Sunday, September 30, 2018

Lockheed Martin: Yemen war good for profits!

Global Network<globalnet@mindspring.com>
To  Global Network  
 
CODEPINK.ORG
Marillyn Hewson
Dear Bruce Gagnon,
Let me introduce myself: I am Marillyn, the proud CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. I am writing because my livelihood of $25 million per year is now at risk. Today, Congressmembers Ro Khanna, Adam Smith, and Mark Pocan introduced a bill in the House; the War Powers Resolution to End U.S. Military Involvement in Yemen. If passed, this would prevent my company from selling weapons to our dear allies, the Saudis. It is not only unfair, but it’s also outright unAmerican!
CODEPINK, along with Reps. Ro Khanna, Smith, Pocan, McGovern, and others, says that just because Saudi Arabia dropped a Lockheed bomb on a Yemeni school bus, killing 44 young children, the U.S. should stop arms sales. I say this is ridiculous. Who said war was a picnic? Believe me, I feel sorry for these kids, but I have my own children to worry about — private schools, trust funds, upkeep on our Virginia mansion. You know, the basics.
My friends at Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and I will be unfairly persecuted by the War Powers Resolution. American jobs and record profits are far more important than the lives of children in far-off Yemen, most of whom are militants who hate us. That’s why I’m appealing to you: DO NOT CLICK on this link from CODEPINK asking Congress to stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
CODEPINK says that because I am a woman and a mother, I should care about the lives of women and children in Yemen. But I didn’t become the CEO of the world’s largest weapons company by being a wuss. The world is a dangerous place, and for the sake of my company’s bottom line, we aim to keep it that way.
Keeping our homeland (and my home) secure,
Marillyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin
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Republicans Double Down to Defend Sexual Predator – For Mass Demonstrations to Stop Kavanaugh!


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Republicans Double Down to Defend Sexual Predator - For Mass Demonstration to Stop Kavanaugh

By Erin Brightwell
Read Online: https://goo.gl/dcQF8D
Thanks to the power of the #MeToo movement and the courage of Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and now Julie Swetnick, the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, appearing only days ago to be a virtual lock, is now hanging by a thread. Kavanaugh, having amassed a thoroughly reactionary anti-woman, anti-worker, and pro-corporation record as a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, was already the most unpopular Supreme Court nominee since Robert Bork in 1987. Then Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault was made public.
It is unfortunate that Blasey Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick must endure an unimaginably stressful and traumatic episode as nationally known victims and survivors of sexual assault. Brett Kavanaugh should have been been forced to withdraw on the basis of his right-wing politics and, in particular, the threat he posed to Roe v. Wade, which is supported by 64% of Americans according to a July 2018 Gallup poll. If Kavanaugh is forced to withdraw, it will be due to the mass anger at sexual abuse reflected in the #MeToo movement, and not at all due to the so-called resistance of the Democratic Party establishment.
The Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations have exposed the culture at the elite, private high schools and Ivy League university fraternities and societies. This is a horrifying, misogynistic world where there is literally a culture of raping women that is passed from generation to generation of ruling-class youth. This is the culture that future judges, politicians, CEOs, and presidents are steeped in, one in which rich, white men make a game of objectifying, humiliating, and assaulting women. The training ground for the ruling-class patriarchy runs through Harvard, Yale, and elite high schools like Georgetown Prep.

