A spectre is haunting the world— the spectre of Communism. - 31 Oct 2018

A spectre is haunting the world— the spectre of Communism. All the powers of Old World have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre...

https://archive.is/vmJT0

Nevada: Worker Killed in Gold Mine Ceiling Collapse - Jason Holman - RIP - 31 Oct 2018

 

Underground worker killed in collapse at Nevada gold mine

Jason Holman, a 42-year-old underground mineworker from Goshen, Utah, was killed on October 25 in a collapse at the Lee Smith gold mine, 50 miles north of Elko, Nevada. Few details have been released, but according to a preliminary report from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Holman, a powderman, was loading explosives into the rock-face when a 150-ton portion of the mine ceiling fell and “a portion of this cemented backfill, weighing approximately 5 tons, landed on top of the miner.” He appears to have died instantly. The incident is still under investigation by MSHA

Holman leaves behind three children—McKade, Tyson and Jaycee—and a loving family. The family could not be reached for additional comments, but his brother Shawn published a tribute on Facebook saying, “one of his goals he was working for and saving toward was taking his daughter Jaycee to Disneyland for the very first time.” According to the gofundme page set up by his family to pay for funeral arrangements, Jason was an avid outdoorsman who liked to hunt, fish and camp. At the time of this writing, the page has raised over $4,400, donated in small sums by other mineworkers and their families.

By all accounts, Holman was well-liked and respected by his coworkers. He had worked as an underground miner for 13 years, including 28 weeks at the Lee Smith mine prior to his death. The Lee Smith mine is one of many underground gold mines in Jerritt Canyon, a mining complex in the isolated Independence Mountains mining district of Northern Nevada that has seen a boom in gold extraction since the 1980s.

The Lee Smith Mine reaches depths of over 1000 feet below the surface. Small Mine Development, the contractor operating the mine, uses underhand mining with cemented backfill to extract the ore. This method was developed to facilitate hard rock mining in deep mines with poor ground conditions. Among two other mines, underhand cut and cemented backfill was developed and tested in the Lucky Friday silver mine in Mullen, Idaho.

Lucky Friday is the deepest mine in the United States, at nearly two miles below the surface. Two hundred and thirty mineworkers there have been on strike since March 2017 and have repeatedly rebuffed attempts to force them to accept a concessions contract that would reduce health benefits and compromise safety in the interests of profits.

The Lee Smith Mine was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2015, along with the entire Jerritt Canyon complex, by Jerrit Canyon Gold LLC, owned by Canadian billionaire Eric Sprott. Speaking to the Elko Daily Free Press after the buyout, Jerritt Canyon Gold’s CEO, Greg Gibson, promised an increase in gold production, saying that Sprott “is of the belief that there are a lot more ounces to come out of Jerritt Canyon.”

Sprott is one of the largest gold equity holders in North America. He purchases mines around the world, speculating that as gold prices rise and the global economy spirals into crisis, he will profit. Speaking earlier this month at the Precious Metals Investment Symposium in Perth, Australia, Sprott said, “If you were right on gold in 2000, on average you made 1700 per cent. Do it once, you’re set for life,” he said, touting his investment strategy as “stealing value.”

The mineworkers who dig the precious metals face dangerous conditions as a rule. In 2014, MSHA issued Veris Gold, the previous owner, 60 citations for safety violations at the Jerritt Canyon Complex. In 2015, Jason Potter, a 26-year-old jumbo drill operator, was killed at the Jerritt Canyon complex’s SSX Mine (also operated by Small Mine Development) when a 13-foot-long drill bit struck him. The MSHA report found management at fault for inadequate safety training. Just 10 days before Jason Holman’s death, two workers were injured in a steam explosion at the Jerritt Canyon Mill.

An underground miner who works in a mine adjacent to Lee Smith spoke about the conditions facing underground mineworkers. “Personally, for me, each shift as I enter the mine, I think about my friends that had passed and make a commitment to myself to come out safe … it is dangerous and there is no way to be 100 percent safe. If a miner isn’t scared each time they enter the hole, they aren’t ready to mine.”

Jason Holman’s death was the 14th metal and nonmetal mining fatality the US in 2018, and the 22nd including fatalities in the coal industry.

Fatalities in the mining industry are a component of the rising rates of workplace injuries and deaths in the US as a whole, as both the Republicans and the Democrats roll back regulations and the corporations cut wages and benefits and sacrifice safety for greater output and profit.

Some of the deadly mining accidents in recent years occurred under the Obama administration, which appointed former United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) safety official Joe Main to head MSHA. Among these accidents was the disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, which killed 29 of the 31 coal miners at the mine.

