By Franz J. T. Lee

The Sword of Damocles hovering over the Motor Industry

As we know, General Motors and Chrysler asked for another $21 billion in government financing. This was in addition to the already approved $17.4 billion at the end of 2008. This is what I call sacred bourgeois fraternity.

According to a recent article published by Andre Damon on February 21, 2009:

"General Motors workers are speaking out against pay cuts". However, "if a restructuring plan, "a final agreement is not reached by March 31, the Obama administration is maintaining a threat to withdraw existing loans and throw the companies into bankruptcy, where a judge would impose the concessions."
This is what I call the iron fist of capital accumulation and destruction.

Many autoworkers are feeling betrayed by the Obama administration. Their imposed unions "have consigned them to poverty wages, and the Democratic party has given them nothing. The billionaires are getting bailouts, and the workers are are being told to take more pay and job cuts."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/
feb2009/auto-f21.shtml

This is the imperialist quintessence of globalization.

May Day! May Day! God Save the Bank Titans!
According to an article of Tara Perkins and Barrie Mackenna, published in the 'Globe and Mail', of February 20, 2009, "panic about the noose around U.S banks' neck is the unknown". Furthermore, they related that "panic about the fate of U.S. financial titans has led to concern that one might not survive the weekend."

The mills of concentration, monopolization, competition, merging and centralization grind slowly, but surely!

Of course among the 'financial titans' are the Royal Bank of Canada, "the two largest U.S. institutions — Bank of America Corp. [BAC-N] and Citigroup Inc." What do the owners of these giant corporations fear? Not the specter of global communism, but of capitalist State nationalization, which is already scaring many "investors, economists and policy makers."

And who now all favor partial and temporary nationalization of the banking giants?

Not the 'Fourth International' of Leon Trotsky but members of Congress, "former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chief Alan Greenspan, Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, and former Fed vice-chairman Alan Blinder, a professor at Princeton University." De facto, however, the U.S. government is already the owner of Citigroup and Bank of America:
"The Treasury Department has already injected $45-billion into each bank, receiving preferred shares in return. If converted into common stock, the government stake in the banks would easily eclipse their depressed market value."

Coming Workers' Riots in the Metropolis: Carte Blanche for Global Fascism?

In a previous article I warned that this global depression will be worse than the previous one of 1929 which lasted till 1945; in fact, in its destructive, fascist quintessence, it lasted even longer, if we consider the Vietnam and Indonesian massacres, especially its South African and Israeli apartheid varieties and its Russian gulag aspects.

In reality this Great Depression has generated the 'Civil Liberties' movements in the USA, the international student revolts, the assassinations of Walter Rodney, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in the 1960s and later.

In reality, it is giving birth to the current Global Recession and World Depression which is just beginning.

Rob Kall fears:
"This economic crisis is going to be worse than the depression. Last week, federal economists predicted that unemployment will not be improved by 2011. It took 12 years and a world war to pull the US out of the Great Depression."
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Coming-
Soon--Riots-in-Ame-by-Rob-Kall-090223-649.html

He continues:

"The world is going through a huge change. It WILL touch you. It will be ugly, if it has not already been ugly. We all need to change our habits, our lifestyles, in anticipation. No-one will escape unscathed."

Have we given our democratically elected leaders free and full authority, 'full spectrum dominance', to complete the works of fascism and 'national socialism' of the 20th century? Or are we going to rebel, to fight against the introduction of global barbarism which has begun long ago already, ever since the original accumulation of capital, of profits, ruling class power and opulent social privileges.

The current world recession has already destroyed 40% of global wealth, has ransacked the savings of the toiling workers, is cutting our salaries, our social benefits for which we fought ever since the dawn of industrialization; it is destroying all our daydreams and hopes for a humane, humanist future.

What must still happen to wake us up?

* That a loaf of bread cost a worthless million dollars, printed by the Fed, that are not even worth the paper on which they are printed?

* To march into World War III guided by propaganda of the Goebbels genre?

* To throw the mother of all bombs on innocent women, mothers and children?

* To fill Siberia, gulags, football fields and camps with millions of "mad cows"?

* To go on a Bushman 'fox-hunting' spree on Sunday afternoon in Namibia? As Hutus and Tutsis to kill ourselves by the millions?

* To kill a million 'communists' in Djakarta, Indonesia?

* To throw atomic bombs on 'Sodom and Gomorrah'?

This is the 'crown of creation', the 'paragon of animals', 'homo sapiens sapiens'? Or is it 'homo homini lupus'?

Well, all these we did before, during and after the Great Depression of 1929?

Just guess what we have in mind, what our loving masters have in mind, for us over the next decade!

Workers of the world, make revolutionary hay while the creative sun still shines, otherwise we will have to hit the emancipatory iron very hard while it is still hot!