A Proper Response to Trump’s Shock and Awe

By Cliff Willmeng.

 

Trump’s shock and awe executive order that denies all federal employees the right to belong to a union is wreaking havoc at the Veteran’s Administration. The National Nurses Union (NNU) represents nurses at the VA and one nurse in Chicago commented that coupled with Musk’s cuts, care for our veterans is being gutted. As always, the love of military personnel and the flag waving is strongest when they are being sent to wars that aren’t in our interests.  When they come back---if they come back---mentally or physically damaged, suddenly federal money is hard to come by.

 

This nurse told me that another major crisis is the VA collects the dues for the unions involved. But if the union doesn’t exist per Trump’s order, why would the VA continue to take money out of people’s pay check? “Dues checkoff”, the process where the boss or company collects employee’s union dues through payroll, is vital to the union functioning, paying bills and so on. Now NNU is scrambling to find a way to keep the dues money coming in. 

Dues checkoff has been great for the union leadership who don’t have to work and don’t have to deal with members on a day to day basis while collecting their dues.  The less interaction with the members the less risky it is for these leaders at a time when anger is white hot in the ranks of the trade union movement. Union leadership simply ducks the pressure.

 

But wait, there’s more. The employer, the VA, also holds some of the union members’ contact information, e mails and such, so now NNU is also scrambling to get the members to sign up to alternative ways to pay their dues before union funding could disappear into thin air.

 

The NNU had a three-day conference this last weekend in Chicago relating to the VA specifically. I don’t know for sure if they are even aware of how they want to respond.

 

Naturally the unions have filed lawsuits in response to Trump’s orders. But Trump has some 50 lawsuits against him, have they not learned that he does not care about lawsuits? I would not oppose fling lawsuits but our unions were not built by filing lawsuits and they won’t be saved by them either. And with Trump openly defying the courts and with the Supreme Court nearly his proxy, to tell our nurses that this will somehow fix the issue is dishonest at best. It gives false hope and would take a considerable amount of energy and resources that could stall critical action needed right now. 

 

We are in a new period; an historical shift has taken place, and it has been a while coming. We are only three months in to this Administration and it is totally uncharted territory unless we go back to the 1920’s and 30’s when the 1929 depression and severity of the crisis stunned the leadership of the AFL at the time.

 

Sara Nelson, the leader of the American Flights Attendance Association has spoken more than once on the need for a national general strike to counter the most vicious attacks the US working class and organized labor has faced since World War Two. This is a positive step and hopefully sister Nelson will wage a campaign within the AFL-CIO executive board for action. 

 

We are not powerless. The AFL-CIO leadership should call for a national meeting to discuss and build for a 24-hour national general strike against the present administration’s anti-union policies. This leadership employs an army of staffers whose primary role has been to ensure the organizations’ concessionary policies get carried out. This resource should be transitioned to reach out to union bodies, Labor Councils, and locals and build for a national one-day work stoppage.

 

 If the AFL-CIO fails to do that which is most likely, then Sister Sara Nelson should take the lead. Hundreds of thousands of shop stewards and local activists would help. Just the announcement of such a development would send shock waves through Congress and wall Street. Imagine what a belligerent like Trump would say in response to even a mere announcement? He would thrash at the nation’s unions and essential workers so stupidly that he may end up driving a national conversation and become our best organizer. 

 

There could be endless incremental steps and actions along the way. Community meetings, preparations, local actions against politicians of both parties, marches, acts of civil disobedience, and occupations could happen. Benefit concerts could bring tens of thousands of people together. This counter offensive of essential workers could do all of this and go far beyond the defensive measures needed to protect our unions at this moment. In the process we could write our own demands that neither political party can accomplish. National health care, the end of student and medical debt, the establishment of social housing, a new infrastructure plan for high speed trains new hospitals, and a reduction in the work week would all be on the table. 

 

All of this I possible. As an emergency room nurse, one of tens of millions of essential workers who risked our lives and pulled this country through the Covid pandemic, I have no question about the central role all of us play. The entire system couldn’t stop reminding us of the fact that without us its functions disappear into thin air.

 

So why are these union leaders talking about nothing more than lawsuits and giving more money to the Democratic Party? If they are not up to the historic task we face, they have to be replaced with new leaders who can build a response worthy of these times. 

About the author
Cliff Willmeng is a registered nurse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has been a member of several unions and is currently in the Minnesota Nurses Association. He has participated in numerous national and local campaigns ranging from labor struggles in Chicago to environmental efforts in Colorado. He participated in the “Battle of Seattle” protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 and was co-founder of Labor For Standing Rock during the Native fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Veterans Day is Not about Thanking Veterans

One in three Iraq War Vets Believes it Wasn't Worth it. Source

It's About Ensuring We Have More of Them

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired.

I just watched the start of Monday night Football in one of my local haunts and the San Francisco Forty Niners are playing the Seattle Seahawks. The national anthem is about to be sung by a man in uniform on a platform flanked by others in uniform. He is an Asian man by the looks of it, and in the US this means East and Southeast Asia it doesn’t mean an Indian, Bangladeshi or Pakistani like it would back home. He’s there to show the US military and US society as a whole is inclusive, and non racist.

