On George Floyd Day, activists from the Harriet Tubman Center L.A. took the street. The Oct. 14 rally was held at the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Figueroa, in USC’s shadow. It answered right-wing calls to honor the fascist Charlie Kirk. Speakers denounced racist police killings and named the dead. They tied the police war on Black and Brown youth to the White House offensive against the working class using federal troops.
The Nobel Peace Prize committee in Norway ignored Gaza’s doctors and ambulance drivers who stayed with their patients while bombs rained down in war-torn Gaza.
Instead, it honored María Corina Machado — a regime-change conspirator, ally of Israel’s Netanyahu, and friend of Donald Trump.
The mainstream media fixated on the grotesque circus of Trump coveting the prize and his fake love fest with Machado. She gushed over him, declaring he should have been the winner.
But war propaganda always trumps personal ego. The Nobel Peace Prize marches to the drumbeat of the U.S. war machine.
The most important thing about this award is its timing.
On Oct. 15, Trump authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela, granting it lethal authority and the power to coordinate with U.S. armed forces.
An invasion force now sits in the Caribbean — eight warships, a submarine, and 10,000 troops.
The Pentagon continues its illegal bombing of small boats, killing 27 people on false drug-trafficking claims.
So, who is Machado?
Machado is more than a smiling face for Washington’s regime-change machine. She is the polished spokesperson for sanctions and foreign intervention.
From the start of the Bolivarian Revolution, centered in Venezuela’s workers and poor, Machado has been an architect of violence. She represents and is a member of the discredited oligarchy and has done everything possible to overthrow the Bolivarian government.
2002 coup against President Hugo Chávez
In April 2002, María Corina Machado backed the coup against President Hugo Chávez. A faction of the military officers allied with reactionary oligarchs, and the U.S. government under George W. Bush, orchestrated the plot. Chávez was captured and held prisoner.
Machado was among 400 signers of the “Carmona Decree,” a document falsely titled the “Constitution of the Government of Democratic Transition and National Unity.” The decree was a parliamentary maneuver to formally overthrow Chávez’s government.
The coup quickly collapsed. A massive popular uprising demanded Chávez’s release. Loyal military officers rescued him and restored constitutional order. Afterward, the coup plotters were purged from the ranks.
2014 ‘La Salida’
After Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro was elected his successor. On Feb. 12, 2014, María Corina Machado joined forces with Leopoldo López of the Voluntad Popular party in a violent campaign called “La Salida” — “The Exit.” This initiative orchestrated violent attacks, referred to as guarimbas, which resulted in the deaths of 43 people.
Anti-Bolivarian protesters blocked streets with burning trash and barbed wire. Buses carrying workers were torched. Workers suspected of being Chavistas — especially Afro-Venezuelans — were attacked. Schools, food trucks, and public buildings were destroyed.
The Maduro government, backed by popular mobilizations, ultimately defeated the violent offensive.
2019 support for Guaidó
In January 2019, Donald Trump backed Juan Guaidó after he declared himself president of Venezuela. Guaidó had the support of Machado, Venezuela’s wealthiest reactionaries, and the then right-wing regimes of Colombia and Brazil — yet their coup attempt failed.
Machado then became an “ambassador” in Guaidó’s phantom government. She lobbied for brutal U.S. sanctions and pushed for the theft of Venezuela’s foreign assets, including its gold reserves and the Citgo oil company. These crimes cost the Venezuelan people hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lives.
She even appealed to Benjamin Netanyahu to help “liberate” Venezuela and backed U.S. sanctions that have killed by cutting off food and medicine to the population.
Machado is no ambassador of peace — she is a tireless representative of her class of parasitic rich, both in Venezuela and in the United States.
Baltimore, Oct. 14 — Activists gathered at the Billie Holiday statue in Upton to declare Oct. 14 “George Floyd Day,” marking his birthday. Protesters carried signs reading “On George Floyd Day, Say No to Racism.” The action was part of a nationwide movement to honor George Floyd — not Charlie Kirk.
The rally opened with a tribute to Assata Shakur. Colby Bryd of the Peoples Power Assembly urged the crowd to keep fighting racist violence. Watch Bryd on YouTube.
