Militarization of the Brazilian state escalates under Lula

Miguel Andrade

With the announcement in early November that it would send troops into customs and ports under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, the Workers Party (PT) government of President Lula da Silva has taken a decisive step in the further militarization of the Brazilian state, which has accelerated since his first two terms, in 2002-2010.

Military parade in Brasilia on "Day of the Soldier", August 25, 2023 [Photo: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom/ Agência Brasil]

The government announced the measure, formally called a “Guarantee of Law and Order” (GLO) operation, after adamantly denying it would resort to it for over 10 months, since taking office on January 1. According to the Justice Ministry, the operation is focused on ports and airports serving the country’s two largest cities, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as well as the southwestern “triple borders” with Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. The GLO allows for the three military branches to take charge of the operations of the federal customs agency, the federal police and associated security branches. The ostensible goal is to “choke” drug trafficking routes entering the country across the western land borders and leaving for European and US cities through eastern ports.

The immediate pretext for the decree was a series of attacks on transport infrastructure on Rio de Janeiro’s impoverished western sector, controlled by mafias formed by off-duty and retired policemen, known as Milícias. On the afternoon of October 23, a Monday, unidentified men started torching buses in the sector’s main thoroughfares, bringing the city to a halt, with classes cancelled and shops closed for the next two days. The action was reportedly a retaliation for the assassination of a Milícia boss by the police. 

The violent episode in Rio de Janeiro immediately sparked a political offensive from the far-right opposition linked to former fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro, which accused the PT government of being “soft” on crime. Barely a week later, the government announced the hasty beginning of the GLO under cries of law-and-order. “It is a necessary action to confront and stifle the financing of organized crime, which has grown due to the lack of serious action by those who have governed the country in recent years,” said PT party president Gleisi Hoffman. 

The decision to launch the GLO operation has sparked significant media commentary, given the PT’s campaign promises in the 2022 elections that it would work for the reversion of the military power grab intensified under former fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro named thousands of military officers to every level of the federal government, including his cabinet, which culminated in the military supporting his claims of election fraud and playing a significant role in the planning and execution of the January 8 fascist assault on Brasilia.

Amid the critical events of the January 8 coup attempt, Lula explicitly rejected the suggestions from the military command and his Defense minister that he should decree a GLO operation to seal the capital. He later explained that once the operation was begun “Lula ceases to be the government so that some general can take over the government.”

Only a week before the decree of the ongoing military operation over ports and borders, Lula had stated that “as long as I’m president, there will be no GLO.” Seeking to justify the government’s sudden shift, Justice Minister Flávio Dino, a former member of the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), defensively declared that the measure does not transfer any power to the military, as no state or city-level authority would be taken over as previously done in other GLO operations.

But however desperately the PT administration attempts to conceal it, the fact is that this is another major concession to the coup-plotting military that can only lead in the direction pointed to by Lula in January: the increasing encroachment on political power by the Armed Forces.

The use of GLOs had so far been resisted by the government due to their popular association with state-sponsored violence and repression against the country’s working class, especially the impoverished sectors living in Brazil’s impoverished favelas, or shantytowns. GLOs have been increasingly used by successive presidents since the fall of the US-backed military dictatorship in 1985, gaining special attention after the first election of Lula and the PT in 2002. In his second term, from 2006 to 2010, Lula intensified the use of GLOs in densely populated favelas of Rio de Janeiro. 

The hosting of international sporting events in Rio de Janeiro, such as the 2007 Pan-American games, the 2014 FIFA World Cup final and the 2016 Summer Olympics, was a pretext for the PT sending troops in combat gear to replace the police in the favelas. Bloodied in the criminal UN-sponsored intervention in Haiti, the military failed to choke drug cartels, but did inflict widespread abuse against the population.

In 2014, former PT president Dilma Rousseff used a GLO to seal Rio’s port area and shut down demonstrations by oil workers opposing the privatization of oil fields. After Dilma’s impeachment in 2016, interim president Michel Temer enacted two GLOs that, under the same pretenses of “choking crime,” put Rio de Janeiro state’s security in military hands for almost a year. 

Each of these high-profile military actions resulted in long-lasting violence against the working class and produced leading agents of the fascist conspiracy in Brazil. Bolsonaro’s Defense Minister and later running-mate, Gen. Walter Braga Netto, for instance, was the head of the federal intervention in Rio under Temer.

Lula’s decision to decree a new GLO operation is even more significant in the face of the recent explosion of infighting between the country’s top civilian security agencies, the Federal Police (PF) and the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin). 

On October 20, Federal Police agents raided Abin headquarters and arrested two of its agents accused of coordinating the illegal use of spy software to monitor over 33,000 individuals. Among them are Supreme Court Justices, opposition politicians and journalists. The same operation raided the Brazilian headquarters of Cognyte, the Israeli-based company selling the spy software, uncovering data about its secret acquisition by the Army under the federal intervention in Rio headed by Gen. Braga Netto. Initial reports also recount the discovery of a scheme for the mass hacking of computers and cell phones. 

Abin representatives complained off the record that the PF had exceeded its authority in raiding the agency’s offices, and that it wanted to stage a spectacle amid fierce disputes over who should be in charge of presidential security after the PT government transferred it from the Abin to the PF.

The open clashes between different branches of Brazil’s repressive apparatus express their growing grip on the state. Under the new PT administration, the Brazilian ruling class is attempting to solve its disputes behind the backs of the population and with ever increasing use of authoritarian measures—most notably through the classified investigation of Bolsonaro’s coup plans led by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

The GLO decree by Lula once more gives the lie to all previous promises about returning the military strictly to their role in “national defense.” Military units and commanders assigned to police the ports and borders will have authority over other independent federal law enforcement agencies, including the PF, hailed by Lula as a “neutral” agency, free from Bolsonaro’s influence.

UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s electioneering budget: an attack on workers and the poor

Robert Stevens

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled an electioneering budget Wednesday, widely hailed in the media as based on a £20 billion tax giveaway. This was far from the case, with supposed benefits for workers largely illusory and big business the real beneficiary.

It built on Hunt’s initial Autumn Statement last year, described at the time by the Financial Times as a “£55bn plan for fiscal tightening” resulting in “the biggest drop in living standards for 70 years.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt leaves No 11 Downing Street ahead of delivering his Autumn Statement in Parliament [Photo by Rory Arnold/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The budget was trailed as a signal by Hunt and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that after years of economic crisis and austerity, the economy was growing again. With the rate of inflation halved over the past year, the time was therefore ripe to continue growth and cut taxes.

Up until 24 hours before the budget, talk was that Hunt was undecided whether to cut income tax or National Insurance rates. In the end he cut National Insurance (NI) by 2 percent from 12 to 10 percent, and not income tax. This was far and away the cheapest alternative for the Treasury.

While around 27 million workers and self-employed people will keep a few hundred pounds of their income as a result of the NI cut, the change will mainly benefit higher earners, mostly Tory voters. Hunt noted specifically, “It means someone on the average salary of £35,000 will save over £450… and for the typical police officer it is a saving of over £630 every single year.”

NI taxes contribute around 20 percent of National Health Service (NHS) funding. Hunt’s cut dovetails with government plans to further privatise the NHS.

The prospect of an election was also behind upgrading welfare benefits to match the slightly higher inflation rate in September, rather than at the 4.5 percent rate it fell to in October. The pension “triple lock”, matching the state pension to the rate of inflation or average wage increase, whichever is higher, was also untouched by Hunt given the fact that most pensioners traditionally vote Tory.

The NI cut raises the possibility of an election earlier than previously anticipated. Instead of the tax cut beginning with the new financial year next April, emergency legislation will be passed Thursday with the saving in wages beginning from January 6.

All these supposed “giveback” measures are smoke and mirrors.

The failure to make any changes on income tax thresholds means millions are left poorer than ever. The Daily Mirror noted, “While this sounds like good news, a cursory glance suggests not everyone will be celebrating. Income tax thresholds, frozen since 2021, remain unchanged. As a result, it is estimated that three million could find themselves in a higher bracket by 2029.”

The paper cited the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which said, “The 2p cut to National Insurance means £449 less tax paid by an average full-time employee, but this is almost entirely offset by frozen thresholds and other changes since 2021. For others, these freezes will more than cancel out the 2p cut.”

Sky News reported, “Forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) showed taxes were still trending upwards, with a post-war high of 37.7% set to be reached by 2028/29 under the current government plans.

“They put this down to so-called ‘fiscal drag’, as while people’s wages may increase, the level at which they start paying tax remains unchanged, and that leads to more people being moved into the higher tax rates four million more, if the OBR’s prediction is correct.”

Hunt trumpeted a rise in the National Living Wage by 9.8 percent to £11.44 from next April, in line with recommendations from the Low Pay Commission. He had the gall to declare that this “delivers our manifesto commitment to eliminate low pay altogether.” But for the low paid, food inflation, housing costs and other essentials have risen by far more than this. For the last year millions of workers took industrial action in a private and public sector strike wave amid the worst cost of living surge in living memory. The trade unions ensured that below-inflation deals were imposed, as they sabotaged an industrial offensive that could have led to the downfall of Sunak’s hated government.

According to Office for Budget Responsibility, Hunt’s budget means that real household disposable income (RHDI) per person is set to be 3.5 percent lower in 2024-25 than it was before the COVID pandemic hit. Workers are still on course for a collapse in real living standards without precedent since records began in the 1950s.

Hunt also set out to slash the welfare budget, announcing measures aimed at forcing hundreds of thousands of ill and disabled people into employment. These sadistic policies are expected to see £4 billion stripped from the welfare budget by 2025. Hunt said that the already punitive work capability assessment will be reformed “to reflect greater flexibility and availability of home-working after the pandemic”.

Those on welfare payments who do not find a job within 18 months will be forced to undertake work experience. After six months of sanctions if they have still not got a job, they will lose their benefits altogether and even the right to free NHS prescriptions and legal aid. The few exemptions from this brutal crackdown will be those with an expected short life span, such as people being treated for cancer and those with a terminal illness.

Among the millions of people being snared in this dragnet are those whose health has been wrecked, possibly for life, as a result of being infected by COVID and who now suffer from Long Covid. The Independent reported, “The Department for Work and Pensions says that since the Covid pandemic the number of people inactive due to long-term sickness or disability has risen by almost half a million to a record high of 2.6 million.”

Tens of billions of pounds stripped from public spending will be lavished on the military budget with Hunt proclaiming, “We will meet our NATO commitment to spend 2% of our GDP on defence, critical at a time of global threats to the international order most notably from Putin’s evil war in Ukraine.” Since February 2022, the government has given the Ukrainian regime over £13 billion in military and financial aid, making it a major contributor to the NATO-led war against Russia.

Big business was the major recipient of government largesse, receiving an additional £11 billion a year in tax breaks. Hunt announced that a measure known as “full expensing” that was set to expire in 2026, which allows businesses to deduct the full cost of investing in machinery and equipment from their tax bill, will be made permanent. This he boasted was the “largest business tax cut in modern British history”.

BBC Business editor Simon Jack said of the measure, “Big profitable construction, engineering and manufacturing businesses will be happy tonight,” giving “the UK one of the most competitive investment environments in the developed world.”

Responding to Hunt, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves moved to reassure big business that they would do much the same when in government. Her speech consisted mainly of complaints that Hunt had pilfered from Labour policy. “We welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that he will make full expensing permanent—another thing that we have been calling for,” she stated. The problem was that business was still “left exposed to the Tories’ economic volatility. Labour’s partnership with business will get our economy firing on all cylinders.”

