Chicago Marches to Oppose U.S. War Moves Against Iran, 4 January 2020

Photoessay: Chicago’s progressive and socialist left turns out to demonstrate against the impending war against Iran on Saturday, January 4, 2020. The demonstration was organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition; dozens of organizations from Christian peace groups and Filipino left parties to revolutionary Maoists, and Trotskyists participated.  The demo was held just across the Chicago River from Trump Tower. At its peak, we estimate that the demonstration was several thousand strong.

Conspicuously absent were Chicago’s powerful trade unions, whose pro-capitalist Democratic-Party-subservient “leadership” *never* dares to bring their members into contact with the socialist left at events like this, quite correctly fearing that if they did, “their” members would be “led astray” and never again be happy, complacent & obedient pro-capitalist Democratic Party sheep.

The demonstration begins, 4 January 2020 at about 11:45AM. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demonstration against war with Iran, 4 January 2020, 12 Noon, photo by IWPCHI.

Chicago, IL, USA demonstration against war with Iran, Wacker and Wabash Ave’s, 4 January 2020, approx. 12 noon. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – Sample of protest signs #1. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – Sample of protest signs #2. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – Sample of protest signs #3. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Presente! Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – Rally across river from Trump Tower #1. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave., #1. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. #2. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. #3. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed #1. Photo by IWPCHI

 

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed. By the time the march got to the Chicago River it was starting to take up both sides of Michigan Ave. #1. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed.  By the time the march got to the Chicago River it was starting to take up both sides of Michigan Ave. #2. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed.  By the time the march got to the Chicago River it was starting to take up both sides of Michigan Ave. #3.  Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed.  By the time the march got to the Chicago River it was taking up both sides of Michigan Ave. #3.  Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed.  By the time the march got to the Chicago River it was taking up both sides of Michigan Ave. #4.  Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – March up Michigan Ave. showing huge growth of number of participants as march progressed.  By the time the march got to the Chicago River it was taking up both sides of Michigan Ave., shutting down traffic on both sides #5.  Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – The demo progressed up Michigan Ave. until it reached the Water Tower, then headed east towards the lake. Here, it starts to move north on the frontage road on the west side of Lake Shore Drive. Navy Pier is in the background.  Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – The demo progressed up Michigan Ave. until it reached the Water Tower, then headed east towards the lake. Here, it starts to move north on the frontage road on the west side of Lake Shore Drive. Photo by IWPCHI

Chicago, IL, USA demo opposing war against Iran, 4 January 2020 – The demo progressed up Michigan Ave. until it reached the Water Tower, then headed east towards the lake. Here, it starts to move north on the frontage road on the west side of Lake Shore Drive. Navy Pier is in the background.  A few minutes later the police apparently arrested a person or persons, or at least attempted to (this was the only instance of a confrontation between the cops and the demonstrators we witnessed).  The crowd started chanting : “Let him (or “them”) go!”  Photo by IWPCHI

—– IWPCHI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News briefs for January, 2020

News and items of interest from around the world and around the Internet for January 2020 – by IWPCHI

1) If this is true and your revolutionary socialist workers party is not growing by leaps and bounds, then you are doing something wrong:  “More than a third of millennials polled approve of communism”!

The poll that this article was based on was apparently commissioned by a US Government-created anti-communist propaganda operation called the “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation”; the poll is conducted annually.  This foundation got its start as a bipartisan effort to spread massive disinformation about the history of the revolutionary socialist movement.  Racist Republican anticommunist scum like the late Sen. Jesse Helms laid down with Racist Democratic Party anticommunist scum like former US President Bill Clinton and gave birth to this deformed beast of an organization.  It’s planning to build one of the first museums in world history dedicated to the goal of systematic falsification of the history of revolutionary socialist working-class parties.  The “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” website is here. Their organization’s leadership is, of course, replete with out-and-out fascists like US Major General John K. Singlaub (Ret.), founder of the Cold War-era fascist “World Anti-Communist League”, now operating under the name of the “World League for Freedom and Democracy”.  By the way: isn’t this an interesting use of these political terms as a name for a fascist organization?