The Trump administration has frozen new and pending regulations and is reviewing existing regulations in order to roll them back. Trump’s head of MSHA, former coal executive David Zatezalo, is overseeing a review of protections against the dust and emissions that contribute to skyrocketing rates of black lung disease among Appalachian coal miners.

As corporations bring in record profits, workers have seen a decade’s worth of declining wages and are working longer hours for fewer benefits, in hazardous conditions. At least 150 workers die every day from hazardous conditions, and according to the most recent government data, 2016 saw a 7 percent increase in workers killed on the job—up to 5,190 from 4,836 in 2015.
Other miners killed this month include:

Roger W. Herndon, 33, an auger helper at the Princess Polly Anna & JCT Enterprises LLC Surface Mine #1, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, who was fatally injured on October 17 when he was struck by a piece of auger drill steel.

Brendan DeMaster, 40, of North Royalton, Ohio, a miner with 20 years experience, who was fatally injured October 2 at an underground zinc mine, which just opened in June in Gouverneur, New York. DeMaster was struck by a sudden burst of stemming sand, which had been ejected from a borehole that was being cleaned with high pressure air.

An 18-year-old miner, Anthony David Montoya of Hollis, Oklahoma, was fatally mauled by a grizzly bear while working at a remote silver mine in Alaska on October 1. He was working at a drill site on the edge of the Hecla Greens Creek Mine, one of the world’s largest silver producers, located about 18 miles south of Juneau on Admiralty Island.

October has been particularly deadly for miners throughout the world.

Twenty-one coal miners were killed in eastern China after a tunnel where 22 miners were working was blocked at both ends by coal after pressure caused rocks to fracture and break on October 20. The Longyun Coal Mining Co. Ltd. is located in Yuncheng County in Shandong province.
A 46-year-old miner in South Africa was also killed by head injuries suffered in an underground accident at Lonmin’s platinum mine. Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, is notorious for the Marikana massacre in August 2012. Seventeen striking miners were murdered and another 78 wounded when South African security forces opened fire on them during a series of violent assaults, which began when officials opened fire on rebellious miners.

https://gephardtdaily.com/local/utah-miner-dies-after-roof-collapse-at-nevada-gold-mine/

Lexington KY: Funeral for UPS Worker Killed on the Job Fixing Machinery - 27 Oct 2018

Funeral to be held today for UPS worker Andy Schanding, killed on the job in Lexington, Kentucky

27 October 2018

Anthony “Andy” Thomas Schanding, a 43-year-old United Parcel Service worker, was killed on the job Tuesday morning at the Mercer Road hub in Lexington, Kentucky. He suffered a fatal injury while performing maintenance on a conveyer at approximately 11:20 a.m. He was pronounced dead fifty minutes later, shortly after arriving at the University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital. A funeral will be held today in the nearby city of Carlisle, Kentucky.

Andy leaves behind a loving family: his wife of 21 years, Sarah Dixon Schanding; a son Elliot and a daughter Emilee; his parents, Bradley and Bonita; brother David; and sisters Elizabeth and Kathy.

Andy Schanding (source: Elizabeth Hughes)

The family published a tribute on Facebook on Tuesday, describing Andy as “a private person [who] was humble, shy, quiet and genuine.” His sister, Elizabeth Hughes, wrote, “Your heart was so big, your smile was contagious and your love for your wife and children was enormous. You were a wonderful father and husband and the love between you and Sarah was admirable. You did good my brother now go rest easy.”

Andy Schanding had been employed at UPS for one year. Before then, he spent 20 years at Stamler/Joy Mining in Millersburg. He was born on December 11, 1974, and graduated from Nicholas County High School in 1994. According to the obituary published by his family, he enjoyed farming, karaoke, throwing darts and working on small projects. He was by all accounts a well-respected and liked worker, and his family has included employees at both Stamler/Joy and UPS among the honorary bearers at today’s funeral.

No information has been released by company management, the coroner’s office or the federal government’s Occupational Safety and Health Association as to how or why Schanding was fatally injured. Andy’s sister Elizabeth told the Herald Leader that he was always highly conscious about safety, both on and off the job. She said Schanding’s supervisor at UPS told the family that Andy was known at the plant for being cautious and always wearing his safety harness. He was wearing the harness when he was killed.

Andy’s brother in law, Tim Dixon, himself a former UPS employee and now an autoworker in Kentucky, told the Herald Leaderthat employers “squeeze every nickel” out of workers. “Companies are greedy,” he said. “That’s when mistakes are made.” Dixon added that Andy enjoyed his job. “I never saw anyone who loved to go to work as much as he did.”

