USA in the hands of capital

Ferguson, Missouri – The War at Home

On August 9, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man, was murdered in cold blood by a cop. The reason? He was walking in the street and questioned the cop’s order to get out of the street. This outrageous act attracted the attention of people across the U.S. and around the world, but not because it was unusual. What was different this time is people did more than just build sidewalk alters – they took to the streets in anger.

The callous disregard for Michael Brown’s life wasn’t limited to one trigger-happy cop. No emergency medical response team was called to save his life. Michael Brown was left to die in the street, his dead body laying in the street for four hours. Outraged, people gathered and then marched to the police station, demanding the arrest of the cop. Not only was there a refusal to charge the cop, but he was allowed to leave town and continue to draw his pay. His case is supposedly still under investigation. And nearly seven weeks later the Ferguson chief of police decided to issue an apology to the family, a hollow gesture at best.

After Brown’s murder, the rage that has been simmering in this community poured into the streets. The local cops were no match for the more than one thousand people who mobilized that first night, some burning and looting stores. Day after day, for weeks, people took to the streets. State and local police and the Missouri National Guard were mobilized against the population, turning Ferguson into a war zone. The forces, outfitted with high-tech battle gear, moved in with massive force. They terrorized those in the streets and in their homes with armored vehicles, flash grenades, tear gas, beanbag guns, sound cannons, rubber bullets and automatic weapons with live ammunition.

Some people were shocked to see this display of military force. But the military arming of local police has been underway for decades. After September 11, 2001, this was explained to be for supposedly fighting terrorism. But the militaristic responses in Ferguson and elsewhere (like Occupy in the recent past) clearly show these armaments are not intended for an imagined foreign threat, but are preparation for an uprising of poor and working people refusing to tolerate the conditions we confront.

The threat of armed violence hangs over people every day. The threat exists to maintain an order that imposes conditions of poverty, degradation and hopelessness on tens of millions of people in this country. This violence, whether the violence of a life of poverty, or armed force used to maintain it, weighs most heavily on black and brown people.

Race has been used for centuries to keep people divided, especially those who have every interest in joining forces. In Ferguson, the official rate of unemployment for people age 16 to 24 is close to fifty percent for black men. In addition to facing a life with few opportunities, young black men face a police force that is 94 percent white. The police of Ferguson, like the rest of the local power structure, is a holdover from the 1990s, when the town was 74 percent white. It has been used to shake down the black community, collecting more than half a million dollars per year in fines.

It is little wonder that people exploded. And that is why people across the country turned out in solidarity with the people of Ferguson. This police violence extends across the United States. A recent study shows that in 2012, the police, security guards, and vigilantes executed more than 313 African American people – one every 28 hours. Official statistics show that nearly two times a week, a white cop killed an African American during a seven-year period ending in 2012.

Those whose task it is to maintain this unequal order, including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to convince people to go home and wait for justice. Perhaps some money will flow, so some appointed leaders can make promises they won’t ever deliver. And soon Ferguson will be out of the spotlight. The cops may be slower to shoot, but the same problems still exist that confront working people everywhere.

There is a war on our lives, an attack on our basic dignity as human beings. We are expected to exist on the margins of a society that brags about its wealth and opportunities. And when people refuse to accept this and maybe talk back to a cop, that system responds, sometimes with deadly force or by adding another individual to the 2.4 million locked up in prison.

Electing new politicians, instituting programs for young people, supposed community control over the police, or any other so-called solutions cannot solve this situation. It is in the nature of this system to be constantly at war, a class war, a war of those who claim the wealth of the society and the right to control our labor. It is the one percent versus the 99 percent and they will not give up the armed terror they need to maintain their control.

The United States – The Cop of the World

The U.S. government acts like the cop of the world. It claims that when it wages war, it is protecting people. Politicians do their best to mask U.S. military violence in the language of humanitarian intervention and the promotion of democracy. But just like cops, the real role of the U.S. military in the world is to protect the wealth of the banks and corporations. There is no limit to the extent of the violence that the U.S. military uses to do this. Shock and awe bombing of entire cities, bridges, roads, napalm in villages, torture, killing millions of innocent civilians – the U.S. military is the cop of the world, using violence to protect a system of domination and exploitation.

