Comparing two impeachments

Barry Grey & Andre Damon

In light of Thursday’s vote in the US House of Representatives to formalize the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, it is worth contrasting the events now unfolding in Washington to those that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon 45 years ago.

In July 1974, the House of Representatives approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon. The direct cause of the impeachment was the Watergate scandal, in which Nixon directed a group of burglars known as the “White House Plumbers” to break into and wiretap the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

Members of the Senate Watergate Investigating committee in Washington, D.C., May 17, 1973 [Credit: AP Photo]

However, the impeachment inquiry unveiled a far broader range of crimes by the administration. Among the five articles of impeachment debated on the House floor was one that accused Nixon of “the submission to Congress of false and misleading statements concerning the existence, scope, and nature of American bombing operations in Cambodia” in connection to the Vietnam War.

Before Watergate, the first task of Nixon’s “plumbers” was to burglarize the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. The aim was to discredit the man who released the Pentagon Papers, which documented that the White House “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress,” about the conduct of the war.

This burglary, as one commentator noted, linked “Vietnam and Watergate in one continuous 1961-to-1975 story.”

“In 1973 the Senate Watergate Committee investigation revealed that the executive branch had directed national intelligence agencies to carry out constitutionally questionable domestic security operations,” notes the official history by the United States Senate. “In 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a front-page New York Times article claiming that the CIA had been spying on anti-war activists for more than a decade, violating the agency’s charter.”

This led to the formation of the Church Committee, which investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA and FBI. Senator Frank Church, commenting on the committees’ findings, warned that the NSA has the capability “to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency… operate[s] within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss.”

Twelve years later, another crisis erupted in Washington, which nearly led to the impeachment of Ronald Reagan, who was only saved by the unwillingness of the Democrats to remove him.

The crisis was triggered by the revelation that the Reagan administration had concocted a scheme to sell arms to Iran in order to buy weapons to finance an illegal war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. According to the CIA officer in charge of the covert war, the Contras routinely murdered “civilians and Sandinista officials in the provinces, as well as heads of cooperatives, nurses, doctors and judges.”

The investigation revealed that the Reagan administration flagrantly violated the Boland Amendment, passed by Congress to prohibit US government assistance to the Contras.

The Nixon impeachment inquiry and the Iran-Contra scandals involved vast crimes, rooted, fundamentally, in the prosecution of illegal wars in pursuit of predatory US policy interests. They exposed sweeping abuses of democratic rights, from the COINTELPRO operation exposed by the Church Committee, to the revelation of the Rex 84 plan for mass detention of “subversive” elements documented by the Iran-Contra hearings.

One need only review this history to see that the present impeachment hearing is the exact opposite of the investigation of Watergate and Iran-Contra. Instead of exposing and curbing the criminal activities of the US intelligence agencies and military, it is aimed at expanding and empowering them.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi summed up the basis of the impeachment inquiry as follows: “In one phone conversation, he [Trump] undermined our national security by withholding military assistance to a country [Ukraine] that has been voted on by the Congress of the United States—to the benefit of the Russians.”

Trump, as former CIA Director David Petraeus recently put it, stands accused of “holding up assistance that’s desperately needed by those who are on the front lines” of a war waged by the US-backed Ukrainian government against forces aligned with Russia. Petraeus added, “This is World War I… it's a very hot war still going on.”

The broad unpopularity of war abroad has created a crisis of legitimacy for the Democrats’ impeachment drive. As might be expected, the Democrats have not mobilized significant popular support on this basis. As Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “For most [Americans], impeachment is not a priority. It’s a dull background noise… the fundamental reality is that many Americans are indifferent.”

In fact, the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has more in common with the impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republicans, in which a concocted sexual scandal was used as a cover for a right-wing agenda.

From the outset, as the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the Democrats’ opposition to Trump has had nothing in common with the popular opposition to his fascistic administration. It is one side in a civil war within the capitalist ruling class and the state, primarily over foreign policy questions.

From the day of Trump’s inauguration, when millions protested across the country, the Democratic Party has worked to contain popular anger and channel it behind a pro-war agenda. It has sought to suppress opposition to Trump’s fascistic assault on immigrants, his moves toward dictatorship, his praise for neo-Nazis, his tax cuts for the rich and his attacks on social programs for workers and poor people.

The Democrats are neither able to nor willing to make any democratic appeal to the popular hatred of Trump. Having long ago abandoned any program of social reform directed toward the working class, the Democratic Party has evolved into an organization based on an alliance of the intelligence agencies, sections of finance and the affluent upper-middle class.

The current impeachment drive has no progressive or democratic content. The Democrats are attempting to impeach Trump on false pretenses, concealing their real objectives. It has all the elements, in other words, of a palace coup.

As the Socialist Equality Party Political Committee wrote in its statement posted October 14, “No to American fascism! Build a mass movement to force Trump out!”:

So long as the conflict is confined to the divisions within the ruling class, there can be no democratic or progressive outcome. Should the impeachment drive of the Democrats fail, it will strengthen Trump’s political position. Should it succeed, it will elevate Trump’s factotum, Mike Pence, to the presidency. Moreover, impeachment will actually strengthen the political influence of the CIA and FBI over the White House. It will legitimize a foreign policy based on an anti-Russia hysteria that will justify a dangerous confrontation with a nuclear-armed power. Either outcome represents an immense danger to the working class.

The fight against Trump can only take a progressive character to the extent that is completely separate from, and hostile to, the palace coup being orchestrated by the Democrats on behalf of the intelligence agencies and the military.

It must be conducted by the working class through the expansion of the class struggle against war, dictatorship and social inequality. It must be informed by a conscious struggle to put an end to capitalism, the source of war and inequality, and establish a socialist society.

Pentagon awards $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft

Kevin Reed

The US Department of Defense unexpectedly awarded a massive contract for cloud computing services to Microsoft Corporation on October 25, snubbing Amazon, which had been widely considered the front-runner for the ten-year agreement.

A statement on the Defense Department’s website said that the Redmond, Washington firm had been selected for the Joint Enterprises Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud contract which will “provide enterprise level, commercial Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to support Department of Defense” (DoD) with a “ceiling value” of $10 billion and an expected completion date of October 24, 2029, “if all options are exercised.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) had been expected to win the contract because the firm has been managing a $600 million cloud computing contract with the Central Intelligence Agency since 2013. An AWS spokesman told National Public Radio on Saturday, “We’re surprised about this conclusion. AWS is the clear leader in cloud computing, and a detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings clearly lead to a different conclusion.”

