Pictured: Barcelona, Spain, September 10. Thousands confront a handful of far right anti-immigrant fascists of the Núcleo Nacional who hid behind police. Banner reads (in Catalan): "Antifascist Barcelona Don't Let the Núcleo Nacional Win." Only communist revolution can defeat fascism.
Nepal Floods here ♦ Government Bank Debt here ♦
Letter: Capitalist Greed Caused Deadly Nepal Floods
A two thousand foot wide chunk of glacier fell off the Nepal border in August. It dropped vertically 4,000 feet from an elevation of 17,000 feet into the valley. The enormous weight and force triggered a magnitude 5.2 earthquake and tsunami size waves in rivers. More than 1400 people are dead. Over 6000 are missing and presumed dead. Tens of thousands are buried in mud, ruined cities, and villages.
This was no accident. Capitalist greed and mismanagement caused it. Glacial melting is accelerating, driven by global warming largely caused by fossil fuels. Violent storms, flooding, and hurricanes are occurring at an alarming rate.
The Himalayas are a seismologically fragile mountain range. Nepal’s capitalist government has built thousands of hydroelectric plants with help from rival India. The electricity these projects generate feeds power-hungry data centers. Many of these serve Huawei and Xiaomi.
Only a communist revolution can turn the tide of global warming and enormous death and destruction caused by endless wars for profit. Las year, massive protests by Nepal’s youth completely paralyzed the rulers. Similar uprisings occurred in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and recently students led massive demonstrations in India. ICWP comrades led many in New Delhi to organize for communist revolution. Communist power of the masses can put an end to imperialist wars, and capitalist greed for profit. We will begin to reverse the process of global warming and build a new world on the wreckage of the old.
—Comrade in the USA
Letter: Government Bank Debt Means Death for Working Class
Many countries are bracing for internal civil wars. The United States tops the list. The capitalist crisis has led to unemployment, hunger, and a lack of social services. Capitalists will do whatever it takes to protect their wealth and political control.
It is a mistake to say that this comes from “the Right.” It comes from capitalism. Why have most South American countries shifted to the right? The reason is that capitalists are concentrating their power, cutting social services, and expanding the armed forces, since the capitalist crisis has created economies based on debt, not growth.
Ecuador has steadily increased its debt to $85 billion—76% of GDP—since the Correa administration. Rafael Correa borrowed from China because oil prices could not sustain the government’s budget. Every successive president has taken out loans. Recently, the government took on another $500 billion in debt from the International Development Bank to promote further capitalist growth. Note that it all began with Correa (wanted by the Ecuadorian government for corruption), then Moreno (five years under house arrest for corruption), followed by Lasso, and now Noboa.
What is all that debt being used for? Not for social services, because Ecuador has the worst healthcare system in the world: no medications, limited surgeries, no dialysis machines, and four thousand people dying due to lack of medical care. The situation is so dire that doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers are protesting in the streets outside hospitals, pleading for resources so they can do their jobs.
This is a global phenomenon. The US debt stands at $40,000,000,000,000. Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia are printing money. The global political economy is in crisis.
Bank loans that generate debt are the lifeblood of the capitalist system. Banks call it liquidity. We call it the blood of the workers. Money is used to generate profits, not to ensure a dignified life for the masses. The capitalist system depends on this debt-based money to survive, and it does so at the expense of workers, who must pay off the public debt without receiving anything in return.
If we have to work to live, why do we need capitalism? We could live in a large community where we all share and collaborate. That’s called communism.
—Comrade in South America
Please send your letters, responses, and suggestions to: contact@icwpredflag.org