SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Monday, December 02, 2024
Sunday, December 01, 2024
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Friday, November 29, 2024
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Laith Marouf - Netanyahu ICC Arrest Warrant; UNSC Ceasefire; Palestinians Resist Israeli Genocide
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Very informative. Laith mentions multipolarity positively. It isn't magic and will need to be built around international socialism in order to prevent the competitiveness that inevitably erupts under nationalism, which is the multipolar basis currently.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Monday, November 18, 2024
Friday, November 15, 2024
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Saturday, November 09, 2024
Friday, November 08, 2024
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Monday, October 21, 2024
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Friday, October 18, 2024
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Saturday, October 12, 2024
Friday, October 11, 2024
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Sunday, October 06, 2024
Saturday, October 05, 2024
Friday, October 04, 2024
Collapsing Empire: Iran Throws Down Gauntlet--Kit Klarenberg
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Collapsing Empire: Iran Throws Down Gauntlet
Iran strikes the Zionist entity, October 1st
Original article:
Thursday, October 03, 2024
Wednesday, October 02, 2024
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Monday, September 30, 2024
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Monday, September 23, 2024
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Friday, September 20, 2024
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
NATO’s Destruction of Ukraine Under the Guise of “Helping”--Glenn Diesen
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NATO’s Destruction of Ukraine Under the Guise of “Helping”
EXCERPT:
NATO dismisses any accusations of an expansionist agenda by presenting itself as a passive actor that merely responds to Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. This narrative conceals the reality that every poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrates that only approximately 20% of Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. When NATO promised future membership to Ukraine in 2008, 43 percent of Ukrainians considered NATO a threat to Ukraine and merely 15 percent associated NATO with protection.[3] Forty-six percent of Ukrainians answered it was more important to have close relations with Russia, while only 10 percent of Ukrainians supported close relations with the US over Russia.[4] In 2011, a NATO document acknowledged: “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support of it is less than 20%”.[5]
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Friday, September 13, 2024
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Monday, September 09, 2024
From a Commenter on Moon of Alabama: Kissing the Ring of POTUS
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There’s an excellent new album by “The The”, called “Ensoulment”
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lyFkE0TSBdZvIXVFkd7-dDE-K18UKzaZ4&si=pgEXM0UWTrLqYcKp
It includes this song “Kissing the ring of Potus”:
The Empire of Lies secures allies
Like a spider ties up flies
Those hand-picked parasites ruling the servile satellites
Know who they dare not criticise
A psychopathic superpower spies from the sky
Transmitting viruses into the mind's eye
"It's vassalage or war!"
Shrieked the Casablanca whore
Slaughter by proxy
The hidden hand
The cat's paw
Kissing the ring of POTUS
Under the spell of hypnosis
The proof of psychosis
The coup that nobody noticed
The criminals were anointed
The false flags were hoisted
Missiles flattening, nations shattering
Yet, even while it was happening, it wasn't happening
By now so conceited and proud
They brag of their crimes out loud
"We cheated, we stole, we lied!"
"We came, we saw, he died!"
So, is this how the Empire dies?
Its constitution withered on the vine
Propped up by the dollar and the drone
Slumped upon a degenerating throne
Kissing the ring of POTUS
Under the spell of hypnosis
The proof of psychosis
The coup that nobody noticed
Kissing the ring of POTUS
Under the spell of hypnosis
The proof of psychosis
The coup that nobody noticed
Monday, September 02, 2024
Sunday, September 01, 2024
Monday, August 26, 2024
Monday, August 19, 2024
Friday, August 09, 2024
Ruling Challenges Media Stance on Palestine
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"On July 30, the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner said:
'States must immediately review all diplomatic, political, and economic ties with Israel, inclusive of business and finance, pension funds, academia and charities.'”
Ruling Challenges Media Stance on Palestine
EXCERPTS:
"Being a crime against humanity, administering apartheid makes Israeli officials war criminals even without taking into account the regime’s crimes in Gaza, which the ICJ in a separate ruling in January said amounted to a case of plausible genocide."
***
"Some hold out little hope. Canterbury University academic and geopolitical commentator Josephine Varghese said:
'I don’t think the ICJ presents an imperative for media outlets like ABC to change their language. The Australian state is a close ally of the U.S. and Israel and their economic interests are deeply interwoven. Western states and media institutions, contrary to their own assertions, are largely anti-democratic in nature and strive, first and foremost, to protect the political and economic interests of their ruling class.'”