According to news reports, among the reasons the DoD selected Microsoft were objections from other contractors as well as the growing political hostility of President Trump toward Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which has been a primary media backer of the Democratic Party and its “Russian meddling” campaign and the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Other giant tech firms such as Oracle, IBM and Google had objected to the increasingly cozy relationship between Amazon and the federal government. Oracle filed a lawsuit in late 2018 arguing that the Defense Department unfairly favored Amazon and that the bidding process was rigged. The case was dismissed by a federal judge who pointed out that Oracle had not met the bidding requirements.

IBM filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office, arguing that the Defense Department’s idea of a single cloud environment for a decade does not “provide the strongest possible foundation for the 21st century battlefield.” Google dropped out of the bidding because, according to an official statement, the project conflicted with the company’s new artificial intelligence principles.

In August, when the contract award was originally scheduled to be announced, it was reported that Trump ordered the decision put on hold and told Defense Secretary Mark Esper to investigate the complaints of favoritism toward Amazon by the other tech companies.

Clearly, if Trump disqualified AWS from winning the DoD contract based on political considerations—many tech reports said the deal was “gift-wrapped for Amazon”—this would put the contracting process squarely in the middle of the conflicts within the ruling establishment over strategic foreign and military policy questions that have sparked impeachment.

According to a report in the New York Times, “In public, Mr. Trump said there were other ‘great companies’ that should have a chance at the contract. But a speechwriter for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says in a book scheduled for publication next week that Mr. Trump had wanted to foil Amazon and give the contract to another company.”

Whatever the reasons for placing the JEDI contract with Microsoft instead of Amazon, the unfolding process shows how the US military has become heavily dependent upon and increasingly interconnected with the privately owned American technology monopolies. For their part, the Silicon Valley corporations are eager and willing participants in the deployment of big data, online information and artificial intelligence technologies for the purpose of US militarism and war and, of course, the enormous profits that come along with such deals.

In the case of Google, the company backed out of bidding on JEDI after a group of tech employees objected to participation in the Pentagon’s Project Maven, a program that develops AI battlefield technologies. Google staff opposition forced the company to discontinue participation in the program after the contract expires this year. It also resulted in the adoption of AI principles stating the company would not design or deploy “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.”

The JEDI program was originally conceived of in 2017 as a single secure global computing platform that would address the US military’s “lack of a coordinated enterprise-level approach to cloud infrastructure” that “makes it virtually impossible for our warfighters and leaders to make critical data-driven decisions at ‘mission-speed,’ negatively affecting outcomes.”

Within a year, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan issued a memo called “Accelerating Cloud Adoption Update” which emphasized the importance “a full and open competition to acquire a modern enterprise cloud services solution that can support unclassified, secret and top secret information.” A major consideration for accelerating the JEDI project was the growing awareness within US ruling and military circles that China is in a race to develop its own military cloud computing platform.

A central component of the JEDI program is its mission critical support for the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence plans. According to Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, the director of the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), “You cannot get to true impact at scale with AI without an enterprise cloud solution.”

The US military is working on the basis of a dystopian theory of “algorithmic warfare” that will weaponize artificial intelligence. As reported by Ben Tarnoff at the Guardian, “The US military knows how to kill. The harder part is figuring out whom to kill. In a more traditional war, you simply kill the enemy. But who is the enemy in a conflict with no national boundaries, no fixed battlefields, and no conventional adversaries? This is the perennial question of the forever war.”

With the merger of JEDI, AI and algorithmic warfare, the US military is deploying the most advanced technologies of modern society—that otherwise would be used to progressively transform the lives of the world’s population under socialism—for the most barbaric purposes.

It should be expected that the growth of the class struggle on a world scale along with mass political opposition to both capitalism and imperialism will continue to emerge among engineers and tech employees within the global tech industries. It is significant that one year ago, a group of Microsoft employees issued an open letter titled, “Don’t Bid on the US Military’s Project JEDI.”

The open letter says in part, “Many Microsoft employees don’t believe that what we build should be used for waging war. When we decided to work at Microsoft, we were doing so in the hopes of ‘empowering every person on the planet to achieve more,’ not with the intent of ending lives and enhancing lethality.” These are the sentiments of workers all over the world and it is becoming more and more clear that only the program of socialist internationalism is capable of fulfilling them.

US: Murray Energy files for bankruptcy, miners’ pensions in peril

Samuel Davidson

In a long-anticipated move, coal giant Murray Energy filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, putting the jobs of 7,000 coal miners at risk and further jeopardizing the pension and health benefits of 82,000 current and retired miners.

Murray lists $1.7 billion in debts. At the beginning of October, the company told creditors that it was unable to meet payments and invoked a 15-day extension. That came and passed without the company being able to meet its obligations.

Murray has begun making restructuring agreements and reports that it has been able to do so with about 60 percent of its creditors. With the bankruptcy filing, the company has been able to secure another $350 million in credit to keep operations going through the bankruptcy process.

The company has not yet announced any mine closures, but undoubtedly that will come. Bankruptcy means the company can also cut wages, healthcare and other benefits for its nonunion miners and seek to have the courts rip up the contracts with its 2,500 union miners.

Robert Murray, the company founder, has agreed to step down as CEO. He is to be replaced by his nephew and former chief financial officer Robert Moore. Murray will remain as the company’s chairman.

Murray Energy is the largest underground mining company in the United States with 17 active coal mines in Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Utah and West Virginia. In those mines, the company operates 12 longwalls and 42 continuous mines.

Murray Energy also operates two surface mines in Colombia, South America. Combined, the company says that it can produce 76 million tons of coal per year.

Murray is the 8th coal company to declare bankruptcy so far this year. Cloud Pike and Blackjewel are among the list.

Robert Murray is an adamant supporter of President Trump. He donated over $1 million during his 2016 election to various super PACs, including $300,000 to Trump’s inauguration. In turn, during the election campaign Trump pledged to revive coal mining; many Trump rallies and appearances took place at Murray mines.

In early 2017, Murray met with Energy Secretary Rick Perry and other White House officials. During the meetings, Murray presented an “action plan” for coal that became a to-do list for the Trump administration.

