Trump on Trial, World at War here ♦ Resolute Sentinel: US plan for Fascism and War here ♦
Lima, Peru, 2020—Miners on strike
Trump on Trial, World at War: We, the Working Class, Need Communist Solidarity
June 11—War plans. That’s what former US president Trump hid in boxes in his bathtub. That’s what he showed off to cronies. That’s why he’s facing criminal charges of violating the Espionage Act.
Because the US profit system (capitalism) is losing out in its global competition with China and other powers (also capitalist). War – if they can win one – is the US profiteers’ only hope. Trump’s trove of secret military and diplomatic papers could make it harder for them to win that war.
Trump isn’t the first world leader hauled into court.
Israel’s Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. His party’s answer: trying to impose political control over the courts. Mass street protests have continued for months.
Former French President Sarkozy is appealing a one-year prison sentence for corruption and influence peddling. South Africa’s Zuma and Ramaphosa await trial on similar charges.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is in jail for corruption. In Peru, every president but one who served between 1985 and 2018 has been arrested or charged.
Trump, too, is brazenly corrupt. But none of the other cases involved top-secret war plans.
Trump and the US Capitalist Class
There’s not much difference between “corruption” and “business as usual” in the profit system. Rich individuals, big corporations, and banks all “look out for number one.” They compete to maximize profits.
But together these exploiters form a capitalist class. Their governments secure their ability to exploit the masses. Democratic or not, they rule over the masses to benefit themselves. The law is stacked against us— not against Trump.
National governments also fight for their capitalist class against rival nations. The strongest use their governments to dominate the masses elsewhere. They fight each other for that. This is called “imperialism.” It means constant wars, including world wars.
US imperialism lived with Trump’s corruption. But stealing secret war plans and showing them around – no. Liberal media call it “treason against the nation.” It is really treason against his capitalist class.
Trump, when president, fawned on Russia’s Putin. This while US imperialism got ready for a showdown with Russian imperialism in eastern Europe.
Now, the US and its NATO allies are stepping up support for Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russia. How might Trump have used his stolen secret war plans? Sell them? Give them to Putin?
The war in Ukraine weakened Russia even before the counteroffensive. Putin’s opponents are organizing, supported by the US and its allies. Trump’s re-election would endanger the entire US position in Europe.
Trump was not indicted to “save democracy and the rule of law,” as liberals say. It was to prepare US imperialism for more and bigger wars.
The world is changing faster than we think.
You may live in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar, or another place that’s already at war. Or face fuel or grain shortages or retrenchment (layoffs) due to wars. Every local war is a piece of a much bigger world war that will likely change all our lives.
Sometimes national elections are just “beauty contests,” even when they get nasty. But sometimes they reflect deeper divisions among capitalist rulers. That might mean deciding who to ally with, and how, in the sharpening conflict between the US and China/Russia.
It’s not always clear which political fights are like that. The split among British Tories? Israel, which – along with Saudi Arabia – is tilting from the US to China? India, with Modi’s attack on Rahul Gandhi?
What’s clear is that we can’t support any capitalist nation or faction. We, too, form a class – the international working class. Everyone whose household depends on a paycheck to survive. Everyone who scrapes by without one. All of us, wherever we live.
The capitalist class tries to force its dog-eat-dog thinking on us. They can survive and thrive that way, but we can’t. We need the opposite: Communist working-class solidarity.
A bigger and stronger International Communist Workers’ Party and an armed revolution will defeat capitalism and build the communist world we need, without money or borders.
Growing wars create more opportunities. Capitalists force working-class youth into their armies to fight these wars. We must organize them to use their arms and skills to liberate our class.
The capitalists have their war plans, and we have ours. Ours are not secret! Make them your plans, too.
Operation “Resolute Sentinel”: US Response to Growing China-Russia Influence in Latin America
June 23— The US Southern Command is conducting “Resolute Sentinel 2023” in Peru from June 1 to August 29. It involves troops from the US, Peru, Britain, and six other Latin American countries.
Two “humanitarian assistance” US-Latin America exercises grew into one for lethal combat training and fascist crowd control.
US imperialism needs both. One, to militarily align Latin American rulers with them to fight the China-Russia-Iran rulers.
The other, to build fascism in the region. US imperialism intends to force Latin America rulers to goose-step behind them (politically and economically). They will try to drown in blood Latin American workers’ rebellions against the inhuman living standards imposed by capitalism’s crisis and wars.
This is part of the general direction of global capitalism: World War III and worldwide fascism. The rivalry between US and Chinese-Russian imperialism fuels this process.
Former Southern Command head Craig Faller, a planner of this exercise, claimed that “not enough action has been taken about the threat posed by China and Russia in the region.” He concluded, “We must invest more in the military and security.”
This exercise openly endorses Peru’s fascist president Dina Boluarte. She was appointed president after the Peruvian military removed and jailed former president Pedro Castillo in a US sponsored coup last December.
It was the US rulers’ response to the “left wave” that has swept Latin America since 2018. “Left leaning” (anti-US) politicians were elected in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Honduras, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil.
These politicians represent sectors of the region’s rulers who want to ally with China and Russia. They want a bigger slice of the profits extracted from their working masses’ exploitation. They want better prices for their natural resources, finance for ports, mass transportation, mining, and factories.
Now the governments of the seven most populous Latin American countries and its six largest economies have moved closer to the US rulers’ main rivals.
US bosses are not accepting this passively. Overthrowing Castillo was just the beginning. They are bent on organizing a continent-wide fascist movement to reestablish their political control.
Unsurprisingly, the exercise is taking place mainly in southern Peru, center of the largest and most militant protests against Dina Boluarte’s government.
Hundreds of mass protests rocked Peru from Castillo’s overthrow through mid-March. Protesters have blocked major highways, paralyzing most of the country.
Boluarte unleashed thousands of police and put the army on the streets. They have killed over seventy protesters. They have beaten, jailed, tortured, and “disappeared” thousands.
Even so, the masses are preparing for another “Takeover of Lima” on July 19. Boluarte is preparing 8,000 police to squash them. Resolute Sentinel’s “crowd control training” is to prepare police and army with the most lethal weapons and fascist tactics developed by US rulers to crush working class rebellions.
The Peruvian masses are fighting back heroically against the super-exploitation by the national capitalists and imperialists. Minimum wage is $11.75 per day. The retirement age is 75 years, but life expectancy is only 72 years!
Mass demands include Castillo’s release from prison, Boluarte’s resignation, new elections, and the writing of a new constitution.
These demands in no way represent working-class interests. They will only change the face and skin complexion of the exploiter. They will do nothing to end capitalist wage slavery and the racism and sexism it needs to keep us divided and enslaved.
Imperialist powers like China and Russia, fighting to end US imperialism’s world control, do not have our interests in mind. They want to be the ones exploiting our labor power, extracting the world’s natural resources as cheaply as possible, and enslaving us in their factories and mines.
Only by fighting for communism can we end capitalist and imperialist exploitation, poverty, outrage, and murder.
In a communist world without capitalists, money, or wage slavery, there will be no fratricidal wars, borders, or nations to defend. We will collectively produce and distribute everything according to everyone’s needs. We will finally end racism, sexism, and other divisions created by class societies.
The bosses can only offer us misery, fascism, and war. We can and must organize ICWP into a mass party to lead a Red Army of millions to overthrow capitalism and build communism worldwide. Join us!
Los Angeles (USA), June 21– Thousands of members of the Writers’ Guild of America West marched on the 50th day of their strike against the big studios
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