CIA wars aren't fought to defend US workers interests.

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The Washington Post has published the secret US Intelligence budget that the paper received as part of a package of information from Edward Snowden.  The $52 billion of taxpayer funds it appears often fails to protect “national security” the Post argues.

Naturally, representatives of the bankers and other coupon clippers that we bailed out after the crash  are already saying the Post has published material that could cause, “Significant damage “ to national security (former CIA officials Paul Pillar, now at the Brookings Institution). The Post has admitted it held back publishing some of the material for fear it would harm national security. The CIA’s $14 billion a year is aimed at knocking out competitor's computers and stealing secrets as well as spying on US citizens.

But the question we have to ask ourselves is: what constitutes national security?   The interests of Halliburton, CitiBank and the cronies that run these institutions are not the same interests as the workers and middle class that allow the US economy and society to function.  In fact, the increased attacks on US workers, our wages, benefits and general living standards, is a direct result of policies designed not to protect us but policies aimed at protecting the interests of US capitalism abroad.

It was not in the interests of US workers, or a good use of our tax money, to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1954 or the democratically elected secular government of Iran in 1953.  The US installed the vicious regime of the Shah of Iran after that escapade so if we want to allocate blame for the presence of the Mullahs blame the Pentagon and their British colleagues.

It was not in US workers interests to invade Vietnam, slaughter 3 million people,  and support a government that couldn’t get elected by its own people.  The US also used chemical weapons on them as it did on the Iraqi people. It wasn’t in our interests to support Bin Laden against the Soviets and the religious fanatics against the government of Mohammad Najibullah.  The US supported the Taliban against Najibullah and when the Soviets could no longer offer assistance the Taliban killed him, castrated him then dragged his body through the streets.  The US had its way, the Islamic fanatics won.  That they were misogynistic 7^th century religious nuts didn’t matter as long as an oil and gas pipeline to the Arabian sea was possible and capital not restrained it was OK, violence against women be damned. US workers and the labor movement should have given critical support to Najibullah against the Taliban and their Pentagon partners.  Remember, up until 1999, every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government.

It wasn’t in our interests when our government involved itself in the murder of Patrice Lumumba and installing Mobutu who killed some two million people. The assassination of Allende and overthrow of that democratically elected government was US orchestrated.  The list of such actions taken to supposedly protect our national interests is a long one. What these activities amount to are not defensive actions but offensive ones aimed at making the world safe for US corporations and the 1% in their rapacious profit making ventures.  Who is going to invade the US?

We are told we are all Americans; that we have to unite.  But all Americans don’t have the same interests. It’s not in the interest of US workers to have fire stations closed, post offices shut down, education savaged, our national parks falling apart through lack of funds etc. It is not in our interest to have two million people in prison and millions of people without decent shelter, food or health care.

The assault on Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden by the representatives of Wall Street in Congress and the Pentagon has nothing to do with the safety and welfare of the American workers and middle class. We can't travel to half of the countries in the world due to US foreign policy mapped out behind closed doors.  What embarrassed them about the Wikileaks and Snowden releases it that they reveal their diplomacy for what it is, the diplomacy of thieves and robbers.   Their counterparts are the same of course, but as workers we have to reach out to our own class internationally.  Millions of workers just like us are suffering horrendous hardships and never ending war in the struggle for control of the world’s diminishing resources. The instability of the so-called free market is everywhere.  More bubbles are developing as the same old activities return. The countries that have been in the limelight as the example of the vibrancy of the market are slipping deeper in to the quagmire, I am talking about the emerging markets particularly the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China). China has whole towns sitting empty or unfinished including a huge replica of the Eiffel Tower, there is an explosion waiting to happen there and the same can be said about the US.  Welcome to the free market folks.

International solidarity and independent activity on the part of working people is made more difficult because organizations we have built over time, trade unions and in most other advanced capitalist economies, political parties are led by bureaucrats whose world view is the same as the bosses, the same as the bankers and Wall Street crowd. Even those claiming to be socialist support their capitalist governments. The workers of France for example, their unions and parties should take direct/industrial action against that government’s threat to bomb Syria, its former colony. Appeals and assistance from the workers of the industrial world to the workers of Syria and the Arab Spring would provide a real alternative to the Assad regime and those in opposition who want rid of it. It would undermine the Islamic fanatics and offer a real alternative to Assad or al Qaeda.

Most people have read the quote below and there is no doubt Butler had weaknesses, a sort of protectionist isolationist ideal, but his description of his role as a Major General in the United States Marine Corp is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it in the 1930’s.

Excerpt from a speech given by Major General Smedley Butler in 1933

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

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John Grishom: "Gitmo, a sad perversion of American Justice"

US justice: Making friends around the world

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The only way one can avoid being sickened and disgusted by the existence of the Guantanamo concentration camp in US occupied Cuba is if one ignores it; and that’s what the vast majority of Americans do.  For many years growing up in Britain I paid little attention to the terrorism of the British state in Northern Ireland as well. I couldn’t avoid the news completely so the hunger strikers, the B Specials, the sectarian killings the treatment of Catholics and what it meant, all came to me through the “official”state media.  With some help, I eventually broke out of my isolation and came to understand the history behind the occupation of Ireland’s six northern counties and the troubles and violence that was still occurring there.

After spending billions of dollars of US taxpayer money arming al Qaeda and the Islamic movement in Afghanistan, the employer/employee relationship between the Pentagon and the Taliban, the backward reactionary feudal warlords, was eventually severed by 1999. (Up until 1999 every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government, treatment of women be damned.) *  After 911, the US offered its new allies, the ruthless Northern Alliance, bounties if they captured and handed over terrorists which they did with gusto.  People were then jailed, tortured, killed and eventually drugged, hooded and flown to the concentration camp at Guantanamo. As we shared with our readers recently, many Taliban that surrendered with the promise of amnesty were brutally murdered under the guidance of US military personnel.  The fate of three British tourists, rounded up by US allies is well documented in the movie Road to Guantanamo. For the US public, burdened with the most censored media and highly efficient state surveillance and propaganda machine, we have no clue who the people in Guantanamo really are.