Here is the link to the poll.

This is undoubtedly the effect of the “Great Recession” when young people across the nation saw their families and the families of their friends and neighbors’ lives destroyed by the capitalist system.  They are of course also feeling the full brunt of the vast increase in college tuition and rent, with wages – until very recently – stagnant at essentially 1980s levels.  The positive attitudes towards socialism range widely among the various “generations”; interestingly even the elderly “Silent Generation” have become slightly less anti-socialist; for Boomers and Gen X ers it’s a mixed bag.  The poll is well worth reading.

I also recommend reading the 1000-plus comments on the Marketwatch article at the top of this item. Americans don’t know anything about socialism or communism; massive confusion abounds, the result of decades of US Govt propaganda and capitalist-owned news media disinformation.  There’s enough material there for at least one article, which I hope to be able to write soon.

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Just stumbled across this little gem while surfing the WHO website on some other errand; I did not know this!

2) #SocialismWorks: (2015) “World Health Organization validates elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis in Cuba”

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3) Illinois joins the growing list of states who have legalized marijuana, but the high taxes are designed to ensure the continued existence of drug cartel operations and profitability, as well as keep US prisons full of people busted for illegal drug dealing and (probably, eventually) for possession of illegal drugs. #DumpTheDems #BuildAWorkersParty #FightForASocialistFuture #Re-LegalizeAllDrugs

Receipt for legal weed purchased in Illinois on first day of legalization, 1 January 2020. Photographer unknown. Source: Twitter

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4) Union of Concerned Scientists 2015 study: “Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave: How Electric Cars Beat Gasoline Cars on Lifetime Global Warming Emissions”

Very informative but unfortunately flawed IMO: in calculating the lifetime global warming emissions of BEVs they assume that owners will not replace the battery over the lifetime of the car.

If this assumption turns out to be wrong, the conclusions of this study may have to be significantly revised or even thrown out entirely. Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, “Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave – How Electric Cars Beat Gasoline Cars on Lifetime Global Warming Emissions” (2015)

As the manufacturing of Li-ion batteries is the #1 source of global warming emissions over the lifetime of the car, if this assumption turns out to be wrong, the conclusions of the study will have to be revised significantly – maybe even thrown out completely.  Early reports from Tesla owners indicate that their car batteries are often losing significant charging capacity over just a few years.  It appears to me that it is highly unlikely that owners of BEVs will wait until their car batteries lose even 30% of their charge-holding capacity before they either buy a new battery or sell the car (passing on that expense to the purchaser). We’ll soon know the answer to this question.

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5) Apropos of the previous entry: global supplies of lithium for Li-ion batteries have been the subject of much discussion, but that’s not the only material used in a lithium-ion battery. Most natural elements necessary for their production have adequate supplies for at least the short-term needs of li-ion battery manufacture… except for cobalt.  I recommend this 2018 article from Scientific American; and I highly recommend this 2017 study the Sci Am article is based upon, from the scientific journal “Joule”: “Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain Considerations: Analysis of Potential Bottlenecks in Critical Metals”

Source: Joule 1, 229–243, October 11, 2017

Police Corruption in the USA: New York City – 1894 Lexow Committee and 1972 Knapp Commission Reports

The Lexow Committee and the Knapp Commission: two massive investigations into police corruption in the New York City Police Department, almost 100 years apart.  Results: in spite of continuous scandals, exposés, investigations and promises from the New York City and state officials that things would change – they never did.  If we were to launch a new investigation into police corruption in the NYPD – or any other big-city police force in the USA, we’d find the same thing: massive corruption.  The truth is that the police forces in the USA have ALWAYS been corrupt, from Day One.  And it’s not just “a few bad apples” (as the police chiefs and Mayors always reassure us); no, the entire orchard is rotten. (Oh, and by the way: the “lesser evil” Democratic Party has been running most big-city police departments since the 1930s).