Reeves boasted that this week Labour, “established a new British infrastructure council, with key investors in the UK economy focused on unlocking private investment by addressing the delivery challenges that businesses face when investing in Britain. Through Labour’s new national wealth fund, we will work alongside the private sector to back the growth of British industries.”

She solidarized with Hunt’s attack on the sick and disabled designed to force them into minimum wage jobs stating, “If we are going to grow the economy, we must get more people into work. Let me be clear: people who can work, should work. That is why we have long argued that the work capability assessment needs replacing, because right now it is discouraging people from seeking work.”

The Financial Times was impressed enough with Reeves’ response to declare, “With a general election expected next year, Labour’s refusal to criticize any of the policies announced by Hunt underscores how closely aligned the two party’s economic visions have become.”

Labor shortages among air traffic controllers threatens airline safety

Claude Delphian

John F. Kennedy International Airport on June 16, 2021. [Photo by Antony-22 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

A recent slew of mistakes and near-misses has finally received the public attention of officials in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Aviation safety experts and industry union representatives reported to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Safety on November 9 that a shortage of air traffic controllers has led to increased fatigue and distraction, in turn contributing to an increase in close calls this year.

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Safety Transportation Board (NTSB), said that aviation safety is “showing clear signs of strain that we cannot ignore.”

“Air traffic controllers are being required to do mandatory overtime,” Homendy testified at the Senate hearing. “It ends up leading to fatigue and distraction, which is exactly what we’re seeing as part of these incident investigations. And it all just comes down to the shortage of staffing.”

Rich Santa, the President of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), told the subcommittee that mandatory overtime is routine, including 6 day workweeks and 10 hour shifts. “It’s unsustainable,” he said. “The answer is not continuing to burden us with more fatigue, and continuing to burden us with more effort and work. It’s hiring the right amount of controllers” so that the facilities are adequately staffed.

Air travel dropped sharply in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary, necessary lockdowns that ensued. During this time, the FAA halted hiring and closed the sole training academy in Oklahoma City. Academy graduates and trainees in FAA facilities nationwide were told to stay home as their training was suspended. In short, the training pipeline was blocked, and no new controllers were being certified while many controllers took the opportunity to retire instead of being forced to work in unsafe facilities during a pandemic where little was being done to protect workers from deadly infection.

Passenger flights rebounded in 2022 when the last of the meager measures protecting against the pandemic were swept away in the name of protecting “the economy.” The FAA was then faced with an instant staffing crisis, prepared by decades of down-to-the-wire hiring practices.

The FAA had called a safety summit in March of over 200 safety experts from US air carriers, airports, air traffic control, and trade unions. These groups were asked to look at the recent problems with “fresh eyes.” But everyone in the aviation industry has known for decades about the chronic staffing crisis with FAA air traffic controllers.

When Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 as part of its crushing the PATCO strike (the NATCA, formed among the scab controllers, replaced PATCO as the air traffic controllers’ union after the strike), the FAA had to rapidly hire new controllers within a few months and years in order to recover a high level of safety in the airspace. As a consequence, massive numbers of air traffic controllers were projected to retire later at nearly the same time.

Air traffic controllers, like firefighters and other highly stressed safety workers, are required to retire by the age of 56 due to biological stresses of the job and the decrease in reaction time and cognitive abilities that come with age. Despite this, the FAA has been known to issue exemptions to allow some workers to work past mandatory retirement age, which has the effect of eroding the margin of safety.

This age-out requirement and the consequences for staffing are well-known, but the FAA has repeatedly failed to act to prevent the looming crisis that now stands before them. The National Air Traffic Controller Association (NATCA) has also long-known about this perpetual staffing crisis. Despite posing as an organization that staunchly defends its membership and the flying public against the grinding wheels of an incompetent FAA bureaucracy, NATCA has also failed to organize its membership to fight for a solution to the staffing and safety problems. Instead, NATCA has gamely gone along with the agency’s hiring plans for years, insisting to its membership that the union has no power over the hiring process.

The Chief Operating Officer of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO), Tim Arel, said that the FAA is working to “hire, train and certify as many controllers as possible. While we have a long way to go, many of the facilities are much healthier than they were previously.”

Senator Ted Cruz, the ranking Republican of the Senate Commerce Committee, asked Arel if a second academy location might help to train more controllers. “At this rate, it would take years for the FAA to hire enough controllers to meet the need,” Cruz said.

“The greatest challenge is not the physical space” at the academy, said Arel. “It’s the number of retired controllers, either military or FAA, that are available to provide instruction,” and are willing to relocate to Oklahoma City to work as instructors.

Air traffic staffing is a snowballing problem where controllers retire as early as possible because of the poor working conditions, and few are willing to relocate away from home to Oklahoma City upon retirement for lower pay and worse working conditions. The academy thus becomes a choke point in the hiring process where the FAA is unwilling to change their process or offer more pay to attract qualified instructors.

College graduates of the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative (AT-CTI), a program that has languished from official disdain and union betrayals on subjects like seniority, are expected to soon be hired and sent directly to their facilities for training. CTI graduates have already received basic air traffic training at their accredited colleges, so it is seen as a shortcut for the FAA, who only now sees it that way because they are in a crisis of their own making.

“Our nation is experiencing an aviation safety crisis,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL). “Near-misses are happening way too frequently, and I refuse to be complacent in waiting to act until the next runway incursion becomes a fatal collision.”

These protestations from both capitalist parties do nothing to address the issues facing controllers themselves, however.

Applicants are not able to choose for themselves where they are sent after graduating from the academy. They are sent where they are needed most, which is often away from their homes, family, and friends with almost zero chance to transfer back home for many years, if ever.

