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Workers Have No Interest in Another Rich Men’s War for Oil

Who’s threatening whom? Dozens of U.S. military bases and 125,000 U.S. troops surround Iran.

“Of course it’s about oil, it’s very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that.” —Four Star General John Abizaid, the former commander of CENTCOM, speaking about the U.S. war on Iraq

“People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course, we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We’re not there for figs.” —Former U.S. Secretary of Defense and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel speaking about the Iraq war in 2007

“I’m interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don’t take the oil, no interest.” —Donald Trump, one month after the US/NATO bombing of Libya in 2012

“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like—
we had entire training courses.” —Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at Texas A&M University, April 15, 2019

Beware Of Lies To Justify War on Iran

Lie: In 1964, the U.S. went to war because North Vietnamese small boats fired on a U.S. warship in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Fact: In 2019 it is confirmed this was a total lie to get us to back a war. Former navy pilot James Stockdale reported from the air, “There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.” The result: 3 million Vietnamese and 56,000 U.S. troops dead and thousands of Vietnam veterans left homeless in the streets.

Lie: Iraq attacked the World Trade Center towers. That’s why the U.S. went to war with Iraq.
Fact: The 9/11 commission confirmed that Iraq had nothing to do with the World Trade Center tragedy. The U.S. invaded Iraq and took over the country and its oil fields. After 500,000 Iraqi children died, Bush finally admitted on 9/11 2006 in a TV speech that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had no hand in 9/11.

Lie: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened the U.S.
Fact: From November 2002 to September 2004, 1,625 US and UN inspectors searched 1,700 sites and found no weapons of mass destruction. It has since been admitted this was a lie to justify the invasion and occupation.

Lie: The U.S. wants democracy in Iran and Iran’s 80 million people want U.S. intervention.
Fact: In 1953, the CIA carried out a coup against the democratic and secular president Mossadegh. They put in power the Shah (means king) who ruled the country with an iron fist until 1979. Iranian people will never forget his reign of terror.

Lie: On June 13, Iran attacked oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman with a mine.
Fact: The Japanese crew of one of the damaged ships stated that this was not true. The crews of both tankers were rescued by Iranians in their territorial waters. On the same day, the Japanese Prime Minister was in Iran for a historic meeting with the leader of Iran, the first meeting of its kind in over forty years. An attack on a Japanese vessel would be the last thing Iran would want to do.

Lie: Iran is a threat.
Fact: Iran has not invaded or attacked another country in 100 years. Over the same time period, the U.S. has carried out over 100 invasions. UN inspectors stated that Iran was not building nuclear weapons and it was the U.S. that pulled out of the nuclear deal, not Iran. The U.S. has recently pulled out of other international arms treaties such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia. There are 125,000 U.S. troops in bases circling Iran.

Lie: This is about national security.
Fact: This is about oil and selling weapons for profits. The federal budget is being looted by giant war profiteering companies for $1.2 trillion a year. This money could be used to meet people’s needs.

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Honduran Workers Fight Back Against Cuts, Demand Removal of U.S. Puppet

Honduran educators and healthcare workers lead a general strike. Tegucigalpa, May 27, 2019.

U.S.-Backed Dictator’s War on the People Drives Emigration

By Joseph Rosen

Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans are rising up against the corrupt and repressive U.S.-backed government of president Juan Orlando Hernández. The united effort continues daily despite the Honduran government ordering country-wide police and military attacks. Some of the worst repression has come from the U.S.-trained and supported Honduran special forces known as TIGRES.

The police state over which Juan Orlando Hernández rules came to power in 2017 through a rigged election that was met with widespread national protests and international condemnation. The demand to remove the president—”Fuera JOH”— is now heard daily across the country.

Hernández’s regime continues the legacy of the government that was installed in 2009 when the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama used the CIA to orchestrate a coup that forced out the popular elected government of Manuel Zelaya. Under Zelaya the government was shifting funds to meet people’s needs. This is why the U.S. carried out the coup. In only one year after the coup, the national education budget was cut in half and public healthcare spending was cut by 20 percent. In the two years after the coup, more than 100 percent of all income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans.

