Waves of popular uprisings have been roiling Haitian society for months. Workers, peasants, teachers and students have taken to the streets to oppose the corrupt U.S. backed oligarchy in control of their government. The last upsurge in protests began on Nov. 18, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières which decided the hard-won war for Haitian independence in 1803. For several days, workers across the country mounted a general strike. The streets have surged with hundreds of thousands of people fed-up with a government that has not only ignored their needs but has met their protests with lethal violence.
The most recent mobilizations have centered around the embezzlement of as much as $3.8 billion dollars in public funds by government elites since 2008. There are obvious reasons that so many have rallied against the injustice of the stolen public funds. While Haiti’s bourgeoisie and their crony bureaucrats have been taking vacations to Miami, less than half of the Haitian population has access to potable water. The masses of Haitians are still struggling to rebuild basic infrastructure after the devastating earthquake of 2010. The funds could have been used to meet the dire needs of the Haitian people, one in four of whom lack access to sanitation.
In fact, the so-called PetroCaribe funds in question were intended for development, for the construction of much needed infrastructure and social programs as part of an accord with oil-rich Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. This deal reflects a longstanding historical bond of solidarity with Venezuela. In 1816, the young republic of Haiti lent arms and aid to Simon Bolivar and his army in their fight for independence from Spain on the condition that slavery be abolished in the founding of Venezuela. In 2017, the PetroCaribe program was halted due to the imposition of financial sanctions on Venezuela by the Trump administration.
Acts of international solidarity fly in the face of U.S. rulers who have sought to undermine the popular will of the Haitians and the Venezuelans ever since this country was founded by wealthy slaveowners. For more than two hundred years, the U.S. has been relentless in its attempts to keep Haiti as a colony where low wage workers would produce goods for export, up through the bloody coups that removed the last popular government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Even today many Haitians work in sweatshops for an average of $3 a day to produce textiles and garments for U.S. companies.
The current U.S. backed government of President Jovenel Moïse as well as the government of his predecessor Michel Martelly are both implicated in the theft of billions. Some in the streets are still calling for an accounting of the lost funds. An increasing number are learning through struggle that this demand is akin to asking a thief to arrest himself. Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is calling to remove Moïse, his ministers, and to establish a transitional government. In their indifference to the suffering of Haitian masses, Moïse and his government have become more an enemy of the people by the day.
As repression grows more brutal, the masses are awakening to the need for a complete overhaul of the state. The Haitian National Police have killed a mounting number of protesters. More troublingly, there have been reports of killings carried out by paramilitary forces, recalling the death squads of the U.S. backed Duvalier regime. On November 13, mercenaries carried out a massacre of dozens in the La Saline neighborhood near Port au Prince; images of the brutal aftermath have fueled the outrage of the anti-government opposition. Among the National Police are 1,300 armed United Nations police officers forming an occupying army that answers to the U.N. Security Council, an instrument of U.S. imperialist rule. For the Haitians set on real revolution, they will have to contend with up to 10,000 U.N. troops should the Security Council authorize it.
The historic destiny of workers and oppressed people in the United States is intimately bound up with the destiny of the Haitian people. In the first case of U.S. aid to a foreign government, the slave-owning George Washington lent over $700,000 to the French planters of St. Domingue in order to put down a rebellion of African slaves. Neither Washington nor the French got their way. Instead, Haiti became the first oppressed nation in the colonized world to win its independence and the Haitian revolution became the standard to which oppressed Africans across the United States aspired in their never ceasing struggle for liberation. Indeed, the heroic example of the Haitian revolution has long shone brightly as a beacon to all oppressed people of the world. Let the freedom seeking people of Haiti lead the way! « Chavire chodyè a » “Overturn the pot!”
Last June people gathered by the thousands to take action against the internment camps set up by ICE that were holding children in cages and separating families. While Trump signed an executive order claiming to stop the separation of children and families, nothing has put a stop to the violence or terror. The situation of our migrant community clearly shows the importance of all workers demanding to Abolish ICE.