People gathered at the statue of Gen. Harriet Tubman in Harlem, New York, on Oct. 14 to honor George Floyd. The Black father would be celebrating his 52nd birthday that day if he hadn’t been murdered by a Minneapolis cop five years before.
People around the world saw the video of Officer Derek Chauvin putting his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, killing him. The May 25, 2020, atrocity sparked a movement of at least 20 million people who marched across the United States against police violence and all bigotry.
Yet the U.S. Congress decided to honor instead the fascist demagogue Charlie Kirk, whose birthday also happened to be Oct. 14.
Just behind Gen. Tubman’s memorial is the New York Police Department’s 28th precinct. Malcolm X led 2,000 people to surround it in April 1957, to demand medical treatment for Hinton Johnson, who police had viciously clubbed.
Omowale Clay, chairperson of the December 12th Movement, reminded people that New York City cops killed the 10-year-old Black youth Clifford Glover in Brooklyn in 1973.
At least 1,100 people are killed every year by U.S. police. That’s three homicides by cops per day.
Many organizations, including the December 12th Movement, Arm the Dollz, Black Alliance for Peace, Bronx Anti-War Coalition, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Jazz Against Genocide, Struggle for Socialism Party and Workers World Party, endorsed the action.
People at the rally recalled other victims of the police, like Breonna Taylor and Erik Garner, who, like George Floyd, were strangled to death by police. Members of Jazz Against Genocide gave a musical tribute.
Speakers denounced the fascist roundups of immigrant workers by ICE and the genocide against the Palestinian people.
Trump has now declared war on Chicago and other cities with large Black and Latine communities while he’s preparing to attack the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The people will stop him.
Israel is a fortress of empire — a U.S.-armed garrison planted in the heart of West Asia to protect capital’s most prized assets: oil, trade routes, and regional dominance.
Behind the rhetoric of democracy and security lies a simple truth. Israel is the outpost through which U.S. power projects itself across the region. Pentagon planners have long called it “our unsinkable aircraft carrier,” a phrase that strips away the pretense. Israel’s role is not to defend itself, but to defend the global reach and profits of U.S. monopoly capital.
A base for monopoly capital
Since 1948, Israel’s survival has depended not on self-reliance but on Washington’s patronage. The billions of dollars in U.S. aid that flow every year are not acts of generosity — they’re investments.
U.S. strategists viewed Israel as an anchor for imperialist domination of West Asia’s resources. In 1981, General Alexander Haig put it bluntly: Israel is “the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk.” The metaphor wasn’t hyperbole. Israel’s job has been to secure trade routes, protect oil profits, and serve as a proving ground for U.S. weapons systems before they’re sold around the world.
Every Israeli war — from Lebanon to Gaza — has served the demands of monopoly capital. Washington supplies the funding and diplomatic cover; Israel supplies the firepower; U.S. arms manufacturers reap the profit.
Air power and the colonial method
Israel didn’t invent the use of air power as a tool of imperialist domination — it perfected a strategy pioneered by earlier empires. In 1911, Italy used airplanes to bomb anti-colonial fighters in Libya, ushering in a new era of warfare that allowed colonizers to kill without risk or accountability.
Britain refined the method across West Asia in the 1920s. Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who later commanded the firebombing of Dresden, first tested his tactics in Iraq and Palestine, boasting that “the Arab and the Kurd now know what real punishment means.”
Lenin described how imperialism replaces direct colonial rule with financial and military domination. Air power became the perfect weapon for this stage of capitalism — violence delivered from a distance, maintaining control without the costs of occupation.
From Gaza to Iran: Imperialism from the sky
Nowhere is this imperialist domination more visible than in Israel’s ongoing air war across West Asia. For nearly two years, Gaza has been subjected to a campaign of annihilation that has leveled entire neighborhoods, hospitals, and refugee camps. Israel has struck not only Gaza but the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran — always under the familiar pretext of “self-defense.”
Each of these bombardments follows a predictable pattern. The United States bankrolls the assault, provides the munitions, and blocks any attempt at accountability. Israel pulls the trigger. And U.S. defense contractors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon — see their stock prices climb with every new strike.
For two years, Israel has waged an unrelenting air war on Gaza, reducing entire neighborhoods, hospitals, and refugee camps to rubble. It has also struck the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran — always under the pretext of “self-defense.”
