1. California Fires: Bosses Fiddle While Workers Burn
2. Anti-Racist Students Blast Fascist Horowitz's Hate-Mongering
3. Turkish Rulers' Challenge to U.S. Leading to Wider War
4. Teachers, Parents, Students: Unite vs. Bosses' Divisive `Merit' $cheme
5. Students Protest Fascist Horowitz's Anti-Muslim Racism
6. Enraged Hospital Workers Storm Bosses' Office
7. Hit Columbia University's Racism
8. MASS STRIKES, UNION BETRAYAL MARK FRANCE CLASS STRUGGLE
9. Imperialist Rivalry Over Oil Behind Myanmar Turmoil
   1. ARMS FOR OIL
10. Auto Workers Spread PLP Ideas
11. VIRUS CAUSES AIDS, CAPITALISM CAUSES EPIDEMIC
    1. Strategies for Change
12. March Against Racist Oakland Cop Murder of Black Youth
13. LETTERS
    1. Racist Attack in Spain
       Hallmark of Capitalism
    2. The Bosses Don't Care About Workers' Lives or Deaths
    3. Pacifism Takes Beating at Anti-War Action
14. Chicago Transit Workers Fight Doomsday Cuts
    1. BBQ Builds Workers' Solidarity and PLP
15. REDEYE REDEYE
    1. Capitalist-era wars center on oil
    2. Immigrant policy "works", -- for bosses
16. Bolshevik Revolution: Workers Took Power; Can Do It Again
    1. Achievements of the Revolution
    2. Heroic Fight Against the Nazis
    3. Lessons to Be Learned

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California Fires: Bosses Fiddle While Workers Burn

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 -- At this writing, over 1,800 homes have been destroyed and 12 people killed in fires that swept through southern California carried by the Santa Ana winds. Several immigrants trying to cross the border died and others were badly burned. The fires were worst in the San Diego area: over 300,000 acres burned, 1,500 buildings destroyed and 500,000 people evacuated.

But U.S. rulers' priority is protecting imperialism, not ensuring enough firefighters, flame retardant materials or water-carrying planes nor preparing levees in New Orleans to withstand fierce hurricanes.

The bosses' media is crowing about their "reverse 911 system" which automatically called people to evacuate, but many immigrant farmworkers were not warned and not allowed to leave the fields. In New Orleans, black workers suffered the most. The conditions at the Super Dome there were hellish; people were left without food, water or sanitation. In San Diego, immigrant workers were murdered trying to find or keep jobs in the local farming industries. Racism is the cutting edge of the attack on all workers.

Unlike New Orleans, most of those evacuated in San Diego had cars and could escape the fires. Volunteers, not the government, provided almost all the food, water, cots, toiletries, etc., and worked at San Diego's stadium and other evacuation centers.

Politicians, including Bush and Schwarzenegger, spent lots of time on TV congratulating themselves for the work performed by these volunteers.

But the firefighters were overstretched and had insufficient resources to fight these fires, including too few planes to drop water and fire retardant material. As is common in southern California, 3,000 prisoners were sent to clear brush and fight the fires.

Every fall winds and drought conditions mean potential fires in southern California. In 2003, understaffed fire departments lacking necessary resources faced big fires in San Diego County. In 2004, a Blue Ribbon Fire Commission recommended many improvements but they never materialized. Fire Chief J. Bowman quit in June 2006, having said the department was "ill-equipped" and "understaffed." (San Diego Union, 4/5/06)

Local real estate bosses, who control local government, refuse to invest to fund better fire protection. These developers are frequently behind initiatives that say no to raising their taxes for new fire services. San Diego still has no county-wide fire department.

In richer communities developers covered homes with a special retardant that protected them from fire, raising the price of the homes. Only the very wealthy can afford this extra cost. In these areas, the houses did not burn and the residents were able to stay inside as the fire skipped around them.

Three days into the fire, the electric company pleaded with people to cut electricity use, which residents desperately needed for air conditioners to counter the toxic smoke. Pollution in LA and San Diego Counties is as much as ten times above safe levels. The fire shut several power lines connecting San Diego with other counties and states but there was little excess transmission-line capacity or local power-generation capacity. Ten percent of the county's power had to be imported from Mexico. Workers were forced to quickly repair lines in dangerous areas to avoid a complete San Diego black-out.

From New Orleans to Minnesota to San Diego, U.S. infrastructure (including firefighting and electric power) is strained beyond its limits. (See CHALLENGE, 10/31) Luckily, these fires mainly hit suburban and rural areas where more people have cars. If San Diego's urban area had to be evacuated, as proposed by the City Attorney, the resources simply aren't there.

Now in California many white workers as well as Latino, Asian and black workers lost their homes in these fires. While such losses were preventable, no reform of capitalism will significantly change the situation. In fact, funds for any added fire-fighting equipment will come from workers' pockets and may be linked to a push for "national service" (drafting youth to perform these tasks).

Capitalism exists to make capitalists rich, not to protect workers and their families. It can't meet workers' needs. The murderous U.S. bosses need workers to fight to defend their empire. In a communist society with no profit motive or imperialist wars for world domination, society's driving force will be organizing production, housing, safety and defense to guarantee the well-being of the working class. Building the fight for communism is truly a life-and-death question for our class.

Anti-Racist Students Blast Fascist Horowitz's Hate-Mongering

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, Oct. 22 -- "Fight Anti-Muslim Racism! Build Multiracial Unity Across All Borders!" proclaimed posters blanketing campus in response to the David Horowitz-sponsored "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" (IFAW). They were posted by student organizations opposing IFAW's racism and war-mongering and its attempt to build support for U.S. imperialism's resource wars in the Middle East and worldwide. The postering was part of a series of actions challenging IFAW on campus, including a teach-in, documentary screening and a number of op-ed pieces in the college newspaper.

Many students, faculty and workers were upset with the blatant racism being promoted by IFAW, but viewed it as a "freedom-of-speech" issue. Other students pointed out that IFAW's racist hate speech has nothing to do with "free speech," but is an attempt to win workers and students to fascist ideas and activities rooted in jingoism, nationalism, patriotism and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

"Free speech" is a myth in class societies, especially under capitalism, where the ruling class controls the overwhelming majority of the means of communication, and the university itself, deciding most of what gets taught in classes and the framework of academic and intellectual discussions. Racist and fascist ideas must be opposed at every opportunity, whether in the university or on the shop floor.

After an anti-war documentary screening before 37 students, a speaker traced the economic roots of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: the need to dominate Mid-East oil for profit and to secure the U.S. global empire. The IFAW's racism tries to hide this fact, presenting the "War on Terror" as a defense of "Western democracy" and against radical Islamic politics. It argues that U.S. imperialist wars are in the interests of workers and students, trying to convince them to sacrifice blood and sweat for the ruling class's profits.

But while Exxon-Mobil's profits skyrocket and more wealth is accumulated at the top, workers lose their homes and face wage-cuts, vanishing pensions and declining health benefits. Every day workers must suffer more closed hospitals, higher prices for daily necessities and neighborhoods devastated by racist cutbacks, police terror and increasing poverty and unemployment, from South Central Los Angeles to Oakland to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. This is the reality of capitalism and its imperialist system.

Later that week, a teach-in brought out nearly 60 students and campus workers. A faculty speaker exposed the racist sensationalism behind Horowitz's language, and the fact that fascism historically has been rooted in capitalism and its need to maintain exploitative relations. The ruling class funds and supports his racism and attempts to build U.S. nationalism as tools to prepare workers, students and soldiers for wider resource and profit wars.

While liberals may publicly distance themselves from outright racists like Horowitz or the Minutemen, they fully support their racist and warmongering ideas which they promote in more subtle and dangerous ways. A student speaker also linked today's wars to the long history of U.S. imperialist terror against the world's workers for the benefit of the capitalist class.

Throughout the week internationalism and multi-racial solidarity among workers, students and soldiers were stressed. Students, faculty and workers called for unity to fight Horowitz's racist attack not only on Muslim families, but on the whole working class. CHALLENGE and PLP'S communist politics proved crucial to mobilizing students around anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist ideas rather than "free speech" issues, helping to organize a multi-racial group of students who understand more why capitalism must be smashed and replaced by a communist world.

Turkish Rulers' Challenge to U.S. Leading to Wider War

The New York Times and its chief foreign correspondent Thomas Friedman are worried that the Democrats are helping the Bushites squeeze Iraq out of the 2008 Presidential election debate. Says Friedman (NYT, 10/24), "All the leading Democratic contenders have signaled that they will not precipitously withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, but the air has gone out of the Iraq debate." A Times editorial (10/20) complained that, "It was bad enough having a one-party government when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues." These liberal rulers are very concerned about the Bushites' mishandling of this war.

But Iraq isn't going away. Witness the escalating crisis between the Turkish army and the PKK guerrillas (Workers' Party of Kurdistan). A hypocritical U.S. Congressional resolution about Turkish genocide against Armenians during World War I helped worsen the crisis. Turkey's rulers are threatening a military assault on PKK bases inside Iraq (authorized by Turkey's Parliament). The Turkish army has massed 100,000 troops at its border with Iraq to attack PKK bases in Iraq's northern mountains.

The Bush administration is trying to forestall a Turkish invasion. After all, northern Iraq is controlled by Kurdish forces which have sided with U.S. imperialism in the Iraq war. Relatively it's the most stable area in Iraq. It also contains some of the largest oil deposits near the city of Kirkuk, which the Kurdish nationalists have given Bush's pal Hunt Oil rights to develop (see CHALLENGE, 10/31, on Hunt's competition with the Eastern Establishment's big oil outfits like Exxon-Mobil). Turkish rulers want to control that oil, opposing its control by Kurdish nationalists.

The Iraq war has sharpened all the contradictions in Eurasia. Since World War II, Turkish bosses have been loyal allies of U.S. imperialism, particularly during the Cold War against the old Soviet Union. But times have changed. Turkish rulers now want a bigger piece of the pie. An article by George Friedman, head of Stratfor Intelligence Report, entitled "Turkey as a Regional Power" (10/23) says:

"Cautious in World War II and strictly aligned with the United States during the Cold War, Turkey played a passive role: It either sat things out or allowed its strategic territory to be used....The situation has changed dramatically.

"In 2006, Turkey had the 18th largest economy in the world -- larger than that of any other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia -- and the economy has been growing...between 5 percent and 7 percent a year for five years....It has a substantial and competent military.... It also is surrounded by chaos.

"Apart from Iraq to the south, there is profound instability in the Caucasus to the north and the Balkans to the northwest....Turkey has a vested interest in stabilizing the region. It no longer regards the United States as a stabilizing force.... It views the Russians as a long-term threat to its interests and sees Russia's potential return to Turkey's frontier as a long-term challenge." Several of the old Soviet republics now sit as a buffer between Russia and Turkey but the Turks see the Russians flexing their oil-powered muscles to possibly threaten Turkey over the long run. Historically Russian and Turkish rulers have always fought over control of the oil in the Caucuses and Caspian Sea region.

Meanwhile, the U.S., while saying it opposes terrorism, actually supports a Kurdish guerrilla group in Iran which is aligned with the PKK and shares its same mountain bases in northern Iraq. So the U.S. is playing a dangerous game, simultaneously trying to placate the Turkish ruling class and the U.S.'s Kurdish allies ruling northern Iraq. Some in the Bush administration haven't forgiven Turkish bosses for barring a U.S. invasion of Iraq from Turkey in 2003. But huge amounts of supplies used by the U.S. invaders in Iraq now come through Turkey, including a U.S. air base in southern Turkey. And Turkish troops are helping NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Kurdish nationalists are preparing for another sellout of their aspirations for a separate state composed of Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. In the past, the Kurdish nationalists have become pawns of Iran's Shah, Saddam Hussein and other regional despots. The PKK, which claims to be "Marxist," is no different. It's basically a nationalist group aligning itself with U.S. imperialism and the pro-U.S. Kurdish rulers of northern Iraq. Its sister guerrilla group in Iran is becoming a U.S.-Israeli bosses' weapon for a war against the mullahs there.

However, many Kurdish workers and youth have often supported what they view as Marxist groups looking for a revolutionary answer to the national oppression Kurds have suffered at the hands of the Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian and imperialist bosses. These workers and youth must unite with their brothers and sisters region-wide to build a red-led movement fighting for the only solution to this imperialist hell: communism.

Teachers, Parents, Students: Unite vs. Bosses' Divisive `Merit' $cheme

NEW YORK CITY, October 17 -- Today, instead of allowing discussion of anti-racist resolutions in support of the Jena 6, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Randi Weingarten changed the agenda of the Delegate Assembly (DA) to push the racist and divisive merit pay and pension plans of billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and former prosecutor Chancellor Klein. Amid increasing racist attacks, noose hangings, beatings, cop murders and the legal lynching of the Jena 6, Weingarten appealed to rampant individualism to push aside the fight against racism to win teachers to collaborate (her word) with our bosses.

The centerpiece of this new deal is the merit-pay scheme under which schools showing improvement in test scores and attendance will get money, perhaps as much as $3,000 per teacher. Each school that votes for it will have a committee -- the principal, another administrator and two UFT members -- to decide who gets the money. This scheme will tear teachers apart.

Workers will be divided over who "deserves" the extra money. The principal will try to reward his favorites. Teachers vying for the money will try to avoid teaching students who have problems. Teachers whose students do not "progress enough" will be blamed if the school does not get the money. Schools will be focused even more on racist testing as a means to determine educational "success." This will push the ideology of individualism and material incentive: the only reason people work harder is to get more pay.

The fact is, those whose main concern is a higher paycheck run from students and become administrators or union hacks or simply kiss up to the principal. Most teachers are already working hard, not to beat someone to a bonus, but because we want our working-class students to learn. Offering extra money to "teach better" is an insult. It implies that we are not concerned about our students and will be "good teachers" only if the bosses reward us. The fact is, the ruling class really does not want us to be good teachers. They don't want us to teach youth the truth about capitalism and the necessity and ability to get rid of it and build communism -- a system run by the working class. Under communism the needs of the working class will come first and we will work based on our political commitment to our class, not based on some "bonus" or other material incentive.

The bait to get teachers to buy into merit pay is the "improved" pension plan. The two are being sold as a single package. But even the bait is poisonous to the working class. Presently UFT members must work 30 years or until age 62 to retire with penalty-free pensions. Educators who started working before 1974 could retire earlier with better pensions. Under the new deal, UFT'ers can retire at age 55 after working 25 years if they agree to pay more into the system each year beginning now. But new hires will have to pay more all through their careers and must work 27 years before retiring -- an "eat-your-young plan."

Only in the last ten minutes of the Assembly did Weingarten allow the discussion of the Jena 6 resolution. A delegate who had earlier challenged the agenda change rose to speak about the increasing racism, including the attack on a black UFT member by the police in June. She demanded that the union stop congratulating itself on passing resolutions, start organizing within the schools and make fighting racism a focus of UFT chapters. Weingarten proposed yet another "committee." We must make this an organizing committee that builds the anti-racist fight in our schools. When the meeting ended the delegate was thanked by several others for speaking about this growing racism.

UFT "leaders" and the ruling class depend on racism and individualism to keep union members divided from each other and from our students and their families. We must expose Weingarten's collaboration. We must not fall for opportunism and material-incentive ideology. We must build unity of educational workers and our students and their families, and recruit them to PLP. This can lay the basis for creating a society in which the "reward" for hard work will be a decent life for our entire class.

Students Protest Fascist Horowitz's Anti-Muslim Racism

BERKELEY, CA, Oct 28 - David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW)," a deranged celebration of lies, ignorance, war and racism, crash-landed on college campuses Oct. 22nd. Many schools saw through this farce and were successful in preventing the events (Only 32 of the expected 200 schools actually went through with IFAW), but Berkeley was not so fortunate.

Prior to IFAW, a student group coalition formed which quickly affirmed a pacifist stance. The leadership decided to address the events indirectly, so as not to obstruct the "free speech" of IFAW. Events emphasizing inter-religious unity and cultural diversity were planned, avoiding the political implications of IFAW in wartime context. Comrades and some other students proposed actively fighting and confronting racism but the liberal line won out. Laying to rest their claims of not being racist, and that IFAW was about "promoting scholarly debate," the mostly all-male College Republicans harassed a group of Muslim women and their Caucasian friend, calling them "terrorists" and "race traitor," respectively. Comrades invited students from a political film class to confront this racistmovement.

IFAW consisted of a forum, a film screening and a rally. At the Monday kickoff forum, PLP members joined students and the community to protest Nonie Darwish, author of the anecdotal "Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror." In her book and during interviews, she holds that "after 9/11, there is nothing America has or has not done that causes terrorism," because "terrorism is the duty of every Muslim." Darwish was greeted with jeers and was consistently disrupted.

Aiming to further deceive the audience, Darwish asked for the support of the American "left" in addressing the mistreatment of women in Islam. Outbursts continued, and Darwish later said this was the largest amount of protest she had ever experienced. Wednesday's screening of "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was made possible only through heightened police protection. On Thursday, the College Republicans held a pathetic 20-minute rally. They appeared shaken and were barely audible, even before students shouted them out! Actively confronting and fighting racism works!

IFAW is classic imperialist rhetoric. Concern is feigned in order to create public acceptance of "The War on Terror," in which control of the mostly Muslim Middle East and its oil is vital to U.S. imperialism's survival. This is a deliberate propaganda effort aimed at the fighters and engineers of tomorrow's wars: students, whom Horowitz feels need extra encouragement.

There are over 1,000,000 Iraqis and nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers now dead. The huge bipartisan-approved war budget and Dept. of Homeland Security safety precautions have resulted in rising tuition, cuts to healthcare and education, racist profiling, detentions, deportations, spying, and legalized torture. This is an attack on the entire working class. This is "Imperio-fascism." The stakes are too high, and we cannot afford to see IFAW out of context. Darwish was ignorant or evil enough to state on Monday that "the discussion had nothing to do with Iraq." The College Republicans, supporting this isolationist argument, stated that protesters "confused the issues at hand." Horowitz and his roster of opportunists (Coulter, Santorum, Pipes, Darwish, etc.) would have us believe that terrorism stems solely from Islamic fundamentalism, not American foreign policy, not extreme poverty, not growing inequality, not imperialism, not capitalism.

To rid ourselves of cockroaches, we turn on the lights. If not exposed, confronted, and combated, they grow. Similarly, allowing racism to go unopposed makes racists feel it is okay. Let's not forget that there are consequences to speech and ideas. In the case of IFAW, they are war, racism and the death of millions of workers. This is not free speech, it is free murder. Oppositional `free speech' is tolerated as long as it is accompanied by inaction, as only actions in the interest of the ruling class are allowed.

The events of IFAW show the potential of multi-racial unity and anti-racist action. PLP members and their student allies will build from this action. While this racist movement is important to confront, we must expose the more dangerous liberal-led movements. While openly racist republicans stab us in the front, wolves-in-sheep's-clothing democrats stab us in the back! 99.999% of democrats have supported the war, and the presidential candidates will not take Iran off their sights. Come the elections, don't vote, revolt! Join PLP in the fight for a society where the needs of the working class are primary and there are no imperialist wars for profit. Read, subscribe to, write to and struggle with CHALLENGE, the revolutionary communist newspaper of PLP and weapon of the working class.

Enraged Hospital Workers Storm Bosses' Office

BROOKLYN, NY, October 20 -- Yesterday at a hospital here, a group of workers representing the day and evening shifts stormed into the Human Resources department expressing rage and anger over working conditions, short-staffing and gross disrespect towards healthcare workers.

This action was planned for a month. The workers were very vocal. One remarked, "The system stinks. I became a health worker in order to take care of sick people, but I cannot, given the workload that demands me to take care of fifteen to twenty patients."

Another said, "I'm an environmental service healthcare worker. We're short-staffed. Many departments are not being cleaned properly. Over the weekends the floors are not swept and most of the time trash remains until the beginning of the week."

Still another said, "The bosses' supervisors and a few doctors are very disrespectful towards the workers. They speak to us in an inappropriate manner.''

One worker replied, "Under the profit system the bosses will always treat the workers with contempt. However, the workers must always wage a struggle against this type of behavior, by confronting the supervisors in their offices with other workers."

The director of Human Resources was very apologetic. He said they'll "look into the problem." Afterwards, the workers called a meeting with the 1199/SEIU union representative who was present. A few workers advocated informational picketing around the hospital. The union leadership said the members should have given management "a chance to respond." A majority of workers agreed.

However, the union leaders do not advocate class struggle. They operate within the rules laid down by the bosses' system. They might win a few grievances and arbitration cases, but these are only reforms that the bosses will reverse later. Class collaboration cannot beat back these attacks.

Here there is understaffing in all areas. Patients lack care. On any particular day, by shift's end many workers are completely worn out. The bosses have been renovating the hospital with huge profits made off the workers' and patients' backs.

They've spent millions on new technology to compete with other capitalist-run hospitals in the drive for more profits for themselves, their stockholders and the banks that finance them. Meanwhile, the emergency room is packed with patients waiting for hours. Increasingly, patients are returning within days of being discharged due to incomplete treatment.

The majority of workers and a large number of the patients at this hospital are black and Latino. The system's racism exacts an even greater toll on these groups, which eventually affects ALL workers, as evidenced by the continuing decline of the ability to obtain decent healthcare in the U.S. The rulers are driven to spend workers' taxes on waging their imperialist wars in the Middle East for control of oil resources while ignoring the healthcare needs of workers here.

Capitalism surely ruins our lives. But the class struggle continues until workers build a mass revolutionary communist Party -- PLP -- that can overthrow this rotten system.

Hit Columbia University's Racism

NEW YORK CITY, October 26 -- Over 50 Columbia University students, alumni and others protested the appearance of racist Columbia alumnus, David Horowitz. His presence followed a week of anti-Muslim rhetoric and speakers, hosted by the College Republicans -- "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" (IFAW).

It also followed weeks of hate crimes, including a noose hanging, swastika graffiti and a message threatening Muslims left in one building stating "AMERICA is for WHITE EUROPEANS." Numerous organizations planned several events throughout the week, including the main protest before Horowitz's speech, joined by a number of Muslim students and a PLP member. The Muslim Student Association didn't participate, believing the protest would "legitimize" Horowitz's message.

Students gathered in the center of the campus to listen to various speakers denounce Horowitz. A PLP member who spoke linked this anti-racist struggle to the fight against Columbia's expansion, racist research and war funding. He said Horowitz represents one wing of the ruling class that wants to use racist terror to whip up support for the war, but was also dangerous because he obscured the danger posed by the rulers' liberal wing that wants to build nationalist and patriotic loyalty to the bosses.

Another PL'er received a big round of applause when stating he was there from City College along with other students outside Columbia who stood in solidarity with them. He also urged the crowd to check out the latest issue of CHALLENGE containing an article about the noose-hanging at Teacher's College.

Many important political points arose during the organizing weeks, including the necessity to place IFAW within the broader racist attacks occurring recently at Columbia. It was also stated that IFAW was an attack on ALL students, not just Muslims; therefore it required a united, multi-racial response.

There was a debate on how best to confront racist, ruling-class mouthpieces like Horowitz. PLP and many Muslim students favored direct action to shut down all the IFAW's events. Others felt this would give Horowitz "what he wanted" and create "bad publicity." Agreement was reached to protest outside the event, not inside.

When Horowitz was scheduled to speak the crowd moved to the student center. The cops barred many trying to enter "because they were not Columbia students." The handful of Columbia students who did gain entry were forced out because they "did not have invitations"!

The crowd outside continued rallying and chanting, despite the rain and cold weather. PLP'ers leafleted, sold CHALLENGE and made some contacts and new friends. In the end Horowitz's racist pro-American garbage was not heard by many people because the College Republicans' poorly-advertised RSVP system for the event effectively shut out not only protesters but a much broader audience.

Now we will follow up our contacts as well as other students involved in organizing the event so that we can build a more sustained movement to fight not only racism at Columbia, but the racism of Columbia.

MASS STRIKES, UNION BETRAYAL MARK FRANCE CLASS STRUGGLE

PARIS, October 26 -- The October 18 nation-wide strike of thousands of transport and utility workers revealed both the strength and the weakness of the working class in France. Strength in the strike's potential: 73.5% of the railroad workers went out, as did 58% of the Paris commuter train workers and 45% of the gas and electricity workers. These percentages greatly exceeded past strikes to defend workers' pensions. Accompanying protest marches in dozens of cities totaled 300,000 demonstrators. But weakness was seen in the complete sellout by union misleaders and their deal with right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy. The workers showed tremendous fighting spirit, but all in vain.

Workers here are taking a beating. Sarkozy is successfully playing the union hacks against one another, taking away 60 years of gains.

On September 9, French Prime Minister François Fillon announced that the government had -- without negotiations -- already arbitrarily written the law eliminating the special retirement plans that were established to compensate for hardships endured by railroad, commuter-train, gas and electrical workers and sailors, among others. They allow retirement at 50 or 55.

In 1995, Prime Minister Alain Juppé attempted a similar attack, but two months of strikes, especially among railroad workers, forced him to back down.

Ending these special benefits is a necessary first step in the bosses' breaking the working class's unity and fighting spirit, since next year the government intends to raise the years of dues-paying required for full retirement from the present 40 to 41 (effective in 2012).

Most union hacks reacted mildly, one favoring "progressively changing" the retirement plans instead of abolishing them, while another tried to play Sarkozy against Fillon.

But Christian Mathieu, a leader of the SUD-Rail trade union, denounced Fillon's announcement as a "declaration of war" and called for a strike, forcing the others to participate to save their credibility.

They immediately sabotaged the strike. The CFDT and the CGT unions (which, combined, comprise over half of France's 1.8 million union members) limited the strike to those directly benefiting from the special retirement plans, and then for just one day.

Clearly, then, the railroad workers would spearhead the strike, especially the train crews; 87% of the train crews support three unions: the CGT, SUD-Rail and the FGAAC (a narrow craft union of train crew workers). If the FGAAC workers scabbed, it would break the strike.

On October 17, Sarkozy secretly offered FGAAC general secretary Bruno Duchemin's train crews retirement at 55 (instead of 50) while the other rail workers would retire at 60 (not 55). After allowing the FGAAC to strike on October 18, Duchemin called it off, hailing the sellout of his own union's members and of all workers as a great victory.

This betrayal broke the back of the strike movement, enabling the CGT and CFDT to stick to their losing one-day walkout strategy. Following strike balloting by several workers' general assemblies, SUD-Rail, UNSA and FO, representing 35% of the rail workers, nonetheless called for the strike to continue. For the next five days, rail traffic remained disrupted in the Paris area and two outlying regions.

On October 22, the union hacks said they would give the government nine days to revise its attack on the special retirement plans or risk another one-day walkout. They've abandoned keeping these pensions intact. Instead, they will mimic the FGAAC, hailing the government's takeaways as a "triumph," arguing that "it could have been worse." These spineless bureaucrats are wasting the energy and self-sacrifice of the working class in France.

Unfortunately, CHALLENGE was exactly right in its prediction (5/23) following the French presidential elections: "The working class here faces a period of sharpening struggle.... Years of reformist politics and business unionism have taken their toll. The union hacks won't fight against the massive capitalist attacks on workers or against racism and imperialist preparations for endless wars. Only dedicated revolutionary work to strengthen class consciousness can rebuild the unity and combativeness the working class needs."

One bright spot was the October 20 demonstrations defending immigrant workers. Some 3,000 marched in Paris while demonstrations occurred in 30 other cities. Two days later, one charge against schoolteacher and immigrant rights activist Florimond Guimard (see CHALLENGE, 10/31) of "willful violence with a weapon, to wit a vehicle" was dropped, but he still stands accused of "resisting the police."

Seven federations of civil servants have called for a one-day public-sector strike on November 20, demanding higher wages, jobs and defense of social services. Five of the teachers' craft unions joined the movement, notably to condemn the government's plan to axe 11,200 education jobs next year. This strike can help workers regain their self-confidence and militancy.

However, only much bigger, longer and tougher strikes have a chance of breaking the government attacks. For that to happen, traitorous union hacks must be dumped. Lasting victory can only come from smashing the government and the capitalist system it represents. For that, workers, soldiers and students must organize for communist revolution.

Imperialist Rivalry Over Oil Behind Myanmar Turmoil

An eerie calm has settled over Myanmar (Burma), the recent scene of massive demonstrations against its military junta, led by saffron-robed Buddhists who were squashed brutally by the army and armed goons. It is the calm before more storms ahead because Myanmar is a bone of contention in the intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry.

Two things have put it in the imperialists' cross-hairs: its rich natural resources -- abundant timber, minerals, hydropower, oil and gas -- and its strategic location. Energy security and total control of the sea lanes across which this energy is transported is an imperative for the major imperialist powers bent on world domination.

As this struggle heats up, the capitalist/imperialists are mercilessly attacking the international working class. Myanmar is a vivid example: 90% of its 50 million members of working-class families earn under $300 a year, spending 70-80% of that on food alone. A 500% increase in oil prices triggered the latest unrest, hiking inflation 35%. Nothing short of communist revolution can eliminate this crushing poverty and capitalism's oppressive rule.

U.S. rulers' main strategy is control of Myanmar, to militarize the Strait of Malacca, thereby controlling the sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, over which 15 million barrels of oil travel daily. Through this narrow passage, between Malaysia and Indonesia, must pass 80% of China's imported oil. With possible war with China looming on the horizon, U.S. rulers must militarize the strait in order to control China's energy supplies.

Therefore, since 1989 their main political agenda in Myanmar has been "non-violent" regime change. Working through its humanitarian-sounding fronts, the U.S. State Department has been recruiting and training Myanmar's opposition leaders. Its latest attempt, the "Saffron Revolution," has failed thus far. According to Asian Times on-line ("The geopolitical stakes of `Saffron Revolution'," 10/24/07), this effort was being directed from the U.S. Consulate General in bordering Thailand.

Russian and Chinese imperialists are fighting the U.S. over Myanmar, working together to maintain the current rulers, although for different reasons. Russia wants to control the gas and oil resources to further its goal of becoming the European Union's (EU) main provider and distributor of energy, expanding its political and economic interest into the East. U.S. rulers are trying desperately to break Russia's energy chokehold on the EU, to get the Europeans on board for present and future wars.

