Angry GI Wives Chase Brass, Want Troops Out

• Army Is a Reflection of a Racist, Exploitative Society

a href="#Ongoing War Shakes U.S. ‘Invincibility’">On"oing War Shakes U.S. ‘Invincibility’

PLP Must Test the Limits

UAW Trading Low Wages For More Members

a href="#Union Hacks’ Proposed Pay Cuts No Answer to VW Mass Layoffs">"nion Hacks’ Proposed Pay Cuts No Answer to VW Mass Layoffs

a href="#I.G. Metall Fails To Win ‘Even A Minor Victory’">I.". Metall Fails To Win ‘Even A Minor Victory’

a href="#‘Negligence’: Another Word for Murder by Racist Cops">‘N"gligence’: Another Word for Murder by Racist Cops

Racism Kills Black and White Workers in War Plant

Strike-breaking S. Korean Pres. No Friend of Workers

a href="#AFL-CIO Uses ‘Jobs For Justice’ To Push Youth to Democrats">AF"-CIO Uses ‘Jobs For Justice’ To Push Youth to Democrats

PLP at NEA Convention: Bush War Budget Behind Racist Cuts

a href="#Bush’s ‘Humanitarian’ Safari Hunting for African Oil">Bush"s ‘Humanitarian’ Safari Hunting for African Oil

a href="#ANC Capitalists Intensify Poverty for S. Africa’s Workers">"NC Capitalists Intensify Poverty for S. Africa’s Workers

Revolution vs. Reform in S. Africa

U.S. War in Iraq Mirrors 1898 Seizure Of Philippines

Bush, Democrats: Two Faces of War vs. Workers

a href="#Black GI’s Led Rebellions in Vietnam War">"lack GI’s Led Rebellions in Vietnam War

Black Sailors Refused Racist Orders to Load Death Ship

LETTERS

Fight Racist Attacks On Arab/Muslim Immigrants

a href="#Racism is Achilles’ Heel of Capitalism">"acism is Achilles’ Heel of Capitalism

a href="#GIs’ Unshined Boots Lead to Red Politics">"Is’ Unshined Boots Lead to Red Politics

Red Eye On The News

---

 As Guerrilla Attacks Intensify in Iraq:

Angry Gi Wives Chase Brass, Want Troops Out

While Bush, who used his father’s connections to avoid combat during the Vietnam War, poses on aircraft carriers and yells, "Bring ’em on" at Iraqi resisters, a colonel at Fort Stewart, Ga. had to be escorted from a meeting with 800 seething spouses, mostly wives. "They were crying, cussing, yelling and screaming for their men to come back." (New York Times, 7/4)

To U.S. soldiers in Iraq and their relatives at home, the battle cry is "Bring us home!" Many realize that the invasion of Iraq was for control of oil, that brings super-profits for a few companies and world domination for the U.S. ruling class.

In a front-page report on the growing anger among military families, the Times reports of "…anger that the talk in Washington is not of taking troops out of Iraq, but of sending more in. I want my husband home," said Ms. Leila, mother of three. "…They have become police in a place they’re not welcome."

Since May 1, when Bush declared major combat over, more than 60 Americans have died including 25 killed in hostile encounters. That’s half the number killed in the two-month war, and they are mostly low-ranking ground troops, performing mundane activities like buying a video, going on patrol or guarding a trash pit.

A July 1st Gallup poll found 42% of the public think the war is going badly, up from 13% in May. Similarly, only 56% think the war is going well, down from 86 percent in May.

"The soldiers were supposed to be welcomed by waving crowds. Where did those people go?" said Kim Franklin, whose husband is part of an artillery unit commanded by Ms. Leila’s husband.

Seven soldiers from Fort Hood have been killed and on July 4th, it was downright depressing. People are dreading that knock on the door. What’s more, an Army study showed that divorce rates at certain Army bases rose 50% after the first Persian Gulf war.

Army Is a Reflection of a Racist, Exploitative Society

Most soldiers joined the military out of necessity, not because of patriotism or to kill and die for ExxonMobil. The "economic draft" promises them training and education for future careers. But most soldiers earn little more than the minimum wage, and even with subsidies for housing and meals, life is harsh. Since December, Feed the Children — which runs a relief program for military families — has provided 100,000 tons of food to 6,200 families who have spouses in the war zone at 12 military bases.

Racism is also central to military life. A good chunk of infantry soldiers doing the crap work are black and Latinos and immigrants. Over 28,000 immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America, fought in Iraq with the hope of becoming citizens.

Fancy hi-tech weapons and murderous bombing raids are not effective in guerrilla and urban warfare. As the trial draws closer of a black soldier accused of killing his officers in Iraq, morale is plummeting and the Vietnam Syndrome is very much alive. (See page 8 on black GI rebellions inside Vietnam during that war and on the brass’s racism.) Bush and his gang have turned the "Butcher of Baghdad" into a "national hero" for leading the resistance (probably with help from other Arab bosses who want to turn Iraq into a quagmire for the U.S.).

Contrary to many in the anti-war movement who either dismiss all GIs or pander to patriotism, GIs have more in common with workers in Iraq than with the warmongers in Washington. The growing anger among soldiers and their relatives can fuel a movement opposing imperialist war and fighting for international solidarity among all workers. Building a mass base for CHALLENGE and recruiting to PLP can prepare workers and soldiers to smash imperialism and fight for communism.

a name="Ongoing War Shakes U.S. ‘Invincibility’"></">On"oing War Shakes U.S. ‘Invincibility’

When they’re not lying through their teeth, U.S. military officials have a talent for stating the obvious. "We’re still at war," declared the U.S. commander in Iraq on July 3, a day when 10 U.S. soldiers were wounded in three separate attacks. Two days later, an explosion in the city of Ramadi killed seven Iraqis who were about to graduate as cops for the puppet police force the U.S. government is building to replace Saddam Hussein’s thugs. Seventy others were wounded.

The New York Times (7/4) labels this fighting as "continuing attacks from disparate but increasingly organized Iraqi guerrillas." This isn’t surprising. Dead or alive, Saddam Hussein still has loyalists willing to do battle. As ongoing armed struggle proves — from Afghanistan to Chechnya — Islamic fundamentalism beyond Iraq also has plenty of fight left in it and plenty of recruits willing to cross borders to serve it. Iraq is a logical flashpoint for this struggle.

By itself, the ongoing violence in Iraq won’t end the U.S. occupation, at least not soon. And it won’t stop U.S. rulers’ plans for future wars they deem necessary to maintain their global empire. But these attacks underscore two potentially serious weaknesses in U.S. imperialism’s seeming invincibility. As the international situation sharpens, our Party can take advantage of these weaknesses to spread its revolutionary communist ideas and to grow among soldiers, workers and students.

The first weakness is mounting unrest among rank-and-file soldiers and their families. Bush & Co. all but promised that this war would have the easy-on, easy-off character of a super highway. Now that the reality of a long occupation has settled in, the U.S. military rank and file’s weak political commitment to imperialism is becoming apparent. The Christian Science Monitor (7/7) reports: "Experts warn that long, frequent deployments could lead to a rash of departures from the military. ‘Hordes of active-duty troops and reservists may soon leave the service rather than subject themselves to a life continually on the road,’ writes Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution." Said one GI to Rumsfeld: "…our sorry asses are ready to come home." (For further evidence, see adjoining article.)

These signs hardly reflect a willingness to "bear any burden" or "pay any price" — as Kennedy put it in his 1961 inaugural speech — for the sake of U.S. imperialism’s needs. JFK was alluding to the big bosses’ already developed plans for war in Vietnam. The "Vietnam Syndrome," the potentially mutinous refusal to fight for the bosses’ flag, remains alive and well among U.S. troops in Iraq and throughout the U.S. military. It won’t transform itself spontaneously into revolutionary consciousness or action, but it provides increasingly fertile ground for bold, resourceful organizing by communist cadre in our Party.

U.S. rulers’ second key weakness stems from their relative position of strength and is closely related to the first. The 146,000 troops in Iraq aren’t nearly the number they need for an effective occupation. That’s the conclusion of nine Republican and Democrat U.S. senators after a three-day inspection tour. "Our troops are stretched very thin," complains Carl Levin, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Levin’s gripe echoes the prediction made by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who had called for "several hundred thousand soldiers" to turn Iraq into an effective client state for U.S. bosses. The Times describes Shinseki’s estimate as "looking more prophetic each day." Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia chimed in: "There is organized resistance to the American presence, and they are getting smarter about the way they do it." (7/4).

Rockefeller speaks for the liberal wing of U.S. bosses, who are impatient with Bush’s go-slow, piecemeal approach to homeland fascism, his half-measure plans for foreign wars and his clumsy lies to justify them. As the 2004 presidential campaign approaches, look for the liberals to come up with a slicker sales pitch for the police state and wider military adventures. Some of its elements include Harlem Congressman Rangel’s scheme to restore the draft as a way to divide the burden of military service "more equally" among rich and poor.

What Rangel, Rockefeller, and the rest of the liberal politicians really mean is that the several hundred thousand troops they want to add in Iraq are a drop in the bucket compared to U.S. imperialism’s needs over the next 20 years. The true number is in the millions. Our Party’s key task in the period ahead will remain the transformation of working-class anger, embodied by GIs in Iraq and their relatives at Fort Stewart, into communist consciousness. These soldiers and their wives don’t know it yet, but they are potential recruits to PLP and the Red Army that will eventually smash U.S. imperialism.

PLP Must Test the Limits

The comment following last issue’s (7/9) letter "JROTC Teaches Lies About Bosses’ War" refers to "the birth of the Vietnam Syndrome." I had the honor of seeing this process unfold first hand, while doing political work in the bosses’ army during the Vietnam War. It was an eye-opening experience for this then new, relatively inexperienced comrade. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to warn against viewing the late 1960s as the "glory days."

Our Party led revolts in my battalion. Yet, even in those heady days of anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist struggle, we still required a year of patient but intense ideological struggle, base-building and agitation before we were able to lead rebellions. And then we didn’t recruit nearly enough to the Party. Relying on spontaneity will get you nowhere.

Today’s different political period, with its less inviting environment, limits our successes. But those limits are not cast in stone.

Surely, when "800 seething spouses" (New York Times 7/4) chase a colonel from a meeting meant to reassure the families of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, we must check to see if the limits are expanding. We do that by increasing our work.

This not only tests the limits, but can also change them. The year of ideological struggle, base-building and agitation changed the limits in my battalion when I was in the Army. The internal struggle is always primary.

Red Veteran

UAW Trading Low Wages For More Members

"There’s been such a blood bath that the UAW now accepts that this is the best they’re going to get." Dan Luria, a labor analyst at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, was referring to the union’s strategy of trading lower pay for more members as contract talks begin with GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler. Contracts covering 280,000 workers and $30 billion in annual labor costs expire Sept. 14.

General Motors wants to reduce pension and retiree health benefits that add $1,360 to the cost of each GM vehicle. (Honda’s pension and retiree health costs are just $107 per vehicle.) When asked whether GM was preparing for a strike, chief financial officer John Devine said, "You might draw that conclusion." GM’s stockpile of 1.24 million cars and trucks (normal inventories are about 1million), would allow the world’s biggest automaker to resist a strike for about three weeks longer.

Ford wants to close four U.S. factories and eliminate 15,000 jobs. DaimlerChrysler wants to sell five parts plants and cut $240 million in annual labor costs. In May, DaimlerChrysler canceled plans to build a $1.5 billion assembly complex in Windsor, Ontario, due to "the deteriorating economy" and "overcapacity in the North American industry." The "modular assembly" complex would have employed 1,000 workers in an assembly plant surrounded by 1,500 lower-paid workers in supplier factories built on the grounds. The Canadian Auto Workers union had already reached a "special agreement" with the company.

The UAW is fighting for survival, while trying to bend over backwards to bail out the auto bosses. The traditional "Big 3" share of the domestic auto market is shrinking while non-union transplants from Europe and Asia are growing. Nissan, Toyota, Honda and Daimler, to name a few, are all building new non-union plants in Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. They pay comparable wages to U.S. auto makers but with no pensions, fewer medical costs, no health and safety restrictions and no grievance procedure.

UAW membership has fallen to 638,722 workers, down from 1.5 million in 1979. Union workers build only 60% of the cars and trucks made in the U.S. and Canada, down from 82% in 1978. The ratio of U.S. parts workers who belong to unions has dropped from 1 in 2 in 1979 to 1 in 7 today. The union wants the "Big 3" auto makers to help them organize new members, especially among supplier parts plants. Dan Poole, a vice president at National City Bank said, "From the auto companies’ perspective, what are they giving up? Not a darn thing."

Recently DaimlerChrysler agreed to sell its New Castle, Ind., plant to Metaldyne for $233 million. The factory makes gears, control arms and ball joints that connect wheels to car and truck bodies.

Metaldyne and the UAW reached a tentative contract that reduces wages for the 1,200 workers from $26/hour to $16/hour and increases health care costs to workers as much as $46 a week for families. In return, Metaldyne agreed not to oppose union organizing at their 10 non-union factories, granting the UAW a "card check," which means the union can avoid an NLRB election and "represent" the workers when more than 50% sign cards. Workers won’t vote on the new contract until September, and only if they promise to stay at Metaldyne. Those who plan on leaving or transferring to other Chrysler plants will be ineligible to vote.

The UAW hopes to "organize" 45,000 parts workers over the next three years by relying on the biggest auto bosses to pressure their suppliers, like Johnson Controls, Tower Automotive Inc., Magna International Inc. and ThyssenKrupp AG. In return, they will help boost productivity and keep labor costs down to increase profits at the suppliers and the Big 3. Johnson Controls pledged "neutrality" in 26 factories after the UAW staged a two day strike that halted production at DaimlerChrysler and GM. The union has since "organized" nine Johnson Controls factories.

This year the UAW will also negotiate contracts at Delphi Corp. and Visteon Corp. Delphi Corp., the world’s largest parts company, was spun off by General Motors in 1999. Third-ranked Visteon Corp. was spun off by Ford in 2000. In 1999, both companies agreed to match the hourly pay at GM and Ford, while slashing 17% and 12% of their respective work forces. If the UAW wants them to adopt a neutral stance during organizing drives at their own suppliers, the trade-off will be paying new hires closer to Metaldyne’s $16/hour than DaimlerChrysler’s $26.

Industrial workers worldwide are in a race to the bottom as the imperialists struggle for markets, cheap labor and resources sharpens. Nationalism has chained union leaders to the respective bosses and put them at odds with their class brothers and sisters around the world. This deadly rivalry is leading to unending wars, during which union leaders trap us "in the tent of their masters." Our main task among many is to build a mass base for CHALLENGE and PLP in the factories and mills across all borders. Only then will we have a chance of turning their next world war into an armed insurrection for communist revolution.

a name="Union Hacks’ Proposed Pay Cuts No Answer to VW Mass Layoffs">">"nion Hacks’ Proposed Pay Cuts No Answer to VW Mass Layoffs

PUEBLA, MEXICO, July 1 — Volkswagen has just announced a 24% production cut here, laying off 2,000 workers. VW bosses said the production and job cuts were the "natural result" of falling sales in the U.S. market. The job losses are devastating for VW workers as well as for the entire region, which depends on these jobs.

The plant’s 160 suppliers will eliminate another 6,000 jobs. (La Jornada, 7/2) Alcoa Fujikura of Puebla (formerly Siemens), which supplies electrical systems for the Jetta A4, New Beetle and Beetle Cabrio models, might eliminate 25% of its 1,400 workers. About 85% of the workers are women, and 80% of them are single mothers. They earn between 68-120 pesos a day (between $7-$12), while VW workers, most of them men, earn 200-400 pesos a day (about $20-$40). A reduction in the workweek to avoid job cuts will be even more devastating for these women workers, who capitalism attacks even harder.

VW’s 2003 production will sink to 270,000 (from a projected 330,000 units). In 1999 and 2000, when VW introduced the new Beetle model, it produced 400,000 units yearly.

The cutbacks are occurring 45 days before the current contract with the Independent Union of VW Workers (SITIAVW) expires. In March 2002, the union proposed wage cuts to avoid mass layoffs, but over half the workers voted for job cuts (with higher severance pay) instead.

Union head José Luis Rodríguez said the current layoffs "won’t tie our hands in negotiating wage hikes and renewal of the contract. On the contrary, they’re separate things." (La Jornada, Mexico, 7/1). But in mass assemblies, the union leadership has won most of the 10,200 VW workers to ask for a four-day workweek and a 20% wage cut instead of job cuts. VW workers have a long history of militancy, but militancy is not enough. We waged mass strikes prior to the 2002 contract, yet here we are facing even sharper attacks. We don’t need union leaders who would have us choose between layoffs and pay cuts, "natural" under capitalism. We need a revolutionary movement that will create the alternative of communism and workers’ power over the profit system. "Workers of the World, Unite!"

a name="I.G. Metall Fails To Win ‘Even A Minor Victory’"></">I.". Metall Fails To Win ‘Even A Minor Victory’

For four-weeks, auto and steel workers in eastern Germany struck to cut the workweek from 38 to 35 hours, as in western Germany. According to the Wall Street Journal (7/1), "It was the first time since 1954 that the powerful I.G. Metall union…failed to eke out even a minor victory, highlighting the waning influence of unions in Europe’s largest economy and likely signaling further weakening to come."

Unions may lose the power to set nationwide wage agreements for entire sectors and be forced to proceed industry by industry. Social-democratic Primer Minister Schröder is trying to cut benefits for unemployed workers while giving tax cuts to the rich to try to revive the ailing economy.

The defeat has provoked an intense struggle among the union leaders of IG Metall. Unions in Germany sit on the Supervisory Boards (Boards of Directors) of companies, like DaimlerChrysler A.G., Deutsche Bank AG, etc. Union hacks serve on government panels for healthcare and pensions. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, union membership grew to 35% with the influx of workers from the former East Germany. Today, it’s down to 22%.

After World War II — when workers worldwide were inspired by the example of a workers’ state, the Soviet Union, having just defeated the Nazis — the "specter of communism" and the shadow of the Soviet Union forced Western Europe’s bosses to make concessions to the workers to keep them from rebelling against capitalism. Union leaders, like those of IG Metall, were made part of the system. But the defeat of the old communist movement has led to a deepening crisis of capitalism and a sharpening rivalry among the imperialists. In order to compete with their rivals, particularly U.S. imperialism, German bosses must increasingly attack "their own" workers. They are following the pattern set in the 1980s by Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the U.S. The old social contract is over. This assault on industrial workers will finance the bosses’ war machine.

The sharpening rivalry among the imperialists will keep all the pro-capitalist union hacks, from IG Metall to the UAW in the U.S., firmly in the tent of their bosses. The nationalist, patriotic slogans to "Buy American" or "German Jobs for German Workers" will ultimately have the union leaders leading us to war to save "our" bosses. We need to use these struggles to build red leadership in the factories and mills across all borders to smash the war makers and strike breakers.

a name="‘Negligence’: Another Word for Murder by Racist Cops"></">‘N"gligence’: Another Word for Murder by Racist Cops

NEWARK, NJ, July 2 — The relatives and friends of Santiago Villanueva, murdered by Bloomfield cops, left the Essex County Supreme Court angry and frustrated at the judge’s postponement of a second hearing until Sept. 27. Then proofs were to be presented against the four cops accused of killing the 35-year-old Dominican-born worker and musician.

The lawyers for cops Richard Chiarello, Vincent DeFabrizio, Gerald Fillipone and Frank Furfaro asked Judge Harold Fullilove for another postpoment, claiming they couldn’t get photos and copies of the victim’s autopsy.

On April 17, 2002, Villanueva suffered an epilepsy attack at the Quick Cut plant where he had worked for a year. When emergency service was called, the four cops came instead, ignored his epilepetic attack, handcuffed Villanueva, assuming he was on drugs and then, according to the medical examimer, the cops asphyxiated him, causing his death.

Some people at the trial, including 80 supporters who protested outside, accused the cops’ lawyers of trying to buy time so witnesses don’t testifiy. Some of these witnesses say they’ve been threatened.

The chances of cops accused of murder being jailed are extremely low. Cops are the bosses’ hired goons, used to enforce the racism which provides super-profits for the bosses, based on the super-exploitation of black, Latino and Asian workers.

Racism Kills Black and White Workers in War Plant

MERIDIAN, MISS., July 9 — A racist worker went on a rampage here yesterday at the Lockheed Martin warplane plant, killing five workers — four black and one white — and wounding nine others, four black and five white. The killer, Douglas Williams, who is white, then shot himself.

Williams had long been known as a racist, "complaining about blacks and talking about shooting them." (New York Times, 7/9) The husband of one worker, Bobby McCall, said his wife had told him that Williams "said he was going to come in one day and kill up a bunch of n——-s."

Retiree Jim Payton, who had worked with Williams, said when he heard about the shooting, Williams "was the first thing that came to mind."

Another worker, Melvin Young, who witnessed the killings, said, "This should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago."

Lockheed bosses refused to say whether they knew about the racist complaints against Douglas involving violence. Lockheed makes parts for the stealth fighter jet and other war planes. It is an integral part of U.S. imperialism’s war machine and its aircraft are used to kill workers in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s no surprise that such a company should harbor a racist killer and do nothing about him.

Allowing this racist to function freely ended up killing white as well as black workers. That’s the logic of the bosses’ racism — it hurts ALL workers.

As the bosses intensify racism to maintain profits and their system, such attacks are increasing. This same week a Mexican family’s home in Farmingville, NY was fire-bombed, the same town where racists beat Mexican workers in broad daylight two years ago.

Capitalism breeds racism and war. It spells death for ALL workers worldwide.

Strike-breaking S. Korean Pres. No Friend of Workers

Former labor leader and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun broke a 4-day rail strike against privatization. The government declared the strike illegal and threatened to jail workers who didn’t return to work. On June 28, 1,000 rail strikers were arrested in a clash with riot cops.

Strikes have surged this year, partially because the pro-capitalist Korean Confederation of Trade Unions leadership thought Roh would side with them. "President Roh…when he was campaigning for the presidency…promised that he’d make sure our demands did not fall on deaf ears." (Wall Street Journal, 7/3) This is the same nonsense AFL-CIO leaders repeat about Democratic Party candidates. It was labor’s pick, Bill Clinton, who passed NAFTA, ended welfare, never lifted a finger to stop striker replacement (scabs), put 100,000 more racist cops on the streets and carried out air wars from Iraq to the former Yugoslavia. And they’re getting ready to do it again to dump Bush in 2004. Union leaders’ faith in capitalism and its politicians is deadly for the working class.

But South Korean workers are not being intimidated. On July 2, 30,000 struck the major auto companies, Hyundai and Kia Motors.

Roh answers to the capitalist system, not the union hacks. South Korea is Asia’s third-largest economy. In the first five months of 2003, direct foreign investments are at $412 million, half of what they were for the same period a year ago. While Roh is breaking strikes in the South, he is negotiating with North Korea as a new source of cheap labor and profits (the same North Korea who’s on Bush’s "Axis of Evil" list).

The working class has no friends in high places. From U.S. to Germany, from Venezuela to Brazil, the working class is being whipped into line and set up for war by "lesser evil" politicians masquerading as friends. Capitalism and all its institutions dictate that the workers pay for the economic crises, no matter who sits in the seat of power. From struggles like these we can learn how to overthrow the profit system and lead the workers to power with communist revolution.

a name="AFL-CIO Uses ‘Jobs For Justice’ To Push Youth to Democrats"></">AF"-CIO Uses ‘Jobs For Justice’ To Push Youth to Democrats

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 21 — Over 1,000 workers and union activists attended the annual Jobs With Justice Conference this past weekend. Topics included organizing the unorganized, immigrant rights, health care for all, the fight against globalization and imperialist war.

The many enthusiastic young workers and union staff members did not hear any clear goals or strategy.

The conference had two main directions: (1) the 2004 elections as the main strategy to improve workers’ lives; and (2) those who thought dumping Bush was important but also believed that mass struggle was necessary to move workers forward.

Every speaker told a story about the misery capitalism creates — losing their health insurance or being unable to afford it; the terrible conditions working in a sweatshop — but few had a clear vision of what to do about it.

A small group of workers organized by PLP discussed solutions from a revolutionary perspective. While encouraging and helping to organize the growing militancy of many workers, the limits of a reformist plan were also explained.

At a workshop on the Iraq war, workers warmly received the idea that imperialist war was rooted in the nature of capitalism and that only by destroying it could we end imperialist war. One worker approached a PLP member and said he had never heard a union official speak so strongly against capitalism. He left reading a CHALLENGE.

The AFL-CIO leadership has organized Jobs with Justice to win younger workers to support the Democratic Party. They tolerate the militancy of many of its members because they feel they can control them. Currently their political leadership of the organization is unchallenged. The phony "leftists" mimic the reformist line. PLP needs to lead the struggle to transform these young militant workers into communist revolutionaries.

PLP at NEA Convention: Bush War Budget Behind Racist Cuts

NEW ORLEANS, July 8 — Ten thousand teachers at the annual convention of the National Education Association (NEA), largest U.S. union, heard calls for more strikes and mass action, against reliance on politicians and for exposing the racist nature of Bush’s war-budget cuts in education.

These calls, from PLP members, friends, many other teachers and youth, stand in sharp contrast to the NEA leadership’s alliance with politicians and bosses.

PLP members and friends led discussion about these issues in the Peace and Justice and Hispanic Caucuses, in the California delegation and on the convention floor. Outside 500 CHALLENGES were distributed, along with 3,000 leaflets — two written at the convention itself — on the issues of class struggle and fighting racism.

This is the fifth consecutive year we’ve had a presence at this annual convention. [Ed. Note: Our last issue mistakenly said this was our first year.] Each year we learn more about building on and advancing our daily activities in our local unions to win teachers to the left.

a name="Bush’s ‘Humanitarian’ Safari Hunting for African Oil"></a>"ush’s ‘Humanitarian’ Safari Hunting for African Oil

Bush began his tour of Africa with talk of sending U.S. troops to Liberia for "humanitarian reasons." Liberia, a country founded by freed U.S. slaves sent there in the early 19th century, has been devastated by a civil war. Charles Taylor, the current leader, has agreed to go into exile in Nigeria when a U.S. peacekeeping force arrives. But U.S. rulers are divided about sending a proposed 2,000 U.S. troop force. Rumsfeld and his two top generals oppose committing that many. They are being stretched too thin or inviting a Somalia-type disaster similar to Bush, Sr. dispatching troops and Clinton having to get them out. Those favoring sending troops want the U.S. to enter the "big game." Britain sent Marines to neighboring Sierra Leone, also hit by civil war, and has now turned that country into a client state. France has sent troops to the Congo and to intervene in Ivory Coast’s civil war, to guarantee French interests. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has active cells in several African countries with Moslem populations.

One thing for sure: whatever the U.S. does won’t be in the interests of the people of Liberia or Africa.