Countless cases have been shared detailing abuse of migrants of all ages at the hands of ICE agents. The most recent case to hit the news is the murder of a 7-year-old Guatemalan child, Jakelin Caal Maquin. As of December 8, 2018 Jakelin, would never again see a world outside of Federal custody. This child spent the last of her limited days under incarceration, denied water, and neglected as she got deathly ill. Jakelin and her father were two of over 160 migrants who were apprehended by ICE on December 6. They were taken to an area at the Border Patrol’s Bound Operating Base in a remote part of New Mexico. These areas where hundreds were detained only had a couple port-a-potties; no running water or access to bathing— and lacked necessities to sustain life.
Jakelin started to become increasingly ill as the migrants were forced on a 90-minute bus to Lordsburg. Only once the child was near death, was she flown to a hospital in El Paso. Following her passing, border patrol agents exploited her father’s grief by forcing him to sign documents in English while his native language is Q’eqchi (a Mayan Dialect).
In the name of Amerikkka, ICE is going about “business as usual” as Jakelin’s murder is one of many who have died in ICE prisons, at the hand of border patrol agents, or when agents dump water in the desert meant for migrant travelers. This child’s death is one among many. The capitalist class can cross borders to carry out business and make profit. Artificial borders and discriminatory immigration laws are enforced only upon our working-class sisters and brothers who only want a better life.
9 Reasons Not to Be Sad That War Criminal & Racist, Bush Sr. is Dead
Bush began the 1991 war with Iraq with a blatant lie that Iraqi troops were aiming to invade Saudi Arabia and cut off the U.S. oil supply and deliberating encouraging Kuwait to steal Iraqi oil. With Bush even bombing air raid shelters, 89,000 tons of bombs killed 200,000 Iraqis. He bombed the infrastructure including sewage treatment plants which led to wide spread disease. He massacred tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers while they were retreating. By 1991, Iraq was ordering its soldiers to pull out of Kuwait through two roads. Those roads became known as the “Highway of Death” when the U.S. military bombed them “like shooting fish in a barrel,” according to one U.S. pilot.
He armed the death squads in Nicaragua that were killing anyone who opposed the Somoza dictatorship and U.S. invasion. He later pardoned all involved.
Bush was a war criminal. He violated the Geneva Convention, anti-torture convention, and War Crimes Act.
He initiated the so-called War on Drugs while allowing drugs to deliberately poison Black and other working class communities. Then threw a million people in jail where inmate slave labor is used to profit corporations.
During his presidential race against Michael Dukakis, he ran the infamous racist “Willie Horton ads”, painting young Black men as rapists and murderers. Bush Sr.’s campaign advisor would even apologize for the ad on his deathbed—Bush never did.
He sexually assaulted at least 8 women, including a 16-year-old woman by groping her when he was 79.
He let the AIDS epidemic grow to kill over 100,000 people. While mostly working class LGBT+ people were on their hospital deathbeds, Bush told them “well, change your behavior.”
As CIA director, Bush Sr. prioritized arms deals with fascist death squads in oil-rich areas, like the mujahedeen in Afghanistan (which would later become the Taliban). This was after he was on the payroll of Dresser Industries—a corporation that made a fortune off of weapons production and oil extraction.
He invaded Panama in 1989, killing 3,000 people and destroying the homes of tens of thousands more, all to keep U.S. military bases in Panama after they were scheduled to be closed by the government.
So who profited from Bush Sr.’s career? Oil corporations, private prisons, and military arms dealers (Bush’s own family!) reaped billions of dollars all throughout the criminal’s presidency. Bush Sr. was only an “American hero” to the wealthy elite that he served. He was an enemy of working class and oppressed people all over the world. It is sad that some progressives like Bernie Sanders praised him in death for his “humble and devoted service” to the country. Truth is our greatest weapon in securing a better future.
IT IS DANGEROUS TO CONTINUE THE DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE
The Clintons, VIP guests at Trump’s VIP wedding
By Gavrielle Gemma
Since its founding, the Democratic Party has represented slaveholders and later a substantial section of the capitalist ruling class. There are, on occasion, divisions among the capitalists, but only on how to prevent the rise of class consciousness and maintain the exploitation of labor, imperialist domination, white supremacy, not to end it.
Friedrich Engels, the collaborator with Karl Marx, wrote many years ago that in fact, the appearance of liberal, bourgeois democracy was best suited to capitalism. While relentlessly pursuing the same goal of profit at any cost, it disguised its ends better and deceived and pacified the people more.
