Often around here you will read a basic critique of National Socialism: it still redistributes wealth, therefore is both dysgenic and unstable, and tends toward brutality to try to force this system to work.

You will also read a criticism of the type of Anti-Semitism that sees Jews as controlling the world through a shadowy conspiracy: this lets democracy off the hook, leaves the problem intact, creates atrocities, and leaves the problem intact.

Everyone wants a nice clear answer with square corners and a feeling of force behind it. Root out the problem, rip up the disease, get rid of the bad and leave only the good.

National Socialism is not this answer because it makes a more Right-wing version of the current system but leaves our core sickness intact while wasting our energy on pursuits that are not directly relevant to our goal.

In the National Socialism worldview, a tiny population the Jews of the world are somehow united (those who favor this view do not know Jews!) in controlling all of us for their devious plans.

Its first logical flaw is that if the Jews ran the world, they would not need us nor would bother to disguise what they are doing. At worst, they are one of many powerful moneyed lobbies buying into our democracies.

Its second logical flaw is that it portrays us as victim-idiots who are incompetent. Jews got where they did by being smart, valuing education, and focusing on making money instead of obtaining salvation from the (Jewish) god Jehovah.

If you teach all of us to be victims, and blame the Jews for being competent and smart, you have portrayed the mighty Aryan as a helpless idiot who is being manipulated through his own stupidity.

That is a very negative view to take of any population, least of all your own.

In reality, the people running us are stupid because the people choosing them the voters behave like idiots. Democracy is a game of optics and emotions, and sanity and realism always lose out to drama, pity, and rage.

When we had our kings, we had saner and smarter people running us, and none of the problems we had today. The mercantile middle classes overthrew their kings, and we got a mercantile order out of that. Everything is for sale, all is optics.

That is democracy as usual, and per democracy as usual, profiteers show up. When we have a war, people become billionaires selling weapons. When the voters endorse the New Green Deal, many more billionaires are minted.

Among those will be the foreign, not just Jews but Chinese, Saudis, Egyptians, Singaporeans, and Argentines. These groups will act in their own interests at the expense of Americans; every group behaves this way, acting in its own self-interest alone.

If you act like a victim, they will take you for all that you have. If you opt for an insane democracy, they will make money off of its stupid decisions, whether wars, Green New Deals, affirmative action, or welfare programs.

They will view you as idiots. When you have a democracy, they know you are paralyzed and that they can buy Congresscritters for a few million. They know that you cannot do anything about it.

In a democracy, you are ruled by the largest segment of your population, which is a group of no particular ability that likes easy answers. Offer them symbolism and they lunge for it, allowing you to keep on stealing.

National Socialists turn White people into BLM. They teach us that we are helpless victims of the International Jew and that there is nothing we can except wait for the great race war while buying bad music and books about The Cause.

They also make themselves into bigots against intelligence. By posing the Jew as an intelligent manipulator and Whites as victims, they suggest that intelligence is bad and repeating the dogma of National Socialism is the only good.

In essence, they are saying intelligence is bad because our enemies use it and encouraging us to get dumber. That makes us weaker over time. It pleases the proles, though, who resent the higher average IQs of the upper castes.

This follows typical democratic thinking: if something goes wrong, remove the people in power, and let the angry mob take over. Unfortunately, the angry mob is a moron and makes us weaker.

In fact, the mob is the only thing through their voting patterns, which favor symbols and emotions over reality that holds us back. National Socialism is part of this mob movement, not standing against it.

Supposing that tomorrow you killed all the Jews and other foreigners. Our problem would still remain. We do not know how to govern ourselves, and have endless bad leadership instead because they are chosen by the least competent group, the mob.

Everything you blame on capitalism, Jews, and elites is in fact the result of democracy and the voting patterns of average people in large numbers. Nothing changes until we change that, no matter how many atrocities we produce.

Tags: anti-semitism, democracy, national socialism

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National Socialism Will Destroy White People

Nazism (or National Socialism; German: Nationalsozialismus) is a set of political beliefs associated with the Nazi Party of Germany. It started in the 1920s, but the Nazi Party gained power in 1933 and started carrying out their ideas in Germany, which they called the Third Reich. They stayed in power in Germany until 1945, when they lost World War II.

National Socialism is an extreme right-wing, fascist, ideology that is heavily inspired from the works of Oswald Spengler. The Nazis believed that only the Aryan (German) race was capable of building nations and other races, notably the Jewish race, were agents of the corruptive forces of capitalism and Marxism, both of which the Nazis opposed. They considered the Aryan race the 'Master race', which meant that they thought that the Aryans were the most biologically evolved of humans and therefore deserved to have power over all other humans. They adapted Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and applied it to humans.

The leader of the Nazis Adolf Hitler wanted to a create a country where all Aryans were treated equally. They spent heavily on poorer people and began several huge government programs to help Germany deal with the unemployment and economic crisis caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression which followed it. Some Nazis, such as Ernst Rhm, wanted the reforms to go further and called for a revolution, eliminating economic classes in Germany and for the government to take control of major businesses. Many of these Nazis were murdered on Hitler's orders during the Night of the Long Knives because they were a threat to his leadership of the Nazi Party.

The Nazis blamed the Jewish people for Germany's defeat in World War I. This is known as the Stab in the Back Myth. The Nazis also blamed the Jewish people for rapid inflation and practically every other economic woe facing Germany at the time as a result of their defeat in World War I. For this reason, the Nazis not only viewed the Jewish people as inferior to them, but as oppressors of the Aryan people who were creating inequality. The Nazis' tactic of lazily albeit effectively blaming the Jewish people for all of Germany's problems is a propaganda tactic known as scapegoating and was used to justify the great atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jewish people.[1]

To implement the racist ideas, the Nuremberg Race Laws (created in 1935) banned non-Aryans and political opponents of the Nazis from the civil-service. They also forbid any sexual contact between 'Aryan' and 'non-Aryan' persons.

The Nazis sent millions of Jews, Roma, and other people to concentration camps and death camps, where they were killed. These killings are now called the Holocaust.

The word Nazi is short for Nationalsozialist (supporter of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) in the German language. This means "National Socialist German Workers' Party".

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, wrote a book called Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). The book said that all of Germany's problems happened because Jews were making plans to hurt the country. He also said that Jewish and communist politicians planned the Armistice of 1918 that ended World War I, and allowed Germany to agree to pay huge amounts of money and goods (reparations).[2]

In November 1923, the Nazis tried to overthrow the democratic German government that had been set up after WWI. Nazi thinking emphasises conflict and violence, and believes that these are the best way to sort out political problems. The Nazis had therefore set up their own private army, called the Sturmabteilung (SA) which were sometimes known as the 'Nazi stormtroopers' or simply the 'brownshirts'. Many political parties had their own private armies at this time in Germany to guard their events and meetings from the private armies of other political parties. The attempt to take power is referred to as the Munich Putsch or Beer Hall Putsch and was crushed after less than 24 hours.

After the Putsch, Hitler was imprisoned for six months and the Nazi Party briefly banned. It was allowed to exist again in if it promised to only be democratic. The Nazis agreed, but made it clear that if they took power in Germany, they would turn Germany into a dictatorship. The Nazis believed in something called the Fhrer Principle, which means that they believe that all groups should be organised like armies, with absolute loyalty shown to the leader of the group. They wanted to apply this principle to Germany. They disagreed with democracy, because they believed that it divided groups which made them weaker.

The Nazis performed very badly in elections until the early 1930s, where they became exceptionally popular. This can be partly explained by a massive increase in poverty in Germany caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and Nazi promises to rebuild German strength and pride. However, this is not the only reason for the Nazis coming to power, because it still took more than three years for Adolf Hitler to become Chancellor of Germany after the Crash.

On the night of the 27 February 1933 and 28 February 1933, someone set the Reichstag building on fire. This was the building where the German Parliament held their meetings. The Nazis blamed the communists. Opponents of the Nazis said that the Nazis themselves had done it to come to power. On the very same day, an emergency law called Reichstagsbrandverordnung was passed. The government claimed it was to protect the state from people trying to hurt the country. With this law, most of the civil rights of the Weimar Republic did not count any longer. The Nazis used this against the other political parties. Members of the communist and social-democratic parties were put into prison or killed.

The Nazis became the biggest party in the parliament. By 1934, they managed to make all other parties illegal. Democracy was replaced with a dictatorship. Adolf Hitler became leader (Fhrer) of Germany, and had the power to make any laws he wanted.

The Nazis changed Germany to fit their ideas of what a country should be like. They created a totalitarian state, which is a country where the government tries to have total control over ordinary people's lives.

In schools, several subjects were changed to fit a Nazi interpretation. History was taught to emphasise German military victories and blames Jewish people and Marxists for defeat in WWI. Children were also taught racial hygiene lessons, where pseudo-scientific racist principles taught to them. In 1936, all German children had to be members of the Hitler Youth which was a Nazi version of the Scouting movement, and was designed to prepare them to be soldiers in wars against other races.

People who opposed the Nazis were seen as traitors. The Nazis created a very effective police state, led by Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich. They were in charge of an organisation called the Schutzstaffel (SS) that took control of all of the police forces in Germany. The SS also set up a new secret police organisation called the Gestapo which hunted down people who wanted to protest against the Nazi government. Enemies of the Nazis were regularly tortured, put in concentration camps or executed.

As the German leader (Fhrer) of Nazi Germany, Hitler began moving Nazi armies into neighboring countries. When Germany attacked Poland, World War II started. Western countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were occupied and to be treated by Germany as colonies. However, in Eastern countries, such as Poland and the Soviet Union, the Nazis planned to kill or enslave the Slavic peoples, so that German settlers could take their land.

The Nazis made alliances with other European countries, such as Finland and Italy. Every other European country that allied with Germany did it because they did not want to be taken over by Germany. Through these alliances and invasions, the Nazis managed to control much of Europe.

In the Holocaust, millions of Jews, as well as Roma people (also called "Gypsies"), people with disabilities, homosexuals, political opponents, and many other people were sent to concentration camps and death camps in Poland and Germany. The Nazis killed millions of these people at the concentration camps with poison gas. The Nazis also killed millions of people in these groups by forcing them to do slave labor without giving them much food or clothing. In total, 17 million people died, 6 million of them being Jews.

In 1945, the Soviet Union took over Berlin after defeating the German army in Russia. The Soviet Red Army met the American and British armies, who had fought right across Germany after invading Nazi Europe from Normandy in France on June 6,1944. The Nazis lost because the Allies had many more soldiers and more money than them.

During the invasion of Berlin, Hitler shot himself in a bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun. Other Nazis also killed themselves, including Joseph Goebbels just one day after Hitler named him as his successor. The Nazis surrendered after the Red Army captured Berlin.

After the war, the Allied governments, namely the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, held trials of the Nazi leaders. These trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany. For this reason, these trials were called "the Nuremberg Trials." The Allied leaders accused the Nazi leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murdering millions of people (in the Holocaust), of starting wars, of conspiracy, and belonging to illegal organizations like the SS (called, "Schutzstaffel", in German). Most Nazi leaders were found guilty by the court, and they were sent to jail or sentenced to death and executed.

There has not been a Nazi state since 1945, but there are still people who believe in those ideas. These people are often called neo-Nazis. Here are some examples of modern Nazi ideas:

After the war, laws were made in Germany and other countries, especially countries in Europe, that make it illegal to say the Holocaust never happened. Sometimes they also ban questioning the number of people affected by it, which is saying that not so many people were killed as most people think who wrote this? There has been some controversy over whether this affects people's free speech. Certain countries, such as Germany, Austria, and France, also banned the use of Nazi symbols. It is also banned to make a Nazi pledge position on a popular media source to stop Nazis from using them.

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Nazism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The foundation of Muslim rule in India was laid down by Shahabuddin Ghori in 1193 for the next 800 years. Muslim Sufi saints preached in India and millions converted to Islam which alarmed the Hindu population and gave birth to their nationalist movement. This development led to the creation of hardliner Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925 by Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur. In Germany, Dietrich Eckart poet and political activist founded the German Workers Party in 1919 to save the nation from Jews. He asked Adolf Hitler to lead the nation to the identity. The German Workers Party was later renamed as the National Socialist Workers Party and this how the Nazi party born.

Nazism is national socialism and the ideology preached by Hitler and his associates. RSS leader Savarkar and Golwalkar praised this ideology and believed the same should be applied to India. The Nazis adopted a new emblem of party based on ancient Aryan origin, the Swastika which was a symbol of good luck. The same was adopted by the Hindutva flag bearer as a symbol of spirituality. The slogan of one flag, one leader and one ideology was borrowed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from the Nazis. The Nazis coined the term Fuhrer for Adolf Hitler and in India Subash Chandra Bose was called Netaji.

