BIDEN: Status Quo Protector -- "Nothing Will Fundamentally Change"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2v8EUnC0uc&ab_channel=SUVRVingSUVRVing

The Censored Day One Agenda For Pres. Biden

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0R1e17J00&ab_channel=RedactedTonight

FORCE THE VOTE!

 

We demand that every progressive in Congress refuse to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House until she publicly pledges to bring Medicare for all to the floor of the House for a vote in January.


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Connecticut educators denounce right-wing record of Biden’s pick for Education Secretary

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/card-d24.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Robert Milkowski
24 December 2020







The response of the corporate media and the teachers unions to President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of Miguel Cardona as his nominee for Education Secretary has been nothing short of effusive.

In the eyes of the Democratic Party and all of its backers, Cardona’s two chief qualifications for the position are that he is Latino and that he has forcefully advocated the reopening of schools during the pandemic as Connecticut’s commissioner of education. If Biden takes office in January, Cardona will immediately promote racial politics to accelerate the school reopening policies pursued by the Trump administration, fraudulently claiming this will be for the benefit of “black and brown” students.

In its article, headlined, “Biden Picks Latino Chief of Connecticut Schools as Education Secretary,” the New York Times glowingly wrote, “The selection of Dr. Cardona, a Latino, would fulfill Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to appoint a diverse cabinet and a secretary of education with public school experience—a blunt juxtaposition to Ms. DeVos, a billionaire champion of private schools that she and her children attended.”

The Times quotes multiple union officials praising Cardona, including Stuart Beckford, the second vice president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, who states, “He has provided the stability the state has needed, and also focusing on equity and diversity.” The article quotes American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, who hailed Cardona’s “deep respect for educators and their unions.”

The Times writes, “Teachers in Connecticut, who endorsed Dr. Cardona’s nomination, said that his leadership had struck the right balance of transparency and flexibility, even during the coronavirus crisis.”

In fact, the “teachers in Connecticut” referred to are the Board of Education Union Coalition, including the Connecticut Education Association (CEA), the American Federation of Teachers Connecticut, and state affiliates of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Auto Workers (UAW).

The union bureaucrats that co-signed an endorsement of Cardona inhabit a different world than the rank-and-file educators that teach and work in schools across Connecticut, whose lives have been thoroughly endangered by the policies pursued by Cardona.

When the CEA posted their endorsement of Cardona on their Facebook page, they were met with a torrent of denunciations by Connecticut educators, with one commenting, “Commissioner Cardona has played fast and loose with teachers’ and students’ lives, and is not pro-teacher. The CEA should be embarrassed at this political pandering, and should never have put teachers’ support in their endorsement. CEA support of this potential nomination is yet another slap in the face to the teachers it is supposed to represent.”

Dr. Tina Manus, a public school teacher in Connecticut, told the World Socialist Web Site, “The fact that the Education Union Coalition endorsed Miguel Cardona without surveying members is disgusting. No action taken by them speaks more to their tone deaf approach to leading educators in CT, as well as their blatant and purposeful disconnection from the Rank and File.”

Dr. Manus added that Cardona “put the entire state of CT at risk, opening schools and allowing those schools to become vectors of community COVID-19 transmission. His policies are the reason COVID numbers went up and poor communities are suffering now…. He further exacerbated the already wide gaps in economics, social class and healthcare poor communities suffer within.”

Nicole Rizzo, who has been teaching in Connecticut for seven years, and is also an organizer for Connecticut Public School (CTPS) Advocates, told Newsweek magazine Cardona “was biased in his representation of reopening schools. The metrics that he and the governor proposed for school reopening, they continually revised without explanation.”

She added, “Many of these schools are lacking basic, rudimentary resources including personal protective equipment and sanitization products.”

Rizzo conducted a survey on the (CTPS) Advocates Facebook page in reaction to the Education Union Coalition’s endorsement of Cardona, which found that an extremely small percentage of the 392 educators polled supported his nomination (7.1 percent), while the majority voted against him (92.9 percent).

Another Connecticut teacher, Thea Bell, told the WSWS, “Cardona has not spent much time in a classroom and apparently fast tracked it out as soon as he could. He smiles all the time when people are suffering. He delivers policy with a smug ‘let them eat cake’ smile of an elite who, now that he has risen above, could not care less about those still struggling.”