The plan listed such items as cutting the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, elimination of government pollution regulations and ending the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

Trump complied, gutting regulations and pulling the US out of the Paris accord. Yet coal has continued to decline. Since taking office, scores of coal-fired power plants have gone offline, switching to natural gas and renewable sources such as wind and solar.

The US Energy Information Administration reports that coal now accounts for less than 25 percent of US electric power production, down from over 50 percent just a few years ago. According to the EIA, demand for coal has fallen to a 40-year low.

Most industry analysts blame the decline, despite Trump’s actions, on the fracking boom and the abundance of cheaper natural gas and the growing renewable industry. While undoubtedly true, this is only part of the story, the crisis in coal production is also part of the global slowdown in manufacturing.

In the past, coal companies would balance production of coal for power generation, with metallurgical coal used in steel production. Metallurgical coal was more specialized, but always got a much higher price and higher profits.

Steel, another industry Trump claimed he would revive, saw a short-lived spike after Trump imposed tariffs but has been in a steady decline since mid-2018, with demand and prices falling. As a result, demand and the price for metallurgical coal have also dropped. This is expected to continue as more and more steel production switches over to electric arc furnaces.

World demand for coal is also down, in part due to the move away from coal to other sources for power generation, but also because of the general slowdown in the world economy and outright recession in many major countries.

Coal exports for the third quarter are down 28 percent from the same quarter last year. This is mainly due to a drop in demand from China whose economy, while not shrinking, is no longer growing as fast.

The Murray Energy bankruptcy spells doom for the United Mine Workers pension plan, which covers 82,000 current and former coal miners, and the fund covering health insurance.

The pension fund was expected to run out in 2022, but will run out of money next year without the payments owed by Murray Energy. The healthcare fund is in slightly better shape, but will also run dry in only a few years.

Murray Energy lists billions in liabilities to the funds and it is almost certain that the bankruptcy judge will rule that the company no longer has to meet these obligations. Money owed to workers is treated last under US bankruptcy law, which ensures that the banks and other creditors are paid first.

Murray Energy was formed by the acquisition of closed, bankrupt or near bankrupt coal mines. In several cases, the company took over mines, absorbing those companies’ pension liabilities, knowing full well that it would declare bankruptcy and shed those obligations.

Murray Energy’s largest acquisition was of Consolidated Coal Company in 2013 from Consol Energy. Murray Energy took over all of Consol’s mines in West Virginia and Ohio, leaving Consol with the massive Bailey Mining complex in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

The United Mine Workers of America, which represents about 2,500 of the miners at Murray Energy (nearly a third of the UMWA’s active members), is opposed to mobilizing miners to fight the threat to their jobs, pensions and healthcare.

Instead, according to a statement issued by UMWA President Cecil Roberts, the union will use miners’ dues money to mobilize their “high-powered legal, financial and communications teams in place that will fight to protect our members’ interests in the bankruptcy court.”

In addition, the UMWA will continue to work to head off the anger of miners over the bankruptcy of their health and pension funds with continued appeals to the Trump administration and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and Congress to pass long-stalled legislation to bail out the health and pension funds.

As the massive fires burning in California and the threat to the entire planet with global warming shows, the capitalist system has no solution the crisis created by the profit system. Instead, giant corporations continue to make the working class pay with their jobs and further environmental catastrophes. The entire energy production industry must be put under workers’ control and run as part of a planned economy to meet human needs while providing for secure jobs and retirement for its workers.

Merger between PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler presages new assault on autoworkers

Shannon Jones

French carmaker PSA Group, owner of Peugeot, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) have agreed to a multi-billion-dollar merger that will create the world’s fourth largest car company, behind Volkswagen, Renault-Nissan and Toyota. The new company will have combined sales and assets ahead of US carmakers Ford and General Motors.

The merged company would be based in the Netherlands, but it will keep a headquarters outside of Detroit for its North American operations. The new company would have a global workforce of around 410,000, sales of 8.7 million vehicles and revenue of some $190 billion. PSA and FCA would each own 50 percent of the combined operation.

Peugeot CEO Carlos Tavares would be CEO of the merged company, while US-born John Elkann, a scion of the family that founded Fiat, would be chairman.

The merger is part of an ongoing consolidation in the global auto industry, a sector that is under enormous pressure from financial markets for higher rates of return under conditions of trade war and mounting recessionary pressures. In addition, automakers face the enormous costs of research and development of electric and autonomous vehicles. Both companies have lagged in development of electric vehicles, with electric vehicles accounting for less than 0.3 percent of Peugeot’s overall sales, forcing it to buy “credits” from Tesla to comply with European Union emission standards. PSA does not have a presence in the US market and neither FCA nor Peugeot have a strong presence in China, the world’s largest auto market.

One industry analyst told CNN, “The electrified autonomous future everyone is waiting for just isn’t feasible without automakers merging and forming strategic alliances to share research and development costs. This is a smart move by both Fiat Chrysler and PSA to ensure their companies continue to be viable and relevant as the industry evolves.”

Another auto analyst cited by the Wall Street Journal said, “We’re moving to an era where scale will matter more than ever before. Those who operate at scale will have a huge advantage. Those companies that sleep at the wheel will suffer going forward.”

The Journal added, “BMW, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Co. and Renault are in an increasingly questionable position and should consider consolidation to stay in the race, analysts commented.”

FCA’s merger with PSA follows its recent failed merger attempt with French automaker Renault. FCA withdrew its offer to Renault, saying that “political conditions” in France were not conducive to such a merger. The French government owns a 15 percent share in Renault and insisted that there be guarantees on jobs in that country.

The companies said they could save 3.7 billion Euros annually through the merger by sharing the cost of developing electric and autonomous vehicles. They claimed that no factories would be closed as a result of the deal.

Whatever its short-term impact, the merger presages ferocious cost-cutting and job elimination in the auto industry. The past year has witnessed a mounting wave of layoffs. The recently imposed deal between the United Auto Workers and GM sanctioned the closure of four US plants. The Oshawa, Ontario GM plant is also slated for closure, with the loss of up to 5,000 assembly and parts supplier jobs. GM also eliminated 8,000 white collar jobs in North America.

The last year has seen a wave of job cuts in the auto industry, with a half million job cuts in India and 220,000 eliminated in China. Nissan recently announced it was cutting 12,500 jobs worldwide, VW is slashing 7,000 positions, and Ford has targeted 12,000 production jobs in Europe and 7,000 white-collar jobs in North America.