The concept of Akhand Bharat was also borrowed from the Nazi concept of Lebensraum, meaning living space. According to the RSS philosophy, all that is South of the Himalayas and North of the Indian Ocean is Bharat. According to Nazi Germany, Germans had a right to expand all the way to the East. In 1980 the Bhartiya Jana Sangh political arm of the RSS morphed into the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). In the 1980 elections, BJP got only two seats and in 1991, it succeeded in forming a coalition government. The 1999 elections helped it come into power with 182 seats. In 2014 and 2019, the BJP came to power as a political force. The election campaign was based on anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan rhetoric.

Similarly, the Nazis in 1924 got 3 percent of all votes. In 1928, it got 2.6 percent of the votes however in the 1930 election, it got 6.5 million votes and the party became a huge political force. In 1933, the Nazis won 44 percent of the votes and Hitler became the chancellor and then, the president and the supreme leader. The Nazis created their own para-military force in 1921 named the Storm Section (SA). They were called Brown Shirts because of the color of their uniform shirts. Their role was the protection of Nazi rallies. The RSS also raised a force similar to the SA which identified with Khaki shorts, with a bamboo stick, and it was Bajrang Dal.

The Nazis had extreme hatred towards the Jews and accused them for all the worlds problems. An organised campaign against the Jews was launched under Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. During the annual Nuremberg Rally, Jews were declared to be enemies of the state. They were asked to go back to Palestine and anti-Semitic legislation was passed which banned marriage between Jews and Germans. Similarly, the RSS leader built the narrative that Hindus should rule India and Muslims and Christians, being outsiders, must be expelled or merged into Hinduism. The RSS was and is famous for anti-Muslim rhetoric and categorised Muslims and Christians as Indias internal enemies.

Hitlers book, Mein Kampf, is famous across India and has been translated into multiple native languages. The BJP-RSS government is trying to transform India into a purely Hindu state where there is no place for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and even low caste Hindus. It is said that during the holocaust, the Nazis killed six million Jews, the majority in concentration camps. Thousands of Muslims are killed on daily basis by Hindu groups over allegations of slaughtering cows and eating beef. There are continued Hindu vigilante attacks on Muslims farmers, livestock traders and farmers trespassing cows. The religious intolerance and violence has increased against Muslims and other minorities across India. The fascist and Nazis inspired BJP-RSS government is a real threat to peace and stability in the region.

The writer is a retired brigadier and freelance columnist.

The religious intolerance and violence has increased against Muslims and other minorities across India.

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Nazis and Sanghis - The Nation

The International Committee of the Fourth International, meeting on June 19, unanimously approved the application of the Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group, SEG) to be its section in Turkey.

The comrades of Sosyalist Eitlik have been working closely with the International Committee in the publication of a Turkish language edition of the World Socialist Web Site and in the translation and distribution of its literature. The leading comrades of the SEG have acquired an extensive knowledge and firm grasp of the history, principles and program of the ICFI.

The June 19 decision followed extensive discussions with representatives of the International Committee in Istanbul on the development of the fight for Trotskyism in Turkey and the Aegean and Black Sea regions.

Upon accepting the application of the Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu, the International Committee paid tribute to the memory of Comrade Halil Celik (1961-2018), who, in the years prior to his untimely death, fought tirelessly for Trotskyism and laid the foundations for the establishment of a section of the ICFI in Turkey.

The Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu will now proceed to the organization of its founding congress.

We publish below the resolution unanimously adopted by the leadership of the Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu on June 15, 2022, requesting its acceptance as a section of the ICFI.

***

1. The Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group, SEG) has taken the resolution to apply to join the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), whose political authority it recognizes and with which it works in the closest political cooperation.

2. It is an integral part of the decision to found the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) as the Turkish section of the ICFI. Both decisions are not based on conjunctural or national considerations, but on the SEGs agreement with the ICFI on questions of history, principles and program. The building of a revolutionary party in any country is possible only on the basis of an international perspective, program and party. The only solution to the major problems in Turkey, which is in a critical position in terms of global geopolitics and class struggle, is the international socialist revolution. The founding of the SEP (Turkey) will be an expression of the global expansion of the ICFI, the only political tendency that assumes the task of solving the great historical problems.

3. As Leon Trotsky wrote in his 1928 Critique of the Draft Program of the Communist International:

In our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital, not a single communist party can establish its program by proceeding solely or mainly from conditions and tendencies of developments in its own country. This also holds entirely for the party that wields state power within the boundaries of the USSR. On August 4, 1914, the death knell sounded for national programs for all time. The revolutionary party of the proletariat can base itself only upon an international program corresponding to the character of the present epoch, the epoch of the highest development and collapse of capitalism. An international communist program is in no case the sum of national programs or an amalgam of their common features. The international program must proceed directly from an analysis of the conditions and tendencies of the world economy and of the world political system taken as a whole in all its connections and contradictions, that is, with the mutually antagonistic interdependence of its separate parts. In the present epoch, to a much larger extent than in the past, the national orientation of the proletariat must and can flow only from a world orientation and not vice versa. Herein lies the basic and primary difference between communist internationalism and all varieties of national socialism.

4. Only the ICFI represents the political continuity of the world Marxist/Trotskyist movement. This continuity goes back to the founding of the Left Opposition under the leadership of Leon Trotsky in 1923 to defend the strategy and program of the world socialist revolution against nationalist Stalinist degeneration. It was this strategy and program that guided the October Revolution in 1917 led by the Bolshevik Party in Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

5. The founding of the Fourth International in 1938 under the leadership of Trotsky after the collapse of the Communist International paving the way for the Nazis to come to power in Germany in 1933; the founding of the International Committee in 1953 by orthodox Trotskyists led by James P. Cannon of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the US against the revisionist-liquidationist tendency led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel; the political struggle by the British Trotskyists led by Gerry Healy against the unprincipled reunification with the Pabloites in 1963; and the struggle of the American Trotskyists led by David North in 1982-86 against the national-opportunist degeneration of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in Britain and the regaining the control of the IC by orthodox Trotskyists, constitute critical turning points in this political continuity.

6. In this context, the Socialist Equality Group emphasizes that it fully agrees with the Historical and International Foundations documents of the Socialist Equality Parties affiliated to the ICFI, and it bases itself on these historical and international foundations.

7. Trotsky wrote in 1938:

It is possible to maintain and develop a revolutionary political grouping of serious importance only on the basis of great principles. The Fourth International alone embodies and represents these principles. It is possible for a national group to maintain a constant revolutionary course only if it is firmly connected in one organization with co-thinkers throughout the world and maintains a constant political and theoretical collaboration with them. The Fourth International alone is such an organization. All purely national groupings, all those who reject international organization, control, and discipline are in their essence reactionary.

This is the approach that led to the SEGs decision to join the ICFI.

8. The SEGs resolution to join the ICFI is a very conscious political decision that reflects the step-by-step integration of our group with the International Committee over the past years on the questions of principle and history. Comrade Halil elik, who passed away at the end of 2018, played a decisive role in reaching this point, which has an international political and historical significance.

9. The political orientation of the predecessor group of todays SEG towards the ICFI dates back to the early 2000s. In November 2007, Halils group wrote to the ICFI at that time:

You are aware of the fact that we have been following the ICFI closely for the last two years through the WSWS and discussing some of its documents internally by translating them into Turkish. Through the meetings and discussions we held, we managed to find answers to many of the questions we had in our minds. In a nutshell, the discussions we have conducted in Istanbul have accelerated the process of understanding the basic positions of the ICFI by our comrades and sympathisers.

The year 2007 also marked an important milestone when German comrades from the ICFI visited Istanbul and discussions with our group deepened.

10. By 2014, the IC plenum unanimously passed a resolution that read:

The plenum of the International Committee of the Fourth International formally accepts the application of Comrade H[alil] on behalf of the organisation Toplumsal Esitlik (Social Equality Group) to open discussions with the aim of establishing a section of the International Committee in Turkey. The IC will work closely with the Turkish comrades to assist them in the political and theoretical preparation of a Founding Conference.

11. This resolution and closer political collaboration with the ICFI shaped our groups political activity after 2014. As an important step in our political integration with the ICFI, in 2018 we changed the name of our group to Socialist Equality, stating in the resolution that:

The SE is assuming a name in line with that of all the official sections of the ICFI (Socialist Equality Party, Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, Parti de lgalit socialiste) and thereby stressing its determination to become the Turkish section of the Fourth International.

12. The founding of Mehring Yaynclk at the end of 2017 and the publication of some of the key works of the ICFI in Turkish represented a major step forward in the building of the Socialist Equality Party (Turkey). Comrade Halils prediction was vindicated:

Publications of the contemporary Marxist literature produced by the world Trotskyist movement in Turkish, we believe, will contribute to the laying of the theoretical and political foundation for the building of the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

13. In 2020, the Socialist Equality Groups decision to come under the full control of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and to continue its publication exclusively on the WSWS was another important step towards establishing a Turkish section of the world party.

14. The last critical meeting in the decision to found the Socialist Equality Party (Turkey) and apply to join the ICFI was the visit of the International Committee delegation to Istanbul in early June 2022.

15. In the historic meetings held during this visit, it was unanimously supported that, on the basis of both the maturity of the objective situation in the world and the SEGs agreement with the ICFI on program, principles and historical issues, the founding of the SEP (Turkey) as an expression of the international expansion of the ICFI could no longer be delayed. The founding of the SEP (Turkey) will inspire the founding of new ICFI sections in the Middle East and around the world.

16. As the COVID-19 pandemic, which intensified the crisis of world capitalism, is entering a new phase, NATOs proxy war against Russia in Ukraine threatens a nuclear World War III. The global food crisis and the cost of living crisis are accompanied by the accelerating collapse of democratic forms of rule in all countries. However, the internal contradictions of capitalism that give rise to these crises are also paving the way for the development of the world socialist revolution. Capitalist globalization and the communication technologies that accompany it have objectively integrated the world economy and the working class to an enormous degree. The class struggle is taking on an international character as never before. The developing movement of the international working class is increasingly intersecting with the conscious political activity of the ICFI. Only the ICFI has a global revolutionary program of solutions to the great historical problems facing the international working class.

17. All global objective developments confirm the ICFIs analysis and prediction at the beginning of 2020: The decade of the socialist revolution begins. However, as the statement explained, the spontaneous struggles of workers and their instinctive striving for socialism are, by themselves, inadequate. The transformation of the class struggle into a conscious movement for socialism is a question of political leadership. The SEGs decision to found the SEP (Turkey) and apply to join the ICFI is part of the fight to resolve this question of political leadership.

18. On this basis, taking a resolution to apply to join the ICFI, the SEG decides to submit its founding documents Statement of Principles and Historical and Political Perspectives for the political approval of the International Committee. The official founding of the party will take place after this process of preparation, discussion and IC approval.

19. At the same time, the SEG enthusiastically supports the proposal to develop the Turkish edition of the WSWS in daily practical cooperation with international comrades. The WSWS is the critical political tool for the building of the ICFI all over the world and thus for the development of the world socialist revolution.

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A historic advance in the fight for Trotskyism: The International Committee of the Fourth International accepts application of the Sosyalist Eitlik...

Democrats Want To Destroy Our Form Of Government

Dear Editor,

Warning! The following missive is going to outrage, irritate and flat out P.O. some people. To them I say step back, take a breath and think about whats been done. Its not the lie your handlers in the (National Socialist) Democrat party are trying to hand you.

Im glad Roe v. Wade has been struck down as a constitutional right. It never was. I defy anyone to show me where it is. Whats happened is something that shouldnt have been decided and enforced at the federal level under the cover of the Constitution has been returned to where it should have been at the state level. This ruling didnt outlaw abortions, contrary to what leftist radical liars would have you believe. The decision as to what will be legal is now on the state legislatures and that is going to be interesting to watch as theyre now in the hot seat and must now put up or shut up. Hopefully its also going to motivate more people to get involved in local politics.

As for my opinion, I believe there are very, very, very narrow circumstances under which an abortion might be considered the only option. I never have and never will support abortion on demand. That, in my opinion, is murder cut and dry.

One thing I believe is if law enforcement is willing to do their job and show they are politically neutral, theyll use this opportunity to seek out and incarcerate those that have and are advocating violence of any and all types of violence as part of their ultimate agenda, that being the destruction of our republic and replacing it with socialism.

I just heard something very scary and needs to be, in my opinion, investigated by members of Congress. Maxine Waters said, on camera, To hell with the Supreme Court! So, Maxine, you want to overthrow the Supreme Court and replace it with what? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called members of the court right wing politicians that need to be removed and replaced.

What were seeing is the true colors of the left and the (National Socialist) Democrat party and their desire to destroy our current form of government by any means and replace it with their controlled form of Socialism where they and only they are in charge.

Who will stand with me to defend this Republic?

