Posted on

Stop Biden’s Bombing in Syria, Emergency Aid to Arctic Storm Victims

Millions go cold in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana
and in Damascus, Syria

What does the working class in these places have in common?  Through military force, the U.S. government has seized oil and gas resources and handed them over to private profiteers who wield total control over, what remains for now, a critical means of survival.  The military assault on Syria and U.S. military spending to seize oil for profits has causes deprivation and suffering for workers of both countries.

Syrian oil is nationalized and income from its export goes into public programs. The U.S. ultra- rich can’t stand this, so they impose Texas-style profiteering by force. The U.S. military occupation of Syrian oil fields is preventing oil delivery to Damascus, Syria which has a population of 2.4 million. They too are experiencing very cold winter weather.

The artic storm that hit the U.S. was forecast for over a week. No preparations were made by the Texas or federal government. No airlifting of food, water and thermal blankets was initiated. No emergency income was made available.  No emergency orders were issued to ban price gouging of electricity or gas. No money was reserved to fix broken pipes and restore drinkable water to millions. Texas, once Mexico, refuses to give the pennies of FEMA aid to undocumented workers who carry Texas on their backs alongside other workers. There are still blue tarps from hurricanes Harvey and Laura in Texas and Louisiana and unlivable homes all over.

As the storm approached, preparations were being made to bomb Syria. More U.S. weapons were being produced, more U.S. warships were being sent to threaten far-off countries, more U.S. sanctions were being imposed to starve and kill thousands around the world.

The U.S. military is currently directing and funding mercenary forces such as the SDF that are currently occupying Syrian oilfields. They are stealing 140,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Hasakah and smuggling it into neighboring U.S. occupied Iraq. The Governor of Hasakah, Mr. Khalil, said the plundering is directly enabled by U.S. military forces.

Secretary of State Pompeo and Sen. Lindsey Graham admitted to looting Syria’s oil in a testimony to the Senate Foreign Relation Committee in July 2020. Pompeo testified that an American oil company was taking crude oil into Iraq.

At that time Trump stated: “We’re keeping the oil, remember that. We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month.”

The bombing in Syria also killed members of the Iraqi security forces who have been fighting ISIS. Iraqis have protested in the hundreds of thousands to demand an end to US occupation. Just last year the Iraqi parliament voted to remove U.S. forces, but the will of the people has been ignored time and time again by the oil hungry US.

Just like the last five presidents, Biden continues to war-monger in Syria under the guise of promoting democracy. He continues to fund the fascist state of Israel and arm the brutal monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Both of these governments are carrying out wars of genocide against the Yemenis and the Palestinians who endure the most extreme cruelties every day.

The politicians and energy company executives who celebrated the “jackpot” they hit when Texas residents’ bills rose by more than 10,000 percent should be jailed. Utilities should be put in the hands of the people who, led by energy workers, can then carry out a just transition to safe, reliable renewable energy.

This bombing should be a wake-up call to those who believe we can support Biden as we focus on only local issues. Syria today; Iran, Russia, or China tomorrow. Nuclear arms production is ramping up and the U.S. is preparing for space war. We must fight for jobs, housing, and a union. In the same breath we must reach the working class with a popular anti-war message as an issue of equal urgency.

The U.S. capitalist economy is dying, and the capitalists are resorting to war profiteering, fossil fuel production, and financial gambling to prop it up. These are the hands behind the rise of the right. If we ignore militarism, if we fail to be internationalists in all our struggles, the working class and oppressed here will suffer mightily.

U.S. Out of the Middle East

Money for Peoples’ Needs, Not for Rich Men’s Wars!

Posted on

India’s Peoples’ Polyclinics Put Community Healthcare Over Profit

In the 1940s, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) started a movement to address people’s lack of access to healthcare, especially in rural areas. The first People’s Polyclinic (‘Praja Vaidyasala’) in Nellore was founded on the principle that anyone who needs treatment should be treated, regardless of their ability to pay. The Nellore People’s Polyclinic (PPC) trains doctors and volunteers to provide healthcare to peasants, agricultural workers, and the rural poor, who lack access to healthcare and cannot afford to travel to urban areas for care. The Nellore PPC inspired many more people in the communist movement to start their own polyclinics. Communist polyclinics in India now provide low-cost or free healthcare to thousands of people every day, saving lives that would otherwise be lost to the private healthcare system. The U.S. could use a movement like this. The private healthcare system in the U.S. has left thousands of uninsured, poor, houseless, Black, and Brown people without access to what could be lifesaving medical care. COVID-19 has only made these disparities worse and led to more preventable deaths. We must stand up and say, “Healthcare for the people, not for profit!” 

Posted on

On 2nd Anniversary of People’s Uprising, Sudanese Push Back Against Government Betrayals

Sudanese take to the streets in December 2020 to demand the end of the Rapid Support Forces, a murderous militia backed by the transitional government.