ARMS FOR OIL

In 2001, Russia sold Myanmar -- reeling under U.S. sanctions -- 15 Mig-29 Fulcrum aircraft. It has recently agreed to build Myanmar a nuclear research center and install an advanced air defense system. In exchange, Russia gets to bid on future oil and gas exploration and production concessions. Presently, Russian and Chinese oil companies are producing Myanmar's off-shore oil deposits. Nevertheless, Russian military bases here will be aimed at countering both U.S. influence and eventually China's growing power.

Aware of U.S. strategy, China is actively seeking to build oil and gas pipelines in Myanmar, one to transport gas from Myanmar and the other to carry Middle Eastern and African oil across Myanmar into China, by-passing the Straits of Malacca. China is also building other ports and bases in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan to project its naval power far into the strategic Indian Ocean.

China is using its clout as the junta's biggest commercial partner and main arms provider to access Myanmar's resources. Myanmar has signed on to supply China 6.5 trillion cubic feet of gas over the next 30 years. Big hydropower projects are also planned.

With other capitalists/imperialists -- Australia, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, U. S. and Thailand -- having their hands on Myanmar's energy resources, the situation is bound to explode. Regional wars will give way to global war.

This scourge can only be eradicated by eliminating the profit system with communist revolution. Myanmar workers once opted for communism. The Communist Party of Burma, until it self-destructed in 1989, had tens of thousands under arms and millions of followers. Several times it nearly captured power. Its internal weaknesses, the same ones afflicting the old communist movement, caused its demise. But the working class of Myanmar and the world will opt for communist revolution again, this time for good.

An eerie calm has settled over Myanmar (Burma), the recent scene of massive demonstrations against its military junta, led by saffron-robed Buddhists who were squashed brutally by the army and armed goons. It is the calm before more storms ahead because Myanmar is a bone of contention in the intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry.

Two things have put it in the imperialists' cross-hairs: its rich natural resources -- abundant timber, minerals, hydropower, oil and gas -- and its strategic location. Energy security and total control of the sea lanes across which this energy is transported is an imperative for the major imperialist powers bent on world domination.

As this struggle heats up, the capitalist/imperialists are mercilessly attacking the international working class. Myanmar is a vivid example: 90% of its 50 million members of working-class families earn under $300 a year, spending 70-80% of that on food alone. A 500% increase in oil prices triggered the latest unrest, hiking inflation 35%. Nothing short of communist revolution can eliminate this crushing poverty and capitalism's oppressive rule.

U.S. rulers' main strategy is control of Myanmar, to militarize the Strait of Malacca, thereby controlling the sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, over which 15 million barrels of oil travel daily. Through this narrow passage, between Malaysia and Indonesia, must pass 80% of China's imported oil. With possible war with China looming on the horizon, U.S. rulers must militarize the strait in order to control China's energy supplies.

Therefore, since 1989 their main political agenda in Myanmar has been "non-violent" regime change. Working through its humanitarian-sounding fronts, the U.S. State Department has been recruiting and training Myanmar's opposition leaders. Its latest attempt, the "Saffron Revolution," has failed thus far. According to Asian Times on-line ("The geopolitical stakes of `Saffron Revolution'," 10/24/07), this effort was being directed from the U.S. Consulate General in bordering Thailand.

Russian and Chinese imperialists are fighting the U.S. over Myanmar, working together to maintain the current rulers, although for different reasons. Russia wants to control the gas and oil resources to further its goal of becoming the European Union's (EU) main provider and distributor of energy, expanding its political and economic interest into the East. U.S. rulers are trying desperately to break Russia's energy chokehold on the EU, to get the Europeans on board for present and future wars.

ARMS FOR OIL

In 2001, Russia sold Myanmar -- reeling under U.S. sanctions -- 15 Mig-29 Fulcrum aircraft. It has recently agreed to build Myanmar a nuclear research center and install an advanced air defense system. In exchange, Russia gets to bid on future oil and gas exploration and production concessions. Presently, Russian and Chinese oil companies are producing Myanmar's off-shore oil deposits. Nevertheless, Russian military bases here will be aimed at countering both U.S. influence and eventually China's growing power.

Aware of U.S. strategy, China is actively seeking to build oil and gas pipelines in Myanmar, one to transport gas from Myanmar and the other to carry Middle Eastern and African oil across Myanmar into China, by-passing the Straits of Malacca. China is also building other ports and bases in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan to project its naval power far into the strategic Indian Ocean.

China is using its clout as the junta's biggest commercial partner and main arms provider to access Myanmar's resources. Myanmar has signed on to supply China 6.5 trillion cubic feet of gas over the next 30 years. Big hydropower projects are also planned.

With other capitalists/imperialists -- Australia, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, U. S. and Thailand -- having their hands on Myanmar's energy resources, the situation is bound to explode. Regional wars will give way to global war.

This scourge can only be eradicated by eliminating the profit system with communist revolution. Myanmar workers once opted for communism. The Communist Party of Burma, until it self-destructed in 1989, had tens of thousands under arms and millions of followers. Several times it nearly captured power. Its internal weaknesses, the same ones afflicting the old communist movement, caused its demise. But the working class of Myanmar and the world will opt for communist revolution again, this time for good.

Auto Workers Spread PLP Ideas

DETROIT, MI, October 25 -- After two weeks of fighting plant-to-plant and local-to-local, the UAW leadership finally overcame rank-and-file resistance, giving Chrysler the new contract it wanted. PLP was a small part of that resistance as Chrysler workers helped distribute PLP literature in their plants and local unions. Barely half the workers approved the deal, which slashes starting pay to $14/hour, creates "non-core" tier jobs that can further lower wages and be farmed out, slashes new workers' retiree benefits and relieves Chrysler of its health care responsibilities.

Ford's deal is next. GM hired 3,000 workers at $14/hour before the ink was dry on its new deal.

No doubt the UAW leadership will be better prepared to ram this sellout down Ford workers' throats. But Ford workers may have "a better idea." Their response to our modest efforts has increased CHALLENGE circulation; hundreds at one assembly plant took PLP fliers and CHALLENGE at shift change. Many paid for them by dropping money in the can entering their union meeting. By establishing CHALLENGE networks and helping distribute contract fliers on the inside, Ford workers are paving the road to joining PLP.

International competition among the auto billionaires and the growing challenges to U.S. bosses have set the "pattern" for these auto talks. We cannot yet alter that balance of forces. But by fighting for future generations and uniting with auto workers worldwide, we can build new leadership on the shop floor. By spreading CHALLENGE and PLP's ideas to more workers, we can understand how the world works, and how to change it!

VIRUS CAUSES AIDS, CAPITALISM CAUSES EPIDEMIC

WASHINGTON, DC -- Activists led by the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association's Health Disparities Committee and DC Fights Back are organizing against District of Columbia's HIV/AIDS epidemic rate that's similar to the 5% in Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. On November 3, we marched in Southeast Washington, DC to the corner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Avenues to organize more working-class struggle against this disease and its social and economic causes.

Two Progressive Labor Party members help lead this work. We have won many public health students and friends to begin to rely on the working class as the main force for change by bringing them to the streets of working-class neighborhoods. We and another activist distribute CHALLENGE during these activities. Workers need CHALLENGE'S communist analysis since, although AIDS may be caused by a virus, the AIDS epidemic is caused by capitalism and imperialism. Such oppression requires revolutionary change.

Communists offer a society in which everyone can work creatively to contribute to each other's well-being. No elite profit-hungry enslaving bosses for us! To achieve communism will take a lot of work and eventually violent working-class struggle. Fighting against the racism of HIV and poverty will help workers unite and gain the strength necessary to seize power.

For two years, health professionals, students, community advocates, people living with HIV, people fighting addictions, gay and straight, black and white have conducted monthly street outreach and community discussions in the communities most affected by HIV, drugs and unemployment. We sit at tables on the corners, walk the streets, staff health fairs and sponsor community meetings where we listen and learn from each other.

Working-class residents have thanked us for caring and have taken thousands of condoms; hundreds have given us their names and numbers. They have told us that what they really need is affordable housing, jobs, activities for youth and drug treatment -- and some have told us that a complete overthrow of the system is needed! We are building a mass movement to expand the struggle against disease by demanding better housing and job opportunities. Public health activists call these the "social determinants of health."

HIV may be the strongest example of unequal conditions in society. It affects the poorest people in the world the most heavily. In the United States, black and Latino workers have the highest burden of HIV. Over 75 percent of new AIDS sufferers are black. HIV is the leading cause of death for young black women! Social and economic factors drive the HIV epidemic. Poverty and unemployment fuel the drug trade, leading to huge percentages of black workers in prison or unable to work. Housing instability is one of the main predictors of HIV and AIDS. Living on the street or moving from couch to couch is risky. No job means no steady income and no opportunity to contribute to society. Depression and substance abuse make people more likely to suffer from infections as well as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. We are in a fight for survival against the ruling class and their politicians who spend over $700 million dollars a day in Iraq, build baseball stadiums and call $400,000 condominiums "affordable housing".

Strategies for Change

Many of the strong activists in our work believe that working with or changing the politicians in power will help us. Our fight against this illusion is gaining some traction, especially as we turn to the working-class as the alternative power to change things! Building stronger relationships in this working-class community can lead to sharp struggle against the rulers and their apologists. The War on Poverty in the 1960s or the newer emphasis on NGOs and community- and faith-based organizations have not and will not turn the tide. The same rich industrialists and financiers control our wages, employment, schools, ideological indoctrination, health systems and foreign policies. It is more unrealistic to think that capitalism can change its racist exploitative character than it is to know that workers' revolution can win!

March Against Racist Oakland Cop Murder of Black Youth

OAKLAND, CA., October 27 -- Several friends and members of PLP attended a rally protesting the police assassination of 20-year-old Gary King, Jr. Cop Gonzales called Gary over for "questioning" with the excuse, "He looked like a murder suspect." After an argument and a struggle, Gary was tazered, broke loose and ran away in broad daylight in the afternoon. Gonzales drew his gun and shot him twice in the back.

The family and some youth marched from the neighborhood where Gary was murdered to City Hall demanding the Mayor charge cop Gonzales with murder and bring him to justice. Gary's young friends were upset, angry and frustrated; a memorial at the site of Gary's murder said, "The Police did this."

The City Hall marches and campaign continue. Gary's Dad told us, "I don't know how to handle this...but these marches help me with the grieving." A nursing student and Gary's high school classmate made a sign reading, "Oakland Police, Stop Killing Our Friends!" She remarked on our Jena 6 T-shirt and we compared the similarities between the white-supremacist KKK justice in Jena and the black-run justice system here. A friend at the rally spoke about the fear she wakes with every day that her teenage sons will end up dead from a cop murder or the general violence among youngsters on the streets.

But weighing most heavily was what to do about this killer cop. Gonzales has been involved in two previous shootings of young people; one died and one is paralyzed. He's on paid leave after this incident but may well return to Oakland's streets to kill again.

Thirty years ago PLP members helped organize a similar march to protest the murder of Tyrone Guiton, a 14-year-old victim of the racist Oakland cops. There have been many police murders since. Now, Ron Dellums, ex-1960's radical, ex-Congressman and Black Congressional Caucus leader, is Mayor. His office responded by locking up City Hall in the face of the angry crowd of 40 or so protesters. So much for Dellum's claim to "leadership" in the fight against the marginalization of Oakland's black and Latino youth.

Thirty years of elections of a largely black political leadership here has not stopped jailing black youth, unemployment, and skyrocketing real estate prices pushing the poor out or crumbling schools. Capitalism marches on - a murderous system killing youth from New Orleans to Baghdad!

At this rally, at Gary's funeral and on the job in transit our organizing uncovered tremendous ambivalence about the causes behind Oakland's soaring murder rate, whether youth killing youth in gang\drug activity or police harassment\murder of black youth. Co-workers at AC Transit and MUNI, and even our passengers, often comment on "the sad state of our youth," or "what happened to respect." But in the next breath they make comments like: "But...there really is nothing out there for them; "Things were different when we were young. ...We had some hope, some jobs...a future!"

Many drivers do recognize that the bar has been raised to exclude young people from working. Previously, a class 2 license was sufficient for a job at AC or MUNI, a job many young people wanted. Now transit agencies turn younger workers down, even with the proper license in hand, if they have one violation in the last five years, like "running a stop sign." A younger black driver said, "It was different even seven years ago when I got this job. I have to argue with people all the time - it's not the kids...it's the system."

Such comments from transit workers can be a springboard to a generalized conclusion that capitalism depends on racism. We put communism on the agenda in this struggle. In the context of police murders and destruction of our community, we present the communist alternative of production for need, not for profit, to remove the economic basis for racism.

Some of our co-workers see how maintaining a system that puts profits first leads to police assassinations and gang/drug killings. They want to take this on since community, family and job are intertwined. Our Local is in the middle of a contract fight for lunch breaks and rest periods which would improve the drivers' schedules and create jobs. At the union meeting we asked who would get these jobs? A union committee could provide "mentoring" for the younger, unemployed "potential" bus drivers. This is an area in which we can unite with co-workers and youth to take on the racist institutions of capitalism.

LETTERS

Racist Attack in Spain
Hallmark of Capitalism

The recent kick in the face and groping of a young Ecuadorean immigrant by a racist thug on a commuter train here revealed the extent of racism in Spain. This racist attack became worldwide news because it was filmed by a train's videocamera. The young girl (a minor) was so traumatized and fearful that she refused to leave her house and denounce the attack until it became public. But the young punk is out on bail and now claims he was "drunk" and "doesn't remember a thing."

Such attacks are not isolated. They occur daily throughout Spain. Local authorities and politicians in some areas openly support these racist gangs. But the biggest racist attack immigrant workers suffer is the super-exploitation of their labor, with miserable wages and in many cases semi-slave-like working conditions.

The union hacks and the official "left" refuse to fight racism but openly collaborate with the bosses' attacks on the entire working class -- selling out strikes and militant actions by rank-and-file workers. This has prevented some young workers from seeing that unity with all workers -- not joining racist neo-Nazi gangs -- is the only way out of the alienation and misery of capitalism.

Leaders of immigrant workers' organizations are also partly to blame. They prefer to separate themselves from all workers in Spain in order to get some public crumbs (grants, etc.) from the authorities.

The fragmentation of the working class here is a big problem -- strengthened by the division of workers into different regional areas (Basques, Catalonians, Galicians, etc.). The racist and national oppression under capitalism can only be fought with the multi-racial and multi-national unity of Spain's entire working class. This unity is now more crucial than ever since the subprime and other crises hitting world capitalism (real estate speculation was huge here, as in the U.S., the UK, Ireland, etc.) are causing Spain's economy to reel.

Racism is a universal aspect of capitalism, from Jena, Louisiana, to Barcelona. We must fight it with an internationalist ideology and anti-racist unity of the working class. That has been the politics PLP and CHALLENGE have fought for since its beginning. Join us!

International anti-racist

The Bosses Don't Care About Workers' Lives or Deaths

"You went early two days in a row," the boss accused me. I tried to answer, "Yes, but..." He interrupted me. "I don't want explanations. I don't care about your problems, and if you miss one more day, don't come back to work!" Then he asked if I liked my job. I answered, "I need to work to pay my bills." He looked at me, annoyed, and asked me again. I made the same answer. He got madder, "You don't understand. My question is if you're happy with your job." My answer continued the same and I got up, asking, "is that all, or do you have another question?" This was two days after I received a call explaining that my best friend's mother had died. After this call I immediately told my supervisor that I had to leave work early to be with my friend and co-worker. The next day I only worked 7 hours and returned to my friend's house to be at her side. That's why my boss had called me to his office for this conversation.

When I got back to my work area, my friends asked what happened with the boss. I explained and they gave me their support, telling me not to pay any attention to him and not to come to work the next day, the day of the funeral. But since I'm a worker in this system of wage slavery, I couldn't risk being fired from my job and decided not to go to the funeral. I couldn't support my friend at this difficult moment, which was a very bitter experience for me.

The next day, while I was cleaning my machine to end the day, my supervisor asked me to stay and work overtime. The boss came and told me I had to stay because they had an urgent order. I interrupted him, "I don't want explanations. I don't care about your problems." He laughed, but with anger on his face, while he tried to make it into a joke, but he knew what I meant. I went home without working more that day.

I'm an industrial worker with a short time in the Party, but these experiences have made me think more about the need to build the Party among the workers to fight against abuse and exploitation. I've learned that while we need our jobs, the bosses need us more, and we shouldn't allow oppression or discrimination against women workers, or any workers. To achieve this, we need to win workers' power. That's why I'm willing to help build the PLP, the Party of the workers.

A woman industrial worker

Pacifism Takes Beating at Anti-War Action

"Honk if you oppose imperialist oil wars and want the troops home today!" Many drivers honked in approval.

PL members in Stockton, CA, are active in the Peace and Justice Network. Every Thursday evening from 5:00 to 6:30 we demonstrate with anti-war signs on a busy street in front of San Joaquin Delta College.

We have distributed CHALLENGE to members of the Peace and Justice Network, sparking sharp political discussions on pacifism, racism, nationalism, imperialism and war.

One Peace and Justice member defended the position of non-violence. When we raised the question of self-defense, he screamed, red-faced, "NO VIOLENCE, NO VIOLENCE," saying, "I won't be associated with anyone who stands for violence."

A retired longshoreman asked about the 1934 General Strike "when workers were confronted with mass police violence". Then we asked, "What would you do if confronted by the violence of the KKK or the Nazis?" The question wasn't answered, but it opened the door to further discussion.

One Peace and Justice member used to bring a large U.S. flag to the anti-war demonstrations. When challenged about this he replied, "This is my flag." We said, "It's not our flag; we support the international working class." The next demonstration he brought the U.N. flag and then stopped bringing any flags. Next we need to bring the red flag. Several times this member has discussed the dignity of all workers.

We've linked these activities to our involvement with students in the MECHA (a Latino students organization) club at the college. We won them to show a series of anti-war films, including the anti-racist, anti-imperialist "Sir, No Sir."

One MECHA member was a Marine in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. He comes from a military family, several of whom served in the Marine Corps. They were committed to serving the interests of U.S. nationalism. But overseas the massive death and destruction he saw for the profits of U.S. oil companieschanged his thinking. Upon returning here he became very active in the anti-war movement.

Another MECHA member designed a very powerful anti-war graphic we've used on leaflets at our public demonstrations.

We plan to increase CHALLENGE sales and form a study group to help create a more revolutionary communist consciousness.

Stockton PL Club

Chicago Transit Workers Fight Doomsday Cuts

CHICAGO, IL, October 29 -- "Why are you talking about the Olympics? We need transit now!" That's what one handicapped mass transit rider yelled at the Congressional sub-committee holding hearings about the mass transit needs of Chicago hosting the 2016 Olympic games. Meanwhile, about 60 riders and bus operators rallied against the "doomsday" cuts due this week. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is scheduled to slash 39 bus routes and raise fares by $1 on November 4, with even bigger service cuts and fare hikes next January, unless the state supplies $110 million in new funding. Metra commuter rail and Pace regional bus service face similar cuts.

But even the new funding demanded by the CTA, Mayor Daley, and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) leadership will come at the expense of the workers, especially newly-hired transit workers. In a very slick move, the CTA and ATU Locals 241 (bus) and 308 (rail) sent their contract negotiations to arbitration. The arbitrator's decision slashes pay and benefits, extends the number of years required for retirement and ends pensions and retiree healthcare for workers hired under this new contract. As many as 1,500 current part-timers can be laid off and rehired as permanent workers subject to the new give-back contract. Once the state agrees to fund the system, the new arbitrated contract automatically goes into effect, bypassing an angry workforce, with service cuts and fare hikes in force.

These racist cuts, attacking an overwhelmingly black workforce and a mainly black and Latino workforce, and similar to the Cook County healthcare cuts, reflect the strain on the bosses' economy caused by the $12 billion-a-month war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the crises rocking the Chicago Police Department (see next CHALLENGE), it also reflects some serious in-fighting among the bosses. While we can't turn the tide against the bosses yet, we can fight these cuts and in doing so, expand CHALLENGE circulation. That in the long run, will build the revolutionary movement that can derail the racist war-makers and strike-breakers. (More next issue.)

BBQ Builds Workers' Solidarity and PLP

Recently our PL industrial club organized a BBQ to close our industrial Summer Project. Going early to help prepare food and set up I asked, "How many chairs did we rent?" "40," came the reply. Wow, I was quite surprised. "Why so many?" I asked. "We're not really expecting that many people, are we?" "Better to have too many," he said, "than not enough."

People started arriving -- family first, then friends, then the family of our friends. Our co-workers brought their wives, brothers, sisters, children, mothers and friends. Everyone from the PL club brought people with them. It was a great working-class crowd! Some came early and others later -- a good thing, because it gave us more time to talk with them and their families than if they all came at once. Besides, to my surprise we wouldn't have had enough chairs!

After the majority of people had arrived, while everyone was enjoying the food, a comrade spoke about workers' solidarity, the striking GM workers, the Jena 6, the need for working-class solidarity and how racism affects all workers. Everyone obviously liked this, judging from the clapping that followed.

My own friends had a really good time. After a while, they got carried away in conversation with some other comrades. The conversation continued for hours, about culture, history and revolution in political films, Latin America, as well as the need for winning industrial workers and soldiers to fight for communism. They talked through dinner and dessert. These discussions enabled me to get to know the partner of one of my friends better. Eventually contact information was exchanged between some friends and other comrades while new friends from other factories were made.

My friends stayed until after dark, despite having to get up early for work the next morning. They helped us clean up and contributed money to help pay for the BBQ. One worker gave $20 for the Jena 6.

The friend who organized the event not only hosted it but made sure it was successful, that workers met other workers and their families and friends.

In addition to getting new CHALLENGE readers, two study groups that were "in the works" were solidified throughout the day.

The friends who came were happily surprised overall by the collective feeling at the BBQ. Friends greeted some comrades the next day at work with warm, firm handshakes, and sincere "Thank yous."

This event is just one more sign that we're on the right track: building ties every day while putting forward our politics primary in a bold way, a successful combination for our industrial club. Our confidence and our CHALLENGE network have grown. This has helped lay the basis for the work that remains to be done.

An industrial comrade

REDEYE REDEYE

Capitalist-era wars center on oil

Of course, the war is about oil. Virtually all wars of the modern, industrial era are about oil at some level. They're about other things too...but oil is always in the equation someplace.

Remember 1991 when we invaded Iraq for the first time? Ostensibly we were doing it to protect the freedom of Kuwait, whose oil fields had been taken over by Saddam. But....When the predictable public outcry arose over trading "blood for oil," [the Secretary of State said . . . .] It was really about truth and justice and democracy blah, blah, blah....Our wars are always about freedom and justice....

We forget that before Japan's "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor we had cut the nation off from high-grade scrap iron, aircraft fuel and, finally, oil. Those acts, however justified, threatened Japan's economic existence and made war inevitable.

And the genesis of our hostile relations in Iran dates from 1953 when a CIA-backed coup overthrew its elected leader, the deeply strange anti-American Mohammad Mossadeg, and installed our puppet, the Shah of Iran, who ruled for us with an iron hand. Mossadeg's greatest crime? He expropriated British oil interests.

Countries fight wars over oil and always will....look at it from the policy-makers' point of view. It's other people's blood. (MinutemanMedia.org, 10/4)

We can't `fight nice' vs. fascism

Eric D. Weitz's "Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy"....praises the republic's achievements in the 1920s and condemns its murderers: the right-wing businessmen, army officers and civil servants who handed the country over to the Nazis....

The republic's mistake, Weitz argues, was its failure to [annihilate] its conservative enemies at the beginning. This is a disquieting view because it can lead to the conclusion that the moderation of the German socialists was a mistake, whereas the [dictatorship] of the Russian Bolsheviks demonstrated what successful leftists had to do to prevail over their opponents. (NYT, 10/21)

Re-enlistment is a phony statistic

Supposedly impressive re-enlistment rates are cited as evidence that soldiers enthusiastically support the war effort. In reality, these retention numbers are more the result of the "stop-loss" policy, where soldiers are required to remain in the Army after their contracts have expired if their units are deployed or ordered to deploy soon. My platoon's infantrymen expected to be "stop-lossed" and some felt they might as well cash in on the re-enlistment bonuses if they were going to be forced to stay in the Army anyway. (NYT, 10/20)

Immigrant policy "works", -- for bosses

To the Editor:

Your editorial argues that the current immigration policy, of catching a few undocumented workers and harrassing and frightening the rest, cannot work. On the contrary, it works perfectly.

The purpose of federal immigration policy, or lack of such, is not to protect the moral rights of immigrants -- it is to maintain long hours, low wages, non-existent benefits and a complete lack of job security as the national labor standard. (NYT, 10/24)

Next prez won't be anti-imperialist

On Iraq, each of those candidates...identified as electable, now says that the U.S. must stay in Iraq or the surrounding region with large military forces, not just after the 2008 election, but that of 2016 -- beyond two more presidential terms -- so as to "prevent chaos"....

The apparent debate that takes place in America on Sunday mornings on television, or in the national press, and in the Congress, is really a knockabout vaudeville performance without serious content: both sides in essential respects are on the same side. (William Pfaff, Tribune Media, 10/4)

Burma `rebel' would keep army rule

...The Burmese Army's....energies go into a bigger task: running Myanmar.... The military, known as the Tatmadaw, now permeates Myanmar, controlling virtually every institution and most business enterprises....

Even if the ruling junta is removed, it is most likely to be replaced by another military government....

The junta's chief opponent, the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has acknowledged that, saying any future government must involve the military. (NYT, 10/7)

Bolshevik Revolution: Workers Took Power; Can Do It Again

Ninety years ago, November 7, 1917, marked the beginning of the single most important event of the 20th century, the Bolshevik revolution, which directly inspired the Chinese revolution and anti-imperialist struggles around the world from Vietnam to Africa to Latin America.

Russia's working class, headed by the revolutionary communists of the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, freed one-sixth of the world's surface from capitalism. They proved once and for all that it was possible to strive for a world without exploitation, where those who produce all value, the working class, can enjoy the fruits of their labor and not have it stolen by a few parasitical bosses and their lackeys.

The Russian revolution was the first serious attempt by workers and peasants to seize, hold and consolidate state power. Even though capitalism has returned to the former Soviet Union, workers will not forget that the Soviet working class defeated capitalism in 1917; smashed the imperialist armies of 17 countries (including Japan, the U.S., Britain, France, among others) which invaded Russia in 1918 to try to crush the revolution; freed the masses, especially women, from the yoke of capitalist, feudal and religious oppression; and then in 1945 defeated the mightiest and most barbaric army the capitalists had ever organized: the Nazi Wehrmacht.

The revolution frightened the world's bosses, who immediately sent armies from 17 countries to try -- in Churchill's words -- to "strangle it in the cradle." From 1918 to 1923, millions of workers led by the Red Army defeated the imperialists' counter-revolution. Nearly five million died in that battle, many of whom were the most committed workers the revolution had produced. Lenin himself died because of injuries inflicted by a hired killer.

The masses showed great courage and determination to defend and build their revolution, under the leadership of their revolutionary party. They proved that the revolutionary violence on the part of the working class and peasantry were vital to the seizure of state power.

Achievements of the Revolution

The Bolshevik Revolution brought Russia to heights of productive development that capitalism, given a similar time period and circumstances, could never have dreamed of. Bringing the working class to power, the Revolution coordinated their social-economic efforts for the production and exchange of the necessities, the comforts and even some luxuries of life, making them available to all. The Soviet system of production was for use, not for profit. This can only be accomplished by abolishing capitalist profits and the private ownership of property, with its exploitation, poverty, unemployment, racism, fascism and imperialist wars.

In the 1930s, when the entire capitalist world sank into depression, and tens of millions worldwide were left jobless and starving (much like today), the Soviet Union was forging ahead building a new society without unemployment and hunger. They created some measure of a decent life for workers in an incredibly short time, transforming a 90% illiteracy rate into one in which nearly everyone was literate.

Around 1938, without any official declaration, the USSR had achieved the era of free bread. One could enter a cafeteria, order little or nothing, and receive all the bread one wanted. You needed, you received -- at least to that extent. Even during a drive for heavy industry, living standards rose strikingly when the rest of the world was mired in the Great Depression.

The Soviet Union not only freed workers but also fought against racism and sexism. The battle against racism was particularly significant. As pro-communist Paul Robeson said about his trips to the Soviet Union, he "felt like a human being for the first time since I grew up. Here I am not a Negro but a human being. Before I came I could hardly believe that such a thing could be.... Here, for the first time in my life, I walk in full human dignity."

Heroic Fight Against the Nazis

In 1941, the bosses again tried to destroy the revolution. Hitler, using all of Europe's resources and the largest military machine ever assembled, invaded the Soviet Union with four million troops. They discovered the Soviets were no pushover as occurred in Western Europe. Hitler's prediction -- endorsed by western military "experts" -- of capturing Moscow in six weeks went up in smoke.

Nazi troops found total destruction and desolation in every captured city or town -- the "scorched earth" policy. Soviet defenders burned everything to the ground that they could not take with them and then organized armed resistance behind enemy lines: the Partisans.

Over 6,000 factories were dismantled and moved east of the Ural Mountains, re-assembled to produce weapons again, a feat requiring total unity and support of Soviet workers, unmatched by any country, before or since. Soviet soldiers and workers fought for Stalingrad block-by-block, house-by-house and room-by-room to halt the "unbeatable" Nazi invaders. Workers in arms factories produced weapons 24 hours a day for the Red Army, working 12-hour shifts. When Nazi troops captured factories, heroic Soviet workers and soldiers would re-take them.

The entire German Sixth Army and 24 of Hitler's generals were surrounded and killed or captured in the battle of Stalingrad. Never again would the Nazis mount a successful offensive against the Red Army. Stalingrad was truly the turning point of the Second World War. Not until the Nazis were on the run following their defeats at Stalingrad and in the Battle of the Kursk -- the biggest armored battle in world history, involving millions of soldiers and 6,000 tanks -- did the U.S.-U.K. forces invade Western Europe. It was the communist-led Soviet Union that smashed the Nazis, the largest and most powerful army ever mounted by a capitalist power.

All this was accomplished under the leadership of Josef Stalin. No wonder he is reviled to this day by world capitalism.

Lessons to Be Learned

Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks suffered from many political weaknesses which led to the return of capitalism to the USSR. From the beginning they believed that to achieve communism, first socialism had to be established, a belief Karl Marx had advanced. We have learned from that experience that socialism retained capitalism's wage system and therefore failed to wipe out many aspects of the profit system. Socialism put forward material incentives to the working class rather than political ones as the way to win workers to communism. We must win masses of workers to abolish capitalism's wage system and its division of labor and fight directly for communism.

