Political writer Greg Shupak discusses the failed attempt in Moscow to reach a ceasefire agreement in the Libyan civil war, and the new attempt in Berlin. As Turkey, the UAE, Egypt, and other regional players
Turkey accused of fuelling resurgence of Isis in Libya: here.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) held a series of meetings across the United States on the threat of war in the aftermath of the criminal assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. The meetings garnered significant attention and many youth demonstrated a genuine concern over the consequences of further escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
In the United States, the social consequences of endless violence abroad are acutely felt by workers and youth. Exorbitant sums are secured to fund the US war machine, as workers and students struggle to make basic ends meet and are told that there is no money for healthcare, education and other social programs. Students increasingly struggle with food insecurity and homelessness, and incidents of gun violence and police brutality occur with an unnerving regularity.
IYSSE members asked youth who attended meetings about their opposition to war, inequality, and the role of the Democratic Party … . Many of the responses are impassioned and reflect a deep hostility to war and the capitalist system.
Steven, a student at Wayne State University (WSU) in Detroit, said, “I’m opposed to war with Iran because it’s going to create an economic downslide. It will be the working class who are forced to fight the war. I think young people should get involved and fight for socialism because these are the issues that address how we live as human beings. To ignore them is to ignore the future of our world and our country.”
Jack, another WSU student, told IYSSE members, “I’ve grown up with multiple wars throughout my lifetime and now to see my classmates from high school in Iraq. For 18 years of my life, I’ve watched this war and seen nothing but the profiting, extraction of resources, and the misery and desolation that’s been brought there. Why would I want to see more than that? There’s no reason for us to be anywhere else in the world—we aren’t the world police. The reality is that we’ve manufactured these imperialist wars to profit. Not for us to profit but for those above us—for the ruling class to profit. It’s being carried out for oil execs, Raytheon execs.
“You see it everywhere, every day—the promotion of war. Raytheon is now one of the sponsors of the Girl Scouts of America. This is becoming ingrained in our culture but there has to be some point that we say this is enough. And if we’re not going to say no now, when are we going to say it? So no, I do not think we should go to war with Iran.”
When asked about the Democratic Party, Jack responded, “Every part of the Democratic Party’s actions is just performative. The impeachment process, for example; they’ll vote to impeach [Trump] but then they’ll immediately pass his border funding, and they’ll willingly pass increased military spending. So, you’re telling me we can outspend the next eight countries combined for military spending, year after year after year, and continue to increase that spending and yet somehow there’s still people who are homeless? … And there’s no money, somehow, to pay for their schooling. But we can drone strike leaders of sovereign nations? It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
“Literally every day Trump is in office he’s committing crimes. He’s committing crimes publicly! He laughs about them, and we can’t go after any of those? We have to focus it on Ukraine? They want to make it look like they’re doing something against Trump, but it’s all performative. The Democratic Party isn’t really an opposition party, it’s not meant to enact change. It hasn’t enacted change in over 50 years, it literally just exists to maintain the status quo.”
He continued, “We’re forced into these arbitrary choices between the two parties. One side’s pretty bad and the other side is a little less bad, so I guess I’m supposed to go with the side that’s a little less bad? Year after year after year. There has to be some kind of change, some kind of stop to this cycle. There is no opposition party. Effectively, the Democrats don’t oppose anything.”
Indya, a student at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said, “My biggest fear is a war with Iran. While Iran isn’t really much of a threat to us because of its low technological capabilities, the country is allied with many of our bigger enemies like Russia and China. Our president isn’t helping; he’s escalating the problem and fueling the fire. This could really set us up for WWIII. I know how crazy that sounds, but there’s really enough going on here that it could truly happen.
“This war is going to devastate the working class, as many more of us will be the ones who actually get sent off to fight. The ruling class, that is the top 1 percent, are the ones who will be making money off of our family members being sent to die.
“There’s so many of us who are already being pushed down by the system. Why are we having to suffer so that the ruling class enrich themselves and build new penthouses, and more private islands? They’re using my parents’ tax money to fund their wars.
“But if we all came together, we could become a truly unbeatable force.”
Discussing the threat of nuclear war, Indya said, “With nuclear war, if there’s one strike, there’s going to be more out of retaliation. And nuclear weapons have a much higher destructive capacity than they did in WWII. We’re still suffering the environmental effects from that war. It’s a really scary thought that we might not be able to repair the world from another nuclear conflict. It’ll affect generations for years to come.”
Sam, a theater student at the University of Michigan, attended the IYSSE meeting in light of his developing interest in Marxism. He told IYSSE members he wanted to hear a socialist perspective on the question of war.
Asked about endless imperialist wars, Sam responded, “I disagree with our entire history on this, and the idea that we should be in any war at all in the first place, especially done with an imperialistic motivation, for colonial reasons or imperial reasons or fascist reasons. I’ve never agreed with it, but I would like to do what I can now to stop this from continuing anywhere in the world.” …
Sam stated he was glad the meeting emphasized the importance of internationalism:
“I think it’s incredibly important to organize workers on a worldwide basis so that if we do create a social revolution and create a socialist government, we can utilize those worldwide trade organizations, to operate independently with workers at the helm. And the best, or only, way to do that would be on a global scale. Internationalism is incredibly important. I was glad to hear it brought up so directly.”
Beth, a pharmaceutical worker attending an IYSSE meeting, said, “I think the attack on Iran is totally criminal. I believe in the slogan ‘law, not war’, as I’ve been reading recently about Ben Ferencz, the American lawyer who fought in World War II and who eventually prosecuted in the subsequent Nuremberg trials. He believed that there should be a universal law that applies to everyone, across international boundaries. Trump is guilty of war crimes and could totally be prosecuted if we were using the same standards.
