https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6rY3IrZeAY
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Maduro: A better world is possible and Russia and Venezuela together will build one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uLra8zDn4c
Amazon FOOLED PBS and NY Times By Faking Social Distancing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0szwbf8KfHU
Conscious blindness to the US economy not working for the majority
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St_6OX9gE_k
Scientists Issue Urgent New COVID Warning To Greedy Countries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLDNl_GID8
AOC Calls Biden Critics "Bad Faith Actors" To Shield Establishment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAlFVlpLL3o
Amazon Union Vote Count Has Begun-- Jordan LIVE from Staten Island Solidarity Rally
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzWV9VklSD8
Leaked Messages Bust Koch Buying Congress To Stop Voting Rights, Greg Palast On GA Rep Cheating
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwk2wMA4XiI
Twitter Catches Fake Amazon Workers Sharing Anti-Union Propaganda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSD-3WBjCmU
Brazil: another failed "strongman government" approach to Covid-19 - Richard Wolff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35dclORJ8_k
Monday, March 29, 2021
Economic Update: Dems' Self Promotion VS Hard Economic Realities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSHHzFYc2Ic
Trump Holdovers Are Sabotaging Social Security & The US Postal Service
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISxr_4-aPTo
Virginian Socialist Gubernatorial Candidate Viciously Smeared For Supporting BDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZX0749GmMs
Zaid Jilani: Why Media Is So MAD That Andrew Yang Is Winning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDmmmV9myuE
Sunday, March 28, 2021
The rise of capitalism and the productivity of labour
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/the-rise-of-capitalism-and-the-productivity-of-labour/
In my view, there are two great scientific discoveries made by Marx and Engels: the materialist conception of history and the law of value under capitalism; in particular, the existence of surplus value in capitalist accumulation. The materialist conception of history asserts that the material conditions of a society’s mode of production and the social classes that emerge in that mode of production ultimately determine a society’s relations and ideology. As Marx said in the preface to his 1859 book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
That general view has been vindicated many times in studies of the economic and political history of human organisation. That is particularly the case in explaining the rise of capitalism to become the dominant mode of production. Now there is new study that adds yet more support for the materialist conception of history. Three scholars at Berkeley and Columbia Universities have published a paper, When Did Growth Begin? New Estimates of Productivity Growth in England from 1250 to 1870.
https://eml.berkeley.edu/~jsteinsson/papers/malthus.pdf
They attempt to measure when productivity growth (output per worker or worker hours) really took off in England, one of the first countries where the capitalist mode production became dominant. They find that there was hardly any growth in productivity before 1600. But productivity started to take off well before the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 when England became a ‘constitutional monarchy’ and the political rule of the merchants and capitalist landowners was established. These scholars find that, from about 1600 to 1810, there was a modest rise of the productivity of the labour force in England of about 4% in each decade (so 0.4% a year), but after 1810 with the industrialisation of Britain, there was a rapid acceleration of productivity growth to about 18% every decade (or 1.8% a year). The move from agricultural capitalism of the 17th century to industrial capitalism transformed the productivity of labour.
They attempt to measure when productivity growth (output per worker or worker hours) really took off in England, one of the first countries where the capitalist mode production became dominant. They find that there was hardly any growth in productivity before 1600. But productivity started to take off well before the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 when England became a ‘constitutional monarchy’ and the political rule of the merchants and capitalist landowners was established. These scholars find that, from about 1600 to 1810, there was a modest rise of the productivity of the labour force in England of about 4% in each decade (so 0.4% a year), but after 1810 with the industrialisation of Britain, there was a rapid acceleration of productivity growth to about 18% every decade (or 1.8% a year). The move from agricultural capitalism of the 17th century to industrial capitalism transformed the productivity of labour.
The authors comment: “our evidence helps distinguish between theories of why growth began. In particular, our findings support the idea that broad-based economic change preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England and may have contributed to causing them.” In other words, it was the change in the mode of production and the social classes that came first; the political changes came later.
As the authors go on to say, “an important debate regarding the onset of growth is whether economic change drove political and institutional change as Marx famously argued or whether political and institutional change kick-started economic growth”. The authors don’t want to accept Marx’s conception outright and seek to argue that “reality is likely more complex than either polar view.” But they cannot escape their own results: that productivity growth began almost a century before the Glorious Revolution and well before the English Civil War. And “this supports the Marxist view that economic change contributed importantly to 17th century institutional change in England.”
The other interesting aspect of the paper is that the authors try to measure the impact of population growth on productivity and wages. In the early 19th century, Thomas Malthus argued that it was impossible for productivity growth to rise sufficiently to enable workers to increase their real incomes, because higher incomes would lead to increased births and eventually over-population, scarcity of food and famines etc, then reducing the population and incomes again.
The authors note that before 1600, there is evidence to support the Malthusian case. The period from 1300 to 1450 was a period of frequent plagues — the most famous being the Black Death of 1348. Over this period, the population of England fell by a factor of two resulting in a sharp drop in labour supply. Over this same period, real wages rose substantially. Then from 1450 to 1600, the population (and labour supply) recovered and real wages fell. In 1630, the English economy was back to almost exactly the same point it was at in 1300.
The reason that the Malthusian argument has validity before 1600 is that there was little or no productivity growth; so livelihoods were determined by labour supply and wages alone. Pre-capitalist England was a stagnant, stationary economy in terms of the productivity of labour. But so was the impact of the Malthusian over-population theory. The authors found that Malthusian population dynamics were very slow: a doubling of real incomes led to a 6 percentage point per decade (0.6% a year) increase in population growth. That implied that it took 150 years for a rise in real incomes to drive up population sufficiently to cause a reversal in income growth.
But once capitalism appears on the scene, the drive for profit by capitalist landowners and trading merchants encourages the use of new agricultural techniques and technology and the expansion of trade. Then productivity growth takes off at a rate increasingly fast enough to overcome the slow impact of Malthusian ‘overpopulation’. Indeed, with industrial capitalism after 1800, the growth in productivity is 28 times higher than the very slow negative impact of rising population on real incomes.
Thomas Malthus
This confirms the view of Engels when he wrote: “For us the matter is easy to explain. The productive power at mankind’s disposal is immeasurable. The productivity of the soil can be increased ad infinitum by the application of capital, labour and science.” Umrisse 1842
Before capitalism, feudal societies stumbled along with their economies ravaged by plagues and climate. For example, the Black Death of 1348 engulfed English society for more than a year, claiming about 25% of the population. For three centuries after the Black Death, the plague would reappear every few decades and wipe out a significant share of the population each time. So real wages in England were mainly affected by these population changes and the consequent size of the labour force (if, as argued above, at a very slow rate).
But under capitalism, productivity rose sharply and the level of real wages was no longer determined by the weather or pandemics but by the class struggle over the production and distribution of the value and surplus value created in capitalist production in agriculture and industry. One of the features of the rise of capitalism from 1600 that the authors point out is the increase in the working day and working year – another confirmation of Marx’s analysis of exploitation under capitalism.
The authors note that as capitalism started to move from agricultural production to industry, in the latter half of the 18th century, real wages in England fell slightly despite substantial productivity growth. They cite one potential explanation, namely “Engel’s Pause,” i.e., the idea that the lion’s share of the gains from early industrialization went to capitalists as opposed to labourers.
The authors are reluctant to accept that Engels was right, preferring a Malthusian explanation in the late 18th century (having just rejected it). Moreover, they think real wages started to grow as early as 1810, before the period of the 1820-1840 cited by Engels as a ‘pause’. But anyway, we can see that the gap between productivity and real wages widened sharply from the beginning of industrial capitalism to now. Surplus value (the value of unpaid labour) rocketed through the early 19th century.