CHALLENGE (7/9) reported on the Congo war that has killed some three million in the last five years, fighting over minerals — diamonds, cobalt, coltan (needed for spaceships and cellular phones) — and oil in the Great Lakes region. Western Africa is rich in oil. Nigeria will be visited by Bush, which along with Angola, provides the U.S. with as much oil as Mexico and Venezuela. Nigeria/Angola oil production will double or triple in the next 5 to 10 years. It’s expected that by 2015 the U.S. will import 25% of its oil from SubSahara Africa. This oil, although not as plentiful and cheap as Iraq’s or Saudi Arabia’s, is of high quality and easily accessible, located on the coast of Western Africa.

But oil, while a blessing for Exxon-Mobil, BP Amoco, Texaco-Chevron, Shell, Totalfina, etc., has only benefited corrupt officials in Africa. Nigeria, Africa’s major oil producer, is now being hit by a militant general strike protesting fuel price increases. "The average Nigerian lives on $1 a day." (Newsweek/MSNBC.com, 7/8).

The Bushites are also boasting about spending $15 billion (over five years) to fight the AIDS epidemic ravaging several African countries. Yet Congress is already discussing cutting that amount. Plus, Bush named Randall Tobias to manage the AIDS fund for Africa. Tobias is a former CEO of Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant which will make big bucks from selling drugs to AIDS victims. Tobias has also been on the Board of Directors of ATT, Kimberley-Clark, the Knight-Ridder media giant and Conoco-Phillips Petroleum. Guess whose interests he will serve in Africa?

So the "humanitarian reasons" the U.S. bosses are championing for Africa will actually fill the profit coffers of the billion-dollar corporations which run the U.S.

a name="ANC Capitalists Intensify Poverty for S. Africa’s Workers">">"NC Capitalists Intensify Poverty for S. Africa’s Workers

The working class and oppressed masses in South Africa (S.A.) fought and defeated apartheid (white minority rule) in 1994. The African National Congress (ANC) — a united front of liberals, nationalists and the fake leftist "Communist" Party of S.A., along with masses of angry anti-racist workers and youth — led the struggle. Then under Nelson Mandela’s leadership, it took power. But only the rulers’ skin color changed; poverty, unemployment and oppression remains and have worsened. Crisis-ridden capitalism is attacking workers harder. This is capitalist "democracy."

The ANC government enshrined the right to "sufficient food and water" in its constitution and pledged to make sanitation and water available to every citizen by the end of 2010. This has become empty rhetoric.

To gain International Monetary Fund loans, the ANC government — committed to water privatization — is charging for water, despite widespread workers’ opposition. In Shakashead, many women with bare feet and dressed in rags walk the dirt road, pushing wheelbarrows or carrying big buckets to fetch water for their families. Those who can afford it stand in line and buy water from a metered tap. A larger group scoops water from a giant fouled mud puddle. Even before privatization, tariffs generally increased during water commercialization, raising service charges 600% in Fort Beaufort black townships between 1994 and 1996.

In the poorer communities, the most horrific effect is disease from water-born pathogens such as cholera, E. coli and shigella, which causes dysentery and death. Three years ago there was a cholera epidemic of 120,000 reported cases and 260 deaths in this province. Such outbreaks occur because the majority, unable to pay, must seek water in polluted puddles, rivers and canals carrying disease and parasites.

U.S. news sources are publicizing the ANC’s sellout, not because U.S. imperialism cares about S.A.’s workers’ suffering, but because the majority of Africa’s water contracts are with European companies. The French company Swez is the major player in S.A. The European Union (E.U.) signed a free trade agreement with S.A. in 1999 while the U.S. has just begun negotiating one. The U.S. bosses’ media’s exposure of the ANC’s murderous water privatization is driven by U.S. imperialism’s fight against the E.U.

S.A.’s working class is opposing these attacks. Thousands have marched crying, "Water for the thirsty, light for the people, homes for the homeless." Workers have fought street battles with guards to prevent evictions for failure to pay water bills. But militant struggle without a revolutionary communist line won’t lead workers out of capitalism’s misery. The heroic struggle of workers, students and oppressed masses to overthrow Apartheid was co-opted by black rulers who cover for the giant corporations that continue to exploit S.A. The Communist Party’s opportunism opened the doors for the current situation (see CHALLENGE, 6/5/03). The working class and its allies in S.A. need to build a real communist party that can destroy capitalism and create a communist society using water and all resources to benefit the working class. (Sources: AfrolNews, 11/4/02; BBCNews, 10/11/99; New York Times, 5/29/03; U.S. D.o.C. Press Release, 11/15/02)

Revolution vs. Reform in S. Africa

My students and I watched the film The Two Trevors, depicting the class struggle in South Africa between the working class and the capitalist regime whose political front is the African National Congress (ANC). The documentary focuses on a demonstration against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, D.C. in April 2000. Upstairs in the IMF conference room sat Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s Finance Minister and ANC leader. In the streets with the 30,000 protesters was a different Trevor — Trevor Ngwane, a community activist from Soweto, expelled from the ANC in 1999 for criticizing its pro-capitalist path.

Students saw that the ANC’s capitalist economic policies hurt the very people who had supported and brought the party to power. The average white household has become 15% wealthier over the last five years, while the average black household has become 19% poorer.

In the July/August, 2003 issue of New Left Review, Ngwane gives a blunt assessment of the ANC’s Nelson Mandela:

"By September ’93 [Mandela] was touring Western capitals with the National Party Finance Minister, Derek Keys, speaking at the UN, pleading for foreign investment and guaranteeing the repatriation of profits and capital-protection measures.

"Without detracting from those twenty-seven years in jail —what that cost him, what he stood for — Mandela has been the real sellout, the biggest betrayer of his people.... Basically the ANC was granted formal, administrative power, while the wealth of the country was retained … [by] the white capitalist elite, Oppenheimer and company."

Ngwane reports the working class is fighting ANC policies, like the privatization of electricity and water, that is making life unbearable for ordinary people. One of the many activist community groups is the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC). The electric company, soon to be privatized, has been raising electricity rates, and cutting off many people’s power when they can’t pay. Hundreds of thousands of poor households cannot cook or run their refrigerators.

The SECC has organized mass rallies and marches against these cutoffs. It has trained people to turn the electricity back on for Soweto residents, and cut off the electricity for local politicians, "to give them a taste of their own medicine." SECC has won concessions from the government, but not nearly enough. The struggle continues.

Ngwane, who proudly declares himself a Marxist, when discussing the relationship between reform and more fundamental change, offers a limited political vision:

"But in the end we had to get down to the most basic questions: what are the problems facing people on the ground that unite us most? In Soweto, it’s electricity. In another area, it is water. We’ve learned that you have to actually organize — to talk to people, door to door, to connect with the masses. But you have to build with a vision. From Day One we argued that electricity cuts are the result of privatization. Privatization is the result of GEAR [the ANC’s neo-liberal capitalist economic program]. GEAR reflects the demands of global capital, which the ANC is bent on pushing through. We cannot win this immediate struggle unless we win that greater one."

Trevor Ngwane is absolutely correct that attempts to win immediate demands — affordable water and electricity — inevitably confronts the entire capitalist system. But despite Ngwane’s years of courageous activism, he omits a key Marxist concept — to rid ourselves of capitalism we must build a revolutionary communist party. With branches across the globe, this party can unite the billions of people worldwide whose lives are ravaged by capitalism, as Ngwane well knows. This party will take part in, and help lead, every struggle for immediate demands, but will do so with the vision of building a revolutionary communist party to fight for communism.

Red Teacher

U.S. War in Iraq Mirrors 1898 Seizure Of Philippines

Last year, a CHALLENGE article described how GIs in the Philippines organized a "return-home" movement after the defeat of the Japanese fascists during World War II. The brass wanted to keep the GIs there to fight the Huks, the communist-led guerrillas who had done most of the jungle fighting against the Japanese. The GI’s actually thanked the Huks for saving many of their lives. Mass protests of GI’s were organized by some left-wing soldiers and foiled the brass’s plans.

At the turn of the century, the Filipino people, like the Iraqis of today, were "liberated" by U.S. bosses from an oppressive ruler, in that case Spain. Militant armed movements in the Philippines and Cuba were fighting Spanish colonialism. The U.S. was an expanding imperialist country and, as it has done many times, picked on a weak but brutal colonial country like Spain.

Those U.S. forces wanting war against Spain, led by warmongering newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, needed an excuse to invade its colonies (just like Bush needed Saddam’s non-existent WMDs). The U.S. was still reeling from a recent recession. President McKinley and others feared stronger European powers might side with Spain. Then the pro-war forces went into action.

On Feb. 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in the port of Havana, killing 260 U.S. sailors. Hearst sent a reporter to Havana to "get the goods" on Spain. He wired Hearst that he could find no evidence of Spanish involvement. Hearst then sent back his famous telegram: "You supply the pictures. I’ll supply the war!"

Congressional moderates gave in and, just as today’s Democrats voted for war against Iraq, on April 25, 1898, Congress declared war on Spain. It lasted only four months. A peace treaty gave Spain $20 million to leave Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the 7,100 islands of the Philippines Archipelago. The U.S. replaced Spain as the new colonial master. It took Cuba several years to get rid of the Platt Amendment, which had turned it into a virtual U.S. colony. The Philippines only became "independent" after WW II. Guam and Puerto Rico are still U.S. colonies.

As usual, the racist arrogance of U.S. bosses emerged. McKinley, the Bush of his time, admitted he had no idea where the Philippines were. His politics of "benevolent assimilation" was to bring "Christian civilization" to the Filipinos. This "civilizing" became a brutal three-year war killing 200,000 Filipinos (mostly civilians) and 4,000 U.S. soldiers (10 times as many as had died in the Spanish-American war). Mass terror ruled. A Sedition Law imposed long jail terms and even death on anyone speaking, writing or publishing "scurrilous libels" against the U.S. colonial government.

But the Filipinos, outgunned by U.S. forces, continued fighting a guerrilla war. U.S. bosses envisioned an expanding empire, from this archipelago to all of Asia, including China. "We will not abandon our part in the mission of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world, " proclaimed then Indiana Rep. Senator Albert Beveridge (Wall Street Journal, 7/2/03).

Many honest forces in the U.S. opposed this massacre. Mark Twain was a leading voice, who — contrary to many of today’s intellectuals — recognized that the U.S. was already an imperialist power. He sympathized with the Filipinos being victimized by the "progress and civilization" foisted on them by the "Blessings-of-Civilization Trust."(WSJ)

As in the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, massive racism helped lay the basis for public support. In 1893, at the Chicago World’s Fair, Filipinos were brought over to be "put on display" for fairgoers to view as inferior "sub-humans." This helped people to accept the war to come five years later.

In championing mass terror, lies and war, the U.S. ruling class is number one.

Bush, Democrats: Two Faces of War vs. Workers

U.S. rulers are waging war on two fronts: first on Afghanistan, Iraq and countries soon to be named, as George W. Bush & Co. try to extend U.S. imperialism’s reign far into the future. Second, the war raging on the home front against the U.S. working class. Grinding us down economically and politically is a crucial component of the bosses’ long-range preparation for fascism and war.

Bush’s version of the "War Against Terror" includes an assault on workers’ bargaining power and right to unionize. The Department of Homeland Security gave him an excuse to consolidate 170,000 federal workers into a "super agency" and strip them of all rights to collective bargaining and civil service protection.

In addition, Bush has played the privatization card, putting the mainly unionized jobs of 850,000 federal workers up for bids by scab and low-wage subcontractors. This attack on public sector unions dates back to the Carter administration. The private sector provided the campaign’s first target. Today only 9% of all private sector workers belong to unions. This decline has given the bosses a blank check to slash health insurance, paid holidays, pensions and legally enforceable grievance procedures.

But Bush is merely following the liberal Democrat Bill Clinton’s economic terrorism against workers. Clinton’s slave-labor "Workfare" scheme threw millions off welfare and forced them to replace unionized workers for the equivalent of a welfare check.

Bush bailed out the U.S. airline industry to the tune of $15 billion but did nothing to help 100,000 laid-off airline workers. He invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to end two airline strikes, stating that "economic activity" (i.e. profits) was the same as "national security."

Last fall, a coalition of shipping companies locked out 10,000 longshoremen at 29 West Coast ports. This attack on the International Longshore and Warehouse Union was a clear warning to the remnants of organized labor. Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge called the ILWU brass to explain that any strike or work stoppage would be a threat to "national security" and that the government would use troops to break it.

The current Bush budget provides a big increase in funds for auditing and investigating unions, while at the same time slashing provisions to enforce health and safety laws, child-labor regulations and minimum-wage compliance. Unions must now itemize every expense over $2,000 related to organizing, striking and legislative or political activity.

Bush’s latest attack exempts millions of workers from overtime pay protection by reclassifying them as "administrators," "professionals," or "executives."

At the same time, racist unemployment is at a nine-year high, with black workers having "considerably more trouble finding employment than whites." (New York Times, 7/4)

Liberal and not so liberal Democrats are trying to exploit Bush’s assaults on unions and his record on the economy to recapture the presidency in 2004. They want to do a craftier job than Bush of disguising fascist attacks on us as a "boon" to the working class. While Bush and the Republicans emphasize productivity and tax breaks for the rich, the Democrats worry about winning workers to a lifetime of loyalty and sacrifice. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s "national service" plan has sounded the opening charge. Other Democrats like Howard Dean will follow suit. Their model is the Roosevelt New Deal of the 1930s, when a few crumbs thrown to workers enabled the government to mobilize for World War II and launch the U.S. as the world’s dominant imperialist power. Conditions have changed since then, but the rulers’ need to enlist millions of workers to support their murderous designs remains constant.

All the politicians, Democrat or Republican, represent one faction or another of the bosses. We mustn’t fall for any of their schemes. Our class interests have nothing in common with theirs.

a name="Black GI’s Led Rebellions in Vietnam War">">"lack GI’s Led Rebellions in Vietnam War

(This concludes the review of "American Patriots, The Story of Blacks in the Military," by Gail Buckley. The author depicts black soldiers trying to defend "their country," while fighting the virulent racism they encountered. She cites Colin Powell as the "heights" that black soldiers have achieved, and doesn’t expose patriotism as serving the ruling class and their imperialist wars (However, WW II had an antifascist character and it was led by the communist forces of the Soviet and Chinese Red Armies). This series concentrates on the bravery and rebelliousness of black soldiers despite intense racism. Our previous issues covered the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War and World War II.)

The Vietnam War

By the time the U.S. war of aggression rolled around, black soldiers had been "integrated" into the military with a vengeance. While 10% of the U.S. population, "In 1968 blacks made up some 9.8 percent of military forces — but close to 20 percent of all combat troops and 14.1 percent of total U.S. fatalities in Vietnam." (p. 415) Like World War II, it was a draft army. But unlike that anti-fascist war, this one attacked people that had been fighting first French, and now U.S. imperialism.

The racism started early, and was directed against black soldiers as well as the Vietnamese. Wayne Smith, a black youth from an integrated, working-class neighborhood in Providence, R.I., told the author that when he was 17 "he joined the Army on the ‘buddy system,’ a recruitment ploy that promised buddies [they] would serve together. ‘The deal didn’t hold,’ he said, and after basic training his white friend got a safe, stateside office job and Smith was assigned to train to be a combat medic, and go to Vietnam….

"’Basic training was a horrible revelation,’ he said….’I couldn’t understand how an American Army trying to motivate people to fight an enemy could be so brutal to their own people. Nothing was safe. It was all about survival.’ Two black sergeants regularly attacked black recruits, ‘to show whites they would treat us as badly or worse than whites.’

"Smith’s disillusionment deepened in the midst of pervasive racism, including the routine reference throughout the military to all Vietnamese as dinks and gooks, which made it easier, he said, to ‘psych you up to kill.’" (pp. 421-23)

"The correspondent Jonathan Schell heard American officers sing a song that was a macabre comment on civilian casualties:

"Bomb the schools and churches.
"Bomb the rice fields, too.
"Show the children in the courtyards
"What napalm can do." (p. 400)

The effects of racism continued far into the future. "Nearly two decades after the end of the war, blacks who had fought in disproportionate numbers, were still suffering disproportionate postwar ills. Some 17 percent of veterans diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder are black….About 275,000 black soldiers served in Vietnam. As many as 30 percent of all homeless veterans in major cities were black, and black vets were three times likelier than whites to be unemployed." (p. 444)

Yet the author never deals with capitalist super-exploitation worth hundreds of billions in profits as the source of this racism, or with the GIs’ tremendous opposition to the war. There was widespread rebellions, many led by black GI’s. Over half a million GI’s deserted during the course of the war. Six of seven aircraft carriers (used to launch bombers over North Vietnam) were immobilized by sabotage from U.S. sailors.

GI’s published 144 underground papers inside Vietnam and on these warships opposing the war and offering bounties to GI’s who shot particular officers. There is only a passing reference to this "fragging" of officers (by fragmentation grenades), and interestingly enough it involved Colin Powell himself: "In the summer of 1968, Powell moved his cot every night, partly to thwart the Vietcong, partly to avoid ‘attacks on authority from within the battalion itself.’" (p. 411)

These events prompted U.S. Marine Colonel Robert Heinl, a 27-year combat veteran and official Marines historian, to write an article entitled, "The Collapse of the Armed Forces," for the Armed Forces Journal in June 1971. This was the birth of the Vietnam Syndrome, the unwillingness of GI’s and workers back home to suffer huge causualities for U.S. imperialist adventures.

Black Sailors Refused Racist Orders to Load Death Ship

In 1944, 50 black sailors were convicted of mutiny. The incident was recalled this week on the occasion of the death of Freddie Meeks, 83, one of the 50 convicted.

"On July 17, 1944, an explosion ripped through the Navy’s Port Chicago ammunition depot…[near]San Francisco while Navy stevedores, all of them black, were loading shells and bombs…bound for the Pacific.

"The blast, its cause never determined, killed 320 men, 202 of them black sailors….It vaporized a 1,200-foot pier [and] sank two ships…." (New York Times, 6/30)

Three weeks later, 258 black sailors — with no formal training for the dangerous job — were sent to unload ammunition at nearby Mare Island depot. Meeks was among 50 who refused. He had helped recover the body parts from the Port Chicago explosion. "To see the wreckage, and all the people that were killed, the way it blew them all to pieces," Meeks later told the Times, "you didn’t want to go and fool with it anymore."

In October, the fifty were convicted of mutiny at a court martial and sentenced to 15 years. They appealed as victims of racism (black sailors were restricted to laborers’ and cooks’ jobs), but the Navy upheld the conviction. The 50 were released in 1946. In 1984, a Navy review panel again upheld the convictions, saying "race was not a factor in the verdicts," while finding that "assigning black sailors to manual labor had been ‘clearly motivated by race.’"

Although pardoned, the convictions were never expunged.

LETTERS

Fight Racist Attacks On Arab/Muslim Immigrants

On June 4, the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) barred Prof. Mohammad Salah from their classrooms, and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) removed him from their substitute teacher list. This followed an ABC News "investigation" which alerted the City Colleges that Professor Salah was on a list of "Specially Designated Terrorists." The schools maintain he was fired because on his job application he failed to disclose spending five years in an Israeli prison.

As a member of my union’s executive committee, the City Colleges Contingent Labor Organizing Committee (CCCLOC), I proposed we contact Professor Salah, who like the rest of us, was a CCC part-time teacher. Quite a controversy ensued. Some felt it’s our union’s responsibility to support a fellow member. It was pointed out that the FBI informed both the CCC and CPS of Professor Salah’s background over a year ago. Yet they were willing to exploit his labor for two more semesters before firing him.

Other members felt associating with him would hurt our contract negotiations. CCC hires us from semester to semester at relatively low pay, with no health insurance and no guarantee of future employment. Consequently CCCLOC joined the Illinois Education Association in April ’02. We won a contested election for bargaining rights in April ’03 and we’re just entering contract negotiations. Another argument against involvement was that we don’t know Prof. Salah or if he is technically part of our bargaining unit. Meanwhile, we’re waiting to hear from his lawyer about whether he wants to speak to us.

Our discussions are weak so far in not examining the nature of U.S. fascism. For example, what’s the media’s role in perpetuating fear under fascism? Every major Chicago paper has written about Prof. Salah since his return here in 1997, including reporting government seizure of his house. So why is ABC now conducting yet another "investigation"? Also, what is the role of Democrats and other liberals in creating fear under fascism?

Although Prof. Salah has never been convicted of a crime in the U.S., Clinton put him on a "watch list" in 1995, while he was in an Israeli prison. It’s also possible that the decision to get rid of Prof. Salah was made in the office of Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, who appoints the CCC’s chancellor and board of trustees.

In the 1950’s, when McCarthy held his congressional witch-hunt, people feared associating with communism or anyone labeled a communist could lead to job loss and being blacklisted. Today, it’s fear of association with "terrorism" or anyone labeled a "terrorist."

We’re beginning to discuss the nature of fascism, and communism, with CHALLENGE readers in CCCLOC. These political struggles are a prerequisite to the working class taking state power, and are the only way to deal with the fear perpetuated by bosses through their media, laws and police. Struggles like this will result in the bosses’ worst fear: PLP leading the working class to victory.

Chicago Comrade

a name="Racism is Achilles’ Heel of Capitalism">">"acism is Achilles’ Heel of Capitalism

The article "Back GE Workers’ Fight vs. Health, Job Cuts" (CHALLENGE, 6/25) reports that at a mass rally of GE workers in Lynn, MA, PLP got a friendly response from a largely black group of workers from Cleveland and an integrated group from Louisville, but a much less friendly reaction from the mostly white workers at the Lynn plant.

The comrades write, "The positive response from the Cleveland and Louisville workers demonstrates that industrial workers, especially those from plants that are integrated or have a large black workforce, are open to our revolutionary communist message."

But the article says nothing about fighting racism. The headline did not focus on fighting racism. This is a big mistake. A militant strike will not spontaneously win workers to fight racism. It will not lead them to reject patriotism or open them to communist ideas. When racism was fought successfully, as by Chicago meatpackers in the 1930s and 1940s, it was because communists put the issue of racism front and center.

Racism is the Achilles heel of the capitalists, and the main contradiction inside our class. It is no accident that mostly white workers isolated from black workers are patriotic and, at bottom, pro-capitalist. They have bought into the bosses’ racist outlook in the segregation of their daily lives. We should not underestimate this.

We should find the main ways racism is manifested in each job site, neighborhood, church or whatever, and figure out how to fight it. Fighting racism is the key to mobilizing black workers and initiating a protracted fight to win white workers away from racial isolation from their sisters and brothers. It is the key to uniting our class and winning workers to the Party.

The weakness of the article reflects the emphasis in our editorials. I grant that we need to expose how the capitalists are fighting among themselves and win workers not to take sides with the liberal imperialists against the Bush gang. But these ideas have taken up 80% or more of our editorials. Where are the editorials that help us to understand better how to fight racism, uniting our class, as the key to communism? These should be the 80%!

We need to expose the racism of the U.S./Zionist road to peace, the plan to create Bantustans for Palestinians as bad as anything ever done in South Africa. Unfortunately the editorial in the same issue says nothing about this or about fighting, and linking, anti-Palestinian and anti-black racism.

When we fight racism, our Party grows. Workers have responded, seeing how racism is at the core of capitalism. We need to shift our emphasis. Put the fight against racism at the center of our editorials and at the center of our practical work.

A comrade

a name="GIs’ Unshined Boots Lead to Red Politics">">"Is’ Unshined Boots Lead to Red Politics

Recently a friend told me about his military experiences. His attempt to discuss imperialism, the war in Afghanistan and racism with his fellow soldiers was largely unsuccessful. Members of his unit seemed disinterested. He was frustrated with them for seemingly being apolitical, and with himself for being unable to engage them in discussions of pro-working class politics. He did manage one strong political relationship during basic training around the fight against racism, but for the most part, something was missing. He completed Advanced Individual Training with even less success.

He mentioned a story he had read about an incident during the Vietnam War. A group of officers and NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) had helicoptered into a combat unit for an inspection. The officers scrutinized the troops and decided they needed to shine their boots. The GIs were weary of being in the jungle and tired of obeying the officers. The order to shine their boots was the last straw. A few moments after the helicopter had lifted off to return the officers to their base, it was shot down, killing everyone on board.

After reading that, he realized that throughout basic training his fellow soldiers’ biggest complaint was having to shine their boots. "I didn’t know it at the time but my fellow soldiers had a lot to teach me," he said. They actually were talking politics but he just wasn’t listening. While Afghanistan and 9/11 had come up, a lot of the group discussions were about being a "squared-away" soldier — pressed uniforms, highly shined boots and about our training. Being forced to shine their boots was the drill sergeants’ way of whipping obedience into them. When they complained about it, or refused to do it, or used "instant shine," it was their way of resisting. It was this same sense of dissatisfaction — although to a much greater degree — that led those soldiers to shoot down the helicopter in Vietnam.

I remembered the classic Bolshevik movie "Potemkin," based on a Russian sailors’ mutiny over being fed maggot-ridden meat. "Rotten meat and dull boots," I thought. "This is what communist politics are all about!"

My friend showed me that politics plays itself out in everything — from how the army trains soldiers to work as a team (but of course in this case, only in the interests of, and under the leadership of the bosses); to how some soldiers evaded details (a rebellious tendency). The opportunities to raise politics abound. "I just didn’t grasp the every-day politics of working as a team, details and highly-shined boots."

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)

Workers could run society

Employees of IMPA, an aluminum plant in Buenos Aires, took charge of it to keep it from closing….

Across this nation of 37 million people, at least 160 factories employing an estimated 10,000 people are now being run as cooperatives by their employees, ranging from a tractor in Cordoba to a tile and ceramics plant in Patagonia….

The IMPA workers have even voted to turn space into a neighborhood cultural and arts center. Dance, drama and music classes and performances now take place regularly there, movies are shown in a small theater on an upper floor and artists have been allowed to set up studios where they paint, draw and sculpture….

The workers are also more willing to make personal sacrifices in the name of the corporation [they’ve seized]. At Ghelco, for example, "everyone makes the same wages now, from directors to the janitors…."

The original owners of some plants have resurfaced, with hopes of reclaiming their proprietorship. That has led to legal struggles and, in one case, even violence. (NYT, 7/8)

Racial arrests will go on

President Bush issued guidelines today barring federal agents from using race or ethnicity in their routine investigations, but the policy carves out clear exemptions for investigations involving terrorism and national security matters….

Arab-Americans and civil rights groups said the exemptions in the White House policy would give the authorities legal justification to single out Middle Easterners and others….

"It’s largely a rhetorical statement [said the ACLU’s Washington office director]. The administration is trying to soften its image, but it’s smoke and mirrors." (NYT, 6/18)

US flouts law in Iraq

They cannot…be called terrorists — nor does the US have any right to try guerrillas who attack occupation troops as criminals, which Bremer announced it plans to do. It is an almost universally accepted principle that a people occupied by a foreign power has the right to use armed force to resist….(GW, 7/2)

Elections betray workers

"I am deeply impressed with President Lula," Horst Kohler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told reporters recently.