This week Ford announced an additional 400 layoffs at its Oakville, Ontario facility and the closure of its Romeo, Michigan engine plant employing 700 workers.

The PSA-FCA merger announcement coincides with a report by FCA of a record operating profit of $2.3 billion on its North American operations, a four percent increase. This came despite unchanged revenue of $21.3 billion and a decrease in shipments of 11 percent. The increase came on a higher profit margin on vehicles, due to a great extent to the company’s ruthless cost-cutting, carried out with the assistance of the United Auto Workers.

FCA’s global earnings rose five percent even though revenue was down one percent and shipments were down nine percent.

For its part, Peugeot has also been involved in ruthless cost-cutting. The company eliminated 3,200 employees in France last year. Total French employment is 64,500, down from 100,000 ten years ago.

Analysts predict that the merger will put additional pressure on other carmakers in the face of a growing economic crisis. Further, the shift to electric vehicles, which require fewer parts, portends further job losses. VW has already teamed up with Ford, and GM has joined with Honda to share costs for EV research and development and joint production ventures.

As part of the merger, FCA shareholders will get a one-time dividend worth $6.1 billion. FCA shares were up sharply on the merger announcement, while PSA shares fell more than nine percent, reflecting the premium that the company paid for the deal.

Both companies have been involved in recent mergers or merger attempts. FCA was formed through the 2009 acquisition of the bankrupt Chrysler Corporation by Italian-based Fiat. PSA bought GM’s European operations in 2017, adding the Opel and Vauxhall brands.

For years prior to the present merger former FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne had pushed for a linkup between the company and another major automaker in the interest of achieving economies of scale. After his approach to GM failed, Marchionne expressed interest in other possibilities, including a combination with tech companies like Apple or Google.

Following the acquisition of Opel, PSA imposed brutal cost-cutting measures with the collaboration of the German IG Metall and other unions in attacks on workers and the increased use of contract labor. This included threats of plant closures if workers did not agree to wage cuts.

The collusion of the United Auto Workers in the US with FCA management in the attacks on workers was highlighted by the comments of an FCA autoworker who recently wrote in to the WSWS. A concession-laden deal expanding the use of temporary and contract workers based on the sellout GM contract is being negotiated by the UAW.

“Our plant has one committeeman and three union stewards and one of the union stewards and the committeeman are actually going out on people’s jobs and threatening them. They are telling the younger workers if they don’t say ‘yes’ to the contract they will no longer have a job.”

The FCA-PSA merger underscores a basic fact of modern economic life: the global integration of production. Workers in every country are linked together across oceans and continents in an interlinked production process. This underscores the need for workers to elaborate a global strategy in opposition to the onslaught on jobs, working conditions and living standards.

Under the capitalist system of production for profit the global division of labor and advances in technology such as autonomous vehicles are not used for the betterment of society, but to drive workers into a pitiless struggle against each other over who will work for the worst wages and conditions.

The reactionary nationalist program of the unions is incapable of defending the jobs and conditions of workers. Hostile to the international unity of the working class, the unions act as cheap labor contractors, offering to hold down wages and speed up production in the name of making “their” companies competitive with foreign rivals.

The most burning issue facing autoworkers is the unification of the international working class to fight these attacks. This requires the building of new organizations, rank and file factory and workplace committees. To ensure a job for every worker and a decent standard of living this fight must be based on a socialist program to replace the anarchy of the capitalist system with the rational organization of economic life throughout the world based on production for human need, not profit. This must include placing the global auto industry under the democratic public ownership and control of the working class.

Twitter’s ban on political advertisement: A new move to censor the internet

Andre Damon

On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that his company would ban all political advertisements on its platform. Advertising, Dorsey said, “brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.”

The announcement comes in the midst of an increasingly aggressive campaign by the US intelligence agencies, congressional Democrats and the media to impose censorship, in the guise of “fact-checking.”

Twitter’s action is politically reactionary, with far-reaching consequences. It converts a private corporation, subject to innumerable political and economic pressures, into the arbiter of what may or may not be written and publicized.

Twitter and Facebook acquired mass audiences by facilitating the free flow of information. But having obtained this audience, they are using their power to carry out censorship on behalf of the government.

Dorsey’s action has been counterposed favorably in the media to the stance of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has publicly opposed calls for social media companies to ban or “fact-check” political advertisements.

“I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or news in a democracy,” Zuckerberg said in a speech at Georgetown University last month. “Banning political ads favors incumbents and whoever the media chooses to cover.”

Zuckerberg is hardly a poster child for the defense of democratic rights. But here he happens to have made a correct point. In response to these statements, he has received a congressional grilling far more severe than Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, whose company is responsible for the deaths of 346 people in crashes involving the 737 Max 8.

His statements have also prompted an outpouring of denunciations in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the broadcast TV networks, which have for years been waging a campaign to censor the internet.

The argument is constructed using a well-worn technique. Various examples of false information or potential lies are cited, including from Donald Trump, as a dangerous threat. This is then used to justify wholesale censorship of political speech, which will inevitably be directed primarily against the left.

A similar method was used after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. In The Lesser Evil, published in 2004, Michael Ignatieff declared that “a terrorist emergency” may “require us to take actions in defense of democracy which will stray from democracy’s own foundational commitments to dignity.”

What would the government have to do, he argued, if it captured a terrorist who had critical information about an imminent attack? Would not all methods, including torture, be necessary to elicit the knowledge needed to “save lives”? What is not permissible to stop the “mushroom cloud”? The implications of these arguments were realized in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

Now the same pretext is being concocted: a supposed imminent threat to democracy—“fake news”—is used to justify the most sweeping attacks on democratic rights.

What is striking, even more so than under the Bush administration, is the degree to which “liberal” and upper-middle class layers in and around the Democratic Party have been recruited into this campaign.

In an op-ed published by the Times yesterday, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin—who should know better—wrote that “crazy lies pumped into the water supply” are corrupting “the most important decisions we make together.” These lies “have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.”

Freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, earlier this month demanded that Facebook “take down lies.” Her thoughtless, ignorant arguments, which expose nothing but a complete absence of democratic consciousness, are being used to legitimize a campaign for censorship.

