1. Uncle Sam Says
   I Want You For Imperialist War
2. Elect Communist PLP'er To Head 6,000-Member D.C. Transit Union
   1. DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES
3. Bosses' War Wracks GI's Minds, Slaughters Iraqis
4. Sailors Celebrate May Day
5. Fight to Expose Pro-Boss Union Hacks At Teachers Convention
6. AN OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF LOCAL 689 CONCERNING THE UNION ELECTION
7. ëCommunity Policing' Fuels LAPD Racist Brutality'
8. Fight over Imperialist War Erupts At Church Convention
9. Student Class Anger hits Iraq War, Lesser Evil Politics
10. Water Privatization Creates Apartheid Worldwide
11. Marching With Criminal Bosses Won't End Mexico's Crime
12. Unemployment is Hazardous for Your Health
    1. Unemployment Kills
    2. Ending Unemployment Means Better Health for All Workers
13. LETTERS
    1. Prisoner Abuse Is Capitalist Business As Usual
    2. The Bill Could Give You a Heart Attack
    3. MICHAEL MOORE: PROÖ.
    4. Ö.AND CON
       Moore Earns $30,000/hr
    5. Impressed by Multi-racial May Day
    6. Church Anti-Racists Fight White Skin Privilege Theory
    7. Brando: One of the Greatest Actors
14. A Perspective on Cuba
15. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. US mum on KKK types
    2. CIA'er: US actions fuel war
    3. ëGood' capitalists must rob too
    4. US stalls on Iraq oil $$
    5. Drug co. bribes doctors
16. EU-U.S. Imperialist Rivalry: More Poverty for Workers
    1. EU FINANCIAL PENETRATION OF LAC HAS INTENSIFIED
    2. HUGE INVESTMENTS MEAN MORE POVERTY FOR WORKERS
17. Bosses Taking Over Anti-Globalization Movement
    1. Movie Review:
       Fahrenheit 9/11 Attacks Bush, Endorses Liberal Imperialists

Uncle Sam Says
I Want You For Imperialist War

The U.S. military's shortcomings in Iraq and Afghanistan expose the rulers' inevitable need to restore the draft. Their ever-expanding wars will soon require millions of troops that stagnant recruiting cannot provide. The only thing stopping them from implementing the draft now is widespread, though unorganized, popular opposition. Young workers are not so willing to serve in the Pentagon's murder machine. Working-class parents don't want their children killing and dying for Exxon Mobil's profits. But with imperialist wars stretching U.S. armed forces to the breaking point, the rulers have already begun forcing people into uniform. In late June, Army brass took a significant step towards restoring the draft by recalling 5,600 retired soldiers involuntarily.

However, while the government is funding and staffing draft boards and two conscription bills are pending in Congress, the rulers are trying hard not to let the cat out of the bag. The New York Times (7/3/04) printed a blatant lie: "Top lawmakers, joined by Pentagon leaders and administration officials, say that there are definitely no plans to resume the draft." The rulers' reticence goes far beyond election-year concerns. They fear the draft as much as they need it, remembering well the rebellions the draft sparked during the Vietnam War. In a Washington Post (7/1/04) opinion piece, "Why We Need the Draft Back," Noel Koch, a military aide to Nixon and Reagan, wrote, "In the late 1960s, America's cities were set aflame by the civil rights revolution; in the early '70s, the campuses of the nation's universities were in similar peril. The draft was a target of anti-war protests." Koch could also have mentioned the wave of mutinies and rebellions that rocked the U.S. military at the time. These militant acts, Koch says, forced Nixon to make a "tactical retreat" and end the draft. So a draft can work two ways. Sending hundreds of thousands into the army against their will offers great potential for GIs organizing inside the military against the very rulers that sent them there.

What Koch describes as dark days in fact were shining ones for the working class. Our Party led many of the struggles that Nixon's lackey laments. In them, we won many workers and students to a revolutionary communist outlook. The Party grew. We are now in a period that both resembles and differs from the Vietnam Era. Today, just as then, U.S.-led wars lay bare the fundamental murderousness of U.S. imperialism and the profit system in general. The level of class consciousness, however, has taken a nose-dive since then, primarily because the old communist movement has collapsed. Thus, ongoing U.S. atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, like prison torture and the slaughter of noncombatants, cause little useful outrage. Well-meaning anti-war activists have quickly joined Move On and other "Dump-Bush" movements that aid the more dangerous, liberal, Kerry camp of war-makers.

The lesson for us is clear, although we were slow to grasp it. In workplaces, communities, schools, and other mass organizations, our Party must take the lead in exposing the rulers' war crimes and their wasting of working-class youth as cannon fodder. No one else can or will attack both the Bushites and the liberals. No one else calls for organizing workers, soldiers and students to fight the real cause of imperialist war: the profit system. Our protests and other activities during the Democratic Party convention in Boston later in July will attack the other war Party: Kerry and the Democrats.

Elect Communist PLP'er To Head 6,000-Member D.C. Transit Union

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23

- Progressive Labor Party member Mike Golash has been elected president of the 6,000-member Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union (ATU). He defeated incumbent president Hicks 2,000 to 1,483 after the previous election was overturned. Amid an imperialist war in Iraq and the rapid rise of a Homeland Security police state, in the face of racist attacks and police terror, and in the shadow of the White House, this local of mainly black workers told the bosses and union hacks, "I'm with Mike!" This is a victory full of opportunities and dangers. Our job is to turn a mass base for a communist into a mass base for communism.

Working at Metro for 28 years, Mike has consistently distributed CHALLENGE to thousands of workers, built a base for PLP, led class struggle and been involved in all union activities, from wildcat strikes to the softball league. In 2000, he was elected Financial Secretary, and came in second running for the presidency in December, 2003, carrying three bus garages - Northern, Western and Bladensburg. Approaching that election, Mike and a group of Metro workers organized a campaign committee, and regrouped as a PLP study group after the election.

Mike filed an election protest because Hicks had used large amounts of union money to pay for his campaign. The International Union ruled that the entire election should be re-run to prevent Department of Labor intervention.

Mike campaigned for ending the racist multi-tier wage progression, militant struggle against management and for international workers' unity against imperialism. The committee issued two leaflets, one attacking Hicks for being an incompetent sellout, the other attacking nationalism and anti-communism (see text, page 3). Suddenly, the campaign committee mushroomed. Old union friends joined study-group members to press for Mike's election. By election time, the committee had representatives at all 34 polling places.

In the six months following the previous December election, while Mike was back to driving a bus and building the Party, the union was deteriorating. Hicks flipped out at one union meeting of 400 workers, screaming that he was running the union his way, and marching up and down the aisles cursing at the workers. He was also giving away the store to management in contract negotiations, agreeing to let Metro reduce its pension contribution and to a management plan for "alternative discipline."

Fearing for the very life of the union, workers, as well as the executive board and former union leaders, threw their support to Mike, but for different reasons. The executive board and former leaders wanted to save their union from going down the tubes and protect their pensions. Many of the especially oppressed younger drivers sensed a chance to finally stand up to management. This sense of hope for bold militant, incorruptible leadership swept through the system, creating a great opportunity for sharper class struggle and recruitment to PLP! This contradiction between the rank and file and the "leadership group" will certainly intensify.

DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Reform does not lead to revolution. The natural pull of the reform movement is to the right, to keep the working class tied to capitalism. In the 1930's, communists fought their hearts out to organize industrial unions, including the ATU, to win the 8-hour day and health insurance, to fight racism, and much more. But the more the reform movement consumed them, the further away they moved from building and leading a revolutionary movement.

The old communist movement eventually collapsed from its own internal weaknesses. Today the international working class is suffering more death, disease, war, genocide and fascist terror than at any point in human history. We will not make that same mistake. While we try to lead the fight for the immediate needs of the workers, more importantly we will fight to build a mass base for CHALLENGE and revolutionary communism, and recruit workers to PLP. This is a very complex and difficult process. It won't be easy. But in fighting for every small gain we will constantly expose to the workers how these endless reform struggles put us on a treadmill that always submarines any apparent gains, and why the cause of every problem, every grievance is the capitalist profit system itself.

Already the Metro bosses and union sellouts are plotting to sabotage the union's new red leadership. If we do our job right, we will face serious attacks. The bosses may take a harder line against Mike to "prove" that workers should not choose communist leadership. Legal and physical attacks, from the government, management or pro-boss union goons, could occur at some point, and workers will have to defend Mike's leadership and PLP.

In order to win workers to the Party and advanced communist politics, we must rely on many workers to spread the distribution of CHALLENGE. These readers and distributors will be the first to grasp communist philosophy, history, politics, economics and strategy. They will also be the most likely to lead militant class struggle around communist ideas, on and off the job.

We can organize discussions at the bus barns around all issues, from why Kerry and the Democrats are enemies of the working class, to why the war in Iraq is caused by inter-imperialist rivalry, to how the wage progression policy is a racist attack on all workers, and how all these attacks are part of a capitalist system that must be destroyed with a communist revolution. And we must look ahead to building the Party's influence far beyond this one local and workplace.

This victory could be a mixed blessing. But we have confidence that the Party and the Metro workers, over time and through much struggle, with advances and setbacks, will build the revolutionary movement in the capital of U.S. imperialism, a system that offers the working class only endless wars, cutbacks, racist terror and mass unemployment. If workers in many other industries follow the lead of the PLP-led workers in Local 689, and are offered the same communist politics, this development can be repeated widely. It's up to each and every one of us.

Bosses' War Wracks GI's Minds, Slaughters Iraqis

"More than one in four veterans of ground combat in Iraq show signs of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder" [PTSD], according to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine of 6,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Miami Herald, 7/1) One in six "reported symptoms of major depression, severe anxiety or . . . " PTSD. (New York Times, 7/1)

These victims go beyond the toll of dead (853) and well over 16,000 wounded and injured, many of the latter also suffering mental illness.

More than 90% reported being shot at; 86% said they saw someone killed or seriously wounded; and over half said they killed at least one person, combat or civilian. And this study was conducted when the "war was one of ëliberation,'" before the time when most of the casualties occurred.

None of this compares to the suffering of the Iraqi people who have been bombed for 13 years and have seen over half a million children die from the effects of destroyed infrastructure, contaminated water supplies and lack of medicine. Imagine the incredible stress on the millions of Iraqi families who have lost loved ones and seen limbs blown off their parents or children.

Imperialist war is engaged in mass slaughter, all to secure U.S. control over oil supplies in the Mid-East and to establish at least forteen new permanent U.S. military bases in "independent" Iraq.

The Journal's study says the PTSD symptoms, the "flashbacks and nightmares," will become more common as time passes. A "study of veterans of the Persian Gulf War found that the prevalence of post-traumatic symptoms more than doubled between an initial survey and a second one two years later." (NYT, 7/1)

Moreover, more and more troops will be stressed out as the "unofficial draft" deploys still more troops for longer periods. In early June all individual tours of duty were extended until their entire units return home, keeping thousands for months longer than expected. As the imperialists find their military stretched thin fighting two wars simultaneously, their drastic measures - deploying thousands more from South Korea and Germany, and calling up 5,600 from the Individual Ready Reserve, soldiers who had already left the service and did not join the Reserve - will add to the carnage.

Not to be outdone by the Bush administration's butchery, the Democrats are calling for still more cannon fodder. "Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and a chief proponent of more troops" declared there is an "urgent need to increase the size of the Army," saying the Bushite's policies to "maintain the nation's military commitment around the world has been woefully inadequate." (NYT, 6/30) This coincides with Kerry's demand for 40,000 more troops in Iraq.

But a larger army will create more anger and frustration among more soldiers and still greater potential for rebellion, to win more workers and youth - both inside and outside the military - to oppose the rulers. All this can spur the growth of the Party.

Sailors Celebrate May Day

(Part 1 of this series - CHALLENGE 7/7 - reported the involvement of sailors and marines in practical work, including discussions growing out of viewing films linking Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the plight of Vietnamese youth and a rebellion in a Salvadoran neighborhood, followed by participation in a community meeting challenging the rulers' defense of police brutality, leading to the conclusion that the system causes this evil.)

May Day 2004 - This was easily the crowing jewel of my experience so far. Two of my new Navy friends decided+to make the trip.+(A third wanted to come but had duty that day.) We arranged to meet at 6:00 a.m in the day room but I slept through my 5:30 alarm. When one of my+new buddies had to wake me up, I knew that this would be a good+day.

We met at a comrade's house and got engaged in political discussion and world politics. As the van pulled away, everyone was in good spirits. When we arrived at the rally, it was in full+swing. We joined a picket line during the speeches. I agreed to a request from an elder comrade to work the bullhorn+and we kicked off the chants: "Racism means FIGHT BACK! Courts mean FIGHT BACK! Cops mean FIGHT BACK!"

One of my buddies was+on the street corner distributing CHALLENGE. He+estimated that he distributed over 50 copies that day. My other buddy was mingling in the crowd,+getting to know people. As our picket line progressed and we+began marching, the cops began getting aggressive, prompting the chant,+"Killer cops mean we have to fight back!" The crowd was really getting into it. One buddy really liked the chant, "Bush, you liar, we'll set your ass on fire!"

Afterwards, we had a dinner and listened to poetry, rap and motivational speeches on the state of the+world and of our movement. While both my buddies+were really moved+by the day's events, one seriously challenged our position on nationalism, leading to some good exchanges. I continued to stress that our Party blames oppression on the capitalist system, not on a+group of people. It's capitalism that continues to manufacture racist and sexist ideas and practices. He asked me if I thought that whites benefited from the system. I said that different levels of oppression do not equal privilege, that white+workers, indeed ALL workers, are punished by capitalism. Yes, black and brown workers are hit the hardest, but the wages+of all workers are pulled+down when black and brown workers'+wages are cut. That's why the Party advocates that smashing racism and the construct of "race" is central to destroying capitalism, that+fighting capitalism is the fight against racism. As Marx stated, "labor in the white skin can never be free while labor in+the black skin is in chains." The exchange was good; we'll continue on this subject and many more.

My buddy also talked with another young comrade from South America who's in the Peace Corp. It was good to see him networking with other young+soldiers for the+working class. After the dinner, we heard a good pep talk from one of our older comrades and then returned home. I felt good, knowing we had made some advances on May Day 2004 towards building the Party. (Next issue: a dinner at the home of an activist mother whose son was a victim of police brutality; and our first study group.)

Navy Red

Fight to Expose Pro-Boss Union Hacks At Teachers Convention

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7 -

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the country's second largest teachers union, is holding its biennial convention here starting July 13. Progressive Labor Party members will be there bringing communist politics to the delegates, and to fight the AFT's collaboration with the ruling-class attacks on the working class.

The union is led by Sandra Feldman, who followed Albert Shanker into AFT leadership. Shanker worked with the CIA in building anti-communist unions worldwide through the 1960s and '70s and Feldman picked up his mantle. She's a member of the ruling-class Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Rockefeller-built organization which develops policy for the liberal Eastern establishment.

What's the head of a workers' union doing helping develop policy for our exploiters? Feldman and the rest of the AFT leadership have the important job of winning teachers to support the rulers. So the rulers must win teachers to the idea that they're not workers, but "professionals," whose interests are tied to the bosses' interests.

Within this class struggle, the fight against racism is crucial. Teachers are training the next generation of workers. The big-city school systems, overwhelmingly black and Latino, are set up to provide the bosses with minimum-wage workers, if they have jobs at all, leaving them the "option" of being used as cannon fodder in imperialist wars. The schools have become racist prisons which send youth off to war, unemployment or a life of poverty and jail. Teachers are in the unique position of either fighting this oppression, uniting with their students and parents, or becoming a tool of the ruling class.

The AFT leadership has already chosen its side: supporting the Democratic Party and the ruling class's pro-war and fascist policies. When Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, the AFT was the first union to jump on the pro-war bandwagon. Just last month, the AFT's largest local, NYC's UFT, rallied with the cops - whose job is to control workers and terrorize the very youth in these teachers' classes - to demand contracts, while refusing to help other unionized school workers resist a sellout contract.

Local unions have brought many resolutions to this convention. We will be helping support the anti-war and anti-racist resolutions. We will attack the drive to support Kerry - the AFT's drive for "anybody but Bush" hides the fact that Kerry, as a representative of the liberal Eastern wing of the ruling class, doesn't stand for anything strategically different than Bush. Kerry's call for 40,000 more troops in Iraq now, and for creation of a National Service with an option for military service, will continue to send working-class youth to fight other workers in a war for U.S. bosses' control of oil. In trying to win teachers to a class perspective we unite teachers with students, parents and other workers, in struggle against the ruling class. That class perspective is crucial to building a movement to get rid of this system once and for all.

The following letter was distributed to D.C. transit workers.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF LOCAL 689 CONCERNING THE UNION ELECTION

Dear fellow 689 members,

I wanted to deal with a couple of touchy issues around the campaign for the presidency of our local: race and politics. These are big issues, even when unspoken. So here goes.

I know from the feedback I've received that quite a few members decided not to vote for me last time because they preferred an African American in the position of president. At one level, I sympathize with this view. The history of slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, segregation, and continued racist discrimination makes every step towards black leadership seem vitally important. However, the nature of that leadership, the "content of their character," is equally important. I ask you to compare the candidates on their integrity, character, maturity, and dedication to the fight against racism. Hicks has betrayed your interests time after time; I have dedicated my energy since 1976 to securing your interests. I have energetically fought grievances, launched a campaign against racist wage progression, fought sexist attacks on women workers by supervisors, and even helped lead a strike to maintain our cost of living clause many years ago. It is true that, as a white man, I have not personally and directly experienced racism; however, I have seen the incredible damage racism causes and how racist conditions ultimately harm us all, and so I have dedicated over 40 years of my life to fighting against racism, from slugging it out with the Klan and Nazis to fighting against the institutional racism of Metro's management. As president, I will continue to do so. I urge you to put aside any misgivings you may have about voting for a white candidate.

I also know that some people decided not to vote for me because I am a communist, a member of the Progressive Labor Party. Unfortunately, most people don't know the truth about communism because the media and politicians have consistently distorted the truth about it (just like they are lying now about Iraq). In fact, communists have for over 100 years led the opposition to the capitalist system of racism and exploitation. Communists led the formation of integrated, industrial unions in this country, including transit unions! Communists believe that militant, multi-racial unity in the working class is needed to fight racism and the rich capitalists who benefit from racism and all forms of exploitation. We also believe that it will take a revolution to overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with a communist society in which the working class will control the government. It's not surprising that the billionaires and their corporations and government are eager to lie about communists. So please, don't let the bosses' propaganda through the school system and the media stop you from bringing a communist to the leadership of the union.

I hope these comments have been helpful to you in thinking through your decision in the upcoming election.

Mike Golash

ëCommunity Policing' Fuels LAPD Racist Brutality'

LOS ANGELES, July 6 -

On June 23, Stanley Miller put his arms in the air and let two cops arrest him after an early morning chase. Racist cop John Hatfield ran up to the prone Miller and brutally kicked him in the head. Then he beat him eleven times with a heavy-duty flashlight while the original two LAPD goons held Mr. Miller down and three other racist cops looked on. The LAPD's racist beating of this black man was shown on local television at the end of a police chase.

Many people in the working-class communities of South-Central L.A. and Compton were outraged. But the local "leadership," like John Mack of the Los Angeles Urban League, "urge[d] calm and demand[ed] that the LAPD thoroughly investigate." (LA Times, 6/24) These sellouts are jumping to be on one of two community oversight panels created by competing political groups.

Mayor Hahn and a potential mayoral opponent, former police chief Bernard Parks, are using this beating as a political grandstand. These hacks are only arguing about whom can best win the public to fascist community policing. This program is part of the ruling class's homeland security plans. It attempts to win community "leaders" to work with the police and snitch on their neighbors, enabling the police to harass and terrorize the community and jail even more black and Latino working-class youth.

The community "leadership" claims that racist Police-Terror Chief Bratton is "working better" with the community than the racist Darryl Gates. But Bratton has only increased the brutal and racist attacks on young people with his "Broken Windows" strategy of viciously enforcing laws against graffiti and loitering while "reaching out to the community." If this is an improvement, then the community is screwed!

A Progressive Labor Party leaflet denounced the LAPD and the capitalist system as the real terrorists. PLP explained that community policing will never end the racist police attacks. Only revolution can remove the basis of police terror and racism - capitalism. We showed how the bosses need cops to control angry workers during this period of imperialist oil war and fascist budget cuts.

People were excited to see a leaflet that told the truth. Many exclaimed that the police have always been the terrorists. One man took 20 leaflets to post at his church. Another man really appreciated our condemnation of war, budget cuts and capitalism. He said he would read the leaflet and CHALLENGE to see about revolution and communism.

The cops who enforce terror on workers got caught in their daily racist actions. We have an opportunity to expose capitalism's racist nature. If we are bold in our organizing, we can channel the masses' anti-cop anger towards joining PLP. Then we can fight for the best antidote to racist cop terror: communism.

Fight over Imperialist War Erupts At Church Convention

The annual convention of a liberal religious denomination seemed like a Democratic Party rally. Speakers and workshops continually pushed voter education and mass registration campaigns. While technically non-partisan, there was a roaring near-consensus around "Anyone But Bush." Hundreds of people trooped off one night to see and cheer "Fahrenheit 9-11."

However, a sharp political struggle on the convention floor exposed a deep rift over the question of Iraq, imperialism and, indirectly, about capitalism. In fact, "immediate withdrawal" aroused the main debate at the convention.

Hundreds of delegates signed a resolution calling for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by the end of the year and for an end to the privatization of the Iraqi economy. But church bureaucrats pressured the resolution's author to craft a "compromise" calling instead for support for U.N. Resolution 1546. Some compromise!

UN 1546 supports the ridiculous lie that the occupation of Iraq "ended" in June (despite the presence of 140,000 U.S. troops, and more on the way) and that the CIA's man Allawi now heads a "fully sovereign and independent" Iraqi government. It provides a major role for "international financial institutions and other organizations" [read: imperialism] in the "reconstruction of the Iraqi economy" and blesses the presence of U.S. troops until 2006.

Another resolution, calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and bases from Iraq and the rest of the world, garnered nearly 200 signatures but was mysteriously "lost." However, a groundswell of grass-roots support for an "immediate withdrawal" amendment forced the leadership into a half-hour debate before nearly 1,000 people. An Arab-American delegate attacked the racism behind the idea that Iraqis need the U.S. to tell them how to set up a government. A woman spoke of her grandson, a soldier recently returned from Iraq. Others eloquently denounced the war as an immoral and unjustified attempt to control Mid-East oil.

But from the presiding minister's speech on day one to the parliamentary maneuvering at the final voting session, it was clear that the leadership was determined to guarantee "1546" and not "immediate withdrawal." It emerged that the church's "Washington Office" was getting political leadership from a former State Department official who held high positions in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. "We have to stay in the mainstream," a staff person whined. "They were just typical liberal imperialists," observed one of the delegates. Not surprisingly, "immediate withdrawal" was voted down.

Minutes later, an anti-privatization clause was voted out. ("If the Iraqis want private enterprise, they should be allowed to have it," said the State Department guy!) This vote was so close that the leadership declared another such clause "moot" and took it out without risking another vote. Unfortunately, the vast majority of delegates - including most who had wanted "immediate withdrawal" - voted for the final resolution, mistakenly thinking that "some anti-war resolution was better than none."

Many, at the conference and beyond it, were surprised by this debate and shocked by the leadership's tactics. This prompted some good discussions with new and old friends. "We need to be better organized the next time," said an anti-imperialist delegate. That's true, but there's also a need to organize around sharper politics. John Kerry is the liberal imperialist candidate, and "Anyone But Bush" is the liberal imperialist line. Voter education and registration campaigns are how the liberal imperialists keep grass-roots people "in the mainstream." They actually want to replace Bush with Kerry, who better represents their long-term imperialist interests.

The hard-working organizers for "immediate withdrawal" should not be discouraged by losing a few votes. They made a valuable contribution in exposing to their co-religionists the difference between liberalism and anti-imperialism. They opened the question of the connection between war and capitalism. There will be many opportunities to build on this in the future and to advance the long-term fight to destroy the system of wars and exploitation for profit.

Student Class Anger hits Iraq War, Lesser Evil Politics

At the end of the semester, we organized a demonstration at the military recruitment center across from our college to oppose and expose the imperialist war in Iraq, military recruitment on campus and the fascist torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. Given that it was only a few weeks before finals, it was impressive to see a goodly number of students and faculty unite on these issues.

We showed how it's a war on the working class, exploiting and deceiving young working-class men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan for capitalism. Links were also made between the prisons in the U.S. and Iraq, conveying the international struggle of workers against racism, imperialism and fascism.

Students made signs saying there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans; one student carried a picture of Iraqi torture victims in protest. It was invigorating to see the energy and class anger of many students throughout the march.

By giving Iraq "sovereignty," the Bush administration was again trying to restore credibility to U.S. Imperialism. The liberal wing of the ruling class has attacked the Bushites as "the enemy" of "American democracy" and the betrayer of the "American people." This picture plays on people's justified anger and says Bush is the problem, prompting workers to vote for the "lesser evil" (Kerry), as seen in the new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." Replacing one capitalist with another won't cut it. We must expose capitalism as the root of imperialist wars for profit and the exploitation of the working class.

Significantly, the demonstration and the semester's activities exposed many students to communist politics. Some are now attending study groups, helping distribute flyers to industrial workers and receiving CHALLENGE. We must struggle against the false consciousness liberals are spreading to the working class. Workers need to hear from us, the Progressive Labor Party. Reaching these workers and students will strengthen our Party. Build PLP and fight for communist revolution!

Water Privatization Creates Apartheid Worldwide

The July 7 CHALLENGE described the crisis the world's working class faces due to water privatization. But how have these multi-national corporations come to own water - a fundamental resource for human life?

The World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Intra-American Development Bank (IADB) - through their tremendous financial influence - force governments in developing countries to privatize their public utilities and social services in order to qualify for multi-million dollar loans, so-called "poverty reduction." By imposing trade agreements and structural adjustment programs (SAP) on developing countries, the WB, IMF and IADB allow large multi- national corporations to own a developing country's water, sanitation and electricity system, as well as many social services like health care and public education. The revenue generated by the sale of these systems and services is supposed to help pay the tremendous interest rates these banks charge. Meanwhile, the local bosses in these countries make a pile for themselves for negotiating these sellouts to the imperialists and use those loans to buy weapons to suppress the masses' opposition. Of course, there's no global institution that defends workers' interests.

The World Trade Organization has total authority over these agreements. It was established in 1994 to defend the interests of the multi-national (imperialist) corporations by enforcing privatization contracts through a system of secret courts and closed-door ministerial meetings that have the power to sanction "disobedient" countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and South America (in that order) have the largest number of active or pending water privatization contracts with multi-national corporations. For instance, after the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in South Africa with the promise that it would end apartheid and provide water and electricity to all black townships, the ANC sold out the working class and signed agreements with the IMF and WB. Then the French company Suez was permitted to buy many of South Africa's municipal water systems and convert community water wells into coin-operated pumps. This forced poor people, who couldn't afford the fee, to collect dirty stagnant water. This led directly to the largest cholera epidemic in recent South African history. (New York Times, 5/29/03) Richard Makolo, a well-known anti-Apartheid activist, argues, "Privatization is a new kind of apartheid. Apartheid separates whites from blacks. Privatization separates rich from poor. (NYT)

Other examples: In May 2003, Aguas y Alcantarillado, a private corporation supplying water to San Jose, Costa Rica, issued 400,000 service cut-offs to residents who were unable to pay the increased water rate. (NYT, 5/26/02). In August of 2000, responding to the demands of the IMF, Nicaragua had to prepare a 5-year plan to privatize the water service for Leon, Chinadega, Matagalpa, the capital city Managua, and on indigenous land in Jinotega. In Honduras and El Salvador, the government is moving to sell the state-owned water services to private corporations, destroying poor communities' hopes of finally receiving running water. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, the U.S. Bechtel corporation increased the water fees by as much as 400%. (http://www.democracyctr.org/bechtel/index.htm)

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the French corporation Suez wrote a water service contract that guaranteed them 19% profit per year on their investment. In order to obtain that guaranteed profit, water rates rose dramatically. Most of the burden fell upon the poor, and service cut-offs increased by 30%. (Business Week, 7/17/03)

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg describing the destructive reality of inter-imperialist rivalry for water privatization worldwide. Capitalist competition turns everything - even water - into a commodity to accumulate profit. While U.S. Bechtel and French Suez rake in unprecedented profits from the sale of water, untold numbers of people are dying due to lack of water. Only a system based on competition for maximum profit would make people suffer and die every day due to lack of water while two-thirds of the planet's surface is covered by water.

(Next issue: what in the capitalist system pushes multi-national, imperialist corporations to privatize water, and what's the solution to this world water crisis?)

Marching With Criminal Bosses Won't End Mexico's Crime

MEXICO CITY, June 27 -

Hundreds of thousands participated in today's mega-march against crime. The marchers were manipulated and deceived by the rulers, politicians and mass media to become not only victims of common criminals but even greater victims of the biggest criminals of all: the capitalists responsible for the conditions that spawn petty crimes.

The Bankers' Association who helped finance the event wants people to forget the mega-frauds involving many of these same bankers. This corruption, combined with capitalism's financial and industrial system, is responsible for mass unemployment, gross poverty and inequality, drug-money laundering and other aspects of society's decay. The bosses of Bimbo, Mexico's biggest bread company, also funded the march. These are the very bosses who've hired goon squads to attack their workers fighting for better conditions. One cannot fight crime without waging class struggle against all these criminal bosses and bankers.

