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Editorial: Lebanon invasion, escalation towards world war
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- 04 October 2024 397 hits
State terrorist Israel invades Lebanon. The capitalist rulers of Iran launch hundreds of missiles at Israel. The U.S., the biggest terrorist of them all, rushes warships and thousands of more troops to the Middle East. Days before the one-year mark of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, an all-out regional war looks more likely by the hour. Inter-imperialist conflict seems headed for a breaking point.
As the international crisis of capitalism spirals out of the top imperialist bosses’ control, their life-and-death competition is sparking a rise of fascism in the U.S. and Europe, where the bosses have lost ground to more open fascists in China and Russia. With Russia grinding down Ukraine and China laying claim to the South China Sea, capitalist politicians and media are sounding alarms of global conflagration. A South African online publication led with this headline: “Top 12 Safest Countries to Live Should World War III Break Out” (South African, 9/24).
But there is no safe place for the working class under capitalism. We can never be secure as long as the bosses are free to value their profits over workers’ lives. Only communist revolution can end the rulers’ reign of terror. Only a mass communist movement, led by the international Progressive Labor Party, can build a world free of genocide. The challenge is great and urgent. Join us!
Zionist onslaught in Lebanon
Not content with murdering more than 41,000 workers and children in Gaza with missiles and bombs, and likely tens of thousands more from starvation, disease, and the obliteration of hospitals (Lancet, 7/8), Israel’s monstrous rulers have turned their sights on Lebanon. Seeking to liquidate Hezbollah, the Islamist militia spawned by Israel’s occupation in the 1980s, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionist regime exploded household pagers and launched “one of the most intense air raids in contemporary warfare” (New York Times, 9/24). Then they assassinated Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, with an airstrike in Beirut that leveled six apartment buildings and killed or wounded nearly one hundred people (apnews.com, 9/28). As Netanyahu and his nazi coalition celebrated “days of greatness,” more than one thousand women, men, and children in Lebanon have been killed with Biden’s blessing and made-in-U.S. 2,000-pound bombs (cbsnews.com, 9/30). Hundreds of thousands have fled in panic from their homes. Under capitalism, the bosses’ capacity for horror is unlimited.
As Israel methodically broadens its bloodbath, the misleaders of Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” are also sending workers to early graves. As a lapdog proxy funded by Iran, the regional imperialist allied with Russia and China, Hezbollah has for decades waged a fight against U.S.-sponsored Israel. It’s a pawn in the inter-imperialist game to control the region’s oil and gas. Hezbollah’s rotten nationalist ideas are so many bricks in the slaughterhouse the capitalists are building for our class.
Now, more than ever, we need to channel our grief and anger at capitalist destruction into building the only movement that can turn the guns around and take the bosses down: communism! Once we replace capitalist rule with a dictatorship of the working class, the only mass graves will be dug for the parasitic bosses who destroy everything they touch.
Unhappy marriage: the U.S. and Israel
Israel’s escalating carnage has put its loyal patron at a crossroads. For the U.S., Israel is a vital linchpin for projecting military power in the Middle East. But it’s also an apartheid pariah state, and the Zionists’ gutter racism and talent for mass murder has reinforced the global perception of U.S. complicity. On September 26, with Genocide Joe Biden and his possible successor, Kamala Harris, cheerleading Israel’s right to “defend” itself, the Zionists welcomed another $8.7 billion in U.S. aid “to support ongoing military efforts” (The Hill, 9/26).
Even before Iran’s strike upped the ante, Biden’s appeals to pause hostilities fell on deaf ears. The airstrike that killed Nasrallah caught the U.S. by surprise as it worked to ink a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah (NBC, 9/28). Defiant terrorist Netanyahu has made it clear he’ll stop at nothing to stay in power and avoid prison on corruption charges. He needs to placate the most racist hyper-nationalists and religious extremists in his governing coalition, making a ceasefire a non-starter (New York Times, 6/3). Sad to say, Israel’s latest siege of carpet bombing and baby-killing has only made Netanyahu and his annexationist Likud party more popular (Times of Israel, 9/29). In both Israel and the U.S., too many workers have been infected by the poison of nationalism and the deadly false solution of a “Jewish state.”