Alan Marshall

Laws Need To Be Enforced

Dear Editor,

Wake up, Greensboro, Mayor Nancy Vaughan! Even New York City knows aggressive law enforcement is necessary to curb crime. They do it by confiscating and destroying criminals dirt bikes and ATVs. And you say what? Greensboro cant police their way out of crime? You appear to be lost as an effective leader?

Just another note on the lawlessness in Greensboro. 9 p.m. tonight at Cone Boulevard and Church St. Not only were the illegal four wheelers and dirt bikes out on the streets of Greensboro, I also saw three fabulous burnouts here. Our current Mayor Nancy Vaughan has blood on her hands because she refuses to allow our law enforcement professionals do their sworn duty of enforcing all laws leaving our good citizens of Greensboro in harms way. In fact, Mayor Nancy Vaughan doesnt believe in law enforcement.

Yes, Mayor Vaughan there are too many families in Greensboro whose lives have been destroyed by your lack of leadership. Just a few of these include:

A friends son lost to an overdose of fentanyl.

A friend and father was hit by a stop light runner. He was pierced by a sign post and it missed his heart by 6 inches.

A friend and my mechanic also at the same intersection was hit by a criminal running the stop light. He will have to live with chronic back issues for life

A friend and father inspecting a property was hit on a sidewalk by a woman under the influence of narcotics. Following the accident, the driver decided to destroy the evidence, ingested the narcotics and had an overdose at the scene! My friend has had multiple surgeries and may never walk again.

Yes, there is a tremendous amount of blood on your hands, Mayor Vaughan. The City of Greensboro needs a transfusion yet you sit back and do nothing to protect us, meanwhile, many in our once fine city are suffering.

Just remember, Greensboro voters, a vote for Mayor Nancy Vaughan will leave blood on your hands as well!

https://auto.hindustantimes.com//watch-hundreds-of

Jim Donaldson

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Letters To The Editor: June 27, 2022 - The Rhino Times of Greensboro - The Rhino TImes

The escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia and the massive attack on democratic rightsepitomized in the US Supreme Court decision abolishing the right to an abortionare two sides of the same process.

In his seminal 1916 work Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Vladimir Lenin defined imperialism as reaction all down the line. In both war and domestic policy, he explained, finance capital strives for domination, not freedom. Lenin wrote, The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive.

Lenins words aptly characterize the present crisis of the world capitalist system.

At this weekends G7 summit, the leaders of the major imperialist powers met in the Bavarian Alps to plan the next stage of the war. Behind the backs of the population, with no public discussion and no formal declaration, the conflict has developed into a de facto war against Russia in Ukraine.

The extent of NATO involvement was revealed in a New York Times article published Saturday titled Commando network coordinates flow of weapons in Ukraine, officials say. The article explains that the US and NATO have organized a stealthy network of commandos and spies who are rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training.

The article cites US and European officials who confirmed that the NATO powers have deployed advisers within Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers, while the US military directly trains soldiers at bases in Germany. This is the product of a years-long plan, dating back to the 2014 Ukrainian elections and the Maidan putsch, to transform Ukraine into a staging ground for a war against Russia. The Times article states, From 2015 to early this year, American Special Forces and National Guard instructors trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at theYavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said.

In both their choice of planning location as well as in their war aims, the leaders of the worlds self-proclaimed democracies emulated Hitler, the last capitalist politician who attempted the colonization of Russia through military means. The very castle where the G7 leaders met in the Bavarian town of Schloss Elmau had been a Nazi military vacation camp during World War Two.

A communiqu issued by the G7 group after the meeting in Schloss Elmau states that it is prepared to carry on the war as long as it takes. This means there is no limit to the number of lives the governments are willing to sacrifice to accomplish their geostrategic goals.

The first point on the agenda at the G7 summiton the cost-of-living and food crisismakes clear that the ruling class is aware the war is paving the way for a colossal confrontation with the working class.

Under these conditions, the ruling class of each imperialist power views the most basic democratic rights as obstacles in the pursuit of its war aims. Even as the war propagandists in the corporate media justify war on the grounds that Putin is a fascist, the logic of the development of the war in the imperialist countries necessitates reaction all down the line.

The decision by six unelected judges on the Supreme Court to strip hundreds of millions of Americans of the right to abortion must be seen in this context.

In issuing its decision, the court announced that it was launching an assault on all basic democratic rights. While Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly referenced contraceptives and same-sex marriage as the next targets, he made clear that all cases involving substantive due process must now be revisited. This includes fundamental rights related to searches and seizures, free speech and assembly, labor regulations and other civil rights.

The Democratic Party and Biden administration have facilitated the Supreme Courts attack on democratic rights with constant efforts to appeal to and appease the far right. When Biden speaks of his Republican friends, he is appealing for bipartisan unity in the pursuit of imperialist war aims against Russia. This bipartisanship only legitimizes the extreme right and strengthens the increasingly fascist Republican Party, which attempted to prevent Biden from taking office less than two years ago.

The intensification of the war and the abortion ban are inextricably related and underscore the basic truth that democracy is incompatible with imperialism. In his 1948 book The American Political Tradition, the historian Richard Hofstadter references publisher Frank Cobbs recollection of a discussion with then-President Woodrow Wilson on the eve of Wilsons 1917 decision to enter World War One.

According to Cobb, Wilson said when a war got going it was just war and there werent two things about it. It required illiberalism at home to reinforce the men at the front. We couldnt fight Germany and maintain the ideals of Government that all thinking men shared. Cobb quoted Wilson as saying, To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat

This is the case in every imperialist center, where three decades of nonstop imperialist war have asphyxiated democracy and nourished the forces of extreme political reaction. In Britain, Boris Johnson is perhaps the most hated prime minister in history for his naked corruption and slovenly subservience to the London banks. The Johnson government is attempting to deport asylum seekers from countries devastated by imperialist war to Rwanda in a move that even the European Court of Human Rights ruled is blatantly illegal.

In France, where Emmanuel Macron is reviled as the president of the rich, the fascist far right won more votes than in any previous presidential election. An unelected administrative court just banned Muslim women from wearing bathing suits that comport with their religious beliefs in a blatant act of cruel discrimination against the countrys large immigrant population.

The war will be conducted on the basis of a massive assault on the economic and social rights of the working class in every country. Government after government is pouring billions of dollars into arming Ukraine without ever asking the public. Calls are growing for balancing budgets to pave the way for further military spending. To pay for war, health and welfare programs will be gutted, even as the pandemic spreads and as governments enact fiscal policies aimed at increasing unemployment and lowering wages.

The war has exacerbated a cost-of-living crisis that is forcing billions of workers to confront unprecedented levels of economic hardship. The imperialist governments are sacrificing the lives of millions in Asia and Africa who face varying degrees of starvation in an attempt to weaken the Russian governments ties to the global economy. In Europe and North America, the cost of food, gas, energy, rent and basic services is skyrocketing because of the war, while the corporatist trade union bureaucracies suppress wages.

Conditions are emerging for a revolutionary explosion throughout the world. Protests against the rising cost of living are suppressed with deadly brutality in countries like Peru, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and elsewhere.

In Europe, strikes are growing across the transport industries, including among British rail workers, dockworkers in Germany and Greece, airport workers in France, Denmark and the Netherlands, and pilots and flight attendants across the continent at Easy Jet, Ryanair, British Airways and SAS. A series of powerful strikes has taken place in heavy industry in the United States, where strikes are threatened by tens of thousands of dock and rail workers.

The ruling class has responded by banning strikes and blaming workers for undermining the war effort. In Britain, the Tories are denouncing striking rail workers as Putins agents while the courts in the US have barred rail workers from striking on national security grounds. This is the modern version of Hitlers stab-in-the-back narrative, which blamed German workers and the revolution of 1918 for German imperialisms defeat in World War One. In Spain, the democratic government of the PSOE and Podemos banned airport workers from joining a European-wide strike for similar reasons.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its national sections, the Socialist Equality Parties, call for the development of a powerful movement of the international working class against imperialist war. The fight against war must be connected to the defense of democratic rights, rooted in the growing struggles of workers throughout the world and based on a socialist program in opposition to the capitalist profit system.

The World Socialist Web Site is the voice of the working class and the leadership of the international socialist movement. We rely entirely on the support of our readers. Please donate today!

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Imperialist war and the attack on democratic rights - WSWS

Last weekend, young comrades from across the Marxist Student Federation gathered for an inspiring summer school on the life and ideas of Lenin. Marxism is on the march. There has never been a better time to join the struggle for socialism.

Between 24-26 June, 80 comrades from the Marxist Student Federation took to the Peak District to participate in the MSFs first residential Marxist summer school.

Comrades from London to Aberdeen travelled to take part in a weekend of political discussion and activities.

In a speech delivered at the third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League in 1920, Lenin stated:

The tasks of the youth in general, and of the Young Communist Leagues and all other organisations in particular, might be summed up in a single word: learn.

Comrades therefore took it upon themselves to dedicate this weekend to the important theoretical contributions made by Lenin to the ideas of Marxism.

The weekend began with a session on war and imperialism, led by Daniel Morley of Socialist Appeal and the International Marxist Tendency.

Daniel started by explaining why war is inherent to capitalism. Imperialism, as Lenin outlined, is a product of monopolisation and the need for the capitalists to find new markets.

The war in Ukraine was also featured in this discussion. Capitalism in this epoch of decay and crisis leads to proxy wars between the major powers, with workers acting as cannon fodder in these inter-imperialist struggles.

Many comrades came into the discussion to talk about different aspects of imperialism. Why do capitalists seek out new markets? What stage of imperialism are we entering into?

Comrades had carefully considered their contributions, and were keen to discuss perspectives and tasks for the immediate future.

After the opening session, comrades spent time socialising, playing frisbee, football, and board games, whilst carrying on political discussions in a more informal environment.

The next morning we were up bright and early, with comrades exploring the beautiful grounds around the venue.

The day started with a political discussion on Marxism and the state, with MSF national organiser Fiona Lali speaking.

Fionas talk began by discussing the origins of the state, before moving onto how Marxists should answer the arguments of both anarchists and reformists when it comes to the state.

After Fionas introduction, comrades separated into breakout rooms, providing space for free-flowing, lively discussion.

Topics covered included: how different states operate in class society; what the state withering away would look like; what a classless communistic society will look like; and how we should fight for socialism now.

After the mornings session, comrades embarked on a walk to the Dovedale stepping stones, where we stopped for lunch. Some opted to climb the Thorpe cloud peak, while others swam and sat by the Manifold river.

Eventually, a short gush of rain forced comrades to pack up quickly, before heading back for the final political session of the day.

The third talk of the weekend was given by Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal, who led off on Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Robs talk started with the early years of Lenins life, and how this future revolutionary leader was politicised after his brother was hanged by the Russian state for attempting to kill the Tsar.

Lenin went on to study law, but soon found his true path in Marxism. From then onwards, he dedicated his life to the building of the revolutionary organisation an organisation that would become the Bolsheviks.

This served as a guiding lesson for comrades attending this weekend school, with comrades emphasising the need for genuine revolutionary leadership throughout the discussion.

After dinner, we had a social, which included a Marxist quiz and revolutionary songs, such as bread and roses, smash the van, and el pueblo unido, jams ser vencido.

Sunday morning kicked off with our final session of the weekend, on the national question.

Shaun Morris, editor of Revolution Scotland, spoke on this subject. He explained that there is no magic formula for how Marxists should approach the question. We must study each national question in its historical evolution.

Shaun began by referencing Marxs writings on Ireland, before moving on to explain Lenins extensive writings on the national question, and the works of other important Marxists such as James Connolly.

We once again broke out into separate rooms to facilitate wider discussion. This resulted in an extensive range of topics being covered: from black nationalism, to Scotland, to Catalonia.

Capitalism remains in its deepest ever crisis. We urgently need to build the forces of Marxism, in Britain and internationally.

The MSF weekend school played a vital role in this task, providing theory and camaraderie for a new generation of class fighters.

We take great inspiration from the life and ideas of Lenin. We will go forward with enthusiasm and confidence, steeled in these ideas, and continue the struggle for socialism.

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MSF summer school: The task is to study! - Socialist Appeal

The UK national rail strike has prompted constant references to the 1984-5 miners strike against the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. There is an understanding among workers that Johnsons government is seeking to emulate Thatcher in inflicting a crushing defeat on the rail workers, to intimidate millions of other workers straining for a fight.

The World Socialist Web Site is reposting an essay first published in 2004, 20 years since the year-long miners strike, to assist the workers in every sector now coming into struggle to understand the central lessons to be drawn from that heroic struggle.

There are, the essay explains, two camps into which reflections on the miners strike generally fall. On the one hand, those claiming that the defeat of the miners strike was inevitable, because theirs was a lost cause waged by yesterdays men This is the view of both the pro-Conservative and pro-Labour media.

On the other, there are those on the left of the Labour Party or in various smaller left groups who look back wistfully at the events of 1984, point to certain mistakes that were made, but essentially regard it as a glorious episode and a template for the class struggle in the future.