Thursday, August 08, 2024
Tuesday, August 06, 2024
Camus Had A Point--Surprised I Haven't Seen This Quote During Covid--4 Years On
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It's impossible that there could be a plague, because everyone knows
that they have vanished from the West. We should not act as though half
the town were threatened with death, because then it would be. Yes,
everyone knew that, except for the dead."
Albert Camus, The Plague
Sunday, August 04, 2024
Saturday, August 03, 2024
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Saturday, July 20, 2024
International Court of Justice Finds Israel’s Occupation of Palestine Illegal
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/07/20/woqv-j20.html
In a devastating condemnation of the Israeli government and its imperialist backers, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Friday that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful, ordering all countries to cease enabling it.
The court ruled categorically that Israel’s 56-year-old domination over “the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” is “illegal.” The occupied territories include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, whose population is being systematically massacred by Israel in an ongoing genocide.
In its sweeping ruling, the court found that, beyond the criminality of Israel’s war against the population of Gaza, the entire framework within which the genocide is being conducted is itself illegal, and that its enablement by the imperialist powers is also illegal.
The court declared that “All States must cooperate with the United Nations to put into effect modalities required to ensure an end to Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” It adds that countries must not “render aid or assistance in maintaining” the illegal occupation.
In a refutation of the imperialist powers’ justifications for funding and arming the Gaza genocide based on claims that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” the court ruled that “Israel’s security concerns cannot override the principle of the prohibition of acquisition of territory by force.”
The Biden administration has declared dozens of times that the support of the United States for Israel’s war against the population of Palestine is “ironclad.” Since the start of the Gaza genocide, the US has provided Israel with $6.5 billion in weapons and has pledged a further $14 billion. This included more than 14,000 2,000-pound bombs.
With the help of these weapons, Israel has likely killed 186,000 Gazans or more since October, according to a survey published in The Lancet.
In announcing the ruling, Nawaf Salam, the president of the ICJ, said,
The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the occupied Palestinian territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.
Responding to Friday’s ruling, the UK-based charity Oxfam declared that Israel “is committing the crime of apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is one of the most serious international crimes.”
Philippe Sands, counsel for Palestine in the ICJ case, declared in response to the ruling,
This is as clear and far-reaching a ruling as I have come across from this court. … Its legal consequences are entirely without ambiguity, its political consequences far-reaching. … Among the many practical consequences, the court has made clear its view, by an overwhelming majority, that the US and other embassies in Jerusalem are illegal and must be removed for international law to be respected.
Israel has fully annexed East Jerusalem and declared Jerusalem as its capital. In an embrace of the illegal occupation, the Trump administration moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, a move upheld by the Biden administration.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, international law expert William Schabas declared, “[The advisory ruling] is not just directed against Israel. It’s directed against Israel’s friends, and it’s telling them that they cannot contribute in any way to the settlement policy, to the continued acts of violence and persecution in the occupied territories.”
In a statement responding to the ruling, Amnesty International declared, “The International Court of Justice has issued its opinion, and the conclusion is loud and clear: Israel’s occupation and annexation of the Palestinian territories are unlawful, and its discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinians violate the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.”
Israeli officials responded with condemnations of the ICJ and by reasserting the very content of the ruling: that Israel is seeking to dominate and annex the entirety of the Palestinian territories.
“We will not accept moral preaching from the court,” blustered Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land—neither in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth, and the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be disputed.”
The ICJ is the highest legal body of the United Nations. Friday’s ruling is in response to a 2022 request by the United Nations General Assembly to rule on the legality of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. It is separate from the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor has accused Israel of genocide.
While Friday’s ruling presents a devastating legal indictment of the Israeli government and its imperialist backers, the fact remains that it, like numerous other court rulings and UN resolutions, has no practical force whatsoever.
The ruling comes ahead of the visit by Netanyahu to Washington on July 24 to deliver a joint address to Congress, in which the war criminal prime minister will give a progress report to his imperialist paymasters. The imperialist powers, led by the United States, are thoroughly committed to supporting the genocide in Gaza as part of the reassertion of neo-colonial domination all over the world.
The task of opposing and ending the Gaza genocide falls to the working class, and it can only be accomplished through the building of an international movement of workers and young people all over the world against war and imperialist barbarism as a critical element of the struggle for socialism. The rally called by the Socialist Equality Party, International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) on the day of Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington will be a decisive step in building this movement, and we urge the broadest possible attendance at this critical event.
