions by the NLRB will go very far. The NLRB has little or no enforcement powers. The NLRB can’t fine companies, not even one single dollar for firing a labor organizer. It certainly can’t throw capitalists in prison for their criminal behavior.
But obviously these legal actions against the NLRB by four major companies show that they don’t want the NLRB poking its nose around, interfering in any way with how they abuse or strong-arm the workforce, a sentiment that is no doubt shared by other capitalists and government officials, as well.
The ongoing and worsening of the economic crisis, along with new attacks by the capitalist class against the working class, have provoked the beginnings of new struggles by workers, including some organizing drives and strikes. Certainly, the effort by some capitalists to dump the NLRB is a part of their attacks against the working class.
But even if these capitalists succeed at getting rid of the NLRB, it will not be a defeat for the workers. For what will count for the workers will be what has always counted: the workers’ own organization and strength. And for the workers to realize that power they will have to build their own independent organizations that unite them at every level, from their unions to their own working-class party.
Apr 22, 2024
Workers at the Volkswagen (VW) plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee plant just voted 73% YES to join the UAW. This was a rare union victory for an auto manufacturing plant in the south.
The VW workers faced a lot of threats from those forces outside the plant who don’t want the workers to have a union. Politicians, business people, and the media used scare tactics, telling the workers that the plant would close if the workers voted for the union. Right before the union vote at VW, the Republican governors of six southern states, where the UAW is also trying to organize auto plants, signed a joint letter saying that unions threaten the “values” of southerners and that it was northerners pushing the union on southerners.
In the past, this fear-mongering propaganda had worked. In 2014 and in 2019, there were UAW organizing drives at VW. Both times, the union lost in close votes. This time, workers did not fall for these lies.
As can happen in the workers’ movement, the two previous union organizing defeats at VW helped workers learn valuable lessons and laid the foundation for a future victory. Two Chattanooga plant workers interviewed in the media explained that they worked on all three organizing drives and they worked on influencing their coworkers in between. They watched over time as more workers came around to the union point-of-view.
One union organizer inside said that at work during the week before this union vote, “All I could see on the line was red T-shirts in support of the union.”
What issues did workers name at this plant as reasons for their YES vote? Workers said they got an 11% raise in November of 2023—after the UAW strikes—and then the company turned around and made their healthcare more expensive! The workforce was not fooled by this “raise.”
One VW worker said that they needed to have a pension to retire on. Other VW workers talked about the speedup and working conditions in the plant. A VW worker said, “It’s really hard to build a quality product when all you’re doing all day long is thinking about how bad your shoulder hurts, or how bad your feet hurt, or how bad your knees hurt.”
VW workers now have a union. But just having a union is not enough. Workers in the UAW plants in the north can tell you that they face many of the same problems as the VW workers in Chattanooga. It is going to take a fight to improve those conditions. But the VW workers have a head start on that fight. They built an organization inside the plant that stood up to the threats they faced and won the union vote. That’s what a union really is—the organized force of the workers. That kind of force organized together can make a fight against the problems that the VW workers, and all auto workers, are facing.
Apr 22, 2024
Last week 100 students protesting the U.S. involvement in the war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and Israel were arrested. They were part of a “Gaza solidarity” encampment students had set up on the campus of Columbia University in New York City. The university president wrote the NYPD, requesting that police clear the encampment, declaring the protests a “clear and present danger” to the university.
The crackdown on protesters opposing the State of Israel’s war against Gaza and the U.S.’s direct involvement in this war is not just at Columbia. Since October, there have been protests at universities and high schools all over the country. And in response, some school officials are making it clear: you will be arrested; you will be suspended from school; you will be denied the right to speak at your own graduation ceremony, even though you are the senior class valedictorian; your student groups will be disbanded. So, institutions that pride themselves as supporting “freedom of speech” are now forbidding the speech of students who are clearly saying they want no part in supporting this war that is starving and killing the Palestinian civilian population.
But the reality is, universities, like all institutions in this society, exist to maintain the existing system—to prepare young men and women to work for it and defend it. And this system is one in which war is part of its very social fabric.
So today, with a number of young people deciding to take a stand against this war, institutions have to find the way to let it be known that if you defy what is, in fact, the U.S. preparing its population to accept the militarization of daily life, you should be ready to face consequences.