Both are false.

The miners strike was defeated by the treachery of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which was not challenged by National Union of Mineworkers President (NUM) Arthur Scargill. While Labour and the TUC refused to mobilise the wider working class in the miners support, Scargill confined miners to a programme of militant action that would supposedly either circumvent the isolation of the strike or pressurise the bureaucracy into action.

Scargills perspective was rooted in his advocacy of maintaining a national and state-protected industry under the Plan for Coal. But sweeping changes in the world economy associated with the globalisation of production had rendered bankrupt all such protectionist strategies, along with the national reformism policies on which Labour and the unions were historically based. They responded by abandoning that programme and adopting an increasingly open pro-corporate politics, serving as partners of the employers.

The miners strike proved at an early stage the necessity of waging the class struggle on a new, socialist and internationalist perspective and the building of new rank-and-file organisations of class struggle and a new socialist and internationalist leadership.

***

The year-long miners strike of 1984-85 was a watershed in political life in Britain. The worst single defeat suffered by the working class in the post-war period, its results continue to resonate to this day.

There has been no shortage of documentaries and articles marking the 20th anniversary. But none of these have made a serious attempt to examine the central lessons to be drawn. Generally, they have fallen into one of two camps:

Firstly, there are those claiming that the defeat of the miners strike was inevitable because theirs was a lost cause waged by yesterdays men. The argument essentially runs that the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, though at times autocratic and arrogant, represented the wave of the future. It was intent on modernising the British economy by curbing the power of the unions, which acted as a bastion of outmoded working practices that were holding the country to ransom. Naturally one may have sympathy for the fate of individual miners, but this should be put in perspective. For what took place subsequently was a consumer boom and the development of the new economy based on deregulation and private capital which even the Labour government has now embraced. This is the view of both the pro-Conservative and pro-Labour media.

Secondly, there are those on the left of the Labour Party or in various smaller left groups who look back wistfully at the events of 1984, point to certain mistakes that were made, but essentially regard it as a glorious episode and a template for the class struggle in the future.

The apparent strength of the former argument is that it appears to have been confirmed by events. As the web site dedicated to Margaret Thatcher proclaims, The year-long miners strike of 1984 is regarded as the last gasp of the old union order; since that year Britain has not experienced any major industrial conflicts.

This cannot be answered by those who refuse to seriously address the causes of a defeat that has ensured the ascendancy of right-wing political and economic nostrums for two decades and for which working people have paid such a bitter price.

For the miners themselves the impact of the strikes defeat has been devastating. There were 170 pits in the UK when the strike began, employing over 181,000 men and producing 90 million tonnes of coal. Today there are 15 pits employing around 6,500 men. Around 3,000 more are employed in surface mining. Areas once defined by their connection with mining such as Durham and Lancashire now have no pits. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has been reduced to a rump with a few thousand members who are still working in the industry.

The suffering of the miners during the strike was on a scale almost without precedent. Some 20,000 miners were injured or hospitalised, 13,000 arrested, 200 imprisoned, two were killed on picket lines, three died digging for coal during the winter, and 966 were sacked.

The miners faced brutal attacks by the police, who utilised techniques of suppression never seen before in mainland Britain. Mounted officers charged at pickets and through the streets of mining communities. A national task force was created of heavily armoured riot police, which was used to mount military style attacks. Miners were prevented from freely moving around the country, and special courts were created to deal with the large numbers of arrests made.

A legal attack was waged against the NUM, during which there were repeated efforts to sequestrate its assets. Powerful business interests and elements within the state combined to organise a massive strike-breaking operation that culminated in the establishment of a scab union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

What happened after the strikes defeat was worse. Once pits closed whole communities were plunged into desperate poverty. Many young people were forced to leave in search of work and, of those who stayed, reports estimate that one in three households are affected by problems of serious drug addiction.

Any regeneration efforts attempted in former mining areas have been shaped by the character of todays economy, with its domination by transnational corporations seeking access to cheap labour and extensive tax breaks. Consequently, according to the Coalfields Community organisation, Companies are able to recruit rigorously and selectively to build up workforces of people willing to work flexibly for low wages, frequently in non-unionised workplaces. Work is often part-time and sometimes temporary when factories close soon after opening.

More generally, the defeat of the miners became the signal for the final abandonment by the trade unions and the Labour Party of any defence of the social interests of the working class. There were other strikes, of course, but nothing of equivalent magnitude. In the 1970s the highest number of days lost through industrial disputes was 29.4 millionduring the Winter of Discontent of 1979. But the average number of days lost each year in that decade was still 12.9 million. In the 1980s the average was 7.2 million, but this figure is distorted by counting in the number of days lost as a result of the miners strike itself, with 27 million working days lost in that year alone.

During the following decade, however, the average number of working days lost each year was just 660,000, with 1998 recording the lowest ever figure of 235,000 in just 205 stoppages, compared with 1,221 in 1984.

Trade union membership is now less than seven million, compared with over 11 million in 1984. In the private sector less than 19 percent of workers belong to a union and less than one-fifth of all 18-29 year olds are union members. This drops to around 10 percent in the private sector.

Even this does not begin to address the full impact on the ability of the working class to successfully combat the employers. For the unions today function essentially as a police force on behalf of management, as opposed to defensive organisations on behalf of their members.

Throughout Thatchers terms in office and that of her successor John Major, the unions did nothing to oppose an unprecedented shift in wealth from the poor to the rich. And when Labour came to power in 1997 under Tony Blair, it continued Thatchers pro-business policies with the full collaboration of the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Within the first two years of Labour taking office, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population recorded their highest share of national income since 1988, at the height of Thatchers rule. Income inequality today is even higher than it was under Thatcher.

As for the impact on working conditions, this can be judged from the fact that by 2002 the number of working days lost due to stress-related illness had risen to 33 million, up from 18 million in 1995, and was fully 60 times the number of days lost due to industrial action (550,000).

Thus, an examination of the miners strike is not simply an issue of historical interest, but one of contemporary significance.

The scale of Thatchers victory in 1984 cannot be understood without reference to the years that preceded it. Indeed, the year-long strike is popularly portrayed as the outcome of a fight between two giant egosThatcher and NUM President Arthur Scargilleach out to finally settle a conflict that first began in 1972which saw mass picketing organised by Scargill at Saltley Gate coke depot and the miners secure a 27 percent pay riseand most significantly in 1974. The miners strike of that year, at which time Scargill was NUM Yorkshire president, had forced the Conservative government of Edward Heath to pose the question who rules the country, the government or the unions? In the end, his government was forced to quit office and give way to a minority Labour government.

Thatchers ascendancy into the leadership of the Conservatives was as the head of a right-wing cabal fired by the belief that Heath should have never retreated in the face of what she subsequently described as the enemy withinthe miners and the working class. But this shift within the Tory Party was bound up with more fundamental economic and political processes.

The bringing down of the Heath government took place at a time of a systemic crisis for the capitalist class on a world scale. The years between 1968-75 saw a series of class struggles, often of revolutionary proportions, as a result of an international economic crisis epitomised by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of dollar-gold convertibility.

The ruling class survived this tumultuous period, but profit rates continued to decline. As a result, the dominant sections of the bourgeoisie concluded that only a major offensive against the working class and the complex system of concessions embodied in the welfare state could rescue the capitalist system. Thatcher, together with President Ronald Reagan in the United States, embodied this political shift away from policies of class compromise towards direct class confrontation.

Thatcher represented the ascendancy of powerful new forces. The major corporations had sought to counteract falling rates of profit by an aggressive turn towards global investment and internationalised production. As part of this strategy they demanded the deregulation of the economies of the advanced industrial countries, the slashing of tax rates and the destruction of welfare provision. Under the banner of rolling back the frontiers of the state, Thatcher was dedicated to such an economic and social reorganisation of Britain in order to make it globally competitive. This included the rationalisation (gutting) and/or privatisation of previously nationalised industries so as to slash taxes while opening key areas of the economy to corporate investors.

After 1974 the Conservatives spent five years in opposition preparing a major offensive against the working class. Just prior to Thatchers coming into office in 1979, a report was prepared by Nicholas Ridley detailing a plan to defeat the miners in the event of another industrial conflict, including the organisation of a large, mobile squad of police, equipped and prepared to uphold the law against violent picketing.

Scargill also saw the early 1970s as providing the essential framework for the 1984-85 strike, but unlike Thatcher, from the standpoint of repeating what he saw as a heroic success.

Far from being the revolutionary of popular right-wing mythology, Scargill is a life-long supporter of the Stalinist Communist Party and an advocate of its national reformist programme. To the extent that he spoke of socialism, it was as a perspective for the distant future. In the meantime, what was required was the creation of a nationally regulated economy based on a mix of import controls and subsidies that would provide the basis for protecting Britains nationalised coal industry. This was the Plan for Coal that he sought to commit the Labour Party and the TUC to fight for in a struggle against the Conservatives. What was demonstrated in 1984, however, was not only that the ruling class was no longer prepared to tolerate such a policy, but that there was no longer any significant constituency for such a programme within the labour bureaucracy of which he was a part.

The same processes that had given rise to Thatcherism had already undermined the Labour Partys national reformist programme. Historically, the Labour Party and the trade unions had advocated a piecemeal struggle to secure concessions from the employers and social reforms through parliament. The bureaucracy did so not out of a genuine belief that this was the eventual road to socialism, but in order to safeguard the profit system on which their privileged existence depended from revolutionary challenge by the working class. Their fundamental loyalty was always to the preservation of the bourgeois order, but they could successfully argue that this was compatible with the provision of higher wages, better working conditions and access to free health care and education.

The globalisation of production that took place from the mid-seventies and which accelerated in the 1980s had rendered this national reformist policy bankrupt. The reorganisation of every aspect of economic lifeproduction, distribution and exchangeon an international scale was incompatible with Labours traditional efforts to maintain a social and political consensus between the classes. Instead, the Labour government that the miners helped to bring to power in 1974 had implemented austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund and imposed wage restraint. In this way the Labour Party first gave the bourgeoisie vital breathing space to prepare a counteroffensive against the working class and then paved the way for what was to be 18 years of Conservative rule.

At no point did the TUC offer any alternative to the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and then James Callaghan. It merely demanded a slight change in course. As a result, one of the most intensive periods of industrial conflict everthe Winter of Discontent of 1979actually succeeded in bringing to power the most right-wing government seen to that point in Britain.

Not only did Scargills perspective cover over the role played by Labour and the TUC in preparing the way for Thatcher, it offered no way of combating the continued shift to the right by the bureaucracy. After Thatcher had secured her second election victory in 1983, the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party had concluded that it was necessary to adapt wholesale to the new economic and political orthodoxy dictated by the bourgeoisie. For its part, the TUC, having isolated and betrayed every struggle against the government, abandoned even its formal opposition to the anti-union laws.

Thus, the dominant sections of the Labour bureaucracy were utterly opposed to any mobilisation of the working class against the government. Yet the perspective of Scargill, the Labour Partys left wing and Britains various radical groups was limited to the encouragement of a militant movement within the trade unions to pressurise Labour and the TUC into taking such a stand. What they would not contemplate was the development of any movement that threatened a political break from the bureaucracy.

This was to prove decisive in the defeat of the miners strike. As the TUCs own official history tellingly explains: In the early 1980s, a policy of active opposition to the anti-union laws was won at the TUC, with activists hoping to repeat the successful (though often unofficial) movement against the industrial relations act of 1971.... [A]t crucial moments some unions, in a weak position, looked to the TUC General Council to organise support action but this was never going to happen. TUC General Secretaries (Len Murray, 1973-84 and Norman Willis, 1984-93) were not going to risk the TUC directly breaking the law (however distasteful that law was).

The strike began on March 5, 1984, and was to end on that same day a year later, though Kent miners and some in Yorkshire stayed out for a few more days in protest. The immediate spark for the strike was the announced closure of Cortonwood colliery, but this was only the initial target of a government intent on closing all unprofitable pits and privatising those that remained. In opposition, Scargill called for the closure of pits to take place only on the grounds of exhaustion and for the preservation of a nationalised and subsidised industry.

Throughout a year of bitter struggle, the actions of the TUC and the Labour leadership were dedicated to isolating the miners and ensuring that the substantial support that existed within the working class was not mobilised against the government.

Solidarity action was mostly limited to raising money and food as the strike dragged on. (Around 60 million was raiseda testament to the strength of support for the miners fight.) Partial and unofficial blocks on the movement of coal were imposed by railwaymen, dockers and lorry drivers, but official secondary supportive strike action was opposed by the TUC unions. Strikes by dockworkers broke out twice as a result of efforts to break their embargo on moving coal, but were speedily called off by the union leaders. And a strike by overseers known as pit deputies was called off on the basis of a rotten compromise. It should be noted that without the deputies, no pit could work and the concerted campaign by the Tories and the police to encourage scabbing would have come to nothing.