Most important, the study refutes the ‘Whig interpretation of history’, namely human ‘civilisation’ is one of gradual progress with changes coming from wiser ideas and political forms constructed by clever people. Instead, the evidence of productivity growth in England shows “sharp and sizable shifts in average growth” supporting the notion that “something changed.” i.e., that the transition from stagnation to growth was more than a steady process of very gradually increased growth.” On the gradual Whig interpretation, the authors conclude that “the results do not support this view of history.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334831075_The_Whig_interpretation_of_history
Also, the study shows that, as sustained productivity growth began in England substantially before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, it was not the change in political institutions that led to economic growth. On the contrary, it was the change in economic relations that led to productivity growth and then political change. “While the institutional changes associated with the Glorious Revolution may well have been important for growth, our results contradict the view that these events preceded the onset of growth in England.”
As Engels put it succinctly: “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”
The authors cannot avoid reaching a similar conclusion. As they say: “Marx stressed the transition from feudalism to capitalism. He argued that after the disappearance of serfdom in the 14th century, English peasants were expelled from their land through the enclosure movement. That spoliation inaugurated a new mode of production: one where workers did not own the means of production, and could only subsist on wage labour. This proletariat was ripe for exploitation by a new class of capitalist farmers and industrialists. In that process, political revolutions were a decisive step in securing the rise of the bourgeoisie. To triumph, capitalism needed to break the remaining shackles of feudalism…. Our findings lend some support to the Marxist view in that we estimate that the onset of growth preceded both the Glorious Revolution and the English Civil War (1642-1651). This timing of the onset of growth supports the view that economic change propelled history forward and drove political and ideological change.”
The development of capitalism in agriculture and in trade laid the basis for the introduction of industrial technology that led to the so-called industrial revolution and industrial capitalism. The Industrial Revolution occurred in Britain around 1800 because “innovation was uniquely profitable then and there”. As real wages rose, there was an incentive to exploit the raw materials necessary for labour saving technologies in textiles such as the spinning jenny, water frame, and mule, as well as coal burning technologies such as the steam engine and coke smelting furnace. Labour productivity exploded upwards. There was staggering rise in investment in means of production relative to labour. According to the authors, from 1600 to 1860, the capital stock in England grew by a factor of five, or 8% per decade.
Industrial capitalism had arrived, and along with rising productivity came increased exploitation of labour and the ideology of ‘political economy’ and bourgeois institutions of rule.
Texas' Governor Lifts Mask Mandate, Then Blames Immigrants for COVID Spike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI3CmMYkRAE
Vaccinations: a new world order (3 graphs)
March 28, 2021merijntknibbe
India and China are taking over. Cuban vaccines have entered phase three. It’s not the case that western countries are tacking the backseat. Yet. However… There are of course issues with the global vaccination effort. According to rumors, there are 29 million AstraZeneca doses produced in the Netherlands and stored in Italy which are not entering the vaccination chain because of… nobody knows (personal opinion: it sometimes feels as if the ‘intern from hell’ chairs the AstraZeneca board). Also, vaccines work excellent at the micro level, at this moment, when it comes to protecting the vulnerable. Vaccinating old men and women leads within weeks to a staggering decline in the death rate. The macro level is another issue. Only Israel, the fastest vaxer of them all, however seems to have reached something like herd immunity since around ten days ago. The UK and the USA will have to double vaccination rates to reach this stage – will pressure to finally start to export vaccines mounts. The EU, china, India have a long road ahead. Interesting question: logic dictates that Israel will have to vaccinate inhabitants of the Palestine state, too. Will this happen? Is it already happening? Anyway, looking at daily data (the graph shows a seven day rolling average) China vaccinated 6 million people in one day, yesterday. For the time being, there are no limits to vaccination growth. Good.
Saturday, March 27, 2021
Behind Amazon’s expansion in Detroit
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/27/8mil-m27.html
Kevin Reed
15 hours ago
Construction of a new Amazon distribution center on the former grounds of the Michigan State Fair in Detroit is well underway. The new 823,000 square-foot building is one of five new Amazon facilities being built in Metro Detroit that the company says will bring “more than 2,000 good jobs” and contribute “positively to the community.”
New Amazon Robotics Distribution Center under construction at the former Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit
Billed as a “robotics” distribution center, Amazon says it is spending $400 million to put up the massive building on the dilapidated 142-acre site that was the home of the Michigan State Fair from 1904 to 2009. A company statement announcing the Detroit expansion plans last January said the project would create 3,000 construction jobs and 1,200 “permanent full- and part-time jobs with a minimum $15 per hour wage and comprehensive benefits starting on the employee’s first day.”
The global corporation—Amazon has a Wall Street value of $1.5 trillion—also explained the infrastructure strategy behind the expansion in Detroit. The new buildings will “play critical roles in the fulfillment of large products and ‘middle mile,’ or the process of transporting packages between Amazon sites before last mile delivery for customers.” The company currently operates 10 facilities in Detroit and has “invested more than $2.5 billion across the state” since 2010, according to the statement.
All five new facilities are scheduled to be completed in 2021. The other four Metro Detroit locations are: a Sub-Same-Day Fulfillment Center in Hazel Park on the site of a horse racetrack that was closed in 2018; an Extra Large Fulfillment Center (XLFC) and Sort Center at Pinnacle Park near Metro Detroit Airport, on the site of the failed Pinnacle thoroughbred racetrack that closed in 2010; a Sort Center in Plymouth and a Robotics Fulfillment Center in Pontiac on the former site of the Pontiac Silverdome of the Detroit Lions professional football team.
The list of locations being redeveloped by Amazon shows that the company has selected areas of Detroit and its suburbs that have been devastated by a combination of deindustrialization and government-financed entertainment venue schemes that went belly up. In each case, there is a backstory regarding the real estate deals between Amazon and various property holding companies brokered by government officials, most of whom are Democrats.
The selection of the Michigan State Fairgrounds is a case in point. In 2018, the City of Detroit bought the 142-acre Fairgrounds site from the state government for $7 million. Last August, Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan announced a plan for the city to sell the property to Detroit-based Sterling Group and Dallas-based Hillwood Enterprises LP for development. The City Council rushed through a deal including a modification to the city master plan to allow reuse of the site for light industrial purposes, ignoring public opposition to selling it.
As part of the deals to obtain the various derelict properties for pennies on the dollar, Amazon and its development partners offered up $2.5 million in investments to local charity organizations such as Beaumont Children’s Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Detroit and Forgotten Harvest. Additionally, in response to public opposition to the deal, Mayor Duggan and the City Council worked in a plan for a new $7 million public transportation Transit Center on the property “paid for” by Amazon.
The investment in Detroit’s public transportation infrastructure is self-serving since Amazon and other industrial manufacturers in the area know full-well that $15 per hour jobs for the newly hired workers is not be enough income to support car ownership or the cost of auto insurance and many will need to take the bus to get to their facilities each day.
In announcing the plan, Amazon’s Vice President of Global Customer Fulfillment Alicia Boler Davis said, “We are grateful for the strong support we’ve received from local and state leaders as we broaden our footprint throughout Michigan.” And the company quoted Mayor Duggan, who said, “We’re thrilled that Amazon selected Detroit for what will be one of the largest fulfillment centers in Michigan.”
Davis would know about the collaboration of “local and state” Democrats with corporate America. She served in various management and executive positions at General Motors for 25 years—including Executive Vice President of Global Manufacturing and Labor Relations—before joining Amazon. The global auto giant is eligible for up to $2.27 billion in tax credits from the state of Michigan through 2029.