The hunger strike at Guantanamo is continuing and some prisoners are considering the only path open to them, plead guilty to war crimes in the hope of getting some sort of trial.  That’s what 11-year resident, Sufiyan Barhoumi would like to do the Wall Street Journal reports this week.  The problem is that the Pentagon won’t charge him with anything.  One of the reasons is the legal wrangling that is going on around these detainees.  The main war US capitalism is engaged in is the “War on terror”, and “terror” not being a nation or having an army or state as it is actually a tactic, tends to complicate things.

The human beings in Guantanamo are not in America, I don’t mean physically, because Guantanamo is in occupied Cuba, but legally and other ways.  In the US under most circumstances, the justice system releases you if you are not charged with a crime after a certain time.  But not so in Guantanamo as the WSJ explains:

“Elsewhere in the American justice system, suspects go free unless prosecutors file charges. In Guantanamo, the opposite is true: Detainees who aren't charged and are presumed innocent under the Military Commissions Act of specific war crimes nevertheless face indefinite detention because the Pentagon has classified them as enemy combatants.”

“Enemy combatants” is a handy term and doesn’t fall from the sky by chance.  Language is important it seems. Being “enemy combatants” or, as we are finding out a “terrorist” strips you of rights society offers to the population as a whole or rights that soldiers have when nations enter conflict.  British colonialism refused to give the collective term “rebellion” to those who fought its occupation and theft of their land as this would give them legitimacy.  The Mau Mau were terrorists not freedom fighters, the same with Irish resistance to 500 years of British occupation. The difference is significant as convicting a Guantanamo inmate of war crimes means the thugs at the Pentagon must prove it to a military commission beyond a reasonable doubt.  But with enemy combatants, all that has to be shown is that a “preponderance of evidence”  or with as the WSJ explains “a 51% certainty”  the accused “belonged to a force associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda”.  As I point out above you’d have to arrest the entire US Congress for that but the statute of limitation has expired on that one conveniently. What al Qaeda is if it is anything at all is a mystery as any resistance to US imperialism’s adventures are “alleged militants” “alleged insurgents” “terrorists”etc.  Friends of the Pentagon are always “rebels”.

So the methods and practices in Guantanamo are not new.  Domestically, they are used in US prisons daily.  For example, Guantanamo authorities are suggesting that they will file charges so concentration camp occupants can offer some sort of legal response and a chance of leaving the place if they testify against each other. In the present hunger strikes in California prisons this is one of the demands, stop forcing inmates to snitch on each other.  While it has been proven that not very useful information comes from torture as people will say anything to put an end to it, getting prisoners to turn anyone in for anything in order to improve their own conditions serves the authorities well, it divides the population, increases internecine gang and racial warfare and strengthens the forces of the state. This is why the struggle for prisoner’s rights must include the right to have independent unions that can represent their interests. In the case of the above mentioned Mr. Barhoumi, they want him to testify against a fellow inmate considered more important,

Being more important than Barhoumi this man was not sent straight to Guantanamo but first to a CIA torture center in Afghanistan where he was waterboarded 83 times according to the WSJ. As with inmates in the US gulag, the human character is very strong as is the hatred of organized state forces and people don’t give up others easily. It’s not a question of taking sides here but even those we oppose have to be respected at times for their principled commitment to what they believe rightly or wrongly is a just cause.  Mr. Barhoumi is “willing to work with this system and plead guilty because it’s his only alternative to indefinite detention” Capt. Justin Swick, his defense attorney tells the WSJ, but he refuses to win his freedom or possibility of it by testifying against others which is the US government’s condition to set the process in motion, “He won’t help convict someone else in a system he believes is illegitimate” says Swick.

There are some decent people in this world. Swick points out that Guantanamo authorities refused to allow John Grisham novels in to the camp as they’re “problematic”.  I’ve never read a Grisham novel so I’m not really sure what horrific dangers one could produce for US authorities or how they threaten the American way of life. But I am tempted to read Mr Grishom whose response to Guantanamo authorities concern about safety and inmate care was, “In response to all their humaneness is to ask where waterboarding fits in.” adding that “Gitmo is a sad perversion of American justice.”

Apparently, the thugs that run the place have backed off on the Grishom novels for MR. Bargoumi, perhaps as a response to the massive hunger strike that is occurring there.  Barhoumi is pleased but will wait till he’s off hunger strike before he reads them. 

The  US state apparatus combines coercion, manipulation, incarceration and the most brutal violence in its war on the workers and middle class. Guantanamo is nothing new, not the exception when it comes to the treatment of the incarcerated.Along with this, racism, sexism and blaming immigrants and foreigners for their crisis, are all tactics aimed at weakening the unity of the working class. People have an understanding that to confront this war machine is serious business and a daunting task; the lack of mass protests at the war being waged against workers in the US is not simply due to apathy. Although we have seen some resistance over the past period and tremendous support for the Occupy Movement as well as lots of isolated individual struggles around the environment,  racism, police brutality, housing etc. , I think there is still a strong feeling among the majority of the population that there’s not much we can do, so there’s a sort of numbing to it all and a “get on with my life”attitude hoping the tide will turn.  But more and more Americans are drawing the conclusion that the tide will not turn so this mood can rapidly change as US history shows and an overconfident US capitalist class can and will make some serious miscalculations that will hasten this process.

*See Michel Chossudovsky: War and Globalization 

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NSA surveillance won't be used against you. Will it?

