TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, June 2 — Following the massacre on one of the supply ships headed to Gaza earlier this month, the Israeli fascist group “Im Tirtzu” organized a rally at the entrance of the Tel Aviv University in support of that deed and of the Israeli army. The fascists were supported by the Student Council and managed to attract a large crowd of students to their rally.

Various left groups, as well as a significant number of Palestinian nationalists, staged a counter-demonstration in front of the fascist rally, calling Israel a fascist state. Unfortunately, most of them followed a nationalist line, either calling for a two-state “solution” or raising Turkish flags. Nationalism — including that of oppressed nations such as the Palestinians — is a dead-end ideology. It serves the bosses by convincing workers that they have more in common with the bosses from “their” country, than with workers around the world. Nationalist slogans are also ineffective in repelling the rising fascist tide in today’s Israel. An internationalist, communist line is needed.  The only way to rid the world of racist, capitalist attacks is for all workers to unite worldwide to overthrow capitalism and establish communism.

One of our comrades took part in this counter-demonstration, and brought along a red flag with the PLP symbol on it, proudly making a stand for communism and against nationalism. When he was asked by one of the nationalists what the flag had to do with the demonstration, he replied “communism is the only way to smash fascism once and for all.”

Later the fascist horde, supported by the cops, charged the counter-demonstration and tried to beat up the demonstrators; one counter-demonstrator was arrested. But our comrade carried out our Party line and fought valiantly against the attack.

We have many lessons to learn from this demonstration, but the most important is about the urgency of building a mass communist party in Israel/Palestine in particular and in the entire world in general. If we had a larger contingent of communists at that demonstration, for example, we could have smashed the fascists. So we will double our efforts towards building the Party. Join Us!

A Comrade in Israel/Palestine

(see eyewitness letter, page 6)

The U.S. war machine kills workers openly to control Iraqi oil fields and a projected Afghanistan pipeline. While Obama’s brass claims to be aiming at Islamic extremists and drug traffickers, their main objective is guarding U.S. imperialism, especially its control of global energy supplies. Under liberal “peace candidate” Obama, secret assassinations, torture, and intimidation by terror surpass atrocities ordered by avowed warmonger Bush. “Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed ‘things that the previous administration did not.’” (Washington Post, 6/4)

But Obama is also promoting less obvious forms of murder for profit. “[T]he Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other ‘radical’ groups, according to senior military and administration officials. Special Operations forces...are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.” (WP article)

To win U.S. workers to back this war operation, Obama & Co. are using various prosecutions of alleged terrorist “bombers” to foment mass racist terror against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. They also propagandize U.S. troops with anti-Arab/Muslim racism to demonize the “enemy” as less than human.

Their purpose is to divert workers’ anger over racist unemployment, foreclosures and racist budget cuts which affect the entire working class while falling heaviest on black and Latino workers. The money saved from these cuts and mass layoffs can then be used to fund their imperialist wars. Given the ruling class’s many-sided operation, it behooves PLP’ers to go on a war footing ourselves to meet these attacks.

Major Oil Sources and Routes
Focus of U.S. ‘Anti-Terror’
Clandestine Violence

Somalia’s Horn of Africa — second only to the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz as a strategic chokepoint for exports of Mid-East crude — draws special attention from the Pentagon’s clandestine wing. “Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa.” (WP article)

To help sway public opinion against a Somali “terrorist menace,” on June 5 the FBI and NYPD arrested two men they said were headed to a “jihadist” training camp in Somalia. Yemen lies across from Somalia on the eastern side of the shipping lane. U.S. rulers justify intervention there by alleging ties between a fundamentalist Yemeni cleric and the incompetent “Christmas underwear” and Times Square bombers as well as the deadly, deranged Ft. Hood shooter.

“Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.” (WP article) Widespread hatred of U.S. imperialism, largely misguided into Islamic sects, gives Obama & Co. plausible, secret targets, aimed at protecting oil and gas supplies and pipelines.

An earlier leak to the NY Times (5/24) revealed that top U.S. general Petraeus “has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region.” Saudi royalty control the world’s greatest oil reserves and make a huge part of them available to Exxon Mobil in a sweetheart deal. Since Bin Laden and other non-royal Saudis were shut out of the scheme, it motivated these competing capitalists to organize al Qaeda and the resulting 9/11 attacks. U.S. enemy Iran also has both oil and nuclear dreams of dominating the Mid-East.

Obama/Gates Attack on Military Industrial Profiteers Aims at More Lethal Conventional Forces

U.S. rulers, meanwhile, are striving for greater killing power under the guise of saving taxpayers’ money. A key feature of the Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closing Program, which is supposed to save billions, is building a new 8,000-strong Navy/Marine base on the Pacific island of Guam. U.S. strategists hope expanding the outpost, which will have a pier for aircraft carriers, will give them an extra edge in confronting the challenge of China’s growing blue-water fleet which can patrol the world’s oceans to secure its own energy supplies.

The NY Times (6/3) reported that, “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered the military and the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy to find tens of billions of dollars in annual savings to pay for war-fighting operations....The goal is...3 percent real growth each year, beyond inflation, in the accounts that pay for combat operations.” Gates wants to rein in costly, dubiously useful, weapons programs to shift expenditures to projects expanding deadly U.S. force. This deadliness-enhancing, “more-bang-for-the-buck” program also involves basing forces where they are most likely to fight.