Conditions for new hires at the Detroit automakers, most of whom start out as temps making less than $17 per hour with substandard benefits, are so low that the auto companies are struggling to compete with Amazon for low-wage labor. Quoting a US auto industry consultant, Automotive News said that there is currently “a significant shortage of workers” for manufacturing because Amazon and the others are “beating out the lure of lower wages to go work in the potentially dangerous close quarters of an assembly plant.” The industry has partially made up for the labor shortage with a regime of forced overtime, with its existing workforce working six and even seven-day work weeks.
David Kalb, president at Applied Tech Industries located in Chesterfield Michigan, told Automotive News he has not been able to find enough workers to staff production commitments shortly after the auto factories resumed operations in May. Kalb said, “We had to go to 10-hour shifts, six days a week because we couldn’t get good help ... We had to increase our pay by a couple of bucks an hour, because that’s what the market was doing at the time.”
Amazon is taking advantage of the conditions of poverty and unemployment in Detroit which are the product of decades of factory closures and job losses carried out with the collaboration of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. That $15 an hour poverty wages can be promoted in Detroit—which was at one time the city with the highest per capita income in the US—as a “good job” is an indictment of the role of the UAW and the Democrats.
As with the billions of dollars invested by Stellantis (formerly Fiat-Chrysler America) in Detroit—including the opening of a new Mack Avenue assembly plant and the expansion of its Jefferson North plant in east Detroit—the expansion of Amazon’s operations in the Motor City is creating several oases of new development surrounded by the ongoing reality of poverty and blight just one or two blocks away. The bottom line for these corporate investments is the expectation of enormous profits through the exploitation of a virtually limitless supply of low cost labor.
Among the working class, there is a growing anger against unhealthy working conditions during the pandemic and an expanding opposition to social inequality. Although Jeff Bezos has announced he is “stepping down” as CEO of Amazon, he increased his personal wealth by $75 billion in 2020 to a total of nearly $190 billion.
Billed as a “robotics” distribution center, Amazon says it is spending $400 million to put up the massive building on the dilapidated 142-acre site that was the home of the Michigan State Fair from 1904 to 2009. A company statement announcing the Detroit expansion plans last January said the project would create 3,000 construction jobs and 1,200 “permanent full- and part-time jobs with a minimum $15 per hour wage and comprehensive benefits starting on the employee’s first day.”
The global corporation—Amazon has a Wall Street value of $1.5 trillion—also explained the infrastructure strategy behind the expansion in Detroit. The new buildings will “play critical roles in the fulfillment of large products and ‘middle mile,’ or the process of transporting packages between Amazon sites before last mile delivery for customers.” The company currently operates 10 facilities in Detroit and has “invested more than $2.5 billion across the state” since 2010, according to the statement.
All five new facilities are scheduled to be completed in 2021. The other four Metro Detroit locations are: a Sub-Same-Day Fulfillment Center in Hazel Park on the site of a horse racetrack that was closed in 2018; an Extra Large Fulfillment Center (XLFC) and Sort Center at Pinnacle Park near Metro Detroit Airport, on the site of the failed Pinnacle thoroughbred racetrack that closed in 2010; a Sort Center in Plymouth and a Robotics Fulfillment Center in Pontiac on the former site of the Pontiac Silverdome of the Detroit Lions professional football team.
The list of locations being redeveloped by Amazon shows that the company has selected areas of Detroit and its suburbs that have been devastated by a combination of deindustrialization and government-financed entertainment venue schemes that went belly up. In each case, there is a backstory regarding the real estate deals between Amazon and various property holding companies brokered by government officials, most of whom are Democrats.
The selection of the Michigan State Fairgrounds is a case in point. In 2018, the City of Detroit bought the 142-acre Fairgrounds site from the state government for $7 million. Last August, Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan announced a plan for the city to sell the property to Detroit-based Sterling Group and Dallas-based Hillwood Enterprises LP for development. The City Council rushed through a deal including a modification to the city master plan to allow reuse of the site for light industrial purposes, ignoring public opposition to selling it.
As part of the deals to obtain the various derelict properties for pennies on the dollar, Amazon and its development partners offered up $2.5 million in investments to local charity organizations such as Beaumont Children’s Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Detroit and Forgotten Harvest. Additionally, in response to public opposition to the deal, Mayor Duggan and the City Council worked in a plan for a new $7 million public transportation Transit Center on the property “paid for” by Amazon.
The investment in Detroit’s public transportation infrastructure is self-serving since Amazon and other industrial manufacturers in the area know full-well that $15 per hour jobs for the newly hired workers is not be enough income to support car ownership or the cost of auto insurance and many will need to take the bus to get to their facilities each day.
In announcing the plan, Amazon’s Vice President of Global Customer Fulfillment Alicia Boler Davis said, “We are grateful for the strong support we’ve received from local and state leaders as we broaden our footprint throughout Michigan.” And the company quoted Mayor Duggan, who said, “We’re thrilled that Amazon selected Detroit for what will be one of the largest fulfillment centers in Michigan.”
Davis would know about the collaboration of “local and state” Democrats with corporate America. She served in various management and executive positions at General Motors for 25 years—including Executive Vice President of Global Manufacturing and Labor Relations—before joining Amazon. The global auto giant is eligible for up to $2.27 billion in tax credits from the state of Michigan through 2029.
Conditions for new hires at the Detroit automakers, most of whom start out as temps making less than $17 per hour with substandard benefits, are so low that the auto companies are struggling to compete with Amazon for low-wage labor. Quoting a US auto industry consultant, Automotive News said that there is currently “a significant shortage of workers” for manufacturing because Amazon and the others are “beating out the lure of lower wages to go work in the potentially dangerous close quarters of an assembly plant.” The industry has partially made up for the labor shortage with a regime of forced overtime, with its existing workforce working six and even seven-day work weeks.
David Kalb, president at Applied Tech Industries located in Chesterfield Michigan, told Automotive News he has not been able to find enough workers to staff production commitments shortly after the auto factories resumed operations in May. Kalb said, “We had to go to 10-hour shifts, six days a week because we couldn’t get good help ... We had to increase our pay by a couple of bucks an hour, because that’s what the market was doing at the time.”
Amazon is taking advantage of the conditions of poverty and unemployment in Detroit which are the product of decades of factory closures and job losses carried out with the collaboration of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. That $15 an hour poverty wages can be promoted in Detroit—which was at one time the city with the highest per capita income in the US—as a “good job” is an indictment of the role of the UAW and the Democrats.
As with the billions of dollars invested by Stellantis (formerly Fiat-Chrysler America) in Detroit—including the opening of a new Mack Avenue assembly plant and the expansion of its Jefferson North plant in east Detroit—the expansion of Amazon’s operations in the Motor City is creating several oases of new development surrounded by the ongoing reality of poverty and blight just one or two blocks away. The bottom line for these corporate investments is the expectation of enormous profits through the exploitation of a virtually limitless supply of low cost labor.
Among the working class, there is a growing anger against unhealthy working conditions during the pandemic and an expanding opposition to social inequality. Although Jeff Bezos has announced he is “stepping down” as CEO of Amazon, he increased his personal wealth by $75 billion in 2020 to a total of nearly $190 billion.
Breana Avelar, a processing assistant, holds a sign outside the Amazon DTW1 fulfillment center in Romulus, Michigan, April 1, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya]
Last April, workers at the Amazon fulfillment center in Romulus near Metro Airport walked out to demand safe working conditions during the early days of the pandemic. The workers, who made their own placards denouncing the vast profits made by Amazon’s Bezos, demanded that the company disclose the truth about the rate of COVID-19 infection and that the facility be closed and sanitized.
Only a month before, wildcat strikes broke out in several auto plants throughout the region, forcing the industry into a two-month shutdown. The Romulus walkout also followed the actions of Amazon workers in other cities throughout the US and Europe demanding protective equipment, hazard pay, extension of sick leave and COVID-19 testing.