C'mon: we can trust these guys

 "All of us who have served in this office understand that the office transcends the individual," Bush said as Obama nodded in thanks. "And we wish you all the very best. And so does the country."

by Richard Mellor

As to be expected, the Wall Street Journal is defending the massive surveillance and spying on millions of Americans (and others) in the interests of public safety and the defense of individual freedoms that are so important to the Journal as a voice of big capital.

Freedom is a word that is thrown around quite a bit these days.  The War on Terror came about as a result of people throughout the world who oppose freedom and are jealous of us because we have it. Nonsense, I know, but the truth as the Journal and the billionaires want us to understand it.

But freedom for the coupon clippers means economic freedom-----freedom for capital to exploit labor, not economic freedom in the sense of a wage that keeps one from starving. Their freedom is the right to hire and fire workers at will. It is the freedom to pay someone $8 an hour or the freedom to bribe politicians or to throw someone out of their home if they fall on hard times and can’t pay the moneylender their interest money. It is the freedom to pollute the environment in their rapacious quest for profits. It is the freedom for someone like Larry Ellison who owns $300 million yachts and a 141-acre Hawaiian island. It is freedom for the coupon clippers to take the collective wealth that productive labor (physical and mental) creates and give it to their offspring.

So when the capitalist class and its cheerleaders like the WSJ talk about freedom it actually means a lack of it for workers, the poor and middle class.

And secretly gathering data, phone conversations, e mails etc. on millions of Americans is necessary because, the Journal tells us, “the safety of citizens is the first—and in our view, the principal—obligation of government.”

“A government that cannot ensure peace cannot protect individual rights” the Journal announces in its own defense of these Stalinist measures.  What individual rights is the Journal referring to I wonder?  I am sure it is the right to ride one’s Harley without persecution. And the right of the mentally  to beg for money at stop signs and the right of some poor slob to get inside a cage with another human being and beat each other to pulp, and the freedom of  the coupon clippers that own the media to make entertainment out of it.

It is the right to say what you want as long as you don’t act on it and campaign for your ideas to become mass ideas, especially if these ideas threaten the worship of the market and the accumulation of capital in the hands of a tiny minority of us.

It is not the right to productive labor.  It is not the right to expect society to provide basic health care, education shelter and leisure time. We all want peace as well.  But how can we have peace or feel secure when whether we earn a means of subsistence or not depends on the gamblers and speculators on Wall Street and their GDP estimates?   How can we be at peace in this world when shelter, the ability to access medical care, access to education for youth and a secure and safe existence for the older generation, is not guaranteed by the very society that the labor and sacrifice of generations built?  How can we claim to live in a free society when capitalism incarcerates two million people, mostly youth and youth of color and 30 million have no work and even more have work that can’t provide security and a future? There are millions of working poor in his country. 

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, people were walking away from their homes abandoning their “moral obligation” to pay off the moneylenders but kept their car payments up.  At least if their car was repossessed they could get to work and sleep in it in some Wal Mart parking lot perhaps.  That is another freedom and right that is not high on the Wall Street Journal’s list of rights, public transportation.

While past heroic struggles of workers and the poor, the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements as well as the great labor battles over a couple of centuries have won us freedoms that we should be grateful for, and while we do not suffer the fate of many people in other countries, we can see that the 1% are gradually eroding them under the guise of fighting terrorism. They have beefed up their security apparatus and are preparing for the battles that lie ahead as they are forced to put the US working class on rations.

We cannot be free under these conditions. 

Like the so-called War on Terror, there is language to describe what the coupon clippers want us to believe, and what we describe through the reality of our material existence.

The data collected on millions of Americans is not going to be used against us, not going to be used to deprive us of our rights the Journal explains. The purpose of collecting all our private e mails (or what we thought were private) and records of our phone/skype conversations is that though we are all caught up in the net, the aim is to“detect potential threats and prevent attacks before they occur, not prosecute them after the fact”

You don’t have to worry Jane Q Citizen, the Wall Street Journal assures us, “The NSA is screening the data system in general for conduct that threatens the security of the system, not targeting any particular individual or group using the system.”

Don’t be afraid, fellow Americans, the Wall Street Journal insists, “It should also be some comfort that two Presidents as distant in temperament and philosophy as George W. Bush and Barack Obama both endorsed the NSA programs.”

Well, that’s made me feel better.  But Bush and Obama, while different in temperament and I should add brainpower, have the same philosophy. They both agree that the market is god and social production cannot be organized in any other way except on the basis of profit. They both believe, and Obama is the better representative for the coupon clippers on this one, that workers and the middle class will pay for their crisis, a crisis of capitalism. They differ only on the details.

As I pointed out in a previous blog, the FBI defines terrorism as, “The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

A strike under this definition is terrorism.  It always was, we won the right to strike by forcing the bosses and their government to legalize it. An activity that limits the rights of corporations and capitalism is terrorist activity according to the FBI.  Young people or homeless people squatting in abandoned buildings or the vacant property of slumlords are committing terrorist acts if they defy the sheriff’s calls to leave. If you try to force the state through mass direct action, occupations, economic disruption to change priorities by shifting capital and human resources from waging wars around the world to social need you are a terrorist.  The only protests that are not acts of terror are those that don’t work.

We should remember that the American Revolutionists were "terrorists" according to the colonial authority and surely this statement from the Declaration of Independence would trigger a look at the author's phone records:

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“..when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

We shouldn’t compare this snooping to spying, the Journal says, “The right comparison is a cop on a beat who patrols public spaces. He's not investigating a crime or enforcing a law; he's watching for suspicious behavior” Yes, but in examples such as this, (the beat cop) we can see the cop.  But even here, as in the stop and frisk methods of the NYC police, this is their answer to poverty and its by-product, crime.