Once hired and trained, controllers are expected to work horrendous “rattler” schedules, so-called because, like the rattlesnake, they “turn around and bite back.” These schedules typically start with two or three second shifts, a “quick turn” to two first shifts with only 9 hours between shifts for commuting, eating, and sleeping, ending with a quick turn to a third shift overnight with only 8 hours between shifts.

The existence of these shifts completely exposes the illegitimacy of the FAA’s claims of reducing fatigue and stress in their workforce, but are popular with the agency because it requires fewer controllers to cover busy shifts and allows management to plug in overtime workers into any variety of shift with minimal retraining.

Compounding all of these problems that make the job less attractive to possible qualified applicants is the eroding pay. New controllers-in-training often start at around $31,000, even in expensive metropolitan areas where most of the highest level facilities exist. Trainees then go through years of training, stepping up their pay along the way. At the end of training, controllers can expect a median annual salary of $138,556 (in 2021), but it is usually much less in lower-level facilities. Many controllers can expect as little as $63,000 per year after training in a low-level facility that they were often sent to against their wishes.

Controller pay has been eroded by high inflation, which wage increases under the NATCA contract have not been keeping up with for years. Last year, NATCA accepted, without informing its membership first, a five-year extension to the current contract. This contract extension locks controllers into below-inflation annual pay increases and does nothing to negate years of declining real wages before the pandemic. Many controllers at the time were outraged that this extension could push the next negotiations into an even more hostile administration, as well as continuing the decrease in their standard of living.

The experience of the NATCA bureaucrats could not be more different than that of their membership. A union newsletter was issued to the membership congratulating NATCA on the successful sellout. This newsletter was how most rank-and-file workers even found out about the extension.

The staffing crisis is a symptom of the need for this struggle and cannot be solved without facing off with both the FAA and the pro-corporate union, NATCA. The FAA refuses to arrange better scheduling for its workers while NATCA acts as the agency’s apologist, telling their membership how impossible it is for them to acquire what is rightfully theirs and aiding the FAA in maintaining the operation at the cost of workers’ health and well-being.

Controllers are not alone, however. Air traffic workers have as their natural allies the pilots and flight attendants who need a safe airspace system, as well as other industry workers and workers in other industries who are fighting the same struggle against their employers and bureaucracies.

The demand for adequate staffing goes hand-in-hand with demands for pay that keeps up with inflation, scheduling that prevents unnecessary fatigue, protection from infection in the workplace with COVID-19 and other illnesses, and not forcing workers to locations where they do not want to be.

US appeals court guts Voting Rights Act

Barry Grey

On Monday, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that effectively turns the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 into a dead letter.

In a 2 to 1 ruling, the appeals court, based in St. Louis and overseeing the mid-US states of Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas, agreed with a US district judge in Arkansas that private individuals and groups such as the NAACP had no right under the law’s Section 2 enforcement provisions to bring legal challenges against redistricting decisions and other actions by states or localities that weaken the voting power of blacks or other minorities.

President Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965

The ruling currently applies only to the seven states in the appeals court’s jurisdiction and is virtually certain to be appealed to the US Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, issued a conflicting ruling on the same issue, affirming the right of individuals to bring such actions under Section 2 of the VRA.

If the US Supreme Court allows the Eighth Circuit ruling to stand, the evisceration of enforcement of the VRA will become the law of the land.

In an extraordinary rejection of decades-long legal precedent and practice under the VRA, and the express intent of Congress, US District Judge Lee Rudofsky in eastern Arkansas, a Trump appointee, in February 2022 dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Arkansas NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel challenging Arkansas’ new legislative map. Judge Rudofsky threw out the suit on the grounds that any such legal challenge had to be brought or joined by the US Justice Department. The judge argued there was no language in the text of Section 2 that explicitly grants “private right of action” under the VRA.

In upholding the ruling in Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas, Eighth Circuit Appeals Court Judge David Stras, another Trump appointee and author of the majority decision, acknowledged that he was overturning what has been settled law for nearly 50 years. He noted that over the past 40 years, only 15 of 182 successful Section 2 cases have been “brought solely” by the US attorney general. He wrote further that while courts have “for much of the last half-century” assumed that private individuals and groups could sue to enforce the VRA, “a deeper look has revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy footing.” Stras was joined by Judge Ryamond Gruender, a George W. Bush appointee.

In his dissent, Eighth Circuit Chief Judge Lavenski Smith, also a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that “while admittedly, the Court has never directly addressed the existence of a private right of action under [Article 2],” the Court has “repeatedly considered such cases, held that private rights of action exist under other sections of the VRA, and concluded in other VRA cases that a private right of action exists under [Article 2].”

He continued:

Until the Court rules or Congress amends the statute, I would follow existing precedent that permits citizens to seek a judicial remedy. Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection.

Many legal experts immediately blasted the Eighth Circuit ruling, decrying not only its substantive anti-democratic significance for voting rights, but also its radical judicial authoritarianism and contempt both for precedent and the intent of Congress in adopting the VRA.

Paul Smith, senior vice president of the Campaign Legal Center, said, “Eliminating individual people’s right to sue under Section 2 of the VRA runs contrary to settled law, common sense and any basic concept of fairness. When the government discriminates against people, they should have a right to fight back in court.”

Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, in a post on the Election Law Blog, wrote that the Eighth Circuit majority decision was based on “a wooden textualist analysis,” despite “recognizing that the Supreme Court and lower courts have for decades allowed such cases to be brought, assuming that Congress intended to allow such suits.” Hasen added that the appeals court majority “acknowledges that the legislative history of the passage of Section 2 leaves no doubt: Congress intended to allow private plaintiffs to bring suit.”

Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, said the appeals court ruling, if allowed to stand, would be “devastating to the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.” She added the decision suggested that there exists “an environment where judges felt like it would be permissible for them to rewrite the law and upend precedent and core rights and protections.”

Should the US Supreme Court uphold the Eighth Circuit ruling, it would mark a major escalation in a mounting political and juridical assault on democratic rights in the US that has been underway for decades. It would bring to mind rulings that paved the way for the American Civil War, such as the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which blew apart all legislative attempts to contain the spread of slavery to the new states being carved out of US territories, place any restrictions on the institution of chattel slavery, or allow for the possibility of freed slaves becoming US citizens.

The current radical right Court has already struck down Roe v. Wade, abolishing at a stroke the constitutional right of women to obtain an abortion. It has also struck down a partial student debt relief program passed by Congress and bolstered the “right” of religious zealots to deny service to individuals based on their religious beliefs. It is serving as a spearhead of a legal counterrevolution being directed by the capitalist ruling class, which is mired in crisis, facing a growing rebellion by the working class, prosecuting a global policy of imperialist war and turning ever more openly to authoritarian and fascistic methods of rule.

In 2000, the Supreme Court in a 5–4 vote handed the presidency to the loser of the popular vote, George W. Bush, by halting the counting of votes in Florida. That ushered in the “war on terror,” the Department of Homeland Security, the institutionalization of drone assassinations, detention without trial and torture at places like Guantanamo.

Thirteen years later, the Supreme Court in a 5–4 ruling (Shelby County v. Holder) overturned Section 4 of the VRA, the “preclearance” provision that required states with a history of Jim Crow segregation and anti-black voter suppression to preclear with the US Justice Department any changes in voting procedures. It marked a major escalation in the attack on voting rights not just for blacks, but for the working class as a whole, including the imposition of voter ID requirements and other obstacles to ballot access for workers and poor people.

Now, with the Eighth Circuit ruling, a new stage in the assault on the VRA and democratic rights more broadly has been initiated. It is possible, for tactical reasons, that the Supreme Court could either reject or modify the ruling if and when it hears an appeal. Last June, the Court ruled in a Section 2 case that Alabama had drawn a racially discriminatory congressional map and ordered that the map be redrawn.

But any such ruling in an appeal of Monday’s Eighth Circuit decision would not mark a reversal of the capitalist court system’s intensifying assault on democratic rights. Recent developments, in fact, point to a drive by at least a section of the far-right faction on the high court to complete the evisceration of the VRA.

In a 2021 Section 2 case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the six right-wing Republican justices on the Supreme Court joined in a 6–3 decision upholding Arizona laws barring trade unions and advocacy groups from collecting voters’ mail-in ballots and banning out-of-precinct voting. The ruling, coming after Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election on the bogus grounds that mail-in ballots and other measures designed to facilitate access to the ballot during the pandemic were used to “steal” the election for Joe Biden, signaled that the right-wing Court majority would make it more difficult to successfully challenge new, restrictive election laws passed by Republican-led state legislatures following Trump’s failed coup.

This was made possible by the efforts of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party to conceal from the American people the complicity of large sections of the military and national security state apparatus, as well as major factions of the financial aristocracy and the bulk of the Republican Party officialdom, in Trump’s attempted coup.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, filed a one-paragraph concurring opinion to Justice Samuel Alito’s majority decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, in which Gorsuch “flagged one thing”—the fact that the Court had not directly addressed whether private individuals or groups could bring legal actions under the VRA against voting-related policies of state and local authorities. Gorsuch thereby signaled his support for the Court to reconsider its practice since the passage of the VRA in 1965 of accepting such legal challenges for review. Far-right Justice Clarence Thomas, notorious for his corrupt relations with billionaire fascistic Republicans, signed onto Gorsuch’s opinion.

JFK: What the Doctors Saw

Tom Carter

A new documentary, JFK: What the Doctors Saw, directed by Barbara Shearer, was made available for streaming online on Paramount Plus on November 14. At roughly 90 minutes, the documentary is a tightly constructed forensic examination of a limited category of evidence relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. on November 22, 1963. Its subject matter consists of the observations of the doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where Kennedy was taken after he was shot.

John F. Kennedy, moments before he was shot.

With this narrow scope, the documentary does not substantively explore the political motives for a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy within the American state apparatus. In fact, behind the idealized public façade of “Camelot,” there were violent political vendettas within the Kennedy administration over the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Nuclear Test Ban treaty and Vietnam. But while it confines itself to a forensic study of a limited range of evidence, what this new documentary does reveal is disturbing and explosive.

The official government account of the assassination, which was advanced within hours of the shooting and which has been maintained ever since, is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy from behind with a rifle from a window of the Texas School Book Depository Building after the presidential motorcade had passed the building and was driving away.

But what the doctors all say they saw when Kennedy arrived at the trauma room at Parkland Memorial Hospital was a bullet entrance wound in the front of Kennedy’s neck, with an exit wound at the back of his head. The doctors unanimously recall seeing that.

One of the most striking moments in the film is when the doctors are shown photos purportedly from the autopsy of Kennedy performed in Washington D.C. They shake their heads and express disbelief, and one doctor says incredulously, “That’s not what I saw.”

If Kennedy was shot from the front, that not only decisively rebuts the official story, it points to a government conspiracy, spanning years and decades, to cover up what really happened.

The film, which consists in large part of the testimony of the doctors themselves, opens with a depiction of Parkland Memorial Hospital in 1963. Many of the doctors themselves were Kennedy supporters and idolized him. Kennedy was a president who, in stark contrast to any politician in the American government today, could speak to genuine democratic ideals and aspirations, however much his administration deviated from them in practice.

The seven Parkland doctors are sympathetic, all-around decent people. They have all passed away since giving their testimony, much of which is shown in this new documentary for the first time.