Today no country is led by revolutionary communists, but this is a temporary historical setback. While this era of widening imperialist wars, fascist attacks on the working class, mass unemployment, diseases like AIDS killing millions in Africa and other areas, is upon us, every dark night has its end.

PLP is a product of both the old International Communist Movement and the struggle against its revisionism. Pseudo-leftist groups have not learned history's lessons and continue to fight for nationalist "sharing of power" with capitalists, a la Venezuela's Chavez, not for the working-class seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Our movement is daily fighting to learn from the Soviet Union's great battles and achievements as well as its deadly errors that led to its collapse, mainly that reformism, racism, nationalism and all forms of concessions to capitalism only lead workers to defeat. Give the ruling class an inch and they'll grab a mile.

We honor the bold fight by the workers of the Bolshevik Revolution against capitalism and for a working-class communist world. Today, we must organize workers, students and soldiers to build a mass worldwide working class Party that will turn this era of imperialist wars into a new, international communist revolution.

 

Gore Wins Nobel War Prize

Mass Outrage vs. Noose Hanging, Racist Columbia U.

a href="#Crumbling of Bosses’ Empire, Infrastructure Spurs Increasing Fascism">"rumbling of Bosses’ Empire, Infrastructure Spurs Increasing Fascism

a href="#Teachers Defy Edict Limiting Students’ Anti-Racist Activities">"eachers Defy Edict Limiting Students’ Anti-Racist Activities

a href="#Wildcat Protests Docker’s Death, Shuts Oakland’s Port">Wi"dcat Protests Docker’s Death, Shuts Oakland’s Port

Back Jena 6 in Union and in Boeing, Subcontractor Plants

Subcontractor Workers Link Jena 6 to Attacks on Immigrants

a href="#PL’ers Organize vs. Rulers’ Anti-Immigrant Raids">PL"ers Organize vs. Rulers’ Anti-Immigrant Raids

Mass Deportations — Big problem for U.S. Bosses

a href="#Fight Racist Cutbacks — Fire Sexist Food Service Boss!">"ight Racist Cutbacks — Fire Sexist Food Service Boss!

French Fascists on Racist Rampage vs. Immigrants

New Auto Contracts: Great Leap Backwards

Attack on Blackwater Assassins Cover to Sneak in Draft?

a href="#‘Reforms’ Prepare China’s Rulers for Showdown with U.S. Bosses">‘Ref"rms’ Prepare China’s Rulers for Showdown with U.S. Bosses

LETTERS

FMLN Betrayal Led Him to Fight for Communism

a href="#My Father Read DESAFIO, Now I’m a PL’er">My"Father Read DESAFIO, Now I’m a PL’er

Burma Junta Learned Brutality from British Imperialists

a href="#A Scab By Any Other Name….">" Scab By Any Other Name….

Imperialist Holocaust: Kills 58 Million Kids Around the World Since 9/11

War On Terror: A Cover For A War On Workers

PLP History: Anti-Racists United Boston Masses vs. Fascist ROAR

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Whiz-Bang Weaponry No Substitute for Political Commitment

---

Gore Wins Nobel War Prize

Just two days before Al Gore won the Nobel "Peace" Prize, the NY Times ran a full-page "Draft Gore" ad urging him to run for president. The prize and the award both reflect an increasing need felt by U.S. rulers for a wartime leader who can militarize the nation.

Neither the prize nor the ad fell from the sky. The Norwegian government handpicks the Nobel committee. A key U.S. ally in the Cold War, NATO stalwart Norway houses several U.S. military bases and has sent troops to Afghanistan. Norway does not belong to the European Union. U.S. companies are the largest single destination for the Nobel foundation’s considerable investments. U.S. war criminals Henry Kissinger, who advised Nixon to bomb his way out of Vietnam, and Jimmy Carter, who’s "Doctrine" about U.S. control of world oil led to the current Mid-East carnage, also received Nobels.

Draft Gore claims to be a grassroots operation. But it gained momentum after a May meeting of Gore "alumni" donors and aides at the Washington home of Peter Knight, a Gore fund-raiser who now toils for Shroders, an imperialist bank based in London.

A host of senior military officers, serving and retired, joined liberal pundits in lambasting Bush & Co.’s failure to mobilize enough troops for Iraq and Afghanistan. With wider Mid-East and global wars looming, U.S. rulers are turning to Gore. They hope the massive pro-capitalist, pro-government movement he leads against global warming can provide recruits for the armed forces and popular support for foreign interventions.

U.S. generals and admirals have already linked climate change to global security and demonized China as the worst polluter. Thomas Friedman, one of the Times’ many cheerleaders for U.S. imperialism, gushed over Gore’s award but concluded, "We still need a vision, a strategy, an army and a commander in the White House who can inspire young and old — not only to meet that challenge but to see in it the opportunity to make America a better, stronger and more productive nation." (NYT, 10/14)

Gore is now getting rich by partnering with a bunch of ex-Goldman Sachs execs in an investment firm. "Gore is a multimillionaire who has built a media and high-tech empire around himself and his environmental work….and is the chairman of…a cable network with 38 million subscribers…. He receives up to $175,000 per speaking appearance….Fast Company magazine has estimated his net worth at more than $100 million." (NYT, 10/13)

Gore may not want to forgo this cash for a White House bid. Whether he runs or not, however, the rulers’ war needs will persist and worsen. The Boston Globe (10/7/07) reports, "Defense Department statistics show the number of young black enlistees has fallen by more than 58 percent since fiscal year 2000." Poor black workers have long been a main source of the U.S. military’s cannon fodder. But the blatant racism of current U.S. wars hinders this economic draft.

Racist Attacks: Chickens Coming Home To Roost

The huge increase in blatant racist attacks domestically complicates the bosses’ need to enlist black youth. It is reflected in the arrests of the Jena Six (see CHALLENGE 10/17) and the racist "noose" culture which has spread from Louisiana to Columbia University to nearly a dozen other examples of this lynching symbol, one that divides the working class and threatens ALL workers.

Another racist factor limiting recruitment is that one of every three black males between ages 18 and 29 are either under arrest, incarcerated, or under the supervision of the criminal justice system. The proposed DREAM Act is targeting Latino youth for military service (see article, page 4). Gore’s mainly white, middle- and upper-class movement cannot solve this problem. U.S. rulers will have to restore the draft. The liberal Brookings Institute in its Opportunities ’08 series, advising the next president, urges mandatory "public service with a military option."

Supporting Gore, or any of the declared candidates for that matter, would be a serious political mistake. They all serve capitalists. The only real alternative is to help build a revolutionary communist party with the goal of eliminating the profit system that destroys the environment, just as it causes oil wars. This is the outlook of the Progressive Labor Party.

Biggest, Bloodiest Bosses Back Gore

Global warming, caused by capitalists’ profit-driven dependence on coal and oil, is a genuine problem. But the campaign Gore heads is a liberal fascist movement that pushes patriotic service to the state. Militarists and financiers run the show.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, the umbrella group Gore formed last year, has as co-directors Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who advised Bush, Sr. in Iraq Gulf War I, and hereditary imperialist Theodore Roosevelt IV, a managing director at Lehman Brothers bankers. Teddy IV also chairs the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Its backers include such heavyweights in U.S. capitalism’s (and its British junior partners’) worldwide empire as Alcoa, BP, Citigroup, DuPont, GE, IBM, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Shell and United Technologies. The profits of all these phony "friends of the earth" — many of whom have polluted it for over a century — depend heavily on U.S. military action in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Hope Pop Culture Will Mislead Masses

Gore’s warmaking supporters often hide their oily affiliations and use popular culture to lure sincere people into their camp. One member of Gore’s alliance is Control Room, which has produced and distributed more than 60 concerts with artists including Beyoncé, Madonna, Green Day, Dave Matthews Band, Keith Urban, James Blunt, Snoop Dogg and the Rolling Stones. Another is Participant Productions, a company focusing on "socially relevant, commercially viable feature films and documentaries." Participants’ titles include Al Gore’s Academy Award winner "An Inconvenient Truth," "Syriana," "Good Night and Good Luck," "North Country" and "Murderball." The group Campus Progress, which trains young liberal leaders, was started by the think-tank Center for American Progress and focuses on hoodwinking well-meaning students.

Mass Outrage vs. Noose Hanging, Racist Columbia U.

NEW YORK CITY, October 10 — Mimicking the racism in Jena, Louisiana, racists hung a noose symbolizing lynching on the door of a black faculty member, Madonna G. Constantine, at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Today, a couple hundred students, faculty and members of the Harlem community demonstrated on the steps of Teachers College to protest this racist act. After several speeches, the demonstration turned into a march around the campus that culminated in a forum of about 600 inside the college. PLP’ers joined the march, sold CHALLENGES and distributed leaflets. Many of the marchers carried signs linking the racism of this incident to that of the attack on the Jena Six.

Although students and professors were outraged and surprised at this noose hanging, there should be no surprise. This incident followed anti-Arab graffiti found in Columbia’s SIPA building, stating that "AMERICA is for WHITE EUROPEANS!" That was swept under the rug. Since the noose hanging, anti-Semitic graffiti was found in a university bathroom. President Lee Bollinger’s e-mail about it said we should just ignore such racist terror. But the noose incident was too blatant to ignore.

Columbia has a long racist history. Its faculty included W. H. Sheldon, who "theorized" that "Negro intelligence . . . [comes to a] standstill at about the 10th year," and that "Mexican intelligence" stops at age 12. It also included Henry Garrett, who wrote pro-segregation literature for the White Citizens Councils in the South. During the Vietnam War, Columbia’s racist weapons research helped slaughter Indochinese peasants. It seized part of a park in a black working-class neighborhood to build a gym for Columbia students. Current Columbia child psychiatrist Gail Wasserman carried out a variety of racist "violence-in-the-genes" research on black and Latin youth to "predict anti-social behavior."

Today, Columbia pushes its racist eminent domain expansion into Harlem. It sponsors anti-Arab speakers, including David Horowitz, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Chesler, and Ibn Warraq as part of their so-called "Islamo-fascism Awareness Week." It used the invitation to Iran’s president to provoke blatant anti-Muslim racism. The latest string of hate crimes simply flows from this racist history.

Meanwhile, the university tries to diffuse anti-racist action. It hides other racist incidents, requires multicultural "sensitivity" training and pushes "dialogue" to bury united militant action.

"White skin privilege" is pushed on white students while black and Latino students are saturated with divisive identity politics. Racism is portrayed as simply an "aberration" that can be "undone" if people are just "educated" enough. There’s no mention of racism being a means to class exploitation. Racism is a major weapon against the whole working class.

Columbia’s divisive propaganda is reflected in one discussion of the noose hanging when an Arab student complained about a lack of concern regarding anti-Arab racism. A black student countered that "foreigners" just don’t "get it" — "we must address anti-black white racism first and deal with all the rest later." But this simply hands power to the same racists who hung the noose in Teachers College. The bosses love nothing more than working-class people fighting amongst themselves and focusing on their supposed "differences" instead of uniting to smash their common oppressor. Historically black workers and students have been in the forefront of fighting racism that has won victories for the entire working class.

Racism can’t be ignored, reformed or discussed away. Columbia students need multi-racial unity and mass militant action to answer these racist scum, not more talking and internal division.

The capitalist system that creates a culture like the noose incidents is the same one dropping cluster bombs on Iraqi children and gunning down immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border. Racism is the tool of a system that is an enemy to all workers, students, teachers and soldiers. Uniting to end this blood-drenched profit system and its imperialist wars through workers power — communism — will mean the bosses’ days are numbered.

a name="Crumbling of Bosses’ Empire, Infrastructure Spurs Increasing Fascism">">"rumbling of Bosses’ Empire, Infrastructure Spurs Increasing Fascism

Two years ago, after decades of warnings, the levees in New Orleans crumbled away in Hurricane Katrina as the U.S. rulers’ arrogant and racist disregard for workers’ safety left thousands to die. The decaying wound that is the U.S. infrastructure (bridges, roadways, transportation) was ripped open this past summer when a Minneapolis bridge collapsed, killing eight.

Facing extreme competition from their rivals such as China, Russia, and the European Union, the liberal bosses are calling for more money for repairs and maintenance not to save lives but to make sure workers and the smaller local bosses toe their line to save their declining empire. The New York Times got straight to the point in an editorial, "[i]n the event of a catastrophic failure, many lives can be lost. But even the slower deterioration undermines our quality of life and retards economic growth."(8/5/07)

These infrastructure failings expose the lesser, domestic bosses’ short-minded rule, squandering the money that they did have rather than repairing the infrastructure. Time Magazine as well as others complained about wasteful projects like the "Bridges to Nowhere" in Alaska, where the local bosses wanted to spend "$223 million crossing to the island of Gravina, population 50..." (08/06/07) Local and federal politicians allocated funding for repairs to bridges and highways but then pocketed the money for other "more glamorous" projects like building new bridges or new railway systems at the same time as 36 states had a bridge deficiency rate 20% or higher (reason.com). As N.Y. Senator Charles Schumer portrayed his fellow members of Congress, "it’s nice for somebody to cut a ribbon for a new structure." (reason.com, 8/8/07).

Warren Ruddman, co-author of a 2001 blueprint for war and fascism, suggested a National Infrastructure Bank to raise investment for repair to whip the local bosses into shape. This bank, along with increased taxes on the working class, would raise investments by ensuring that "users … pay a greater portion of infrastructure costs." Smaller bosses, like trucking companies, may oppose these user fees that could come out of their own pockets, but the liberal ruling bosses will do whatever is necessary to make these junior partners pay their share and more.

The bosses need to build the roads that will transport their goods to market as well as their supplies for war. They will do it on the backs of workers as they have in New Orleans. There immigrant workers from Central America are being paid a small fraction of U.S. construction workers’ standard wage levels to rebuild the city’s profit-making business district while black workers’ homes are left to rot.

Workers do not need to get trapped in the U.S. bosses’ squabble over who should pay to repair the infrastructure. These bosses didn’t lose a night of sleep when eight died in Minneapolis, three died when Mianus Bridge in Connecticut collapsed in 1983, or 40 were killed when the Cypress Street Viaduct collapsed in Oakland in 1989. The rulers’ goal is to keep their goods, oil and profits flowing, even at the expense of workers’ lives. This will mean more bridges and roadways in disrepair as the U.S. spends billions for wars in Iraq and elsewhere in a life-and-death struggle against their imperialist rivals. Workers’ safety will only be protected when we make the decisions on how to use our own labor and resources (communism), after we have buried the capitalists’ profit-making system under the rubble of their collapsing infrastructure.

a name="Teachers Defy Edict Limiting Students’ Anti-Racist Activities">">"eachers Defy Edict Limiting Students’ Anti-Racist Activities

BROOKLYN, NY, October 16 — Yesterday teachers at our high school won a small but significant victory, staging a "work-in" that defied an administrative edict which would limit our after-school (especially anti-racist) activities. One of the last remaining large schools with a fairly active union chapter, a student body that has often fought back and a group of teachers who work closely with Progressive Labor Party, we have faced continuous attacks in the past few years.

Last year we won many important anti-racist victories. Students and teachers organized a mass campaign against racism, including assemblies and forums. Volunteer trips to New Orleans supported workers there. A sharp struggle defended a teacher threatened by the administration for involvement in these trips. Eventually the administration was forced to back down, but not for long.

This year students and teachers returned to discover that the school would be closing early and activities would be limited. Even staff members who stayed late to work would be considered "trespassing." Many students are on late schedule, so according to this new policy they’d have less than an hour to participate in after-school activities. Interestingly, clubs that would be most limited by this rule are those which have been fighting racism and building student unity. We’ve had several mass meetings and are planning a teach-in about the Jena 6. Over 40 students packed a classroom two weeks ago to hear college students report on their trip to Jena.

So to answer the administration’s new policy we organized a "work-in" and encouraged teachers to stay late to test the waters. Earlier we had been warned that we’d be considered "trespassing" and "violating school policy" if we stayed late. However, not surprisingly, when groups of teachers did stay late in their respective offices, we were commended for working so hard and told that "special security" would be provided for us that day! The administration backed down pretty quickly.

We should be clear that these new rules are mainly an attack on students, as well as on the movement we seek to build. Hopefully, this small act of resistance is just the beginning of larger things to come. We must take on the administration at every juncture and point out that their interests are opposite from ours — they keep the school open for various events when they see the need, but are ready to kick students and teachers to the curb on a daily basis. Unity of students, parents and teachers to fight these attacks is crucial. We plan to step up this struggle, increase our CHALLENGE sales and organize more actions and struggles this semester. J

a name="Wildcat Protests Docker’s Death, Shuts Oakland’s Port"></">Wi"dcat Protests Docker’s Death, Shuts Oakland’s Port

Oakland, CA, Sept. 25 — When over 1,500 longshoremen shut down the Port of Oakland, the stillness around the 4th largest port in the U.S. gave us a glimpse of the power of an active working class. These workers walked off the job to protest the death of one of their comrades, Reginald Ross, who was killed while unloading a freighter. Even though the walkout was unofficial, not one container was unloaded that day.

The shutdown exposed the bias of the capitalist media. It’s a bias that continually downplays issues of life-and-death importance to working-class communities. Much of the media quoted the Port’s spokesperson, Marilyn Sandifur: "In more than seven years, this is the first time I am aware of the fatal accident of a longshore worker." She must have confined her "awareness" to the Port of Oakland itself because Reginald Ross is the 6th longshoreman to be killed at West Coast docks so far this year. Not one major media outlet saw fit to uncover such a history.

It’s no surprise. Capitalism in general treats working-class life cheaply. The Port of Oakland, for example, is located in West Oakland. As CHALLENGE has reported, the murder rate of young black men in West Oakland has reached the genocidal rate of 186 per 100,000. In fact, some weekends see more young black men killed in Oakland than U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad — a sensational fact our sensationalist capitalist press ignores. Lacking a class-conscious revolutionary press with a mass circulation, the working class only understands and reacts to this assault in an isolated way. In the communities under siege in Oakland, there is an outpouring of grief, outrage, candle-lit prayers for peace. Yet neither there, nor in the Bay Area as a whole, is there the realization that the working class has power.

It is in this light that the strike of the longshoremen on Sept. 25 should be seen. Day in, day out, our class creates billions of dollars in value for the capitalist class. For the capitalist, money is everything. But for the working class, life is infinitely more valuable than money. On Sept. 25, the longshoremen showed us all what our value system means.

Karl Marx, the founder of the communist movement, once asked, "What distinguishes the humblest architect from the busiest (hive-building) bee?" And he answered that the architect first imagines his building before starting it. Imagine a world where an expanding revolutionary press re-ignites our active working class consciousness. Imagine a world where the next genocidal-fratricidal murder of a young black man is greeted by five minutes of silence followed by strikes and demonstrations on the docks, at BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and AC Transit, at EBMUD (East Bay Municipal Utility District), at Chiron, at the hospitals, at UC Cal., Laney College, Merrit and Oakland High Schools! Imagine such actions later leading to other actions against the bosses and their goons.

And after that moment of imagination let us get to work. Let us talk to our co-workers and fellow students, bring up resolutions in union halls and churches and, above all, expand the reach of CHALLENGE, the paper that sparks the imagination. Spurred on by the example of our longshore brothers and sisters, let us expand and deepen our actions to build Progressive Labor Party and fight for a communist revolution.

Back Jena 6 in Union and in Boeing, Subcontractor Plants

SEATTLE, WA — "It has to be brought to light," insisted a white Boeing machinist as more than a dozen union members — black, Latin and white — prepared an anti-racist resolution to support the Jena 6. "I was just talking with my son about the way high schools are organized. Racism is everywhere." The resolution now sits in the union’s executive board, but the struggle continues on the shop floor.

Before we entered the meeting, we knew we were in for a fight. We were not disappointed!

One low-level official described how he would shake his head at the roadblocks the union mis-leaders put up anytime our left-led, rank-and-file group raised racism. (He actively supported anti-racists during the battle to get the union to participate in last year’s May Day March calling for international unity.) "How can you run an organization like that!" he bemoaned.

Even as the resolution was tabled until next month’s meeting, debates broke out throughout the hall and in the corridors outside. "I don’t want to be a jerk, but what has this to do with the union?" asked one. We replied that anti-racism was crucial to answering the economic and political attacks on our members, like racist subcontracting. We pointed to the parts of the resolution calling for anti-racist, multi-racial solidarity in the upcoming contract struggle. The question of the class necessity of anti-racism was front and center at this overwhelmingly white union meeting.

We wanted to do more than engage in this useful debate. We planned beforehand to use this resolution to jump-start struggle on the shop floor. Jena 6 defense collections are now being taken in a number of buildings.

These "shop-floor" collections — in alliance with the collections taken among non-union subcontractor workers — can lead the way. There are many more black and Latin workers in the plants than at union meetings. Still more black and Latin workers suffer super-exploitation at the hand of vicious subcontractors.

CHALLENGE sales and mailings have increased modestly, spreading the revolutionary politics necessary to marshal this multi-racial force. We’re mobilizing to raise this resolution at various other meetings and conferences during the next month. We can measure the lasting value of this battle through the expansion and consolidation of our CHALLENGE networks here and among the subcontractors. Stay tuned!

Subcontractor Workers Link Jena 6 to Attacks on Immigrants

The following is a letter sent to the Jena 6 Defense Committee from a group of industrial workers along with some money they collected:

"We work in factories in California. We declare our support for the anti-racist Jena 6 and the workers striking against GM. The majority of us are immigrants and we also face racism and exploitation in our lives. As the racists attacked you, they also attack immigrants who are only looking for a better life for our families. As GM attacks the workers’ medical benefits and wages, we too face poverty wages and worsening benefits. All of this while our children die in racist wars for the bosses’ oil profits.

Since racism, exploitation and war affect us all, we send our support and this message of unity. Your struggle is our struggle, and that of workers everywhere. We’re also sending some money in the hopes that it helps and that you keep fighting with the same courage you’ve shown us all."

In solidarity,
Some industrial subcontractor workers

a name="PL’ers Organize vs. Rulers’ Anti-Immigrant Raids"></">PL"ers Organize vs. Rulers’ Anti-Immigrant Raids

LOS ANGELES, CA. — The Migra (Immigration Customs Enforcement — ICE) and local police have been carrying out raids against immigrant workers and their families across the U.S. Under the pretext of "deporting criminals," these agents of terror break down doors of homes at 4:00 AM with guns drawn. They also search, arrest and deport workers at their jobs. In many U.S. counties, the open racists try to pass anti-immigrant laws to force immigrants to leave. This racist attack aims to divide and terrorize our class, laying the basis for sharper future attacks on citizens and immigrants.

Meanwhile, representatives of the racist liberal bosses are "defending" their wage-slaves. Recently a Federal Judge in San Francisco temporarily halted the sending of letters to bosses telling them to fire workers with non-matching social security numbers. New York’s Governor is proposing drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants. All bosses want to exploit and oppress all workers. The liberals want loyalty to U.S. rulers.

The top bosses need low-paid, patriotic workers in the U.S., especially for war production. They also need soldiers willing to kill and die in U.S. imperialist wars. The Pentagon is pushing the Dream Act. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to introduce it as part of upcoming military appropriations bills. He said, "This [Hispanic immigrants] is a potentially very recruitable group….The Dream Act will help solve the recruitment crisis we face today." (Wall Street Journal, 9/21) Only one in 20 undocumented youth are able to attend college, so the Act is primarily a military recruitment bill with a "humanitarian" cover.

The latest raids run counter to the plans of the top imperialists to win the hearts and minds of immigrant youth and workers. While the raids could also push many youth to join the military to escape deportations, under these conditions immigrant youth would potentially be all the more open to rebelling against the racist warmakers.

Mass Deportations — Big problem for U.S. Bosses

Recently, the U.S. government signed a new treaty, NAFTA Plus, with Canada and Mexico, giving the U.S. bosses more control over commerce, energy and security. The reactivation of Plan Puebla Panama, along with the NAFTA Corridor, aims for U.S. control of resources, new hydroelectric plants and a huge super-highway from Canada to Mexico and Central America for transporting goods quickly.

This plan is meant to counter Venezuela’s Chavez and help prepare for wider war. The new Plan Mexico will militarize that country, supposedly to "fight terrorism and narco-traffic," but mainly to repress any movement that risks the flow of Mexico’s oil to the U.S. The U.S. will spend over $1 billion to launch the plan — for planes, helicopters, and the transport and U.S. training of Mexican military personnel. Equipment and personnel would mainly protect oil pipelines, but would be ready to crush rebellions opposing U.S. bosses and their Mexican partners.

Massive deportations of Mexican workers would mean more instability in Mexico, endangering the government of U.S. "friend" Felipe Calderon, with possibly more Oaxaca-like uprisings. This would deprive U.S. imperialists of needed future soldiers and arms producers. That’s why the bosses’ rag, the NY Times, laments ICE’s storm-trooper tactics and why the conservative Wall Street Journal printed a letter (10/13) attacking the "deportationists," which drew a careful distinction between "protecting the border" and mass deportations.

PLP is organizing to unite workers and students to oppose both the anti-immigrant raids and the liberal racists’ war plans. In recent meetings with comrades from Mexico, Central America and the U.S., we made plans to expose and fight the bosses’ growing fascism and imperialist war. We discussed building PLP in the class struggle, from farmworker organizations in El Salvador to teachers’ unions and schools in Mexico to factories in Los Angeles and New York. We will participate in marches, protests, strikes and meetings, focusing on increasing CHALLENGE networks and winning workers, students and soldiers to see clearly the capitalists’ game and the need for communist revolution to eliminate borders, imperialist war and exploitation.

Building PLP means exposing bosses’ agents like Mexico’s Lopez Obrador and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. These fake leftists only use the masses’ growing anger to try to take control of the oil profits, electricity, etc. and sell them to the highest bidder, whether it be the USA, China, India or the European Union. This creates serious problems in U.S. imperialism’s backyard. Workers’ power will defeat all bosses — from Calderon to Obrador to Bush and Clinton.

a name="Fight Racist Cutbacks — Fire Sexist Food Service Boss!">">"ight Racist Cutbacks — Fire Sexist Food Service Boss!

CHICAGO, IL October 15 — Since the $105 million racist budget cuts took effect last January, nearly half the County clinics and 1,000 jobs have been eliminated (over 200 doctors, almost 300 nurses and 500 other workers). The patient population has dropped 17% and clinic visits are down 40%. Oak Forest Hospital, once intended for long-term care, is almost an abandoned building and the future of Provident Hospital is uncertain. Before the cuts, the County served over one million uninsured and indigent workers and their families, 82% of them black and Latin.

And that was before the stampede of workers taking the Alternative Retirement Cancellation Payment or early buy-out. The bosses anticipated 400 more workers leaving by the end of October. The number may be as high as 600. The rush to the exits, like the more than 100,000 GM, Ford, Chrysler and Delphi workers before them, is a vote of mass cynicism and no-confidence in the bosses and the union leaders who defend them.

The current budget is still $65 million in the hole, and next year’s budget promises even further cuts. We are gearing up for another round of cutbacks and fight-backs. With 1,000 workers gone and others cynical, it won’t be easy.

One worker taking the early-out is food service worker Alice "Honey" Wilcher. In 26 years with the County she was never disciplined for anything. She showed up for work. She was a good friend and co-worker. Her mother has worked here for 30 years.

But Honey is escaping from her groping and sexually-molesting boss, Anthony Williams, and the SEIU leadership that didn’t fight for her. She is leaving because the bosses were going to fire her for standing up to Williams, who has sexually harassed many women. One worker said, "Everybody knows how he is."

After Honey resisted one of Williams’ assaults and demanded he leave her alone, Williams was suspended for three days. For the same incident, Honey was charged with insubordination and the bosses recommended she be fired. Despite Honey’s having a clean record for 26 years, and despite complaining to the union, the County and the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), no one would even remove Williams, or Honey, from this abusive situation. The bosses kept them in the same department. After going out on a medical leave, the union repeatedly called her, harassing her to go back to work!

Food Service boss Anthony Williams is a racist and sexist dog who should be fired. He is a creation of the racist system that is shredding the meager health care available to more than a million mostly black and Latin workers while using workers’ tax money to finance the Iraq bloodbath; of the system that is about to slash hundreds of CTA transit workers, cut more than 80 bus routes, and raise the fare to $3.00; the same system that defends police torture and racist murder, and fills the prisons with black and Latin youth. All this in a city, county and state run from top to bottom by the Democrats! Only communist revolution will destroy this racist system of wage slavery.

PLP is planning a CHALLENGE dinner this month which County workers will attend. Recruiting them to the Party is an important answer to the attacks on these hospital workers.

French Fascists on Racist Rampage vs. Immigrants

PARIS, October 13 — The French government is on a racist anti-immigrant rampage. France’s gendarmerie — the national police force, organized along military lines — is on a war footing to hunt down undocumented immigrants.

Immigrants have been so terrorized that they’re jumping from windows to escape the police. On September 21, Mrs. Chulan Zhang Liu became the fifth immigrant worker in two months to die after leaping from a window.

Ivan, a 12-year-old Russian boy, was seriously injured in late August when he fell from a window during a police round-up in Amiens.

This terrorism has steadily increased over the past five years. On January 11, then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy crowed that, "We deported 24,000 illegal aliens in 2006, which represents an increase of 140% compared to 2002." His target is deportation of 25,000 immigrant workers this year.

Anthropologist Emmanuel Terray compared the anti-immigrant round-ups to those of Jews in Nazi-occupied France. "Once they’ve decided they want to stop and question people who haven’t committed any particular crime, except that of being here, or else that of being a Jew in 1942," said Terray, "they…look for them where they are; they set traps for them. You’ve got to know that, at the Belleville metro station, operations of this type take place practically every week. According to what the local people tell me, one week it’s the Chinese, another it’s the Arabs."

On the police union website, cops have admitted that "the only people who are stopped in these operations are those who are likely to be illegal aliens because of the color of their skin." (Le Monde, 9/25)

The French government estimates there are up to 400,000 undocumented immigrants in France. Most are workers, especially in construction and restaurants.

The rulers have become so barbaric that, for the first time in ten years, sick people are being deported to countries where they cannot get treatment. Last June, an immigrant worker suffering from hepatitis C was deported against a doctor’s orders.

The National Assembly and the Senate have just passed the Hortefeux law, imposing drastic conditions on family reunification. Under this law, anyone who wants to enter France under the family reunification procedure — including spouses of French citizens — must first pass a French language and "values" test. The legal resident or French citizen with whom they’re being re-united must have an annual income of at least $21,783.

