Vol. 73/No. 28      July 27, 2009

The dissolution of the newspaper reflects the party’s continued evolution away from any pretense of building a revolutionary workers party and toward a radical political association entrenched in U.S. bourgeois politics.

“Because we are a small staff without the big bucks of the corporate media, we will not be able to continue to produce a weekly 12-page newspaper at this time,” wrote editor Teresa Albano in a letter to readers.

For the first time in the Communist Party’s history its supporters will no longer have a newspaper that espouses the party’s views to distribute to workers and youth in the streets, at demonstrations, on campuses, and at workplaces of the real world. Articles will continue to be posted on a daily basis to the PWW Web site.

Albano’s letter, titled “Change comes to the People’s Weekly World: working-class daily launched,” was posted to the PWW Web site July 2 and printed in the July 11 edition of the paper.

Albano attempts to present the dissolution of a printed paper and the move to an “online daily” as a great step forward. “Can you believe it?” she gushes. “It still seems like a dream to me. This fighting, working-class newspaper is back to daily publishing!”

In the July 18 edition, Albano wrote about readers’ response to the move. Most of those she quoted applauded the decision and explained the supposed benefits of the Web site over a printed newspaper.

One loyal reader, however, was not wholly convinced: “While I am thrilled that the PWW will soon return to a daily, it is with great sadness that I read that it will no longer appear in print form.” The reader suggested a formatted digital digest of three to four pages that could be printed each day “to bring to work.”

Albano reminded this reader that the Web site will “provide a weekly downloadable selection of articles, easy to print from your home computer.” Maybe—with enough money—Albano says, a daily digital digest could be possible in the “not-too-distant future.”

The People’s Weekly World has been increasingly emphasizing its Web site over the newspaper and has been posting articles and other pieces, such as the entire Fourth of July address by President Barack Obama, that do not appear in print. Leading up to the announcement, the newspaper ran prominent ads encouraging readers to follow PWW.org on the “Twitter” Web site.

True to its class-collaborationist course the PWW has given unwavering support to the Obama administration, and increasingly its conduct of the war in Afghanistan and the “war on terror.”

In its June 6 issue the paper’s labor editor, John Wojcik, praised Ron Adams, mayor of Hardin, Montana, for requesting his town be allowed to hold 100 Guantánamo prisoners in the empty local jail. Wojcik interviewed Adams, who said the move would create jobs and bring federal cops to help police the town.

In response to the right-wing killings of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and Stephen Johns, a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the PWW printed an editorial in the June 27 edition, calling on readers to heed the warnings of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on the potential growth of “‘home-grown’ terrorists.” The editorial complained that “law enforcement at all levels has been AWOL in protecting against domestic terrorism.”

In the same editorial, the paper responded to a criticism against President Barack Obama by actor Jon Voight at a Republican Party fundraiser. “It is a federal crime to threaten violence against the president,” the editorial pointed out.

The following week the PWW printed two editorials. One, titled “A welcome move,” praised Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, newly appointed head of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, for “coming to grips with the harsh reality that too many civilians were being killed.”

“McChrystal decided to limit air strikes only to prevent American and coalition troops from being ‘overrun,’” the paper said. “This change in policy was brought on by the realization that without winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people a long and costly war awaited the American people both in money and lives with certain defeat as the outcome.”

It was under the banner of winning hearts and minds that U.S. presidents from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon prosecuted a brutal war against the people of Vietnam, napalming villages and assassinating fighters resisting U.S. occupation.

The editorial went on to describe the “indiscriminate killing of innocents” caused by air strikes as “recipe for disaster” and the “policy of air strikes” as “counterproductive.” The policy, it said, “should be eliminated… . Especially[!] in Pakistan!”

The praise of McCrystal was posted shortly after U.S. aerial drones restarted strikes in Pakistan following a one-month pause, and just two days after two drones unleashed missiles in Pakistan’s tribal agency of South Waziristan—one of which targeted a funeral, killing more than 65 people. In the two weeks since the editorial was posted to the PWW Web site June 25, U.S. drones launched five air strikes in northwest Pakistan, killing more than 60 people.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home