President Fox and his right-wing Party (PAN) also manipulated the growing fear and anger of the masses over spreading crime to hook them into a fascist movement supporting the call by the police chief and Attorney-General for the death penalty, even though recent polls showed most people believe cops and ex-cops are mainly responsible for the crime wave in Mexico City and surrounding areas.

The liberal opposition to Fox, like this city's mayor, doesn't support the march organizers, knowing full-well it's just a rally for the next presidential elections. But that hasn't stopped them from imposing "Zero Tolerance" on crime in the city. Former right-wing NYC Mayor Giuliani received $4 million to "advise" city authorities on imposing this program.

We in PLP must redouble our efforts to win workers to our communist politics exposing capitalism and crime as birds of a feather. The participants in this march were unknowingly marching for a police state - meaning giving the biggest criminals more power. The fight for communism will be a long and hard one, but it is the only road to end crime and its cause: capitalism.

Unemployment is Hazardous for Your Health

Unemployment is a permanent feature of capitalism. The ranks of the jobless vary in size as economic conditions change but unemployment never disappears completely. The bosses' economists define "full employment" as approximately 5% unemployment, which amounts to 10% when including those who've given up looking for work or are working part-time because they can't find full-time jobs.

The existence of this permanent pool of jobless workers (which Karl Marx called the "reserve army of labor") benefits the bosses in two ways. During economic expansion, the unemployed can be swiftly integrated into companies hungry for workers. During economic downturns, they become a tool to depress overall wages: the bosses can threaten employed workers with being replaced by the unemployed. Unemployment is not a mistake, bad luck or a temporary problem of a cycling economy. It's a necessary and permanent part of the capitalist system.

Unemployment Kills

Unemployed workers and their families are a lot less healthy than the employed. British surveys for 1985-86 show that the unemployed reported nearly 30% more chronic illness compared to the population as a whole. This is no surprise. With little or no income, even the basic health-maintaining necessities of life - food, clothing, heating, and home maintenance - are compromised. Doctor's visits are postponed. Depression and psychological illness, marital strain, and family breakdown - along with alcohol and drug abuse - threaten the unemployed worker.

Some years ago, Britain's "shadow" employment minister, Frank Dobson, said, "In plain English, [unemployment] kills and maims." It kills mainly by way of cancer, suicide, accidents, and violence. A middle- aged man who loses his job doubles his chances of dying in the next 10 years. One study in Edinburgh found that from 1968-87 the unemployed were 11 times more likely to attempt suicide.

Some have argued that it's not unemployment that causes bad health but rather people in bad health tend to lose their jobs. But surveys, including one from the British Office of Population Censuses and Surveys Longitudinal Study, showed that the high death rate of unemployed men could not be explained by the state of their health before unemployment.

About ten years ago, Business Week ran an article on Homestead, Pennsylvania, a city deserted by the faltering U.S. steel industry. Half the town's former steelworkers were collecting unemployment benefits or working at minimum-wage jobs. The residents called their city "a national disaster" and listed "the used-up men recently dead of heart attack, stroke, or suicide."

Ending Unemployment Means Better Health for All Workers

Just as unemployment lowers wages of the working class as a whole, it can also depress the health status of all workers. When unemployment rises, workers become relatively more expendable. If workers get sick, they can be more easily replaced. Therefore, bosses can invest less in maintaining workers' health because there is a bigger replacement pool. The bosses will still get their pound of flesh - and if that flesh is used up faster than before, no problem: just substitute another desperate body. No wonder unemployment is correlated with a general decline in health statistics. Listen carefully - when the unemployment rate rises, you can hear the bodies dropping.

Under communism there will be plenty of useful work for everyone. Top priority will be making life better for humanity everywhere, not profits for a small class of capitalist parasites. Unemployment ravages workers' health. It's a form of social murder. The "public health" solution is clear: end unemployment with communist revolution.

LETTERS

Prisoner Abuse Is Capitalist Business As Usual

While the uproar about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war continues worldwide, here in the U.S. this practice is business as usual. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "There shall neither be slavery nor involuntary servitude unless duly convicted of a crime."

This may seem like an acceptable statement, not really worthy of notice until dialectically analyzing to whom this applies.

The 2.1 million people now imprisoned in the U.S., mostly black and Latino, mirrors the old slavery plantation. After the so-called Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the bosses then figured out how to continue capitalizing on free labor - thus the 13th Amendment. (The Proclamation did not free all slaves, only those in slave-holding states that had seceded.) To say the U.S. is "appalled" at the treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war is to literally blow smoke in the eyes of every conscious worker in this hemisphere. Stories of prisoner maltreatment here at home have been surfacing for years with no indignant outcry of rage.

On April 26 in Indiana, organizers called on over 1,300 prisoners to support a passive resistance campaign protesting inhumane treatment and conditions and systematic violation of our human rights. The organizers urged: unity regardless of race, religion or "gang affiliation"; boycotting the gymnasium, thereby forcing the staff to shower hundreds of prisoners within the housing units; mass filing of grievances with the prison grievance and with the governor's newly-appointed ombudsman to investigate both prisoner and civilian complaints and abuses; and an organized silent protest at mealtime.

If our complaints were not addressed, it called for a peaceful work strike/stoppage against the slave-labor factory-type work the prisoners perform. The organizers want to reduce the problems that stress out the prisoners, to decrease the possibility of destructive inmate-against-inmate violence.

The bosses' "answered" with a lockdown of the facility, is keeping inmates in their cells 24 hours a day, cold-sack lunches for meals and no visitation rights even for family members. They could have either taken the grievances seriously or denied them. But they responded with this vicious repression that will intensify the psychological stress and actually increase the danger of destructive violence. If the system treats U.S. citizens in this manner for asking for humane treatment, why would anyone be surprised at the treatment of prisoners of war?

We must speak out against the continuous oppression of our working-class sisters and brothers who have families and loved ones caught up in the system and are being forced to support those slave-labor programs. We should understand that these vicious prison practices are not caused by just a few sadistic individuals, but represents how capitalist society must routinely act. Now is the time to build a movement against the capitalist roots of this problem, even as we struggle against these specific forms of capitalist oppression.

An Indiana reader

The Bill Could Give You a Heart Attack

I recently had a pace-maker/defibrillator implanted in my chest. When the cardiologist was trying to convince me to have the procedure, he said, "500,000 people die every year in the U.S. from ëSudden Cardiac Death.' This can save your life." He didn't need to say much more. The whole procedure took less than two hours and I was kept in the hospital overnight.

I do feel a lot better, but I was really eager to see the bill. Finally it came - $142,000! The device alone was about $75,000! No wonder a half million people die every year. It's not because the technology doesn't exist to save them, but that people can't afford it. About 45 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance and millions more have lousy insurance. Capitalism creates heart diseases a million ways - stress, poor diet, smoking, hazardous jobs, etc., and only saves a fraction of the victims. If it wasn't a disease that affects the rulers themselves, there still might not be many advances.

Anyway, I'm one of the lucky ones; my wife has good insurance. But I promise to wear this battery out fighting for communist revolution!

Takes A Licking But Keeps On Ticking

MICHAEL MOORE: PROÖ.

I am a CHALLENGE reader. I don't agree with PLP on everything, but I enjoy the paper. But it upsets me when you find it necessary to attack Michael Moore. What's your reason for attacking him? Because a bunch of large corporations are associated with his film?

In a society controlled by the ruling class, it's impossible for a film to get to more than a couple thousand people without the support of large corporations. In the right-wing community in which I live I've seen many people who were once obedient to right-wing fascism begin to have their minds opened to the reality that another world is possible. Who opened their minds? Michael Moore! Moore is able to communicate with the masses of people in a brilliant way. Sure, he's not as far left as we would like him to be, but he's able to mobilize the masses against Bush, and occasionally capitalism. We should support him, and try to show his followers the path of Socialism. We should not attack him for not already being on it!

Moore Fan

Ö.AND CON
Moore Earns $30,000/hr

I'd like to share a little information on Michael Moore to dispel the myth that he's a working-class advocate. A friend of mine works at a West coast university that hosts different entertainment and speakers as a "service" to the local community. Through school money and donations from wealthy individuals the university subsidizes major acts to perform that otherwise could not afford to do so, i.e., an orchestra or a dance troupe that isn't guaranteed to make money through ticket sales.

After the hype of "Bowling for Columbine," Moore was invited to come and share his message. The fee for this "voice of the working class" came out to $120,000 for two speeches - all told, four hours work! As a comparison, a dance troupe of nearly 100 people would typically cost as much and high profile public speakers are generally paid $10,000 per speech. Also, at his request, Moore was put up in a five-star hotel, was fed a catered meal from a gourmet restaurant and was provided with several luxury SUVs for his entourage.

During his speech, an audience member asked why the ticket prices were so high ($75). Moore said the promoters were to blame. In fact, the university tried to lower his price, but he wouldn't agree. The fact that the university agreed to pay and host him points to its own agreement with his message. But many honest people who attended believe in the "down-to-earth" and pro-worker Michael Moore. He is really just another high-paid servant of the ruling class.

West Coast comrade

Impressed by Multi-racial May Day

A small group of us from Purdue University attended our first May Day event in Chicago on May 1. When we left from West Lafayette, Indiana, for the 130-mile trip to Chicago, we didn't know what to expect. We were especially impressed by the combination of people there from all racial groups and occupations. It showed us that every-day people are a part of the radical, anti-capitalist movement.

The event gave us much to talk about on the long ride home. We hope to participate in another May Day event like this.

Some Purdue students

Church Anti-Racists Fight White Skin Privilege Theory

We have fought the neo-racist doctrine of White Skin Privilege (WSP) in our denomination since it first appeared in 1992. In our church, this doctrine states that racism is based on systemic power, sanctioned by the state, but the struggle against racism cannot be carried out in a multi-racial manner since all whites, especially white workers, "benefit" from racism.

This became the official position of our denomination's social justice bureaucracy and a concerted effort was made to impose this view on all the churches. However by 2002, thanks in part to our efforts, the position had been temporarily defeated, except among hard-core neo-racist liberals.

Our class analysis says the bosses try to bribe sections of the working class with citizenship, higher wages, the right to vote, etc., to keep the working class divided based on "race." Numbers of white workers have been won to this tactic and have acted against their own class interests as racist terrorists for the bosses in oppressing blacks and other minorities, and anti-racist white forces. Since capitalist ideology is primary in our lives and racism is a major capitalist ideological tool, we're all infected with this poison. Some whites, as well as non-whites, will fight to the death against multi-racial unity.

The primary aspect of our class analysis is that prejudice is the result of racism, not its cause. At its best, WSP confuses appearance with essence. Capitalism is the essence, racism is the appearance.

It is extremely important to widely distribute the Party's literature on the capitalist nature of racism. The agitation must be sustained and patient.

We attended meetings, went to conferences, did mass leafleting, sponsored programs, developed an anti-racist course, joined the enemies' committee and converted most of them to friends, and organized denomination convention sessions. What you can do depends on your political base and the nature of the mass organization.

Finally, we must try to win all those we influence to the following anti-racist principles: Racism is both an ideological weapon and a political economic system created by capitalism, initially to justify slavery. While there's no scientific basis for "race," racism exploits white workers while super-exploiting black, Latin and Asian workers. Therefore, no worker benefits from racism. Most of all, racism can be and has been fought, and sometimes temporarily defeated, but only through full-scale multi-racial unity where possible.

To strengthen our fight, we must greatly increase the distribution of CHALLENGE. Secondly, we must deepen our ties to those we are trying to win. Too often we make agitation and action primary over consolidation. Although we added three new people to our group, we still rely mainly on meetings rather than intensive base-building as the basis for consolidation.

All victories under capitalism are temporary. Only the ideological lessons we learn from our victories or defeats are permanent - as reflected in winning people to join PLP.

Two Anti-Racist Veterans

Brando: One of the Greatest Actors

Possibly the greatest actor ever to come out of the U.S., Marlon Brando died on July 1. Brando took on some roles he shouldn't have - he had little respect for the actor's craft. But he also acted in some strongly anti-racist, anti-imperialist roles, such as "Burn" and "A Dry White Season," which never brought much money nor - unsurprisingly - earned good reviews.

But with all the praise he received upon his death, there's nothing critical being said about his most controversial role: Terry+Malloy in "On the Waterfront." This movie was made by a bunch of sellout ex-communists like Elia Kazan and Lee J. Cobb to justify their informing during the so-called McCarthy era - which more properly should be called the Truman era.Elia Kazan, the worst of the lot, lately has been "rehabilitated" after decades of condemnation. People like DeNiro and Martin Scorsese pimped for him when the Academy Award frauds gave him an honorary "Oscar." Some people, like Nick Nolte and Ed Harris, refused to stand for the tiresome standing ovation he got, and the press attacked them for their principles. Various reasons have been advanced for why Brando accepted the role of an informer in a longshoremen's union.

(There were plenty of worse unions at the time, but the longshoremen, like the equally-attacked Teamster's union, could bring the country to a standstill, and the rulers feared that power and the example it could set for workers generally.) Some people said Brando took the role because he felt he owed Kazan, his original director on Broadway, for giving him his break.

Whatever, one thing Hollywood and the whoring reporters reporting on Brando's death refuse to discuss is what Marlon Brando said about what he'd done in accepting that role: he declared that it was the worse mistake of his life. Who could say it better?

A Playwright from Brooklyn

CHALLENGE comment: It should also be noted that when Kazan appeared for his "Oscar," PLP helped lead hundreds in a demonstration against this anti-communist stoolpigeon's fingering of communists and left-wingers. And it was to Brando's credit that he refused to appear when he won his second Oscar but instead asked a Native American woman to come on stage and read his protest of U.S. genocide against Native Americans

A Perspective on Cuba

(The following was supposed to have appeared as an introduction to the Cuban Perspective article in the current issue of "The Communist" magazine but was omitted by mistake.)

The "Cuban Question" continues to be on the political agenda in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. The Bush administration, courting the votes of the anti-communist Cuban exiles in Florida, has tightened the embargo on Cubans in the U.S. visiting their relatives back home to once every three years. This has backfired, causing rarely-seen anti-Bush protests by exiles in Miami. The Democrats are taking advantage of this rift to try to prevent Bush from again stealing Florida in the November election.

While the embargo is being tightened, Repsol, the Spanish oil company, has discovered potentially huge oil deposits in the area of the Gulf of Mexico controlled by Cuba (25 years ago, the waters were divided among Cuba, Mexico and the U.S.) Repsol is so certain of its findings that it has rented a huge Norwegian oil platform for almost $200,000 a day. This could improve Cuba's economic situation, and assure control of the government by the current bureaucracy once Fidel Castro dies. It would also accelerate the process of "market socialism" (state capitalism mixed with private capitalism) now operating in Cuba.

There are also U.S. capitalist groups (currently mainly agri-business) which oppose the U.S. embargo. The London Financial Times (6/19) reported that U.S. oil companies might also press for ending the embargo, to be able to invest in this new oil bonanza. All this could sharpen the U.S.-European- Chinese imperialist rivalry in Latin American and the Caribbean.

For Cuba's working class, the future must be a struggle against all forms of capitalism. Some say it's difficult for a small island (and one so close to the U.S.) to build real communism alone. But a fight for real communism in Cuba could inspire the entire world's working class and could turn the tables in the class struggle. Workers could take the offensive, instead of being on the defensive as is mostly true in the world today.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

US mum on KKK types

In April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex, F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon - a cyanide bomb - big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot buildingÖ.

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar its owner. He didn't even issue a press releaseÖ.It's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. AshcroftÖreluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist? Ö.Murderous right-wing fanatics are still out there. The concerns of the Justice Department, however, appear to lie elsewhereÖ (NYT, 6/22)

CIA'er: US actions fuel war

A new book by the senior Central Intelligence Agency officer who headed a special office to track Osama bin Laden and his followers warns that the United States is losing the war against radical Islam and that theÖ.threat is rooted in opposition not to American values, but to policies and actions, particularly in the Islamic world.

(NYT, 6/23)

ëGood' capitalists must rob too

What drives executives to cook the books seem painfully obvious: it's greed, isn't it? [But] Competition, a primal force of capitalism, can steer even the nongreedy executive down an unethical path. Andrei Shleifer, an economics professor at Harvard, argues that if unethical behavior drives down corporate costs, rivals will be compelled to do the same just to stay in business.

"Evidence tells us very clearly, even the most saintly C.E.O.'s were involved"Öbecause of market pressure.

The principle works equally to explain accounting fraud, bribery or the use of child labor, Mr. Shleifer says. For instance, if a company gains a cost advantage by hiring children, and can thus offer lower prices to consumers, its rivals have a powerful incentive to hire children, tooÖ.

"The keener the competition, the higher is the pressure to reduce costs, and the more pervasive is corruptionÖ" (NYT, 7/4)

US stalls on Iraq oil $$

Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion" on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolutionÖwould appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi peopleÖ.Instead, the U.S. stalled.

Given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraqi's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true. (NYT, 6/29)

Drug co. bribes doctors

The check for $10,000 arrived in the mail unsolicited. The doctor who received it from the drug maker Schering-Plough said it was made out to him personally in exchange forÖ his commitment to prescribe the company's medicines. Two other physicians said in separate interviews that they, too, received checks....

Doctors who demonstrated disloyalty by testing other company's drugs or even talking favorably about them, risked being barred from the Schering-Plough money stream....

The question [is] whether drug companies are persuading doctors - often through payoffs - to prescribe drugs that patients do not need or should not use or for which there may be cheaper alternatives. (NYT, 6/27)

EU-U.S. Imperialist Rivalry: More Poverty for Workers

Part II

(The previous article reviewed the inter-imperialist rivalry over Latin America, the Summit of the Latin American, Caribbean and European nations, their push for multi-lateral decision-making and warned workers not to side with any capitalists, local or imperialist. In this article we will show how the European imperialists' investments are penetrating into what the U.S. rulers consider their backyard.)

EU FINANCIAL PENETRATION OF LAC HAS INTENSIFIED

European investors are the principal source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flowing to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). While the EU's FDI in LAC averaged less than $5 billion during the 1990-1994 period, in 1997 it equaled the U.S. and has surpassed it since. In 1999, the EU invested $43 billion in LAC, compared to $20 billion from the US.

In 2001, the EU's FDI in LAC dropped to $29 billion and has continued declining since, but it still exceeds the US. Several reasons explain this decrease. First was the 50% drop in global foreign direct investment, mainly due to the world crisis of over-production. Secondly, much of the investment flurry in the previous decade was fueled by privatization programs in many countries. There's not much left to privatize. Thirdly is China's emergence as a haven for cheap labor. And finally there's the cost of integrating the Eastern Europeans nations into the EU. Despite the investment decline, the imperialists still suck $20 billion yearly in profits out of LAC.

In addition, EU investments have generated greater sales. In 1999, European transnational companies (TNCs) operating in LAC accounted for 50% of the sales of the 100 largest TNCs in the region, compared to 43% generated by U.S. companies. That same year, 7 of 10 largest TNCs in LAC were European, as were 5 of the 10 biggest banks. In South America, total assets of EU companies now surpass those of U.S. companies and are approaching the U.S. level in Central America and Mexico. Total EU assets in LAC climbed to $275 billion in 2003, with Brazil holding 38%, Argentina 26% and Mexico 13%.

Besides defying U.S. hegemony in the region on those fronts, the EU has also emerged as Latin America's second trading partner - being the first with MERCOSUR (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay), with the Andean Group (Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), and with Chile. The EU doubled its trade with LAC between 1990 and 2000. In 2003, this amounted to $91.3 billion. Brazil is its main trading partner (34%) and Mexico, despite NAFTA, is second (25.3%). With the integration of the Eastern European nations into the EU, these economic ties are bound to expand, not shrink.

Russian President Putin's recent visit to Mexico is another example of other imperialists targeting the U.S. backyard. Besides gaining some commercial agreements, Russia will build a military helicopter factory and other arms plants in Mexico. In South America, China is moving in more aggressively, investing heavily in Brazil's mining industry and strengthening their economic ties.

HUGE INVESTMENTS MEAN MORE POVERTY FOR WORKERS

Despite the huge influx of capital in the so-called developing countries, poverty has increased. Latin America has one of the highest rates of unequal distribution of income with the top 10% gobbling up 48% and the bottom 10% only 1.8% of all income. Extreme poverty rose from 93.4 million people in 1990 to 102 million in 2003. Poverty overall rose from 200 million people to 226.6 million in the same period.

Sao Paulo, which produces 40% of the gross domestic product of Brazil, has over two million unemployed workers. Brazil was one of the main recipients of FDI, especially from the "caring" EU.

Only money sent by relatives living abroad has kept the masses of workers in the LAC region from being further ground into poverty. Last year it was $40 billion - $30 billion from the U.S. and the rest mainly from Europe. This exceeded the $36.5 billion in FDI that the LAC received that year.

Capitalism-imperialism, whether the U.S.-globalization model or the Euro-globalization one, has nothing to offer the working class but poverty, fascism and wars. There are no lesser-evil capitalists or imperialists. We can only rely on the workers, students and soldiers from our class that have been won to communist ideas, to turn the next imperialist bloodbath into a fight for communism. That's our challenge. To accomplish this, LAC workers need to build a mass Progressive Labor Party.

Bosses Taking Over Anti-Globalization Movement

Along with the Democratic Party convention, Boston will also host the Social Forum, an outgrowth of the World Social Forum (WSF). Starting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the WSF was created as the capitalists' reaction to mounting militancy against globalization.

In November 1999, over 50,000 protesters descended on Seattle, Washington to confront the World Trade Organization conference. Nationalists, environmentalists, anti-globalists, trade unionists of all stripes and some communists participated in a variety of demonstrations, confrontations, and teach-ins to disrupt the conference. The workshop leaders called for reforming capitalism, not destroying it. And the leaders pushed national sovereignty, not workers' internationalism.

For the next 18 months, at every gathering of the major world powers these protests grew, both in numbers and militancy. Davos in Switzerland; Washington, D.C.; Melbourne, Australia; Prague, the Czech Republic; Nice, France; Quebec, Canada; Gothenburg, Sweden; Genoa, Italy.

As they grew, so did the repression of the state. In Genoa, Italy, 150,000 overcame fascist police measures. Reviewing the trend, the British business magazine "The Economist" warned, "Many of the issues they [the protesters] raise reflect popular concern about the hard edges of globalizationÖabout the poor being left behind, harming the environment, caring about profits more than people." Escalating police terror by itself was seen as counter-productive - live ammunition used at Gothenburg, a protester killed at Genoa. An ideological offensive was needed.

It is tempting to see the idea of a Social Forum being formed when World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab found himself trapped by demonstrators in Melbourne. "If I have learned one thing from here," he commented, "I will try in future to install a dialogue corner were some business people and some people in the street could meet and just exchange ideas."

In fact, the WSF was created out of a far more deliberate process. Within weeks of the Seattle demonstrations, while protesters were still glowing about its success, leaders of the French Non Governmental Organization (NGO), ATTAC, the Brazilian employers' Association, and the head of Brazilian NGO's met to counter what they considered the "failure of Seattle."

In their eyes, Seattle hadn't created a credible program to reform the international financial system (which favors U.S. imperialism). Unlike the majority of protesters, ATTAC doesn't want to smash the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, but rather to reform them (favoring French and European imperialism). The Social Forum aimed to "re-educate" the street so that it too favored "credible reforms" rather than "pie-in-the-sky demands" like abolishing the IMF! In 2001, the French government gave ATTAC about $360,000 in grants.

Yet ATTAC was not alone. By the time of the first Forum at Porto Alegre, the WSF was funded by a host of other "partners." For example, one was the Heinrich Boll Foundation, associated with the German Green Party which supported the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and was part of the Shroeder coalition government. Another is the Ford Foundation, long infamous as a conduit for CIA money.

(Next issue: how NGO's - really GO's - push identity politics rather than class solutions.)

Movie Review:
Fahrenheit 9/11 Attacks Bush, Endorses Liberal Imperialists

Much hoopla has been made of Michael Moore's new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." From a liberal perspective, it's an informative movie, exposing the Bush administration's obvious flaws in losing support for the war in Iraq and it's unilateralism - it's go-it-alone strategy. For conservatives "F 9/11" is a liberal, fiction-filled propaganda movie, with its ultimate ambition to win people to vote Democratic in the 2004 election. From a communist perspective, this movie, while attacking some corporations, basically not only promotes capitalism but is also anti-working class in its attempt to use the vilification of one section of the ruling class in order to ally with another.

Moore uses his signature style of fusing news footage, narration and journalism to make his case against the Bushites. It begins with the racist disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida that guaranteed Bush's "victory" in 2000. That election exposed the scam of voting and "democracy" under capitalism. Moore uses this as the pivotal moment in U.S. history where everything went wrong, negating the fact that for centuries U.S. workers have faced slavery, fascist terror, unemployment, wars, etc.

The movie then targets Bush for his incompetence and his connections to the Saudi ruling class, including Papa Bush's connections to the bin Laden family. Moore talks to several government officials who verify that after 9/11, while commercial aircraft were grounded, the bin Ladens as well as other high-ranking Saudis were flown out of the country. Moore dishonestly ignores the deals the U.S. has been making with the Saudis since Roosevelt, when 60 years ago that president offered the House of Saud U.S. support in exchange for "cooperation" on the flow of oil and oil profits.

The rest of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a liberal critique of the war in Iraq - the U.S. should have gone in with more troops, enlisted more of their European allies, etc. - while exposing the ruling-class ambition to exploit that country's black gold. Moore depicts corporations like Halliburton at conferences licking their chops over profitable contracts they will reap from the war. Moore completely absolves the liberals for its complicity in the war.

Worst of all, the film never, ever exposes the Clinton Administration's murderous policies in Iraq after the first Gulf War. The sanctions imposed on Iraq after Gulf War I prevented the country from repairing its infrastructure, t hat - according to UN studies - caused the deaths of approximately 5,000 children every month for 12 years. By the end of that decade, an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis had died due to U.S./British sanctions and bombings.

Probably the movie's most effective parts involve Moore's interviews with workers in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. One worker says he was watching media coverage of the war and, noticing the devastation, said the same destruction existed in Flint. Moore later follows two Marine recruiters as they attempt to recruit young workers to the military, and how they're sneaky about it, concentrating on poor working-class neighborhoods.

The danger of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Moore's attempt to unify audiences into the "we" as all Americans, that "our" country was taken away by the evil neo-conservatives and "we've" got to take it back. Moore never explains that the U.S. contains two antagonistic classes - the rulers and the workers - and that young workers forced to fight in imperialist wars are serving the bosses' class interests, not their own.

Lila Lipscomb, a mother who lost her son in Iraq, expresses her grief and sorrow but explains that she's patriotic and loves her country. Moore empathizes with her and says, "It's a great country isn't it?"

At the end of the movie, he narrates, "In time of need, it has always been the young poor, who have stepped up." (!) The young have basically been drafted into the military because the future for many in poor urban areas has always been bleak (2.1 million workers are in jail, 70% black and Latin). The military coerces young workers with the "carrots" of money and education.

This movie and the 2004 election, if successful for the Democrats, will further establish liberal fascism and a police state, with many believing that the U.S. is great so "get out and vote." Liberals want to put a smiling face on fascism to maintain ruling-class power. But most importantly they need millions won to their line to fight in wars for capitalism, a "mission" at which the Bushites have flunked miserably. Workers must understand the racist nature of capitalism, that it can never represent workers' class interests, no matter who is the president of the U.S.

(For a more detailed critique of Fahrenheit 9/11: "The Problem is Bigger than the Bushes." )

1. Gov't Guesstimates Jobs: Racist Unemployment Still Rampant
2. Bushites' Iraq Fiasco: BIG BOSSES NEED KERRY TO SAVE OIL EMPIRE
3. Bin Laden Challenges Exxon
4. Fight `Outsourcing' with International Workers' Unity
5. NEA Teachers' Lesson Plan: Fight Racism, Imperialist War
6. N.J. Pickets Oppose U.S. Rulers' Torture
7. Organizing Sailors to Become Working-Class Political Leaders
8. COKE: Sweet For Bosses, Exploiting Child Labor in El Salvador
9. IMPERIALIST BATTLE OVER LATIN AMERICA SHOWS NEED TO BUILD MASS PLP -- Part I
   1. LACEU SUMMIT
      CHALLENGED U.S. RULERS ON THREE FRONTS
10. $10/Hr Still Poverty Wages for Home Health Care Workers
11. SEIU Pushes Kerry But Workers Respond to PLP's Red Ideas
12. Imperialist Rivalry Peaks in Nepal
13. LETTERS
    1. U.S. Protectors of Scabs are Torturers In Iraq
    2. Boycott Cops' Rally -- A Class Act
    3. All Workers Must Back Mideast Masses
    4. Veteran, New PL'ers Built May Day
    5. Reagan Never `Forgot' The Rich He Served
    6. U.S. Imperialism Has Long History of Torture
    7. Anger Over Sellouts Sparks Red Politics
    8. 82 Million Uninsured While Health Care Bosses' Profits Soar
14. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. From Honduras to Iraq
    2. Women earn 60% less
    3. $ystem ruins China health
    4. If Nazis guilty, so is US
    5. Torching Afghan women
    6. Motive in Iraq: Profits
15. Ford, GM, IBM Armed Hitler Before and During WW2
    1. U.S. BOSSES SET UP SHOP IN NAZI GERMANY
16. Privatizing Water Kills As Capitalists Thirst For Profits

Gov't Guesstimates Jobs: Racist Unemployment Still Rampant

The Bush administration and the media have been flooding us with reports of the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It seems the government is constantly juggling numbers to come up with an "accurate" (and lower) unemployment total, which is always off the mark.

