Trump’s Nightmare Space Wars Endorsed by Biden

We need money to end COVID-19, poverty, unemployment, racism and debt, not space bombs.

by Gavrielle Gemma

Militarism and war are the biggest ways capitalist vampires are sucking the peoples’ blood to amass huge profits. Trump may be on the way out, but Republicans and Democrats have endorsed his nightmarish space wars program – the U.S. Space Force, which was established in 2019. Both parties recently voted to give $15.2 billion to the new Space Force as part of the military budget for 2021.

U.S. throws out international treaty

After the fascist shut-down of the Capitol, politicians proclaimed that the U.S. believes in the rule of law. But the only laws they believe in are laws protecting private profits. In 1967, the U.S. signed an international Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons and military bases in outer space and prohibiting any nation from claiming sovereignty over space. This treaty has been ignored.

New Space Force to threaten the world

Space Force is the Pentagon’s “separate military branch for American supremacy in space.” The Space Force is headed by General Jay Raymond, who wrote the “capstone war-fighting doctrine” for space, the plan for Space Force to encircle the globe with U.S. satellites to control the global GPS and for many satellites to have missile firing capability.

The Pentagon, on behalf of private corporations, has for years been carrying out a U.S. cyber war. There has been a lot of media hype about how maybe Russia, maybe China, maybe Iran hacked into the U.S. systems. These hysteric reports distract us from the failures of the U.S. with COVID-19 and growing poverty. Meanwhile, the U.S. openly bragged in 2019 that they have hacked Russian power grids, which has the potential to endanger the lives of millions of people.

Control of the global GPS could be used for even more deadly ends around the globe, as so many systems rely on this navigation system. Space Force would extend the already extensive hacking by the U.S. into countries’ systems around the world, increasing the threat to lives of the world’s people.

Biden signals he will continue Trump’s investment in space war

Profiteering corporations – including fascist Tesla’s Space X, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, York Space System, Rand Corporations – are racing to feed at this new source of wealth stolen from the working people. Bill Gattle of L3Harris said, “the whole industry is moving from building a few satellites to building hundreds of them.”

In September, Joe Biden told the Military Officers Association of America that, “we have to make smart investments in technologies and innovations – including in cyber, space, unmanned systems, and artificial intelligence […] to meet the threats of the future.” That Biden would be for extending Trump’s Space Force project is not surprising. Biden’s transition team has many militarists, military corporations representatives, bankers, and Wall Street executives on it.

Space News, a publication for the profiteering space ware industry, responded to questions regarding the Biden administration’s support for Space Force. Velos, a military consulting firm, wrote “space continues to be a bipartisan policy and Joe Biden’s campaign has articulated their belief in the importance of the doman.” Velos continued, “the Democratic Party national platform supports continuity with NASA and the Space Force.”

The military section of the capitalist economy is growing ever larger. It represents the most racist and right-wing, pro-fascist elements of society. That is why the Pentagon, who has oversight of operations in D.C., openly delayed National Guard troops moving into D.C., allowing the fascists free reign on January 6.

All the money the government is giving to war profiteers belongs to the people. Their wars in space of on the ground are only to enrich the obscenely wealthy. A working-class anti-war movement can stop them, and we will.

Support Incarcerated Workers’ Strike in Alabama (Calls to Action)

by Jennifer Lin

In protest against the utterly inhumane conditions in Alabama DOC, the prisoner-led Free Alabama Movement’s 30-Day Economic Blackout has stopped work from Jan 1 to Jan 31.

On January 1, incarcerated people across Alabama’s prison system went on a work strike and 11 people in isolation went on a hunger strike. Officially called the “30 Day Economic Blackout,” the strike is being organized by the Free Alabama Movement, founded and led by imprisoned Black men fighting against mass incarceration and prison slavery. People in Alabama’s prisons live in heinous conditions in overcrowded cells and are ten time smore likely to die from homicide than in any other state. Incarcerated peoples’ loved one can no longer visit them in person; Alabama is only allowing virtual visits due to COVID-19, but the Free Alabama Movement claims this is a front to permanently end in-person visits to psychologically torture incarcerated people even more. These virtual visits are insanely profitable for tech companies that have contracts with prisons. The strike is calling on people to show solidarity by boycotting 5 corporations that profit from prisons and forced prison labor: Securus Technologies, JPay, Access Correction, Union Supply Company, and Alabama Correctional Industries.