On December 19, tens of thousands took to the streets in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum and nearby city Umm Durman on the second anniversary of the Sudan’s December 2018 evolution, which resulted in the removal and criminal prosecution of the Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Less than a week later, the streets were filled again following the murder of yet another young activist at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia backed by the transitional government. Following this latest assassination, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), a trade union coalition, launched the “Know Your Right” campaign to demand the dissolution of the RSF.

The right wing and the military have formed an alliance in opposition to leftist, union, and people’s forces. Demonstrators want power to be returned to civilian forces and are calling out the slow pace of change following the Revolution and the ruling government’s betrayals. On January 6, the transitional government signed the Zionist “Abraham Accords,” which are debt-forgiveness bribes by the U.S. and World Bank in exchange for Sudan ‘normalizing’ relations with apartheid Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people. Progressive activists as well as political parties within Sudan mobilized to reject the government’s position.

Posted on

Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils Tells Louisiana Legislature: Bail Out the People!

Members of the Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils held a press conference at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge on December 18 before a hearing on CARES Act money the State has withheld from workers.
Members of the Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils held a press conference at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge on December 18 before a hearing on CARES Act money the State has withheld from workers.

On December 18 members of the Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils (LMWC) held a press conference at the Louisiana state Capitol to demand that state legislators use the tens of millions of unspent federal relief dollars to bail out workers suffering hardship because of the COVID pandemic.

The state of Louisiana received $1.8 billion in federal relief (CARES Act) funds to supposedly cope with the fallout from the pandemic. Around $525 million of those funds were used to reimburse local governments for “pandemic related expenses.” Yet many of the poorest parishes were excluded from relief because they couldn’t afford the expenses in the first place.

Tens of millions of dollars were used to pay off sheriff’s departments instead of going to food, housing assistance, health services, or economic relief.

Of the $50 million dollars set aside for (pitifully low) $250 payments to essential workers, $11 million never made it into the hands of workers.

$362 million in CARES Act funds are simply unaccounted for.

LMWC demands that these funds go directly to low income households who are bearing the brunt of the crisis. 200,000 Louisianans are jobless. At least 1 in 6 Louisiana households is struggling to put food on the table. Around 30,000 households are on the verge of eviction in Orleans Parish alone.

We refuse to go hungry and die as our tax dollars are used to bail out big corporations or buy arms for the police. We need jobs, income, housing, and healthcare. The LMWC is prepared to fight to get what we deserve. Join us!

Posted on

Pandemic Relief Showered on Anti-LGBTQ Orgs

by Sally Jane Black

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) gave $4.3 million to anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion organizations, including American College of Pediatricians, American Family Association, Center for Family and Human Rights, Church Militant/St. Michael’s Media, Liberty Counsel, Pacific Justice Institute and Ruth Institute.

The American Family Association, which targets not only LGBTQ people, but also women and non-Christians, received $1.4 million alone. They have 200 radio stations across the country that tout their violent and divisive ideology. The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, which received over $600,000, was foudned and named after a demagogue who promotes child abuse.

These organizations are funded by the same capitalists, such as the Koch Brothers and the DeVos family, that are behind the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ laws that have swept through state legislatures in the last few years. Their goal is to pit people in the working class against one another, misusing religious freedom to make religious workers and LGBTQ people blame each other for their oppression instead of the capitalists. The use of PPP loans to fund these hate groups during the pandemic while millions of workers have lost their jobs is not an accident, but the priorities of the super-rich.

These right-wing organizations should be shut down and their leaders jailed, not funded by money that should be spent supporting workers during these crises.

Posted on

Racism in Healthcare: A Disease We Must Eradicate!

Dr. Susan Moore died from COVID-19 as racism deprived her of care. A still from a video she shared to expose the treatment

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Z Petrosian

In the U.S. COVID-19 has infected Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian people at rates higher than whites, and the disparity is even greater when it comes to the severity of illness and death from COVID-19. Centuries of racism in the U.S. healthcare system are to blame. We don’t need more studies. We need action to demand expanded access to healthcare for all, especially people of color and very poor people, through national Medicaid for all. We must also create independent community-based boards that have the power to accept complaints, implement changes, and review materials and practices.

Centuries of racist abuses call for reparations

Racism in healthcare can be traced to the foundations of the U.S., which is based on the genocide of Native peoples and chattel enslavement of Africans. For centuries, non-white, particularly Black, people were treated as less than human, only to be kept healthy enough to work or to be experimented on without consent, as in the case of gynecological experimentation carried out by James Marion Sims on enslaved Black women. This abuse and experimentation continued long after slavery was abolished, most infamously in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study wherein Black men were deliberately infected with syphilis and denied treatment.

This abuse is not just in the past but continues to exist in healthcare, particularly in the lack of equal access to quality medical care. Studies show that, overall, Blacks who report medical problems receive less timely and lower quality treatment than whites; illness and disease is more likely to be found and addressed later in its course, resulting in worse outcomes and preventable deaths.