She added, “My school refused to allow me to teach remotely. They ultimately fired me for basically being medically fragile and high risk. At the last minute they rescinded my termination and put me on unpaid leave this year. My lawyer intervened. Cardona had NO plan to shield vulnerable educational workers in his demand to open face to face. Instead, he is letting teachers fight singular legal battles, lose their jobs, retire, get fired, etc.”

Since the summer, Cardona has joined Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Ned Lamont in falsely claiming that schools are not vectors for the spread of COVID-19. In an op-ed in the News-Times last week, without citing any evidence, Cardona claimed, “Cases reported by schools, which include students who are in full remote learning, are being traced back to community spread happening outside the building.”

A Hartford educator who chose to remain anonymous spoke about this to the WSWS, stating, “Cardona never allowed for the possibility of school closures. He claimed teachers would receive PPE, but no improvements made to ventilation systems in extremely old buildings. Data was being manipulated; the CSDE kept saying kids don't contract the virus to justify the reopening. The decisions were not based in reality. They kept moving the goalposts on what would require a closing, and Cardona didn't listen to the teachers pleading not to reopen the schools. Teachers have gotten sick and some have died.”

He continued, “The state's own reopening safety thresholds were set at 25 out of 100,000 as the trigger to move to full remote. We moved way beyond those thresholds. As the infection rates rose, the CSDE just kept re-writing the reopening plan... moving the safety threshold. We documented all of it. Our numbers of infection are now way over 100 out of 100,000 in some towns. He does not care, he wants it open for optics. I would say also because now it seems to suggest he has ‘found a way’ to keep it open.”

In concluding he said, “We have had several iterations of the Connecticut school reopening plan. Again, the CSDE just kept rewriting it as the infection rates rocketed. They gaslit everyone. It's been really tragic for many. I no longer want to be an educator. There is no integrity in the public system.”

As a result of these and other policies implemented by the state’s Democratic politicians, Connecticut now has the fifth highest ratio of deaths per person among all US states. In total, 170,705 of the state’s 3.6 million residents have been infected with COVID-19 and 5,736 people have died. Cases have surged in the past two months following the reopening of schools throughout the state, with a record 8,129 cases on December 7.

Educators must draw the necessary conclusions from Biden’s selection of Cardona, which underscores that his administration will pursue the same homicidal policies as the Trump administration of opening all schools and nonessential businesses as the pandemic rages.

Although the Democrats’ tactics may vary, their fundamental goal—keeping the economy open in the interests of Wall Street—remains the same. Both parties are beholden to the same ruling elite, whose wealth has vastly increased alongside the ever-greater suffering and death of workers during this global pandemic.

Educators and all workers must organize themselves independently of both corporate-controlled parties and the pro-capitalist unions, through the formation of rank-and-file safety committees. These committees must prepare for a political general strike, with the goal of closing all schools and nonessential businesses to stop the spread of the pandemic and save lives.

Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/labo-d24.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws



Asia
China: Apple electronics factory workers protest in Shanghai

Thousands of temporary workers from Apple’s Taiwan-invested Pegatron facility in Shanghai demonstrated outside the plant on December 19 to protest against the forced transfer of workers to another facility. Large numbers of police blocked the plant entrance, sparking clashes.

The protest erupted after Pegatron tried to transfer thousands of workers from its Shanghai factory to another facility at Kunshan in Jiangsu Province. Workers were told that if they refused to transfer they would be fired and would not be eligible for their share of finders’ fee commission usually shared between recruitment agencies and workers.

The fees form a substantial part of temporary workers’ overall remuneration package. A worker could accumulate 11,000 yuan ($US1,700) in such payments after 55 days working at Pegatron.

Faced with the large number of angry protesters, management said it would revise the relocation package to ensure that transferring workers would retain all of their existing salary and benefits.
Cambodian garment workers occupy closed factory demanding unpaid wages

A group of half a dozen former garment workers from a closed factory 50km south of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh are occupying the factory, standing guard over the sewing machines. The owners shuttered the factory in March without paying outstanding wages and bonuses.