The nomination of Hillary Clinton disgusted a vast section of especially young activists who opposed the militarist, oil company and banking candidate and who had come to realize that the Democratic Party was not a party of the workers or the people, but controlled totally by and for the 1%, the same 1% that controls the Republicans.
Millions of workers and youth were ready to leave the Democratic Party. They were inspired by just the mention of the word socialism by Bernie Sanders, even though he was a Democratic Party candidate. But Sanders, despite Democratic Party corruption preventing his nomination, heartily endorsed the rotten Hillary Clinton. Supporters had fervently hoped if not nominated, he would run as an independent. We cannot forget this undemocratic decision and capitulation to the very forces he was condemning.
Even the possibility of a long overdue break with the parties of capitalism scared the establishment, and they went into overdrive to hammer in a message that only the Democrat Party candidates could save us from Trumpism.
Trump arose out of the crisis of capitalists who felt their empire and profits were crumbling. They wanted to quickly pursue an assault on the workers, as well as accelerate the theft of the budget to be turned over to the war profiteers and banks as their solution.
The Democratic Party aided this by building up the military and supporting, eagerly, genocidal wars for profits. After all, both parties serve the same masters. The Democratic Party method is to pursue the same aim but more gradually, and they have gone along with cuts to social programs over the decades. They have deported millions of immigrants, initiated policies of mass incarceration and impoverishment, especially of women. They have supported continuous imperialist war and carried out fascist coups in the Ukraine and Honduras. Meanwhile, not one single meaningful measure enacted against the lowering of wages and insecurity of the working class was undertaken. Resorting to imperialist war, coups, and sabotage flows from the capitalist need to exploit labor, expand markets, get cheap labor and resources through domination of other countries. Are these the forces that will Fight the Right?
It was exactly Democratic Party deeds that paved the way for the ruling class to take a chance on a more openly reactionary president who could drive the capitalist engine of destruction of the world’s working class at a faster, unfettered pace.
That Sanders’ program is not revolutionary, and that he himself has often gone along with imperialism is undisputed. But it is the movement that exploded that was so important. However, both the “establishment” Democrats and the “left” Democrats immediately began to perpetuate the deception that the reason for the hated Trump regime is all due to bad people getting in, and if only we elect “good” people everything will be fine. This is not only historically false, but dangerous. Some younger activists have been led to believe that all things bad began with Trump. If only we could go back to the Obama years, all would be well. The result is the social democrats are actively herding people back into the Democratic Party rather than out of it.
It’s certainly a good sign that voters pick a democratic socialist, a liberal, over a white nationalist, but nothing more. That should be a signal that these voters are ready to organize, not to wait for a new congress to be the savior. Progressives can all recognize the extreme white nationalism, anti-worker assaults and dictator-of-the-world desires of Trump’s program. We are all supposed to fight the right. But awakening forces are told to ally with fascist FBI directors and generals—indeed anyone who criticizes Trump. Will that really hold off the right? That has been attempted often in history with disastrous consequences.
In Chile in 1974, Salvador Allende, a socialist, was elected president. The U.S. and Chilean oligarchy teamed up to sabotage the economy and arm and train the generals. Allende tried to ally with the liberal capitalist class forces of Chile, rather than arming the masses for the inevitable fight to come. The result was that Allende was murdered and the U.S. installed a 30-year brutal dictatorship, murdering thousands and impoverishing more.
Another dire example in history was in Germany. Again, rather than arm the masses to fight fascism, a popular front with bourgeois elements was proposed which led to disaster. Of course, neither the Democrats or Republicans opposed Hitler while he was staving off revolution and threatening the Soviet Union. The U.S. only entered the war to make sure the U.S. ruling class got its share of colonies and influence after the Soviet Union had basically defeated the Nazis at a cost of 30 million people.
