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The U.S. says it will only allow people back into Fallujah "one sector at a time" -- registered, supervised and (of course) disarmed. The U.S. occupiers have issued the Orwellian decree that the head of every household returning to Fallujah will be required to wear a visible identification badge. No cars will be allowed into the city -- since the occupiers are terrified of improvised attacks. Instead, future inhabitants will be forced to use buses (that will clearly be controlled and patrolled by armed occupiers).

The whole plan has the flavor of Israeli operations on the West Bank, or the all-American reservations forced on Native peoples, or some Nazi-era ghetto in eastern Europe.
www.rwor.org/a/1261/fallujah%20occupation.htm

He told CBS’ “60 Minutes” television program, “I was told in basic training that if I’m given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it, and I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do.”
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/hinz-d11.shtml

At least four US soldiers are either imprisoned or have completed jail terms for refusing to serve in protest against the war, and several others have been “less than honorably” discharged. Hundreds more troops have applied for conscientious objector status.
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/navy-d10.shtml

Anger over the stop-loss orders has given rise to a lawsuit by eight US soldiers ordered to remain in Iraq after they had fulfilled their commitments to the military. The suit, filed Monday, charges that the soldiers were lured into the military under false pretenses, because the information they were given and papers they signed made no mention of the provision allowing the government to extend their military service. [...]

That the Pentagon chose to forgo a court martial is telling. What moved the South Carolina reservists to disobey orders were the same concerns and sentiments expressed by the soldiers who challenged Rumsfeld in Kuwait.

There were indications that their action enjoyed widespread sympathy within the military ranks. “There are troops who support you and believe you did the right thing,” one soldier in Kuwait wrote to the newspaper Stars and Stripes. “You took a stand, not just for yourselves, but for every member of the military.”
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/rums-d09.shtml

This whole "compassionate conservative" thing has, as one of its key elements, that it is morally wrong and politically wrong for the government to provide a lot of these social services to people. That people should be self-reliant to get these things for themselves, and if they need help they should get it from people who will also give them the correct moral posture -- namely, faith-based agencies.
www.rwor.org/a/1261/avakian%20dictatorship%20democracy%20pt9.htm

For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it.
www.truthout.org/docs_04/120804X.shtml

Despite Mr. Bush’s and Greenspan’s self-interested worries, Social Security is far from insolvent. Currently, despite the Bush budget, the system brought in a $120 billion surplus in 2002. The SSA’s own accountants have projected that the systems annual budget should continue running with a surplus until 2020. After that, the SSA reserve funds, which now total more than $3 trillion would completely cover any shortfalls. By 2070 the system would again return to surplus. However, Bush thinks that this money is needed more by the billionaire American capitalists than by millions of retired workers!
www.socialistappeal.org/usa/bush_agenda.html

At the Davos summit of neoliberal chieftains in 1999, Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embrace "economic reform" fully. In the bombing campaign that followed, it was state-owned companies, rather than military sites, that were targeted. Nato's destruction of only 14 Yugoslav army tanks compares with its bombing of 372 centres of industry, including the Zastava car factory. "Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed," wrote Clark.
informationclearinghouse.info/article7439.htm

The Western press has provided the propaganda accompaniment to the coups carried out in Belgrade (Serbia) and Tiflis (Georgia), and the one underway in Kiev, describing the process in glowing terms as a “democratic revolution.” However, what transpires in the aftermath of these overthrows goes largely unreported. Hardly a single journalist has taken the trouble to investigate the outcome of the democratic promises made by the new ruling powers.

However, reports by Amnesty International and other organizations show that, if anything, the situation with regard to democracy and human rights in these countries —- as bad as it was under the old regimes -— has actually worsened. The pursuit and abuse of political opponents remains a priority for the new “democratic” rulers.
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/geor-d09.shtml

To claim that democratic elections could be held [in Afghanistan] under such circumstances is absurd. Not only does the US function as the country’s military overlord but it also controls the financial purse strings. It is hardly surprising that Karzai, Washington’s obvious favorite, won the presidential poll.
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/afgh-d09.shtml

In spite of their hollow promises (Kyoto, Aids, world poverty), they are not interested in solving these burning questions. Instead they continue their imperialist wars under the fig leaf of democracy and the “war on terror”. But what about this war on the people? In a world with an abundance of resources, tens of thousands of people are dying on a daily basis. What else is this than a new, permanent holocaust?