Thursday, June 27, 2024
Monday, June 24, 2024
Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange to Plead Guilty, Return to Australia | AP News
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CHEERS AND LONG LIFE TO JULIAN, STELLA AND THEIR TWO BOYS.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to plead guilty, return to Australia | AP News
THE FOLLOWING IS NOT THE STORY I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE THAT JULIAN'S CASE HAS BEEN. BUT IT'S WHAT'S OUT THERE.
EXCERPT:
WASHINGTON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will free him from prison and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents, according to court papers filed late Monday.
Assange is scheduled to appear in the federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.
The guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge, brings an abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue and to the U.S. government’s years-long pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. Investigators, by contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country’s national security at risk.
He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia.
The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him from any additional prison time. He had spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after Swedish authorities sought his arrest on rape allegations before being locked up in the United Kingdom.
Prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of the five years Assange has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London. Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Thursday, June 13, 2024
UN Commission Finds Israel Guilty of “Extermination,” “Crimes Against Humanity,” Killing Palestinians and Israeli Hostages
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/13/enhy-j13.html
The commission found that the Israeli military’s response to the October 7 attack was “significantly delayed and, in many places, totally inadequate.” This was despite the fact that the Israeli military was in possession of Hamas’s detailed battle plans for the attack. On the day of the attack, Israeli forces were deliberately withdrawn from the border.
Once Israeli forces arrived, they began attacking Israeli hostages and other civilians. “The Commission documented one statement by an ISF tank crew, confirming that the crew had applied the Hannibal Directive by shooting at a vehicle which they suspected was transporting abducted ISF [Israeli security forces] soldiers.”
The Hannibal Directive aims to prevent the capture of Israelis by enemy forces, even at the cost of their lives, and implies that the IDF should kill Israelis rather than allow them to fall into the hands of Hamas.
The report continued, “The Commission also verified information indicating that, in at least two other cases, ISF had likely applied the Hannibal Directive, resulting in the killing of up to 14 Israeli civilians. One woman was killed by ISF helicopter fire while being abducted from Nir Oz to Gaza by militants. In another case, the Commission found that Israeli tank fire killed some or all of the 13 civilian hostages held in a house in Be’eri.”
The commission concluded, “Israeli authorities failed to protect civilians in southern Israel on almost every front. This included failing to swiftly deploy sufficient security forces to protect civilians and evacuate them from civilian locations on 7 October. In several locations, ISF applied the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive’ and killed at least 14 Israeli civilians.”
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Sunday, June 09, 2024
Saturday, June 08, 2024
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
The Crisis at Boeing and the Case for Nationalization--Bryan Dyne, World Socialist Website
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/29/lsyl-m29.html
Excerpt:
The contract for the machinists expires on September 12 and a strike authorization vote is scheduled for July 17.
That one of the principle demands of the workers is for more safety inspections and quality control of Boeing aircraft speaks to the class nature of aviation. Workers know that it is their families, friends and co-workers who fly on poorly built and maintained mass-produced aircraft, while the executives and upper management soar on private jets with specialists to keep them at peak efficiency.
It follows that for aircraft to be truly safe, there must be workers’ control over their production. Production lines across the industry must be slowed down in a coordinated fashion to ensure adequate time to fully check and re-check each plane as it is being assembled. New and more advanced testing and development facilities must be established to insure that inherently flawed designs like the MAX 8 never again see the light of day.
Above all else, the crisis at Boeing makes the case for the nationalization of the entire airline industry.
Air travel is an integral part of modern life and the frequency of disasters and near misses cannot be allowed to continue. The working class must remove the profit motive and the dominance of Wall Street from public flight and replace them with a rationally and scientifically organized international system of air transportation.
Airline companies must be transformed into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities, alongside all other major industries, as part of the fight to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
PUBLIC MEETING: Mobilize the Working Class to Defend the Univ. of California Strike Against Genocide!
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/22/ygjp-m22.html
Will Lehman, a socialist Mack Trucks worker who ran for United Auto Workers president on a platform of rank-and-file control, issued the following statement in support of the meeting:
The strike by University of California academic workers against the crackdown on Gaza protests is in danger. On Tuesday, the university filed for a court injunction to ban the strike.
This is an attack on the whole working class. If they get away with this, no rights are safe.
The World Socialist Web Site and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees are holding an emergency meeting this Saturday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific. All workers in every industry should attend. The issue will not be decided in the pro-corporate courts. It will be decided in the factories, the docks, the schools and hospitals, and other workplaces.
