Category: Political Exposure

Suicides spread as economic crisis deepens

By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira


Public disapproval for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has brought to light a growing problem with suicides committed by U.S. military personnel. Many of these men and women come from the working-class and oppressed nationalities, whose social plight is compounded by the abuses they endure from Pentagon military policy and the top brass.


But news reports rarely mention the growing crisis of suicides among the general U.S. population. According to a 2008 report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, U.S. suicides are on the rise for the first time in a decade. A report by the American Association of Suicidology shows that suicides figures for 2005 outnumbered homicides by almost two to one, ranking suicides as the 11th cause of death in the United States.


The suicide of a loved one touches the deepest emotions of families and friends. The physical destruction of one’s own life, dismissing forever the least sense of hope, may seem like the most inconceivable of all human acts.


More often than not, suicide is reduced to an individual choice, a personal tragedy, removed from any social context. But the growing suicide epidemic has its obvious connections to the economic reality. It is not coincidental that the last significant jump in the rate of suicides in all U.S. history was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Rising suicides are not just a domestic phenomenon. In the last half century, suicides worldwide have increased by 60 percent. Imperialist penetration in subjugated countries, with all of its ugliest features, has had a devastating impact on millions of people around the world.

Studies have shown that most suicides do not spring from a desire to die, but a desire to escape overwhelming and irresolvable situations. African chattel slaves chose to take their own lives rather than continue experiencing the horrors inflicted upon them by the white overseers and masters. Similarly, today’s impoverished workers, losing their jobs and made homeless in growing numbers, may find no other way to cope with despair.

The JHBSPH report found that suicides have increased in the United States for the first time in 10 years. One of the main contributors to the increased statistic is a decline in the standard of living for white men and women between the ages of 40 and 64. The capitalist economic crisis has disrupted the more privileged social position the white population has enjoyed historically.

Native Americans, one of the most impoverished peoples in the United States, continue to suffer the highest rate of suicide, 32.4 per 100,000. Compare the rates of suicides among the different sectors of the population: 14.2 per 100,000 whites, 9.9 per 100,000 Latinos, 8.5 per 100,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders and 7.4 per 100,000 African Americans.

Widespread distress

The capitalist class has placed the burden of the economic crisis on the backs of the working class. Two million more unemployed within the last year, growing home foreclosures, families left without health coverage, a 25 percent rise in incidents of police brutality since 2001 and civil liberties blatantly diminished—no wonder there is widespread distress.

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The national suicide rate is 10.9 per 100,000 people. More than 90 percent of people who die from suicide live highly stressful lives attributed to financial situations. Among other causes stemming from economic-related deterioration of social life are family violence, divorce, and drug and alcohol abuse.

The economic deterioration has only intensified the plight of children. Millions of children in this country live parentless, with a 50 percent school drop-out rate, and an increasing number are incarcerated. Capitalism cannot guarantee working-class children a decent, well-paying job in their future, let alone a decent education, leaving many with a sense of uncertainty.


Not surprisingly, a Surgeon General report disclosed that suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people. Suicide rates are 1.3 per 100,000 for children ages 10 to 14, 8.2 per 100,000 for adolescents ages 14 to 19 and 12.5 per 100,000 for young adults ages 20 to 24. The last group beats the national average.

In a 2006 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly one of every 12 adolescents in high school attempted suicide, and 17 percent considered making an attempt.


For older or retired workers, ages 65 and up, suicide rates are also high. A 2004 report by the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention revealed that the rate of suicide for people 65 years of age and older is 14.3 per 100,000.

Working-class seniors are often neglected. The capitalist system takes little interest in workers past the prime age for profitable exploitation. If they can stay in their jobs long enough to retire, they face many difficulties, including the threat of losing their retirement plans, medical insurance and other services.

Resources exist, pilfered by wealthy

With modern technological and scientific advancements, the means exist for a scientific approach to address these problems. In a society that has such an enormous number of resources and wealth, there is no reason for people to be in need. The resources to eradicate misery and want exist but capitalism perpetuates social and economic inequalities—the material conditions responsible for pushing the most vulnerable to the far depths of hopelessness.

