[Peace] FW: May Day 2015

Sun Apr 26 20:24:18 EDT 2015

Newsletter

Online Rally Sunday, May 3
* Down with capitalism and imperialism!
* Unite the international the working class!
* Fight against against war, dictatorship and poverty!
* For peace, for equality, for socialism!

Rally date and time:The rally will be held on
Sunday, May 3, 2015
at 2:00 pm US EDT

It is only one week until the May 3 International Online May Day Rally, sponsored by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site. We call on all our readers to join this historic event by registering at internationalmayday.org.
Below are a number of recent articles on the danger of world war, the attack on democratic rights and the fight for socialism.

Obama's drone warfare: Assassination made routineBy Patrick Martin
25 April 2015 

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of President Obama's announcement Thursday that two hostages of Al Qaeda, an American and an Italian, were killed in a US drone missile strike in Pakistan is the lack of any significant reaction from official political circles or the media.

There was a certain amount of tut-tutting in the press and expressions of sympathy for the family of Dr. Warren Weinstein, the longtime aid worker in Pakistan who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda in 2011 and killed by the US government in January 2015.

But there was no challenge to the basic premise of the drone missile program: that the CIA and Pentagon have the right to kill any individual, in any country, on the mere say-so of the president. Drone murder by the US government has become routine and is accepted as normal and legitimate by the official shapers of public opinion. (Read more)

Australia's Anzac Day and the glorification of militarism and war By Peter Symonds 
 25 April 2015 

To any outside observer, the extraordinary promotion of militarism and patriotism in Australia surrounding today's commemoration of the centenary of Anzac Day must appear bizarre, even insane. Dawn services and military parades are being held across the country. Most shops are shut until 1pm. The media has gone into overdrive, with the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation providing continuous Anzac coverage from early morning to early evening and Anzac Day featured prominently on every newspaper front page.

The focus is the involvement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (Anzac) troops in the Anglo-French attempt during World War I to invade the Gallipoli Peninsula in modern-day Turkey, beginning on April 25, 1915. From every standpoint, the Gallipoli campaign was a disaster, in which hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides were killed or wounded. After eight months, the troops were forced to withdraw in the face of determined Turkish resistance having achieved none of their objectives.

Yet more than a half billion dollars in government and corporate sponsorship has been lavished on the WWI commemorations, even as big business demands deeper cutbacks to public education, health and welfare services. Planned out years in advance under Labor and Coalition governments, every level of government (federal, state and local), every section of the media and every institution--educational, sporting, cultural and artistic--has been enlisted. (Read more)

The police murder in BaltimoreBy Andre Damon
24 April 2015 

On April 12, 25-year-old Freddie Gray "made eye contact" with a Baltimore police officer; a week later he was dead from an episode of brutality and torture that left three of his vertebrae crushed and his spinal cord mostly severed.

A bystander video, depicting only part of the man's ordeal, shows a stony-faced group of police officers loading Gray, who is visibly injured and crying out in pain, into a small steel cage in the back of a police van. Thirty minutes later, he arrived at a hospital on the edge of death.

Prior to the beginning of the video, bystanders said that police officers subjected Gray to what can only be described as a horrific form of torture in which he was "folded up like he was...a piece of origami," with his heels on his back, leaving him praying for medical assistance and unable to walk.

Subsequent press reports have revealed that giving shackled prisoners a "rough ride" inside small, steel-caged police vans is a form of "touchless torture" used by police in Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities. (Read more)

Sri Lanka: Campaign for International May Day wins warm response By our correspondents 
 24 April 2015 

The fight for the 2015 Online International May Day Rally has received support from students and workers at Colombo's University of Sri Jayawardenepura, which has about 12,000 students.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka are campaigning for the May 3 rally, sponsored by the World Socialist Web Site, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the IYSSE. As part of the campaign, the SEP and IYSSE will also hold a public meeting in Colombo on May 1.

Supporters distributed hundreds of Sinhala language copies of the May Day Rally announcement at the university, along with other Marxist literature. Several students and workers spoke to the SEP team, and expressed their support by holding placards against imperialist war.

I. H. Macar, a translator, said: "As I am very much concerned about the developing threat of another worldwide catastrophe, your campaign struck me immediately. Apart from your party, no any other political organisation or media speaks about the threat of imperialist war.

"I have known your party since my childhood. My father was a sympathiser of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL, predecessor of Sri Lankan SEP). I know the RCL fought for internationalism from its inception. I am convinced that [war] cannot be resolved on a national basis. War is an imperialist intervention." (Read more)

No to imperialist war! Join the 2015 International May Day Online Rally!By the International Committee of the Fourth International
 13 April 2015 

On Sunday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International will hold an international online rally to mark May Day, the historic day of international working class solidarity.

May Day this year will be held amidst conditions of immense crisis. Much of the world is already engulfed in war. Without the intervention of the working class, these conflicts, ever more violent and bloody, will lead inexorably to a world war waged by nuclear-armed powers that would call into question the very future of human civilization.

In Eastern Europe, the fascist-led coup in Ukraine, orchestrated by the United States and the European powers in February of 2014, has been followed by a vast militarization of the entire region. NATO troops are engaged in highly provocative military exercises on Russia's border, and hundreds of US armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters and fighter planes have been deployed to bolster the right-wing, anti-Russian governments in the Baltic states.

In the Middle East and Central Asia, the United States has orchestrated one war after another, each ending in chaos and disaster. Last year, the Obama administration initiated a new war in Iraq and Syria, which has been followed by a US-backed bombing campaign in Yemen, led by the reactionary regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

At the same time, the US is expanding its "pivot to Asia," constructing a network of military alliances and arms agreements aimed at encircling and containing China--and preparing the way for war. In Africa, Washington is backing Kenya against Somalia in the East, while organizing massive war games involving Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Tunisia in the West.

In the quarter-century since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the American ruling class has spearheaded an endless and escalating series of global conflicts. Proclaiming its "unipolar moment," the US financial aristocracy has sought to counteract the protracted decline of American capitalism through violence and conquest. It has decreed as a matter of policy that, in its drive for world domination, no significant regional competitor will be tolerated. (Read more)

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