The Brazilian president barely resembles the candidate who some U.S. critics feared was too close to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Indeed, his biggest political struggle to date is keeping the lid on the rebellion from his Workers’ Party most loyal base — trade unions, leftist politicians and anti-poverty groups — who complain that Lula has sold them out. (GW, 7/2)

Shaping Iraq for profits

Many point out that Bremer is no expert on Iraqi politics. But that was never the point. He seems to be an expert at profiting from the war on terror, and at helping US multinationals make money in far-off places where they are unwelcome. In other words, he is the perfect man for the job.

Bremer’s "de-Ba’athification" takes on new meaning. Is he working only to get rid of Ba’ath party members, or is he also working to shrink the public sector as a whole so that hospitals, schools and even the army are primed for privatization by US firms? Just as reconstruction is the guise for privatization, de-Ba’athification looks a lot like downsizing. (GW, 6/18)

No big biz crooks in jail

President Bush’s rhetoric doesn’t meet the reality test….

On declaring support for corporate reforms, August 4, 2002: "No more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard time."

Ten months later, no corporate criminal has been sentenced to prison, though a few higher-ups were taken away in handcuffs for show. The disgraced Kenneth Lay, former Enron chief executive officer and a member of Bush’s "Pioneers" (millionaires who raised a record $193 million in the Presidential campaign), is still enjoying his luxurious homes. And the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Haliburton’s accounting practices while Vice-President Dick Cheney headed the company didn’t prevent its winning a no-bid contract for oil-related work in Iraq. (Atlanta Journal, 6/3)

Orwell helps ruling class

Orwell wrote of Animal Farm: "Of course, I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian Revolution…. I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders…."

This raises as many questions as it seeks to answer. The Russian working-class masses were as "alert" as they possibly could be in 1917, and the revolution was neither violent nor conspiratorial….

The truth is that Orwell wrote next to nothing about the Russian revolution and his interpretation of it was as vague as his denunciations of its betrayal was devastating….

Orwell gave British intelligence the names of communists — like any fink from the Ministry of Truth….

Again and again he denounced…the "quietism" that leaves the Blimps and their detestable capitalism system intact. But how were these things to be changed? If not by revolution, how? (GW, 6/18)

CIA helps protect profits

The State Department recently issued a collection of previously classified documents that shed new light on the Central Intelligence Agency's role in the June 1954 coup in Guatemala that ousted the president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Mr. Arbenz had clashed with the United Fruit Company….

Here are excerpts from documents related to the coup plot….

Tasks for Chief of Station, Guatemala

a. Controlled penetration of the Communist Party
b. Controlled penetration of the major labor unions….

Consider it highly important to mobilize anti-communist activities of the Catholic Church dignitaries and of Catholic lay organizations….This could be done, for instance, by describing graphically how the local church would be turned into a meeting hall for the "Fighting Godless," how the reader's children would have to spend their time with the "Red Pioneers," how the pictures of Lenin, Stalin and Malenkov would replace the pictures of the Saints in every home….

Telegram from C.I.A. headquarters to PBSUCCESS headquarters, June 24, 1954:

We now prepared authorize bombing specific targets in [Guatemala City] area….

Telegram from C.I.A. headquarters to PBSUCCESS headquarters, June 30, 1954:

Heartiest congratulations upon outcome developments past forty-eight hours. A great victory has been won. (NYT, 7/6)

(note: This issue was put up late, and so has no Table of Contents. It is complete otherwise. The PDF version has the original format and a complete Table of Contents.)

IRAQI WORKERS’ AND GIs’ BLOOD SPILLED FOR BIG OIL PROFITS

"You call Donald Rumsfeld and tell him our sorry asses are ready to go home. Tell him to come spend a night in our building," said Private Mathew C. O’Dell, 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division. (NY Times 6/15)

As U.S. occupation forces in Iraq face increasing opposition, U.S. soldiers say, "send us home!"

How quickly things change. The Rumsfeld-Bush-Blair gang went from "shock and awe" on the war’s first day, to being briefly derailed by some Iraqi resistance the following week, to a quick victory when the Iraqi army basically stopped fighting or disappeared — and some Iraqi generals were paid off. Bush declared on May 1, upon his aircraft-carrier photo-op landing, that the war was basically over. Now we hear reports of a "guerrilla" war. Stratfor.com (on-line intelligence service) calls it a possible Vietnam-style quagmire. Soldiers and elements within the U.S. ruling class are attacking Rumsfeld for his "military shortsightedness." He’s turned from a Napoleon to a buffoon.

One mother, writing to the New York Post (6/20) said, "My son is one of those exhausted troops....He told us in letters he was hungry, thin, tired, chewed up by chiggers, his hair was too long, and he was barely clean….It’s time to send these weary men home to their loved ones."

Another wrote, "My son, part of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, was sent out last November …and has been involved in the combat and post-combat rebuilding ever since….Don’t you think it is time for him and his battalion to come home also?"

These GI’s thought their tour of duty was over. Instead they’re facing an angry Iraqi population and guerrilla fighting. Of the 194 U.S. soldiers acknowledged to have been killed since the invasion began, nearly one-fourth have died since May 1 when Bush declared the war "over." The death of six British MPS in what was until now considered relatively quiet southern Iraq shows the war is far from over.

This has revived the Vietnam Syndrome among rank-and-file soldiers, with a potential for protests and demands to be sent home alive. This combination of local resistance and GI rebellion led to the U.S. defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago.

But while many soldiers and their families back home blame Rumsfeld, others blame — and attack — the Iraqis for the situation they’re in. This is a crucial question. GI’s must understand that their enemy is the U.S. bosses who lied through their teeth in order to seize the huge Iraqi oil reserves (world’s second largest), as part of their drive to remain the world’s number one imperialist power.

Liberals Want Bigger Military

The liberal bosses and many in the U.S. media are attacking the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush military strategy for another reason: underestimating the number and rotation of troops needed for the occupation of Iraq and future wars. The liberal Washington Post worries that the lack of rotating more troops will make the army less effective as a fighting force for the bosses. It reported that U.S. troops are "‘frustrated and disillusioned’ as peacekeepers deployed too thinly." Even right-winger Robert Novak (New York Post, 6/23) says, "the unspoken fear in Army circles is that complaints will depress reenlistment, so important to an all-volunteer force, and ultimately diminish the vital corps of non-commissioned officers….With more than 370,000 soldiers, or 70 percent of the Army, deployed in 120 countries, President Bush’s capability to pursue his doctrine of pre-emption is constrained." In a speech marking his retirement as Army Chief of Staff, Gen Eric Shinseki warned, "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division army." (New York Times, 6/23)

Senator Joseph Biden, leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, "I think we’re going to be here in a big way with forces and economic input for a minimum of three to five years." (Time, on line, 6/23)

The Bush Administration has contracted troops from other countries, including India and Honduras, to help occupy Iraq. The press in Central America reported that Honduran rank-and-file soldiers will be paid $5 a day to help occupy Iraq!

The Rumsfeld camp and the liberal hawks are fighting over the best way to run Iraq, control its oil and guarantee a military loyal to carrying out their murderous plans. The interests of rank-and-file soldiers from the U.S., Iraq, India and Central America are the same: to unite with each other against imperialism and its wars for profit. Class-conscious workers, students and soldiers can take advantage of the imperialists’ problems to make their nightmare — of working-class, anti-racist unity and rebellion in the ranks — come true.`

WORKERS REBEL AGAINST RACIST POLICE TERROR

BENTON HARBOR, MI, June 21 — "Yeah, that’s what we need!" was the response from a black resident when a PLP member said communism is the only solution to racist cop killings and repression. We came here in the wake of a three-day rebellion of mainly black workers after the racist police chased a young black motorcyclist, Terrance Shurn, 28, at speeds up to 100 mph to his death. This is the latest in a string of racist police killings, including one young black man who was strangled. In the aftermath of the rebellion, Benton Harbor is a police state, with armored personnel carriers and convoys of 20 police cars, three cops to a car, roaming the small neighborhood.

This mostly black community of 11,000 has a 25% unemployment rate and dilapidated housing. Across the river, neighboring St. Joseph is an affluent, mostly white community of 8,700, with a median income double Benton Harbor’s and a 2% unemployment rate. State and Benton Township police harass black workers who don’t return across the river before sundown and humiliate and terrify young people for no reason. Benton Harbor was once home to many factories. Few are left, such as Whirlpool and auto-parts maker Bosch. The deepening crisis of overproduction has surplused much of the workforce, forcing those lucky enough to find jobs to labor under slave-like conditions, going from one job to the next. Many find it difficult to land jobs paying more than $5 an hour.

One woman said she was stopped in St. Joseph for simply spending the day at the beach. Another worker told how the cops stopped two kids and stripped them naked in broad daylight. Even the young children now know from which cop cars they should run for their lives. It’s no wonder that Shurn decided to run.

While PLP members went door to door, an armored vehicle rumbled down the street. State police stopped and harassed workers for no reason, nearly sealing off the area. The police stopped and detained dozens of black workers, confiscating their cars for minor offenses.

Benton Township cop, Wes Koza, has a history of brutalizing black workers. He was involved in a high-speed chase that killed a five-year-old child. The year before he used a stranglehold to kill a black worker. So it was no shock that racist KKKoza took up the chase that killed a 28 year old black man whose only crime was speeding. Some in the community say he rammed the motorcycle with his squad car, forcing Shurn to lose control.

Two days before we arrived, Jesse Jackson showed up to say, "Our fight isn’t against the police." This millionaire businessman is planning a mass march for "economic justice." (Benton Harbor’s police chief is his former bodyguard.) We’ll be there to expose these misleaders and bring the ideas of anti-racism and communism to the workers.

We distributed 200 CHALLENGES. Two people expressed how important it was for them to go and show solidarity with Benton Harbor’s workers. We made several contacts and many workers took extra CHALLENGES for their friends and family. Some asked us to return. Our plan is to take more people back with us to meet these workers who are open to our revolutionary communist ideas.

War is Also on Liberal Dems’ Agenda

The dominant liberal wing of U.S. capital hopes to use Bush’s Weapons of Mass Destruction scandal to unseat him in 2004. But a Democratic victory next year will never benefit the working class. By exposing Bush’s lies about Iraqi weapons, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Senator Jay Rockefeller and others are, in fact, advancing the cause of war and fascism.

On June 17 in Washington, the New Democrat Network (NDN), founded by presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, outlined its six-point Agenda for the First Decade of the 21st Century. Blessing the NDN program were, along with Lieberman, presidential contender John Kerry and General Wesley Clark, who directed the U.S.-led bombing of Serbia during the Clinton regime. Each plank in the liberals’ platform promotes either imperialist wars abroad or tightened social control at home.

Their foremost goal is to "Assert Responsible Global Leadership: win the war on terrorism and end international conflicts that threaten our interests, ensure that America’s military is the strongest, most agile, and best equipped in the world." "Our interests" is a code for U.S. control of Mideast oil that goes back to the Carter administration. The NDN covers its war aims with the usual liberal humanitarianism. While it invades nation after nation, the NDN says the U.S. will also "combat AIDS and other pandemics that threaten global stability, and work together with our allies and international organizations to advance democracy, liberty, free markets, opportunities for women, and rising standards of living across the world."

Next is a call to "Protect the Homeland: Help the new Homeland Security Department create and implement a comprehensive homeland security strategy." Translation: more domestic spying on workers, more deportations and more imprisonment without cause. Under the heading "Strengthen Families and Communities" come plans for expanding fascistic community policing and launching "community service" programs that open the door to a new military draft.

The New Democrats say: "Modernize Our Health Care System: provide all with access to quality and affordable health insurance, address the rapid rise of costs, reform and improve Medicare and provide a market-based prescription drug benefit." These moves serve the main wing’s need to wrest control of health care from the drug and insurance companies. GE, GM and other large corporations don’t want to send billions to those outfits in paying for the health coverage of their workforce.

The remaining points in the NDN agenda are the age-old Establishment demands for conservation and free trade. Since President Teddy Roosevelt’s day, conservation laws have helped ensure a supply of raw materials for the more powerful capitalists at the expense of upstarts. And, throughout the history of the profit system, free trade has benefited the nation with the military might to enforce its access to worldwide markets and cheap labor.

Completely absent from the New Democrats’ agenda and from the rhetoric of the viable candidates is any anti-war sentiment. Lieberman, Kerry, and Gephardt all supported Bush’s murderous invasion of Iraq. The Democrats differ from the Bush gang only tactically, over how much of a humanitarian fig leaf they should put on their imperialist butchery. On the very day the NDN met, Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor and a major Democratic strategist, was at the liberal Brookings Institution praising the U.S. war machine’s slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi workers. "I believe we did the right thing in Iraq...I am glad the Bush administration has made the greater Middle East a policy priority....President Bush has set ambitious goals. He has acted boldly. I respect that."

Lieberman, Kerry, and Gephardt have chastised Bush for doing too little, too slowly to carry out the drastic homeland security measures presented in the Hart-Rudman reports. And in an unprecedented move, Rand Beers, a domestic terrorism expert on Bush’s National Security Council, quit in frustration and jumped on the Democrats’ bandwagon. "Beers’ resignation surprised Washington, but what he did next was even more astounding. Eight weeks after leaving the Bush White House, he volunteered as national security adviser for Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Democratic candidate for president, in a campaign to oust his former boss" (Washington Post, 6/16). Said Beers, "The administration wasn’t matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They’re making us less secure, not more secure." This advocate for fascism thinks the Democrats will be more successful at implementing it.

Whether a Democrat or a Republican sits in the White House, we can expect more U.S.-led invasions and some form of a sharper crackdown on U.S. workers. Real political change will come about only when the working class seizes power in a communist revolution. The many aspects of the long-term struggle toward this goal form the platform of the Progressive Labor Party. These include building a base of co-workers, friends, and neighbors; leading class struggle against the bosses’ growing attacks; widening CHALLENGE circulation; sharing our communist analysis of events, and recruiting new members to PLP.

Hospital Bosses Attack — Workers Fight Back!

CHICAGO, IL June 23 — "This is fascism!" declared dietitian Carol O’Neil after being fired last week at Stroger Hospital (the new name for Cook County Hospital — CCH). Carol has never been taken to a disciplinary hearing in her 19-year career at the hospital. But she has defended hundreds of workers over the past 13 years as one of the most active, anti-racist and pro-worker chief stewards in SEIU Local 73/HC (Health Care). She was active in the CCH InCAR (International Committee Against Racism) and waged various campaigns for workers and patients.

The new Nutrition and Food Services boss Amjad Ali has a long racist, sexist, anti-worker history. He recently harassed Mrs. Cooper, a supervisor, over using her Family Medical Leave time to care for her sick husband. At the end of May he took Mrs. Cooper, who had medical problems of her own, to a disciplinary hearing for her attendance. He said she had to decide if she should resign and stay home to care for her husband. Workers never saw her as upset as she was that day. The next morning she died.

One worker said, "I hold [Ali] responsible for Mrs. Cooper’s death." The shameless bosses actually began building their case against Carol when she tried resolving a grievance after returning to work the day of Mrs. Cooper’s funeral. Eventually they brought seven trumped-up charges against her, ranging from "being out of her work area" to "being behind in her paper work"!

Meanwhile, the union leadership is facing a serious challenge. Carol is running for local office on the reform "Members First" slate (ballots were mailed out just after she was fired). The local covers about 30 worksites. County is crucial to winning and Carol is the key to County. Local President Pia Davis is fighting to keep her $95,000-a-year office. She told Carol, "You all are trying to take my job," then insisted on personally "defending" her at the hearing.

On very short notice, dozens of workers signed petitions demanding the charges be dropped and brought them to the hearing. A group of about 20 witnesses and supporters escorted Carol to the hearing, despite Davis’s "concern" that it might intimidate the bosses.

A few days after the hearing, Carol was fired and given a police escort to clean out her office and leave the building. Co-workers were shocked and angry and offered to help. "At first I was embarrassed and then angry," Carol said. "I told one of my co-workers and she told the rest. I have some fears, but I decided to put my faith in the collective and it was the right thing to do."

The next day over 100 workers, including Members First leaders, held a lunch-time gathering in the cafeteria to begin circulating another petition to get Carol rehired. About 20 hospital security and Chicago cops failed to intimidate the workers and couldn’t get her to leave because of all the workers surrounding her, showering her with hugs and support. Ultimately, all visitors’ passes had to be cancelled. Even then it took the cops another half-hour to get Carol and her supporters out of the hospital. So much for "free speech" when workers fight back.

Within every attack lies a golden opportunity. We can politically defeat the racism and sexism of the bosses as well as the self-serving union hacks. The fight for Carol’s job has already put many workers in motion and activated many friends of the Party. Our CHALLENGE network helped to distribute 500 PLP leaflets throughout the hospital and more workers attended our last PLP club meeting. Whether or not Carol gets her job back, and she will, we can recruit more workers to PLP, expand the base for CHALLENGE and increase our political leadership in the main healthcare union in Chicago. This reminds us of the power workers have when we unite to fight.

Eastern German Auto Strikers Lead the Way

A series of auto strikes in the former East Germany is affecting the industry nationwide. Workers in the east want to cut their work-week from, 38 hours a week to 35 as it is in the west. Production of Volkswagen’s Golf model at the Wolfsburg complex, VW’s biggest plant, could stop if strikes continue to interrupt the parts flow.

DaimlerChrysler, Audi and BMW have also been hit. Meanwhile, the walkouts have forced the steel industry to agree to begin reducing work hours between 2005 and 2009.

The IG Metall union started the strikes several weeks ago, under pressure from hundreds of thousands of auto and steel workers. The strikes have erupted while the economy of Germany, Europe’s strongest, is facing the same problems as the U.S.: recession and deflation. Workers are refusing to pay for the bosses’ crisis.

The sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is forcing both U.S. and European rulers to sharpen the attacks on their workers, to get the money and manpower to build their war machines. Despite appearances, German union leaders are no better than their U.S. UAW counterparts. Nationalism means they’re far more committed to their bosses than their workers.

Autoworkers worldwide should support these strikes. This fall, contracts expire at GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler in the U.S. Autoworkers here should follow the lead of their fellow workers in eastern Germany. "Autoworkers of the world, unite!"

VW and Hitler’s ‘People’s Car’

To maintain the illusion he was for the German workers, Hitler commissioned auto boss Ferdinand Porsche to build a "people’s car" (Volkswagen). On March 26, 1938, construction began on what was to become the world’s largest auto plant, with the aim of hiring 30,000 workers and producing one million units yearly. The plan included taking money from workers’ paychecks throughout Germany to help them buy a VW. World War II put an end to that Nazi dream.

Only 630 VWs were produced for civilian use while tens of thousands of military vehicles were manufactured for the Nazi Army. Hitler’s regime stole these workers’ contributions for their cars and put them into a war fund. Like many other German companies, VW used lots of slave labor during the war.

When the war ended, Porsche was jailed for war crimes.

In 1948, with help from the Marshall Plan, engineer Heinrich Nordhoff became president of VW and began the process which turned it into Europe’s biggest auto company and one of the largest in the world.

While Union, Democratic Governor Push Racist Cuts:

Rank And Filers Resist Boeing’s Extortion

OLYMPIA, WA, June 11 — "When will they [the union misleaders] realize we’re at war with global corporations?" complained a Boeing Machinist as dozens of us distributed thousands of leaflets hand-to-hand, attacking the union-backed cuts in worker’s compensation and unemployment insurance. "They’ll never be our friends."

Boeing has demanded billions in concessions from 18 states competing for final assembly of the company’s proposed new jet, the 7E7 — "E" for "extortion."

Washington State’s Governor Locke — a rising star in the Democratic Party who recently gave the Democratic reply to Bush’s State of the Union speech — agreed to keep the company’s demands secret. Meanwhile, he helped orchestrate a $3.2 billion, 20-year Boeing tax cut. That translates to $133,000 a year for each of the 1,200 workers the new factory would employ.

Worker’s comp. and unemployment insurance (UI) will be slashed whether or not Boeing decides to locate here. Thousands of injured workers, particularly those suffering hearing loss from noisy Boeing factories, will find themselves cut off without a cent. The 35,000 laid-off Boeing workers will have their UI benefits capped immediately. Over the next few years, both the duration of benefits and the maximum will shrink. In perhaps the cruelest cut, 44,000 other (seasonal) workers, including 23% of the farm workers, will lose their UI benefits entirely. The rest will be cut even more than higher-paid workers.

The Boeing Machinists union pressured the State Labor Council to agree to cutbacks. The Council, however, balked at shifting the cuts to the poorest workers. Instead, they wanted an across-the-board UI reduction. The Boeing union refused to budge, demanding bigger cuts for the poor. The company drove a Mack truck through the split in the labor lobby, getting huge cutbacks for poor workers and 10% reductions for Boeing workers to boot. No wonder big business and the Republicans invited Machinist political director Linda Lanham to their victory news conference.

At those plants receiving significant numbers of our flyers before the legislative vote, workers were furious at "those corporate whores down at the [union] hall." Our leaflet asked, "Since when has fighting for jobs meant attacking the laid-off?" We rejected any cuts or coalitions with the State’s bosses in the name of "fighting for jobs." We called for solidarity with farm workers, the laid-off and workers in other states, many of whom are also Machinists, being subjected to this same corporate blackmail.

The union leadership portrays these cuts as "a great legislative victory." "Many of these seasonal workers aren’t even in unions," said Machinist District President Mark Blondin, defending his treachery. "Machinists who work for 15 years or more without ever drawing unemployment is the sort of worker who should be eligible for benefits," added Linda Lanham.

Worker Knows Racism When He Sees It

"What! Is it the farm workers’ fault the growers throw them on the street?" shouted a rank-and-file member, when he heard the leadership’s "reasoning." "Maybe it’s their fault they weren’t born white!" (Most Boeing workers remaining after the layoffs are white, while most farm workers are Latino.) Class-conscious workers, like this white Machinist, know racism when they see it!

The union leaders may not realize we’re at war, but the bosses sure do. They’re bogged down in an increasingly costly occupation of Iraq. "The spiraling costs of America’s global military dominance," says the British Financial Times (6/10), "[could seriously damage] the American standard of living." The bosses plan to attack workers at home in order to pay for more pre-emptive military strikes.

Same Enemy, Same Fight

European workers — like those at Boeing’s competition, Airbus — face similar attacks. French workers’ pensions are being cut to pay for France’s own imperialist ambitions. "The European industrialists must unite to resist [U.S. military supremacy]," said French Defense Minister Alliot-Marie, throwing down the gauntlet on the eve of the Paris Air Show (La Monde, 6/14). She envisions an anti-U.S. military/industrial alliance from Portugal to Russia built on the backs of Europe’s workers.

The bosses and the union leadership want to chain us to the profits of our own individual bosses. We in Washington State got a taste of what that means. Karl Marx’s conclusion to the Communist Manifesto was never truer: "Workers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains!"

Deal-making At Boeing’s House of ILL Repute

OLYMPIA, WASH., June 19 — It ain’t the House of Blues… or the House of the Rising Sun. It’s none other than the Boeing House (of Ill Repute) in Olympia, WA.

Boeing’s house is just 50 yards from the State Legislature, a gathering place for Boeing lobbyists and lawmakers. According to the Seattle Times, here they sit on the porch, smoke big cigars, and eat pizza.

"It’s also a popular spot for adjournment parties. After this year’s 105-day regular session ended six weeks ago, two House members — one Republican and one Democrat — were seen swing dancing to a jug band rendition of "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers."

If this weren’t so disgusting it would be funny!

Of course what they were really doing was sealing the deal that Boeing demanded and the Machinists union approved: cut unemployment and disability benefits for thousands of laid-off and injured workers and provide nothing for seasonal workers.

Yakima Valley farm workers have been picketing the Boeing House (See article above). We will contact them as part of our summer activities. The bosses, their union flunkies and the government may be dancing together today, but the working class will eventually dance on their graves.

New Slogan, Same Class Collaboration

Last month, the Boeing Machinist leadership launched a campaign to land the 7E7 final assembly in Everett, Washington. Early on, members protested that the campaign slogan "Whatever It Takes" was a blank check for the company. The hacks quickly changed the slogan to the unintelligible "We Can Do It," hoping to camouflage the attacks on the working class they were about to endorse (see adjoining article).

This campaign will continue through November, when the company announces its production decision. The hacks kicked off their campaign in Everett, billing it as a "Rally For Jobs." In fact, the rally’s purpose was to mobilize shop stewards and whatever members they could to lobby for cuts in unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation. They plan to bring this traveling road show to all Puget Sound plants.

In only a few weeks, the union leadership has surrendered any pretext of workers’ solidarity. Their campaign clearly attacks selected groups of workers, the price for their publicly-stated plan to build coalitions with various Boeing-led business councils. The working class must answer with our own campaign, led by those class-conscious workers who can expose the deadly consequences of the union’s collaboration with the bosses.

Capitalism Not As Rosy AS NEA Liberals See It

NEW ORLEANS, June 24 — The media is filled with news about the occupation of Iraq, the failing "peace" in the Mid East, layoffs, racist unemployment, budget cuts and the Patriot Act’s attacks on workers’ rights, all indicating growing fascism. The rich get tax cuts, the working class gets more taxes. But seeming to view this period through rose-colored glasses, the National Education Association (NEA) leadership has called a conference with the theme: The United States of Education — Great Public Schools for Every Child. This week 10,000 U.S. teachers will be meeting here for the NEA’s yearly Representative Assembly, organized around that theme. As the NEA leadership sees the world, things are O.K. so let’s just keep inching along to better schools for everybody, without questioning the direction of a system based on wars and oppression for profit.

In fact, things are NOT OK. These wars, cuts and deficits are the effects of the capitalist crisis on the working class. Moreover, both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress and in the state capitols intend to continue attacking the working class with war abroad and cutbacks at home. And they can count on the union leaderships not to challenge their basic assumptions or their spending priorities.

Some union leaders nation-wide are negotiating for their "fair share" of the cuts. Health-care union leaders urge legislators to cut community colleges; community college union leaders urge them to cut K-12; K-12 urges cuts in health care. Others unions unite together, putting up token resistance — mostly lobbying politicians and calling passive demonstrations — against the cuts. Instead of fighting to put a moratorium on the debt paid to the banks — who get theirs no matter what — there are calls for higher taxes on sales, tobacco, real estate and vehicles, all hitting the working class hardest.

Nowhere do we see union leaders — especially true in the NEA — championing the power of the working class. Teachers are workers, and must see that their power lies in uniting with other workers in militant action to shut down the schools and other public services to fight the bosses’ attacks. Recently we saw how almost 200,000 striking teachers nearly shut down Peru, forcing the government to declare a national emergency when hundreds of thousands of other workers joined the teachers. (See CHALLENGE, 6/25)

The NEA is the country’s largest teachers union. We plan to organize among the thousands of NEA representatives who want to expose the blind loyalty of the leadership to this fascist system. We want to bring the ideas of class struggle, anti-racism and anti-imperialism to the NEA membership, beginning in this conference. While we should fight the Bush administration neo-conservatives, the bigger danger facing us are the liberals, including those heading the NEA, who lead us to the same place, just in a "nicer" way.