The law also provides that family members from "countries where many documents are fakes" (code language for Africa) must submit to a DNA test to prove they’re related to the person here. People are mobilizing against this racist terror. Last year Marseilles primary-school teacher Florimond Guimard participated in an anti-deportation rally. He followed a police car hauling away a deportee. For that, he was charged with "group violence with an arm" (the "arm" being the car Guimard was driving). He risks three years in prison and a $64,000 fine.

The defense of Guimard has become the rallying cry of the anti-deportation movement. On October 20, there will be nation-wide anti-deportation rallies. But beyond fighting racist deportations, we must destroy the capitalist system that brands some workers as "undocumented immigrants." That can only be accomplished through communist revolution.

New Auto Contracts: Great Leap Backwards

DETROIT, MI October 11 — If the tens of thousands of black youth marching in Jena, La. on September 20 was a glimpse of revolutionary potential — the future — then the 2007 auto contracts are a grim reminder of the long, dark night in which the working class finds itself without revolutionary communist leadership.

On the same day the four-year UAW-GM contract was ratified, Chrysler and the UAW reached a new agreement. Ford’s next.

A two-day "strike" at GM and a 6-hour "strike" at Chrysler give new meaning to the term "staging a strike." These actions were called to rally the membership behind a transformation in auto that will be a Great Leap Backwards for generations of industrial workers. More than one-fourth of the workers never struck because their plants were already on temporary shut-down due to a huge backlog of unsold vehicles.

The media is focused almost exclusively on the transfer of health care from the auto bosses to a union-run trust fund. This lifts almost $100 billion in health care commitments from GM, Ford and Chrysler which they can now claim as profits. But the real news lies in the rollback of wages and benefits for workers about to be hired.

Starting wages at GM, Chrysler and soon Ford, will be slightly over $14-an-hour, the 1990 rate — when a gallon of gas was 80 cents! For the moment, new hires at UAW factories in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio will earn less than non-union workers at Honda, Toyota and Daimler plants in Mississippi and Alabama! Healthcare, pensions, work rules and job security will further decay.

The London Financial Times reports (10/17) that while under the old contract a GM worker cost the company $78 an hour in wages and benefits, under the new contract, a new worker will cost $25.66 an hour. Three-fourths of the workers under the higher rates will retire in the next four years.

Creation of new multi-tiered, "non-core" workers will drop wages and benefits even further. At Chrysler, 11,000 of the 45,000 current jobs are "non-core." Wages will sink and many jobs will be farmed out. The UAW agreed to the elimination of more than 100,000 jobs and more than 40 plant closings at GM, Ford, Chrysler and Delphi a year before contract talks even started. These union leaders worked hand-in-glove with the bosses and never fought the racist layoffs which initially fell most heavily on black workers. This laid the basis to hit white workers as well. Racism hurts all workers.

All this results from the sharpening competition among the world’s auto billionaires, as well as the collapse of the old communist movement. In this period of heightened conflict and increased attacks, workers have no mass revolutionary center or leadership to guide them in the class struggle. This is the bosses’ greatest weapon in their ability to survive every threat, challenge and crisis.

Even against these odds, more than one-third of GM’s workers rejected the contract. The union left Ford for last because they expect the most problems here, from both the company and the workers. Chrysler and Ford workers should reject these contracts and begin organizing joint strike actions and a mass march on Solidarity House. We should appeal to auto workers worldwide to support our struggle.

From Baghdad to Soweto, from Bogotá to Detroit, the bosses and their flag-waving union leaders are getting away with murder. They want us to believe the answer lies in one election after another. But the answer lies in the patient, steady building of a mass revolutionary communist movement.

We will turn the tables on the bosses when industrial workers make communist ideas mass ideas. By fighting the bosses and union leaders on this contract, increasing the readership of CHALLENGE and deepening our personal and political ties with our co-workers, we are paving the road to communist revolution.

Attack on Blackwater Assassins Cover to Sneak in Draft?

The liberal bosses’ crocodile tears over the unprovoked murders of Iraqi civilians by Blackwater "guards" are just a smokescreen. From Abu Ghraib to Mosel to Falluja, the U.S. military brass has ordered U.S. troops to terrorize the Iraqi population. Blackwater USA, "the State Dept’s principal private security contractor in Iraq" (NY Times, 10/3), is part of the ongoing fight between the liberal bosses disciplining the rogue smaller bosses. "The fallout from Blackwater’s heavy-handed tactics is a reminder of the folly of using a private force to perform military missions in a war zone. These jobs need to be brought back into government hands as soon as practicable," (NY Times, 10/3) This fight is setting the stage for the future of larger and more bloody wars where the U.S. rulers will need the draft.

Pairing a volunteer army with civilian contractors, and high-tech weaponry, have both been strategies to avoid the political problems of an army of draftees. High-tech weapons rather than more boots on the ground has proved a disaster in Iraq. Another stopgap measure is the DREAM Act, really the first step toward a draft, which is now referred to as "national service" in an attempt by the liberal imperialists to win popular support. According to Timothy K. Hsia, Army infantry captain, the U.S. army may now have more civilian contractors in Iraq than military personnel (LA Times, 9/21).

The reliance on contractors has created a new set of problems for the bosses. Contractors are outside the top imperialists’ military chain of command. They are unreliable. The top U.S. rulers need to exert strict discipline among the troops to fight current and future wars. The only alternative to private contractors would be a draft to recruit more army personnel.

Vietnam: The Ghost of Wars Past

The U.S. bosses have spent the last 35 years haunted by the "Vietnam Syndrome." In the early 1970s, large numbers of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam rebelled. The fraggings in Vietnam (soldiers used fragmentation grenades to kill some of the most vicious officers) — 209 in 1970 alone — is one example. U.S. soldiers became so unreliable that the brass took their weapons away. Military unrest was the main factor in ending the draft. Since the Vietnam War the U.S. bosses have tried to maintain their world domination without a draft, and the problems of rebellion and outright mutiny that helped doom U.S. imperialism’s effort to rule Vietnam.

Fight Against Imperialism, Pacifism

Challenged by local bosses and imperialist rivals China, Russia, and Europe, the U.S faces wider war, leading to World War III. They will eventually need to draft millions of young people. In whatever form, the draft will lead to growing anger.

We should have no illusions that an anti-draft, pacifist movement can stop imperialist war. As long as the imperialists have state power, they can and will force youth into the military. Pacifism, the belief in non-violence, is a diversion to sap energy and anger of militant anti-imperialist youth away from rebellion and revolution. The bosses will always use violent acts of war or police terror.

Our Party rejected the racist student deferrments during the Vietnam War. The only answer to expanding imperialist war must be to organize in the military, factories, schools, and anti-draft movements to rebel against the warmakers, to turn their imperialist bloodbath into revolutionary war for workers’ power, communism.

More Wars to Come . . .

The liberal bosses’ condemnation of Blackwater is to win support for future wars where they will need the help of millions of working-class youth. In order to do this, the liberals want to appear like the "nice" bosses who oppose murderous hacks like Blackwater. They will try to use these trials and the 2008 elections to win workers and youth back into their fold.

The bosses can’t rule the world without soldiers and workers. A draft of hundreds of thousands of working-class young people into their army can become an opportunity. To insure their own survival, the bosses send the most exploited and oppressed youth into the army and into war factories. The same working-class youth who face racism, poverty, and exploitation at home will again question why they should fight and die for the bosses’ profits. When soldiers with guns in their hands unite with workers and students to fight against this murderous system, they will have the potential to put an end to racist capitalism with communist revolution.

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The "Communist" Party of China’s (CCP) 17th Congress on October 15 was scheduled to discuss its program for the next generation of leaders as put forward by Hu Jintao, CCP General Secretary and the country’s President and commander-in-chief. The Congress is occurring during China’s emergence as a more powerful imperialist country challenging the U.S., Japan and India. The Congress will concretize a "new stage" of China’s reforms, which — according to Hu Jintao — will generate a new model of "harmonious" and "scientific" development.

Jintao, in control since the 2002 Congress, will remain in power for a second and final term. His second in command, Wen Jiabao, will also retain his post. But a shake-up looms in the Politburo’s Permanent Committee, with Jintao possibly reducing the top leadership group from nine to five. Even Jintao is trying to avoid a bitter power struggle with those in other top leadership factions. The NY Times (9/14) quotes China expert Bo Zhiyue of St. John Fisher College: "I think he knows that real power lies in his position….He also knows how to balance different groups." Jintao is bringing to the top leadership Li Keqiang, Party chief in the Northern province of Liaoning, who might succeed Jintao after 2012 when he steps down. (Secretary-Generals can only serve two terms.)

In a June 25 speech at a Party Central School, Jintao outlined the second important aspect of the Congress. He stated that China is in a "new phase" of its reform process, having great strategic opportunities while confronting many internal and external challenges. China’s "reforms" began with Zhu Enlai following defeat of the Cultural Revolution, helped by the Gang of Four, which later paid for its opportunism. Deng Xiaoping, considered a capitalist roader by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, accelerated the capitalist reforms in 1978 after Mao died and the Gang of Four was crushed.

U.S. imperialists were delighted with these "reforms," seeing China not only for its investment potential but also as a counterweight to the former Soviet Union. In a way, China was the great savior of world capitalism. However, China’s new bosses would not be content to forever play second fiddle to U.S. or Japanese imperialists. China is now a more powerful imperialist country, with much money to invest in Asia, Africa, Latin America and even in the U.S. and European Union. It’s also developing its own military power, including a "blue water" navy to challenge U.S. naval power in Asia and eventually beyond. It’s also becoming a major player in space technology, just behind the U.S. and Russia.

Domestically, China is moving beyond being the "world’s workshop," whose industries are just mainly used for cheaply-produced consumer goods for the world’s major imperialist corporations. The Congress will discuss "scientific development" to turn Chinese industry into leaders in the hi-tech, heavy industry (auto, steel, etc.) and military fields.

The Congress will also try to deal more with localized corruption, which alienates many workers and peasants — one of the main causes of protests and struggles by workers all over China. Already thousands of corrupt local leaders have been jailed. Of course, corruption and China’s gross inequality won’t be solved by capitalist reforms.

Finally, China’s main challenges include Taiwan and the need for secure oil supplies, not controlled by Exxon-Mobil, BP, et al. This will intensify inter-imperialist rivalry and will eventually impel direct military confrontation with the U.S., Japan or India.

The "C"PC doesn’t represent the class interests of China’s workers and peasants, but rather of the capitalist class enemy. There are now thousands of those enemies, bosses who are members of the Party. China’s workers need another revolution, not more reforms, but this time to eliminate all forms of capitalism.

LETTERS

FMLN Betrayal Led Him to Fight for Communism

I’m proud to be an internationalist fighter for communism, as a member of PLP. My political life began in 1975 when I joined the revolutionary political struggle, working as a mass organizer until 1978. In 1979 I became part of the Military Committees of the ERP (People’s Revolutionary Army) and participated in the armed struggle until 1991.

I want to stress that the ideology that convinced me was the need to fight for a change in the system — workers’ class struggle for the seizure of power and for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Then I read Mao Zedong’s Red Book. But as the struggle advanced and the international situation changed, with Perestroika in Russia, the initial goal of the struggle lost its revolutionary outlook.

On January 10, 1992, the FMLN guerrilla umbrella group and the murderous government of El Salvador signed a "Peace Accord." The FMLN then turned towards a reformist political struggle, becoming an electoral party.

I was angry and worried about that, and very saddened for the many comrades who died believing they were fighting to destroy capitalism. Then one day PLP members visited me. They talked about the international struggle of the working class for true communism. Unfortunately, they didn’t return. At the end of 2006 I contacted my brother and he put me in touch with a PLP comrade. I began to participate in DESAFIO-CHALLENGE study groups. I have since begun distributing our communist newspaper among some old FMLN comrades and others. The class struggle process goes on. To honor my fallen comrades, I’m going to fight to destroy capitalism.

I learned a lot in a recent Communist Political School. It helped me again find the correct road we should all follow to reach the goal of final victory — communism!

A Comrade Veteran of the Civil War in El Salvador

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Although my father would later help bring me closer to revolutionary politics, I come from a very traditional and conservative family of peasants in El Salvador. In 1972, I began to understand that capitalism could not meet the interests of the working class. In 1974 I got a copy of "La Vida de Miguel Marmol," written by revolutionary poet Roque Dalton, from a worker. The story is of a survivor of the 1932 massacre of workers and peasants who, led by communists, rose up against a brutal U.S.-supported military dictatorship.

Afterwards, I made contact with a revolutionary leader from the 1970s struggle against the military regimes and their electoral frauds. I began to see that when workers get organized, become class conscious and fight back, they can achieve a more just and humane society. All those types of resistance produced the armed popular struggle here. But after the civil war ended in 1992, things did not change for the better as expected. Many comrades were frustrated and angry.

A few years later, a PLP comrade through my 85-year-old father gave me a copy of DESAFIO-CHALLENGE. My dad was a DESAFIO reader and when he died his ideas were indeed communist.

I joined the PLP and a few weeks ago, after being in PLP for 11 years I participated in a communist cadre school. The school strengthened my resolve that only through communist ideas and the building of a classless worldwide society can end the evils created by capitalism. Workers of the World, Unite!

A Comrade, El Salvador

Burma Junta Learned Brutality from British Imperialists

A Red Eye item (CHALLENGE, 10/17) shows clearly that the Chevron and Total oil companies, along with others from India and China, support the brutal military Junta ruling Myanmar-Burma. But imperialism’s oppression of Burma’s people is not new. The British colonial occupation of that country was at least as brutal as the current Junta, if not more so. In a 1938 general strike, British cops shot demonstrators led by Buddhist monks, murdering 17 people.

While the Junta’s shut-down of the internet and independent news has been criticized, George Orwell’s first novel, "Burmese Days," was a scathing attack on the British colonial rule and consequently was barred from being printed in Britain. Potential publishers were warned of likely lawsuits. It was finally published in the U.S. but only after Orwell made some changes softening his denunciation of British colonialism.

Orwell wrote it based on his experiences as a cop in the British imperialist Civil Service in Burma. He saw the Empire’s dirty work up close.

The prison near Rangoon was the largest in the British Empire, and was used to incarcerate militant opponents of British colonialism, including members of the Communist Party of Burma.

An Internationalist

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A letter in CHALLENGE (10/17) from a "friend" of the Chicago Cygnus soap plant workers gave support to striking immigrant workers who face the worst of capitalism’s racist conditions. Nationalism and racism were both attacked and workers’ unity and power were put front and center. This made it all the more surprising that those who crossed the picket lines were almost treated as allies of the strikers.

There are times (like the 1968 NYC teachers’ walkout that we characterized as a racist action against working-class parents rather than a strike against school bosses) when crossing that line might be the principled thing to do, but it’s hard to see why that would have been true here. The letter uses the term "replacement workers," a bosses’ term to make scabbing seem respectable. The unity of workers is never served by one group of workers undermining the struggle of other workers.

Explaining that "we didn’t know about the strike and just wanted to feed our families" is only O.K. if, when you learn about the strike, you join the strikers and refuse to scab. Being a strike-breaker is joining hands with the bosses. Sugarcoating it with this reason and that excuse shouldn’t be tolerated. We should struggle with workers who are tempted to become strike-breakers, but if they go over to the bosses’ side they must be treated (at least in the short run) as the enemy.

As a result of failing to unite in opposition to Reagan’s using scabs to break the air traffic controller’s strike in 1981, the U.S. working class has been greatly weakened. Our job as communists is to emphasize that there are only two sides to the struggle between workers and capitalists, and anything that divides the working class — racism, sexism, nationalism, scabbing, etc. — is our bitter enemy.

A Reader

Imperialist Holocaust: Kills 58 Million Kids Around the World Since 9/11

The attack on 9/11/2001 in which 3,000 people died has been used by U.S. rulers to justify every war since then, killing of innocent civilians, racist assault on Middle Eastern and South Asian workers, and passage of the fascist Patriot Act and any other measure that the bosses feel necessary to preserve their profit system, especially control of the world’s oil supplies. Yet a "9/11" has been occurring every 3.5 hours, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the last six years, around the world, with absolutely no outcry from these capitalist mass murderers.

The world’s imperialist powers, led by the U.S., have exploited the resources of peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America for centuries, keeping them in abject poverty, including deaths due to preventable diseases. According to the World Health Organization, "Childbirth complications, pneumonia and diarrhea — age-old causes of death that can be prevented with cheap, proven methods" (NY Times, 10/11) kill 9.7 million children younger than 5 every year.

"Pneumonia [is] treatable with a 58-cent dose of antibiotic syrup…. Diarrhea…with 47 cents worth of oral rehydration salts" and birth complications with either "two 20-cent tetanus shots for the mother during pregnancy… [or] a simple mask and plastic bag device that can cost as little as $10" to correct a failure to breathe at birth. (NYT, 10/11)

The lack of such simple remedies has killed 58 million children under 5 in the six years since 9/11. In other words, a "9/11" — in these cases 3,000 children dying because of imperialist exploitation — has occurred every 3½ hours during those six years! And these deaths continue relentlessly, day after day, year after year.

Many honest people believe that these problems could be solved if trillions weren’t spent on wars. But ever since capitalism came into existence, war has been a constant. The bosses’ are mainly concerned with amassing maximum profits and oil, and are utterly unconcerned over the fate of these children whose deaths could be avoided with a few cents per child.

Such are the holocausts that imperialism creates.

A Reader

War On Terror: A Cover For A War On Workers

Part 1

The "war on terror" is mostly a scam for a war on the working class. A blatant example is how the increasing U.S. war on undocumented workers is justified by phony claims about terrorism.

After 9/11, the ruling class saw a great opportunity to grind down undocumented workers by combining the Border Patrol with the Customs Service (and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service), making a new U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. CBP proclaims its mission is "securing America’s borders." It trumpets its "success stories from the frontline of protecting America"— one terrorist arrested in 2005 and one alleged bomber turned away in 2003, compared to the more than six million undocumented workers seized since 9/11 — which shows what a minor part of the CBP’s activities is the "war on terror." The CBP’s 2005-2010 "Strategic Plan" — entitled "Protecting America" — is full of the same nonsense with each goal called "preventing terrorism," when the actual activities described show that the CBP’s real priorities are speeding imports into the USA at lower costs to the bosses and harassing undocumented workers.

The same nonsense is found in the "National Border Patrol Strategy," where the number one goal is "preventing terrorism" especially by apprehending those entering the U.S. "between the ports of entry" — code for hunting undocumented workers, inside the USA and at the border between formal crossing points. The Border Patrol’s extensive propaganda on its website cannot point to one example of a terrorist it has stopped. In fact, the very few cases of terrorist detentions have been at the formal ports of entry like airports, none "between ports of entry."

With the "war-on-terror" excuse, the U.S. ruling class has poured money into the cops who harrass undocumented workers. The budget of the CBP has soared from $3.0 billion in 2001 to $7.8 billion this year. And $2.5 billion of that is spent on "border security between ports of entry," which is triple what was spent in 2000 and six times what was spent in 1997. And all of this for exactly zero terrorists caught!

And the Democrats in Congress are fighting with Bush because the liberals want to add $3 billion more to CBP’s budget next year, almost all for enforcement between ports of entry. What a wonderful example of how liberals are more dangerous for workers than conservatives: the liberals are smarter because they smile while they stab workers in the back. The blatant racists send out the Minutemen; the liberals triple the size of the Border Patrol in a little more than a decade, with proposals for big new increases.

Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Immigration Statistics reports that 3.1 million "unauthorized residents entered the U.S. between 2000 and 2005. All the money spent on patrolling the border isn’t really keeping out immigrants either, just as it isn’t catching terrorists. The reason for this is that the ruling class needs immigrants to fill the lowest-wage jobs in the country. But they also want to make sure this labor force is afraid enough not to organize for better wages and conditions and isolated enough not to unite with other workers. Therefore, every chance we get, we need to organize anti-racist struggle on the job, in our schools and in our mass organizations. Only then will we have a shot at turning fear of our working-class brothers and sisters into hatred toward the bosses and its racist system.

(Next: the "Real I.D." Law)

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

North got big share of slavery $$

The opening of the African Burial Ground….graveyard, which may have originally contained between 10,000 and 20,000 bodies….shocked many New Yorkers who had grown up believing that slavery’s horrors were confined to the American South and that theirs was a free state.

The truth is that Gotham [NY] was at the very center of the trade in human beings and featured more Africans in chains than just about any other American city….

And New York’s slavery was just as brutal as the Southern variety…. The adults in the sample [analyzed] had typically been worked to death. Many of the children had died of malnutrition, while others died at the hands of desperate mothers who ended their lives rather than watch them grow up in such a hell. (NYT, 10/10)

China, capitalist now, needs religion

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Chinese government is not antireligious…. In order to curb the excess of social disintegration caused by the capitalist explosion, officials now celebrate religions that sustain social stability, from Buddhism to Confucianism — the very ideologies that were the target of the [communists’] Cultural Revolution. (NYT, 10/10)

U.S. denounces them but sells arms

The United States maintained its role as the leading supplier of weapons to the developing world in 2006….

The global arms market is highly competitive, with manufacturing nations seeking both to increase profits and to expand political influence through weapons sales to developing nations….

The study makes clear also that the United States has signed weapons-sales agreements with nations whose records on democracy and human rights are subject to official criticism. (NYT, 10/1

LA admits cop war on May demo

[Five months after a] pro-immigration rally here in May, the Los Angeles Police Department…issued….reports by 246 people of injuries ranging from bruises to broken bones… Officers… fired rubber bullets and swung batons even as demonstrators were trying to disperse. Scenes of officers trampling journalists who were covering the rally, which had been called to urge Congress to grant legal status to illegal immigrants, were played repeatedly on local and national television….

Representatives of some of the people injured at the rally were not completely satisfied with the report….

"It does not go to the institutional cultural problems…. Why does this happen over and over again?" (NYT, 10/10)

This war, by any name, smells

…This surge is destined to wind down next year because of troop deployment concerns, meaning the president will need a new word to describe his way forward. I’m thinking he should replace surge with "nudge,"… which will require fewer troops.

Nudge should serve until the president nears the end of his term, at which point he is going to have to find still another word to take over. Having carefully weighed all the possibilities, I think the logical successor to surge and nudge should be "goose…."

Senator: General, in your opinion, is "the goose" working?

General: The goose [has juice].

Well said. (LAT, 9/20)

Toxic waste areas hurt racism’s victims

Let’s be frank: The people most affected by environmental degradation aren’t white or well-off. Fifty-six percent of the 9.2 million people who live within 1.86 miles of the country’s most serious hazardous waste sites are people of color…. Seven in 10 people living near clusters of toxic waste sites are minorities…. Moreover, doctors believe that environmental factors may be partly to blame for the higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease, birth defects and cancer found among people of color and low-income whites, according to several studies. (LAT, 9/30)

Iran blocks U.S. goals in Mideast

In reality the growing confrontation between Washington and Iran has less to do with nuclear weapons or Iraqi resistance and more with the fact that Iran has emerged as the main strategic beneficiary of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran and its allies now offer the only effective challenge to U.S. domination of the Middle East and its resources. (GW, 10/12)

Ignoring Congo rapes shows racism/sexism

To the Editor:

Re "Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War" (front page, Oct. 7): I know that something is wrong with the world when thousands of Congolese women are raped without causing an international outcry. How is it that we accept futility as the answer to a crisis of this magnitude?....

No political leaders will offer these women asylum in their countries; no American presidential candidates will address this issue on the campaign trail; and people around the world will go about their lives ignorant of the pain and terror in Congo.

We… continue to aid the exploitation of women through desensitivity. (NYT, 10/14)

PLP History: Anti-Racists United Boston Masses vs. Fascist ROAR

(Part III described the first action-filled days of the anti-racist Summer Project organized in Boston by PLP and its friends in the International Committee Against Racism. It was marked by numerous failed attempts at intimidation by Boston’s anti-busing fascists in ROAR, who were backed by liberal mayor Kevin White and his pals in the Kennedy political machine. These provocations only strengthened the anti-racists’ resolve.)

By late June, BOSTON 75 had established itself as the only public challenge to ROAR and had survived the racists’ bully tactics. Now Boston’s workers, parents and students had to be approached with the message of anti-racist unity.

INCAR had drafted a petition demanding new schools, more teachers, expanded bilingual programs, improved facilities in the schools and the indictment of the most prominent racists, including Louise Day Hicks and the ROAR executive committee, for conspiracy to violate the civil rights of school children.

The petition campaign sought to prove that the vast majority of Boston’s workers, students and professionals had anti-racist aspirations and didn’t support ROAR’s Nazi outlook. The campaign got a shot in the arm when two black families moved into the nearly all-white Hyde Park district in late June. Each was savagely attacked by racist punks who specialized in assaulting young children. INCAR volunteers were instrumental in organizing defense committees in both cases, despite the usual harassment by Boston’s cops. Despite threats from them and ROAR, an integrated group of 30 people met to discuss methods of countering racist violence.

The INCAR petition suddenly became a commonplace sight in dozens of greater Boston neighborhoods. Hundreds signed every day, again in defiance of coercion by ROAR and the police. Boston’s masses were responding affirmatively to the anti-racist message.

Along with the petition drive, the Project organized the Roxbury "Freedom School." Its program included numerous activities that proved the feasibility of integrated anti-racist education. Classes included anti-racist and pro-communist political history, as well as art, math, English, and Spanish. The school formed a basketball team. Over 60 students enrolled in the first week. Their numbers would grow as the summer progressed. Parents participated in all phases of the school’s activities.

Meanwhile, INCAR and PLP continued to combine this mass work with militant anti-racist action. The week of July 14, Mayor White announced his $30 million school budget cutback, which entailed laying off 1,200 teachers, aides, bus monitors and others.

Boston’s union leaders and the rulers’ established loyal opposition in the NAACP and elsewhere uttered not a peep of protest against this racist attack. Only INCAR raised its voice. On July 17, the Summer Project called for a picket line outside White’s posh Beacon Hill home. At White’s personal behest, the cops barred it. About 100 anti-racists tried to march anyway. The very next day, 200 INCAR and PLP members held a sit-in inside White’s City Hall office, while another 70 picketed outside. White stayed conveniently away, but his aides and the rest of City Hall were in a panic.

BOSTON 75 was clearly becoming more than a pinprick in the rulers’ side. The anti-racists had resisted all attempts at coercion. The bosses’ own media could no longer ignore INCAR’s activities, even if the coverage was a tissue of lies. The movement had made an important, if temporary, inroad into the labor movement, receiving an endorsement from the American Federation of Government Employees. The AFGE leadership later withdrew this support for fear of identification with "radicals," but had already sent a copy of INCAR’s petition to all of its members in Massachusetts.

The City Hall sit-in was the last straw for White and his ROAR pals. To rid themselves of the anti-racist movement, they used the tactic of trapping the INCAR volunteers into combat with ROAR at unfavorable odds and then would have the cops arrest the anti-racists on trumped-up felony charges.

The occasion they chose was a July 23 unity meeting at a Hyde Park school. When 15 INCAR members and Hyde Park residents arrived at the school, they found the meeting room occupied by 50 ROAR thugs armed with bats and sticks. The fascists had locked the school doors. Suddenly the cops appeared and ordered the INCAR members to leave. The anti-racists returned to their headquarters, followed by the cops and some of their ROAR buddies. The cops arrested 17 people, all INCAR members, including a volunteer doing his laundry across the street. The arrested anti-racists were transported to the Hyde Park station house, where a lynch mob organized by ROAR and the cops chanted, "Give us the n------!"

However, the next day, INCAR and PLP members were back on the streets of Boston, picketing the West Roxbury courthouse while the 17 were being arraigned, canvassing and rallying in the streets and running the Freedom School. The racists were growing desperate. The anti-racists were conducting business as usual.

(Next: The Liberal-ROAR axis and the battles of Carson Beach.)

Book Review:

Whiz-Bang Weaponry No Substitute for Political Commitment

Military Power:

Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle

By Stephen Biddle

Princeton University Press, 2004

A fight rages within the U.S. military over what the Iraq fiasco means for future wars. Stephen Biddle, senior fellow in defense policy at the Council of Foreign Relations, stepped into this cauldron with the publication of "Military Power," a text meant to define U.S. military planning in the coming decades.

Biddle also advises General Petraeus and other top generals. He tested his theories using the Pentagon’s most advanced computer simulations. He is uniquely positioned to influence the upcoming debate.

Biddle focuses on large scale wars, although he argues for further inquires into guerilla-type conflicts. The surprising implication is that the U.S. may not win a direct confrontation with emerging imperialist powers.

WWI Ushers In New Age of Warfare

What Biddle calls "the modern system of force employment" was invented to deal with the "storm of steel" the machine gun brought to the World War I battlefield. By 1917, trench warfare between Germany and the allied powers stalemated. Neither side could advance across the no-man’s-land between fortified positions. The answer was smaller, more flexible units that could more easily seek cover. The "modern system" was born.

The problem for generals was that when small units found safe hiding places away from their commanders, they didn’t move! The tactics of small-unit deployment required politically motivated initiative.

Organization and motivation of troops becomes more important — not less — with advanced, more lethal weapons. Although technological and numerical superiority are important, Biddle’s simulations prove they are not decisive against armies that master "the modern system."

On the other hand, technological and numerical superiority are decisive against armies that haven’t. Iraq’s quick defeat during Gulf War I is a prime example. Biddle warns these lopsided victories lead to dangerous arrogance if not correctly analyzed.

He updates his analysis with mathematical projections and tests his theory against extreme cases where modern tactics and organization overcame technological and numerical superiority. Not surprisingly, he omits a clear example — the World War II battle for Stalingrad.

Stalingrad Shows Power of Communist Class Consciousness

The Nazi bombardment of Stalingrad left no roof intact and hardly any walls either. The red troops used this rubble for concealment during the 1942-43 siege.

Even anti-communist accounts admit "individuals and groups fought on without orders" after being cut off from central command. Unarmed comrades "seized weapons from the dead and fought on." "The Red Army paid great attention to . . . deception, camouflage and operational security" as reserves massed to encircle the surprised Nazis (Antony Beevor, Stalingrad). Mass heroism — essential for the "modern system" to work — crushed the German 6th Army along with the Nazi myth of invincibility, changing the course of the war.