The workers have large debts because they took out loans to feed their families after the plant closed. They have fought off people sent by the factory owner to remove the machines, hoping to win their outstanding pay.

“Those machines are my money; they are my life,” Vanna, a worker said, pledging to hold them hostage until she receives about $US2,000 in wages and bonuses owed since the bosses shut the factory.

Cambodia’s $7 billion garment sector—the country’s largest employer with 800,000, mostly female, workers—was dealt a double blow this year by the coronavirus pandemic and by unlawful crippling tariffs imposed by the European Union over claimed human rights abuses.
India: Punjab police brutally attack unemployed teachers

Several people were injured when police used canes to attack a demonstration of unemployed teachers while they marched towards the chief minister’s residence in Patiala, Punjab state, on December 19. Teachers held a sit-down protest near the residence alleging that the government was not considering their demands which are more than three years old.

The unemployed teachers, who have passed the Elementary Teacher in Training and the Teacher Eligibility Test, were demanding the repeal of the provision Bachelor of Education entry to elementary schools, and for 10,000 new posts to be immediately advertised. Elementary Teacher Training is a diploma level course for teaching the preschool curriculum and equips teachers with required skills.
Tamil Nadu COVID-19 door-to-door screeners demand wages

Former workers employed on contract by the Madurai [municipal] Corporation to undertake door-to-door screening protested outside the Madurai City health office on December 18 demanding their wages.

Protesters said that many workers were hired on a contract basis in June but were asked to quit the job on September 23 without prior notice. They have been demanding settlement of wages due for the past two months.
Puducherry public transport workers oppose against privatisation

Over 200 contract drivers and conductors for the Puducherry Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) stopped work on December 21 and demonstrated in front of the PRTC workshop demanding permanent jobs and for the government to reverse its decision to sell several bus routes to private enterprise. The town bus services were suspended during to the strike.
Tamil Nadu power distribution workers demonstrate against privatisation

Tamil Nadu Electricity Board workers protested against privatisation at different locations across the state on Monday. The state government plans to hand over maintenance of five power stations to private operators for two years. Workers fear the move is the first step to full privatisation and are demanding the government reverse its decision.

Workers have also demanded that the government withdraw its decision to recruit employees on contract basis through agencies. The workers alleged that the board has less than 82,000 employees, instead of the required strength of 142,000, which has impacted their workload.
Sri Lankan garment workers on strike over year-end bonus

Workers from the British-owned Next Garment Factory in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone (KFTZ), north of Colombo, have been on strike since December 16 demanding that the year-end bonus be paid in full.

Workers at the factory, which employs about 2,000 people, began protesting after management announced that bonuses would be slashed due to profit losses this year. The factory was only closed for several days in October after 11 workers were tested positive for COVID-19.

Striking workers were holding daily protests outside the plant until management called the police to disperse them on December 18. Management also threatened workers who have raised their concerns on social media.

Districts near the KFTZ were under a curfew in October due to a high number of coronavirus infections in the factories. All free trade zone employees, however, were ordered to keep working and to use their service identity cards as curfew passes.
Sri Lankan development officers demand permanent positions

Development officers affiliated to government departments across the island demonstrated in 19 districts, including Colombo, on Tuesday, demanding that their appointments be made permanent. The protest was prompted by the government’s failure to make their jobs permanent, even four months after their mandatory one-year training period ended.

The Joint Development Officers Centre coordinated the demonstrations. Protesters in each district chanted slogans and displayed placards in front of the district secretariats and in front of the Ministry of Public Administration in Colombo.
Pakistan: Punjab police attack teachers demanding permanent jobs

Over 700 contract-based teachers from Punjab government schools were attacked by police using teargas and batons as they marched toward the prime minister’s residence in Islamabad on Saturday. Many protesters were injured and 44 were arrested.

The teachers continued their demonstration blocking a main transport artery of the city in defiance of police orders to move their protest to the Press Club. Later the protest was moved to a different area after police agreed to release those arrested. The demonstration ended later in the day when the government agreed to hold discussions the next day.

Teachers want immediate job permanency and repeal of new regulations that disqualify many teachers despite their years of service. The new rules impact on 11,000 teachers currently in service.