Below him there are lines of people in military garb and a huge American flag is slowly unfurled on the ground. Perhaps there were jets flying around too as occurs on occasion to advertise US capitalism’s most advanced peace keeping equipment. I left before I could determine that.

The whole scene nauseates me and I let out a loud wow as the monster flag was slowly appearing on the pitch  A young couple sitting a few places over, hear me and the man quickly places his hand over his heart. Oh dear, I thought to myself, I am about to get in trouble. I say should we sit or are we all supposed to stand and the young woman says she too is unsure and feels unsure about it. She is Latina which is encouraging.  I then move on and say it reminds me a bit of Nazi, Germany, a bit too nationalistic for me I say.

I made some comment about the suicides in the military and the way they are treated when they return after finding themselves in the most horrible position of being shot at or having to shoot at another human being with the intention of ending their lives. I point out that those most aggressively campaigning for wars never fight in them and so on, that the rich don’t fight wars working people do.

The young man was clearly not offended by my remarks and I am not sure if he was unsure about my position and did not want to be seen to be enjoying a pint on veterans day without being sufficiently patriotic so he did the hand over heart thing. Either way, they were not gung ho on war and the military and had serious thoughts about the nature of it all. As I left I urged them to watch Sir No Sir as we also talked a little about the Vietnam War.

 But the reality is that the US is a very nationalistic and militaristic society. The draft was ended in 1973 so we have what they call an all-volunteer military force. As most workers don’t join the military for sadistic reasons, the conditions that draw them have to be created. Poverty, desperation or the lack of opportunity for employment and advancement is a big plus. Getting cheap loans, a free education are also used. As it is, less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. population is in the military. This has a crippling effect on a small number of families whose young sons and daughters are sent to defend US capitalism’s profits abroad.

The propaganda of patriotism and nationalism is very strong. We are told to “support the Troops” which means in reality that we must support US capitalism’s predatory wars. But the flag waving is all for when our young people are leaving these shores not so much when they return; this is common of all nations. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis has devastated young veterans and in 2018 325 active-duty members died by suicide.

Veterans of combat have always constituted a significant portion of the homeless, “Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are facing elevated rates of suicide and mental illness, drug and alcohol dependence, car crashes, and homelessness.”, according to statistics, “At least 970,000 veterans have some degree of officially recognized disability as a result of the wars. Many more live with physical and emotional scars despite lack of disability status.”  Watson Institute: Costs of War.

For Veteran’s Day 2018, Caitlin Johnson, the Australian independent journalist wrote the following:

“The US will be celebrating Veterans Day tomorrow, and many a striped flag shall be waved. The social currency of esteem will be used to elevate those who have served in the US military, thereby ensuring future generations of recruits to be thrown into the gears of the globe-spanning war machine.

Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its shores are in their nineties, and soon there won’t be any of them left. Every single person who has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.”

"Last week I saw the hashtag #SaluteToService trending on Twitter. Apparently the NFL had a deal going where every time someone tweeted that hashtag they’d throw a few bucks at some veteran’s charity. Which sounds sweet, until you consider three things:

1. The NFL’s ten wealthiest team owners are worth a combined $61 billion.

2. The NFL has taken millions of dollars from the Pentagon for displays of patriotism on the field, including for the policy of bringing all players out for the national anthem every game starting in 2009 (which led to Colin Kaepernick’s demonstrations and the obscene backlash against him)."

This is an accurate account of what Veterans Day really is about in my view.

I want to remind, no urge the reader, to remember Pat Tillman. Tillman gave up fame and fortune in order to join the US military and defend his country from those that attacked it on September 11^th 2001.  He was all over the media. Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other warmongers took him and ran with him. He would be the poster boy for the US military. He would encourage young men to do the same and join up.

But Pat Tillman was a genuine leader and an honest person. Afghanistan and his experience in the military led him to draw different conclusions. He was not going to do the US warmonger’s bidding. He was not going to be the poster boy for military service. He has been airbrushed from history. He was killed by what we are expected to believe was friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan. The same qualities that drew him to join the military would be the same qualities that would lead him to play a different role on his return. He was respected, looked up to, seen as a genuinely honest and principled individual; everything those who send our young people in to these predatory wars are not.

I recommend the reader take the time to watch The Pat Tillman Story.  One cannot help doubt the official version of his death on watching this while at the same time feeling proud and impressed by his mother and father and the struggle they went through to get to the truth.

Most importantly, lets not continue to be fooled and let’s tell the truth about what the military is for. It is an offensive force, not a defensive one. And for so many it’s simply a job; often the only decent one around.

Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War?

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day in the US and it is worth remembering one of the most violent and brutal wars in US history, the assault by the world’s most powerful and advanced military power on a colonial nation that had in no way threatened or harmed the United States.

Close to 60,000 US working class young men and women lost their lives in what we call the Vietnam War. When we add the damage to families, hundreds of thousands of Americans were directly affected by it.  But the cost to the Vietnamese was horrific and their children are still being born with deformities due to the spraying of an herbicide containing dioxin on them and their food supply. Here in the US, there are still Vietnam Veterans dying of Agent Orange cancers, I have personally known some of them.