Under capitalism, socially created wealth is pilfered by the rich. While government officials hand over the public treasury to the wealthy, the working poor must confront the consequences of this injustice. Hospitals are closed and health care is denied to working people. Psychiatric and psychological care is part of the comprehensive medical care which should be a right. The vast majority of people are left to suffer in various ways.

Capitalism is to blame for the suffering wrought upon working people day in and day out—the epidemic of suicides being one of its more extreme manifestations. Any system that compels so many to such drastic ends must be indicted, prosecuted, condemned and done away with. Only in a world without class exploitation can human beings progress in surroundings of solidarity and cooperation. Only then will human life be accorded the appreciation and respect it deserves and will all human beings live with dignity.

https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/26/suicide-rate-rising-american-women-cdc-report

July 25, 1898 — Invasion of Puerto Rico & the Emergence of U.S. Imperialism

By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

For the many people who have engaged in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence, July 25th has a special significance. On that date in 1898, U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico, beginning a period of U.S. colonial domination on the island that continues to this day.

The United States invaded Puerto Rico, as well as the Philippines, Guam and Cuba, in the setting of the Spanish-American War. That military conflict was the opening of what would be the menacing role and predatory nature of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean, Latin America and the entire world.

The seizure of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines signaled the quest of the U.S. capitalist class to become a world power. European powers had pursued a policy of colonial acquisitions since the end of the 15th century.

But only in the late 19th century had the mature and developed capitalist powers virtually colonized the entire planet. The projection of U.S. rulers outside of the North American mainland signified a rush not to be left behind in this global division of markets.

Imperialism was transforming from a policy into a global system. No capitalist power could stand on the sidelines. Eventually this scramble and competition for colonies led to the First World War in human history, from 1914 to 1918, involving all the major capitalist powers.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the renowned leader of the 1917 Russian socialist revolution, noted this trend in the very first sentence of his classic 1916 work Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin wrote: “During the last 15 to 20 years, especially since the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the economic and also the political literature of the two hemispheres has more and more adopted the term ‘imperialism’ to describe the present era.”

My portrait of Vladamir Lenin. 24″ X 30″, acrylic paint on canvas.

Until the Spanish-American War, capitalism in the U.S. was focused on the Westward expansion within North America which came from the push to seize Indigenous/First Nation people’s lands and conquest of nearly half of Mexico’s territory in the 1846-1848 U.S.-Mexican War.

Following the overthrow of the system of African chattel slavery with the end of the Civil War in 1865, industrial capitalism was able to grow rapidly. Facilitating trade and the transfer of raw materials by laying railroad tracks throughout the entire stretch of the U.S. territory. Mining of raw materials increased. Factories, ports, bridges and dams were constructed at a greater pace.

Beneath this supposed “progress” in U.S. society, there was a tremendous cost in human suffering. The consolidation and expansion of capitalism in the country could be measured by the many horrific acts of genocide on Indigenous/First Nation people. 

What began at Plymouth Rock proceeded to become a tradition and custom of white supremacy. Outright murder, theft and rape became a requirement for U.S. capitalism’s further development. By the late 1890’s, Indigenous people were virtually annihilated within continental United States, as the so-called “Indian Wars” came to a close.

However, the westward expansionist drive by the white supremacist policies of Washington officials encountered the resistance of many Indigenous tribal nations. Their fighting spirit shall forever be exemplary to the freedom struggles of oppressed people everywhere. Tribal figures like Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, Captain Jack, Red Cloud, Cochise, Sitting Bull and Geronimo, all stood up with dignity and led their people in many fierce battles against the encroaching white racist conquerors.

The legendary Apache  leader Geronimo (far right) with three of his most trusted warriors.

Eventually the dynamism of capitalism meant that the home market was insufficient. New markets, raw materials and cheaper labor were increasingly required for continuation of a vast increase in productive forces. Capitalist development began to be propelled in the direction of a new kind of expansionism, aimed at subordinating the economies of other lands.

COMPETITION BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES & SPAIN

The more benefits that U.S.-based companies derived from economic investments made in the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico before the war—amounting to $50 million in 1897—the more that U.S. manufacturers and bankers desired direct control of these markets.

Throughout the 1890’s, there was a growing war fever among U.S. capitalists. Prominent bourgeois figures, politicians, journalists and the clergy openly encouraged the military seizure of Spain’s remaining colonies. “Democracy” and “freedom” became the banner for all sorts of demagogic warmongers.