These reports have been often quoted but rarely have they seen the light of day; they have existed in the dusty archives of public and collegiate libraries, available only to those who knew where to look.  Now, thanks to the Internet, these mind-blowing reports can be yours with the click of a button. So download away and prove to yourself how endemic total police corruption is to the capitalist system.

The only sure way to put an end to police corruption once and for all is to get rid of the capitalist system that spawns it through workers socialist revolution.

— IWPCHI

1894 NYPD Lexow Committee Report Vol I_

1894 NYPD Lexow Committee Report Vol II_

1894 NYPD Lexow Committee Report Vol III_

1894 NYPD Lexow Committee Report Vol IV_

1894 NYPD Lexow Committee Report Vol V_

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[Note: The Knapp Commission Report is in the process of being archived.  Only this first section is available at this time.  We’ll be making the rest of it available (hopefully) before the holidays. – IWPCHI]

Knapp Commission Report Part 1 – Introductory Material, Table of Contents, Summary and Principal Recommendations

Knapp Commission Report Section One – Chapter One – History of Commission – Chapter Two Methods and Sources

Knapp Commission Report Section Two – Chapter Three – Patterns of Police Corruption

Knapp Commission Report Section Two – Chapter Four – Gambling

Knapp Commission Report Section Two – Chapter Five – Narcotics

Knapp Commission Report Section Two – Chapter Six – Prostitution

Knapp Commission Report Section Two – Chapter Seven – Construction

Knapp Commission Report Section Two – Chapter Eight – Bars

 

DOCUMENTS: All the Depositions in the Tesla Shareholders Litigation case

[UPDATE (31 October 2019): We are now in the process of breaking out each of the individual depositions so you can just download whichever one you’re looking for instead of having to download the entire sets of depositions and then plow through 800 pages to get to what you want.]

Note by Iwpchi: Thanks to https://www.plainsite.org for obtaining and archiving these *very interesting* documents! They have a lot more if you’d like to learn more about the extent of the Tesla/SolarCity securities fraud case here:

https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/32atfyhh5/delaware-court-of-chancery/in-re-tesla-motors-inc-stockholder-litigation/

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Delaware Court of Chancery
Case No. 12711-VCS
In Re Tesla Motors, Inc. Stockholder Litigation

Document 328, Attachment 1

[Exhibits 1-7]

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Exhibit 1: Hayden Barnard (founder, Paramount Solar; former Chief Revenue Officer, SolarCity)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 1_Hayden Barnard

Relevant emails:

1.  Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Emails_Exhibit 19_Hayden Barnard (TESLA 3404-3405)
2. [Not located] (TESLA 412642)
3. Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Emails_Exhibit 44_Hayden Barnard (TESLA 8245-8246)

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Exhibit 2: Gregory Bilicic (Investment banker, Lazard Freres & Co., hired by SolarCity to represent them in the negotiations with Tesla, who were interested in taking over SC)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 2_Gregory Bilicic

Relevant emails and documents:

1.  [Exhibits 1-11 not located]
2.  Exhibit 12:  Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Emails_Exhibit 81_TESLA 1882_Exhibit 12_Gregory Bilicic  (Exhibit 81 TESLA 1882)

[Note: It appears that most of these documents have been withheld at the request of Lazard (presumably because they contain information that pertains to Lazard’s own confidential institutional communications which are deemed not relevant to the pertinent legal issues in the Tesla Stockholders Litigation itself (too bad because they would undoubtedly be juicy indeed). It’s important to remember that this proceeding is held under the jurisdiction of the Delaware Chancery Court system; it’s not a regular criminal court proceeding, so the rules of evidence and discovery are presumably not the same as in the latter.  If these emails and documents are included with the materials published so far by PlainSite, we have not been able to locate them. – IWPCHI]