The still living architects of this slaughter are living very privileged lives and walking free in the Unites States. One of them, possibly the world’s greatest living mass murder, Henry Kissinger, is a wealthy man respected in the circles of power.

I have not read the Author, Nick Turse’s book Kill Anything That Moves that is mentioned below but I have read Christopher Hitchens’ The Trial of Henry Kissinger and highly recommend it. The US committed horrific atrocities in Laos as well. The 58,00 mostly young US workers that died in this assault on third world nations were a wasted generation, cannon fodder for the US corporations and their rapacious quest for profits. Also watch Sir No Sir.

The youth of the United States must not allow this history to go unchallenged and we must remember that many of the homeless we have seen on our streets and who are vilified by the capitalist media and the right wingers are victims of this imperialist war.

This is shared from  The BBC website.

Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War?
28 August 2013

In 1968 US soldiers murdered several hundred Vietnamese civilians in the single most infamous incident of the Vietnam War. The My Lai massacre is often held to have been an aberration but investigative journalist Nick Turse has uncovered evidence that war crimes were committed by the US military on a far bigger scale.

In a war in which lip service was often paid to winning "hearts and minds", the US military had an almost singular focus on one defining measure of success in Vietnam: the body count - the number of enemy killed in action.

Vietnamese forces, outgunned by their adversaries, relied heavily on mines and other booby traps as well as sniper fire and ambushes. Their methods were to strike and immediately withdraw.

Unable to deal with an enemy that dictated the time and place of combat, US forces took to destroying whatever they could manage. If the Americans could kill more enemies - known as Viet Cong or VC - than the Vietnamese could replace, the thinking went, they would naturally give up the fight.

To motivate troops to aim for a high body count, competitions were held between units to see who could kill the most. Rewards for the highest tally, displayed on "kill boards" included days off or an extra case of beer. Their commanders meanwhile stood to win rapid promotion.

Very quickly the phrase - "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC" - became a defining dictum of the war and civilian corpses were regularly tallied as slain enemies or Viet Cong.

Vietnam war

• US, South Vietnam failed to stop communist-led unification
• In 1970 US used 128,400 tonnes of munitions each month
• Quang Tri province was saturated with 3,000 bombs per square km
• 58,000 Americans died
• 3.8 million Vietnamese died including 2m civilians between 1955-1975

The war in brief

Civilians, including women and children, were killed for running from soldiers or helicopter gunships that had fired warning shots, or being in a village suspected of sheltering Viet Cong.

At the time, much of this activity went unreported - but not unnoticed.

Civilian casualties

Researching post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam veterans, in 2001 I stumbled across a collection of war crimes investigations carried out by the military at the US National Archives.

Box after box of criminal investigation reports and day-to-day paperwork had been long buried away and almost totally forgotten. Some detailed the most nightmarish descriptions. Others hinted at terrible events that had not been followed up.

At that time the US military had at its disposal more killing power, destructive force, and advanced technology than any military in the history of the world.

The amount of ammunition fired per soldier was 26 times greater in Vietnam than during World War II. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam.

Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air and strafed by helicopter gunships before ground troops went in on search-and-destroy missions.

The phrase "kill anything that moves" became an order on the lips of some American commanders whose troops carried out massacres across their area of operations.

While the US suffered more than 58,000 dead in the war, an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians were killed, another 5.3 million injured and about 11 million, by US government figures, became refugees in their own country.

Today, if people remember anything about American atrocities in Vietnam, they recall the March 1968 My Lai massacre in which more than 500 civilians were killed over the course of four hours, during which US troops even took time out to eat lunch.

Far bloodier operations, like one codenamed Speedy Express, should be remembered as well, but thanks to cover-ups at the highest levels of the US military, few are.

Image caption Gen Julian Ewell earned the nickname Butcher of the Delta during his time in Vietnam

Industrial-scale slaughter

In late 1968, the 9th Infantry Division, under the command of Gen Julian Ewell, kicked off a large-scale operation in the Mekong Delta, the densely populated deep south of Vietnam.

In an already body count-obsessed environment, Ewell, who became known as the Butcher of the Delta, was especially notorious. He sacked subordinates who killed insufficient numbers and unleashed heavy firepower on a countryside packed with civilians.

A whistle-blower in the division wrote to the US Army Chief of Staff William Westmoreland, pleading for an investigation. Artillery called in on villages, he reported, had killed women and children. Helicopter gunships had frightened farmers into running and then cut them down. Troops on the ground had done the same thing.

The result was industrial-scale slaughter, the equivalent, he said, to a "My Lai each month".

Just look at the ratio of Viet Cong reportedly killed to weapons captured, he told Westmoreland.

Indeed, by the end of the operation Ewell's division claimed an enemy body count of close to 11,000, but turned in fewer than 750 captured weapons.

Westmoreland ignored the whistle-blower, scuttled a nascent inquiry, and buried the files, but not before an internal Pentagon report endorsed some of the whistle-blower's most damning allegations.

The secret investigation into Speedy Express remained classified for decades before I found it in buried in the National Archives.

The military estimated that as many as 7,000 civilians were killed during the operation. More damning still, the analysis admitted that the "US command, in its extensive experience with large-scale combat operations in South East Asia, appreciated the inevitability of significant civilian casualties in the conduct of large operations in densely populated areas such as the Delta."

