For the story behind this video click here: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/…

Original article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

Federal judge slams Obama administration lawyers’ defense of illegal wiretapping, by John Andrews, via World Socialist Web Site:

A federal judge has rebuffed the Obama administration’s latest attempt to defend illegal Bush-era eavesdropping, ruling that a now defunct US Islamic charity, Al-Haramain, and two of its lawyers are entitled to money damages because government agents failed to obtain a warrant before tapping their phones.

Original article: http://socialistworker.org.uk/…

Though this is a British publication, by British socialists who don’t like to play much with the other socialists, I heartily concur with the sentiment of the article.  We know Obama’s signiture piece of legislative action was a sell-out to the health insurance industry.  We know that his bailout of the auto industry was done with the insistance upon dropping the workers’ right to strike action during the next contract and included draconian cuts in pay and compensation.  We know that workers are faring badly under Obama, and probably will continue to do so.

Strikes are the workers’ forge and anvil.  If we are to rebuild our economy, it will be done on the backs of the workers, not the bosses or politicians.  It’s time to, as the old song says, srike while the iron is hot.

Original article: http://www.omaha.com/article/2…

ht: http://www.democraticundergrou…

BA strikers: “It is time to stop this rush to the bottom”  via World Socialist Web Site.

This will be short. One of the cabin attendants has put the whole situation for all of us in a succinct a manner that everybody can understand. This is not just an issue for the BA strikers, it’s an issue for all workers:

“It is time we stopped this rush to the bottom. It’s a recession, and we are all struggling. I agree with you that worker’s shouldn’t pay for this. It came out in the company report this week that our top seven managers between them got £4 million in share options. Now apparently this strike is all over £10 million. That is rubbish. I think they want to smash the unions and get us all on Easyjet wages, and once that is done to merge with Iberian Airlines.

The sad thing here in the US is that this is true for the right as well. Until they understand that their livelihoods are threatened by the bosses, they will play the patsies for the bosses. The bosses don’t care a whit about the right as workers, only as cannon fodder for union busting. Until there is a concerted effort to make this the overriding point about our economic conditions, the right will never understand.

SocialismConference.org

Chicago: June 17 – 20

Oakland: July 1 – 4

With the economy in shambles and with wars and occupations continuing, the challenge to change these conditions confronts us all. More than a year ago, millions placed their hopes in Barack Obama and the Democrats to solve these problems. But after months of broken promises and concessions to conservatives, jobs are scarce, the banks are unregulated, and full equality for LGBT people remains elusive.

Original article via Socialist Appeal (UK):

The call issued by President Chavez to set up a new revolutionary international, the Fifth International, has provoked a passionate discussion in the ranks of the workers’ movement in Latin America and on a world scale. It is impossible for Marxists to remain indifferent to this question. What attitude should we take towards it?

Original article, by V.I. Lenin (yep…him), via In Defence of Marxism:

“The working woman and the peasant woman are oppressed by capital, but over and above that, even in the most democratic of the bourgeois republics, they remain, firstly, deprived of some rights because the law does not give them equality with men; and secondly – and this is the main thing – they remain in “household bondage”, they continue to be “household slaves”, for they are overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household.” V.I.Lenin, March 4, 1921

Original article, by Patrick Martin, via World Socialist Web Site:

The first week of March has seen a number of commentaries in the American media, mainly from liberal pundits, worrying over the declining public standing of President Obama and the growing signs of disarray in the Democratic Party.