More Than Ever, Politics Is Primary

Military strategists worry that the Iraq war has shaken the army rank and file. To Biddle, instilling a greater commitment to U.S. imperialism among the troops is crucial. His outlook dovetails the liberal politicians’ need for "a patriotic movement for peace."

Soldiers’ politics are also crucial for revolutionaries who have the interests of the working class at heart. There can be no talk of revolution without support from large numbers of troops. We should use every opportunity to win soldiers to rebel against imperialism and its racist and sexist underpinnings. Networks of CHALLENGE readers can help influence small-unit-level rebellions today that can lead to bigger rebellions later. Eventually, soldiers will help smash the bosses’ armed forces, contributing to an armed force for revolution.

1. 50,000 ANGRY ANTI-RACISTS MARCH IN JENA
   Communist Revolution Only Answer to Racist System
   1. Ford Workers Stand Against Racism
2. PLP Exposes Genocidal New Orleans Mayor
3. IMPERIALIST RIVALRY SHARPENING = MORE WARS
   1. An Early Shot in World War III?
4. `Jena 6' Sparks Students to Bring Anti-Racist Fight Back to Classroom, Neighborhood
5. From LA to NY: Multi-Racial Unity Against Jena Racism
   Students Take Lead
6. Bx: Link War and Jena Racism
7. Over 500 Workers, Students Walk-out
8. JENA FACTS
9. To Smash Racism We MustRecruit Workers to Communism
10. China: Communist Internationalism Instead of Literary Nationalism!
11. Rank and File Must Lead Fight Against Racist Warmakers
12. UAW Sell-Outs Unite with Bosses to Screw Workers for War Budget
13. Young and Old Must Unite to Fight Hospital Bosses
14. Building Anti-Imperialism in the Union
15. LETTERS
    1. Oaxaca Fighter: From Reformism to Communism
    2. Taxi Drivers Strike Against
       Hi-Tech Fascism
    3. Cygnus Bosses Unable to Break Workers Unity
    4. Reform is No solution To Racist Capitalist Healthcare
16. 40 Years After Che's Death: Lessons of His Achievements and Errors
17. REDEYE
    1. U.S. Lays Legal Base for Fascism
    2. Jena Racism is Deadly Norm in U.S.
    3. U.S. Has Done Lots Worse Than 9/11
    4. "Races" All Have Same Ancestors
    5. Not Only China But Total-Chevron Support Myanmar Junta
18. BOSTON FREEDOM SUMMER, STUDENTS FIGHT FASCISTS IN THE STREETS
    PART III
19. "The War" Distorts Anti-Fascist History to Build Patriotism

---

50,000 ANGRY ANTI-RACISTS MARCH IN JENA
Communist Revolution Only Answer to Racist System

JENA, LA, Sept. 20 -- Over 50,000 angry anti-racist demonstrators descended on Jena, Louisiana in support of the six black high school students (Jena 6) who are facing charges (see box on page 3). Two-thirds of the demonstrators were under 30 and about 95% were black. Nationally hundreds of thousands took local action, gave money, signed petitions or wore black clothing on this day in solidarity with the Jena 6.

The reason for this mass outpouring is not because Jena is so unique, but because it is so common. Black and Latin youth are the main victims of racist police terror, from the murder of Sean Bell in NYC, to the recent killing of Aaron Harrison, an 18-year old black youth shot in the back by Chicago police in August. The racist criminal justice system, boasts a prison population of 2.2 million, the highest in the world, 70% black and Latin, with millions more on probation, parole, or awaiting trial. This Gestapo terror has spilled over to fascist immigration raids and deportations of undocumented workers, and the fascist Homeland Security roundup and racist harassment of tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants.

It is no surprise thousands of black youth took to the streets against this capitalist racist terror because they know all too well the deadly effects of racism, whether in small towns like Jena, or big cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and LA. They came from hundreds of college campuses and high schools, filled with great revolutionary potential.

This mass outpouring of hatred against racism shows that U.S. rulers have so far failed to win the loyalty of young black & Latin workers to U.S. imperialism. The rulers need to win over these youth to patriotism, a future of fighting and dying in endless imperialist wars and a low-wage police state in order to maintain their system.

Local gutter racists, like the Jena H.S. KKK, local mayors, prosecutors and the police, aren't making their job any easier because these open racists are attacking the very people the rulers need to wage imperialist war. According to the U.S. Census, the poverty rate in Louisiana is 19.2 percent, the highest in the south and the second highest in the country. More than 26 percent of children under 18 years of age live in poverty, also the highest in the south and the second highest in the nation. In Jena, more than 18 percent of the population, and 20 percent of children live in poverty. They are almost all black. In Jena, working-class students, black & white alike, attend the same failing high school. Instead of a multi-racial fight for better conditions, the racist nature of capitalism directs white students' anger against black students.

Misleaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are running to the head of the growing movement to steer black youth into the dead end of electoral politics and the Democratic Party. With big names and bigger bucks, Jackson, Sharpton and the billionaires behind them have a tiger by the tail as they try to pacify and win black youth. At the march, Jackson introduced New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, the racist criminal who left more than 100,000 black people to die during Hurricane Katrina. Congresswoman Maxine Waters from Los Angeles and Congressman John Conyers from Detroit are calling for a federal investigation into Jena. But the federal government will never fight racism. In fact it has always built racism, from slavery to Jim Crow to the funding of the increasing number of killer cops in black and Latin neighborhoods.

Workers supported the youth as delegations of auto workers from Detroit and Chicago, the Teamster's National Black Caucus, postal workers from New Orleans, Chicago and St. Louis, longshoremen from Charleston, S.C. and many more joined them. Autoworkers from the Chicago Ford Assembly plant and the Chicago area UAW Civil Rights Council sent $1,000 with their delegations for the Jena 6 legal defense fund. Resolutions were raised among UAW Legal service workers in Newark, NJ and at the Amalgamated Transit Union convention in Las Vegas. What if the next time the cops killed a black teenager in cold blood, these workers walked out? That type of action could move many workers and youth to see capitalism as the enemy and the working class as having the power to change things.

We can challenge the bosses and their flunkies for the political leadership of the masses by fighting racism where we live, work, and go to school every day. By making political breakthroughs in our main concentrations, we can reach millions. These scenarios become more likely as we deepen our personal and political ties to the masses, increase the readership of CHALLENGE, and fight to lead more anti-racist struggle against the enemy. This is the road to communist revolution.

Ford Workers Stand Against Racism

After helping the UAW Civil Rights Council pass a resolution to support the march, Chicago Ford workers brought the fight back to their local union. At their monthly meeting, with their contract struggle hanging over their heads, they too passed a resolution to send money and people to Jena. They also took up a two-day plant gate collection to involve many more workers. This has raised the political unity of the workers around fighting racism.

PLP Exposes Genocidal New Orleans Mayor

I attended the mass anti-racist demonstration in Jena, La., on Sept. 20. The marchers enthusiastically took, and read on the spot, over 1000 CHALLENGES and thousands of leaflets our PLP contingent distributed. We got a great response to the message that communist revolution is the only way workers and youth can hang a system that thrives on racism to survive.

One of the most disgusting things about the day was the appearance of the racist murderer of New Orleans, black Democratic Party Mayor Ray Nagin. He showed up to `support' these militant anti-racist fighters after leaving hundreds of thousands, mostly black, to die in New Orleans.

In his face we chanted, "Ray Nagin, you can't hide, you left New Orleans to die." Some workers around us got very angry. They claimed that he "did all he could" and told people to evacuate. As we continued to chant, a comrade spoke to a couple of these workers explaining that we must recognize that the racism in Jena and New Orleans all stem from the same source, capitalism. Nagin, like Bush, serves this system. Another comrade was talking to some other workers nearby who were from New Orleans. One of them, a Katrina survivor, said "You know, he did leave us to die." She and the other workers took CHALLENGE.

Our presence is much needed in this growing movement against racism, led by black youth and workers. We are the ones presenting these workers with a real solution outside of the dead-end politics of voting for the Democrats and nationalism.

A Red Worker

IMPERIALIST RIVALRY SHARPENING = MORE WARS

The rulers through their phony debates are trying to convince workers that a solution can be found to the war in Iraq. This contradicts the needs of the U.S. bosses and what the U.S. Army's top general, George Casey, recently told Congress: "the next several decades will be ones of persistent conflict" (Boston Globe, 9/27/07). War criminal Casey should have added "intensifying" and "widening." All the leading Presidential candidates are pushing for whacking Iran.

U.S. rulers fear losing their position as the world's leading imperialist power. Mounting challenges from regional Middle Eastern rivals like Iran and global ones like China and Russia are provoking threats of increasingly deadly U.S. responses. The same liberal Democrats, whom the leaders of the anti-war movement push workers and students to trust and follow, are rapidly signing on to this concept of perpetual war.

The New York Times reported that "the three leading Democratic presidential candidates refused on Wednesday night to promise that they would withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of their first term, saying in a televised debate in New Hampshire that they could not predict the future challenges in Iraq (9/27/07). When asked about Iran, Barack Obama said "attacks" should come after "we have gathered the international community to put the squeeze on Iran economically" (Voice of America, 9/27/07). Hillary Clinton did her part to ramp-up hostilities by voting to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. It indeed terrorizes Iranian workers, but Clinton speaks of its danger to the U.S. ruling class.

An Early Shot in World War III?

At September's United Nations (UN) general assembly, the menace of U.S.-directed military action loomed behind fierce diplomatic wrangling over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Earlier that month, U.S. proxy Israel had staged an air raid on a nuclear weapons site North Korean agents were suspected of building in Syria. The attack, aided by Pentagon intelligence, targeted Iran's anti-U.S. rulers as much as Syria's. This was an unmistakable "you could be next" warning to Iran. A strike against Iran could spark Middle East chaos, for which the over-stretched U.S. military is ill-prepared.

But, that doesn't mean U.S. rulers would never attempt one. The huge profit potential of the Mideast--control of the bulk of the world's oil--lures capitalists to make incredibly risky rolls of the dice there. Good examples are Iraq's failed 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the current U.S. fiasco in Iraq.

The Israeli raid into Syria signals a proxy war foreshadowing global conflict. Hired gun Israel, reaping $3 billion in arms a year from Washington, has long guarded the western flank of the U.S.'s Mideast oil empire. Now China, through its client North Korea, is helping Israel's enemy Syria with its nuclear program. China desperately needs Mideast oil, free of Exxon Mobil's dictates, to fuel its skyrocketing economy. This sets the stage for an armed collision with the U.S. war machine.

China's ally Iran cannot supply its needs alone. That is why China must break U.S. control over Saudi Arabia, the cornerstone of the U.S. empire. It is only a matter of time--shortening by the day, according to U.S. analysts--before a Chinese "blue water" navy (ships capable of traveling long distances for military purposes) confronts the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf.

U.S. strategy seems to favor striking the Chinese-led axis at home, before it acquires global reach. Reporting on Pentagon debates surrounding Admiral Mike Mullen's coming appointment as Joint Chiefs of Staff head, the New York Times said (9/30/07), "The most significant possible crisis situations today are conflict with China across the Taiwan Straits, the nuclear threat from North Korea and, potentially, Iran. Military action would require air and naval power to strike at long distances, submarines to guarantee access through choke points, and Special Operations teams to carry out precision missions on the ground..." Should such tactics fail, more drastic plans lie in the U.S. arsenal.

"The Air Force will need to maintain its technology for the most challenging forms of warfare against a `peer competitor' -- code for China or Russia -- or an emerging smaller adversary with sophisticated weaponry (nuclear arms), like Iran." Short of a hydrogen-bomb holocaust, war maker Mullen optimistically envisions a "thousand-ship" invasion armada, suitable for both the Middle and Far East, with 300 U.S. vessels and the rest supplied by "friendly nations."

But the bosses are afraid to talk openly about the most crucial piece of the puzzle, the vast land troops their expanding wars will require. The Iraq mess revealed just how critical boots on the ground are. U.S. rulers must instill patriotism and a sense of national service, eventually restoring the draft. Millions of working-class youth will then be exposed to the profit-hungry rulers' war crimes, like the indiscriminate slaughter of Iraq civilians by U.S. forces, regular and mercenary. This will offer communists a great opportunity to organize workers and soldiers to smash the imperialist war makers once and for all.

`Jena 6' Sparks Students to Bring Anti-Racist Fight Back to Classroom, Neighborhood

BROOKLYN, N.Y., September 20--"Let's have a walkout" and "It's so great to see our students organizing against something so important" are just a few of the comments heard throughout a Brooklyn high school on the day of national protest against the racist attacks on the Jena 6.

After a discussion on the importance of responding to racist attacks whenever and wherever they occur, a group of teachers and students met to write a leaflet and organize other activities in response to the latest racist attacks. They talked about the importance of linking the racism in Jena, Louisiana to the racism the working class faces everywhere. In the end, a leaflet attacking metal detectors in schools, police harassment of students, the attempted genocide in New Orleans, the roundup of Muslims after 9/11 and the murder of Iraqi workers in this latest imperialist war was written. It tied all of these racist attacks to capitalism by explaining the ruling class' need to divide and conquer workers worldwide in order to stay in power. It also called on students to organize an immediate response to all racist attacks.

The following morning hundreds of leaflets were handed out by subway and bus stations near the school in less than half an hour. Stickers with the slogan "Free the Jena 6, Unite Against Racism" were sold throughout the school for a small donation, raising about thirty dollars to send to the legal defense fund. Lastly, more leaflets were made and distributed at teach-ins led by students, held throughout the day in many classrooms. Students got especially angry when they heard about a racist restaurant nearby that refuses to serve the mainly black & Latin working-class students from our school, while it happily serves white children who live in the middle-class neighborhood where the building is located. Although some students expressed doubts about ever ending racism, the excitement of most was felt all over the school as teachers and students proudly wore their anti-racist stickers.

The gutter racists have given us an opening to actively fight racism, but we won't have learned all the lessons needed about how to fight the cause of racism until we learn to direct our fire against the insidious racism of the liberals as well. In the upcoming discussions about whether to remove metal detectors from the school, the open racists will argue that they are needed to secure ourselves against "dangerous" black and Latino students. We want the metal detectors removed because we see it for the racist attack that it is.

But we need to be aware of the liberal higher-ups who will highjack our struggle in their own effort to gentrify the school. They want the school to look more like "better" schools so they can convince wealthier neighboring families to send their children to this school, replacing working-class black and Latin students. It is trickier to identify the enemies in this kind of battle, but even more necessary. Even if the metal detectors are removed, there will be more racism to combat. We will continue to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE amongst students and teachers, while building study groups. We also need to organize anti-racist students, parents, teachers, and community members to confront all forms of racism, while raising the bigger questions of how to end the system that thrives off of racism once and for all!

From LA to NY: Multi-Racial Unity Against Jena Racism
Students Take Lead

LOS ANGELES, CALI. SEPTEMBER 20 -- At several local high schools students took the lead in organizing actions to support the Jena 6 and to oppose the war in Iraq. Actions included visits to classrooms, where student leaders spoke about the need for multi-racial unity in the fight against the racist attacks that the Jena 6 have suffered. "The biggest fear that the rulers have is for all of us to unite as one," announced a student leader in one of the classrooms. In another classroom a teacher tried to dismiss the comments that a student was making as "communist thinking" and said he did not want to listen to it. "Well, I'm a communist" the student yelled back, and "see you later Mr. Capitalist," she said as she left the room. In another situation, a male Latino teacher criticized a Latino female student "for defending the blacks." The student leader stood her ground and said, "that's the problem, all of us suffer racist attacks and we don't unite together; you are a racist," and she kept going to classrooms to get the students to come to a rally.

A rally was held inside during lunch time in one school and a second rally in front of another school right before school started. In preparation, some students made posters, t-shirts and banners. "We went around inside the school with the posters and people were saying `man you weren't scared, that was cool.'" At the school which had the morning rally a half dozen teachers and around 40 students gathered. The students came up with a chant "1-2-3-4, let the Jena 6 go...5-6-7-8, do it now, we wont wait!" A student leader said, "It was the students who knew, understood and supported the Jena 6. People read the signs and honked their horns as they drove by the rally. We were all feeling happy as an organized group of young students who had planned the action."

CHALLENGE/DESAFIO played an important role in the actions. Hundreds were distributed, along with leaflets, on the days leading up to the actions and on the day of the actions, which was the same day as the mass march in Jena.

Students at one school who led an action to support the Jena 6 also made a banner for an anti-war march on Saturday which said "From Jena to Baghdad--Stop Racist Terror!" At that small march, two of the most popular chants were "Jena, Baghdad, New Orleans--Smash the Racist War Machine!" and "¡No sangre obrera por ganancias petroleras!" (No workers' blood for oil profits). We sold hundreds of Challenges and passed out 1500 communist leaflets denouncing racist capitalism from Jena to Baghdad and exposing deportations and the DREAM Act as a draft for immigrant youth who will be faced with the "choice" of military service or deportation. We called for a student-worker-soldier alliance to smash racism and imperialism with communist revolution.

In the liberal-led immigrant rights movement, the main participants are Latino. In the anti-war movement, those involved are mainly white and the mass movement to defend the Jena 6 has mainly involved black supporters. Since we are one working class and an injury to one is an injury to all, we need to fight these attacks as one class. The actions to support the Jena 6 here involved immigrant Latino students and black students, and they fought for multi-racial unity. Anti-racist actions led by bold and militant students can, at this time of widening war, build the unity and understanding we need to put us on the revolutionary road to victory. They can help students see the need to build an alliance with the industrial working class and soldiers, key forces for revolution. J

Bx: Link War and Jena Racism

BRONX, NY, September 20 -- Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party rallied today in front of the Military Recruiting Center on Fordham Road and The Grand Concourse. We provided a communist response to racist attacks from Jena, Louisiana to Iraq. The racist dehumanization of Iraqis has allowed the mass murder of over 1.2 million workers (see CHALLENGE, Oct. 3). Our rally also diverted hundreds of people's attention away from the recruiters' attempts to win working class black and Latin youth to kill and die in bosses' imperialist oil wars. We also called on the workers and youth of the Bronx to join the growing mass protest movement against the racist frame up of the Jena 6 (see page 1).

A speaker talked about how racism and capitalism go together and how building the PLP to fight for a communist world will ultimately free the working class from racist oppression. The mass response to our rally was shown by the fact that 150 CHALLENGES were distributed along with over 700 leaflets titled, "Fight the Racist Legal Lynching of The Jena 6." The racism suffered by the Jena 6 is not the exception but the rule, since it is also rampant against youth here in NYC.

One student we know (discouraged by the lousy capitalist school system and misled by the bosses' media) was thinking of talking to the military recruiters after our demonstration. We in PLP struggle with youth forced to join the military to become political organizers of fellow soldiers against the imperialist warmakers. Vietnam war veterans used their military training to lead the most successful mass armed anti-racist rebellion in the history of the United States (the 1967 Detroit Rebellion). In the middle of World War One, the Bolsheviks (communists) in Russia organized soldiers to join workers to take state power away from the bosses. It is important for any young person today joining the army to learn this history and to understand that the bosses' military exists to protect the profits of oil moguls like Exxon-Mobil and the interests of U.S. imperialism worldwide.

Before speaking with the recruiters the student watched dozens of people cheer as one PLP speaker openly exposed the racist nature of the recruiters, the imperialist war for oil, and the bosses they serve and protect. This outraged one Marine recruiter so much that he challenged the comrade to a fight in the middle of Fordham Road.

In his first public speech, one HS student showed how the schools are racist and feed hundreds of black and Latin youth to these recruiters. He said of the capitalist schools, "It's true, they don't teach us anything in school...my English teacher didn't even know about Jena, Louisiana...I had to teach my class about what happened." Ten minutes later the recruiter started to heckle and pick a fight with this young speaker. These young people (including the student that wanted to speak to the recruiter about joining the military) and the rest of our base got an important lesson on the real motivation behind the recruiters. One high school student responded "That was one of the best demonstrations I've been to because I really saw that what we do can directly outrage the government."

Over 500 Workers, Students Walk-out

NEWARK, N.J., September 20--Almost 500 people demonstrated at Broad and Market against the racist frame-up of six black youth in Jena, Louisiana. This demonstration was called by the Newark-based People's Organization for Progress (POP) on short notice and was the largest such action in a long time. Many of the demonstrators wore black in solidarity with the Jena 6. Just two months ago, hundreds in this city commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Newark rebellion against racism.

This event showed that the Jena 6 case has become a mass issue. Many workers from downtown businesses joined the picket line. There was also a contingent of construction workers, wearing their hardhats, from the nearby site of the almost-completed Newark arena. Students from Arts High School led chants and were open to going beyond the usual "No Justice, No Peace." About 40 militant students from Arts walked out of their school, despite threats of suspensions from the principal.

Two days before the date of the rally planned in Louisiana, two unions at one workplace endorsed a resolution condemning the criminal charges against the Jena 6 and supporting the rally. At this workplace, we only found out two hours before that the Newark demonstration would be at 12:00 PM. Ten workers, from both unions, took their lunch hour in order to participate.

As POP led the demonstrators into the street for a march to Newark City Hall, hundreds of residents cheered the marchers. At the rally at City Hall, several youth spoke, including Arts High students. This event showed that, despite the lies of the media, youth are eager to engage in positive activities by giving leadership to the struggle against racism.

Several workers distributed 200 copies of a PLP flyer, which called for communist revolution to smash racism. Demonstrators eagerly took the flyers. There is a deep-seated anger, particularly amongst black workers, about this case. For many, the Jena 6 was the last straw in a series of racist outrages in the recent period.

Like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, POP leaders push for reform of a profoundly racist system, which can never change until the capitalists are overthrown. In any demonstration led by POP, these leaders try to limit the politics to the immediate demands of that particular event. They never connect individual abuses to the bigger picture. Many workers now follow these reformist leaders. However, the Jena 6 case reveals that racism is truly the "Achilles heel" of the bosses' system, the main place where they are vulnerable to the anger of the workers.

No matter how they try to cover it up, or smooth it over, the rulers cannot get away from the fact that their racket cannot survive without racism. The capitalists have a dirty secret: they need racism in order to split the working class and to make extra tens of billions in profits off of the lower-paid labor of black, Latino and immigrant workers. Events like the one in Newark show that many are open to the need for revolution to destroy this plague on the working class

JENA FACTS

The bosses' media, as always, is distorting the details of the events in Jena, Louisiana. So that all workers may have the facts and not be misled, here's a summary of the racist incidents that transpired in 2006:

* In August, during a school assembly, a black student asked if he could sit under what was referred to by many as the "white tree". The principal said he could sit wherever he wanted. The next day nooses were found hanging from the tree.
* In the days after the "nooses incident," fights between white and black students ensued at the school. In an effort to quell the tension, the school asked the District Attorney to speak at an assembly. Pouring gas on a fire, the DA warned the students he could be their friend or their worst enemy. He lifted his fountain pen and said, "I can end your life with the stroke of a pen."
* On Sept 10, black students attempted to address the Board of Education to discuss the tree incident and were turned away.
* In November, a section of Jena High was set on fire in an apparent arson.
* In December, at the Jena Fair Barn, a group of black and white students got into a fight where a white student was arrested. One of the five black youth involved was Robert Bailey, Jr.
* The next day, December 2nd, at a convenience store, Bailey was confronted by a couple of white youth who were at the party the night before. One of the white youth pulled a gun and the black youth wrestled it away. The cops arrested the black youth and charged them with robbing the gun.
* On December 4th, a white student, Justin Barker, got into a fight after supposedly insulting Bailey for the previous weekend's events. Barker was beaten-up and had minor injuries but was able to attend a school event later that evening. Five black youth, Bailey, Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw were charged with second-degree attempted murder charges. A sixth student, Jesse Ray Beard, was charged as a juvenile.

To Smash Racism We MustRecruit Workers to Communism

PHILADELPHIA, September 26 -- Last summer an 18 year-old black worker was shot and killed during a robbery at a Philadelphia hospital parking lot. Our collective distributed a Challenge newsletter condemning the hospital bosses for the racist neglect of security that led to this young man's death. Later that summer a black nurse was assaulted by a white doctor and then fired because she fought back to defend herself. Again our collective distributed a Challenge newsletter condemning this racist attack. We took the position that not only black workers but all workers need to join in violent struggle against racism. These two Challenge newsletters swept through the hospital like a shock wave. PLP was the talk of the town.

More recently a number of black workers approached the party comrade about an incident of racial segregation at our hospital. A black woman, a nurse's aide, was moved from her normal work area to accommodate the demands of a racist patient. It is significant that these black workers approached the party comrade and not the 1199 C hospital workers union when they wanted to fight back against this flagrant racism. Many of the workers are disgusted with the unions do-nothing policies. When the union leaders were contacted about this racist incident they did exactly that, nothing!

None of these efforts to fight racism led to any clear "victory." No one was fired for the racist neglect that led to a young man's death. The black nurse who was fired did not win back her job. The incident of segregation went unpunished. Our party comrade was feeling down over this inability to get back at the class enemy but many of the black workers were happy and excited over these events. When our comrade approached a friend of his, a longtime union delegate, and asked him why he was happy, the delegate told him "This stuff has been going on for a long time. We all know it's wrong, we all hate it. But you guys are the only people who will come right out in the open and say it's wrong."

What an eye opener this was! In the party we are constantly discussing reform and revolution. In order to bring revolutionary leadership to the workers we must be in the reform struggles but we must not fall into the trap of believing that capitalism can be reformed. Because our comrade fell into the trap of thinking short-term victories against the racist bosses was primary, he was feeling defeated when in fact the party was winning all along. These struggles against racism have built PLP's reputation as a committed anti-racist working class party. Several workers attended our May Day celebration because of these efforts. More workers are reading CHALLENGE and discussing communist ideas with our comrade. A study-action group has been formed and there's a plan to try and guarantee recruitment. There are also plans to build more sustained struggles. This is revolutionary victory snatched from the jaws of the reformist defeat! The party work will continue at our hospital. There will be many more reform struggles with some victories and some defeats. If we keep the revolutionary line of the PLP foremost in our mind we can always be winning something. After all we have a whole world to win and nothing to lose but our chains

China: Communist Internationalism Instead of Literary Nationalism!

Visiting China recently I noticed an incredible drive to build Chinese nationalist ideology. The Chinese capitalists have mostly replaced communist culture with nationalism. (Some older workers still sing the revolutionary songs of their youth in the city parks, however, and militant workers' struggles hint that communism could live again here.) There is constant propaganda about China "taking her rightful place on the world stage," as the Beijing Olympics symbolize. The Nazis used the same metaphor for their military expansion, calling for "space to live" and staging the Berlin Olympics as a festival of nationalist pride. President Hu Jintao's refrain of "harmony" means replacing class struggle with all-class unity, the lie that the bosses' interests can be harmonized with workers' interests in the so-called "national interest."

Like the nationalism pushed by U.S. bosses, Chinese nationalism supports a drive toward military might, preparations for war and pride in breakthroughs like Chinese anti-missile-missile technology or the submarines of its new blue-water navy. It also prepares for war with rivals like the U.S. and Japan by encouraging racist thinking about workers in those countries (U.S. and Japanese bosses, of course, are doing the same thing against China). Finally, nationalism supports China's emerging imperialist policies. No longer content to be the low-wage "workshop of the world," China is using its banks, largest corporations and military to lock up the natural resources of Africa. Chinese military ties to African ruling classes promise to conflict with older British, French, and U.S. imperialist interests.

This intense culture of nationalism extended even into an obscure academic literary conference. Several papers by scholars with leadership positions promoted a new Chinese nationalism in literary studies. One proposed remapping the world literature curriculum to give Chinese writing its rightful place, and make Chinese "the second-biggest language" in the world. The author rightly said that the accepted "canon" of major works always reflects power relations. But instead of criticizing the cultural imperialists, all he wanted was a seat at the head of their table! Another paper by a dean and party leader argued that Chinese literary nationalism was necessary and good because Chinese culture was harmonious and peaceful, and had an "open nationalism," aware and tolerant of national differences and other cultures. This is a variant of the liberal imperialism of Britain, France, and the U.S., who claim viciously racist cities like London, Paris, and New York as capitals of cultural openness.

One young scholar scared me with his passionate nationalism when we talked. He really believed nationalism and capitalism are what China needs today. Asked about the last organized Chinese nationalists, the Kuomintang, he angrily dismissed them as "fascists," claiming that Chinese nationalism now was liberal and different. Asked about the obvious oppression of migrant workers in the cities and farmers in the countryside, he said that those were merely economic differences, and that even the poorest Chinese should be proud of their culture. This outlook may be his ticket to professional success, but he meant every word. Some other young intellectuals, however, were more open to anti-nationalist, anti-imperialist arguments.

As inter-imperialist war looms, intellectuals in China, the U.S. and everywhere else should ally internationally with the world's workers against all imperialisms. The Chinese "Communist" Party has turned communism into nationalism in its drive for a place in the capitalist sun. To instead build communist internationalism, to fight alongside workers and soldiers against savage capitalist exploitation, intellectuals need a single international party, the PLP. As Marx said, workers have no country. What we have are the same international class interests and the same common enemy: capitalism.

Red Internationalist

Rank and File Must Lead Fight Against Racist Warmakers

A "Labor Conference to Stop the War" is being organized in San Francisco on Oct. 20 by the ILWU (Int'l Longshoremen and Warehouse Union) Locals 10 and 34. Unions from all over the U.S. are being invited. The conference plans "workplace rallies, labor street mobilizations and strike action against the war." Already the L.A. teachers' union (UTLA) and the S.F. Labor Council have endorsed the conference.

PLP members plan to attend the conference to bring our line that this is an imperialist war, not just one caused by the "wrong" policies of Bush. Another major weakness of the anti-war movement has been that workers, particularly rank-and-filers and black and Latin workers in basic industries, have played a very minor role in the actions against the Iraq-Afghanistan war. The anti-war actions have generally built pacifism and reliance on Democratic Party politicians.

We must build on the examples of April 2003, when anti-war protestors picketed war cargo shippers in Oakland, and the cops fired on the protestors and longshoremen. This past May, when anti-war protestors and the Oakland Education Association also picketed war shippers, longshoremen honored the picket line.

We urge rank-and-file union activists to attend the conference and fight for a worker-student-soldier alliance based on the idea that capitalism makes war inevitable, and that liberal politicians are not the solution but part of the problem. If we unite the black workers and students mobilizing to free the Jena 6, the GM workers who recently went on strike and immigrant workers fighting the virulent racism they suffer to the fight against the bosses' wars, then we will really have the power to stop the warmakers.