Top US admiral warns war with China over Taiwan “much closer than most think”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/27/usch-m27.html
Peter Symonds
15 hours ago
The US Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John Aquilino, testified this week that he regarded a Chinese attack on Taiwan as the most threatening flashpoint for war in the Indo-Pacific region and advocated a further build-up of US military force in the western Pacific to counter China. His remarks underscore the mounting bipartisan clamour in Washington against Beijing and the accelerating danger of the Biden administration, not China, provoking a war.
Aquilino was testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing to replace Admiral Phil Davidson as head of the US Indo-Pacific Command—the largest US military command. He told the committee that “the dangerous concern is that of a military force against Taiwan.” He referred to the previous testimony of Davidson, who last week warned of a supposed Chinese takeover within six years, then added, “[M]y opinion is this problem is much closer to us than most think.”
Significantly, Aquilino agreed with the assessment of Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who told the Senate committee this month that Taiwan was “the most significant flashpoint now that could lead to a large-scale war.” In his bellicose anti-China remarks, McMaster argued that “China has a fleeting opportunity that is closing,” and the months between next year’s Winter Olympic Games in Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress later in the year presented the “greatest danger.”
These declarations stand reality on its head. It is not Chinese “aggression” that threatens a devastating nuclear war between China and the US, but rather the relentless US military build-up throughout Asia. Combined with naval provocations in the South and East China Seas and trade war measures against China, this has dramatically escalated geopolitical tensions. Aquilino, Davidson and McMaster all used the alleged threat posed to Taiwan to justify their demands for a further major expansion of armaments and military spending for the US Indo-Pacific Command.
The deliberate US ramping up of confrontation with China began under the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” which called for the deployment of 60 percent of the Pentagon’s naval and air assets to the region by 2020. The Trump administration then launched what amounted to economic warfare against China, directed in particular at preventing its development of rival hi-tech products. This was combined with accelerated provocative “freedom of navigation” operations in Chinese-claimed territorial waters in the South China Sea.
Foreword to the German edition of David North’s Quarter Century of War
Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020
After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.
Within weeks of being installed, President Biden has accelerated the war drive against China. In his press conference on Thursday, Biden declared there would be “steep, steep competition” with China. He said his administration would nearly treble research and development funding to ensure US supremacy in hi-tech areas, and again insisted that China had to abide by the “international rules”—that is, those set by Washington.
In the last fortnight, Biden has convened the first leaders’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, involving the US, Japan, Australia and India—a quasi-military alliance directed against China—and dispatched Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea to consolidate alliances against China. Blinken went on to Alaska, where he and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan opened a two-day meeting with their Chinese counterparts with a provocative attack on China across a broad array of issues.
The new focus in US military and strategic circles on Taiwan, underscored by a slew of commentary, including by the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, is particularly dangerous. Following the 1949 Chinese Revolution, it was only the intervention of the US Navy that prevented Taiwan’s incorporation into the newly-established People’s Republic of China. For two decades, the US maintained the fiction that the Kuomintang dictatorship on Taiwan headed by Chiang Kai-shek was the legitimate ruler of all China, enabling it to sit in the UN Security Council.
That abruptly changed in 1972 after the US, under President Nixon, reached a rapprochement with China, aimed at jointly confronting the Soviet Union. Taiwan became the greatest obstacle to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations, which were finalised only in 1979, when Washington conceded that Beijing, not Taipei, was the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan. Congress, however, passed the Taiwan Act in 1979, committing the US to arming Taiwan and defending it against alleged Chinese aggression.
This highly contradictory stance, known in Washington as “strategic ambiguity,” has been able to persist only because the US cut formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, severely limited contact between US and Taiwanese officials, and restricted arms sales. Tensions in the narrow Taiwan Strait between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, which repeatedly flared in the past, were defused.
Over the past decade, however, US actions, particularly under the Trump administration, have destabilised the inherently unstable and highly charged issues surrounding Taiwan’s status. Trump threatened to tear up the "One China" policy if China did not make economic concessions. He greatly boosted arms sales to Taiwan and increased the number of US warships passing through the Taiwan Straits.
In the final days of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ended all restrictions on contact between US and Taiwanese officials—military as well as civilian. In a significant symbolic step, the de facto Taiwanese ambassador to the US was, for the first time, invited to Biden’s inauguration, signaling that the new administration would not reverse the policy.
Not surprisingly, China has responded with protests. It has repeated statements that Taiwan is part of China and conducted military exercises near Taiwan. This “aggression” is now being seized on by US imperialism as the pretext to justify a further military expansion along the so-called "first island chain," which includes Taiwan, immediately adjacent to the Chinese mainland, as part of its broader military build-up in the region.
In his confirmation hearing, Aquilino applauded steps taken by Taiwan to develop its own missiles. On Thursday, Taiwan’s defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, declared that the country was now mass producing long-range missiles—that is, offensive weaponry—capable of striking deep inside the Chinese mainland. The missile program is developing three more models as “a priority.”
On the same day, Taiwan and the US signed their first agreement under the Biden administration, establishing a joint Coast Guard Working Group to collaborate on maritime security. The excuse for the move was new powers granted by the recent National People’s Congress in Beijing to authorise the Chinese coast guard to use force when necessary. Taiwan is expanding its own coast guard, which is armed and can be drafted into naval service in the event of war.
Underlying the sharpening tensions over Taiwan is the island’s strategic and economic significance. Situated about 150 kilometres off the Chinese mainland, the island was described by US General Douglas MacArthur in the early 1950s as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier”—that is, a major military asset. A number of Taiwanese-controlled islets, all heavily fortified, lie just kilometres off the Chinese coast. Any move by the US to establish military ties or a military presence on Taiwan would be regarded in Beijing as a major threat to its security. Economically, Taiwan plays a central and highly sensitive role in the production of the world’s semiconductors.
By heightening tensions with China over Taiwan, the Biden administration is pouring petrol over what is correctly regarded as the most dangerous flashpoint in Asia, threatening to not only trigger war between the US and China, but drag in the entire world.
Australian government and media seek to bury Afghanistan war crimes
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/27/afgh-m27.html
Oscar Grenfell
15 hours ago
Four months after the government-commissioned Brereton report said there was “credible evidence” of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, including the murder of at least 39 civilians and prisoners, and multiple acts of torture, the perpetrators remain in the military. No investigations for criminal prosecutions have begun.
This is only the starkest expression of an ongoing cover-up involving the Liberal-National Coalition government, the Labor Party opposition, multiple state agencies and the official media. For years they have sought to hide evidence of the atrocities, which occurred under a Labor government between 2009 and 2013.
The Brereton report was a damage-control operation, initiated after some details were leaked to the media. It suppressed more information than it revealed and absolved governments and senior military command of any responsibility, based on the implausible assertion that they had been unaware of the crimes. The report’s release was greeted by brief hand-wringing from politicians and the media over the impact that the revelations would have on “our military.” The issue was then dropped almost entirely.
It resurfaced at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday. Chris Moraitis, director-general of the Office of the Special Investigator, established at the recommendation of the Brereton report to conduct a criminal investigation into the allegations, provided an update on the progress of its work.
In short, Moraitis indicated that the body he heads has done virtually nothing. The organisation does not even have any investigators.
“We’re in the process of engaging investigators and we’re going to do that in the next one, two, three months,” Moraitis said. “That involves them being sworn in as special members of the Australian Federal Police and involves at least three weeks of induction in preparation, and involves us also doing a few other things.”
Moraitis is clearly working to a timetable prepared by the government. After the report’s release last November, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and other government representatives declared that any criminal prosecutions, if they eventuated at all, would likely take up to a decade. These statements had the character of a directive rather than a prediction.
