The Empire's mass media plays and replays every nonsensical uttering
from the lips of Donald Trump. But few words about the continuous
rape and plunder of Puerto Rico. The greed driven Corporate
Capitalists learn nothing from history. They are too focused on the
moment. But some of us recall what happens when a People decide they
have had enough, and rise up and throw off the chains of oppression.
How soon the American Pirates have forgotten Fidel Castro and the
overthrow of the powerful Masters by a determined People And even
though it goes back some years, our Corporate Oppressors should
remember what happened right here when Colonists refused to allow the
British Empire to suck any more marrow from their bones.
These Corporate monsters will never learn. We, the Workers, will
eventually take all we can take. The uprising will blow the Corporate
Empire away. Literally.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/29/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8022/802220.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 22 June 6, 2016
(editorial)
End US colonial rule in Puerto Rico!
The imposition of a fiscal board on Puerto Rico strips away the mask
from a simple fact: the island nation is a U.S. colony.
All seven members of the board will be appointed by the president of the
United States. It will have the power to veto any law passed by the
Puerto Rican legislature, to order layoffs of government workers, to
sell off Puerto Rican government property and to impose criminal
penalties on anyone who disobeys its edicts. So much for the
“self-governing” Commonwealth.
The big-business media and politicians often slander the Puerto Rican
people as lazy riffraff who live off welfare and food stamps, with a
corrupt government that won’t make hard decisions to pay off its creditors.
At best, they say some blame falls on “vulture” hedge funds, which
bought up a chunk of the island’s bonds for as little as 30 cents on the
dollar, but demand payment in full.
But the problem is not vulture capitalism: it’s capitalism, specifically
in the form of Washington’s imperialist domination.
U.S. capitalists of all stripes reap superprofits from the colonial
oppression of Puerto Rico: the giant pharmaceutical corporations that
benefit from low wages and taxes on the island; the shipping companies
that have a monopoly on cargo trade; agribusiness that provides 80
percent of the food because imperialist domination wiped out much of the
island’s agricultural production.
With the layoffs of thousands, increases in sales taxes and cuts in
pensions, working people in Puerto Rico are already paying for the
capitalist crisis. The fiscal board will further tighten the screws.
President Obama and leading Democratic and Republican Party politicians,
including Bernie Sanders, say they are for a referendum to give the
people of Puerto Rico a choice between independence, statehood or
keeping its current status.
But any vote under colonial rule is a sham. What kind of free vote can
there be under the watchful eye — including cops, courts, and spies — of
those who benefit from Puerto Rico remaining a colony under the rule of
the same imperialist government that has held independence fighter Oscar
López in U.S. prisons for the last 35 years?
The Socialist Workers Party at its founding convention in 1938 opposed
“any attempt by American imperialism, open or masked, to infringe upon
the right of self-determination of any nation or people.”
“More than ever working people in Puerto Rico and in the U.S. have
everything to gain by fighting together for our common interests and
backing the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence from colonial rule,”
Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president,
told the Militant. She’s right.
Independence for Puerto Rico! Free Oscar López!
Related articles:
Puerto Rico debt crisis: product of US capitalism’s colonial rule
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