The government is aggressively seeking to reform public education in Punjab including handing over the administration of schools to non-governmental organizations, as part of its overall cost cutting plans. The increasingly large number of contract-based workers is a result of this policy.
Australia and New Zealand
Royal Flying Doctor Service paramedics and nurses maintain eight weeks of industrial action

Nurses and paramedics who transport patients in Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) ambulances in Victoria are maintaining low-level industrial action begun on October 29 over the organisation’s proposed enterprise agreement (EA). The action includes writing slogans on their vehicles, returning back to base for meal breaks rather than eating on the road, and not working extra time before or after their rostered shift (incidental overtime).

The highly specialised workers are members of the Victorian Ambulance Union and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. They are opposed to the RFDS’s attempt to impose a two-tiered wage system that would slash the pay of new recruits by 16.8 percent ($4,000 per year). The management also wants to end recognition of the registered nurse classification and critical skills and experience, and cut leave benefits of part-time employees.

The RFDS wants to limit annual pay increases to no more than the consumer price index (CPI) and has refused to include back pay in the new agreement, even though wages have been frozen for three years while negotiating a new agreement.

The RFDS attempted to implement a non-union EA in 2017 with provisions similar to those in the current offer, but it was decisively rejected by the ambulance crews. An “in principle” agreement was reached with the unions in 2019 but its implementation was stalled when the RFDS applied to the Fair Work Commission in May for a delay while the RFDS’s contract with the Victorian Labor government’s Ambulance Victoria was renegotiated.

Ambulance Victoria has contracts with several patient transport providers to move patients between medical facilities, or in the case of RFDS patients, from the airport to a hospital. The RFDS says the attack on its workers’ wages and conditions is necessary to rein in costs as the industry had to become more competitive.
Blacktown Hospital nurses continue struggle for safe staffing levels

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA), representing traumatised and overworked nurses at the state-owned Blacktown Hospital, in western Sydney, New South Wales, filed a dispute with the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) over the hospital management’s delay in following through in a commitment to resolve inadequate staffing levels.

On November 19, over 150 NSWNMA members walked out on a 24-hour strike demanding that staffing at the hospital be increased to safe levels. They were ordered back to work after several hours by the union on orders from the NSW Industrial Relations Commission. The government responded by saying it would employ an additional 15 full-time equivalent midwifery roles and launch a “thorough” review into staffing levels at the hospital.

Frustrated with hospital management inaction, off duty nurses began protesting outside the hospital forcing the NSWANF to register a dispute in the IRC.

According to the union, there are already eight vacant staffing positions at the hospital and nurses and midwives were not confident that the additional positions would be filled. Fifteen additional staff, moreover, could not properly cover all the wards and patients at Blacktown Hospital.

Adding to the nurses’ workload, midwives are being trained to take on more roles, increasing their workloads each shift. At least 20 senior obstetricians at the hospital threatened to resign in the first week of February 2021 if their concerns about understaffing, lack of experienced staff and access to birthing facilities are not addressed.
Tasmanian municipal workers strike for new work agreement

Outdoor workers from the Glenorchy City Council (GCC), on the outskirts of Tasmania’s capital Hobart, walked off the job on December 15 for a stop work meeting in an attempt to force GCC management to enter “genuine” negotiations for a new enterprise agreement. The Australian Services Union (ASU) has been in negotiations with the council since April. It said the workers have not had a pay increase since May last year but management refuses to present a “real” wage offer.

The union claimed that the council has not given a detailed response to claims around superannuation or allowances; not addressed the use of insecure employment; advised they wish to cap redundancy entitlements at 52 weeks and want to remove the Employee Support Benefit and Study Fees Reimbursement from the enterprise agreement.

Over 90 ASU members are involved in industrial action that could include stoppages up to 24 hours, bans on overtime, call backs, working on Saturdays and Sundays and pub holidays, outdoor equipment maintenance in parks and buildings, and bans on selected administration work.
New Zealand home care workers strike

Workers employed by the Auckland-based home support provider, Lifewise, continued industrial action this week after talks between the company and the E Tu union broke down.