Moraitis’ comments underscored the character of the Brereton report, as a continuation of the cover-up. Conducted in secret, it was dragged out from 2016 to 2020. Investigators provided an untold number of military personnel with immunity for testimony, and much of the evidence was given on the proviso that it could not be used in a court. This was justified on the pretext of encouraging witnesses and participants in the crimes to testify freely.
The overwhelming majority of the material remains classified. The publicly-released version of the report contains few details that had not been previously reported in the media. Its descriptions of the war crimes were as vague as possible.
The main outcome of the Brereton investigation was to create a potential legal minefield, as to what evidence is admissible and what is not. Moraitis said his staff were sifting through the Brereton material to “help ensure investigators will only receive information they can lawfully obtain and use in criminal investigations and any future criminal proceedings.” This process is being conducted under a shroud of secrecy.
Moraitis’ testimony followed a report in the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph on March 16, which revealed that at least some of the 25 soldiers implicated in the war crimes remain in the military. The alleged criminals would not be sacked. They would be allowed to discharge from the army on unspecified “medical grounds.” No other media outlet picked up the story.
The article, apparently based on information provided from within the military, appeared just days before the Coalition, Labor, the Greens and other MPs voted for a royal commission into the treatment of military veterans and their high rates of suicide. The timing indicates that the hardships faced by soldiers, resulting from their deployment to predatory and illegal wars, will be exploited to obfuscate the criminality of what occurred in Afghanistan.
As for the victims and their relatives, the Coalition government stated after the release of the Brereton report that it did not intend to provide them with any compensation. A Google search indicates that the issue was last mentioned in the corporate media in December.
The obvious attempts to forestall any criminal prosecutions of the soldiers involved are all the more extraordinary, given that millions of people have seen cast-iron evidence of at least some of the crimes.
Last March, for instance, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published footage from a soldiers’ helmet camera, showing the point-blank execution of an unarmed Afghan civilian in 2012. Had the murder occurred in any other context, the perpetrator would have been arrested, charged and sentenced years ago. Military whistleblowers, as well as Afghan victims, have also provided eyewitness accounts of some of the crimes to the media.
The bid to prevent the cases from ever reaching a court is motivated by several factors. When the report was released, some of the soldiers implicated indicated through the press that they felt “betrayed” and “scapegoated.” Shortly after, an image was leaked to the media, showing a senior special forces commander drinking beer from the prosthetic leg of a dead Afghan.
It was rapidly revealed that the man pictured was warrant officer John Letch. When he stood down after the publication, Letch was the Command Sergeant Major of Special Operations Command. Letch had worked at Army Headquarters and Headquarters Special Operations Command.
Whoever leaked the image of Letch, it was directed against the claim of the Brereton report that no one above the level of squadron command was aware of the violations of international law. The government and military command are undoubtedly fearful that if soldiers are tried, they will testify that they were merely following orders.
Many of the murders occurred after the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard ordered greater involvement of Australian troops in US-led “kill and capture” raids, supposedly targeting insurgent leaders in 2011.
In April 2013, then Chief of the Defence Force General David Hurley issued a secret directive to soldiers, warning that they could be “exposed to criminal and disciplinary liability, including potentially the war crime of murder” if they could not prove that those they killed were participating in hostilities. In other words, the crimes flowed from the government-led prosecution of a neo-colonial war, and were known to military command.
Clearly, there are also concerns that the true scale of the war crimes could be revealed if the alleged perpetrators are pressed in court. The Brereton inquiry acknowledged that there were likely many more incidents that were not covered in its report.
The latest proof that murder and torture were commonly used instruments of the occupation was provided by Shamsurahman Mamond, who worked as a translator for the Australian military in Uruzgan Province.
Mamond told the Special Broadcasting Service this week: “[In the] provincial reconstruction team, it was our job to connect with local elders and local people. They were coming and telling us what was going on out in the fields. They would say, ‘They’re destroying the whole house. They’re killing the kids and ladies and everyone because they’re looking for insurgents and Taliban.’”
The translator indicated that torture was routine at the Australian base in the town of Tarin Kowt. “My accommodation was a few metres away from the jail,” he said. “I saw sometimes they were taking people out of the car like toys, we also sometimes heard people yelling, it was sad because if someone is in the detention centre, they don’t have a weapon, they are not a threat anymore, there was no necessity for punishment.”
Such information runs counter to the promotion of the military by the entire political and media establishment, and preparations for its involvement in new and even greater crimes.
The last major media mention of the war crimes came in December, when Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry representative, tweeted a condemnation of the killings. This was accompanied by a graphic, produced by a visual artist, showing an Australian soldier holding a knife to the neck of an Afghan child. The picture clearly referred to an incident described in the Brereton report, involving soldiers slashing the throats of two 14-year-old boys.
Labor, the Liberal-Nationals, the Greens and various independents all denounced Zhao’s tweet as a Chinese “attack” on Australian soldiers. The media treated the tweet as a far more serious offence than the killings themselves.
The hysterical reaction was a warning that ongoing exposure of the military was beyond the pale and would be treated as treasonous and “un-Australian.” This was directed against anti-war opposition, and was the signal for the war crimes to be dropped entirely from the press.
The denunciation of China also highlighted the fact that the cover-up of the war crimes is aimed at ensuring that the atrocities committed in Afghanistan do not get in the way of the preparations for Australia to play a frontline role in US plans for a catastrophic war against China.
US-backed UNHRC resolution puts Sri Lanka on notice
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/27/unsl-m27.html
K. Ratnayake
15 hours ago
On Tuesday, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a new resolution on Sri Lanka and called on the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to monitor human rights violations in the country.
The resolution was presented by the UNHRC’s “Core Group on Sri Lanka,” whose members include the UK, Canada, Germany, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Malawi. The US State Department issued a statement declaring that it was a co-sponsor.
Entitled “Promoting reconciliation, accountability, and human rights in Sri Lanka,” the purpose of the resolution is to pressure President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s government to break relations with China and more actively integrate with Washington’s military-strategic preparations against China. The resolution was supported by 22 countries, with 11 in opposition and 14 abstentions.
Senior Sri Lankan leaders, including President Rajapakse himself, heavily lobbied the UNHRC members to oppose the resolution. The US and UK intensely campaigned to isolate and reduce support for Colombo. The media reported that it was the lowest number of votes for Sri Lanka, when similar UNHRC resolutions were first moved against the country.
Washington backed a 2009 resolution a month after Colombo’s ended its bloody war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and sponsored all UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka between 2012 and 2017.
This week’s 16-point resolution called for the devolution of power, protection of human rights, and a “review” of the prevention of terrorism act, accountability, respect of religious freedoms and protection human rights defenders. It also expressed concerns about militarisation of the civilian government.
In formulating the resolution, its sponsors have cynically exploited the anti-democratic measures of the Colombo government. Accountability is a reference to the crimes committed during the final months of the war against the LTTE when at least 40,000 civilians were killed, including surrendering LTTE leaders. The Tamil population has continuously demanded Colombo provide information about the hundreds of young men disappeared after surrendering to the army.
In recent months, the Rajapakse regime has inflamed anti-Islamic sentiment and alienated the community with the forcible cremation of Muslims killed by COVID-19. It has also stepped up the militarisation of his administration with the elevation of retired generals into key government positions.
Significantly, the resolution calls on the OHCHR “to collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence and to develop possible strategies for future accountability processes for gross violations of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law in Sri Lanka to advocate for victims and survivors, and to support relevant judicial and other proceedings including in Member States with competent jurisdiction.”
According to media reports, establishment of a relevant database for “future accountability processes” would cost $US2.8 million over an 18-month period. The body would be staffed by 12 personnel, including three legal advisors, two analysts, two investigators and human rights officers. It is the first time a UNHRC resolution has outlined specific measures for an international intervention in Sri Lanka.