Lately big job gains are being reported by the Labor Department. However, this flies in the face of workers "still reporting...difficulty finding full-time work." (NY Post, 6/8)

One reason for this difficulty could be that job growth is not all what it's cracked up to be. "Right now," according to N.Y. Post Business Page writer John Crudele (6/8) "most of the growth...is coming from new companies the government thinks -- but can't prove -- are being created." [Our emphasis -- Ed.] While revisions in calculations were made in 1991 after "massive mistakes concerning jobs and wages" were discovered (including the double-counting of new jobs), Crudele says "Washington is still guessing at the number of jobs in this country.... Polls show voters aren't very optimistic about the economy despite the jobs figures."

"I don't think he [Bush] has created anything," Lonnie Steele, 57, of East Flat Rock, N.C. told the Associated Press (6/14) in a report entitled, "Voters don't think Bush has created a million jobs."

Even the latest "optimistic" government reports show unemployment of black workers rose in May to nearly 10% because of racist unemployment while the jobless rate for all workers remained at 5.6%. As CHALLENGE has shown previously, the true rate is probably double that, given all the categories the government excludes from its count.

This is now further confirmed by a Reuters dispatch reporting the U.S. government's "alternative measure...[of] the hidden unemployed,... not included in the official unemployment rate."

That rate "is dramatically higher, at 9.7% in May, compared with the official...5.6%. That's an extra 5.96 million, in addition to the 8.2 million `officially' unemployed..." This adds in "workers who have not actually looked for work in the past four weeks, including `discouraged workers' who have given up altogether. They also include those who have given up looking for full-time jobs and have settled for part-time work...."

"None of the unemployment measures include the 1.7% of the male wage-earning population who are in prison, or another 1.36 million men...." (Reuters, 6/14)

In addition, to this 14.1 million, also excluded are people on welfare who can't find jobs and those youth who joined the military because they couldn't find work.

But there is still further fraud in the government's figures. Crudele reports from the government's own website (www.bis.gov/web/web/cesbd.htm) that, "Of the 248,000 jobs that Washington says sprang into existence in May..., 195,000 materialized from...guesstimate[s]. The same thing happened in April (with 270,000 jobs just a guess) and March (153,000 guess)." A top economist at the Labor Department says it won't know until "this time next year whether the figure [the 195,000 guess] is accurate."

Furthermore, the N.Y. Times reports (6/11) that in the first quarter of 2004, "4.5 million workers...applied for unemployment insurance." However, slightly fewer than 40% of U.S. workers are actually eligible for these benefits. This is 40% of a possible total of 11.5 million jobless.

Unemployment is inherent to capitalism. In a planless economy in which every company tries to capture as big a section of the market as possible, overproduction is inevitable. Those companies who lose in this struggle are driven to reduce labor costs -- layoffs -- to try to maintain profits. The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate the profit system that creates it.

Bushites' Iraq Fiasco: BIG BOSSES NEED KERRY TO SAVE OIL EMPIRE

U.S. rulers are answering nationalist and fundamentalist threats to their Mid-East oil empire in typical capitalist fashion, with indiscriminate murder. On June 15, anti-U.S. insurgents shut down all crude exports from Iraq by blowing up pipelines feeding its southern oil terminal. Sabotage earlier had stopped shipments from northern fields. So, on June 19, "a U.S. military plane fired missiles...into a residential neighborhood in Fallujah, killing at least 20 and leveling houses.... Outraged residents accused the Americans of trying to inflict maximum damaged by firing two strikes -- one first to attack and another to kill the rescuers. `The number of casualties is so high because after the first missile we jumped to rescue the victims,' said Wissam Ali Hamad. `The second missile killed those trying to carry out the rescue.'" (Associated Press, 6/19) Meanwhile, liberal critics of Bush's war-making, those close to the Exxon Mobil-Chevron Texaco-Shell-BP axis, are calling for a Kerry administration to send an even more deadly U.S. force to Iraq.

Control of the Mid-East's oil gives U.S. rulers such great profits and leverage over their competition that they will stop at nothing to keep it. They invaded Iraq hoping to seize its oil fields from the pro-Russian and pro-French Saddam Hussein. They wanted to boost production from a pre-1990 2.5 million barrels per day to six million, as Philip Carroll, the former Shell boss who governed Iraq just after the U.S. "victory," once boasted.

A U.S.-controlled Iraq with the capacity to pump at that level could have become the main "swing producer." U.S. oil firms could then have set world prices, broken OPEC and hedged threats to their mother lode of oil, Saudi Arabia [see box]. But today's zero barrels a day is a lot less than the dreamed-of six million. Oil bosses are furious at Bush for not putting enough GI boots on the ground in Iraq to wipe out U.S. opponents and secure the oil infrastructure. "There has to be basic security, a stable government," Carroll lamented. (Bloomberg, 6/18) And in a gross understatement, Stratfor, an influential policy analysis outfit, says Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond "is not thrilled with the Bush administration's approach to foreign policy," (6/8)

Liberals, aiding the oil barons, demand more U.S. killing power. Writing for the liberal Brookings Institution (6/4), military analyst Michael O'Hanlon says "success in Iraq [that is, maintaining a U.S. stranglehold on its oil] is too important to allow the present size of the U.S. Army to predetermine our options for deploying troops there.... The only conscionable response is to increase the size of the U.S. ground forces.... No more time should be lost -- about 40,000 more troops, mostly Army soldiers but perhaps some Marines as well, should be added to the U.S. military." But O'Hanlon warns that low recruitment "could leave the country with few choices besides a return to the draft, with its even greater problems of a much less proficient and committed military."

Bush's mishandling of Iraq is fueling an unprecedented elect-Kerry movement among high-ranking foreign service and military officers, who traditionally have steered clear of electoral politics. On June 16, a newly-formed group called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change issued a statement at the National Press Club in Washington. In it, 27 former ambassadors, generals and admirals said they were "deeply concerned by the damage the Bush Administration has caused to our national and international interests." Liberal Jimmy Carter long ago identified these "interests" as the U.S.'s ability to dominate other nations militarily and economically, especially with the oil weapon.

Many of the signers belong to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a liberal policy factory closely tied to the Exxon Mobil-Rockefeller wing of U.S. capital. Two -- Charles Freeman, ex-ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and General Joseph Hoar -- participated in a 1997 CFR study laying out a blueprint for a post-war Iraq six years before the U.S. invaded. Another, ex-CIA chief Admiral Stansfield Turner, recently lectured CFR members on the need for a police state in the U.S.: "We are going to have to integrate the policeman on the motorcycle in Montana with the domestic spying done by the FBI or an MI5 [Britain's secret police], and it's going to be a very big operation." (CFR transcript, 5/4)

These Kerry backers -- just like the Bushites -- have the blood of millions of workers on their hands. Their interests lie in advancing U.S. imperialism, no matter what the cost in human lives. Jumping on their Kerry bandwagon, as an alternative to Bush's butchery, would only strengthen the U.S. war machine.

Instead of participating in the rulers' electoral circus, we should organize against all bosses and build Progressive Labor Party to destroy their system, replacing it with a communist society that has no class interest in war, unemployment, racism and poverty.

Bin Laden Challenges Exxon

In the most lucrative and strategically important business deal on earth, Saudi Arabia sells Exxon Mobil (and some others) vast amounts of cheap crude oil on secret terms. It's mainly the Saudi Aramco connection that allows Exxon to sell over 8 million barrels a day of petroleum products, while it pumps only 2.5 million barrels of crude from its own wells. When Saudi royals nationalized Aramco in 1976, they, unlike Iran and Iraq, didn't expel their American partners, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco. According to Anthony Cave Brown in "Oil, God, and Gold" (Houghton Mifflin, 1999, p. 361), "The American[s] would have access to seven million barrels of crude oil per day...at forty-seven cents per barrel." The going rate then was $11. The would-be oil barons of al Qaeda seek to overthrow this sweetheart arrangement, which continues in some form today. According to Exxon Mobil president Rex Tillerson, "We are the largest purchaser of Saudi crude oil exports -- making Saudi Arabia the single largest supplier of raw materials to Exxon Mobil's worldwide refinery system." (Exxon Mobil press release, 4/27)

Wanting the oil profits for themselves, bin Laden's thugs have a strategy of scaring the more than 30,000 U.S. nationals out of Saudi Arabia, for whom they now provide oil industry and military expertise. Al Qaeda's recent beheading of a U.S. military contractor caused many to flee. But U.S. rulers won't let their Saudi oil bonanza go without a major war. If al Qaeda threatens to seize power, the U.S. rulers' response will make their Iraqi slaughter look like a picnic.

Fight `Outsourcing' with International Workers' Unity

Much has been made of job losses in the U.S. due to outsourcing jobs overseas. The latest Labor Department figures for the first quarter of 2004 showed 16,000 layoffs because of relocation of jobs, of which 60% (9,600) moved to another part of the U.S.; only 4,633 went abroad. But, then again this doesn't include companies with less than 50 employees or larger companies where less than 50 actually applied for unemployment benefits. Wall Street's Goldman Sachs, including the smaller firms, estimates outsourcing overseas of 250,000 to 300,000 per year, although still a small part of a labor market of 130 million.

But whatever the figure, workers finding new jobs after being laid off because of this outsourcing are earning $2 an hour less, on average. (Miami Herald, 6/12) Based on a 40-hour week, that's $80 weekly or over $4,000 less per year. These U.S. workers are suffering as a direct result of U.S. imperialism and racism. U.S. bosses ship jobs overseas seeking cheaper labor, then use racism to blame these "foreign" workers for the job losses, and then pay U.S. workers thousands less in their new jobs (if they can find any). Thus, imperialism super-exploits workers overseas and its racism helps to lower wages here.

Only the unity of workers internationally can fight this world capitalist attack on all workers and prevent the bosses from pitting groups of workers against each other. And only communist revolution can finish off the system that causes this worldwide suffering.

NEA Teachers' Lesson Plan: Fight Racism, Imperialist War

The National Education Association, the country's largest union, is holding its annual convention of 10,000 delegates in Washington, D.C. this July. Like other union gatherings this summer, the NEA convention will likely become a campaign rally promoting John Kerry for President. We should reject both Kerry and Bush and the capitalism they represent. Instead we should fight for a system that puts workers' needs first, a system based on cooperation and production for need, not profits.

We will work with others backing resolutions which condemn torture in prisons in the U.S. Afghanistan and in Iraq, and expose Kerry's plans for national service as a cover for bringing back the military draft. We plan to organize among the thousands of NEA delegates who are opposed to war and fascist torture, and to win them to see that instead of supporting the Democrats, the only real alternative to the evils of capitalism is communist revolution

Teachers are painfully aware that the students we educate face a world of rising unemployment, restricted opportunities, reduced benefits, mayhem, jail and war. The schools themselves have become racist institutions in which declining attention is paid to black and Latin students, dragging down the education of white working-class students as well. This is a world based on the exploitation of workers, where oil is a curse, not a blessing and whose "leaders" use nationalism and religion to win workers and youth to fight wars and kill other workers to benefit the fabulously wealthy. But teachers are in a position to educate these students and their parents about the causes of these problems -- and what we can do about them.

U.S. capitalists have a problem trying to maintain their economic dominance. European, Chinese and other imperialists are beginning to challenge the U.S., over the war in Iraq and with the rising importance of the European Union's currency (the euro) and its threat to the dollar as payment for the world's oil. The main section of the U.S. ruling class is upset with the way Bush has met this challenge. His huge tax cuts for the rich have short-changed their military. Of course, it has also decreased spending on social services such as health care and education.

Now the Rockefeller wing wants to dump Bush so John Kerry can "do it right," meaning his call for 40,000 more troops in Iraq and unity with others to help pay the price of conquest. 

Kerry seeks to reinstitute the draft, calling for a program of National Service (www.JohnKerry.com) with options for strengthening the Patriot Act -- a Police Corps and the creation of a new community defense service to work for the government -- and for recruiting more soldiers through National Service with options for the military. He describes it as "the highest form of service." He would reward this service with Pell grants for college. This follows the "United We Serve" task force recommendation that the Pell Grant be tied to national service.

No matter what form military recruitment takes, working-class young people will serve in the rulers' wars. Teachers giving them a critical perspective and class consciousness can help our students -- future workers and soldiers -- understand that they can unite with other workers worldwide, rather than seeing them as their enemy.

The issues in the schools and at the NEA convention must be seen in light of the events described above. The real question is whether we should support the exploitation, profits-before-people, racism, sexism, nationalism and wars of the rulers' imperialist system at all or whether we should fight to overthrow it and replace it with a communist system based on cooperation, production for use, internationalism and people first, last and always.

N.J. Pickets Oppose U.S. Rulers' Torture

NEWARK, NJ -- On June 3, a militant group of people from mass organizations around the city picketed the Federal Building protesting the U.S. military's horrific torture of prisoners at Abu Gharib prison in Iraq. Several drivers honked their horns in support as they passed Broad Street reading signs like,: "U.S. Biggest Terrorist" and heard the rousing chants: "Money for Jobs, Not for War!" and "Hey, Hey, Ho Ho, Racist War Has Got to Go!"

Speeches from demonstrators denounced U.S. imperialism, including the tortures at Abu Gharib as part of the U.S. racist campaign for world domination of markets. One speaker related the torture to the Patriot Act's racist treatment of Arab workers in the U.S. under which the government interrogates, imprisons and deports them as well as quelling and silencing dissent here.

Many workers grabbed leaflets and others bought CHALLENGES, agreeing with the demonstrators' politics against the war in Iraq. Some said they didn't trust any politicians anymore and agreed that maybe we do need a new system. Right now we need mass demonstrations, resolutions in union, churches and other mass organizations denouncing this torture and opposing the U.S. ruling class that orders it. Friends and comrades of PLP must spread the message to workers worldwide that the working class needs to make revolution against the war-makers and build a society based on the dictatorship of the working class!

Organizing Sailors to Become Working-Class Political Leaders

In a previous CHALLENGE article (4/14) I detailed my positive experience with sailors in boot camp. Now for my progress with sailors/marines in post-boot camp, which has emboldened me even more. The key is to get my buddies involved in our work on a practical level so it doesn't come off simply as theory but as an actual struggle that can be won -- if we're consistent and on the ball. Here's some practical involvement which has brought sailors/marines closer to our Party and its view that working-class soldiers and sailors don't have to become torturers like those in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.

A chapter of a movement of mostly young progressives who fight the expansion of the exploitation of prison labor recently held a film festival. I invited several colleagues to join me, two sailors and one marine. On the way to the event one stressed that the black people's fight today in the U.S. today is for acceptance, for them to be able wear their dreadlocks to work, and so on. I challenged this, saying America today is more than willing to accept us if we're willing to serve imperialism. I suggested he look more closely at urban police departments. In fact, the cop who killed a black University student had dreadlocks.

 The first film that night dealt with Palestinian youth kidnapped by Israeli authorities and held against their will. One youth we saw was held in detention for almost a year, abused in prison, beaten, denied schooling and interrogated daily. Another film explored the plight of youth in Vietnam after the Vietnam War, their daily struggle for survival. The last one portrayed the 1992 rebellion against police brutality in a mostly Salvadoran neighborhood. It described why these workers fled to the U.S (escaping torture and El Salvador death squads funded by Reagan and the CIA). Once here, instead of receiving peace and justice, they suffered unemployment, underemployment, lousy schooling, substandard housing and daily harassment/torture by the cops. 

 Afterwards, everyone felt quite moved and motivated to struggle over what they'd witnessed. One seemed more concerned with the struggle against police brutality and couldn't see why we cared about Palestine or Vietnam. I stressed the inter-connectedness of U.S Imperialism/capitalism, how police brutality here is linked to the oppressed Palestinian child, how the U.S. sends billions to the Israeli government. He nodded when I said that in order to win workers' power we must build solidarity with all workers across all borders! One must expand the fight for your home beyond the nation where you were born to the CLASS you belong to! This is home! The experience was a good one and helped our work.

The following week, the same sailor who challenged our global view traveled with me to an anti-police brutality meeting to hear how the goons -- cops -- would "reform" themselves through a consent decree negotiated by the U.S. Justice Department. A grassroots group had pressured for this decree. Now we were witnessing how the capitalist state, even on this level, will use a reform movement to strengthen its grip on the working class. We see this nationally with the election of black and Latino politicians, along with black and brown cops.

My Navy buddy felt it was an oxymoron, the police (the feds) monitoring the police. When he raised his hand to question this, he quickly discovered how the police are trained to deceive you into thinking they're "for the people." The representative of the Chief of Police answered that the Federal Justice Department was committed to justice and ensuring that the County police were held accountable. This is the same Justice Department named for J. Edgar Hoover, the notorious FBI director, who -- through the infamous Counter Intelligence Program -- spied on countless organizations fighting for justice and freedom. My buddy wasn't buying this. Neither were the others present.

 Several mothers whose sons were victims of police brutality were angry at a process that gives more deference to the cops than to the victims/survivors forced to bury their sons with no justice! (The Chief's representative told us the police were included in negotiating the consent decree while the community was locked out.)

Both mothers expressed outrage over the fact that the cops who beat and tortured (in one case killed) their sons are still on the force despite the Federal consent decree, the hiring of the first permanent black Police Chief, the election of the second black County Executive, and so on. Many community members now understand that it's the system, not only the police chief or the County Executive, that must be challenged. We in PLP pushed our colleagues to see that the system must be destroyed! (Next issue: celebrating May Day.)

COKE: Sweet For Bosses, Exploiting Child Labor in El Salvador

Coca Cola is having lots of problems which its most recent CEO -- like the others before him -- couldn't solve. He was forced to resign. This prompted a rare N. Y. Times' editorial (6/18) criticizing the company for doling out hundreds of millions of "shareholders' dollars" to incompetent CEOs. Of course, the Times doesn't worry about the workers who produce these millions. Workers should not take sides with any bosses, but must be concerned with how their profit-making screws us.

Firstly, Coca Cola's products damages the teeth and health of tens of millions of people worldwide. It's not only saturated with sugar and other sweeteners, but it also used to use coca paste (how it got its name), the source of cocaine. Supposedly, coca leaves are no longer used in the U.S. market but they're still part of the product bottled overseas. (For an interesting article on Coca Cola, cocaine, the CIA and Papa Bush's fortunes, see www.skolnicsreport.com, April 2004).

But Coke is wreaking havoc in other ways. We've reported on Colombian Coca Cola bottlers employing paramilitary death squads to murder activists in the Coke workers union. Now it appears Coke is using child labor to make super-profits. The UN declared June 12 an International Day Against Child Labor. It's estimated that 200 million children are now super-exploited worldwide. Some try to justify this by saying "cultural" reasons cause parents to bring their children to work, particularly in agriculture in the world's poorest countries. But this also occurs in the U.S. and European agri-business, where migrant labor (mostly undocumented immigrant workers) is common. Parents feel forced to bring their children along to augment the family's meager poverty wages paid by expoiting bosses.

In El Salvador, child labor is commonly used in cutting sugar cane. One-third of the country's sugar cane workers are under 18, many of whom began working when they were 8 (according to a 6/14 Human Rights Watch report (Argenpress.info). The ILO (Int'l Labor Organization) estimates that from 5,000 to 30,000 children under 18 participate in what it calls "dangerous work" in El Salvador's sugar cane fields. The ILO has a group there fighting for the immediate end to this child labor. But calling on capitalists to end it won't do the trick, another reason why PLP organizes for communist revolution to destroy capitalism, a system based on all forms of wage slavery.

"Dangerous work" means the children must use machetes and other sharp objects to cut the sugar cane and root out the leaves, laboring nine hours a day in unbearable heat. There are many "accidents," but basically it's up to the workers to find medical help. Official figures show 22,000 children die worldwide because of "industrial accidents." But the real number is far higher.

Child labor continues because it's very profitable, both for the plantation owners and for the corporations that buy the sugar they produce. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this super-exploitation's final product -- sugar --is Coca Cola. The local Coke bottler buys sugar from Central Izalco, El Salvador's biggest sugar mill. At least four of the plantations supplying Izalco use child labor. Of course, Coke has an international "code" forbidding child labor, but it only covers direct suppliers, not the plantations. Obviously the code is worthless.

Millions of children are also being used to wage imperialist wars for one boss or another, whose armies are predominantly youth. After years of civil war, "peace" has brought nothing but more deaths and misery to the workers and youth of El Salvador (including drug-dealing gangs trained in the U.S.). The leaders of the former FMLN guerrillas have now turned into electoral politicians, selling out the hundreds of thousands who died and fought the U.S. death-squad lackey rulers. For our children's sake, let's fight to destroy capitalism once and for all, for a society without Coke and bosses and their sellout politicians, where all the children can be children. Join the communist PLP and end this living hell.

IMPERIALIST BATTLE OVER LATIN AMERICA SHOWS NEED TO BUILD MASS PLP -- Part I

As PLP has often pointed out, the main contradiction in the world today is inter-imperialist rivalry. This rivalry, driven by economic laws integral to capitalism, inexorably leads to more and wider wars, and eventually, as Lenin wrote, to world war. Therefore communists learn capitalism's economic trends to enable us to alert the working class of the impending dangers and be better prepared to turn the imperialist war into a class war for communist revolution.

Economic laws dictate capitalist crisis, fascism and wars. Only when communist revolution is spread worldwide, destroying capitalism itself, will these horrors end. This won't happen spontaneously, but only by PLP fighting hard and skillfully for its ideas among all workers, youth and soldiers.

The collapse of the state-capitalist Soviet Union's empire left the U.S. as the dominant imperialist power. But it also opened the gates to fierce inter-imperialist rivalry by eliminating the threat that forged unity among the western imperialists. The European Union (EU), having become one of the U.S. rulers' main contenders for world hegemony, is attacking U.S. supremacy economically and politically, globally and regionally -- and is making advances.

This process has its twist and turns, its ups and downs, but the trend points to the decline of U.S. supremacy as the number one imperialist. It isn't, and won't be, a peaceful process. The many armed conflicts in the world reflect this inter-imperialist dogfight. Eventually, the major imperialists will clash on the battlefield.

U.S. bosses won't surrender Latin America or the rest of its empire peacefully. In 1962, they came very close to nuclear war over tiny Cuba. Hundreds of thousands were murdered in Central America to protect the U.S. control of the region from pro-Soviet and pro-European forces like El Salvador's FMLN and Nicaragua's Sandinistas. The U.S. invaded Panama to stop Noriega from making the Japanese yen that country's main currency. Under the guise of the "war on terror and drugs," the U.S. has established more military bases across Latin America.

These sharpening contradictions among the imperialists don't mean World War III will start tomorrow but simply that it, and more wars, are inevitable. Presently none of the U.S. rulers' rivals are ready or willing to challenge the U.S. militarily, but that's just a question of time. They'll be propelled by these sharpening external and internal contradictions. European bosses are grappling with the development of their military, and with their future relationship with Russia and China, both nuclear powers. They certainly realize there can't be multi-lateralism without military backing. Having fought two wars for world supremacy, they must know that fulfilling this ambition will require another one.

LACEU SUMMIT
CHALLENGED U.S. RULERS ON THREE FRONTS

The recent summit of Latin American, Caribbean and European (LACEU) rulers in Guadalajara, Mexico, further intensified this power struggle. The EU imperialists outlined their strategy on three fronts to challenge U.S. world hegemony with "Euro-globalism." The first was political, calling for a return to multi-lateralism among the industrialized nations in the decision-making process of world affairs.

The second front was economic. It called for regional integration, multi-lateralism in the regulation of the world economy and the creation of an EU that could compete with the U.S. in international markets. To reduce U.S. hegemony in this hemisphere, the summit decided to officially sign next October the free trade agreement between the EU and MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), to which Mexico has applied for membership.

The third front was the social one. The European butchers want to portray themselves to the world's workers as benign imperialists, while attacking U.S. policies that guarantee its hegemony in Latin America and elsewhere. They say they favor creating organizations that promote "fairer income redistribution" globally and that protect the environment and human rights. The EU funds many Non-Governmental Organizations and mass movements in the Latin America -- Carribean area, that attack U.S. policies on all these fronts, especially against the U.S. free-market globalization and the creation of the U.S.-sponsored FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas).

Workers shouldn't fall for this trick. Capitalism produces for profits. No imperialist/capitalist will ever put the well-being of workers above the bosses' class interests. This condemns billions of people to abject poverty and to death from starvation and curable deceases. They have needs, but no money. Communism, on the other hand, means production for human needs. There won't be anything for sale, or money to buy it. Society will produce to fulfill all the needs of the international working class.

(Next issue, the intensification of European penetration into Latin America.)

$10/Hr Still Poverty Wages for Home Health Care Workers

BROOKLYN, NY, June 21 -- "We were sold out! The home health care agencies and the 1199-SEIU leadership are good for nothing!" declared a striking home health care worker upon hearing that they had "won" $10 an hour by 2007.

On June 7, several of us workers from a Brooklyn hospital joined the picket line in solidarity with strikers. Many CHALLENGES were sold to this militant group of underpaid workers.

Local 1199-SEIU had called a three-day strike beginning on June 7 for these 25,000 workers. Almost all of the workers' contracts had expired; others had never even had one. The union demands included vacation, sick and bereavement leaves, health coverage and a $10 hourly wage.

Thousands of workers showed up to picket on the strike's first day. Many were chanting for more money, that $10 was unacceptable. The bosses' politicians' message at the rally was how evil Bush is and how good capitalism and "democracy" is for everyone.

At 9 AM, the union leadership reported some agencies had settled and that the workers should return to work. The workers immediately raised their hands and shouted angrily, "No way! We're not going back!"

The 1199 SEIU leadership, seeing the workers' defiance, quickly called a vote. The strikers' position to stay out won overwhelmingly. They continued picketing and also marched through midtown Manhattan, snarling traffic for hours.

Over the next two days, many workers did return to work, following an agreement with several agencies. The union leadership was, and continues to be, very passive. They aim to get out the vote for the bosses' Democratic Party politicians and get workers to accept any and all rotten contract deals.

Many agencies still haven't settled. The new contract will have little impact on the workers' lives. Under capitalism, it's practically impossible for such workers to feed, clothe and house their families under these wage-rates.

The home health care workers, mostly immigrant women, provide compassionate care in homes of people discharged from hospitals. The bosses' home health care system is based upon agencies netting enormous profits from low-paid workers.

Medicare and Medicaid finance the system, from workers' taxes and bosses' profit extracted from the working class. The funds are channeled through "certified home health care agencies."

They subcontract to "licensed home care service agencies." After paying high administrative costs and siphoning off huge profits of the $17 an hour paid to the agencies what's left is trickled down to pay workers $7 an hour.

Since U.S. rulers are spending billions of dollars of our money on their war in Iraq, even less remains for social service programs. The bosses are out to reduce the cost of health care and drive down workers' wages. We must organize the working class to build the PLP around the revolutionary communist ideas in the CHALLENGE and through PLP's 2004 summer project.

SEIU Pushes Kerry But Workers Respond to PLP's Red Ideas

San Francisco, June 22 -- At an SEIU march for health care here, the union shirts were red, but the message they carried -- "Laborers for Kerry" -- was not. Allying with Democratic politicians, the union had printed thousands of stickers reading, "I am a health care voter." It was a clear push to vote for Kerry.

Meanwhile, a committed group of communists from Progressive Labor Party hoisted a banner with a sharply different message: "Capitalism kills workers every day! It will never provide decent health care for all workers! From S.F. to Baghdad, the fight for real healthcare is the fight for communism!" A large majority of the workers who we spoke with agreed the Democrats were dangerous. Many bought CHALLENGES. Ten workers gave contact information on the spot.

Clearly SEIU members are not firmly committed to the Democratic Party. This is good news because, as CHALLENGE has consistently pointed out, Kerry and the Democrats are 100% for the imperialist war for oil in Iraq. Democrats like Clinton have launched some of the most vicious attacks on the working class in recent times, such as the huge increase in imprisonment and the destruction of welfare. While the SEIU contributed $13 million to the Democratic Party over the past four years, the overall trend for workers conditions was down, down, down.

This is a critical time. While the SEIU's membership is not highly committed to the "social-fascist" (so-called "lesser-evil" but still fascist) Democratic Party, they haven't reached the level of attacking the Democrats and adopting revolutionary ideas. But their openness to PLP members at the march demonstrates that when PLP exposes social-fascism, workers are interested.

PLP will approach these contacts to promote the understanding that workers need a political solution "outside the box" of capitalism -- that the only solution is communist revolution. Unions will never fight for communism -- but that doesn't mean communists won't fight in unions. Communists and their allies will remain in unions and student-labor groups to fight against the system while advancing the need for revolution.

While PLP makes this fight, organizations like SEIU are training their own leaders. After the march, SEIU kicked off a youth conference for this purpose. There, PLP members met several young people friendly to PLP's communist analysis. (Details next issue.)

Imperialist Rivalry Peaks in Nepal

Nepal used to be known as an idyllic Himalayan Shangri-La, a paradise for mountain climbers and hippies. Well, very few people refer to Nepal that way now. It's a microcosm mirroring the rivalry among the world's large and small imperialists.

Life was never a paradise for Nepal's peasants and workers. The so-called "Democratic Monarchy" created in 1990 didn't represent most of the people. This contradiction exploded when a Maoist group (CPN-Maoist) began an armed struggle against the government. Then several years ago they halted their rebellion and joined talks with the government.

