SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strike Exposes Deteriorating Conditions in the Entertainment Industry

CORPORATE STUDIOS PUBLICLY EXPRESS DISDAIN TOWARDS WRITERS AND ACTORS WHILE SEEKING TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS

July 19, 2023 

Fighting Words SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strike Exposes Deteriorating Conditions in the Entertainment Industry – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Striking members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Announcers (SAG-AFTRA) along with the Writers Guild of America (WGA), have created a crisis for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPATP), which represents the owners and executives of the major studios in the United States.

These industrial actions are jeopardizing the revenue and profits of the large studios and networks which will result in the postponement and cancellation of programs and films.

As the majority of those working in these sectors of the industry continue to experience declining pay and rising job insecurity, the studios have stiffened their resolve to severely weaken the unions. If the intransigence of the owners in regard to the more than two months-long WGA strike provides any indication, the SAG-AFTRA work stoppage could last for a long time.

Since the beginning of the WGA strike on May 2, the corporate leaders and union representatives have not held any negotiations. The screen actors and announcers joined the picket lines with the WGA on July 14 after the owners refused to make any offers to the union’s bargaining teams which could reverse the steadily declining standard of living for the workers.

Since the walk out by the SAG-AFTRA, the corporate executives have attempted to portray those on strike as being incorrigible with expectations that are “unrealistic.” They have asserted through the corporate news networks that the unions are not taking into consideration the changes which have taken place over the last decade.

However, what the AMPATP does not say is that the salaries and compensation for executives are consistently rising where many are earning tens of millions of dollars annually. The enormous growth in corporate salaries and bonuses reflect the prevailing practices within the movie and television industry. Union leaders of both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA claim that the studios have expressed only disrespect and contempt for the concerns of the workers.

Countering the Misinformation of the Bosses

Union leaders have sought to dispel the myths that members of their bargaining units are privileged and earn far more money than the average worker in the U.S. This is of course true for high profile and well-paid actors and screenwriters working on blockbuster films which cost tens to hundreds of millions to produce.

Nonetheless, many union members interviewed on the picket lines indicate that they are taking home far less than workers employed in other fields. The declining wages are due in part to the expanding popularity of streaming platforms leaving workers unable to receive their owed residuals.

Other changes in the operations of the media business include far fewer episodes per season, the elimination of payments for auditions which are often done online in the aftermath of the pandemic as well as earning thresholds for health insurance eligibility.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a press statement on the first day of the strike that:

“It came with great sadness that we came to this crossroads. But we had no choice. We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly. How far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right while giving hundreds and millions of dollars to their CEOS. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”

The attitudes of the studios are mirrored throughout the capitalist system in the U.S. and internationally. The corporate executives, owners and shareholders are demanding more concessions from employees to enhance their profit-making capacity.

Gains won by the working class and their unions during monumental struggles from the late 19th century to the present are under assault from the owners supported by local, state and federal governments. Several of the high-profile actors and screenwriters have voiced their support for the strike and are being seen walking the picket lines. Actors such as Susan Sarandon and Emily Blunt realize that despite their successes, the changes being instituted by the industry owners are threats to the profession as a whole.

As long as the strike continues, members of the unions are not allowed to promote the films in which they appeared. The cast of “Oppenheimer” were in Britain for the official premiere of the film. They refused to participate in the ceremonies and returned to the U.S. to stand in solidarity with the striking union membership.

Drescher continued to emphasize the importance of the strike during this important period in history, noting:

“We stand in solidarity in unprecedented unity. Our union and our sister unions and the unions around the world are standing by us as well as other labor unions. Because at some point, the jig is up. You cannot keep being dwindled and marginalized and disrespected and dishonored. The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI. This is a moment of history that is a moment of truth. If we don’t stand tall right now, we are going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business, who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family.”

Artificial Intelligence is of utmost concern to the striking unions due to the potential for the owners and executives to further the level of already existing exploitation. The unfair use of individual images and voices in order to create new productions absent any contractual arrangements with the subjects will inevitably result in even deeper declines in salaries and other forms of compensation for the union membership.

SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said of the controversy surrounding the implementation of AI in the entertainment industry:

“The companies refuse to recognize that you can’t expect people to sign over their name, image, likeness and voice, their persona to some corporate conglomerate with no right to ever say what they’re going to do with it in the future. That is not going to happen, we are not going to agree to terms like that, so the companies have to move in our direction and come up with some reasonable agreement. We didn’t come into this negotiation saying ‘Let’s ban AI’,”. We came into this negotiation saying that AI has to be done in a way that respects actors, respects their human rights to their own bodies, voice, image and likeness. Nothing less than that is going to be acceptable.”

Economic Impact of an Extended Strike in the Film and Television Industry

Members of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA say they are prepared for the long haul. They realize that the studios are out to break the will of the unions to fight for their economic rights.

Withholding the labor power of the writers and actors will disrupt the functioning of the studios and other businesses which service the entertainment industry. Advertising revenues from film and television could decline with the postponement of movie releases and weekly programs.

With the current level of inflation in the U.S., union members will be hard pressed to make rent and mortgage payments in addition to transportation, energy and food expenses. The unions have established funds which can provide aid to striking workers. However, it is highly unlikely that these strike funds will meet the entire needs of the union members.

Consequently, a prolonged strike by SAG-AFTRA and WGA will have a ripple effect in the broader economy particularly in the Los Angeles and New York areas. Nonetheless, the unions recognize that the alternative to the strike would mean a complete capitulation to the industry executives and owners which would wipe out tens of thousands of jobs.