Policing the entire planet requires a lot of money and resources. Today the U.S. spends about 50 percent of the entire federal budget on the military, about $1.3 trillion dollars per year – more than the military spending of all other countries in the world combined. This puts the sheer force of the U.S. military, in terms of aircrafts and armaments, vastly ahead of the rest of the world. The U.S. government has 900 military bases in 150 countries around the world. In addition it maintains a massive spy network, as has been revealed by Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden.

In the last decade, in addition to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government has carried out military strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and other countries, all under the banner of the so-called “war on terror.” The Obama administration has openly admitted it has created “kill lists,” assassinating individuals all over the world, including at least four U.S. citizens, one of whom was a 16-year old boy murdered by a drone strike in Yemen. Drone strikes have been used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya and other countries. The majority of people killed in these strikes are innocent bystanders, often children. This is the cop of the world saying openly – “we have the right to assassinate whoever we deem a threat to our interests – and we are doing it.”

And now the U.S. has begun dropping bombs once again on the people of Iraq and now Syria. The military spokespeople exaggerate the accuracy of their so-called smart bombs. Already Human Rights Watch has reported civilian deaths in most of the airstrikes – sometimes killing only civilians.

The fundamental task of the U.S. military is to defend the political and economic interests of a class – the capitalist class of the United States, who own and control the vast wealth and resources of the world. This requires brutal force. It is not done to help or defend people, or for any of the other excuses which the politicians make. This policing of the world is just an extension of a system of imperial domination which ensures the profits of banks and corporations. This system is responsible for terrorizing and killing millions of people all over the world – and the U.S. military stands at the head of this violence and terror.

The Police: To Serve and Protect…Their System!

The militaristic response by the police to the rebellion in Ferguson showed the country and the world something all too familiar to poor and working class people – that the police are heavily armed and ready to use brutal force to put people down. The police are often represented as the good guys who only go after bad criminals who deserve any violence the police inflict on them. But during periods of social unrest the true nature of the police is revealed for all to see – they are an armed force serving the interests of those that rule this society. And today they are armed to the teeth.

Ever since 1990, a Department of Defense program (known as 1033) has been used to direct millions of dollars worth of military equipment to state and local police departments. This program started out giving away about one million dollars per year worth of equipment in 1990, but today it is over $450 million per year – and increasing every year. In addition, after the 9/11 attacks, between 2002 and 2011, the Department of Homeland Security distributed over $35 billion to state and local police forces throughout the U.S. Together these programs have equipped the police with state of the art killing machines, including grenade launchers, armed helicopters, machine guns, tanks, drones, explosive robots, full body armor and more.

Much of this new equipment has been used by growing SWAT teams. In 1980 SWAT teams across the U.S. were deployed only 3,000 times. Today there are over 50,000 deployments of SWAT teams per year – an increase of 1700 percent. Often they have been used to go after non-violent suspects, used to break up illegal poker games, a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers, barber shops for operating without a license, and even used in raids on organized cockfights, once rolling a tank into the yard killing 100 birds. Even as violent crime rates have fallen in the U.S., the militarization of the police has only kept increasing.

The police are the ultimate line of defense for those who own the wealth of this society. Poverty, racism, fear, legal threats, the courts – when these are not enough to keep working people down, when we still find the strength and confidence to organize our own forces, then the role of the police is shown as clear as day.

There is a reason the militarization of the police is continuously increasing. No matter how much they train, the working class will always outnumber them.

ISIS – A Product U.S. Imperialism

U.S. warplanes have started bombing communities in Syria and Iraq, targeting the group called ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In the last year, ISIS has rapidly extended its control into areas of both Iraq and Syria, which produce large amounts of oil, threatening the profits of big Western Oil companies. This is the real reason behind the mobilization of U.S. and NATO military forces, not the lives of Iraqi or Syrian civilians. And this is why the U.S. Congress was so quick to produce 28 billion dollars for this new war in the Middle East.

The origins of ISIS stems from the last invasion and occupation of Iraq, which began in 2003. The U.S. strategy in Iraq has always been one of divide and control. In Iraq the U.S. government played Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi’a populations off one another, arming each in turn. In 2004 the U.S. gave control of the Iraqi government to political parties with a base of support in the Shi’a Muslim community, the majority of the Iraqi population. Once in power, this government gave major concessions to western Oil Companies while it began to systematically oppress the Sunni minority. By 2005, this policy resulted in a sectarian civil war, raging ever since. And throughout this civil war the U.S. has continued to arm and fund all sides as it tries to maintain a regime that would carry out its interests in the region.