Prisons are a tool for the mass torture and dehumanization of primarily Black and brown people and funnel huge profits to private corporations through forced labor. They are designed to prop up capitalism and further the oppression of workers. Now incarcerated people are being left to die in crowded and dirty cells without access to adequate medical care during COVID-19. These people are our friends, family, and community members. The Alabama strike is a tremendous act of resistance that we must support.

The people on hunger strike have been brutally repressed with beatings, mace, harassment, and threats. The Free Alabama Movement is asking everyone to engage in an email, phone, and twitter storm of support. Tell Dunn: “At Kilby Correctional Facility, Sgt. Williams and Officer Landrum jumped on an bead a prisoner who is participating in a hunger strike. Alabama DOC needs to intervene immediately by investigating this incident and firing both guards.” – from the the #Alabama11. Show your solidarity by joining this call!

Call, Email, Twitter the Alabama Corrections Department
Alabama DOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn:
334-353-3883
Jefferson.dunn@doc.Alabama.gov
Twitter @ADOCDunn

Tell Orleans DA Jason Williams: “Time for Justice! Drop the False Charges Against Mickey Davis and Caleb Wassell!” (Calls to Action)

Take Down All Symbols to White Supremacy

On Saturday, June 11, hundreds of people took down a statute of slaveowner John McDonogh in Duncan Plaze and threw it in the river, rejecting the racist monument and everything it stood for. NOPD singled out and falsely accused two people among the hundreds. Mickey Davis and CAleb Wassell were assaulted and arrested. In an act of openly racist retaliation, the city members of the white supremacist Monumental Task Committee appraise the statue in order to inflate the value of it and charge Caleb with a felony that could come with a sentence of 10 years in prison.

The charges are a blatant attempt to intimidate the mass movement that arose this summer in response to police terror and racism. Six months later, the city is still pursuing these ridiculous charges, with not evidence that either Davis or Wassel was involved in the alleged “crime” of removing a racist eyesore from a public park.

STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH MICKEY AND CALEB!

Contact the district attorney and demand that ALL charges be dropped!

District Attorney: (504) 822-2414
communications@orleansda.com

Suggested message:
“I am contacting you to demand that the District Attorney’s office drop all charges against Mickey Davis and Caleb Wassell. The city must respect the will of the people of New Orleans, who decided to remove from the public landscape a statue that venerated the slaveowner John McDonogh. It’s time that New Orleans join the ranks of cities across the world who are taking the path of progress by disowning monuments to slavery, genocide, and racism. Drop the baseless and unjust charges against Davis and Wassell now.”

City of New Orleans Promotes Tourism Amid Rising Pandemic Numbers

by Daniel Meinecke, musician

Musicians in New Orleans are outraged over the decision from the city to spend money on Dick Clark’s ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ concert production. Initially Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser pushed for the state’s involvement in the even to the tune of $500,000 only if singer Lauren Daigle was to be the representative for Louisiana. This caused outrage amongst the community because Lauren Daigle was also partially responsible for the super spreader event in November that Sean Feucht hosted and the city police and leaders failed to shut down. Mayor Cantrell requested to the event promoters that they remove Daigle from the concert, which caused the outrage of Nungesser and the removal of state funds from the project. Mayor Cantrell should have used this opportunity to vilify Nungesser, who is more aligned with Daigle than the needs of the people of New Orleans. However, the Mayor was insistent on the event happening, so she funded the spot in the concert through the New Orleans Culture and Heritage Fund (NOTCF) and used it to keep the event in New Orleans, but with the New Orleans artists PJ Morton and Big Freedia.

The funds were pulled from this account because the slot in the NYE production was to be an advertisement for tourism to New Orleans. This is despite the current spike in COVID-19 cases. “New Orleans cannot market itself out of the situation it is in,” said a representative of Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleanse.

City’s misuse of Culture Fund benefits tourism companies, not artists

The biggest issue of the misuse of these funds is that the board of the NOTCF has been unable to pivot the use of these funds to help the community, but instead goes ahead with an advertisement to promote tourism. Even Kristin Palmer of the City Council who also sits on the NOTCF board said, “NOTCF is not in the business of promotion, but to invest in our people,” according to meeting minutes from an NOTCF meeting on December 18th. Kristin Palmer was also the only dissenting vote on the measure to allow the use of the funds for the concert. The NOTCF is out of touch with the community and actively digging itself into a hole as it fund projects not related to helping the community through a pandemic that has left people out of work for 9 months.