But this didn't last long; the rulers were using the negotiations to their own advantage. Amid all this, the royal family was almost wiped out by one of their own. The new king who took power wasn't content with being a figurehead, ruling as an autocrat and limiting bourgeois democracy.

The Maoists returned to armed struggle, spread throughout Nepal as well as spilling into neighboring India. In May, the Bushites' war "against terror" reached Nepal, declaring the local Maoists "terrorists." India, worried about support by local armed groups -- and possibly by Pakistan as well -- for Nepal's Maoists, has also stepped up its intervention in Nepal, helping train its Army, supplied with M-16s by the U.S. army, and training by the UK.

Meanwhile, the Nepalese ruling class and its international backers are trying to re-introduce the façade of "bourgeois democracy" to placate the angry masses. They want to draw the fake leftist Unified Marxist-Leninist Party back into a coalition government. By doing this, "Mr. Deuba [the new Primer Minister] would take one big group out of the daily protests on the streets of Kathmandu, the capital," reports the Financial Times (6/19-20). "The protesters...demand that King Gyanendra stay inside the gilded cage of symbolic power that was built for the monarch by the...1990....constitution."

Strikes have erupted alongside the daily protests and armed struggle. The "Maoists latest bandh (strike) shut down all Nepal's schools and colleges for 12 days, a sign of their growing strength." (FT)

The rulers have a two-pronged plan for the Maoists: war plus -- knowing the limitation of Maoist politics -- winning them to join their government. The FT adds that the U.S. and UK want to help "bring the Maoists into the mainstream," renounce violence and participate in elections. In the past, the Maoists agreed to negotiate with the rulers. Their rebellion now is limited to demanding the abolition of the monarchy and for a "people's assembly." They're not fighting for communism, destroying capitalism and all bosses.

Maoism fights for "new democracy" -- a form of state capitalism they would lead. This same line led to the reversal of the communist-led revolution in China.

Internationally, the big backers of Nepal's Maoists are the RCP Avakianites, the same outfit behind the Not in Our Name group in the U.S. anti-war movement. They basically agree with "Anybody but Bush," which translates to "elect Kerry", another warmaker (see editorial page 1).

In today's world, the imperialists and capitalists are competing ever fiercer for markets, resources and cheap labor, with the entire globe divided among various bosses, the prospect of "peace" and freedom in Nepal is a mirage. Nothing short of fighting for communism is a waste of the lives and militancy of Nepal's workers and peasants.

LETTERS

U.S. Protectors of Scabs are Torturers In Iraq

The Visteon strikers in Indiana who recently fought security guards and cops (CHALLENGE, 6/24) furnish one more reminder about the role of cops and company goons. On June 8, in New York City, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) president Randi Weingarten spoke at a joint contract rally of the UFT, the firefighters and the NYPD. She praised this as "real solidarity."

But cops are not workers and the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) is not a union of workers. It's a fascist group defending cops, particularly when they kill or torture workers and youth (and in NYC, mostly black and Latino workers). If there's a strike or any real militant workers' action, the same cops Weingarten praised will attack teachers or any other workers. This rally was another sign of how reactionary and racist labor hacks like Weingarten have become.

On security guards -- I don't know which outfit was used against the Visteon strikers, but many of these private security companies are being used to torture Iraqis. Vance International is a private security group (mercenaries) serving the U.S. military in Iraq. Longtime CHALLENGE readers may remember that Vance attacked striking Pittston miners in 1993, Caterpillar strikers in 1994 and Detroit newspaper strikers in 1995, cracking the skull of one striker.

When professional strike-breakers double as torturers and become the dual enemies of workers internationally, it shows that opposing the war in Iraq represents the class interests of all workers.

A Comrade

Boycott Cops' Rally -- A Class Act

On June 8, UFT President Randi Weingarten called on all union members to march in solidarity with NYC kkkops and firefighters to "invest in NYC's Brightest, Bravest and Finest." Our Party collective decided we should boycott this rally and instead organize something at our own schools.

The UFT chapter leader at my school wrote to all members urging them to march and make the biggest rally yet. He also distributed buttons calling for a fair contract. I responded with a letter to all teachers urging them to boycott the rally. I said that although solidarity and militancy were crucial to the future of the working class, it was wrong to march with the cops; the cops are our class enemy because of the racist way they constantly harass our students; and that at rallies they protect the bosses and arrest protestors. This was the first time I had called on teachers, in a mass way, to oppose the union bosses. I was a little nervous.

The following day many teachers approached me to thank me for having written the letter. Some said they completely agreed. One told me she had never thought about the cops in that way, that I had a good point. I received no negative comments. Although a few teachers went anyway, many didn't, mainly because of their hatred of the union bosses. Self-critically, it would have been better for me to call for some kind of action, not just a boycott. That could have produced more communist struggle.

Red teacher

All Workers Must Back Mideast Masses

U.S. imperialism is decaying. In the long term it will be defeated. The images of torture in Iraq are rapidly shattering the already flimsy image of U.S. "democracy," in the Arab world and elsewhere. Arab rulers, either allied or conflicted with the U.S. still helped sustain it in the 1991 Gulf War, but have little credibility now, or in the future, in the eyes of the proletariat and poor masses of the Mid-East. These exploited workers have the double burden of national rulers as well as imperialist exploiters.

The countdown is on for Arab ruling classes. This is a partial defeat also for the bigger imperialist countries, including the U.S. The main part of the U.S. ruling class is apprehensive about Bush's go-it-alone policy. They favor a military alliance with UN support, as in 1991. The Bush administration policy has contributed to the loss of confidence in Tony Blair and, after the March 11 attack in Madrid, to Aznar losing the Spanish elections and the new Prime Minister Zapatero withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq.

Forces like France's Chirac are waiting for the occupation of Iraq to go under UN supervision that could ensure European countries a bigger share of the oil robbery.

The struggle in Palestine and Iraq is one against occupation and imperialist exploitation. While there is no communist movement able to liberate workers and oppressed masses from capitalist exploitation at this point, the fight is necessary. It is not enough just to speak of solidarity.

We must ask ourselves how to win workers and proletarian masses to communist revolution. Many European workers are indifferent to these struggles against occupation and imperialist exploitation because of Islamic influence among the masses. This is wrong. These struggles are really similar to those among Korean, Argentinian, Ecuadorian, Bolivian and Venezuelan workers who fight governments and the IMF under the wrong leadership. The same is true for Italian, French, U.S. and Spanish workers who struggle under the wrong trade union or political leadership. In fact, this process of proletarians fighting to free themselves from the mis-leadership of local rulers as well as from imperialists is only the first step.

It's a product of the absence of an international communist organization that PLP wants to build, but it doesn't make all these struggles less important. Amid such struggles, workers must make a conscious effort to understand what's happening around them, to build a growing consciousness and re-build workers' solidarity and the necessity of a working-class organization.

We must always attack all signs of indifference some workers have about these struggles. In Iraq, for example, there are wide struggles over unemployment, the lack of electricity, repression and occupation. The fight against the occupation is a problem for all of Iraq's workers.

The struggles against the war in our countries, against racism and torture as well as to win U.S. soldiers to fight against U.S. imperialism (and capitalism in general) are the keys to winning Middle-Eastern workers to fight for communism and to build a mass international PLP to destroy the entire system and the class of bosses who run it.

A Red Italian immigrant in Germany

Veteran, New PL'ers Built May Day

Our modest collective has participated in many past May Day marches. Usually this organizing involved chartering a bus, selling tickets and bringing a small number of workers to Washington. This year, because of changing political conditions, we organized our first May Day event in our home town. It was a difficult but rewarding experience.

Although as communists, we struggle for change, we found this change in our May Day organizing tough to accept. Marching with the Party in Washington or New York had become a tradition for us. Breaking with tradition is trying, even for revolutionaries. After much discussion we realized we need flexibility to build the Party in a fascist state.

Our collective has been very uneven about commitment to political activism. A few comrades are more aggressive about base-building and on-the-job struggle. Others are more reserved, less able to get involved with people. (Everyone gets fired up about fighting the Klan.)

Recently some of our less active members have shown a desire to increase their commitment to building the Party. The more active ones had a political struggle about how to involve these others. The time being short, we thought relying on newcomers might make us less efficient. But the bosses are always propagandizing about the "inefficiency of collectivism." As communists it was our duty to give leadership to our less experienced comrades and develop their growing commitment. Ultimately this communist approach paid off. We organized a May Day celebration that was an inspiration to all who attended.

The dinner was cooked by hospital workers who run a part-time catering business. The working-class food was enjoyed by all. Afterwards there were four speakers. The first three were leaders of reform organizations. The last speaker, a Party member, reviewed the history and tradition of May Day.

At our next meeting, the collective discussed the event. We were pleased with the outcome but were also critical of our political weaknesses. As PLP members we usually attack reformers as misleaders of the working class. But these speakers were friendly to the Party. It seemed inappropriate to attack them after having invited them to address us. Our comrade spoke about revolution and communism but his speech seemed tacked on at the end of the event. We concluded that we should have allowed time to discuss the speeches. This would have enabled us to advance the Party's ideas on reform and revolution more clearly. Such discussion groups are already part of our plan for May Day 2005.

This new style of work is filled with opportunity and danger. There's clearly a danger of drifting into reformism, but there's also the opportunity to bring the Party's line to many more people. Our collective is confident that PLP's experience and revolutionary politics will guide us along this exciting new path.

May Day organizer

Reagan Never `Forgot' The Rich He Served

Ass-kissing reporters are sobbing over the death of Ronald Reagan. We're supposed to feel bad for this pimp who, until the current Bush, probably caused more suffering than any president in history

Like Bush, his targets were the poor. The rich came out even more ahead than before Reagan took office --and they were doing great off our labor before Raping Ron.

The man who most severely cut benefits for people on welfare and old people developed Alzheimer's Disease toward the end of his reign of terror.

High-paid Secret Service bodyguards have told how they dumped bushels of leaves into Reagan's pool, for him to fish out with a net, so he could feel useful. Meanwhile, thousands of poor people were thrown out on the street into poverty, with no medical benefits to protect them. I was listening to a National Public Radio sob-fest about Reagan, and a white teacher in Boston called in and said her black students -- unlike the people she'd been hearing on this show -- said they had no good feelings for Reagan. "Another rich white man," one called him, and she quoted a second student about the use of the word "tragic" concerning Reagan's death: "He was ninety. Didn't they know he was eventually going to die?" (Poor people, as victims of capitalism, often have a clearer view of what's going on than the deluded people who buy the myth of the" two-party democracy." Today [6/10] is the next to last day of Reagan's lying in state. Big deal. He lied in state every day of his eight years as leader of the capitalist world.

North Country Red

U.S. Imperialism Has Long History of Torture

It was standing room only at a recent community-group forum on military recruiters in high schools. Amid the speeches given by Brooklyn students, teachers and veterans of the Vietnam and Iraqi wars was one by an Iranian teacher who gave a detailed analysis of torture committed in the name of U.S. Imperialism. She chronicled endless incidents of inhumane acts of torture, from the Middle East to Central America and the United States. One of her main points to the mostly young audience was that this latest torture scandal in Iraq is not an isolated incident. It's a systematic one that has been occurring for generations. Amid all the hoopla about the late president Reagan's "legacy," we should remember it was on his watch that the now incompetent CIA unleashed a lot of this torture on the world. So let's not end the Reagan-bashing just yet. He might be gone but the precedent he set is still butchering workers.

Red college student

Anger Over Sellouts Sparks Red Politics

"Trust me, we won. I don't know how much we'll have to pay for medical when this is all over, but we won." The union president was urging the shop stewards to sell the story to the membership.

In the fall, MTA mechanics struck for five weeks over medical benefits. We went back after getting the small stuff and the president's promise that our medical would be "solved" by an arbitrator.

The rotten fruits of this union president's "victory" will show up as an extra $100 deduction in next week's paycheck. For retirees under 65, the cost is a stunning $246 per month.

Many, many workers are angry and complaining. "How can a lower-tier service attendant making $15 an hour pay $l00 a month out of take-home?"

"I heard a story about the grocery workers," said a welder. "The retirees got shafted just like our retirees. I've got to re-think my retirement."

Someone asked the union office secretaries who administer the health plan, "Getting a lot of worried phone calls, are you?" She said, not joking, "We're going to need security around here soon."

Slowly, through CHALLENGE sales and distribution of news clippings from CHALLENGE and the bosses' papers, workers are realizing capitalism is becoming more unstable. We're making a down payment on this Iraq war by paying more for medical. That's how the bosses force us to help stabilize their rotten system. But even this won't do it. We're in for more and more war.

A "quickie" study group occurred when some workers wanted to know about the communist politics of a Party member and what he thought could be done about the medical cuts.

Discussing these cuts and the weakness of striking alone, one new worker was attacking communism in a very loudmouthed way. The PL member said, "You seem to have learned a lot about communism when you were in the army's special units. How about I bring an article from a communist paper and we'll all read it and discuss what it says about communism." The other workers agreed and even the new guy had to go along.

Several days later the PL'er brought the article "Timkin Lays Off 1,300" from the mid-May CHALLENGE. All were appalled by the hypocrisy of Bush and his friends, the Timkin bosses. The workers don't yet grasp the solution of communism. But one said, "If you were a boss, what would you do?" This makes the point in reverse. The class of bosses have no choice but to lay off workers, exploit cheaper labor and make war for control of profits. But the communist asked, "Does the working class have to continue to suffer so bosses can make higher profits?" An opening has been made for several new CHALLENGE readers, and to develop the point of this question.

Southern California Comrade

82 Million Uninsured While Health Care Bosses' Profits Soar

Approximately one-third of all people in the U.S. under the age of 65 were without health insurance for some part of 2002-2003, according to a study by Families USA. That's 82 million people, two-thirds of whom had no coverage for six months or longer. The study labels this "an enormous epidemic" and attributes 18,000 deaths between ages 18 and 64 to lack of insurance, the sixth leading cause of death in the country, more than AIDS or diabetes. And these deaths don't even count children!

Under capitalism, this $1.6 trillion healthcare industry reaps tens of billions of profits for drug companies, equipment suppliers and hospital conglomerates, among others. Meanwhile, in half the states a family earning the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour -- $10,700 annually -- makes "too much" money to be eligible for Medicaid!

Such are the statistics of poverty and death:

* Nearly 43% of black families and nearly 60% of Latin families were uninsured for some part of 2002-2003 because of the racist nature of health care;
* More than 80% of these uninsured were connected to the workforce;
* One-fourth of families earning between $56,000 and $74,000 per year were part of this uninsured group;
* Seventy percent of uninsured adults in poor health were unable to afford a doctor;
* Forty percent of these families say to obtain health insurance they would have to cut down on food, rent or utilities.

The study blamed this enormous increase in those without health insurance on rising costs [read profits], unemployment, state budget cuts and bosses passing on the costs of insurance to workers who can't afford them. Add these components and they equal one cause: CAPITALISM. No profit system can provide decent health care for the working class. Only communism can achieve that.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

From Honduras to Iraq

...US ambassador to Iraq....Negroponte was one of a group of officials involved in Central America....The US policy in Central America in the 80s was essentially that the ends justified the means. Many of those involved in the atrocities in Central America were graduates of the School of the Americas where interrogation techniques of the kind that have come to light in Iraq were taught. When Negroponte was ambassador in Honduras his building in Tegucigalpa became one of the nerve centers of the CIA with in Latin America with a tenfold increase in staff. Now a man who has been accused of not spotting human rights abuses taking place in front of his eyes in Honduras is being sent to Iraq at a time when allegations of human rights abuses are at the heart of the occupation. (GW, 6/17)

Women earn 60% less

Forty years ago, the Census Bureau reports, women made, on average 59 percent of what men made. Now they make 77 percent....such measures substantially overstate what women earn over time . . . Women work far fewer hours than men on average and often drop out of the work force for years at a time. Usually they do so for child-rearing and to tend to the family . . . researches found that the average woman earned $273,592 over 15 years, compared with $722,693 for men ( in 1999 dollars)....But hours alone do not account for the discrepancy in pay over time. The economists' analysis turns up continuing evidence of gender segregation. A far higher proportion of females have had jobs that pay at the bottom of the income scale. . . . Women also often take low-paying temporary or part-time jobs that provide few benefits so they can be home for the family. This in turn creates a labor pool that business can consistently exploit, encouraging companies to orient their operations to use such low-paid workers rather than create better jobs. (NYT, 6/10)

$ystem ruins China health

In the past 25 years the "Chinese miracle" has made many people richer but also made

them sicker and less able to afford medical care once provided free. Tuberculosis and bilharzia are making a comeback, HIV cases are rising at the rate of 30% per year and Sars has emerged as a new threat... Once one of the proudest boasts of the communist party, the healthcare system is in tatters. The abolition of rural cooperatives in 1978 left 800 million peasants with-out health insurance.... In the battle against tuberculosis,...China is now the only country in the western Pacific region where families have to pay for childhood immunization....WHO and foreign governments are now telling Beijing that its free market reforms have gone too far.(GW, 6/17)

If Nazis guilty, so is US

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, officials can be held accountable for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if they did not order them - so long as they had control over the perpetrators, had reason to know about the crimes, and did not stop them or punish the criminals. This doctrine is the product of an American initiative. Devised by Allied judges and prosecutors at the Nuremberg tribunals, it was a means to impute responsibility for wartime atrocities to Nazi leaders, who often communicated indirectly and avoided leaving a paper trail....If this is now the standard in international law - which the United States and the United Nations are applying to rogue leaders like the former Yugoslavian president, Slobodan Milosevic - what does it mean for Washington?(NYT,6/10)

Torching Afghan women

Mallali was burned all over, it took her 24 hours to die. In a suicide note to her parents she explained why she had chosen such a horrific end. "Her husband's family was treating her like an animal," said Mr Shah, tears trickling down her cheeks... She found it hard to live like a slave. Several hundred young women are burning themselves to death every year in western Afghanistan... "There are many more pressures on young Afghan women today because they have learned what freedom is... Girls know they should have rights, and they are prepared to burn themselves to show society that they do not have them yet."... Despite an increase in the number of girls in school, most Afghan women enjoy no more rights than they did under the Taliban. Most of the country is not controlled by the government but by warlords as misogynistic as the Taliban. (GW, 6/17

Motive in Iraq: Profits

Al Qaeda is stronger than ever and poised to strike in spectacular fashion... That is not just the opinion of pessimistic liberals in Washington think tanks.That is the view from the heart of US intelligence....Anonymous (as he has to describe himself)....He argues that al-Qaida targets America for what it does, not what it is. Bin laden finds support around the Muslim world because of US support for Israel, the US military presence on the Arabian peninsula and in other Islamic countries, and US support for corrupt westernised regimes in those countries...."

In that light, the Bush Administration has only made Americas' position worse by the invasion of Iraq, which Anonymous describes as . . . "a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage". (GW, 6/17)

Ford, GM, IBM Armed Hitler Before and During WW2

PART 1

The biggest U.S. corporations and banks helped Hitler and the Nazis wage World War II.

While Bush was "honoring" the 10,000 U.S. and Allied soldiers who died on D-Day, the fact is that his granddaddy, Prescott Bush, and other U.S. bosses made huge profits producing for the Nazi war machine. The planes, trucks and tanks manufactured by Ford and GM plants in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, the oil supplied by Rockefeller's Standard Oil (now Exxon), the synthetics supplied by DuPont, the technology supplied by IBM and ITT, all contributed to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, Western Europe and North Africa, the rocket bombing of Britain and the Holocaust.

The main factor that upset this U.S. corporate/Nazi alliance, seeking decades of super-profits in a fascist Europe, was the communist-led Soviet Union.

U.S. bosses had two reasons for supporting Hitler: (1) to destroy the USSR and its example to the world's workers of an attempt to establish a profit-free society; and (2) to reap huge profits from supplying his Nazi war machine, guaranteed by the fascist smashing of unions, strikes and left-wing organizations. But inter-imperialist rivalry helped spoil all that. The main section of the U.S. ruling class ultimately realized that the Nazis were looking to grab the whole imperialist pie, threatening U.S. imperialism itself. That, plus the fact that the Soviets were later chasing the Nazi army westward towards Berlin, impelled U.S. bosses to join all out in the fight against the fascist Axis, mainly being waged by the Soviet Red Army (see CHALLENGE, 6/24).

U.S. BOSSES SET UP SHOP IN NAZI GERMANY

Many of the largest U.S. corporations, banks and Wall Street investment houses were already prospering in Germany before World War II erupted in Europe (see box). Ford had its plant in Cologne; GM took over the country's largest auto manufacturer, Opel; Standard Oil was linked to I.G. Farben; IBM established its Dehomag branch; the Union Bank, managed by Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather and an eager supporter of Hitler, was tied to the German steel baron Thyssen who financed the Fascists' rise to power. It was Prescott's Nazi profits that helped his son, Bush, Sr., launch his oil business.

Once Hitler seized power in 1933 with the backing of Germany's biggest bosses, it was open season for profit-making. This had occurred amid the worldwide Depression, with production and profits down. Street battles between the Nazis and Communists were common. The bosses feared a "red" revolution similar to the one in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), although very militant, mainly pursued electoral politics ("after Hitler, Thaelmann" -- head of the KPD)). The KPD's path shortly became the line of the international communist movement (the Comintern): uniting with "lesser evil" capitalist forces (the "United Front Against Fascism"), such as the SPD (Social-Democrats) which ran the trade unions. But the SPD was more anti-communist than anti-Nazi.

The Nazis had no illusions in bourgeois democracy and used the Brown Shirts and the Gestapo to smash strikes and all opposition to fascist capitalism. Thousands of communists, trade unionists and even social-democrats were thrown into the first concentration camps, the precursors of the Holocaust. With a combination of repression, patriotism and crude anti-Semitism, many workers accepted, fought and died for the Führer. Workers "were little more than serfs, forbidden not only to strike but to change jobs," driven "to work harder [and] faster." Now all capitalists could cut wages mercilessly, including Ford, GM, Coca Cola and the rest.

As the Nazis geared for war, production and profits rose accordingly. The Ford plant's annual profits increased 20-fold from 1935 to 1939. By 1938, GM's Opel plant was netting $14 million annually. From 1933 to 1939, IBM's branch profit went up 400%. As Germany re-armed, all these U.S. corporate branches converted to war production.

The engines in the trucks captured by the D-Day invaders in 1944 were made by Ford and GM. Some partly-assembled Ford vehicles were shipped from Dearborn, Mich. to its plant in Cologne and completed just in time to be used in Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Ford also supplied the Nazis with strategic raw materials, millions of pounds of rubber and copper. Texaco and Standard Oil helped Hitler build up his oil stockpile, supplying 94% of German imports by September 1941 (Germany had no oil). Oil was essential to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Albert Speer, Hitler's armament minister, said that without synthetic fuels from U.S. firms, the Germans "would never have considered invading Poland." (Michael Dobbs, International Herald-Tribune, 12/3/98) GM's main factory in Russelsheim assembled the JU-88, the workhorse of Germany's bomber fleet. At one point GM and Ford together accounted for half of the Nazis' entire production of tanks. GM's Opel plant produced the all-wheel drive trucks particularly useful in the mud of the Eastern Front and in the North African desert. Ford set up a non-vehicle factory near its Cologne plant that was involved in developing turbines for the infamous V-2 rockets that devastated London

The German concept of the "Blitzkrieg" was used to swiftly conquer Poland, the Balkans, France, Holland, Belgium and Norway. This kind of warfare involved perfectly synchronized attacks by land and air, requiring highly sophisticated communications equipment. ITT supplied most of that apparatus. IBM's Dehomag plant sold them state-of-the-art technology which, according to Edwin Black ("IBM and the Holocaust," p. 208), enabled the Nazis to "achieve scale, velocity [and] efficiency." IBM, he concluded, "put the `blitz' in the `krieg' for Nazi Germany."

Then, as the Nazis conquered country after country, the U.S. companies rode their coattails. Ford and Coca-Cola expanded into these occupied areas. Ford's plants in France, Holland and Belgium became extremely profitable based on its unconditional collaboration with the Nazis. Ford built a tank factory in France's Algerian colony which supplied General Rommel's Africa Corps on his advance into Egypt.

No wonder GM chairman William Knudson and ITT boss Sosthenes Behn were enchanted with Hitler. No wonder Hitler gave prestigious awards to Henry Ford, IBM's Thomas Watson and GM's export director James Mooney.

(Next issue: Soviets put crimp in Nazi/Western goals; U.S. Bosses play both sides after Pearl Harbor; U.S. technology used in the Holocaust.)

Sources: "Profits Uber Alles," American Corporations and Hitler by Jacques Pauwels, 6/8/04; <http://global research.ca/articles/PAW406A.html>

Charles Higham: "Trading With the Enemy," 1983; Ralph Levering: "American Opinion and the Russian Alliance," 1976; Edwin Black: "IBM and the Holocaust," 2001; Billstein, Fings, Kugler and Levis: "Working for the Enemy: Ford, GM and Forced Labor during the Second World War," 2000; Silverstein: "Ford and the Fuhrer"

Privatizing Water Kills As Capitalists Thirst For Profits

Without question, water is one of the most important resources for human life. Without a constant supply of clean water, humans will quickly die. Water is also one of the most abundant resources in the world. Yet according to the UN's World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, three billion people -- around half the world's population -- have no access to clean water.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.1 billion don't have dependable access to water at all. At any given time patients suffering from water-borne diseases occupy approximately half of the world's hospital beds. In the past 10 years, diarrhea, contracted from drinking contaminated water, has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II -- about one every ten seconds.

While the figures are probably even higher, these statistics paint a picture of modern capitalism's murderous reality. In almost every country, water is not considered a fundamental human right, but rather a commodity that the ruling class owns. They sell this commodity and reap tremendous profits. Maude Barlow, director of the liberal environmentalist Blue Planet Project, estimates that water and sanitation service is a two-trillion dollar global industry! Many of the world's poorest people have barely been able to subsist on well water or subsidized state-owned water utilities. But recent developments in the global economy have dramatically changed poor people's access to even the most basic water sources.

Worldwide, multi-national corporations are taking advantage of the World Trade Organization's decision to allow corporations to buy public utilities and social services. (See General Agreement on Trades and Services (GATS) in the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement.) Large U.S., British, German and French corporations are rushing to buy municipal water utilities. These corporations create so-called "Private-Public Partnerships" that guarantee them tremendous profit on the backs of workers, peasants and indigenous communities. These "Partnerships" have increased water rates by as much as 400% in some areas, converted community wells into coin-operated pumps, and shut off water service for enormous percentages of poor communities who are unable to pay the increased rates. The results of water privatization have been devastating.

Those who can't pay for privatized water are forced to drink contaminated water from canals and stagnant ponds. In many developing countries, women must walk an average of over 7 km. (4 miles) to collect water, and they must carry an average of 20 kg. (44 lbs.) back home. The WHO reports massive outbreaks of cholera and typhoid because of water privatization in Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Cholera is a potentially life-threatening disease contracted from bacteria-contaminated drinking water. Someone with cholera who doesn't get the proper anti-biotics and rehydration medicine will die in four days. The immune system of infants, young children and elderly people are least capable of fighting water-borne diseases. Therefore they die in larger numbers during a crisis. Without expensive technology it is difficult to sanitize water. Poor people with access to forests must cut down trees to build fires to boil the water. This leads to deforestation in poor communities as well as increased lung diseases for people (mostly women) who must breathe in the smoke from the fires.

(This series will analyze what communists mean when we say we need a world based upon need, not profit. The next two articles will review which institutions help convert water into a commodity and how the world capitalist system necessitates the commodification of water.)

Bush, Kerry: Two Faces of War and Police State

a href="#‘Anybody But Bush-ism’ Is No Solution">‘A"ybody But Bush-ism’ Is No Solution

Reagan: Best President Bosses, Fascists, Death Squads Ever Had

Without Soviet Red Army Would Have Been No D-Day

Soviets Beat 80% of Nazi Army While U.S. Bosses Backed Hitler

a href="#PLP’ers Expose Kerry At LA Anti-War March">"LP’ers Expose Kerry At LA Anti-War March

a href="#Red Leadership, Workers’ Unity Key to Fighting New Racist Boss">"ed Leadership, Workers’ Unity Key to Fighting New Racist Boss

The Kerry Convention

The Fight Of Our Lives

Marine Condemns War in Iraq: ‘We’re committing genocide….’

Wounded Women GI Regrets U.S. Role in Iraq

a href="#Draft Is Coming; Organize GI’s to Fight Warmakers">"raft Is Coming; Organize GI’s to Fight Warmakers

The Current Draft

Homecare Workers Lead Fight Against Racist Exploitation

Summer Project 2004

a href="#Chicago’s Racist School Cuts: No War Left Behind">"hicago’s Racist School Cuts: No War Left Behind

a href="#Hit Rutgers Community Policing/ ‘Counter-Terrorism’ Gang-Up">Hi" Rutgers Community Policing/ ‘Counter-Terrorism’ Gang-Up

LETTERS

Our Responsibility to Our Children

Tie India Election To Imperialist Rivalry

Genocide at the Haitian-Dominican Border

Laundromat Bosses Sack Women Workers

a href="#U.S. Military Can't - or Won't - Feed GI’s">".S. Military Can't - or Won't - Feed GI’s

Visteon Workers Battle Strike-breaking Cops

a href="#Michael Moore’s Movie Bashes Bush But Aids Liberal Warmakers">"ichael Moore’s Movie Bashes Bush But Aids Liberal Warmakers

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• Peacekeepers fuel sex biz
• Langston Hughes vs. Kerry
• China: Capitalism = no job
• Digital speed-up = bad life
• Low-wage era won’t end
• Pope hires scandal cardinal
• Green but not most urgent
• Iraq: Imperialist history

a href="#1954, People’s War Defeated French Colonialism">"954, People’s War Defeated French Colonialism

Nationalist Alliance With Any Imperialist Bloc Deadly For Workers

Bush, Kerry: Two Faces of War and Police State

WASHINGTON, D.C. June 5 — Despite steady rain, over 2,000 people protested the Iraqi war and occupation today. The PLP brought a small contingent of workers, students, sailors, and marines to the march to drive home two key points: the fight against racism in the U.S. must be a central part of any anti-war movement, and only a revolution against capitalism — not the election of "anybody but Bush" — will end imperialist war.