The workers, who provide support for elderly people, began to hold partial strikes, lasting four hours a day, from December 14 and picketed Lifewise offices. They are calling for a guaranteed minimum number of work hours, as well as increased sick leave. Many workers are only offered 15 hours a week, making them unable to survive financially on low wages.

In July 2019, when bargaining began for a new collective agreement, workers say Lifewise agreed to an extra three days of sick leave, as well as more bereavement leave. But the company withdrew the offer in September this year, blaming the financial impact of the pandemic. E Tu is continuing to negotiate with the company.
Toll transport workers walk out

Workers for Toll Logistics, an Australasian transport company owned by Japan Post, walked off work on December 22 for 24 hours. Twenty-five workers participated in the action, around 70 percent of the company’s operational workforce. Workers are concerned about redundancy conditions after Japan Post decided to sell its New Zealand operations. This is the second strike by Toll workers this month, with further action planned if a settlement is not reached. The First Union is negotiating with Toll.
Fresh Collective supermarket staff hold one-hour strike

A group of workers at New World supermarket’s boutique offshoot store, Fresh Collective, held a one-hour picket line strike in the affluent Auckland suburb of Mt Albert. A First Union representative stated that workers are concerned at the lack of pay parity with other supermarket workers. Fresh Collective is a luxury store where customers pay high prices, while some store staff earn only 10 cents over the minimum wage of $18.90.

Force A Vote For Medicare For All

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZaafP1kvxw&ab_channel=RedactedTonight

Trump pardons Blackwater killers for Nisour Square massacre

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/pers-d24.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Patrick Martin
23 December 2020







President Trump’s pardon of four Blackwater mercenaries, tried and convicted of mass murder in Baghdad during the Iraq War, is a clear signal that American soldiers and the paramilitary thugs who assist them can kill with impunity in wars of aggression launched by US imperialism. It sends a message about domestic as well as foreign policy. Trump is seeking to develop fascist forces, including sections of the police and military, who will be prepared to carry out similar massacres against American workers and youth.

Trump has been threatening to pardon the Nisour Square killers for several years, in the course of which he has pardoned several other convicted war criminals from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Blackwater guards have high-level support, both among Fox News pundits who are followed by Trump and within his own cabinet. His billionaire Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder.
The circumstances of the 2007 Nisour Square massacre are not in doubt, following exhaustive investigations by the US military, the FBI and the Iraqi authorities. A squad of Blackwater mercenaries, deployed as guards for US State Department officials, left its base in the Green Zone, the US government’s compound in central Baghdad, on the morning of September 16, 2007, equipped with heavy weapons. At the first city square they entered, the mercenaries halted traffic and then opened fire indiscriminately with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on cars, taxis and buses carrying hundreds of ordinary Iraqis going about their daily business. No Iraqis fired shots, displayed weapons, or in any way threatened the Blackwater agents.

When the bloodbath was over, at least 14 Iraqis lay dead and 17 were wounded. None of the Americans suffered so much as a scratch. The death list demonstrates the essentially random character of the victims, 10 men, two women and two boys, hit in the hail of gunfire and explosives. There is no reference to these names in the pardon declaration issued by the White House:
Ahmad Haitham Ahmad al-Rubai, 20, a medical student
Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, 46, Ahmad’s mother and a dermatologist
Ghaniyah Hassan Ali, 55, mother of eight, who died on a bus shielding her daughter Afrah from the bullets
Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq, 9, killed in the car his father was driving
Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, 47, a delivery truck driver
Qasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, 12, the truck driver’s son
Mushtaq Karim Abd Al-Razzaq, 18, an Iraqi soldier standing at a military checkpoint
Osama Fadhil Abbas, 52, a car dealer
Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein, 54, a blacksmith commuting to work on his motorcycle
Ibrahim Abid Ayash, 77, a gardener and passenger on a bus
Mahdi Sahib Nasir, 26, a taxi driver
Hamoud Sa’eed Abttan, 33, an unemployed job seeker, father of seven
Uday Ismail Ibrahiem, 27, Hamoud’s cousin, also unemployed and a father of three
Sa’adi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, 52, a businessman

The Nisour Square massacre came at the high point of the bloodletting in Iraq, when President George W. Bush had ordered a “surge” in troop deployments and operations throughout Iraq to forestall an impending disintegration of the Iraqi puppet regime established by the 2003 US invasion. The death toll skyrocketed with the ongoing clashes with Iraqi insurgent forces. It was impossible for US officials to move outside the Green Zone without heavily armed escorts, mainly provided by Blackwater, which held a $1 billion contract for guard services in the war zones. Mainly drawn from ex-military men turned highly paid mercenaries, Blackwater was characterized by a colonialist disdain for the “natives” and a penchant for shooting first and never asking questions.

