1. Workers of the World, Unite!
   May Day: Stand Up to Bosses' Terror
2. May 1: One Flag, One Workers' Army United!
3. Israeli-Palestine War Threatens U.S. World Order
4. Arafat & Co. Help U.S. Companies Exploit Palestinian Workers
5. Global Domination Through Mass Terror
6. International Workers' Unity Answer To Bosses' Oil Wars
7. Black, Latin and Unionized Workers Must Be Won to Fight Bosses' War and Anti-Muslim Terror
8. Israeli Jenin Massacre: Scratch a Boss, Find a Nazi
9. Rulers' Law Make Fascism Legal
10. 300 Students Back PLP Teachers Facing Anti-Communist Attack
11. Hundreds Confront Racist Cops
12. Expose Bosses' Agents In Aerospace Contract Fight
    1. The Silence Is Deafening
    2. Union `Leaders' Choose Their Side
13. Spectre of Fascism Haunting France
    1. Phony `Leftists' Opened Door For Le Pen
14. Failed Coup Setback For U.S. Bosses In Own `Backyard'
    1. Chavez Is No Friend of Venezuelan Workers
    2. Venezuela: Surprise! It Is All About Oil!
15. LETTERS
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. Building GI's Class Consciousness
    2. It's Not Jews versus Arabs
    3. Need Jewish-Arab Worker Unity
    4. Putting Racism to the Test

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Workers of the World, Unite!
May Day: Stand Up to Bosses' Terror

PLP Communist May Day Marches, Sat. May 4, 1PM

Brooklyn, NY: Prospect Park Entrance at Parkside and Ocean
Q Circle Train to Parkside

Los Angeles: 8^th and Broadway

This is the first May Day since September 11, which ushered in a new stage in developing war and fascism. The racist "War on Terror" and fascist Homeland Security has made the world a more dangerous place. The future of the revolutionary movement and the international working class will depend on how we meet the challenges ahead.

PLP stands for armed struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communist revolution is our goal. Our strategy for the seizure of power rests on building a mass international PLP among workers, soldiers, and youth. The bosses' "democracy" is actually a class dictatorship, a terror enforced through control of state power -- their cops, courts, prisons, laws and armed forces. This will be especially true in the coming period of growing war and fascism. Building a mass PLP that can withstand the blows of the ruling class and eventually lead the working class to power is at the very core of our revolutionary strategy.

Bush & Co. are being drawn into an ever-widening war against Muslim fundamentalists who want to challenge U.S. imperialism for control of Persian Gulf oil profits. The Israeli-Palestinian bloodbath has exploded and threatens the stability of the entire region and beyond. It has postponed Bush's plans for a second invasion of Iraq, sharpened the contradictions between U.S. and European bosses, and could have global consequences. A top Middle East specialist at Rockefeller's Council of Foreign Relations said, "The situation is totally, completely out of control, in a way it has never quite been before." (New York Times, 4/14)

In the U.S., thousands of Arab and Muslim citizens and immigrants have been rounded up. Many are being held indefinitely, not charged with any crime. The use of these fascist methods now is just the appetizer. The main course will soon be served to all workers. The list of "terrorist organizations" is growing and local and federal police have unlimited use of all forms of surveillance. Last December, striking teachers were arrested in New Jersey. Today in New York City, teachers have been banned from using the "S" word -- strike.

The racist rulers used 9/11 to rapidly put in place all the necessary tools for a fascist police state that will surpass apartheid-South Africa or Nazi Germany. The police torturers of Abner Louima have been granted new trials in NYC. Racist police terror, the highest prison population in the world, and prison-like schools that don't teach prepare black and Latin youth for a future of war and low-wage jobs.

Workers are being told to sacrifice for the bosses' oil wars while the rulers fight to exploit our class worldwide. From Enron to LTV Steel, hundreds of thousands of workers are being tossed in the streets, over 35,000 from Ford alone. The bosses and union leaders sing, "United We Stand." But between bosses and workers, there is no "we."

Wars and civil wars, famines and disease, mass poverty and racist "ethnic cleansings" are the bitter fruits of the supremacy of U.S. imperialism and the "free market." More than two billion people "live" on less than $2.00 a day. Workers and our children are dying in unprecedented numbers, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The defeat of the old communist movement has led us to where we are today. The bosses appear to be all-powerful and the working class appears to be at their mercy. To be sure, we are in a difficult time. The road to revolution will be long and hard. Keeping the revolutionary communist movement alive and functioning under any and all conditions is the most vital job in the world today. This May Day we march for communist revolution and life itself, for the future of the international working class. "Workers of the World, Unite!"

May 1: One Flag, One Workers' Army United!

May Day, the international working-class holiday, was born out of the May 1, 1886 General Strike of Chicago workers for the 8-hour day. In 1890, May 1st was adopted by the International led by Karl Marx as the day when the world's working class "holds a review of its forces, mobilized for the first time as One army, [under] One flag....[to] make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all lands are, in very truth, united."

May Day has become the day when workers worldwide march for their demands, led by communists, advancing revolutionary goals.

Israeli-Palestine War Threatens U.S. World Order

No worker should support either murderous faction in the current bloodshed between Israeli and Palestinian rulers. Both sides are ruthless profiteers anxious to secure the best deal for their particular class interests.

Among the Israelis, Sharon and the "loyal opposition" Labor Party agree on making Israel the dominant local force for exploiting Arab workers in the Middle East. They differ only on tactics.

The Arafat and Hamas cliques are no better. They each have plans to gain power and maximum profit for themselves. The young Arab workers and students being used as foot soldiers in this terrible war are making a grave mistake. So are the millions of workers, Arab and others, supporting Palestinian nationalism.

Israeli rulers, with U.S. backing, are fascist murderers, responsible for the horrible oppression of the Palestinian people. But Arafat & Co. is no better. The CIA and other U.S. agencies trained the Palestinian Authority ruling the West Bank.