This is imperialism in its purest form. Air power delivers destruction from a safe distance; monopoly capital converts that destruction into profit. Every bomb dropped on Gaza reverberates through Wall Street.
The fortress cracks
For decades, Washington used Israel as the cornerstone of its regional strategy — a dependable enforcer whose military superiority guaranteed U.S. hegemony from the Mediterranean to the Arab/Persian Gulf. But the Gaza war has exposed how fragile that arrangement has become.
After nearly two years of relentless bombing — tens of thousands of tons of explosives dropped on one of the most densely populated areas on Earth — Israel has failed to achieve its stated goals. The resistance remains intact. Hamas still governs Gaza and commands popular support, while the Zionist forces have suffered heavy battlefield losses, including many of the supposedly invincible Merkava tanks. No Arab army in history has inflicted such losses on the Israeli military machine.
The myth of invincibility shattered
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation did more than breach Israel’s borders — it tore apart a political mythology that had underpinned U.S. power in the region for decades. Israel’s aura of military supremacy, carefully cultivated since 1967, was shattered in a single day. What Washington had long presented as a “pillar of stability” was revealed to be brittle and overextended.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s answer was the same as every imperialist proxy facing crisis: overwhelming violence. The genocidal air campaign that followed was meant not only to destroy Hamas but to reassert the illusion of control. Yet despite the scale of the onslaught, the resistance has endured. As senior Hamas official Ayham Shananaa put it, the very survival of Gaza’s fighters amid such destruction “constitutes a strategic victory.”
But the cracks run deeper than military failure. Apartheid Israel’s economy has hemorrhaged over $67 billion in direct war costs. The economic toll may cost Israel an estimated $400 billion in lost economic activity over the next decade, according to the Rand Corporation.
The tourism and construction sectors have collapsed. The vaunted tech industry — long marketed as proof of Israel’s supposed dynamism — is bleeding talent and capital. Immigration — the lifeblood of any settler-colonial project — has declined.
Most tellingly, the Israeli military reports its highest suicide rate in 13 years alongside thousands of reservists fleeing combat duty — the unmistakable marks of an army in both tactical and psychological collapse.
A client state in crisis
This is what the Trump administration now faces: a client state too exhausted to fulfill its imperialist function. For Washington, the deal is simple — Israel exists to serve U.S. strategic interests, not the other way around.
When U.S. officials warn that “Israel in such a weakened state would be unable to provide support in a potential conflict with Iran,” they are admitting that their regional enforcer can no longer enforce.
For decades, Washington sold the illusion that the path to Palestinian freedom ran through negotiation. The 1993 Oslo Accords turned a struggle for national liberation into a managed process of dependency. “Dialogue,” “security coordination,” and “painful compromises” became euphemisms for surrender.
Under this system, the U.S. funded the expansion of settlements, deepening the occupation.
Gaza never accepted this arrangement. Despite a crushing blockade since 2007 designed to enforce surrender through starvation, the Strip remained ungovernable. Each Israeli assault — in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and the ongoing genocide since 2023 — left Gaza devastated but undefeated. Homes were rebuilt from rubble; weapons were fashioned from unexploded Israeli shells. The siege produced not submission, but defiance.
As Islamic Jihad official Haitham Abu al-Ghazlan emphasizes, “The resistance is now more entrenched than ever.” The measure of victory is not material destruction but the failure of the Zionist project to displace or pacify the population.
The technocratic trap
Now, as the bombs pause, the U.S. and its European imperialist allies are pushing their latest rebranding exercise: a “technocratic” government for Gaza, divorced from politics and resistance, staffed by hand-picked managers and overseen by international donors.
The model is familiar. It’s the same template the IMF and World Bank apply from Haiti to Iraq — governance without sovereignty, administration without liberation. It seeks to manage Gaza, not free it.
The Palestinian resistance has made its position clear: while it does not oppose civil administration for daily life, security sovereignty remains non-negotiable. “The resistance’s arms are a red line as long as the occupation exists,” Shananaa insists. Any attempt to link reconstruction to disarmament is a bid to achieve through diplomacy what two years of genocide could not accomplish.
The united resistance understands what U.S. imperialism desperately works to obscure: Every so-called peace process designed by the imperialist powers has ended in more settlements, more displacement, more apartheid.
