Page 6 Yellow Vests and Red Unions - Page 11 Corporate Titans Target Venezuela - Page 17 “Maybe We Should Change the System Itself” by Greta Thunberg
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
$4 at Newsstands and Bookstores SocialistViewpoint H The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. —Karl Marx H MARCH/APRIL 2019 VOL. 19 NO. 2 Drug Wars, Prison and Corporate Wealth - Page 4 Primacy of the Working Class - Page 6 Yellow Vests and Red Unions - Page 11 Corporate Titans Target Venezuela - Page 17 “Maybe We Should Change the System Itself” By Greta Thunberg But I don’t care about being popular. Until you start focusing on what I care about climate justice and the living needs to be done, rather than what is planet. Our civilization is being sacri- politically possible, there is no hope. We ficed for the opportunity of a very small cannot solve a crisis without treating it number of people to continue making as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil enormous amounts of money. Our bio- fuels in the ground, and we need to sphere is being sacrificed so that rich focus on equity. And if solutions within people in countries like mine can live in the system are so impossible to find, luxury. It is the sufferings of the many, then maybe we should change the sys- which pay for the luxuries of the few. tem itself. We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored Our biosphere is being us in the past, and you will ignore us Greta Thunberg sacrificed so that rich again. We have run out of excuses, and people in countries like we are running out of time. We have Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activ- come here to let you know that change ist Greta Thunberg addressed the COP24 mine can live in luxu- is coming, whether you like it or not. UN plenary assembly, on December 12, ry. It is the sufferings of The real power belongs to the people. 2018, in Katowice, Poland. Here is the Thank you. speech she gave excerpted from a December the many, which pay for —Daily Kos, December 16, 2018 16, 2018 article in the Daily Kos titled, the luxuries of the few. “Fifteen-year Old Greta Thunberg Speaks https://www.dailykos.com/ Truth to Power at UN Climate Change stories/2018/12/16/1819508/-A-Call-to- Conference.” The year 2078, I will celebrate my Action-on-Climate-Change-by-15- 75th birthday. If I have children, maybe My name is Greta Thunberg. I am year-Old-Greta-Thunberg they will 15-years-old, and I’m from Sweden. I spend that speak on behalf of Climate Justice Now! day with me. Many people say that Sweden is just Maybe they a small country, and it doesn’t matter will ask me what we do. But I’ve learned that you about you. are never too small to make a difference. Maybe they And if a few children can get headlines will ask why all over the world just by not going to you didn’t school, then imagine what we could all do anything do together if we really wanted to. while there But to do that, we have to speak still was time clearly, no matter how uncomfortable to act. You that may be. You only speak of green say you love eternal economic growth because you your chil- are too scared of being unpopular. You dren above only talk about moving forward with all else, and the same bad ideas that got us into this yet you are mess, even when the only sensible stealing thing to do is pull the emergency their future brake. You are not mature enough to in front of tell it like it is. Even that burden you their very leave to us children. eyes. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 19, No. 2 SocialistViewpointSOCIALIST VIEWPOINT March/April 2019 Vol. 19, No. 2 www.socialistviewpoint.org CONTENTS email: [email protected] (415) 824-8730 U.S. and World Politics Environment “Maybe We Should Change the System Itself”..........2 Disaster Capitalism in Brazil ........................44 By Greta Thunberg By Vijay Prashad Drugs, Wars, Prisons and Corporate Wealth ...........4 By Bonnie Weinstein Incarceration Nation Primacy of the Working Class ........................6 Alleged Government Interference in Governor By Susan Roberts Cuomo’s Parole Denial ...........................46 Yellow Vests and Red Unions ........................11 By Jalil A. Muntaqim By Richard Greenman Death Row Inmate Asks Governor Newsom Corporate Titans Target Venezuela...................17 for Innocence Investigation.......................47 By Bruce Lesnick By Kevin Cooper History and Hypocrisy of U.S. Meddling in Venezuela .....20 Prison Report Mass Media Chose to Ignore ...........48 By Brett Wilkins By Adam Johnson General Strike: The Fierce Urgency of Now ...........22 Women Politicals of the American Empire ............49 Aggression Against Venezuela Must Cease ............23 By Linda Ford Tripling the Poverty Rate in the U.S. .................23 Life Imprisonment For Profit Is the Crime............51 By Paul Buchheit By Ted Kelly Andy Lopez, ¡Presente! ..............................25 Indiana Case Shines Spotlight on Solitary Confinement ..53 By Chris Kinder By Olivia Covington Incarceration vs. Education .........................26 Stunning Turn of Events has Hope By Valerie Bauman for Mumia’s Freedom Rising......................55 When and How Will Artificial Intelligence be OK?.....27 Adapted From an Article By Noelle Hanrahan By Dr. Nayvin Gordon Remembering Martin King ..........................56 California Cop Protected Neo-Nazis By Mumia Abu-Jamal and Targeted Their Victims .......................27 Fight for Decarceration .............................57 By Sam Levin By Dan Berger Arizona: Four Women Convicted After Leaving Food and Water in Desert For Migrants .................30 Reviews By Associated Press U.S. Spent Billions to Change Outcome of Elections Lessons from the FBI’s Secret War on Activism........31 Worldwide ......................................58 By Michael Steven Smith By Danny Haiphong Palestinian Children Killed by Israel in 2018 Have Been Forgotten by the World ................33 Letters to the Editors . 60 By Ramona Wadi Israel’s Largest Land Grab Since 1948 ................34 Arsenal of Marxism By Whitney Webb Paris Commune, the October Revolution U.S. and Mass Murder in Guatemala .................36 and the Party Question ...........................62 By Greg Grandin and Elizabeth Oglesby By Howard Keylor 200 Million Strike Against Anti-Labor Policies in India . 39 War and the Workers ...............................63 By Adam Pal By V. I. Lenin Afghanistan in 2019: Fewer U.S. Troops, Capitalism in Crisis.................................75 More CIA Torture and Killings....................42 By Mumia Abu-Jamal By William Boardman Socialist Viewpoint (ISSN 1535-5438) is published bi-monthly by the Socialist Viewpoint Publishing Association, 60 29th Street, #429, San Francisco, CA 94110. Rates: For one year (6 issues): Introductory rate in the U.S. $20.00; Regular rate in the U.S. $30.00; Bargain rate: $35.00 for two years; All other countries $50.00 (Money orders, checks, etc., should be in U.S. dollars.) Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, California. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Socialist Viewpoint, 60 29th Street, #429, San Francisco, CA 94110 Vol.Vol.Vol. 19, 19,3, No.No. 22 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 3 U.S. and World Politics U.S. AND WORLD POLITICS Drugs, Wars, Prisons and Corporate Wealth By Bonnie Weinstein The principle of profit is king holds mon as patients struggle to keep up. of the more powerful forms of the true for the military and prison indus- In the short term, fluctuating blood company’s painkillers. According to trial complexes as well as the healthcare sugar levels can lead to confusion, the complaint, McKinsey consul- industry and industry in general. War, dehydration, coma, even death. In tants advised Purdue Pharma to prisons and the healthcare industry all the long term, poorly controlled dia- increase sales by claiming that opi- betes is associated with heart attacks, oids reduced stress and made have one thing in common—they strokes, blindness, amputation and patients less isolated. Patients on make money off of human misery. the need for dialysis. The exorbitant drugs such as OxyContin can in fact There’s a multitude of examples of prices confound patients and doctors become socially withdrawn. how the quest for higher profits endan- alike since insulin is nearly a century McKinsey consultants, members of gers the health and welfare of working old now. The pricing is all the more the Sackler family were told, also people. But two recent examples in the infuriating when one considers planned to study techniques for medical industry stand out. that the discoverers of insulin sold keeping patients on opioids longer the patent for $1 each to ensure that and McKinsey urged Purdue Pharma Pharmaceutical corporations spend the medication would be affordable.” to fight efforts taken by federal agen- tens-of-millions of dollars on adver- This means that people are getting cies to stop illegal drug sales...” tisements—on everything from hem- sicker and even dying because they Financial success for the Sackler orrhoid ointments to late-stage cancer can’t afford the insulin they need family and Purdue Pharma, in fact, drugs—because they profit tremen- because the industries’ profit margin is contributed to more than 70,200 dously from the sale of them. more important than their lives. American deaths in 2017.2 This is noth- The financial wellbeing of pharma- In a January 31, 2019 New York ing short of mass murder for profit. ceutical corporations depends on prof- Times article by Barry Meier titled, And, under the private, for-profit its from the sale of drugs to individu- “Sackler Scion’s Email Reveals Push for medical industry, big business has als, and to insurance companies that High-Dose OxyContin, New Lawsuit nothing to lose by people getting sicker insure drug coverage. Profit is the pur- Disclosures Claim,” while becoming addicted to their pose of their existence.