Corporate Campaign Bribes Pay Louisiana Legislators to Wage War on Workers

The minimum wage of $7.25 has been around since 2009. It was too low then, and it is way too low now. The official inflation rate does not count rent, food, utilities, tuition, or healthcare. The real inflation rate is between 7% and 13% depending on where you live. Adjusting for real inflation would mean a minimum wage of $12.60 to $16.88. EVen $12.60 is not a living wage. We want $15/hr.

The Louisiana Legislature is determined to totally impoverish workers even though most states have minimum wages higher than Louisiana’s. In 28 states, minimum wages are from $8.75 to $14 in 2021. While we work for pennies, Louisiana legislators live in luxury and give tax exemptions, abatements, and outright subsidies every year to corporations in exchange for campaign contributions, which are really bribes.

Florida voters have won a minimum wage increase to $15/hr over the next 4 years, despite millions spent to oppose their efforts. We want to vote for $15 an hour. Let Louisiana workers vote!

Letter to the Editor: COVID-19 Vaccine Can Save Lives. End Racism in Access.

With great fanfare, as if announcing a miracle, the state proudly declared the vaccine was now available to those 70 and above and those with problems that put them at higher risk. It made a good photo-op for the politicians, who receive vaccines, have healthcare, fat pay checks and are allowed to take bribes and get rich at taxpayers’ expense.

Monday, Jan 4, arrived with 7 pharmacies in New Orleans each getting 107 shots to give out. You had to have known about it and have internet access and time to sit waiting for the list to go online. After pharmacies were listed, the phones were instantly busy, and people spent all day calling, even though the appointments were gone in minutes. Hundreds ran to pharmacies, desperate, only to be turned away without a future appointment. Three hours after all appointments were gone, Mayor Cantrell’s reelection PAC announced the vaccinations were available. Anything to look good, except for those who know better.

With only 749 shots available, a disgrace in itself, the most hard-hit Black seniors and at-risk people should have been offered it first. The vaccines should have been made available at community centers within walking distance, not at far-flung pharmacies.

Once again, capitalist medicine has failed to provide real care, given huge profits to the rich, and resulted in lots of inequality. They probably want us to fight each other for the shot, but we won’t; we’ll fight the capitalists instead.

-At-risk senior in the Florida neighborhood.

Military Industrial Banking Complex Fosters Fascism

U.S. capitalism is in constant crisis, desperately striving by any means to sustain the profits of the ultra-rich. To do this, capitalists are driving us into the dust, reducing wages and social programs (social wages) here and around the world.

The capitalists’ addiction to war profits clears the path for fascism.

Capitalism has reached a stage where a growing section of capitalists relies on government military spending for their profits. As a result, capitalist governments hand over larger and larger portions of their national budgets to war profiteering corporations at the expense of social programs. In the U.S., the military and financial sectors have come to dominate civilian production. In doing, their political power has grown.

The military industrial banking complex is run by the most right-wing, racist sector of the capitalist class. More than any other sector, they determine U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The growth of the fascist movement can no longer be ignored. All those openly supporting the fascists should be ousted and jailed. But to snuff out fascism completely, we must go to the heart of the U.S. capitalist system.

Will the Democratic party stop the growth of fascism or fuel it?

Any change in government may sound good after Trump. And we may get a few urgently needed and long overdue relief bills. But the Democratic Party did nothing meaningful to challenge Trumpism other than carry out a sham impeachment that urged for war on Russia at the behest of the CIA and the Pentagon.

In the middle of a pandemic and a world economic crisis, both Republicans and Democrats put aside their difference to pass a record military spending bill. Our money is stolen for more jets, nuclear weapons, and aircraft carriers while people have nothing. They have also co-conspired to conceal the fact that while we die and beg for relive, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is giving trillions to banks and private corporations.

Trumpism didn’t spring from the head of a rotten politician. Trumpism is an outgrowth of the dominant capitalist sectors wanting to divide the people, push us down, and violently crush any nation that dares to jeopardize their profits by struggling for independence.

Is it possible to combat fascism at home and fund and arm it elsewhere? No.

It is deeply disturbing how some call themselves socialists yet side with the U.S. capitalist regime change wars designed to re-impose the rule of the ultra-rich in Venezuela and Cuba. The U.S. funds and arms the fascist Columbian and Israeli governments and is responsible for genocide in Yemen and across Africa. How dare politicians say that the U.S. doesn’t resolve differences with violence when the U.S. military carries out endless wars and coups on behalf of the super-rich? The U.S. drops a bomb once every 12 minutes somewhere in the world. How many children and families does that add up to?