Indeed, what the military admitted in this long secret report confirmed exactly what I also discovered in hundreds of talks and formal interviews with American veterans, in tens of thousands of pages of formerly classified military documents, and, most of all, in the heavily populated areas of Vietnam where Americans expended massive firepower.

Survivors of a massacre by US Marines in Quang Tri Province told me what it was like to huddle together in an underground bomb shelter as shots rang out and grenades exploded above.

Fearing that one of those grenades would soon roll into their bunker, a mother grabbed her young children, took a chance and bolted.

"Racing from our bunker, we saw the shelter opposite ours being shot up," Nguyen Van Phuoc, one of those youngsters, told me. One of the Americans then wheeled around and fired at his mother, killing her.

Many more were killed on that October day in 1967. Two of the soldiers involved were later court martialled but cleared of murder.

Commemoration

Last year, the Pentagon kicked off a 13-year programme to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war. An entry on the official Vietnam War Commemoration website for My Lai describes it as an "incident" and the number killed is listed as "200" not 500.

|
Speedy Express is referred to as "an operation that would eventually yield an enemy body count of 11,000".

There is almost no mention of Vietnamese civilians.

In a presidential proclamation on the website, Barack Obama distils the conflict down to troops slogging "through jungles and rice paddies… fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans… through more than a decade of combat".

Despite what the president might believe, combat was just a fraction of that war.

The real war in Vietnam was typified by millions of men, women, and children driven into slums and refugee camps; by homes, hamlets, and whole villages burnt to the ground; by millions killed or wounded when war showed up on their doorstep.

President Obama called the Vietnam War "a chapter in our nation's history that must never be forgotten". But thanks to cover-ups like that of Speedy Express, few know the truth to begin with.

About the author: Nick Turse has been researching US military atrocities in the Vietnam War for more than a decade and has detailed his findings in a book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked for a statement about the evidence presented, said he doubted that more than 50 years after the US went to war in Vietnam, it would be possible for the military to provide an official statement in "a timely manner."  

Don't Let The Criminals of Guantanamo Walk Free

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I give no credibility to those who can can condemn the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and places like Auschwitz with the view that it couldn't happen here in the US. Here in the 21st century where we are supposed to be so civilized, "How would the German people have allowed that?" people will often say of the existence of Auschwitz and  Treblinka and Bergen Belsen.

Leaving aside the historical record that shows quite clearly that the modern nation state we call the United States was based on such activity; the genocidal wars against the native population that included biological warfare and ethnic cleansing for example, and more recently US capitalism killed some 3 million people in Vietnam air dropping chemicals on their food, the people themselves, and even their own troops.

But what is Guantanamo?  Most of the US population has no clue that after 911 and with the help of the feudal warlords it paid billions to in the war against the former Soviet Union, the US offered poverty stricken people living in a country trapped in a feudal bubble and with a centuries long history of struggle against colonial powers, cash if they would go out, find terrorists and hand them over to them---------so they did.

No US official responsible for this war crime has paid for the inhuman brutality inflicted on the people held in Guantanamo or Bagram or any other US government torture center.  The US houses some of the most efficient terrorists and killers on the planet. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, George W Bush Obama and, through their political inaction most ranking members of the Democratic and Republican parties.

How can George W Bush not be seen as anything but a mass murderer?

Obama signed the Executive Order to close Guantanamo, a US occupied part of Cuba and promised it would be closed within a year, yet despite the Democrats in control of the House and Senate, nothing happened. This is not a rare occurrence but standard procedure. It was not an accident. This is one of the many lessons that some of the young people so enamored with the many new faces that have emerged from the last election will have to learn about the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party and cannot serve the interests of the working class in America and never will. 

Trump is such a degenerate and vile human being that George Bush is being re-invented as some sort of cuddly character. He's best friends with Michelle Obama now, even offered her a piece of candy at the funeral of the dead bourgeois they all made fun of, John McCain. Michelle Obama, like her husband, one of the more cultured and refined representatives of US imperialism, has even been seen in the mass media hugging this mass murderer and referring to him as her "partner in crime" Class solidarity is strong among them.

The problem is that the capitalist media has been very successful in manipulating the working class population, blaming foreigners, immigrants, the poor for all our ills. The havoc the US war machine has waged on poor former colonial countries is barbarism to say the least. Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 911, is no longer a viable nation state. After 17 years and thousands upon thousands dead including some Americans, Afghanistan is still a "failed" state. The largest and most influential of the failed states of course is the US---the guy with the big stick.

We should be sickened by what we see in the video above. Imagine how working there turned young people in to monsters, destroyed their humanity much as the humanity of the operators of the attack helicopter in Collateral Murder was destroyed.  Not only that, it is what drives what the Pentagon calls "terrorist" activity.   Read Wikileaks' The Gitmo Files and watch this "Collateral Murder" video, that's why they went after Chelsea Manning and why they want Assange, they brought us the truth about what our government is doing domestically and abroad.

A former co-worker Facebook friend put something up about how we "owe illegals nothing" in reference to the caravan and general immigration through our southern borders. Naturally, he has no clue why people from the south risk life and limb (always rape for women) to come to the US. They are not migrants, they are economic refugees fleeing conditions brought about through decades of US foreign policy in the region. Canadians aren't scrambling to come here.