Bosses on all sides are using nationalism and religion to cover the capitalist cause of the ongoing bloodshed. The enemy of our enemy isn't necessarily our friend. What's really at stake here is the direction of Israel's economy and more importantly, the U.S. rulers' need to control the flow of Persian Gulf oil to the rest of the world. We don't know all the ins and outs of the Israeli-Palestinian death match, but a look at conflicting profit interests is revealing.

Rockefeller oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco and their British allies (as far as the Mideast is concerned) BP and Shell command 59% of petroleum-related exports to countries other than the U.S. Continuing that dominance means eliminating any threat from Iraq, which is working with French and Russian oil bosses to double or triple its production.

But to launch their sorely-needed second invasion of Iraq, U.S. rulers must have stability in Israel-Palestine. They cannot afford losing Israel as a pro-U.S. cop in the region any more than they can brook an international Arab or Muslim rebellion against the U.S. Such an uprising would strip Saudi Arabia's unmatched oil reserves from the ExxonMobil Empire. Colin Powell's recent Mideast "peace" mission aimed at repeating Desert Storm, which killed half a million people in 1991 and even more through subsequent U.S.-led embargoes and bombings. Noting Exxon & Co.'s world dominance, the Boston Globe editorialized (4/17), "If Powell can't stop the region's accelerating descent, the world order over which the United States presides may be threatened." Powell presented himself as a missionary for peace. Such liberalism has already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers and is preparing to slaughter many more. There are no "nice cops" here.

Arafat & Co. Help U.S. Companies Exploit Palestinian Workers

In 1991 Kuwait expelled 350,000 Palestinian workers from its oilfields, and the Saudis drove out still more, fearing they might go over to Saddam Hussein. Many were forced into the dire poverty of the West Bank and Gaza. The potential for anti-U.S. unrest turned explosive. So U.S. liberals, led by Clinton, cooked up the 1993 Oslo Accords to try to relieve growing tensions. Under the Oslo terms, the World Bank helped U.S. companies like Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble set up factories in ultra-low-wage "industrial zones" administered by Arafat's newly empowered Palestinian Authority. Developed by the liberals' Council on Foreign Relations and Rockefeller and Ford foundations, this follows the example of the U.S.-run maquiladora sweatshops in Mexico. It spawned a new class of Palestinian "peace process profiteers...exploiting cheap labor under exclusive contracts with international financial organizations." (Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2001) But Arafat and his labor pimps have fallen from the U.S. main wing's graces. They take too big a cut of the profits.

Sharon, on the other hand, opposes both Arafat and the U.S. liberals. He is replacing Arafat's maquiladoras with brutal apartheid. In April, his troops massacred Palestinians in Jenin, site of an "industrial estate." Sharon wants Palestinians shut out from Israel's $100 billion economy, except as menial laborers. His faction's grandest project is turning the Negev Desert into a Silicon Valley staffed by skilled Jewish immigrants. His Likud party encourages Jewish immigrants to fill the better high-tech jobs, which account for 25% of Israel's output. More than a million highly trained Russian Jews have moved to Israel. These tech professionals are part of an anti-Arab labor aristocracy that has become even more virulent since the Nasdaq/dot.com crash of 2001. More people are fighting for fewer jobs.

In contrast, terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad want to destroy Israel and replace it with a Moslem fundamentalist state, giving them the lion's share of the profits from economic development. It's no accident their suicide bombers often target Sharon's base, killing many Russian immigrants.

Under capitalism, workers are forced to choose between suicide bombings or an oil war; between maquiladora-style sweatshops or apartheid. This is the price we pay worldwide for the collapse of the old communist movement. This May Day, PLP re-dedicates itself to building the revolutionary movement to end capitalism and replace it with a communist society run by and for the working class. For the workers of the world, it is the only way out.

Global Domination Through Mass Terror

If Sharon differs somewhat with the U.S. main wing, why did Bush give him free rein for so long? Bush is a coalition president. Fundamentally, he represents the Eastern Establishment into which he was born. But he must also appease his most "right-wing" Republican backers, to keep them from rebelling as they did in the mid-1990s. Remember Gingrich and McVeigh? U.S. New Money's interest in Israel is exemplified by Intel, which benefits immensely from Sharon's Likud Party's pipeline of skilled Russian workers. California-based Intel is Israel's largest high-tech exporter, with 5,271 largely Russian workers. Intel houses many of these Jewish immigrants on land seized from Palestinians. Intel's founder Gordon Moore and CEO Craig Barrett were both major backers of Bush's 2000 campaign. Bush tolerated Enron's anti-Rockefeller activities until a crisis forced him to side with the big boys. He can go only so far with Intel.

We shouldn't make too much of Sharon's differences with U.S. bosses. He and his Labor Party rivals agree on maintaining Israel's dominance through terror. Both agree strategically on the need to unite with U.S. imperialism and to back its oil wars. Once again, tactical splits between competing capitalists should never fool us into marching for any of them. Our goal and fight are for communism.

International Workers' Unity Answer To Bosses' Oil Wars

SAN FRANCISCO, April 20 -- Over 20,000 demonstrators marched from Dolores Park to the Civic Center to protest the imperialist war in Afghanistan and Israel's fascist occupation of Palestine. Comrades from across California marched in PLP's multi-racial contingent and amid a sea of Palestinian flags boldly held red flags high to help spread the message of internationalism and communist revolution.

After weeks of horrific images on TV of death, suffering, and misery, it was inspiring to see tens of thousands of Arab, Jewish, white, black, Latino and Asian workers gathered together to oppose war and racism. A highlight was a bullhorn speech by a PLP comrade at Dolores Park, declaring that workers worldwide have more in common with each other than with any boss or "national leader." He explained that only by uniting workers everywhere and fighting for communism, for the end of capitalist exploitation, will we be able to live in a world without imperialist war and fascism. Many students and workers stopped to listen to this impassioned call for international workers' solidarity and communist revolution.