Political Establishment in Crisis

The Republican leadership appears to have learned nothing from the reaction of women to Trump’s history of sexual abuse, or the Roy Moore scandal as they dig in behind Kavanaugh. It is being reported that Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has told senators to prepare to work through the weekend, meaning the Senate Republican leadership intends to try to introduce a vote in the full Senate as early as Saturday. Between pressure from the right-wing base to get another conservative justice on the court before the midterms, when the Senate could swing to the Democrats, and the concern that even more allegations may surface against Kavanaugh, the Republicans are calculating how fast they can push the nomination through and they are willing to brand themselves as the party of predator enablers in the process.
At this point, with the massive anger at Kavanaugh’s nomination going forward despite the allegations against him, no Democratic Senator could possibly vote to confirm him without committing political suicide. We should remember, however, that prior to Christine Blasey Ford coming forward, Kavanaugh’s confirmation seemed all but assured. The Democratic Party leadership refused to enforce a party line vote on Kavanaugh because they felt that a vote against Kavanaugh could hurt the midterm chances of Democratic Senators in states Trump won. The Democrats’ “resistance” was limited to some combative questioning in the Senate Judiciary hearings, most notably by California Senator Kamala Harris. The entire episode demonstrates the weakness of the Democratic Party. Now, presumably, their spines have been stiffened by the righteous anger of millions of women who cannot tolerate the casual acceptance of sexual assault among the ruling class.

Kavanaugh’s Reactionary Right Wing Politics

Even before Kavanaugh’s alleged history of sexual assault was revealed, he was a serious threat to women’s rights. Kavanaugh’s hostility to abortion rights was illustrated by his dissent in the DC Court of Appeals decision to allow a pregnant 17 year old immigrant to have an abortion while she was being held in a private detention center. Kavanaugh agreed that the young woman had a right to an abortion, but suggested a legal solution that would have forced her to wait until she was more than 20 weeks pregnant, the absolute limit for abortions in Texas where she was being held. Trump nominated Kavanaugh at least in part because he is seen as strongly anti-abortion, a position demanded by the highly organized Christian Right. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would be a clear threat to women’s bodily autonomy and, while women’s groups organized direct actions during Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings, a broader fight against the nominee was possible even before the sexual assault allegations came to light.
The Kavanaugh nomination should be ringing alarm bells not just for women’s groups. Kavanaugh infamously wrote a dissent of the DC court’s decision to uphold an OSHA fine after Seaworld trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by an orca whale during a show, arguing that animal training was similar to professional sports and inherently risky – therefore the employer should have no responsibility for the safety of its trainers. There are scores of cases in which Kavanaugh ruled against government regulations, including many regulations that protected the environment. Kavanaugh is a model judge for big business and a serious threat to working people.

Women Fight Back

Women held protests across the country on Monday, September 24 and over a hundred were arrested doing direct action at Senate offices in Washington. This is an excellent step, but larger and more militant mass actions that shake the political establishment to its foundations could kill the Kavanaugh nomination once and for all. From the Women’s Marches to the McDonald’s women’s strikes against sexual harassment, women have shown they are ready to move into action against sexual abuse.
Increasingly, there is a contradiction developing between the willingness of ordinary women to fight back against anti-abortion misogynists like Brett Kavanaugh and the Democratic Party establishment which does virtually nothing to organize a real resistance movement in the streets and workplaces. The truth is that the Democratic Party fears the activism of working-class people. Canceling Kavanaugh is one thing, but the Democrats worry that once women, young people, and working people experience a big victory through protest they will demand more changes that may not be acceptable to the party’s billionaire backers.
This whole awful situation speaks volumes about why we need an independent left party in this country with a pro-working-class program which could mobilize people not just in the voting booths but in the streets against Trump and the reactionary agenda of the right. However, currently there is understandably a massive desire on the left to punish the Republicans in the midterms by electing Democrats. Furthermore, with a number of candidates running and winning on a program similar to that of Bernie Sanders, a new progressive current in the Democratic Party is emerging. Among these successful progressive candidates in Democratic primaries are a number running as socialists and members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), most notably Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, .
While Socialist Alternative’s position is that socialists should build a party independent of the Democrats and big business, the DSA should test the limits of the Democratic Party on a concrete issue such as Brett Kavanaugh. The DSA now has 50,000 members nationwide, and several active socialist feminist caucuses within it. The DSA should join with its allies in the labor movement, as well as other left groups, to organize urgent protests, walkouts, and direct actions against Kavanaugh all across the country in the coming days with a broad call to all those who want to defend Roe v. Wadeand fight against sexual assault.
At the time of this writing, there is no inevitability to the Kavanaugh confirmation. Much is riding on Thursday’s Senate hearing where Kavanaugh and his accuser will testify. Republican leaders appear to be prepared to push as hard as is necessary to get Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court, while the Democrats are now forced by the power of #MeToo to fully oppose Kavanaugh. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ opposition will, in all likelihood, be limited to the Senate hearing itself, not drawing on the enormous potential power of the new women’s movement that is building steam. With the Democratic Party so far refusing to organize mass protests against Kavanaugh, it is up to the unions, the women’s organizations and other groups on the left, including the DSA, to bring Kavanaugh down once and for all, in the event that the weight of the multiple sexual assault accusations against him isn’t enough on their own.
Please check SocialistAlternative.org regularly for the socialist analysis, strategy, and tactics needed to build movements to defeat the billionaire class.
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Forum on US Colonial Crimes in Latin America