Fifty-six years ago, in 1968, students at Columbia shut down the university when they protested against the U.S.’s war in Vietnam. And while the university cracked down on them, it didn’t stop what was to become a massive anti-war movement across the country.
It’s hard to say where today’s protests against today’s war will go. But one thing is for sure: it’s a good thing that today, some young people are ready to take a stand.
Apr 22, 2024
On March 21 of this year, Dexter Reed, a 26-year-old man, was stopped by plain-clothes police while driving in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. The reason given was that he was “not wearing his seat belt.”
Four cops approached his car, guns drawn. Dexter Reed opened his car window and when a cop tried to pull his door open, Reed maybe shot his gun over the window pane.
Four officers returned fire, shooting 96 rounds in around 41 seconds.
Reed opened his car door and fell to the ground. All this was recorded by a body-worn camera footage released by COPA (Civilian Office of Police Accountability).
The video shows multiple perspectives. Including from one officer who was shot, but there isn’t clear footage of Reed shooting.
Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling described it as an “exchange of gun fire.” Reed’s family members demand answers on why Reed was pulled over. The family’s attorney said the police stop was unconstitutional, with plain-clothes officers who did not announce they were police.
Reed’s family members know that nothing will bring back their loved one, but they demand a full investigation of the case. Later they joined a demonstration outside the 11th District Police Station, where protesters demanded the firing of the officers who shot Reed.
The officers were placed on a 30-day administrative leave amid the investigation from COPA and the Cook County State Attorney’s office.
COPA was created in 2016 after the city was forced to release dashcam video of then officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
CPD has repeated on television that they are working with the community to solve the high crime situation that Chicagoans have in the city. But shooting 96 rounds in less than a minute means that the police will never be part of the community. This situation creates fear and distrust from young people. This tragedy tells them that the police was created to serve the rich and not the poor neighborhoods.
Apr 22, 2024
The U.S. government advises people not to visit Haiti. It has told family members of U.S. officials to leave the country. It cites “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.” The U.N. says that Haiti is in a “cataclysmic situation.”
And yet, on Thursday, April 18, the U.S. sent “around 50 Haitian nationals” back to Haiti, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Because the main airport in the capital is closed in the midst of Haiti’s collapse, they had to send the deportation flights to a smaller regional airport. The DHS explained simply that those they deported “were found not to have a legal basis to remain in the United States.”
One advocacy group pointed out that, given the situation in Haiti, these deportations were in violation of both U.S. and international law. So how exactly is the Biden administration more “humane” or lawful than the Trump administration?
Apr 22, 2024
In early April, 99 Cents Only Stores announced that it was closing all its 371 stores in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas.
More than 10,000 workers are losing their jobs. And many working-class neighborhoods across the Southwestern U.S. are losing a store where families could buy everyday necessities at more affordable prices. In many cases the only store, especially since other discount chains have also been closing stores lately—hundreds of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores, for example, whose impending shutdown was announced in March.
99 Cents Only is not going out of business because customers abandoned it. To the contrary, the discount chain’s stores have continued to be busy. The reason behind the shuttering of this retail chain is that it was under a crushing debt as a result of being taken over by Wall Street vultures.
In 2012, the owners of 99 Cents Only sold it to Ares Management, a private equity firm, for 1.6 billion dollars. This change in ownership turned the company into a “highly leveraged capital structure,” according to a report by Standard & Poor Rating Services. That, in plain English, is to say that the new owners of 99 Cent Only Stores used it as leverage to borrow big sums of money, saddling the company with a big debt, as private equity firms usually do. Then, private equity owners continue to borrow big, further ballooning the company’s debt, to pay themselves huge sums. Sure enough, in its bankruptcy filing, 99 Cent Only Stores reported 457 million dollars of debt in loans and lines of credit.
This rotten scheme is nothing new—it’s what was behind the bankruptcy of quite a few other big, well-known chain stores across the U.S. in recent years, such as Sears, Kmart, and JCPenney, to name a few.
In their zeal to take the money and run, these Wall Street parasites are in fact cannibalizing entire sectors of the capitalist economy.