Thousands protest cuts to social programs, layoffs

The current surge of protests began after trade unions of health and education workers called for strikes and mobilizations to protest widespread layoffs and cuts to social programs. These attacks were forced on the people as a condition of loans that the government receives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a consortium of banks dominated by the U.S. and its imperialist partners.

Hundreds of thousands of workers, Indigenous people, peasants and students heeded the unions’ call to action. Because of these massive mobilizations, the National Congress of Honduras was forced to nullify the law that would have enacted the cuts. The masses have been emboldened by this win; now they’re marching with even more determination to take down the illegitimate president.

Mobilizations will continue to swell as Honduras approaches the ten-year anniversary of the U.S.- orchestrated military coup. The Platform for the Defense of Health and Education, a driving force behind the protests, has demanded that the government withdraw its military forces and guarantee that healthcare and education workers not face retaliation for the strike.
New Orleanian and Honduran workers are in the same struggle

The struggles of workers in New Orleans and in Honduras are connected.

In 2010, Hernandez’s predecessor and U.S. puppet Porfirio Lobo Sosa made a visit to New Orleans to sign a memorandum of understanding with former mayor Mitch Landrieu to partner on healthcare and public education “reforms.” The post-coup Honduran government has modeled its attack on public education on the privatizations carried out in New Orleans after Katrina.

More Honduran-born people live in New Orleans than anywhere else in the United States; many of these refugees have migrated because of the difficult conditions forced on their country by U.S. imperialist intervention. Many of the same Honduran workers who helped to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina now face harassment, deportation and concentration camp detentions.

Workers can show their solidarity with our Honduran sisters and brothers by demanding an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military and intelligence personnel from Honduras and by demanding an immediate end to all U.S. funding and support of the Honduran security forces and government, which are terrorizing the Honduran people.

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Secretaries of Defense Make a Killing


On June 18 Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan stepped down after being exposed as a domestic abuser. Before becoming Secretary of Defense, Shanahan served as Boeing Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Operations.

Shanahan’s replacement and now acting Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, was previously a senior executive at the Raytheon Company as vice president for Government Relations.

In 2017 Boeing sold $26.9 billion in arms, Raytheon $23.9 billion. These 2 companies are the 2nd and 3rd largest arms manufacturers in the world after U.S.-based Lockheed Martin.

Every year billions of dollars of arms are paid for with U.S. tax-payer money. According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the average American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on war since 2001.

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U.S. Wars Mean Mega-Profits for Corporations, Not Security

By Jennifer Lin

The US is a relentless war machine hellbent on destroying innocent human lives in its quest for military dominance and profit. The Pentagon has reached a deal with Lockheed Martin to procure over the next three years 478 F-35 stealth war planes (the most expensive US weapons systems in history) for $34 billion. This will be the largest procurement of weapons in US history. The deal will allow Lockheed to maintain its position as the world’s largest military contractor. Lockheed is responsible for some of the most atrocious war crimes. Their fighter jets have formed the backbone of Israel’s brutal attacks on Lebanon and Palestine as well as Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen, which has plunged the country into intense poverty, famine, and disease.

Raytheon is another military contractor that has a history of supplying weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia. The company has agreed to merge with United Technologies, a corporation that researches and develops aerospace and defense systems. The combined company, Raytheon Technologies Corporation, is expected to rake in $74 billion in annual sales, which would make it the second-largest aerospace and defense contractor after Boeing.

This merger is part of a wider trend in the consolidation of military corporations for the purpose of accumulating more wealth for the capitalist ruling class.

The consolidation of wealth and power among war profiteers, along with banks and oil companies, directly deprives working class people. The lion’s share of our tax dollars are being squandered on deadly weapons instead of being invested in education, healthcare, housing, and much-needed public services that would improve all our lives.

As workers, we must demand an end to U.S. wars. All wars waged by the U.S. serve the interests of the U.S. ruling class, which also wages war against workers daily in the form of capitalist exploitation and oppression. As long as capitalism is allowed to continue, so will wars for profit. Millions of civilians will die, and the planet will continue to be destroyed at an unprecedented rate.