Militarism and racist arrogance, in the centuries of campaigns to expel Indigenous people from their lands and enforce a genocidal system, were now utilized to justify imperialist expansion. The use of brutal force against people in the invaded lands was justified as “divine will” or “manifest destiny.”

With mounting tensions between Washington and Madrid, the U.S. Navy targeted and harassed any vessel flying the Spanish flag in the open sea. U.S. Navy warships were instructed to stop Spanish freighters, carry out searches, and in many cases seize the cargo. This was despite the fact that a state of war did not yet exist.

Spain was a crumbling feudal power facing severe internal political strife. It no longer had the empire status that it enjoyed centuries ago. The Spanish government was not in a position to engage in hostilities with any country — especially the United States, which was demonstrating its industrial might and was eager to test its military ability.

A PRETEXT FOR WAR

On the evening of February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded while docked in the Port of Havana, Cuba. 266 sailors were killed as they slept in their quarters. The ship’s captain and his close officers ironically were not on board.

Washington officials were quick to blame the Spanish government, claiming that the explosion was caused by a floating mine. The fact that many eyewitnesses saw the force of the explosion coming from within the bow of the ship did not matter to U.S. investigators. Whatever the cause, the Spanish government was in no way responsible.

Artist’s depiction of the U.S. Battleship Maine explosion in the Port of Havana, Cuba.

Despite Spain’s repeated diplomatic efforts and willingness to compensate for the loss of life and the destroyed ship, the U.S. government exploited the situation as a perfect excuse for war.

On April 25, 1898, the notorious U.S. President William McKinley, with the consent of the U.S. Congress, made his infamous declaration of war against Spain. The United States would now be recognized as a world imperialist power.

The military campaigns that followed impacted the lives of millions of people in the Philippines, Guam, Cuba and Puerto Rico. They were now to become subjects of a new colonial oppressor.

THE U.S. MILITARY INVASION & COLONIZATION OF PUERTO RICO

In the early morning hours of May 12, 1898 a fleet consisting of several U.S. Navy warship began the military campaign for the conquest of Puerto Rico. These warships conducted a devastating bombardment on the port city of San Juan, by firing a volley totaling 1,360 shells. Several Spanish Navy vessels were sunk while in the interior of the municipality many buildings were destroyed. What came after was a naval blockade of Puerto Rico’s principal ports.

On May 12, 1898 a fleet of U.S. Navy warships bombarded San Juan, Puerto Rico.

On July 25, 1898, 26,000 U.S. soldiers stormed the shores of Guanica, Puerto Rico — the stepping-stone to the invasion of the entire island nation. The invasion was led by the war criminal U.S. Army General Nelson A. Miles — a reliable servant of the U.S. capitalist westward expansion.

Miles was infamous for his role in the vicious suppression of the 1894 Pullman strike and other labor struggles fighting for the eight-hour day as well as workers right to unionize. He was also known for his capture and mistreatment of Indigenous leaders like Geronimo and Sitting Bull. But among Miles’ most outstanding crimes was the December 29, 1890, brutal massacre of 300 Indigenous men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

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While American troops began their onslaught on Guanica, U.S. warships entered the Bay of Ponce. These vessels threaten to use their destructive heavy guns on the city if the inhabitants did not surrender.

As the U.S. Army marched through the mountains, they encountered peasants who had been forewarned of the invasion’s brutality. These mountain people (Jibaros), armed solely with machetes, valiantly attacked the U.S. soldiers. The peasants who were captured by the invading forces were often bound to trees and shot by firing squad.

The U.S. military occupations in the Philippines, Guam, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the opening shots of a wave of imperialist invasions over the next decades in the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world.

U.S. troops were sent to Nicaragua in 1898 and again in 1899, 1907 and 1910, and from 1912 through 1933; Panama from 1901 through 1914 and again in 1989; Honduras in 1903 and again in 1911; the Dominican Republic in 1903 and again in 1965; Korea in 1904 and again in 1950; China in 1911; Mexico from 1914 through 1918; Haiti from 1914 through 1934; Cuba in 1898, 1906 to 1909, 1912 and again from 1917 through 1933; the Soviet Union from 1918 through 1922; Guatemala in 1920; Vietnam from 1955 through 1975; Grenada in 1983, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in Mar 20, 2003 and so on.

