Some light reading

Multi-tasking? Bankers and Generals. What a combination.

I see that two more of Bank of America’s board of directors are directors no more. They are both retired military big wigs, General Tommy Franks and the lesser known Admiral Joseph Prueher. Bank of America received $45 billion from the US taxpayer.

It shows how interconnected finance capital and the war machine is. The military is not to keep us free. It won’t be sent to the picket lines to help strikers keep scabs out. History is not full of examples of the troops being sent to protect workers from company thugs or to ensure that workers’ rights aren’t trampled on. They aren’t sent in to the urban slums to root out the slumlords and ensure tenants have a decent, roach free environment.

And they certainly aren’t sent abroad to defend the rights of US workers. They are sent to expand upon and defend the rights of US capitalists. Roosevelt, the Darling of the liberals, used troops against domestic workers more than any president before him according to some sources.

Rural struggle
Ranchers in Colorado are waging a battle against the US Army that wants to grab more land just north of the New Mexico border. With all this spreading of freedom around the world and those pesky foreign workers who prefer being unfree, the military needs more training ground at home for war practice. The economic downturn ion the US will no doubt be a boon for the military as more working class youth will need a steady income.

The present training ground in Colorado covers about 370 square miles but the Army wants to triple that to over 1000. The Army is trying to buy out the locals but they are resisting and may have to resort to taking it through eminent domain.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the area is a historic treasure trove containing dinosaur tracks, ancient writings carved in to cliffs and other national treasures. Some 17,000 locals are fiercely resisting the Army’s attempts to throw them from the land they have lived on for five generations.

So US capitalism’s predatory wars are demanding more at home, not just in the form of higher taxes, diversion of funds from sorely needed social services to the war machine, but driving people from their communities as well. This is not new as the original inhabitants were driven from the land also but probably comes as a bit of a surprise to the more recent residents---the market doesn’t discriminate.

At some point the failed courtroom strategies will be abandoned and the old traditions of struggle, the direct action battles of the past, will once again emerge as workers find our feet, whether it been in the factories and hog farms of the south or among the small ranchers in Colorado.
Note: I have not researched the Colorado issue to any extent and assume that the ranchers involved are not huge agribusinesses