The same post called for respecting veterans and he's obviously a Trump fan. Well, veterans are not respected by the US government, or any government for that matter. There are hundreds of thousands of them in severe physical and mental crisis leading to the statistic that more commit suicide than die in combat. All the flag waving is for when they're sent to kill or be killed not for when they return damaged goods; that's money out and suddenly there's a shortage. And it's not to defend our so-called freedoms, that the US ruling class is dismantling, but to enrich the likes of the war criminal Dick Cheney and other investors plundering the world's resources. 

Needless to say I don't need FB friends like this former co-worker who most likely, like so many of us, couldn't locate Iraq or Afghanistan on a map as taxpayer money was raining down on its citizens in the form of bombs and missiles.   Personally I am repulsed by that trick slogan, "Support our Troops" as all it means is to defend their actions, US corporate wars. I would do everything in my power to prevent a child of mine from dying or killing others in such a worthless venture that is not in our interest. The rich don't send their kids, they have better options. The best way to support anyone, troops included is not place them in harms way without cause.  A civilized society would provide better options for our young people.

Don't let what happened to these people the US war machine stuck in Guantanamo die without calling out the perpetrators and calling for their prosecution just as a matter of principle. I heard a young guy on TV talking about how "we" took back the House meaning the Democrats.

Imagine identifying with a political party owned and operated by billionaires. It is not without good reason that this party is referred to as the "death of all social movements".

That's the political hole we find ourselves in.

Keep the Veteran's Administration Public. Service not Profits

AFGE Demo demanding more VA funding in Washington Fem 2018

Chicago:

This Saturday from 4-5p,  I will be on America’s Heroes Group Radio Talk Show (WVON1690AM) for the purpose of introducing and discussing the Right To Heal Campaign.  If you are free, would you please listen or share with anyone who may be interested?

We must get the word out about the dismantling of the VA! Please help and spread the word.

In Unity,

Anne Lindgren

President

American Federation of Government Employees

Local 0789 – Jesse Brown VA Medical Center

820 S Damen Ave

Chicago , IL 60612

312-569-5597

 [email protected]

From a VA Nurse, Chicago.

One thing the Veterans Administration and the United States Postal Service have in common is that the private sector would like to get its grubby little hands on them. Both these public institutions, despite their weaknesses and faults, are among the most best organized efficient organizations in the country. Every major study has made it clear that despite its problems, the VA provides good quality health care and when I talk to 60 year and 80 year old veterans they all agree with this and they receive health care no private institution could match despite the problems.

A major problem is the VA upper management who won’t listen; won’t listen to the Veterans, or the doctors and medical staff and won’t listen to the unions. Out of a workforce of 360,000 there are presently 49,000 open positions. What person who works in the public sector does not recognize this trick? Don’t fill positions, public services suffer, demonize publicly run services as inefficient and a failure and promote the market and privatization as the answer.

In response to the scandals and complaints about VA services and the wait times in particular, Barack Obama and John McCain pushed for and a law was passed to inject $11billion in to the VA through what was called the Choice Act. It was the first step in pushing the treatment of veterans out of the public sphere and in to arms of private doctors. This made matters worse as private doctors were unprepared for the deluge and VA doctors were overwhelmed with paperwork from them about their new patients.

Things got even worse when Trump fired Veterans Affairs secretary David J Shulkin (fired him by tweet of course). By law, when the number one guy is fired, the number two automatically takes over but Trump put in his man, Ronny L. Jackson. Like many of Trumps friends and associates, Jackson was a bit of a shady character and failed the nomination process which was then followed by an avalanche of resignations as often happens when the US Predator in Chief makes an appearance.

The damage the private sector and Trump have inflicted on a public agency whose job it is to care for physically and mentally damaged veterans is confirmation of the real worth of working class men and women to the ruling class in US society. The flag waving, the jets flying over sports venues, the hands over the hearts and the singing of the national anthem is all propaganda. They don’t care about veterans in the last analysis.

The intent is to destroy the VA in real terms and in the mind of the public. In this way it will be easier to hand it over to the private sector and profiteers.

Any fool knows we have an economic draft.

Caspar Weinberger

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

In a previous post, a video I put up, I talked (and wrote) of the military, of veterans and how disgusting it is that young people who have had to face the most horrific conditions, and real war is a horror scene, are faced with bureaucratic obstacles and spending restraints when it comes to taking care of them when they come back home. It had nothing to do what one's position is on war but how little the folks so eager to send our kids in to battle really think of them.

My comments were mostly about the crisis of addiction to narcotics that so many young veterans are dealing with. The fact that more than 20 veterans a day commit suicide is also tragic.  I pointed to what is obvious to most all working people other than those who spend too much time soaking up the 1%'s propaganda like a sponge, that those that "volunteer" are working class youth. Society is set up to ensure that the military is the best option for poor and working class youth. If higher education was free and public schools had a 1 to 12 or 1 to 14 teacher to student ratio like the schools that the rich sends their children too, there would not be so many working class victims for the military recruiters to pounce on.