Apr 22, 2024
CPAP machines and similar mechanical ventilators pump air for people who have difficulty breathing, especially when they are asleep. But a big company, Philips Respironics, sold more than five million machines even after learning in 2009 that they had a major and sometimes fatal problem.
Foam padding installed inside the machines to absorb mechanical noise and help people sleep had a tendency to shred into tiny toxic particles which people breathed in. But Philips executives knew the company could get away with selling them anyway.
Over the next 11 years, Philips withheld more than 3,700 complaints from the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company even ran global marketing campaigns to sell more machines. The FDA racked up 385 reports of deaths and more than 105,000 complaints of respiratory problems, pneumonia, chest pain, dizziness, infections, and even cancer, caused by the foam dust—but did nothing.
In 2021, hundreds of customer lawsuits finally forced the company to recall millions of the machines and pay nearly half a billion dollars in compensation. Three years later, federal officials have now halted Philips from manufacturing more of these toxic machines.
The FDA claims to oversee nearly 900 medical device recalls every year, but this example shows basically anything goes. Many Philips customers waited almost two years for a machine with the problem fixed. The FDA’s true job is to let companies make profit.
Under capitalism, the rule is “whatever the market will bear.” With medical devices, this means unnecessary death and illness.
Apr 22, 2024
Earth Day is Monday, April 22. The theme this year is “Planet vs Plastics.” Plastic is a huge problem today. It is everywhere. In our food, our water, and yes, inside of us.
We know now that big oil companies lied about the causal relationship between burning fossil fuels and warming the planet. Since the 1950s their scientists knew this would be a problem. But Big Oil’s concern was for profit, not life on this planet. So, it should come as no surprise to learn that they also have been lying about plastic recycling.
A new report by Climate Integrity Organization revealed evidence that for the last six decades Big Oil has used the false promise of plastic recycling to exponentially increase new plastic production. These lies have created and perpetuated the global plastic waste crisis and imposed significant costs on communities that are left to pay for the consequences.
“Recycling cannot go on indefinitely and does not solve the solid waste problem.” This is according to ExxonMobil, founding member of the Vinyl Institute at their 1989 conference!
Despite this knowledge, fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies have fraudulently marketed plastic recycling as a solution for decades, in order to escape regulation and protect their profits. Their lies were summed up by an Exxon employee, who told staffers at the American Plastics Council in 1994 that when it comes to plastic recycling, “we are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results.”
Apr 22, 2024
For the U.S. superpower, the bloody Israeli war in Gaza was always tied to a much bigger war, a war aimed against the Iranian regime. This is why the U.S. government supported the Israeli military bombing of the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, killing 16 people, including seven senior Iranian military officials, among whom was a very high ranking general.
This brazen attack threatened to explode into a wider, regional war. The Biden administration appeared to be mildly critical of the Israeli government, saying it wanted to avoid such a war. But in reality, the Israeli government never could have carried off the original attack, nor could the Israeli military have successfully countered Iran’s launching of hundreds of cruise missiles, drones and ballistic missiles, without the deep involvement of the U.S. military at every level.
In fact, the April 1 Israeli attack on Iran was simply an extension of long-term U.S. policy, which has targeted the Iranian regime ever since a massive uprising in 1979 overthrew the Shah of Iran, who headed one of the most important U.S. client states in the Middle East.
Iran, a big, oil-rich country strategically located in the heart of the Middle East, had been a prize of imperial plunder and domination for more than a century. First, the Russian Czar and British Empire competed for control. By 1921, the British empire gained sole control and propped up a king, called a “Shah,” who ruled over Iran and gave the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a forerunner of British Petroleum, a sweetheart deal that allowed the British capitalist class to reap the lions’ share of the profits, squeezing out everyone else.
This British monopoly control was challenged in 1951, when Muhammad Mossadegh, a large landowner who was appointed prime minister, nationalized the British oil company in the interests of the Iranian capitalist class. But the British government virulently opposed this. Two years later, the British Secret Service, along with the U.S. CIA, overthrew the Mossadegh government and re-installed the rule of the Shah. But the U.S. soon took over control of Iran from the much weaker British Empire.
Over the next two decades, the U.S. government strengthened the Shah’s dictatorship over the country. The CIA was instrumental in building up the SAVAK, the much-hated secret police, which tortured and murdered those who opposed the Shah’s regime. At the same time, the U.S. helped to build up the Iranian military, turning it into one of the main pillars of U.S. domination in the Middle East, along with Israel.