Teachers must not teach blind patriotism and obedience to destructive wars of profit and conquest. We must challenge a system that attacks working-class youth by sending them to fight the bosses’ wars, only to guarantee the profits of the few. Out of struggles against these cuts and for the truth, we can build our own strength and unity for the long-term fight for workers’ power.

Capitalism can no more provide "Great Public Schools for Every Child" than it can eliminate poverty, unemployment or imperialist wars. Capitalism is a class society, based on racism, which the bosses exploit for their profits. We need a real communist society where the fruits of our labor will be shared by all. Only then will health care and education for workers be central to society.

We must oppose the NEA leadership in their drive to blind us to the ruling class’s plans. Support any New Business Items which answer these attacks and put us on a path to struggle against rulers’ wars. Read and circulate CHALLENGE and give distributors your name to help build a movement in the NEA.

Bosses Kill 3 Million in War for Congo’s Minerals

Three million people have been killed in a war during the last five years involving an area as large as Western Europe. Even though it’s being waged with old fashioned guns and mainly child soldiers, it’s a war for the minerals without which "smart" bombs, cellular phones, videogames, space ships and laptops couldn’t be built. It is not a virtual war game but it’s for real, one that few people outside Africa know about.

For years, the Congo was ruled by one of the CIA’s favorite dictators, Mobutu. He renamed it Zaire. Mobutu became enormously wealthy as a lackey of the U.S. and Apartheid South Africa, helping them arm forces like those of Jonas Savimbi who fought the pro-Soviet regime of Angola. When the Cold War ended, Mobutu, along with Savimbi, became useless to their masters. Laurent Kabila, helped by Ugandan and Rwandan armies — in exchange for future mineral concessions — organized a rebellion against Mobutu and ousted him.

But peace did not come to the newly-named Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kabila was murdered in 2001 and succeeded by his son Joseph. Since then there have been many unsuccessful attempts to reach a cease-fire with rival warlords. The latest fighting erupted in the Eastern Congo.

Although it’s labeled a tribal conflict, similar to the massacre of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi in the early 1990s, it’s much more than that. The rulers of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi support warlords who control the richest part of the Congo. Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, Lybia and Sudan support the Kabila regime. They’re after the Congo’s mineral wealth: 2/3 of the world’s supply of cobalt, 10% of the copper, one third of the world’s diamonds, huge deposits of gold, manganese, uranium and oil. It also has 80% of the world’s coltan, a super-conductor mineral used in everything from cellular phones to space ships. Multi-national companies, mainly U.S. and South African, are vigorously pursuing this coltan.

Recently the organization l’Observatoire de l’Afrique Centrale (OBSAC), reported that the Canadian-based Heritage Oil Company is now involved. On June 2, 2002, it acquired 30,000 square kilometers of land in Eastern Congo now controlled by the Kabila government. Heritage Oil decided to risk oil exploration in the area. But while Kabila and Uganda’s rulers will profit from the deal, the rulers of Rwanda and its forces are excluded. Until recently, the Rwandan-run militias controlled this oil rich area. France-Belgium’s TotalFinaElf is unhappy with the deal since it expected to get the rights won by Heritage. Be sure that the French Special Forces sent to the region for "humanitarian reasons" will be mainly used on behalf of Totalfina.

Meanwhile, 50,000 people have died in the most recent fighting in Eastern Congo, and one million are refugees. Most of the fighting involves child soldiers used by the different militias as cannon fodder.

This is the essence of capitalism and imperialism in the 21st century: wars, mass murder, starvation, all on the altar of profits. For the sake of our children and humanity, let’s build an international movement to destroy this rotten system and build communism.

The Secret Holocaust

Many millenniums ago, the great leap in evolution developed the first humans in Central Africa’s Rift valley in the Great Lakes region. Their offsprings populated the entire world, changing appearances to adapt to different climates and environments.

For centuries, the Congo was protected from pillaging by the European descendants of these primates because of its jungles and difficult-to-traverse rivers. Portuguese and Arab traders bought slaves from the coastal tribes who had captured them from their inland enemies. The colonialists then sold these slaves in the New World.

The rough climate, geography and flies which destroyed horses kept the colonialists away from the inland Congo until the end of the 19th century. It was the last place in Africa to fall to European empires, and became the private property of Belgium’s King Leopold II. Leopold never set foot on his property but died one of the world’s richest men after 20 years of pillaging the Congo and killing 15 million people. (Mark Twain waged an international campaign against this 19th century holocaust.)

The Congo was ruled till the early 1960s as a Belgian colony. When Leopold’s heirs departed, they left the country in ruins, without any basic services. Then Patrice Lumumba, a left-wing anti-colonialist, became Congo’s Prime Minister and tried to improve conditions. But he was too friendly with the Soviet Union so the CIA organized his assassination and installed their agent Mobutu in power. It’s gone from bad to worse ever since.

Expose Mexico’s Bosses In Fight vs. Layoffs

State of Mexico, Mexico, June 10 — "The bosses are thieves, a parasitic class that must be eliminated," said a leaflet distributed inside a freight company famous for being repressive. That’s how the workers responded to the firing of two workers for having taken a can of chilies. The bosses were furious at the exposé of how they become rich through robbery and exploitation. They’ve since launched a frantic campaign to repress the rebellious workers.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the Mexican economy has low productivity. The country’s consequent loss of markets has rattled the ruling class. They’re desperate to turn this situation around by imposing fascist working conditions, punishments, suspensions, threats, lengthening work-hours, increasing the amount of work and through arbitrary firings.

Gabriela was fired because she refused to work 10 hours for 8 hours pay. Carlos wouldn’t work 12 hours for 8 hours pay, so the bosses claimed he "improperly" used a computer and fired him.

The firing of Gabriella, the murders of the women workers of the maquillas (sweatshops) of Juarez, the sexism and racism that are behind these tremendous crimes, the millions of single mothers who fight to survive and are thrown on the street by the bosses — all this demands that we fight to destroy this murderous decaying capitalist system, which is incapable of offering us decent lives. We need more women in PLP to provide the communist leadership that the working class needs.

The workers are in motion in a slow but sure process: their class hatred and anger is being directed to intensify the class struggle, build unity with other workers and a network of CHALLENGE readers to give political leadership to all workers.

Mexico’s bosses are losing market share to their Chinese competitors. Their union hacks from the CTM (main Mexican labor federation) organized a violent nationalist demonstration against merchandise made in China. We workers must not fall into this bosses’ trap. The commodities, the market, productivity and nationalism are all bosses’ institutions and policies to increase the exploitation and oppression of the whole working class. International workers’ unity and the fight for communism can put workers on the offensive against the bosses’ constant attacks. Join PLP.

No Mere ‘Technicality’

Soviet Workers Saved World From Nazi Scourge

June 19th was the 50th anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for "conspiracy" to give U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II (see CHALLENGE, 6/25). A "review" of the case appeared in the New York Times (6/15) by Sam Roberts, author of a book about Ethel’s brother David Greenglass who admitted lying to send his sister to the electric chair. Roberts, in explaining why the Rosenbergs "weren’t charged with treason," says "the Russians were technically an ally in the mid-1940’s."

While Roberts’ "technical" definition may apply to the U.S. ruling class, the Soviet workers and Red Army were most definitely a true ally and comrade-in-arms to the international working class, including U.S. workers.

On June 22, 1941, 3,000,000 Nazi troops — until then perhaps the most committed military machine in world history — invaded the Soviet Union along a 2,000-mile front. After conquering Western Europe in two months, with Britain on its knees, Hitler was boasting that they would be in Moscow in six weeks (a prediction shared by this same NY Times and the rest of the U.S. press).

The Soviet Red Army became the first force to halt the Nazis, fighting alone against Hitler for 2½ years and defeating the Nazis at Stalingrad, the turning point of WWII.

Amid this most massive confrontation of armies the world had ever seen, the Soviet working class transported all its heavy industry eastward beyond the Ural Mountains to keep its weapons production beyond the reach of the Nazi attackers. That would be like moving all the factories from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago west of the Mississippi.

Simultaneously, Soviet workers pursued a "scorched earth" campaign, burning and destroying everything in the western Soviet Union to prevent Hitler’s invaders from using these resources. That’s the equivalent of "scorching the earth" from New England to Florida and the entire Appalachian Mountain states.

Between 20 and 30 million Soviets died in WWII. The COMBINED losses of the U.S. (under 300,000), Britain (500,000) and the entire British Empire (120,000) was less than one-twentieth of those suffered by the Soviet Union. (See "The World Almanac of World War II," p. 614.)

The D-Day U.S./British invasion of France took place while the Soviet Red Army was battling 80% of Hitler’s army on the Eastern Front. If Hitler had conquered the world’s first communist-led country and millions of Nazi troops were turned loose on the West, they would have invaded and probably conquered the U.K. All those "Private Ryans" waiting to be saved would never have reached France. A British general said had Hitler defeated the Soviets, millions in Britain and the U.S. would have been killed. Far fewer "baby boomers" would have ever been born.

The Soviet workers and their Red Army, led by Stalin, saved humanity from the Nazis. Such was the magnificent role of our "technical ally."

U.S. and Nazi rulers were racing to produce the A-Bomb. Both would have used it against the USSR. Why wouldn’t a communist like Julius Rosenberg, seeing the embattled Soviet Union fighting the Nazis virtually by itself, want to help it develop such a weapon? "Treason" to the U.S. ruling class? Yes! Loyalty to the international working class? Absolutely!

Now the U.S. ruling class is surpassing Hitler, launching endless wars and mass murder for profits and world domination. Millions die because of capitalist-caused hunger, poverty, racism and unemployment. Since the defeat of the world communist movement, there is little opposition to its war machine. The only answer to this new fascist/imperialist monster is the building of a new international communist movement that can organize the world’s working class to do to U.S. bosses and all capitalists what the Soviet workers did to the Nazis.

Black GI’s Fought Nazis and U.S. Military’s Racism

(This continues the review of "American Patriots, The Story of Blacks in the Military," by Gail Buckley. The author depicts black soldiers trying to defend "their country," despite encountering virulent racism. She cites Colin Powell as the "heights" that black soldiers have achieved in the military and doesn’t indicate that patriotism serves the rulers or that U.S. imperialist wars were fought in the ruling class’s interests, although WWII had a distinct anti-fascist character. This series concentrates on the bravery of black soldiers despite intense racism. Our previous issue covered the Civil War, World War I and the Spanish Civil War.)

World War II

When WWII began, the U.S. armed forces were still segregated. White officers generally commanded all black troops. Lynchings were common on the home front. According to liberal President Roosevelt, "No black issue, from making lynching a federal crime to desegregating the military was more important than appeasing the southern wing of the Democratic Party." (p. 259)

In 1940, black unemployment was at 20%. Black workers referred to Roosevelt’s "New Deal" as "the dirty deal." Fifteen enlisted black Navy messmen — promised they’d learn a trade — wrote a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier (a black paper), warning others who enlisted that, "All they would become is seagoing bellhops, chambermaids and dishwashers." (p. 263)

Racism was intense. "In the winter of 1941…the military ordered ‘white blood’ only. Blood segregation was mandated by the military…" (p. 268) No "black blood" could be given to wounded white soldiers!

When USO entertainers put on shows for the troops, "black soldiers were forced to sit behind German…POWs." (p. 261) In 1943, the actress and singer Lena Horne (mother of this book’s author) refused to entertain at an Alabama army camp because German prisoners of war were seated up front and black soldiers in the back. Ms. Horne was kicked out of the USO (United Service Organization organizing wartime entertainment). After that she only entertained black troops.

"The 93rd [all-black] Division saw action under General Douglas MacArthur…but from Hawaii to Australia fought more white racists than Japanese." (p. 277)

In December 1944, the Germans’ counter-offensive, the so-called Battle of the Bulge, rocked Allied troops back on their heels. A desperate General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of all Allied troops (and future President), allowed black troops to volunteer for combat; 2,221 did. But fighting alongside white soldiers would mean desegregation, so instead Eisenhower put them in all-black platoons under white commanders.

Two months earlier, in October, General Patton’s Third Army had bogged down in France’s Saar basin and needed replacements. The only combat armored units in the U.S. were black. The 761st tank battalion was selected. "When they moved by train to Fort Knox…the unit was ordered to pull down the shades, for Kentucky whites were in the habit of shooting at passing black troops." (p. 327)

The 761st was rushed to relieve the embattled white troops. After five furious days of fighting, they forced the Germans to retreat back into Germany. By April 27, the 761st crossed the Danube, spearheading the assault that, by early May of 1945, advanced into Austria. On May 6 they united with the westbound Soviet Red Army, in the hugely photographed meeting of East and West.

"Between March 31 and May 6, the 761st took 106,921 prisoners, an average daily rate of 2,813, including 20 German generals…[and] liberated the Gunskirchen concentration camp." (p. 331)

Eisenhower refused to award the 761st the Distinguished Unit Citation (DUC), although 12 white units received it. In 1978 they finally recieved the DUC for "extraordinary heroism," and "accomplishments [that] were truly magnificent as the successful crossing of the Rhine River into Germany was totally dependent upon the accomplishment of their mission."

"When the movie ‘Patton’ was released in 1970, no mention was made of the 761st…. They had…stayed longer on the front line than any other armored battalion…riding deeper into Germany. But only one black was portrayed in the film: Patton’s orderly." (p. 331)

Buckley concludes, "The 500,000 black American men and women who served in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific in the 1940s would have bitter memories of the military…. [which] enforced American-style racism wherever it went. Black GIs fought fascism on two fronts in World War II — at home and abroad, where, as often as not, the enemy wore an American uniform." (p. 261)

(Next issue: the Vietnam War and Gulf War I.)

THE FIRST U.S. HERO OF WORLD WAR II

"The first American hero of World War II was black. On December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, Dorie Miller was a messman on the burning deck of the U.S.S. West Virginia. Miller,…son of a Texas sharecropper, …manned an anti-aircraft gun to bring down…four Japanese planes…. Miller had never been taught to fire the…gun; it was against Navy regulations for blacks to do so. Only when the ammunition was exhausted and the [battleship] was sinking beneath him did he abandon ship….

"The first Navy dispatches from Pearl Harbor described him as an ‘unidentified Negro messman.’ Apparently embarrassed that the first hero of the war was black, the Navy found a white hero in Captain Colin Kelly, killed on December 9 in a crash-dive onto [a] Japanese battleship….

"[Miller] remained a messman until he died [in] 1943, when all hands went down on the torpedoed carrier Liscome Bay."(p. 275)

The Secret War Against U.S. Military Veterans

In recent months thousands of young GI’s have been shipped to war in the Mid-East. Some won’t return. Those who do may become part of the rapidly growing number sickened by depleted uranium weapons and other weapons of mass destruction used by the U.S. military. These vets are also at risk from service cuts back home.

The government says it honors and cares for soldiers risking their lives in the bosses’ wars, while cutting veteran’s benefits. In Chicago, the Veterans Health Administration is closing the VA Lakeside Hospital, which just happens to sit on prime real estate sought by millionaire developers.

Meanwhile, a recent American Legion survey of over 3,000 veterans found the average vet waits seven months for an appointment. Then the VA reschedules 60% of the time, so the vet must wait another 2½ months for the new appointment!

According to the Chicago Tribune (5/11), "[Forrest] Costner, 55, who served in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, tried to sign up for VA health care in November, 2000 when he began to worry about losing his job. Costner was still waiting for a VA appointment when his employer let him go in October [2002!]."

A cancer survivor who takes medication for diabetes and high blood pressure and who is still jobless, Costner has been paying $700 a month for insurance while the VA keeps him in limbo." The government tells you, ‘We’ll always be there for you when you need us’ when you go into the military, but it seems like once you’ve done the job for them you really don’t matter that much anymore."

The U.S. Supreme Court just ruled against aging veterans from World War II and the Korean War (Schism vs. the U.S.) Thousands of vets had been promised lifetime medical benefits when they enlisted. Now it’s "Sorry, we don’t have the money — you’re on your own."

As a protest sign said during an anti-war demonstration: "Rich man’s war, poor man’s blood." The billionaires running the government has no interest in the "promises" made to idealistic young military recruits. The sons and daughters of the working class are used and discarded when the new market, natural resource or other economic target has been captured. The bosses gorge themselves on oil profits while the veteran struggles for medical care.

The only war that makes sense for workers is a class war. The working class produces everything of value. It’s the autoworker or oil derrick operator or nurse who makes it happen, not the Exxon stockholder or hospital CEO. The soldiers carry the guns. When revolutionary ideas grow in soldiers’ minds, the generals get nervous. One day those in power will pay the price for their arrogance. They underestimate our ability to learn the lessons taught by today’s abuses. But we’re learning. We’ll turn their profit wars into class war — communist revolution for workers’ power.

LETTERS

Solidarity Needed vs. Racist Layoffs

Recently, Mayor Bloomberg announced the layoff of 2,000 school workers in the New York City Department of Education. They’re overwhelmingly black and Latin women. Some are school aides who monitor lunchrooms, playgrounds and assist in the front office, members of District Council 37. Others (paraprofessionals) assist teachers in the classroom are members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The attack on these workers illustrates the racism of the City’s cutbacks. However, scratching further one can see that Mayor Bloomberg and other Republicans may have another agenda.

School aides were introduced 30 years ago under the then Mayor Lindsay’s plan to decentralize the school system. After massive protests by black and Latin parents against their children’s’ inferior education, Lindsay (along with the Ford Foundation) pushed decentralization to take the heat off the central Board. Part of the "community control" plan was the hiring of school aides, mainly black and Latin workers. When the school reform movement was in its progressive stages the school aides were on the front lines in bringing in black, Latin and working-class history to the public schools.

Soon the Democratic bosses began to exercise power over the schools; community control became "Democratic Party control." Superintendents, principals and school aide positions are generally approved by the Democratic hacks, providing the Democrats with a certain mass base. Under the guise of "school reform," Bloomberg decided to weaken this base by layoffs and "restructuring" the Department of Education. First he hired Joel Klein, a former CEO. Now come the racist layoffs. UFT president Randi Weingarten has launched a lawsuit over the school-aide layoffs.

Lawsuits will not stop these cuts. Only solidarity among teachers, aides and parents can save these jobs.

NYC UFT Member

Friendship Grows From Struggle

A comrade and I recently visited with a laid-off construction worker. Joe reads CHALLENGE and took three to a youth group meeting he attends. He has come to a PLP forum and helped write and distribute a Party leaflet. We met Joe through the struggle over his wife’s firing. She was unable to win her job back, but the struggle put PLP on the map as a fighting organization. Whenever we fight racist injustice and exploitation, it counts toward the ultimate victory over our oppressors.

Our conversation with Joe was friendly and stimulating. He had been a member of the black Muslims under Elijah Mohammad, but left when Wallace Mohammad & Farrakan split into two factions.

We discussed how communists view religion and nationalism; ideologies that mislead workers and help the ruling class maintain its power. Black nationalism means black workers should ally with black bosses, as if exploitation is a function of color. Exploitation is built into capitalism, no matter what color our oppressors are.

Religion keeps our class in chains by telling us we have no control over our destiny, that an all-powerful spirit (god, Allah, Christ, etc.) controls all. The Russian and Chinese revolutions provide clear examples of how workers, under a communist party, were able to smash their capitalist oppressors. Under the right conditions, PLP will lead millions in the worldwide movement for a communist society. We can and will control our destiny.

Joe also wanted to discuss secret ruling class groups, like the Skull & Bones society, the Illuminati, and the Masons. I am not familiar with these groups, but hopefully, others can write to CHALLENGE and explain how they serve the bosses.

We need workers like Joe and his courageous wife to join us, and help lead the struggle for working-class justice. He really enjoyed watching the May Day video. Long live PLP and communist revolution!

A Comrade

JROTC Teaches Lies About Bosses’ Wars

Many of my friends active in the "peace movement" are thinking about the long-term problems of fighting imperialist wars, and are trying to figure out the reasons for these wars. This is a good development, as they realize that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are but two in a string of wars.

This has sparked many good discussions. I explain that these wars result from the inevitable crisis of capitalism and they’ll continue until a revolutionary movement led by communists wipes out capitalism. Although many of my friends are not yet convinced, they are open, and reading CHALLENGE with them has been very helpful.

Some people are active in a campaign to throw JROTC off high school campuses, leading to much discussion. JROTC is a class taught by retired military officers as a substitute for a Physical Education (PE). Students spend enough time marching around to satisfy the PE requirement, and a lot of time in class learning military organization, strategy and tactics, and how great U.S. imperialism is. It’s funded both by the military and the school district, and the former sees it as one of their best recruiting programs. In our district, it’s in schools with mostly black and Latin students.

My friends say JROTC is racist because it recruits largely black and Latino students for serial warfare, and sets low expectations in poor communities. They say that part of building an anti-war movement is to fight JROTC. I’ve commented that the worst thing about JROTC is not its recruitment of youth to the military — the economic situation today does that. The worst thing is political: its textbooks push patriotism and justify every imperialist adventure the U.S. has ever undertaken. Students are taught, first and foremost, to uncritically follow orders.

We know that working class youth — especially black and Latin — will join the military. U.S. imperialism relies on these youth to fight its wars. But will they enlist knowing they’re part of an international working class which has suffered from imperialism worldwide as well as in the U.S.? Or will they go on thinking the U.S. is the best of all possible societies and has the right to rule the rest of the world?

When they get to Iraq (or wherever the next war is) the struggle over what ideas they hold only sharpens. As occupation meets resistance, and soldiers continue to face attack from a hostile population, they face alternatives. Some realize they shouldn’t be there and begin to demand to be sent home. Others are won to racism and begin to see the entire conquered population as the enemy. As things sharpen, these choices become sharper. In Vietnam, U.S. troops massacred civilians. My Lai was only the most famous. There was also massive resistance to fighting and a total break-down of authority — GI’s defying their officers. How soldiers react in these situations is largely determined by what they think about the world.

So I tell my friends that the fight is not to keep youth out of the military, but to educate them about the nature of U.S. imperialism and to win them to an anti-racist, pro-working class point of view. We should debate JROTC teachers in the schools, and require that all students in JROTC classes be given an anti-imperialist history of the U.S. to combat the military’s lies. We have the truth on our side, and we should fight for the allegiance of the youth.

A Comrade

CHALLENGE comment:

The comrade’s point is well-taken. It is true that soldiers’ reactions are influenced by how they see the world, but their reactions also have much to do with the international class struggle. The old communist movement led its last great battles during the late 1960’s.

In China, millions of Red Guards were rebelling for communism against the capitalist roaders who today have turned China into a massively exploited, cheap-labor country. In Vietnam, the communist-led resistance was actually defeating U.S. imperialism. Rebellion was occurring worldwide as millions protested against imperialist war and racism. The huge urban rebellions against police brutality and racist unemployment in the U.S. also influenced U.S. soldiers, particularly black GI’s. For these soldiers the enemy wasn’t the Vietcong but their own officers and the racist military. Half a million U.S. soldiers deserted; many fragged (shot) their own officers and sabotaged six aircraft carriers. This was the birth of the Vietnam Syndrome which the U.S. bosses so greatly fear, and which slowly but surely is beginning to haunt them once again (see front page).

Cops Run Scared When Workers Unite

Our city's public hospital saw the meaning of "workers power" when they fired one of our co-workers.

The day after the firing she came to the hospital cafeteria. The hospital had been leafleted that morning so everyone knew she was coming.

"The cafeteria looks like Fort Knox," one worker said. A group of us walked with her into the cafeteria. Hospital security and city police were waiting for us, along with the union recording secretary who tried to stop us, claiming what we were doing was "illegal."

We had a petition for everyone to sign demanding our co-worker be reinstated. After she explained to Security why she was there, they decided not to act against her so the "suits" came in.

The Chief of Security and his assistant tried to get us to leave the cafeteria. Many people gathered around us. Security and the cops were running scared. At one point a cop yelled into his radio, "All units to the cafeteria." No one paid any attention. Everyone was asking for the petition. There were about 40 people around us, telling our co-worker they supported her. People were ignoring the cops. Workers were telling her, "If you don't come back to work, we'll go on strike." After about an hour we decided to leave, but the rally continued outside for another hour.

When talking to other workers later that week, one said it reminded her of the civil rights movement days. When she was seven years old she had seen Martin Luther King, Jr. speak at a church. She said she was glad she came [to this action] to let them know "we're going to fight." Another worker told me, "She didn't have to be terminated so we're going to fight for her. I didn't feel intimidated. I felt I could fight. The struggle for the leadership of our union will continue. The president of the union has decided to ally with the bosses, to keep peace with them. We choose to fight with the workers."

Most of these workers read our paper and we're pushing forward with them. The next step is to recruit them to the Party.

A Hospital Worker

Is what's good for the company good for the workers?

In September the company president had a meeting at the factory where I work to announce it was growing and was building a factory in Mexico. Most of the workers cheered. They thought that what was good for the company would be good for us; 85% of the 600 workers are from Mexico. Many felt proud that the new factory was in "their country." When I cautioned the workers not to be so happy, some said I felt that way only because I am from another country.

In January workers from the new factory came here for training. They said they make a flat $6/day, less than dollar an hour. We get $8/hr. plus production bonuses. My co-workers began to worry. One said, "The company can get rid of one of us and hire 10 workers in Mexico for the same money."

In May the company laid off all 80 workers supplied by an outside agency. Management also announced that a job performed by 320 workers here was also being done in Mexico, and that workers on that job here who made three mistakes would be fired. Most workers doing this job have worked for this boss for more than seven years, some for as many as 25 years. "Auditors" began watching everyone and making notes, but not saying anything. So far, three workers have been fired. There are rumors that the entire factory will close in October.

Many workers are now telling me that what I said last October was true. What's good for the company is NOT good for the workers. More workers are understanding that Mexican nationalism - like all nationalism - is harmful to workers. Five workers have been reading CHALLENGE.

We plan to ask these five workers to join PLP and help us increase our circulation. We also plan to demand that the union - which has done nothing - meet, prepare a defense against contract violations, firings and layoffs, and get accurate information from management about its intentions. We're also organizing a barbeque to get the workers together away from the factory. We have to figure out a way to unite with the workers in the factory in Mexico.

An Internationalist Worker

U.S. Rulers Have Long History of : Weapons Of Mass Distortion

PLP Leads Shut-down of KKK in Illinois

U.S. Road Map to War Filled With Potholes

a href="#Back GE Workers’ Fight vs. Medical, Job Cuts">"ack GE Workers’ Fight vs. Medical, Job Cuts

a href="#Bosses Say Cut Back; Union Hacks Say ‘O.K.’">Bo"ses Say Cut Back; Union Hacks Say ‘O.K.’