For more info on the conference go to http://www.labournet.net/world/0708/awar1.html.

Anti-War worker

UAW Sell-Outs Unite with Bosses to Screw Workers for War Budget

DETROIT, MI September 2 -The new four-year UAW-GM contract reflects the sharpening competition among the world's billionaires for markets, resources and cheap labor. As the Automotive News (8/13) reported, "This year...Toyota is going to set the pattern for the entire industry..." And while GM, Ford and Chrysler will get huge concessions and unload their health care liabilities, Toyota is announcing new "cost cutting measures" on their U.S. workers while the new Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama will offer a starting wage of $14 an hour (far lower than previous union wages).

This imperialist rivalry has led to the bloodbath in Iraq, and global auto production that has pitted worker against worker in a race to the bottom. The flag-waving Solidarity House (UAW headquarters in Detroit) gang, is only interested in keeping their billionaire masters on top. We need a revolutionary movement to abolish wage slavery, smash all borders, and establish a communist world with production based on the needs of the working class, not the profits of Wall St.

The new contract:

*Establishes a VEBA trust fund and removes a $55 billion healthcare bill from GM's books. It will be funded at 70% of the liability and take effect in 2009. Similar VEBA's went bankrupt at Caterpillar and Detroit Diesel in the past.
*Maintains health benefits at current levels, until the VEBA is established. Then the UAW will administer our health care cuts.
*Freezes wages for the entire contract, with annual lump sum payments. Current auto wages will never be matched again.
*Establishes multi-tiered wage levels for new hires.
*Will extend buyouts of senior workers and start hiring temps at lower wages and benefits.
*Has very vague wording on job levels and future plant closings. More than a year before the contract expired, Solidarity House agreed to a major restructuring at GM, Ford and Delphi that included health cuts for retirees, wage cuts for active workers, and a buyout plan to eliminate 100,000 jobs and close 40 factories.
*Then there is the fine print and side agreements we will never see or vote on!
Worldwide auto production is shifting away from the U.S. and Europe and towards China and India. China is emerging as one of the world's largest auto producers and markets. At the same time, while GM and Ford close U.S. plants, Toyota, Daimler, Honda and others open new ones. Since 2000, about 15,000 parts plants have opened in the South, almost all non-union, and at a fraction of union pay.

We are up against the contradictions of imperialism and the racist profit system. They cannot be solved at the bargaining table. We should reject this contract, organize a mass march on Solidarity House, and reach out to auto workers around the world for support. Only communist revolution can smash imperialism and abolish wage slavery. Join PLP!J

Young and Old Must Unite to Fight Hospital Bosses

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 26 -- Lenny, a veteran union delegate for the 1199C hospital workers union, recently asked Sam, a worker in his 20's, to consider becoming a union delegate. "I'm afraid nobody will listen to me because I'm so young," said Sam. "Yeah, well that's the problem," said Lenny, "Most of the older workers my age don't realize that their job security, benefits, pensions, and lives are closely tied to what happens to the younger workers."

A few months after this conversation the 1199C union leaders announced the latest pension fund crisis. The older union members that Sam feared wouldn't listen to him are now alarmed and scared. "Damn straight I'm fighting for my pension," declared a middle-aged union delegate, "I ain't eating cat food when I'm old!" A younger union delegate meanwhile argued, "Why the hell should we younger workers give a sh_t! There won't be any Social Security or Pension for us anyway!"

When calm, most workers agree that the division between younger and older workers hurts all of us. But the day to day bombardment of capitalism's anti-working class ideas can infect the best of us. That's why the spread of PLP's communist ideas and Challenge-Desafio is so important.

Communists in PLP fight for working class unity. Class unity is essential for communist revolution. Just fighting for reforms under capitalism requires class unity.

The capitalist bosses spend billions to use racism to divide workers by skin color; sexism to divide workers by gender; patriotism and nationalism to divide us by capitalist country, religious or other bourgeois grouping; and phony age divisions to split older workers from our own children and grandchildren!

These false capitalist divisions also allow the capitalists to make super profits by paying immigrant, women and black, Latin, and Asian workers less than white workers. The introduction of the "two tier wage and benefit" systems into union contracts expanded the bosses' ability to superexploit younger workers by paying them lower wages and benefits than the older union members and the failure to fight the "two-tier" attack on younger workers has also hurt the older veteran union members.

A 2006 federal law now requires the pension fund to maintain higher funding levels than before. This means the union members must unite to fight for the hospital to pay more into the pension fund. If that doesn't happen, the union members' monthly pension payments will be reduced or union members will have to start paying into the pension fund for the first time.

One cause of this crisis is that many full time jobs were lost to layoffs and hospital closings as well as being broken down into part time jobs. The hospital bosses don't pay into the pension fund for part-time workers.

At our hospital the two-tier system began over 10 years ago when hospital bosses in Environmental Services tried to split up the jobs of 300 workers who were all full time and worked every other weekend. The bosses figured they would save money by hiring part timers just for weekends with no benefits like healthcare or vacation and sick time.

The 1199C union delegates at that time organized the union workers to fight against this attack on full time jobs. (It's no accident that these union delegates were regular CHALLENGE readers!) For a short time the bosses backed off.

Then the bosses recruited two Environmental Services workers, one black, one white, to have workers sign a petition for weekends off. In a section of the hospital where the influence of the union delegates was the weakest the petition helped bosses to first begin hiring part-time workers. It was only a matter of time before it spread throughout the whole department. Now the Environmental Services Department has around 120 full-time workers and 120 part-time workers and less and less money came into the pension fund.

This pension crisis must be a wake up call for union members. Because the union movement accepts capitalism, the unions can never give workers the understanding we need to build true class unity or understand that our real enemy is the capitalist system itself. Only communist ideas can do this. Communist ideas show that what workers have in common as a class is far greater than secondary differences like skin color, country of origin or age.

We can't begin to fight such attacks without the multi-racial class unity of all workers. Our union contract reopens in July and one demand that might unite older and younger would be the demand for more full-time jobs with benefits. Full-time jobs with benefits is what most of the younger workers want and would ease the pension funding crisis by increasing its funding.

Building Anti-Imperialism in the Union

"We need to bring the troops home NOW!" Navy veteran demands at statewide union convention.

When several of our local union members drafted an anti-Iraq war resolution to be voted on at a chapter meeting we knew we would be fighting an uphill battle. One of these local members, a communist, proposed the resolution to his activist friends, and together they worked to bring the resolution to a vote. In spite of vigorous opposition from some members, including veterans of the Iraq War, the resolution won by a 2/3 majority.

The chapter delegates took the resolution to the statewide conference, knowing there would be an even bigger battle to gain support for it among the other chapters in the state. It was clear that the state leadership did not want the resolution to pass when the committee analyzing proposed resolutions described it as "divisive" and not an appropriate issue for our union! State leaders refused to approve distribution of our literature at the conference site.

The first three days of the conference were spent preparing speeches to present to the almost 2000 delegates and discussing our resolution with those we met in workshops. The atmosphere at the conference was clearly and pointedly patriotic and honoring union members and families who were serving or had died in Iraq. Pictures of these servicemen and women were projected on giant screens on the first day of the conference and one of the booths set up during breaks in conference business had camouflage t-shirts available.

As the anti-war resolution and the recommendation against it were read, pro and con lines were forming to speak to the resolution. Our first spokesman stated that the war in Iraq is the single most important issue facing U.S. workers. He stressed that as leaders of the labor movement, union activists must oppose a war that was killing not only working-class Americans, but working-class Iraqis, all for the interests of U.S. oil companies and their friends in government.

As delegates came to the microphone, we were not sure what to expect. We thought we would see more workers at the "con" line because of the "support our troops" atmosphere at the conference. However, one of the delegates at the "con" line had meant to be at the "pro" mic. He was a retired Navy man whose son was in Iraq and who wanted him "TO COME HOME NOW!"

When the vote came, our resolution lost by a significant margin. But we had met several delegates and union staff workers who agreed with our position on the war, and we will be working with them to bring this resolution back to the 2008 conference. At the closing session one delegate told those assembled that his son was on his third tour of duty and, "I cannot believe that this group would not vote to bring the troops home."

Fighting for communism in mass organizations like labor unions and churches is hard. In fact, working in mass organizations is hard not only for communists, but for all workers who want to see a better life for themselves and their children. But without our work in these mass organizations and the friends we have made there, our Party could not have made the political advances that CHALLENGE has reported over the years, attacking nationalism and sexism, exposing racist ideology, fighting oppressive regimes. We could not have stopped KKK or Save Our State rallies, we could not have stopped layoffs at factories, and most importantly, we could not have won hundreds of workers and students to join the struggle for revolutionary communism. Because of the struggle we engage in as communists to build a movement that will lead the working class to take state power, we will strengthen ourselves to win more and bigger battles. J

LETTERS

Oaxaca Fighter: From Reformism to Communism

I'm a young Oaxacan fighter who for a long time was won to capitalist alienation. But my life changed when the social problems and mass movement exploded here in Oaxaca.

When I began to see the masses of people demonstrating to demand their necessities, I changed. I joined the mass marches and protests led by APPO (Popular Association of the Peoples of Oaxaca) and Section 22 of the teachers' union. I was very active with these organizations and followed the ideas of the leaders.

I participated very actively in the confrontations to defend my people and my rights against the police, the army, and the paramilitaries contracted by the government. I witnessed many of my fellow fighters being killed, arrested and brutally beaten. All these things made me think about true changes.

During the mass struggle I met PLP through their discussions and distribution of literature criticizing the leadership of APPO for politics that did not represent the real solutions to the problems suffered by the people of Oaxaca.

I criticized the PLP for not participating publicly as a party in the mass meetings and actions and for its political positions. I said that I followed the leaders of APPO because they were open in the movement. Time passed and the federal and state governments unleashed their brutality against my people. They won against us physically but not ideologically.

During this time I began to understand what PLP said, "The reformist leaders are part of the capitalist system." These opportunist leaders just seek their own benefits and those of their particular cliques. People who follow these phonies and give up their lives in fighting for a new society based on equality are used by them.

Many people were assassinated, tortured, and disappeared for the benefits of a few reformist opportunists who today parade their governmental posts, including people from the pseudo-Marxist Revolutionary Popular Front. Many of my friends left the struggle because they felt deceived by these sellouts. But a lot of us have stayed, learning that this is a process and that we are sowing the seeds of real change. Today I'm a member of PLP and our struggle is to smash the capitalist system and its reformist defenders, who create hunger, poverty, unemployment, wars and murders. Today, I'm struggling with my friends for them to join us so we can change the system through a true communist revolution.

From Reformist to Communist

Taxi Drivers Strike Against
Hi-Tech Fascism

On September 5, thousands of taxi drivers went on strike in New York City to demand that the city government rescind its plan to install GPS (Global Positioning System) in all cabs. Bharevi Desie, leader of the Taxi Workers Alliance, representing 7,000 taxi drivers, mostly immigrant workers (60% South Asian), called the strike a success. She said 80% of the drivers stayed home belying what billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and the Taxi Limousine Commission said about only a few drivers joining the strike. She said the action was to inform the public about the tremendous danger for the drivers and riders the hi-tech GPS system represents.

The GPS in taxicabs will record every move the drivers make, and will make them more liable for any accident. Drivers will also lose income if any component of the system fails. There is an also a big concern over radiation. This is another step by the fascist Homeland Security police state as it spies on workers on their job sites, communities, schools, etc.

The city bosses used all their power, including the media, to try to make the strike a failure. Mayor Bloomberg even used his flunky Fernando Mateo, the so-called leader of livery drivers, to try to break the strike. Mateo received money from the City to hire young people to distribute leaflets against the strike. The city authorities also created special pick-up zones making riders pay three times the normal fare.

PLP went to the strikers' rallying site with CHALLENGE and a sign saying "Stop Scabs." A major weakness of the strikers (including PLP'ers) was that there was no plan to stop scabbing. PLP should have mobilized for a more massive presence to introduce communist politics among the strikers.

On Sept. 10, a few days after the strike, over 500 strikers met to discuss the outcome; 95% voted to strike again on Oct.1 if the city persists on installing the GPS. At the meeting, a PLP member and taxi driver proposed that the Taxi Workers Alliance call on the TWU Local 100 (representing subway and bus workers) and other city unions to join a massive solidarity work stoppage or slowdown. This kind of joint militant struggle will go a long way in fighting the bosses' growing attacks on all workers.

The MTA has just announced that the subway and bus fare will go up to $2.25 a ride, which will be a racist attack on the mostly black, Latin and immigrant riders. Workers must not accept the growing fascist attacks on our class to make us pay even more for the capitalist economic crisis and its endless oil wars.

A Red Taxi Driver

Cygnus Bosses Unable to Break Workers Unity

Temporary, undocumented, non-union workers walked off their jobs to take a stand against the racist termination of their co-workers here at Cygnus, a soap packaging plant. But the two-week strike ended uneventfully when the Total Staffing temp agency that hired the majority of the workers promised them they could return to work, without reprisals, at the same pay as before. The workers were preparing to picket Total Staffing when they received letters to return to work. Some signed immediately. Others wondered why some were so happy to return to the lousy conditions they had walked-out on. These complaints were answered with hushed whispers that union reps had visited the picket line promising to get us better pay and working conditions after we returned to work.

Active throughout the strike, PLP members stressed that the real victory was that we had remained united throughout the struggle and had realized our power as workers. At a BBQ the following day, we took the opportunity to remind the workers of the very important lessons learned during the strike. The very first day of the strike Cygnus called the mixers back to work, some say with higher pay. Without the mixers, production would have been completely stopped. The strikers realized that we had to build deep friendships with all who have the power to stop production should the need for action arise again.

We also learned the importance of working class unity. We made a point of fighting racism from both sides. A nationalist misleader from the Workers' Collaborative, an immigration rights group, told the strikers they would win because the replacement workers were black, and therefore, "slow and lazy." We said it was no coincidence that all the replacement workers were black and that racism is the bosses' tool. We won the strikers to reach out to those crossing the line, and to expose and fight the racism of the bosses and nationalist sellouts. Many who crossed the line expressed support for the strikers while trying to explain that they didn't know about the strike and just wanted to feed their families. It was clear for all to see how the bosses use wage slavery and racism to pit workers against each other.

In the weeks following the return the work, we have continued to meet with our friends at Cygnus and even one of the replacement workers. It is unclear whether the union that spoke to the workers has made any contact with Cygnus.

The Workers' Collaborative held a fundraiser that raised $1,500. They have yet to give any money to the workers, saying that the strike ended, even though these workers who make between $6-$7-an-hour missed five weeks pay. Their actions made it easy for us to point out the limits of reform work within the system and how it always falls short of meeting the needs of the working class.

Our presence, in contrast, has been very consistent and much appreciated. The distribution of CHALLENGE to our new friends has sparked conversations about how the immigration issue is connected to the larger problems of capitalism. In fighting back, we have learned lessons and built relationships with workers to win them to the Party and plant the seeds for future struggles and eventually a communist revolution.

Friend of Cygnus Workers

Reform is No solution To Racist Capitalist Healthcare

The closing of the Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center in Compton, California exposes the sham of "liberal benevolence". The hospital opened as a result of the Watts Rebellion which was sparked by the shooting and death of Leonard Deadwyler. He was shot by the cops as he frantically tried to drive his pregnant wife, who was in labor, to the nearest hospital more than twenty miles away from Compton.

For years, residents of Compton had no medical center nearby and the hospitals where they sought treatment were racist. The death of Deadwyler and the mass rebellion that followed resulted in the building of King Hospital and the Charles Drew Medical Center that would train mainly African American doctors to treat the patients in the area.

Over the years funding has always been a constant battle, and the recent death of Edith Isabel Rodriguez, who bled to death on the floor of the ER there before being seen by staff, exemplifies why many call this hospital "Killer King."

My own experience at King was certainly negative. After I had dental surgery at the hospital, the doctor gave no post-surgery instructions or a prescription for pain killers. When I called to ask about a prescription, the nurse was hostile as if I were to blame for the pain. Later, the same nurse called to tell me that they may have damaged a nerve to a tooth near the surgical site!

King is plagued by understaffing, due to under funding. Another problem is the racism of the management system towards the black population and a growing Latino population. The racism that African Americans have fought so hard against is now also practiced against Latinos.

People who remember the days before there was a hospital, and who see more and more hospitals closing, fight to keep it open while we also worry about the hostility of a staff that is supposed to help the patients. The racist media paints this as a failure due primarily to the incompetence of African American administrators. But this hospital never had a chance. Dr. Charles Drew, the developer of blood transfusions, was not lush with money. The teaching component was named to honor him just as the naming of the hospital was supposed to honor Dr. King. What keeps most teaching hospitals afloat are government funding and a rich and influential alumna. King/Drew had neither.

From the closing of the King/Drew medical center, we should learn that reform is a very temporary and partial solution to the systemic failure of racist capitalism in serving the working class. We should fight to reopen King/Drew with more staffing and funding. And we should commit ourselves to fight to destroy a racist system that treats so many workers as expendable.

A friend

40 Years After Che's Death: Lessons of His Achievements and Errors

October 8 marks the 40th anniversary of the murder of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After his small guerrilla group was captured in the Bolivian Andes by Bolivian army troops, he was killed by a Cuban rightwing exile team working for the CIA. Even though for 30 years the Bolivian rulers intimidated the La Higuera villagers to not honor Che, even flying planes low over the village every October 8, the village has now become sort of a museum for the legend of Che. Ironically, since the rise of power of Evo Morales, the only Indigenous President of Bolivia and a self-proclaimed "socialist," the very poor people La Higuera now has medical service for the first time in history: two doctors sent by the Cuban government.

The face of Che has become an icon worldwide, not only as a revolutionary symbol but even as a commercial one, on T-Shirts, scarves, and berets. Even a beer was named after him in Europe. The recent movie Motorcycle Diaries--recounting his pre-revolutionary years when as a young medical student he and a friend toured Latin America and saw first hand the poverty and racism suffered by millions from the Andes to Caracas--became a worldwide hit. A new movie is on the making staring Bernicio del Toro as Che as a figure in Castro-led Cuba.

Che was a contradictory figure as far as revolutionary communist politics are concerned. Indeed, he gave up what could have been an easy middle class life as a doctor to become a revolutionary. He was one of the leading commanders of the Rebel Army that defeated the well armed pro-U.S. army of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. He became Minister of Economy and fought for political incentives instead of economic incentives for workers. He pushed for building a "new man/woman" to fight for the well-being of the entire revolutionary society instead of for his/her self interests. He had sharp criticisms of the Soviet-style of socialism, even hinting that it was leading to capitalism. Some say that his disagreements with Moscow-Fidel alliance made him leave Cuba to fight for his idea of a guerrilla movement overseas. First he went to the Congo to help the Lumumba-led movement against the pro-imperialist forces that eventually brought Mobutu to power and turned the Congo into a pro-U.S. ally and in the later years a more pro-France ally. Then he went to Bolivia to lead a small group of guerrillas to try to inspire the peasantry to rise up against the reactionary government. That was his major weakness.

His military-guerrilla tactics were based on the belief that a few committed guerrilla fighters could inspire the masses to rise up and fight their exploiters (this strategy was called the "guerrilla foco"). He ignored the role of building a revolutionary communist movement to build a mass political base. He even trusted the revisionist (sellout) pro-Soviet "Communist" Party of Bolivia for mass support for his guerrilla group. Of course, the "C"P of Bolivia didn't lift a finger since it firmly believed in reforming capitalism peacefully, plus it really didn't trust Che because of his criticisms of the Soviet rulers. The guerrilla foco strategy was easily defeated in Bolivia and in other countries where it was tried. Many honest revolutionary workers and youth were killed because of this wrong strategy.

Today, many so-called progressive rulers in Latin America -- Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador and Chávez in Venezuela -- praise Che in order to win mass political support for their nationalist reforms of capitalism (their so-called "Bolivarian socialism"). They are not real anti-imperialists and look for a better share of the capitalist pie for their "reformed" capitalism from the European Union, China, Russia and any other imperialist rivals of the U.S. bosses. Revolutionary communists must win workers and youth falling into the trap of supporting the "Bolivarian capitalists" to forge a mass internationalist movement to fight for a society without any form of exploitation -- communism -- and end the capitalist hell of endless wars, racism and the superexploitation of millions.

REDEYE

U.S. Lays Legal Base for Fascism

At the end of this chilling volume ["Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy"] Mr. Savage offers a concise and powerful conclusion: "The expansive presidential powers claimed and exercised by the Bush-Cheney White House are now an immutable part of American history--not controversies but facts. The importance of such precedants is difficult to overstate. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once warned, any new claim of executive power, once validated into precedent, `lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.'

...."Sooner or later, there will always be another urgent need." NYT 9/25

Jena Racism is Deadly Norm in U.S.

In Jena....Justin Sloan, a white man, attacked black students who tried to go to a white party in town. Sloan was charged with battery and put on probation. A few days after that a white boy pulled a gun on three black students in a convenience store. The black student wrestled the gun from him and took it home. The black student was charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who produced the gun was not charged.

On December 4 a group of black students attacked a white student, Justin Barker, after they heard him brag about a racial assault committed by his friend. Barker, 17...spent a few hours in hospital and, on his release, went to a party where friends described him as "his usual smiling self." The six black students were then arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder....

These incidents...suggest that a racial scandal in America happens when the scandal of its continuing racism is laid bare. The outrage is not that this happened in Jena, but that similar things happen everywhere, every day in America, and almost nobody takes any notice....

Add racism to poverty and the magnifier effect is stunning...the 10 states with the highest discrepancy between black and white incarceration include Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York... Jena's problem is not that it has proved itself more racist but that it has manifested its racism with insufficient subtlety. GW, 9/21

U.S. Has Done Lots Worse Than 9/11

What happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was...a grisly addition to a history of human experience that has often included many thousands killed, en masse, by inhuman human choice. It is simply and complexly a factual matter that the U.S. government has participated in outright mass murders directly (in, for example, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq) and indirectly (through aid to armies terrorizing civilians in Nicaragua, Angola, East Timor and many other countries).

...."do as we say, not as we do." Norman Solomon 9/8

"Races" All Have Same Ancestors

Race is a social construct. It carries no secure markers. We all go back to common ancestors in what is now East Africa. Every distinction since is only environmental. There was a time in this country when we spoke of "the Irish race" and "the Italian race"--and meant it. You don't hear that much any longer. It went out of style. (NYT News Service)

Not Only China But Total-Chevron Support Myanmar Junta

Total and Chevron are partners on the Yadana offshore gas project, which came on stream in 1998. Last year the field produced an average of 19.3m cubic metres a day, representing about half of Burma's total gas output. Most of the gas is sold to Thailand; PTT, the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, is a member of the Yadana consortium. Chevron, which acquired its stake when it bought Unocal in 2005, said it was monitoring the situation...

In 2003 Bernard Kouchner, now French foreign minister, was commissioned as an independent consultant by Total to write a report on the group's involvement in Burma. He did not call for it to leave the country, but said the company "must come out clearly in favour of democracy".

Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch said: "The Yadana project is probably one of the biggest revenue raisers, if not the biggest revenue raiser, for the Burmese government, so it gives them the ability to do the things they want to do."

He added that there was a similar responsibility on Thailand, which buys most of the Yadana gas, and other Asian countries that have been investing in Burma.... ONGC of India and CNPC of China, both state-controlled, have been building up their investments. Burma's gas resources are sizeable, if not enormous. Proved reserves were 540bn cubic metres at the end of last year, according to the BP Review of World Energy (FT, 9/27/07).

BOSTON FREEDOM SUMMER, STUDENTS FIGHT FASCISTS IN THE STREETS
PART III

(Part II described the successful 1975 May Day march PLP organized in defiance of ROAR, Boston's gutter racist organization, and its pals in the Boston Police Department and City Hall. The Party and its friends in the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR) then began organizing a nation-wide summer-long drive, "BOSTON 75," directly in the eye of the storm. Its goal: to smash the most virulent racist movement in the U.S. since the heyday of the KKK.)

In the early spring of 1975, INCAR flooded college campuses nationwide with tens of thousands of brochures calling on students and others to join the "Freedom Summer Anti-Racist Action Project." Students had already demonstrated during the Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam war periods that energy, creativity, militancy and political commitment can more than compensate for inexperience. Could the same hold true in Boston, even if most of the volunteers came from the outside? Given the stakes, there was no other choice.

The first wave of young volunteers arrived in early June. Eventually their numbers would reach 150, coming from California, Texas, the Midwest, Washington, D.C., Seattle, New York and elsewhere.

The project's organizational blueprint envisioned several overlapping areas: a Freedom School in Roxbury bringing black and white students together in a friendly atmosphere, helping them compensate for the havoc of the previous year in the Boston public schools; the formation of committees to canvass in South Boston, Hyde Park, Roxbury, Dorchester, Cambridge and other greater Boston neighborhoods; an outreach committee to win support from churches, unions and other mass organizations; and an area-wide petition drive to popularize INCAR's program for better schools and opposition to the racists.

From the start, the politicians, cops and ROAR made clear that they considered BOSTON 75 a threat and would use any tactic to crush it, from harassment to open terror.

The racists began in early June. When a group of INCAR volunteers were conducting street agitation, ROAR thugs overturned their table and vandalized their truck. The cops made no arrests. On June 7, 60 INCAR members picketed the new ROAR office in Fields Corner, an integrated section of Dorchester. Cops immediately arrived and blocked the picket line, as well as a planned neighborhood march.

This coercion didn't deter the anti-racists. They successfully circulated a petition calling for ROAR's ouster from Dorchester. When cops attacked an INCAR rally at Boston State College, 25 INCAR members invaded the president's office.

These opening skirmishes proved that the rulers' stake in Boston's fascist movement was bigger than their desire to maintain illusions about "free speech" for anti-racists. The initial battles also hardened the resolution of INCAR and PLP to stand up to intimidation.

A week later, the bosses and their agents decided to try to wipe out the Project before it reached full strength. On June 14, 25 INCAR members held a street rally at Uphams Corner. The cops watching the rally soon disappeared. Then, as if on cue, ten thugs carrying bats, a hockey stick and a sawed-off oar arrived and began assaulting the anti-racists, all of whom were weaponless.

The INCAR members fought back. The police suddenly reappeared. An INCAR worker courageously addressed the 100 onlookers who had gathered by now, explaining that the attack was a partnership between ROAR goons and the cops and that the anti-racist movement would not be cowed by these tactics. He was immediately arrested. The ROAR attackers went scot-free.

The INCAR volunteers refused to yield an inch in the face of this racist bullying. Two days later, they were back on the streets, this time picketing City Hall to expose the complicity between ROAR and the Boston City Council, eight of whose nine members proudly acknowledged their ROAR membership. These racist Councilors were brazen enough to plaster the letters R-O-A-R on the windows of their City Hall offices which passers-by could see from the street.

The "right" to strut this racism had been upheld several times in court as an exercise in "free speech." However, on June 16, it was unceremoniously challenged from an extra-legal source, when several INCAR members infiltrated the offices and ripped the hated letters off the windows. The struggle was sharpening.

(Next: Reaching the masses.)

"The War" Distorts Anti-Fascist History to Build Patriotism

Ken Burns's documentary "The War" has been seen by millions, becoming one of the most viewed PBS TV programs. The well made but ultimately crass documentary focuses on a cross section of Americans from all parts of the country and all classes portrayed as reluctant warriors. Again and again we see blue bloods from Connecticut interspersed with Japanese and black workers and first generation immigrants fighting to be accepted as Americans on the battle field and on the home front.

It details the transformation of the American population from American isolationism to an acceptance of the need to kill and die for "democracy." Even though it's about the U.S. during WWII, its message is clearly aimed at today's young adults. In order to push patriotism among workers in the U.S. it distorts the true nature of what happened over 60 years ago.

Burns frames the war as one in which an "innocent" American people came to realize the U.S. "had to fight" fascism. He disregards the world-wide anti-fascist movement begun years earlier in Spain and carried on in China, Russia, Ethiopia and ultimately all of Europe. This sleight of hand turns what was in fact a mass heroic working class movement into a crude attempt to get today's population to overcome its aversion to imperialist war.

Burns completely sanitizes the U.S. ruling class interests that affected Roosevelt's policy on the war, namely the reluctance to enter so long as it looked like the Germans would try to finish off the Soviet Union before expanding the war and the allowing of Pearl Harbor to happen once it became apparent that the Germans would not limit themselves. Hiding the class interests of U.S. rulers in regards to the war was necessary to overcome the revulsion of imperialism that sometimes expresses itself as pacifism.

This pacifism, is the ultimate target of "The War." Taking this on is no easy task. The anti-war movement in this country (started by PLP) grew during the Vietnam War. Also the shellacking the U.S. took in Vietnam was the worst setback the U.S. bosses have ever suffered one that even after 9-11 they have still not recovered from.

But this doesn't stop Burns from trying. The documentary focuses on the U.S.'s efforts to get people to accept the deaths of hundreds of thousands as necessary. It talks about the transformation of normal people agonized by killing into soldiers who become "professional" in a term used by the show, and the footage of dead American soldiers is shown over and over as a sort of preemptive strike against shock at mass U.S. casualties in the next "War."

Ironically Burns's ability to get away with this distortion rests on an ironic and truly unfortunate fact. The old communist movement also hid the class nature of WWII in an effort to build the United Front against fascism. This mistake turned the heroic movement of literally hundreds of millions of workers to defend some form of socialism and workers power into a war for "democracy" that left the U.S. running half the world (the Chinese and Soviets did control the other half). But more importantly it politically undermined the workers movement and led many to believe that kinder capitalism was possible and the best that we could hope for. Burns takes this a step farther even by virtually disregarding the international nature of the war and the fact that the USSR played the major role in defeating Nazism and turning it into "an American" experience.

Clearly this documentary is about rewriting history to affect the future. The efforts of Burns, PBS, and their supporters from the various ruling class foundations are driven by concern that today's youth won't die for this country in large numbers. That said, we must also recognize that as the bosses prepare for the next World War we have the opportunity to build on the great efforts of the old communist movement and the chance to avoid repeating their mistakes.