But in 1979 a vast revolution, which included huge workers strikes, as well as fights by the middle classes, overthrew the government and forced the Shah to flee. There were opposition groups of all kinds, from leftist guerrilla groups and other student radicals, along with the Tudeh (the Iranian Communist Party). But when the mullahs, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the extreme-right wing religious fundamentalists, made a play for power, none of the leftist groups opposed them, not to speak of standing for the independent power of the working class. Without a revolutionary organization based in the working class, this left workers and ordinary people open to attack.
Once in power, the mullahs strangled the revolutionary momentum of the Iranian masses, thus serving the interests of all the dictators in the Middle East and their U.S. godfather. But to the U.S., what counted was that the mullahs had come to power at the head of a movement that overthrew the Shah of Iran who was one of the strongest pillars of the domination of the United States in the region. On top of that, the mullahs chose to support radical Iranian students who took over the American embassy and turned its 52 U.S. civilian and military personnel into hostages.
That made the mullahs the U.S. enemy. There was no way the U.S. was going to accept this. Because if the U.S. did, it would set a precedent that said it was permissible to overthrow U.S. supported strongmen and thumb their nose at the all-mighty U.S. super-power.
So, the U.S. set out to destroy the rule of the mullahs. The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Iran and imposed a trade embargo. It then encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran. Obviously, Hussein had his own reasons for doing it: he wanted to become the new regional strongman. But in effect, the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–88 completed the work of drowning the revolution in a bloodbath.
But the Reagan administration played a double game, which the mullahs were all too ready to accept. While supplying Hussein with most of the military aid, the U.S. also secretly supplied Iran with weapons, including thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as spare parts for Iran’s fleet of American-made F-4, F-5 and F-14 warplanes, left over from the time of the Shah. This is what came out in 1986 during the Iran–Contra scandal. In reality, U.S. imperialism tried to weaken both sides. There were one million dead and both countries were left in ashes.
The U.S. has had a complicated relationship with Iran ever since. When the U.S. wasn’t trying to overthrow or crush the mullahs, it sought Iranian collaboration when their interests intersected. In 1990–91, for example, barely two years after the Iran–Iraq war ended, U.S. imperialism attacked Iraq in the first Gulf War. While the Iranian regime denounced the U.S. war, the Iranian rulers were also perfectly happy to see their old nemesis, Saddam Hussein, defeated and weakened, and they cooperated with the U.S. behind the scenes. But that didn’t stop the U.S. from imposing a suffocating trade embargo on Iran, despite the protests of big U.S. oil companies, who desperately wanted to profit from Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves.
In the period that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, U.S. and Iranian interests converged once again, and the mullahs demonstrated to the U.S. government how responsible a partner they could be. The mullahs worked closely with the U.S. imperialists, first in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda, and again in Iraq after the U.S. invaded and overthrew Saddam Hussein. Finally, when ISIS suddenly gained domination over Syria and Iraq in 2014–17, the United States chose to give a free hand to Iran and its military allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to fight against the jihadist organization—up to a certain point.
Iran was a valuable ally, especially since it was one of the few Middle East dictatorships that appeared to be relatively stable, not being torn apart. As a reward, the U.S. signed a nuclear agreement with Iran, which was viewed as a first step toward ending the trade embargo and ending the unofficial state of war that existed between the U.S. and Iran. But once ISIS was significantly weakened, U.S. leaders sought to prevent Iran from taking advantage of its victories to expand its influence in the region. And the U.S. once again imposed increasingly severe economic and political pressures. Trump’s election became the pretext for the change in policy that “the deep state” initiated. That policy has continued under Biden, with only a few small changes.
What the Israeli attack against the Iranian Embassy in Damascus proves is that the Israeli war in Gaza and the West Bank is not limited to the Palestinians. In the end, the U.S. is using it to reimpose its imperial domination over the entire Middle East, and that includes using Israel as a U.S. proxy to help the U.S. to batter, strangle and suffocate Iran.
Apr 22, 2024
The Israeli state’s massacre of Gazan civilians continues.