It is important to understand that there is a method in the madness. These kinds of problems won’t simply go away by adding another drop in the ocean. Structural problems demand structural solutions. They require a radical change in the present economic system.
www.marxist.com/Globalisation/unicef_report_billion.htm

[This] ignores the fact that under the Bretton Woods system, the US ran a current account surplus and the value of the dollar was pegged to gold. The present system is only able to continue so long as Asian banks keep purchasing dollars, exposing themselves to ever-greater risk of massive losses in terms of their own currency should the dollar experience a sharp fall.
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/doll-d08.shtml

The criticism of President Bush's inaction, by a senior member of the
ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will be taken as a veiled threat that
Japan could start to sell off its multi-billion-dollar holdings of US
Treasuries.
observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1366578,00.html

Fear of such instability must also be of concern to the oil corporations involved, such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, as Equatorial Guinea is now the third largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa. The tiny country of less than 500,000 people had a gross domestic product of $US1.85 billion in 2001 and churns out 350,000 barrels of oil a day. It has vast oil reserves, estimated to be approximately 10 percent of the total global reserves, according to the US Department of Energy. US oil companies have invested $US3 billion in the country since 1995. Most of the population live in dire poverty and the regime is renowned for its brutality, with political detainees routinely tortured or ill-treated according to Amnesty International. A report by a US Senate committee revealed hundreds of millions of dollars had been deposited by Obiang, his family and associates in the Washington-based Riggs Bank “with little or no attention to the bank’s anti-money laundering obligations....”
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/guine-d07.shtml

U.S. business groups and the Bush administration have pressed the courts to turn back the tide of litigation from abroad, and other experts said a settlement in such a high-profile case could encourage lawyers to file more and broader human rights abuse suits.

"Major multinationals are terrified," said Susan Aaronson, director of the Kenan Institute's Washington Center for Globalization Studies. "They are absolutely terrified."

For eight years, Unocal vigorously defended itself against the claims that it turned a blind eye to violent acts allegedly committed by soldiers assigned to guard the pipeline, in which Unocal is a partner with the French oil company Total and the military junta that rules the country formerly known as Burma.
www.truthout.org/docs_04/121504F.shtml

A recent survey for the Ministry of Commerce found that of 600 major consumer products, 446, or 74.3 per cent, were in oversupply. [2] China is confronted by a classical capitalist crisis of overproduction. The workers cannot afford to buy the goods they produce. There are too many houses, too many computers, too many clothes, at the same time as the workers receive wages which are only just sufficient to keep body and soul together. [...]
In reality Government ministers are complicit. They organize and benefit from the ‘market’ system which creates the generalised abuse of migrant workers. If they really wanted to eliminate late payments, why don’t they introduce a system of rewards for exposing late payers? Why not declare late payment an act of ‘counter revolution’? Or introduce prison sentences for employers guilty of late payment? Would that not be the natural response of a Communist to such ruthless and blatant exploitation? [...]
In some parts of the countryside selling blood to blood heads has become the life blood of the local economy. “ ‘Selling blood- as long as I am alive and to the end of my life’, has long been a popular saying among farmers who make a living exchanging blood or blood plasma for cash.” [19] [...]
Ding continues, “What had changed was that previous intra-firm work assignments had become, in appearance, inter-firm market transactions... With intra-firm assignments being turned into inter-firm transactions, abnormal movements of assets, production costs and profits between a state firm and its affiliates became routine” [26]
www.marxist.com/Asia/china_war_workers.htm

Most people in China would never have heard of the Chinese Trotskyists. But the publication of these books indicates, at the very least, that there is concern within the regime about the impact of Trotskyism. After all, their political legitimacy is still based on the false claim to represent socialism or communism.
wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/chi2-d08.shtml