Immigrants, Citizens Must Unite vs. Racist Border Killers

ESL Students Force Out Racist Professor

a href="#Striking Teachers Confront Peru’s Army, Union Hacks">"triking Teachers Confront Peru’s Army, Union Hacks

a href="#Book Review: Black GI’s and the Fight vs. Rampant Racism">"ook Review: Black GI’s and the Fight vs. Rampant Racism

a href="#‘Free Trade’ War For South America’s Markets">‘Fre" Trade’ War For South America’s Markets

a href="#The Truth Behind ‘Support Our Troops’">Th" Truth Behind ‘Support Our Troops’

a href="#The Rosenbergs — Loyal to International Working Class, Not to Bosses">"he Rosenbergs — Loyal to International Working Class, Not to Bosses

U.S. Rulers Loot Social Security

Tax Cuts And Budget Deficits

401(K)ick in the Head

a href="#1980’s Tax ‘Cut’ was Hike for Workers">1980"s Tax ‘Cut’ was Hike for Workers

Red Eye On The News

LETTERS

a href="#‘Pushing 70’ and Still Anti-Fascist">‘P"shing 70’ and Still Anti-Fascist

AIDS Article Got It Wrong

Look to Workers Not to Democrats

Revolution A Universal Language

Bosses Cry Wolf(owitz)

a href="#U.S. Hiring India’s Army to Police Iraq">".S. Hiring India’s Army to Police Iraq

How I Became A Communist

a href="#China’s Red ‘Barefoot Docs’ Would Have Stopped SARS">Chin"’s Red ‘Barefoot Docs’ Would Have Stopped SARS

---

U.S. Rulers Have Long History of : Weapons Of Mass Distortion

After two months of occupation in Iraq, the U.S. military still hasn’t produced the "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) that supposedly justified Bush’s war. This failure has generated a lot of hype in the international media. A major scandal is brewing. The New York Times piously editorializes about the "good word of the United States." (6/8). Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report have all run major pieces on "possible" government falsifications about Iraqi WMD.

Let’s assume Bush & Co. lied through their teeth. This is standard operating procedure when the big bosses want to launch an imperialist war. U.S. rulers are particularly adept at it.

In 1964, President Johnson manufactured a North Vietnamese "attack" in the Gulf of Tonkin as a cover for escalating the Vietnam War. Millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of U.S. troops died in the process.

In 1984, Reagan concocted a preposterous story about Cuban weapons in Grenada in order to invade that Caribbean island and change its political leadership. The U.S. Navy flattened the island in the interest of "democracy."

In 1989, Bush, Sr. used Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega’s involvement in drug smuggling, which Bush had tolerated all along, as an excuse to invade Panama and counter a Japanese bankers’ financial take-over while eliminating a political embarrassment and killing thousands of civilians.

In 1991, Bush, Sr. had a U.S. diplomat sucker Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait, providing the U.S. an excuse to launch Desert Storm I. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were murdered.

In 1999, Clinton used the Big Lie of "human rights" to turn the former Yugoslavia into rubble. The real reason for that war was to prevent former Serbian president Milosevic from becoming a rival player in the oil pipeline business.

U.S. lies and provocations to justify wars of conquest go all the way back to the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898, which gave U.S. rulers an excuse to grab a chunk of Spain’s colonial empire.

So one could say that Bush, Jr.’s fabrications about Iraqi WMD are just another day at the office. But this scandal doesn’t seem to be going away, and the working class has a clear interest in grasping its essential meaning. If we don’t make the effort to do so, we risk falling into a deadly trap that liberals in the U.S. ruling class are trying to set for us.

The whole point about WMD was to justify the war and motivate the U.S. military and civilian population to accept casualties in the name of a higher good. Well, U.S. casualties were minimal this time. But conquest won’t always come so cheap. Already, the U.S. occupiers are taking daily casualties in a conflict that now appears to have turned into a guerrilla war. Iraq, after Afghanistan, represents merely the second stage of a sweeping U.S. plan to rule the world by force. A war against Iran and an occupation of Saudi Arabia aren’t out of the question in the not-so-distant future. The U.S. military has now ringed all of former Soviet Central Asia. The bosses are making noise about dealing with North Korea. On the more distant horizon lies a potential direct conflict with some combination of the U.S.’s main imperialist competitors. China, Russia, France and Germany could be in the mix.

CHALLENGE can’t predict the exact scenarios or timetables. But Bush’s invasion of Iraq must not be considered a one-shot deal. As Stratfor.com (intelligence news service) says, this is "a war that will last for many years." (6/5)

Viewed in this context, the mounting WMD-gate scandal appears as a fight among the big bosses over how best to inspire the working class to fight and die for the strategic goal of maintaining U.S. world domination. Bush’s detractors within the ruling class don’t give a damn about the moral implications of lying. They do it all the time themselves. However, they worry deeply about motivating workers to line up as enthusiastic cannon-fodder for future wars. One New York Times columnist frets: "…if [WMD] are not found, some…worry about what might happen if Mr. Bush or a successor tried to rally American or international backing for another war — say, with Iran or North Korea — using disputed evidence to buttress the case." (6/8). The Times editorial chimes in: "The issue goes to the heart of American leadership," and agonizes about what might happen to U.S. credibility "when real threats materialize," if a U.S. president "squanders…credibility." Stratfor is a little more direct than the Times: "[Bush’s] use of smoke and mirrors to justify a war in which Iraq was simply a single campaign …created a situation in which the American public had one perception of the reason for the war while the war’s planner had another…[T]his is a dangerous situation to have created." (6/5).

Hovering over the big bosses’ heads is the fear that "Vietnam Syndrome" — the unwillingness of troops to fight for U.S. imperialism — is alive and well within the U.S. military and society at large. This fear is justified! The rulers would love to whip up a Hitler-like wave of racist patriotism to fuel their drive for world conquest. So far, they haven’t done too well. Bush’s awkward WMD fictions prove the point. Now the liberals (Kerry, et al.) are floating gimmicks like "national service" to mislead us into marching for their agenda.

Ultimately, the rulers have no choice other than racing from one Big Lie to another. No war they launch can serve the interests of the working class. Communism remains the only goal worth fighting and dying for. As the WMD-gate scandal sharpens and the rulers contrive new schemes to gull us into their bloody wars , CHALLENGE will continue to expose their true imperialist motives. Joining and building the Progressive Labor Party is the only sure path to sharpen the class struggle, leading the working class to a communist future.

PLP Leads Shut-down of KKK in Illinois

CHICAGO, IL May 31- "PLP in Berwyn! About damn time!" That’s what a worker declared after receiving CHALLENGE and a flyer, as hundreds of workers and students showed up to shut down the KKK today. Despite the efforts of politicians, press and religious leaders to pacify workers, many community people responded to the militant leadership of PLP in chants, speeches, and action. Many realized that simply ignoring the Klan is deadly.

Blocks from the rally, a few cop-protected Nazis were beat down while our group chanted, "Death to the Nazis! Power to the Workers!" One comrade at her first anti-Klan action said, "These racists need to be taught a lesson. A beat-down! Now that’s a lesson!"

Upon reaching the rally the cops herded the anti-racists into pens like criminals. Cops protect these racists and uphold the capitalist system that divides workers, black against white, and citizen against immigrant to generate maximum profits. Eight anti-racists were arrested, including two PLP members. A few workers gave us their names and numbers.

Fighting these racist scum is good, but not enough. This rally comes while U.S. rulers are struggling for control of oil around the world to maintain global dominance. The war in Iraq, which killed thousands of Iraqi workers, has temporarily secured Exxon/Mobil’s oil profits in the Middle East. But it has also intensified the conflict between U.S. bosses and their European rivals.

To wage profit wars abroad the rulers need fascism at home. This means repressive laws, cutbacks in healthcare and education, unemployment, and racist terror against black workers and youth and immigrants. Capitalism needs KKK racism to divide the working class and win workers to fight in oil wars overseas.

Only communist revolution can smash their government, cops and courts and end increased racist terror and imperialist war. Only then can we build a world that serves the international working class. JOIN PLP!

U.S. Road Map to War Filled With Potholes

Iraq remains so dangerous that its "liberator" George Bush can’t even set foot there. Unable to ensure their boss’s safety on the ground, Bush’s handlers had to settle for a less than triumphal fly-over of Iraq during his recent Mideast trip. After a relatively easy campaign in Iraq and buying off Saddam’s top generals, while killing at least 5,000 civilians, U.S. forces now face guerrilla warfare. Ambushing Iraqi holdouts are killing GIs at a rate only slightly lower than in the original invasion.

The situation in Iraq reflects troubles confronting U.S. rulers throughout the Middle East. They need to control its oil by force in order to maintain their superpower dominance over foreign rivals. Washington has a two-fold strategy: ringing the Middle East with staging bases for future invasions, and relying on local regimes to impoverish and terrorize workers. Both schemes are creating increasing instability in the region.

Israel is supposed to guard the western flank of the U.S.’s Mideast oil province and suppress the Palestinian segment of the Arab working class. But, directly due to U.S. action, mounting internal violence is dashing U.S. rulers’ hopes for a stable, reliable Israel. U.S threats against Iran after the Iraq invasion only emboldened the Islamic Hamas faction, which gets support from Iran’s ayatollahs, who are themselves in league with French and Russian oil bosses. (The Russians are helping Iran build a nuclear plant, defying U.S. protests.) Hamas is boycotting Bush’s Israeli-Palestinian "peace" talks and has launched a new series of suicidal attacks on Israelis.

The poverty and misery at the heart of Palestinian workers’ current unrest goes back to the U.S.’s first invasion of Iraq. At that time, under Washington’s instructions, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia expelled some 600,000 Palestinian workers and cut off financial aid to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) and Jordan. U.S. bosses feared the workers would side with Iraq. Many of these displaced workers returned home to the West Bank and Gaza.

Afghanistan is not proving to be the military stronghold U.S. rulers hoped for. It sits at the Persian Gulf oilfields’ eastern edge and contains strategic oil and gas pipeline routes. U.S. forces there have not succeeded in eradicating Al Qaeda-Taleban forces, which killed four German soldiers last week.

The re-emerging threat from Al Qaeda is, in fact, forcing the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia, the crown jewel of the Mideast oil treasure. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is beefing up its presence in neighboring Bahrain and Qatar. Al Qaeda represents Saudi capitalists who don’t belong to the royal family and want to take over the vast Saudi oil industry for themselves. The U.S.-led butchery in Iraq did the opposite of intimidating Al Qaeda, as the latter’s recent terror attacks in Morocco and Saudi Arabia show.

The Al Qaeda menace also has U.S. bosses rethinking their long-standing love match with the Saudi royal family. On June 5, Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil scrapped a $15 billion natural gas deal that the house of Saud had pushed. One reason was that Exxon wanted a bigger profit share than the royals wanted to give. But, in addition, U.S. rulers no longer seem willing to guarantee the royal family’s survival indefinitely.

Given the combination of the U.S. rulers’ need to control the Middle East by military intervention along with the repressiveness of local governments there, Stratfor.com, an intelligence news service, (6/6) concludes, "The stage is now set for upheaval and change." This means more imperialist invasions and more popular uprisings.

The working class of the Middle East, led by oil workers, has a long pro-communist history. Unfortunately, the opportunism of the old communist movement has left the field open today to the local fundamentalist and nationalist bosses. It’s time to build a new communist movement based on the unity of all workers and their allies against ALL local bosses and the imperialists, with the goal of fighting for a communist Middle East.

Patriotism Is Dangerous to Your Health:

a name="Back GE Workers’ Fight vs. Medical, Job Cuts">">"ack GE Workers’ Fight vs. Medical, Job Cuts

LYNN, MA, June 7 — Today nearly 3,000 General Electric workers from Lynn, Cleveland, Louisville and many other Eastern and Mid-Western cities rallied in preparation for a possible strike of 24,000 workers nationwide. They’re fighting increasing healthcare costs, attacks on retirees, and plans to move production to countries where workers get $2/hr or less. PLP’ers joined the rally to support the workers and bring them a message of revolution.

We distributed CHALLENGE and several hundred leaflets exposing GE’s role as the most profitable weapons manufacturer in the world, which the bosses use in their imperialist slaughters. GE also owns NBC, a key part of the bosses’ pro-war propaganda machine.

PLP called on workers to strike GE and damage the bosses’ ability to wage unending wars. In contrast, a Lynn congressman jingoistically proclaimed his support for GE workers because they make weapons (the Lynn plant’s specialty). He said the country has recently "gained a great appreciation for our men and women in uniform," and those workers "who make the weapons who keep them safe." We also revealed the role of the IUE hacks in screwing workers for over 50 years (see CHALLENGE, 6/11) and called on workers to reject them.

Most of our leaflets and nearly all our CHALLENGES were taken by the mostly black workers from Cleveland and the integrated group from Louisville. The Cleveland workers supported the 2001 Cincinnati rebellion against a cop murderer and embraced our ideas about fighting racist police terror and the KKK. They were enthusiastic about striking GE. The Louisville workers welcomed our message attacking the police killing of GE striker Michelle Rogers in January. Many agreed that the cops’ job is to protect the bosses, their property and their scabs. Many of these workers were her friends. One contact came from that group.

While the hacks said they mourned sister Rogers’ death, they said nothing about the role of the police, despite the fact that the Louisville workers face regular harassment from the cops and the Klan, and periodic police raids on their local office. When the rally ended, the hacks "thanked" the police and praised them for being AFL-CIO members. The Louisville workers laughed because they knew better.

Most workers from the mostly white Lynn plant refused our leaflets, some with hostility. Many wore shirts decorated with American flags, equating patriotism with fighting corporate greed. We were attacked for being communists and opposing the war. Many of these workers were unhappy about the idea of a strike, some clinging to the illusion that GE could come around without one.

The positive response from the Cleveland and Louisville workers demonstrates that industrial workers, especially those from plants that are integrated or have a large black workforce, are open to our revolutionary communist message. These workers will be the key force for making revolution. Workers everywhere must back GE workers if they strike, helping build class-consciousness and solidarity. Class contradictions can become clearer during strikes.

During the last national GE strike, during the Vietnam War in 1969, PLP led 10,000 workers and students to break away from a pacifist anti-war demonstration to march to the Labor Department in support of the strikers. We organized workers and students to walk the picket lines nation-wide under the banner, "War-maker, Strike-breaker! Smash GE!" and built a red-led worker-student alliance. Workers, soldiers, and students at war-making facilities and institutions can defeat the bosses’ war machine.

a name="Bosses Say Cut Back; Union Hacks Say ‘O.K.’"></">Bo"ses Say Cut Back; Union Hacks Say ‘O.K.’

LOS ANGELES, June 9 — Mass layoffs, cuts in wages, benefits and services, hikes in sales, excise and vehicle taxes — workers are MAD. So what’s California union leaders’ "answer"? Some mild protests to let off steam but stick with the Democrats, accept some layoffs and "not-so-bad" cuts.

SEIU Local 660 and other public worker unions are mobilizing a June 16-17 protest against these attacks. But there’s a twist. The union leaders are proposing a sales tax increase to bail out the bosses from the budget deficit, a racist tax hike falling heaviest on workers, especially on black, Latin and immigrant workers.

Meanwhile, the "rallying cry" of the state’s largest union, the California School Employees Association (CSEA) is, "A Fair Share, Not the Whole Share"! They want job and wage-cuts only "in proportion to" their numbers in the workforce and to their salaries. This "bargaining position," starting from acceptance of layoffs, limits workers’ ability to fight back.

In 1865, Karl Marx rallied the International Workingman’s Association with: "Instead of… ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they [the working class] ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system!"

The working class is still struggling valiantly for a "fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work," to obtain more of the value of our labor power. Some workers have wrested some concessions; most live in deepening poverty. Workers have not won the freedom to be gained only from ending the wage system. Since workers produce all value, we should reap the FULL fruits of that work and collectively decide its distribution according to need. That’s real fairness. That’s communism.

SEIU says, "California is facing the worst budget crisis in our lifetimes." Sure, a quarter-century of tax breaks for corporations, using federal funds for wars for oil profits, plus the current recession, threaten tens of thousands of jobs.

California bosses are locked in a bitter dogfight over this crisis. Democrat Governor Gray Davis, elected by the state’s largest unions, wants some tax increases and big budget cuts. Republican legislators want even deeper cuts but no tax increases. Either way, workers lose. But many workers are ready to fight back.

We need to strike against the cutbacks; to organize the unorganized and build support among workers and students who use public services, to feel the power of a united working class. A handful of Republicans in Sacramento can shut down the budget process but workers can shut down the state!

However, that’s not what union leaders are planning. Instead, they’re lining us up behind Davis’s Democratic Party.

CSEA’s State President, Clyde Rivers, criticized the bashing of Davis, saying 40% of the state budget goes to education and we’re "only" taking 4% of the cuts. "The money has to come from somewhere," he says. Not a word about uniting with other workers to fight the bosses’ war budget or the huge give-backs to the rich. No attacking the capitalist system that makes profits at the expense of workers’ education and health.

Meanwhile, liberal LA Democrat Jackie Goldberg told community college students to contact State representatives, especially Republicans and, "Ask them to vote for tax increases."

These liberal Democrats, who the union honchos cozy up to, like all politicians are lap dogs of the banks and big corporations. When union leaders agree to sales tax hikes and "fair share" deals and "proportionate" cuts, the bosses smell blood and take advantage of the workers’ weak position to demand more — while the banks rake in billions in profits from interest.

Trying to save our jobs by saving "our" schools, or "our" companies, or "our" country, only helps the capitalist class that runs these schools, owns these companies and controls their country.

California’s budget crisis is part of capitalism’s general world crisis. Under pressure from international competition, U.S. bosses are squeezing the working class here both for immediate gains and to pay for the war machine they need to defend their profit empire overseas.

We must win workers to struggle against these attacks and sharply oppose the pro-capitalist union leaders who would mislead us into collaborating in our own exploitation. Out of these struggles we can and must recruit workers to PLP to fight for communism, the only answer to the bosses’ crisis.

Immigrants, Citizens Must Unite vs. Racist Border Killers

LOS ANGELES, June 7 — In the past month, another 23 immigrant workers died trying to cross the border from Mexico — 19 inside a trailer abandoned in Texas, three others in a rail car and another murdered by a racist Arizona rancher who said, "I thought it was a wild boar and I shot."

These deaths add to the untold atrocities perpetrated by the rotten racist capitalist system against the international working class. For the bosses’ profit system, a workers’ life is worthless, whether from Mexico, Central America, Afghanistan or Iraq.

The number of dead and arrested immigrants increases yearly. Both the hated Migra (Immigration Service) and the racist anti-immigrant groups are part of the government’s fascist build-up, intensifying attacks against immigrant workers. This opens the door to attacking all workers. The terror and racism at the border help the bosses depress immigrant workers’ wages still lower, reducing wages for all workers combined with mass layoffs and cuts in all public services.

Military Technology Oppresses Immigrant Workers

The fascist group "American Border Patrol" led by racist Glen Spencer (former head of "Voices of Citizens Together") in the Arizona area is using remote control airplanes (drones) to patrol the border and detect those trying to cross it. These spy planes, used in Afghanistan and Iraq, are connected with satellites and control points on the ground.

"The help that we get [from Border Patrol officials] is very useful," says Spencer. The government is militarizing the border using racist civilian groups, providing them with the most advanced technology to beat and capture immigrants.

Another anti-immigrant racist, Roger Barnet, brags he’s captured more than 10,000 immigrant workers in the last four years, and has forced many to walk long distances as punishment. Many have been beaten. Barnet’s been accused of killing immigrant workers who’ve crossed his path.

The bosses and their government don’t want to stop the flow of low-paid immigrants, but do want to terrorize them into accepting, super-exploitation. Many immigrant farm workers, restaurant and garment workers don’t even receive minimum wages.

These sharpening racist, fascist attacks can lead to more intense class struggle against the bosses and their capitalist system. Both immigrant and citizen workers are preparing to form groups at work to fight over the long-term, both in union and non-union shops. We’ll give these racists what they deserve. Several years ago hundreds of citizen and immigrant workers beat the racist followers of Spencer and Barnett. But ultimately workers must fight to destroy this murderous system, its profits and borders, with communist revolution. Our condolences to the families of these workers who died on the altar of profits. We also offer them our commitment to fight to sweep the filth of capitalism off the face of the earth.

ESL Students Force Out Racist Professor

I’m an ESL teacher in NYC. Our class has 24 students, all women. There are six Muslim students, from Yemen, Pakistan and Kosovo. The Yemeni students wear the burka. We’ve become like family, discovering many things we have in common — our attitudes and values regarding our families and struggles for economic survival. As the war in Iraq unfolded we shared fears, anger and our political outlooks. All opposed the "imperialist war for oil."

Last November, as a professor at the school passed two of the Yemeni students she spat, "I’m so sick of this shit, these terrorist bombers. I’m so angry I could kill them!"

Another teacher and some of her GED students witnessed this attack. When I arrived I was furious. We immediately responded — all of our students wrote letters, insisting the professor be fired. We demanded that security remove her, saying we wouldn’t continue class if she were in the same wing. Later the college "diversity office" interviewed us. As we planned an article in the college paper and to contact the campus Muslim Student Organization to sponsor a teach-in, the teacher abruptly resigned and left the school.

My students, all immigrants, hugged one another, cried and cheered. They all said this could have happened to any of them. I called the families of my Muslim students urging them to support the students, to tell them of our support and to guarantee that none of the students drop out of the class.

Later I told this story at an anti-war conference where the group was planning to combat the fascist Patriot Act and Homeland Security. I told my students about the Conference. Four have become CHALLENGE readers.

The students have selected two stories written by their classmates to present at the end-of-the-year celebration. One was about Ramadan written by a young woman recently arrived from Yemen. The camaraderie and respect, the collective approach to discussing our political and cultural outlooks and the willingness to fight back is a vivid expression of working-class solidarity and internationalism. The classroom truly presents workers, students and Party members with great opportunities. It is the job of Party members to seize these opportunities.

A comrade

a name="Striking Teachers Confront Peru’s Army, Union Hacks">">"triking Teachers Confront Peru’s Army, Union Hacks

LIMA, PERU, June 10 — This past weekend teachers voted to continue their strike, defying their leadership’s agreement to a deal with the government of Alejandro Toledo, the former World Bank official. Rank-and-file teachers across the country rejected the sellout by the Patria Roja (Red Fatherland) fake leftist group which controls the executive board of SUTEP (the teachers’ union). The deal offered teachers a monthly increase of 100 soles ($29), the same amount first proposed by the government. The only "gains" were for the union leaders, particularly the one making them part of the government-run National Education Council.

The strike itself was launched only because of rank-and-file pressure. The leadership decided to support a strike only a few days before it began early in May, in order to maintain control. During the strike, only the rank-and-file teachers fought to expand it and make it more militant. The government then ordered a state of emergency and called out the army with its tanks. In the city of Puno, when students supporting the strike confronted the army, one — Edy Qilca — was shot and killed. Later in the area of Comas, near Lima, Mateo Jiménez, a striking teacher, was almost killed when he was shot by the army.

The radicalization of teachers, students and workers forced the CGTP (the National Labor Federation) to call a mass march of over 10,000 workers and youth on June 4, defying the state of emergency. Fearing the growth and militancy of the movement, and the pressure for a nation-wide general strike, the union hacks and the government made their deal.

This struggle has again demonstrated the universal role of union bureaucrats, whose main job always seems to be to betray workers. Contrary to fake leftists, like those leading the SUTEP, true communists support the best class interests of workers, particularly the most militant ones. Rather than making deals with the bosses, communists attempt to turn these mass strikes into a school for communism: teaching workers the need to fight for a society without any bosses.

a name="Book Review: Black GI’s and the Fight vs. Rampant Racism">">"ook Review: Black GI’s and the Fight vs. Rampant Racism

"American Patriots — The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm," by Gail Buckley catalogues the depths of racism perpetrated on black people by the U.S. ruling class. However, she uses Colin Powell’s rise through the ranks as a thread throughout the book to symbolize the "equality" achieved by black soldiers. She lacks a class analysis and dwells on many individual heroes, hardly relating the class content of various imperialist wars. At the same time the book gives a fairly decent treatment of the role played by communists in fighting racism in the military. Communists organized the first integrated combat unit of black and white soldiers in U.S. history commanded by a black officer, in the anti-fascist Spanish Civil War.

This review will deal only with some highlights of some of the wars covered in this 500-page book, including examples of black soldiers’ bravery in the face of enormous racism.

The Civil War

Initially, this was a "white man’s war" to abolish slavery. Black people were barred from the Union Army. Northern General McClellan returned runaway slaves to their Southern masters! In 1861, Lincoln fired General John Fremont when he proclaimed that all slaves in Missouri who took up arms for the North would be freed.

Karl Marx warned in the New York Herald, that the North could not win the Civil War unless it admitted black soldiers. After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery, 180,000 black soldiers flooded the Union Army and turned the tide in favor of the North. Although always commanded by white officers, these soldiers were among the most heroic in defeating the Confederate Army.

World War I

The racist Wilson administration restricted black soldiers to menial tasks. The only ones to serve in combat did so under the command of the French Army. General John Pershing, commander of all U.S. troops in France, distributed "Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops" to the French military: "The black man is regarded…as an inferior being…constantly censured for his want of intelligence…The vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American…We must not eat with them, must not shake hands or meet with them outside…military service…"

The French burned this racist directive, welcomed black soldiers with open arms and acknowledged them as heroes. These black troops spent more consecutive time at the front lines than any U.S. soldiers. "New York’s 369th National Guard regiment [was] the most decorated American unit of the war" but due "to U.S. pressure was denied permission to march in the Paris victory parade."

Meanwhile, 100 black people were lynched in the South during U.S. participation in WWI. When a black soldier in the 24th Infantry was arrested for aiding a black woman being beaten by the Houston police, black soldiers from Camp Logan marched on the police station. In the ensuing battle, five cops and four soldiers were killed. The entire 24th was shipped to Arizona for the largest court-martial in U.S. history. Thirteen soldiers were sentenced to death and forty-one to life imprisonment. Three were executed. Twenty years later those in prison were released.

The Spanish Civil War, 1936 To 1938

This war did not involve the U.S. Army but it was the first war in which black officers from the U.S. commanded integrated units of black and white soldiers. The Spanish people were fighting the aggression of the fascist Franco army, backed by Hitler and Mussolini. A U.S. government embargo barred aid to the anti-fascist forces, objectively helping the fascists. Communists from many countries volunteered in international brigades to fight Franco. The "out-manned and out-machined" anti-fascist troops were able to last three years due to "the heroism of the Spanish people, Soviet material aid and the International Brigades." This was the first armed struggle against rising fascism in Europe.

It was in the Lincoln Brigade that the integration of U.S. citizen-soldiers took place, led by black communist officers. One hundred black volunteers joined the Lincoln Brigade. Oliver Law, the first black commander of an integrated U.S. unit, was killed in action. Vaughn Love expressed what many felt: "We were all deep revolutionaries. We thought, ‘We have to get to the front and kill these fascists!’…I was through with the system. I knew it didn’t work and I was thinking in terms of changing society — to change the world."

