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Vol. 77/No. 42      November 25, 2013

 
Immediate and massive aid to Philippines!
(editorial)
 
Unfolding today in the Philippines, a nation with a population of 100 million, is a social catastrophe. The profit-driven capitalists in the Philippines — as well as the U.S. rulers to which they are beholden — bear responsibility for the thousands of deaths, hunger, disease and other severe hardships bearing down on hundreds of thousands of toilers there. The callous law of value that guides all their actions ensured Typhoon Haiyan would wreak massive and lasting devastation on the lives of workers, farmers and fishermen.

“Meteorologists say humans played a big role in this disaster — probably bigger than nature’s,” wrote the New York Times. “Factors in the unfolding tragedy include poverty and a tremendous growth in population, much of it in vulnerable coastal areas with poor construction.”

But it’s not “humans,” but the economic and social relations of capitalism that perpetuate the conditions that guarantee these disasters will happen over and over again; that forces workers and farmers to live in harms way; that fails to adequately prepare; and that decides to “save money” rather than human beings.

In Haiti more than 200,000 were killed and more than 1 million left homeless in the immediate aftermath of a January 2010 earthquake from which working people have yet to recover. Only socialist Cuba — where no one is left to fend for themselves — provided any useful aid, which included a brigade of nearly 1,500 medical personnel, who treated some 100,000 Haitians in the first couple months.

U.S. “aid” has been superficial and, like it was in Haiti, prioritizes the protection of private property and restoration of “order.”

Workers worldwide should demand from Washington and other imperialist governments: immediate and massive provision of food, water, shelter and medical care; reconstruction aid with no strings attached; and cancelation of the Philippines foreign debt!
 
 
Related article:
Philippines social disaster wrought by capitalism
 
 
 
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