United for Justice with Peace<info@justicewithpeace.org>
To  markin  

Forum on US Colonial Crimes in Latin America

When: Saturday, September 29, 2018, 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Where: Workers World Party Office • 284 Amory Street • Jamaica Plain
The International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes in Puerto Rico will be held all day on Sat Oct 27 in Washington Heights, Manhattan; and the local Forum on Puerto Rico in Jamaica Plain, Boston on Sat Sep 29 at 4pm that is building for the tribunal.  
Information about the Oct 27 tribunal is at https://www.facebook.com/events/222592841680891/ and https://www.facebook.com/puertoricotribunal/ and https://puertoricotribunal.org .  A list of endorsers of the tribunal is at https://puertoricotribunal.org/endorse/  The conveners of the tribunal include Rafael Cancel Miranda.  The tribunal is endorsed by UNAC and a whole lot of other anti-war organizations
The event page for the local Boston Forum on Puerto Rico on Sat Sep 29 is at https://www.facebook.com/events/239329483421587/   FIRE (Fight for Im/Migrants and Refugees Everywhere) is organizing this local forum in conjunction with the organizers of the tribunal.   The Boston forum will be held at the Workers World Party office in the Brewery building on Amory Street in Jamaice Plain.  I attended the planning meeting.  Puerto Rican activists Roberto Torres Collado and Dorotea Manuela  from Encuentro 5 attended the planning meeting.  Also present was Andre Francois of the Boston School Bus Driver’s union. Andre is going to be one of the judges at the tribunal.   At the local forum we are going to have several Puerto Rican speakers.
The Boston School Bus Drivers’ union is planning to provide a bus for people to go to NYC for the day to attend the tribunal on Oct 27.
Endorsed by United for Justice with Peace.
Upcoming Events: 
Venezuela Today: Challenges from Within and Abroad Wednesday, October 3, 2018 - 6:30pm Boston University Boston
Film Screening: “The Occupation of the American Mind" Thursday, October 4, 2018 - 6:00pm Jamaica Plain branch, Boston Public Library Jamaica Plain
Women's March on the Pentagon: 51st anniversary of 1967 historic protest Saturday, October 20, 2018 - 10:00am Washington DC area Washington DC
RESCHEDULED: Mobilize Against Trump's Veteran's Day War Parade Saturday, November 10, 2018 - 9:00am To Be Announced Washington DC
First International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases Friday, November 16, 2018 - 6:00pm Liberty Hall Dublin 1, Ireland
Newsletter: 
UJP Activist
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A View From The Left -BIW wins $3.9 billion contract for 4 destroyers, while rival will build 6



BIW wins $3.9 billion contract for 4 destroyers, while rival will build 6

The contract will keep Bath shipbuilders busy through 2022, although the Navy ordered six of the ships from Huntington Ingalls Industries.

 

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/09/27/bath-iron-works-wins-3-9-billion-contract-to-build-four-navy-destroyers/

 

 

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