We spread these ideas through a bullhorn rally to hundreds of the marchers as they left the park for Secretary of "Defense" Donald Rumsfeld’s house, as well as by distributing over 250 CHALLENGES to marchers eager for our revolutionary message. We also passed out over 400 leaflets urging people to join a protest against police brutality on June 18 at police headquarters in Palmer Park, Maryland. About 20 marchers signed the petition demanding the re-opening of the Archie Elliott case through the indictment of the two cops who gunned him down 11 years ago while he sat in a police cruiser with his hands handcuffed behind his back.

The fight against revisionism (phony leftists) is still critical. Although some speakers correctly said Kerry was no better than Bush, the main thrust of their message was how evil Bush is. Nicholas Berg’s father spoke movingly and correctly about the viciousness of Bush, but advocated strict non-violent direct action. Thus, the revisionists and their pacifist allies leading this event play into the shell game of electoral politics, rather than moving anti-war activists towards the revolutionary, anti-racist strategy advanced by PLP. The presence of our sailors and marines, who met briefly with a group of families of military personnel in Iraq, demonstrates our Party’s seriousness about its line — the way you end capitalism is with revolution, and that revolution must be fought for among the youth in the military as well as in the workplaces and in the cities. Let’s continue to win more anti-war activists to this strategy!

a name="‘Anybody But Bush-ism’ Is No Solution"></">‘A"ybody But Bush-ism’ Is No Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, JUNE 5 — PLP’s communist contingent chanted, "John Kerry’s No Solution — It’s Time to Fight for Revolution!" and "Asian, Latin, black and white, Workers of the World, Unite!" Workers from many different countries joined our chants and pumped their fists in solidarity. An older worker who spotted our banner approached a young Party member, saying, "About time someone says it like that: ‘Fight for Communism.’ Put it right out there! Keep it up.’"

We passed out 1,500 flyers with the headline, "It’s Bigger Than Bush!" Many people nodded their heads at this title. The flyer explained that war and fascism are growing in the U.S., not because of a special Bush plan, but to serve the needs of the whole capitalist class, which controls the electoral system. Kerry serves the same big corporate bosses that Bush does. Unlike the liberal anti-war leadership, our flyer showed that Kerry — with his plans for more troops in Iraq — is as dangerous as Bush. This analysis was made possible by the use of CHALLENGE’S editorials and our PLP study group.

As our contingent neared the end of the march, we encountered a group of pro-war, Zionist (pro-Israeli fascist) demonstrators. Protected by a squadron of cops, they marched right into the middle of the anti-war demonstrators. The liberal and pacifist politics of the anti-war march allowed these fascists to barge right in, while the demonstration slipped by on the sides. But when our contingent spotted the Zionists, a young comrade started to chant, "Death to the Fascists, Power to the Workers!" Then a veteran communist led our contingent to confront them face-to-face, where the chant continued even louder.

Many marchers preferred to avoid confrontation, but several chanted with us. Some others were ready for confrontation but chanted, "Free Palestine" instead. These were among the most militant marchers besides PLP, but without a movement based on multi-racial, international, working-class solidarity, there will be no real freedom from exploitation and war, in Palestine or anywhere else.

As war and fascism grow, it’s crucial that PLP also grow. While 2.1 million are locked in a racist prison system, and working-class soldiers are sent to kill and die in Iraq, we need more than peaceful marches — we need nothing less than communism. At the next anti-war march, our contingent will bring twice as many of our friends, to give them a taste of what it means to bring revolutionary communism as an alternative to "Anybody-But-Bush-ism."

Reagan: Best President Bosses, Fascists, Death Squads Ever Had

The ruling class and its bought-and-paid-for media are going nuts trying to outdo each other in slobbering over the "legacy" of Ronald Reagan. But this arch-anticommunist’s record matches any other president in its anti-working class fervor. After having spent a decade as a PR hack for General Electric and a career "fighting communists" in the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan upped the ante as president. Here’s a short list:

He fired 10,000 striking air controllers and destroyed their union (ironically, the only union that endorsed him for president) and replaced them with scabs from the military, launching decades of scabbing (which the labor misleaders did nothing to oppose).

He cut taxes for the rich while initiating taxes on workers’ unemployment and disability benefits.

* On Reagan’s watch Social Security taxes rose to a level surpassing income taxes for most workers, creating a surplus which was then used to finance the biggest "peacetime" military spending increase in history.

*His administration accelerated the racist budget cuts initiated by President Carter, cutting social services (including funding for Alzheimer's research!) to the bone, especially affecting black and Latin workers in the cities, a racist attack that eventually spread to the whole working class. Homelessness became a mass phenomenon.

*Reagan’s boys classified ketchup as a "vegetable" in order to reduce the cost of children’s school lunches.

*He sent 300 Marines to Lebanon who then got blown away, sending Reagan home with his tail between his legs.

*To "erase" that defeat he invaded tiny Grenada, overthrowing a government friendly to Castro, on the pretext that some Cuban construction workers were building an airfield there,

*Reagan’s CIA trained the death squads used to murder 70,000 peasants in El Salvador.

Reagan backed Guatemala’s General Rios Montt ( a born again Christian, AKA: the butcher of Guatemala), who seized power in a military coup in 1982 and unleashed a reign of terror that killed 70,000, 90% Mayan Indians, in 18 months. On Dec. 4, 1982, Reagan met with the dictator and declared, "President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity…. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."

*His administration surpassed Watergate with the Iran-Contra scandal, having Oliver North send arms to Iran’s Ayatollahs and then use the profits to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, torturing and killing tens of thousands there. He had the CIA flying supplies to the Contras and using the same planes to transport drugs back to Arkansas (covered up by a special state agency established by then Governor Bill Clinton), drugs that were used to create the crack-cocaine epidemic in the inner cities.

*When Reagan went to the 1984 D-Day memorial, he made a "side trip" to a Bitburg, Germany, cemetery to honor Hitler's S.S. storm troopers.

* The Reagan administration built up and supported Saddam Hussein in the latter’s 1980s war with Iran, sending Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to negotiate deals supplying Saddam with weapons, intelligence information on targets in Iran, location of Iranian oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and cluster bombs to drop on Iranian troops.

* Reagan’s CIA continued Carter’s campaign in Afghanistan, spending $3 billion to build up an anti-Soviet jihad among Muslims that trained Osama bin Laden and his terrorists, and which later produced Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Reagan’s attacks on workers marked him as a Grade A enemy of the international working class. Good riddance. He should only rot in hell.

Without Soviet Red Army Would Have Been No D-Day

All the hoopla of the 60th anniversary of D-Day — which will be milked for all it’s worth in the Bush/Chirac/Schroeder (and Putin, no less!) "celebration" in France, and in the A&E special on Eisenhower — further spreads the myth that the U.S. defeated Nazi fascism and won World War II. The soldiers who fought from D-Day onward certainly deserve to be honored — but not by the hypocritical imperialists leading the ceremonies who are very ready to send youth to kill and be killed on behalf of the bosses’ profits. However, this outpouring barely mentions the tens of millions of heroes from the Soviet Union, its working class and its Red Army, who saved Europe and the workers of the world from fascism.

The rash of pro-Western propaganda claims that if D-Day had failed, the Nazis would have shifted their troops in France to the East and possibly defeated the Soviets. But this turns everything on its head. When the U.S.-Britain-led Atlantic Alliance landed in Normandy — an invasion that had been postponed for two years and was finally launched to reach Berlin before the Red Army— the Soviets had already been engaging 80% of the Nazi army on the Eastern Front for 2½ years. They had won the Battle of Stalingrad, which Western historians agree was the turning point of the Second World War. The truth is the exploits of the Red Army against the Nazis in the East is what GUARANTEED the success of D-Day in the West against an enemy already considerably weakened by the Red Army.

Had the Hitlerites defeated the Soviets, they could have shifted most of their 180 divisions to the West and the U.S.-led forces could not have even attempted to land in France. More likely there would have been a Nazi invasion of Britain and the bombing of the U.S. If U.S.-led Alliance had attempted a D-Day after a Hitler victory in the East, the Nazis would probably have driven the Allies into the sea.

As CHALLENGE has been reporting for 40 years, and which the New York Times just "discovered" this past February 21 (see CHALLENGE, 3/17/04), "The war fought on the Eastern Front is arguably the single most important chapter in modern military history."

The Times admits, "The D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge…tend to dominate America’s conception of the Allied defeat of Germany…." [in large part due to the U.S. media’s phony portrayal of the war, led in no small part by this same N. Y. Times]. The Times finally recognizes that, "The decisive impact of America’s erstwhile ally was often deliberately downplayed in the West for political reasons."

It agrees that, "Military historians have always known that the main scene of the Nazis’ downfall was the Eastern Front, which claimed 80% of all German military casualties in the war.

"The four-year conflict between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army remains the largest and possibly the most ferocious ever fought….The front extended 1,900 miles (greater than the distance from the northern border of Maine to the southern tip of Florida) and German troops advanced over 1,000 miles into Soviet territory (equivalent to the distance from the East Coast to Topeka, Kansas). And they clashed in a seemingly unrelenting series of military operations of unparalleled scale; the battle of Kursk alone…involved 3.5 million men."

Of course, the bosses’ media and U.S. textbooks never trace this monumental achievement of the Soviet working class and its Red Army to the leadership of the Communist Party and its leader Josef Stalin, a victory that almost single-handedly saved the world from Hitlerite fascism. (For a full analysis of WW2, see CHALLENGE supplement, May 17, 1995.)

Soviets Beat 80% of Nazi Army While U.S. Bosses Backed Hitler

While 10,300 Allied soldiers died during the D-Day landings (6,000 U.S. and 4,300 British and Canadian), on the Eastern Front hundreds of thousands of deaths occurred in each battle. The Battle of Moscow alone involved over three million soldiers and 2,000 tanks. The Soviets used half its army and the Germans one-third of its forces in that struggle. In contrast, the Germans used 50,000 to 70,000 troops at El Alamein, an important battle in North Africa.

Eventually, almost 80% of the Third Reich’s military might was lost on the Eastern Front. It had 10 million casualties as well as losing 48,000 armored and assault vehicles and 167,000 artillery pieces. This vast difference between the two fronts stemmed from the fact that the Nazis were welcomed by "5th columns" — local fascists — in France and elsewhere in the West, leading to a relatively easy victory. France fell in six weeks. However, in the former Soviet Union, the 5th columnists had been eliminated from the Red Army and civilian life.

Hitler aimed to smash the communist Soviet Union, a fond hope of the Western imperialists. Tony Benn (a Labor MP) was quoted as saying: "I’ve got…at home the captured German Foreign Office documents reporting what Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, said on behalf of Chamberlain to Hitler. He said, ‘I’ve come, Herr Chancellor, to congratulate you on destroying Communism in Germany and acting as a bulwark against Communism in Russia.’ " http://www.abc.net.au/religion/stories/s1087072.htm

Senator Harry Truman (who succeeded Roosevelt as President in 1945) had publicly wished both sides would bleed each other to death in the East. The Nazis’ blitzkrieg attacks from the 1939 invasion of Poland until the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941) were fueled with oil provided by Esso (now Exxon) and used trucks supplied by GM and Ford subsidiaries in Germany. IBM, Union Carbide, Goodrich, DuPont, GE, Kodak, JP Morgan, and Westinghouse all helped the Nazi war machine early in the war and even after the U.S. declared war on the fascist Axis (See "The Myth of the Good War, the U.S. during WW2," by Canadian historian Jacques Pauwels; quoted in the Spanish website Rebelion.org, 6/07/04 "Why Ford, GM, Esso Armed Hitler.)

By December 1941, when the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow, the Soviets had already suffered nine million casualties. They called on the Western Allies to open a Second Front in the West in 1942, but Churchill and Roosevelt stalled until they saw the Soviets might move through all of Europe and defeat the Nazis by themselves.

Yes, humanity owes a great deal to the heroic fighters of World War II, most of them led by communists.

a name="PLP’ers Expose Kerry At LA Anti-War March">">"LP’ers Expose Kerry At LA Anti-War March

LOS ANGELES, June 7 — On June 5, about 2,000 people marched through downtown here protesting the occupation of Iraq. While the march leaders were either ignoring the elections or just attacking Bush, Progressive Labor Party boldly attacked Kerry and the capitalist system.PL handed out thousands of leaflets titled, "Bush and Kerry: Two Faces of War and Fascism" and sold hundreds of CHALLENGES. Exposing Kerry led to many good discussions and even a few arguments.

Many at the march agreed that Kerry was as bad as Bush, but saw no alternative. We pointed out that the power to change society lies not with politicians but in the hands of workers, students, and soldiers. We argued that an international revolutionary communist movement led by PLP was the only way to destroy war and fascism.

A man from a small South American country was excited to hear of a revolutionary communist party with an international outlook. Many others agreed with most of what we said, but are not yet won to see the possibility of a long-term struggle. Several people gave us their names. Others said they were glad we attacked Bush AND Kerry.

The marchers and workers who watched were much angrier than in past marches. Many on the sidewalks have relatives involved in the war. This anger shows that people need to hear our line. There is currently an opening for us in PLP to win these workers and students away from the cynicism of electoral politics and towards revolutionary communist ideas.

By either ignoring or favoring Kerry, the leaders of the march objectively support imperialism. PLP warns of the dangerous illusions of backing this capitalist politician who wants to send 40,000 more troops to the Mid-East and step up fascist "Homeland security." Anyone who believes a vote for Kerry means at least a "more progressive domestic agenda," is being deluded. The imperialists cannot both expand their Mid-East war and simultaneously fund better health care for workers. The alternative of fighting to destroy capitalism and build communism is becoming more compelling.

a name="Red Leadership, Workers’ Unity Key to Fighting New Racist Boss">">"ed Leadership, Workers’ Unity Key to Fighting New Racist Boss

CHICAGO, IL, June 7 — When our contract talks finally get started at Stroger Hospital, Daniel Winship will be the new head of the Cook County public-health system. While he was the CEO of the University of Missouri Health Care system (1999-2003), he wiped out close to 700 jobs and ordered pay cuts and hiring freezes to balance a $21.3 million budget deficit on the workers’ backs. The University of Missouri System Spectrum Newsletter reported, "While the hospital is beginning to see some progress in reducing the deficit…[Winship] noted that indigent care continues to be a drain on resources." (2/28/02)

Public health, education and all social services are under attack based on the billions funding the war in Iraq, the fascist Homeland Security police state and Bush’s tax cuts for billionaires.

Winship will assume the throne with a series of racist attacks on workers and patients while making $277,000 a year. His first job will be to force a racist war contract on us that cuts wages, jobs and our health care benefits. After that, he will focus his fire on the mostly black and Latin unemployed and uninsured men, women and children we serve.

Winship was hired by County boss Stroger, a black Democrat, whose bank accounts are fat with union money. So much for "lesser-evil" politicians who are "friends of labor." The whole capitalist system stinks.

The Kerry Convention

The SEIU Convention this month will focus on mobilizing more than a million members to get out the vote for John Kerry. Kerry supports the war in Iraq and wants to add 40,000 troops. He backs the Homeland Security police state and criticizes Bush for not going far enough. Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote, "Europeans are hoping that a Kerry administration would execute a 180-degree turn on foreign policy, it’s more likely to be a 20% adjustment." (The Economist, 5/15)

John Sweeney, Andy Stern and the AFL-CIO leadership are committed to U.S. imperialism ruling the world. They fear the potential of angry black, Latin and women workers, concentrated in the major cities, with loved ones serving in the armed forces. They want this anger safely confined to the dead-end electoral process. They hold out the illusion that some millionaire politician will save us, while they negotiate away our jobs, wages, health care and living conditions. PLP will be at the convention to build the revolutionary movement among delegates from other locals and cities.

The Fight Of Our Lives

Day after day grievances are piling up. About seven discharge cases have been heard, with no response from the bosses. Many others haven’t even been heard yet.

One worker was written up recently for wearing cargo pants and violating the dress code! On another ward, two workers were having a personal conversation and a management spy phoned the supervisor to have one worker written up for using a curse word.

Through firings and harassment, by adding work to assignments and not upgrading classifications, management is trying to settle the new contract before the talks even start.

We are in a fight for our lives, no matter who gets elected. The recent struggle to save the jobs of the black respiratory therapists (see CHALLENGE, 4/28) is a glimpse of what can happen when workers unite and communist leadership begins to take hold.

We must prepare to strike in the fall. The best way to do that is to read and distribute CHALLENGE and join and build PLP. We will use this contract fight to try to beat back every racist attack and build the revolutionary communist movement. Our future is in our hands.

Marine Condemns War in Iraq:

‘We’re committing genocide….’

(The following story is taken directly from an interview by reporter Paul Rockwell of the Sacramento Bee, May 16. It shows that there are many GIs who don’t follow orders blindly as did the torturers in Abu Ghraib prison and reject the Nazi/racist view that Iraqis are "sub-human." Many are learning from their experience. Reportedly 1,700 have deserted or refused to go to Iraq.)

For nearly 12 years, "Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine." He trained fellow Marines in boot camp. "The Iraq war, the brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever," writes Rockwell. He was honorably discharged and is back home in Waynsville, N.C. Massey was in the initial invasion and says, "We killed a lot of innocent people…. I was in charge of a platoon…of machine gunners and missile men….One particular incident — and there’s many more — …really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. Intelligence reports [said the] cars were loaded down with suicide bombs."

Massey’s platoon fired machine guns. "Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. Never heard any. One gentleman looked up at me and said: ‘Why did you kill my brother? We didn’t do anything wrong.’ That hit me like a ton of bricks." Massey reports Baghdad was bombed with civilians trying to flee. He says the U.S. dropped leaflets: "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." They did but U.S. troops "were still lighting them up…. We never found any weapons." Massey says he helped throw bodies in a ditch. Outside Baghdad, "We lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot." The demonstrators….were young and…had no weapons….The order to shoot…, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government." They fired "into six or ten kids. All taken out."

Massey raised his weapon toward one Iraqi hiding behind a concrete pillar. "He put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, ‘Don’t shoot.’ He was running with half of his foot cut off…." Massey says, "Depleted uranium [DU] is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there’s dust. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. It’s basically like leaving plutonium rods around.

"I’m 32 years old. I have 80% of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don’t feel like a healthy 32-year-old. DU is affecting our troops [and] Iraqi civilians…. "The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn’t even know about DU until two years ago….I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine!" "I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from….a multi-purpose cluster bomb…. He stepped on it. We didn’t get to training about clusters until about a month before I left…. They were everywhere, inside the towns and cities….Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own."

Massey hears from Marine buddies inside that, "There were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling…to keep the wraps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies." Massey reports that after killing innocent Iraqis in cars pushed him "over the edge," his commanding officer asked, "Are you OK?" Massey replied, "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." The officer "corrected" him: "No, today was a good day." When he said that, Massey thought, "What the hell am I into?" Massey says that, "Before the invasion…. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that [he]… could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing."

"I killed innocent people for our government," Massey admits. "Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I’ve had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel…ashamed." After Baghdad fell, Massey’s platoon went south to Karbala. "We had a…meeting on the battle plan…. Things were going through my head — about what we were doing over there. Things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside…." He told his lieutenant, "‘You know, I honestly feel that what we’re doing is wrong over here. We’re committing genocide….with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we’re leaving over here.’ He didn’t like that. He…stormed off. I knew right then…my career was over…."After I talked to the top commander….I was basically put on house arrest….

Massey concluded, "It was just a personal conviction with me. I’ve had an impeccable career. I chose to get out….. I blame the president of the U.S. It’s not the grunt….The president…said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie."

Wounded Women GI Regrets U.S. Role in Iraq

Danielle Green, 27, a former star basketball player for Notre Dame, has just returned from Iraq without her left hand. It was ripped off by a rocket from a homemade missile launcher. Interviewed by the New York Times (6/3), she said she had been "disappointed" in her tour of duty in Iraq. "I thought we were going for humanitarian reasons, like building things and cleaning the neighborhoods up….But we hardly did any of it. We spent a lot of time just doing nothing.

"Looking back, I personally don’t think we should have gone into Iraq. Not the way things have turned out. A lot more people are going to get hurt, and for what?"

As with many others, this black soldier joined the army "inspired not by patriotism" but, she says, "I thought I could develop greater discipline and organization if I did."

She said, "I grew up very poor on the South and West Sides of Chicago…. And my father wasn’t around at all, and my mother got messed up with drugs. And I remember as a small child loving G.I. Joe. I thought, ‘Oh, man, that’s cool.’"

She grew up with an aunt who was also hooked on drugs and then lived with her grandmother. She said there was "a lot of chaos" in her early life and the military seemed to offer order.

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A military draft is on the way, and involuntary conscription is already here.

Twin bills in the House and Senate, HR 163 and S 89, are timed to pass just after this year’s presidential election and begin as early as June 15, 2005. This draft will bar blanket college deferments and escape to Canada, as in the Vietnam War.

The Universal National Service Act of 2003, backed by both Bush and Kerry, will "require that all young persons [age 18 to 26] …including women, perform…military…or civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security and for other purposes." These active bills currently sit in the committees on armed services in the Senate and House.

College deferments will be limited to seniors finishing their academic year and the lower years to finishing their current semester.

In December 2001, Canada and the U.S. signed a "smart border declaration," a 30-point plan requiring a "pre-clearance agreement" for people entering and departing each country, to prevent "draft dodgers."

The 2004 Selective Service System budget has already received $28 million to prepare for a military draft. The Pentagon is quietly campaigning to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide. Though unpopular in an election year, given the rulers’ declaration of a "permanent state of war on terrorism," such a draft becomes their best option to stock U.S. military bases in 132 countries, to say nothing of the endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond, to secure U.S. control of Mid-East oil. And performing military service "for other purposes" is easily usable as a catch-all to quell strikes and rebellions at home.

The Current Draft

Shortly after 9/11 Bush authorized a "stop-loss" policy that "allows commanders to hold soldiers past the date they are due to leave the service if their unit is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan." (Op-ed column by former Army captain Andrew Exum, N. Y. Times, 6/2) This "prevents a mass exodus of combat soldiers."

"For enlisted soldiers…who sign on…for a predetermined period of service," says Exum, "stop-loss is a gross breach of contract." These are volunteers who are "already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan" who "have completed their active duty obligations" but are now being "conscripted" involuntarily to serve beyond the period for which they volunteered. In effect, the government "stop-loss" policy is drafting them.

Added to this current "draft" is activating members of "the individual Ready Reserve as part of what [the military] is calling an ‘involuntary mobilization.’" These are troops released from active duty and "who are no longer expected to participate even in regular training." (NYT)

These involuntary conscripts will provide the 20,000 additional troops the Pentagon has slated for Iraq or the 40,000 Kerry has called for. Given the unpopularity of a "regular" draft amid a presidential campaign — they will, Exum says, become "election-year fodder."

Additionally, the racist "economic draft" forces mainly black, Latin and Asian, but also white working-class youth to join the military for lack of decent civilian jobs.

Many of these soldiers are beginning to realize that the lies and patriotism pushed by the rulers just mean dying and killing other workers to protect the megaprofits of Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Chase, Citibank, & Co. Thos provides great potential to organize among these soldiers (and the regular draft will multiply this potential) to oppose the imperialist warmakers and fight for the only solution to a future of endless wars, racist/fascist terror, mass unemployment and minimum-wage jobs: communism.

Homecare Workers Lead Fight Against Racist Exploitation

New York City—"We are going to be on strike on June 7, please support us." "We care for Alzheimer’s patients, old people and disabled people. Our clients depend on us. We can’t leave them at any time."

"Many of us work 12 hours a day, at $6 to 8 an hour with no overtime pay. Many of us work 24 hours [including sleeping in], often 10 days at a stretch. We’re paid for 12 hours at straight pay, sometimes with a night differential of $17, sometimes with nothing."

"On the first May Day in 1886 workers fought for the 8-hour day. On this May Day in 2004 we’re fighting for the 8-hour day with overtime pay!" So reported home attendants and home health aides at a May Day event in New York City.

About 125,000 homecare workers belong to 1199-SEIU here. Thousands more are not unionized. Nearly 40% of these homecare workers, mostly immigrant women, used to work in factories that have since outsourced their jobs to free enterprise zones around the world. We must unite with our brothers and sisters to fight capitalism’s low wages worldwide.

The 1199 union contracts state what homecare workers can’t earn, like time for travel between jobs and certification training time. They don’t mention the duration of the work-week, overtime rates or working 24 hours. The union leaders are complicit in the robbery of these workers.

Local 1199 is concentrating on the $10 "living wage" for 23,000 home health aides in NYC and registering its members to vote. Gifford Miller, chairperson of the NY City Council, told a union rally in April, "Higher wages means higher taxes and better services." While home health aides may see only half of their sought-for $3 wage hike after increased taxes, one can bet the taxes will finance war, not services for the working class.

The U.S. government spends $4-5 billion monthly on the imperialist oil war in Iraq, profiting the oil and banking billionaires. Meanwhile, workers are sped up and education, housing subsidy and healthcare budgets are cut — and 35 million people in the U.S. live below the poverty line.

Summer Project 2004

"Don’t leave me out of the summer plan," said one worker after May Day. Seventeen homecare workers, current and former students in 1199 ESL classes and their teacher are organizing a PLP-led Summer Project. We began with a planning meeting and then, together with a church group, picketed the offices of New York’s Democratic senators, Clinton and Schumer. We will also: picket a local Bronx Democratic Assemblyman’s office and a homecare agency; take the case of one worker seeking overtime pay for her 18 years on the job to the NY State Dept. of Labor; leaflet two large hospitals, demanding equality with hospital workers; join protests at the Republican Convention in August; support a possible strike by home health aides; and take a bus trip to a state park with our families.

Throughout the summer we will hold regular PLP study groups, discussing the Party and articles in CHALENGE-DESAFIO, aiming to increase the network distribution of the paper from its current 26 to as much as we can.

As more workers realize that as long as capitalism exists we will suffer endless poverty and imperialist wars, wage slavery and racist brutality — all in the name of "democracy and homeland security" — they can be won to become revolutionary organizers, giving leadership to other workers and to PLP. These workers, mostly women and minorities, can help the entire working class fight for a society without bosses. Learning from the achievements and errors of our revolutionary ancestors, we will hasten the day for workers’ power: communism.

a name="Chicago’s Racist School Cuts: No War Left Behind">">"hicago’s Racist School Cuts: No War Left Behind

CHICAGO, June 9 - The Board of Education is closing 10 schools and cutting 1,600 jobs, including 400 staff for early childhood programs and special education classes, plus 180 central office workers. This ties into the capitalist agenda is imperialist war, fascism, police terror and low wages.

Eighty-six percent of Chicago's predominately black and Latin students live in poverty and are being "left behind." Fancy new magnet schools are built to lure the middle class back into the city while staff is cut in places of severe need.

In May, no slate running in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) elections received 50% of the vote, leading to a June 11 run-off. Neither the incumbent "reformer" Debbie Lynch of the PACT caucus, nor her opponent representing the "old guard" ousted three years ago, will fight the cuts. These pro-capitalist union leaders put the bosses' agenda over a decent education for working-class children.

To remain the top imperialist power, U.S. capitalists need many scientists, doctors, teachers and other professions. They also need students to be patriotic, racist and willing to fight imperialist wars. The capitalists need the teachers unions on their side. That's why the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sits on the bosses' Council on Foreign Relations. The AFT has served the rulers well for years, taking pro-war, anti-student positions. None of the CTU candidates challenged this role. The Lynch leadership "responded" to the latest cutbacks by distributing "No Staff Cuts" signs and stickers and demonstrating at the Board meeting.

Our modest PLP forces in the schools and the CTU are working to win over teachers and students and popularize our ideas. A teachers' CHALLENGE study group meets regularly and dozens of union members read CHALLENGE. Several students went to May Day because of involvement in a discussion group about racism and war. As we develop more influence among teachers and students, we can take on both the School Board and the CTU leadership, organizing strikes and protests of parents, students, teachers and other school staff against racist cuts that finance imperialist wars. By fighting the bosses and building the PLP, we will learn what it takes to wage the ultimate fight for communist revolution.

a name="Hit Rutgers Community Policing/ ‘Counter-Terrorism’ Gang-Up"></">Hi" Rutgers Community Policing/ ‘Counter-Terrorism’ Gang-Up

NEWARK, NJ, June 4 — Chanting, "They say Patriot Act; we say fight back," and "1-2-3-4, we won’t fight your oil war; 5-6-7-8, we don’t want your fascist state," workers and students from this area picketed a conference on "Economic, Social, and Legal Consequences of Heightened Security" at the Rutgers-Newark (R-N) Center for Law & Justice. The demonstration was organized on short notice, and involved members of several mass organizations active around issues of racism, police brutality and the war in Iraq. A PLP flyer was distributed hand-to-hand to help bring friends to this action.