As a young man I went traveling in Europe.  I ended up in Istanbul and took a train to Baghdad. It was 1971. US capitalism’s stooge Saddam Hussein was in power.  But Iraq was a fairly secular country by Middle East standards. Women were in government I think and I saw many people dressed in western clothes; the Iraqi's were kind to me given the role of British Imperialism in the country. It was a good experience and I talked to some of them about their lives. I recall getting the impression that life under a US supported dictator wasn’t so bad as long as you never got involved in politics, as long as you didn’t oppose the regime. The CIA had helped Hussein rid the country of any opposition.  Keep out of opposition politics and you’ll be fine.

The billions of e mails and private conversations the NSA has stored may never affect some people as they are correct in saying that they are not targeting people unless they threaten the system.  An Arabic name for one will trigger some interest. But when those millions who thought they would never get involved in politics are forced to do so by the capitalist offensive, the snoops will do a little research.  Everything they can find to discredit you will be dragged out.  That affair with the neighbor; the little detail you left off your tax return or and other details about your private and personal life you thought you were discussing with your counselor, parent, friend will now become very valuable information.

Freedom means different things to different people who have different economic interests in society.

We can thank Edward Snowden for bringing some of these things to light

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Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden Working class Americans to be proud of

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment" *

The release of secret National Security Administration documents revealing the US government agency’s extensive spying and surveillance apparatus has thrown the US capitalist class in to deeper crisis.  Billions of e mails and other private communications between Americans are being stored and processed by the NSA.

Edward Snowden, the young man who revealed himself as the source of the leaks in an interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, is presently in hiding and no doubt fearing for his life.  Snowden’s actions come during the trial of Bradley Manning, the young US soldier facing a life sentence for sharing with the US public, information about US government war crimes and dirty diplomatic deals and as Julian Assange, a founder of the Wikileaks news service that published the material, is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The NSA’s gathering of the personal information of tens of millions of Americans and others, has been made possible in part by the agency having access to the “systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants” according to a top secret document obtained and verified by the Guardian. The access to all this information was made possible through what the media has described as a “previously undisclosed program” called Prism.

The official line is that Prism functions with the assistance of these companies but all the companies involved have so far denied it.  Officials at Apple have said they never heard of Prism. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," some execs have stated.  That is highly unlikely.

We should not underestimate the severity of this crisis coming on the heels of the Wikileaks/Manning revelations which shed light on their phony diplomacy, a diplomacy rooted in lies and thievery. The extent to which this affects million of ordinary US citizens adds much more fuel to the fire.

Amid the turmoil, the profiteers and their representatives in Congress and the White House have condemned Snowden much as they have Manning and Assange.  Barack Obama has defended the massive surveillance network begun under his predecessor, the Imbecile Bush saying, "that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing" because "they help us prevent terrorist attacks."

Dianne Feinstein, a one-time darling of the liberals denied Snowden was a whistleblower, and publicly accused him of committing “an act of treason.”

The Wall Street Journal responded in much the same way pointing out sarcastically that, “At least Mr. Snowden has the courage of his misguided convictions” because he publicly identified himself as the source of the leak rather than remaining anonymous although his motives “..appear to be political paranoia and righteous good intentions.”

After all, the Journal adds, “If he did discover abuses, he could have gone to the multiple layers of oversight including congressional committees.”. These “multiple layers” are actually multiple obstacle courses, hoops for people to jump through until they become so fatigued and demoralized they cannot go on and the secrecy and phony façade of government is maintained. The objection to allowing any undermining of military commanders control over rape allegations in their units is motivated by the same concerns.

The Journal then went on to discredit Snowden personally, “His likely career path took him from community college washout to NSA security guard to Central Intelligence Agency IT consultant…”  Normally, a guy who never graduated high school ending up as a well-paid specialist for a major government agency would be good news for Wall Street Journal readers.  But you have to be on the team, you have to be prepared to suppress democracy and keep from millions of Americans information they have a right to know. 

US capitalism is experiencing a political as well as an economic crisis.  We have here a situation where its own internal regime is breaking down. US capitalism, the sole global superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union is spreading itself very thin as it is forced to defend its global influence and the struggle for resources and has to put the US working class on rations to finance it. The self-proclaimed American Century lasted barely a decade. 

After the collapse of Stalinism, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “We Won.”  The society the US capitalist class referred to as “Communism” had fallen under the weight of its own parasitic bureaucracy; the bi-polar world was no more and the US stood alone as the most powerful economic and military force on earth. Full Spectrum Dominance was the new mantra.

Officially known as full-spectrum superiority this term was defined by the U.S. military as:
“The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”,  “Full Spectrum Dominance” became the new order.  US capitalism must be free to travel the world uninhibited.  Even cyberspace must come under US capitalism’s control.  In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid technological advances and the events of 911, cyberspace has become the battleground of the future.

With the official goal of making the world “Safe for Democracy” after the events of September 11^th 2003, the US increased its military presence throughout the world and beefed up it security and surveillance forces at home and abroad to the point that some five million Americans hold US government security clearances. But the wars in cyberspace are real, despite possessing billions of dollars worth of military hardware, the right hacker with the right program can create havoc with a nation’s defense/offense system. The huge increase in private contractors having access to secret information is a product of the increasing cyber warfare and, as the WSJ points out, large US companies are lobbying the government to grant more security clearances for their employees, in part to, “..fend off hackers from Iran, China and elsewhere.”

The changed global relations since the collapse of the Soviets and the bi-polar world has increased tensions between nation states particularly with the rise of China and the Russian Federation.  The rising social movements from Egypt to Greece, Latin America, China and South Africa, very much aided by social media, have increased the need for surveillance and control of the Internet as well as increased police and security presence on the ground.  The US War on Terror is an announcement to the world that US capitalism has the right to wage war anywhere it wants.  Waged under the banner of saving the world for democracy it is a war for global domination and the plundering of global markets and resources; it is a war without end until the planet can no longer sustain it.

Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, are heroic figures.  The war to criminalize investigative journalism, another by-product of the War on Terror also has its heroic figures like Glenn Greenwald and others who refuse to “embed” their journalistic integrity in the cesspool of bourgeois politics.

Apologists for the 1%, as they do with Bradley Manning, claim Snowden is aiding terrorists and placing US troops in harms way.  But it is not terrorists (a term that encompasses any person or persons that oppose US imperialism’s agenda) that Snowden’s leaks were being kept from.  So-called terrorists know full well they are being tracked; the US has been imposing such measure like retina scans on civilian populations outside its borders for years.  It is the US population that was unaware of this extensive invasion of our privacy until Snowden revealed it to us. 

Snowden made it quite clear that had he wanted to harm the US as a nation he could  have. “If I had just wanted to harm the US, then you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon, but that’s not my intention.” He said in his interview with Greenwald.  He has made his intentions very clear:

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy, privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,"

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.”  he said, and that he would be satisfied, “if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

“I’m no different than anybody else…”he went on,  “I don’t have special skills, I’m just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what’s happening and goes, ‘This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs are right or wrong.’”

As this crisis deepens it is forcing some in the US Congress to try and cover their asses and question the level of surveillance activities in the US and a review of the Patriot act has been suggested.  Internationally, Obama and all US government officials will be facing questions form their counterparts throughout the world. They are all involved in this cyber warfare but the US has the big stick.

It is likely we will see more of this in the future and one can only wonder at this point what effect this will have on the Manning Trial.  There is no doubt Snowden has increased his chances of survival by coming out in to the open although the US state apparatus are masters of assassination.  It is the US working class that they are afraid of here; they have become a little overconfident and overconfidence in politics can lead to severe mistakes, even catastrophic ones.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have stood up against the most powerful militaristic force on the planet, two working class young men against the US state.  They are truly heroic figures in every sense of the word. By comparison, if we go to the official website of the AFL-CIO we will see nothing, not a word about this episode that is being talked about across the globe (if there is anything it is hidden). The stifling bureaucracy that sits at the head of the largest national labor organization in the US is best described as similar to the old soviet bureaucracy without state power. For those of us proud of US working class history and those heroic figures who built our movement, the present heads of organized labor are nothing less than criminal in their cowardly retreat in the face of the bosses’ offensive. For organized workers, we are in a war on two fronts, one with the bosses and the other more difficult one with their allies who lead our movement.

Despite this, Republican Rep. Peter King’s statement that  “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”,  belongs in a time passed. US capitalism has limited credibility abroad as its allies are unreliable lackeys, bought, cajoled and bribed in to their camp and its representatives at home among the most hated and distrusted figures in society.

The world has changed much in the past 20 years. These developments are very positive and reflect the growing frustration and opposition to a bankrupt economic system that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. Workers throughout the world should support Snowden, Bradley Manning and others like them, actively where we can. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

It is a good time to be alive. 

*Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds an expert consultant to the US and UK governments on psychological operations, propagandaand diplomacy. source

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Pablo Neruda, Murdered by US corporations.

Pablo Neruda

Henry Kissinger, one of the mass murderers responsible for the deaths of three million Vietnamese and 67,000 Americans, also supported and authorized funding for the assassination of Salvador Allende and before that, Rene Schneider, the Chilean general.  It is now looking much more like  Pablo Neruda's death was also one of Kissinger and the CIA's many assassinations of opponents to US capitalism's plundering of South America's resources. No genocide trials for Henry.

*****************

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Forty years after the death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, a judge has issued an order for police to make a portrait of and find the man who prosecutors allege may have poisoned him.

Neruda's death was attributed at the time to prostate cancer but the case's plaintiff lawyer, Eduardo Contreras, says there is new evidence showing he was likely murdered by agents of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Contreras said Dr. Sergio Draper, who originally testified that he was with Neruda at the time of his death on Sept. 23, 1973, is now saying there was another doctor named "Price" with the poet.  But Price did not appear in any of the hospital's records as a treating doctor and Draper said he never saw him again after the day he left him with Neruda. Moreover Price's description of a blond, blue eyed, tall man, matches Michael Townley, the CIA double agent who worked with Chilean secret police under Pinochet.

Townley was taken into the U.S. witness protection program after acknowledging having killed prominent Pinochet critics in Washington and Buenos Aires.

For Contreras, whoever the man was, "the important fact is that this was the person who ordered the injection" that allegedly killed Neruda.

Neruda's former assistant Manuel Araya also said he believed the poet was poisoned by Pinochet's agents.

The Nobel Prize winner's body was exhumed on April 8, and is being analyzed by Chilean and international forensic specialists.

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Woolwich killing, hypocrisy and censorship.

The organizers of this blog unconditionally oppose the killing of the soldier in Woolwich London. It and the nature it took has increased support for the racists and right wing in Britain and in turn weakened the working class. This killing throws the movement back and our blog unconditionally opposes it.

However we would like to point out the hypocrisy and censorship of the mass media of the capitalists which is whipping up these right wing and racist and anti Islam feelings. To do so we would like to put this killing in context.

Last month, that is May, over 1,000 Iraqis were killed in Iraq. This is a direct result and the responsibility of the US and its allies invading Iraq. Then there are the continuing drone attacks which kill innocent civilians in any country US imperialism wishes to attack.

Then there is the force feeding in Guantanamo Bay. Over 60 of the prisoners who are on hunger strike have been cleared to be released but the US government will not release them. Instead they are force feeding them. This means they are strapped to a chair, a hose is forced up their nose and a mixture of nutrients pumped into them. Imagine the pain and panic this causes. A drug with severe side affects is given to prevent nausea but if the prisoners do vomit up the nutrients then they are strapped down again and the process repeated.