When a well-meaning but confused Israeli supporter argued that Israelis should not be asked to give up their state for internationalism, several comrades explained that a worker cannot give up something he or she does not own. Likewise, Palestinians should be urged not to fight for a state that they will never own. As long as the bosses hold state power, workers will always be exploited. The bosses will continually use state power to increase their profits through racism, sexism and imperialist war. Sharon is fighting to hold state power to keep exploiting workers, and Arafat is fighting to gain state power to exploit even more workers. Both have repeatedly demonstrated they're not concerned with defending workers' interests. Both shed workers' blood to protect capitalist profit.

Many of the chants, posters and banners enabled us to challenge nationalism and opportunism. It was encouraging to see many signs comparing Sharon to Hitler, but many of these signs wrongly argued that Sharon and Bush are the only problems. Many thought once they go, everything will be peaceful. But it's the system of capitalism -- not the evil intentions of certain individuals -- that produces fascism and imperialist war. History has shown that even if we eliminate Bush and Sharon, the bosses will only put other capitalist murderers into power. While the March leadership and many opportunist groups led marchers to chant the ambiguous, "Free . . . Free Palestine," we encouraged workers to militantly shout, "Arab, Jewish, black, and white; workers and soldiers of the world unite!" Soon other marchers were shouting along will us.

Our participation was successful because we became closer with our friends, made contacts and invited people to May Day. We distributed 2,000 May Day leaflets, at least 300 CHALLENGES and many pamphlets describing the connection between war and capitalism. We stood up to opportunism and nationalism and kept pushing for an internationalist communist solution. These lessons must be taken back to our shops, schools, classrooms and organizations in which we participate.

Black, Latin and Unionized Workers Must Be Won to Fight Bosses' War and Anti-Muslim Terror

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 20--Tens of thousands from groups protesting the Israeli rulers' assault on the Palestinians, the war in Afghanistan and globalization converged here today. It was one of the largest demonstrations since the protests against U.S. aggression in El Salvador in the 1980s.

On the one hand it showed that many workers and students are not swallowing the patriotic fervor being whipped up by the ruling class since 9/11 nor intimidated by the repressive Patriot Act. On the other hand, the potential strength of the tens of thousands of protesters was undermined by a bosses' nationalist ideology. Calls for a separate capitalist Palestinian state would lead Palestinian workers into the arms of Palestinian exploiters (see pages 1, 2), foreign bankers, landowners and capitalists. This would exchange the terror of Israeli occupation for sweatshops run by Middle Eastern Arab, U.S. and European bosses.

Our group participated in the anti-occupation demonstration, the majority of whom were Palestinians, including many women and families, who had come from all over the East Coast and Mid-West. We distributed a PLP leaflet that saluted the resistance of the Palestinian masses in the current struggle. It indicted Israeli rulers for its genocidal war to expand its territory via the Jewish settlements in the West Bank through the killing, expulsion and enslavement of Palestinians. But it also warned against relying on nationalist ideology, on protecting Arab rulers' exploitation of Palestinian workers. We also stressed the necessity for unity of Arab and Jewish workers against all bosses - Arab, Israeli and U.S. imperialists.

Many marchers carried CHALLENGE and other Party literature. One comrade, though separated from her group, continued to lead militant chants on her bullhorn. We, along with other marchers, joined in for some of the more politically advanced chants, such as "Bush, Sharon you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!" and "No war for oil, No imperialist war."

Although there were calls for Jewish and Arab unity, nationalist ideas predominated.

Some demonstrators, angry against the Israeli rulers, crossed the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism with signs equating the Star of David with the swastika. But Judaism is not Zionism and all Jews are not anti-Palestinian. In fact, anti-racist, anti-occupation sentiment and actions are growing inside Israel. Dozens of regular soldiers and 417 reservists have refused to serve in the occupied territories and many have been jailed. Since the latest Israeli attack began, tens of thousands of Jews have demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the occupation. Thousands of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs have gone together into the West Bank to provide aid and stand up to the brutalities of the Israeli army. Actions like these are a positive step towards the communist idea of Arab and Jewish workers uniting as a single entity and sharing the value they produce.

Although there was plenty of criticism of U.S. Mid-East policy, only PLP's leaflet exposed the motivating force behind U.S. policy in the region - maintaining control over Persian Gulf oil. U.S. rulers view Israel as a strategic asset in that policy, helping to guarantee U.S. world dominance.

One glaring absence among the protestors was black and Latin and unionized workers in general. Only one labor union endorsed the march, AFSCME Local 1707, and then in small numbers. Nationalism and pro-war patriotism hurts all workers; they isolate the Muslim workers in the U.S. from the rest of the working class and don't defeat the pro-war feelings spread by the bosses' agents inside the working class. A mass movement against imperialist war must reach out into working-class communities and to workers through their unions and workplaces and point out how war and fascism only benefit the bosses, and hurt the entire working class.

The discussions with our friends at this event helped raise the political consciousness of us all. It was a small step in our on-going work of building a mass base for communist revolution.

Israeli Jenin Massacre: Scratch a Boss, Find a Nazi

During World War II, Czechoslovak resistance fighters killed Gruppenführer Heydrich near the town of Lidice. He was second in command to Himmler and one of the masterminds behind the holocaust. The Nazis retaliated by murdering every man, woman and child and bulldozing Lidice, making it a world symbol of fascist brutality.

Recently the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz quoted an Israeli army officer talking of the need to "study how the German Army operated in the Warsaw Ghetto." That "operation" slaughtered 30,000 Jewish men, women and children after the left-led Ghetto insurrection.