The list of U.S. military invasions continued throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. With hundreds of military bases and interventions around the world it became a constant feature of world affairs to the present day.

CONTINUED ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE

The corporate media has always made every effort to disguise the foreign subjugation of Puerto Rico. But events occasionally occur that push the truth to the surface, especially when the colonized people are driven to rise up and rebel.

Due to colonial circumstances Puerto Rico is one of the most plundered inhabited territorial entities on the globe. Giant U.S. corporations extract an average of $30 billion dollars annually in profits. For a country with a population less than 4 million makes the rate of exploitation one of the highest per capita in the world. This is why Puerto Rico continues to suffer economic devastation, especially after Hurricane Maria and since the COVID pandemic.

Because the United States is the most advanced capitalist country in the world, for it to use the oldest form of foreign subjugation dating back to the Assyrian, Greek and Roman Empires, says volumes about the barbarity of U.S. colonial policy.

Denying the right of self-determination and independence justifies the continued people’s resistance, in Puerto Rico and throughout the diaspora. And with growing discontent throughout the world, the Puerto Rican liberation struggle shall inevitably contribute to the global elimination of the imperialist system.

QUE VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE!

Bernie Sanders is no damn Socialist! He opposes Reparations, for Africa and the decedents of African chattel slavery!

By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

The demand for Reparations for centuries of African chattel slavery has always been dreaded by the capitalist ruling class and argued against with contempt by every form of white supremacy, both hidden and open. Bernie Sanders who makes every attempt to project himself as a “socialist” can very easily be proven a complete hypocrite on just the topic of reparations.

Socialists who truly uphold their convictions for an uncompromising struggle against capitalism cannot speak of ending capitalist oppression without fighting for reparations for African Americans, Africa and the entire African diaspora.

The unimaginable colossal wealth in the hands of the capitalist class today was initially created by enslaved African labor centuries ago. The racial injustices that exist today in this country against African Americans, Latinos and all people of color is rooted in this question.

For Bernie Sanders to speak of reparations with indifference only brings to light why his circles of support continue to be just as predominantly white as his fellow contenders in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Reparations for the historically super-exploited sectors of the population is a fundamental matter for those who call themselves Socialist.

Reparations will not just mean economic compensation; its implementation will also require incarcerating those who inherited wealth and their position of social privilege at the expense of Black people. Reparations cannot avoid also addressing putting an end to white privilege and entitlement by decree. A theme that the followers of the Sanders campaign, Bernie Sanders himself, as well as other supposed “Socialists” in the Democratic Party are by their very nature unable to grapple with.

Bernie Sanders’ “sincerity” or “insincerity” is irrelevant. There are many things which he has critiqued about this system which are true, such as the greed of the banks and the entire capitalist class. However, Mr. Sanders is embedded in the surroundings of white privilege. The progress and salvation of working-class people, especially people of color, cannot co-exist in this society with tyrants, exploiters and racists.

Given the social dynamics and historical circumstances of the United States and the extreme reliance on racism by the ruling class, reparations for oppressed people automatically imply the complete expropriation of the capitalist class. Expropriating the expropriators.

If Sanders is opposed to reparations for the descendent of African slavery and the African continent, then he is no different than his colleagues in the U.S. government who serve as safeguards for a system that plunders while brutalizing those who resist from Puerto Rico to Palestine and beyond.

Changing the circumstances of capitalist oppression, including Reparations for the victims of this system, will require a mass movement capable of launching revolution. This is the line of departure between revolutionary socialists and Sanders-type of apologists who speak of a “harmless” kind of socialism, which means something that is acceptable to our oppressors.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/

REPARATIONS FOR BLACKS & ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE

DONALD TRUMP, RACISM & CAPITALIST ELECTIONS

By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

What may very well distinguish the 2016 Presidential race from others in many decades is the media sensationalism the Republican candidate Donald Trump has received. Many people, especially people of color, have been angered or distressed by Trump’s openly racist speeches at campaign rallies and comments made to the news media. African Americans, Mexicans and other non-white people, along with Muslims and immigrants, have been the targets of Donald Trump’s vile depictions and slanders disguised as “speaking truth” or “freedom of speech.”