Dr. Susan Moore, 52, dies of COVID-19 while fighting for equal care

The quality of care routinely given to rich whites and politicians is denied to the working class and people of color. Recently Susan Moore, a dedicated Black family medicine doctor, called out racism at the hands of a white doctor and staff who were treating her for COVID-19 at a hospital in suburban Indianapolis. Being a medical professional, Dr. Moore was able to make detailed demands about the specific treatments she knew she needed even as her reported symptoms went unheeded.

Despite her objections, Dr. Moore was sent home prematurely while her condition deteriorated. “This is how Black people get killed, when you them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Dr. Moore said. Just hours later, she was transported in an ambulance to another hospital where she died from COVID-19.

This most horrible outcome was compounded by a lifetime of unequal access to medicine due to the racism of the system. Income, housing access, geography, and education all play a major role in the health outcomes of U.S. residents. But Black people are sicker and die younger even when their education levels and incomes are the same as whites. Racism kills.

An image of Dr. Susan Moore and her son.

Affected communities should have the final say on care and equal access to medical education, research, & healthcare delivery

One way to address racism in healthcare is to guarantee free medical coverage and high-quality care to everyone through national improved Medicaid for all. There should be no red tape and no medical bills; this system should cover all necessary medical care for every person in the U.S. for their entire lifetime.

Socialist countries, such as Cuba, provide excellent healthcare at no cost to patients, keeping their populations healthy through a focus on equal access to both prevention and treatment. We can also look here at home to the Veterans Administration (VA) health system to see evidence that guaranteeing health coverage improves health outcomes, especially for Black people. The VA is a health system in need of improvements – long demanded by veterans – still, while Black people in the general population have higher rates of heart disease and death than whites, a study of three million people guaranteed care through the VA showed Blacks were 37% less likely than white men to develop heart disease and had a 24% lower death rate than white patients.

Calls for improved Medicaid for all are urgent during pandemic

It should not have taken a global pandemic for racism to be more broadly recognized as a pervasive and insidious public health issue affecting all aspects of U.S. society, including the healthcare system. However, the current crises give urgency to demands for consistent, free, and equal access to healthcare.

All medical knowledge, treatments, medicines, and therapies are produced by the global working class. It is wrong to allow governments and corporations – including pharmaceutical, insurance, and hospital corporations – to hoard healthcare for the privileged few and make profits. We must take up the fight for Medicaid for all. Equal, quality healthcare is a right!

Posted on

ARGENTINA: Argentinians Win Right to Free, Safe, Legal Abortion (International Briefs)

After decades of struggle and massive street mobilizations, Argentinians win abortion rights.

On December 30, the Argentinian Senate passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy bill, legalizing abortion for any pregnant person. This victory follows decades of struggle led by Argentina’s women’s movement, LGBTQ community, and labor unions. As the bill was being debated, thousands of militant demonstrators filled the streets surrounding the National Congress to show support, erupting in cheers once the law passed. “We won it in the streets. We’ll see you again in the streets,” said Gostine Bete, and abortion rights activist with the Movimiento Popular por Dignidad.

Argentina’s new law guarantees free, safe, and legal abortions to women and people of any gender who become pregnant and request an abortion within the first 14 weeks with extensions in cases of rape, risk of life or health of pregnant person, or risk of still birth. Along with the right to abortion, a 1,000-day Plan bill was passed to strengthen healthcare service and nutrition for mothers and newborns from pregnancy until the child’s second birthday.

Posted on

FRANCE: Following Massive Protests, France Withdraws ‘Security’ Bill (International Briefs)

Mandatory Credit: Photo by ISA HARSIN/SIPA/Shutterstock (11029703ae) Demonstration Place du Trocadero in Paris, called in particular by journalists’ unions who denounce an attack on freedom of expression and the rule of law, following the adoption by the National Assembly in first reading November 20, 2020 of article 24 of the global security law proposal, brought by Gerald Darmanin, Minister of Interior in the government of Emmanuel Macron. This article penalizes the malicious diffusion of police images Demonstration against global security law, Paris, France – 21 Nov 2020

More than half a million people across France took to the streets to protest of the so-called Global Security Bill, which was passed in late November. The bill would have forbidden the publication of images where a police officer can be identified and expanded the ability of the “security forces” to film ordinary citizens without their consent using bodycams and drones. Although the bill has been withdrawn as of December, right wing lawmakers say they will return with a new version.

Images of police brutality particularly against Muslims, Black people, and migrants in France have galvanized opposition to President Macron’s repressive, racist, and anti-worker policies. In addition to the ‘security’ bill, Macron has promoted a bill called Supporting Republican Principles. THis bill seeks further restrictions of Muslim life by banning home-schooling, expanding surveillance of Muslims, and subjecting publicly funded organizations to tests of their French nationalism. Protesters must stay in the streets to ensure this racist bill is also withdrawn.