Screen Actors Join Writers in Entertainment Industry Strike

COMBINED SAG-AFTRA AND WGA WORK STOPPAGES WOULD PARALYZE PRODUCTION CENTERS FROM HOLLYWOOD TO NEW YORK CITY

July 19, 2023

Fighting Words Screen Actors Join Writers in Entertainment Industry Strike – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

Writers Union of America set to strike Writers Union of America set to strike.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Despite the enormous profits being made by film and television corporations in the United States, the writers, actors and announcers are undergoing pay cuts and threats to their future employment.

Since early May, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike for better salaries, benefits and job security in a rapidly changing industry where streaming and the use of artificial intelligence have become avenues for greater exploitation and marginalization of scribes and performers.

The WGA claims that the billions of dollars in investments made by the motion pictures and television studios over the last decade has resulted in salary and benefits losses. Furthermore, they believe that the current system of working within the industry is broken. Union leaders are saying that the changes being implemented by the owners and management threatens writing as a profession.

Negotiations between the writers and the studios broke down on May 1 when the two sides were unable to reach an agreement to avoid a strike. The strike has delayed production on many film and television projects in the U.S. and internationally.

In regard to actors, the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic witnessed the introduction of certain forms of auditioning for jobs by performers which were done virtually without compensation. Other issues such as declining rates of residual payments related to reruns, streaming, syndication, etc., are key elements in the rising discontent among the union membership.

In the latest round of labor unrest, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) authorized a strike in early June by a margin of 98% after failing to reach an agreement with the studio owners represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The combined strike action involving the WGA and SAG-AFTRA could effectively shut down the entertainment industry in the U.S.

The SAG-AFTRA contract was extended to July 12 in the hope that an agreement could be reached with AMPTP. However, the AMPTP accused the SAG-AFTRA of being unreasonable in their demands and that the decision to strike is the total responsibility of the actors and announcers.

AMPTP represents the long-established major studios along with streaming platforms including Amazon, Netflix and NBCUniversal. A press release from the AMPTP emphasized:

“Rather than continuing to negotiate, SAG-AFTRA has put us on a course that will deepen the financial hardship for thousands who depend on the industry for their livelihood.”

This is the first time since 1960 that there has been a joint strike involving the writers, actors and announcers. There are 11,000 WGA members on strike, and they are being joined by 160,000 people represented by the SAG-AFTRA).

The industry has experienced a series of strikes since 1936. Other work stoppages have occurred among the writers and actors during the 1960s right through the present century.

A statement on July 13 issued by the SAG President Fran Drescher and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtre-Ireland says:

“The AMPTP has refused to acknowledge that enormous shifts in the industry and economy have had a detrimental impact on those who perform labor for the studios. Though we’ve engaged in negotiations in good faith and remained eager to reach a deal that sufficiently addressed performer concerns, the AMPTP’s responses to our proposals have not been adequate…. Our ninety-year history is a testament to what can be achieved through our conviction and unity. For the future of our profession, we stand together.”

Broader Economic Impact of an Entertainment Industry Strike

Tensions within the entertainment industry have been brewing for months. In June, well-known actors such as Meryl Streep, John Leguizamo, Jennifer Lawrence, Constance Wu and Ben Stiller, sent a letter to the SAG officials saying they are prepared to strike.

The advent of a long strike by the SAG-AFTRA and the WGA would further delay the completion of films and television productions. Even actors and writers from other countries have pledged to honor the labor actions by their counterparts in the U.S.

Advertising revenues would be severely impacted by an industry-wide strike since the large corporations utilize television, radio and movie screenings to promote their products. A delay in film releases will inevitably cause significant losses for movie houses which are still reeling from the pandemic. Many theaters have closed in major urban areas unable to recover from the revenue losses over a period of nearly two years of lockdowns and public health restrictions.

Moreover, those writers, actors and announcers working in the industry would be faced with the grim prospects of permanent layoffs. This is why the union leaders are sounding the alarm that the role of writers and actors are at stake in the current phase of labor relations in the industry.

As the chief negotiator for the SAG Crabtree-Ireland noted:

“We’re looking to make sure that acting can be a sustainable career choice for people, not just the 100 most famous celebrities in the world, but for the whole large population of our membership. They should be able to make a living and you know, pay a mortgage or pay rent like everybody else. We’re fundamentally interested in making sure that our members share in the success of projects that they create. We have a real vested interest in making sure that something significant is done about this, so that we’re not trying to fix it retroactively three years from now. It needs to be done now.”

One of the most anticipated films of the summer, “Oppenheimer”, made its UK premiere on July 12 in London. The red-carpet celebration was held to promote the official release on July 21 by Universal Pictures. The film is based on the role of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist involved in the manufacture of the first atomic bomb known as the Manhattan Project.

Co-star Emily Blunt said that in the event of a strike by the SAG-AFTRA she would not remain in Britain for the broader opening and would return to the U.S. She was quoted as saying:

“I think right now we are just sorting of … I hope everyone makes a fair deal and we are here to celebrate this movie. And if they call it, we’ll be leaving together as cast in unity with everyone …We are gonna have to. We will see what happens. Right now, it’s the joy to be together.”

A Summer of Strikes

In the U.S., the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike comes amid a wave of industrial actions. The Teamsters union representing 340,000 UPS workers are slated to walk off the job at the end of July. This could represent the largest private sector strike against a single employer in U.S. history.

The UAW began its negotiations with the automotive industry during mid-July, where the new leadership has pledged to take a harder line against the corporations. The traditional handshake between labor and management was avoided to indicate that the union leadership is committed to protecting the interests of the workers.

UAW leaders have postponed any presidential endorsements until further notice unlike the AFL-CIO, which at its recent national conference, gave its full backing to the re-election of Democratic Party President Joe Biden. The AFL-CIO has said publicly that Biden is the most pro-labor president in history.