 

Growing Fight Back To Free The Jena Six

Reds Led International Campaign vs. Scottsboro Legal Lynching

Bloody Iraq Chaos Sparks Oil Free-for-All

• Petraeus And Bush Betrayed Exxon & Co. In Iraq
• Big Oil’s Rivals Cashing In
• Biggest Bosses Need Wider Wars

Ex-Fed Chief Greenspan Says Iraq War Really for Oil

At D.C. March, PLP Marks Capitalism as Cause of War

1.2 Million Dead From U.S. Imperialist Invasion

Struggle Sharpens Against Patriotism, War and Bosses’ Racist Health Cuts

Back Japan’s Teachers’ Anti-Imperialist Action

Immigrant Marchers Welcome PLP Answer to Liberal Misleaders

Howard Univ. Protest vs. Jena 6 Attacks Opens Door to Red Ideas

Resolution By United Auto Workers LOCAL 2320, Backs The Jena 6

Women, Girls ‘bought, sold, raped, beaten’ in Vegas Sex Trade

Bush’s Sunni Ally: A Mobster

Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Squeezing Japan’s Bosses

Morocco’s Cops Attack Striking Miners

Facts Belie Sicko’s Version of French Healthcare

• Attack On The Hospitals
• Attack On Social Security
• Attack On Specialist Care

LETTERS

Neo-Nazi Skinheads Learn From Racist Israeli Rulers

GIs Respond to PLers’ Exposé of U.S. Oil War

New Fascist Rule Hits 8 Million Immigrants

U.S. Bosses May Go Down, But Not Easily

Revolution Makes More Sense than Reform

‘No End in Sight ’? That’s War in An Imperialist World

REDEYE

• Terror vs. schoolkids recalls Hiroshima
• Oil politics bringing starvation
• Big U$ aid for terror-run nation
• Red China ended opium addiction
• Ordering lead paint = more profit

PL History: May Day Marchers Repulse Boston Racists

Training to Smash the Fascists

Fascism was this Summer’s Movie Fashion

---

Growing Fight Back To Free The Jena Six:

Hang The Racist System!

"Now my son knows what it means to be black in America," declared the father of Mychal Bell, on the day the 16-year-old high school student was convicted by a racist jury of "attempted murder" and "conspiracy to commit murder." Mychal is one of the Jena 6; five others also face charges. As we go to press, tens of thousands of workers, students and youth are descending on Jena on what was to be his sentencing date. He has been in jail since January and is still there needing $90,000 bail although his initial conviction has been overturned, in response to the growing anti-racist storm headed for Jena. He is still threatened with other charges.

The Jena 6 has captured the attention of the anti-racist movement amid a series of increased racist attacks across the U.S. Consider:

• The mass racist terror in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when more than 100,000 black people were left behind to die;

• The closing of half the public health clinics in Chicago this past winter that serve an uninsured patient population 85% black and Latin. The Census Bureau just announced that another two million people lost their health insurance and a new wave of racist budget cuts awaits them;

• A prison population of over 2.2 million people, the highest in the world, 70% black and Latin, with millions more on probation, parole or awaiting trial;

• A rise in racist police terror, from the murder of Sean Bell in NYC on the morning he was to be married, to the cops’ beating to death of a Latino worker in the Ramona Gardens public housing project in Los Angeles to the cop murder of an immigrant worker in Mt. Kisco, NY to the recent killing of Arron Harrison, an 18-year-old black youth shot in the back by Chicago police last month. In fact, the Chicago police murdered four young black and Latin men in August.

• Immigration raids, increased border patrols and racist deportations of undocumented workers, scape-goating them for (falsely) "stealing the jobs" of U.S.-born workers;

• The round-up and racist profiling of tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants in the name of "the war on terror."

While politicians from Hillary Clinton to Obama to Giuliani all rant about the "war on terror" and defend the bloodbath in Iraq, the real terror we face are the increasing racist attacks on the working class. From infant mortality to life expectancy, by every objective measure, racism is more widespread and devastating now than at any time since the 1960’s Civil Rights movement.

This is not just the Bush crowd’s policies; it is built into the capitalist system of wage slavery. Racism is the fiber that holds the whole blood-soaked cloth together. Capitalism was built on slavery and then created the unscientific concept of "race" to justify it. Without the trillions of dollars stolen through the historical super-exploitation of black workers, and the political ideology to divide all workers, capitalism could not survive. The super-profits stolen from Latino, Asian, immigrant and women workers have added to the fortunes of the racist rulers, all of which increases exploitation of all workers.

On the one hand, racist terror is needed to force us to accept a future of wider wars and poverty wages. On the other, racist budget cuts against the poorest of the poor are the important ways the rulers finance their wars to control the flow of Mid-East oil or any other challenges to their empire. Racism is the cutting edge of fascism. And only a mass, multiracial international revolutionary communist movement, led by black, Latin and women workers, soldiers and youth can smash racist wage slavery.

Whenever the masses are in motion, the bosses are playing with fire. They remember the ghetto rebellions of the 1960’s, especially the 1967 Detroit Rebellion that forced President Johnson to send troops headed for Vietnam to crush the rebellion. As of September 19th, more than 200,000 people have signed petitions to free the Jena 6. What was expected to be a rally in Jena of a few thousand may now be tens of thousands. So the bosses have called out their loyal cronies, Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to steer the anti-racist sentiments of the masses back into the dead-end of electoral politics and into the clutches of the Democratic Party. PLP is active in this struggle to build the revolutionary communist movement and end racist terror forever.

Under capitalism, racist terror is protected while fighting racism is not. What kind of system is it where a black student feels he must ask if he can sit under the "whites only" tree? Where the school superintendent considers nooses hanging from that "white tree" to be a joke? What kind of system allows the racist white students responsible to go unpunished while terrorizing those who fight back with life-long jail sentences? Where the racist District Attorney can tell a student assembly, "I can end your lives with a stroke of a pen." Like the mother of one of the Jena 6 put it, "They want to keep institutionalized slavery alive and well." Such a system must be destroyed with communist revolution.

We must take the struggle of the Jena 6, and against all forms of racist terror, to our jobs, unions, schools, campuses, community groups and barracks. Raise money and resolutions for their legal defense, demanding their freedom. The Jena 6 have struck an anti-racist nerve. More than 2,000 rallied at Howard University (see page 3). The Chicago Area UAW Civil Rights Council is sending delegations to Jena with a $500 check for their defense, and will take up shop collections among Ford, Navistar and other workers. Chicago’s Ford Assembly plant workers voted to send a donation and delegation on behalf of the Jena 6 and collect money from rank-and-filers at shift change.

The fight against racism can only be resolved by destroying the profit-system that breeds it. Fighting racism and for equality has always been at the heart of building the revolutionary communist movement and the Progressive Labor Party. These six young black students, by standing up to the racist terrorists in their school and running their courts, have created an opportunity for our movement to advance. Seize it! Free the Jena 6. Fight for communism.

Reds Led International Campaign vs. Scottsboro Legal Lynching

On March 21, 1931, nine black teenagers, the youngest being 13, were jailed in Scottsboro, Alabama, falsely charged with raping two white women on a freight train. Legal lynching has historically been part of the racist Jim Crow system that dominated the U.S. since the Civil War, especially in the South. "The Scottsboro Case," the most infamous case of legal lynching, exposed the U.S. ruling class throughout the world. This charge was later repudiated, especially by one of the women, Ruby Bates. But after a few days, a kangaroo trial still sentenced the Scottsboro 9 to the electric chair.

The Communist Party rallied to their defense, sending the veteran communist lawyer Joseph Brodsky to defend the victims. While it was fought back and forth in the courts, the communists launched a national and international campaign to free the nine young men, organizing demonstrations, marches and rallies in cities across the country and abroad. The case became one of the most famous battles against racist frame-ups in U.S. history.

All this was occurring simultaneously with mass movements of the unemployed and among industrial workers for unionization, led by communists, reflecting the great ferment in the working class battling the effects of capitalism’s Great Depression.

Forced by heavy mass pressure, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial, on the grounds that in the original "trial" the accused had inadequate legal counsel. Only after the communists’ campaign had drawn worldwide protests did various reformist organizations — the NAACP, the Urban League and the A.F. of L. — join the international struggle. Great respect for the communists grew among masses of black people.

The fight saved the Scottsboro 9 from the electric chair but the savage Southern courts sentenced them to prison terms up to 99 years. It was only in 1950 that the last of the young men was released.

The case became known especially among the workers in the colonies owned by the imperialist powers. This became a powerful force that somewhat restrained the racist lynchers and exposed U.S. rulers as among the most racist in the world. The Scottsboro fight serves as a telling lesson that anti-racist forces organizing mass pressure among all sections of the working class can return blow for blow against the rulers’ racist oppression.

Bloody Iraq Chaos Sparks Oil Free-for-All

In his latest speech, George W. Bush said U.S. military engagement in Iraq would extend "beyond my presidency." On one hand, Bush is trying to dump the Iraq mess on his successor ("Bush Passes the Buck" editorialized the Boston Globe, 9/15). But a stronger motive compels U.S. rulers to keep troops in Iraq: it is not yet secure enough for Exxon Mobil and Chevron and their British partners BP and Shell to operate in.

Securing Iraq’s oilfields for these oil giants was one of the most important reasons the U.S. and Britain invaded in the first place, in addition to controlling the Mid-East against imperialist rivals. While Bush had this as one goal, he also pandered to an electoral base of smaller capitalists who were unwilling to make the sacrifices (higher taxes and wartime government regulation) that a massive invasion would have demanded. So he and the neocons attempted to do it "on the cheap" — too few troops — and with no plan for the post-invasion, dissolving the Iraqi army, firing the Baath officials who could run the government, and so on.

A pre-invasion study by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) had envisioned six million barrels of crude gushing daily from Iraqi wells. Currently, however, insurgent attacks and sabotage, plus the general instability, keep the daily flow below two million barrels. The Wall Street Journal reported (9/10/07): "For large multinationals, the lack of security makes any meaningful fieldwork difficult. But more crucially: Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, there has been no legal framework for signing deals and ensuring they last beyond the current government."An understated Chevron spokesman told the Dallas Morning News (9/11/07), "We want to see things probably much more stabilized than they are now," before investing in exploration.

Petraeus And Bush Betrayed Exxon & Co. In Iraq

The Democrats, loyal to the main wing of U.S. capitalists, represented by Big Oil, and more than willing to waste Iraqis and GI lives, favor continuing the bloodshed there until it’s safe for Big Oil. Richard Haass, president of the CFR think-tank (funded by the Rockefellers) approves of the liberals’ pro-war stance. "Even a lot of the Democrats...aren’t calling for total withdrawal...a lot of them are talking about residual forces in certain places for certain missions.... [S]ixteen months from now, when a new president takes over, you are likely to see a U.S. presence of plus-or-minus 100,000 troops in Iraq, doing a lot of training, but still doing some combat missions in the central part of the country." (CFR website, 9/11/07)

MoveOn, a liberal group founded by Larry Rockefeller, among others, took out a full-page New York Times ad calling General David Petraeus, the top U.S. officer in Iraq, "General Betray Us." Petraeus is indeed a mass-murdering war criminal, but MoveOn wasn’t motivated by concern for Iraqi lives. His greater sin, in liberals’ eyes, is treason against Exxon Mobil and its kind by failing to safeguard the Iraqi oil infrastructure.

Big Oil’s Rivals Cashing In

With the biggest U.S. and U.K. refiners — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell — sidelined for the moment in Iraq, rivals are attempting to cash in on the nation’s oil treasure, challenging Big Oil’s monopoly. With Bush’s O.K., Hunt Oil of Dallas just signed a deal with Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq. This move undermines Big Oil’s goal from the invasion’s inception — a national law that would give the Big Four almost exclusive access to Iraq’s oil at unheard-of profit rates. Again Bush is serving his donor base at the expense of the bigger U.S. bosses. Hunt Oil chief Ray Hunt raised millions for Bush’s election campaigns. The Hunt family is a long-time enemy of the rulers’ liberal dominant wing. Ray’s late father, H.L. Hunt, was implicated in the Kennedy assassination.

On Sept. 8-10, Conoco Phillips, another foe of the main wing, hosted a conference in Dubai, with co-sponsors Total of France and Lukoil of Russia, on "International Investment in the Iraqi Oil Industry," featuring Iraq’s highest-ranking oil ministers. Clinton’s Iran Libya Sanctions Act of the mid-1990s mainly targeted Conoco’s operations in those countries.

Biggest Bosses Need Wider Wars

The dominant Exxon Mobil wing cannot afford much longer to forgo Iraqi oil profits, or let rivals grab them. Their solution lies in wider wars (in the Mid-East in the short term, with China later on) requiring far larger military forces, higher taxes and the complete World War II-style unity of the entire capitalist class.

The CFR welcomed part of Bush’s speech as "a new and clearer statement of strategic intent: a vision of an ‘enduring’ U.S. presence in Iraq meant to counter the nuclear and political ambitions of Iran." And the elite think-tank does not rule out a U.S. attack on Iran. "Most experts doubt the United States will launch a unilateral strike on Tehran, but acknowledge such an action would be the worst case scenario." (CFR website, 9/14/07) And the Wall Street Journal (9/10/07) reports, "The Pentagon is preparing to build its first base for U.S. forces near the Iraqi-Iranian border, in a major new effort to curb the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq."

Saudi Arabia, the crumbling cornerstone of U.S. imperialism across the Persian Gulf, "has begun setting up a 35,000-strong security force to protect its oil infrastructure from potential attacks. The move underlines the kingdom’s growing concern about its oil installations after threats from al-Qaeda to attack facilities in the Gulf, as well as rising tensions between Iran and the U.S. (London Financial Times, 8/26/07)

For the main U.S. rulers, the 2008 election is principally a search for a president (unlike Bush) able and willing to mobilize both capitalists and workers for war. They need someone who can and will impose rigid discipline on all businesses in the interests of the largest ones. They need someone who can and will restore the draft, brutally crack down on dissent, and herd workers into war industries.

We must not be misled by Democrats or people like MoveOn, who in fact serve these profit-hungry war-makers, seeking to deploy U.S. troops region-wide. But without workers to produce for, and soldiers to fight these imperialist wars, the profit-makers are doomed. Only a mass, international PLP, winning workers and soldiers to destroy capitalism which drives these wars and the system’s evils — mass unemployment, poverty wages, racism and fascism — is the way forward for the working class.J

Ex-Fed Chief Greenspan Says Iraq War Really for Oil

America’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir...., Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the U.S. Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W. Bush’s economic policies.

....His view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion.... [says] "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil…."

Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.

Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

At D.C. March, PLP Marks Capitalism as Cause of War

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 15 — Today, thousands of marchers led by the ANSWER coalition called on the U.S. government to pull all troops out of Iraq. However, their
"answer" leads the anti-war movement to back the Democratic Party warmakers. PLP presented the revolutionary alternative with a bullhorn rally near the main demonstration, linking the war, rotten schools and racism to the capitalist system.

We spoke about the growing fascist character of the U.S. — how the police are being militarized and the "war on terror" is an attack against the few rights workers still have. Above all, our rally denounced all politicians (Democrats and Republicans) as warmakers and racist. We called for workers’ revolution against the U.S. rulers as the only way to crush fascism, imperialism and wage slavery.

We distributed over 800 CHALLENGES and hundreds of fliers about the Jena 6 case. We also circulated a petition against racist attacks in Jena and at the University of Maryland at the rally and during the march.

Pro-war groups including the Gathering of Eagles and Free Republic counter-demonstrated along the march route with as many as 1,000 pro-fascists in their ranks. They chanted "U.S.A" and spewed anti-communist lies. Some of them attacked protestors, including an anti-war Latino father who was carrying a memorial for his son, killed in Iraq. It was a weakness that anti-war workers, students and soldiers, and ourselves, were not prepared for the presence of these fascist organizations. These gutter fascists are the goons the bosses have historically used to attack those who oppose their war, racism and economic attacks on the entire working class. Right-wingers like Michelle Malkin and other media mouthpieces openly organized for the counter-demonstration through the NY Post, and Fox News. It should be no surprise that not one of these fascists was arrested whereas almost 200 anti-war demonstrators were arrested. The growth of these fascists must be fought by the more rapid growth of the revolutionary communist movement!

While the PLP banner proclaiming "Workers, students, soldiers unite! Smash imperialist war!" was in front of our bullhorn rally, other comrades took this message to the middle of the march to struggle for a revolutionary outlook. The positive response from the marchers to our red message shows the great potential for turning anger into revolutionary organization. As the rulers and their Republican and Democrat politicians prepare for wider wars (Iran seems to be next), we must multiply our efforts to win workers, students and soldiers to the understanding that capitalism is the cause of war, and the only solution is to organize to destroy it.

1.2 Million Dead From U.S. Imperialist Invasion

According to a new study by the British polling firm ORB, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 U.S. invasion, a number exceeding the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide. The study was conducted with face-to-face interviews in 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Two provinces — al-Anbar and Karbala — were too dangerous to canvas and researchers were not given permission in a third, Irbul.

Previously the highest estimate had been 650,000 in the landmark Johns Hopkins study published in the Lancet, the British medical journal. The ORB findings parallel the rolling estimate on the Just Foreign Policy website of just over one million killed, based on the Johns Hopkins data.

How well the Bushites and bosses’ media have hidden this toll was revealed earlier this year in an Associated Press poll asking people in this country how many civilians they thought were killed in Iraq because of the invasion and occupation. The median answer was 9,890.

Struggle Sharpens Against Patriotism, War and Bosses’ Racist Health Cuts

LOS ANGELES, September 11 — When "everyone please rise for the flag salute" came over the PA system, students all over the school sat down. In some classrooms the teachers sat down, too. In other classrooms, students were ordered to stand, but they stood silently, with their arms crossed defiantly. "They can make me stand up," said one student, "but they can’t make me say the pledge, and they sure can’t make me believe in patriotism."

Some students said, "We should have a sit-in in the principal’s office!" Others said, "We should put out a flyer." "This is all about the war in Iraq." "They’re just using the people who died on September 11 to try to get support for their war."

Teachers had found out on Friday after school that this patriotic PA pledge and announcement—the first of its kind at the school—was planned. Teachers communicated with each other over the weekend, sharing ideas about the history of the pledge of allegiance, how it relates to the history of imperialist war and what the struggle has been against patriotism and the pledge. On Monday several teachers held discussions with their students on these topics.

Students in one class pointed out that they had already learned the history of the pledge of allegiance, which was written in 1892 at the height of lynchings of African-Americans, the use of the U.S. Army to stop a nationwide Pullman railway strike, and racist attacks on Italian and Jewish immigrants. Nevertheless, the pledge said "with liberty and justice for all." The purpose of the pledge was to win the working class to patriotism to prepare for imperialism and war—then in Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines—now in Iraq. Students in this class understood the purpose of the pledge very well; when they did a role play in class debating whether the U.S. should continue imperialist war in the Philippines, the pro-imperialists, with money hanging out of their pockets, couldn’t convince anti-imperialists, workers, immigrants, and African-Americans to support U.S. imperialism. In one last desperate try, they got together in a group and chanted the original ending of the pledge, "One country, one language, one flag!" Everyone could see that patriotism was the last desperate attempt of the rulers to win the working class to war. It didn’t work that day in class, and it still isn’t working with these students.

As a result of this discussion, several students put out a flyer, calling for students to organize to fight against patriotism and imperialist war. They went to another school club and they all decided to join together to fight against racist cutbacks in health services on campus and in the community (including the closing of King-Drew Hospital – see last issue), and the war in Iraq. More of these students are now reading and distributing CHALLENGE newspaper, and organizing the fight against racist cutbacks and war. The struggle continues. J

Back Japan’s Teachers’ Anti-Imperialist Action

As stated in a CHALLENGE letter from the National Educators Association convention (8/1), 1,500 Japanese teachers have been attacked for refusing to rise to sing the national anthem and salute the flag because they see this as a step to winning their students to go to defend the interests of the Japanese rulers in imperialist war. The American Federation of Teachers local at San Francisco Community College passed a resolution supporting these teachers and demanding an end to the attacks on them. The resolution calls for support demonstrations on Oct. 5, 2007 at Japanese embassies and consulates. The Japanese teachers say their fight is like the fight in the U.S. against the No Child Left Behind legislation. A similar resolution will be considered by teachers in LA at an upcoming United Teachers of LA delegate assembly meeting. Teachers in the U.S. should stand up to the bosses’ patriotism in the service of imperialist war with the same bravery as teachers in Japan. This will help build internationalism not only among teachers but among students, who are future soldiers, workers and teachers themselves. It can help build anti-imperialist, anti-racist struggle and one international communist PLP to take on all the imperialist war makers and ultimately destroy them with communist revolution.

Immigrant Marchers Welcome PLP Answer to Liberal Misleaders

Prince William County, VA, September 2 — PLP’ers brought the message of multi-national, multi-racial revolution and internationalism to a gathering of thousands of mainly Latino workers at an immigrant rally in this D.C. suburb. This working class crowd received over 300 CHALLENGE enthusiastically. Our message sharply contrasted with the misleading message that "We are all Americans from Canada to Argentina" from Mexicans Without Borders (MWB), which organized this American flag-waving rally against recent anti-immigrant legislation passed by the Prince William County Council.

The fascist law calls for county police, in partnership with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), to interrogate persons regarding their immigration status. It also calls on county service providers to demand immigration paperwork for anyone who requests or uses public services (like health care and libraries) and deny services to undocumented workers and their children.

MWB thought that a weeklong economic boycott and a rally and march would make the County repeal the racist law. It is highly unlikely that this will happen in today’s increasingly fascist climate.

The "we-are-all-Americans" theme of the march was an insult to demonstrators since most were in the U.S. due to the brutal anti-worker policies of the U.S.-backed Central American rulers in the 1980s and 1990s. One disgusted worker shouted to the MWB speaker exactly where he could stick his American flag! Surrendering further, though, MWB said that "there might be some people along the march route who hurl insults or disagree with our cause [the Minutemen counter protestors], and it is important that we ignore them and fight for our rights, the right way." In other words, bow down to fascists and turn the other cheek.

The students, workers and teachers at the rally liked our militant, anti-capitalist message. They were relieved to hear an alternative to the liberal sham on stage. Next time we need to show up with more forces, more Spanish speakers and more CHALLENGE-DESAFIOs to build a base in the ever-growing Latino community in the D.C. metropolitan area. J

Howard Univ. Protest vs. Jena 6 Attacks Opens Door to Red Ideas

WASHINGTON, DC, September 5 — Today over 2,000 angry students filled Cramton Auditorium to capacity while hundreds more assembled outside, furious at the racist attacks by the Louisiana government on the Jena 6. Led by the student government and organized by the campus chapters of Amnesty International and NAACP, which had mobilized 400 volunteers to build for the event, students vowed to descend on Jena on September 20 to voice their outrage at this flagrant racist attack, collected $8,000 on the spot to support the legal defense team, and declared that they would sponsor political education about the racist system throughout the semester. Soon thereafter, a planning meeting of the local Amnesty International chapter decided to hold additional actions about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the U.S. military’s creation of a new Africa Command to handle the U.S. capitalist interests on that continent.

Meanwhile, two days after this event, a noose was found hanging outside the Nyumburu Cultural Center at the nearby University of Maryland (UMD), almost certainly inspired by the publicity around the Jena 6 case. A fightback is developing there as well. PLP organizers circulated petitions on their jobs and at the anti-war march on September 15 demanding that all charges against the Jena 6 be dropped and that those responsible for the noose at UMD be found and expelled. Dozens of pages of signatures have been gathered.

This outpouring of anti-racist and internationalist sentiment is inspiring. Speakers at the Howard University rally correctly linked the fight against this racist attack to the war in Iraq, to the Scottsboro case, and to many other instances of oppression caused by capitalism. This is the first time in recent memory that a political event was so well attended that it forced Cramton Auditorium to lock out hundreds of students due to fire laws! The energy from this rally lays the basis for many more students to learn about revolutionary change and the road to communism as the way to abolish the capitalist system that is built on and reinforces vicious racism and imperialism. A PLP study-action group is now being organized at Howard University from these activities, with the goal of circulating CHALLENGE-DESAFIO more broadly and learning the lessons of past revolutions to advance revolutionary change. J

Resolution By United Auto Workers LOCAL 2320, Backs The Jena 6

NEWARK, NJ – WHEREAS, the six black high school students from Jena, Louisiana are being framed for crimes they didn’t commit; and,

WHEREAS, one of the students has been convicted by a racist judge and jury and faces a 22-year prison term [Ed. Note: see page 1 for later development]; and

WHEREAS, Mychal Bell, the first youth of the Jena Six to be tried, was improperly represented by a public defender who called no witnesses; and,

WHEREAS, we as legal service workers vigorously oppose the arrest of the six black students of Jena, Louisiana and condemn the conviction of Mychal Bell; and,

WHEREAS, the original constitution of the union as Essex-Newark Legal Services committed the union to the elimination of racism, sexism, elitism and poverty;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the ENLS Staff Association and the ENLS Attorney’s Association, both branches of NOLSW, UAW Local 2320, support the six high school students from Jena, Louisiana and their struggle against racism; and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that said unions also support the September 20th rally to support the Jena Six.J

Women, Girls ‘bought, sold, raped, beaten’ in Vegas Sex Trade

Thailand’s sexploitation trade has nothing on Las Vegas, "the epicenter of North American prostitution and sex trafficking," according to a book-length report by psychologist and researcher Melissa Farley, entitled "Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada." (NY Times, 9/3) After reading the report, Times columnist Bob Herbert says, "Vegas is a place where women and girls by the tens of thousands are chewed up by the vast and astonishingly open sex trade…. Females are bought, sold, raped, beaten, shamed and… physically and emotionally wrecked."

Nowhere, of course, does the liberal Herbert cite the source of this exploitation of women — the profit-driven capitalist system which rakes in billions from this degradation.

Those pulled into this sex trafficking are in their "early-20s, late-teens and younger. Child prostitutes by the hundreds pass through the Family Division courtroom….girls as young as 12, with the average age being 14." They also include "huge numbers of foreign women."

Although prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada, it is "illegal" in Vegas, yet it is "where 90% of the state’s prostitution occurs." Huge mobile billboards promise "Hot Babes — Direct to your Room." Over 150 pages in the city’s yellow pages advertise "college teens, mothers and daughters," and so on in every disgusting sexual come-on.

The sex "industry" is controlled by club owners, escort service managers, pimps and traffickers in whose pockets most of the money ends up, not to mention the banks which profit from the interest on loans to the plush hotels which contain the rooms where this sexual slavery flourishes.

But in Vegas, the country’s fastest-growing city, the government is at the center of the prostitution payoff. Mayor Oscar Goodman, formerly a lawyer for the mob, boasts that the city would reap "tremendous benefits" if a series of "magnificent brothels" could be legally established, convinced that this "could be a boon"! (Although it seems to be quite profitable without any "legality.")

In the 1990s, Las Vegas tried hard to promote a family-friendly image, but, boasted Goodman, "That ended when I became mayor."

Hundreds of corporations and unions hold their annual meetings and conventions in this sex-trafficking center of the continent. They represent the "best" U.S. capitalism has to offer: women broken by sexploitation.

In the past, communist-led revolutions freed women from such oppression. In February, 1917, women garment workers led a massive general strike which helped spark the Russian revolution. Then the Bolsheviks liberated women in Russia and in the Caucasus from the yoke of the Orthodox Church and the Mullahs, Muslim religious leaders. The 1949 Chinese revolution rehabilitated tens of thousands of women forced into prostitution. Capitalism’s return to those countries has brought back these capitalist evils. But, learning from both past achievements and failures, communists today fight all forms of oppression of women. Eventually, only communism — a society free of the profit motive that drives this horror — can destroy this unending sex slavery.

Bush’s Sunni Ally: A Mobster

Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who met Bush during his September 3 visit to the huge U.S. base in Anbar province west of Baghdad, was killed along with his bodyguards on September 13 — the same day Bush gave his national speech supporting General Petraeus’s recommendations.

Bush praised Risha as a "hero" for having joined the U.S. "pacification" of that province. But Risha was labeled a "mobster" by the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, France’s CIA. (Le Canard Enchainé 9/12)

Abu Risha, the Sunni tribal chief, "had recently changed sides, after having long knocked about with the insurgents. And in Paris, the reading of his CV — we dare not say his ‘police record’ — drew a few ironic reactions from the French general staff and the French foreign ministry. Indeed, Abu Risha built a solid fortune in smuggling via Syria and Jordan, in that frontier zone through which jihadists, arms and explosives often transit."

Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Squeezing Japan’s Bosses

The September 12 resignation of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after just one year in power, has triggered a major political crisis for this key U.S. ally in Asia, particularly in its relation to China. Abe, 52, was the country’s youngest leader since World War II. Under his rule, the Defense Agency became a Ministry, a sign of Japanese imperialism breaking with its so-called post-war pacifism.

His resignation follows government scandals involving the resignation of four of his ministers and the recent suicide of his Agricultural minister, all shattering credibility in his government. Then, on July 29, the opposition won control of parliament’s Upper House.

An Intelligence Brief by PINR.com explains how his resignation "leaves the Liberal Democratic Party (L.D.P.) leaderless as it approaches a showdown with the Democratic Party of Japan (D.P.J.) over the renewal of the law [allowing]…Japan’s navy to support the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. Japan’s navy has been providing refueling and water for the U.S. military in the Indian Ocean. This mission is controversial in Japan because many believe it…[violates] the spirit of the country’s pacifist constitution, if not the letter of the law. The law in question expires November 1. Although the L.D.P.-controlled lower house could force the bill through if the D.P.J.-controlled upper house votes it down, it would be a procedural headache on such a short timeframe and could cause a backlash from the public."

The U.S. is pressing for the law’s extension. Amidst this government crisis, Thomas Schieffer, U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, met with Abe’s cabinet to insist on continuing Japan’s naval support of U.S. efforts in the region.

Japan’s capitalism also faces many other problems, including growing competition from China in Asia. It is the only top imperialist country actually facing a sharp reduction in population. Its racist immigration policies limit the number of immigrants entering Japan, which could increase its low labor costs to a level approaching the U.S. and European Union countries.

Even though Japan’s economy has recovered from the long period of stagflation following the housing and banking bubbles bursting in the late ’80s, it could face problems if exports to the U.S. suffer because of the U.S. subprime crisis and possible recession. This would widen the large income gap already existing in Japan caused by the anti-working class economic reforms of former PM Koizumi. The ending of government subsidies hit the rural heartland hard and workers were affected by the end of "lifetime employment" and the growth of lower-paid casual and temporary jobs.

Basically, Abe has become a victim of the inter-imperialist rivalry shaping events worldwide. He was forced to quit just a few days after meeting Bush and Australian PM Howard during the APEC meeting to "strengthen the war against terror."