With Israel gone rogue, China is exploiting U.S. disarray by pivoting to the Middle East and signing deals to provide missile technology to Iran (mirror.co.uk, 10/1). Both China and Russia are using the BRIC infrastructure investment program to challenge the dominance of the U.S dollar (nasdaq.com, 7/8). Even if Kamala Harris and the Democrats were willing to pay the political price, they can’t afford to press Netanyahu too hard, much less tear up their blank check for mass destruction. Any U.S. move to rein in the Jewish-supremacist regime would open the regional door to their imperialist rivals.
U.S moves toward fascism
U.S rulers also must contend with rising resistance within the bosses’ own borders. More than a hundred cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, and St. Louis, have pushed for local resolutions to demand a ceasefire (NPR, 4/18). College students across the nation have turned the seats of imperialist ideology into sites of anti-imperialist protest. Unions too have joined the call, adding their weight to the growing forces of opposition (Guardian, 7/23).
To stave off widespread fightback, the U.S. ruling class has no choice but to jettison the old rules of liberal democracy and turn toward fascism. One ominous development is the growing push to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish racism. At Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, a tenured Jewish professor was fired for accusing the Zionists of genocide (insidehighered.com, 10/2). At Cornell University, a student faces deportation for joining campus protests (Newsweek, 9/28). As the U.S. rulers strain to defend their position in their never-ending battle for world supremacy, it exposes the illusion of “free” speech under capitalism.
At the same time, the bosses are using voting to pacify workers’ righteous anger and enlist support for their imperialist death machine. With the U.S. presidential election around the corner, both Democrats and Republicans are working overtime to convince workers that capitalism works in their best interests–and that genocide is an acceptable price to pay to fend off “our” enemies. But the fact remains: Top cop Harris and nazi Donald Trump serve one set of imperialist masters or another. Choosing either one means more death for the working class. Choosing either Israel or Hezbollah or Hamas is the same losing proposition.
Turn anti-imperialist actions into communist revolution
Communism will erase all borders and stop the lethal competition for maximum profit. Communist revolution will end nationalism, racism, sexism, and imperialist war. Campus protests and anti-genocide resolutions are important, but they cannot smash a system that relies on money soaked in the blood of the working class. The bosses will never let us vote them out of business. PLP calls on all students, workers, and soldiers to turn reform struggles into the fight for communism. Every new comrade brings the world closer to real peace. Every new comrade hammers another nail into the coffin of capitalism. Join us! We have a world to win!
BROOKLYN,SEPTEMBER 17—Hundreds of angry workers gathered outside a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) subway station where the fascist New York Police Department KKKops carelessly shot up the platform nearly killing four people–including two bystanders–just days before in a majority Black neighborhood (to no sympathy from antiracists, one of those shot also included another KKKkop). One of the bystanders was shot in the head and is reported to have permanent brain damage (Pix 11, 9/18).
Progressive Labor Party comrades joined our class brothers and sisters in their standoff against the kkops.
The reason for this racist assault? A Black worker–also shot–had entered the station without paying a $2.90 fare. Racist capitalism works every day to show our lives, especially those of Black workers, are disposable to the bosses! Building a communist world will ensure our security from these trigger happy death squads, all too eager to play Shoot ‘Em Up for $2.90.
Speaking out
In a show of force, the kkkops surrounded the station and sidewalks in advance of the protest. But we were not intimidated by the scare tactics. We held a rally outside the station before taking the streets!
A comrade's student who came to the protest with him gave global context to the shooting, and how “the tools of imperialism” are being used to incite “hateful rhetoric and genocidal violence” against other workers that we must stand against.
One comrade who spoke added that this shooting would likely never have happened in a neighborhood with more white workers and that no amount of police reform will fix this. We soon marched to a nearby precinct, where the pigs attacked with pepper spray and several arrests. Remaining workers maintained a presence outside, doing jail support and calling out the blue scumbags as they walked by.
Footage from racist shooting released
Recently released body cam video of the incident shows the KKKops chasing Black worker Derrell Mickles for not paying to enter the station. He makes several attempts to avoid the pigs, running towards one after they tased him, just before they opened fire.
Even if Mickles had a knife, that doesn’t excuse this racist attack! The police chose to confront someone over a $2.90 fare, then shoot recklessly when they couldn’t subdue him (Gothamist, 9/17).
That this happened in Brownsville, a neighborhood that has been ground zero for the bosses’ racist neglect for decades, is no coincidence. Thirty six percent of Brownsville residents live below the federal poverty level. Almost half the neighborhood's working age residents are unemployed (NY Health Foundation). The KKKops felt right at home shooting away at people who live here who they see as worthless.