This is torture.

Where in the capitalist mass media is the outrage about these events. Where for that matter is the outrage in large sections of the population at these events. Yes we must condemn the Woolwich killing, but we also must condemn the torture and killings of imperialism which out number many times over the Woolwich killings. hypocrisy

Sean

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Why Disinformation Works. In America

We reprint this article by Paul Craig Roberts for the interest of our readers. Roberts is former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. From Global Research.

  “Truth has no Relevance. Only Agendas are Important”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, May 25, 2013

paulcraigroberts.org

Region: USA

Theme: Media Disinformation

Have you ever wondered how the government’s misinformation gains traction?
What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along with the government’s explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the government’s account.

The leftwing likes the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist mayhem in America, because it proves their blowback theory and satisfies them that the dispossessed and oppressed can fight back against imperialism.

The patriotic rightwing likes the official story, because it proves America is attacked for its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in by immigration authorities and nurtured by welfare, or because the government, which can’t do anything right, ignored plentiful warnings. Whatever the government says, no matter how problematical, the official story gets its traction from its compatibility with existing predispositions and agendas.

In such a country, truth has no relevance. Only agendas are important. A person can see this everywhere. I could write volumes illustrating how agenda-driven writers across the spectrum will support the most improbable government stories despite the absence of any evidence simply because the government’s line can be used to support their agendas.

For example, a conservative writer in the June issue of Chronicles uses the government’s story about the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to argue against immigration, amnesty for illegals, and political asylum for Muslims. He writes: “Even the most high-tech security systems imaginable will inevitably fail as they are overwhelmed by a flood of often hostile and dangerous immigrants.”

The writer accepts all of the improbable government statements as proof that the brothers were guilty. The wounded brother who was unable to respond to the boat owner who discovered him and had to be put on life support somehow managed to write a confession on the inside of the boat. As soon as the authorities have the brother locked up in a hospital on life support, “unnamed officials” and “authorities who remain anonymous” are planting the story in the media that the suspect is signing written confessions of his guilt while on life support. No one has seen any of these written confessions. But we know that they exist, because the government and media say so.

The conservative writer knows that Dzhokhar is guilty because he is Muslim and a Chechen. Therefore, it does not occur to the writer to wonder about the agenda of the unnamed sources who are busy at work creating belief in the brothers’ guilt. This insures that no juror would dare vote for acquittal and have to explain it to family and friends. Innocent until proven guilty in a court has been thrown out the window. This should disturb the conservative writer, but doesn’t.

The conservative writer sees Chechen ethnicity as an indication of guilt even though the brothers grew up in the US as normal Americans, because Chechens are “engaged in anti-Russian jihad.” But Chechens have no reason for hostility against the US. As evidence indicates, Washington supports the Chechens in their conflict with Russia. By supporting Chechen terrorism, Washington violates all of the laws that it ruthlessly applies to compassionate Americans who give donations to Palestinian charities that Washington alleges are run by Hamas, a Washington-declared terrorist organization.
It doesn’t occur to the conservative writer that something is amiss when martial law is established over one of America’s main cities and its metropolitan area, 10,000 heavily armed troops are put on the streets with tanks, and citizens are ordered out of their homes with their hands over their heads, all of this just to search for one wounded 19-year old suspect. Instead the writer blames the “surveillance state” on “the inevitable consequences of suicidal liberalism” which has embraced “the oldest sin in the world: rebellion against authority.” The writer is so pleased to use the government’s story line as a way of indulging the conservative’s romance with authority and striking a blow at liberalism that he does not notice that he has lined up against the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence and rebelled against authority.

I could just as easily have used a left-wing writer to illustrate the point that improbable explanations are acceptable if they fit with predispositions and can be employed in behalf of an agenda.
Think about it. Do you not think that it is extraordinary that the only investigations we have of such events as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing are private investigations, such as this investigation of the backpacks: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/20/official-story-has-odd-wrinkles-a-pack-of-questions-about-the-boston-bombing-backpacks/ ^[1]

There was no investigation of 9/11. Indeed, the White House resisted any inquiry at all for one year despite the insistent demands from the 9/11 families. NIST did not investigate anything. NIST simply constructed a computer model that was consistent with the government’s story. The 9/11 Commission simply sat and listened to the government’s explanation and wrote it down. These are not investigations.

The only investigations have come from a physicist who proved that WTC 7 came down at free fall and was thus the result of controlled demolition, from a team of scientists who examined dust from the WTC towers and found nano-thermite, from high-rise architects and structural engineers with decades of experience, and from first responders and firefighters who were in the towers and experienced explosions throughout the towers, even in the sub-basements.

We have reached the point where evidence is no longer required. The government’s statements suffice. Only conspiracy kooks produce real evidence.

In America, government statements have a unique authority. This authority comes from the white hat that the US wore in World War II and in the subsequent Cold War. It was easy to demonize Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism and Maoist China. Even today when Russian publications interview me about the perilous state of civil liberty in the US and Washington’s endless illegal military attacks abroad, I sometimes receive reports that some Russians believe that it was an impostor who was interviewed, not the real Paul Craig Roberts.

There are Russians who believe that it was President Reagan who brought freedom to Russia, and as I served in the Reagan administration these Russians associate me with their vision of America as a light unto the world. Some Russians actually believe that Washington’s wars are truly wars of liberation.

The same illusions reign among Chinese dissidents. Chen Guangcheng is the Chinese dissident who sought refuge in the US Embassy in China. Recently he was interviewed by the BBC World Service. Chen Guangcheng believes that the US protects human rights while China suppresses human rights. He complained to the BBC that in China police can arrest citizens and detain them for as long as six months without accounting for their detainment. He thought that the US and UK should publicly protest this violation of due process, a human right. Apparently, Chen Guangcheng is unaware that US citizens are subject to indefinite detention without due process and even to assassination without due process.

