Lies and more lies from the White House

Obama talks about the troops beginning to leave Afghanistan in 2011. Yesterday, Afghanistan's fraudulently "elected" president said the country would not be able to pay for its own security until 2024. Obama's 2011 is a pipe dream thrown out to fool us. The US has been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq now for eight years, longer than the US fought in World War 1 and World War 2 combined. And increasingly it is creeping into war in Pakistan. And they and their ally Israel are seriously considering attacking Iran, and in Latin America the US is considering launching Columbia at Venezuela. My companion and I were in Ireland recently on holidays. An Irish woman asked us: "Do your Americans just like to fight?" Of course it is not Americans who decide to fight. It is the US corporate class who launch wars to occupy and seize and control resources and territory abroad. And this corporate class certainly do not like to fight, they send the US working class youth to do their fighting for them. As the old saying goes they would fight for their interests to the last drop of another person's blood. US capitalism looks like being locked into prolonged wars for the indefinite future.

The New York Times December 8th explained that less than 1% of Americans are doing the fighting in the wars of the US. Remember the Bush regime, look at this regime, can you find a single one of either who fought in any of the wars of their time. Maybe Powell. Cheney the war monger, who got deferment after deferment to get out of going to Vietnam, when asked why he did not go, said he had other things to do. People like him are the scum of the earth. This is what is happening at the moment, the poor, those with no future, are being economically conscripted into the US military to go and fight the corporations' wars, to go and fight US capitalism's wars. The same issue of the New York times comments: "What we are doing is indefensible and will ultimately cost a fearful price, and there will be absolutely no way for the US to avoid paying it." This is right. The cost will not only be financial it will also be political as the youth who were sent to fight realize how they were conned and in whose interests they were really fighting. There will be a great revolt in the military as there was in the 1960's.

While unemployment and the threat of unemployment are economically conscripting the youth into the military to kill or be killed we must also keep in mind the prison population. They also are being driven into a world of terrible violence and where their resources and talents are wasted. They say unemployment is about 10%. In reality it is much higher. You have to look at the millions who are so discouraged they do not seek work and the millions who are under employed. But you also have to look at the prison population. They have to be counted amongst the unemployed that is the people to whom capitalism cannot give a productive role, that is a job. People in prisons and jails at the moment comes to 2.3 million. This is a staggering number. It is equal to the population of some small countries, to the workforce of some small countries. In this "land of the free" there is a higher proportion of its population in prison than in any other country in the world. What an incredibly cruelty and waste.

US capitalism has a monopoly of politics with their two parties the Republicans and Democrats. The working class has no mass party to oppose the capitalists and their lying propaganda and control and domination. This is why US capitalism can get away with its wars abroad, its super exploitation of its own working class at home and its illusion that it can dominate the world for the indefinite future. It is economically in crisis with its massive debts, it is militarily in crisis as it is bogged down in its wars and it is politically in crisis as its parties increasingly are in conflict with each other and in conflict internally. US capitalism is riding for a great fall. The US working class must be preparing itself for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Sean.