REDEYE 7/13/16

Class war erupts in France
NYT, 6/19 and 6/12 — …[In] months of demonstrations in the streets…workers…have blocked oil refineries, nuclear plants, factories and the country’s rail network. The unrest has been set off by a government overhaul of…making hiring and firing easier and weakening the unions’ grip….
[In Paris] all up and down the boulevard, store windows were smashed….Young men clambered on top of bus shelters….The police brought out tear gas and…water cannon….[leaving] the Boulevard du Montparnasse…looking like a war zone….
“I am in the Class Struggle” was a sticker sported by many protesters…. “The Struggle Is About Class Against Class,” read one billboard….
Emmanuel Macron,…economic minister…and former Rothschild banker….was…greeted with eggs…and catcalls….”Get lost!” they shouted at him….
Mr. Macron is the darling of the businessmen’s confederation and the favorite of…pro-capitalist media in France.
Lenin and Stalin still
revered among workers
NYT, 6/14 — …[The statue of] Lenin the Bolshevik leader had stood in this courtyard for nearly 100 years….Residents of the two apartment buildings nearby had taken up a collection to erect the monument….
It is very rare to see a Lenin toppled in Russia. A quarter-century after the end of the Soviet Union, thousands of Lenins large and small stand proudly in public squares or, as in this case, in quasi-private courtyards. Lenin himself…still lies in a glass coffin in a granite mausoleum in Red Square. A 70-foot statue of him in Kaluzhskaya Square is one of the largest monuments in the city….Even the few that were toppled in August 1991 have now been lovingly restored and are displayed in a sculpture
garden in the city center….
…Stalin’s public image is being largely redeemed: His likeness has gone up on posters around the country, and he has been praised as a great military and industrial leader.
Racist U.S. massacres have exceeded Orlando’s
NYT, 6/18 — Is the massacre in Orlando the worst mass shooting in Unites States history?....
…Characterizing Orlando as the worst ignores an ugly history of attacks that claimed more lives, most involving…black or Indian victims….
In Colfax, La., in 1873; in East St. Louis, Ill., in 1917; and in Tulsa, Okla., in 192`; mobs…attacked and killed large numbers of black people….In 1890, a cavalry regiment gunned down Lakota men, women and children on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota….By most estimates, the death toll was higher than in the Orlando attack.
Capitalist wars,
persecution displaced 65 mill
NYT, 6/20 — The annual report by the United Nations…found that in 2015, 65.3 million people remained forcibly displaced from their homes….fleeing war, persecution, poverty or environmental devastation….
Half of all refugee children are out of school….
…The Obama….administration…is facing criticism…over a new round of deportations of Central Americans, including women and children….
…The latest refugee numbers amount to a report card on the failure of the world’s most powerful leaders to end wars.
Clinton’s welfare reform leaves millions destitute
NYT, 6/19 — In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed a…bill for welfare reform….
…Welfare “reform” is a misnomer…cash welfare is essentially dead, leaving some families with children utterly destitute….in the heartland of America….The embarrassing truth is that welfare reform has resulted in a layer of destitution that echoes poverty in countries like Bangladesh….
…Because of welfare reform, roughly three million American children live in households with income of less than $2 per person per day, a global metric of extreme poverty.
Thousands hit U.S.
imperialist bases
NYT, 6/20 — Tens of thousands of people on the Japanese island of Okinawa gathered…to demand the removal of American military bases in…the largest demonstration against the United States presence there in two decades.
The protest…was…a memorial for a 20-year-old woman who was found dead last month. A United States Marine veteran…working as a civilian contractor…has been arrested in connection with the killing….
Organizers said 65,000 people had attended the protest….the largest demonstration since 1995, when two American Marines and a Navy sailor were arrested over the rape of a 12-year-old girl….
With just a sliver of Japan’s total land mass, Okinawa is home to about half the American soldiers and sailors stationed in Japan. About three-quarters of the acreage in Japan taken up by United States bases is on the island….