Scargill and his supporters took an ambivalent attitude to the TUC and the Labour Party. Initially, they sought to keep them at arms length, arguing that this would prevent them from being in a position to sell out the strike. On March 16, the NUM sent a secret letter to the TUC explicitly stating, No request is being made by this union for the intervention or assistance of the TUC.

But Scargills efforts to galvanise the labour movement by a display of mass picketing at the Orgreave Coke works near Sheffield in May and June were a disaster. It merely allowed thousands of riot police to wade into miners dressed only in jeans and t-shirts, and to make hundreds of arrests and seriously injure dozens moreincluding Scargill himself.

In the latter months of the strike, Scargill and the NUM were forced to repeatedly take part in negotiations with the National Coal Board set up by the TUC.

The NUM leader was in an unrivalled position from which to challenge the TUC and Labour bureaucracy, should he have chosen to do so. Had he made an explicit call to the working class to defy their leaders and come out in support of the miners, there is no doubt he would have met a powerful response. Instead, he kept his members out in an increasingly futile campaign before accepting defeat without securing a single concession from the government and the National Coal Board.

Though Scargill enjoyed considerable standing amongst the more militant sections of the working class and was viewed as a principled alternative to the likes of Labour leader Neil Kinnock, his leadership would not have remained unchallenged throughout months of terrible hardship had it not been for the crucial support he was given by the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP).

At the time, the WRP was the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), but had long since begun to abandon a revolutionary perspective in favour of a capitulation to the bureaucratic leaderships of the workers movement.

Its adaptation to Scargill was one of the most grotesque expressions of this protracted political degeneration. The WRPs role is analysed in the ICFI statement, How the Workers Revolutionary Party Betrayed Trotskyism 1973-85:

During a struggle that lasted for one year, the WRP never once placed a single demand on the mass political organisation of the working classthe Labour Party. It never issued a call for the mobilisation of the working class to force the resignation of the Tory government, new elections and the return of the Labour Party to power on a socialist programme

For all its left-sounding rhetoric, the line of the WRP throughout the miners strike conveniently enabled the [WRP leader Gerry] Healy clique to avoid any conflict with its opportunist friends in the Labour Party and with the Scargill leadership of the NUM. For all the talk of a revolutionary situation, the WRP leaders consciously ruled out any criticism of Scargillthus exposing the fact that their own call for a general strike was utterly hollow.

The ICFI statement continues,

In the situation which existed in 1984, the central demand to bring the Tories down and return the Labourites to power on socialist policies would have had a powerful impact upon the mass movement, and created the conditions for the exposure of the Labourites. In so far as the Labourites, including and above all the Lefts, refused to support this demand and fight for it their credibility within the working class would be shattered. On the other hand, if despite the sabotage of the Social Democrats, the Tories were forced to resign (or, for that matter, attempted to remain in power in the face of mass popular opposition), a pre-revolutionary situation could have emerged in Britain....

The campaign for a general strike could only develop in a political struggle within the working class against this objectively reactionary line. It would have entailed an uncompromising day-to-day battle against Scargills centrist politics, a clear analysis of the limitations of syndicalism, the exposure of Scargills ties to the Stalinists, and an unequivocal denunciation of his refusal to fight for the immediate bringing down of the Tories. Only along these lines could the WRP have built up within miners and the working class as a whole thepoliticalconsciousness necessary for the general strike.

In the final analysis, it was the refusal of the WRP to wage a principled struggle against Scargill that disarmed the many thousands of workers who looked to it for a lead, and thereby ensured the strikes defeat.

The necessity to develop apolitical consciousnessthat is, a genuine socialist consciousnessin the working class remains the essential lesson that must be drawn from the miners strike.

The strike was a seminal experience for a generation of workers, but it is one that has still to be digested and understood.

It is a feature of the strike that despite the suffering it caused, it generally strengthened bonds of friendship and family. Even its critics are forced to acknowledge, for example, the essential role played by women in the strike and how this challenged preconceptions in what was undoubtedly hitherto very male-dominated communities. In the strikes aftermath, however, communities were torn apart and many families split up. This cannot be understood simply as the result of a defeat, however terrible. It suggests the personal pressures created because so few of the strikes participants understood why they had been defeated despite their heroism and sacrifice and were able to conceive of a way forward.

Thatcher won the strike not because of any inherent strength, but because of the rottenness of her political opponents. And though it was portrayed at the time as the high point of industrial militancy, it turned out to be its last hurrah. By 1984, the old organisations of the working class were already in an advanced state of decay. And the perspective of national reformism on which they were based could no longer provide the means through which the working class could defend any of its past gains, let alone offer the means to make fresh advances.

Tony Blair and New Labour are not in that sense a break from the history of the workers movement, but the product of its most negative featuresits ideological subordination to the bourgeoisie and the profit system.

The miners strike posed the necessity for the working class to break both organisationally and politically from the programme of social reformism and to develop new organisations and methods of struggle based upon the revolutionary internationalist perspective of Marxismin opposition to which Labourism had developed.

But at the time, even the most steadfast and principled sections of miners and the working class generally believed that militant action alone would be enough to stiffen the resolve of their leaders and ensure victory. They paid a heavy price for such illusions.

At first glance, it would appear that little that was progressive emerged from the miners strike. Certainly, it had the effect of tightening the grip of a corrupt clique on the workers movement, using the defeat to proclaim the end of the class struggle in order to impose its own right-wing policies.

There is an extremely limited character to such a victory, however.

The last 20 years have seen changes of such magnitude that they have turned previous assumptions upside down. In the process, it is not merely the old perspective of social reformism that has been discredited. The alternatives offered by the right wing have been exposed in far less time. Thatchers popular capitalism proved to be a recipe for societal breakdown, and the repackaged version offered by Blair, the so-called Third Way, has proved to be no less disastrous.

The most discredited of political notions, however, is the idea that the Labour Party in any way represents a political alternative for working people. The ideological conquest of the old workers movement by overt champions of the profit system and the transformation of the Labour Party and the trade unions into adjuncts of big business are so complete that they can no longer hold the allegiance of the broad mass of the working class.

On every issue relating to its social and democratic rights, the working class today finds itself in direct confrontation with its old organisations. This found its most finished expression in the mass mobilisations against the Iraq war, where popular hostility to Blairs pro-business agenda fed into opposition to an unprovoked and criminal attack on a defenceless country.

The class struggle is far from over. Rather, the anti-war movement indicates that in the next period it will not be confined within the old structures and must take on the character of a political rebellion against the trade union and labour bureaucracy. In preparing the ground for such a development, an examination of the central lessons of the miners strike is of vital importance.

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The lessons of the 1984-5 miners' strike for the UK rail strikes - WSWS

The savage killing of at least 37 refugees on the border between Morocco and the Spanish exclave of Melilla underscores the brutality and disregard of basic democratic rights that pervades the European Union. As the US-NATO war with Russia rapidly escalates into a global conflagration, and workers across the continent move into struggle against the unbearable cost of living and the ruling elites murderous pandemic policy, the major European powers are resurrecting forms of state-organised violence and political reaction not seen since Europes domination by authoritarian and fascist regimes during the 1930s.

The barbaric massacre was carried out through the combined efforts of the Spanish Civil Guard and Moroccan gendarmerie on Friday. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) reported that the migrants came mostly from the impoverished African countries of Chad, Niger, South Sudan and Sudan and would have been considered asylum seekers under international law. In addition to at least 37 fatalities, over 150 people were injured during charges and beatings by the security forces or after falling from the 6- to 10-metre-high fences preventing entry into the Spanish exclave from Morocco.

The massacre was clearly coordinated by both countries, as the Civil Guard allowed Moroccan security forces into Melilla to illegally drive refugees who made it across the border back to Morocco. In the manner of a fascistic demagogue, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the Socialist Party, declared his full support for the actions of the border guards, stating that they beat back a violent assault and an attack on the territorial integrity of Spain.

The massacre could hardly have taken place at a more opportune time for the government in Madrid, which is led by the Socialist Party and includes the pseudo-left Podemos. At the NATO summit beginning today in the Spanish capital, the Spanish government will push for refugee border crossings to be designated as a hybrid threat alongside terrorism and food insecurity in the aggressive military alliances new strategic concept, which Madrid hopes will legitimise the expansion of its military operations in Africa.

NATOs strategic roadmap for the next decade will include plans for how war will be fought by US and European imperialism against Russia and China. Leaving no doubt about this fact, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Monday that NATOs rapid reaction force in the Baltic and Eastern Europe will increase eight-fold, from 40,000 to over 300,000 troops.

Such a vast escalation of military violence is incompatible with democratic rights. The bloody massacring of desperate migrants on the European Unions southern border must therefore be taken as a serious warning by working people everywhere. The unconditional defence of the fascistic border guards by the Spanish government demonstrates that as they wage war in the east, Europes ruling elites are deploying the most brutal forms of repression against anyone who gets in the way of their reckless plans of imperialist conquest.

This was underscored by the deafening silence on the massacre at the G7 summit that concludes today in Schloss Elmau in Germany. While the leaders of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan agreed on a sanctimonious statement pledging to strengthen the resilience of our democracies and a commitment to the rules-based international order, not a word was wasted on the bloody massacre on Europes doorstep.

Late yesterday evening, a semi-truck trailer filled with dozens of dead undocumented Central American immigrants was discovered in San Antonio, Texas. The truck was carrying refugees fleeing desperate economic conditions in Central America, the legacy of over a century of US imperialist exploitation. Their peaceful entry into the country was barred by the Biden administrations anti-immigrant restrictions. The official death toll of 46 is expected to rise and likely includes children.

The cold indifference shown by the ruling elites of all the major powers towards the lives of the most oppressed sections of society recalls the contemptuous attitude taken by the imperialist powers on the eve of World War II to the plight of Europes Jews and other persecuted minorities fleeing the Nazi regime. At the infamous 1938 Evian Conference, none of the major powers agreed to accept additional refugees for fear of damaging relations with the Third Reich, which was at the time still viewed by substantial sections of the European ruling class as an ally against the Soviet Union.

It is not merely a matter of historical coincidence that Fridays massacre occurredin Spains North African territory, from where a revolt by fascist officers in July 1936, led by Francisco Franco, served as the basis for the fascist movement that emerged victorious in the Spanish Civil War and ruthlessly oppressed the Spanish working class for four decades. The EUs official sanctioning of Fridays massacre will encourage and strengthen present-day fascist movements across the continent, which are cultivated by the ruling class to crush worker opposition to its unpopular policies.

The European Union and its member states have systematically created the conditions for fascistic violence against workers and the most oppressed layers of society through the promotion of far-right political forces and the militarisation of the entire continent. Far-right and fascistic parties play a prominent role in the official political life of all the major European powers, while their militaries and security forces are rife with far-right networks. In Germany, these groups have drawn up kill lists of political opponents to be executed on Day X, while high-ranking military personnel in France and Spain openly discuss plans to seize power in coups.

The EUs fortress Europe policy has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean over the past three decades while trying to flee the social catastrophe produced by uninterrupted imperialist wars and the legacy of the colonial subjugation of Africa and the Middle East. Illegal pushbacks, where Europes fascistic Frontex border guards and their partners in the national security forces forcibly return migrants across the EUs external borders before they have had a chance to exercise their legal right to apply for asylum, are part of the EUs standard operating procedure.

European governments from across the official political spectrum have fully embraced the EUs far-right policies towards refugees. When large numbers of migrants fled the imperialist-instigated war in Syria in 2015, Greeces pseudo-left Syriza government established a series of concentration camp-style facilities on islands in the Aegean Sea to detain asylum seekers.

At the initiative of Italys far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the EU suspended all naval rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea in 2019, leaving thousands of people to drown. Finlands Social Democrat-led government, which was hailed as a progressive breath of fresh air when it came to power in 2019, has followed up its application to join NATO by declaring its intention to begin constructing barriers along its 1,300-kilometre border with Russia to guard against the potential for refugees to be used as hybrid warfare by Moscow. Helsinki is following in the footsteps of Polands right-wing PIS government, which illegally blocked refugees from crossing the border with Belarus last winter, leaving many to freeze to death in the forest.

The same governments who are engaged in abrogating the most basic democratic rights are in the front ranks of the imperialist war against Russia. Britains Tory government, which intends to dispatch asylum seekers to poverty-stricken Rwanda, has led the European powers in providing heavy weaponry to the Ukrainian regime. In Germany, the Social Democrat-led government, which maintains vicious anti-refugee policies adopted from the fascist Alternative for Germany, has tripled the countrys defence budget for this year as part of the largest rearmament programme since Hitler. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has brutally attacked migrant camps in Calais and Paris and systematically discriminates against the substantial Muslim minority, recently declared that the population must get used to living in a war economy. The Spanish government, which perpetrated Fridays massacre, has sent 800 troops, Eurofighter jets, and warships to Eastern Europe and plans to use the NATO summit to announce a doubling of Spains military budget to 24 billion.