Even as the military operations continue, warnings of a famine grow louder. Food going into Gaza has been reduced to a trickle. Not only do Israeli forces only allow in tiny amounts of aid, but right-wing Israelis set up protests and roadblocks to cut off even that tiny amount. There is no way to know how many people continue to die not just from bombs but from malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, and the lack of any kind of medical attention—made worse by the fact that Israeli forces have leveled most of the area’s hospitals. And as the U.N. points out, children are the most vulnerable of all to dying from lack of food, and from suffering life-long health affects as a consequence of malnutrition.
Israel has also ramped up its attacks on the main U.N. agency that has provided aid to the Palestinian refugees for seventy-five years, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This agency has long provided some of the only schools, hospitals, food, and other services available to Palestinians, and forms the backbone of aid operations in Gaza. At least 178 UNRWA workers have been killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Now Israel is accusing UNRWA staffers of having links to Hamas and has claimed some staffers confessed that they helped with the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. The latest foreign aid bill passed by the U.S House even explicitly prohibits any aid from going to UNRWA. But UNRWA staffers say that their confessions were coerced by torture—something Israeli forces are known for carrying out. And as everyone knows, confessions coerced from torture mean exactly nothing, since a torture victim can be forced to say anything to make the torture stop.
Israel continues to claim that this is a war aimed at rooting out Hamas. But the continued attacks on those who provide basic necessities like food show that this war is really aimed against the population of Gaza—and its children first of all.
Apr 22, 2024
This article is translated from the March 22, issue #2903 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name in France.
In North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, seven million people have had to leave their towns and flee ever further afield. War has raged unabated in this region for thirty years. The conflict has intensified in recent months, pitting the Congolese army against the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group.
France bears a crushing responsibility for the genesis of this interminable war. In 1994, after supporting and arming the genocidal Rwandan government, the French army protected the escape of the Hutu militias into Congo, after they had just massacred 800,000 Tutsis. These militias took control of the refugee camps and attacked the local Tutsi population, sparking the creation of self-defense groups.
These were the beginnings of the two Congo wars. In 1996, the Rwandan army, allied to the Ugandan army, entered the country, marched on the capital Kinshasa and overthrew the dictator Mobutu. Two years later, the new dictator of Congo, Laurent Désiré Kabila, changed alliances and provoked a new war, this time involving the armies of seven African countries and a multitude of armed groups, resulting in millions of deaths among the population.
Despite an official peace agreement signed in 2002, war has never ceased in the North Kivu region. The M23 has distant origins among the Tutsis who defended themselves against the Hutu genociders after 1994, but after being integrated into the Congolese army for a time and then mutinying, its members have long since become nothing more than a band of predators allied with Rwanda. The Congolese army, for its part, is supported by so-called Wazalendo militias, formed at the behest of Congolese President Tshisekedi to supposedly "defend themselves against foreign invasion." The population is caught between these armed bands, who are waging a reign of terror, and the terrorized inhabitants no longer know where to take refuge. Many fugitives have taken to the camps set up in Uganda, in such numbers that humanitarian organizations no longer have enough to feed them. Others have taken refuge in Goma, the regional capital encircled by the M23, but find no security there, having to contend with extortion by Congolese soldiers and the Wazalendo sect.
Behind this endless war lies the region’s mineral wealth. North Kivu contains 80% of the world’s reserves of coltan, a valuable mineral that is indispensable in the manufacture of smartphones and computers, and the region abounds in other mineral riches. Multinationals, African governments, and mafia gangs are rushing to exploit it. 40,000 children, the diggers, work in the mine holes. At the mines’ exits, these child miners are confronted by the men of a hundred or so armed groups working in concert with the Rwandan, Congolese or Ugandan armies. All are ready to fight to the death and massacre the population to get their hands on the mineral wealth. But at the end of the chain, once all these local intermediaries have been paid, the product ends up in the hands of the big global corporations.
On February 19, for example, the European Union signed a cooperation agreement with Rwanda on raw materials, particularly coltan, even though the country has not a single gram of this mineral in its subsoil, and everything it can export comes from Kivu. The big corporations thus enrich themselves through the work of the miners, which does not prevent the hypocritical denunciations of the European Union against the crimes perpetrated in the Congo.