Fascist murder is not unique to the Nazis. The U.S. ruling class has murdered millions, from Vietnam to Iraq to Serbia and now Afghanistan. The Iraqi and Iranian bosses waged war against each other in the 1980s, murdering over 1.5 million people on each side. In 1982, Sharon organized fascist Lebanese militias to massacre 15,000 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra/Chatila camps in Southern Lebanon. Now he has ordered the massacre in the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp by Israeli "Defense" Forces. Fascist brutality is part and parcel of every capitalist, no matter his or her religion or nationality.

The Arab bosses in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and throughout the Mid-East -- who hypocritically "defend" the Palestinians' plight at the hands of the Israeli bosses -- are the very ones who unmercifully exploited Palestinian workers and then expelled them into the Israeli-created refugee camps after Desert Storm I. All bosses are responsible for the mass murder of Palestinian workers, Arab and Israeli, as well as the U.S. rulers who supply the Israelis with their weapons of mass destruction.

This first report is excerpted from the British Independent (4/16):

A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed.... A residential area roughly 160,000 square yards about a third of a mile wide has been reduced to dust. Rubble has been shoveled by bulldozers into 30-foot piles. The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust, under a field of debris, criss-crossed with tank and bulldozer tread marks.

A quiet sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland.... Here, he said, he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house.... [and] bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank. We could not see the bodies. But we could smell them....

Every wall is speckled and torn with bullet holes and shrapnel, testimony of the awesome, random firepower of [U.S.] Cobra and Apache helicopters that hovered over the camp.... Every other building bears the giant, charred, impact mark of a helicopter missile.... There were still many families and weeping children living amid the ruins, cut off from...aid....

[Others] have spent the bombardment in basements, enduring day after day of terror. Some were forced into rooms by the soldiers, who smashed their way into houses through the walls. The UN says half of the camp's 15,000 residents were under 18....

The following excerpts are from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz (4/17):

The hospital, located at the camp's entrance, is also difficult to reach because an IDF [Israeli Army] tank is stationed there, which...opens fire at anyone who approaches the hospital. It is also impossible to bring medication or blood units from the hospital to treat the injured....

The IDF refused a request from UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) to transfer water and food to the refugees Monday. UNWRA director Richard Cook told Ha'aretz that...the organization has been unable to deliver medical or food supplies to the camp's inhabitants due to the army's refusal.

An April 15 dispatch from the AFP news agency at the Jenin Refugee Camp reported that Red Cross delegates at the scene "likened [the]...camp after the Israeli assault to an earthquake zone...."

"Jamal Zubaidi, 16, said Israeli troops ordered all men...to come out on the street with their hands up.... The men were then driven to a nearby yard, ordered to strip naked, and made to lie face down in the dirt, Zubaidi said. `While my neighbor Jamal Sabar was taking off his pants, they shot him dead.'

"`I am no longer under arrest. I am free, but I fear going back,' said Abderaman Subeide, 27. `My family is broken. My mother and brother were killed in the fighting, my two brothers were arrested, and I don't know what happened to my wife. I have to find her first....'"

Rulers' Law Make Fascism Legal

(This is the first in a series of articles on the law and legal issues from a revolutionary communist perspective.)

The federal indictment of lawyer Lynne Stewart and three others for helping the Islamic fundamentalist Sheik Rahman may have surprised some, but something like it was bound to happen. Why? U.S. rulers see a chance to use the "anti-terror" laws which are behind the charges in order to terrorize workers and others. So it's important to look at the source of these and other related laws.

U.S. immigration law has a long history of racist, repressive and anti-communist provisions. The courts have specifically upheld many of these more overtly fascist laws when they're challenged. U.S. rulers also spread anti-immigrant ideas among workers. This enables the bosses to legally and politically get away with extra repression when attacking immigrant workers.

After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, new immigration laws allowed the government to establish lists of "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTOs). Once an FTO is put on the list, it's very difficult to legally get it off. Although many listed now are Islamic fundamentalist groups, others are also listed -- Shining Path, a Peruvian Maoist group; and the anti-U.S. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

If you're on the list, (1) any member of the group is unable to enter the U.S.; (2) any non-citizen who gives "material support" to, raises funds for, or tries to recruit people to a group on the list can be arrested, detained and brought before a special deportation court. These courts are allowed to receive secret evidence as long as the government claims -- and the judge agrees -- that releasing such information could harm "national security." (3) A person being tried in this court cannot ask the judge to throw out illegally-obtained evidence.

These laws also allow the government to charge any person, citizen or not, who gives "material support" to an FTO, including money, housing, use of communication equipment or transportation. This is the law that Lynn Stewart, et al., are being tried under. Stewart faces up to 50 years in jail. Supposedly, Stewart used her fax to send messages from the Sheik to some of his followers. The government claims that she violated her agreement not to speak to Rahman about legal matters while visiting him in prison. But the most important issue here was the fact that Stewart is being charged with passing along or concealing what are in essence anti-U.S. political instructions.

Think about this scenario: What if PLP had a chapter in some other country which grew significantly and began challenging the pro-U.S. government there? That government launches a fascist attack on the Party, and PLP organizes the workers to fight back. The U.S. government then designates the PLP chapter there a "foreign terrorist organization." Now sending money, food, cell phones or people (among other "material support") becomes a criminal act which allows U.S. bosses to attack PLP or other supporters of the international working class right here. (To be continued.)

300 Students Back PLP Teachers Facing Anti-Communist Attack

BROOKLYN, NY, April 15 -- Erasmus H.S. teachers are once again under attack for bringing communist politics to their students. After manipulating students and harassing parents at home, the administration decided that two teachers took students on an "unauthorized, overnight trip" and placed a letter in the teachers' files threatening them with firing and loss of license. Of course, when teachers and students attend Sunday school, museum outings or Little League together, no administrator asks if the Superintendent gave permission.