We must cast aside illusions and mobilize the people.

We must go to workers of all nationalities and expose the truth: fascists are puppets of the super-rich who are paid to use racism and other means to divide the people so the rich can hold on to their wealth. Just like the Nazis, the job of the fascists is to turn the people away from the real enemy so that total war can be waged against the working class.

The Biden administration could easily go to war with China or Iran or drag us into some other war we have no stake in. More than ever we must practice international solidarity. We must oppose U.S. militarism which is a noose around the neck of the whole working class. We cannot be lulled into passivity by heeding politicans’ calls to “heal” the country or defend the democracy of the few. These illusions only disarm the people when we ought to be organizing to defeat the fascists once and for all.

The People Will Bury the Fascists with Mass Struggle

Pentagon & Capitalist Rulers Allowed the Storming of the Capitol

Mandatory Credit: Photo by William Volcov/Shutterstock (9973296d) Protest against fascism and anti-Semitism on the Upper East Side on Manhattan Island in New York Anti-Semitism and Facism protest, New York, USA – 10 Nov 2018 Three protesters were arrested

The only thing more disgusting than the fascists who stormed the Capitol is the big business media endlessly replaying and publicizing their victory. Corporations and politicians are given airtime to claim their opposition but they have been and still are the main source of funding and support for the fascists. The fascists are celebrating the endless replay of them entering and holding the Capitol for four hours while they paraded around their racists Nazi signs and slogans. This has emboldened them to undertake further actions which they are again openly planning, this time with more focus on the seats of state governments.

Let’s be clear: this was allowed to happen not because a few Capitol police were sympathetic to the fascists (given a choice, the police will always side with the fascists). Evidence shows that the government and the Pentagon, at the highest levels, decided in advance to allow the scene at the Capitol to give the fascists a victory.

This violent assault was planned openly for weeks. They were allowed into D.C. and allowed to go to the Capitol. The Mayor had asked for troops and Trump and others were on the phone with the generals delaying. The Mayor certainly did not delay it. Even when a mere 340 National Guard troops were finally okayed, they stayed away from the Capitol until 5:15 PM.

Whether this was meant to be a dress rehearsal or more, it was not an insurrection with millions rising up for them. But it was certainly a step forward in the building of a fascist movement.

Fascism is not just a bad set of policies, it’s a bludgeon used to rescue capitalist profit.

Fascism is not just a bad policy cured by “good” politicians. It is a way to defend profits at a time when the capitalist system is in crisis. The German Nazi regime was a capitalist government dedicated to preventing workers’ power in the face of a depression. It was used to crush workers’ support of socialism.

In periods of relative stability, politicians take advantage of the low consciousness of workers to promote faith in capitalist democracy. But when deception fails, when they can no longer fool workers into believing that billionaires deserve private islands while millions of children starve, they will resort to open terrorism. This is what the history of fascism teaches us.

Independence from Democratic Party is urgent

It’s important to fight any setback, especially against the fascists. We must defend every right that we’ve won through struggle. The issue is how. We cannot depend on the Democratic party because they ultimately answer to their capitalist backers. They fund liberal and fascist politicians, one more than the other depending on which way the winds blow.

Even Biden admitted that Trump’s white supremacist shock troops were treated with kid gloves while Black Lives Matter protesters were met with brutal repression. But his answer is to call for “equal treatment before the law” as if Nazis and anti-racists were equal. Biden’s plan to “Unite America” is just another way of saying that he can work with the right-wing forces as long as they don’t give Wall Street the jitters.

Mass Mobilizations are more important than ever

The U.S. ‘left’ wasted four years waiting for the Democratic party until the tremendous Black Lives Matter protests broke out over the summer. As Workers Voice pointed out often, this was four years that Trump used to build his fascist movement. Anti-Trumpism was reduced to ridiculing the man himself, ignoring how effective Trump’s ploys were among many backwards workers. We urged mass street mobilizations to oust Trump. Even if he were replaced by Pence, the balance of power in the class struggle would have propelled the movement forward.

There’s no better time to hit the streets than now. Leave the parties of Wall Street and the Pentagon behind. The only force capable of defeating fascism is the collective power of working and oppressed people, united in motion. United, we can never be defeated.