war criminals and jobs destroyers and hypocrites.

Thank you Erin for your email on the war monger and criminal Gates. I heard an interview on radio recently with a journalist who was talking about the Vietnam war. He had done a story about a young man who had been so brutalized by that war that on coming home he had killed somebody. The journalist went to interview his mother, a poor working class woman, I think it was in Indiana she lived. She said to him in relation to what the war mongers and criminals such as Gates and Kissinger, such as the tops of the US government and military had done to her son. She said: "I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer." I wept when I heard this reply. 

I see that the cost per troop in Afghanistan is now 30% higher than in Iraq. 500 US troops have been killed so far and about $1 trillion or so spent. What that could have done in our schools and hospitals instead of being squandered in an unwinnable war of occupation for profit and control. 

Directly related to these wars is the news that teenage unemployment is now 25%. This means more youth forced to join the military, economically conscripted, just to survive. These huge unemployment figures are no accident. the people who run the country, the owners of the corporations cannot afford full unemployment. If everybody had a job then we would be a lot more confident to fight for better wages and conditions. They need an army of unemployed to take our jobs if we go on strike. The Federal Reserve has the job of manipulating interest rates to keep unemployment high enough to weaken the working class. 

The other reason unemployment is so high is that capitalism has the basic contradiction of over production, something it cannot get over. The working class cannot buy back all they produce because they are not paid for the full value of their labour. So there is a surplus product. And there is surplus labour. That is unemployed workers. 

Capitalism is rotten to the core. Whether it is wars, or unemployment, or environmental destruction, it has forfeited the right to rule. A new mass workers movement committed to a democratic revolutionary socialist alternative has to be built. Down with the Republicans. But down also with the Democrats. They are two bosses parties. 

The Democrats are as committed to capitalism as the Republicans. They are so committed to not displeasing the sickness industrial complex that they cannot convince people that health care needs reforming. In a CBS poll 67% do not understand the proposals for health care reform. No wonder. Obama is so busy trying to please the profit addicted sickness industrial complex that he has no message to put out that would be clear and would benefit all workers. He is a pathetic capitalist politician who has no concept of the depth of the economic and political crisis facing US capitalism and that something serious has to be done. 

The only reason these corporations and these parties still rule is because the leaders of the trade union movement will not fight. These leaders also have forfeited their right to rule. they must be removed from their positions and replaced with a leadership committed to fight against capitalism and for democratic revolutionary socialism. Sean.