But in 2011, it seemed that some people in the Middle East were going to overcome these divisions. The Arab Spring swept the Middle East, toppling dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and touching off a revolution in Syria against the extremely repressive military government of Bashar Al-Assad. But the U.S. and its ally Saudi Arabia moved quickly to reestablish control. In Syria this meant sending money and weapons, reinforcing the most reactionary forces. ISIS was born from a fusion of these groups along with Sunni groups in Iraq. Now ISIS has rallied many of the oppressed Sunni minority in Iraq, and seized the north of that country.

Like Frankenstein, the monster created by arming and funding Sunni tribes and small rebel groupings is out of control, and its creators – the U.S. and Saudi Arabia – are trying to hunt it down and limit its influence. So far the airstrikes have killed hundreds of civilians, and have failed to slow the advance of ISIS forces. Given the limited effect of airstrikes, government officials are beginning to talk about deploying U.S. troops to train and lead ground forces against ISIS. Sending U.S. ground forces back to Iraq and into Syria will be disastrous to the majority of the people living there.

Previous U.S. military interventions in the Middle East have not made anyone safer or better off. In fact, today Iraq is devastated. These invasions have instead destroyed countless lives, devastated whole cities and communities, deprived people of decent housing, water, health care, and electricity. Five million Iraqis fled the war and U.S. occupation. Today there are nine million Syrians who have become refugees – about half the population. The past wars have increased the influence of religious leaders who want to impose religious control over the lives of the people. Women have lost what little rights they had achieved in earlier times. Another military intervention led by the U.S. will only make things worse for the people of the region. This war is once again about the control and domination of the U.S. over the resources of the Middle East – not the lives of the people living in the region.

Israel and the U.S. – The Special Relationship

It is clear the U.S. and Israel have a special relationship. Every U.S. official has to make this absolutely clear whether they sit in Congress or in the Oval Office. During the latest war Israel inflicted on Gaza, while nearly one third of all Americans polled believed that the violence was unacceptable, every singe member of the Senate and all but eight members of the House voted to increase military aid to Israel. This isn’t the only example. For the last 50 years, the U.S. has vetoed United Nations resolutions which condemned Israel’s violence 42 times. Clearly there is a relationship of support, but why? The answer was given by Nixon’s Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird : Israel is the U.S.’s “cop on the beat” in the Middle East.

During the 1930s the U.S. began its involvement in the Middle East. In exchange for oil, the U.S. helped maintain oppressive regimes. But in the 1950s and 1960s there was a wave of revolutions which threatened to overthrow these regimes and throw the U.S. out of the Middle East. At the center of the revolutionary wave stood Egypt and President Nasser, a military officer who overthrew the Egyptian monarchy. Nasser’s government took Egypt’s natural resources, especially the Suez canal, back from British and French companies. Nasser also called for all Arab countries to unite in the fight against imperialism.

The regimes which the U.S. had supported toppled one by one as revolutions and military coups followed the example of Egypt. But one state remained untouched because it was never part of the Arab World: Israel. Established in 1948, Israel was primarily a country of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Israel had been established by a mass expulsion of the Arab inhabitants, resulting in 700,000 refugees pushed into the surrounding countries.

Rather than finding a way to integrate into the region, the state of Israel has maintained a constant war ever since. In 1956, 1967, and finally in 1972, Israel launched massive wars to crush Egypt and the Arab revolutionary wave. The success of these wars led the United States to begin pouring military aid into Israel. In every war Israel seized territory, extending its borders into territory held by Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. In 1967 Israel seized the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, putting the Palestinian people under a military occupation that continues to this day.

The story of Jewish oppression in Europe and the terrible history of Jewish genocide at the hands of the Nazis was used as an official justification for Israel’s actions. The resentment of the Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, towards Israel was framed by Israeli and U.S. politicians as simply an expression of anti-semitism.

Israel’s special relationship with the U.S. continues to this day. The U.S. relies on Israel to be its “cop on the beat” in each conflict that the U.S. feels its interests in the region are threatened. In exchange, the U.S. supports and facilitates Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people. This state of constant war is a nightmare for the Palestinians and a tragedy for ordinary Israelis caught in the crossfire.

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