“We know who war benefits. It benefits the rich, and it’s always the poor and the working class who suffer the consequences. My father fought in World War II and the Korean War and it totally destroyed him. He suffered with alcoholism my entire life, and his experiences haunted him.”
Yesterday, over a half-million French strikers and youth marched for a 43rd day of strikes against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts. They rejected Prime Minister Édouard Philippe’s announcement this weekend of a “temporary” withdrawal of a planned two-year increase in the pension age from the text of the bill, which Philippe intends to rework and add back into the bill after four months of talks with the unions.
According to the unions, 550,000 people marched across France, including 150,000 in Paris and tens of thousands in cities including Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes. In Toulouse, they interrupted a ceremony held by right-wing mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc, holding a banner saying “Emmanuel Moudenc, mayor of the rich” and singing “yellow vest” songs.
Among workers, there is growing opposition to Macron and support for the strike. An Odoxa poll for France-Info and the right-wing daily Le Figaro found that 66 percent of the population still considers the strike “justified”. even though 57 percent would like it to stop, as rail and mass transit strikes lengthen commutes to work. Moreover, 67 percent told Odoxa they agreed that Philippe’s announcement this weekend was “a half-measure that comes too late.”
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Emma, a schoolteacher protesting in Paris, told the WSWS: “We demand the pension cuts not be implemented. Philippe can say whatever he wants to anybody about his announcements on the pension age, we don’t care—at all.” She added, “What is unprecedented is that the strike belongs to the strikers. The workers have escaped the control of the unions.” …
“This is not a pension reform, it is armed robbery”, the sign says.
Emma added that her pension could fall by up to €1,036 per month due to Macron’s cuts: she is a teacher with three children and, in addition to cuts specifically to teachers’ pensions, Macron’s reform slashes bonuses paid to women for bearing children. She said: “Women are unjustly attacked by this reform, though media peddle the line that this is a pro-woman reform, that things will be much fairer for them if their careers were interrupted by childbirth.”
Sylvie, who works in Paris mass transit, said Macron’s pension cut “is bad for everyone. It is a swindle. They cannot tell us how much it will take away from the French people… But we’ve seen such cuts in other European countries. Cutting our pensions twenty to thirty percent or more, is that good? Who wants to earn less—and I mean much, much less? They aim to impoverish the people.” …
This upsurge of international class struggle unfolds amid a descent of the capitalist class into criminality and militarism, epitomized by Washington’s drone murder of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani on January 3 in Baghdad. This assassination, carried out with blatant contempt for international law, exposed the danger of all-out war between the major powers in the Middle East.
As the strike against France’s “president of the rich” continues, it is ever clearer that this struggle raises far broader issues that ultimately workers can resolve only via international, revolutionary action against the financial aristocracy and the capitalist system.
Jules, a Paris high school student, told the WSWS: “There is a lot of concern among high school students about the danger of war in the coming years. When certain individuals start bombing the Iranian military … then it’s not even a proxy war anymore, it is America and Iran that are nearly at war, or at least in violent armed conflict. And there is a lot of concern about the future of the peace we had in Europe for the last few decades.”
Jules linked the war danger to the aggressive domestic repression and austerity measures against workers at home. He said, “After attacking pensions, Macron will attack public health care and the universities… If he has given the Legion of Honor medal to the head of BlackRock, it is that he has very close links to BlackRock,” the $6 trillion global asset management firm that discussed Macron’s pension cuts with him just after his election in 2017.
The WSWS also interviewed Adrien, a worker at the Grandpuits refinery that is on a three-day strike. French refinery workers are discussing a possible indefinite national strike, which in 2010 rapidly led to a national fuel shortage and a direct clash with the state. …
In 2010, Adrien said, “we arrived for our 5a.m. shift and discovered 17 trucks of riot police in front of our workplace. They came with the police prefect with requisition letters addressed to each of us by name, threatening us with three years of prison and €45,000 fines if we did not return to work. The UN International Labor Organization later ruled against the prefecture’s position, calling it illegal: they cannot requisition a private company except to supply critical public services… It was completely illegal, and a violation of our constitutional right to strike and of democracy.”
Workers are discussing what Macron might do against a nationwide refinery strike today. Adrien said, “This government and the bosses behind it dream of just one thing: outlawing the right to strike in France. They will not hesitate to requisition us, even with illegal requisition orders. They will try to requisition us; we will struggle for our right to strike.”
This experience of the class struggle underlines the need to build committees of action, organizations independent of the unions, to mobilize broader layers of workers to defend strikers. This entails a struggle against the diktat of the banks and of the police-state machine raising key political questions …
“When all the poor will get involved in the struggle …” the vest says.
Éva, a student protesting in Paris against Macron and students’ precarious living conditions due to low scholarships, said she “absolutely” supports bringing down Macron: “I never supported Macron and never will.”
Strike threat by French ski resort staff: French ski resort staff in the CGT union have given notice to strike beginning February 15. The action would coincide with the beginning of the French school holiday break, which sees a surge in ski resort bookings. Seasonal workers such as ski resort staff are entitled to payments from the Pôle emploi to cover off-season periods when no work is available. The Macron government wants to change the way off-season payments are calculated. Seasonal workers say the changes will leave them worse off. The ski workers will join the tens of thousands of French workers and yellow vest protesters demanding an end to President Macron’s attacks on pensions: here.
Time and again Trump made campaign promises about “Mexico paying for the wall” but all he’s done since taking office is force military families to foot the bill.