The first and greatest danger to the workers and oppressed is to deceive the people by lending support to catastrophic imperialist lies. The U.S. /NATO bloc has encircled Russia with nuclear bases and warships while installing a neo-Nazi government on its border. In an anything-that-attacks-Trump-is-good stance, Democrats focus on Russian election hacking and turning FBI despots into heroes. Some sections of the capitalist ruling class just want to do business with Russia; others want to colonize Russia and steal its vast resources. The capitalist class succeeded, cheered on by both capitalist parties in turning Eastern Europe into a U.S./NATO Colony, with U.S.-supported ultra-right-wing regimes. Both sectors of the capitalist class have nothing but evil intentions.
The danger in all this, and the danger in deceiving the workers, is that another major imperialist war may erupt, a war in which workers have no stake. The first things progressives must do is debunk U.S. propaganda and explain that the U.S. goes to war only for domination of markets, cheap labor and resources to gain profit at any cost. No U.S. intervention ever brings democracy or prosperity – only death, destruction, repression and poverty.
Nor does it bring security and prosperity at home.
Winning a seat in the capitalist government can be helpful if used to educate and organize the people as progressive change always follow mass struggle, not the other way around. But how can we move the workers past capitalist lies if social democrats collude in perpetuating them. The newly elected DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez set a terrible example by praising John McCain. McCain, from a military officer family, was a war criminal who bombed Vietnam mercilessly, promoted the invasion of Iraq and was a conservative and racist. An anti-war activist shockingly told me Ocasio-Cortez had no choice. If she didn’t join the chorus of flag wavers, she would be scorned in Congress. If political leaders only want to join the club and are afraid to risk their respectability, there will be no progress.
SUPPORT OF THE MILITARY GAVE RISE TO TRUMP Moving from a civilian to military based economy strengthens the ultra-reactionary forces and makes them and the banks more dominant in politics. So the consistent Democratic Party support for imperialism and the military under Obama and before helped give rise to Trump.
Trying to separate the rise of a reactionary politician from developments in the capitalist economy leads nowhere. Hitler was supported by the world’s capitalist classes because they felt it was either fascism or revolution. Without their support, he would not have risen to power.
ANTI-IMMIGRANT POLICIES RAMPANT BEFORE TRUMP During his term Obama was dubbed “Deporter-in-Chief”. But let’s go to the underlaying cause of the desperate migration of workers. It was under Bill Clinton that the NAFTA trade deal was signed displacing millions of Mexican peasants and workers and laying off workers here. Clinton said then “NAFTA means jobs.” But the Democratic Party is equally complicit in the wars and economic strangulation of other countries that have led to the global refugee crisis. To ignore this is to be complicit in deepening the crisis.
CARTER WROTE THE PATCO UNION BUSTING PLAN, REAGAN CARRIED IT OUT
UNIONS NEED TO STOP COLLABORATING WITH BOSSES, DEMOCRATIC OR REPUBLICAN PARTIES
Usually when you give money you expect something back from it. But unions continue to give millions of dollars, mostly to the Democrats who have given nothing back. The idea that progress can be made by collaborating with the bosses rather than fighting them is a tragic lie. Of course, the top echelons of labor have made out nicely. In the 1980’s, capitalists began a massive technological revolution using funds amassed through the labor of workers. But far from benefitting workers, they used these advances to lay off millions of workers in union industries, set up shops overseas, and wages have been sinking ever since.
The Democratic Party went along with it all. They made not one sincere attempt to even moderate the effects of the capitalist technological revolution. Similarly, while banks got $12 trillion in bailouts in 2008, not one meaningful measure was raised to bail out the people.
REFORM OR REVOLUTION The liberals and non-profit professionals like to say that we revolutionary socialists are only about theory and not for improving conditions under capitalism. This lie serves them well. Communists have been among the most ardent fighters for equal rights, union rights and social programs by organizing mass movements. Once these gains are established, non-profits move in and make careers and salaries while weakening the hard fought victories.
But we are not only about reform because everything won can be taken away. Every day, 25,000 children in the world die from treatable, preventable disease inflicted upon them by capitalism. There is enough food to feed the world were it not in private capitalist hands. The planet must be saved from the capitalists who only see profits at any cost. We must stop the mass murder of millions by U.S. imperialist war. We can return to the workers here the product of their labor.