Stopping U.S. imperialist wars must be part of a larger effort to overthrow capitalism. We must continue to educate, agitate, and organize against ALL forms of capitalist exploitation.

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Iran is not the Threat; War-Crazed Trump Is

Who’s threatening who? Map shows locations of the dozens of U.S. military bases surrounding Iran.

No More Wars for Oil!

By Gregory William

Without ceasing their efforts to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela, the Trump administration and the U.S. military command have been revving up threats against Iran.

Trump and his gang have already demonstrated through their use of inhumane economic sanctions that they are willing to destroy the lives of thousands of people—all so that their capitalist masters can gain control of Iran and Venezuela’s oil fields.

In early May Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, announced the deployment of a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attacks on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.” Since then Trump has sent an 1,500 additional troops to the region.

Does Iran pose any threat to the U.S.? No!

Since the beginning of the last century, the United States has carried out more than 100 invasions of countries around the world. In that time, Iran hasn’t invaded a single country. Nor have they started a single war.

Bolton has had a hand in several U.S. invasions and wars—not least in Libya and Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have died as a result. During the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bolton systematically churned out lies about Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to convince the public that war was necessary, leading to absolute devastation in that country and massive looting of U.S. taxpayers’ money. Bolton has been advocating for war with Iran for over 20 years and is now trying ratchet up tensions so that an accident or a false-flag attack might provide a pretext for war.

Here’s another claim workers might hear in the U.S. capitalist-owned media. Isn’t the Iranian government a despotic theocracy that curtails the rights of its people, and isn’t that a good reason for the U.S. to intervene?

There’s no reason to believe that this is a concern of Trump and company. One of the U.S.’ closest allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, recently beheaded 37 men and hung one of their bodies upside down on a pole in public. This hasn’t been a topic of discussion in Washington. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to support the Saudi regime’s genocidal war in Yemen and gives the Israeli government billions of our tax dollars to murder innocent Palestinian children.

The Iranian forces that Bolton and Trump are promoting as the possible “liberators” of the country hail from the now-deposed fascist monarchy or alternately, from the so-called ‘National Council of Resistance,’ an organization aligned with the Saudi monarchy and Israel.

U.S. imperialists clearly have no interest in promoting democracy or human rights in Iran or anywhere else in the world. The long history of U.S. interference in Iran proves it.

In U.S. wars for oil, playbook hasn’t changed

In 1953, U.S. and British espionage agencies orchestrated a coup in Iran, ousting the democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. In 1951, under the leadership of Mosaddegh, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry which had until then been under the control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—later known as British Petroleum (BP), the same company responsible for the horrible Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Iranian government intended to use their oil resources to benefit the people of Iran rather than British and American shareholders.

Before the coup, the British initiated an international boycott of Iranian oil. They were trying to put an economic stranglehold on the country to make it bend to the wishes of the British and U.S. capitalist classes. In place of the popular government of Mosaddegh, the coup orchestrators installed General Fazlollah Zahedi, who shored up the rule of the Shah (the Iranian prince). The new regime relied heavily on Washington to stay in power. According to the CIA’s own declassified documents, for example, Iranian mobsters were on the U.S. payroll to stage pro-Shah riots as the coup was underway.

Under the Shah’s rule until 1979, thousands of social leaders, trade unionists, workers, students, and peasants were tortured and murdered by the SAVAK, a Gestapo-like agency set up by the CIA. Inequality soared to become almost the worst in the world, according to the International Labor Office. The people of Iran suffered all these hardships to enrich the owners of an imperialist oil cartel. This is really existing “free” market capitalism at work.

In 1979, the Iranian masses rose up to overthrow the imperialist-backed Shah. Although many of the demands of the revolution have not been met by the government of the Islamic Republic that replaced the monarchy, national independence remains a victory that the masses of Iranians are intent on defending. Any progressive Iranian knows that a U.S. war would be a terrible setback to their own struggle for political power within the country.