TWU Local 100, which represents the city’s train operators and conductors, also has blood on its hands from this attack. This sellout union has done nothing but push for more KKKops in the system to make it “safer.” In reality, they have given their support for racist police terror in the subway.
Fare brings more violence
The subway fare itself brings violence in New York City’s buses and subways. Violence against workers just trying to get somewhere-as this incident shows-and violence against transit workers who become targets from the transit bosses’ lies and incompetence.
Comrades working in transit have pushed the idea that removing the farebox is one way to make public transit less dangerous. A free bus program the MTA tried between September 2023-2024 showed a 39 percent decrease in bus operator assaults on the free lines during that period (The Nation, 9/6).
Whether every person pays the fare or not, the MTA still owes billions in bonds to profiteering Wall Street bosses. Any discussion about enforcing payment to ride public transit in the city inevitably enforces racist ideas (i.e, those who don’t pay are all criminals).
When the fascist Proud Boys interrupted a drag queen story hour event in Queens last year, the KKKops allowed them to access the subway system without paying, proving the kkkops only weaponize the fare to their personal benefit (NBC New York, 1/3/23).
Capitalism's relentless demand for protecting profits and keeping workers in line is behind this racist shooting. Black and Latin workers must bear the brunt of a crumbling transit system whose bosses target them as responsible for its lack of safety. All the while, said bosses continue defunding and sending their attack dogs as solutions. We know the only solution to a better transit system and better world is through dictatorship of the proletariat—communism. Together we can run a communist moneyless antiracist, antisexist society without kkkops where we all can enjoy what our class produces freely such as free transit and free housing.
This October 7th marked a year since Israel turned its open-air prison in Gaza into mass graves, genociding tens of thousands of workers with weapons supplied by U.S. bosses. At a time when many workers in Israel have been won to extreme Jewish nationalism (zionism) and anti-Arab racism that has hardened into fascism, rightfully angry workers are turning to Arab nationalism as the only path to liberation. But Progressive Labor Party calls for workers on both sides of the fake “Israel-Palestine” divide to reject the bosses' nationalism, which claims that workers in Palestine and Israel, have the same interests as their respective elites. To see how fake the divide is between workers in Palestine and Israel, one need only look at the historical and present examples of solidarity and comradeship between Arab and Jewish workers in the region:
Living together
During the British Mandate (1920s to 1948), Arab and Jewish residents lived together despite nationalist pressure from their respective elites. The port city of Haifa was a major site of cohabitation. There were equal numbers of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim people, and immigrants from Europe and Syria who settled there. Jobs where workers with different nationalities worked instilled class consciousness and promoted friendships, but the ruling classes built an apartheid system that prevented cooperation. The Zionist and Palestinian elites appealed to nationalist ideology and created the separate Jewish Histradut and Arab labor federations, respectively.
Joint labor organizing and strikes
During the 1920s, Arab workers began organizing and joining trade unions, especially in the railroad industry.
Communists joined and organized the early trade unions. In 1925, the Palestinian Communist Party (CP) applied to join the Comintern, the international organization of communist parties established by the Soviet Union. The CP urged unified strikes and included Arab workers as leaders.
Railway
The railway industry employed large numbers of Arab and Jewish workers. They experienced bad working and living conditions, abuse, and low wages at their hands. In 1920, the employees organized the first union in Palestine to demand an end to such practices. The Jewish-run Histadrut opposed joint membership. The union adopted a policy of Hebrew-only labor.
Arab workers appealed to Jewish railway association members:
Such separate organizations are dangerous…We must unite and present common demands to the government, which ignores its obligation to the worker, and instead sends in the police and puts him in jail (Comrades and Enemies, 1996, p 105).
Increasing conflict between Palestinian and Israeli elites developed during the mid-1930s. Yet, Jewish and Arab railway workers sustained their spirit of class consciousness that paved the way for future joint struggles.
Drivers and truckers strikes
Against initial opposition from the Histadrut and wealthy Palestinian families, Arab and Jewish drivers united and pressed for reforms, striking together for a week in 1931 that shut down transportation and forced the government to reduce taxes.