The underlying assumption is that the determination of what is truth and what are “crazy lies” is a purely objective process, unrelated to class or social interests. In fact, bourgeois politics by its very nature is built on lies, which serve, as Leon Trotsky explained, to cover over the deep contradictions in capitalist society.

Who is to be given authority to decide what is the truth? Giant corporations with intimate connections to the state, like Google, Facebook and Twitter? Or publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which serve as mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies? Or is it to be the intelligence agencies themselves?

Bill Keller, the former editor of the Times, once warned that the internet has undermined the role of “gatekeepers”—that is, institutions that vet the information to which the public has access.

These “gatekeepers” are, in fact, not politically neutral. According to the Times, for example, anyone who questions the circumstances behind the death of Jeffrey Epstein is engaged in unfounded “conspiracy theories.” Those opposing the entire anti-Russia narrative of the intelligence agencies—which has been used to justify internet censorship—are propagating “fake news.”

The implications of these types of arguments are perhaps most crassly revealed by Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

To Zuckerberg’s statement that “people should be able to see for themselves” what politicians say, Friedman declares, “Yeah, right, as if average citizens are able to discern the veracity of every political ad after years of being conditioned by responsible journalism to assume the claims aren’t just made up.”

“Years of… responsible journalism!” Friedman takes his readers for fools. Sixteen years ago, Friedman served as a propagandist for the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, promoting the White House’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” while declaring he had “no problem with a war for oil.”

In 2017, Friedman declared that “only a fool would not root for” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Just over a year later, bin Salman personally ordered Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi to be sawed into pieces at a Saudi consulate.

Presumably those who attacked Friedman for his role in promoting the lies of the state should have been censored for “propagating lies.”

As for those who should determine what is true, Friedman writes: “Diplomats, intelligence officers and civil servants” are “the people who uphold the regulations—and provide the independent research and facts—that make our government legitimate.”

That is, the task of the government, through its “intelligence officers” is to provide the “facts” that lead citizens to believe the government legitimate.

What is to be done with people who have exposed the “facts” that “intelligence officers” believe should not be public? They are to end up, like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, languishing in prison, and the publications that distribute their revelations are to be gagged.

Let’s call things by their real names. This is nothing but censorship. The New York Times is in the business of selling lies. And the public is getting tired of it, so the Times wants to prevent them from having a choice.

Since the 2016 election, the US intelligence agencies have advocated internet censorship in the name of fighting “fake news.” The main target of this campaign has not been Trump, but rather left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites and organizations. In 2017 Google, announced that it would promote “authoritative” news sources over “alternative viewpoints,” leading to a massive drop in search traffic to left-wing sites. Facebook and Twitter followed suit, removing left-wing accounts and pages with millions of followers.

Under relentless pressure from the Democrats and intelligence agencies, these companies will only intensify their offensive against left-wing, anti-war and socialist organizations.

Peronism returns to power in Argentina amid simmering social anger

Andrea Lobo

Alberto Fernández and his running mate and former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won Sunday’s presidential election in Argentina with 48 percent of the vote amid a deepening economic and social crisis.

Argentine and international financial circles are expressing overwhelming panic, but not over Fernández taking power. Instead, they fear that Peronism, the preferred force of bourgeois rule for most of the post-WWII period, will prove unable to prevent the country from being engulfed by the wave of social protests that have swept the region, from Haiti to Ecuador and Chile.

“The peso is falling—and so, it seems, is the sky,” the Washington Post commented. “Inflation and poverty rates are soaring. National reserves are shrinking fast. In short, Argentina—in a terrible déjà vu of crises past—is hurtling once again toward the economic abyss.”

The Post, owned by the world’s richest person, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, adds that the campaign was marked by “populism, inequality and corruption—the same toxic mix now touching off unrest across South America,” and concludes that Macri’s defeat proves “that only the rough-and-tumble, union-backed Peronista machine can truly rule unruly Argentina.”

The Wall Street Journal had also expressed relief over Fernández’s “ample ties with the Peronist movement including trade unions, far-left groups and conservative provincial governors.” And Forbes indicates that “given the disastrous state of Argentina’s economy, Fernández begins to look like a possible hero.”

After an almost relentless economic downturn and high inflation since 2014, in which millions have fallen below the poverty line while billions of dollars have been pumped into the pockets of exporters and financial vultures, the next government faces a social minefield.

While the Central Bank has injected tens of billions this year into financial markets to stabilize the peso, debt payments accrued so far for the next four years top $110 billion, twice as much as government spending over the last year.

An editorial in the London-based Financial Times warns that there will be “No honeymoon for Argentina’s new leader” from investors, and demands that Fernández “woo foreign investment” and oppose “big-spending,” i.e., social spending. “The end of the commodities boom and the weakness of the economy mean there is no money for such largesse,” the FT warns. The American Forbes magazine stressed along similar lines, “the importance of both paying the International Monetary Fund and cozying up with the United States and Donald Trump.”

At the same time, the “honeymoon” with restive voters is expected to be shorter, if anything, with the US intelligence firm Stratfor warning: “History has shown that high levels of popular support in Argentine politics can just as easily turn into widespread discontent and, in turn, social unrest.” It goes on to question whether Macri can “keep his country’s economy and political future from collapse in the coming weeks.”

These economic warnings extend globally, with the FT columnist Jonathan Wheatley asking recently whether “investing in emerging markets still makes sense?” For Argentina, he argues, “the great question is whether [the country] is ever going to grow again.”

Higher interest rates in the advanced economies last year led to a massive drain of capital away from so-called emerging markets, chiefly those with large debts in foreign currencies. However, now that interest rates are being pushed back down in Europe, Japan and the US, investments in emerging markets have continued to fall to the lowest level since the 1990s, according to the Institute for International Finance, which refers to a “fundamental” limit being reached.

Despite his empty populist demagogy, Alberto Fernández has already made clear that he will brutally impose the diktats of finance capital and imperialism while seeking to mobilize a divided Peronist apparatus to suppress social opposition.

During his acceptance speech Sunday he promised “the supportive and egalitarian Argentina of which everybody dreams,” while in the same breadth cautioning, “I hope you will understand the Argentina that is coming needs the effort and compromise of all.”

Reports in August indicated Fernández told IMF negotiators privately, “you’ll be able to charge us, and we’ll get along,” while his economic team promised, according to the Argentine financial newspaper Ámbito Financiero, “the imposition of adjustments to wages and pensions as a mechanism to seek fiscal equilibriums and reduce pressures on prices.”