As a real estate giant, Trump is clear where his social class interests lay. He is a member of the capitalist class. In the numerous hotels and condominiums, he owns, many of the employees are Black, Latino and women. It is precisely these wage workers who are the ones to have created the $4.5 Billion net worth Trump has accumulated through decades of exploitation.

The way the media has featured Trump’s arrogant hate speech, one might easily believe that Donald Trump is the only racist among all of the 2016 presidential candidates, both Republicans and Democrats. If we were to take into consideration the overall picture of U.S. history and the role played by white privilege and entitlement today, we can then come to the conclusion of how there is so much more hidden behind Trump’s theatrical style campaign.

In a society founded on racist hatred and genocide centuries ago, where white supremacy came to define many habits, customs and traditions in which it operates in the general culture like an unofficial religion, can we honestly say that Trump’s remarks are the exception?

Whichever candidate wins the presidential election, the reins of political and economic power will continue to be in the hands of the various groupings of multi-billionaires. It is precisely the views and interests of these billionaires that decide the thinking and actions of these politicians.

Capitalist democracy is designed to hide the iron-clad dictatorship of these billionaires. Bourgeois politics consists precisely in fronting professional politicians—more or less reactionary, more or less populist—to convince the working class first of all that they have a choice in their oppression, and second that the outcome of the political cycle reflects “the people’s will.”

What a big lie

No matter what happens on Election Day 2016 our oppressors will continue to rule. The police will continue to murder poor, working class youths, especially people of color; the prison system will continue to enslave Blacks and Latinos in prison industries; public officials (“elected”) will continue to pass legislation that allow the closing of hospitals, schools, daycare centers while granting landlords greater powers to increase the push to gentrify our communities.

Manipulating public concerns by projecting worst case scenario is one of the oldest psychological tactics the ruling class has learned to master. They have dominated this society with the politics of deception, especially when they present to us the “good cop-bad cop” scenario. Highlighting constantly the latest racist and misogynist comments made by Donald Trump serves this purpose.

Take for example the strategy government and transportation officials use whenever they wish to raise bus and subway fares, as well as bridge and tunnel tolls. They will announce outrageous and unaffordable fare hikes in order to scare the public into accepting a lesser increase amount.

Shamefully, many progressives, including some on the “socialist” political Left, have allowed themselves to be drawn into the widespread Trump panic. These are people who should be quite familiar with the purpose and nature of the bourgeois elections.

These political forces fail to realize how the rulers use extremist figures like Donald Trump as a ploy to divert attention away from the actual political strategy of the ruling class. Some have even characterized Trump as some sort of a representative of a new U.S. fascism, as if the other candidates were not subordinated to the wishes of the most exploitative and racist sectors of the ruling class.

 Of course, those who disrupt Trump’s campaign appearances to denounce his racist bigotry deserve our applause. So do the young Black Lives Matter activists who have disrupted “socialist” Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ events.

But “dump Trump” protests that focus on this one politician as “worse than” the others , however well-intentioned, fall into the pitfall of bourgeois electoralism. Absent a militant and class-conscious struggle, the political orientation of these protests leads directly toward the deception of bourgeois elections. New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is quite conscious of the political trajectory, which is why she organized her own City Hall protest against the “disgusting, racist demagogue”—as she presides over a city plagued by racist police violence and abuses by billionaire landlords.

What is downplayed and kept away from the general public is the intricate mandate handed to whoever wins the presidential election. Whether it be Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Bush, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mark Rubio or Donald Trump, the winner in 2016 will be obligated to follow a strict set of protocols which are written into Federal Law and set-up to protect the capitalist system.

The Donald Trump campaign does not reveal anything new about the U.S. ruling class. It is not a turn toward fascism, where the ruling class mobilizes other class forces to do battle with the working class in the streets. Rather, the Trump campaign shows the inherent racism of the whole ruling class and the bankruptcy of bourgeois “democracy.”

The bottom line is this: the main objective of the bourgeois elections and capitalist politicians, from Trump to Sanders, is to provide oppressed and exploited people with the illusion of “democracy” in order to better exploit us. Fundamental change can only come about with the force of a people’s movement engaged in revolutionary struggle.