Nonetheless, the majority of rank-and-file workers obviously have a different opinion. Several recent polls reveal that Biden’s ratings remain extremely low for a president in his first term. The majority of registered voters interviewed said that Biden should not seek another term due to his age.

However, even more significantly, most people stated that the economy was the major concern in the present period. There have been monthly reports saying that the jobless rate stands at 3.4-3.5%.

Even though the unemployment rate is low, the inability of workers to keep up with the rate of inflation has fueled hardships at the gas stations, supermarkets, car dealerships, rental properties and the payments for mortgage rates. The phenomenon of rising prices for energy and durable goods has slowed since the middle of 2022.

However, the costs for essential commodities and services are still far too high for many working families and the extremely impoverished. The federal minimum wage in the U.S. has not been raised since 2009 during the Great Recession.

Consequently, the working class must continue to organize and act in order to protect its own interests. Otherwise, the rightward shift related to labor relations will continue rendering people to even more dire social conditions across the U.S.

Artificial Intelligence and the Class Struggle

July 24, 2023 

Fighting Words Artificial Intelligence and the Class Struggle – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

Artificial Intelligence challenges working class from Hollywood to the Pentagon. | Image: geeksforgeeks.org

By Chris Fry

Since the earliest days of the industrial revolution, workers have fought company owners over their use of automated machinery to step up the pace of exploitation.

“Programmable” looms in textile mills allowed owners to hire children to work 12 to 14 hours a day at half pay.

Famously, workers used to throw their wooden shoes called “sabot” into the machine gears to force them to stop, hence the word “sabotage”.

At the Flint sit down strike in 1936, workers barricaded the doors to prevent General Motors from removing the assembly line machinery and setting it up at another location. This tactic helped the workers win the strike and force union recognition.

Today, the focus of automation has moved from mechanical to digital, particularly with the advent of AI (Artificial Intelligence).  Webster’s dictionary provides two related definitions for AI: “1) a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers; and 2) the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.”

Current AI applications depend on vast databases of different fields of knowledge (e.g., street maps, pictures, languages, literature, etc.) plus powerful computer hardware and software to interact with those databases to allow applications to simulate human intelligence, speech, behavior, appearance and more.

The incredible pace of AI’s increased use has even alarmed some of its developers, so much so that 1,000 of them wrote an open letter calling for a six month pause for AI’s most powerful technologies, as a May 1 New York Times article reports:

In late March, more than 1,000 technology leaders, researchers and other pundits working in and around artificial intelligence signed an open letter warning that A.I. technologies present “profound risks to society and humanity.”

“Powerful A.I. systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said.

“Our ability to understand what could go wrong with very powerful A.I. systems is very weak,” said Yoshua Bengio, a professor and A.I. researcher at the University of Montreal. “So we need to be very careful.”

These systems can generate untruthful, biased and otherwise toxic information. Systems like GPT-4 get facts wrong and make up information, a phenomenon called “hallucination.”

Automated weapons systems – the Pentagon’s “Terminator” syndrome

The most dangerous application of AI to humanity is its use in modern imperialist warfare. On July 9, PBS held an interview with Paul Scharre, Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security, a war industry “think tank”, who said that the Pentagon is already preparing autonomous weapons in its proxy war in Ukraine:

Well, we’re already seeing drones being used in Ukraine that have all of the components needed to build fully autonomous weapons that can go out over the battlefield, find their own targets, and then all on their own attack those targets without any further human intervention. And that raises very challenging legal, and moral and ethical questions about human control over the use of force of war.

Of course, these “questions” have not stopped the war industry’s head-long rush to implement AI technology. Scharre complained in his interviewer that the Pentagon is moving too slowly:

Well, they’re not keeping up. That’s the short version, they’re woefully behind because the culture is so radically different. And the bottom line is, you can’t buy AI the same way that you might buy an aircraft carrier. The military is moving too slow. It’s mired in cumbersome bureaucracy. And the leadership of the Pentagon has tried to shake things up. They had a major reorganization last year of the people working AI and data and software inside the Defense Department.

But we haven’t seen a lot of changes since then. And so the Pentagon is going to have to find ways to cut through the red tape and move faster if they’re going to stay on top of this very important technology.

In the famous Terminator movies, autonomous robot weapons destroy their own creators before attacking humanity in general. In a recent blog from the British Campaign for Nuclear disarmament, that scenario was described in a U.S. military simulation:

Also in May, the Royal Aeronautical Society hosted the ‘Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit’ conference that brought together over 200 delegates from around the world to discuss the future of military air and space capabilities. A blog reporting on the conference mentioned how AI was a major theme and a presentation from Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the Chief of AI Test and Operations, USAF, warned against an over reliance on AI systems and noted that they were easy to trick and deceive. They can also create unexpected strategies to achieve their goals, and he noted that in one simulated test an AI-enabled drone was told to identify and destroy ground-based missile sites.

The final firing decision was to be made by a human, but the system had been trained that destruction of the missile site was the top priority. The AI decided therefore that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission and, in the simulation, it attacked the operator. Hamilton was reported as saying that the human operator would tell it not to kill the threat, “but it got its points by killing that threat. So, what did it do? … It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.” Although the system was trained not to kill the operator, it started destroying the communication tower used to connect with the drone.

The Pentagon excuses itself for developing these dangerous weapons AI applications by saying that the People’s Republic of China is also developing these systems. But it must be pointed out that it is the U.S. fleet that is parading its nuclear-armed warships just off the coast of China in its arrogant and provocative “freedom of navigation” campaign, giving China no warning time to respond to an attack. U.S. Imperialism has no such justification.