Japanese imperialism needs to become a military power again, but the mass atrocities by the fascist Imperial Army in China, Korea and the rest of the Asian countries it occupied during WW2, have won it the mistrust of the masses in those countries. Moreover, WW II showed Japan is limited militarily because it’s an island without the depth that protects China, Russia and the U.S. So it must ally itself with U.S. imperialism to fight the growing threat of China’s imperialism.

Capitalism and imperialism offer workers a future of endless wars, racism and economic turmoil. It’s time for the world’s workers to begin organizing a mass international revolutionary movement to change that deadly future.

Morocco’s Cops Attack Striking Miners

JBEL AWAM, MOROCCO, September 13 — Two days ago at 4 AM, the Royal Police invaded a camp set up by striking miners here since the start of their walkout on July 4, violently expelling the miners, their wives and children and arresting 29. Fellow workers and relatives of those arrested demonstrated at police headquarters yesterday, demanding their release.

Two months ago, the cops arrested workers camping at the mine’s gates. They were later released and forced to set up their strike camp a distance away from the gates. The 200 striking miners are demanding the rehiring of those who’ve been fired, and equal wages for casual and permanent workers.

The subcontracted miners are not even recognized as doing underground work, being labeled "surface" workers; the 14 to 16 monthly work accidents don’t have medical coverage. There are four deadly accidents every year at this mine, owned by the Society of Mines. The miners declared that the mine’s pollution is poisoning the local river.

As soon as Morocco’s recent electoral farce ended (only one in eight inhabitants voted) without threatening the power of the right-wing repressive monarchy, the government launched an offensive against workers’ struggles. Several months ago, CHALLENGE reported on a militant struggle by Delphi and textile workers here, evidence that Arab workers are fighting for their class interests.

International solidarity is crucial for these struggles. PLP champions the slogan, "Workers of the world, Unite; we have one common enemy: world capitalism!"

Protest messages demanding release of the miners can be sent to the Prime Minister of Morocco: Fax 00212-37761010 / 00212-37731010 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Facts Belie Sicko’s Version of French Healthcare

PARIS, September 6 — Michael Moore was on the defensive at a press conference here. "[In "Sicko"] you show an idealized vision of the French, British and Canadian health care systems, which those who endure the reality will have a hard time recognizing," one reporter said. "What’s the purpose of those sequences?"

Moore admitted he dumbed down "Sicko" so that people in the U.S. could understand the message.

"These different capitalist countries have managed to set up systems of solidarity," Moore said. "I’m aware of their inequalities.... I wanted to show the American public...that it’s possible to envisage systems of that kind, to consider health care not as a privilege, but as a right. I give a superficial view of what’s happening in these countries; but remember, eight out of ten Americans…don’t have a passport."

Michael Moore oversimplifies and distorts the truth because it doesn't support his reformist agenda. He wants to demonize the American health care system without exposing capitalism's inability to meet workers needs all over the world. Yet, with the facts, U.S. workers can easily understand the full truth. The French healthcare system which has never favored the working class, is a good example. In 1982 the "Socialist" government created a Permanent Committee on Asbestos to monitor the on-the-job health threat. The asbestos industry controlled the committee and covered up the number of sick workers until 1997; then the government discovered "an epidemic." Today, asbestos-related diseases kill 3,000 workers annually; 100,000 will die over the next 20 years.

In "Sicko," Moore uses outdated World Health Organization figures from the late 1990s. Consequently he ignores the three-pronged attack the bosses launched on the French health care system in 2004.

First, they slashed hospital budgets and disorganized the hospital system. Second, social security covers fewer and fewer people, forcing them to buy supplementary insurance. Third, rules changes for specialist care have made it less accessible to workers.

Attack On The Hospitals

Since 2004, supposedly "inefficient" local dispensaries have been closed, flooding the remaining big centralized public hospitals, especially the emergency rooms, with people having minor ailments being treated using expensive and inappropriate means.

In May, Dr. Michael Huguier, a government official, said the new, activity-based accounting system has created a wasteful number-crunching bureaucracy and reduced the types of hospital care available.

Budget-slashing "has resulted in a decline in the care public hospitals offer, to the benefit of the lucrative private sector [hospitals]," said the Communist Party-led CGT trade union….[causing] "staff reductions, worsening working conditions, the closure of beds, wards and hospitals, the selection of the most profitable patients, and focusing on technical and high technology activities."

Attack On Social Security

The government has also further reduced the medicines and treatments social security covers. As the CGT said: "The goal of the [April 2004] Doust-Blazy reform was…to reduce the proportion of health care expenses paid for by social security and to open up a bigger and bigger field to private insurance companies." Supplementary insurance has become a 26-million-euro-a-year business for the bosses.

Not everyone can afford supplementary insurance: while 96% of the richest fifth of the population have it, only 79% of the poorest fifth do. In racist France, only 58% of immigrants from Arab North Africa, and only 54% of immigrants from black, sub-Saharan Africa have supplementary coverage (Insee Première no. 1142).

Health insurance eats up more and more of the family budget. Today 10 to 15% of the people here postpone treatment because they can’t afford it ("l’Humanité," 9/5).

Attack On Specialist Care

The April 2004 reform made family doctors "gate keepers" to specialist health care. People must see their family doctor before seeking specialist care. Otherwise, they pay more for the specialist.

But family doctors aren’t paid for the extra "gate-keeping" work. Consequently, they don’t do it, said the president of the family doctors association. Rich people can afford to by-pass the family doctor, but workers face an additional hurdle in getting specialist care.

This is the wretched situation in France, and it will get worse if the working class doesn’t fight back.

The National Assembly will impose medical co-payments, effective in 2008, requiring a one-euro payment every time one sees the doctor; an 18-euro franchise on every bill over 91 euros; and a 50-eurocent co-payment on every medicine prescribed.

A handicapped association condemned the scheme: "Most of the handicapped live on ... 627.27 euros a month," yet they will have to pay these extra charges.

A CSA polling company survey showed 61% of the people here oppose the co-payment scheme. Over 40 trade unions, associations and left-wing parties are organizing a demonstration against it in Paris on September 29.

While it’s important for workers in France to build this demonstration and other fight-backs against the bosses, they need to approach these struggles as stepping stones to communist revolution — the only road to decent health care for everyone.

LETTERS

Neo-Nazi Skinheads Learn From Racist Israeli Rulers

Many were shocked to learn that a neo-Nazi gang of skinhead youth aged 16 to 21 were arrested in Israel in September. They were immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU). They were accused of causing bodily harm, illegal possession of weapons and denying the Holocaust.

They had desecrated two synagogues with swastikas and had beaten three religious students. They have also brutally attacked Asian immigrant workers. One Thai worker was stabbed and kicked. The gang beat another man forcing him to ask forgiveness of the Russian people for being a "Jewish drug addict." All their crimes were actually recorded on film.

The reaction has been both shock as well as asking for changes to the Law of Return, barring prospective immigrants with no personal concrete connection to Judaism, including the religious law specifying that to be Jewish means having a Jewish mother. Over one million people from the FSU have immigrated to Israel in recent years under the Law of Return. Many are not religious at all, but were escaping from the economic collapse of the FSU. Many have no loyalty to Israel or Zionism.

However, the racism and fascist ideas and actions of this neo-Nazi gang are no surprise. After all, Israel is a very racist state, having enforced apartheid for the Palestinian population. Arabs who are considered Israeli citizens have second-class status because of racism and the religious nature of the Israeli state.

The Zionists who founded Israel had connections with the Nazis during World War II. During Nazi executioner Eichmann’s trial in Israel, he said that the Holocaust could not have succeeded without the assistance of the Judenrat (Jewish Council). Yabotinsky, one of the founding ideologues of modern Israel and whose ideas were followed by Begin, Sharon, Netanyahu and the Likud Party, was an admirer of Mussolini.

Israel’s rulers are also rabid war-makers, just like the Nazis. Recently they bombed Syria, as a "trial run" against Syria’s ally Iran, trying to widen the oil wars in the Middle East.

So no one should be surprised that there are real Nazis in Israel. After all, fascism and war are inevitable under capitalism.

An Anti-Nazi Red

GIs Respond to PLers’ Exposé of U.S. Oil War

A small group of PLers went to a town near a military base recently to talk to the GI’s about the war, about their potential for changing the world, and to offer them Challenge and a leaflet about the need to fight imperialism, racism and sexism inside the bosses’ armed forces, and to fight to destroy imperialist war with communist revolution. The leaflet was based on a recent CHALLENGE article about the Veterans’ convention. Almost all the GI’s we approached were either very friendly or at least polite.

Some of the GI’s wanted to talk. In several of the longer conversations, the effect of the bosses’ propaganda was evident. However, these service people were very open to hearing our points and often ended up agreeing with us. The major lie that people we encountered believed was that the armed forces are helping the Iraqi’s rebuild their society.

A young comrade reported that in response to a serviceman telling him that the purpose of the Iraq war is to keep the terrorists out of the U.S., he said that the war was really about the control of oil. The serviceman immediately understood this point and gladly took CHALLENGE and the leaflet.

We distributed about 40 leaflets and 28 CHALLENGES. One young comrade said, "I was nervous even though I had done this before, but even the service people who disagreed with us took our literature. I had thought they might get in our faces, but some of them agreed that the war is not good, and a few really thanked us for our literature."

Another comrade got a serviceman interested in reading CHALLENGE after he explained, "We’re in favor of soldiers, but against how they’ve been placed in Iraq to defend Exxon Mobil. Every capitalist government in the world recruits and enlists the sons of the workers to fight their wars for them, but we never see the sons of the ruling classes fighting. We want servicemen to think and question and to act in the interest of the class they’re in — the working class." The GI then asked for the paper and the leaflet.

Another comrade emphasized that CHALLENGE has a lot about fighting the bosses’ racism and the serviceman’s face lit up. They discussed the case of the Jenna 6, and how that showed that the U.S. courts and whole system defends racism and attacks anti-racists, that this system is racist to the core, from here to Iraq. Then an older black man passing by said, "I was in Vietnam for fourteen years." After we talked for a while and he got the paper, he said, "God bless you, and good luck." Young and older alike, we enjoyed this experience and intend to come back with more friends soon.

Excited PL’ers

New Fascist Rule Hits 8 Million Immigrants

With all the anti-immigrant racism being pushed by gutter racists (and by behind-the-scenes liberals), what follows is just the latest attack. On September 4, the Social Security Administration was prepared to send letters to 140,000 employers of an estimated 8,000,000 workers that anyone without a valid Social Security number must be fired. A recent ruling by the fascist Department of Homeland Security warns that failure to heed the regulation will face legal sanctions.

This attack was so blatant that a federal judge felt impelled to grant a temporary injunction barring implementation of the rule at least until an October 1st hearing on a court suit challenging the directive.

According to a column in the NY Daily News (9/2), "The new rule will mean an unprecedented mass layoff of millions of hardworking employees….The irony is that according to the Social Security Administration, 75% of the undocumented workers pay Social Security, Medicare and other federal payroll taxes. It is calculated that undocumented workers have paid a total of $585 billion in taxes over time — money to which they have no access because of their legal status."

In other words, these immigrant workers have paid out over a HALF-TRILLION DOLLARS from which they will receive not one cent in benefits!

The degree of exploitation of these immigrant workers is further reflected in the fact that, for instance, because they are paid poverty wages, "New York restaurant owners….insist that…without these laborers there is no way their businesses could be profitable. Many of the 15,000 restaurants and bars in New York City…would go bankrupt and close their doors."

But a recent Administration inspector general report cited by the News also said that "more often" than not these so-called fraudulent Social Security numbers result from "clerical errors, misspellings and other mistakes," and, ironically, "More than 70% of the discrepancies involved U.S. citizens." So the attack on immigrant workers will end up as an attack on all workers, citizen and non-citizen. Truly, racism hurts all workers.

A Reader

U.S. Bosses May Go Down, But Not Easily

NY State University (Binghamton) Professor Immanuel Wallerstein spoke at the Univ. of Buenos Aires (UBA) recently as part of a South American speaking tour. His regular insightful commentaries on political topics are read worldwide and translated into Spanish. They oppose U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Demonstrating his pro-working class stance, on Sept. 11 the 77-year-old professor visited the 19-floor Bauen Hotel in Buenos Aires, taken over by its workers after the owner abandoned it. Like other workplaces seized by workers in Argentina and other South American countries, the workers face many obstacles, including the former owner’s legal threats to take it back. Worker-ownership of the means of production under capitalism only offers temporary relief to the problems caused by the profit system.

Wallerstein showed his solidarity with the workers, meeting with subway workers to plan a fight-back against mass firings.

His UBA talk described "living in a post-U.S. world." He said the golden years of U.S. imperialist expansion are over. Now we "just have to wait" for the decline of the U.S. as a superpower and the emergence of new powers, like China, the European Union, India and the Mercosur (the South American Common Market) if the latter consolidates and expands itself.

He declared that all U.S. presidents, from Nixon to Clinton, have tried to delay what Wallerstein considers the inevitable fall of U.S. power. Now, he says, Bush — instead of simply delaying this development like his predecessors — has pushed the accelerator button all the way and turned what was a slow decline into a "noisy fall without turning back." His example was the debacle in Iraq as well as the long-range disappearance of a U.S.-led unipolar world.

Wallerstein said that Bush’s and the neocon’s current strategy is to kick the Iraqi problem over to what they think will be a future Democratic Party President and then blame the Democrats for "losing Iraq."

There are many truths to Wallerstein’s analysis; indeed, the U.S. is in relative decline. But it won’t go down that easily. Whoever becomes the next President — Hillary Clinton, Obama, Edwards or any of the Republican politicians — will expand the war in the Middle-East. U.S. imperialism, led by its Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco oil barons, won’t easily surrender Mid-East oil to local capitalists or to its imperialist rivals. Millions of workers’ lives will be sacrificed on the altar of the inter-imperialist rivalry for world control.

Even given a U.S. decline, to become a second-rate power like Britain after World War II, capitalism and imperialism won’t disappear. To accomplish that requires a different political strategy than Wallerstein’s. It needs the organization of workers and soldiers worldwide to smash capitalism and to turn their coming global wars into revolutionary struggles for communism, for real workers’ power.

An Internationalist Worker

Revolution Makes More Sense than Reform

We were leafleting for the first time at a small factory in Los Angeles. One worker already had one but he said right away, "We don’t need this, we have a union, the UAW."

"Unions can’t solve all workers’ problems," I said. "Look at this disgusting oil profit war where our kids are fighting and dying in Iraq." He was as angry about the war as I was, but he said, "The union can’t do anything about the war." I replied that while we can raise the fight against the war in unions, to really end imperialist war we need an organization that’s prepared to fight for all the interests of our whole class.

Another worker had already read the leaflet. "This is a good company," she said. "They don’t exploit us here." "All workers are exploited," I said, "that’s how the company makes its profits. Maybe you aren’t super-exploited here, but they do exploit your labor." All workers produce value that the bosses take as profits.

Many other people have the same idea that only undocumented immigrants, prison labor, and maybe those in the worst minimum-wage jobs are "exploited." It’s true that these workers – most of them black, latino/a, and immigrants, many of them women – are the most exploited. But exploitation is the lifeblood of capitalism, and no worker escapes it.

The workers at this factory earn an average of $19.00 per hour. It’s more than double the minimum wage here, but only pennies compared to what the factory owners and CEOs pocket!

Later in the week I was visiting some friends. The guy had shown Challenge-Desafio to a couple of his friends who are active in a union – he thinks they might even work for the union. He didn’t think they liked the paper very much. I told him about the union member who didn’t think workers needed to organize because "the union takes care of us." I said that unions, at their best, only tried to reform capitalism. "A lot of people think that reform and revolution go in the same direction," I said, "but actually they go in opposite directions. Often union officials are among the most hostile to revolution. Their jobs are based on the idea that the workplace can be made ‘fair’ and they need to believe that the system can work, not that it needs to be overthrown." My friend had never heard that before, but he said it made sense to him. He and his wife and I talked for a few more hours about communism and how they felt about possibly joining the Party. As I was leaving, he took copies of the new issue of the paper and said that he had an idea of some other people who would probably like it more than the other guys did.

Summer Project Volunteer, L.A.

‘No End in Sight ’? That’s War in An Imperialist World

Charles Ferguson’s documentary, "No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq," represents a big section of the country’s wealthy ruling class who are very angry at how the Bush Administration has carried out the Iraq war. These anti-Bushites supported the invasion in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein and secure U.S. control of the flow of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. When the war began to go badly, however, they turned against Bush and the war.

Ferguson, who wrote, directed and produced the film (his first), is perfect for the role. A multi-millionaire and former business executive, Ferguson is a life-time member of the Council of Foreign Relations (an influential think-tank created by the Rockefeller family). His film is largely composed of interviews with people who had leadership roles in Washington and Baghdad in 2003 and now want to tell the world that their sound advice was ignored by the Bush administration. The talking heads include Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State; Jay Garner, who was in charge of the occupation before Paul Bremer; Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell; Paul Hughes, director of strategic policy under Bremer; and Barbara Bodine, who ran the short-lived Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

What were the main mistakes the U.S. made during the occupation, according to the film? First, there weren’t enough U.S. troops, a claim made for years by key Democratic Party politicians. The film’s spokespeople maintain that if there had been more troops, they would have been able to stop the outbreak of the insurgency.

Yet some of the evidence presented in the film contradicts this claim. For one, Bodine and Hughes both say that U.S. commanders received orders from Washington not to stop looters from ransacking national museums, libraries and government buildings, even though this would have been an easy task. This disregard for Iraqi national treasures caused tremendous resentment world-wide towards the U.S. occupation. Then the widespread arrest, detention and abuse of young Iraqi males — many of them the sole breadwinners for their families — fueled even more hostility toward the brutal occupation.

Above all, the most egregious error, say the critics in the film, was the decision in May 2003 to disband the Iraqi army, as well as another decision to remove members of the Baathist Party from government jobs and ban them from future public service. Sending half a million soldiers home with guns but no jobs, where they could be recruited by insurgent groups and local militias, meant trouble for the U.S. occupation. It also created a pool of thousands of unemployed functionaries, technocrats, and academics who had every reason to hate the U.S. occupiers and to help the insurgents.

One of the critics astutely says, "The biggest beneficiary of the occupation has been Iran." The removal of Iran’s enemy in Iraq (the Sunni-based Baath Party) and the coming to power of Iraqi leaders with long-standing, deep ties to Iran also creates a major dilemma for U.S. imperialism, which must either make a deal with the Iranian government or prepare to invade Iran. This was the result of ousting the Baathists and relying on Shiite political parties.

It seems the Bush administration had concluded that it couldn’t trust the Baathists or its army and thought it could recruit a more compliant government from its CIA contacts (men like Chalabi and Allawi), as well as Shiite politicians who, it thought, would be eternally grateful for being brought to power.

The main weakness of the film is that it criticizes the U.S.’s tactical decisions without ever saying that the invasion and occupation were wrong. Therefore, the film reinforces the Democratic Party’s position that the war is Bush’s failure rather than a logical outgrowth of U.S. imperialism. The fact that workers and soldiers in Iraq have suffered so immensely with over 1.2 million dead and millions more suffering great hardships (four million have fled their homes) is not seen as the problem. For Ferguson and those officials he interviewed — who at first were eager to help the U.S. conquer and control Iraq — the problem was not the goal of the war. It was the sloppy execution.

People who oppose the war must not be encouraged to sit around thinking of better ways for imperialists to kill and maim all over the world to serve the profits of Exxon-Mobil, etc. We should spend that time thinking of ways to win more workers and students to fight against a system based on endless imperialist wars and is incapable of meeting the needs of working people all over the world.

REDEYE

Terror vs. schoolkids recalls Hiroshima

During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this week is also the 62^nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki….

"That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m….an enormous blast — silence — hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails…. Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies — Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead…."

The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were available soft targets, much like the children playing in Iraq….

Of course, ‘we’ had our justifications, as terrorists always do…. (Robert Scheer, 8/10)

Oil politics bringing starvation

Challenged by President George Bush to produce 35bn gallons of non-fossil transport fuels by 2017 to reduce US dependency on imported oil,…thousands of farmers…are turning the corn belt of America from the breadbasket of the world into an enormous fuel tank….consumed, not by people, but by cars.

The era of "agrofuels" has arrived,….Across the US, 20% of the corn crop went to ethanol last year….It is proving horrendous for food prices….Meat, too, will cost more because chicken and pigs are fed largely on grain…."

…850 million people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food aid has increased 20% in just a year….The price of staple tortilla quadrupled in Mexico in February and crowds of 75,000 people came on to the streets in protest. South Africa has had food prices of nearly 17% and China was forced to halt all new planting of corn for ethanol after staple foods such as pork soared by 42% last year. (GW, 9/7)

Top pols know voters can’t win

New York City’s Boss Tweed used to say, "I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I do the nominating. (NYT, 9/9)

Big U$ aid for terror-run nation

Which country of 80 million is a close ally of America, has jailed 100,000 political prisoners, maintains a police force of 1.4 million — four times the size of its standing army — and is a place where 200 critics of its president have disappeared without a trace since 1990?

If you guessed Egypt, you are right.

Next to Israel, Egypt ranks as the second-largest recipient of American aid, raking in more than $45 billion since 1979….

With this money, Mr. Mubarak has instilled terror, crushed political dissent and turned people into ghosts. (NY Sun, 8/23)

Red China ended opium addiction

Historically, governments feared opium because they saw it devastate China. After World War II, China had 40 million addicts, including the last empress. Mao cracked down ruthlessly, burning crops and executing dealers; by 1960, addiction was virtually gone. (NYT, 9/10)

GIs with Iraq-related cancer ignored

Blaming America’s use of depleted uranium munitions in its 2003 "Shock and Awe" campaign for a surge in cancer there….the study is an outgrowth of claims by Iraq war veterans that exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic substances there has negatively affected their health….

"Between the chemicals in the air overseas, the shots they give you, and not eating well or sleeping more than four hours a day…your body isn’t strong enough to fight anything off.

"Right now, it’s cancer, cancer, cancer….People like us don’t get benefits," Sergeant Valentin says.

Because cancer is a disease and not a war wound, we don’t qualify. No one even knows we’re on the oncology ward. The press, celebrities, and politicians…want publicity shots with amputee soldiers. (NY Sun, 8/6)

Ordering lead paint = more profit

Why is lead paint…turning up in so many recalls?….

The simplest answer…is price. Paint with higher levels of lead often sells for a third of the cost of paint with low levels….

Ms. Zhang, a sales manager in Big Tree Toys, a company in Shantou in southern China….insisted that if her company used leaded paint, it disclosed that.

It depends on the client’s requirement," she said. "If the prices they offer make it impossible to use lead-free paint, we’ll tell them that we might have to use leaded paint. It totally depends on what the clients want." (NYT, 9/11)

PL History: May Day Marchers Repulse Boston Racists

Part II of a three-part series

In 1971, PLP had revived the tradition of annual May Day marches, in part to pick the red flag out of the mud through which Soviet and Chinese revisionism and the CPUSA had dragged it and to hold it high once again. Thirty years almost to the day, after Hitlerite fascism had been smashed in Germany nothing could be more appropriate than to hold May Day in South Boston, the stronghold of a burgeoning U.S. fascist movement.

In the months leading up to May Day, the fascists had http://www.fjtv6.com/images/2007/LiveFreeorDieHard.jpg a clear advantage. They carried out regular acts of racist violence in the neighborhoods of South Boston, East Boston, Dorchester and Charlestown, particularly in schools where ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) had a base. With the media’s and politicians’ help, ROAR was developing an image as a political force. The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association funded it. The sellout union officials of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council endorsed its racist anti-busing position. Kevin White, Boston’s liberal mayor and key Kennedy ally, dispensed patronage jobs to ROAR leaders and their cronies.

In the spring of 1975, ROAR president Louise Day Hicks, who sat on the Boston City Council, led a march of 1,500 racists in Washington to protest "forced busing for integration." Meanwhile, leaders of other unions, some of whom pretended to support integration and oppose racism, did nothing. The NAACP confined itself, as usual, to press conferences and legal maneuvers,

This was the context in which PLP called for the May Day march in "Southie." When word went out to demonstrate under the red flag of revolution in ROAR’s own bailiwick, 2,500 workers and students — the largest number of participants in a PLP May Day before or since — came from throughout the East Coast to call for multi-racial unity against the rulers and to chant "Death to Fascism!"

Egged on by the applause of Boston’s Tactical Police Force, ROAR’s bullies tried to smash the march before it could start. About 80 of these goons charged the small PLP security force that had assembled near Columbia Point to greet the busses transporting the marchers. Twenty-five anti-racist fighters, who had been preparing physically and politically over several weeks for just such an eventuality, met them head-on and kicked the hell out of them.

The element of surprise was important here: the anti-racists had come armed with obvious weapons, like steel-tipped rubber truncheons and steel pipes wrapped in copies of CHALLENGE, which they were only too happy to let the cops confiscate. The racists therefore believed they were charging an outnumbered, defenseless victim. In their overconfidence and arrogance, they overlooked the spike-buckled belts on the anti-racists. This shock and the PLP’ers’ political determination turned a potential rout into its opposite.

When the cops saw their pals on the receiving end of a thrashing, they moved in to arrest and beat up several anti-racists. But the march went on, despite a barrage of rocks the racist thugs threw from a safe distance. Here the extra-thick cardboard posters the May Day marchers were carrying served as an effective weapon of self-defense.

May Day ’75 was the talk of the town for days. This was the first time anyone had stood up to ROAR’s racist bullies. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party, in unity with hundreds of anti-racist friends and allies, had proved that the victory of these gutter racists was not written in stone.

The problem now became transforming the battle of May Day into an ongoing offensive against ROAR and its sponsors in the liberal ruling class.J

(Next: Boston ’75, A Summer of Struggle, A Lifetime of Commitment, A Call to Action)

Training to Smash the Fascists

A member of the PLP security squad that repulsed the ROAR attack before the 1975 May Day march wrote about the Battle of Columbia Point:

"For weeks before [the march], we assembled our own ‘spring training’: meeting in [New York’s] Central Park with our red hats, organizing ourselves into groups of three responsible for each other, learning how to immobilize an attacker three-on-one. We were big and little, women and men, white and black, muscular and flabby, white collar and blue-collar and jobless, new Party member and veteran…we had faced the ferocity of the Fascist Movement [in Boston] first-hand and then returned to our home bases to report to comrades all along the East Coast that fascism was not a future figment, but was the present reality in Boston, and that we’d better get ourselves ready to beat up on it before it beat us." ("Communist Magazine," Fall, 1992)

Fascism was this Summer’s Movie Fashion

With the ongoing Iraq War and growing competition from imperialist rivals, U.S. capitalism finds itself in increasing crisis. Many of this summer’s blockbuster films not only reflect this crisis, but also the domestic fascism that must accompany international unrest. On the one hand, domestic fascism means the U.S. bosses clamping down on workers who disagree with their actions, often beginning with racist attacks on Arab and immigrant workers that in turn lead to attacks on all workers. On the other it means the bosses are fighting harder to win workers to be loyal to such repression and wars.

Both Michael Bay’s Transformers (released on July 4th) and Len Wisemen’s Live Free or Die Hard display an America in crisis, demanding greater sacrifice. They are aimed at 20-30 year-olds who remember the 1980s films and cartoons. And with a PG-13 rating, the bosses hope to attract a newer, younger generation to die for U.S. imperialism.

In Transformers, the Autobots (the Good guys) battle the Decepticons (the Bad guys) for control of the "Cube," a device that controls the fate of the universe. As the film unfolds, the Decepticons attack U.S. soil and breech the Pentagon’s security systems, and eventually face off against a U.S. military/Autobot alliance.

In an attempt to recruit working class youth to sacrifice themselves for U.S. imperialism, the film depicts the two main characters, both high school students, fighting along side U.S. soldiers to beat the Decpticons. "You’re a soldier now," yells Captain Lennox in the final scenes of the film, pushing the main character to deliver the Cube to the U.S. government as fast as possible.

In an interview with the U.S. Air Force, Bay explained this decision to push military recruitment. He revealed how filming at a U.S. Airbase and using military personal in the film gave the film more credibility and also acted as a recruiting tool. In fact, Dreamworks officials have said that the level of military cooperation on this film is unprecedented and very much appreciated. By erasing the boundaries between Hollywood entertainment and military recruitment, U.S. imperialism will continue to lay the cultural foundations of fascism necessary for its survival.

Also crucial to the survival of U.S. imperialism is its manufacturing base. As the Autobots fight to protect the U.S. from the Decepticons, they periodically transform into actual General Motors vehicles. As Dino Bernacchi, GM’s associate director of branded entertainment said, "These cars are the stars, literally, in the movie." Amid stiff competition from overseas markets, GM is hoping that its exposure in the film will translate into greater profits.

Like Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard paints a portrait of U.S. capitalism in crisis. Every aspect of the system, from Wall Street to the Pentagon, has come under attack from a group of cyber-terrorists. The film bases itself on a 1997 Wired magazine article titled "A Farewell to Arms." The article argues that in an ever-increasing technological world, Washington must rethink its outdated information and weapons systems in favor of more sophisticated ones. The film takes this idea further, arguing that along with these more sophisticated systems, brute force (combined with a mix of sexism, patriotism and racism) is still a necessary component to the survival of U.S. capitalism.

In the film, an aged Bruce Willis is paired with the college-aged Justin Long, a reoccurring character on Apple’s Mac vs. PC advertisements familiar to most younger people. Willis symbolizes U.S. capitalism’s more traditional reliance on brute force. Long’s character represents the need to combine this with a hipper, "user-friendly" version of fascism.

Long’s appearance also reflects a growing trend in universities across the country. In exchange for grants from the Department of Defense, many universities have decided to focus their computer science research on cyber counter-terrorism. Overall, the film feeds the fear of an imminent terrorist attack on the U.S. And it calls for both a more advanced system of surveillance and more police and military forces on the ground.

Ultimately, both films are aimed at working class youth and act as recruitment ads for U.S. imperialism. The bosses hope that workers will continue to passively accept the calls for increased military recruitment and greater government surveillance. In the meantime, films like these are silently laying the groundwork for fascism in the U.S. By talking to coworkers and people around us about the messages in such films PLP members and friends can lay a different groundwork. Ours will lead to a communist revolution that will smash the deadly ideas and oppression promoted by the bosses’ oppressive culture and replace it with working-class culture that promotes international unity!