Workers must take action to defend the strike. It must be expanded to not just the entire University of California system but to the entire UAW membership and to other industries. Workers must form rank-and-file committees to enforce the will of the membership against the sellouts by the union bureaucrats.
The ruling class wants to ban all forms of political opposition. If you protest the crimes of the government you will be arrested. If you strike against arrests and the suppression of free speech, your strike will be declared illegal. One university administrator put it bluntly. He said: “Particularly in today’s climate,” if this strike is allowed, “the University—and every other public agency in California—would face constant strikes advancing political and/or social viewpoints.”But every struggle in the history of the workers’ movement—from the fight against child labor, for the eight-hour day, and for the right to strike itself—has been a “political” struggle.
The same methods have already been turned against workers opposing corporate exploitation. In 2022, Biden and Congress banned a strike by railroad workers on so-called national security grounds.
The UAW is sabotaging the UC strike because they support Genocide Joe Biden. They are acting as an extension of the police and the courts.
They have only called out a single campus, UC Santa Cruz. They responded to the injunction by begging the university to negotiate. They say they may call out another campus by Friday. But the strike could already be illegal by then. But even if they do get an agreement to shut down the strike, it will be an injunction in all but name.
There is enormous rank-and-file anger over this sabotage. But the issue has to be taken out of the hands of the bureaucrats. The response has to begin now. Contact the WSWS to get started by visiting wsws.org/workers. Register for Saturday’s meeting by clicking here.
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Friday, May 10, 2024
Saturday, May 04, 2024
Wednesday, May 01, 2024
Workers Must Prepare Industrial Action to Halt Police Crackdown on Student Anti-genocide Protests
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/02/pers-m02.html
Workers are witnessing the beginning stages of martial law in the United States. While there is a long history of the use of police against anti-war protests, there is no precedent for the attempt to illegalize opposition to a genocide, which is being openly backed by the US government.
Against peaceful demonstrators, local governments controlled by both parties, and in coordination with the White House, have flooded campuses with riot cops and mounted police, backed with drones and snipers, to beat and arrest thousands. While they claim this is needed to “restore order,” police are working with the extreme right, who at UCLA attacked protesters with fireworks and blunt weapons while police stood by. Even open massacres of students like at Kent State in 1970 are being considered, as shown by demands to deploy the National Guard to universities.
The unanimous support for the crackdown exposes the character of the political system as an instrument of class rule. Both parties also overcame their differences in 2022 to ban a national strike by railroad workers.
Getting the “home front” in order is seen as a necessary first step in preparing for massively unpopular military escalation and war crimes on a scale which have not been seen since the end of World War II. In the first instance, this means the Israeli invasion of Rafah, which would be, by far, the worst atrocity so far in the seven-month-long genocide in the Gaza Strip.
The genocide in Gaza and US war plans against Iran are only one front in an emerging world war. The campus crackdowns came as both parties voted to pass funding, not only for Israel but for the military in Ukraine, as well as for Taiwan, which would act as a tripwire in a future war against China.
Workers and their children will be shipped off to fight these wars, which are being paid for by the destruction of wages, pensions, healthcare and social programs. These wars have already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives but also threaten nuclear annihilation.
‘The Meaning of May Day’ (1907) by Rosa Luxemburg -- via @ClaraWeiss_WSWS
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May Day is a living historical element of the international proletarian class struggle and therefore it has faithfully reflected for almost twenty years all the phases, all the factors of the class struggle. From an external viewpoint it seems to be the same monotonous repetition of the same speeches and articles, of the same demands and resolutions. And those whose glance cannot penetrate behind the meaningless surface of things and grasp their essence, believe that thru constant repetition the celebration of May Day has lost its entire significance, that it has become practically an “empty demonstration”. But under the apparently similar external circumstances May Day reveals within itself the constantly changing pulse of the proletarian struggle! It is part of the life of the labor movement, therefore changes with it, and reflects, in its spiritual content, in its sentiment, in its tenseness, the changing situation of the class struggle.