Aftermath of the explosion in at the Lexington UPS Freight hub in May

Thousands of UPS workers are injured or killed in workplace accidents every year due to relentless company demands for speedup to maximize profits.

The day after Schanding was killed, UPS released its quarterly profit figures, showing a 20 percent year-on-year increase in third quarter profits to $1.5 billion. The company is on track to record a $7 billion profit this year. This money, enough to give every UPS worker around the world a $20,000 raise, will be passed on to investment funds and the billionaire financial parasites who control them, in the form of stock buybacks and dividend payouts. In the past twenty years, UPS has increased its dividend-per-share payout four-fold. It will hand over $3 billion in dividends in 2018.

The atmosphere of management harassment and intimidation in the warehouses has increased following the the Teamsters’ October 5 decision to defy the 54 percent “no” vote by UPS workers on its sellout four-year labor contract backed by management. Workers in hubs across the country report that the company has been inspired by the Teamsters’misleaders ignoring the workers vote to go on the offensive.

Schanding’s death is not an isolated incident.

In Rockford, Illinois, Lily, who earns $13 an hour and is attempting to raise three children with her husband, told us how a co-worker, who had received little training, had her finger ripped off by a rapidly moving box on the sorting line.

In Tennessee, Sean, a 32-year-old permanent part-time UPS worker, told us how his wrist tendon was torn trying to lift an overweight package. He was sent to a company-approved doctor, who proscribed anti-inflammatories and instructed him to return to work with a brace. Only five months later was he able to get the surgery he needed, and he has permanently lost range of motion in his arm. He is now living on poverty-level workers’ compensation payments trying to support his baby son and wife.

In Ontario, California, Irene, a 36-year-old porter of 10 years, revealed that workers are becoming dizzy and have to leave work early due to the polluted air in the warehouse. The fumes are caused by welding as part of ongoing construction work to install new, more highly-automated equipment. Many workers have become sick, including pregnant women workers on the line. Last year, Irene said, a 22-year-old worker had a seizure, fell on his head and was killed.


At the Blue Sky Parkway UPS Freight hub, also in Lexington but separate from the facility in which Andy Schanding was killed, an explosion in May injured two workers. A propane torch reportedly set off the explosion of tanks of acetylene (a gas used for welding) on a truck and trailer parked in the hub. The two workers who were hospitalized and six other workers in the vicinity were lucky to escape with their lives, having been sufficiently far away when the explosion occurred.

Every year, thousands of workers are killed on the job in America’s industrial slaughterhouse. The most recently-available government data, from 2016, reports 5,190 workers killed on the job, up by 7 percent from the year before. Another 50–60,000 workers die from occupational diseases, including Black Lung and cancers caused by workplace pollution. This means an average of 150 workers die every day on the job.

Battlefield Tactical Nukes Will Be Used - US missile treaty withdrawal: “Prepare for nuclear war” - 24 Oct 2018

24 October 2018

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which prohibited Washington and Moscow from developing short- and medium-range missiles.

It is difficult to overstate the criminality and recklessness of this action. The lives of billions of people in Europe and East Asia have been deliberately placed in the crossfire of Washington’s nuclear buildup against Beijing and Moscow.

American military planners are intent on not only building, but using, nuclear weapons in combat. They aim to demonstrate to their potential adversaries that no humanitarian or moral constraints exist for them, and that Washington out-does its rivals not just in weapons, but in bloodlust.

These plans are being laid in secret. The New York Times has treated the US withdrawal from the treaty as a non-issue. It was not even front-page news, and the newspaper published no editorial or columns about it. Nor was it discussed on the Sunday talk shows.

The Democrats have been almost entirely silent on the consequences, and the danger of global war—or any opposition to war—has been excluded as an issue from the 2018 midterm elections, just two weeks away.

In the foreign policy press and the publications of think tanks, however, nuclear war is a preeminent issue. Even before the White House’s announcement, Foreign Affairs dedicated its current issue to a discussion of nuclear war, with its cover featuring a missile launch.

The issue features a column by Elbridge A. Colby, one of the principal authors of the National Defense Strategy published by the Pentagon in January, which proclaimed the effective end of the “war on terror” and the beginning of “great-power competition.”

Colby, the former deputy assistant secretary for strategy and force development, titled his article, “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War.” He writes: “The risks of nuclear brinkmanship may be enormous, but so is the payoff from gaining a nuclear advantage over an opponent.”