The administration has lied to students about why they were asking questions, about what could happen to the teachers and about the teachers' response to the letter. They have asked the questioned students not to tell the teachers about the investigation. They presented the teachers with only a very general accusation and then assumed guilt because we asked for written allegations.

But five years of PLP organizing in this school has given us teachers a stronger position. The student government immediately wrote a petition in an emergency meeting calling on the principal to drop his "investigations" of dedicated teachers and instead pay attention to the school's real problems: fascistic security, abusive teachers and the lack of decent elective classes. Within a week 300 of the 800 students and many teachers had signed the petition. Teachers have expressed additional support, including one who wrote a detailed letter to the principal condemning the investigation and supporting the accused teachers.

The union has filed a standard grievance against the letter in our file. But as communists we understand that true victory in this battle will be students and teachers understanding the ruling class more clearly, joining the class struggle with us and marching on May Day in working-class solidarity.

Hundreds Confront Racist Cops

CHICAGO, IL April 18 -- Last night about 500 people spilled out of their homes at a West Side housing project to confront the racist police. As two cops pursued Kearie Walker, 21, and Cortez Paramore, 22, as "suspects" in a "drug investigation," "several hundred unruly people...thought they were going to prevent two people from going to jail," said police spokesman Pat Camden.

When dozens of cops in full riot gear arrived at the ABLA Homes on West 13th Street, they were greeted with a salvo of rocks and bottles. Two cops were injured when a brick was thrown into a squad car, striking one of them in the face. The two young black men were charged with aggravated battery to a police officer. There were no drug charges.

This standoff took place just one week after police attacked 49-year old Alton George in the Robert Taylor Homes after they "suspected" he was selling drugs. He was beaten and pistol-whipped before being arrested. He died in police custody.

Those who knew him, described George as a "hard-working married man," who "never did drugs." "If a resident had problems with their refrigerator or stove or anything, he would fix it. That's they type of man he was." (Chicago Defender, 4/20)

You won't find a lot of American flags or "United We Stand" posters in Chicago's public housing projects, just racist unemployment and police terror. "We're afraid it's going to get worse," said one resident. "We want the [police] brutality to stop."

Expose Bosses' Agents In Aerospace Contract Fight

"Stand United" is the International Association of Machinists' (IAM) motto for the upcoming aerospace contract negotiations -- along with a big U.S. flag. Despite appeals to solidarity, at a recent union meeting none of the "leaders" mentioned a word about the current aerospace strikes and wildcats. "Who exactly do they want us to unite with?" asked a clever member.

Lest CHALLENGE readers think we're making a mountain out of a molehill, last meeting the chief negotiator made a rambling speech ending with the supposedly stinging condemnation that "the company has no loyalty to the flag." When members pressed him about supporting the IAM Lockheed workers striking for job security, he blew smoke in our face. "We'll do whatever they [the Lockheed union] ask us to do," he answered. As suspected, that meant doing nothing.

The Silence Is Deafening

You'd never know from union leadership reports that the fight-back against job and wage cuts has spread throughout the world's aerospace industry. Besides Lockheed, 8,000 Canadian IAM members at Bombardier wildcatted in early April after rejecting the company's demands around sick days, work schedules and paid holidays. (A sanctioned strike started April 15.) The workers also want retirement at 58 instead of 60, with no penalties. Workers chanted that these issues all translated into demands for more jobs as they blocked roads leading to three plants in St. Laurent, Dorval and Mirabel in Quebec province.

Meanwhile, Airbus bosses fired a worker accused of leading a March wildcat of 2,000 at the Broughton (North Wales, England) wing plant over pay bonuses for managers and cuts for workers. The BBC reported "many of the 5,000 at the plant were...unhappy with the flexibility agreement reached after [9/11]." In December, the workers were forced to accept "a package of cuts in hours and overtime...and voluntary redundancy [layoffs]" for 200 workers. (BBC News, 4/11)

Union `Leaders' Choose Their Side

"I guess they don't want us getting any ideas," joked a worker back at the shop. The worldwide bosses' "war on terrorism" has turned into a worldwide "war on aerospace workers." We could learn a lot from uniting with aerospace workers internationally to fight these bosses' attacks. Instead, the union leadership plays the nationalist card to thwart any such global unity.

When fascism grew in the 1930s and the world hurtled toward World War II, a pivotal debate raged within the communist movement over whether to emphasize "united front from above" (with bosses) or "united fronts from below" (with workers). As the present crisis intensifies, the question emerges again-- though with different particulars based on present circumstances. Do we unite with the bosses of "our" nation or with the workers of the world?

The union leaders have chosen their side. Their phony militancy hides a nationalist poison. That's why they don't willingly support wildcatting Canadian workers or fired Airbus workers, let alone forge international working-class solidarity.

In the 1930's many reformist union leaders became "social-fascists," advancing the bosses' agenda of war and fascism. That role is fast characterizing the present period.

During the current contract struggle, aerospace workers' organizational and political efforts must build the forces dedicated to advancing the interests of the world's workers. It will be a long, difficult struggle with many tactical twists and turns. Nevertheless, the times demand we take aim at the bosses' agents within the labor movement.

Spectre of Fascism Haunting France

The French capitalist political scene was thrown into turmoil when Jean-Marie Le Pen, the candidate of the openly fascist National Front, ran second in the first round of the presidential elections, eliminating third-place finisher Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Prime Minister. Le Pen, a virulent racist who is bitterly anti-immigrant, was given no chance to reach the final round in May. Now, he will be the one running against President Chirac, who led the voting in the first round with 20%. This open fascist, who considers the Holocaust a "minor detail" in history and wants France out of the European Union, has a slim chance of becoming the President of the French Republic.