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Exhibit 3: Brad Buss (former CFO, SolarCity; former CFO, Board of Directors, Tesla)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 3_Brad Buss

Miscellaneous documents:

1. Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Emails_Exhibit 73_TESLADIR 57808_Brad Buss (Brad Buss, “SolarCity Corporation Termination Certification”, 17 March 2016)

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Exhibit 4: Toby Corey (former Chief Revenue Officer, SolarCity)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 4_Toby Corey

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Exhibit 5: Robyn Denholm (Chairman, Tesla Board of Directors)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 5_Robyn Denholm

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Exhibit 6: Antonio Gracias (Lead Independent Director, Tesla Board of Directors)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 6_Antonio Gracias

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Exhibit 7: Donald R. Kendall, Jr. (Former member, Solar City Board of Directors)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 7_Donald Kendall Jr

 

Complete set in the original single document format from PlainSite:

Exhibits 1-7: Depositions of Brad Buss, Robyn Denholm et al

 

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Delaware Court of Chancery
Case No. 12711-VCS
In Re Tesla Motors, Inc. Stockholder Litigation
Document 328, Attachment 2

[Exhibits 8-14]

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Exhibit 8: Courtney McBean (Lawyer, in Charge of team from Evercore which had been hired by Tesla to advise/represent them on acquisition of Solar City)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 8_Courtney McBean

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Exhibit 9: Elon Musk Vol I (CEO, Tesla; CEO, CTO, SpaceX; co-founder, Chairman of Board, SolarCity) (Deposition given Saturday, June 1 2019)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 9_Elon Musk_Vol I

Relevant emails and documents:

1.  Exhibit 1: Elon Musk SolarCity Shareholders Litigation Deposition Vol I, pg 18_Exhibit 1_detail 10-Q 30sep2016
2.  Exhibit 2:

 

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Exhibit 9: Elon Musk Vol II (Deposition given Sat. Aug. 24, 2019)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 9_Elon Musk_Vol II

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Exhibit 10: Kimbal Musk (Elon Musk’s brother; Member, Board of Directors, Tesla)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 10_Kimbal Musk

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Exhibit 11: Lyndon Rive (Cousin of Elon and Kimbal Musk; co-founder, CEO of SolarCity)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 11_Lyndon Rive

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Exhibit 12: Tanguy Serra (former COO, President, and CFO of SolarCity)
Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 12_Tanguy Serra

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Exhibit 13: Ira Ehrenpreis

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 13_Ira Ehrenpreis

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Exhibit 14: Jason Wheeler

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Deposition_Exhibit 14_Jason Wheeler

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Complete set in the original single document format from PlainSite:

Exhibits 8-14: Depositions of Courtney McBean, Elon Musk et al

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Delaware Court of Chancery
Case No. 12711-VCS
In Re Tesla Motors, Inc. Stockholder Litigation
Document 338, Attachment 4

[Exhibit 75]

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Exhibit 75: Radford Small (CFO, SolarCity; VP of Global Capital Markets, Tesla)

Tesla Shareholders Litigation_Depositions_Exhibit 75_Radford Small

U.S. Navy to Climate Change Deniers: “You’re In Denial” (Updated 13 October 2019)

[This page was updated on 13 October 2019; scroll down for the updated info – IWPCHI]

 

The next time you are told by some scientifically illiterate blowhard that global warming/climate change is #FakeNews, show them this:  the U.S. Navy’s “Arctic Roadmap 2014-2030”.

Published by the U.S. Navy’s “Task Force Climate Change”, it describes the strategic opportunities and threats that are emerging in the polar regions as the polar ice caps shrink due to… you guessed it! Climate change!  Even the most obtuse opponent of environmentalism will be hard-pressed to deny that maybe… just maybe… the climatologists and long-term defense planners working for the U.S. Navy know what they’re talking about.