Phases of May Day
The inner history of May Day has passed thru three great phases. In its early years, when it had to force the way open before it, it was greeted with the tense expectations and elevated sentiments of the proletarians of all countries. The workers had won a new weapon for their arsenal. and the first attempts to use this weapon intensified the feeling of power and the joy of struggle of the millions of exploited and oppressed. On the other side, the new demonstration of the class struggle evoked in the bourgeoisie of all countries the deepest hatred and fear. The idea of an international Socialist demonstration appeared to it as the returning ghost of the old International and the eager response to a simultaneous. world celebration of labor, as the death-knell of the entire rule of capital. This accounts for the insane preparations made in the early years to overcome the dangers of May Day with the most brutal police and military violence.
And of course the place of vanguard in the armed battalions of the terrified bourgeoisie was taken by the “free republic” of France–only second to Czarist absolutism, first blood shed by the proletariat in the name of May Day flowed in 1891 in Fourmies (France) and, in 1892 in Lodz, Russian Poland.
But it did not take long before the rulers grew calmer and began to recognize the purely demonstrative character of May Day. Of course this was associated with the long period of primarily parliamentary struggle and the quiet development of political and trade union organizations, that now set in the labor movement. In Germany the first May Day was marked by the collapse of the Socialist “exception law”. In 1893 the Belgian proletariat won access to parliament; in 1896, the Austrian. At any rate, the nineties were a decade of active trade union work and irresistible growth of the parliamentary representation of labor. The demonstration of the laboring masses themselves retreated before the action of the representatives of labor; the idea of the international community of the proletariat retreated before the positive activity and the extension of the workers parties in every country. Gradually May Day became a peaceful folk-festival, regarded with considerable equanimity by bourgeois society.
In recent years a noticeable change in the situation of the labor movement has set in. A fresh wind blows over the fields of battle. In the East the great Russian Revolution. In Germany a sharpening and intensification of the political and economic struggle: extensive lock-out activities against the workers in industry and the consolidation of all bourgeois parties for the parliamentary lock-out of the working class. In France a brutal crusade of the “radical” government against the trade unions and a series of bitter wage struggles. Aroused by the powerful growth of the proletarian organizations during the last fifteen years, terrified by the Russian Revolution, the international bourgeoisie becomes nervous, savage, aggressive.
May Day Arises Anew
And thereby May Day enters upon a new phase. As the immediate demonstration of the masses–their only direct political action hitherto outside of elections, it becomes filled with a new content, with a new spirit, to the degree that the sharpening of the class struggle again pushed to the foreground the role of the proletarian masses. The more that reaction, that the rule of, naked violence of the bourgeoisie contests every step forward in the interests of the proletariat upon the economic and political fields, the more do we approach the time in which the masses will take matters into their own hands, in which the masses will be called upon to defend in their own person the interests of their class emancipation. To prepare ourselves to meet these inevitable times, to arm ourselves in the expectation of these times with the consciousness of our duty and our power, that is today the task of the proletariat and May Day, as the direct demonstration of the masses, is a means towards this end.
At the same time another factor steps into the foreground with vigor: the internationality of the cause of the working class. As long as the class struggle had the least bit of democratic elbow-room and as long as the day of positive parliamentary work lasted, the labor movement was dominated by the peculiarities of its national surroundings, by its national dispersal. But as soon as the fundamental forces of the class struggle arise from the depths of capitalist society to the surface, as soon as the struggle throws the masses sharply up against the ruling powers, then the idea of the world proletariat, one and indivisible, again revives. The preparations of the bourgeoisie of all countries for May Day this year recalls to the proletariat that its struggle for emancipation is one and the same in all countries. Today, at the head of the army of world labor stands the Russian proletariat, the proletariat of the land of revolution. And the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat of this country, its experiences, its problems, constitute the great historical school for our coming great struggles. May Day this year again arouses–as it did in its early days–the hatred and fear of the bourgeoisie; by the working masses, however, it is greeted with determination and the joy of battle, From the very beginning a proletarian demonstration for the eight hour day and against war, it has gradually become a demonstration for the proletarian revolution. Not the decline but the tremendous rise of May Day lies ahead of us for it is borne aloft by the same storm-wind that is already sweeping over the surface of bourgeois society and that will lead us to bitter struggles and to final victory!
May Day is a living historical element of the international proletarian class struggle and therefore it has faithfully reflected for almost twenty years all the phases, all the factors of the class struggle. From an external viewpoint it seems to be the same monotonous repetition of the same speeches and articles, of the same demands and resolutions. And those whose glance cannot penetrate behind the meaningless surface of things and grasp their essence, believe that thru constant repetition the celebration of May Day has lost its entire significance, that it has become practically an “empty demonstration”. But under the apparently similar external circumstances May Day reveals within itself the constantly changing pulse of the proletarian struggle! It is part of the life of the labor movement, therefore changes with it, and reflects, in its spiritual content, in its sentiment, in its tenseness, the changing situation of the class struggle.