Quarry workers
The Nesher Quarry, near Haifa, employed Jewish and Arab workers from Egypt and Palestine. Conditions were bad for all but especially for the Arab workforce. Wages differed by 10-fold, working hours were longer for Egyptians, and all were forced to buy from company stores and live in company hovels. In the 1920s, the workers struck. While nationalism ended up ruining this fightback, joint organizing occurred in other jobs. Arab and Jewish workers ran the salt plants, unionized bakeries, and organized in government and military offices, and the citrus and oil industries.
Palestinian Arab workers differentiated Jewish people from Zionism.
In 1944 during another railroad strike, a union leader reported that the slogan, “long live Arab-Jewish unity was enthusiastically received.” During the turbulent late 1940s, joint strikes erupted among 22,000 postal workers, telegraph workers, and government clerks. Even agricultural workers in the countryside formed joint co-operatives, and urban workers formed joint commercial boards.
This historical movement of worker-led solidarity seeking to cross nationalist and racist divides between workers in the region still exists. Here are some examples below:
Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian protests and solidarity
A few dozen weeks after Israel attacked Gaza, Jewish Israelis organized demonstrations calling for a cease fire and an end to the war on Gaza. They began with several dozen people at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv. As the war continued, more Israelis rallied against it, risking jail, beatings, shame, and isolation.
These are other examples of resistance organizations:
The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) organizes in Israel and other countries to defend and rebuild Palestinian property slated for destruction. It uses grass roots, direct action and international advocacy to safeguard Palestinian property.
Protecting olive orchards and farms
The olive industry on the West Bank is one of the most important. In 2015, it accounted for the livelihood of 100,000 Palestinian families and 25 percent of the area’s gross agricultural income. The IDF and settlers have destroyed the trees, and killed and injured the growers. The residents of Budrus with their Israeli partners successfully repelled Israeli troops with a 10-month campaign against a wall that would cut through the orchard inside the West Bank. They demonstrated daily with militant confrontations, holding signs saying Jews and Arabs Unite.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel documents attacks on health in Israeli prisons and war zones through collaborations with medical organizations in Israel and around the world. It recently released a statement calling for the end of Israeli bombings of hospitals and medical personnel.
Standing Together mobilizes Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel to work for peace, equality, and social and climate justice.
Women in Black, Israel originated in Israel in 1988 to oppose the occupation. Every Friday, women stand vigil on the street in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to hold discussions and teach about Israeli history and Palestinian liberation.
Combatants in Peace is a grassroots movement of Palestinians and Israelis, working together to end the occupation and bring sustainable peace, equality, and freedom.
The Refuseniks are young people who refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. When a reporter asked what army a refusenik would join, he answered, "I would gladly enlist in the Red Army to fight the Nazis." The film, Tantura, presents interviews with elderly veterans who conducted the 1948 expulsions and killings of over 700,000 Palestinians.
Rebuilding internationalist & multiracial solidarity
Communists in the region and all over the world must reject the bosses’ nationalism and racism and lay our crosshairs firmly on the elites in both Israel Palestine, and all over the world rather than seeking to pit one group of workers against another. We must push anti-racist and internationalist messaging at every protest through chanting, literature and the personal connections we build with workers. Workers in Palestine and all over the world cannot afford for us to wait! Join the PLP and together we can smash the racist system once and for all!
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Justice for 18-year-old Donnell: KKKapitalism kills, workers fight back
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- 04 October 2024 346 hits
BALTIMORE, MD, 9/6 — This evening a number of local workers angrily protested the racist police murder of Donnell Rochester. Three years ago, Donnell was unarmed, but Baltimore police nevertheless gunned him down in cold blood, shortly before he would have graduated high school. Comrades from the Progressive Labor Party have been active in this struggle, to fight for a system where Donnell would have still been alive–communism.
Prosecutors back killer cops
The reform demand is for Governor Wes Moore to move the case from the Baltimore City State’s Attorney to the statewide Attorney General’s office. This is because the City State’s Attorney, Ivan Bates, has refused to prosecute the killer cops that horrifically stole Donnell’s life.
Face off in the streets
Led boldly by Donnell’s mother, we faced off with police for about an hour. During that confrontation, one of the supervisory white-shirt cops was in contact with racist Police Chief Richard Worley. He was in charge of the Northeast District, when cops under his command killed Tyrone West. Apparently, Worley figured it wouldn’t be a good look for his cops to arrest us.