Together with their US ally, which specialises in detaining child refugees in prison-like conditions and laying waste to entire societies in over 30 years of uninterrupted war, these are the governments that the media propagandists claim are waging a war for democracy and the freedom of Ukraine against Russian aggression and the fascist Putin.

There is in fact nothing democratic about the imperialist redivision of the world that is now well under way. The hundreds of billions of euros that the leading European imperialist powers plan to spend on their war machines in order to subjugate Russia, seize control of its lucrative natural resources, and fend off competition from their imperialist rivals will have to be squeezed out of the working class through stepped up austerity and attacks on wages and working conditions.

Tobias Elwood, a leading member of British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons Conservative Party, denounced 50,000 rail workers on strike last week for job security and wage increases, with inflation at over 11 percent, as Putins friends. Spains Socialist Party/Podemos government banned a strike by Ryanair pilots and cabin crews over the weekend. In Germany, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared in the weeks following the presentation of the massive 100 billion rearmament programme that the population would have to make sacrifices to pay for the war.

The defence of all democratic and social rights, including the right of working people to live in whichever country they please, is inseparable from the struggle of the international working class against imperialist war. In opposition to the threat of savage repression at home and the waging of war abroad, the World Socialist Web Site calls for the building of an international anti-war movement in the working class to uphold democratic rights through the fight for socialism.

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Massacre in Morocco: The ugly face of European imperialism - WSWS

Each month here in Essex, we see criminals come before the courts to be sentenced for offences across the county. Crimes range from murder, to substantial drug operations, prolonged sexual offending and radicalisation. June 2022 was certainly no exception.

Selected cases will stand out; some criminals are so dangerous or violent that they need to be shared far and wide, so as many people are aware of them as possible. The people in this list are some of those, and have all been put behind bars in June.

There have been killers, grooming sexual predators, radical neo-Nazis attending survival camps, huge drug operations, and rapists. We have compiled them all into one place so that Essex residents can be aware of the violent deeds they have committed. The hearings were mostly held in crown courts in London, Basildon and Chelmsford.

Read more:The latest crime news from across Essex

The neo-Nazi member of National Action who attended a knife survival camp

David Musins, 36, admitted his involvement with the extreme right-wing organisation after it was banned by the Government in December 2016. At the Old Bailey, prosecutor Tom Williams told how Musins, from Muswell Hill, North London, had joined Iron March, a neo-Nazi web forum, in January 2016.

In an introductory message he wrote that he was in his 20s, that he was based in London, and studied history before becoming interested in National Socialism. The court heard that once a member of National Action, Musins had attended an "outdoor camping and knife survival event" in Epping Forest, Essex, along with many other events related to weapons and graffiti with high-ranking members who have since been convicted.

Mr Williams outlined the defendants substantial involvement with NA and a number of high-profile individuals who have since been convicted. Musins was jailed for a total of three years.

The man who strangled and killed his wife while their children were at school

On the evening of May, 13, London Metropolitan Police officers, alongside London Ambulance Service, found Maria Rafael Chavex, 32, unresponsive at a property in Kingston Road, Ilford. Sadly she was pronounced dead at the scene.

London Metropolitan Police launched an investigation at the scene and determined there were no signs of disturbance and Maria did not suffer any obvious injuries. However, a post-mortem examination was carried out and revealed the mother-of-three suffered neck compressions and likely died from being strangled.

Police continued with their investigation by speaking to neighbours and reviewing CCTV evidence through which they discovered husband Muhammad Ilyas, 41, had killed Maria that afternoon while the couple's three children were at school. The couple had moved to the UK in 2019 and Maria was attending a college course to learn English at the time of her death. Ilyas was working on a market stall in Stratford.

Ilyas was found guilty of his wife's murder on June 10 this year. He is set to be sentenced in July, with the minimum sentence for murder being a life sentence.

The men who fatally shot a man and left him for dead

Mushin Mohamed, 26, of Leytonstone Road, Stratford, and a second man, Tyrelle Joseph, 21, of Banks Way, Little Ilford, were involved in two shootings in East London and Essex, which caused one of the victims to die at the scene.

On November 1, 2020, at 10.14pm, Metropolitan Police were called to reports of a disturbance in Balfour Road, Ilford. When they arrived they found a man aged 30 suffering injuries and thought had he been hit by a car. Two men then got out of the car and shot the victim, Jason Diallo, from Ilford, in the head before they got back in the car and drove away.

An eyewitness shortly after confirmed that Jason had been cycling along the road when he was knocked off his bike by the car. CCTV also showed that Jason had been deliberately knocked off his bike the vehicle, which was traveling at speed.

Despite the best efforts of emergency service, Jason died at the scene. Just 15 minutes later, at 10.29pm on the same day, police were called to another shooting around five miles away in Garvary Road, Canning Town. A 27-year-old man was found with a gunshot injury to his shoulder.

On Tuesday, June 14 2022, the trial against the two men finished and Mohammad was jailed for 35 years after being found guilty of murder and attempted murder. Joseph was also found guilty of assisting an offender, and has been jailed for seven years.

The gang that ran an elaborate and complex drug ring around Essex

Steven Mann, 38, of Boreham Road, Great Leighs, was the leader of a group that shipped Class A drugs around the county, and was the focus of a longstanding police investigation. Police first became involved in the case several years ago when they started to suspect Mann was living well beyond his legitimate means.

The crook was known to drive a multitude of supercars, including a McLaren 600LT, worth over 100,000 and a number of Rolls Royces. Mann had a number of high value assets and a very limited source of legitimate income which could not support the lifestyle he was leading.

During the investigation officers from Essex Police's serious and organised crime unit were able to link Mann to a retail premises in Witham, which he owned. It was identified as somewhere where he and his associates would meet to discuss the drug ring's activities.

As a result, officers were able to connect the 38-year-old who headed up the organised crime group, to James Lucia, Jordan Newell, Dean Newman and Billy Rice. Each of the men worked under Mann. At Chelmsford Crown Court, three of the members were jailed for a combined 18 years while two others received suspended sentences.

The thug who forced women out of their cars at knifepoint

Daniel Clark, 39, approached and threatened two women and tried to get them out of their cars in Ingrave Road, Brentwood, on June 26 last year. Within a 10 minute period, between 8.25am and 8.35am, Clark tried to "force two women to get out of their cars".

During the first incident, the victim had come to a stop at a set of traffic lights when Clark opened her door, grabbed her, verbally abused her and tried to pull her out. Fortunately, she was able to kick him away and close the door. During the incident, she described seeing Clark holding what appeared to be a flick knife which he held against her stomach.

A short time later, a second woman was sitting in her car which was parked along the same road when she saw Clark running up the road. At that point he turned around, banged on her window, and started screaming at her to open the car, threatening to hurt her if she didnt.

He managed to smash the window, causing glass to fall on the victim, and tried to open the door from the inside. During the incident, a piece of glass got into the victims eye. She was also left with a large wound to her arm. When she screamed, Clark ran off. At Basildon Crown Court this week, Clark was jailed for two years and nine months.

The 'remorseless' and 'disgusting' sex offender who abused boys for decades

"Remorseless" Andrew Dutton abused two teenage boys in the Essex town of Benfleet during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dutton, 63, of Dean Street, Blackpool, was charged with five counts of indecent assault and five counts of indecency with a child after the victims reported the incidents to Essex Police in March and April 2019.

The incidents were investigated by Essex Police's Quest team which investigates non-recent child sexual abuse. Appearing at a trial at Basildon Crown Court, it was heard that Dutton abused two 'vulnerable' teenage boys for his own sexual gratification.

As a result, he was found guilty of all charges on Wednesday, June 15, and was sentenced at the same court on Friday June 17 where he was jailed for over 17 years. The victim said: When I first came forward, I never thought I would get so far as to see my abuser sentenced.

"The myriad of lies the defendant perpetrated to try and escape justice still made being cross-examined a brutal experience. But I can say to other victims is the knowledge you are telling the truth will give you the strength to get through it."

The men who murdered their friend during a row

Officers had been called to an address in The Hides, Harlow, at around 5.40pm on November 8 last year, following reports of a disturbance. Upon arrival, officers had to force entry to get inside before finding 24-year-old Cristian-Marin Patru injured, with stab wounds to his chin, back and neck.

He was found collapsed on the floor with a 'considerable amount of blood in a number of rooms and a trail leading up a path outside to the rear gate.' Sadly, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Through further investigations, officers established a link between Cristian and a drug dealer called Jayden Drake who was running the Bobby Davro drug line in Harlow. There was also information that 25-year-old Drake had been using the address in The Hides as part of his drug activities and he had a history of carrying knives.

Drakes fingerprints were found on a number of items in one of the bedrooms as were those of another man, 19-year-old Igors Andersons. Detectives were able to establish that Drake and Andersons were at the address at the time of the attack.

They were both subsequently charged with murder. At the trial, Drake claimed Andersons had stabbed Cristian but claimed that he was looking away at the moment of the attack. Andersons claimed he had blacked out at the moment the injuries were inflicted but assumed he had caused the injuries - however, he claimed it must have been in self-defence.

But following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, the jury found both men - Drake, of Maclean Road, Bournemouth, and Andersons, of Tickenhall Drive, Harlow - guilty of murder. They are due to be sentenced at the same court in July.

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Essex crime: The faces of the criminals jailed in the county in June 2022 - Essex Live

Food, beverage and tobacco, capital goods, diversified financials, transportation and consumers services companies in Sri Lanka are enjoying increased profits while millions of workers, poor and children are in a desperate struggle to survive the worsening economic crisis. Many companies have recorded their highest-ever annual profits.

According to the recent figures, the listed companies in the above sectors have secured large increases in their combined earnings in the first quarter of 2022 on a year-to-year basis. This includes 303 percent growth in the food, beverage and tobacco sectors earnings, 210.2 percent in capital goods, 138.8 percent in diversified financials, 682.1 percent in transportation and 173.6 percent increases consumer services, compared to the same quarter of 2021.

The most diversified blue chip, Hayleys PLC, recorded an all-time high profit of 28.1 billion rupees ($US78 million) in the last financial year. It was the highest profit in the companys 144-year group history, chairman Mohan Pandithage said.

LOLC financial service group recorded a profit growth of 443.8 percent year-on-year basis to 39.3 billion rupees in the first quarter. The increase was mainly a result of its global operations.

Hatton National Bank Finance, which is involved in a range of loans and other financial services, recorded a group net profit of 515.6 million rupees for the 202122 financial year, up from a loss the previous last year. The diversified blue-chip Aitken Spence conglomerate reported a profit before tax of 14.2 billion rupees, an increase of 2.8 billion rupees from previous year. Prime Lands Residencies also posted a record before tax profit of 1,848 million rupees for the 20212022 fiscal year.

Softlogic Holdings consolidated annual revenue surged by 35 percent to 111.2 billion rupees and consolidated year-on-year gross profit increased 52 percent to 39 billion rupees. It is involved in healthcare, retail services, insurance and financial services.

The Lanka Hospitals Corporation, one of the largest of the more than 140 private hospitals in Sri Lanka, recorded a 2.8 billion-rupee turn over in the first quarter of this year. Benefiting from COVID-19, which continues to rage across the country, it was a 27 percent increase on the same period last year.

By contrast, Sri Lankas year-on-year inflation rate for May rose to 45.3 percent and food inflation to 58 percentfigures that are continuously climbing as fuel prices increase. High prices are devastating the social conditions of millions of workers, the self-employed, farmers and the poor.

The vast gulf between these huge profits and the social disaster being unleashed against the Sri Lankan masses is yet another dramatic confirmation of Karl Marxs famous observation: Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Section 4, Chapter 25 Capital, Volume 1).

According to a recent United Nations report, nearly 5 million Sri Lankans are living hand to mouth, forced to sell their jewellery and to borrow money in order to survive. It noted 22 percent of countrys population needs food aid and 86 percent of households have been compelled to reduce what they eat, including skipping meals. The UN also reported that 56,000 children under five suffer from severe acute malnutrition and urgently need nutrient-rich food.

An indication of the desperate conditions confronting children was revealed by doctors at Colombos Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children (LRH) who reported that 20 percent of children admitted to the facility suffered from malnutrition. These children, LRH Consultant Paediatrician Dr. Deepal Perara said, were not receiving the required quantities of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids and vitamins.

The disaster facing children was further confirmed by UNICEFs representative in Sri Lanka, Christian Skoog. He reported that nearly one in two children in the country required some form of emergency assistance, including nutrition, health care, clean drinking water, education and mental health service. Sri Lanka, he added, has the second-highest rate of acute malnutrition among children under five in South Asia and at least 17 percent of children are suffering from chronic wasting.