Climate change is real; it’s been confirmed and reconfirmed by scientists – and military strategists – working for affected nation-states all over the Earth.  To deny this is to declare yourself to be beyond the reach of logic and scientific reasoning, period.  That doesn’t mean that we have to believe everything the most alarmist of the environmentalists say; it means we have to face facts no matter how unpleasant or counter-intuitive they may seem to be and prepare to face these challenges head-on as they are confirmed to be real and not merely normal and temporary fluctuations in climatic data. The capitalists are salivating over their fantasies of how to profit from the human misery and mass migrations sure to be caused as low-lying coastal areas are flooded over the next several decades. As US and NATO imperialist military planners strive to take advantage of global warming in order to find new ways to launch attacks against their opponents – threatening WWIII – workers must realize that there literally is no future for them under the capitalist system. We workers need to take power out of the hands of the capitalist greedheads and into our own hands so we can create a socialist future for the workers of the world, free from capitalist exploitation, needless human suffering and war.

— IWPCHI

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UPDATE:

We have found a few new sources of information on the massive, rapid warming trend in the polar regions of Earth, and the US Navy’s response to this phenomenon.

First, we researched the history of submarine surfacings at the geographic North Pole.  The first submarine to do so was the USS Skate, on 17 March, 1959.  Since that time, a number of surface ships and submarines have operated on the open surface waters at the North Pole.

The US Navy’s “Arctic Roadmap”, published in February of 2014, was, due to the rapidly warming conditions at the poles, updated again in 2017.  The update (which we found freely available online) is in the form of a slideshow entitled “The US Navy and the Arctic”; you can download a copy of it from our website by clicking on this link.

This is the slide we found to be most shocking as it reveals the rapid decline of the permanent sea ice present in the north polar region today, and the incredible rate of reduction in that sea ice which is expected to open up new trans-polar shipping routes for at least several weeks a year by 2025!

US Navy – Arctic Ice Coverage – 2012-2030.

As we obtain more information on this subject we’ll add it to this article.

100th Anniversary of the “Worst Racial Massacre in US History”: the Elaine, Arkansas “Race Riot” of 1919

The Arkansas Race Riot by Ida B Wells (1920) cover.  Source: The Internet Archive

We are very pleased to present to our readers Ida B. Wells’ account of what has been called “the worst racial massacre in U.S. history”: the 1919 mass-murder of the black citizens of Elaine, Arkansas, on the 100th anniversary of this horrific event.

Racism is an endemic part of the capitalist economic system and can not be reformed away. The capitalist classes of the world, in order to maintain the hegemony of their numerically tiny minority over the vast numbers of workers, utilize every method available to keep the working class forces fighting each other so that the capitalist class can more easily rob the workers blind. By dividing the workers against themselves along racial, sexual, religious and national-origin lines the capitalist class has for the most part successfully maintained their class minority’s domination over the working class supermajority. Only in a handful of countries have the workers successfully fought to emancipate themselves from capitalist class domination and exploitation: in the USSR, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Cambodia. In *every* successful workers socialist revolution in history a Leninist vanguard party (or an organization closely modeled on the Leninist vanguard party) was created to lead the struggle. Only through workers socialist revolution can the working class emancipate itself from the systematic economic exploitation of the capitalist class. In order to achieve that goal, the working class *must* create its own revolutionary working class vanguard party based on the revolutionary socialist political ideology of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.  Our goal is to organize such a party. All anti-racist workers are encouraged to contact us and join in this great work!  Workers of the World, Unite!

—- Iwpchi

The Arkansas Race Riot by Ida B. Wells (1920; 62 pages, .pdf – click on link to download)

Thanks to the Internet Archive for the copy of this original document.