Liberal governor friendly to finance capital
However, we need to keep in mind that the U.S. system of so-called democracy is, in actuality, a dictatorship of the capitalist class. For example, Maryland’s first Black governor, liberal Wes Moore – just like all the governors before him – has a background of “friendships and board relationships with America’s super-wealthy corporate elite” (Baltimore Sun Commentary, 8/8).
For five years, Moore was an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in London and at Citigroup in New York. In 2017 his big corporate break arrived when he became CEO of the “anti-poverty” Robin Hood Foundation. That organization, in essence, is a tax shelter for hedge funders. “It’s still run by financial masters of the universe” and “its board members” - such as David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs (Sun Commentary).
Is Maryland Governor Wes Brown likely to change the jurisdiction of Donnell’s case to the Attorney General’s office? Probably not (even if he does, the courts will never bring the justice Donnell truly deserves).
Let’s keep in mind that murders in the U.S. - during 2023 - went down by more than 11 percent. However, in sharp contrast, police killed more workers in 2023 than during any other year in more than a decade [MappingPoliceViolence.us].
Can't rely on capitalism for justice
Capitalism needs racism. The lower wages paid to Black and Latin workers account for about a fifth of total corporate profits. And racism, even more importantly, is used by the capitalist class to divide and weaken the working class. Police murders are part of this racism.
If Governor Moore were to turn over Donnell’s case to the Maryland Attorney General, it would be theatrics. We must keep in mind that Moore would simply be posturing, pretending that the capitalist state will end its violent and racist suppression of our class.
We must smash racism and the capitalist state, and build a new, fully egalitarian communist world of sisterhood and brotherhood. We must honor Donnell Rochester. Dare to struggle. Dare to win!
Nassau County in New York, the state of North Carolina, and the University of California campuses have been the first in the U.S. to pass laws outlawing the wearing of masks in public. Other jurisdictions have proposals for such laws, including one in the legislature in New Jersey (northjersey.com, 09/12). This new fascist offensive attacks both political marches and people who wear masks for medical reasons. Bringing both groups together in the fight against racism and capitalism is an opportunity to broaden the revolutionary communist movement. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been engaged in the fight for safer working conditions, disability justice, and COVID-19 safety as well as the fight against the genocide in Gaza and the long-term struggle for communist revolution. Resisting mask bans is a newer fight.
The push for mask bans started as a way to intimidate anti-genocide protestors. It makes it easier to identify them with facial recognition and to target them for suspension, firing, and harassment for opposing U.S. imperialism.
The disability justice community has called for masking in medical facilities and other public places as a public health issue and is also under attack. At the Nassau hearing, Zionists berated disability organizers who called out mask bans as an attack on immunocompromised individuals. At the same time, many disability justice groups have also opposed the genocide of Palestinians.
Communists in the disability justice struggle
PLP members have joined with disability justice organizers who have waged campaigns for universal masking with N95 masks in health care settings and for stricter isolation procedures when workers and students have a COVID-19 infection. At the Long COVID Awareness protest in DC in March, 2024, a PLP member spoke about capitalism’s drive for profit at the expense of workers’ lives. We have worked with Mask Blocs in our cities and distributed free test kits to our schools and neighborhood groups.
As communists we believe in contributive justice, the idea that all workers should have the opportunity to contribute to society as much as possible. This means practicing good public health measures like air filtration, mask wearing, and testing to find out if your symptoms are from COVID-19 and if you have fully recovered with negative testing. Tests are not perfect but combined with other measures help decrease risks. This summer’s surge has shown that the virus is not seasonal like the flu but is airborne year round and constantly changing. Death and the development of Long COVID are reasons we need to protect ourselves.
Racism and eugenics
Disregarding the risks of COVID-19 to disabled workers is a form of eugenics in which some people are viewed as less valuable than others. Placing the current mask bans in this context reveals another fascist aspect of these policies. Discouraging mask wearing increases the risk to everyone but especially people who are immunocompromised. Further, letting the police stop people who wear masks to find out if the masks are for a health reason gives the police another racist excuse to harass Black and Latin workers --another version of “stop and frisk.” Black and Latin workers have suffered more from COVID-19 than others (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10147367/). Discouraging mask wearing for fear of police interaction will increase the risk of infections.
These steps toward fascism: increased surveillance, harsher intimidation, and racist eugenics mean that students and workers must unite the disability justice, antiracist, anti-genocide, and communist movements. Capitalism is the enemy of all these movements and building PLP is critical to destroy this system.