Many workers are disenchanted because of the problems caused by the world crisis of capitalism. Workers and voters in general were looking for solutions outside the traditional capitalist parties. But now all the main parties opposing Chirac, including the discredited "Communist" Party (which supported Jospin and was also a big loser), are uniting to support Chirac in order to block Le Pen's rise. Jack Lang, the Socialist Education Minister, said: "We will make sure that fascism does not win."

That's the most dangerous part of this election. Workers and others, who want real change, will be told to choose between two forms of fascism. After all, the Chirac government is blatantly anti-working class and racist, particularly against North African immigrants. It's like choosing between Hitler and Mussolini.

Workers won't find any solutions to the crisis of world capitalism, its wars and recessions, by voting for any one of these politicians. As far as workers' class interests are concerned, they are all fascist.

Phony `Leftists' Opened Door For Le Pen

Jean Marie Le Pen, the open Nazi running against President Chirac in the May 5 elections in France, was a creation of socialist Francois Mitterrand. Before Mitterrand became President (1981-95), Le Pen was a minor figure, ridiculed by the press. But in 1984, everything changed. Even though Le Pen received only 0.3% of the vote in the first round of the 1981 elections, in Feb. 1984 Mitterrand made possible Le Pen's appearance on government-owned public TV on the popular program, "L'heure de verité" (The hour of truth). This was just before the elections to the European Parliament. It exposed the French public to this fascist demagogue's rhetoric. His vote zoomed to 11.2%.

Then, the 1986 legislative elections, when Mitterand's Socialist Party (SP) was a clear underdog to Chirac's right-wing Gaullist Party, Mitterrand "reformed" the electoral system, enabling Le Pen's Nazis to win 35 seats in the National Assembly. This divided the right-wing vote (previously solidly Gaullist), helping Mitterand's SP. That was the real birth of Le Pen.

The SP Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and his allies in the French "Communist" Party ("C"P), who've ruled France since 1997, also helped open the doors to the current Le Pen upsurge. Their government's privatization program slashed tens of thousands of workers' jobs from Danone, Air France, Moulinex, Bata, Péchiney and AOM-Air Liberté. When Michelin workers appealed to the SP-"C"P government for help against massive job losses, nothing was done. Even the 35-hour work-week, considered by the PS-"C"P as crucial to their 1997 electoral victory, today only benefits one in three workers. The shorter work-week legislation has so many loopholes, workers believe it has actually worsened wages and working conditions. In France, like in most capitalist countries, the gap between rich and poor has widened, and younger workers have gotten the worst of it. No wonder the "C"P recorded its lowest vote ever (just 3.4%) in the first round of the current elections.

The "C"P has a long history of betrayals which has demoralized workers (10% of those who voted for Le Pen used to vote for the "C"P). In 1968, it sabotaged the massive worker-student general strike that almost overthrew the French government of General DeGaulle. In the 1980s, the "C"P Mayor of a town near Paris used a bulldozer to demolish apartments of African immigrant workers. Like Mitterrand's SP, the "C"P has supported French imperialist military adventures, like the bloody attempt to keep Algeria a French colony in the late 1950s early '60s.

Phony "left" organizations' opportunist, right-wing, pro-capitalist policies open the doors to Nazis like Le Pen.

Meanwhile, some groups with a rhetoric to the left of the "C"P gained more votes than in the past, combining to come in fourth after Jospin. Though such organizations (Trotskyites) claim to be revolutionaries, they are basically electoral parties, helping to build illusions among millions of left-leaning workers angry with the status quo that capitalism can be reformed peacefully through elections.

Failed Coup Setback For U.S. Bosses In Own `Backyard'

Obstacles are mounting to the U.S. bosses' plans to dominate the world and eliminate or neutralize all opposition.

"What began so simply on Sept. 11 has become extraordinarily complex," reports Stratfor.com (4/22), "On Sept. 11, the U.S. announced a single...goal: the utter destruction of al Qaeda....Only seven months into the war...the effort is increasingly murky....The U.S. is being buffeted by events that have little to do with al Qaeda but certainly cut into Washington's ability to focus on the core issue. The recent coup in Venezuela is a case in point....Venezuela is a huge problem for the U.S. It produces about 4% of the world's crude oil and provides 16% of all oil consumed by the U.S." (Stratfor.com, April 22).

The failure of the coup in Venezuela -- organized by a combination of the Chamber of Commerce; the mass media; the head of Venoco petrochemical (one of South America's richest bosses); right-wing union hacks trained by the AFL-CIO; generals trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas; and the Opus Dei fascist sect of the Catholic Church -- was a big setback for the Bush administration. Apparently, in the 24 hours of holding power these different factions fought each other over who would take what, contributing to the coup's collapse. So as Stratfor says: "If Chavez, a relatively minor figure, can survive the wrath of Washington, how seriously should the rest of the world take the Bush administration's `with-us-or-against-us' rhetoric?"

Venezuela, after all, is in the U.S. "backyard," where the Monroe Doctrine is supposed to apply, and the failed coup has given ideas to others (especially the European imperialists) that Washington's bark is louder than its bite. For sure, there will be another coup attempt. For example, the first coup against Allende in Chile occurred in June 1973, led by the army's Tacna's tank brigade. It failed. In a compromise with fascist pro-U.S. forces, the socialist Allende named General Pinochet as Army chief. Three months later, on Sept. 11, a coup organized by Pinochet, Kissinger and AT&T succeeded. Thousands of workers and youth were killed by the fascist Pinochet regime.