There can be no technical fix to colonial domination, no managerial substitute for liberation.
Empire’s declining returns
The crisis extends far beyond Palestine. Yemen has effectively closed the Red Sea to Israeli shipping. Iran has shown it can strike Israeli military installations at will. Even traditional U.S. allies face mounting public pressure for their complicity in genocide.
The so-called “rules-based international order” — code words for U.S. imperialist hegemony — is crumbling under the weight of its contradictions.
What we are witnessing is the unraveling of imperialist power. The very brutality required to maintain the colonial project undermines its legitimacy. The more Israel bombs, the more the world sees it for what it is: not a democracy defending itself, but a settler state sustained by massacre.
Global public opinion has shifted decisively. Millions have marched in solidarity with Palestine, and governments once afraid to speak now move to recognize Palestinian statehood. Even within Israel, the legitimacy of the Netanyahu regime is eroding. The prime minister who sought to destroy Hamas may instead go down as the man who broke Zionism.
Beyond the rubble
Amid the ruins of Gaza, something remarkable endures: not just survival, but defiance. Every rebuilt home, every tunnel dug, every act of mutual aid is a declaration that Palestine will not disappear.
This endurance carries a larger meaning. If Gaza — besieged, starved, and bombed by the most powerful militaries on earth — can continue to resist, then the entire architecture of U.S. imperialist power is more fragile than it appears. The “unsinkable aircraft carrier” is taking on water, and no amount of weapons or propaganda in the U.S. arsenal can keep afloat a racist settler colony that has lost its legitimacy and faces growing resistance both locally and globally.
The Struggle for Socialism Party issues this urgent call:
The situation is critical. On Oct. 15, Donald Trump authorized a covert CIA operation in Venezuela. The order empowers CIA paramilitary operatives to use lethal force on Venezuelan soil and to oust President Nicolás Maduro.
An invasion force is now positioned in the Caribbean — 8 warships, 1 submarine, and 10,000 troops, B-52 strategic bombers, F-35 fighter jets and an unknown number of Special Operations units. The bounty on elected President Nicolás Maduro has been doubled to $50 million. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues its illegal bombing of small boats, killing 28 people based on false accusations of drug trafficking.
This war has nothing to do with drug trafficking, an accusation that has been completely debunked; it has everything to do with who will control Venezuela’s vast natural resources, including oil and gold. Will it be the people of Venezuela or the bankers and billionaires residing in New York City or London?
We call for emergency response protests if the U.S. continues launching direct attacks in the Caribbean or invades Venezuela. We will take to the streets in our cities, campuses, and communities to demand: “Stop the U.S. war on Venezuela!”
Workers, students, and the poor in the United States have nothing to gain from a war waged for billionaires and military generals.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—President Nicolás Maduro has hailed the Operation Independence 200 military drill—conducted in Caracas and Miranda state to protect strategic services and fine-tune military preparedness amid potential attacks from the U.S. empire—as a success.
During a televised interview this Wednesday, October 15, President Maduro noted that “nothing stopped the exercise” despite heavy rains. “Our military personnel went out with the highest morale to defend the Homeland. Our people, in perfect civic-military-police fusion, were there [to support them] in the streets.”
He explained that amid U.S. imperial military threats—whose naval deployment in the southern Caribbean poses a serious threat not just to Venezuela, but to regional peace—Venezuela “is winning peace, zone by zone, territory by territory, state by state. And who wins peace? It is won by the entire society. A united society, the people united in perfect national unity.”
Earlier on social media, the Venezuelan head of state stated that the drill allows for the comprehensive defense of “mountains, coastlines, schools, hospitals, factories, markets, communities, and our people, to continue achieving peace,” without affecting economic and day-to-day life.
He stated that Caracas and Miranda state have a population of nearly seven million “good, hard-working, and studious people,” emphasizing the importance of fine-tuning the activation of the Communal Militia Units and the Popular Bases for Comprehensive Defense. This aims to provide, essentially, a “war of all people” approach to protecting Venezuela.
President Maduro explained that these “militia communities” are “very important” alongside “the popular bases for comprehensive defense,” and added, “Peace is our destiny, our blessing. United, we will continue to win.”