This can only happen by awakening the class-consciousness of the workers and oppressed, not only to fight now, but also to fight to overturn the entire rotten system and bring in genuine socialism and a peaceful prosperous world for all. To advance this we need to openly break with the capitalist Democratic Party and advance independent mass political organizations, including building a labor party of the working class and the oppressed.
As Syria fights the last battles of its over 7-year war against U.S. and Israeli-backed terrorist insurgency, it still faces many challenges and a rough road ahead. This long, dirty war which has been fueled by the US and its allies, has cost 500,000 Syrian lives and an estimated $400 billion in damages. The war has driven 10 million Syrians to flee their homes, creating one of the worst refugee crises in the world today. Needless to say, despite their celebrating their victories against terrorism and invasion, the people in Syria will live with the trauma of this war for generations.
However, western imperialism and its puppets in the middle east are still aggressively harassing the Syrian people and the Syrian army. In the past 18 months Israel has shot over 200 missiles into Syria. The U.S. still maintains its illegal invasion of Syrian territory, with 12 military bases and up to 2,000 special operations soldiers. U.S. Generals (Trump’s best friends) continue to regularly threaten Syria with further bombing and invasion.
Syria is now openly engaged in the early stages of what could be the last major battle of the war. Most of the western-backed terrorist forces, Al Queada, ISIS, al-NUSRA, which the U.S. has branded as terrorists are the so called “rebels” receiving support from the U.S. and Israel. They are concentrated in the northwestern city of Idlib, and the Syrian Army is preparing for an offensive with the support if its allies. They have had to make these preparations and conduct negotiations in the face of the aforementioned bombings and constant threats of intervention from imperialist politicians.
But why are the imperialists being so aggressive and threatening when Syria is close to ending its war? The answer is clear if you look at the history of U.S. war-mongering in the middle east: the imperialists make money off of wars and stealing natural resources, so they’ll only allow peace if they can hold a dominant, colonizer position.
Just within my generation, the U.S. has invaded and devastated Iraq, Libya and Afganistan. These countries, home to some of the world most ancient civilizations, had long been victims of western intervention and aggression, but they remained relatively stable until the U.S. and its allies invaded. They all now lay in ruins.
In Libya, the U.S. invasion caused the growth of a domestic slave trade as well as terrible sectarian violence between warlord and fundamentalist groups. In Iraq, the U.S.-installed government is viciously repressing protests where everyday Iraq citizens are demanding basic necessities like food and water and jobs. Afganistan has never seen an end to violence since the U.S. invaded, and NATO today uses the war-torn country as a military training ground. Last year the U.S. even dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb in Afganistan. One thing is for sure: the military industrial complex and the oil executives are laughing to the bank every time workers and oppressed people in the U.S. believe the lies that they feed us on the corporate media to justify these wars.
We should express our support for Syria in in their struggle against imperialism and for their right to self determination. We also must voice our opposition to the threats that U.S. politicians and generals have been issuing and demand that the U.S. & Israel stop their attacks and pull their troops out of Syria. Only then can Syrian workers rebuild their communities and advance their struggles against capitalist and imperialist oppression.
A young survivor of the August 9, 2018 US/Saudi bombing of a school bus, with fragment of U.S. made missile. Photo by Yemeni photographer Ahmad Algohbarya.
By Malcolm Suber
Although most of our readers have very little information about the war in Yemen, we believe it necessary to give a working class perspective on one of the most devastating wars occurring in the world today. The U.S. capitalist press hardly mentions this war. The reason for the lack of coverage is that the U.S. imperialist ruling class bears real responsibility for the crisis. A quote from a Yemeni doctor sums it up this way: “The missiles that kill us – American made. The planes that kill us – American made. The tanks… American-made. You are saying to me where is America? America is the whole thing.” (From a PBS report by Jane Ferguson)
The Yemeni civil war pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels against the fascist Saudi Arabia-backed government forces who receive their weaponry and military advice from the U.S. pentagon.
Leaving aside the complex question of who is right in the conflict, there is no question that masses of innocent civilians have wrongly become targets. Hospitals, schools, mosques and other non-military targets have been hit. The Saudi led forces have dropped cluster bombs on Houthi sites.
The humanitarian disaster in Yemen is unthinkable. The UN puts the number of displaced at over 2 million, with 22 million Yemenis in danger of a cholera outbreak and starvation because of disruption of international aid shipments. Yet the civil war in Yemen has received very little attention in the US bourgeois press because it does not fit in their hierarchy of important news.