Concerns about war crimes, suppression of democratic rights and militarisation of the government by sponsors of the UNHCR resolution are utterly hypocritical.
In the last three decades alone, the US, UK, Canada and Germany have unleashed neo-colonial military interventions killing hundreds of thousands of people and committing countless war crimes.
The ruling elites in these imperialist countries have responded to the economic and social crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic by promoting extreme right-wing and fascistic forces. A sharp expression of this extreme-rightward turn was the Trump-led fascistic coup attempt in Washington on January 6.
The UNHCR resolution has nothing do with exposing war crimes or defending human rights but is another expression of intense US efforts to undercut Beijing’s influence in the region by placing putting Colombo on notice over its relations with Beijing.
The US and its strategic ally India are concerned about the Rajapakse government’s increasing financial dependence on Beijing. Teetering on the brink of default, the cash-strapped government last week obtained a $1.5 billon swap loan from People’s Bank of China to boost its falling foreign reserves.
In 2015, Washington orchestrated a regime-change operation against former President Mahinda Rajapakse, the brother of the current president, after “human rights” resolutions at the UNHCR failed to persuade Colombo to distance itself from Beijing.
Last week, Beijing, well aware of Washington’s political manoeuvres, campaigned against the UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka. China’s envoy in Geneva urged UNHCR members to oppose the resolution and condemned the “double standards and politicisation of human rights.” He called on the UN body to “promote and protect human rights through genuine dialogue and cooperation” and “respect the sovereignty and independence” of other countries.
President Rajapakse spoke to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, appealing to him to oppose the resolution. India, however, abstained on the UNHRC vote. New Delhi maintains close contact with the Tamil nationalist parties in Sri Lanka who are pressuring Colombo for a power-sharing arrangement.
Pawankumar Badhe, India’s envoy in Geneva, called on Colombo “to address the aspiration of Tamil community… [and] engage constructively with the international community to ensure that the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all its citizens.”
Addressing parliament on Thursday, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena ludicrously declared that the resolution “will have an adverse effect on the ongoing efforts to maintain peace, reconciliation and economic development in the country.”
Conscious that Colombo is under immense pressure from Washington, he insisted, however, that “Sri Lanka will continue to engage constructively with the UN and its agencies in the same spirit of cooperation...”
Sajith Premadasa, leader of Samagi Jana Balavegaya, the main opposition party, told parliament that the reason the UNHRC resolution had been passed was “because the government has adopted policies that have led to disunity and mistrust among different communities in the country.” In the same breath, Premadasa declared that his party “is willing to support the government to take forward a domestic mechanism.”
Leading Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) member Bimal Ratnayake said that the government “has betrayed the country for its vicious and dictatorial power. Even now we should admit our mistakes without being conceited. We urge the government to respect human rights, abolish the 20th amendment to the Constitution, stop militarisation and we will win at the UNHRC next time.”
These organisations have consistently downplayed the geo-strategic issues underpinning the UNHCR resolution. The SJB leadership, previously in the United National Party, and the JVP fully backed the war and deny that the military committed any war crimes. Like Rajapakse’s ruling party, they depend on the military and know that it will be needed to defend the ruling elite against the mass eruption of social tensions.
The UNHRC resolution is not just about Sri Lanka but is another indication of the intense pressure being exerted by Washington on its allies in preparation for US-led military operations against China. A war between these nuclear-armed nations would rapidly escalate into a catastrophic global conflagration.
After the January 6 coup attempt, Republicans escalate attack on voting rights
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/27/pers-m27.html
Barry Grey
16 hours ago
On Thursday, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law a sweeping attack on voting rights aimed at crippling the ability of poor, minority and working class people to cast a ballot. Kemp, a Republican, signed the misnamed “Election Integrity Act” in a closed-door ceremony only hours after both Republican-controlled houses of the state legislature passed the measure on a party-line vote.
Georgia is one of 43 states whose legislatures are, for the most part, controlled by the Republican Party, and that have introduced bills attacking the most basic of all democratic rights, the right to vote. This drive was dramatically accelerated in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s unsuccessful effort to overturn the 2020 election and retain power as de facto dictator. Georgia is the first of these states to turn its proposals to gut voting rights into law.
Trump’s plot to overturn the Constitution was based on the lie, supported by virtually the entire Republican Party, of pervasive voter fraud and a “stolen election.” His conspiracy culminated in the fascist assault on the US Capitol on January 6, which, assisted by Trump and his appointed leaders of the Pentagon, came within seconds of achieving its goal of taking lawmakers hostage and blocking congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Given Georgia’s history of lynch law and Jim Crow segregation, the arrest and jailing of state Representative Park Cannon, an African American woman, for demanding entry to Kemp’s office so as to protest the rollback of key gains of the civil rights movement, has a sinister symbolic significance.
Georgia was one of five “swing states” that switched from the Republicans to the Democrats in the 2020 presidential race, giving Biden a substantial victory in the electoral vote and contributing to his lopsided 8 million vote majority in the popular vote.
In an election that saw record voter participation nationally, Georgia voters cast ballots in record numbers, with black and working class Democratic voters in particular choosing to cast mail-in ballots due to the pandemic.
Trump’s defeat in November was followed in early January by the victory of Democratic challengers in two Senate runoff races, fueled by large turnouts among young and black voters. Those wins in Georgia shifted control of the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats, giving them control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House.
The Republican “election integrity” provisions are in line with Trump’s unsuccessful demands on state officials and the courts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump repeatedly attacked Kemp and the Georgia secretary of state after they rejected his claims of election fraud and refused to carry out his demand that they overturn Biden’s win.
Provisions in the Georgia law include voter ID requirements for absentee ballots, a shorter period for voters to apply for mail-in ballots, limits on the use of ballot drop boxes, and a ban on mobile voting vans (which were used in the heavily black and Democratic Atlanta area).
The law even makes it a crime to offer food and water to voters waiting in line. It allows any state resident to lodge an unlimited number of challenges to voter registration and eligibility. It also allows state lawmakers to initiate takeovers of local election boards, giving them legal cover to block local officials in poor, minority and working class counties from certifying Democratic victories—something Trump attempted to do extra-legally by personally intervening to overturn the results in cities such as Atlanta and Detroit.
Similar provisions are included in bills being introduced in other states, from Arizona to Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida and Texas to northern industrial states such as Michigan. Some include even more overtly unconstitutional provisions, such as giving the state legislature the power to override the popular vote and choose its own slate of electors.
The entire working class must be united in the struggle to defeat the attack on voting rights. The first prerequisite for such a struggle, however, is to understand that no confidence can be placed in the other party of the American corporate-financial oligarchy, the Democrats, to defend the right to vote.
Trump and the Republicans speak for the most predatory and fascistic sections of the ruling class. They have been emboldened to lay siege to democratic gains won through the struggles of millions of workers of all races by the feckless and duplicitous response of Biden and the Democrats to the January 6 attempted coup.
Rather than demanding the criminal prosecution of Trump and his Republican co-conspirators, they have incessantly pleaded with their “Republican colleagues” for unity and bipartisanship. At the same time, they have sought to cover up the massive scale of the coup conspiracy and the role of the Republican Party and high-ranking officials in the military, the police and the state intelligence apparatus. They have to this point held only a handful of public hearings, and refused to call Pentagon officials who delayed for hours the dispatch of National Guard troops to protect the Capitol from the fascist mob.
At his first press conference, held Thursday, even as the Georgia bill was being rushed through the legislature, Biden repeated his appeal for “unity” and refused to endorse calls from voting rights advocates and some Democrats for the Democratic-controlled Congress to put an end to the anti-democratic filibuster, which gives the Republicans an effective veto on any and all legislation to protect the right to vote.