Phases of May Day
The inner history of May Day has passed thru three great phases. In its early years, when it had to force the way open before it, it was greeted with the tense expectations and elevated sentiments of the proletarians of all countries. The workers had won a new weapon for their arsenal. and the first attempts to use this weapon intensified the feeling of power and the joy of struggle of the millions of exploited and oppressed. On the other side, the new demonstration of the class struggle evoked in the bourgeoisie of all countries the deepest hatred and fear. The idea of an international Socialist demonstration appeared to it as the returning ghost of the old International and the eager response to a simultaneous. world celebration of labor, as the death-knell of the entire rule of capital. This accounts for the insane preparations made in the early years to overcome the dangers of May Day with the most brutal police and military violence.
And of course the place of vanguard in the armed battalions of the terrified bourgeoisie was taken by the “free republic” of France–only second to Czarist absolutism, first blood shed by the proletariat in the name of May Day flowed in 1891 in Fourmies (France) and, in 1892 in Lodz, Russian Poland.
But it did not take long before the rulers grew calmer and began to recognize the purely demonstrative character of May Day. Of course this was associated with the long period of primarily parliamentary struggle and the quiet development of political and trade union organizations, that now set in the labor movement. In Germany the first May Day was marked by the collapse of the Socialist “exception law”. In 1893 the Belgian proletariat won access to parliament; in 1896, the Austrian. At any rate, the nineties were a decade of active trade union work and irresistible growth of the parliamentary representation of labor. The demonstration of the laboring masses themselves retreated before the action of the representatives of labor; the idea of the international community of the proletariat retreated before the positive activity and the extension of the workers parties in every country. Gradually May Day became a peaceful folk-festival, regarded with considerable equanimity by bourgeois society.
In recent years a noticeable change in the situation of the labor movement has set in. A fresh wind blows over the fields of battle. In the East the great Russian Revolution. In Germany a sharpening and intensification of the political and economic struggle: extensive lock-out activities against the workers in industry and the consolidation of all bourgeois parties for the parliamentary lock-out of the working class. In France a brutal crusade of the “radical” government against the trade unions and a series of bitter wage struggles. Aroused by the powerful growth of the proletarian organizations during the last fifteen years, terrified by the Russian Revolution, the international bourgeoisie becomes nervous, savage, aggressive.
May Day Arises Anew
And thereby May Day enters upon a new phase. As the immediate demonstration of the masses–their only direct political action hitherto outside of elections, it becomes filled with a new content, with a new spirit, to the degree that the sharpening of the class struggle again pushed to the foreground the role of the proletarian masses. The more that reaction, that the rule of, naked violence of the bourgeoisie contests every step forward in the interests of the proletariat upon the economic and political fields, the more do we approach the time in which the masses will take matters into their own hands, in which the masses will be called upon to defend in their own person the interests of their class emancipation. To prepare ourselves to meet these inevitable times, to arm ourselves in the expectation of these times with the consciousness of our duty and our power, that is today the task of the proletariat and May Day, as the direct demonstration of the masses, is a means towards this end.
At the same time another factor steps into the foreground with vigor: the internationality of the cause of the working class. As long as the class struggle had the least bit of democratic elbow-room and as long as the day of positive parliamentary work lasted, the labor movement was dominated by the peculiarities of its national surroundings, by its national dispersal. But as soon as the fundamental forces of the class struggle arise from the depths of capitalist society to the surface, as soon as the struggle throws the masses sharply up against the ruling powers, then the idea of the world proletariat, one and indivisible, again revives. The preparations of the bourgeoisie of all countries for May Day this year recalls to the proletariat that its struggle for emancipation is one and the same in all countries. Today, at the head of the army of world labor stands the Russian proletariat, the proletariat of the land of revolution. And the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat of this country, its experiences, its problems, constitute the great historical school for our coming great struggles. May Day this year again arouses–as it did in its early days–the hatred and fear of the bourgeoisie; by the working masses, however, it is greeted with determination and the joy of battle, From the very beginning a proletarian demonstration for the eight hour day and against war, it has gradually become a demonstration for the proletarian revolution. Not the decline but the tremendous rise of May Day lies ahead of us for it is borne aloft by the same storm-wind that is already sweeping over the surface of bourgeois society and that will lead us to bitter struggles and to final victory!