The Chinese government allowed Chen Guangcheng safe passage to leave China and live in the US. Chen Guangcheng is so dazzled by his illusions of America as a human rights beacon that it has never occurred to him that the oppressive, human rights-violating Chinese government gave him safe passage, but that Julian Assange, after being given political asylum by Ecuador is still confined to the Ecuadoran embassy in London, because Washington will not allow its UK puppet state to permit his safe passage to Ecuador.

Perhaps Chen Guangcheng and the Chinese and Russian dissidents who are so enamored of the US could gain some needed perspective if they were to read US soldier Terry Holdbrooks’ book about the treatment given to the Guantanamo prisoners. Holdbrooks was there on the scene, part of the process, and this is what he told RT: “The torture and information extraction methods that we used certainly created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to whether or not this was my America. But when I thought about what we were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did not seem like the America I signed up to defend. It did not seem like the America I grew up in. And that in itself was a very disillusioning experience.” http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-guard-islam-torture-608/ ^[2]

In a May 17 Wall Street Journal.com article, Peggy Noonan wrote that President Obama has lost his patina of high-mindedness. What did Obama do that brought this loss upon himself? Is it because he sits in the Oval Office approving lists of US citizens to be assassinated without due process of law? Is it because he detains US citizens indefinitely in violation of habeas corpus? Is it because he has kept open the torture prison at Guantanamo? Is it because he continued the war that the neoconservatives started, despite his promise to end it, and started new wars?

Is it because he attacks with drones people in their homes, medical centers, and work places in countries with which the US is not at war? Is it because his corrupt administration spies on American citizens without warrants and without cause?

No. It is none of these reasons. In Noonan’s view these are not offenses for which presidents, even Democratic ones, lose their high-minded patina. Obama can no longer be trusted, because the IRS hassled some conservative political activists. Noonan is a Republican, and what Obama did wrong was to use the IRS against some Republicans.

Apparently, it has not occurred to Noonan that if Obama–or any president–can use the IRS against opponents, he can use Homeland Security and the police state against them. He can use indefinite detention against them. He can use drones against them.

All of these are much more drastic measures. Why isn’t Peggy Noonan concerned?
Because she thinks these measures will only be used against terrorists, just as the IRS is only supposed to be used against tax evaders.

When a public and the commentators who inform it accept the collapse of the Constitution’s authority and the demise of their civil liberties, to complain about the IRS is pointless.

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We've moved on from the Iraq war – but Iraqis don't have that choice

reprinted from the Guardian UK

Like characters from The Great Gatsby, Britain and the US have arrogantly turned their backs and left a country in ruins

• 
• • John Pilger
  • The Guardian, Sunday 26 May 2013 13.00 EDT

 

Iraq's ministry of social affairs estimates 4.5 million children have lost one or both parents. This means 14% of the population are orphans. Photograph: Reuters

The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, "the seeds of our death". An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr teaching hospital in Basra, Dr Ali told me that in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. "Before the Gulf war," he said, "we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48% of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long after. That's almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten."

Along the corridor, Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a paediatrician, kept a photo album of the children she was trying to save. Many had neuroblastoma. "Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumour in two years," she said. "Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same."

Among the doctors I interviewed, there was little doubt that depleted uranium shells used by the Americans and British in the Gulf war were the cause. A US military physicist assigned to clean up the Gulf war battlefield across the border in Kuwait said, "Each round fired by an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft carried over 4,500 grams of solid uranium. Well over 300 tons of DU was used. It was a form of nuclear warfare."

Although the link with cancer is always difficult to prove absolutely, the Iraqi doctors argue that "the epidemic speaks for itself". The British oncologist Karol Sikora, chief of the World Health Organisation's cancer programme in the 1990s, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Iraq sanctions committee]." He told me, "We were specifically told [by the WHO] not to talk about the whole Iraq business. The WHO is not an organisation that likes to get involved in politics."

Recently, Hans von Sponeck, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and senior UN humanitarian official in Iraq, wrote to me: "The US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers." A WHO report, the result of a landmark study conducted with the Iraqi ministry of health, has been "delayed". Covering 10,800 households, it contains "damning evidence", says a ministry official and, according to one of its researchers, remains "top secret". The report says birth defects have risen to a "crisis" right across Iraqi society where depleted uranium and other toxic heavy metals were used by the US and Britain. Fourteen years after he sounded the alarm, Dr Jawad Al-Ali reports "phenomenal" multiple cancers in entire families.

Iraq is no longer news. Last week, the killing of 57 Iraqis in one day was a non-event compared with the murder of a British soldier in London. Yet the two atrocities are connected. Their emblem might be a lavish new movie of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Two of the main characters, as Fitzgerald wrote, "smashed up things and creatures and retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness … and let other people clean up the mess".

The "mess" left by George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq is a sectarian war, the bombs of 7/7 and now a man waving a bloody meat cleaver in Woolwich. Bush has retreated back into his Mickey Mouse "presidential library and museum" and Tony Blair into his jackdaw travels and his money.
Their "mess" is a crime of epic proportions, wrote Von Sponeck, referring to the Iraqi ministry of social affairs' estimate of 4.5 million children who have lost one or both parents. "This means a horrific 14% of Iraq's population are orphans," he wrote. "An estimated one million families are headed by women, most of them widows". Domestic violence and child abuse are rightly urgent issues in Britain; in Iraq the catastrophe ignited by Britain has brought violence and abuse into millions of homes.