The flyer said that under capitalism educational institutions are not neutral in the class struggle. Despite their pretense of protecting academic freedom for all, the capitalists use their control of society — which includes the universities — to push their agenda. During capitalist crises, they mobilize the population to support fascism and the bosses’ wars for control of oil.

Our suspicions that Rutgers’ Prof. George Kelling’s bloody hands were somehow involved proved true. The conference accompanied an R-N "domestic security preparedness conference" sponsored by, among others, the R-N Police Institute (PI) and the Manhattan Institute (MI). The PI has been Kelling’s vehicle for pushing his "community policing" plans; the MI has been the main right-wing think-tank helping to spread it across the U.S.

Kelling’s success with community policing — using workers to aid the cops in fingering other workers and youth — has apparently made him a key player in ruling-class plans for a national security police state in the U.S. In late 2002, Kelling — author of "Broken Windows" — and the MI started the Counterterrorism Information Sharing Consortium to integrate local cops into the Feds’ "war against terrorism."

To add insult to injury, Viet Dinh, co-author of the U.S.A. Patriot Act and now law school professor at Georgetown, was to give the afternoon keynote. Dinh, a vicious anti-communist, openly justifies the mass round-ups and jailings of South Asian and other immigrants after 9/11.

The morning panelists came from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the shipping industry and the Federal Reserve. Obviously this conference was called to map ruling-class plans for imposing Homeland Security throughout the U.S. The use of the liberal Rutgers Law School to help build a U.S. police state was a wake-up call for all of us.

Speakers from several of the mass organizations eloquently exposed U.S. rulers’ plans for more imperialist war and full-blown fascism, and called for immediate action to fight back. One speaker from a local anti-police brutality group declared, "It’s not coming; it’s here." Others attacked Kelling’s racist ideas — jailing thousands of black and Latin youth under the guise of promoting "quality of life." Another said, "Imperialist war and police brutality are quality-of-life crimes." A third speaker explained to bystanders listening intently why the biggest terrorists are those promoting government policies which intensify the bosses’ police state. During the speeches, many CHALLENGES and the flyers were distributed.

Although Dinh canceled his speech at the last minute, we should have no illusions. We must redouble our efforts to recruit to the Party, amid building a mass movement against war and fascism. Our opportunities seem to be increasing. As we turn our sights to the upcoming conventions in Boston and New York, we must steel our determination.

LETTERS

Our Responsibility to Our Children

My daughter was a five-month embryo in my abdomen when we marched out of Central Park into a long line of police on horseback in the first big Manhattan demonstration against the Vietnam War under the PL banner, "U.S. Out of Vietnam!"

During the late 1960s and early 1970s I regularly sold CHALLENGE in our Manhattan neighborhood with my toddler daughter by my side. She was a regular "participant" in many PL and anti-Vietnam War meetings at my home and even in offices of my union, sleeping on a pillow on the floor or on my lap as we worked late into the night. She walked the picket line with me — arousing complaints from management (to the rousing laughter of fellow strikers) that we were "exploiting" our own children.

But as the years have passed, I stopped selling CHALLENGE openly and my own participation in mass activities for the Party slackened — thought my conviction about the correctness of its principles never wavered. But I am most critical that I never tried to actively recruit my own daughter to the Party.

The reason, I admit with shame, was fear. Fear for her safety. At one point I even thought of taking a furlough from the Party because I began to fear that I might lose my job and, as a single parent, was completely responsible for her welfare. I should have realized what an opportunity I was letting slip by when she expressed clear distress that I would "give up my ideals" even though she was then about 10 years old and we had not seriously discussed communist politics. She was clearly responding positively to an engaged way of life — and I didn’t take that furlough.

She is now a wonderfully strong and clear-minded woman in her mid-30s who leads a virtuous life — but not a communist one. Occasionally she initiates a discussion with me to ask in a serious, not aversive way why I continued in my beliefs even though communism seems to have collapsed around the world. Of course, that is the question all of us as comrades have to deal with nowadays in building a base among our friends and fellow workers.

All this is a prelude to saying that I think CHALLENGE’S May Day issue — with its inspiring articles on demonstrations around the world and the historical information on capitalist torture and the 1918 insurrection in Strasbourg — was great! And today, after all these years, I’m giving a copy to my daughter. And we will talk.

A Manhattan comrade

Tie India Election To Imperialist Rivalry

The article on India (CHALLENGE, 6/9) missed an important aspect of the recent elections there: the link to the inter-imperialist rivalry unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan. The defeated right-wing government led by the BJP Party was planning a sort of coup, retiring the old Prime Minister Bajpayi and forging a strong Israel-India-U.S. axis to share the oil flow from the Mid-East. The BJP had intended to send thousands of Indian troops to Iraq. It’s doubtful the new government led by the Congress Party will do that. They repeatedly call for a strong multi-polar world and advocate close relations with the European imperialists, with Russia and China as well as the U.S.

Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to accept the Prime Minister post is mostly cosmetic, not due to the threat on her life. Mainly, the Indian bosses want to gain maximum advantage from the U.S. Iraq disaster.

The right-wing BJP was willing to gamble with the Bush gang. The Congress Party will play hardball with the U.S. They have five decades of experience as well as the backing of the two main revisionist [phony left] "Communist" Parties.

A Reader

Genocide at the Haitian-Dominican Border

Like many Dominican and Haitian immigrants in the U.S., I donated food for the victims of the terrible flood that killed thousands. No one knows how many were buried by the mud or rising water. Working-class solidarity always shines when fellow workers are hit by such tragedies, even though many know that much of the aid usually fills the pockets of crooked officials.

But while the flood was a natural disaster, the slaughter wasn’t. David Alvarez Martín wrote an article in the Dominican daily El Caribe (6/1) entitled "Genocide in Jimaní." He explained that the only reason so many people were buried alive was the government’s failure to provide them with decent places to live. Many are trapped in miserable conditions near the river. He accused corrupt government officials of enriching themselves at the expense of these people.

In 2003, the ousted President Hipólito Mejía used over $2 billions to bail out the Bainter bank, which engineered an Enron-type fraud. Money went to the big investors, not to the little people who lost their savings. There are even reports that INDRHI, the state water resources agency, was drilling for a dam nearby (despite experts’ advice against it), worsening the flood.

On the Haitian side, the U.S.-French lackey running the country after Aristide was ousted, blamed the tragedy on deforestation, on people tearing down trees for use as cooking fuel. But many profit-driven international companies have uprooted the valuable Gaiac tree, a hardwood that doesn’t absorb water so it can be used for pier pilings. Without replacing those trees, the ground is open to flooding, which contributed to the tragedy.

The Haitian bosses and the imperialists are responsible for the rotten conditions that have made the country a disaster area, with or without floods. Those who believed that the new rulers, who, with the help of the Tonton Macoute death squads ousted Aristide, will change things are now realizing the sad truth. Aristide himself became corrupt and betrayed the poor masses who viewed him as a savior. Corruption, drug gangs and imperialist super-exploitation will continue.

Don’t expect too much either from the newly-elected Dominican President, Leonel Fernández. His main job is serving capitalism and the International Monetary Fund.

Indeed, as CHALLENGE has been saying, world capitalism has brought the international working class to a new Dark Age. The only light at the end of this tunnel is to organize a movement to destroy all the bosses, and bury them once and for all. Join the PLP now!

Red Immigrant

Laundromat Bosses Sack Women Workers

A recent N.Y. Times article described the terrible conditions suffered by NYC laundromat workers (almost all women, many of them Mexican immigrants) who fold clothes for 80 to 90 hours a week at $3 an hour or less.

A friend of mine who used to do that work left because of the low pay and rotten conditions - many women faint because of the heat from the dryers) - and because, as a single mother, she had no time to take care of her children. But her sister still works in a laundromat.

She said her sister and co-workers are denied lunch-breaks, despite those long hours. When she asked her boss (most owners are immigrants too) for a raise of $6 a day - just a few pennies an hour, and still virtually only half the already miserable minimum wage - he refused. If she misses a day or a few hours, the boss threatens to fire her. She, like all the other women doing that work, has no papers. The racist anti-immigrant policies are deadly for thousands of these workers, while providing super-profits for the few immigrant bosses who own the laundromats.

Some women are beginning to organize and want to build a union, but given the long record of betrayals by today's union hacks, the future is not bright.

On the other hand, if we can win some of these women to PLP, they can organize their co-workers to see that capitalism always finds a zillion ways to make life a living hell for workers worldwide, and that the best solution is to join our Party and wash the capitalist filth from the face of the earth. Join the PLP and fight for a society without racism and wage slavery.

A NYC comrade

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A Marine now in Iraq outside Falluja, told his wife he and his buddies were going hungry. In April when supply routes running north from Kuwait were under frequent attack, the brass cut the number of truck convoys making that trip. Consequently, the Marines outside Falluja received one MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) per day - for each TWO Marines. An MRE is intended for one soldier. It contains about 1,200 calories. At least two per day are needed to sustain one soldier under battlefield conditions - so they were getting about ONE-FOURTH of that minimum.

If the brass had diverted a few helicopters from other missions, they could have brought more food to the Marines despite the attacks on truck convoys. But the brass could care less about Marines being hungry for a few days or weeks.[Not to mentinon the thousands of starving Iraqi children and civilians — Ed]

The Marine's wife heard from a friend whose spouse is in the Navy, stationed in the Middle East, that he and his fellow sailors were told they had to buy their own food when they were off duty. The sailors protested and received a per-diem food allowance from the Navy.

Lots of little things are combining to tell U.S. troops that the war in Iraq is not for "freedom" and "democracy," but only serves U.S. imperialism. Little things can lead to big things. In 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, rotten food on the Imperial Battleship Potemkin triggered a mutiny that united with workers in the port of Odessa and led to opposition to the whole imperialist war.

A friend

Visteon Workers Battle Strike-breaking Cops

BEDFORD, INDIANA, June 1 — Two-dozen state troopers with riot helmets and shields reinforced strike-breaking security guards at a Visteon auto parts plant today, after striking workers clashed with the security guards and scabs. Visteon and Local 907 of the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America reached a tentative contract agreement on May 23, but the workers rejected it, and the strike began early on May 30.

The plant makes parts for fuel systems and for windshield wipers and drive trains. Last April, Visteon announced it was ending production of fuel delivery modules here, eliminating 600 of the 1,150 jobs.

Twelve strikers were injured blocking a driveway to stop a van full of scabs. At least two strikers were knocked to the ground.

One striker said, "When the van tried to leave, their security guards came out and they were hitting people…I got shoved in front of the van, my legs were pulled under and I was hanging onto the wiper arm."

The company accused strikers of blocking entrances, throwing nails down to puncture tires, and hitting vehicles carrying scabs into the plant.

The world’s largest corporations will spare no expense and use the full weight of their state, cops and courts, to brutally drive down workers’ living conditions in this period of expanding war and Homeland Security fascism. A mass rally of 100,000 auto, steel, and other IUE and CWA members in Indiana, surrounding the plant, could sharpen the struggle for a decent contract and up the ante in the battle against the private thugs and state police. But the union leaders are committed to helping the bosses cut labor costs, while telling the workers to elect Kerry. Voting for some bosses’ politician will not reverse this tidal wave of attacks. Only the patient and urgent building of a mass PLP in basic industry can provide the revolutionary answer this assault needs.

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Self- proclaimed "anti-capitalist" filmmaker Michael Moore says his "Fahrenheit 9/11" does such a number on George Bush that Hollywood bosses won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Moore claims he had to wage a titanic battle to wrest control of the film from evil Disney moguls, who refused to show it. According to Moore, only through the intercession of the anti-Hollywood Weinstein brothers has the film found an independent distributor. But this David-and-Goliath hype strays far from reality.

"Fahrenheit’s" chief promoters represent the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. rulers, whom Moore helps by criticizing Bush’s failures before and after Sept. 11 and his bungling of the Iraq invasion. The liberals need a president more effective than Bush at establishing a police state in the U.S. and rallying forces for the imperialist wars necessary to maintain U.S. world domination.

Reviewers say "Fahrenheit," due out in late June, exposes incompetence and corruption in the Bush White House. That sounds good at first. But look who’s backing Moore. The "Independent" Film Channel (IFC), wholly owned by Cablevision, is distributing the movie in the U.S. Once a family-owned, third-rate media outlet, Cablevision has fallen into the hands of the major rulers. Two years ago, when, in order to compete, Cablevision began borrowing more than $1.5 billion from banks like JP Morgan and Citigroup, the big boys took over. In a classic case of the rulers’ exercising control through finance capital, JP Morgan Chase became the company’s financial advisor. The rulers put an ex-JP Morgan managing director, Thomas Reifenheiser, and a U.S. Navy admiral, John Ryan, on Cablevision’s board, to ensure the firm’s imperialist orientation. A major figure in the U.S. killing machine, Ryan has headed both the Sixth Fleet and the Naval Academy. The warmakers putting "Fahrenheit" on movie screens want Bush to ship out if, as it seems, he can’t shape up.

Another of Moore’s pals is former Democratic Senator George Mitchell, presiding director of Disney. Mitchell’s Disney helped rather than hindered the U.S. release of "Fahrenheit." Owning the film’s rights, Disney could have locked it in a safe and thrown away the key. Instead Disney let the Weinsteins buy it and pass it along to IFC. Disney then blessed the deal by saying that any profits it made would go to charity.

Mitchell’s favorite cause is U.S. imperialism. A former Clinton envoy, Mitchell sits on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a liberal strategy-making think-tank. The CFR, closely tied to the Exxon Mobil-JP Morgan Chase-Rockefeller wing of U.S. capital, had long called for an invasion of Iraq, demonizing Hussein’s regime as the "greatest danger on earth." The CFR, however, wanted Bush to delay the attack until he could gather larger U.S. forces and more allies. The main rulers’ criticism of Bush, which Moore fosters, is that his assault on Iraq was not deadly enough.

Moore knows not to bite the hand that feeds him. While he dwells on Bush’s well-known ties to the oil industry, he ignores liberal war profiteers. Piper Rudnick, a law firm Mitchell also heads, now specializes in advising client companies on cashing in on Iraqi reconstruction. And Moore has nothing but praise for his saviors, the Weinsteins, who are major funders of John Kerry’s campaign. Kerry has plans for militarizing the U.S. that Bush never dreamed of.

Moore may once have had pro-working class leanings. His "Roger and Me" showed sympathy for unemployed workers in Flint, Michigan, and bitterness toward GM bosses. But even that film offered the false hope that capitalism could be reformed by "more public-spirited" executives. Now Moore offers the equally deadly promise that dumping Bush for Kerry can alleviate terrorism and war. Dumping the profit system through communist revolution is the only real solution. Moore steers people away from it by promoting illusions about supposedly "lesser evil" bosses. Our Party will continue to expose these fatal illusions and those who foster them.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Peacekeepers fuel sex biz

Western troops, policemen, and civilians are largely to blame for the rapid growth of the sex slave industry in Kosovo over the past five years, a mushrooming trade in which hundreds of women, many of them under-age girls, are tortured, raped, abused, then criminalized. Amnesty International said last week…. The international presence in Kosovo continues to generate 80% of the income for the pimps, brothel girls or traffic women….The sex slavery in Kosovo parallels similar developments in Bosnia, where the arrival of thousands of Nato peacekeepers in 1995 fuelled a thriving forced prostitution industry.

International personnel in Kosovo enjoy immunity from prosecution… (GW, 5/13)

Langston Hughes vs. Kerry

Mr. Kerry has begun consistently wrapping up his speeches with…"Let America be America again."

It is the title of a 1938 poem by Langston Hughes…. [which reads] "O, let my land be a land where Liberty/Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath."….Mr. Kerry quoted, though he skipped…Hughes’s bitter aside on racism:

(There’s never been equality

for me,

Nor freedom in this

"homeland of the free") ….

For that matter,…. some .…would appreciate its declaration that "From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, / We must take back our land." (NYT, (6/1)

China: Capitalism = no job

China’s embrace of capitalism is the reason it has become a manufacturing hub and one of the growth engines of the world economy. Yet it is also why employment is such an intractable problem. The transition from a planned economy to a market economy cost tens of millions of workers their jobs…. Some experts estimate that as many as 200 million people in the countryside are without work. (NYT, 5/28)

Digital speed-up = bad life

In the last 30 years, productivity has soared, but job satisfaction has plummeted….

The 1970’s were a slower age, and much of the workers’ pleasure in their jobs is related to the less-demanding time clock. A hospital billing agent can take time off from dunning patients to look in on a man whose leg was amputated, who has no one to care for him….

Three decades later, we are caught up in what a recent book dubbed "The Ruthless Economy." High tech and new management styles put workers on what the author Simon Head calls "digital assembly lines" with little room for creativity or independent thought….

There have been substantial productivity gains. But those gains have not found their way to paychecks. (NYT, 5/31)

Low-wage era won’t end

Globalization…is also demonstrating the relevance of the 19th century economist David Ricardo’s iron law of wages.

That "law" says that in a market in which the supply of labor is infinite — and for practical purposes, that is the case in today’s globalized labor market — wages will eventually stabilize at a point just above subsistence level. (Tribune Media Service)

Pope hires scandal cardinal

Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who was forced to resign as leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston after a long and painful sexual abuse scandal involving clergy members, was chosen by Pope John Paul II…to head a basilica in Rome….

The appointment could be financially lucrative for Cardinal Law. (NYT 5/28)

Green but not most urgent

Global warning is a serious problem, the group concluded, but regarded every proposal as having costs that were likely to exceed benefits….

"Climate is important but not as urgent of a problem as malnutrition and disease," said Robert W. Fogel, another Nobel winner there. There were 798 million undernourished people in the developing world in 2001, according to the United Nations. "If we twiddle our thumbs, not spending money wisely, millions of people will die." (NYT, 6/5)

Iraq: Imperialist history

Abu Ghraib was just waiting to repeat itself. It is the French in Algeria and Indochina. It is the British in an empire where the sun never set, or, in the case of Northern Ireland, seemed not to have risen in the first place.

It is what America did in Vietnam and before that, anywhere in Central America and the Caribbean where, for the good of the natives, we brought freedom to their shores. Once upon a time, the Army treated American Indians in a horrendous fashion, but that was because they, too, did not for some reason want to be occupied…. (Washington Post, 5/12)

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May 7, 2004 marked the 50th anniversary of a battle that ranks among the greatest triumphs in working-class history. On that date in 1954, Vietnamese communist forces led by General Giap smashed the French army at its camp in Dien Bien Phu. The defeat sounded the death-knell of French and British colonialism. Although the French were to begin another bloody colonial war in Algeria that same year, Dien Bien Phu sealed the fate of colonialism, as it was known then.

The British novelist Graham Greene called this battle "a defeat for more than the French army. The defeat marked virtually the end of any hope the Western Powers might have entertained that they could dominate the East." ("Ways of Escape," p. 85)

The stakes for the U.S., British and French bosses, the major imperialist powers in 1954, were so high in this struggle that when the Eisenhower administration saw the handwriting on the wall for the French, it "discussed a whole range of military options — including carrier based air-delivered ‘tactical’ atomic bombs to relieve the siege of Dien Bien Phu." (George McT. Kahin, "Intervention: How American Became Involved in Vietnam," p. 46)

The French had an army of trained officers with the military hardware of a modern industrial capitalist society. The Vietnamese forces, called the Vietminh, were peasants with none of the equipment necessary for modern warfare. But as one of their fiercest opponents at Dien Bien Phu later observed:

I saw them start out with haphazard weapons, such as hunting guns, and then from month to month they were able to get organized to go from small groups to sections, and from sections to companies. And then on to battalions and brigades and finally to full divisions. (Lieutenant Colonel "Bruno" Bigeard, quoted in Michael Maclear, "The Ten-Thousand Day War," p.46).

The "secret" weapon that enabled the Vietminh to achieve this stunning victory is called "People’s War." Inspired in great part by communist ideology, People’s War enlisted the overwhelming majority of the Vietnamese population in the struggle against French colonialism. The armed struggle formed the major, but by no means the only component of this concept. The entire infrastructure of communications, transport, supply (including food) and medical care was built and maintained by the people. The French groaned bitterly that they could never distinguish combatants from non-combatants. The U.S. military would subsequently echo this complaint.

General Giap had carefully studied the revolutionary concept of People’s War through the experience of the Chinese Red Army, which had earlier smashed the Japanese fascist military and then the U.S.-backed forces of Chiang Kai-shek. Led by Mao Zedong, the Red Army embodied the principle that its soldiers should "be among the people like fish in water."

Mao and Giap applied the communist concept that the human element plays the key role in warfare. In this particular situation, the idea meant that the political motivation of those fighting — and of those who support the fighters — has qualitatively greater importance than the hardware belonging to the other side.

Lieutenant-Colonel Bigeard acknowledged the political superiority of the Vietminh:

…I can tell you that they became the greatest infantry in the world: these enduring men [Bigeard couldn’t bring himself to credit the many women fighters in the Vietminh — Ed.], capable of covering fifty kilometers in the night on the strength of a bowl of rice, with running shoes, and then singing their way into battle. In my opinion they turned out to be exceptional infantry and they managed to defeat us. Now, we were not that many, we were far from France, but we have to admit they also beat the Americans. So they were exceptional. (Maclear, p. 46)

The French defeat produced a reaction in Washington that somewhat resembles the U.S. bosses’ current tactical squabbles about Bush, Jr.’s invasion of Iraq. The Eisenhower administration debated a number of alternatives but agreed unanimously that Vietnam could not "fall to communism." The Kennedy White House planned the first stages of U.S. intervention. After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson & Co. concocted a series of lies that served as a pretext for escalating the war.

At the height of the Vietnam War, nearly 600,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Southeast Asia. Fifty-eight thousand U.S. troops died. By 1974, the U.S. War Dept. reported 503,926 deserted. (N.Y. Times, 8/20/74) Mutinies and the killing of officers by working class GIs — called "fragging" — were common. Anti-war demonstrations and strikes engulfed U.S. colleges and high schools. Three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians perished because of the genocidal tactics employed by the U.S.

But the U.S. imperialists’ terror fell flat on its face. By 1974, the U.S. had to acknowledge the greatest military defeat in its history and to leave Vietnam with its tail between its legs, just as the French had 20 years earlier.

People’s War had won a significant partial victory. But as the deplorable state of contemporary Vietnam demonstrates, capitalism has returned there with a vengeance. As PLP predicted at the time, bad politics turned this stunning working-class victory into a defeat of equal if not greater magnitude. The bad politics were the heritage of the old communist movement’s errors, primarily nationalism, the deadly illusion that a Vietnamese capitalist is a lesser evil than a French or American capitalist. The Vietnamese Communist Party allowed itself to be infected with this poison. The infection led to a second fatal mistake: an alliance with the former Soviet Union, which, by the 1950s, had become a capitalist state with imperialist ambitions to rival the U.S. for world domination. Hoodwinked by the notion, "my enemy’s enemy must be my friend," the Vietnamese took aid from the Soviets. This aid was intended to influence rather than help them, and the Vietnamese military’s dependence on it led them to negotiate a settlement with the U.S., when the correct solution would have been a continuation of People’s War.

Had People’s War continued in Vietnam, it could have spread throughout the rest of Asia. It could have influenced the left forces in the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It could have given left leadership worldwide, including to black rebellions in the U.S., and inspired a wave of revolutionary struggle. But all this is hindsight, and given the old communist movement’s capitulation to nationalism, the better-case scenario wasn’t in the cards.

Nonetheless, PLP did grow in this period, and became politically stronger by learning from the achievements and errors of the Vietnamese and China’s Red Guards, but we were unable to counter the move to the right. Still, we commemorate the heroism of the peasant army that crushed French colonialism 50 years ago. We can absorb these lessons of our class’s most stirring victories and devastating defeats. This exercise, along with daily participation in class battles and the war over ideas, can help get us to the next level. This means fighting first, foremost, and exclusively for communism and consigning nationalist thinking to the garbage-dump of history.

The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu led to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. Bush, Sr.’s Iraq I led to Bush, Jr.’s Iraq II. Sooner or later the current war will widen far beyond its present borders. We must organize now wherever we can so that communists, rather than nationalists or religious holy-rollers, become the leaders of the next People’s Wars/working class insurrections that are sure to erupt.

Nationalist Alliance With Any Imperialist Bloc Deadly For Workers

MEXICO CITY, May 31 — Summit Meeting III of Latin American, Caribbean and European rulers exposed the European Union (EU) imperialists as too timid to sharpen their challenge (at least for now) of U.S. bosses in this region, the U.S. "backyard." Last issue, we reported the EU’s top priority was increasing its reach In Latin America, but apparently its own economic problems have temporarily halted increased investments there. The EU wants to consolidate its hold on the new members. (The Czech and Slovakia Republics, Hungary and others are already part of German imperialism’s sphere of influence.)

According to CEPAL (the UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America), "the expansion of foreign investments all over the world has stopped." Capitalism’s crisis of overproduction is still shrinking the international markets. Workers worldwide don’t need any more capitalism, we need communism.

The EU even shrank from strongly condemning U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners. German chancellor Schröder opposed criticizing the U.S. The Summit’s final document used the euphemism "mistreatments," never mentioning the U.S. Apparently the Europe’s imperialists know they’re also torturers and murderers and don’t want to create any precedent for themselves. EU bosses also refused to condemn the U.S. commercial blockade of Cuba.

Nothing concrete was produced at this assembly of the champions of multi-lateralism, except an attempt to reach an economic pact with MERCOSUR (the Brazil-Argentina-led South American common market), which may be formalized at the next meeting. This EU step back from confronting the U.S. in its backyard is just temporary.

The Paris Le Monde editorializes that one reason is the EU is now, concentrating on its expansion into Eastern Europe; "Latin America will suffer because of this." The 75 million people in the new EU member countries will form a common market of 454 million people. The new EU members will get 24.4 billion Euros from 2004-06 to control mass emigration from Eastern to Western Europe. So, for its own security, EU’s bosses are now concentrating on their own backyard.

Capitalism’s worldwide crisis has led some weaker rulers to use nationalism to deceive the masses about their wheelings and dealing with the different imperialist blocs. Workers should not fall for this trap.

Since Fidel Castro skipped this meeting, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez became the big media attraction. Chavez attacked ALCA (the U.S.-led Free Trade Agreement) and free-market policies, but then showed his lack of political and historical savvy. He implored the mythical forces of Quetzalcoatl and the dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe to "help free" Latin American. Quetzalcoatl was the god of the Aztec empire which exploited and enslaved other ethnic groups in ancient Mexico. The Spanish colonialists used the mythical appearance of the Virgin to force the ethnic population to submit to their rule.

Brazil’s Lula, who just returned from making deals with China’s bosses, said that "hunger is the most powerful WMD," killing 24,000 people a day, 11 children per minute. But to confess how deadly capitalism is doesn’t mean doing something about it. Brazil has the poorest people on the continent, because of capitalism and imperialism. Lula warned that these conditions are a powderkeg for violence. His real worry is workers’ mass violence against their exploiters. Communists welcome this, knowing well that class struggle is the engine moving history forward.

Mexico’s Vincente Fox has been one Bush’s most loyal servants in Latin America. Fox even recalled his ambassador to Cuba. But now he tried to change his image as Bush’s lapdog by re-establishing relations with Havana.

The "altermundistas" (mass organizations against the summit) opposed economic deals based on neo-liberalism’s free market. This line mirrors nationalists like Chavez and Lula. But even so, during the Summit the Gualajara cops attacked them brutally. No wonder Fox and other Latin American rulers don’t condemn Bush for "torture." They’re experts at torturing their own people.

Castro refused to attend, criticizing EU rulers as hypocrites who attacked human rights violations in Cuba but not in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison or the brutality suffered by Latin American and African immigrants. Yet this hasn’t stopped Castro from accepting European, Canadian, Mexican and other capitalist investments to exploit Cuban workers. Castro hypocritically uses "anti-imperialist" rhetoric when it’s convenient, deceiving many honest people.

No form of capitalism or imperialism can free workers from a system which only offers endless wars, mass unemployment, racism, hunger and poverty. Communists must redouble our efforts to offer the world’s workers and their allies the only solution to this hell. We in PLP are dedicated to rebuilding this international communist movement.

1. Kerry `Solution' For Bush Iraq Fiasco:
   EXPAND WAR
2. 50 Years Later Racism Still Riding High
   1. IT'S NOT JUST ECONOMICS -- IT'S ALSO POLITICS
3. Israeli Massacres in Gaza Follow U.S. and Nazi Models
4. PLP Anti-Torture Motion Gains Wide Support At UFT Assembly
   1. We must stand together against torture.
   2. Resolution:
5. Students, Teachers Defend PLP'er Attacked by Bosses
6. Link U.S. War on Iraq to Anti-Muslim Racism
7. Militant FIAT Strikes Highlight Key Role of Industrial Workers
8. SBC Walkout Sold Out By Losing Patriotic Strategy
9. Exchanging EU for U.S. Imperialists Won't Help Latin American Workers
10. PLP Youth Lead Fight vs. War Recruiters
11. California Trucker Says It's A Fight for Survival
12. Small NJ Town Opposes Sending Guard to Iraq
13. Bush's `Mission Accomplished':
    Timkin Lays off 1,300
14. LETTERS
    1. A Communist's Trip Into Voter Registration Land
    2. Homeland Security Motto: ARREST! ARREST!
    3. Anti-war Jogger Talks; GIs Listen
    4. From Silent Vigils
       To Militant Rallies
    5. The Myth of Ghouliani
    6. China, PLP and the 20th Century
    7. Printing Prison Photo A Mistake
15. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. LBJ/Vietnam = Bush/Iraq
    2. No majority rule on minimum wage
    3. Black women Soldiers Are anti-war
    4. Rob Palestinians of water
16. Imperialism Creates Gangs, Then Burns Youth Alive
17. 387 Million Vote in India But Capitalist Horror Marches On
18. Newly-elected Dominican President Follows IMF Bankers' Rules

Kerry `Solution' For Bush Iraq Fiasco:
EXPAND WAR

Bush has become the world's most hated man. For workers, this is a partially positive development. It's good, because the president of the U.S. profit system is now recognized by billions as the face of oil war, mass murder and atrocity. But it's far from enough to serve our class interests. We don't need a break from just one lying, murdering capitalist politician. We need to build a mass international PLP to destroy the entire system and the class of bosses who run it.