While Lanka Hospitals Corporation in Colombo, which is part of the islands expanding private hospital sector, is making high profits, the overall public health system is on the brink of collapse as stocks of vital medicines and medical equipment dry up.

According to the latest UN update, about 200 essential medicines are now out of stock in Sri Lanka, with predicted shortages of another 163 critical drugs over the next two to three months. Over 2,700 essential surgical items and more than 250 regular laboratory items are also out of stock.

This social calamity is a product of the capitalist profit system. From so-called independence from the British colonial rule in 1948, successive Sri Lankan governments have systematically worked to secure the profit interests of local and foreign big business at the expense of all working people and the poor.

Sri Lankas tiny capitalist elite, and the governments that serve it, regard the state-owned sector as their own private assets, demanding and receiving bail outs and concessions paid for by increased exploitation and social attacks on the working class.

There is no solution to burning issues confronting the massesthe shortages and skyrocketing prices of essentials like food, fuel and cooking gaswithin the capitalist system and national borders.

The only way for the working class to secure its essential needs is to take the production and distribution out of the hands of the capitalists. Inventories must be made of these resources and the wealth of the ruling elite seized by the working class and redistributed on the basis of social need.

Sri Lankan workers, who demonstrated their political and industrial strength in powerful general strikes against the Rajapakse government on April 28, May 6, and May 10 should review the political lessons of this struggle and the treacherous role played by the unions.

During the two-month popular anti-government uprising, the trade unions systematically blocked any independent intervention of the working class against Rajapakse government, and its brutal attacks on social and democratic rights. The unions do not represent the working class but defend the profit system, functioning as industrial police force on behalf of the government and employers.

As the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has explained, the working class must take matters into its own hands. This requires the formation of independent action committees at every factory, workplace, plantations and neighbourhoods in opposition to all parties of the bourgeois political establishment and trade unions.

Rallying all sections of the working class, the rural poor and youths, these action committees need to fight for a government of workers and peasants based on socialist policies as part of broader struggle for socialism in South Asia and internationally.

We urge all WSWS readers to register for the Socialist Equality Partys online public meeting at 4 p.m., on Sunday, July 3 to discuss this perspective.

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Sri Lankan corporations reap large profits as workers and rural toilers face poverty and starvation - WSWS

FOX Business host Larry Kudlow calls out President Joe Biden's green energy policies and explains how Putin has found new customers on 'Kudlow.'

The G-7 meeting in Germany has made at least one key point absolutely clear. Joe Biden's so-called "energy transition" to renewable fuels is a complete failure, not just in the U.S., but now worldwide, globally, an utter failure.

In Europe, the countries are talking renewables, but are reopening coal plants. That's because they either can't get enough Russian oil and gas supplies, or what they can get is too expensive, or both.

Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands... all reopening coal plants. Their so-called "green strategies," shoved aside.

They made a transition alright, back to the worst carbon polluters. The president of Nigeria, which is a big oil and gas producer, is berating the Europeans for thinking renewables will pave the way to industrial prosperity.

TEXAS GOV. GREG ABBOTT FIRES WARNING TO BIDEN OVER EPA RULE THAT COULD SEND GAS PRICES EVEN HIGHER

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with young award-winning culture professionals via videoconference in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 25, 2022. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, file / AP Images)

European Brent oil is running around $115. West Texas crude is about the same. Gasoline just under $5 is causing massive political backlash and threatens economic recession. Biden's green strategy is in complete collapse.

Most regrettably, the guy with a smile on his face is Vladimir Putin. The sanctions strategy has backfired on the U.S. and NATO. Putin's making money hand over fist.

His ruble currency is at a pre-war high. It's the pound and the euro that have been sinking out of sight. Putin has found new customers, China and India.

India's Russian imports have moved from 30,000 barrels per day back in February to a million barrels per day in June.

When the Indian finance minister was asked why he's doing this, "isn't he undermining the western defense of Ukraine?" he responded simply: "everyone else is buying Russian oil, why shouldn't we?"

Hate to say it, but he's right. I hate to say this, but Putin has outsmarted the West.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION REPORT SHOWS MASSIVE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY JOB LOSSES

Fox News host Sandra Smith weighs in on price controls and President Biden's energy policies on 'Kudlow.'

IfJoe Biden had been willing to face reality and pull back on his war against fossil fuels by waving all his regulations and restrictions and sanctions on fracking, pipelining, refining, and so-forth, if he had shown some flexibility in the face of sky-rocketing energy prices and a political revolt at home, then it's quite possible that energy supplies would be much greater today for all components and distillates, prices would be lower, or at the very least futures prices would be significantly lower.

All of which would've added relief to the Wests energy crisis. Lower prices would've hurt Putin's war machine financing, but Biden was stubborn, self-centered, politically narcissistic and has utterly failed to help the NATO coalition, as well as ordinary workin' folks and people driving trucks and grocery stores and real wages.

All this could have been mitigated, if not avoided, but for his stubbornness clinging to this idea of a 100% transition to renewablescraziness.

Now comes the craziest part of all. After gimmicks like a gas tax holiday or running down our strategic petroleum reserves (which are there for national security, not political price-fixing), or even debit card subsidies for gasoline, here's the latest: price controls. Yup, price controls. I'm surprised it took the socialists so long to get there.

Janet Yellen is leading the way, distinguished former Fed chair married to a Nobel Prize winner touting price controls on Russian oil. Really? But wait! It gets better.

That former Wall Street capitalist Emanuel Macron wants to go really big. He wants price controls on all oil producers: Russia, Saudis, OPEC, probably Venezuela, maybe Iranwho knows? Probably, his world oil price controls would meanyou guessed it price controls on American oil, too. Right?

EUROPEAN UNION INSTITUTES MANDATORY GAS STORAGE AHEAD OF POSSIBLE RUSSIAN CUTS

FOX Business host Gerri Willis provides insight on the push to buy American on 'Cavuto: Coast to Coast.'

That's only fair, global oil price controls, not on solar or wind, but fossils.

As I shut my eyes and lean back, I see Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter. "Whip inflation now" on a grand scale. It's a global race to socialism. Never mind the obvious shortages, energy wars, or just the plan stupidity of repeating an age-old socialist mistake, but, then again, when you look around that G-7 table Biden, Trudeau, Scholz, Macron, Draghi, Johnson I don't see much of a commitment to free-market capitalism.

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I don't see any Reagans. I don't see any Thatchers. I don't see Milton Friedman. I don't see Adam Smith. I don't see the signers of the American Declaration of Independence. Oh, wait a minute, that's tomorrow's special. This is just a tease. Tomorrow's theme is "Restoring Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Works for me because Americans don't see much life, liberty or happiness right now, but I know a way out and, yes, the cavalry is coming. Woke big-government socialism is dead.

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the June 28, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."

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Larry Kudlow: Putin has outsmarted the West - Fox Business

With little more than three months to go before Quebecs provincial election, Qubec Solidaire (QS) leads the polls among 18 to 34-year-olds, with 33 percent saying they intend to vote for the party. When other age groups are taken into account, QSs anticipated electoral support drops to 13 percent.

While opinion survey results shouldnt be taken for reality, Qubec Solidaires popularity among younger people does have political significance. A symptom of growing dissatisfaction with the status quo, it indicates that many younger Quebecers have illusions in this party of the affluent middle class, even though its left-wing image has been badly tarnished in the decade and a half since its founding, due to its forced march to the right.

It is vital that young workers, and the working class as a whole, recognize QS for what it isa pseudo-left party oriented to the political establishmentand shed any false hope that it constitutes a progressive alternative to the right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Qubec (CAQ) government and its virulent Quebec chauvinism.

The call for Quebec independence that lies at the heart of the QS program is based on the most retrograde nationalism and is a profoundly reactionary projectthe reshuffling of the state borders of North America to create the continents third imperialist state, a capitalist Rpublic du Qubec.

At a time when global capitalism is mired in systemic crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic, the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the skyrocketing cost of living, Qubec Solidaire is preparing for the elections by further integrating itself into the ruling political establishment.

This was demonstrated at its National Council meeting in late May, the partys last leadership meeting before it launches its campaign for the October 3 provincial election. At the meeting, QS presented itself first and foremost as a party that is responsible and ready-to-govern, that is, a party that fully defends the capitalist profit system.

Not one voice was raised to condemn the imperialist war that NATOof which Canada is a founding and leading memberis waging against Russia. No QS leader denounced the CAQ and federal Liberal government's disastrous handling of the pandemic. No one called for a broad working class mobilization against runaway inflation and the employer assault on wages and working conditions that the CAQ government has overseen.

The only criticisms of the reactionary CAQ government that came out of the National Council were timid proposals to deal with the housing crisis and other acute social problems, and for increased environmental protection and a slap on the wrist for Quebec Premier Franois Legault for exaggerating the threat immigration supposedly represents to Quebec. The latter was purely symbolic, since just a few days earlier the 10 QS legislators in the provincial parliament had voted in favour of the CAQs Bill 96, which stokes Quebec chauvinism by trampling upon the linguistic and democratic rights of minorities.

QS's complicit silence on the war against Russia in Ukraine is part of its support for Ottawas predatory imperialist actions. In recent decades, the ruling class has dragged Canada into a series of wars waged by Washington to uphold its global hegemony by securing control over critical resources and geostrategic regions. These wars have devastated entire societies and resulted in millions, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, being transformed into refugees.

Ottawa has intensified its decades-old military-security and economic partnership with Washington during this period as a means of protecting and expanding its own, increasingly significant imperialist interests. Qubec Solidaire has never opposed this in whole or in part, or in any significant way. It has never campaigned against the huge military spending increases implemented by successive governments, especially the current Trudeau Liberal government, which is purchasing new fleets of warplanes and warships, and last week announced plans to spend $40 billion over the next 20 years to modernize NORAD.

In so far as QS has spoken about Washingtons and Ottawas wars of conquest, it has been to legitimize them, by repeating the lie that they have been aimed at defending human rights and protecting the vulnerable.

QS is playing the same role in the current war against Russia in Ukraine, this time under the pretext of defending democracy. As the war began in late February, QS tabled a motion in the National Assembly that placed all blame for the conflict on Russia; covered up NATOs aggressive and provocative role, including its decades-long drive to strategically encircle Russia; and promoted the lie that the war was about defending the right of the Ukrainian people to live in a peaceful, prosperous and sovereign country. Not surprisingly, this motion was unanimously accepted by the CAQ, the Parti Qubcois and the Quebec Liberal Party, all of which unabashedly defend Quebec capitalism and Canadian imperialisms interests abroad.

QSs relentless efforts to integrate itself into the establishment are also evident in crucial domestic policy issuesabove all, the political cover it has provided the Legault government in its ruinous and criminal response to the pandemic.

While the CAQ pursued a pandemic policy that prioritized the profits of the corporate and financial elite by doing everything to keep the economy open, QS provided it and the Trudeau government, which oversaw the same policy across Canada, its full support.

During the first year of the pandemic, Manon Mass, then the top leader of the QS, regularly held secret consultations with Premier Legault on the implementation of the provinces profits before lives back-to-work/back-to-school policy. This policy has resulted in 15,500 official COVID-19 deaths in Quebec, the infections of millions, of whom an untold number are now suffering from Long Covid, and chronically overburdened hospitals.

To the extent that Qubec Solidaire criticized the Legault government over its handling of the pandemic, it was from the right. QS attacked the CAQ for its supposed lack of zeal in reopening schoolsveritable hotbeds of coronavirus transmissionand in mandating in-person schooling for all, under the outrageous pretext that students (and their parents) had to be exposed to a potentially deadly virus in order to preserve their mental health.

QSs full support for the Legault government on the pandemic issue was so compromising that last year, party members felt compelled to publicly rebuke the leadership for its all-too-visible collusion with the CAQ.

QS may occasionally present itself as a left party, but it is a party that is organically opposed to the class struggle. It rejects the mobilization of the working class as an independent political force in a struggle against the capitalist social and political order.

Underscoring that the QS is determined to repudiate any association, however flimsy and symbolic, with working class or even popular struggles, the party leadership has made a point of recruiting a new layer of candidates from affluent professional and business circlesmayors, lawyers, doctors, small businesspeople and financial executives.

The solidarity of which Qubec Solidaire speaks has nothing to do with class solidarity among workers, regardless of nationality, language or other differences. It is rather solidarity between the classes, in which the better-off help the less fortunate and the working class is politically subordinated to the petty and big bourgeoisie.

This finds expression in Qubec Solidaires attitude to the resurgence of the international class struggle, as workers rebel against decades of austerity, contract concessions and attacks on democratic rights now compounded by the impact of the pandemic and the US-NATO war in Russia.