Parkland Hospital surgery staff

The Parkland Hospital was evidently one of the best in the Dallas area, and the doctors and nurses were experienced professionals who had evaluated and treated countless gunshot wounds and other serious injuries before November 22. Speaking movingly in their taped interviews, they were all clearly shocked and traumatized by the events of that day—as well as by the shadowy government conduct they witnessed in the wake of the shooting.

After the shooting in downtown Dallas, the motorcade sped to the nearest hospital, which was Parkland. The doctors received Kennedy’s body in the trauma room and were prepared to do their best. But Kennedy’s injuries were nothing short of catastrophic. While the doctors observed an entrance wound in the front of his neck, the back of his head, the doctors say, was “gone,” together with much of his brain.

As shown in the video shot by bystander Abraham Zapruder as the Kennedy motorcade was passing the infamous “grassy knoll”--which is no less unsettling to watch than it was a half-century ago--Kennedy’s head all but exploded as he was shot, sending bits and pieces of his skull and brain cascading over the back of the car. Jacqueline Kennedy, who was seated next to Kennedy in the car, can be seen in the video retrieving a piece of his brain that had been blown onto the rear of the car, which the Parkland doctors say she was still holding when she arrived at the hospital.

In the trauma room at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Kennedy was not breathing and his heart was not beating, and there was little for the doctors to do after briefly attempting to resuscitate him except pronounce him dead and send for a priest. Nevertheless, the doctors all documented and recorded their findings contemporaneously—including the entrance wound in the front of Kennedy’s neck.

It is the A-B-C of gunshot wound forensics that entrance wounds are small and exit wounds are larger—and in the case of bullets fired from powerful rifles, sometimes dramatically larger and horribly gruesome, in contrast to often sanitized Hollywood depictions.

This pattern of entrance and exit wounds often constitutes the key evidence establishing the position of a shooter relative to the shooting victim in a criminal prosecution. The doctors at Parkland had seen countless shooting victims, and distinguishing entrance from exit wounds was second nature to them. They all thought the neck wound was an entrance wound—and that this fact was obvious and uncontroversial.

As the documentary shows, there was shock and surprise when federal intelligence agents swiftly descended on the hospital, confiscated the body and whisked it away to Washington. The chief medical examiner for the Dallas Coroner’s office, Dr. Earl Rose, had an office at Parkland Memorial Hospital. When he protested that under Texas law the autopsy had to be performed in Dallas County, a government agent swore at him and manhandled him, putting his arms under the doctor’s armpits, lifting him into the air, and setting him down against a wall.

It is worth remembering that US intelligence agencies operate as a law unto themselves and were in 1963 at a high point of their unchecked criminality: connections to organized crime, illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, burglary, forgery, human experimentation, evidence tampering, persecution and harassment of journalists and civil rights leaders, and assassination. It was only 10 years later, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, that some of these activities, including the infamous Central Intelligence Agency “family jewels,” finally began to come to light and become the subject of public scrutiny.

Literally, before Kennedy’s body had even arrived in Washington D.C. for an autopsy, the federal government was presenting a version of events from which it has never deviated: Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy from behind. Oswald, who publicly insisted that he was innocent and a “patsy,” was shot and killed two days later by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner with ties to organized crime, who in turn died in prison before the criminal proceedings against him could be completed.

The day of the assassination, Dr. Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who attended to Kennedy, gave a press conference in Dallas where he described the wound in the front of Kennedy’s neck as an “entrance wound.” Dr. Robert McClelland, who was present at that press conference, testifies in the new film: “When [Dr. Perry] left the room, someone came up to him who Dr. Perry thought maybe was a Secret Service man, and he told Dr. Perry, ‘You must never, ever say that was an entrance wound again if you know what’s good for you.’”

When Kennedy’s body arrived in Washington and began to be subjected to an autopsy under strict military control, the documentary argues, it had already been tampered with. The brain stem had already been surgically severed and the remains of the brain had been removed, which was not done at Parkland Hospital. The autopsy itself was by all accounts a fiasco and incompetently performed by any standard.

When the Parkland doctors are shown photos from the autopsy years later, they all say that these images do not match their recollection of Kennedy’s injuries when they saw him. In one of the most chilling and striking sections of the documentary, the Parkland doctors are all adamant that Kennedy was shot from the front. They had no motive to lie, and, if anything, were putting themselves at risk by refusing to accept the official government story.

While all opposition to the government version of the assassination is officially branded as “conspiracy theories,” 60 years later a solid majority of Americans do not believe the government version and its implausible “single bullet theory,” according to which one bullet struck both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, who was seated in the car in front of him. Connally himself publicly stated that he did not believe it, as did newly sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson in a recorded phone call.

The official government version of events was assembled and presented by the dubious Warren Commission, which included former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who had been personally fired by Kennedy in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, as well as John J. McCloy, an influential behind-the-scenes figure and old friend of Dulles.

For his part, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of the assassinated president and son of Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, has publicly stated that his father believed his brother was killed by a conspiracy involving Cuban exiles and the CIA.

Indeed, what the documentary does not explore, but which is powerful additional and circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy, is the political context for the assassination, which David North summarized in his essay on the 50-year anniversary of the assassination in 2013:

Less than three months after his inauguration, Kennedy gave final approval for the launching of a counterrevolutionary invasion of Cuba by an anti-Castro army that had been created by the CIA. The new president received assurances that the invaders would be greeted as liberators when they landed in Cuba. The CIA knew that no such uprising was in the offing, but assumed that Kennedy, once the invasion had begun, would feel compelled to commit US forces to prevent the defeat of an American-sponsored operation. However, Kennedy, fearing Soviet retaliation in Berlin, refused to intervene to back the anti-Castro mercenaries. The invasion was defeated in less than 72 hours and more than 1,000 mercenaries were captured. The CIA never forgave Kennedy for this “betrayal” …

In the final year of his presidency, the political divisions within the ruling class over critical issues of international policy became more intense. Kennedy’s decision to avoid an invasion of Cuba in the October 1962 missile crisis was opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff … [T]he last three months of his presidency were preoccupied with the intensifying crisis in Vietnam. … Kennedy authorized the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Diem, which resulted in the latter’s murder on November 1, 1963. The purpose of the coup was to establish a new anti-communist regime that would wage war against the National Liberation Front more effectively than Diem. Three weeks later, Kennedy was murdered in Dallas.