When the survivors of the Lincoln Brigades offered themselves as a group to the U.S. Army in World War II, they were rejected because they would have been the only integrated unit in the U.S. military.

(Next issue: World War II, the Vietnam War and Gulf War I.)

a name="‘Free Trade’ War For South America’s Markets"></a>"Free Trade’ War For South America’s Markets

South America is now being pummeled by all the contradictions of world capitalism. On the one hand, workers and their allies are fighting back against their bosses, who are trying to make them pay for the system’s economic problems. Recently we’ve seen mass strikes and rebellions in Bolivia (Feb.) and Peru (May). These struggles oppose the free-market attacks by Bolivia’s President Lozada (a multi-millionaire) and Peru’s President Toledo (a former World Bank official).

While workers are paying for the bosses’ economic crisis, foreign investors are turning increasingly to Latin America, sharpening the rivalry among different imperialists and their local allies.

On June 9, Colin Powell attended a meeting of the Organization of American States in Chile. Several days before, Chile’s "socialist" President Lagos officially joined NAFTA. (The Bush administration had delayed Chile’s admission because Lagos refused to support the Iraq war.) Powell said that now, after the Iraqi conflict, the U.S. was ready to pay more attention to Latin America.

The Bush administration is fighting for a hemisphere-wide free trade agreement, run by the U.S. But they have serious opposition, led by Brazil’s Sao Paulo bourgeoisie, the most powerful capitalist group in Latin America and probably in the so-called developing world. The Sao Paulo bosses fully support Brazil’s "socialist" President, Lula. The Brazilian bosses want their own free trade agreement — MERCOSUR — and not a U.S.-run one. They’re fighting mad because U.S. rulers talk about free trade but impose heavy restrictions on Brazilian steel, oranges and other exports to the U.S.

Brazil’s bosses are supported by a goodly section of Argentina’s ruling class. Kichner, who won the Argentine presidency after defeating U.S. ally Menem, is also pushing for MERCOSUR. Argentina’s bosses cannot forget that when the December 2001 mass rebellion overthrew free marketeer De la Rúa, and the Argentine economy was in the dumps, the Bush administration told them "tough luck." In defiance of the Bushites, Kirchner invited Fidel Castro to his inauguration, even allowing him to speak at a mass public rally organized by his local supporters. (Fidel did not utter the "R" word — revolution — once.)

These pro-MERCOSUR bosses, including Venezuela’s Chavez, are not anti-imperialist. They just want a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. They will deal with whichever rulers give them the best deal at any particular time. Kirchner’s new government includes representatives from JP Morgan Chase Bank. Lula has just lost the support of part of his working-class base and of the massive MST (Landless Peasant Movement) because of his imposition of International Monetary Fund austerity measures. Chavez never stopped supplying the U.S. with oil during the Iraq war and is now making a deal with a consortium led by former Republican Presidential candidate Jack Kemp to sell oil to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Other p0layers in this include Germany, and to a lesser extent China. Germany is putting the finishing touches on a free trade agreement with MERCOSUR. The Sao Paulo bourgeoisie is negotiating with Ludwig Braun, President of Germany’s Confederation of Industry and Commerce. In a recent conference in Frankfurt, German bosses and bankers approved the treaty with MERCOSUR and asked the Berlin government to sign it as soon as possible. They see MERCOSUR as a way to end the stagnation infecting the German economy. In 2002, Germany’s trade with Latin America reached 27.3 billion Euros (22.7 US$). Brazil and Mexico were Germany’s biggest trade partners. Deutche Bank wants to set up branches in Argentina and Brazil once the post-World War II restrictions are lifted.

Meanwhile, Europe’s Airbus is competing with Boeing for the lucrative sale of new planes to Brazilian airlines. China also wants to increase its trade in cattle, agricultural and other products.

So while the local bosses and the imperialists wheel and deal, battling over markets, cheap labor, trade and resources, workers suffer increasing misery. While workers and their allies are fighting back, they must be wary of any nationalist "saviors" who want to use workers’ anger for their own capitalist interests. Early in 2000, a mass uprising by rural workers from Ecuador’s Indigenous areas in alliance with some nationalist and anti-U.S. bosses, overthrew the President and briefly seized the government. They all were betrayed by a general who claimed he was on their side and then sold them out to the U.S. embassy and local bosses. Another officer, Lt.-Col. Lucio Gutierrez, also joined the rebellion. Later claiming to be the "people’s candidate," he ran for and won the Presidency this year. Now he’s a faithful servant of the local bosses, Texaco and the Bush administration. He came to Washington and offered his support for the Iraq war.

There’s no shortcut to building a mass revolutionary communist movement to fight all the bosses and their imperialist allies. This is the key task facing all workers and their allies, from Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo to Caracas.

a name="The Truth Behind ‘Support Our Troops’"></">Th" Truth Behind ‘Support Our Troops’

The government and its mouthpieces in the mass media have drowned us all with the slogan "support our troops" to a point where people say it and believe it but haven’t thought about what it really means. Although workers who shout this slogan and wear yellow ribbons would probably deny it, it means: cheer them on as they kill and hope they return safely. Many would probably only admit to wanting a safe return, but that ignores the reality of war.

Soldiers are workers and the product they make is war. Since they’re soldiers in a capitalist army and take orders from the ruling class, they make capitalist war. The bombs they drop, the missiles they fire and the bullets they shoot kill millions of people so that some tiny super-rich group of capitalists gain or remain in power. "Support our troops" means support capitalist war.

Those soldiers do not create or start wars, but these wars couldn’t happen if they didn’t do their jobs. Many young workers enlisted because they were promised health benefits, schooling, and financial security, which seemed a better deal than most jobs available to the average worker. However, like many veterans have discovered — if they survive — they come home to empty promises. Here are some facts little publicized in the mass media:

• The Congressional Budget Committee voted to cut $25 billion in veterans’ benefits over the next 10 years.
• The Bush administration proposed cutting $172 million from impact aid programs which provide school funding for children of military personnel.
• The administration ordered the Dept. of Veterans Affairs to stop publicizing health benefits available to veterans.
• It is estimated that one of every three homeless men are veterans.
• The armed forces finally admitted that their Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons pose "long-term health risks to natives and combat veterans" and that "low doses have been linked to cancer."
• Thirty-six percent of Dessert Storm veterans have filed for service-related disabilities, DU being the primary reason.
• Gulf War vets have a 500% greater chance of getting Lou Gherig’s disease.
• The chances of having a baby with birth defects are 300% greater for women veterans and 200% greater for men who parent children.
• The U.S. military still uses Depleted Uranium

a name="The Rosenbergs — Loyal to International Working Class, Not to Bosses">">"he Rosenbergs — Loyal to International Working Class, Not to Bosses

On June 19th 50 years ago the U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for "conspiracy to commit espionage." Their trial occurred in the midst of the anti-communist hysteria of McCarthyism and the Cold War.

Because the Rosenbergs were communists, the ruling class painted them as "agents of a foreign power," and communism as something alien to U.S. workers. The rulers claimed that the Soviets had to steal nuclear secrets because they were "too dumb" to achieve what "more advanced" U.S. scientists could achieve. But four years later, when the Soviets were the first to send a vehicle into space (the "Sputnik"), it was U.S. rulers who were struck dumb. Finally, to justify the death sentence, Judge Kaufman blamed the Rosenbergs for the Korean War and the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers, helping U.S. rulers to intensify their rampant anti-communism.

The Rosenbergs were accused of "conspiracy" because it is easier to prove than actually committing espionage. Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass, a low-level operative in Los Alamos, lied in exchange for the government not prosecuting his wife. He said that Ethel had typed the "secrets" for Julius. His lies sent Ethel to the electric chair. She refused to testify against her husband in exchange for a life sentence. In a recent book, Greenglass admitted he lied to help convict his sister.

Millions around the world demonstrated on behalf of the Rosenbergs. The couple had two young sons, 6 and 10, and most people felt even if their parents were "guilty," they shouldn’t be executed. Governments and even the Pope petitioned the Eisenhower administration for clemency. Many scientists pointed out that whatever secrets might have been given the Soviets would eventually have been figured out by them anyway. But the hysteria whipped up in the U.S. helped the ruling class win people here to back it in the Cold War.

It is very possible, even probable, that Julius Rosenberg did try to give information to the Soviets. He knew that U.S. rulers were threatened by the spread of communism because of the example set by the USSR, whose working class and Red Army had just smashed the Nazi war machine nearly single-handedly. U.S. rulers, along with Britain and France, had initially supported Hitler moving east to destroy the world’s first communist-led country. It was no stretch to figure out that the ruling class here, with a monopoly on the A-bomb, would not hesitate to use it on the Soviet Union. So they painted the Rosenbergs as disloyal Red traitors.

Unfortunately the Communist Party U.S.A. fell right into this trap. For several decades before World War II, the CP was part of the most dedicated internationalist organization in world history. They had fought for workers and the exploited everywhere. They were "disloyal" and "treasonous" to the bosses’ governments, racist police brutality, fascism, the bosses’ frame-up legal system, lynching, mass poverty and to the imperialist governments who killed tens of millions worldwide. Why should any worker or decent person be "loyal" to that?

But by the late 1930s the communist movement began to waver in its commitment to fighting the capitalists and allied itself with the "lesser evil" bosses. They abandoned working-class internationalism and the fight for communism.

By the time of the Rosenberg trial, the CPUSA focused more on the legal defense — framing the question as "were they spies or not?" — rather than on exposing the nature of capitalism and the need to overthrow the ruling class.

But "patriotism" and "treason" are, like all politics, class questions. Every government, every nation, is set up and run by exploiters, against the interests of the exploited. Working people have no nation. Nationalism and patriotism are used to get the working class to fight for the bosses’ class interests.

Communists are internationalists. We and our class owe no loyalty to any boss, including "our own" exploiters. We in PLP, and every class conscious person who opposes exploitation and supports workers’ struggles say, "Good for the Rosenbergs!" We proudly remember them and applaud their internationalist courage. "Loyalty to U.S. rulers" means loyalty to the exploiters and treason to the working class. Workers of the world, unite!

U.S. Rulers Loot Social Security

The U.S. ruling class is using the Social Security (SS) system to pay the military’s $400 billion budget and cut taxes for the rich while raising them for the working class. In this $3.2 TRILLION scam, the rulers are stealing trillions from the SS surplus to mask the real budget deficit, and scaring people into thinking that unless SS funds are privately invested, their pensions will go down the drain.

The bosses’ laws mandate that payments into the SS Trust Fund be used only to pay for current and future retirees’ pensions. A surplus has developed by more being paid into SS by current workers than is paid out to current retirees.

But since 1968, the government has been "folding" the surplus into the overall Federal Budget, called the Unified Budget. The Johnson administration did this to mask the true cost of the Vietnam War. By including the surplus in the general federal budget, it "dramatically reduced the percentage of the budget devoted to ‘defense’ in 1968 and throughout the military build-up of the 1980s." (New York Times, 1/21/90)

In 1998, Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) estimated that by 2012 there should be "a $3.2 trillion reserve" when the baby boomer generation starts retiring. (NYT, 11/9/98) But there won’t be any reserve. There will be a huge deficit because the government stole trillions from the surplus to help finance every war from Vietnam to Iraq.

The threat to SS could be eliminated if the biggest loophole of all was plugged. The law says workers must have 7.65% deducted from their paychecks in SS taxes. Employers must pay another 7.65% for each employee into the SS Trust Fund.

But this tax is paid only on the first $87,000 of wages annually. So a couple earning $50,000 a year pays $3,825 into the Fund, while a CEO making $10 million a year pays $6,655, a tax RATE of less than .0004 per cent! If the CEO had to pay 7.65% on his full $10 million salary, he would pay $765,000 a year and his corporate employer would have to pay another $765,000! With that loophole gone there would be no "deficit."

Tax Cuts And Budget Deficits

The current Bush tax cut for the wealthy and the billions of debt building from the Iraq war are producing an astronomical deficit. But this process began in the 1980s under Reagan and Bush and continued under Clinton. They also used the SS system to mask their swindles.

The fleecing of the SS Trust Fund surplus is not only paying for imperialist wars but masking the true dimensions of the Federal deficit. If a $200 billion SS surplus were not diverted into the overall Federal budget revenue, the Federal deficit would be that much higher and force the government to borrow even more money to "balance" the budget. So the working class is paying more in taxes while the rich pay less; facing the threat of reduced pensions to pay for endless wars; and giving our sons and daughters to kill and be killed in oil wars for profit and world domination. U.S. rulers are the biggest looters of all.

401(K)ick in the Head

The retirement dream of millions of U.S. workers is rapidly becoming a nightmare. While the rulers’ fleecing of Social Security endangers present and future retirees, the bursting of the 1990’s stock bubble has wiped out retirement for millions and impelled one of every eight workers over 65 to work or look for work. Nearly one-fourth of those over 45 plan to postpone retirement.

Much of this is due to the scam over 401(k)s. The old-fashioned company pension was a "defined benefit plan" — that is, the company was committed to pay a certain pension at a certain age and had to deposit funds to guarantee that amount. However, the 401(k) is a "defined contribution plan," meaning that whatever contribution was put in, either solely by the employer or by both the employer and employee, there was no defined benefit. The company had no defined commitment; future benefits depended on whatever happened in the stock market where the 401(k)s were invested.

Fine, when the market’s rising. But under capitalism, the boom always leads to a bust. This virtually destroyed those pension funds invested in 401(k)s. In the past two years, 77% of workers between 50 and 70 lost money in this thievery.

Originally the 401(k) was supposed to supplement the traditional pension. But corporations, seeing the chance to escape any committed benefit, shifted to the 401(k)s. If the market collapses, too bad for the workers. The company has no responsibility to pay out a specific benefit. From 1979 to 1998, corporations decreased the traditional plans by 60% while 401(k)s doubled.

Now "many seniors are returning to the workforce because they don’t have the financial resources" on which to retire. "And the baby boomers approaching retirement don’t look much better." (All quotes and information from N.Y. Daily News, 6/8)

With nearly 20 million workers unemployed or underemployed, capitalism now has ex-retired workers fighting younger jobless workers for a decreasing number of jobs.

The profit system leads straight to hell.

a name="1980’s Tax ‘Cut’ was Hike for Workers"></a>"980’s Tax ‘Cut’ was Hike for Workers

In the 1980s, the net income of millionaires greatly increased when the top tax rate for individuals was reduced from 70% to 28%. "The corporate tax rate also dropped substantially…[while] the share of Federal revenues from Social Security taxes rose 23 percent…[In] the Reagan-Bush years…the burden of taxation was shifted from the income tax to the Social Security tax. Counting their employers’ share, nearly three-quarters of all Americans now pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in income taxes…[Now] the expenses of the Government are financed more by a tax on the poor and the middle class and less by a tax on the wealthy." (NYT, 1/21/90)µ

Red Eye On The News

Below Are Excerpts From Mainstream Newspapers That Contain Important Information:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)\

Greed system dooms kids

Instead of the normal cycle of children growing up and burying their parents, in South L.A. the parents, with stunning frequency, are burying their children.

It is estimated that over the past 20 years some 10,000 young people have died in L.A’s violence-ridden neighborhoods.

"The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone" . . .

The mayhem is concentrated in certain sections of the city . . . the most troubled neighborhoods; [with] the chronic demons of poverty and joblessness. NYT 6/9/03

Liberals built for Iraq war

. . . many of the systems that were so successful in the recent Iraq war were put in the pipeline or first purchased under Democratic presidents.

A memo that former Clinton hands are quietly circulating points out that the F-117 stealth fighter and the B-2 bomber programs were developed in the era of former President Jimmy Carter. The Longbow Hellfire missile was tested and procured under Clinton. The Tomahawk Land Attack missile was a Carter-era program that the Clinton administration modernized and expanded.

"The Bush Administration made no significant changes in arms, force structure or personnel before taking to war in the Gulf the Army a Democratic president provided," the memo concludes. Washington Post 5/2

Racist medicine exposed

Residents from one of South Africa’s poorest townships have destroyed the myth that Africans cannot be trusted with Aids drugs — by staying alive.

Dozens of adults and orphans with the HIV virus have set a precedent by following a medical regime that some governments and drugs companies had said was not feasible in Africa.

Sceptics have long argued that poor Africans, many of whom lack watches and literacy, would break the strict regime of taking certain pills at certain times, risking the emergence of a drug-resistant strain of HIV.

"The response has been incredible. These adherence rates are better than you would get in the US or the UK," said an MSF spokeswoman. GW 6/4

No terror link to Iraq

. . . no conclusive evidence of joint terrorist operations by Iraq and Al Qaueda has been found, several intelligence officials acknowledged, nor have ties been discovered between Baghdad and the September 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New york.

. . . an intelligence official said, "Things pointing in one direction were given a lot of weight and other things were discounted." NYT 6/9

No tax $$ for poorest

. . . there are 50 million households — 36 percent of all households in the nation — who will receive no benefit from the tax law. The figure includes people who do not earn enough to owe income tax. NYT 6/1

US used uranium in Iraq

Nine million tank rounds of depleted uranium (DU) litter the terrain of Iraq. When a DU shell is fired it ignites on impact. Uraninum plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely . A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system.

DU is classified by UN resolutions as a weapon of mass destruction. Yet a weapon of mass destruction was used in Iraq by those who were there on the pretext of seeking them out. GW 5/28

Now they call it terror

In its annual report to Congress on terrorism the State Department said that the 199 recorded terrorist incidents last year represented a 44 percent drop from the previous year. . . . Virtually all the incidents identified by the U.S. government as acts of global terrorism" in 2002 occurred in four places: in Colombia, in Chechnya with its separatist war; In Afghanistan, with the continuing low-scale war; and with the Palestinian intifada. Elsewhere, the Bali tourist bombing by Islamic extremists caused some 200 deaths.

Before September 11, 2001, virtually none of this would have been called terrorism. It would have been called civil insurrection or nationalist or separatist violence.

Since September 11, vast global significance has been attributed to such episodes. They have made the rationale for state mobilization and the restrictions of civil liberties in the United States (and at the American penal colony at Guantanamo Bay). Tribune 5/7

LETTERS

a name="‘Pushing 70’ and Still Anti-Fascist"></">‘P"shing 70’ and Still Anti-Fascist

Please send me the new issue of The Communist. In addition, I would like to renew my subscription. Please accept the remainder of the check as a small donation.

I look forward to each issue of CHALLENGE as a way of "re-connecting" with the cause. You keep tabs on the fascists well!

Incidentally, I am pushing 70 but did march in both D.C. and NYC in Jan-Feb-March. I watched good people in the 1950s fall as casualties of McCarthyism and can never forgive U.S. fascism for that. So keep up your sharp level of writing. Good work.

An Aging Comrade

AIDS Article Got It Wrong

I was very disappointed to see the misleading article, "Bosses Hide Poverty as Cause of Disease and AIDS" (CHALLENGE, 6/11). While the title is true, the article perpetuates the favorite myths of a fringe group of HIV deniers. For instance, questioning the definition of AIDS (implying that most African cases are incorrectly diagnosed) comes straight from two California quacks, Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick, recently popularized by the rock group Foo Fighters. These two are dangerous because they have recently gained the ear of South Africa’s Mbeki, whose own AIDS policy of neglect is part of the betrayal of the South African working class described so well in an article in the same issue.

There is overwhelming evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV, in Africa as elsewhere. Block transmission of the virus from mother to child and you prevent the disease; without anti-virals one-fourth of the babies born to infected mothers will die. It is insulting to suggest that African doctors can’t tell the difference between AIDS and endemic diseases. One-third of the world is infected with TB, but the majority of cases are latent and do not make people sick. HIV infection reactivates latent TB and the TB bacterium hastens the progress of HIV infection; this is why TB is often the hallmark of AIDS.

I lost a dear friend ten years ago; she was one of the first victims of the African pandemic, infected by a contaminated blood transfusion before the days of HIV testing. All my African friends have lost family, friends, and co-workers to this holocaust. These were not poor people. They were teachers and nurses, comparatively well-fed and previously healthy. Conversely, an African friend whose immune system was already severely damaged by HIV was treated with the new anti-virals and remains healthy today, 15 years after infection.

The article suggests that "life-style factors" determine HIV survival rates. However, many in the U.S. who lived in the fast lane (multiple sex partners, injected drugs) are surviving long-term on the new drug cocktails. Anti-virals aren’t a cure, but they stave off death unless the virus evolves resistance.

The ravages of imperialism explain why HIV/AIDS is primarily killing the poor of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In that sense, AIDS is a disease of poverty, as are TB, malaria, and cholera, also all caused by infectious agents. But when Mbeki says, "Poverty causes AIDS" he means something deeply cynical. If he admitted the virus as the cause, he would have to do something about it and that something doesn’t fit his IMF-tailored bottom line. The ANC (African National Congress) would have to fight for cheap anti-virals and defy big drug companies’ (and the U.S. government’s) bar against low-cost generics. They would have to push an unpopular prevention campaign. They would have to mobilize to be something they are not — advocates for the working class. Even Mandela has denounced Mbeki’s indefensible line on AIDS, amidst growing resistance in South Africa. (New Yorker, 5/19)

Our rulers’ solution for infectious disease in the world’s South is to invoke "appropriate technologies" for treatment. Paul Farmer quotes an activist’s definition of this concept as "shit for the poor." In "Infections and Inequalities," Farmer (who treats AIDS and TB in Haiti) argues that we must reject lower standards of care for the working class of poor countries. That could be a prescription for revolutionary internationalism.

Mid-West Comrade

Look to Workers Not to Democrats

Eleanor and I are becoming friends through our activity in a local peace organization. She’s taken a lot of leadership in our group. Recently we rode together to a "progressive" conference. Eleanor was concerned that some of our members have been pushing voter registration as our main focus. "I’ve been in so many grassroots organizations over the years," she said. "And the same thing always happens. People go off to work for John Anderson, or Gene McCarthy or McGovern. They never return, and then we have to start all over. I don’t want that to happen to us." I certainly agreed with that.

"But then what should we be doing?" she asked. I said focus on the domestic costs of the war economy — connect with labor and community groups to push for actions against the cuts, like strikes. As we approached the conference, she said she’d always favored that sort of work.

One of the conference’s best speakers was a working-class woman who explored her personal development from an "ordinary housewife" to a community leader. On the way home, I told Eleanor I thought this speaker answered her question. We should be looking to working-class people like her, not to the Democrats, as our hope for the future,.

"But you can’t just not vote," she replied. "At least the Democrats are better on the environment, the judiciary, and all."

That sparked a good conversation about "lesser evils" and how shallow the concept of "democracy" is when it’s reduced to capitalist elections — and about a book I’d been reading describing how the Chinese communists had organized really popular decision-making in villages they liberated after World War II. She agreed with that more than I thought she would.

I told her some believe the rulers would allow reforms in order to maintain their system. But, I said, the USA-Patriot Act showed they would sooner aim to squash a mass movement through force.

"I’d rather see a revolution," she said.

A Comrade

Revolution A Universal Language

The war in Iraq has helped us fight to make revolution a real alternative for some workers.

I work in the garment industry where exploitation of the working class has no borders. I’m on a new job with mostly Asian workers whose language I don’t understand.

It’s easy to make friends, but we’ve had to overcome the obstacles of language and customs. At first I only smiled at my co-workers and they started to call me "the friend," but this was too general and lacked true friendship. I learned some words in their language and exchanged food at lunchtime to get everyone to call me by my name. For me, it was a big victory for building unity among the workers.

When the war in Iraq started, there was a lot of discussion at work between the workers and the boss. I didn’t understand their positions and asked one of my friends to explain them. She replied that the workers said the war was for oil, a war of rich against poor, and that the boss had told them if they didn’t like it, they should leave this country.

I explained to my friend that the boss won’t understand this point because she’s defending her interests and has to protect them while seeming to build friendships with the workers (she’s also Asian). This gave the green light to discussions about imperialism and class struggle. (It’s happening with the help of a translation machine I take to work.)

My friend and co-worker invited me to her house and, using words in three languages, we were able to have a good conversation. She showed me some pictures. In the background of one was a (red?) flag and the portrait of a revolutionary leader. This inspired more confidence in me to deepen our discussion as daughters of proletarian revolution.

Garment Daughter of the Revolution

Bosses Cry Wolf(owitz)

Paul Wolfowitz, the Undersecretary of State, tells all in the Vanity Fair magazine. The Washington authorities had no solid evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction held by dictator Saddam Hussein. Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, doctors a document about those same weapons. Donald Rumsfeld puts his foot in his mouth and says the weapons cannot be found. The next day he reverses his statement. The bosses’ rags are low-keyed about this.

To some of us this may not be news or a surprise. We remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident. During the sixties, the government manufactured news that a Vietnamese boat had attacked a U.S. Navy ship. Congress gave the military war powers. Later it was proved no such incident occurred. Many Vietnamese were killed.

The bosses’ rags lie for the sake of their class interests. In the past we have seen many such lies.

The point is, we have a newspaper that looks after the interests of the working class — CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. We should make an effort to increase the circulation of our newspaper among our friends. Sometimes our own anti-communism prevents us from increasing CHALLENGE distribution. Our motivation should be that we carry out our class interests. We must be as aggressive as the bosses are when we try to increase our working-class paper. Thank you.

A Red Healthcare Worker

a name="U.S. Hiring India’s Army to Police Iraq">">".S. Hiring India’s Army to Police Iraq

U.S. War Secretary Rumsfeld made the unusual move of calling on India’s Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani at his hotel suite in Washington on June 8 soon after Advani had arrived by train from New York. The Sunday sortie appeared to involve the issue of sending Indian soldiers to Iraq.

It seems the U.S. military has underestimated the number of occupying troops it will need so it’s trying to recruit some of the most fascistic elements of the Indian army as mercenaries. U.S. bosses want the units of the Indian army that are actively involved in urban warfare and experienced in dealing with suppressing civilians. This resembles the use of the South Korean army during the Vietnam war. The Indian bosses want a bigger price for this support in the form of a dominant role in Central Asian gas and oil, and firm control over Pakistan.

Advani asked for more time because at issue is command and control and how long the commitment was for and to what purpose. Some of these issues are already being discussed by the Indian military and the US Central Command, according to newspaper reports.

The two men also discussed strategic ties between the two countries including the transfer and supply of military and hi-tech equipment.

It appears the U.S. is not exactly prepared for its task as imperialist conqueror of the Iraqi people.

A West Coast comrade

How I Became A Communist

Before I became a communist I was already anti-U.S. Government. I had seen how they tried to forcefully impose their will on others, and the consequences for those not conforming. Not living in the U.S and not brainwashed by its media made it easier to see such things.

Being from the Caribbean I saw how they tricked countries like Jamaica and Guyana into devaluing their currency via the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, placing these countries forever in debt to the U.S. I saw how they threatened sanctions against St. Lucia and other Caribbean nations just because they preferred to trade with the European Union.