“Any future confrontation with Russia or China could go nuclear,” Colby warns. “In a harder-fought, more uncertain struggle, each combatant may be tempted to reach for the nuclear saber to up the ante and test the other side’s resolve, or even just to keep fighting.”

A sane person would see this as an argument for the abolition of nuclear weapons. But in the minds of the Pentagon’s professional killers, it speaks to the urgent need to build and use such weapons.
“The best way to avoid a nuclear war,” Colby writes, “is to be ready to fight a limited one.” In this dangerous world, “US officials,” Colby writes, must demonstrate that "the United States is prepared to conduct limited, effective nuclear operations.”

In other words, Mr. Colby is advocating the use of nuclear weapons in combat, not as a doomsday scenario, but in an escalation of a conventional military conflict, whether in the Baltics against Russia, or in the Eastern Pacific against China.

There is an insanity to such arguments, but it is an insanity that has an objective basis. The capitalist world order, choking on the insoluble conflict between the nation-state and the global economy, is leading mankind toward a catastrophe.

While the INF treaty is with Russia, a major calculation behind the Trump administration’s withdrawal from it relates to the growing conflict with China. In an article hailing the decision, the National Interest called the move “China’s New Nightmare.” Washington, the journal wrote, risks “becoming significantly ‘out sticked’ in the ongoing ‘range war’ between military systems designed to safely control the increasingly unfriendly seas and skies of the Western Pacific.”

“US withdrawal from INF, however, could help reverse this dynamic,” it states, adding, “New American conventional systems… could be stationed in unsinkable, out-of-the-way locales” such as Japan, the Philippines and Australia. But while these countries are “unsinkable,” they are home to hundreds of millions of people. The populations living near such missile bases will be told, of course, that nuclear war is unlikely, even as policymakers, in secret documents, plan out exactly how many millions will die.

The driver of Washington’s nuclear brinkmanship is the protracted decline of the global economic power of the United States relative to its rivals, principally China. But this process has entered an acute phase in recent years, with a concerted effort on the part of the Chinese ruling elite to promote the country’s high-value manufacturing and high-tech sector.

In a speech announcing a new military and economic escalation against China earlier this month, US Vice President Mike Pence demanded that China cease its efforts to control what he called the “commanding heights of the 21st century economy,” including “robotics, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence,” making it clear that under the Trump administration, the United States is “defending our interests with renewed American strength.”

“We’re modernizing our nuclear arsenal,” Pence threatened. “We’re fielding and developing new cutting-edge fighters and bombers. We’re building a new generation of aircraft carriers and warships. We’re investing as never before in our armed forces.”

The active preparations for nuclear war, which would be a total war complete with a police-state crackdown on all political opposition, are being made behind the back of the public, which overwhelmingly opposes it.

Far from opposing the military build-up, the Democrats have focused their criticism of Trump for the past two years on claims that he is insufficiently aggressive against Russia, which has been used as the pretext for imposing a regime of internet censorship aimed at silencing domestic opposition.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ Leadership Pushes “Change the Rules” Campaign to Back Capitalist Politicians - 22 Oct 2018

22 October 2018

Many workers across Australia will take part in union rallies on October 23 to express their opposition to the corporate offensive against jobs, wages and working conditions, and the assault on social spending being prosecuted by the federal and state governments. However, the openly stated aim of the “Change the Rules” protests organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is to channel these sentiments into the election of yet another big business federal Labor government.

The entire campaign is fraudulent. In its material, the ACTU leadership and its secretary Sally McManus have highlighted soaring inequality, exemplified by the fact that the richest one percent of the population owns more wealth than the poorest 70 percent. The union leadership have denounced the prevalence of casual and contract labour, which now accounts for up to half the entire workforce, and condemned to stagnant and falling pay.

Left out of the ACTU top's    rhetoric is the reality that all these conditions that workers face are the outcome of the decades-long collaboration by the union misleaders with the corporations and successive governments, both Labor and Coalition.

The very “Fair Work Australia” industrial legislation the unions claim to be fighting to change were imposed by Labor with their support.

In 2007, the ACTU and its affiliates launched the “Your Rights at Work” campaign, upon which “Change the Rules” is modelled. The aim was to channel hostility to the Coalition government of John Howard, and its Work Choices industrial relations regime, into the election of Labor.
One of the first acts of the new Rudd-Gillard Labor government was to pass the Fair Work legislation, which retained most of the draconian provisions of Work Choices. The laws, which illegalised virtually all industrial action and cleared the path for continuous pro-business restructuring, were praised and fully backed by the unions.