As ICC Reportedly Prepares War Crimes Charges, Israeli Officials Call to Bomb Rafah--WSWS
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/01/uhdg-m01.html
EXCERPT:
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that his troops will assault Rafah, where 1.5 million defenseless Palestinian civilians now live in refugee camps. He added that he would not under any conditions spare Rafah, whether or not a deal was reached on an exchange of hostages held by the Israeli government and Hamas authorities in Gaza.
“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all its aims is not an option,” Netanyahu said. “We will enter Rafah, and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there—whether or not there is a deal—in order to achieve total victory.”
The war on Gaza has exacted a truly horrific toll. At least 34,535 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, over 10,000 have died under the rubble of bombed-out buildings, and 77,704 have been wounded. Over 1 million Palestinians are suffering severe hunger as Israeli forces cut off Gaza’s access to food, medicine and other basic necessities. Yet Netanyahu declared that he would not under any conditions agree to Hamas’ appeals to halt the genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
Netanyahu said, “Hamas insists on one thing—the end of the war—but it will not get it. I am not ready to give it. Therefore, if this is the situation—and indeed this is, currently—[the deal] will not happen. There may be people saying they are ready to end the war and let Hamas return. I won’t accept that.”
Netanyahu’s pledge to continue the war and bomb more than a million defenseless civilians in Rafah was his government’s response to reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is preparing to issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials on war crimes charges. Comfortable in the knowledge that the major NATO powers support its atrocities in Gaza, the regime is brazenly proclaiming its intention to commit genocidal war crimes.
ICC officials have warned for months that they were investigating Israeli officials’ conduct of the war and, in particular, their threats to destroy Rafah. “I am deeply concerned by the reported bombardment and potential ground incursion by Israeli forces in Rafah,” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan wrote on X/Twitter, adding: “As I have repeatedly emphasised, those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my Office takes action pursuant to its mandate.”
Indeed, even NATO officials admit that attacking Rafah would mean committing war crimes against the Palestinian people. Yesterday, British Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell told the British Parliament: “Given the number of civilians sheltering in Rafah, it’s not easy to see how such an offensive could be compliant with international humanitarian law in the current circumstances.”
NY Police Assault Student Protesters after White House Denounces Anti-genocide Occupation at Columbia--WSWS
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/25/fwco-a25.html
New York police assault student protesters after White House denounces anti-genocide occupation at Columbia
At around 9 p.m. Tuesday night, hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) riot police descended on Columbia University to conduct mass arrests of students protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Video shared on social media shows heavily armored police arresting students and faculty attempting to block their access to the university.
In order to prevent objective documentation of their brutality, police forced legal observers, press and medics to leave the campus area, and even public streets nearby, before they began their assault. As of this writing it is unclear how many protesters have been arrested and the extent of their injuries.
The police brutality witnessed at Columbia Tuesday night was replicated across the country. At the University of South Florida in Tampa, riot police were recorded firing tear gas and rubber bullets against unarmed and peaceful protesters.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Monday, March 25, 2024
Julian Assange and the Fight Against Imperialist War
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/03/25/ymiy-m25.html
EXCERPT:
As we wrote in a subsequent Perspective: “The forces arrayed against Assange by the UK and US states are powerful. But there is another, even more formidable force which has yet to have its say—the British, American and international working class.”
The task we face is this: we, and I include everyone here tonight, must devote our energies to convincing the working class of the burning relevance of the Assange case for its own interests, and of the need for them to take up the fight on his behalf.
This means cutting through the mountain of lies and slanders and breaking out of the narrow confines in which the official campaign for Assange’s freedom has been confined. It means going to the workers, to the younger generation of workers and students in particular, fighting to clarify the essential political issues raised and outlining a strategy on which to fight back.
The fact that the United States is pursuing Assange under the Espionage Act is historically revealing. As we wrote four years ago:
“The precedents for Assange’s trial under the Espionage Act are the mass roundups of socialists and anarchist groups carried out in the years after the law was first established in 1917. Fearful of the revolutionary movements swelling across the world, the US government outlawed political opposition to the First World War and agitation for workers’ strikes and protests.
“Assange’s case is preparation for a similar assault on the working class.”
That is now being played out. Sunak’s government is seeking to make standing up for the truth of what is happening in Gaza a crime to try and crush the growing anti-war movement. His extremism definition is part of a pattern of governments preparing for war not only with their opponents abroad, but with what they see as the main enemy—the working class at home. It joins laws attacking the right to strike, protest and blow the whistle on state crimes.