After the August primaries signaled that right-wing president Mauricio Macri would lose power, capital flight escalated, unleashing a national strike and mass protests. On a tightrope, Macri responded by cutting regressive taxes and promising social spending, while imposing a $10,000 ceiling for US dollar purchases to limit capital flight. This was brought down dramatically to $200 this weekend.

Since then, the Peronist-led trade union bureaucracy has done everything to contain and channel the protests behind the elections to “assure a stable transition” to Fernández. However, it could not have forestalled a social explosion for so long without the assistance of the Left Workers Front-Unity (FIT-U) and its own union officials.

The Peronist bureaucracy and its apologists are using deceptive calls for “unity” to cement support for Fernández. The “dissident” trade-union confederation CTA (Argentine Workers Central) announced its re-integration into the main General Confederation of Labor (CGT) in early October. The Socialist Workers Party (PTS) in the FIT-U, which leads several unions in the CTA, responded by denouncing the “verticalism” of the decision, adding that “Fernández himself raised the need of the unity of the organized labor movement.” This, however, was only to insist that “the unification in the workers movement must be carried out in the streets with a 36-hour national strike” against Macri.

In early September, striking teachers in the southern Chubut Province, who were blocking roads and protesting back pay and austerity, were physically assaulted by more than 100 goons of the Oil and Gas Workers Union led by Jorge “Loma” Ávila, who belongs to the Kirchnerist wing of Peronism. These attacks foreshadow the repression to come, but they also raise grave historical parallels with the assassinations carried out by Peronism against left-wing workers under the government of Isabel Martínez de Perón in 1974-76, paving the way to military dictatorship. The FIT-U and other pseudo-left forces, however, have continued to channel their appeals to the same rotten bureaucracy claiming workers can “recover” the trade unions.

This false and nationalist perspective was used during the 1968-76 social upsurge by the forces in the FIT-U, including the Partido Obrero and the Morenoite predecessors of the PTS, to channel the working class behind Peronism, disarming workers politically and setting the stage for the 1976 installation of a US-backed military junta that tortured and killed tens of thousands of radicalized workers and youth, infamously dumping many into the sea from airplanes.

Despite the registry of 1.7 million new, largely young voters and the entry of new parties into the electoral coalition, the FIT-U’s presidential ticket lost 251,316 votes compared to 2015. During the presidential debates and campaign propaganda, the pseudo-left politicians were a shadow of the Fernández campaign, advancing populist, bourgeois slogans like “the crisis must be paid by those who made it” and acting as a pressure group on the Peronists.

Washington threatens to fight Syria and Russia for oil

Bill Van Auken

The Pentagon has explicitly stated that US troops being redeployed to occupy Syria’s oil fields are prepared to unleash “overwhelming force,” including against troops loyal to Syria’s own government and the Russian and Iranian forces that support it.

The ominous US threat came as clashes between Turkish and Syrian government forces along the tense border between the two countries underscored the extreme instability in the region following President Donald Trump’s order earlier this month to re-position US troops as part of the green-lighting of a Turkish invasion.

The Turkish incursion, which has killed hundreds and driven an estimated 200,000 from their homes, was launched with the purpose of driving from the border the Kurdish YPG militia, the main element in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which served as the proxy ground troops for Washington’s so-called war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Ankara considers the YPG a “terrorist” organization and an extension of the Kurdish separatist PKK in Turkey, against which it has waged a bloody counterinsurgency campaign for more than three decades.

In response to what it regards as Washington’s betrayal, the Kurdish leadership in Syria appealed to both Syria and Russia to take control of the border area.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck separate deals with the United States—buffoonishly touted by Trump as a “great day for civilization” that had “saved millions of lives”--and with Moscow. The two agreements involved successive cease-fires in the invasion launched by Ankara on October 9 in return for a commitment to move Kurdish forces 30 km (approximately 18 miles) south of the Turkish-Syrian border.

While there has been much talk of the 30 km strip being turned into a “safe zone,” with Erdogan proposing to send millions of Syrian refugees there from Turkey, one of Ankara’s principal goals is to gain control of the M4 highway that runs parallel to the border, 30 km inside Syria, and allows for the movement of troops between eastern and western Syrian territories with Kurdish majorities.

The latest cease-fire, brokered by Moscow following a meeting between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on October 22, expired on Tuesday. Moscow claimed that it had overseen the withdrawal of 34,000 YPG fighters 30 km south of the Turkish border.

Erdogan on Wednesday told members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Turkish Parliament that his government had concluded fulfillment of the agreement was not complete. “We will retaliate in kind against any assault from outside of the safe zone and will widen the area of the safe zone if necessary,” he said.

Such “retaliation” erupted into violent attacks by the Turkish military, and the Islamist militias it backs, against Syrian government troops near the strategic Syrian border town of Ras al-Ayr on Tuesday and Wednesday. According to reports, the battles claimed the lives of seven Syrian soldiers while leaving several others wounded. The Islamist “rebels” reportedly advanced under the cover of heavy Turkish supporting fire and protection by armed drones.

The so-called “rebels” have also launched attacks on predominantly Kurdish villages, with the aim of driving out their residents.

The Turkish-backed Islamists posted videos on Telegram showing their fighters kicking and abusing captured Syrian troops, as well the body of one soldier who appeared to have been executed.

Meanwhile, Time magazine cited US intelligence sources as stating that the Turkish-backed militias were using US-supplied weapons to carry out war crimes against the Kurdish civilian population in the border areas, and that Ankara has deployed far more troops than are needed to secure the so-called “safe zone,” raising the threat of an intensified “ethnic-cleansing” operation.

Under these conditions of escalating tensions on the border, where Turkey and Russia are supposed to carry out joint patrols beginning in early November, the Pentagon has spelled out that US forces being sent into Syria’s oil fields under the pretext of guarding them against ISIS are prepared to attack Syrian government and Russian forces if they enter the area.

“The United States will retain control of oil fields in northeastern Syria,” US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told a Pentagon press conference Monday. He claimed that the deployment of American troops there was aimed at denying oil resources to ISIS—which has already been defeated—and assuring that they remain a source of funding for Washington’s erstwhile Kurdish allies in the SDF. He added that US forces will “respond with overwhelming military force against any group that threatens the safety of our forces there.”