Ever since, Labor and the union leadership have invoked the Fair Work legislation to suppress any political or industrial struggle by workers. Time and again, the union mileaders have insisted that workers end strike action, accept wage cuts and acquiesce to sackings, because they have been given the green light by the pro-business Fair Work Commission, which the union apparatus asserts is an “independent umpire.”

The Fair Work regime itself was the outcome of the assault on the conditions of the working class that was launched after the coming to power of the Hawke-Keating Labor government in 1983.
The so-called Accords between the Labor government, the ACTU and the major employers facilitated a vast restructuring and deregulation of the economy. As part of this agenda, the union leadership enforced the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs and abolished the shop stewards’ committees and other forms of rank-and-file workplace organisation that called for opposition to the demands of the corporations for “international competitiveness”.

The result was the fastest growth of social inequality since the end of World War II and a social disaster in working class areas. Entire generations of workers and youth have been condemned to a future of precarious work and low wages.

In the 1990s, the ACTU leadership backed the Labor government of Paul Keating when it introduced the modern system of enterprise bargaining. This ended industry-wide negotiations over conditions, and tied workers to the immediate profit demands of their individual companies.

The complicity of the union leadership in the attack on the working class is starkly revealed in the virtual disappearance of strikes, the most elementary form of workers’ struggle against the employers. Since the introduction of enterprise bargaining, and especially since the imposition of the Fair Work legislation, the number of strikes has fallen to its lowest level in Australian history.
The unions misleaders have presided over one enterprise agreement after another which have slashed real wages, eliminated conditions and destroyed jobs.

The Australian Workers Union leaders, for instance, including when it was led by current Labor leader Bill Shorten, signed secret agreements with major employers that cut wages and abolished penalty rates for some of the country’s lowest-paid workers, including cleaners and agricultural labourers.

Across the fast-food and service sectors, penalty rates are virtually a thing of the past, along with sick and holiday leave and a living wage, after years of sweetheart deals between the unions leaders and major transnational companies.

In the manufacturing sector, the unions misleaders have overseen the shutdown of the car industry and the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs at the ports, in the steel and mining sectors, textiles and other industries.

The ACTU officials running the “Change the Rules” campaign apparently hope that workers suffer collective amnesia and have forgotten their bitter experiences with the Labor Party and the unions leadership over the past 30 years.

In a speech this month, McManus declared: “We have so often turned to the Labor Party to enact legislation that ensures working people have the rights they need.” She claimed that Labor was “the party of full employment” and “has the track record on reform that benefits the workers of Australia.”
As the record demonstrates, these are transparent and shameless lies.

If Labor returns to power, it will be a government of, for and by big business and the wealthiest layers of society, no different to the Coalition. Amid the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the next government will cut education, healthcare and welfare, escalate Australia’s alignment with the militarist US-led confrontation against China and intensify the attacks on democratic rights, including the persecution of refugees.

The changes to industrial relations laws that the ACTU leadership is proposing a Labor government introduce are not intended to improve workers’ conditions, but assist the corporations continue to drive them down.

In her recent speech, McManus reiterated the ACTU’s call for the abolition of enterprise bargaining and the re-establishment of industry-wide agreements. She said that this was necessary because enterprise bargaining was no longer delivering sufficient boosts to “productivity,” i.e. cuts to employers’ costs and ever-greater profits.

Industry-wide bargaining, McManus declared, would allow “business owners” and union leaders “to come together to improve productivity.” McManus called for even greater powers for the Fair Work Commission, declaring that it should be able to arbitrate disputes to “make bargaining more efficient and resolve situations when groups cannot see past their own conflict to the point of common ground.”

In other words, McManus is advocating for an industrial relations system in which a handful of union officials, Fair Work bureaucrats and corporate representatives come together and impose cost-cutting agreements upon tens of thousands of workers across entire industries. McManus has previously cited Germany, where union officials sit on company and state boards alongside government employers, as a model to be emulated.

The fraudulent rhetoric over social inequality by the ACTU leaders is simply an attempt by the discredited union apparatus to try and keep control over workers. The unions leaders are terrified by the resurgence of the class struggle internationally, which this year alone has seen mass strikes by teachers in the US, lecturers in the UK, nurses in New Zealand and millions of workers across the Indian subcontinent and China—in opposition to the official trade unions misleaders.

In every struggle that emerges internationally, the unions misleaders function as strikebreakers and company agents. In an era of globalised production and capitalist crisis, the unions leaders, based on a nationalist and pro-capitalist program, operate as the representatives of their “own” national ruling class. They seek to ensure that national industry remains “internationally competitive” by forcing down wages and eliminating conditions.