Book Review: “Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors”, by Edward Niedermeyer

Book Review:

Ludicrous, by Edward Niedermeyer. It will not take you 14 days to read this book! Not speed-readers, we knocked it off quite enjoyably in a few hours.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆  Three Red Stars – Recommended

“Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors”
by Edward Niedermeyer
Published 2019 by Ben Bella Books, Dallas TX
275 pages, Hardcover
Review by Iwpchi

We were pleased to see at our local library what – so far as we know – is the first critical look at Tesla Motors and its truly “ludicrous” billionaire “visionary genius(TM)”-in-chief Elon Musk.  Edward Niedermeyer’s new book is a brief overview of the trials and tribulations of Tesla Motors from its founding in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning right up until 2018. Written in an easily-accessible journalistic prose, it’s a quick read – we knocked it off easily in a few hours without skipping through it and enjoyed every bit of it.  Unfortunately, for those of us who have been following the Tesla saga in real-time the past several years, the book has little that is new beyond what will be familiar to the thriving, well-informed and highly critical online #TSLAQ community.  For the Teslarati, who have been drinking the Kool-Aid spewing forth from Tesla’s well-organized and effective public relations office (via Reddit, Twitter, Tesla Motors Club and quasi-official Tesla fanzines like Electrek) the book will provide perhaps the first eye-opening glimpse of the grim reality behind the carefully stage-managed dog- and-pony-shows endlessly being presented to the public by Tesla and its P.T. Barnum-like con-man CEO Elon Musk.

Though the book is an entertaining read, it does have its shortcomings: first of all, it is not an exhaustive study of the company at all, either from an economics or any other standpoint.  Those books will undoubtedly be coming along later (we’re looking at you, Charley Grant lol!); this one is merely an introduction for the curious layman who wants a look behind the shaky walls and flimsy tents of Elon Musk’s Potemkin auto manufacturing debacle.  For instance: very little is said about the very poor and unsafe working conditions at Tesla’s various factories that were the direct result of billionaire Musk’s vast ignorance of and contempt for standard safety practices in modern manufacturing facilities.  Even the well-known and confirmed story that Musk would not allow the typical “safety yellow” paint to be used as warning markings for dangerous areas in his factories (which is the standard practice in factories throughout the USA and the world)  “because he doesn’t like the color yellow” was left out – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  The book also does not give us any hard data on the human cost of Musk’s disregard for safe workplace practices in terms of actual injuries and/or fatalities at his various manufacturing facilities – data that we imagine the United Auto Workers Union – busy trying to unionize Musk’s factories – would be only too happy to have provided.

We would also have liked to have seen a chapter on the other even more egregious examples of Musk’s much ballyhooed (and basically non-existent) “Visionary Genius(TM)”: his many silly projects and other corporate entities, like his asinine “Hyperloop” and his ridiculous “Boring Co.” boondoggle.  They’re mentioned, but only in passing.  Musk creates these phony companies and then promotes them in the manner of a classic American huckster whenever there is a need to distract the public from the latest torrent of bad publicity threatening to topple his rickety Rube Goldberg-like pyramid of financially co-dependent companies. To the general public, poorly-educated as it is by the vastly underfunded US capitalist public school system, these laughably improbable corporations and their idiotic and non-existent products – like Solar City’s fake “Solar Roof tiles” – seem like the products of a God-like visionary who thinks big and whose amazing scientific knowledge and engineering prowess will usher in the 22nd century 80 years early. To actual scientists and engineers, (and to us), all that Musk has demonstrated to the world is that he is – like almost all of his top capitalist class brethren – a personal-greed-motivated ass-clown who has *no* engineering experience or skills, a superficial understanding of basic scientific and engineering concepts (at best) and who just goes around making absurd shit up all the time – like his laughable, impractical and (at this time) technologically impossible plans to “colonize” and even “terraform” Mars.  Elon Musk is nothing but a con man who has erected one of the world’s greatest Ponzi schemes nakedly in front of the eviscerated US government agencies charged with enforcing laws against corporate fraud and the entire world; Musk’s bald stupidity when it comes to the brutal fundamental realities of basic capitalist economics will undoubtedly lead to the spectacular collapse of his cockamamie empire – including his one viable company, SpaceX.  Musk will probably walk away from the collapse of his empire with enough of his ill-gotten gains to maintain quite a luxurious lifestyle for the rest of his life; but the tens of thousands of workers whose hard labor under brutal conditions actually made him all his billions will be thrown out of work and their lives irreparably damaged because they had faith in this billionaire asshat to provide them and their families with long-term financial stability.  This we do not find to be the least bit amusing.  It is why we say that the capitalist system must be overthrown and replaced with a planned socialist economic system if the working class wants to be able to provide for their families for the long term – or even to survive at all, as the “visionary geniuses” of the capitalist class intend to replace as many workers with robots as possible the minute the technology comes available (which will begin to happen in earnest within our lifetimes).