AI and the strike by the Writers and Screen Actors Guilds

Artificial Intelligence is a major issue  in the ongoing strike by writers and movie production workers, including actors, and the entertainment industry’s corporate owners, called the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP). This “alliance” includes such giants as Amazon, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, HBO and The Walt Disney Company, the parent company of ABC News.

This is the first combined strike by these two groups of workers since 1960. The real pay for these workers after inflation has greatly declined in the last decade while the pay for owners and executives has skyrocketed. Along with demanding higher pay, these unions are demanding that AI applications not be used against them to lower their compensation.

AI applications like ChatGPT can “scrape” millions of documents from the internet without the writers’ permission to create new documents, or in this case, new story scripts. The writers call AI “plagiarism machines.”

For the writers, they demand that their writing not be used to “train” AI applications, and they not be tasked to correct AI generated scripts, for which they would receive less pay.

As one striking worker put it:

On Twitter, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill expressed similar concerns, writing, “The immediate fear of AI isn’t that us writers will have our work replaced by artificially generated content. It’s that we will be underpaid to rewrite that trash into something we could have done better from the start. This is what the WGA is opposing, and the studios want.”

The Screen Actors Guild has parallel demands regarding AI as their fellow strikers from the Writers Guild. As ABC News reported on July 19:

In addition to a pay hike, SAG-AFTRA said it proposed a comprehensive set of provisions to grant informed consent and fair compensation when a “digital replica” is made or an actor’s performance is changed using artificial intelligence. The union also said it proposed a comprehensive plan for actors to participate in streaming revenue, claiming the current business model has eroded our residual income for actors.

These AI issues may seem obscure to many members of the working class and oppressed communities. But it is important to remember that artificial intelligence in the hands of the Wall Street billionaires and Pentagon generals will lead to more and more exploitation for our class and increase the chances of a global nuclear catastrophe for our planet.

AI could offer tremendous social benefits, such as medical cures and economic scientific planning, but only if it is controlled by the workers and oppressed through a socialist system.

NATO Summit Won’t Stop Ukraine’s Declining Fortunes

July 19, 2023

Fighting Words NATO Summit Won’t Stop Ukraine’s Declining Fortunes – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

31 NATO leaders at Vilnius Summit cannot save Ukraine proxy war

By David Sole

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held a high level summit July 11-12 in the capital of Lithuania not far from the Ukrainian battlefields. Delegates included U.S. President Joe Biden, the leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and 27 other NATO allies. Central to their discussions was what to do about the failure of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine which is becoming harder to cover up with the Ukrainian “offensive” stalled going into its 7th week.

Of course Ukraine’s President Zelensky was in attendance, too. Having been given over $100 billion in military assistance over the past 17 months, NATO officials have to figure out their next moves since “victory” over the Russian Federation is now further away than ever. It was probably inevitable that the summit revealed deepening cracks among the allies.

CNN World headlined “NATO’s crucial summit in Vilnius nearly came off the rails and gave Russia a PR victory.” Zelensky was so upset with the failure of NATO to lay out a clear path to membership that he denounced the gathering in a tweet as “absurd.” The British Defense Secretary was quoted as saying that Ukraine “should be more grateful for the support it has already received.”

The New York Times noted on July 19 that for NATO to project unity “is getting harder to sustain as the war in Ukraine goes on.” It states that “the membership disputes may be overshadowed by new worries that the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive is bogged down, and that Kyiv could run out of ammunition.”

Ukraine has gotten pledges for more weapons to keep the proxy war going. France will be supplying long-range missiles and Germany will send more tank ammunition. Denmark and the Netherlands announced that they, along with 9 other NATO countries, would start training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 fighter jet. President Biden, several months ago, withdrew the U.S.’s objection to sending F-16s onto the battlefield.  It is also reported that Biden may agree to send long range Army Tactical Missile Systems with a range of 190 miles.

While some of these weapons would not arrive for months or even next year, the U.S. has been shipping 155 artillery rounds that release hundreds of cluster bomblets – a weapon outlawed by most countries world-wide. Many of these cluster bombs fail to detonate and may be around years after a conflict inflicing death and injuries on civilians.

This type of shell is not effective against tanks or armored fighting vehicles, which is really what Ukraine has been demanding. Unfortunately for them the U.S. and the rest of NATO has run through all their stockpiles of 155 mm artillery shells and is sending these hated weapons instead.

None of these weapons can or will change the unequal balance of forces. Even Western experts agree with the Russian Ministry of Defense that Ukraine has lost up to one-third of its tanks and heavy armor in the first weeks of the offensive, along with tens of thousands of troops killed or wounded.

Reports that those severe losses have slowed down appear to come from the fact that Ukrainian battle commanders are not sending out their armor into the field of combat. Ukrainian Commander in Chief General Valery Zalushny complains that “the West hasn’t given him enough to fight with. He wants air superiority, long-range missiles, and the ability to have as many artillery shells as Russia can fire” according to the Washington Post.

Zaluzhny’s wish list is beyond the ability of the West to manufacture and provide. There is also the concern that the U.S. and its allies will go too far and be dragged into a direct war with the Russian Federation.

Another alarming announcement came from Biden following the NATO summit. On July 13 the President authorized the call up of 3,000 military reservists to be sent to eastern Europe. U.S. troops already are stationed in countries bordering Ukraine, such as Poland and Romania.

With little positive to report on their Ukrainian proxies in the war, the Western media has shifted its attention to a change in the Russian high command. A July 13 report in the New York Times “has exposed dissension and fueled a shake-up in the Russian military, as it tries to fend off a Ukrainian advance.”