The ruling class are preparing for a clash they know is coming because their policies, above all their war policies, cannot be pursued except through a further assault on already gutted living standards and state provision. Assange’s case has been the canary in the coalmine for these preparations.
Opposing war and defending democratic rights are the vital questions confronting the international working class today and that struggle must have Assange’s freedom inscribed on its banner. It must learn from his case to prepare for the battles ahead.
In conclusion, I will be blunt: we have lost a lot of time. This really is the 11th hour for Julian Assange and for everything his case represents. We cannot start from a position of pessimism in our ability to build a mass movement. What I hope this speech has demonstrated is the potential for such a movement, and how it has been thwarted not primarily by the attacks of Assange’s enemies but by the rotten perspective of those who were supposed to defend him.
A break with that perspective will prepare the way for a broad campaign, embracing the most energetic and principled fighters in their workplaces, neighbourhoods, and universities.
In the last years the Socialist Equality Party has collaborated with workers including bus drivers, postal workers, teachers, and tea plantation workers, and with students, in the UK, Australia, the United States, Germany and Sri Lanka to form rank-and-file committees which have all passed resolutions in Assange’s defence. We have held rallies in all those countries.
To those here today we say: join us in this campaign and in the fight for socialism against dictatorship and war. And join the Socialist Equality Party.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Friday, March 15, 2024
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Friday, March 01, 2024
Socialist Equality Party Building Socialism via Presidential Campaign of Joe Kishore & Jerry White
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From Andre Damon of the Socialist Equality Party:
Joe Kishore and Jerry White on the campaign trail.
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COVID-19 has killed 28 million men, women, and children. It's now spreading faster than it was this month in 2020-2023. Its time to end this pandemic. The Socialist Equality Party is building a mass movement of the working class to stop COVID-19 once and for all.
Thursday, February 29, 2024
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Putin’s Interview with Tucker Carlson: The Russian Oligarchy Pleads for “Peaceful Coexistence” with Imperialism
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VERY IMPORTANT:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/21/qehv-f21.html
EXCERPT:
Even as imperialism escalates toward World War III, Putin attempts to secure a deal through diplomatic and military maneuvers that are ideologically based on appeals to nationalism and the far right. The interview serves as an indicative step in this process.
The working class must draw important lessons from this interview. It exposes the political and historical bankruptcy of the oligarchic regime stemming from the Stalinist betrayal of the October Revolution and the subsequent restoration of capitalism.
The bitter experience of two world wars demonstrates that imperialism cannot be transformed into an instrument of world peace. To avert catastrophe, the working class must formulate its response to the war on an independent and internationalist basis, in opposition to all factions of the imperialist powers and the oligarchies that emerged from the Soviet Union’s ruins. It must seek not the reshuffling of borders or a rearrangement of terms between capitalist countries but the overthrow of the nation-state structure and the world capitalist system.
What is imperative is the establishment of a socialist anti-war movement among youth and workers, grounded in the traditions and principles of internationalism and Marxism, namely Trotskyism. This is the goal pursued by the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists in Russia and Ukraine, alongside their comrades in the International Committee of the Fourth International.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Assange’s Lawyers Expose US-UK Persecution on First Day of High Court Hearing
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/20/epzq-f20.html
EXCERPT:
Assange’s case against his prosecutors is devastating. It establishes that the US government is waging a campaign of political persecution in retribution for Assange’s exposure of US government crimes. In doing so, it is violating his most essential democratic rights: to life, freedom from torture and inhuman and degrading punishment, freedom of expression, and freedom from abuse of legal process and arbitrary power.
Summers delivered the most significant evidence, arguing that the US is illegally using its prosecution of Assange as a means of punishing his activity with WikiLeaks which exposed “US state-level crimes, crimes which sit at the very apex of the legal hierarchy,” including “extrajudicial assassinations, renditions, torture, dark prisons, rogue killings.”
What Assange’s work disclosed, Summers continued, was a type of “criminality which permeates, is approved, tolerated, within the very fabric of the American government.” His case therefore falls within a class of cases where “state retaliation makes use of the criminal justice system.”
Summers cited as a “vivid illustration” and “paradigmatic example from history” Emile Zola’s open letter condemning the French state’s persecution of Alfred Dreyfus, “J’Accuse...!”
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