Whether these struggles take place outside Quebec, as in the recent eruption of mass social unrest in Sri Lanka and Peru, or the strike waves in Spain and the US, or whether they occur in Quebec, as at Olymel, ArcelorMittal, Rolls-Royce, or Molson-Coors, to name but a few, QS has little or nothing to say about them. It lives in constant fear that working class struggles for better wages, safe working conditions, and quality public services will break out of the straitjacket of state-regulated collective bargaining and parliamentary politics and become a class-conscious movement that challenges the capitalist order it defends.

Thus QS allies with and courts the trade union bureaucracy, which for decades has played a pivotal role in isolating and suppressing workers struggles. When unions impose rotten contracts, as they did in the public sector last year, QS refuses to criticize them.

The nationalist, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist agenda of QS is highlighted by the politics of the parties with which it is allied on the international stage. In Spain, PODEMOS has forged a coalition with one of the two governing parties of the Spanish ruling class, the PSOE, in order to impose capitalist austerity and let the pandemic rip through the population. The PSOE-Podemos government has repeatedly used state repression and violence against striking workers. In Germany, the Left Party supports the return of German imperialism to the world stage, including the leading role it is playing in the NATO war against Russia.

Qubec Solidaire has nothing to do with socialism, or for that matter real left-wing politics. If it did, it would recognize that the capitalist system has entered its worst crisis since World War II. It would lead a principled opposition to chauvinism, war and fascism. It would denounce growing social inequality and welcome the growing opposition of working people to capitalism around the world.

QS does none of this and accepts entirely the framework of capitalism and the system of rival nation-states in which it is historically rooted. These national rivalries are an absolute brake on the harmonious and rational development of the world economy, posing a mortal threat to humanity that today takes the form of the pandemic, imperialist war and an impending environmental catastrophe.

As a representative of the affluent middle classes, QS may complain about certain aspects of capitalism and occasionally deplore the dictatorship of the financial elite over society. Its goal, however, is not to fight the ruling capitalist class on the basis of a socialist program, but to court it and carve out a place for itself within the political establishment. Qubec Solidaire wants to convince the ruling elite that its left image can be used to preserve social peace, assisting it in suppressing working class struggles and diverting mounting social anger and frustration along reactionary nationalist channels.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

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Qubec Solidaire prepares for provincial election by turning even further right - WSWS

Several South Florida high school educators are alarmed that a new state civics initiative designed to prepare students to be virtuous citizens is infused with a Christian and conservative ideology after a three-day training session in Broward County last week.

Teachers who spoke to the Times/Herald said they dont object to the states new standards for civics, but they do take issue with how the state wants them to be taught.

It was very skewed, said Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade government teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School. There was a very strong Christian fundamentalist way toward analyzing different quotes and different documents. That was concerning.

The civics training, which is part of Gov. Ron DeSantis Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, underscores the tension that has been building around education and how classrooms have become battlegrounds for politically contentious issues. In Florida, DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature have pushed policies that limit what schools can teach about race, gender identity and certain aspects of history.

Those dynamics came into full view last week, when trainers told Broward teachers the nations founders did not desire a strict separation of state and church, downplayed the role the colonies and later the United States had in the history of slavery in America, and pushed a judicial theory, favored by legal conservatives like DeSantis, that requires people to interpret the Constitution as the framers intended it, not as a living, evolving document, according to three educators who attended the training.

It is disturbing, really, that through these workshops and through legislation, there is this attempt to both censor and to drive or propagandize particular points of view, said Richard Judd, 50, a Nova High School social studies teacher with 22 years of experience who attended the state-led training session last week.

A review of more than 200 pages of the states presentations show the founding fathers intent and the misconceptions about their thinking were a main theme of the training. One slide underscored that the Founders expected religion to be promoted because they believed it to be essential to civic virtue. Without virtue, another slide noted, citizens become licentious and become subject to tyranny.

Another slide highlights three U.S. Supreme Court cases to show when the Founders original intent began to change. That included the 1962 landmark case that found school-sponsored prayer violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which Judd said trainers viewed as unjust. At one point, the trainers equated it to the 1892 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the separate but equal doctrine.

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Ending school prayer was compared to upholding segregation, Judd said. In other words, he said, trainers called both those rulings unjust.

On slavery, the state said that two-thirds of the founding fathers were slave owners but emphasized that even those that held slaves did not defend the institution.

DeSantis administration has spent nearly $6 million to train public school teachers across the state on how to teach civics as part of the governors initiative. The first training sessions were June 20-22, at Broward College in Davie. Teachers in Hillsborough County are training this week.

The civics training is the latest effort in a long line of education policies that aims to fight what DeSantis and conservative education reformers say are woke ideologies in public schools.

It also provides a snapshot of how national groups, including Hillsdale College, a politically influential private Christian college in southern Michigan, are working with the DeSantis administration to reshape education in the state. The goal is to put a greater emphasis on civics than on socially divisive issues such as race and gender identity, which DeSantis has said is an effort to reorient teaching away from indoctrination and back towards education. But to several educators who went through the states training, it felt like a broader effort to impose a conservative view on historical events.

We are constantly under attack, and there is this false narrative that were indoctrinating children, but that is nothing compared to what the state just threw in new civic educators faces. Thats straight-up indoctrination, said Segal, a 46-year-old teacher with 19 years of experience.

The Florida Department of Education is leading the workshops, which were developed with the help of Hillsdale College and other groups. The Bill of Rights Institute, founded by Charles Koch in 1999, is one of those groups. The state aims to train about 2,500 teachers in 10 sessions across the state. The three-day sessions are voluntary, but teachers get a $700 stipend and the possibility of a $3,000 bonus as an incentive to attend.

The Times/Herald reached out to John Duebel, the states director of social studies and the arts for the bureau of standards and instructional support, but he declined to be interviewed and referred questions to the Florida Department of Educations communications office. A request for comment from the governor was also referred to the Department of Education.

Every lesson we teach is based on history, not ideology or any form of indoctrination. Let us know if you are actually interested in reviewing the coursework and understanding it for yourself, the Florida Department of Education said in a statement on Friday when asked about the session and educators concerns. On Tuesday afternoon, the department provided the slide presentations, which were reviewed by the Times/Herald. The documents provided did not include the trainers comments for each slide.

DeSantis and Republican lawmakers increasingly talk about how they believe the woke left is posing a threat to the public education system in Florida.

DeSantis describes a battle for the next generation in education. His former education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, last spring told the Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar that education is 100 percent ideological, which is why picking leaders is so crucial. He added that leaders need to be strategic and quick when implementing policies to make sure they have impact.

Education is our sword. Thats our weapon. Our weapon is education, Corcoran said. And we can do it. We can get it right.

The DeSantis administration has implemented its education agenda through a renewed emphasis on civics, and he has approved measures that limit what schools can teach about racism and other aspects of history, and his Department of Education has rejected math textbooks for containing what the state called indoctrinating concepts.

I think what parents are doing is they are reorienting the school system away from indoctrination and back towards education, where we have a premium on doing what a core part of education should be, DeSantis, who is running for reelection, said in an interview with the Focus on the Family podcast on June 3.

Another layer to the parental rights movement DeSantis has helped spearhead in Florida is empowering parents to hold districts accountable for what they believe to be violations of the states new rules through lawsuits. House Bill 7, titled Individual Freedom and known as the Stop Woke Act, enables parents to sue local school districts they think are teaching critical race theory, a legal concept that is not generally taught in K-12 but that explains how racism and race have impacted American life through history. The governor is also championing the promotion of school vouchers and charter schools. Among those engaged in the effort are parents, community members, nonprofit organizations and a powerful ally: Hillsdale College.

The private Christian college, which is among the groups that helped develop the states summer civics training, has been at the forefront of growing a national network of classical public charter schools. Similar to the message highlighted in the states civics training, classical charter schools emphasize a return to a traditional education model focused on core subjects like math, science and civics and teaching American history through primary sources.

As a state, Florida has a favorable legislative and regulatory environment for the establishment of charter schools, Hillsdale spokeswoman Emily Stack Davis said in an email to the Times/Herald. Insofar as Gov. DeSantis has helped build and sustain this environment, he has been a friend to the work of Hillsdale College in this area.

For Tatiana Ahlbum, 25, a second-year 12th-grade government and economics teacher at Fort Lauderdale High who attended the Broward sessions last week, the states training underscores an effort to depart from how history and civics has traditionally been taught in favor of an approach the DeSantis administration advocates.

It was a bit different than a typical training, Ahlbum said. Previously, trainers would show us how to teach the information. But this time, instead of being shown how to implement the standards, they kind of went the opposite way. They presented this history as if none of us had learned it before.

Throughout the sessions, teachers said, facilitators emphasized that most enslaved people in the country were born into slavery and that the colonies didnt buy nearly as many enslaved people during the transatlantic slave trade as has been portrayed, Ahlbum said. The framing, she added, felt as though America was being characterized as less bad when it came to slavery.

One slide noted that less than 4% of enslaved people in the Western hemisphere were in colonial America and that the number only increased through birth. (For context, there were nearly 4 million enslaved people among the 31 million in the overall U.S. population in 1860, according to documentation in the Library of Congress.)

Another slide quotes Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson saying they wanted legislation to outlaw slavery, without mentioning that both were slave owners. The quotes were not sourced, a theme that the educators noticed throughout the training session.

We were not told which documents stated this or how to find them just that they existed, Ahlbum said.

At one point, Ahlbum said, a state facilitator told a table of 12th-grade government teachers that their students will need the most clarity on socialism because they think its the best thing ever, which Ahlbum said isnt true of her seniors. The assumption, she said, made it seem like students are looked down on because they have information state officials may not like or agree with.

Several presentation slides emphasized that it was a misconception that the Founders desired strict separation of church and state and the Founders only wanted to protect Freedom of worship. During breakout sessions, the states presenters repeatedly mentioned the influence Jesus Christ and the Bible had on the countrys foundation.

There was this Christian nationalism philosophy that was just baked into everything that was there, Judd said.

But Judd noted that the states presentation glossed over the different Christian denominations. He said trainers suggested Christianity meant the same thing to the nations founders, which he thought was one of the significant shortcomings of the training session.

Judd says he has for years mentioned Christianity as an influence in American history, but the states trainers were telling teachers to go beyond that. He said the state delivered the instruction in a way that made it seem as though Christianity was the only viewpoint that the Founding Fathers had in mind for the country.

People were profoundly religious in those eras. Its not to be discounted one bit, Judd said. But their (the states) thesis that the intent of the founders was to have this wonderful Christian world is a specious claim at best.

The emphasis on religion seems to mirror DeSantis comments.

What the left is doing is they are saying religions role in the public square should be eliminated, and they will cite the First Amendment and establishment of religion, which was not what it was intended to do, DeSantis said earlier this month on a Focus of the Family podcast. They are trying to establish a religion of their own. This woke ideology functions as a religion, obviously it is not the Judeo-Christian tradition, but they want that to be effectively the governing faith of our country.

They want to impose their world view to the exclusion of the rest of us, the governor added.

The trainings approach is worrisome to the future of the profession, said Segal. Young teachers could be influenced by the agenda being pushed by the DeSantis administration, she said.

For those new teachers that are entering the force, this is the cornerstone of what theyre leaning on, and those that dont have much content knowledge yet, are going to rely heavily on the method in which these facilitators taught, Segal said.

Ahlbum and Segal reiterated that state standards arent controversial. Instead, their concerns regarded how facilitators instructed teachers to teach the material.

For example, Segal said, the phrase, all men are created equal, was mentioned to explain the Declaration of Independence and later the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves in 1863. But when you study historical documents within the time period that they were written, All men are created equal refers to white, land-owning men, she said.

Whats more, teachers said, was the inability to debate or question how certain topics were being presented. When a question was asked, Ahlbum said, the facilitator would deflect it or say theyd return to the discussion and later would not.

For Stephen Backs, 55, a 27-year history teacher at Hialeah Gardens High School in Miami-Dade County, the question now becomes: How do teachers teach history particularly as it relates to slavery and events like the Civil Rights movement without acknowledging that there were some evil actions.

Amid deepening tensions between parents and school boards and parents ability to question a teachers lesson Backs said he fears that some teachers will be afraid to discuss certain topics in an effort to keep their jobs.

What Im seeing here is a governor who is trying to demonize public education, said Backs, who didnt attend the training but reviewed a series of slides from the event. In the long run, its going to do so much damage. Weve made so many advances and (the administration) is trying to split us apart again. Its going to cost us our culture.

This isnt the first time concerns about the impact of DeSantis efforts have been heard.

Senate Education Committee vice chairperson Shevrin Jones, a West Park Democrat who has been an educator himself, said that the administrations education policies highlight the concerns he raised when they were first being proposed and rolled out.

I knew this was going to happen, Jones said after reviewing some of the material. They are very intentional about their approach and their selective history.

Miami Herald staff writer Sommer Brugal reported from Miami, and Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau reporter Ana Ceballos reported from Tallahassee.

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Some teachers alarmed by Florida civics training approach on religion, slavery - Tampa Bay Times