The first thing to note is that, for 6 weeks and at tremendous cost to themselves, the Ukrainian armed forces have failed to make any significant “advance” against the heavily dug in Russian lines.

The article does report that a top Russian general inside Ukraine has been replaced whereupon he recorded a four minute denunciation of his superior officers. General Ivan Popov addressed himself to his troops, a serious breach of discipline, especially in wartime. Popov’s remarks were put on social media by a former general and current legislator.

Popov, however, does not appear to have any relation to the Wagner group insurrection inside of Russia three weeks ago led by its chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. Questions also were raised about the whereabouts of General Sergei Surovikin, head of the air force and previously head of Russian forces in Ukraine. Popov apparently had been complaining about “the lack of counter-battery and artillery reconnaissance capabilities” among other issues.

Anyone familiar with military history can cite numerous battlefield command replacements under the intense pressures of war. The U.S. Civil War, for example, saw the Northern troops repeatedly defeated over and again by the Southern slave owners’ armies. General George B. McClellan was appointed head of the Army of the Potomac by President Lincoln in the summer of 1861. Only months later Lincoln removed him from his post as General-in-chief of the Union forces (March 1862). In November 1862 Lincoln removed him from command. McClellan is reported to have conspired to carry out a coup in his anger against Lincoln and failed in his run for the presidency in the 1864 elections.

During the Korean War (June 25, 1950 0 July 27, 1953) President Harry S Truman appointed World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur as Commander-in-Chief of U.S. forces. Less than one year later, on April 11, 1951, President Truman fired MacArthur.

It would be unwise to read too much into command shake-ups in the Russian military. It is inevitable that mistakes will be made and that supply problems will arise. The problems inevitably are intensified by the life and death situation at the front lines. The powerful resistance shown by the Russian forces over the past 17 months, their ability to advance and, when necessary retreat, to prepare for and stop Ukrainian offensives and to minimize their casualties with use of superior weapons systems, all are evidence of a strong, motivated rank and file and an evolving, capable military leadership.

Haitians Protest UN Occupation and Pending Foreign “Intervention”

INTERVIEW WITH HAITI ACTION COMMITTEE MEMBER SETH DONNELLY

July 24, 2023 

Fighting Words Haitians Protest UN Occupation and Pending Foreign “Intervention” – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

Haitians continue protests against corruption and imperialist intervention. | Photo: wola.org

By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor

The US and Canada have been arguing for a multilateral military intervention in Haiti led by the army of a third country, possibly even Rwanda, to support the puppet regime that they installed. They are using “gang violence” as the racist excuse, but there are actually more gang killings in Jamaica. In fact, the people of Haiti have been protesting in the streets to get the UN and the Core Group out of Haiti and get the US to stop supporting the illegitimate, unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry.

I spoke to Haiti Action Committee activist Seth Donnelly, a public school teacher who has traveled to Haiti over 20 times since the 2004 coup that removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

ANN GARRISON: Seth Donnelly, can you tell us what you see going on in Haiti?

SETH DONNELY: Yes, absolutely. The current situation is one of a neocolonial dictatorship, installed primarily by the United States, under the UN occupation.

AG: That’s the UN mission that the UN Security Council renewed on July 14, right? Not the foreign military force that the US and Canada are pushing for.

SD: Right. So since the US-orchestrated coup in 2004 against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and hundreds of other democratically elected officials at all levels, Haiti has been under occupation. And within that context, in 2011 the US installed the current regime that is in power in Haiti, that of the Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK).

When I say installed, there’s extensive evidence that Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, literally intervened, went to Haiti and maneuvered Michel Martelly into power after US-sponsored elections that were already fraudulent, given that the the largest political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, wasn’t allowed to participate.

Martelly is like the godfather of the PHTK, a very right-wing powerbroker connected to the Haitian oligarchy. He handpicked a successor, Jovenel Moise, who took power after more fraudulent US-sponsored elections in 2016.

Readers may know that Jovenel Moise was then assassinated in the summer of 2021. Based on the evidence that keeps being unearthed, this was quite possibly a US-backed assassination involving elements within the PHTK, including the current US-backed, unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry.

So under this current Ariel Henry regime, we have seen a proliferation of massacres carried out by the police and what US media calls gangs. They’re more accurately understood as paramilitaries, heavily armed paramilitaries, many of which work closely with the police, such as the G-9 Federation, led by the ex-police officer, Jimmy Chérizier, popularly known as “Barbecue.” A few notorious examples of such massacres include the 2018 Lasalin massacre (see this video) and the 2019 massacres in the Tokyo and Site Vensan (Cite Vincent) neighborhoods. The Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic documented this pattern in its 2021 report “Killing with Impunity: State-Sanctioned Massacres in Haiti.”

These paramilitaries and the police have laid siege to popular neighborhoods of resistance to the regime. They’ve destroyed them, burned down houses, and massacred men, women, and children.

AG: And what has the International Monetary Fund been doing amidst all this?

SD: The PHTK regime has loyally implemented IMF dictates. For example, removing the fuel subsidy. And that has resulted in cost-push inflation, which has created the worst hunger crisis in Haiti in many generations. Over half the population is now suffering from extreme food insecurity and malnutrition. Children are once again eating mud cookies. By March 2023, a record 4.9 million people were experiencing acute hunger, nearly half the population. Haiti’s food inflation is among the highest in the world, increasing by 48% between February 2022 and February 2023.

AG: There haven’t been any recent elections, have there?

SD: There’s not a single official legitimately left in office, because the regime is incapable of holding free and fair elections. All formerly elected officials are legally termed out.

So this is the situation in which the Biden administration is arguing for yet another “intervention,” which is really more of an invasion, as if that’s the solution. It’s akin to pretending that the arsonists will put out the fire they started.