CIA authorization and B-52 flights
The drills come as the president of the U.S. empire, Donald Trump, admitted on Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela, a sharp escalation in the renewed regime change efforts from the U.S. entity. He did not specify what that authorization is supposed to entail.
At a news conference, Trump was asked, “Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?” to which he responded by reiterating the U.S. empire’s fictional claims the Venezuelan government sends drugs, mental-health patients, and criminals to the U.S. colony.
“I authorized for two reasons, really,” he explained. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the U.S.. The other thing is Venezuela’s role in drug-trafficking.” He neglected to mention the reports from the UN and international experts indicating that only about 5% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. empire transits at all through Venezuela, and none is sourced in the nation. The drug is produced in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, as Venezuela has been labeled by international specialized agencies as a drug cultivation-free country.
“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump continued to insist. “A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea. So you get to see that. But we’re going to stop them by land also.”
According to U.S. imperial officials—cited by the colonial outlet The New York Times—Trump is pursuing these strategies to force the ousting of President Maduro. The U.S. entity’s ruler declined to answer when asked if the CIA has the authority of the government to execute President Maduro, saying instead, “I think Venezuela is feeling heat.”
The authorization would “allow” the CIA (under the authority of the U.S. colony) to carry out lethal operations on Venezuelan territory or coordinate joint actions with the armed forces of the empire. A U.S. imperial naval contingent of eight warships, a submarine, and some 10,000 troops is currently deployed in the Caribbean.
This move comes as Washington halts diplomatic dialogue with President Maduro’s government and continues extrajudicial killings on small boats it claims are transporting drugs, despite no evidence for their claims.
In a separate incident viewed by analysts as a military provocation, three B-52H bombers from the U.S. empire were spotted by flight monitoring services flying on Wednesday near Venezuelan airspace, following Trump’s announcement regarding CIA involvement in attacking Venezuela.
Flight tracking service Flightradar24, along with multiple open-source intelligence social media posts, identified the trio of bombers. The aircraft, with tail numbers 61-0010, 60-0052, and 60-0033, departed from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and flew through the Gulf of Mexico, before approaching Venezuela and circling over the Caribbean Sea inside the Maiquetía Flight Information Region, just a few kilometers north of Caracas.
The provocative mission is part of Trump’s intense pressure campaign for regime change in Venezuela. This effort includes raising the bounty for President Maduro’s capture to $50 million last August, strikes on alleged drug-running boats leading to the extrajudicial killing of 27 civilians, and a significant military buildup in the region. So far, neither officials from the U.S. empire nor Venezuela have commented on the incident.
Drill deployment and objectives
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello was in charge of activating the defensive military drill in Miranda state. “We are responsible for conducting an assessment in each of the Miranda regions,” the top official said, quoted on the publicly-owned news channel VTV, “such as Guarenas, Guatire, Barlovento, Altos Mirandinos, Valles del Tuy, and others, within our framework of 27 territorial actions.”
Minister Cabello explained that the defensive drill is part of a project of national unity and an active, long-term defense strategy drawn up by the nation to fully prepare for foreign aggression, while, at the same time, keeping the country’s life and economy unaffected.
“They know,” Cabello said, “the imperialists, the traitors to the country, those who wait for us to come and do their job [with an invasion] that under any circumstance we will maintain national unity.” He explained that in Miranda state, “468 militia units” were activated to work with state authorities on protecting electrical transmission networks, fuel distribution, drinking water, food, and other fundamental areas.
Military commanders participating in the drill explained that the objective is to optimize civic-military preparedness, and preserve the forces and resources of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) by deconcentrating military unit equipment and arsenal.
Plans to protect and secure strategic facilities are being refined. These include power stations, water pumping stations, gas filling stations, hydrological systems, telecommunications, the healthcare sector and hospital networks, transportation, medicines, and food distribution.
Since 2001, the U.S. empire has tried unsuccessfully, using a variety of strategies, to drive Chavismo from power, first against the late President Hugo Chávez, and now against President Nicolás Maduro.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday, Oct. 15, that xenophobic claims that compare Venezuelans with criminal groups such as the Tren de Aragua, which was exterminated by the nation’s military police force, must cease.
“The discriminatory and xenophobic statements of comparing Venezuelan identity with criminal groups attacked and exterminated in Venezuela must cease,” the president said when leading a new meeting of the National Council of Sovereignty and Peace.