For one thing, Yemenis are poor, non-white people from a distant third world country. Secondly, both Democratic and Republican party politicians support US intervention on the side of the Saudis. Thirdly, covering the story in depth would require digging into US imperialist business leaders as merchants of death with sales of the most advance weapons to the reactionary Saudi regime.
News coverage of the Yemeni civil war would also reveal the double-dealing of the US government which pretends to be waging a war against Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist organizations yet is supplying them with funds and weapons as part of the Saudi-led forces. The Saudis are also allying themselves with the Zionist Israeli regime as partners in conflict with Iran.
Under the Obama regime, the US carried out drone warfare against the Houthis which resulted in some of its main leaders being assassinated, including anti-terrorist Imam, Salem bin ali Jaber. Those US drones bombed school buses and wedding receptions killing many civilians that the Obama administration labeled as mistakes and collateral damage.
Vietnamese Children fleeing U.S. bombing with napalm. 8 bombs a minute were dropped. Did John McCain drop this bomb?
Just because you’re not the best friend of the other criminal, Donald Trump, doesn’t make you a hero.
Senator John McCain was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War— a war that took the lives of 3 million Vietnamese and 57,000 U.S. GI’s. The U.S. dropped 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It destroyed village after village. Many of the bombs dropped Agent Orange and napalm, chemical warfare that destroyed crops, forests, fields, rice paddies and tortured any human being hit by it. Decades after the bombing, Vietnamese and U.S. soldiers developed cancer and other illnesses from agent orange which took the Pentagon and U.S. government decades to admit.
McCain vigorously supported Bush’s war against Iraq and more recently backed the Saudi fascist government in their genocidal war on Yemen which both bombs and starves the people. Joining all presidents, Republican and Democrat, who do not view the lives of other people as important, McCain embraced every war waged by the US imperialist state. During his 2008 campaign for President, McCain sang the song “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
Domestic Policy The Children’s Defense Fund called McCain the worst Senator in Congress for children. Running against Obama in 2008, McCain promised to balance the budget by cutting social security, Medicare and Medicaid. He also supported spending billions on the profit-making domestic surveillance and homeland security. McCain was firmly against taxing big business. During 5 terms as Senator his record on labor rights, women, LGBTQ, racial equality, women’s rights and consumer rights was terrible.
And we cannot forget he chose Sarah Palin, a maniac far right racist as his vice-presidential running mate. Not that he ever made much of an attempt to conceal his own racism: this is a man who in 1983 voted against the establishment of MLK Day. The same man who in 2000 said, “I hate the g**ks… I will hate them as long as I live.”
McCain swayed in the political wind. At one point he supported a path for citizenship for immigrants. Then when running for President he endorsed the plan of the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association (giant ranchers on stolen land) to deploy armored tanks to the border and deprive immigrants of water in the desert. He accused immigrants of intentionally causing car crashes to collect money from insurance companies.
It’s understandable that the big business media would follow the script of this “great man” nonsense. But there is no excuse when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Socialist of America member and Democratic Party Primary winner for Congress from New York, chimes in: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.”
Clearly, the multi-millionaire McCain, whose father and grand-father were navy Admirals, lived a life of pandering to the rich, bombing other countries, and trying to destroy social programs. No great man, no hero, not even close.
Working Class, Oppressed Masses Rally to Support Maduro
By Quest Riggs
In early August the world watched as Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, narrowly survived an assassination attempt. While he was giving a speech to soldiers of the Venezuelan military, two large explosions detonated in the air injuring seven military personnel. The two bombs were attached to small drones that were on course to the stage where the president and his wife were standing, alongside many of the highest ranking officials of the government and military. In this way, this terrorist attack was not only an assassination attempt on the president of the Republic: it was yet another coup attempt by the farright bourgeoisie of Venezuela in cooperation with North American imperialism.
In a speech after the attack, Maduro asked, “What would have happened if this attempt on my life was successful? What would be happening today in the streets of Venezuela?” He went on to say, “I tell the Venezuelan opposition that I guarantee you can live in this country peacefully. If something happens to me, you will have to face millions of Campesinos and humble people making justice with their own hands.”