AG: Canada too, right? Both US and Canadian mining companies are heavily involved in Haiti.

SD: Right. Canada too, and that’s clearly one of the main reasons the US and Canada have both been pushing this intervention.

AG: And what about the Haitian people?

SD: The Haitian people have been out in the streets protesting the idea of a foreign intervention. Operating at the base of the mass movement of the poor majority is Fanmi Lavalas, the most significant political party in Haiti, which has consistently been the target of US-backed political repression and terror. The mass movement demands that there be no foreign intervention. The Haitian people are struggling today to complete the revolution of 1804, to affirm their right to self-determination, to dismantle this hated neocolonial regime, and install a genuine transition government.

So that’s where we’re at, and the Biden administration has doubled down in supporting the government, despite opposition from even some Democrats in Congress. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken continue to treat Ariel Henry as if he’s a legitimate leader that needs to be at the table for negotiations. They continue to fund the police hand over fist despite massive evidence that the police are linked to the gangs and paramilitaries.

AG: Biden has been mercilessly deporting Haitians too, hasn’t he?

SD: Biden has deported more Haitians than the last three presidents combined. That’s Trump, Obama, and Bush Jr.

Haitians are fleeing hunger and violence, and if they make it to the US/Mexico border, they’re rounded up en masse, as we saw in the photos of the US Border Patrol chasing refugees, border patrol agents on horses using the reins as whips.

So this is an absolute humanitarian disaster. It’s arguably the worst human rights crisis in the Americas. And it’s made in the USA.

AG: What about Biden’s support for the police?

SD: The police in Haiti are deeply connected to the repression and to the massacres, as well as targeted killings of journalists. There’ve been a lot of journalists, independent journalists, killed by the police. For example, on October 30th, 2022, police shot an unarmed journalist, Romelo Vilsaint, in the head, and killed him during a protest at the Delmas police station where he and other journalists were demanding the release of a jailed colleague, Robest Dimanche. Police had previously detained Dimanche when he was covering a street protest.

And we can contrast the Biden administration’s support for the police with how the administration sanctioned the Cuban police after a relatively minor crackdown in Cuba after the protests in July 2021. I think there may have been one fatality in that, whereas in Haiti, the police killings are epidemic, and all the US does is shower them with more money.

AG: The news is reporting that there are only 9000 police in Haiti, and more are needed. This proposed international intervention is supposed to help them. I don’t think those pushing it are likely to get it past the Security Council, and they know that, so they’re talking about some sort of multilateral force organized and sent in without UN Security Council approval.

SD: Right. One of President Aristide’s greatest accomplishments— before the second US-backed coup d’état in 2004—was to dissolve the Haitian military. The military had been a backbone of US control during the Papa Doc and Baby Doc dictatorships throughout the 20th century.

President Aristide instead sought to develop a small, professional police force, with training from countries such as Switzerland, that could protect, rather than terrorize, the Haitian people. Since the 2004 coup, the US has supported the reintegration of former military and death squad elements back into this police force, funding its transformation once again into an agent of terror.

The narrative being put out in the US media, and by the US and Canadian governments and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres—who is very much involved in this occupation—is that the police are outgunned by the “gangs” and that the police need more equipment and weapons and training and the support of foreign intervention.

What that narrative misses is that the police are heavily weaponized against the people, and overwhelmingly, at very high levels of command, working with the paramilitaries to terrorize the population.

AG: How are people on the ground resisting all this?

SD: There was an interesting development that started this past spring. The population rose up against the paramilitaries or “gangs” who had been occupying their neighborhoods. This became known as the “Bwa Kale” movement. And then, within a matter of weeks, the population brought the level of violence and the kidnappings down dramatically.

This did involve violence by ordinary people who have just been pushed to the brink, but what Bwa Kale shows you is that when the people organize at a base level, they can tackle the problem of insecurity. So clearly funding the police is not working to bring down crime. What brings down crime is people taking power.

AG: What sort of privilege is the regime getting from being in power?

SD: Well, first, it’s your classic neocolonial regime, in the most direct sense that it was literally installed by the US. Hillary Clinton, who, like I said, maneuvered the first PHTK leader, Martelly, into power, so there’s that classic architecture of colonialism.

Second, Haiti is mineral rich. It’s got bauxite. It’s got petroleum, gold, and more. Because of the racism in the US media and the ignorance it inflicts, Americans are always asking, “Oh, why is Haiti so poor?” but Haiti is not poor. Haiti is resource rich. It’s just the most plundered country in the Americas, similar to the Congo.

The regime has even been trying to change the mining law to give it more power. As it is now, the parliament has to approve mining concessions, but the PHTK regime wants to make that an executive decision, so that gold mining companies from Canada and the United States can just come in without having to go through Parliament.

Regime officials also accumulate wealth by:

Engaging in pervasive corruption and the massive looting of public funds.

Perpetuating land grabs and the dispossession of Haitian farmers, including by former PHTK President Jovenel Moise himself to enlarge his personal banana republic.

There’s tremendous pocketing of public monies by high level PHTK officials. Hence what they call the PetroCaribe scandal, provoking huge street protests in 2018.

There are linkages between this regime and the small number of families that dominate the import/export businesses, including organized crime, in Haiti. That’s most likely why Jovenel Moise was killed. He was probably stepping on the wrong toes.

So there are a lot of economic advantages to the regime, and I’m sure that filters down to various levels of the police force, who are getting paid off and protected from paramilitary violence by working with the paramilitaries.

AG: Are there any decent police?