Likewise, the dignitary stressed that “Venezuela is not the train of Aragua, it is a country of honest, humane, hardworking people.”
“When Venezuelans, the product of a brutal economic war, of silent missiles that sought to destroy the body and the economic and social soul of the country, had to leave and found the demon of xenophobic campaigns and violence,” Maduro said.
Meanwhile, he added that “especially today in the United States they intend to lie and say that Venezuelans are a derivation of a criminal gang that we exterminated here: the Aragua train.”
On the other hand, the president insisted: “Venezuela is a country full of values and a collective desire to live, he said while stressing that the people are not afraid of anyone and want to prosper in peace.”
The statements are given within the framework of the convocation of the National Council of Sovereignty and Peace, which after a month of operation delivered to the head of state the results of the four working groups installed: International, Political, Communication and Economic, from which more than 30 activities were derived that will be implemented during the coming months.
Source: teleSUR
Sixteen workers died in an explosion at Accurate Energetic Systems in rural Tennessee.
AES supplies explosives to the U.S. military and major contractors. Demand for munitions is rising across the Pentagon’s supply chain.
Routine OSHA inspections are largely suspended during the shutdown. AES previously faced citations for RDX (an explosive with neurotoxic dust) exposure at the plant.
This is the domestic face of permanent war. More missiles, less oversight, dead workers. Factories run at wartime tempo. Working‑class communities pay with their lives.
The blast, not a glitch
A pre‑dawn explosion leveled an AES production building near Bucksnort, rattling homes miles away as Sheriff Chris Davis called the scene “devastating,” with recovery hinging on days‑long, DNA‑based identifications amid dangerous debris and unexploded ordnance.
Authorities have now identified all 16 victims, closing one chapter of uncertainty for a town where nearly everyone knows someone who worked behind those blast walls. The cause remains under investigation by federal and state agencies, but the pattern — production pressure outrunning protection — is already legible.
War economy squeeze
AES manufactures and tests high‑energy materials for the Army and major contractors, tying a 1,300‑acre plant and its workers directly to the Pentagon’s procurement cycle as orders surge and schedules tighten.
Lockheed Martin and its peers are accelerating weapons production — ramping up output of missiles, launchers, and interceptors. They’re expanding automation and factory floors to “deliver more, faster,” driving a chain reaction through their suppliers, especially smaller and more vulnerable shops like AES.
Precision Strike Missile output alone is being pushed to 400 units per year, a symbol of an industry racing to boost firepower across everything from artillery rockets to anti-ship weapons.
Boeing has locked in $2.7 billion in contracts to build more than 3,000 PAC-3 seekers — the guidance systems that let Patriot missiles find and destroy incoming targets. Production will reach up to 750 units a year through 2030, cementing Boeing’s position as a key subcontractor to Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Army.
Lockheed, the Patriot program’s prime contractor, separately won a $9.8 billion Army deal in September for PAC-3 MSE interceptors. Together, the awards mark a full-scale production ramp from top contractors to component suppliers across the missile industry.
The New York Times headline on Oct. 13 declared: “Factory towns revive as defense tech makers arrive.”:
“In January, Anduril, an artificial-intelligence-backed weapons manufacturer, announced that it was building a $1 billion factory in Ohio to make drones and other A.I.-enabled weapons. It has since said it also plans to open factories in Rhode Island and Mississippi.
“Regent, a shipbuilding start-up, is constructing a factory in Rhode Island to make electric sea gliders for military purposes. And UXV Technologies, a Danish drone and robotics company, opened a manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania last year.”
The military-industrial monopolies tie this surge directly to active wars and military buildups in Ukraine, West Asia (including Palestine and Iran), and the Indo-Pacific, where Washington is preparing for war on China. Rising conflict is being turned into production orders — and subcontractors are under intense pressure to deliver on time.
In plants that handle missile explosive components like Tennessee’s AES, workers bear the brunt of this push, as the war economy turns public funding into private backlogs and rising shop-floor risk.
Oversight on ice
Since Oct. 1, the government shutdown has sidelined most federal workplace safety programs. Routine inspections are halted, and enforcement is on hold — just when high-risk industries need the closest oversight.