The next day, thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to show their support for the government and their willingness to mobilize in defense of their revolution. Thousands of workers, peasants and students marched dressed in red, and they were joined by the armed community militias who organize to defend Venezuela’s independence. They rally because of the social improvements for many workers and poor people in Venezuela in housing, education and wages during Maduro’s presidency. But their main objective is to protect Venezuela’s independence from North American imperialism, which is in the offensive to dominate the workers of South & Central America and the Carribean.
Across the continent the forces of imperialism and capitalism, the richest people in the Americas, are murdering poor workers- especially those who organize and fight for their communities. They are plotting to strip all of the independence fighters in Latin America of power and tear down all barriers to their profits and domination. But the people, the workers, will never lie down in the face of oppression and exploitation!
Ever since May 8 when the Trump government announced that the US was pulling out of the 2015 agreement between world imperialist powers and Iran over its nuclear program, the US government has launched an aggressive offensive of speeches by members of the state department and the US military threatening war on Iran. The US aims to force Iran to end its nuclear program and its support for the Syrian regime and the Houthi freedom fighters in Yemen.
The Trump government, in typical gangster fashion, is using sanctions against the Iranian regime in an effort to starve Iranian people into submission to US imperialist dictate. The Trump regime believes that as the last remaining superpower it has the political right and military might to reorder the entire globe to its liking. The US sanctions against Iran are meant to disrupt the Iranian economy by requiring that its junior imperialist powers in the European Union and Great Britain support the US sanctions or have their trade with the US disrupted as well.
The aim of the US campaign against Iran is to clear the entire Middle East of regimes which are hostile to US domination of the oil-rich region. The US also requires recognition of the Zionist state of Israel. Already, the US is supporting Saudi Arabia’s bombarding Yemen with the most up to date military planes and battlefield equipment, sold to them by the US military industrial complex.
The war mongering assault by the US is a complete violation of the sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the Iranian people and state. Why should the US have the right to pick and choose who should rule in the other countries of the world? Why should only some countries have the right to nuclear weapons while claiming that others should be denied that right? Clearly the US imperialist government, which is the only government that has used nuclear bombs in war, can’t be that arbiter.
Trump has gotten on Twitter and created a straw man by announcing that the US government will go to war with Iran if they threaten the US. He wrote: “Never, ever threaten the US again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”.
Of course Iran has not threatened the US; it has condemned US incursions on its territory and warned that it will defend their territory as is their right as a sovereign country. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hit back at Trump’s tweet. “Color us unimpressed. The world heard even harsher bluster a few months ago. And Iranians have heard them- albeit more civilized ones- for 40 years. We’ve been around for millennia and seen the fall of empires, including our own, which lasted more than the life of some countries. BE CAUTIOUS!”
The US working class must take seriously Trump’s threats to wage war against Iran. We have a duty to oppose all US war plans by building up the anti-imperialist war movement here in the US. The Iranian people and state are not our enemies. Iran and other oppressed countries like North Korea and Venezuela are trying to live independent lives not dictated by US imperialism and need our support. The New Orleans Workers Group will work tirelessly to educate workers about our real interests and our internationalist duty to oppose US imperialist war.
On August 9, the United States and their puppets in Saudi Arabia bombed a school bus full of children. Fifty civilians, mostly children, died and over 60 were injured in this airstrike. While the world cried in disgust at this massacre of children, the Saudi “royalty” and the US imperialists coldly either denied their responsibility or attempted to justify it as a “legitimate target”. The US military and profit making corporations who sold the bombs are just as responsible for the massacre as the Saudis who dropped them, especially because the US provides the intelligence and coordinates for such airstrikes. U.S. workers pay for this as money for needed social programs is stolen by Congress and the Trump administration and turned over to the war profiteers.
This is just the latest episode in the bloody war on the Yemeni people, especially children. The attacks are almost all directed at civilians, either through direct violence or by destroying their access to necessities like food, water and medicine. In Yemen, the imperialists and their puppets in the Middle East are responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. We cannot become complacent and we must expose all the politicians, generals, and war profiteering capitalists who are responsible for this war.