"Leftist" ISO and DSA - Pro-Democratic Party - Pro-Imperialist Discover the US Backed Saudi War on Yemen - 23 Oct 2018

Amid crisis over Khashoggi murder

US State Department “socialists” discover the war in Yemen

By Barry Grey
23 October 2018

Anyone who carefully follows the publications of the various pseudo-left organizations in the United States will note how reliably they track the political line of the New York Times and other Democratic-Party aligned media outlets. These corporate media, in turn, reflect the positions of definite factions within the US intelligence establishment.

This is clearly seen in the response by Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), and Jacobin, which is closely aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to the state murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. These publications respond like political weathervanes to shifting currents within US imperialist policy-making and intelligence circles—in this case, growing dissatisfaction with the current ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Obama administration gave bin Salman the OK to launch a war in March of 2015 to defeat Houthi rebels and reinstall the deposed US-Saudi puppet regime of Abd-Rabbu Monsour Hadi. Since then Washington has provided crucial military, logistical and intelligence assistance for a savage bombing campaign against civilian targets that has killed somewhere between 16,000 and 50,000 Yemenis, brought some 1.4 million people to the point of famine and caused a world record cholera epidemic affecting a million people.

The Trump administration has continued and deepened the Obama policy, forging even closer relations with the Saudi dictatorship and negotiating a $1.2 billion arms deal as part of a united front of Washington, the Sunni Gulf states and Israel against Iran.

For more than three years, SocialistWorker.org and Jacobin have been virtually silent on the war being waged by a coalition of Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia against Yemen. A Google search of Socialist Worker shows a total of only eight articles since the outbreak of the war. A search of Jacobin yields a mere six articles. (The World Socialist Web Site, in comparison, has published dozens of articles, commentaries, Perspective columns and historical pieces exposing one of the greatest war crimes of the 21st century.)

In all but ignoring this made-in-the USA war crime, the ISO and the DSA have followed the lead of the major corporate media.

Now, however, amid the flurry of criticism of the crown prince following the murder of Khashoggi, a US resident and columnist for the Washington Post with close ties to US intelligence, the New York Times, the Post and the major TV news outlets have suddenly discovered the war in Yemen and even, though rarely, mentioned Washington’s role. Their newfound interest in the war is entirely cynical—a means of placing pressure on the House of Saud and the Trump administration to either rein in the crown prince or replace him with a different member of the royal family.

The ISO and Jacobin have followed suit. Hence the appearance on October 15 of the article “Will the Saudi regime get away with murder?” on Socialist Worker. The piece, by an unnamed “activist and writer from Saudi Arabia,” mentions the war in Yemen while focusing on Khashoggi’s longstanding ties to the Saudi monarchy. It states: “Since his self-exile, Khashoggi has transformed himself from a loyalist who as late as 2016 celebrated the execution of dissidents and praised the disastrous US-backed war for ‘saving Yemen’ into an ardent critic of Saudi Arabia’s ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (commonly referred to as MBS).”

The writer adds that Khashoggi was “well-connected in Washington—someone these elites can see and identify with.” The author continues: “But there may also be a developing sentiment that MBS is out of control and becoming an unreliable ally. He is responsible for a series of international and domestic crises that not only further destabilize the region, but his own rule.”

This shift within intelligence circles was signaled in a more public manner by Bernie Sanders, who gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University on October 9, one week after Khashoggi’s disappearance, titled “Building a Global Democratic Movement to Counter Authoritarianism.” Sanders focused on the Saudi regime, denouncing it for its internal repression and for “devastating the country of Yemen in a catastrophic war in alliance with the United States.”

Jacobin has published three articles on the Khashoggi killing that touch on the war in Yemen. The first (“Bernie’s New Internationalist Vision”) hails Sanders’ foreign policy speech as a genuine call to action against war and authoritarianism—while admitting that Sanders has voted repeatedly in favor of US military intervention and spoken of the need to maintain American military supremacy.
The second, by Branko Marcetic, cites statements by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham denouncing the Saudi government and speculates on the possibility of a “rift in US-Saudi relations” that is “long overdue.”

The third, posted October 17 (“How We Can End the Saudis’ War in Yemen”), also by Marcetic, argues that the way to end the war is to pressure 10 Democrats who previously voted against a Senate resolution calling for the US to end its participation in the war to reverse their vote. In all these articles, the pseudo-left publications write as advisers to factions of the state.