Barbara Shearer, the director of the documentary, is a former network executive for National Geographic. She previously directed a factual three-episode 2021 TV miniseries, “Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell.” While the scope of her Kennedy documentary is narrow, the clinical focus is in some ways a strength, as she steers clear of the more speculative elements of the many conflicting and controversial theories surrounding Kennedy’s death. The result is credible and objective. The testimony of the Parkland doctors suffices in itself to be highly disturbing.

In 2023, not a day goes by without American newspapers and television programs deferentially presenting the opinions of supposed “experts” from the so-called “intelligence community.” This is the same “intelligence community” responsible for secret “black sites” and torture camps around the world that operate in categorical defiance of US and international law; the same forces that served up the lies about “weapons of mass destruction” that were used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003; that plotted to assassinate WikiLeaks journalist Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes; that are engaged in worldwide illegal surveillance against political opponents and dissidents, as exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

Over the past month and a half, this “intelligence community” has been mobilized in an effort to intimidate and suppress opposition to Israeli war crimes in Gaza with false accusations of antisemitism. It does, indeed, have a dark and sinister history. In this context, Shearer’s documentary is timely and welcome.

North Korea conducts satellite launch as US-instigated tensions rise in Indo-Pacific

Ben McGrath

North Korea conducted what it claimed to be a successful launch of a military reconnaissance satellite late Tuesday night. It was Pyongyang’s third attempt following two failures in May and August of this year. The US and its allies immediately seized on the launch to continue ramping up tensions in the region, ultimately aimed at provoking war with China.  

North Korean military reconnaissance satellite launch [Photo: Korean Central News Agency]

According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s state media outlet: “The carrier rocket Chollima-1 flew normally along the preset flight track and accurately put the reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1 on its orbit at 22:54:13, 705s after the launch.” The report stated Pyongyang will conduct additional launches in the near future.

The launch took place earlier than expected, with Pyongyang having previously alerted Japan that it would carry it out between Wednesday and December 1. The rocket took off from Tongchang-ri in North Pyongan Province, along the west coast, and travelled south through international airspace, passing west of South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea. The South Korean military confirmed that the satellite had entered orbit.

The US, Japan, and South Korea condemned the launch, labelling it a cover for testing ballistic missile technology. Washington’s National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson stated the launch “is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond.”

Such statements are entirely hypocritical. While Washington demands North Korea adhere to UN resolutions and sanctions, the US is carrying out accelerating preparations for war in the Indo-Pacific region against China, including the formation of a de facto trilateral military alliance with South Korea and Japan. At the same time, the US is waging war against Russia in Ukraine and fully backs Israel as it carries out a genocide against the oppressed Palestinian people in Gaza.

Pyongyang had previously agreed to a moratorium on long-range missile and nuclear tests following talks with the previous Trump administration in 2018, which attempted to pressure the Kim Jong-un regime to distance itself from China. Washington, however, offered nothing in return while continually goading and provoking the North. Facing economic isolation, Pyongyang gradually resumed missile tests in an attempt to pressure Washington back to the bargaining table.

The Biden administration has exploited North Korea’s missile tests as a pretext to build a system of military alliances in the region while provocatively holding major military exercises on Beijing’s doorstep on a regular basis. Pyongyang, by contrast, last conducted a missile firing on September 13.

In addition, Russia is now being accused of providing aid to North Korea’s rocket program. Backed by Washington and the Western media, which presents unsubstantiated allegations as established facts, South Korean officials are promoting the possibility that North Korea and Russia cooperated to carry out the launch. Pyongyang and Moscow have denied such collaboration.

Even if true, North Korea is an impoverished country devastated by the 1950-1953 Korean War and crippling US-led economic sanctions. Pyongyang’s missile and rocket tests pale in comparison to the destructive capabilities the US and its allies have threatened to unleash. Washington now regularly dispatches nuclear-capable strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula under the pretext of defending against North Korea.

As recently as Tuesday, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived at Busan, making it the third such visit by a massive US carrier to South Korea this year. Yesterday, South Korea’s Defense Minister Sin Won-sik announced that Seoul and Washington plan to conduct bilateral as well as trilateral military drills with Tokyo, involving the Carl Vinson. The drills are likely to take place Saturday and Sunday respectively.

The US military does not confirm or deny whether strategic assets such as aircraft carriers are carrying nuclear weapons. However, for all intents and purposes, Washington has returned nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, creating a situation in which Pyongyang and Beijing must assume their presence. This only heightens the risk of a catastrophic conflict erupting in the region.

The dispatching of the Carl Vinson to the region is highly provocative. Shortly after Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began in October, Washington deployed the aircraft carrier to the Indo-Pacific, joining the USS Ronald Reagan, which is based at Yokosuka, Japan. As it plans for a wider war with Iran, the Biden administration is no doubt aware that such a conflict could pull in China and is making the preparations for what would become World War III.

The US, South, and Japan also announced recently that they would expand the frequency and scale of their military drills beginning in January as well as agreeing to increased intelligence sharing in real-time. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin travelled to Seoul last week for discussions with Defense Minister Sin and Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara, who attended remotely from Tokyo.