The purpose of the coming U.S. offensive for Kandahar is to ensure U.S. presence in that city, a strategic point along the projected TAPI pipeline to run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.

Finally, the U.S. military is, in fact, prolonging the occupation it pretends to be winding down in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. (see page 8) As U.S. ground troops leave, the USS Iwo Jima is scheduled to arrive. The Iwo Jima is not a hospital ship but an amphibious assault vessel with 2,000 heavily-armed Marines aboard.

Their continued military presence encircling Haiti aims at exploiting the vast oil and gas reserves under the Caribbean Sea which Russia and China are already eyeing. Both countries sent their presidents to Cuba to negotiate financing of projects whereby they could beat U.S. Big Oil to the punch here.

Yet despite their seeming ability to kill anywhere at any time with vastly superior weapons, U.S. rulers face a perilous future militarily. Shaky “ally” Israel, unstable foe North Korea and/or strategic adversaries Iran, China and Russia could in a flash provoke a global conflict causing more casualties — on all sides — than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

We, as revolutionary communists, should expose the bosses’ aggressive militarizing, like Obama’s burgeoning death squads, and put ourselves on a wartime footing. 

GARY, IN, March 31 — No question about it; the racist U.S. court system does not serve the working class.  Levi Randolph, a Gary cop, was acquitted of reckless homicide charges by the Lake Superior Court.  In January 2006, Randolph murdered Vincent Smith Jr., a 16-year-old black youth, by shooting him in the back of the head as the teen fled his cousin’s house.

Randolph claimed he was shooting in self-defense, but as stated, Smith was running away and only had a cell phone in his possession.  The truth is that the working class must always be on the defensive when dealing with police.  Cops are the bosses’ thugs carrying out their dirty work, terrorizing black and Latino neighborhoods. This is done to keep workers scared as racist attacks on the working class worsen.

Following Smith’s murder, PLP and community groups led protests, speeches, and vigils, demanding that Randolph be taken off the streets and charged with murder.  In March 2007, when Randolph was finally indicted for “reckless homicide,” many people who were involved in this battle felt relieved that “something was finally being done” in this struggle. Unfortunately they believed the liberal lie that the bosses’ courts will solve the workers’ problems. However, Vincent Smith’s murder was not a “reckless homicide.” It was the callous execution of an unarmed young black man, which is common for police.

The trial was scheduled for November 2008.  PLP led protesters gathered around the courthouse calling for Randolph’s head. The judge then declared a mistrial, saying that jurors had been compromised by the action outside.

In March 2010, Randolph’s trial finally took place. Randolph was defended in court by Scott King, the crooked former mayor of Gary. He charmed the jury and perpetuated the lie that Randolph shot Smith in self-defense. The prosecuting attorney made little effort to argue her case, even referring to Smith as the “figure in the black hoodie.”  It is not a surprise that the prosecutor would throw away a case that involved the police murder of a black youth.

Throughout the four-year campaign there were many lessons learned from this struggle.  But none rang louder than the fact that the cops and courts work hand-in-fist to oppress the working class. Justice cannot be found in the bosses’ courts, and the cops are their thugs.

Racism cannot be fought by relying on the bosses. Yet, the best thing to come out of the campaign was the anti-racist, working-class unity that brought people together to fight against this police murder.

Only through this unity and communist politics from Progressive Labor Party can we end the bosses’ rule and the police terror they use to oppress the whole working class. J

CHICAGO, May 15 — Today, a multi-racial group of workers converged on the office of a national politician in an effort to expose and protest his indifference to the plight of workers currently suffering racist terror in Arizona. The reform group we have been working in planned a prayer vigil and press conference in the parking lot just outside his doors. While we, as members of the PLP, know that electoral politics and faith in religion ultimately betray the working class, we attended this demonstration and supported our friends who organized it. In addition, we saw this as an opportunity to inject a communist analysis to the event.

While many spoke of reform and the power of prayer, some gave strong historical, economic and working-class analyses. They spoke about how racism is at the core of SB-1070, the new Arizona law, and how black, Latino and white workers need to unite instead of letting superficial differences keep us divided.

While a lot of the day was good, it had its weaknesses. The purpose of the event was to “pray” for a reform. The leadership’s goal is to further the DREAM Act and have Obama pass comprehensive immigration reform. This faith in the system and Obama is a death sentence for the working class. The DREAM Act would use the promise of “legalization” to trick these youth into giving eight years and maybe their lives to the military. Any reform passed will not have our best interest at heart; rather, it would be a vehicle for perpetuating our exploitation.

A Party member spoke and exposed the racist history of the United States. She also spoke to the importance of having faith in our fellow workers, and not politicians or even a “god.” She also exposed the racist link between the current financial crisis and the scapegoating of Latino workers, falsely blaming them for “taking away” the jobs of citizens. Lastly she stressed the importance of militant political action. Her analysis was well-received, and many wanted to hear more.

The purpose of working in these groups is not to win the reform; but to grow as communists and build ties with other workers. This is the only way to build the fight for communism, an anti-racist society where all workers would work together for our common needs. Lenin once said, “Unions are schools for communism.” Groups like this are similar to unions, because they give us the opportunity to fight the bosses, meet other workers, and share communism with them. We look forward to further struggle with these new friends. J