In Kivu, the armed groups and soldiers of African countries are merely the face of capitalist exploitation.
Apr 22, 2024
Even as U.S. forces are increasingly drawn into fighting in the Middle East, even as they arm and train troops in Ukraine to fight Russia, the U.S. has also been moving to further encircle China militarily.
On April 17, President Biden organized an official state dinner for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The two leaders announced that the military forces of their countries would further increase their coordination, including forming a new joint defense council.
The next day, the two leaders met with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, the first time the leaders of the three nations had ever met together. The point of the meeting, according to the New York Times, was to launch “a more aggressive effort by the United States and its allies to isolate China….”
This comes just a month after U.S. and Japanese military forces conducted a massive joint exercise known as “Iron Fist ‘24”—an exercise that had been in California until 2023, when it was moved to Japan. According to U.S. Naval Institute News, the whole point of moving the exercise was to prepare to counter “Chinese claims to the disputed Senkaku islands” and maneuvers by the Chinese navy.
At the same time that it was carrying out “Iron Fist ‘24” with Japan, the U.S. was also carrying out its annual large-scale drills with South Korea, reinforcing the integration and coordination of the two countries’ militaries. And the U.S. military was also conducting military drills in Thailand, coordinating with Thai forces and also with 30 other militaries.
On top of that, the aid package the U.S. House just passed provides military support not just to Ukraine and Israel, but also allocates eight billion dollars for Taiwan and the “Indo-Pacific.”
Look at a map: Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea surround China. The U.S. repeatedly accuses China of being “aggressive” and “hostile.” But there are exactly zero Chinese military bases or Chinese military allies anywhere near the United States, and the Chinese military has never once carried out an open military exercise within a few thousand miles of U.S. soil.
The facts and the map make clear: it is the U.S. that is tightening a military noose around China, preparing for a war that would be an utter disaster for the people of both countries, and the rest of the world.
Apr 22, 2024
The dictatorship of the gangs is plunging the country deeper and deeper into barbarism and chaos. All the signs are red. While the mainstream American press is talking about a humanitarian catastrophe, the U.S. government, which describes Haiti as an open-air hell, has just deported dozens of Haitians to this hell and has announced that this series of expulsions will continue.
It is also in this atmosphere that preparations for the installation of the Transitional Presidential Council have been launched, to the great displeasure of the gangs who vow to prevent this installation by setting the capital on fire. They have already taken action, murdering a dozen people in a shoot-out on Thursday, April 18 in Carrefour, south of the capital.
Below is an article translated from the April 20, issue #1326 of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in Guadeloupe and Martinique, two islands that are French overseas departments in the Caribbean.
The decree creating the seven-member Presidential Council was published on April 12 in Port-au-Prince.
Behind the scenes at CARICOM and its embassies, there is a lot of hustle and bustle. The French Prime Minister Attal and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau have announced their support for the council and are calling for the rapid deployment of a military force in Haiti. While there are names of personalities, a proposal for a prime minister, and even a timetable for implementation, nothing is concrete regarding this council. And nothing has been accepted by the gangs. The gang leader “Barbecue” is constantly on social media spreading new insults and threats against this presidential council assembly.
At the same time, he claims to be ensuring the population’s safety in the coming period with his “Living together” project. Fine words, but no results. There is no truce in gang attacks on the population of the capital. For example, in Mariani, a gang leader (Tibout Ba) seized the local gas station, his henchmen secured it, and he now sells fuel to vans and motorcycles at high prices.
As for Guy Philippe, his interests are relayed on the radios, which give the microphone to his supporters. They are requesting arbitration by the Cour de Cassation to install him as president. A few dozen of his supporters demonstrated in Port-au-Prince on April 14 under this slogan. In the industrial zone, a number of companies have opened their doors, and workers are forced to return, despite the dangers, to toil for a wage of $4 a day.
State representatives, Haitian politicians, gang leaders, all speak in the name of the people, all speak of defending the interests of the people. These are the same people who have been at the forefront for years with their populist declarations, their promises, their timetables for achievements. For the hard-working population, which remains trapped, there can be no improvement to expect from these men.
Apr 22, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of April 14, 2024.
The U.S. took a step closer to engaging its own military in a spreading Middle East war.