In her book Dispatches from the Dark Side, Gareth Peirce, Britain's greatest human rights lawyer, applies the rule of law to Blair, his propagandist Alastair Campbell and his colluding cabinet. For Blair, she wrote, "human beings presumed to hold [Islamist] views, were to be disabled by any means possible, and permanently … in Blair's language a 'virus' to be 'eliminated' and requiring 'a myriad of interventions [sic] deep into the affairs of other nations.' The very concept of war was mutated to 'our values versus theirs'." And yet, says Peirce, "the threads of emails, internal government communiques, reveal no dissent". For foreign secretary Jack Straw, sending innocent British citizens to Guantánamo was "the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objective".

These crimes, their iniquity on a par with Woolwich, await prosecution. But who will demand it? In the kabuki theatre of Westminster politics, the faraway violence of "our values" is of no interest. Do the rest of us also turn our backs?

www.johnpilger.com
• This article was amended on 27 May 2013. The original referred to the A-10 Warthog aircraft as the A-10 Warhog.

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Noam Chomsky on terrorism, the mass media and US foreign policy

I am not the most ardent Chomsky fan as he doesn't really offer much of a way forward, but this is an interesting interview with the liberal intellectual on US foreign policy and the media etc.

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Statement on the Woolwich Murder

Woolwich, London yesterday

This blog condemns unconditionally the brutal slaying of a young British soldier in London yesterday.  This event will strengthen the British fascist and nationalist movement and weaken the unity of the working class in our struggle against the capitalist offensive and austerity agenda. It will be used as an excuse to ratchet up the police state tactics -- Homeland security etc. -- in the U.S. and the UK.

But as a leading Muslim spokesperson in Britain pointed out immediately after the killing, while condemning such acts of individual terrorism, they are not unique to Muslims and have to be understood within the context of British foreign policy if they are to be prevented in the future.

British capitalism’s involvement in the mass slaughter of Muslims and occupation of Muslim lands directly or indirectly through stooges, cannot be left out of the equation. The death and displacement of millions of people in the Muslim world as part of US and western imperialism’s efforts to control the resources of the world under the guise of a War on Terror has to be understood as the backdrop to such savage and barbaric actions. This killing is truly horrible, but no more so than the daily drone killings -- that are personally overseen by Barack Obama. The Palestinian issue, Guantanamo, all of this is relevant.

We do not get in western media, the deep, penetrating and extensive coverage of the atrocities committed by imperialist forces in Muslim countries for obvious reasons; we would be moved by them as we are moved by the coverage of the events in Woolwich. They learned that media-marketing lesson in Vietnam.

Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan where hundreds upon hundreds of civilians, women and children, have been blown to bits by US drones; further incursions in to Saharan Africa to control the area’s natural resources, this is the backdrop to what happened in Woolwich. When we add British support for Gaddafi and training of his secret police and the American support for the butcher Mubarak and financing and arming of his torturers, the people behind the killing of this young soldier are Cheney, Bush, Obama, Blair, Rumsfeld and other fine gentlemen.  And let’s not forget Madeline Albright who told ABC news that the death of 500,000 Iraqi’s (mostly women and children and Muslim) was “worth it”. These people commit acts of barbarism on a mass scale.  State terrorism is a very efficient form of terrorism.

As we wrote yesterday we recognize this for what it is, the inevitable savagery of imperialism's attempt to control the world. Such actions are inevitable because of the actions of 
imperialism. Listen to the young man in the video yesterday. He actually says this as he apologizes that women have to witness such barbarity that he says is carried out by imperialist forces in these lands all the time.

US imperialism supported and funded the Islamic fanatics including bin Laden. Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, Gaddafi, thugs like Tunisia’s Ben Ali who was overthrown in the Arab Spring, the absolute monarchy in Bahrain and the Saudi thugs, all these murderers have been funded and supported by the US and British taxpayer.  Up until 1999 every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government. 

Despite this we condemn this act.  The young soldier, a worker in uniform, was 20 years old and like young workers that join the military in the US, mostly do so for economic reasons. His death is a “gift” to the right wing fascist and nationalist forces.

Included in the context we are outlining here is the role of the leaders of the mass organizations of the 
working class who support imperialism. As a result they give no lead to
 the enraged youth and workers in these countries, no alternative that can show a way out and to fight back against the Cheneys, Blairs, Bushes and Obamas of this world. So among the most desperate and despaired emerges this very savage and reactionary act in Woolwich.

The leaders of the workers organizations due to their support of imperialism’s policies refuse to organize mass anti-war movements, or movements in the armed 
forces for union rights for soldiers and to end all wars and 
occupations. These mass workers' leaders have blood on their hands also.

The Cheney’s, Bushes, the Obamas, the Camerons, 
the Blairs, the oil and gas companies, the military forces of 
imperialism all have their hands on the weapons that killed that young working class soldier in London yesterday.

Facts For Working People:

Unconditionally opposes the killing of this young soldier, a worker in uniform. This act will weaken and divide the working class.  

Unconditionally opposes the agents of imperialism who send young workers into harms way in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere to seize the resources of these countries for the major profit addicted tax dodging corporations. .

Unconditionally opposes all invasions and wars carried out by US imperialism and its allies internationally as they seek to seize the wealth of the planet.

We call for an immediate cessation of illegal drone attacks and the drone program that has murdered thousands of innocent civilians abroad and is being introduced in the US to include domestic police and security forces in order to suppress dissent and opposition to the US corporations’ austerity agenda at home.

Opposes any effort by the fascist and nationalist groups to exploit the death of this young soldier.  We must not let the racists and fascists take this event under their banners. The left and the workers movement must act. Workers of the world unite against the forces of the corporations and their armies and the reactionary alternatives that are springing up in the vacuum.

It is not enough for the labor movement, the left and progressive forces to comment on this reactionary act. They must mobilize. We call for demonstrations and mobilizations to end all involvement of British and other imperialist countries’ military invasions and wars in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the only way to prevent new forces from being recruited to the reactionary Islamic groups and reactionary Islamic ideas.

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