Chavez Is No Friend of Venezuelan Workers

However, the tens of thousands of poor workers and honest soldiers who came out to oppose the coup against Chavez and who hate the old ruling elite that sees the workers with racist contempt, should understand that reliance on Chavez is a losing strategy. Chavez follows a long line of populist military leaders (Omar Torrijos in Panama, Juan Torres in Bolivia and even Perón in Argentina) who used the working class to fight for their own brand of capitalism. While Chavez has angered U.S. bosses by being too friendly with the Colombian guerrillas, flirting with Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and the European imperialists and worst of all, opposing the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, he has done very little to improve the lot of the working class of Venezuela. In fact, his "Bolivarian Revolution," trying to use imperialist investments to help the "national development," has devalued the Bolivar (the local currency), increased the cost of living, and cut back public services 20%.

Today, 80% of all Venezuelans still live below the poverty line.

As most reformists and populists, Chavez is now trying to reconcile with the coup organizers (hated by most workers since they are the same racist corrupt gang which stole the oil wealth of Venezuela and sent the army to murder 1,000 people during the 1989 El Caracazo mass uprising). But Washington and their local agents plan to prove that what no one can challenge them in the U.S. "backyard."

Workers must organize for the coming battles. The fight to build a communist movement is now a matter of life and death for the working class of Venezuela.

Venezuela: Surprise! It Is All About Oil!

Isaac Pérez Rouca, the 32-year-old heir to the Venoco petrochemical fortune, is one of the richest men in Latin America. Basically he -- along with the U.S. embassy -- coordinated the recent failed coup in Venezuela. Carmona, head of the Chamber of Commerce, who was installed as President for 24 hours before Chavez returned to power, is an employee of the Venoco company.

The coup mirrors a fight over control of PVDSA (the state-owned oil company), one of the world's largest. Venezuela has an estimated 221 billion barrels of oil reserves of which 78 billion barrels are proven. This represents approximately half the reserves in the Western Hemisphere, placing Venezuela in fifth place worldwide in available proven reserves. If the Orinoco Strip reserves are added, it has the largest reserves on the planet, 300 billion barrels. Additionally, it has approximately 30% of the Hemisphere's reserves, sixth largest in the world. It also has four coal mines with reserves of 1 billion metric tons.

PVDSA is the biggest oil exporter to the U.S., providing 16% of U.S. daily needs. Tulsa, Oklahoma-based CITGO was bought by PDVSA in the 1990s, and its CEO is a Venezuelan military officer appointed by Chavez. CITGO owns 18.6% of U.S. refining capacity, distributing over 140 million barrels of gasoline a year through its own gas stations. It also produces over 30 million barrels of jet fuel per year and operates one of the largest asphalt refineries on the East Coast. Obviously PDVSA is a big prize. It was founded in 1976 when the Venezuelan oil industry was nationalized but in the last several years it has opened up to foreign investors, seeking the capital to increase daily oil production to 5.8 million barrels and to more than double its daily natural gas production by 2009. The biggest projects, requiring heavy foreign investments, have been awarded to Conoco, Exxon Mobil, Veba Oel, Total (the giant French oil company), Statoil, and Phillips and Texaco.

The fight to control PDVSA is central to the dogfight in Venezuela. Billions are at stake. Falling into the "wrong" hands -- Chavez's friends among European imperialists, Iraq and Cuba -- would be a big blow to U.S. imperialist oil war plans, particularly to attack Iraq.

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!

Building GI's Class Consciousness

I've always thought the military was one of the most diverse and socially accepting organizations in terms of ethnic backgrounds, especially among the enlisted ranks. Where else are people thrown together and forced to get along and work towards a common goal regardless of where they're from? Not until September 11 did I realize the truth behind it all.

I work with people mostly from lower working-class families. I had thought they saw the world as I did. With the rest of my work center I remember watching the events of September 11 unfold on CNN with thoughts of war in my head. Only after the destruction did I hear one of my black co-workers say, "We need to just get rid of all the Arabs in our country. Go over and kill them all!" [Ed.: This discussion occurred among a large group of black soldiers.] Then it hit me; my co-workers view the world the way our backward and corrupt country encourages us to. We've been taught to celebrate all the differences we encounter in life but never to realize we're all part of the whole.

As the government's war for oil profits continued, I struggled with my co-workers. "What would you say if a black person had done this [Ed.: crashed into the WTC]?" I asked. "Would you then agree to round up thousands of black men just because they were black?"

"That's different," someone said.

"No, it's not," I replied. "It's racism!"

I must win my fellow soldiers to see we're all part of the same working class. When the bosses attack one section of our class, they prepare the way to attack all workers. As long as we think only about "our" group, then they can turn one group of workers against another in the service of everlasting profits.

Not Fooled by Bosses' Racist War Lies

It's Not Jews versus Arabs

I've attended rallies protesting the actions of the Israeli government.

There's been a good response by many to the idea of Arab-Jewish unity against the occupation. But that's not the only response.

At one march, I carried a sign saying, "Arabs and Jews unite against all imperialist warmongers," and passed out a leaflet headlined, "Arabs and Jews -- Unite Against All Bosses." I gave one to a man carrying a Palestinian flag. He asked, "What is your political position?" I said, "I'm a communist." He said,"Oh. Then you're neutral in this struggle." I was taken aback. "Neutral?" I said, "I most certainly am NOT neutral! I'm on the side of the international working class. We're fighting to destroy all these imperialists who are murdering workers for their own oil profits."

The Israeli government slaughter of Palestinians is an attack on all workers, like the U.S. bosses' attack on Iraqi and Afghani workers. The random killing of Jews in pizza parlors is also such an attack.

This man's remark was telling. A nationalist perspective puts one either on the side of the Palestinians or on the side of the Jews. This is an anti-worker outlook. It plays right into the hands of the different bosses who manipulate each side for their own imperialist aims. The U.S. and Israeli bosses are justifiably hated by many worldwide. But we also must expose the cynical game being played by the bosses of the European Union (EU), Iran, and Arafat and Hamas who are fomenting Palestinian nationalism and suicide bombings which kill Palestinian and Jewish workers. The EU wants to become the "honest broker" in the Middle East. They and other imperialists want access to oil independent from the U.S. bosses. Arafat and Hamas want to be bosses over Palestinian workers, with the support of the EU and other imperialists.