I didn’t identify this as imperialism, just a superpower trying to bully smaller countries and take over the world. I was quite content living my capitalistic lifestyle with my capitalistic dreams while deep down loathing the U.S. government. I thought once a president who cared about the workers was elected, things would change. But I didn’t realize this would never happen under capitalism. It was only when I moved to the U.S. that I realized how one-sided this supposed democracy really is. The people vote for a president but basically he’s still picked by the ruling class. They say this country was built on basic freedoms like free speech, yet when your views differ from the ruling class’s you’re labeled "unpatriotic" and are blacklisted. I felt the whole system needed to be changed but didn’t really know to what.

Then a friend, a PLP member, took me to a meeting at her mentor’s house and I learned about communism, capitalism, nationalism and imperialism. Before then the only "isms" I knew were racism and sexism.

As I learned more about communism I found I had some communist ideas for years (such as fighting imperialism) but didn’t know it. I understood that capitalism needed poverty, pay cuts, crime and other ills to exist. This disturbed me. Though I thought communism was a good idea, I was still skeptical. I wasn’t sure I was really up to the challenge or ready to give up my capitalistic dreams, like owning my own business and gaining power by any means necessary.

Basically I was being a hypocrite. I hated the U.S government but if I got the chance I would do the same. I realized that however much we workers complained about the system, if we didn’t unite and fight, the system would never change and that the only way we could smash imperialism was through communist revolution.

One great deciding factor was the May Day celebration in 2002. I never saw so many people of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds joining together for a common cause. May Day had been nothing more than another day home from school or work in my homeland, but seeing all these people celebrating really opened my eyes. I decided it was time to change, to become a communist. I’ve been in PLP for one year now and am still learning new things every day.

A new comrade

a name="China’s Red ‘Barefoot Docs’ Would Have Stopped SARS"></a>"hina’s Red ‘Barefoot Docs’ Would Have Stopped SARS

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune about SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) by a Lee Feigon says 90% of the workers in Mao’s China were covered by medical insurance. Today only 11% are covered.

Then the government had organized a system of "barefoot doctors." They were healthcare workers with some basic skills working in China’s most remote rural areas. They not only treated individual patients and administered vaccinations but were also concerned with sanitary conditions in the community and the workplace.

While maybe not discovering new, expensive drugs, they were a network of dedicated healthcare workers, able to spot, report and advise on measures to contain epidemics.

Things are very different today for workers in China. The new capitalists who run the "Communist" Party of China dismantled this healthcare system. The present one is riddled with corruption, bribery and profit-making. China’s workers are exploited. One need only go shopping here to see the products made by our fellow wage slaves. It’s so bad that these bosses are moving their maquilas (sweatshops) from Mexico to China, where labor is even cheaper.

The SARS epidemic shows what workers can expect from capitalism. The barefoot doctors would have contained, if not prevented, a SARS outbreak.

A red medical worker

1. RACIST NYPD REIGN OF TERROR KILLS TWO
   BLACK WORKERS
2. Liberal Democratic Candidates Want to `Out-Hitler' Bush Gang
3. Workers' Only Interest in Bosses' Dispute: Organize to Fight Them All
4. Vietnam War Criminal Kerry: Leader of Liberal Fascists
5. Rulers Using SARS to Militarize Public Health
6. Back Workers' Fight vs. GE Warmaker, Strike-breaker
   1. How Anti-Communism Screwed GE Workers
7. Immigrant Workers Caught in Sears Tower `Terror' Sweep
8. Homeland Security = National Guard Strike-Breaking
9. May Day Deaths Symbolize Betrayal
   of South Africa's Workers
10. Baghdad May Day 1959:
    One Million Marched Under Red Flags
11. Arundhati Roy's `Boycott' Solution Will Never End Capitalist Misery
12. GI's Should Refuse To Be
    An Occupying Army
13. May Day 2003: `The Party's in Good Hands'
14. PL'er Challenges Roy's Smokescreen
15. Building the Party:
    Saying `Yes' To Active Mass Organizing
16. LEARNING FROM STRUGGLE
17. U.S. Rulers `Nuke' Iraqis
    And Own Soldiers
18. Massive Strikes Sweep France
19. Basra Oil Workers Lambast Invaders and Ba'ath Stooges
20. Child Labor Is Good For Business
21. Bosses Hide Poverty As Cause Of Disease and AIDS
22. LETTERS
    1. Anti-Communism Spawned Bush's Neo-Cons
    2. Individual Freed In Collective Fight For Revolution
    3. Action Among Masses Spurs PLP Growth

---

RACIST NYPD REIGN OF TERROR KILLS TWO
BLACK WORKERS

NEW YORK CITY, May 23 -- At the break of day on May 16th, a squad of New York's "slimiest" kicked in a Harlem apartment door and attacked with stun gun and grenade. But rather than the drug dealer the cops claimed they were chasing, they had exploded the grenade in front of a life-long city worker and church-goer, Ms. Alberta Spruill. After being handcuffed, she collapsed in shock and died on the way to the hospital.

This was such an obvious "mistake" that Commissioner Kelly and Mayor "Cut-back-everything-except-my-billions" Bloomberg immediately cried crocodile tears of apology, hoping to calm the fury that would rise over yet another racist cop-killing.

The cops acted on an informer's information, and -- holding the community in contempt -- made no attempt to corroborate it with anyone in her building.

But really this was NO "MISTAKE"! The National Lawyers Guild estimates that one or two unarmed people -- usually black or Latino -- are killed each week somewhere in the U.S. Several days after Bloomberg's "apology," the cops killed Ousmane Zongo, an unarmed immigrant from Burkina Faso, Africa, a craftsman working in an African art bazaar that flourishes inside a Chelsea warehouse. The official lie was that he tried to pull a cop's gun during a raid on a video piracy outfit. Later it was revealed the victim had nothing to do with the people the cops were raiding.

Mr. Zongo's friends and colleagues described him as a "gentle, friendly" man "who avoided conflict, spoke no English and did little except repair African sculptures in his third-floor stall and send money home to his wife and two children...in Western Africa." (New York Times, (5/24) Alema Zonon, an art vendor from Mr. Zongo's home country, said, "He never, never [fought] with nobody....The police, I can't believe it. They shoot him for nothing." (NYT) A friend said that before he was slain he was preparing to return home to his family.

These murders are part of the racist terror and intensification of fascist repression designed to intimidate working people from fighting back against the sharpening oppression of an empire struggling to maintain world rule. Immigrants have always been special targets of this terror, but with post-9/11 Homeland "Security" the door kick-in at daybreak has become a regular occurrence for our Arab, Islamic and South Asian sisters and brothers. Ms. Spruill's murder shows that the police are being given the green light to attack ANY ONE OF US, citizen or immigrant, in the most barbaric way.

A fight back is developing. Two Harlem-based vigils and marches are planned this week. This killing -- and the Patriot Act fascism it represents -- must be sharply raised in every workplace, school and organization. Resolutions like several already passed in various organizations must be endorsed and circulated. And most of all action, not just agitation, must be urged aggressively to turn the tide of this obviously growing fascism. PL'ers active in these struggles must show co-workers that racist terror/cutbacks and capitalism are birds of a feather, and that the role of cops is to serve as goons of the rulers' fascist terror.

Liberal Democratic Candidates Want to `Out-Hitler' Bush Gang

U.S. rulers have made a clumsy attempt to disguise their bloody drive for world domination as a crusade against "global terrorism." The 9/11 attacks gave them an excuse to wreak havoc in Afghanistan and to invade the Persian Gulf. Their recent conquest of Iraq represents one step in a much broader imperialist strategy. It includes more oil wars and eventually confrontations with other imperialist rivals temporarily too weak to challenge the U.S. head-on.

The big bosses understand that this strategy requires fascism -- a full-blown police state -- at home. They need to discipline and mobilize the working class to fight for U.S. imperialism and accept the inevitable casualties and sacrifices. The rulers also need discipline within their own ranks. A tactical squabble has been raging among them about the best methods for achieving these goals, paralleling the foreign policy spats between "neo-conservatives" and liberals.

Workers' Only Interest in Bosses' Dispute: Organize to Fight Them All

Workers have no stake in allying with any of the rulers as they argue over how to conquer the world and implement their police state. Our only interest lies in organizing to smash them all by building the Progressive Labor Party and planting the seeds for communist revolution.

However, it's important to recognize the true motives behind the big lies the rulers are spreading, to identify the enemy who speaks in "friendly" tones. As usual, the main danger to the working class is the liberal wing of the U.S. Establishment.

Shortly after 9/11, the liberals began lambasting Bush for blowing a golden opportunity to set up a police state, focusing on his economic policies. Bush has tried to develop the police state on the cheap. His "have-your-cake-and-eat-it" approach tries to combine fascism and hefty tax cuts for his corporate buddies. The liberals squawk that this approach won't work, saying centralizing the government and mobilizing the population on a level unprecedented in U.S. history will require a vast, costly effort. Their favorite parallel is World War II. They want to channel billions into the U.S. drive for world domination, not into Bush's tax cuts. With the 2004 presidential election season nearing, they've begun to play their hand.

New Mexico's Governor, Democrat Bill Richardson, with deep ties to the Rockefeller wing of the Eastern Establishment, recently called for Democrats to develop a "strong economic message" and a "strong national security message," adding, "if we need to use force, we do it." (New York Times, 5/26)

Then Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who demanded a department of "Homeland Security" when Bush still opposed it, says "the Bush administration is not spending enough on homeland defenses." (CNN, 5/22). Florida Senator Bob Graham proposes that the FBI "strengthen and improve its domestic capability as fully and as expeditiously as possible" and complains about the FBI's "history of repeated shortcomings...in the face of grave and immediate threats to our homeland" (Prepared Testimony for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, May 22).

Vietnam War Criminal Kerry: Leader of Liberal Fascists

Right now, the leader of the pack is Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who honed his skills as a mass murderer during the Vietnam War. Kerry has wrapped a fully-packaged plan for a police state in red, white, and blue and labeled it "a new era of national service." To underscore its paramilitary aspect, Kerry announced it at an American Legion Hall in New Hampshire. The plan includes: college tuition credit for national service, a high school community service graduation requirement to be administered by state governments, the recruitment of 100,000 "older Americans in service" and a "summer of service" for 13-17 year olds, a "rebirth of the Peace Corps" (Kennedy's pet project for getting idealistic youth to work for U.S. imperialism), the recruitment of "more Americans to the military" and the creation of a "new community defense service." (Washington Post, 5/19).

Kerry and the liberals understand, as Hitler did, that a police state is much easier to implement if those whom it oppresses play an enthusiastic role in carrying out their own oppression, a hallmark of the liberal Clinton presidency. Clinton destroyed welfare and replaced it with a form of slave labor. Yet until his final days in office, he enjoyed high poll ratings. Kerry & Co. want to build on this record. He's framing his campaign in the rhetoric of community spirit and self-sacrifice. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne notices that Kerry has given the "service idea a new twist. Drawing from fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain...Americans, Kerry say[s], `think elected officials no longer ask them to serve a cause larger than themselves...' [Kerry casts] patriotism and community-mindedness as the opposites of `get-mine and get-out rhetoric and a `creed of greed.' These he associate[s] with Bush's overall approach to domestic policy" (Washington Post, 5/20)

Sure, Bush represents greed. Greed is a by-product of the profit system. But Kerry and the liberals serve the same class interests as Bush. Kerry merely has a more sophisticated, class-conscious approach than the Bush gang. "Community-mindedness" and the rejection of selfishness are noble goals. However, what's their true content? For Kerry & Co., this still means conquering the world and inducing us to applaud while we pay the awful price.

The working class's criteria for "community-mindedness" is the complete opposite of the imperialist agenda for war and fascism. Our class consciousness views all bosses as our enemies. The liberals will keep trying to sucker us into marching under the banners of their police state. The Progressive Labor Party will continue to organize workers, students and soldiers into marching under the red flag and fighting for a future of communist revolution.

Rulers Using SARS to Militarize Public Health

If the SARS virus hadn't broken out, the bosses would have invented something like it. It's given them a golden opportunity to push their plans for domestic fascism.

Police terror is a major component of fascism, but not the only one. To maintain social control, the carrot can serve as an equally useful tool as the stick. Health care is an important carrot.

When the SARS virus began making headlines, Dr. Joshua Lederberg called it "a variation of the common cold..." (L.A. Times, 5/24). Lederberg is President-emeritus of Rockefeller University. He quickly revised his political estimate and now thunders that this virus is the "single greatest threat to man's dominance on the planet." (Quoted in Dr. Elin Gursky, "Now to Confront a Greater Enemy," ANSER, Institute for Homeland Security)

CHALLENGE readers will remember the "anthrax scare" that followed the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The bosses never found the culprit, but they made a lot of hay about "bioterrorism." As early as November 2001, Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller and Bill Frist held a public forum linking epidemics to bioterrorism. Now a virtual industry has emerged combining the two. Its leaders include scientific and political pillars of the Eastern Establishment. On November 1, 2001, Margaret Hamburg warned the Rockefeller-Frist gabfest: "We need to recognize that public health is public safety, and an important pillar in our national security framework....Public health is a critical defense need" (Transcript, "Bioterrorism and Biodefense: Are We Ready?"). Hamburg is a former New York City Health Commissioner, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an Overseer of Harvard University.

Dr. Elin Gursky, a Senior Fellow at the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, links SARS and the imperialists' recent war in Iraq. She praises the U.S. military's "flexibility," laments that the health care establishment lags far behind it, and calls for a dramatic increase in the number of public health employees, concluding: "The nation's ability to meet the threat of terrorists as well as newly-emerging diseases is now clearly a matter of 21st century national security" (op. cit.).

The rulers' response to SARS exposes their intention to militarize public health and use it as a tactic for sweet-talking or coercing us into relying on them to "protect" us under any and all circumstances. This is the main aspect of the SARS episode. The disease itself will probably soon be replaced by another real or concocted public health emergency. But imperialist war and fascism will not go away. They must be destroyed. We need to remain vigilant about the rulers' schemes for conning us into depending upon them for our "well-being." Only a revolutionary communist analysis of events can provide the framework for doing this.

Back Workers' Fight vs. GE Warmaker, Strike-breaker

Twenty-four thousand General Electric workers may strike the world's third largest corporation -- and most profitable arms producer -- in June. It would be the first nationwide walkout by GE workers in 34 years. One-third of GE's workforce has 30 years service.

GE is demanding workers pay $900 annual health insurance co-payments. In January, targeted two-day strikes protested the company's unilaterally imposed $200 hike.

GE's net profit in the first quarter of 2003 was $3.2 BILLION -- an annual rate of nearly $12.8 billion -- a slight "slippage" from its 2001 record of $13.6 billion. Now this multi-billion dollar giant wants to soak its workers for health insurance after they've given a lifetime of work to produce those huge profits.

Thirteen unions are involved and the bosses hope to play them off against each other. Already the Machinists have broken away from the unified bargaining team. But that "team" doesn't seem to be adopting a class struggle position. The International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), which recently merged with the CWA (communications workers), is the largest of the thirteen and wants GE to remain "neutral" in any unionization drive. GE's CEO is having none of it.

The world crisis of capitalism is moving GE to squeeze its workers even more. When profits "drop" from $13 billion to $12 billion, they start to worry. This crisis is tied to U.S. imperialism's drive to permanent war to deal with its economic rivals. GE reaps huge profits selling the weapons that are killing workers around the world. GE bosses call on their workers to "patriotically" produce these weapons and then demands that they take cuts in their hard-earned wages and benefits to maintain GE's profits and the bosses' war machine.

Should GE workers strike, all workers and students should support it -- joining the picket lines, helping to stop scabs, raising money in their organizations, passing resolutions, picketing GE sales units, inviting GE workers to union meetings and campuses to speak about and marshal support for the strikers. This is an opportunity to organize all those who opposed the U.S. war in Iraq to help GE workers fight one of the world's leading war makers.

A militant strike against this war maker and strike breaker can inspire workers worldwide and send shivers down the spines of GE and its class. "Workers of the world, unite!"

How Anti-Communism Screwed GE Workers

The communist-led United Electrical Workers (UE) unionized GE and the other large electronics industry corporations in the mid-1930s. When the Second World War ended, the CIO's UE had 650,000 members, including all of GE's production workers. Then came the ferocious anti-communism of the Cold War. Most of the CIO's leadership marched behind the U.S. ruling class's anti-Soviet offensive. The Reuther CIO leadership set up rival unions to its left-led sections. The IUE was born as a dual union to UE.

A key certification struggle occurred at GE's giant 10,000-worker Lynn, Mass., plant. The night before the vote, liberal Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey (later vice-president under Lyndon Johnson) wired Lynn's GE workers that if they voted for UE, the company would lose all its government contracts and thousands of GE workers would be out of a job. Despite that blatant anti-communism, well over 4,000 workers voted for UE, which lost the election to IUE by just 400 ballots.

When the smoke cleared, the anticommunist IUE had captured 325,000 members, the UE was left with 50,000 and nearly 300,000 electrical workers were lost to unionization altogether from the former 650,000-strong UE.

Anti-communism pays -- for the bosses.

Immigrant Workers Caught in Sears Tower `Terror' Sweep

CHICAGO, IL May 23 -- "This is an injustice. How can they take away his life like this?" declared the wife of a Sears Tower janitor, a Mexican immigrant who, after working for only a month, was arrested as part of the "War on Terrorism." Federal police said the sweeps were necessary to protect a potential high-profile target for terrorists. They wouldn't say how many workers were arrested or name their countries of origin.

After the 9/11 attacks, city and federal officials added concrete barriers and X-ray machines to protect the 110-story building. A Sears Tower spokesman said the immigrants worked for tenants, not for the building itself, and that building managers "would...support any steps [taken by] the federal government..."

Last December 10, federal police targeted immigrant airport workers at O'Hare International and Midway Airports. At least 46 were arrested, and 20 were charged with federal criminal offenses. About 40 are still awaiting decisions on their deportation cases. Federal police also made arrests at airports in New York, Miami, Washington and elsewhere as part of Operation Tarmac. One of these workers gave a very moving talk at the PLP Workers' May Day Dinner.

Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said, "We are...trying to ensure that everyone who has access to secure areas is who they say they are." The arrested janitor had no access to any secure area. She said that even a law-abiding undoncumented immigrant was vulnerable to blackmail from terrorists. "If they're not terrorists hemselves...being...undocumented...leaves them open to coercion," she said.

Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said, "Do you feel safer because busboys and janitors are being deported?...They are not terrorists, and they are not dangerous. These are the same people President Bush was talking about legalizing just two years ago."

The arrests were carried out during an "orange alert" just before the Memorial Day weekend. While the TV floodlights glared on thousands of "citizen-victims" reporting to hospitals as part of the Homeland Security drill carried out last week, in the darkness federal and local police were planning terror attacks against all immigrant workers. This one-two punch was an attack on the working class at large. The only thing more terrifying than the raids themselves is the deafening silence of the mass movement in response to them. We cannot allow this silence to dominate our unions, churches, classrooms and community organizations. Our response to these fascist attacks must be reflected in a rising CHALLENGE distribution and a more active, fighting revolutionary communist movement.

Homeland Security = National Guard Strike-Breaking

CENTRAL NEW JERSEY, May 27 -- The AmerGen Energy Co. of Chicago has the New Jersey National Guard inside its Oyster Creek nuclear power plant here on an "anti-terrorist watch" protecting scabs being imported to break the strike of 215 electrical workers. The "war on terror" has come home with a vengeance for striking members of Local 1289 of the IBEW (Int'l Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). They're fighting the company's demand to lay off at least 15% of the workforce, plus "flexibility" to lay off even more and also break work-rules to force workers to perform several jobs other than their own.

The contract expired last October, was extended until January and then the company stalled bargaining until unilaterally imposing a new contract on April 14. The NLRB rejected a union petition saying this company move was "unfair," so the workers finally walked out on May 22.

AmerGen says it wants to make the plant "efficient and competitive." Yet since buying the plant three years ago it has already chopped the workforce from 850 to 450 and now wants even more cuts. The bosses hope to break the union by bringing in scabs from its nine other plants.

The striking workers operate Oyster Creek's nuclear reactor, monitor and repair the plant's various gauges and dials, and insure that workers are not exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. They say their jobs are too specialized to risk having to perform jobs other than ones they're trained for.

Right now the plant is shut down because of a cable failure and the company wants the scabs to fix it and get the plant operating again. While the rulers say they're so "concerned" about "terrorists," they're ready to allow this company to use untrained scabs to repair and run a nuclear reactor, and use troops to protect those scabs! This endangers not only the workers but thousands of the state's residents.

Obviously the "war on terror" is a war on the working class, in Iraq and in New Jersey.`

May Day Deaths Symbolize Betrayal
of South Africa's Workers

May Day was a day of anguish for workers in South Africa. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) reported a "tragic accident near Bethlehem, Free State, killing 60 workers, mainly members of the SA Municipal Workers' Union. The bus taking them from Kimberley to a May Day rally in Qwaqwa plunged into a dam. What should have been a celebration of the workers' day turned into a tragedy."

A lack of maintenance on South Africa's roads, creating dangerous conditions, caused this "accident."

After years of rule by the ANC (African National Congress), recent figures show a worsening poverty among black workers since the days of apartheid. Years of militant struggles by workers and youth, which inspired anti-racists worldwide, won little or no gains for apartheid's victims. Early in May BBC News Online reported that, "Incomes in black households fell by 19% between 1995 and 2000....The research carried out by the Univ. of Western Cape surveyed black townships around Cape Town, where it found 76% of households living below the poverty line of $42 per month."

The international anti-racist movement, mostly spearheaded by communists, led heroic struggles. But these struggles were undercut by the erroneous outlook of the old communist movement. Present events in South Africa offer great lessons.

Walter Sisulu, who played a leading role in launching the armed struggle against the apartheid regime died around May Day, just before his 91st birthday. Sisulu was born in a rural region, son of a domestic who became an urban worker. In 1949, he was elected Secretary-General of the ANC and played a central role in shaping it into a major revolutionary, anti-racist organization. During that period, Sisulu fought most of the ANC leadership that opposed multi-racial unity with other non-black groups fighting apartheid. In the early 1950's, he forged an alliance with the India Congresses, the Congress of Democrats (formed by anti-apartheid whites) and the African Coloured People's Organization. Patiently he won the ANC nationalists. who opposed this multi-racial unity, to build a multi-racial movement.

He also fought anti-communism within the liberation movement and built unity between the trade union and communist movements. In 1955 he joined the banned underground Communist Party, later becoming part of its central committee. He was arrested in the early 1960s, and, along with Nelson Mandela, made a defiant speech against the fascist regime, knowing they would pay for this. Both were sentenced to life and spent 25 years in Robben Island prison. Refusing to be broken by the fascists, he organized and politicized younger fellow inmates, turning the jail into what became known as a "people's organization."

He was also a key figure in holding the ANC together during bitter in-fighting within the anti-apartheid struggle. Like many revolutionaries, he was also a loving husband, father and grandfather.

But despite his commitment and his dream of a revolutionary, anti-racist, multi-racial South Africa, the movement he helped found and lead established a capitalist regime. Now the same workers who fought apartheid are organizing mass struggles and strikes against the evils of the profit system -- unemployment, layoffs and poverty -- under the ANC government. Despite superficial changes, allowing a few non-whites into the ruling class and among its henchmen, the same racist bosses -- Oppenheimer's Anglo-American corporation and other local British/U.S. companies -- still run South Africa.

This most enormous tragedy was the fight by the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the entire anti-apartheid movement for capitalism with a "human face." There's no such animal. National liberation has historically maintained the profit system, just with greater participation of local bosses.

Capitalism is based on exploiting workers, no matter who runs the government. The SACP became a reformist, pro-capitalist organization now part of the ANC government. The millions of workers and youth oppressed by apartheid (like the very militant townships rebels known as "young comrades") wanted a system representing their class interests, not a "change of faces." They need communism, where workers rule and whose production serves the working class, not the Oppenheimers and their ilk. That is the lesson PLP have learned from this and many other struggles worldwide. Join us!

Baghdad May Day 1959:
One Million Marched Under Red Flags

On May Day, 1959, 44 years ago, one million workers, students, intellectuals and peasants, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians and Jews, marched in Baghdad under the red flags of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). Six years before, the ICP had led a massive general strike against the government and the imperialist oil companies behind it that totally shut down the country and eventually ousted the hated monarchy. The ICP could have taken power but didn't. The reasons were briefly outlined in the CHALLENGE article (5/14) on Iraqi workers needing communist revolution. However, valuable lessons can be drawn from the ICP's achievements and grave mistakes.

Founded in 1935, three years after Britain declared Iraq "independent" (although still its semi-colony), the ICP followed the line of the old international communist movement. During World War II it supported the war against the Nazis and stopped denouncing the British imperialists (who were fighting the fascists). After the war, the anger of the masses at British imperialism and the Iraqi monarchy grew. The ICP attacked both. Then the January 1948 mass uprising erupted, the biggest against the monarchy, begun by students but quickly spreading to workers and peasants. On Jan. 27, the police killed several hundred protestors, but the struggle continued. The Prime Minister fled to London. But when Moscow recognized the state of Israel that year, the ICP (like its sister parties in the Mid-East) was stunned. Many quit. The Iraqi rulers' repression intensified. They publicly executed the head of the ICP.

However, it recovered and grew. From 1953-55, influenced by the Chinese CP, it raised the immediate need of the proletarians to seize power. But when Nasser took over in Egypt under the slogan of "Pan-Arabic socialism," the ICP again sought unity with a "progressive national bourgeoisie."

Finally, in 1958, "free" military officers, following Nasser's lead, overthrew the monarchy, calling for state capitalism under a strong nationalist capitalist class. This movement capitalized on the anti-imperialist and anti-monarchy feelings of the masses. The new military regime was forced to legalize all unions and political parties, but its "socialism" was a sham. U.S., British, French and Dutch oil companies gobbled up the Iraqi Petroleum Co. The Kurds, whose strongest party was the Communist Party, demanded autonomy and, even more important, a share of the oil wealth. The "free officers" government of General Qasim refused.

The ICP, although not part of the "free officers" movement, supported it. Despite years of repression, the ICP grew stronger -- as May Day 1959 demonstrated -- impelling CIA head Allen Dulles to label Iraq "the most dangerous place in the world" (shades of Bush!). The new military regime attacked the ICP. The Party, instead of fighting for power (potentially possible), stopped criticizing the Qasimgovernment. Despite ICP support, the regime continued to jail and kill communists and banned its newspaper. Such were the fruits of supporting the "progressive nationalist" bosses.

In 1963, a Baath Party coup overthrew the Qasim government. The Kennedy CIA provided its new friends in the Baath Party with a hit list of communists. Thousands were jailed and killed. Through several ensuing coups, the ICP grew weaker, suffering many splits, including a Maoist group whose guerrilla warfare against the Baathites was crushed.