There are definite political reasons why the pseudo-left promoters of “human rights” imperialism downplayed the slaughter in Yemen for more than three years. Both the ISO and the DSA supported the war for regime-change in Libya, which ended with US-backed Islamist terrorists torturing and killing deposed ruler Muammar Gaddafi, and they back the ongoing war for regime-change in Syria—neocolonial wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and destroyed both countries.

They have accordingly directed their moral indignation against not the US and its allies, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, but rather against the Syrian regime and its backers, Russia and Iran, which they have conveniently labeled “imperialist” powers. Saudi Arabia’s internal repression and its bloodbath in Yemen, carried out with the indispensable aid of Washington, cut across their pro-imperialist narrative. Hence the virtual silence from these quarters.

To the extent that they have criticized the foreign policy of the Trump administration, they have done so largely from the right, in line with the New York Times and the Democratic Party—denouncing the administration for not arming the Syrian “rebels” with weapons capable of shooting down Russian warplanes and for insufficiently escalating the attack on Syrian President Assad and the confrontation with Russian President Putin.

They line up behind those factions of the US intelligence establishment that see Russia as the most pressing obstacle to the establishment of US dominance in the Middle East, which is seen, in turn, as crucial to imposing US hegemony over the Eurasian continent. Their assigned task is to provide a “left” rationale for US imperialist war and cultivate a pro-war constituency within sections of the upper-middle class whose political views are dominated by the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Now, however, in the wake of the murder of Khashoggi, there are signs that the winds are shifting in relation to the crown prince. With the war in Yemen deadlocked and the Saudi regime facing a growing social and economic crisis—the Wall Street Journal warned last week about bin Salman’s “debt binge”—there is increasing concern over the 33-year-old prince’s recklessness and impetuosity and the lack of control over his actions exercised by the Trump administration.

John Brennan headed the CIA under Obama when the US gave its blessings to the Saudi-led assault on Yemen. He also presided over Obama’s drone assassination program, which killed hundreds of Yemenis. But on October 12, Brennan published a column in the Washington Post denouncing the crown prince’s “inhumanity.” He concluded with a demand for US sanctions against all Saudis involved in the killing, a freeze on US military sales, suspension of all “routine” intelligence cooperation and a US-sponsored UN Security Council resolution condemning the murder.
Bloomberg published a commentary on October 17 that concluded with a quote from a long-time friend of Khashoggi and adviser to Turkish President Erdogan, who stated, “Jamal may have been seen as the focal point of an alternative governing power.”

Foreign Affairs on October 18 posted a piece by Daniel Benjamin, appointed in 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as coordinator for counterterrorism at the US State Department, declaring that the murder of Khashoggi “has evinced a recklessness that is deeply at odds with US interests.”

It is clear that factions within the US intelligence apparatus have grown increasingly concerned over the rule of the current crown prince and were promoting Khashoggi as part of a push to rein him in or possibly replace him. None of the US critics of the crown prince remotely suggest that the crimes of the regime call for a campaign of regime-change, as with Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad. But they fear a change at the top may be required to avert a collapse of the regime itself.

In suddenly discovering the war in Yemen and the crimes of the Saudi regime, the pro-imperialist, pro-Democratic Party organizations of the privileged middle class such as the ISO and the DSA are snapping into line behind those factions within the ruling class and the state with which they are allied.

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Trump’s threat to tear up nuclear pact with Russia met with alarm in Europe, silence from Democrats - 23 Oct 2018

By Bill Van Auken

23 October 2018

The threat issued over the weekend by US President Donald Trump to unilaterally rip up a key disarmament treaty with Russia has provoked vows from Russia to retaliate, expressions of sharp concern among Washington’s NATO allies and near total silence from Trump’s ostensible opposition in the Democratic Party.

Two weeks before the US midterm elections, not a single candidate, Democrat or Republican, is raising the growing danger of a new nuclear arms race and of direct military confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers as an issue. No section of the ruling political establishment has any interest in alerting the population to the real and present danger of a catastrophic nuclear war.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that Trump has vowed to scuttle was negotiated in 1987 between US President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, whose “perestroika” and “glasnost” policies paved the way to capitalist restoration and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