This isn’t just a delay in investigating accidents; it increases the danger in real time. Workers handling explosive materials now face greater risk without regular audits or the authority to stop unsafe work. With inspectors off the job, “run harder” becomes the unspoken rule on the factory floor.
Years before the explosion, Tennessee inspectors found AES workers suffering seizures and nervous system damage from exposure to RDX, a powerful explosive compound. Tests detected explosive residue on their skin — and even in the break room — showing that toxic exposure had spread into supposedly safe areas.
Inspectors labeled the violations “serious,” but AES settled the cases with minor fixes and light penalties. The deeper hazards stayed in place.
The Pentagon pipeline
Between 2020 and 2024, private companies took in about $2.4 trillion in Pentagon contracts. The top five defense giants alone captured $771 billion — government money funneled through corporate pipelines, while the real danger lands on the factory floor, where explosives are poured, pressed, and packed.
Missile and launcher orders are surging, and backlogs are booming. But safety investment isn’t keeping pace. The subcontractors who turn contracts into weapons bear the risk. As the arsenal speeds up, the danger moves from the battlefield to the workshop.
Defense work is now fused with cloud computing and AI. Tech giants have landed multi-billion-dollar military contracts, wiring battlefield systems into the same digital networks that power everyday life. Silicon Valley is fully woven into the war machine.
Engineers who could be designing trains, housing, or renewable energy are instead building targeting software and missile guidance systems — because that’s where the guaranteed money is. Entire workforces and regions are being reshaped around permanent, low-level war instead of social rebuilding.
Sixteen dead, little said
Sixteen workers were killed in the mass detonation at AES. The blast tore through a plant that fed the U.S. war machine — and through families who now hold vigils few national outlets cover.
Media coverage faded within days. When production outruns protection, tragedy becomes routine. The permanent war economy treats domestic risk as the cost of global power. The workers who die in these plants are casualties of that system, even if they never leave U.S. soil.
“We can win this struggle if we choose to be architects and simply not bees.” – Thomas Sankara, Imperialism is the arsonist of our forests and savannas, 1986
We honor the life and revolutionary achievements of Thomas Sankara, known as “Africa’s Che Guevara.” A man on a mission to lift Burkina Faso out of the death grip of imperialism and transform it into a beacon of progress and true liberation on the African continent.
Under the leadership of Thomas Sankara, Upper Volta became the country of Burkina Faso, “The Land of Upright People.” Literacy rates rose exponentially across the whole country. Over two million Burkinabé children were vaccinated. He ended Burkina Faso’s reliance on Western aid and set out to create self-sufficiency for the country.
Land was redistributed amongst the working class and peasants of the country, and out of the hands of wealthy landlords under the control of Western imperialists. Ten million trees were planted across the country. Roads and railways were built to connect the country. All of these steps helped create better living conditions for the people of Burkina Faso while also healing the old wounds caused by imperialism and setting the country on a path towards progress.
Thomas Sankara saw the full picture of the global class struggle. He did not set out to create a better Burkina Faso without the country’s women. He banned genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy. Women were appointed to government positions and were able to, and encouraged to, join the country’s workforce and military. Pregnancy leave was granted for all expectant mothers.
He was a man committed to the people. Under his guidance, the old Western luxury and corruption within the Burkinabé government were done away with. Public servants drove cars produced in Burkina Faso and wore clothing made entirely of 100% Burkinabé cotton, tailored by Burkinabé artisans. He never allowed portraits and monuments of himself to be erected in public because he fully believed that it was the people who made this progress happen. He said himself that there are “seven million Thomas Sankaras.”
His love of his country extended to the entire African continent. He believed that all of Africa had the right to tear away from the claws of Western imperialism. His passion for pan African liberation made him a target of Western imperialists and those of the African elite who wanted to continue gutting their continent all for their Western masters.
Thomas Sankara was brutally assassinated and gunned down in 1987, only four years into his presidency. Betrayed by Blaise Compaoré, a onetime ally turned rival who seized power and reversed Sankara’s policies until a popular revolution ousted him in 2014 and sent him into exile. France has yet to release its classified records regarding the assassination of Thomas Sankara.
In the 21st century, the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Sankara lives on. Currently, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the sitting president of Burkina Faso, is continuing the mission set out by Thomas Sankara to see a fully liberated Burkina Faso, free of neocolonial rule and Western interference.
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