These military exercises will likely take place even closer to North Korea’s borders. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol led a meeting of his administration’s National Security Council (NSC) late Tuesday in the United Kingdom where he is on a state visit. The NSC announced Seoul would resume intelligence activities around the Demilitarized Zone separating the North and South. These reconnaissance operations supposedly halted following a 2018 agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang that established a buffer zone along land and sea borders to reduce tensions.

For months, the right-wing Yoon administration has been looking for an excuse to annul the agreement while pinning blame on Pyongyang for doing so. Since coming to office in May 2022, Yoon has fully backed US war plans against China, supported provocations against North Korea and called for increased nuclear cooperation with Washington.

During a summit in April, Biden and Yoon agreed to establish a Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), which is meant to give Seoul more say in the planning and use of US nuclear weapons. The NCG is modelled after a similar group in NATO that decides nuclear policy.

The Brotherhood of Billionaires

Lawrence Wittner

In recent decades, a growing similarity has developed between the Chinese and U.S. economic systems. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s talk of “socialism,” the rapidly-expanding Chinese economy has become increasingly capitalist, with the private sector accounting for about two-thirds of China’s Gross Domestic Product in 2021.

Not surprisingly, then, the two countries currently lead the rest of the world’s nations in their number of billionaires. This March, according to Forbes, the United States had 735 billionaires (worth a collective $4.5 trillion) and China had 562 (worth $2 trillion) out of a global total of 2,640.

The richest U.S. billionaire, as well as the wealthiest man in the world, is Elon Musk, who, as of November 2023, possessed a fortune estimated at $241 billion. Born to a wealthy South African family, Musk cofounded six companies, among them Tesla and SpaceX (whose Starships exploded this April and November), and recently purchased Twitter, turning it into a conduit for hate speech.

Well-known for his arrogant, incendiary, and antisemitic pronouncements, Musk presides over corporations that have faced lawsuits over civil and workers’ rights violations. This September the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla, charging racial discrimination and harassment of Black workers.

Jeff Bezos, the second richest American, with $168 billion in wealth, founded and long presided over the e-commerce giant Amazon, the second largest corporation in the United States, with $514 billion in revenue during 2022. He also owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that produces rockets, one of which he flew into space for a joyride in 2021. Bezos modestly thanked “every Amazon employee” because “you guys paid for this”―a fact surely recognized by Amazon’s delivery drivers, timed so relentlessly on the job that they urinate in bottles while on the road.

Amazon also fought ferociously to block unionization of its employees and, though thousands of workers at Amazon’s massive Staten Island warehouse startled the nation by defiantly voting for a union, the company refused to recognize it. This May, Bezos and his glamorous fiancée set off on his three-masted sailing yacht, the largest in the world, blissfully touring Europe and holding an at-sea engagement party amid movie stars, royalty, and, of course, billionaires.

Larry Ellison, the third richest American, currently possesses $145 billion in wealth, based largely on his holdings in Oracle, a software giant. Dubbed the “nation’s most avid trophy-home buyer” by the Wall Street Journal, Ellison has purchased dozens of very expensive mansions and real estate properties. They include a 23-acre estate, modeled after a 16th-century Japanese imperial palace, that he reportedly spent $200 million to renovate, as well as 98 percent of Lanai, the sixth-largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, which he purchased for $300 million.

Ellison has owned many exotic cars, the twelfth-largest yacht in the world (built at a cost of $200 million), and several planes, and has had four wives and divorces. He has also sued San Jose, California over the local airport’s rule that prevented him from landing his private jet there in the middle of the night.

Today’s top three Chinese billionaires are Zhong Shanshan (bottled spring water manufacturer, $64 billion), Zhang Yiming (founder of tech giant ByteDance, $43 billion), and Colin Huang (e-commerce leader, $41 billion). Given China’s government-controlled communications media and sensitivity about the existence of fabulous wealth and extravagant lifestyles in this ostensibly socialist nation, public information about these and most other wealthy Chinese is far less available than for their U.S. counterparts. Even so, the lives of China’s billionaires have been revealed again and again to include luxurious mansions, private jets, collections of the world’s most expensive cars, jewelry, and art, and other glittering accoutrements of private privilege.

It’s certainly a different way of life from that of the people who produce their wealth. Although there has been substantial economic growth in China, the country is characterized by a high level of economic inequality. Chinese workers in manufacturing average only about $6 an hour, and life for many of them is precarious. Companies employ hundreds of millions of rural migrants, often on temporary contracts or hired informally, and this leaves them vulnerable to unpaid overtime work, sudden pay cuts, or layoffs.

Increasingly, factories have resorted to not paying workers, paying them late, or letting them go. Barred from forming independent unions, workers have nonetheless conducted a surge of strikes. Furthermore, the country’s safety net is minimal and, in rural regions, social security benefits are only about $27 a month. In 2020, China’s premier reported that 600 million Chinese had a monthly income of less than $150.

Much the same pattern exists in the United States. For decades, despite a rising GNP, income and wealth have grown more unequal and, as of 2018, the three wealthiest U.S. billionaires had combined fortunes exceeding the total wealth of half the American population. Today, real wages in the United States stand at roughly the same level as 40 years ago, with the federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour.

Almost 18 million Americans exist in what has been called “deep poverty”―defined as living on less than $6,380 a year for an individual or living on less than $13,100 a year for a family of four. Amid heightening inequality and declining membership, American unions are waging a fierce struggle for economic justice.

This prevalence of economic inequality reflects not only corporate priorities, but the enormous political influence billionaires exercise in both nations, either through their vast wealth or through direct personal control of government. Billionaire politicians like Donald Trump make appeals to the working class, but deliver tax breaks for the rich, just as billionaire rulers like Xi Jinping talk of “common prosperity,” but simultaneously promote China as “open for business.”

In the world they desired and did much to create, the billionaires of both countries have a lot more in common with each other than with their fellow citizens.