SD: There are officers who are dedicated to protecting the population, but many of them have been killed. There’ve been police protests against the PHTK regime by police officers who say they’re being set up to be killed because the government and the PHTK are working with the paramilitaries.

AG: Okay, so you say there’s a lot of resource extraction going on. It’s just not benefiting the people. And this means gold, petroleum, and various minerals, including bauxite?

SD: Yeah. It would be good to do the type of research that folks have been doing since the coup in Peru against Castillo—looking at the mining concessions under the current regime in Peru.

AG: I’ve seen in the Congo that studying and reporting on mining concessions can be a good way to get yourself killed.

SD: I’m sure but I know folks have been doing that research in Haiti.

And in addition to the mining there are of course the free trade zones for exploiting Haitian labor. The Clintons funded the construction of this big free trade zone in the north of Haiti, the Caracol Industrial Park for textiles that led to a lot of land grabbing.

AG: When you say the Clintons, do you mean the Clintons operating through various NGOs or Bill Clinton when he was president?

SD: No, I mean, more recently, the Caracol Industrial Park was backed  by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and funded by the Obama Administration. When Bill Clinton was president he likewise pushed the neoliberal policies onto Haiti that led, among other things, to the destruction of Haiti’s domestic rice production.

AG: In this context, I think we should note that Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham was put on the board of a corporation that was then given a Haitian gold mining lease.

SD: Yes.

AG: And not because he knows anything about gold mining.

SD: I don’t think many people in this country adequately grasp the sheer criminality of the Clintons in particular. The Clintons, as instruments of US imperialism in Haiti, have been very destructive in so many ways, going all the way down to the trailers that were sent to supposedly house people after the 2010 earthquake. The Clinton Foundation installed trailers that were sent from New Orleans and that were contaminated with formaldehyde.

AG: OK, let me try to summarize the layers of conflict you’ve been describing here. The US, which represents various resource extractivist industries and individuals, put an oligarchic regime in power. This oligarchic regime is using the police and some of these paramilitary gangs to control the people amidst all this spiraling violence and chaos while the US and Canada are both doubling down in their support for it. There are various police, paramilitary, criminal and oligarchic elements competing for power. And at the same time you have a popular uprising being repressed by the oligarchy, the police, the paramilitary “gangs,” and the UN occupation, which could soon expand to further “multilateral intervention” backed by the US and Canada.

SD: That’s it in a nutshell.

AG: Lastly then, could you tell us some more about the popular movement and the role that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still playing in it?

SD: Lavalas refers to the mass, grassroots movement of workers, peasants, street vendors, students, and other sectors that successfully toppled the Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorship and created the conditions for the free and fair elections of 1990 that led to the landslide victory of President Aristide. In Kreyol, Lavalas means flood, the idea being that each of us is a drop of water and that when we unite, we become a flood. The Lavalas movement and its political party, Fanmi Lavalas, remain the most potent political forces on the ground today in Haiti. The Haitian people have not forgotten the very real achievements in education, healthcare, housing, food production, and human rights when Lavalas was in power prior to the last coup.

Fanmi Lavalas candidates have dominated in every free and fair election, thus the 2004 coup and political exclusion and repression ever since under US domination. Despite this, President Aristide returned to Haiti from exile in South Africa in 2011, against the opposition of President Obama. Since his return to Haiti, he has, with international solidarity, reopened and expanded UNIFA, a flagship university—with medical, legal, engineering, and agronomy schools—that provides education to those otherwise unable to access it. UNIFA is a beacon of hope today in Haiti and a symbol of the new Haiti that the masses of the people in the street are struggling to build.

Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize  for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann(at)anngarrison.com. Please help to support her work on Patreon.

Seth Donnelly is a public school teacher who has been to Haiti more than 20 times since the 2004 coup that removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He is also the author of “The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation” from Monthly Review Press.

Published in Black Agenda Report, July 19, 2023

What’s Going on Next Door in Mexico – and Why Don’t We Know?

WEBINAR WAS ORGANIZED BY MORATORIUM NOW! COALITION

July 24, 2023

By Fighting Words Staff

To watch the recording of this webinar go to the following link: What's going on next door in Mexico - and why don't we know?! - YouTube

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition organized a webinar on July 10 entitled “What’s going on next door in Mexico – and why don’t we know?!”.  The idea for the forum was raised after leading members of the Republican party called for a U.S. military attack on Mexico.  The calls became louder after Mexico expressed interest in joining BRICS. A goal of the forum was to begin the process of educating activists about developments in Mexico and the need for solidarity with the people of Mexico. The webinar featured members of the Mexico Solidarity Project.

The call for the forum stated:

In 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won a landslide victory to become México’s President. His progressive party, Morena, was only 4 years old. Its base is working people and social movements. What has happened since then? Why is México important for us in Detroit?

Come hear from activists in the México Solidarity Project. They’ll discuss the historical relationship of the US and México, what has happened during AMLO’s Presidency, and why solidarity between Mexican and US peoples is critical for positive change in both countries.

Panelists:

* Bill Gallegos is a founder and leader of the Chicano movement of the 60’s and 70’s. His penetrating Marxist based analyses on US/Mexico relations, the formation of Chicanos as a people, and the importance of the Southwest have informed and guided many of us.

*Javier Bravo is a Morena activist, pushing it from the left. A professor at Guanajuato University, he also acts as a resource for Casa Obrera del Bajio, a center for independent worker organizing formed during the union campaign at the GM plant in Silao.

* Bruce Hobson has spent half his life in México, and has the distinction of having been deported by México in the 1990’s for his suspected support of the Zapatista movement. He lives in Guanajuato, and builds people to people ties between the MSP and Mexican political and social activists.