I received the following comment on a FB group that my commentary/video was posted on.  The author writes: "It's a volunteer army. nobody forced you to do anything. take responsibility.". You have to wonder about the stupidity of some folks.  Is it stupidity? Does this person actually believe that volunteering or opting to join the military is the act of a "free" person? Is there no coercion in society? If that's so, how come whenever I wanted to get a worker in the workplace to sign a petition in support of a victimized co-worker, many of them were afraid to do so? What were they afraid of? And how come the sons and daughters of hedge fund managers, private equity lords, bankers and tech billionaires aren't signing up in droves?

I almost feel silly explaining this as surely any thinking worker understands why the working class volunteers,  this doesn't mean workers don't volunteer because they want to defend their country, we do, but we are conned in to believing a danger exists when it doesn't. Not to our interests as workers anyway.  The reason I am sort of responding to this guy's comment here is that when I was at work I had a run in with a worker (it's almost always a white worker) who I can tell was of a similar political bent, he too soaked up the propaganda of the bosses' media, parroted their propaganda on a regular basis. What usually accompanies this type of thinking is a racial bias and a hatred of the poor in general, a belief that those who are at the bottom rungs of society are there through their own choosing. If they were smarter, made better choices, they wouldn't be poor, would have more options.

But by chance I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal at the time, when one of their heroes Caspar Weinberger, attacked the argument that we basically have an economic draft. Weinberger, who was secretary of defense under Reagan and served in the Bush and Ford administrations, was also a lawyer for the Bechtel corporation and chairman of the billionaires magazine, Forbes. Bechtel is the company that often gets the contracts to rebuild a nation's infrastructure after the US military has bombed it. He basically argued that minorities and people of color were more patriotic than whites that explained the percentages. I found great pleasure handing that piece of information to my right wing co-worker.

Here is the piece I wrote around that time and distributed at work and below it is the actual article from Weinberger published in the Wall Street Journal. One has to laugh where he quotes Reagan as saying that every recruit "wants to be here" like they wouldn't rather be studying at a university or in a well paying job where they were less likely to get shot. But that's how these people look at the world, we are lesser creatures. After all, they must be smarter, they're in charge.

Military Recruiters Target Working Class Men………And Boys

by Richard Mellor

A year ago, U.S. Army recruiters were having a hard time. "To me, recruiting used to be easy. Right now, you really have to hunt for those ones who really want to do it (Army service)," states Richard Guzman, who recruits in New York City's Harlem section (Reuters 3-6-05)

Working class youth have been a little more reluctant to sign up since 911 and there has been much said about the fact that minorities are overly represented in the military; African Americans for example make up about 13% of the U.S. population but some 18% of the military.  The military wages aggressive campaigns aimed at working class and poor youth in order to get them in.

Recent news reports claim that there has been an increase in the percentage of Latinos signing up.  They were 13% of new recruits in 2004 according to the DoD; double what they were ten years earlier (SF Chronicle. 5-15-06).

To any serious observer there is obviously an economic draft in the US.  As Michael Moore pointed out in his film, Fahrenheit 911, the children of Congressmen and Senators don’t rush to serve.  The children of the rich and privileged have more options; it’s the economy stupid.

For Latinos, the increase probably has a lot to do with the increase in their population along with all the regular incentives to sign up plus extras.  After four years of service, Latino youth who are undocumented can get full U.S. citizenship.  If they die in combat they can be counted as dead U.S. citizens. There is no doubt that the appeal to the machismo influences decisions as well as the effect of advertising, school and society with regard to honor and patriotism, but it is painfully obvious that it is the prospect of an education or learning a skill that can lead to a better life that draws working class youth in to the military.

Not so for the finally deceased Caspar Weinberger.  Weinberger was very fond of sending other people’s kids to defend the interests of his old employer, Bechtel Corp.  He presided over a huge increase in U.S. military spending.

Responding to Congressman Charles Wrangel and John Conyers who have argued for the draft on the basis that the U.S. “must debate whether it should continue with a fighting force comprised disproportionately of people from low-income families and minorities.”, Weinberger, a favorite of many Americans of the right wing variety hurls a blow at the white worker.

This is “race and class warfare” bemoans Weinberger.  The capitalist class cannot admit that economic conditions and the lack of opportunity that this portends make the military a viable option.  College credits and/or financing are a possible route to a better job and a more secure future.

“This is all utter and pernicious nonsense.”  says Weinberger,  “…the burden of defending the country is resting on the shoulders, white, black, brown, etc., of those who want that "burden," and whose volunteering gives it to them.   That’s it, rich kids simply don’t want the burden of defending the country and poor and working class kids do.  What loyalty.  Go Volunteers!

Weinberger responds to the disproportionate percentage of minorities in the military compared to their percentage of the population with an astounding attack on the white working class, “I would reply that that simply demonstrates that there is a higher degree of patriotism among black and Hispanic youths of draft age than among whites of draft age.” (WSJ 1-10-2003)

There we have it.  White workers, but especially white middle class and upper middle class youth just don’t care about America enough to join up.  For the sons of the capitalist class, the rich and powerful, they care even less and instead of dying a glorious death in Iraq or Afghanistan they enter that miserable and insecure world of insider trading or working at the family firm.