The current assault on voting rights is an escalation of an attack that has been ongoing for decades, against which the Democratic Party has mounted no serious opposition. It demonstrated its lack of any genuine commitment to the defense of voting rights in 2000, when Al Gore and the entire party accepted the Supreme Court ruling halting the counting of votes in Florida and handing the election to the loser of the popular vote, George W. Bush.
In 2013, the Supreme Court carried out the next major attack on voting rights in its 5–4 decision to overturn Section 5 of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most important gain of the mass civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. That ruling invalidated the enforcement mechanism of the act, lifting the requirement for former Jim Crow states in the South to pre-clear any changes in voting procedures with the federal government.
The Voting Rights Act put an end to the systematic exclusion of blacks from the ballot box, enforced mainly through KKK bombings and the murder of civil rights activists, white as well as black, by “law enforcement.” This reign of terror was carried out with the tacit support of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, which declared the struggle for civil rights to be a communist plot. All of this took place under the aegis of the Democratic Party, which based its political control of the South on its brutal enforcement of segregation.
The bill’s passage was extracted from the Johnson administration at the cost of the blood and lives of hundreds of martyrs. These included the three young activists, two white and one black, who joined the drive in the summer of 1964 to register blacks in Mississippi and were murdered by the KKK and local police. Passage of the act was preceded by the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches, in which a number of participants and supporters were murdered by police and FBI informants.
Neither the Obama administration nor the congressional Democrats mounted any effort to pass legislation restoring the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, emboldening the Republicans to expand their drive to impose barriers in states across the country to block working class voters.
No confidence can be placed in the Democratic Party to defend the right to vote. The Democrats are above all motivated by fear of the emergence of a left-wing, anti-war and socialist movement of the working class outside of the two-party system. When it comes to blocking ballot access to parties to their left, above all, socialist parties, they are no less ruthless and contemptuous of democratic rights than the Republicans.
In the 2020 election, Democratic governors, election officials and judges played the leading role in blocking the presidential candidates of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) from obtaining ballot status. The Democratic governors of Michigan and California opposed legal motions by the SEP and its candidates, Joseph Kishore and Norissa Santa Cruz, to suspend already prohibitive and undemocratic signature requirements—12,000 in Michigan and 200,000 in California—in light of the coronavirus pandemic, which made petitioning for signatures a threat to the health of both SEP supporters and the general public.
They refused to place the SEP candidates on the ballot, arguing that they should risk their lives and violate state lockdown requirements even as the infection rate and death toll surged.
The Democratic attorney general of California argued that allowing the SEP on the ballot would cause “an unmanageable and overcrowded ballot” that would create “voter confusion” and “frustration of the democratic process.” Of course, the opposite was the case. The Democrats were, and remain, determined to prevent working class voters from having an opportunity to vote for a socialist alternative to the capitalist politicians.
As the WSWS has explained, the pandemic is a trigger event that has intensified the global crisis of capitalism and accelerated the drive of the ruling classes to war and dictatorship. This is an international process. The criminal and incompetent response of capitalist governments all over the world to the pandemic, knowingly sacrificing millions of lives in order to protect and expand the profits and wealth of the rich and the super-rich, is discrediting the entire system in the eyes of the working class.
The turn toward fascism and dictatorship is the universal ruling class response. None of the social and democratic gains of the past century can be defended within the framework of a system that fuels ever more staggering levels of social inequality.
The defense of the right to vote is impossible without a political break with the Democratic Party and the building of a mass socialist movement of the working class. Millions of workers all over the world will come to understand that today there is no democracy without socialism, and will, under the revolutionary leadership of the SEP and its sister parties in the world Trotskyist movement, act accordingly.
Fracking can’t rely on plastics
Americans support the steps taken by the Biden administration thus far to tackle climate change by large margins, according to a new poll. The widespread support comes as the White House and the U.S. Congress gear up for a major push on a roughly $3 trillion infrastructure proposal, which could potentially mark the most ambitious push on climate action ever attempted in the U.S. Read all about it here.
Campaigners, meanwhile, are calling for polluters to be denied access to this year’s pivotal COP26 summit and locked out of all future UN climate talks. A letter released this week, and signed by over 170 grassroots groups, urged the UK government to “kick out” polluters from sponsoring or even visiting the climate summit, claiming their presence is “poisoning” the climate debate. The letter by campaign group Glasgow Calls Out Polluters reads: “To protect vulnerable communities we urgently need a just transition to a fossil-free world but many polluters, whose profits depend on inaction, won’t let this happen.” Caitlin Tilley has the story.
And a new report warns that developing new shale gas fields in Appalachia “may not end up being profitable” in the years ahead. In addition, the associated petrochemical buildout that the region has pinned its hopes on as the future of natural gas is “unlikely,” the report states. For much of the past decade, the region has seen natural gas prices languish as drillers pumped too much gas out of the ground, which has resulted in persistently low prices. And now a renewed price surge appears unlikely as gas faces growing competition from solar and wind. Nick Cunningham reports.
What Joe Manchin coverage leaves out
Hi everybody, I’m Karim Doumar, an audience editor at ProPublica, filling in for Logan this week. Welcome back to the Weekly Dispatch.
If you followed the passage of President Joe Biden’s stimulus bill, you know about Sen. Joe Manchin. And this is probably what you know: The West Virginia Democrat is the most conservative member of the Senate Democrats, and their majority is so tiny that it’s almost impossible for them to pass anything without him.
If you read the daily papers, Manchin has one of two roles: Either he has worked with Republicans to forge bipartisan compromises (remember the December stimulus bill?), or he is the final hurdle facing progressive legislation before it can be enacted (remember the March stimulus bill?).
Either way, all the thorniest Senate issues of the day, including infrastructure, the filibuster and climate change, run straight through Manchin, leaving him competing with the president for the Most Important Joe award. So we wanted to get to know him better.
Lucky for you, reporter Ken Ward Jr., a distinguished fellow working with ProPublica, has spent a lifetime as an investigative and environmental reporter in the state Manchin serves. Ward, who is also a reporter at nonprofit Mountain State Spotlight, isn’t as interested in the Manchin you read about in most political coverage, that highly sought 50th D vote in the senate. What he’s interested in is policy and how it impacts people’s lives. That may sound obvious, but when I sat down with him (via Zoom) to ask what he’s learned about Manchin in his years covering the man, he frequently had to gently nudge me back toward policy and people, and away from looking at the world through a political lens.
Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Karim Doumar: There's this national narrative of Joe Manchin as a Democrat in a deep red state, navigating a series of wedge issues to survive politically, but a lot less attention is paid toward him as a politician being responsive specifically to needs of voters who elected him. Do you think that's a fair characterization? And what do you think people who are reading that kind of stuff are missing about residents and voters in the state?
Ken Ward Jr.: The real sticking point for me with the way the national narrative is [it’s] as if the goal of politics is to decide whether red or blue wins, as opposed to looking at what's being accomplished either way. With Sen. Manchin, I'm looking at: What is it that his constituents elected him to do? And is he serving them? Or to what extent in some cases might he not be serving them?
The example that is in my wheelhouse reporting-wise is: What is he going to do in his role on the Energy Committee on climate change issues? So much of the narrative is more about whether he is going to help President Biden achieve his legislative goals on that or not, as opposed to the parts of it that I think are important. Is he going to be successful in insisting that any sort of action about climate change that might further reduce the ability of states like West Virginia to rely on fossil fuels for the economy, is he going to do something to make sure that the states that would be hurt economically by that have something else in place, some sort of just transition for coal communities, which has been this kind of elusive concept?
KD: Can you talk about West Virginia, its relationship to coal and natural gas, and what role he's had in that?