Edward Niedermeyer was not out to bring down Elon Musk and his Chaplinesque car company when he wrote this book, although he tells us that as soon as he began writing critical articles about Tesla and Musk he came under a company-directed smear campaign orchestrated by Tesla and Musk (which is the standard operating procedure for that shameless “visionary genius(TM)” Musk and his co-conspirators). And his book fails to utilize all the currently available material that could bring Musk’s phony empire crashing down to Earth, or to develop any new material that is unknown to the well-informed #tslaq-ers. But for the general reader who has yet to explore the tawdry shucking-and-jiving going on behind the curtain at P.T. Musk’s sleazy corporate chicanery-factories, it will be a very informative and enjoyable read.

If the workers of the world want to find heroes, they need to look elsewhere than among the world’s greedhead capitalist classes, who are only out to rob the working classes of the world blind.  The heroes of the future who will save the workers from being phased-out entirely will either come from within the working class or they will not come at all.  Elon Musk is just the latest example of the tired cliche of the wealthy hero who so loves mankind that he utilizes all his wealth to bring about positive change for the entire human race.  That has always been a capitalist myth and will always be a capitalist myth; and it will continue to fool the gullible until the working class realizes that only we the workers ourselves have a vested interest in creating a better future for the entire human race.

– Iwpchi

1945 Anti-racism Pamphlet Issued by the U.S. United Auto Workers Union

We found this very interesting document on the website of the US National Archives.  Published in April, 1945 and entitled “A Bill of Rights for All UAW Members”, it’s a WWII-era anti-racism pamphlet published by the then-still-heavily-Communist-Party-influenced leadership of the UAW.  In 1945 of course, the US Communist Party was espousing full-fledged support of the USA’s war effort to smash Nazism (the better to defend the USSR).  Within a few years the Communists would be driven out of the AFL-CIO unions and replaced with even more nakedly pro-capitalist anticommunist leaders.

The CPUSA was in the forefront of the US civil rights movement from its founding just after WWI until the 1960s. Under the guidance of the then-Leninist COMINTERN, the fledgling CPUSA was ordered to organize black workers in the USA as an important vanguard of the US proletariat. They were to abandon any lackadaisical attitudes towards organizing blacks an an especially oppressed caste of workers in the racist capitalist USA and to intransigently fight politically against the then-prevailing black leadership of Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington who espoused what the COMINTERN denounced as an absolutely unacceptable program of “separate but equal” segregation of the working class.  This political intervention by the COMINTERN into the US political scene via the Communist Party of the USA split the civil rights movement into two camps; the integrationists, all heavily influenced by the Communist Party’s political leadership on this question, eventually prevailed (although, unfortunately, in a pro-capitalist reformist rather than revolutionary socialist form). The truly heroic and selfless work of US Communist Party workers in the 1920s and 1930s is vividly captured in Robin D.G. Kelley’s magnificent book “Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression”.

With no further ado here’s the UAW’s anti-racist pamphlet from 1945.

—- IWPCHI

April 1945 – A Bill Of Rights for All UAW Members_United Auto Workers Union