The point is that whatever percentage it is of whatever ethnic group that signs up, we know what the motive is and what the class background is of these “volunteers”. This reserve army of the unemployed or the low waged who are used to terrify those working in to submission under the threat of replacement, are also prime targets for defending US corporations interests abroad under the guise of defending the country or spreading “freedom.”  Workers do not need to be enticed to defend what we know is right and what is in our self-interest to defend.

The disgusting picture here of an army recruiter enticing a young Latino boy, inviting him to a possible early grave, is a reflection of how they have to deceive and lie to convince workers that joining up is in our own self interest; they start young just like the dope dealers.

With the recent immigration movement and demonstrations on May 1^st and the rising opposition to corporate policies that wreak such devastation on our lives and the environment, the recruiters will hopefully have an increasingly cool reception.

5-15-06

 ****************

January 10, 2003

WSJ Commentary (U.S.)

Dodgy Drafters
By CASPAR W. WEINBERGER

WASHINGTON -- Congressmen Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) and John Conyers (D., Mich.) have pushed some bad ideas before, but their new proposal -- to bring back the Vietnam era in the form of a military draft -- is far and away the worst. Attempting to play both the race and class warfare cards, the congressmen said the U.S. "must debate whether it should continue with a fighting force comprised disproportionately of people from low-income families and minorities." In another burst of unconscionable demagoguery, they also say that the burden of defending the country is resting too heavily on the shoulders of the blacks and minorities.

This is all utter and pernicious nonsense.

The congressmen never mentioned that the burden of defending the country is resting on the shoulders, white, black, brown, etc., of those who want that "burden," and whose volunteering gives it to them.

If some statistical genius has computed that our all-volunteer force may have slightly more black and Hispanic volunteers than is "proportionate" -- (to what?) -- I would reply that that simply demonstrates that there is a higher degree of patriotism among black and Hispanic youths of draft age than among whites of draft age. That should be a matter of praise and gratification. But no! The congressmen simply ignore the fact that however "proportional," our military is what it is because it is made up of people who want to be there.

Messrs. Rangel and Conyers want to scrap all that, roughly like the people who wanted to break up the New York Yankees because they were too good. The congressmen talk as if there is some racist administration forcing young blacks and Hispanics into the danger of war while leaving the children of the white and the rich free to evade military service and practice greed or whatever.

That is the picture they would like to paint. But that simply does not exist. The true picture is that if there are "disproportionately" too many black and Hispanic volunteers, that is because "too many" of them are volunteering to defend us all. Mr. Rangel and others like him prefer force and compulsion, not reason, on behalf of their causes; and so their solution to the "dilemma" of too many patriotic blacks, etc., seems to be two-fold. One: Either refuse them admission to the military until the "numbers are corrected"; or two: draft everyone aged 18-26 into a vast unneeded pool of people, all of whom, no matter how unsuitable, would have to be given military training or forced into some unspecified national service.

This would cost enormous sums -- far higher than Messrs. Rangel and Conyers would vote to authorize -- all to give the country many million more unneeded government employees. But neither a draft, nor a refusal to allow patriotic young blacks and Hispanics to volunteer, are needed or favored by the military or the majority of citizens. Instead, the stage would be set for the fierce opposition to a draft that marked the Vietnam years, when the nation was polarized.

Would any of this improve the military? Hardly. The purpose of the Rangel-Conyers draft is not to improve the military but to build public opposition to war with Iraq. A collateral result would be to fill the military with people who do not want to be there.

A recent editorial in this newspaper exploded the idea that the children of low income or minority parents are at greater risk in war. Those who insist that blacks will become the brunt of combat casualties "have it exactly backwards," as the Journal correctly pointed out. The Rangel-Conyers problem is that none of the standard demagogic appeals to racism or class warfare apply to a military comprised exclusively of volunteers. So the congressmen have to invent a scenario in which to invoke their mumbo-jumbo.

* * *

The bottom line, to which every American concerned about national security should pay heed: Trained and eager volunteers are far more effective soldiers than conscripts. I volunteered for the Army and the Infantry as a private after graduating from Law School in 1941 and trained and served with both drafted soldiers and volunteers. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that volunteers were far more effective than draftees and eager to train and to fight.

Once, early in 1982, President Reagan and I reviewed a force of young American soldiers newly enrolled. Afterwards he said to me, "You know, Cap, I would infinitely rather look each of these young people in the eye and know that each wants to be here.

Let's keep it that way.

Mr. Weinberger, defense secretary in the Reagan administration, is chairman of Forbes magazine.

Veterans get little help when they most need it. Veteran care is not profitable.

"I got blown up seven times, I would go see my medic, get bandaged, get percs (narcotics) and get on with it." Injured Afghanistan veteran.

US capitalism is not the only country that treats the working class youth it sends to fight its wars with disrespect. The only reason that it protects its soldiers at all is that if too many die, the resistance will grow. The likes of Kissinger or Rumsfeld and the unelected few that make the decisions behind the scenes, care no more for our youth than they do for the millions of lives their actions destroy. It is simply a tactical battlefield decision, a necessity of achieving their goals, that they bother to protect the troops at all.