*Meizhu Lui is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and cut her political teeth as a rank and file unionist in Boston. She has worked to build unity among peoples of color in the US, and now with the people of México; she co-chairs the joint MSP/Labor Notes labor solidarity committee.

*Jorge Mújica Murias works as the Strategic Campaigns Organizer of Arise Chicago, a worker Center. Born in Mexico, Jorge participated in labor and popular movements until he emigrated to the United States in 1987. Has worked as a journalist for several newspapers, Univision and Telemundo, and twice won the First Place award for Investigative Reporting from the Association of Hispanic Publicists. He is one of the main organizers of the 2006 immigrant rights marches, and co-author of “Voces Migrantes, Movimiento 10 de Marzo”, a book about the immigration movement. Jorge has worked for several labor unions, is a member of the National Council of the National Union of Writers, and several community organizations that have fought for the interests of the Mexican community abroad. He was elected to the Mexican Federal Congress in 2021, representing the Mexican diaspora.

Moreno is the acronym for the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement). The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is a leader of Moreno and was elected in 2018.

Moratorium NOW! Coalition intends to organize additional forums regarding Mexico in collaboration with the Mexico Solidarity Project.

C.L.R. James (aka, J.R. Johnson): World Events Are of Great Importance to U.S. Labor, (September 1944)

From Labor Action, Vol. 8 No. 39, 25 September 1944, p. 4.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for MIA.

In 1933 the American working class was battling with an economic crisis such as had never before struck this rich and prosperous country. Unaccustomed to think in terms of danger to its national existence, the American working, class took little interest in the accession to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Two years before, the Japanese imperialists had invaded Manchuria. The event had caused even less excitement among the American workers.

Yet these two happenings were the beginnings of what became a worldwide catastrophe, dragging the whole of humanity into a whirlpool of blood and destruction. The American working class is paying and will continue to pay for the fact that it did not recognize then the true significance of the invasion of Manchuria and the Nazi victory.

The Rulers Knew

The American ruling class, however, knew quite well what was involved. Many of the biggest capitalists, Ford, for example, rejoiced openly at the destruction of the German working class movement by Hitler. Had the U.S. government exerted its influence in Europe, Hitler could have been blown out of existence before he had an army of a quarter of a million men. China could have been supported in an effort to strengthen itself against Japan. But imperialists never fight wars for any purpose except imperialist interests.

The American government was kept informed of all the intrigues in Europe with and against Hitler. It formally expressed sympathy for the Chinese, while American capitalism armed Japan for that war as for the present one. It stood by and saw Ethiopia raped. It joined Britain, France and Stalinist Russia in the blockade and strangulation of the workers of Spain in their fight against the fascist uprising.

Masses Are Rising

Now today after this most dreadful of wars, the European workers are holding up again. Italy is seething with discontent, the French masses have shown once more that the spirit which produced the great French Revolution and the Commune still burns as brightly as ever in France. In every occupied country the masses are ready to fight for their liberation and the creation of a new Europe.

But once more the American ruling class is alive to the situation. Having had to join in the crushing of an imperialist rival which had grown too dangerous, they are, as ever, alert to the necessity of destroying the working class as an independent force in European society. They are as determined as ever to crush the nationalist aspirations of the Oriental peoples. To the Anglo-American ruling classes has been added a formidable ally. Stalinist Russia, trading on the traditions and achievements of the October Revolution, is now at one with Britain and America in the determination to reduce the European workers to submission and impotence in their efforts to carve out their own destiny.

Labor’s Great Interest

The American working class, in its own interest, cannot afford to allow European affairs to be ordered and regulated by the imperialists in the interests of American and other capital. The American proletariat cannot afford to stand by and see the hundreds of millions of Asiatics made once more into milch cows over whom imperialists, Eastern and Western, fight their bloody wars. The American workers must intervene with an independent policy. We failed to intervene in 1933, when the German workers were crushed. We failed to intervene in 1936 to save the Spanish Revolution. See how bitterly we have paid!

Today as the European war begins to draw to a close, the signs are thick in the heavens that the imperialists are using the prestige of victory, the power of their arms, and the power of the productive system AGAINST the working masses of Europe. Darlan, Badoglio, Giraud and then de Gaulle all tell the tale. Stalin, afraid of the Warsaw workers, pushed it into the jaws of the German army and left it to bleed to death or to paralysis.

Let us have no misunderstandings. This is a matter of life and death for us. If the imperialists are left free to recreate the old Europe, economic crisis and political reaction will once more radiate to all corners of the globe. The American workers cannot escape it. Therefore, in our own interests we must intervene. We must speak in our own voice, in the voice of organized labor, declaring our solidarity with the struggles for freedom of the European proletariat and the Asiatic peoples.

Workers Must Speak Out

We must denounce the counter-revolution of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, and we must denounce it in the voice of American labor, speaking on behalf of the great majority of the American people.

We must organize assistance, assistance to the fighters, relief to the suffering masses, aid to the workers’ organizations. All this we must do in the name of organized labor.

Let us speak and act in our own voice. Let us show the great masses everywhere that there is another America besides the America of Roosevelt, of Dewey, of the financiers and industrialists.

Let us make it clear that there is an America which is the friend of liberty everywhere, that is in complete solidarity with all the oppressed, against all the oppressors everywhere.

Such an America is the organized labor movement of this country- the greatest in the world. Today it is asserting itself splendidly on the national scene. But as we think of 1933 to the present day, we cannot but see that labor’s independence must be felt on the international scene as well.

This we must do not only for good will and comradeship but from hard necessity and self-protection. The time is ripe. There can be no delay. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin are in full action for their own aims. Labor must rise to the occasion and challenge their foreign policy with a foreign policy of its own.