When Saddam Hussein finally came to power in the mid-1970s, he began with a left cover, even allowing ICP and Kurdish participation in the government, But by 1978, Saddam felt strong enough to clamp down on the ICP.

Now the Party has reappeared publicly, the first to publish a newspaper -- the People's Path -- after the fall of Saddam. It has opened offices in many cities. But its line is even more right-wing than previously. During the Saddam regime it was part of the Iraqi National Front, led by U.S. agent Chalabi. It broke with the Front when the U.S. cut its funds as a Front member. The ICP has renounced any form of revolution (in 1963 it had attacked Leninism). It now wants to build a "European style" social-democracy in Iraq.

But Iraqi workers have a long history of rebellion. A new revolutionary communist movement is a matter of life and death for the working class of Iraq and its allies. Their fight is two-fold, against both the U.S. occupiers and their lackeys), and also the religious fanatics who want to build an Iranian-style Islamic regime. They need the support of the international working class.

Arundhati Roy's `Boycott' Solution Will Never End Capitalist Misery

Tens of millions of people worldwide have reacted to U.S. rulers' invasion of Iraq and its more open moves for world domination by moving to the left, by becoming anti-imperialist, by questioning the status quo -- capitalism. It is a time when millions can be won from merely opposing imperialism and questioning the profit system that spawns it to seeing the need for communist revolution to forcibly wipe out capitalism.

Recently Arundhati Roy, an activist from India, made a speech to a packed house at the Riverside Church in New York City. Interestingly enough, she was beginning an international tour, sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights, at this epicenter of liberalism, also known as the Rockefellers' church.

While indicting many aspects of U.S. imperialist policy to a cheering, mostly middle class throng, when she reached out for a solution to the mass misery, fascism, racism and war induced by capitalism, she even quoted the Soviet revolutionary Lenin in asking: "What is to be done?" Unfortunately, she did not report his answer: since no ruling class nor oppressive system has ever given up its rule without a violent struggle, the working class must be organized for a violent revolution to defend its class interests. That can only be accomplished under the leadership of its own party, a communist party, organized for a communist revolution to wipe out capitalism, not reform it.

After puncturing holes in many of the rationalizations spouted by Bush to justify the U.S. ruling class's mass murder in Iraq for the past 12 years; after accusing the Bush administration and the 9/11 terrorists of "working as a team;" and after exposing how the Bush gang plans to introduce U.S.-style capitalism into Iraq for the greater glory of the oil billionaires, since, "There is no conventional military force that can challenge the American war machine," what does she propose? A boycott of U.S. and British goods, a "People's sanctions" on every corporation with contracts in Iraq to "force them out of business." Even if such a boycott could succeed, what does that leave us with? A "kinder, gentler" capitalism? A capitalism with a "human face"? This is a call for social democracy, a "solution" that has often led to fascism, or at best an attempt to reform a profit system than cannot be reformed but hides its exploitative nature.

To indict U.S. imperialism for many of its crimes without advancing a strategy to smash it is to allow it to continue wreaking its havoc across the planet. Historically boycotts have never ended an oppressive system. Such actions might sharpen contradictions, but for what? To make for a "kinder" capitalism? Ms. Roy says the Republicans are destroying democracy and that "Americans must take it back." But "democracy" here has always meant capitalist rule, whether by Democratic or Republican servants. Who is the force to challenge the Bushites? Never once is the indictment of U.S. imperialism extended to the Democrats, to the liberals. The clear message from all this would be to vote "bad guy" Bush out and do what? Vote a "good guy" Democrat into the White House in 2004? This is no solution, but rather a continuation of capitalist misery with (possibly) a "gentler face."

Ms. Roy has no class analysis. What she said is completely acceptable to the liberal section of the ruling class, which is why she's allowed to speak at the Riverside Church. Would that have happened if she were to attack capitalism as inevitably exploitative, much less call for communist revolution?

Even assuming Ms. Roy is well-meaning, such well-meaning people can have wrong ideas that are dangerous to the working class. Yes, workers DO want to know "what is to be done." It is the job of communists to bring Lenin's answer to the working class, especially at the point of production, in the military and in the working-class communities. It is here where PLP's message can become a key force for the solution to all the oppression capitalism hits us with.

While the movement of millions to an anti-U.S. imperialist stance has been a very positive development, to then divert it into one of rule by liberal capitalists is just as bad as rule by the present cabal and even more dangerous. No, the strategy must be to move those tens of millions opposing U.S. rulers to see that capitalism must be destroyed by communist revolution.

GI's Should Refuse To Be
An Occupying Army

The British Army has rejected a Pentagon request to move several thousand of its troops from southern Iraq to patrol Baghdad and relieve the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division (ID). The British said they feared morale problems if they didn't send soldiers home now. This is the same problem U.S. generals are having with the Third ID. The "quick" war is turning into an extended quagmire.

As an occupying army, U.S. and British troops are coming into continuing close contact with large numbers of Iraqi civilians. U.S. soldiers are firing into anti-U.S. demonstrations, killing unarmed civilians at close range on a daily basis.

Not only is this is a crime against Iraqi workers, but the brutality and uncertainty of being an occupier also puts a tremendous strain on soldiers. House-to-house searches and raids, killing of civilians, including children, and spawning the hatred of those the brass said you were "liberating" takes a huge toll. Some Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza eventually formed a "refusnik" movement, refusing to serve in the dehumanization of being an occupying force that uses such brutal tactics as employing Palestinians as human shields.(The photo above is of a recent demonstration in New York City supporting the "refusnik" soldiers.)

Many U.S. soldiers who were led to believe that after a quick "liberation" they would be going home, may be realizing that this was no liberation and they wouldn't be going home for a while. The strains are starting to show. The disagreement between the U.S. and British military over who will patrol Baghdad is a sign of that stress.

Historically soldiers have rebelled against being occupiers. When World War II ended, tens of thousands of U.S. GI's who helped defeat the Japanese in the Philippines were ready to return home right away. The U.S. bosses were reluctant to send them home because they feared the mass communist-led struggle in Asia at the time, inspired by the Soviet defeat of the Nazis and the growing communist movement in China. So tens of thousands of soldiers openly marched in opposition to the brass and demanded to go home. While the U.S. Army never completely left the Philippines, most soldiers were quickly sent back to the U.S. The "We Want To Go Home" movement was a powerful example of soldiers taking history into their own hands.

May Day 2003: `The Party's in Good Hands'

NEW YORK CITY, May 3 -- "The Party is in good hands," said a speaker tonight, as he looked around the room while recounting the history of the Progressive Labor Party. Indeed, May Day here was a resounding success. From the inspiring and informative pre-dinner presentation; to the rousing speeches given primarily by young people; to the delicious, home-made international cuisine; to the rich and varied cultural program, May Day showed that although we have a long road ahead, we're truly on the road to communist revolution.

Because central leadership was placed in youthful hands, with guidance from veteran comrades, our dinner was notable for its variety and spirit. The keynote speeches, two of which were given by young people, were well-planned and enthusiastically delivered. The audience responded eagerly to the call of our featured speaker, as he outlined the inevitability of misery and mass murder under capitalism and asked: "Is this the kind of world we want?" "NO!" shouted the crowd. Another speaker recounted the proud history of May Day, pointing out how even May Day harvest festivals in Europe and the U.S. revealed elements of class struggle between workers and bosses. Later a new young comrade gave an impassioned speech on why he joined the Party and how it helps him fight his "selfish, capitalist ways."

Our cultural program revealed a vast richness of talent. From hip hop to traditional and contemporary folk/protest music, from revolutionary gospel to rock, our Party has found many forms to express the class hatred felt toward the bosses. Singers and poets, especially among the youth, used their talents to expose capitalism and call for communist revolution as the only solution to capitalist wars and terror.

Our well-attended dinner included guests from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, among other places. It had an anti-racist, international character, with workers and youth from many countries.

Our consistent, long-term work in large mass organizations reaped the fruits of our patient labor, both quantitatively (attendance) and qualitatively (participation, recruitment and consolidation). This success is a beacon for us all.

The activities were well-planned by our May Day committee which met months before. Youth were in charge of writing and helping to critique the speeches, as well as planning the event. We emerged inspired by the wealth of knowledge and talent in the Party, determined to bring them to many more workers.

May Day is a time when we as a Party can survey our forces and plan our next steps on the road to revolution. We want to recruit from among the key participants and guests, consolidate present members, and wage fierce class struggle against imperialist war, rising fascism, racist attacks on immigrants and the monstrous budget cuts and unemployment devastating the working class.

Our Party definitely is in good hands. And we must use them to build, body by body, struggle by struggle, a mighty communist party that can crush the ruling class forever and create a world in the tradition of May Day: one working class, worldwide, united and free of exploitation.

PL'er Challenges Roy's Smokescreen

LOS ANGELES, May 27 -- When Arundhati Roy spoke here today, a PLP member was able to ask, "Since you say that `government leaders must be held accountable,' isn't it true that the global corporatism that you oppose is really imperialism, which is inherent in the capitalist system, and isn't it true that the leaders who you want us to hold accountable are only accountable to the capitalists and therefore opposed to the interests of the workers of the world and isn't it true that the only way for workers to solve this problem is to organize a revolution to take power and destroy capitalism?"

There was some applause, after which Ms. Roy "replied" that she hadn't said the government leaders are accountable, but that we would have to make them accountable.

CHALLENGE was sold before, during and after the speech. A CHALLENGE seller was asked by an Indian man if "you were the person who asked the question about revolution." "Yes," came the reply but the seller "wished it had been clearer."

"You were very clear," said the man. "Here's $2.00 for your paper."

A PLP leaflet distributed at the event noted that on May 20, 60 million workers in India organized the largest strike since "independence" from British imperialism, and asked, "Isn't such a show of workers' strength at the point of production a better school for revolutionary change than the internet-organized boycotts you suggest?"

Building the Party:
Saying `Yes' To Active Mass Organizing

I had been in my university's Chicano student organization for only three weeks when a leader of the group asked me if I "would like to drive half-way across the country to attend our national conference." Two years ago, I probably would have replied "no" and called someone to leaflet and sell CHALLENGE outside the conference. Little did I realize that by answering "yes" I would not only create a great opportunity to organize among these students, but would learn valuable lessons as well.

The trip became fun and a chance for me to get to really know others in the group. The conference was less nationalistic then I expected and offered many opportunities to discuss revolutionary Marxist ideas openly, probably stemming from the fascism and terror U.S. rulers are openly pushing today. Comrades living in the immediate area, a member organizing in the regional chapter to the north and myself were able to use this exciting mood to both agitate from the outside and organize inside to move the workshops militantly leftward.

Our active struggle at the conference and in our individual chapters sparked a lot of communist discussion on the long trip home, ranging from the war in Iraq -- triggered by a CHALLENGE flyer -- to communist centralism. A young leader of the organization raised the common misconception that "[working] people don't really have a voice under communism." I pointed out the lack of decision-making power the working class has now, under capitalism (using the war as an example). We discussed how the decision to build a neighborhood power plant might be made under communism. The people in the community, workers trained in power-plant engineering and environmentalists would all be involved. Money, potential profits and labor exploitation would not exist. The working class would come first.

Our talk ended with this same young man saying, "If we're going to do this [communist revolution], I'd like to be a leader of the south central region." This same Chicano student is know receiving the paper and enthusiastically attended our May Day dinner. Another Latina woman from the trip is also becoming more involved.

LEARNING FROM STRUGGLE

Careful work does not mean non-work. Nor does it mean reluctance and fear. After 9/11, the political atmosphere and how we function changed. Capitalism's instability has made war and fascism the order of the day.

For us to effectively struggle now, we must actively do so in mass organizations. Without saying "yes" to the trip, this group's leadership could easily have misled my chapter with nationalist and liberal, pacifist ideas. We must react quickly and be willing to aid our comrades "on the inside."

My most important lesson? Often we are too reluctant to tell workers and students about the Party for fear of being "exposed." Certainly, we must take the class enemy into account, but what's the use of careful organization if it stops us from spreading our class view publicly and doesn't let workers and students know a communist party exists that will eventually break the chains pulling us down? By saying "yes" to actively struggling in mass organizations, we are saying "yes" to a communist future.

U.S. Rulers `Nuke' Iraqis
And Own Soldiers

The so-called precision war by the U.S. against Iraq has left a legacy of death and suffering by radiation poisoning that will last far into the future. Over 200,000 U.S. veterans from the 1991 Gulf war are disabled and over 10,000 have died due to illness caused by that war, many from radiation poisoning because of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. DU is used in many types of ammunition and armor on vehicles. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. and British soldiers and millions of Iraqis have been exposed to these poisons. When DU shells explode, they not only have more immediate killing power but they also create radioactive dust that stays in the environment indefinitely. So in addition to the destruction caused by the initial bombing, the poisons go on killing for years. DU poisoning, in fact, is now killing children born to Iraqis and U.S. soldiers since the poison has passed through semen onto the next generation.

In Gulf War I approximately 300 tons of DU was dropped on Iraq. This time it was between 1,000 and 2,000 tons. Even worse, the majority of the latter were dropped on heavily-populated areas. The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute (EPI) admitted that, "If DU enters the body, it has potential to generate significant medical consequences."

DU's lethal nature has been extensively documented yet hardly reported on by the bosses' press. It utterly belies stories of "precision bombing," low U.S. casualties and limited "collateral" damage. Actually, Gulf Wars I and II were mass murder for oil, with extremely high casualties among Iraqi civilians and soldiers as well as U.S. troops. Thus, the great defenders of "civilization" in Washington and London are the main users of weapons of mass destruction.

Current U.S. soldiers should listen to the stories of Gulf war vets suffering from radiation poisoning. Those politicians and TV personalities who wrap themselves in the flag and put up yellow ribbons to support the troops are covering up the military's deception. While U.S. soldiers were invading Iraq and Afghanistan, the very leaders who have been publicly patting them on the back were poisoning them.

Those sailors on the deck of the aircraft carrier where Bush landed to make his gung-ho speech (and then shortly left) have been sleeping and working next to DU bombs and missiles 24/7 for the last ten months.

The military has fought tenaciously to deny benefits to soldiers disabled due by DU poisoning. The military denies it's dangerous, yet their own training manuals advise anyone who comes within 80 feet of DU-contaminated equipment to wear protective gear. The Army knew that if the troops were to realize what they had been exposed to, "the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive."(EPI)

U.S. rulers will stop at nothing to control the flow of Mid-East oil. They are already developing more "small-scale" nuclear weapons to use on battlefields filled with U.S. soldiers in their upcoming wars. To them the lives of U.S. GI's, like the lives of Iraqi and Afghan workers, mean nothing.

Massive Strikes Sweep France

PARIS, May 28 -- A wave of strikes swept through France as over 600,000 workers and students marched through this city on May 25 protesting government proposals that would force them to stay on their jobs up to five more years before collecting their pensions. Demonstrators also condemned government plans to make it more difficult for poorer students to obtain a college education. Yesterday an air controllers' walkout grounded 80% of 4,000 scheduled flights. Teachers extended their strike, the seventh such walkout. Parisian sanitation workers struck for a 2nd day. A call went out from transportation and civil service workers for an open-ended strike beginning June 3. All this is part of a fight-back to prevent European bosses from breaking a host of social welfare benefits workers have gained in past struggles.

Basra Oil Workers Lambast Invaders and Ba'ath Stooges

"We want elections, we don't want another Saddam," read the placards of 300 oil workers demonstrating on May 9 at the Basra refinery, second largest in Iraq. They were protesting the British Army's appointment of a Ba'ath Party official to manage the oil works. "We [want] to choose our managers now that Saddam is gone," said Mehdi Saleh Maatouq.

But UK commander Binns is threatening the workers, hiring armed guards because, he says, "People here only understand the law of the gun." This is "liberation," U.S./UK-style.

Iraq's workers can play a crucial role in rebuilding a revolutionary communist movement. The oil workers especially -- producing the world's most important resource -- are decisive to that revolutionary task. Oil for profits and to maintain world domination are why U.S. bosses invaded in the first place and what's behind their every move. With Exxon, Chevron, BP, Halliburton, Bechtel & Co. moving in, exploitation of Iraq's oil workers will mount. All the more reason to raise the cry, "Oil workers of the world, unite!"

That's why PLP organizes to build an international revolutionary communist movement. This is an urgent task since all kinds of reactionaries, from the hardcore followers of Saddam Hussein to Islamic fundamentalists are trying to co-opt the growing anger of workers and youth against the U.S.-UK occupation forces.u

Child Labor Is Good For Business

The U.S. ruling class would like workers to believe child labor is something that only happens abroad, mostly in poor, "developing" nations. But child labor is alive and well inside the U.S. and is good for U.S. business.

The super-exploitation of children in agriculture and industry was part of the reason that capitalism flourished in the U.S. Child labor was a common feature of slavery and also occurred among those working for wages. In the 1600's, bosses believed that "children should be industriously employed" and passed laws requiring children to work. With the rise of the industrial revolution at the turn of the 19th century, factory towns became dependent on the super-exploitation of women and children. Children between 7 and 12 made up one-third of the workforce in U.S. factories.

The U.S. government was very cautious about restricting child labor because it would drastically lower bosses' profits. Not until 1938, with passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, were laws enacted concerning minimum wages, overtime pay, safety conditions and child labor (forced by a communist-led movement of millions). But children working on farms are still not subject to laws governing the maximum number of hours they can work outside of school.

A 1997 survey by the Child Labor Coalition found 6,229 employers in 35 states in violation of child labor laws and 7,577 minors were illegally employed in 29 states. Because penalties for these violations are so low, occasional fines hardly dent the profits gained from exploiting these children. In fact, a 1997 study by the Associated Press it found that farmers and factory owners who illegally hire under-age children typically escape civil or criminal punishment altogether.

Rather than re-enforce existing child labor laws, Congress has been relaxing the federal laws protecting child laborers. In 1996 it reversed laws prohibiting minors from loading, operating and repairing paper balers after the National Grocers' Association and Food Market Institute lobbied against the law in order to avoid fines and penalties. Similar instances have occurred in the automotive and sawmill industries. The government has served the interests of the bosses and not the safety of working-class children.

Agri-business is the worst offender. As many as 800,000 children under 18 work as migrant and seasonal farm workers in California alone. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 1992 to 1998 43% of occupational fatalities of children 17 and younger occurred in agriculture. Teenage agricultural workers risk never completing high school; only 47% were in a grade corresponding to their age. Many of these child laborers receive no health insurance and four in five migrant working teens have no family supervision or support.

The fact is, for U.S. bosses children are desirable as employees because they are easier to control and are less likely to demand higher wages, better working conditions and organize unions. With child labor, industries can pay substandard wages and withhold benefits they normally would have to provide to adult workers. Furthermore, competition among domestic and international bosses has made child labor in "developing" nations a desirable alternative to better-paid adult labor at home. U.S. bosses are doing everything possible to open up cheap child-labor markets here and abroad to safeguard their profits. Under capitalism, child labor is good for business.

Bosses Hide Poverty As Cause Of Disease and AIDS

Our May Day celebration health display table contained a controversial paper disputing contemporary medical theories about HIV/AIDS. This flyer -- the opinion of one person -- stated that the HIV virus does not resolutely lead to AIDS ending in death. She questioned the medical model which assumes that many diseases of poverty, unsafe water supplies, etc., are being categorized as AIDS caused by HIV when they're actually caused by the poverty induced by the capitalist profit system. Moreover, modern drugs may actually weaken the immune system.

The current medical model is based on two tests, the ELISA and Western Blot. A positive response on either test alone merely shows the presence of a protein present in numerous pathogens. HIV is only one. Others sometimes resulting in an HIV+ result include viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, auto-immune disease (i.e., lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis), cancer, herpes simplex virus, the flu shot and even pregnancy!

The CDC (Center for Disease Control) definition of AIDS includes people who've ever had a CD4 (immune response "helper cell") lymphocyte count below 200 cells per micro-liter tested positively for HIV or who have infections that can occur with HIV (i.e., pulmonary TB, invasive cervical cancer) and those that rarely occur in the absence of severe immunodeficiency.

Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2003 (see reference below) states, "dramatic increases in the efficacy of antiretroviral treatments have improved the prognosis of persons with HIV/AIDS. One consequence is that fewer persons with HIV ever develop an infection or malignancy or have a low enough CD4 count to classify them as having AIDS, which means that the CDC definition has become a less useful measure of the impact of HIV/AIDS in the US."(p. 1272) But this medical book omits the importance of rising hepatitis C-related deaths among HIV/AIDS diagnosed persons, directly corresponding to street intravenous (IV) drug use. They point to life styles as a very relevant component in the HIV survival rates.

Lifestyle factors involved include "recreational" drug use of all kinds -- including alcohol -- fast living, junk food and many processed foods, tobacco, stress, lack of sleep and sexually transmitted diseases. For example, drug users die at an average age of 31, regardless of HIV status. Clean needles might prevent hepatitis transmission but don't protect against the toxicity of the heroin in the needle.

Most medical texts also do not distinguish between persons labeled as having AIDS and the recognizable diseases of poverty, especially those rampant in Africa where the clinical diagnosis of AIDS includes four symptoms: persistent dry cough, fever, persistent diarrhea and weight loss. These symptoms are common to diseases endemic to many of the poorest nations. Many are also on the list of conditions causing false HIV+ tests, including malaria, TB and parasites. There are 300 million cases of malaria every year. Millions more people are stressed, malnourished, don't have clean water to drink and can't afford mosquito netting.

Companies manufacturing HIV drugs reap mind-boggling profits. AZT, the first approved anti-viral drug, is highly toxic to bone marrow and most (normal) cell replication. But the cost is a "mere" $364 per month compared to the current "cocktail" which costs $1913/month! (ibid, p. 1292) The regimen is complicated; the side effects range from neuropathy to hepatitis and acute gastro-intestinal distress. No wonder people seek alternative theories and treatments.

Primary prevention, such as condom distribution, counseling, safe needles and perinatal HIV prophylaxis are a low priority, quite simply because increasing profits cannot be made from safe sex and widespread education.

Bibliography:
Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2003, edited by Lawrence Tierney, Stephen McPhee and Maxine Papadakis "You Don't Have To Die; Lwon Chaltow"

LETTERS

Anti-Communism Spawned Bush's Neo-Cons

CHALLENGE has always pointed that anti-communism is a deadly enemy of all workers, showing how workers and others who fall for it sooner or later end up paying for it. Recent events are full of this fact.

For instance, the gang surrounding Rumsfeld -- the so-called Neo-Conservatives (Wolfowitz, Perle, etc.) -- are direct descendents of the post-World War II anti-communism of the liberal and Trotskyite movements. Most of these Neo-Cons, and one of their gurus (William Kristol) were Trotskyites then. They soon joined the Cold War anti-communists, led mainly by liberals working with the CIA. Later they were influenced by the philosophy of Leo Strauss, who advanced very elitist, fascist ideas. Strauss (who died in 1973) taught at the Univ. of Chicago and influenced many, including Wolfowitz. Strauss said it was the natural right of the wise and strong to lead societies for the benefit of their "democratic" aims, using subterfuges because telling the truth won't get the job done (see Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker magazine, 5/12).

The Neo-Cons' lies and deception led to the invasion of Iraq and caused much death and destruction but, after leading the U.S. foreign policy since 9/11, they are now in disarray, particularly since the Eastern Establishment (the main section of the U.S. ruling class) doesn't seem to need them as much.

Many other forms of anti-communism have led to the massacre of millions. In Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Islamic fundamentalism, pushed anti-communism during the Cold War, serving the aims of U.S. rulers. Osama bin Laden and the Saudi ruling class financed the Islamic fundamentalist movement that fought for the CIA against the Soviet Union's allies in Afghanistan. Today, these fundamentalists have turned against their former U.S. friends.

In the future I'll write more of the many examples of anti-communism leading to fascism and more wars.

An anti anti-communist

Individual Freed In Collective Fight For Revolution

Capitalism affects every aspect of our society as well as our human relationships. What is sometimes not completely clear is the extent to which capitalism also affects our personal lives. It's not simply a matter of the exploitation of our labor for a wage that cannot give our families a decent life, now or in the future. For this system is also targeting us constantly with propaganda to determine our criteria for self-esteem.

Under capitalism, the worth of human beings is related to the "importance" of their job. We often evaluate ourselves according to the same principle. The natural consequence is an individualist rush to be "the best slave in the system," being more and more trapped in the flatteries and briberies of money, social prestige and so on. A person who, for whatever reason, doesn't "qualify" is considered a loser -- most tragically, often by themselves as well -- whose life is worth nothing.

The answer to bringing back our inner dignity as human beings and workers will never be found in any role assigned by capitalist society. Besides our jobs that we are forced to do to support ourselves, there is another job which really makes life worth living: the daily struggle for revolution and a communist world.

In this job we are not isolated and trapped in our limited individualist goals, but we walk together with our class brothers and sisters. We are not even trapped by time since the struggle for communism is uniting our generation with past and future ones. Not only a day-by-day struggle for life in this capitalist prison, but a long-term outlook to get out of this prison forever.

What are our choices for this truly productive work? Everyone must find their own answers according to their potential, interests and skills that capitalism presents us with in order to maximize their exploitation of us, combined with the opportunitites of the moment.

A Comrade

Action Among Masses Spurs PLP Growth

The war in Iraq and the celebration of May Day have affected our relatively new Party club. Apart from our general activities, we had a small dinner with eight adults and four children. As always, we had a great dinner with really good food, as the occasion merited. Some members wore shirts with Party slogans. The celebration was informal but always political. We talked about the war, what can happen now in the Middle East, about fascism and listened to music. One of us reviewed the significance of May Day.

This was the culmination of another year of activity in which we've increased participation in the mass movement. The war sharpened our struggle among co-workers and friends who were drawn closer to the Party. Some were very active with us in the anti-war movement, generating more enthusiasm in two comrades who'd been a little down.

After last year's May Day, the sharp struggles to participate in some mass organizations didn't produce the desired results right away, but gradually the situation changed. Two comrades joined an organization of mainly immigrant workers, another became active in their union, and still another sporadically in a church. As the war neared, club struggles sharpened over more active participation in these organizations. With the war upon us, this involvement grew.

In a meeting before May Day, we discussed the value of these activities. Some felt the effort didn't produce enough results, but we all agreed we had made small but important advances in almost all areas. Some co-workers from our jobs came with us to marches. Some have now participated in study groups; others read CHALLENGE. A friend who had become inactive is now involved again and brought two people to the May Day dinner.

Although our dinner wasn't mass, it was significant. We invited more of our friends to come. Those who didn't called to apologize, asking about the Party's May Day march. They now feel closer to us.

All this hasn't been automatic. More struggle is needed to recruit them to the Party, but being involved with them in the mass movement made everyone more enthusiastic.

The last of our guests stayed to make future plans and promised to keep fighting, with greater commitment. It seemed no one wanted the day to end, but tomorrow is another day, with more workers vowing to fight for the future of the international working class.

A visionary comrade