The 2014 trial in the United States included 30 eyewitnesses flown in from Iraq to give testimony, the largest number ever to come to America for such a purpose. Their accounts were graphic and heart-wrenching. “Anything that moved in Nisour Square was shot. Women, children, young people, they shot everyone,” said Hassan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who survived the attack with his son.

Blackwater claimed that the convoy had come under attack, that the witness accounts were fabricated, and the killings were justified. However, a congressional report found that in 80 percent of the cases where Blackwater guards used their weapons in Iraq between 2005 and 2007, they had fired first.

Despite repeated interventions on behalf of the Blackwater mercenaries by US politicians and court rulings that overturned several guilty verdicts, four were finally convicted. Nicholas Slatten was the first to open fire, killing Dr. Al-Khazali and her son Ahmad, who was driving her to a medical appointment in a white Kia. Slatten was sentenced to life imprisonment. Three others, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty and Paul Slough, joined in the killing. They received prison sentences ranging from 11 to 15 years.

At the time that the Blackwater killers were first convicted and sentenced, the WSWS wrote:


The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. There are numerous reported incidents of mass murder conducted by US soldiers, special forces operatives and private contractors. Many more such incidents are unrecorded because no victims survived. But some of these were among the hundreds of atrocities made public by Private Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who released logs of military reports to WikiLeaks, some made public under the title “Collateral Murder.”

More importantly, the politicians and generals who organized and led the US war in Iraq have gotten off scot-free. Under the principles laid down by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, the leaders of the US government during the Iraq War—George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Tenet, Paul Wolfowitz—and top military commanders from Tommy Franks to David Petraeus are guilty of the crime of planning and executing a war of aggression. They are collectively responsible for all the deaths that ensued as a result of their actions.

Today, many more names would be added to that list, including all the leading personnel of the Obama administration: Obama, Biden (now the president-elect and future distributor of pardons), as well as those who supervised drone warfare and larger-scale acts of military aggression in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and other countries.

There were perfunctory statements of outrage from congressional Democrats over the Trump pardons. “If you murder civilians while at war, you get a pardon,” said Representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

But Trump’s suppression of the Nisour Square convictions is only the crudest expression of a policy embraced by Democratic administrations as well as Republican. No one can forget that it was Obama who blocked all prosecutions of CIA officers for running secret torture chambers around the world, claiming that he wanted to “look forward, not backward.” What he looked “forward” to was using the CIA to carry out drone-missile assassinations all over the world, with American citizens among the victims.

President-elect Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, has already indicated that he will pursue the same policy, opposing prosecutions of Trump administration officials for such crimes as separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents, brutalizing and even killing migrants at the border, and carrying out flagrant violations of international law like the drone-missile killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

And while paying lip service to having learned the lessons of the bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, Biden has filled the national security positions in his cabinet and on his White House staff with advocates of and participants in these wars. He selected as his nominee to head the Pentagon, retired General Lloyd Austin, who was deputy to David Petraeus in 2008, during one of the bloodiest stretches of the war, and then held the top military command in Baghdad in 2010-2011, overseeing the final stages of the US withdrawal. Austin later headed the US Central Command as US troops poured back into Iraq to combat ISIS forces that were overrunning the Iraqi military.

The principal charge raised by the Democratic Party against Trump over the past four years was that he was insufficiently aggressive in prosecuting military operations in Syria and carrying forward the US military-intelligence onslaught against Russia initiated by the Obama administration. The replacement of Trump by Biden next month will not mean any lessening in the belligerence of American imperialism, only new dangers.

The struggle against imperialist war and barbarism requires the political mobilization of the working class, against both parties of imperialism, the Democrats as much as the Republicans, on the basis of a socialist and antiwar program.