En Passant

The problem isn’t who is selling us the shit sandwich. The problem is the shit sandwich.

The emergence of ISIS is the result of the violence unleashed by U.S. imperialism write the editors of Socialist Worker US. Barack Obama’s “game plan” to confront ISIS won’t stop the disaster that the U.S. itself created in the Middle East–still less will it make ordinary people in the U.S. safer. On the contrary, the new drive to war is making the world more dangerous.

Barack Obama, hey hey, how many kids did you kill today?

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism carries the following estimates for the numbers killed by US drones, including those on Obama’s watch since 2009.

Rather than celebrating Obama’s renewed “commitment” to environmental action, we should recognize it for what it is: After five years of doing all he can to promote fossil fuel production, it’s the first, timid, grudging response of the U.S. state to the growing environmental movement against Obama and all that he represents: the economic, political and military priorities of U.S. imperial power.

To beat the Panopticon, we need to tear it down. There is one group with the strength to do this. We who build and rebuild every day the prison that is capitalism can not only tear it down. We can build a new world where there are no physical or mental prisons, no spies and no mass surveillance. We workers have that power.

In 1984 Winston Smith wrote ‘If there is hope, it lies in the proles.’ It was true in 1948; it is true now.

Eric Ruder in Socialist Worker US reports on a new weapon of choice in U.S. wars around the globe – the drone.

If unions, advocates for the elderly and health care activists want to draw a line against the Washington establishment’s threats, they would have millions standing behind them.

But taking such a stand will require recognizing that the austerity drive in Washington is being carried out by both parties – and that working people have to confront the Democratic White House every bit as much as the Republican Congress.

Easy access to guns – one-third of Americans own a gun, and the U.S. as a whole has half the world’s guns in civilian hands – may provide the means for committing certain types of crimes, but the roots of Adam Lanza’s actions go deeper. They lie in a profoundly alienated society in which violence in general is sanctioned by the most exalted American institutions–as long as it is carried out for “legitimate” purposes, like U.S. wars abroad or police at home defending law and order.

The disarray of the Republican Tea Party right will give confidence to all those that want to fight back. Our hope must be that in doing so, workers discover the power to unite and go well beyond the Democratic Party that has taken their votes for granted and delivered so little.