Oh, certainly, Biden declared that the U.S. doesn’t want a wider conflict.
But the conflict in the Middle East is getting wider. And the U.S. already is directly involved.
On April 1, when Israeli war planes carried out an aerial attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria, the U.S. was already in place to back up Israel. It had two destroyers carrying missiles in waters near Iran. The U.S. also had missile batteries on the ground, ready for action, in countries near Iran: Iraq, Syria and Jordan. And it used these to mount the defense of Israel.
Up until now, the U.S. may have avoided overt, direct entanglement of its own army in recent wars in the Middle East, but now the U.S. stepped out openly.
The U.S. is implicated in the history that produced wars all through the Middle East.
Israel was established on top of Palestinian villages and towns. After World War II, Jewish refugees were funneled to Palestine by British and U.S. ships. Those refugees had been driven into death camps by European fascism during the war and denied entrance into the U.S. and Britain by so-called “democratic” governments. For many Jewish refugees, Palestine was a last hope. Many went intending to work with the Palestinians. But the Zionist movement—flush with money coming from Britain and the U.S.—organized terrorist violence to drive Palestinians from their homes.
The Palestinians may have been uprooted, but Israel could not stand by itself. For decades, the U.S. funded Israel, built up its military, kept its economy going. This was not out of generosity. The U.S. was paying to keep Israel as its chief cop in the oil-rich Middle East.
The Israeli army—like a number of others—was a surrogate, a stand-in for U.S. military forces. This was the result of choices made by the rulers of this country, especially after the Vietnam war.
That war had created enormous problems for U.S. rulers. In this country, opposition to the Vietnam war was massive and growing. The big urban centers were exploding in social revolts. In Vietnam, U.S. soldiers were refusing orders, even attacking officers. In the U.S. itself, social revolution was not only a word. It was a possibility.
With the end of the Vietnam war in 1973, the U.S. military sought to develop a different policy. It still would use military force to impose the hold of U.S. corporations around the world. But the U.S. would pay surrogates—the armies of other nations—to provide the human cannon fodder who would die to protect Exxon’s and Ford’s profit.
Millions of people were killed in wars—U.S. wars—that few people in this country ever knew were going on.
This policy lasted from 1973 to 2001. But difficulties in the Middle East brought that policy to an end. The U.S. sent its own troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. But U.S. rulers attempted to avoid the problems of Vietnam. Instead of instituting a new draft, the army would depend on “economic conscription.”
The capitalist economy cooperated. Never able to provide enough jobs for young people coming of age, the capitalist economy drove part of each new generation into the military.
Whether carried out by its own troops or by surrogates it pays, whether based on the legal draft or “economic conscription,” the U.S. economic system needs war. It is the same capitalist system that holds the whole world in its grasp today.
Everywhere, it is the same story. The corporations that organize the economy in one country attempt to search for sources of additional wealth they can steal from other countries. But the theft of wealth requires force. It requires war. Capitalism feeds on war.
This is why the Middle East is moving toward a wider war. This is why the whole world is moving toward a wider war. Capitalism needs it. Until the working class stops it, capitalism will have war.
Apr 22, 2024
This Oscar winning Frontline documentary presents first-hand footage of twenty days of the battle for Mariupol in Ukraine. At incredible risk, the journalists stayed to document these events. You see more than anything the cost of the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. You see ordinary people asking why is this happening? You see their anger and pain. As war spreads around the globe, these are questions worth asking.
This book details in stark relief the battles workers had to fight to win better working conditions and unions that they, not the company, controlled. The author was a participant and/or an avid observer of these events as they enfolded, a Trotskyist and a communist, and the book reflects his excitement and conveys the power of the events. Particularly telling is the first third of the book, where he describes how workers were up against union bureaucrats who preached labor peace in the face of horrible conditions and wages eaten up by inflation. Three strikes led by these communist workers turned the tide. The first, the Toledo Auto-Lite strike, was fought in 1934 in the midst of stupefying hardship, and it opened the door. Due to solidarity between the workers and the unemployed, masses of workers were united, ready to fight for a better life. Nothing would deter them, not company goons, police, national guardsmen, legal injunctions, or union bureaucrats. Also in 1934, there then came the Teamster truckers’ strike in Minneapolis with its use of “flying squadrons”, and the San Francisco general strike. The stage was set: workers now knew their power in spite of everything.