The anti-Bush campaign driven by liberal Democrats and Republicans aims at neither peace nor justice. The liberals want to oust Bush not because he's making war in Iraq but rather because his war is turning into a fiasco. On the home front, they oppose him not because his "Homeland Security" threatens a police state but rather because his police state tactics have fallen far short of the results needed to mobilize the country for a long-range future of ever-widening wars.

U.S. imperialism aims to rule the world. The Democrats and Republicans agree on this goal. They further concur on preventing the rise of a rival super-power in Asia, Russia, or the European Union. They see eye to eye on ensuring U.S. domination of crucial Persian Gulf oil as the key to these goals.

However, they differ on tactics. The Bush, Jr. presidency represents a major departure from the basic U.S. foreign policy of all presidents from Nixon to Clinton. Democrat or Republican, every White House from 1968-2000 reflected some alternating between carrot and stick as far as rivals were concerned. In Europe, for instance, the U.S. succeeded in blocking attempts to create a joint European military. But U.S. bosses also agreed to consult their European competitors in numerous forums, like the Trilateral Commission, the G-7 economic meetings and the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. This approach allowed U.S. and European banks to rake in huge profits by bleeding dry the workers of the poorest capitalist countries and by "restructuring" the economies of the former Soviet bloc -- in other words, by destroying the economic benefits socialism created.

Although the Europeans began flexing their muscles (for example, by building the gas line linking the former Soviet Union to Germany), they never wandered too far from U.S. geopolitical edicts.

But the collapse of the former Soviet Union, which was a tremendous strategic victory for U.S. bosses, also gave rise to the illusion in some sections of the U.S. ruling class that the carrot could be eliminated altogether in favor of the stick.

The Bush, Jr. presidency represents this delusion of grandeur. The Bush crowd figured that without the Soviet Union they had a green light to "assert U.S. power unilaterally, and militarily." (Immanuel Wallerstein, "The U.S. and Europe, 1945 to Today") In one sense they were right. As everyone knows, Bush & Co. invaded Iraq, and no one stopped them. The Europeans, Russians, and Chinese don't yet have the muscle to confront them militarily; and the present level of class struggle is very low.

But disposing of a corrupt, tin-horn army is one thing. Single-handedly conquering and holding a nation of 25 million people and pacifying it for major oil investment are different matters altogether.

The occupation of Iraq has been anything but a cake-walk for the U.S. military, which is undermanned and under-equipped. Morale among U.S. soldiers is very low. Bush's farcical "Coalition" of the bribed and threatened has fallen apart. If anything, the departure of Spanish troops, which came in the wake of elections that unseated a pro-U.S. government after the Madrid train bombings, will hasten the growth of European independence from the U.S. The latest version of the "Road Map to Peace" in the Middle East is crumbling in a hail of bullets and bombs.

The Bush Klan made a further miscalculation. They figured that by waving a big stick in Iraq, they would discourage rulers of other countries from acquiring nukes. The opposite is happening: "...We shall be going from eight to 25 nuclear powers in the next quarter century." (Wallerstein)

Kerry & Co. want a return to the Nixon-Carter-Reagan-Bush Sr.-Clinton "multi-lateralism." No less a mouthpiece for U.S. profits than Business Week editorializes that the U.S., which "relies on its global ties for economic growth, on immigration for its dynamism, and on foreign capital for its finances cannot long ignore virulent anti-Americanism before facing dire consequences." The editors advance the Kerry-Powell line about "overwhelming force" -- sending more troops -- and "alliances" -- using the UN. ("Iraq: How to Repair America's Moral Authority," 5/24)

But a return to the Nixon-Clinton policies seems highly unrealistic. The cat is out of the bag. The growth of U.S. power has set in motion a chain of events that are slowly but inexorably leading to the rise of the very rivalries U.S. rulers desperately need to prevent. This is the nature of imperialism. The bosses of the European Union, Russia and China all have compelling profit motives that clash with those of Exxon Mobil, J.P. Morgan Chase, et al. Sooner or later, everyone else comes gunning for the top dog. Capitalism is just a gangster fight on a bigger stage.

Bush may go or stay. The liberals are working overtime to change his tactics. Over the short term, they may succeed. Even if they do, the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and other Persian Gulf oil nations will expand. Over the long haul, conditions are ripening for armed struggle among the major imperialist countries, with increasing U.S. isolation.

The capitalist system has no "moral authority." Such authority can come only from a society based on working-class aspirations, not maximum profits. As the presidential election campaign develops, our Party can advance by showing in both thought and action that the alternative to Bush is not Kerry or another liberal but rather a lifetime of commitment to communist revolution.

50 Years Later Racism Still Riding High

Beware of liberals like John Kerry and his media pals celebrating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. That Supreme Court decision was supposed to end one aspect of racism, segregation in public schools. But racism, in its many forms, has only persisted and intensified over the decades. With their phony "long-hard-road" rhetoric, Kerry & Co. try to perpetuate the myth that U.S. rulers will end racism. The hard reality is that the capitalists' profits depend on their ability to super-exploit certain groups of workers, to better exploit the working class as a whole. Racism, based on the scientifically bankrupt idea that varying skin colors make people fundamentally different, is far too lucrative a weapon for the rulers to abandon.

Kerry's May 17 remark in Topeka was pure hypocrisy: "We have to defend the progress that has been made, but we also have to move the cause forward." Kerry's real "cause" is U.S. imperialism, and its domestic agenda includes worsening conditions for all working-class families, especially black ones.

A study by Harvard's Civil Rights Project shows that the rulers' compliance with the Brown decision has dwindled in the absence of a mass anti-racist movement: "Most white students now have little contact with minority students in many areas of the country....We are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated." (Washington Post, 1/18/04) The study noted that in the South "the percentage of blacks attending predominantly white schools increased from zero in 1954 to 43 percent in 1988. By 2001, the figure had fallen to 30 percent."

The biggest money-maker for the rulers remains racist wage differences. By paying black and Latin workers super-low wages, capitalists can depress the wages of all workers. The chart shows black families' income over the last half century fluctuating within a very narrow range but never even approaching two thirds those of white families. Instead of "upward mobility" the figures reveal a system that enforces income inequality.

Unemployment rates, which help the rulers drive wages down, follow the same pattern: bad for all workers, and worse for black and Latin workers. For young workers aged 16 to 24 the official rate of joblessness is 9.2% for whites and 16.9% for blacks.

MEDIAN INCOME: BLACK FAMILIES, AS A PERCENTAGE OF WHITE FAMILIES

1950--54%
1955--56%
1960--55%
1965--54%
1970--61%
1975--62%
190--58%
2001--62%

IT'S NOT JUST ECONOMICS -- IT'S ALSO POLITICS

Racism is also helping the rulers develop their fascist police state. Arrests and imprisonments of all workers are skyrocketing. But for black and Latin workers, the rate is out of sight. From 1974 to 2001, the number of adults incarcerated jumped from 1.8 million to 5.6 million. In 1974, the portion of the black population serving time was 8.7%, while 1.3% of whites were locked up. By 2001, the share of the total population who had been or were in jail doubled, for both whites and blacks. In 1974, one out of every seven black men, and one in 20 white men, did time. Today, every third black man is, has been, or will be in jail. The same goes for every sixteenth white man. (Statistics come from an August 2003 report of the U.S. Dept. of "Justice.") Over 70% of all U.S. prisoners are black or Latin. The particularly vicious assault on black and Latin people enables the rulers to attack all workers.

The U.S. military is another bastion of racism. The rulers use their racist low-pay and high-unemployment setup to force workers of all backgrounds into uniform and the prospect of killing and dying for Exxon Mobil's profits. While black youth comprise slightly more than 12% of the population, they form 29% of the U.S. Army and 20% of all the services. As a result, "nearly a fifth of the fatalities among U.S. troops in the current war in Iraq are black, which will be the highest cost African Americans have paid in any of America's wars if the trend continues." (Scripps Howard News Service, 4/11/04)

The working class -- white, black, Latin and Asian -- is suffering the brunt of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few officers have died. But racism, especially in the military, could prove U.S. capitalism's Achilles heel. Working-class soldiers, of every so-called "race," have no class interest in fighting for the rulers' racist system and the greatest interest in rebelling against it. Charles Moskos, a liberal sociologist at Northwestern University openly fears rebellion, because "we're having our working class doing our fighting for us." (Christian Science Monitor, 3/18/03) Moskos speaks for the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. rulers. He helped write both the Hart-Rudman reports and Brookings' "United We Serve," pre- and post- 9/11 blueprints for fascism in liberal guise, and cooked up Kerry's universal national service scheme.

PLP has been in the forefront of anti-racist struggles for 40 years, from its participation in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion to driving the racist "theoreticians" off the campuses to the 1973 Chrysler Mack Ave. sit-down strike to leading tens of thousands against the KKK and the neo-Nazis. A communist-led movement can turn the liberals' fears into reality. Rebellions throughout the working class, including in the armed forces, can help lead to a workers' revolution that will end racism, as no capitalist court decision or election ever could or would.

Israeli Massacres in Gaza Follow U.S. and Nazi Models

May 19 was "Bloody Wednesday," the day the Israeli Army (IDF) and the U.S. occupation forces outdid each other in massacres. The IDF is waging a mass terror campaign against the Palestinian Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. A U.S.-supplied IDF Apache helicopter attacked a peaceful demonstration of 3,000 in Tel Al-Sultan, murdering several protestors, including children. Simultaneously, a U.S. helicopter gunship attacked an Iraqi wedding celebration near the Syrian border, murdering 40, also including children, claiming these were "terrorists." Wedding celebrants were shooting small arms skyward, a tradition there.

Both U.S. and Israeli authorities said they'll "investigate" the incidents. Don't hold your breath.

On May 15, more than 150,000 people rallied in Tel Aviv's Rabin Plaza, calling on the Sharon government to leave Gaza and begin peace talks with the Palestinians. The recent death of 13 Israeli soldiers and the massive state terror against the people of Gaza led to the protest. It was organized by an umbrella group of the so-called Zionist "left," outnumbering a recent Likud Party protest of 60,000 rejecting Sharon's Gaza pullout plan. But the "left" Zionist rally actually backed Sharon's phony plan to exit Gaza. Thus, Sharon is now the "lesser evil" in the Likud Party!

In 1993, the same Zionist "left" supported the U.S.-brokered Oslo pact, supposedly to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It just brought more repression of the Palestinians.

Then, in 2000, a new Palestinian Intifada erupted. This Zionist "left" swallowed the Likud gang's racist propaganda -- "Arabs cannot be trusted."

At the latest rally, Labor Party head Shimon Peres, "Peace Now" honcho Tzaly Reshef, and Amir Peretz, head of the labor federation Histradut, all supported Sharon's new scheme. These groups still back the apartheid-style occupation of the West Bank Palestinians.

Shortly after the rally, the IDF attacked the Rafah refugee camp, demolishing homes and killing innocent children and others. The IDF terror is blatant enough to draw condemnation from the European Union imperialists and the UN (with the U.S. abstaining). The Bush administration says, "Israel has a right to defend itself." After all, the IDF's "defense" mirrors the U.S. "defense" in Iraq -- both imperialist occupations.

Meanwhile, Arafat's Palestinian Authority and the Arab League have shown their impotence, pleading for "international condemnation" of the Israeli government's "crimes against humanity." `

But behind all these nationalist and imperialist "pleas" and "protests" lies a sinister plan. While the IDF attacked the Gaza refugees, Condoleeza Rice was in Berlin huddling with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Queri. Rice said the meeting was "very productive." Basically it supports Sharon's Gaza scheme: have a Palestinian security group run by the Egyptian Army control Gaza, keeping Hamas and Islamic Jihad under check there. The EU, despite its conflicts with the U.S., also backs this plan.

This endless instability and wave of massacres is what capitalism offers all workers. Unfortunately, there's no real left leadership in Israel nor among the Palestinians. Hamas, the so-called militant Islamist group, was basically organized by Israel in the early 1980s to counter the militant Intifada rebellion then. Some smaller Israeli groups to the left of the Zionist "left," call for a two-state solution: creating a capitalist state for the Palestinians. But these two states -- Israel and Palestine -- won't solve any of their contradictions. The rulers of both countries will continue fighting each other, and the exploited workers on both sides will still be exploited.

The lack of a real revolutionary alternative is a sign of the times. The collapse of the old communist movement has left the working class and its allies in the Dark Ages. But nothing lasts forever. Palestinian and Israeli workers have a long revolutionary and communist tradition. We must learn from the many past errors and rebuild an internationalist communist movement to fight for the only real solution: a communist society that unites all workers and destroys all the divisions killing them now. It's a long hard road, but it's the only light at the end of this dark tunnel.

PLP Anti-Torture Motion Gains Wide Support At UFT Assembly

NEW YORK CITY, May 19 -- Times are changing. Despite opposition from the union leadership, nearly 40% of the UFT (United Federation of Teachers) Delegate Assembly (DA) voted to bring a PLP motion to the floor opposing the U.S. war in Iraq and condemning the torture of Iraqi workers.

The May 12 DA drew just 700 of the 2,400 delegates into a crowded new assembly hall (see box). About 75 teachers entering the meeting took CHALLENGES. Many more who were handed copies of the motion to be brought to the floor expressed interest. People ask for CHALLENGES now and take them eagerly. This is a far cry from two years ago when 20 papers were considered a "good day."

When we raised our anti-war/anti-torture motion, for a few seconds UFT president Weingarten seemed unsure about letting it go through, but she backed away and the entire motion with all the "wherefores" was read. Immediately a very conservative speaker spoke against it, alluding to the decapitation of the U.S. businessman. A short 5-minute political floor fight arose while Weingarten tried to bring a weaker version of the stronger PL motion before the DA. She lost, and the Assembly was asked to decide whether the full PL motion condemning the Iraqi war should be voted on at this meeting. While a majority opposed bringing it to the floor, nearly 40% agreed the PL motion should be voted on.

We must do more work amongst the individual delegates and will try to establish a PL study group with some of them for the next school year. We've been raising PL's ideas at the conservative DA for the past 10 years, and the delegates' thinking is beginning to change. This demonstrates that our consistency and determination to bring the truth of our ideas to the working class will eventually have an effect.(The following are excerpts from a resolution submitted to the United Federation of Teachers Delegate Assembly, May 12.) 

We must stand together against torture.

The newspapers, radio and TV have been filled with reports and pictures about the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Griab prison by the US military....We shouldn't be surprised -- this is business as usual.... The U.S. trained Central American, Irani and Iraqi police and military to torture opposition members before [the] government decided...[it] wanted more control over the areas. In fact, this treatment in commonplace in U.S. prisons, especially in Texas under then Governor Bush.

Yet it seems...the government is upset [not] about...the torture, but just...[at] being caught....

The war for oil in Iraq is destroying the lives of workers around the world. U.S. and Iraqi workers are being killed and injured at an alarming rate. We must stand with our working class brothers and sisters to bring an end to this war.

Resolution:

Be it resolved that the UFT take a public position in opposition to the torture of Iraqi prisoners and in opposition to the war in Iraq, and,

Be it resolved that we organize a rally outside the AFT convention in DC to show our opposition to this treatment of our fellow workers.

Presented by UFT members and members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)

Students, Teachers Defend PLP'er Attacked by Bosses

NEW YORK CITY. May 19 -- Rank-and-file members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) are defending a PLP teacher who is under attack because of the growing fascist activities of schools Chancellor Klein and billionaire Mayor Bloomberg.

The chaotic conditions in the city's school system this year, and the Klein-Bloomberg assault, have resulted in unsatisfactory observations -- "U" ratings -- for many teachers city-wide. They're particularly aiming at non-tenured teachers, the easiest to fire.

Their "logic" is that the school system is failing, and therefore it must be the teachers' fault -- "not enough teachers are getting unsatisfactory observations." Therefore, "to teach children better," get rid of the "unsatisfactory" teachers, rather than provide smaller classes or any other modern teaching tools. Of course, well-hidden is the ruling class's racist purpose of creating a huge pool of poorly-educated, largely black and Latin youth who will fill millions of minimum-wage jobs or become cannon fodder for the bosses' imperialist wars.

The PLP teacher under attack was tenured under a trades-area license. Then this particular trade was one among many that have been cut from the curriculum in recent years. This is partly because, by law, no vocational class can have more than 24 students. (Regular classes here have a contractual limit of 34 students; many often have more.) Therefore, the need to fund more teachers for such classes plus the cost of the necessary tools and materials for vocational trades, make them a "luxury" nowadays, even though they provide students with the skills for future jobs as electricians, dental mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, etc.

The PL'er is now teaching under a Social Studies license, currently unprotected by tenure. When the school Principal and Assistant Principal started to harass and "U" rate this teacher, despite his 17 years of satisfactory classroom experience, the school's students and teachers wrote letters to the union president and collected petitions which they presented to the principal and divisional superintendent. They wrote and sang fighting songs on his behalf and displayed numerous acts of common decency towards him. Nevertheless the Principal continued the harassment and she and the Assistant Principal gave him only one satisfactory observation for the year and five unsatisfactories. This is enough to revoke his license and his job.

Teachers turned up at our comrade's room when they thought the administration would be observing him, to be present as independent observers in order to certify his competence.

The PL'er grieved every single "U" rating and the many scathing complaint letters the administration had given him. Four letters were thrown out at a second-stage grievance. But dismissal of the observation reports is more difficult.

Some teachers wrote the union president saying that although they disagreed with the PL'ers communist politics, they applauded the many extra things he does for the students and the school. They declared that if the union could not protect such a caring teacher, it has no power at all.

Recently, when this teacher went to a second-stage grievance on one of the unsatisfactory observations, the adjudicator agreed he indeed should have had a pre-observation, since he's at risk of losing his job. Though a mere technicality, it indicates that the union is serious about defending him.

It's clear that this union defense stems from the struggle the rank-and-file union members and students waged on his behalf over the last year. It's certainly important to have friends.

Link U.S. War on Iraq to Anti-Muslim Racism

CALIFORNIA -- Recently 50 students and faculty at an urban community college attended a forum on Israel/Palestine, sponsored by the new campus Political Science Club. Speakers related this issue to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the racist portrayal of Muslims in U.S. mass culture. "I always hear one thing at my synagogue," said a Jewish student. "This made me think about Arabs in a different way."

This forum was a modest but significant event on a very diverse working-class campus with few student activities. It's been a great learning experience for the Political Science Club. None of the eight student organizers -- a multiracial group of young women and men-- had ever participated in such an event before, let alone planned one. The club president captured the spirit in her closing remarks: "We can't just watch the news for a few minutes every day. We have to seek out information for ourselves and share it with other people. And we have to act on it!"

Two students brought relatives who now want to join the club although they're not students themselves. "I've learned things here today that I never learned in a classroom," said one, a black health care worker.

Afterwards, several teachers approached the club's faculty sponsor, all with the same message: "This was a very good thing for our campus. Our students need to think more about global issues. They have to hear different perspectives."

"What [one speaker] said about the dangers of nationalism really made sense to me," a Latina student commented. "We have to think more about how we are all alike." She wants the club to meet over the summer "and maybe organize some protests."

A student close to PLP is joining the club, and plans to introduce CHALLENGE to more students. While these are small developments relative to the enormity of imperialist crisis and war, such steps can lead to much bigger ones.

Militant FIAT Strikes Highlight Key Role of Industrial Workers

MELFI, ITALY, May 17 -- A 21-day wildcat strike by 5,000 FIAT workers, backed by thousands of auto and steel workers walking out in solidarity, forced some significant concessions from the bosses. The FIAT workers followed the lead of strikers in smaller supply plants, demanding wage parity with the rest of FIAT's workers, an end to the bosses' reign of terror inside the plant and to the grueling rotating schedule that forces 12 consecutive work days without a break. This mass struggle demonstrates the key role industrial workers play in all capitalist societies.

The workers fought FIAT, the union hacks and the cops. The mass solidarity reminded many of the "Struggles of 1968," when industrial workers -- inspired by the heroic Vietnamese workers and peasants and China's Cultural Revolution -- waged militant battles against their bosses and union hacks.

The ten-year-old, high-tech Melfi plant is the most productive FIAT plant ever. It also makes parts for other FIAT plants, and the strike affected production throughout Italy. The rotten working conditions and wages in this southern plant, far below rates in the North, symbolized the social pact among the various capitalist parties (including the fake-left), the union hacks and the bosses. But capitalism's international crisis and Prime Minister Berlusconi's sending troops to support the U.S. occupation of Iraq have workers fighting these attacks. Bus drivers in Milan and Alitalia airline workers have been wildcatting to protect their jobs.

The strikers surrounded the plant to stop scabs. The UIL (social-democrats) and CISL (Catholic) union hacks and the bosses' media said such actions were "antiquated" and led nowhere.

The cops, ordered to protect scabs, surrounded the picket lines and scuffles broke out. Several workers and cops were injured. The two union federations reached a sellout deal with FIAT behind the backs of the workers. The fake-left Auto and Steel workers union (FIOM-CGIL) didn't sign the sellout, but told workers to return to work while they continued negotiating, but the strikers stood firm.

On April 26, thousands of workers responded to the police attack on the Melfi workers by striking 100 plants in the Turin region and another 100 in Brescia province, forcing FIOM to call a 4-hour nation-wide auto and steel strike on April 28, in solidarity with the Melfi workers. Many struck for a full day. In FIAT's biggest plant, in Turin, 11,000 workers marched shouting, "Long live the methods of Melfi workers!" Similar actions occurred at the Alfa Romeo plants in Pomigliani and Val di Sangro. At FIAT's Sicily plant, workers raised 25,000 Euros for the Melfi strikers.

The Melfi strike cost FIAT over 21,000 vehicles and 200 million Euros in lost production. The company agreed to recognize rank-and-file groups like RSU (international Workers' Commissions) and COBAS (Rank-and-File Committees) as participants in the negotiations. Average monthly wage hikes of $126 will give Melfi workers parity with the rest of FIAT in two years. Workers will no longer have to work back-to-back weeks of night shifts and the maximum consecutive working days will be 10. Seven holidays were won, and there will be a moratorium on the company's long-standing disciplinary measures. Mass meetings approved the settlement by a 77% "Yes" vote.

But like all reform victories, they are fleeting and the bosses and union hacks are already planning to take it back. During the intensifying world capitalist crisis, FIAT, like all auto bosses, must increase exploitation of its workforce to compete with its rivals in the world market.

Despite a tremendous history of militant struggle, FIAT workers are trapped on a capitalist treadmill. But their actions create the atmosphere where the PLP can grow and develop a mass base for revolutionary communism. Only communist revolution can end imperialist war and capitalist crisis.

Without industrial workers, capitalists cannot produce anything. The union hacks and fake leftists serve the bosses. Workers can run society without any of these parasites and war-makers.

SBC Walkout Sold Out By Losing Patriotic Strategy

CHICAGO, IL May 24 -- After a four-day strike, SBC Communications reached a tentative contract covering 100,000 technicians, operators and customer service representatives of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in 13 states. The contract also seals the fates of thousands more in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers (IBEW). Their contract expires June 26.

SBC has the highest profit margins in the telecommunication industry. It recently bought AT&T Wireless in the largest recorded cash purchase in history. Last year alone SBC generated an $8.5 billion profit, while outsourcing 20,000 jobs to U.S. non-union companies and to India, the Philippines and elsewhere. This is especially true for jobs in high-speed DSL, business data systems and WiFi Internet access.

Now SBC claims it can only remain competitive by slashing active and retired workers health benefits! This is the logic of capitalism, especially in times of war and growing fascism. SBC is doing what it must to cut costs, lower wages and maximize profits -- the golden rule of Wall Street's finance capitalists to whom SBC bosses must answer.

The CWA and IBEW misleaders have already sacrificed jobs, wages, pensions and extra time off. The new 5-year war-contract calls for a measly 2% wage increase and lump-sum payments that will be eaten up by higher health insurance and prescription costs. There'll be no layoffs of current workers, but new hires are on their own.

The union leaders emphasized the issue of outsourcing jobs to India, around the line of "American Jobs for American Workers." This is a sure loser. Instead of fighting other workers for the bosses' crumbs, we should be uniting will all our brothers and sisters against ALL bosses. The Nazis had a similar slogan in Germany before World War II. Waving the bosses' flag only ties us to U.S. imperialism's slaughter in Iraq and to John Kerry's Democrats, who are attacking Bush for not sending even more troops to secure their oil empire.

At best, the union leaders only sign agreements legalizing our exploitation. At worst, they're willing accomplices with U.S. imperialism, attacking workers here and worldwide, helping the bosses fuel their war machine.

PLP fights to put the international working class in command, from Chicago to Calcutta. Through this contract struggle we have kept our eye on the prize. More SBC workers are reading CHALLENGE and contributing to the class struggle. The current war-contract, like the war itself, will only make us more committed to our goal.

Exchanging EU for U.S. Imperialists Won't Help Latin American Workers

MEXICO CITY, May 24 -- The 3rd Summit of rulers from Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union (EU) will meet in Gualajara next week. Its alleged theme is to alleviate the area's extreme poverty. But capitalism's international crisis only intensifies the exploitation of the working class. This conference will sharpen the rivalry between the European and U.S. imperialists in this region.

Other imperialists are taking advantage of the U.S.'s quagmire in Iraq (see page 1) to penetrate what the U.S. considers its backyard. Brazil's President Lula just concluded a visit to China to expand trade between the two countries. China is importing all it can from Brazil and Argentina.

Mexico's President Fox is one ruler who remains faithful to the U.S. version of globalization and free markets. Even so, he's also seeking to diversify Mexico's economy, making deals with the European imperialists.

Europe's bosses need to expand. They've already admitted the former Soviet bloc countries into the EU, whose economy is growing only 1.5% per year, not the expected 4.6%. UE Commissioner Chris Patten said its integration with Latin America is a top priority. The EU is already Latin America's second biggest trading partner, the exchange doubling to 53.7 billions euros from 1990 to 2002. The EU is already the leading trading partner of MERCOSUR (the Argentina/Brazil-led common market).

Europe's bosses are also challenging the U.S.'s main weapon -- the military -- in the region, with France sending troops to Haiti after the overthrow of Aristide being part of that plan. Lula has promised to send Brazilian "peacekeepers" there as well.

Exchanging one imperialist master for another is no answer to the misery and super-exploitation of workers anywhere. We don't need more Lulas or Chavez's; we need more revolutionary communists to fight all forms of capitalism; with workers' power. Join PLP in making this a reality.

PLP Youth Lead Fight vs. War Recruiters

BROOKLYN, NY, May 22 -- Bush says more troops are "needed" in Iraq. Where will they come from? Using rising youth unemployment and the resulting "economic draft," the U.S. military's steady invasion of our high schools and universities is a major factor making the current imperialist adventure in Iraq possible. The presence of these recruiters impelled about 60 people to gather in a local church to expose them at a forum titled, "From Brooklyn to Baghdad?"

Young PLP'ers set the tone in their opening speeches, placing the role of military recruiters in the context of the general crisis of capitalism, its effect on education and imperialist war. They drew rousing applause. When a local politician tried to drum up support for Kerry, he was heckled and received scant approval.

The highlight of the event came when two young recent veterans revealed that many of their fellow soldiers do not support the war. It was clear that the "mighty" U.S. Army is depending on youth who see the truth and oppose the war.

About 20 workers and youth signed up to picket the local recruiting station. We want military recruiters out of our schools, but that's not enough. When the draft comes -- when, not if -- we want to organize workers and soldiers to turn the fight around against the warmakers once and for all.

California Trucker Says It's A Fight for Survival

LOS ANGELES, May 25 -- Thousands of truck drivers either work for a company or "own" their own trucks --in debt up to their eyeballs to a bank.They work the ports here, Long Beach and Oakland, moving millions of tons of goods weekly in and out of California, the sixth largest economy in the world. Those in LA and Long Beach ports move more merchandise, much of it from China, than any other U.S. port.

These truckers are a crucial link in the production chain, moving materials from the factories and ports to points throughout the country. That's why, when they take to the streets demanding better conditions, the liberals rulers -- through the AFL-CIO and other community-based organizations like Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana -- try to control the drivers' organizing campaign. They want to confine their discontent within the limits of the capitalist system.

Part of the attack on these drivers is racist. In the LA area, the great majority of the drivers are Latino immigrant workers. The other part of the attack is the imperialist war. The big bosses are driving for maximum profits through high diesel costs, low wages and many taxes to pay for their oil war.

At the California ports there are several groups of workers looking for the best way to organize themselves. Some already have established small committees. Others want to form one. In general, they see the need to organize against the big bosses' attacks.

The following is an interview with a truck driver who "owns" his truck.

Q: What are your demands?
A: That they lower the cost of diesel and raise the price they pay for cargo shipped by 30%. And that the intermediary companies (brokers) pay the road taxes and the insurance on the trucks.