Why we must say no to intervention today

Nearly four times the size of Iraq, Iran is a country of 80 million people. A war with Iran would condemn an entire region of the earth to years of death and insecurity. This terrible cost to humanity would be paid by U.S. workers too. For every dollar of our taxes that’s wasted on death machines, that’s one less dollar spent on education or healthcare or all the things necessary to give us real national security.

We— the workers of the world— must stand up and declare that we will not pay for their oil with our blood.

U.S. Hands off Iran!
End U.S. sanctions against Iran!
Bring the troops home!
Close the U.S./NATO bases!
End U.S. aid to  Saudi Arabia and Israel!

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The Pentagon and the Internet

The U.S. military operates 5,000 websites through its Defense Media Activity branch. Nafeez Ahmed reported in Motherboard on October 30, 2018, that “a series of research projects, patent filings, and policy changes indicate that the Pentagon wants to use social media surveillance to quell domestic insurrection and rebellion….The United States government is accelerating efforts to monitor social media to preempt major anti-government protests in the US, according to scientific research, official government documents, and patent filings reviewed by Motherboard. The social media posts of American citizens who don’t like President Donald Trump are the focus of the latest US military-funded research. The research, funded by the US Army and co-authored by a researcher based at the West Point Military Academy, is part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to consolidate the US military’s role and influence on domestic intelligence.”

The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars finding patterns in posts across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and beyond to enable the prediction of major events. Ahmed further reports that “a Pentagon-funded report titled ‘Social Network Structure as a Predictor of Social Behavior: The Case of Protest in the 2016 US Presidential Election’ was funded by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), which is part of the US Army’s Research Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM).”

Ahmed continues: “The tool was originally developed under the Obama administration back in 2011 by the US Army Research Laboratory and US Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in partnership with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Illinois, IBM, and Caterva (a social marketing company that in 2013 was folded into a subsidiary of giant US government IT contractor CSC). Past papers associated with the project show that the tool has been largely tested in foreign theaters like Haiti, Egypt, and Syria.

“The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is part of the ARL Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS CTA), a consortium of three industrial research labs and 14 universities which receives multi-million-dollar support from the US Army Research Laboratory. Much of that research has been funded by the US government’s spy research organization, IARPA—the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Government National Business Center.”

To show the extent of the collaboration between the Pentagon, universities and corporations, HRL, a main company involved in this domestic spying, is jointly owned by General Motors and Boeing.

The same technology being used against people in the U.S. was developed to interfere in the use of social media during the lead-up to and during elections of other countries, which the U.S. has been doing for decades.

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Yemenis Demand End to U.S./Saudi War!

An effigy of Donald Trump with the words “Yemeni child murderer”in Hodeida, Yemen.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis held demonstrations throughout the country to condemn Trump’s veto of a U.S. congressional resolution directing “the removal of United States Armed Forc-es from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.” Protesters denounced the United States for continuing to support the Saudi-led war and blockade against their country.

Advocacy for the Yemen War Powers resolution—which has been led by Yemeni-American groups—has spread awareness of the criminal war on the people of Yemen. The U.S./Saudi military campaign has resulted in the deaths of 15,250 civilians, including 3,527 children and 2,277 women, according to the Legal Center for Rights and Development in Yemen, a non-governmental organiza-tion monitoring human-rights violations. Many more have been wounded and suffer from a short-age of medical supplies and treatment due to the Saudi land, air, and sea blockade. Millions of Yeme-nis are on the brink of starvation.

On April 8, at least 14 schoolchildren were killed when a Saudi coalition air strike targeted resi-dential areas in Yemen’s west-central province of Sana’a.
When Yemeni journalist Ahmed Abdulkareem asked one of the protesters in Sana’a to give a statement to the English speaking press, he replied, “My message is only to the American people: is spilling more Yemeni blood acceptable to you?”

More than ever, progressive people in the U.S. must stand with our Yemeni siblings to demand an end to the U.S./Saudi war on Yemen.

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Veterans for Peace Support Venezuela

President Donald Trump has called on Venezuelan soldiers to disobey orders and join coup perpetrators headed by U.S.-backed opposition leader, Juan Guaidó. If they do not do this, President Trump threatened: “You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything.”