Apr 22, 2024
The Arizona Supreme Court upheld an old, 1864 law banning all abortions. Under this law, abortion providers could receive two to five years in prison unless the abortion is necessary to save the life of the woman. This law stands to go in effect June 8th unless something stops it. The state legislature already failed. This will be a ballot issue. But women would still have to wait at least six months. Waiting is not an option for pregnant women wanting an abortion.
This law, and other laws like it in other states, are being used against women. The agenda of the extreme right is to pretend that these laws prove that everyone was completely against abortion, in all cases, from the moment of conception. This was not true in the 1860s just like it is not true today. One hundred sixty years ago was a different time period. It is important to understand the historical context of this law that is now infiltrating 2024.
In the 1860s Arizona was a new territory on the frontier, not even a state yet. Its growth was driven by miners who were seeking fortunes in a burgeoning gold and silver industry, with settlers increasingly encroaching on Native American tribal lands. Women were scarce on frontier lands. In addition, some women were using abortion to delay childbirth and limit family size. This was seen by some men as a shirking of their obligations.
During this same time period there was also a movement by doctors to professionalize abortion services. Abortion was a money-making business. And doctors were competing with midwives and others who were untrained but making big bucks performing abortions.
Very few people were ever prosecuted under the Arizona law or similar ones in other states. At that time, first trimester abortions were widespread, and widely accepted by the population. Scientists had not yet developed methods to detect pregnancy during the first few months of gestation. As a result, abortions before “quickening,” when a fetus’s first movements are detected, usually around the fourth or fifth month of gestation, were not considered a crime.
There was no national abortion debate to speak of. Religion wasn’t yet a major factor in Americans’ views on abortion the way it is today. Reading this 1864 law with 2024 eyes is just wrong. It has been purposefully taken out of historical context to attack women.
Apr 22, 2024
On April 8, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to 10–15 years in prison—for a crime their son committed. They are the first parents convicted in an American courtroom for a crime their child committed.
Their son, Ethan Crumbley, went into his high school in Oxford, Michigan in 2021, shot and killed four of his fellow students, and wounded six other students and a teacher. He was later convicted of murder, and at the age of 15 was sentenced to life behind bars.
For the first time ever, the parents were charged for a crime they did not directly commit. The Crumbley parents were each found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors said that the parents failed to safely store a gun and could have prevented the shooting.
It is not the only time that someone other than the actual shooter is being held accountable for the killing that took place in the shooting. More such charges are to come.
Ethan had drawn a picture of a gun, a bullet and a victim on a math assignment, accompanied by the words, "The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is useless. Blood everywhere." But he told a counselor that the drawing only reflected his interest in video games.
James had recently bought Ethan a gun, a Sig Sauer 9mm, which resembled the gun in the picture Ethan had drawn. Ethan had that gun in his backpack.
No one checked Ethan’s backpack or locker. Later that day, Ethan pulled out the gun and shot and killed four of his fellow students and wounded others.
And yet, the parents are deemed responsible.
The parents were negligent. They could have easily locked the gun up in a safe, or even with a cable lock that would have rendered it useless. They neglected to do any of that.
But who is to blame for this tragedy? The parents could have done more, certainly. The school could have done more, absolutely. After all, who let him into the school with a loaded gun in his backpack?
Charging the parents is a desperate attempt to hold some individuals responsible for a problem that truly is this society’s fault.
Ethan was clearly distressed. But who should carry the blame? Himself? His parents? Or maybe his school, which let him carry the gun in and didn’t do anything once he arrived?
How about the society that allows children to grow up so isolated and alienated that they would even consider killing their own classmates?
This is a society based around profit; a society that atomizes and alienates individuals, and then acts as if it is shocked when one of those individuals reacts and kills others. It’s a society that treats all individuals as if they are perfectly whole on their own, even though we know that humans have evolved within a group, needing connection to other humans. NO individual is complete on his or her own. We ALL need many others around us to be complete, and even to survive.
Charging and sentencing Ethan Crumbley’s parents is to pretend the opposite. It says that this society can produce humane people, if only we follow the rules.
It cannot. And the perpetuation of all these mass killings is the proof.