KW: Joe Manchin has a unique connection to West Virginia and its coal industry. Let's be clear that coal from West Virginia and coal communities from West Virginia helped build the country. They helped make America an industrial power. They helped win a couple of world wars. Coal from West Virginia has been important for the rest of the country.
It's been more of a mixed bag for West Virginia because while West Virginia is the historically largest coal producer in the country, West Virginia is one of the poorest states. So the big existential question is, if coal is so great for West Virginia, why is West Virginia so poor?
The much oversimplified but still accurate answer is because so much of the wealth that comes out of the ground from coal is going someplace else. So right now, with coal and natural gas, West Virginia is at this really historic pivot point in its lifetime. Coal is continuing to decline, and natural gas has risen in its place. In West Virginia, it's become a more politically and economically powerful industry. Production has skyrocketed, but we're seeing the same thing: that some of the places where natural gas is produced, and where people bear the burden of extracting it from the ground, are among the state's poorest places. Why is that? The answer, of course, is somewhat similar: A lot of the wealth is going someplace else.
I would say [Manchin’s] most visceral connection with the coal industry is his uncle was one of 78 miners who died in 1968 in a horrible explosion at the Farmington mine in north-central West Virginia. That explosion led to the passage of federal mine safety legislation. His family was partially supported by the coal industry. At the same time, his family felt the unique pain of what too many other West Virginia families have felt. So he should understand this kind of complicated relationship better than most politicians.
KD: One of the ways for people to understand politicians is to look at how they've responded to crises and disasters. You've covered the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster and Sago Mine disaster. Can you talk a little bit about what you learned about Joe Manchin while you were covering those disasters?
KW: The Sago Mine disaster happened in 2006. And 12 miners were killed in that explosion. A few weeks after that, there was a mine fire at the Aracoma Mine. Two miners died in that. Then in 2010, 29 miners were killed in the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster. Joe Manchin was governor for all of those.
And so he got to play this role in this theater that we have in West Virginia over these mine disasters, where what happens is, oh my God, the whistle blew, there was an explosion at the mine. All the families rush to a school or a church or some building nearby. And they huddle there and wait for news while the mine rescue teams are looking for them.
Joe Manchin got to play the role of the guy who comes out and briefs the media and the families about where things stand. And he rushed very quickly after the Sago Mine disaster to get the Legislature here to push through a historic law to improve mine rescue capability. You would think you would have excess air for them to breathe and other sorts of emergency equipment, but America didn't while other countries did. So Joe Manchin pushed through legislation to address that.
But then there's this other scene that really sticks in my mind. After the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, when we all spent about a week waiting and hoping that some of these miners may have survived, that they were huddled breathing extra oxygen that was in the mine because of Joe Manchin. But it turned out they didn't. So [after] this weeklong series of periodic briefings, Gov. Manchin comes out and he talks about how the Women's Auxiliary in the community where this happened had been bringing food to the media, who had gathered to cover the story, and how typically and wonderfully West Virginia that was that they were making sure that all of these folks from out of state who were there to cover this tragedy were fed.
He was talking about this in a way that, _gosh, there's a good story here for West Virginia too, because look at what good people we are that we fed all of these reporters, _as opposed to this sense of outrage that 29 more coal miners got blown up needlessly.
Now I don't doubt for a second that Joe Manchin actually was outraged. And Don Blankenship, the CEO of the company that owned that mine, Joe Manchin has been in a longtime feud with him since. But when the curtain was coming down on that scene, outside the Upper Big Branch Mine, he wanted to tell the story of what good people this Lady's Auxiliary was.
It just struck me as almost an acceptance that this is the theater that we're going to go through in West Virginia, periodically, if we're going to rely on the coal industry.
KD: You mentioned that since then he's had a feud with Don Blankenship. Is that typical of his relationship with a lot of the people who run the mining companies?
KW: I don't think so at all. I went for years to the West Virginia Coal Association’s annual meetings, and Sen. Manchin was always on the agenda as a speaker. When many people in West Virginia felt that the Obama administration was singling out the coal industry, Joe Manchin was very squarely on the side of the coal industry. I don't think that he counts many coal CEOs on a Joe Manchin enemies list. They're more likely on a list of people who contributed to his campaign.
KD: You've reported extensively on the current Gov. Jim Justice and his business empire. What is their relationship like?
KW: The story there is that Joe Manchin denies that he was directly involved in convincing Jim Justice to run, but he was a major early supporter when Jim Justice, who had been a Republican, became a Democrat to run for governor in 2016. And Joe Manchin was his most visible and vocal supporter in that run.
Very shortly after that, less than a year after he took office, Gov. Justice announced at a Donald Trump rally in Huntington, West Virginia, that he was switching parties back to becoming a Republican. And so that started this feud between Justice and Manchin. You often don't get senators delving down into state political issues to that extent anymore, but Manchin has done that on numerous occasions to criticize the way Jim Justice was running the state. Most recently, when Jim Justice ran for reelection in 2020, Manchin supported Ben Selango, the Democratic nominee, and campaigned for him.
KD: It looks like the next thing that Biden wants to do is pass an infrastructure bill. Manchin already came out and said he wanted to do it with Republican support. In your reporting and in reporting from the Mountain State Spotlight team, if you could write up an infrastructure bill for West Virginia, what does West Virginia need?
KW: There's a certain lore to that for Joe Manchin, on infrastructure, that's especially strong, because of course, West Virginia for decades had Sen. Robert C. Byrd, and Robert C. Byrd was proud to be the Prince of Pork. We've got roads and bridges and schools, and all sorts of public buildings all over the state, institutes of higher learning, and lots and lots of federal money that came here because of Sen. Byrd's position. So that's like the ideal for someone like Joe Manchin. But he's not the chair of the Appropriations Committee. So he's not necessarily in the same position to pour the pork here except to the extent that he can hold his vote over the person who is.
West Virginia continues to lag behind in lots of different kinds of infrastructure that would help the country. We have old and crumbling infrastructure for drinking water. We have old (and in many places nonexistent) infrastructure for sanitary sewers. Many parts of West Virginia still, despite billions of dollars from the Appalachian Regional Commission for Highway Construction, lag behind in having good roads. West Virginia has a lot of needs for aid related to schools.
But the biggest infrastructure worry is that West Virginia spent 100 years mining coal, and a lot of the good coal is gone. A lot of the other coal that's left isn't going to be mined because of climate change and because of cheap, natural gas. So what kind of infrastructure can West Virginia get that would enable it to have another kind of economy? Is that more federal money for wind power, or for solar power or job retraining? The sort of infrastructure that West Virginia most desperately needs is infrastructure that allows communities to find another path forward.
Unfortunately, there's no quick and easy answer, but there are lots of ideas out there. The Abandoned Mine Land Program is a federal program to clean up abandoned mines. The same kind of work running a bulldozer on an active surface mine? Same guy can run a bulldozer cleaning up an abandoned mine. You have a lot of places in West Virginia where Joe Smith company might put this cleaner, futuristic economic development project, but they can't because the water and the sewer in that community aren't any good, and there's no flatland that isn't marred by an old mindsight. So can we spend more money on those kinds of things?
KD: Do you have any insight on the important climate questions you’ve mentioned? On where he will lean?
KW: I think it's gonna depend on what he thinks he can get. There was a grand compromise, a long, long time ago, where John L. Lewis, who was the legendary president of the United Mine Workers of America, agreed to go along with mechanization of the mines, bringing in big machines underground that were going to cost hundreds of thousands of miners their jobs over a couple of decades. He went along with it partly because I think he thought it was inevitable, but also because he got out of it the creation of UMW health and retirement funds and a series of medical clinics around the coalfields for miners and their families. So the question for Manchin is, is there some grand compromise around climate change, where he can get what he thinks West Virginia really needs in exchange for going in favor of a bill that his friends in the coal industry may not really want?
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