Q: Does owning your own truck make you feel different from any other worker?
A: No. Look, the truck is just a tool for work. The average cost of a truck is $25,000. The majority have only one truck and we owe the cost of it to the bank or to a credit card. We depend on the schedule and orders of the intermediary companies, the brokers. Some think they can escape from being poor like this, but those are just illusions.

Q: What is the average wage for a driver, a truck "owner," in the ports?
A: Look, I work and drive throughout California. If it's a good week, I make about $900 for about 60 hours. After taking out for taxes, I make about $14 an hour, with no benefits. The local drivers, who just drive inside Los Angeles, make even less.

Q: Do unionized drivers have it better?
A: We're still looking for the best option. Many drivers don't trust the Teamsters. But maybe we'd better find out more and understand that they would just be "intermediaries" with whom you have to negotiate to get a little more.

Q: Why are you a truck driver?
A: My other option would be McDonalds. Unfortunately, the poverty and hunger we inherited from those who came before us has left us with no choice but to fight to survive. We'll be carrying this load until we organize against the system. I believe we need a new world.

These drivers, like industrial workers and others, can play a key role in liberating the working class. The rulers and their politicians will try to win them to fascism and to support imperialist wars. But independently of whether they join in a union or a community organization, our main role is to win them to join the revolutionary communist movement to destroy this capitalist system with its poverty and wars. The attacks against them open up many to this outlook.

Small NJ Town Opposes Sending Guard to Iraq

RED BANK, NJ, May 23 -- Rocked by Iraqi opposition to its invasion, torture and mass killings, the Bush regime announced in March that many National Guard units were being sent to Iraq, including the 2nd Division, virtually all of the New York and New Jersey Guard.

On May 22, about 40 people picketed the Army-Navy-Air Force recruiting station on Monmouth St. here to protest sending the Guard out of state for the first time in living memory. Passersby in cars and on foot waved, honked horns, and cheered. Not a single person made a hostile remark! There's little support for the war here.

Pickets and marchers chanted spirited slogans. Most were pacifist or anti-Bush, but Kerry had few defenders here. A few marchers started anti-imperialist chants which the group readily picked up, confirming that many are open to anti-capitalist ideas.

Highlight of the picket, march and rally were two short speeches by a young woman from the NJ Guard protesting being sent to Iraq. She's filing for C.O. (Conscientious Objector) status on grounds that this war is immoral. She declared that Guard members' "free speech" is curtailed. She listed what she's "not allowed to say," thereby saying them without actually affirming them.

The march went through downtown Red Bank, then back to the recruiting station and a concluding rally at the railroad station. Over $100 was raised for the young Guardswoman's legal expenses.

The large turnout for such a small NJ town and the enthusiastic reception proves that the ruling-class brutality has helped many people see through their illusions. A few CHALLENGES were seen in marchers' hands. While it's good that this Guardswoman expresses her anti-war sentiments, it would be better if soldiers opposed to the war organized inside the military. We must work hard to build communist ideas among all those who are disgusted by U.S. rulers' war on workers, at home and abroad.

Bush's `Mission Accomplished':
Timkin Lays off 1,300

CANTON, OHIO, May 19 -- "The future of this company is bright and therefore, the future of employment is bright for the families that work here." That's what Bush told the workers at the Timkin company here just 13 months ago, pushing his tax cuts, which he said would "spur the economy."

The "bright future" has become a "Mission Acomplished." Timkin, the city's largest employer, is shutting its doors and laying off 1,300 workers here. "How can I afford to get married, afford a house payment, maybe kids, if I don't have a job?" said Timkin worker Shawn Higgins. (Canton TV News channel 5, 5/19)

These mass layoffs are "a devastating blow to Canton." The company is a $4 billion producer of steel, alloys, bearings, etc., with 26,000 workers in 27 countries. Company boss W. R. Timkin gives the standard capitalist reason for the shutdown -- "have to keep up with the competition" -- and will shift work to lower-wage plants.

Ohio has lost 200,000 jobs since Bush became president. Meanwhile, boss Timkin raked in $2.6 million in salary last year and will get a $59,000 tax break from Bush's tax cuts that were supposed to "spur the economy." "Incidentally," Timkin raised $600,000 in one night for Bush's re-election campaign. One hand certainly does wash the other.

Rather than listening to, and cheering, Bush's (or any other politician's) patriotic lies, Timkin workers should be fighting like hell against these attacks, and joining in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in all of Timkin's other plants to prevent the bosses from using one group against another.

No matter who is president, capitalism grinds down workers according to the laws of the free market. To "stay competitive," bosses must seek maximize profits or their rivals will drive them under. Workers produce the value from which those profits are derived. To increase profits, bosses must lower the cost of the labor that produces them, moving to ever-lower-wage areas -- from the U.S. to Mexico to China and back to prison labor in the U.S. This is the source of poverty and mass unemployment in all capitalist countries.

The only real solution for Timkin's workers and all workers is to destroy the profit system that creates these intolerable conditions. That's what communist revolution is all about.

LETTERS

A Communist's Trip Into Voter Registration Land

On Saturday, May 8, I rode with two dozen NYC members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) on a bus to Philadelphia where we joined hundreds of other trade unionists from 1199, IBEW and other unions to register voters in this "swing state." I've been active in our union's political affairs for about eight years, but this was my first attempt to deal with registering voters to oppose an incumbent president.

From PLP's point of view, my main purpose was to develop better relationships with some fellow UFT members, discuss commonly-raised aspects of communism, sell some CHALLENGES and increase my union activism. It was a full day -- we left at 7 A.M. and got home at 10 that night.

On the trip to Philadelphia, I got out a few CHALLENGES, sang the pro-Soviet World War II song "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" to a group of teachers, and had an argument about the Soviet leader. Upon arrival, we joined about 400 workers from the other unions in an activity the leaders entitled, "Move It." They didn't call for Kerry's election, just for Bush's defeat. Despite the absence of Kerry signs or buttons, to punctuate their election choice a main speaker related her struggle to persuade her mother to vote against Bush. She finally won, but the mother now wants to vote for Nader, so now she's struggling with her to vote for a Democrat who's "more likely to win."

In going door-to-door, our UFT group registered nearly 100 people. I must confess I had terribly mixed feelings. In 40 years I've only voted once, and then for a protest candidate. I did, however, get better acquainted with my companions on the journey. They didn't feel too confident about voting for Kerry, although they weren't quite ready to say people shouldn't vote. Some felt Kucinich would have been better, but felt nobody would have voted for him.

After a full day's work, on the bus trip back I was applauded when I sang a revolutionary song, "The World Is Overburdened With the Idle and the Rich." Most of these people have seen Party members active on the floor of the Delegate Assembly. Although most on the bus were members of the union's ruling Unity caucus, many appreciate our honesty and integrity. They're not ready to join, but are really pleased that we're part of the UFT.

All in all, it was a good day. We'd become quite comradely after so many hours together. You really have to "be in it to win it."

Red Teacher

Homeland Security Motto: ARREST! ARREST!

Conditions are changing qualitatively in terms of developing fascism, Homeland Security and the repressive apparatus. The FBI's Counter Terrorism Division, with a foreign and domestic structure, is investigating anti-war groups. Thousands of wiretaps have been executed under the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) Court. These are secret, "unconstrained" wiretaps. All the intelligence gathered goes directly to criminal investigations.

There are also National Security letters from the Attorney General's office. They're not issued through the FISA Court, require no judge's order and no "reasonable" basis. Thousands are being sent out to look at bank records, hacking into computers to monitor keystrokes, phone taps, and breaking and entering into homes. And it's a federal crime for your bank or phone company to tell you you're being watched.

Michael Chertoff used to be #3 at the Department of Justice. He's now on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. and on the fast track to the Supreme Court. He recently asked the question, "Now that we can collect huge amounts of intelligence, what should we do with it?" His answer? "ARREST!" He called for "creating the legal architecture" to make it easier to arrest U.S. citizens, and advocated using the threat of being held as an "enemy combatant" to get "suspects" to talk. He said this method has already proven successful with immigrants who've been arrested.

After the elections, there'll be an increase in the repressive apparatus, no matter who's elected. We must fight the illusion of waiting on the "big event," for Hitler to be elected. The objections raised by the Democrats and the ACLU to the Patriot Act or Patriot Act II are over form, not content. The train has already left the station on 9/11.

Mid-west Reader

Anti-war Jogger Talks; GIs Listen

Usually about 30 to 40 people attend regular meetings of the liberal peace group I've belonged to for several years. Recently there's been much debate over strategy because some people are pushing hard to "defeat George Bush" but others rightly see Kerry as another war-maker who doesn't share their values.

At the last meeting, each person stated briefly what would most energize him or her. I said we should start outreaching to people in the military and their families.

I've said this before, drawing little reaction, but this time was different. Half a dozen people sat up in their seats and said "Yes!" Several others repeated my idea when they spoke.

Later, someone told a story about an incident on her morning jog. Coming around a corner, she encountered a group of reservists jogging towards her, chanting cadences. Startled, she called out to them, "Be kind to the Iraqi people!" The next lap around, she was better prepared, and started saying the same thing in cadence. To her surprise, they stopped their cadence and listened to her.

The publicity over the horrible photos of tortured Iraqi prisoners, as well as the fact that other soldiers exposed them, has brought home to many people that it matters a whole lot what soldiers think and do. This peace group may be willing to encourage some sort of resistance to imperialist butchery. And both the soldiers and the peace organizers can learn a lot from such work.

Peace group member

From Silent Vigils
To Militant Rallies

When Bush declared the Iraq war "over" last year, many people who had participated in "peace vigils" and large protests were discouraged. Only a few of the hundreds of regular weekly vigils continued, with smaller numbers of people. Over the last month, though -- after Falluja, and the wide exposure of the torture photos -- the mood is changing.

Several members of my church have organized a new vigil at a government building where lots of people wait in line to enter. Instead of silently holding signs, we take turns giving short speeches. Recently, before we went out, we exchanged ideas about the outrageous treatment of Iraqi prisoners, and how the torrent of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim war propaganda had created the climate for it. I said that black and Latin people imprisoned in the U.S. suffered the same kind of racist abuse right here. Two of my friends agreed, and this became one of the main themes of our small rally that day. Most of the folks waiting in line listened intently, more than the week before when we talked only about Iraq. Many nodded in agreement, and several Latina workers applauded.

Some other people I know are organizing another new regular protest. One is a young worker, originally from the Mideast, who reminded me that we had talked at a street-corner rally over a year ago. Then she mainly wanted to dump Saddam Hussein. She remembered what I had said then, about the U.S. having no plan to replace him with anything better, and about the real reason for the war being control of oil profits. Since then, she has spent a great deal of time on the Internet, getting and sharing information. She's totally against the war. She wants to get some of her friends to help with the new "peace vigil" and perhaps meet as a discussion group.

It's a long way from peace vigils to revolution, and most of my friends are not very far along that road. Some are joining the Kerry campaign. But the worst mistake we could make would be to underestimate the impact we can have during these difficult times. In my experience, when we put our ideas forward, on whatever level, people generally respond well to them. This can open up more opportunities.

Anti-imperialist war activist

The Myth of Ghouliani

The "testimony" of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani before the commission "investigating" 9/11, and the commissioners' "questioning" of Giuliani is a case study of ruling-class hypocrisy. The day before, one commission member had described the city's crisis coordination and communications system as "not worthy of the Boy Scouts." Yet when Ghouliani appeared, he was fawned over, praised as a "hero," handled with kid gloves and never asked any sharp questions, causing the wife of one victim to condemn the panel for "letting Rudy Giuliani polish his crown."

It was the families of those killed on 9/11 who challenged the Ghouliani "hero" myth. One was hustled out when she shouted, "3,000 people murdered does not mean leadership....Let me ask the real questions." "Liar!" yelled another." Said the mother of one dead firefighter, "My son was murdered because of your incompetence!" Another relative kept challenging Ghouliani and the Commission with, "Ask about why the CIA trained al Qaeda." A sister of another dead firefighter shouted at the ex-mayor, "Talk about the radios."

This last point exposes the city's complicity in hundreds of unnecessary deaths. Firefighters charged that their radios didn't function and therefore they could not communicate with other first responders or with any command posts, nor could they hear orders to evacuate the North tower after the South tower had collapsed. The firefighters say these faulty radios caused at least 100 unnecessary deaths. The firefighters' death toll was 15 times that of the cops. Yet not one question was asked Ghouliani about these radios nor was any rank-and-file firefighter called to testify.

The radios that didn't function on 9/11 were the same ones that didn't function during the 1993 bombing. Several months before 9/11, the Ghouliani administration struck a no-bid, $33 million deal with Motorola to purchase new digital radios over fire department objections. Never field-tested, designed for intelligence agencies needing encryption capabilities, they had no application on the fire ground. After repeated failures, some life-threatening, they had to be withdrawn. Firefighters were stuck with the old radios which hadn't functioned properly in the 1993 bombing, were failure-prone in high-rise buildings and were incompatible with the police communications system.

Firefighters had called for a Grand Jury investigation of the no-bid Motorola deal, given the tendency of the ex-mayor's administration to award contracts to rich political supporters. But that never happened either.

Nor did any commissioner question Ghouliani -- given the 1993 bombing -- about why he installed a $13 million command "bunker" on the 21st floor of 7 World Trade Center. There a massive tank holding thousands of gallons of diesel fuel at ground level was connected to pipes running up to the command center, in violation of city codes. The fuel was ignited by debris from the Twin Towers, melting the building's key supports and totally destroying it.

The rulers and their lackey politicians, including the 9/11 Commissioners, care not one whit for working people whose lives are destroyed by their worldwide imperialist adventures. The CIA trained and organized the fundamentalists' "jihad" in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, creating the very gang that engineered the 9/11 attack. This was the avowed policy of the Carter administration and all its successors. They are murdering thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of GIs today. Torture and death are too good for these imperialist bastards.

A Brooklyn old-timer

China, PLP and the 20th Century

The article "New Communist International Movement Must Bury Dark Ages," (CHALLENGE, 12/17/03) states that the three most important events of the 20th Century were the 1917 communist-led Russian Revolution, the Soviet Red Army's defeat of the Nazi war machine in World War II, and the collapse of the old communist movement. But there should have been at least three other most important events of the last century -- the communist-led Chinese Revolution, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the birth of a New International Communist Movement led by PLP that fights for communism.

It's not this writer's intention to spell out the details of why these events were just as important, or more so, than the collapse of the old communist movement. But not to consider for this honor the Chinese Revolution -- that for some years put one-fourth of humanity under communist leadership and proved that so-called backward, "third world," non-white people could be won to the most advanced communist line of the times -- could be misconstrued as PLP being racist and having a slanted Eurocentric view of history.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was also a major milestone on the exploited masses' road to revolution. It helped propel the understanding of revolutionary theory and practice to greater heights, especially the primacy of ideology over material incentives. Out of this struggle and the political debate it engendered, came PLP's Road to Revolution III, an indispensable prerequisite for the most advanced line the communist movement has yet produced, Road to Revolution IV.

Lastly is the emergence of PLP which has not only kept the red flag of revolution flying high, but has made tremendous contributions to revolutionary theory and has begun building a fledgling new communist international. This despite the collapse of the old communist movement when the working class seems to be in a quagmire of cynicism, religious and nationalist fanaticism, and while the rulers of the world plunder and butcher at will. PLP has great potential and represents the best advance for the international working class since the collapse of the old movement. We have a long way to go, and face titanic battles, but we're building on a strong foundation, and on the shoulders of giants.

A Comrade

Printing Prison Photo A Mistake

The excellent front-page article (CHALLENGE, 5/26) "Torture under capitalism" makes the important point that "the imperialists' need for maximum profits and control of oil makes racist intimidation and killing the primary mission of the U.S. Armed Forces." However, it was a mistake to reprint the horrible photo of the soldier with an Iraqi man on a leash. Not only is it disgusting racist pornography, but it reinforces the rulers' message that "a few bad soldiers" are to blame. The captioned cartoon in Desafio at least made a political point, but again, why not redraw the picture with an imperialist holding the leash? Graphics are very powerful. Even though some MP's (some of them are also U.S. prison guards) have been won to carry out the bosses' fascist attacks, the main culprits are the imperialists themselves. We must always be conscious that the message conveyed is consistent with the line of the accompanying article.

A comrade

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

LBJ/Vietnam = Bush/Iraq

Bush was asked about any comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam. He said, "The analogy is false."

By his own words....Bush is repeating the worst of Johnson....

Bush said: "America's objective in Iraq is limited and it is firm. We seek and independent, free and secure Iraq."

In 1966 Johnson said: "Our purpose is a limited one, and that is to permit self-determination for the people of South Vietnam."

Bush said: "As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation, and neither does America. We're not an imperial power."

In 1968, Johnson said: "We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination....

Bush said: "We will succeed in Iraq. We're carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change."

In 1968, Johnson said: "So far as changing our basic strategy, the answer would be no."

....Bush said: "Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world."

Johnson said in 1966: "The time is now, and the place is Vietnam." (Boston Globe)

No majority rule on minimum wage

For the bottom 5 percent -- the least-skilled, lowest-paid men and women...more than six million people -- wages go up only when the minimum wage does....

The public is sympathetic....In a January poll...the Pew Research Center found that 94 percent of the 1,503 people questioned were in favor of an increase in the minimum wage.... (NYT, 5/16)

Black women Soldiers Are anti-war

The whole [prison] episode can be reduced to....the systemic actions of an occupying institution....

Senator Ben Campbell said, "I don't know how these people got into our army."

....For the most part they joined to get paid, not because they believed in the war on terror. Indeed, the most over-represented demographic group in the military -- African-American women -- is the same group least likely to support the war in Iraq. (GW, 5/20)

Rob Palestinians of water

More than 80% of water from the West Bank goes to Israel. The Palestinians are allotted just 18% of the water that is extracted from their own land. Palestinian villages and farmers are monitored by meters fitted to pumps and punished for overuse. Jewish settlers....use 10 times as much water per capita as each Palestinian. (GW, 1/28) Big Bosses Finance `White-Skin Privlege'The highest levels of the ruling class have decided to fund white skin privilege ideology --.the capitalist idea that white workers are privileged or benefit from racism. (See CHALLENGE article `Circular Logic' Dooms Working-Class Anti-Racist Struggle, 5/12/04) They know that this capitalist ideology doesn't threaten their rule, as a communist-led, pro-working class, anti-racist movement would.

One promoter of this ideology is The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. Based in New Orleans, it has trained 100,000, chiefly through its Undoing Racism workshops and forums. In 1996-1997, it established offices in Minnesota, Brooklyn, Seattle and Berkeley, CA. More recently, the Institute has "provided leadership for a new national Anti-Racism Training Institute, with sites in Albuquerque, Seattle, New Orleans and Broward County, FL. " (The People's Institute web site)

Various ruling-class foundations have funded this rapid expansion. In 1997, the Charles Stewart Mott foundation invited The People's Institute to Flint, Mich. to train "a diverse group of community leaders." Within three years, The Institute was presenting its white skin privilege ideology to over 500 leaders in Flint, financed by an additional grant from the Mott foundation (Sojourners Magazine, 9/1/2000).

Charles Stewart Mott founded the C.S. Mott foundation in 1926. He was Vice-President of General Motors and a board member for 60 years until his death in 1973. This is the same General Motors that gutted Flint during the eighties by closing plant after plant, sending tens of thousands onto the streets.

GM, probably more than any other single corporation, devastated the black working class during the last decade. As with any other racist attack, white workers also suffered in huge numbers as millions of industrial jobs were destroyed.

The Mott foundation, with assets of $2 billion plus, is a premier ruling-class foundation. The present chair, president and CEO, William S. White was offered the job by his father-in-law Harding Mott, son of Charles. Other family relations fill the board, continuing GM's "humanitarian" traditions.

Meanwhile, the Gotto Foundation of Minneapolis funded The Institute's Minnesota office. Louis W. Hill, Jr., son of a railroad robber baron who founded the Great Northern Railroad, started the Gotto foundation. His son Louis F. Hill leads it today.

The People's Institute West in Berkeley, CA. "was made possible by funding from the Grousbeck Family Foundation (The People Institute West web site)," which can be contacted c/o H.I. Grousbeck, Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The San Francisco Foundation provides grants for operating expenses. With $700 million in assets, it's the one of the country's largest community foundations. Founded by Daniel Koshland, former CEO of Levi Strauss from 1922-1979, the SF foundation board of trustees includes vice-chair Peter E Haas, Jr., another heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Peter's brother Robert was Levi Strauss CEO from 1984-1999, and Chairman of the Board since 1989. He's a member of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and a trustee of the Brookings Institution.

Meanwhile, the chair of the Koshland Awards Committee of the SF Foundation, Michael Omi, holds positions at UC Berkeley, the University of Washington, the University of Minnesota and the advisory board of the Rockefeller Foundation.

All in all, it's a ruling-class project.

Imperialism Creates Gangs, Then Burns Youth Alive

It was like a scene out of Dante's inferno -- 103 young people incinerated alive by a fire in a Honduras jail. Although blood-curdling, we shouldn't be surprised. One hundred and eighty-two youth jammed into a cell meant for 50. When the fire broke out, the jailers first refused to let them out. Some survived with first degree burns but most died, trapped in the fire.

The rulers throughout Central America have a long history as mass murderers, learning well from their Washington masters. After all, John Negroponte, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, developed the torture methods used against Iraqi and Afghan prisoners when he was ambassador to Honduras during the region-wide civil war. The bosses have killed hundreds of thousands of workers and youth -- many of them Indians and dark-skinned -- to protect their political and economic power. This can only end when our Party can expand throughout Central America and organize the working class to take state power to build communism!

Besides physical genocide amid the worst material conditions, the capitalists murder us with their poisonous ideologies. Thus, in Central America they've won thousands -- in Honduras alone, possibly 40,000 -- to belong to hated street gangs called "maras." These gangs use and deal drugs, slaughter each other and terrorize the general population.

They had never existed in Central America, even when there was no communist movement to inspire working-class youth to engage in class war instead of drugs and crime. This was the case in Honduras from early 1900s until 1954 when the Honduras Communist Party (HCP) was founded. These gangs are a product of capitalism in decay and in particular of the decline of US imperialism.

These "Maras" are a direct export of US imperialism. In the 80s the US bosses inundated the Latin and black working class neighborhoods in the US with crack cocaine in order to fund their Contra War against the Sandinistas and to divert unemployed, rebellious youth in the US. This produced hundreds of thousands of drug addicts and gave rise to vicious gangs and gang warfare for the control of the drug traffic. Thousands of youth have been killed and hundreds of thousands more jailed, brutalized and put to work for pennies an hour.

After serving their sentences, some of these gang members were deported to Central America. That is how the Maras got their start, as the US ruling class exported their strategy of dealing with potentially one of the most revolutionary sectors of the working class.

In Central America, this US policy seems to work wonders for the bosses. They have been able to win these youth to become enemies of the working class. They don't want a repeat of the 70s and 80s when national liberation insurrection was in the air and tens of thousands of youth in their early teens joined the armed struggle against the US backed regimes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Honduras never had an insurrectionary situation, even though the conditions cry out for communist revolution. But the youth in Honduras never heard this cry because the HCP never fought for insurrection or communism. While others did fight for insurrection, they did not fight for communism. But the working class youth is our future and hope. When inspired, they bring enthusiasm, audacity, and creativity to the struggle. It's our responsibility to rescue them from the jaws of the bosses and win them to our Party. Let the murders of the youth in the Honduran prison, along with the murders and tortures in Iraqi and US prisons, cause us to strengthen our commitment to build PLP internationally to bury all the murderers of our youth!

387 Million Vote in India But Capitalist Horror Marches On

The recent defeat of the right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP party-led coalition in India has been called a victory over free markets and globalization. While hundreds of millions voted against them, the winning Congress Party will not obey this popular mandate.

Sonia Gandhi (the Italian-born head of the Congress Party) decided not to become Prime Minister -- even though her Party's rank and file begged her to take it. Her decision has as much to do with fears for her life (her husband, Sanjiv and her mother-in-law, Indira, were both murdered in the job), as with pressure from The City (London's stock market), Wall Street and the local bourgeoisie to get one of their own there. However, Manmohan Singh, 71, the new PM was a Governor of the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank. He will be the first Sikh to lead India. "As Finance Minister from 1991 to 1996 under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, the white-bearded Singh rescued India from financial crisis and put its old socialist economy [read: state capitalist] on the path to free-market reform." (Business Week, 5/31)

The losing BJP government called its electoral campaign "India Shines," given that the economy was growing 8% a year and that Bangalore and other areas attract information technology investors from all over the world. This is enriching well-educated Indians and reaping super-profits for IBM, Intel, HSBC, Delta Airlines, Microsoft and other international capitalists. But conditions for most Indians are going from bad to worse.

Agriculture is a mess -- in recent years 8,000 poor peasants committed suicide because of bankruptcy. While India graduates 2.5 million students from college annually, and probably more engineers than any other country, non-university schools are a disaster. "Nearly 40% of Indians remain illiterate. Unemployment...is estimated at 7% to 10%, and with 10 million entering the workforce each year, joblessness will worsen....223 million Indians live in hunger, more than in all of Africa, consuming less than 1960 calories per day." (BW).

The bosses fear rebellions, particularly after the February 50-million-strong general strike almost became an uprising in many areas. So the Congress Party is much better for the bosses now. It will make some changes, mainly to benefit capitalism: build the infrastructure, invest more in agriculture and public education. Also, many local bosses fear China becoming Asia's superpower and have more confidence the Congress Party can handle that rivalry. When it was in power previously, it had launched a border war against Mao's China.

The two big fake leftist parties -- the "Communist" Party of India (CPI) and the "Communist" Party Marxist (CPM) -- drew 27 million votes and now control 60 seats (15%) in India's Parliament). They have been and will be particularly helpful to the bosses. Since 1977, the CPM has run the state of West Bengal. It also runs Kerala. While both parties pay lip service to fighting privatization and globalization, the CPM has wooed major investments from technology companies like IBM, guaranteeing labor peace, curbing strikes. More important, it has developed capitalism in the countryside.

But the majority of the 387 million Indians who voted to oust the BJP will soon realize that whatever crumbs they get won't end their hellish conditions. Since independence and partition in 1947 (when the British divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan), the Congress Party and the Indian bosses over-all have been unable to eliminate the caste system, Communalism (pogroms against the 150 million Moslems), hunger, wars, and unemployment. Tens of millions of workers and peasants consider themselves communists but are being betrayed by fake-leftists. It's time to fight for revolutionary communism. That's PLP's goal.

Newly-elected Dominican President Follows IMF Bankers' Rules

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Republic, May 20 --"Pa'fuera es que van" (Out they go) was the most popular slogan (even turned into a popular Merengue song) during the recent electoral campaign here. It came true -- the very unpopular President Hipólito Mejía lost his re-election bid. Former President Leonel Fernández won 56% of the vote in the first round. People didn't vote FOR Fernandez but rather AGAINST Mejía, under whose government the economy went downhill. Mejía blamed everything on the collapse of the world economy (the dot.com boom of the late 90s went bust when he became President). This is partially true, but his ineptness and government corruption didn't help.

In 2003, the country "plunged into recession, mainly as a result of the $2.2 billion collapse of the Banco Intercontinental, one of the country's biggest banks, and allegations of cronyism and disastrous lending policies....The affair has shattered business confidence, triggered capital flight and eroded reserves. Gross Domestic Product declined 0.4% in 2003 and is expected to decline a further 1% this year." (London Financial Times, 5/13).

Because of the bank bailout, the peso lost over 40% of its value against the dollar this year. Inflation soared; prices are expected to rise 50% in 2004.

Newly-elected President Fernandez and his Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) took advantage of the population's anger. Several mass general strikes against the Mejía government occurred in the last year. In the most recent one, Dominican Army troops which had just returned from Iraq were sent to quell street demonstrators. After Spain's government took its troops out of Iraq, the 300+ Dominican troops also returned.

Mejía split his own Dominican Revolutionary Party by turning against its no-continuous-re-election-of-Presidents rule. Additionally, his rude personality and erratic public interviews got him nicknamed "El Mulo de Gurabo" (the Mule from Gurabo, his hometown).

Many hope Fernandez will change things. When his PLD ran the country (1996-2000), their "national liberation" politics turned sharply to the right. Free market and privatization of public enterprises became the norm. Many government officials got rich from the privatization. The state-owned electrical utility was sold at a bargain to Enron and Spanish energy companies, but the constant blackouts didn't end as promised. The PLD's unpopularity grew and was nicknamed the "eat-alone" gang (they shared with no one but their own clique). They lost the 2000 elections to Mejía.

Now Fernandez will follow capitalism's rules. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is demanding the government sign an austerity plan to obtain loans. This will surely happen no matter who runs the government since the IMF even has an official in the Dominican Central Bank.

For the first time, Dominican immigrants overseas were able to vote; 16,000 did so in the NYC Metropolitan area (overwhelmingly for Fernandez). The $2 billion these immigrants send home each year help keep the Dominican economy afloat. These immigrant workers in the U.S. are being squeezed by low wages and high prices. They must sacrifice to help feed their families. Fernandez promised many things to these immigrants. But like their relatives back home, they shouldn't expect anything from Fernandez's government.

The frustration felt by workers and youth in the Dominican Republic -- having to choose between bad and worse -- is occurring worldwide. The fact that workers are forced over and over to choose between rotten capitalist politicians show that we in PLP must redouble our revolutionary efforts to make sure this changes ASAP.