Esper was asked by CNN, “What do you want to do with in the oil fields, does that include denying access, preventing Russian or Syrian forces, which now have changed the battle space?”

The defense secretary responded, “So the short answer is yes, it presently does,” going on to claim that the objective was to assure a funding stream for the SDF so that it could continue to guard the prisons where alleged ISIS fighters numbering in the thousands are being held under appalling conditions, many of them wounded, starving and on the brink of death. These prisoners, including children, have been packed like sardines into makeshift jails.

Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, cut off further questions about a potential clash between US and Russian forces in Syria, attempting to steer the press conference back to the extra-judicial execution of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The shift of US forces to the oilfields of Syria’s northeastern Deir al-Zour province signals continuity with the regime change war launched under the Obama administration nearly eight years ago, based on the CIA’s funneling of arms, money and fighters to the Al Qaeda-linked militias that were unleashed against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Trump’s demagogic claim earlier this month that he was putting an end to Washington’s “forever wars” in the Middle East and withdrawing US troops from Syria touched off a political firestorm. The Democratic leadership in Congress was joined by the majority of Republicans, as well as recently retired senior US commanders, expressing the view of the current top brass, in denouncing the move as a “betrayal of the Kurds” and, above all, an impermissible ceding of ground to Russia and Iran in the oil-rich region.

The re-deployment of US troops to the Syrian oil fields and the killing of al-Baghdadi were both aimed at quelling this criticism. While al-Baghdadi’s slaying appears to have missed its mark in terms of generating any increase in popular support for the decades-long US military intervention in the Middle East, the sending of soldiers and tanks into the oil fields represents a commitment to continue the war for regime change.

It is meant to deny the Syrian government access to energy resources needed to reconstruct a country that has seen half a million people killed, half of its population displaced and the bulk of its infrastructure destroyed. More broadly, it is aimed at continuing the protracted military campaign to assert US hegemony over the region in order to deny its energy resources to US imperialism’s principal global rivals, in particular China.

This act of international piracy—Moscow has released videos of US forces providing security for the smuggling of Syrian oil—places US troops on a front line facing both Syrian government and Russian forces. With other state and non-state actors, including Turkey, Iran, the Kurdish militias and the Turkish-backed Islamist militias, all operating in the same small region, the threat of a localized clash sparking a region-wide or even global conflict is greater than ever.

Independent pathologist says evidence shows Jeffrey Epstein’s death was a homicide

Kevin Reed

A private pathologist hired by the brother of Jeffrey Epstein said on Wednesday that the Wall Street investment counselor likely died by “ligature homicidal strangulation” and did not kill himself in his jail cell on August 10 while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Appearing on the morning TV program “Fox and Friends,” Dr. Michael Baden contradicted the findings of the New York medical examiner that Epstein hanged himself saying, “I think the evidence points to homicide rather than suicide.”

Dr. Baden, who is a former New York City medical examiner, explained that Epstein’s injuries, including three broken bones in his neck, “are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation,” adding, “I’ve not seen in 50 years where that occurred in a suicidal hanging case.”

Six days after Jeffrey Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center and later pronounced dead, the New York City Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson said after a “careful review of all investigative information,” that the cause of death was suicide by hanging. Epstein’s legal team immediately challenged the findings, saying they had hired a private pathologist to observe the autopsy.

In his comments on the Fox program, Dr. Baden explained that there were three fractures in Jeffrey Epstein’s “hyoid bone and the thyroid cartilage that are very unusual for suicide and more indicative of homicidal strangulation.” The other forensic evidence pointed to by Dr. Baden that indicates Epstein was strangled included blood and hemorrhaging in the eyes and face and the depth and location of the mark in the middle of his neck.

Dr. Baden also provided important new details about the circumstances of Epstein’s death and the subsequent investigation into it by New York City and federal authorities. He said that DNA evidence exists that can prove whether Epstein was alone or with others in his cell during his strangulation.

Even though samples were taken from Epstein’s fingernails “to see if there was anyone else’s DNA on it,” nothing has been released about this evidence. Dr. Baden further said that Epstein was allegedly found hanging from a homemade ligature that “was made out of torn strips of orange sheets and whoever made it had to have a lot of DNA on it and the brother has been asking that from day one.”

Dr. Baden also revealed that the doctor who performed the autopsy originally did not think there was enough information to make a determination on the cause of death, “so she put pending further study” and a week later this was changed without any explanation. “The brother wants to know what did they get new in that week” to change their determination, Baden said. “It’s 80 days now and the brother feels he is getting a runaround.”

Michael Baden is a board-certified forensic pathologist who is known for his work on high-profile deaths and is the host of the HBO TV program “Autopsy.” He was the chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassination’s pathology panel that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and has examined more than 20,000 deaths.

Dr. Baden said that his independent investigation is not complete until all information has been collected and provided for analysis. It is the opinion of Baden and of Jeffrey’s brother Mark Epstein that if it was a homicide, a number of people had to have been involved.

In his interview with Fox, Dr. Baden also brought up the other facts in the case—guards assigned to watch Epstein’s cell had been asleep for hours, the removal of Epstein’s cellmate the day before he was found dead, and the “malfunctioning” of the video surveillance cameras near his cell—as evidence of a conspiracy. He also pointed to the contradiction in the behavior of Epstein just prior to his death—working diligently on his legal defense and optimistic about the possibility of being released on bail—as not that of someone planning a suicide.

From the initial reports of Epstein’s death, sections of the corporate media led by the New York Times have been quick to conclude that he died by hanging himself, and accusing anyone of raising questions about his death of being “conspiracy theorists,” despite the many legitimate concerns about what happened and the obvious motives by some for having him murdered. Once the New York medical examiner issued the finding of “suicide by hanging,” the New York Times began reporting it as a well-established fact and quickly dropped the story from their news coverage.

The new facts and evaluation from Dr. Baden further substantiate that there is a connection between Jeffrey Epstein’s death, his arrest and pending trial on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York, and his relationships with many high-profile political and business figures internationally. There is no doubt that Epstein was preparing a defense that would have included an exposure of the participation of many elite individuals who he regularly met with and entertained at his properties in New York City, Palm Beach, Florida, and his private island in the Caribbean.