While President Trump speaks of supporting democracy in Venezuela and Latin America, the real purpose of the U.S. assault on the Venezuelan government is to fully open the vast Venezuelan oil reserves to U.S. and other Western oil corporations as well as to destroy progressive governments in Latin America that put their own peoples’ needs above the profits of foreign corporations.

The Veterans For Peace Statement of Purpose states that, “we will work, with others both nationally and internationally:

  • To increase public awareness of the causes and costs of war
  • To restrain our governments from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations
  • To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons
  • To seek justice for veterans and victims of war
  • To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”

In this spirit, Veterans For Peace (VFP) calls on all members of the U.S. military to refuse illegal orders to intervene in Venezuela. Furthermore, VFP urges all U.S. military leaders to inform the president that they will order their units to stand down from preparations to invade Venezuela.

Illegal, immoral and irresponsible U.S. actions, including “sanctions” (economic war) have already taken a great toll on the people Venezuela. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Venezuelan people and military are standing firm against foreign intervention. Now there is a very real possibility that President Trump will order U.S. troops to intervene in Venezuela, whether through a direct invasion and occupation, or through support for irregular counter-revolutionary forces. This would likely lead to a widening war that could spread to other Latin American countries and the Caribbean, bringing increasing suffering to the peoples of Latin America and the U.S.

It is illegal under both U.S. and international law to launch a military attack against another nation unless it is clearly in self-defense, and is approved by the United Nations. There are a number of options for GI’s who do not wish to follow illegal orders. Veterans For Peace wants service-members to be fully informed as they make profound choices with possibly serious consequences. We urge GI’s facing possible deployment to contact the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force at (619) 463-2369 and/or help@militarylawhelp.com for referral to a civilian attorney to discuss your options. Many of their member lawyers are willing to do an initial pro-bono (free) consultation.

Refuse to be used in an illegal war. Follow your conscience and be on the right side of history.

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In Argentina, Over A Million March in Honor of Victims Of U.S.-Backed Military Dictatorship

Banner with the names and photos of the 30,000 detained and disappeared. Photo: Emergentes

43 years after a U.S. orchestrated military coup was carried out in Argentina, over a million people marched throughout the country to remember the 30,000 murdered and the thousands more who went missing during the horrible military dictatorship that followed.  This is what Trump & Co. want for Venezuela. March 24 marked the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice.

The marches also protest the current right-wing government of Mauricio Macri which is trying to impose drastic hardships on the people. Macri is a close ally of Trump and the fascist Bolsanaro in Brazil.

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Finally – Some Truth About the U.S. Attempts to Colonize Venezuela

U.S. Imperialists Driving to Disastrous War – Workers Say No!

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Energy Secretary Rick Perry spoke to a conference of U.S. Big Oil companies asking them to get directly involved in the failing attempt to take over Venezuela.

Perry was asked if the overthrow of Maduro would lead to the reassertion of control over Venezuela’s oil reserves— the largest on the planet— by US-based energy giants. “Absolutely, I think that is the real message, that the national companies want to see this regime out so that we can return,” he replied.

Exxon used to control Venezuela’s oil until it was nationalized. The Bolivarian revolution used oil revenue to build houses, free education, free medical care and many other programs we don’t have here in the U.S. Of course we could if our national budget was not looted by the profiteering war industries.

In his speech, Pompeo stated that the goal of U.S. foreign policy was to dominate the world politically and economically by control global oil stocks.  He then went on to lay claim to energy reserves in the South China seas.  China responded angrily by saying the U.S should stay out of the region. U.S warplanes capable of carrying nuclear bombs were subsequently deployed in this area.

Pompeo, Trump, Bolton, and the majority of Democrats who vote for militarism are on a crazed mission to dominate the world, threatening us all with major wars for their own profit.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S installed a UNOCAL (an American oil company) employee as president. And prior to invading Iraq, V.P. and former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney personally brought together a consortium of U.S. oil companies where they drew maps parceling out Iraq’s oil for themselves.

This shows the true motives of U.S. imperialism which at the same time seeks to destroy any popular movement that might bring true democracy and real gains for the people.