I don't know if it comes across clearly in this video but it bothers me when people fall in to line with all the flag waving and patriotic singing and such then see how the very people the ruling class claims are American heroes and all that are basically dumped when they need help the most. I do feel that people do it in many cases because they don't want to face the fact that the working class is being conned, our young people are being lied to, or that they are basically being denied opportunities that should exist for all in society in order to direct them in to the trenches, ensuring that someone, anyone but their kids, fight to defend capitalism and profits.

If they were to admit the truth to themselves they'd have to do something about it, face being called unpatriotic or un-American. But if we don't reject this false view of the military and the idea that the US has hundreds of military installations abroad is involved in regional wars and the bombing of seven or more countries not to defend these shores or our, (workers) way of life, but the plunder and subsequent profits that plunder brings to a small minority of  American families.

It's sort of insulting to listen to their commentators, the mouthpieces of US capitalism in the media talk of veterans in glowing terms yet except for rare occasions, say nothing about how they are treated in society. It's not new. About a third of all homeless people were Vietnam veterans at one time. And what was that war about? Why did the US military slaughter some 3 or 4 million Vietnamese and pour dioxin on their food? They never threatened us.

There is a difference between a hedge fund managers America, Donald Trump's America, or to be exact, the  America of the capitalist class, the 1% as we have called them of late, and working and middle class people. It's as if we are in different worlds and we are. We have more in common with workers in other countries which is why we should be working to build unity with them rather than the few thousand billionaires that call themselves American.

The US ruling class like all of them, will work with any monster that shares the loot, helps fill their coffers and maintains the system of capitalism and the filth that comes with it. Hell, they've installed most of them. Putin is an enemy of workers, so are the Mullah's so is the Saudi's and other more extreme regimes, but it's OK, there is loyalty among thieves----to a point.

We have many national disasters. The prison industrial complex is one of them. The poverty, destruction of cities and communities is another. The lack of fresh water in Flint which is a city that is surrounded by fresh water is another. And so is the shameful and tragic treatment of veterans, working class youth who, if they had other opportunities, would take them. Unemployment is always good for war.

Workers don't need to be bribed in order to defend our homes, livelihoods and communities. We shouldn't have to fight in predatory wars for US capitalism on behalf of Wall Street where we are forced to kill workers in other countries in order to get an education assuming we survive it. For some, the unfortunate thing is they do survive, when before they would have died.  But they survive as broken men and women and they find that the money is just not there for them then.

Undocumented workers don't harm veterans. War profiteers do.

Here's a hint: Don't send them to fight corporate wars

So Trump has this to say:

“In many cases, illegal immigrants are taken much better care of by this country than our veterans,” Trump said at the annual Rolling Thunder rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of thousands of bikers gathered to honor prisoners of war and service members missing in action. “We’re not going to allow that to happen any longer.”

“We’re gonna rebuild our military,” he continued. “And we’re gonna take care of our veterans. Our veterans have been treated so badly in this country.”

Well even if Trump was right, what does he care about veterans? Remember Bob Dylan's great song, A Pawn in the Game about the assassination of Medgar Evers?  Trump is organizing a the game with his comments and the way he phrases the issue. His intention is that we blame undocumented workers who are for the most part economic refugees, for the disgusting way US capitalism treats those that fought its wars and have paid dearly for it.  It's the old divide and rule. 

Trump is parasite. He has never done any socially productive labor. His slumlord father left him millions. He blames the economic refugees for the poor treatment him and his friends are giving veterans and at the same time he says he wants to rebuild the military.  The US is already the world's largest dealer in weapons of mass destruction.  It's military budget alone could eliminate poverty.

Will we hear the national voice of the trade union leadership on this?  Will the leaders of an' organization with 12 million workers in it explain this con game for what it is and how we must not be the pawn in the game. Will they explain this in class terms? Unfortunately no, we will not.

They will, as always, keep their mouths shut on the most important issues of the day. They, more than the capitalist class, fear the organized working class because a conscious, politically aggressive membership means the end of the job for life.  Better let the sleeping giant lie.

In the unions those activists and leaders at the lower level, closer to the ranks must lead from below.  Resolutions can be introduced countering the bosses' divide and rule propaganda and offering solutions that unite, not divide us. These resolutions can be sent far and wide, to other locals and union bodies asking for support or statements along similar lines.They can be made as public as possible to break through, even in a small way in the beginning, the stifling weight of the capitalist media.

These resolutions can be discussed and debated and voted on. This process will affect consciousness and increase awareness of the important things that are happening in the world around us; issues that determine where we live, where our children go to school.  Issues that determine whether or not we have adequate health care.  It is a failure of duty in a way for any union activist to remain silent and not bring to the forefront the refusal of the labor hierarchy to fight back.

We are in a struggle for the consciousness of the working class. For older workers, we owe it to our grandchildren to participate in that struggle.

* I wrote a piece some years ago before I had this blog. Undocumented Workers are Not the Enemy of Labor. I wrote it and distributed it at work in response to a right wing worker trying to get us to sign a petition to deny undocumented immigrants driving licenses.  I got so mad at him and another guy that supported him, he was white, the other guy black. I had never seen this guy take any stand for the union or involve himself in the struggles on the job. "And this was what gets you off your ass", I told him, "Supporting a petition to deny some of the most oppressed and vulnerable of our brothers and sisters the legal right to drive to their shitty jobs."