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Most people in the U.S. are at least tangentially aware of the so called "drug-wars" that are being waged within the borders of their southern neighbor.  Some months ago, in March, New York Times journalists wrote about violence "spilling" over the border. They cited some vague facts about homicide figures rising in certain American cities and then proceeded to hook the reader with some detective-like stories about a kidnapping and a pistol-whipping incident - incidents implied to be connected to the drug-violence in Mexico.

As this issue of Internationalism goes to press, details are still emerging regarding the senseless mass slaughter of 33 people-including the apparent shooter who committed suicide-on th

In the early morning hours of Nov. 25th five New York City undercover police officers pumped fifty bullets at nearly point blank range into a car occupied by three unarmed black men. Sean Bell, the driver was killed and two passengers were seriously wounded. So outrageous was this assault that even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Governor George Pataki quickly issued public statements decrying the obvious use of “excessive force” by the cops...

This spring hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, most of them “illegal aliens”, as the bourgeoisie calls them, predominantly from Latin American countries, took to the streets in major American cities across the country, from Los Angeles, to Dallas, to Chicago, to Washington DC, and New York City, protesting a threatened crackdown proposed in legislation advocated by the right-wing of the Republican party. The movement seemed to erupt overnight, coming from nowhere. What is the meaning of these events and what is the class nature of this movement?

Despite the frightening rhythm of explosions and collapses, and the resulting deaths and injuries to workers in China’s mines, it took an explosion at a mine in Sago, West Virginia, where a group of miners were trapped underground, slowly dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, for the British media to remember just how dangerous coal extraction can be.

If you are going to be at the demonstration in Washington, or in any other towns, and you agree with the positions that this leaflet defends, then print off the attached PDF file and distribute it yourself.

The clamor over gay marriage has become a virtual obsession of the bourgeois media in the United States over the past several months. Television talk shows have been replete with impassioned debate between liberal reformers and conservative Christians arguing the pros and cons of granting same-sex couples the right to a legally sanctioned marriage. From the Marxist perspective, while the often bigoted and hate-inspired arguments of the conservative foes of gay marriage-which claim that homosexuality is a perverse lifestyle whose legal recognition will further erode the moral fiber of the nation-are easy to reject, the often inspired and passionate arguments of liberal reformers for granting the right to same sex marriage are not so simple to evaluate

For more than a month the prestigious New York Times, and the media in general, have been shaken by the Jayson Blair scandal, which has put into question the veracity of the mass media that the ruling class relies upon to manipulate and mold mass consciousness in contemporary society. Blair was exposed for plagiarizing and even fabricating more than 73 national news stories over the past year. To repair the damage to its credibility, the Times devoted four full pages of its May 11th edition to detailing Blair’s transgressions. This “coming clean” by the self-styled American newspaper of record was supposed to reassure the public that the New York Times was more than capable of cleaning its own house. The whole thing was very reminiscent of the New York police department’s self-investigations of police brutality complaints. Journalists around the country rushed to the defense of the Times, praising the newspaper for confronting the scandal head-on. As one apologist put it, “the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post are dedicated to reporting the truth.”

In our last issue, we reported how the American bourgeoisie is making full use of the pretext of the "war on terrorism" to ram through unprecedented attacks on the working class' living and working conditions (see "War is a Pretext for Austerity," Internationalism #125). Utilizing the federal structure of its state apparatus, the American ruling class seeks to obscure its policy of generalized austerity at the level of the national capital itself by portraying the measures as the result of particular local and state officials' policy choices.

A central element in the current ideological offensive of the ruling class is the aggressive effort to gain public acquiescence in the strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state, and the erosion of “civil liberties.”Of course this isn’t totally new.The Clinton administration had already presided over the greatest repressive offensive in a generation.The strengthening of the police forces around the country by the transfer of 100,000 laid off soldiers to local police agencies during the 1990s; the increase in the number of criminal offensives punishable by death; the closing of the doors to political exiles from oppressive regimes in South America and the Caribbean; repressive rulings by the Supreme Court that expanded police search and seizure powers, limited appeals by defendants; the explosion in the percentage imprisoned in the nation’s jails -- are all examples of this strengthening of the repressive apparatus overthe past decade.

There has been a lot of hype in the mass media about the so-called 'Greatest Generation' -- the generation that fought in World War II. First there was "Saving Private Ryan," the Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Hanks, which glorified the sacrifices of those who fought in the war. More recently, there has been a media campaign to erect a monument to the soldiers and sailors who "made the world safe for the American way of life." Tom Brokaw, one of the most prominent television news reporters/broadcasters in the United States, has published two books on this generation, both those who fought in the war. The television news has been inundated with "heart-warming" stories about "long overdue" medals and citations being awarded to aging veterans. Various tributes have been made to the factory workers who worked long and hard to produce the weapons and materials needed to prosecute the war. A strong dose of gratitude is handed to those men and women who were not sent into combat but who worked under often dangerous and difficult conditions to keep production for war going at a fierce pace. There has been homage to all the women who worked as nurses or factory workers or truck drivers to keep war production going.

In the last few months the ruling class has unleashed an incredible barrage of democratic campaigns to confuse and disorient the working class. The democratic mystification is used skillfully by the bourgeoisie in diverting political discontent within the working class into harmless traps that keep workers tied to the state and dilute the working class within a broader "civic movement" (interclassist people’s movements). Notable democratic campaigns in recent months include not only the union reform campaigns and the ongoing presidential campaign mentioned above, but also those centered on anti-police brutality and corruption movements, the ideological campaign around investing in the stock market, the Elian Gonzalez affair, and the anti-globalization movement.

This was a social outrage. A demonstration beyond doubt of the license to kill that has been granted to the police to kill ‘suspects’

This man who was murdered was an immigrant to the United States from Africa

The main political parties claimed to have agreed that ‘race’ wouldn’t be an issue in the election campaign. The party leaders signed a declaration prepared by the Commission for Racial Equality. And then, of course, the ‘debate’ on ‘race’ got under way.

And what a victory it was. Who would have thought, even a year ago, that sixty thousand people would turn up to greet delegates of the World Trade Organisation. Who'd have thought that trade unionists would be marching with environmentalists people dressed as turtles marching with sacked steelworkers, the topless lesbian avengers mingling with farmers. Churchgoers with the anarchist black-block. The mass protests helped focus world-wide attention on what the WTO really stands for and it crumbled under the pressure. Forget all their talk about 'free trade', the WTO is nothing more than a nasty little organisation fighting for the rights of multinational organisations to dismantle every country's labour and environmental laws" SchNEWS website bulletin, 10.12.99