A test launch of an American Titan II ICBM

The deal banned the production and deployment by the US and Russia of land-based ballistic missiles—both conventional and nuclear—with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310–3,420 miles). It represented a significant concession by Moscow—previously rejected by Gorbachev’s predecessors and the Soviet military command—resulting in the destruction of 1,752 Soviet missiles, including SS-20s aimed at Washington’s European NATO allies, as compared with 859 less powerful US missiles, most of them Pershing IIs pointed at Moscow and other Soviet targets. The deployment of the US missiles had provoked mass protests, particularly in Germany, over the fear that the arms buildup threatened to turn Europe into the main battlefield in a US-Soviet nuclear war.
That threat is now being revived between the US and Russia with charges and counter-charges, provoking new expressions of alarm in Europe.
Washington has charged Moscow with developing and deploying a new intermediate range nuclear missile, which Russia denies.
The danger that the dispute over the so-called intermediate-range nuclear missiles could turn into a direct military conflict between the world’s two largest nuclear powers became all too apparent earlier this month, when the US NATO ambassador, Key Bailey Hutchison, threatened a pre-emptive military strike against Russia. Hutchison told a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels that if Moscow continued its development and alleged deployment of the missile that Washington claims violates the INF treaty, the Pentagon was prepared to “take out” the missile.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has acknowledged in its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review that it has already begun research and development on new conventional, ground-launched, intermediate-range missile systems. Moscow has further charged that anti-missile installations that the US has deployed surrounding Russia in eastern Europe could easily be converted into launchpads for offensive missiles.
Moscow responded Monday to Trump’s threat with a combination of offers to negotiate “mutual” grievances over the INF and threats to answer any US military escalation with one of its own.
“We need to hear the American side’s explanation on this issue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Scrapping the treaty forces Russia to take steps for its own security.”

Delivering this “explanation” is US national security adviser John Bolton, the chief advocate within the Trump administration for abrogating the treaty and an anti-Russian hawk who had previously described Moscow’s alleged “meddling” in the US 2016 election as an “act of war.” Bolton met with his counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, and with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday, and is scheduled to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin today.

Reaction in Europe to Trump’s threat has been generally negative. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called it “regrettable.” French President Emmanuel Macron called Trump on Sunday. “The president noted the importance of this treaty, in particular for European security and our strategic stability,” Macron’s office said of the call. The governments of Italy and Spain issued similar statements.

British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson, meanwhile, reiterated the UK government’s subservience to Washington, declaring that Britain stands “absolutely resolute” with the Trump administration.

Should the Trump administration consummate the abrogation of the treaty, it would sharply escalate already rising tensions within NATO, posing the threat of a breakup and the consolidation of a new European military alliance.

China called upon Washington to “think twice” before ripping up the arms control treaty. A foreign ministry spokeswoman added, “It needs to be emphasized that it is completely wrong to bring up China when talking about withdrawal from the treaty.”

Washington is being driven to abrogate the treaty in large measure as part of its buildup toward war with China. Not a party to the bilateral accord, China has developed a significant force of land-based, conventionally armed, medium-range ballistic missiles to counter the US military buildup in its “pivot to Asia.” The Pentagon wants to counter this by deploying its own missiles in the region, but is barred from doing so by the INF treaty.

Meanwhile, in the US itself, the threat to tear up one of the most important arms control treaties of the 20th century, opening the door to the breakdown of all such agreements and a frenzied arms race to deploy “usable” nuclear weapons, has been met with near total silence, particularly by the Democratic Party, which is ostensibly running against Trump’s policies in the midterm elections.
One exception was Senator Robert Menendez, who is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez, who has denounced the Trump administration for not adopting a more confrontational stance against Russia, declared Monday: “There is no doubt that Russia is responsible for the degradation of the INF treaty. However, withdrawing from this treaty without a comprehensive strategy for addressing its underlying strategic implications and without consulting Congress or our allies threatens long-term United States’ national security interests.”

The Democratic Party supports the buildup to war against Russia and welcomes Trump’s threats against Moscow; that is what they have demanded from the outset of his administration. What Menendez is demanding, however, is that the Trump White House present a “comprehensive strategy” for military confrontation with the nuclear-armed power. At the same time, it is expressing concerns within the US military and intelligence apparatus that Trump’s unilateralism is undermining the NATO military alliance in Europe.

Within America’s two capitalist parties and the ruling political establishment generally, there exists no antiwar faction. Divisions between the Democrats and the Trump White House are limited to tactical matters of where and how the US should concentrate its global war drive.

The US ruling class as a whole supports the escalation of the conflict with Russia, regardless of the threat of nuclear war. The aim is to eliminate the Russian Federation as an impediment to US domination of the strategic energy producing regions of the Middle East and Central Asia, and ultimately to subjugate and divide it into a collection of semi-colonies of US imperialism.
Despite the basic unanimity of the two capitalist parties in support of war and reaction, there exists a powerful constituency for the struggle against war within the American working class. The US government, the corporate media and the major parties have all sought to conceal the real danger of a global nuclear conflagration from the broad mass of the population.

https://archive.is/GBbpr