The Boeing crashes and the criminalization of American capitalism

Bryan Dyne

“There are certain men in the world who rather see everybody hung before they'll take blame.” ― Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons”

When American playwright Arthur Miller wrote those words in 1947, he was penning a work based on the conspiracy between the Wright Aeronautical Corporation and military and civilian inspectors to approve defective airplane engines for use in World War II. The collusion occurred between 1941 and 1943 and was brought before then-Senator Harry Truman’s investigative committee after workers exposed the scheme. A number of executives went to prison.

In Miller’s play, the chief culprit, Joe Keller, offloads the blame onto a subordinate and later finds out that 21 pilots died as a result of his actions, including one of his sons. Keller commits suicide out of shame and regret.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg showed no such human emotions when he sat before the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday. Knowing he had nothing to fear from the Democratic and Republican politicians deferentially lobbing questions at him, he stonewalled and evaded, defending his decision to ignore and conceal multiple warnings from engineers and pilots and rush the deadly Boeing 737 Max 8 into service in 2017.

He even defended the “delegation” of oversight by federal regulators to Boeing itself and called for a further “updating,” i.e., gutting, of regulations.

Within two years of the launch of the new plane, two 737 Max 8 planes had crashed as a result of the malfunction of an automatic anti-stall mechanism called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), whose very existence had been concealed from pilots. A total of 346 men, women and children were killed.

At this week’s hearings, Muilenburg acknowledged that he knew of the red flags, yet not a single congressman or senator suggested that he, or his coconspirators in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), should be criminally prosecuted. Nor did the corporate media.

The first disaster occurred just over a year ago when Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the sea outside of Jakarta, Indonesia, killing 189 people. The second came five months later, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 nosedived into the ground near Addis Ababa, extinguishing the lives of another 157 human beings.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Muilenburg did not even acknowledge the presence of family members of the deceased who stood behind him holding up photos of their lost spouses, children, parents and siblings. He turned around to face them only after a member of the group demanded that he “look at people when you say you’re sorry.”

The Max 8 crashes were not simply accidents, they were crimes. They were the outcome of the criminalization of the American corporate ruling class.

Investigations by both Indonesian and Ethiopian flight safety officials have concluded that both Boeing and the FAA were culpable in the crashes.

By now, facts have emerged, some of which were raised at the hearings, which demonstrate incontrovertibly that Boeing knowingly put into service an aircraft that was not safe. These include:

• Emails from pilots and engineers warning of the dangers, including one from Mark Forkner, Boeing’s chief technical pilot, noting that MCAS was out of control, “egregious” and “running rampant” during a test run on a flight simulator.
• An email to Muilenburg from a senior manager recommending that the entire Max 8 program be shut down because standard safety protocols were being ignored in the race to launch the plane before Boeing’s European-based rival Airbus captured a slice of its market share. He wrote, “All my internal warning bells are going off and for the first time in my life I am hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.”
• A 2016 warning to Congress from the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, which represents workers at the FAA, that deregulation had reached a point where regulators would be able to intervene in problems with an airplane only “after an accident has happened and people are killed.”
• The removal of any mention of MCAS from flight training manuals and the reduction of pilot training on the new aircraft to a one-hour video on an iPad.
• Boeing’s expansion of the power and scope of MCAS shortly before the Max 8’s launch without any notification to the FAA, other regulatory agencies, pilots or airlines.
• Boeing’s decision to attach a new and bigger engine to a five-decade old airframe, rather than redesign the airplane, in order to cut costs, reduce labor, rush production and speed up certification. The resulting tendency of the Max 8 to stall, which MCAS was intended to correct, rendered the new plane “fatally flawed,” according to former pilot and aviation safety expert Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.
• The failure of Boeing and the FAA to ground the 737 Max 8 after the October 2018 Lion Air crash, even though Boeing had been aware of problems with MCAS before the disaster. Even after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 five months later, Boeing and the FAA refused to ground the plane until every other authority in the world had done so.

All of these crimes of commission or omission flow from Boeing’s subordination of all considerations, including safety, to profit. This is not unique to the aerospace manufacturer, but the basis of the entire capitalist system. The lives lost along the way are just the cost of doing business.

While the grounding of the Max 8 and lawsuits by pilots and relatives of victims are expected to cost Boeing $8 billion, the company increased in value by nearly $200 billion from the time that the deathtrap was announced in 2011 to when the planes were grounded.

The anarchy and irrationality of the capitalist market have been given unbridled rein by the deregulation of the airline industry—and every other sector of the capitalist economy—which began under Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1978 and has continued under both Democrats and Republicans for the past four decades. It is of a piece with the financialization and deindustrialization of the economy and the destruction of jobs, wages and social services.

For his part, Muilenburg laid off 16,000 workers in 2016 and 2017, his first two full years as CEO. As a reward, he draws a salary of $30 million a year. This year, nearly a third of his compensation has come from selling off a sizeable chunk of his Boeing stock a month before the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

Like many mega corporations, Boeing occupies a strategic position in the global operations of American imperialism and is tightly integrated into the state military/intelligence apparatus. It is the largest US exporter and second largest defense contractor. It is on the front lines of the mounting trade conflict with Europe, in which Boeing faces off against Europe’s Airbus. Since Trump’s election, it has more than tripled its stock price, spearheading the massive run-up on the Dow that has bolstered the fortunes of the American ruling elite.

Boeing is only one example of the lawlessness of the operations of big business. The recent past has seen the BP oil spill, the lead poisoning of Flint, the opioid epidemic, the wildfires and power outages linked to PG&E and the Wall Street crash of 2008. Not a single CEO has gone to jail as a result of these disasters driven by corporate greed and criminality. As Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder told Congress in 2013, America’s corporate barons and their business empires are “too big to jail.”

These are not aberrations or the products, at root, of subjective avarice—although blind greed exists in abundance. The criminalization of the American ruling class is the product of the degeneration and crisis of the entire social and economic system of capitalism.

The Boeing disasters underscore the need to put an end to capitalism and replace it with socialism, which is based on the satisfaction of social need, not private profit. This means mobilizing the working class to expropriate the private owners of the banks and major corporations and transform corporate giants such as Boeing into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities. It means ending the dictatorship of the corporations over the workers and placing the control of economic life in the hands of the producers.

The entire political system and both bribed parties of big business, including their left talkers like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will oppose this to the bitter end. To establish safe, efficient, comfortable and affordable air travel requires the independent and revolutionary mobilization of the working class in the US and internationally in the fight for socialism.