We must unite with workers of the world, not with any boss. There is no lesser evil capitalist or imperialist. The working class has paid dearly for uniting with "lesser evil imperialists." We have an uphill fight, but only communism can end wars for oil profits and meet the needs of the world's workers. Communists need to be bold and principled in this fight.

A Comrade

Need Jewish-Arab Worker Unity

On April 20, tens of thousands marched in Washington against the "War on Terrorism" and U.S. aid to Israel. I attended the United We March rally with nineteen students from the Boston U. Students Unite for Peace. During the rally we passed out SPARKs, the paper of our support group. I also distributed May Day stickers, PLP flyers and CHALLENGES and had discussions with people from the group.

During the march most chants were initially pro-peace/anti-Bush. About 15 mostly black students joined my chanting of, "Cheney you liar, we'll set your ass on fire!" It startled many people in my group. Some felt it was too militant. My chant of "Arab, Latin, black and white, Workers of the World Unite!" was not taken up. The Coalition group "ANSWER," including many Arab families, chanted, "Free, Free Palestine! Die! Die! Israel!" Several hundred chanted, "1,2,3,4, We don't want your racist war! 5,6,7,8, Stop the violence, Stop the Hate!"

This contrast between the pro-peace, anti-violence chants and the militant, nationalist and occasionally racist chants permeated much of the March. Anti-Jewish chants and signs equating the Star of David with the Nazi Swastika disgusted many in my group and in the March. All the BU students in my group agreed with me that we needed Jewish-Arab unity against Israel's war and racism to end the war in Israel/Palestine. When we neared the Capitol building we pointed towards it and chanted, "This is what Democracy looks like! That is what Fascism looks like!"

I strengthened my ties with those in the group and struggled with them over advancing multi-racial unity to oppose war and racism; over the mistaken goal of self-determination and the need to destroy nationalism, imperialism and capitalism with communism and revolution; and over the difference between militant, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist chants versus pacifist chants that only called for "peace" and for the U.S. to "stop" oppressing and exploiting all workers.

A Comrade

Putting Racism to the Test

I teach physics in a large urban high school. Recently a big controversy erupted over the Science Department's final exams. All teachers of any particular course were supposed to give the same final. Students who failed would have to repeat the course (although the passing grade was set pretty low).

This is a long-standing policy, established (before I got there) because some teachers were not actually covering all the course material. In a few cases, their students were being cheated because their teachers were lazy and/or racist and didn't bother to teach. The purpose of the test was to maintain academic standards by pressuring these teachers to do their job.

But to many students, the tests were an obstacle preventing them from graduating. Actually, since I've been at this school, very few -- if any -- students have failed these exams after earning a "C" average or better all year. Still, some students considered the tests racist, like IQ tests and other exams that are really racist. Quite a few postponed taking science classes as long as possible, and took as few as they could get away with. Of course, this is not what most of the science teachers want.

So the students, encouraged by some counselors and other school staff, protested the "science exit exams." They circulated petitions and organized people to attend a school board meeting to complain. There was talk of a walkout.

Well, I generally encourage students to fight racism. But I wasn't convinced these final exams were racist. However, comments being made by some paternalistic adults seemed a lot more racist. They implied strongly that "these students" couldn't really learn science, that science was "too hard for them," and that "very few people really need to know science anyway." But all working-class youth, and workers of any age, can and must learn science -- and math, history, philosophy, language skills, the nature of capitalism and the history of revolution as well.

Fortunately, we were able to organize dialogue between anti-racist teachers and a few of the student organizers. After a few very tense weeks, most of the science teachers admitted a minimum "make-it-or-break-it" cut-off score on the test was unnecessary. Now the test grades will be averaged in with the rest of the course work, producing almost the exact same effect, but without making the students so anxious.

The student leaders, pleased with this victory, were open to the idea that fighting racism in science education means finding ways to help more students take, and succeed at, science classes. A new science club is forming to work on this.

The Party's politics of "fight to teach, fight to learn" really helped me to sort out -- and give leadership to -- a situation that initially seemed pretty awful. It created much discussion, in the lunchroom with other teachers and also in my classrooms, and has led to some new friendships based on anti-racist struggle.

A Teacher

 

a href="#U.S. Bosses’ Plans to Whack Saddam Hussein Derailed for Now">"IL FEEDS FLAMES OF BOSSES’ WAR IN MID-EAST: U.S. Bosses’ Plans to Whack Saddam Hussein Derailed for Now

• Pro-U.S. Mubarak, Saudi Royal Parasites Remember the Shah of Iran
• European Imperialists Want Independence from ExxonMobil
• Liberals Want U.S. Troops In Middle East
• Arabs and Jews unite against Israeli onslaught

3000 March in New York City

• Protest in Ramallah

NY Teachers, Parents Talk Up Strike vs. Racist School Mess

a href="#Muni Bosses’ ‘Schedule’: Break Workers’ Backs">Muni B"sses’ ‘Schedule’: Break Workers’ Backs

a href="#A Debate: Reform Union Leaders: ‘Friendly Debate’ or Sharp Criticism?">A "ebate: Reform Union Leaders: ‘Friendly Debate’ or Sharp Criticism?

• CHALLENGE RESPONDS

L.A. Airport March Hits Immigration Terror Tactics

Working-Class Unity Sparks May Day Celebration in SSEU Local 371

Recovery? Tell It to the Jobless

a href="#Bosses’ Oil Wars Deepen Poverty in Somalia">"osses’ Oil Wars Deepen Poverty in Somalia

a href="#Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Spawns Endless Conflicts">"osses’ Dogfight Over Oil Spawns Endless Conflicts

Iraq: a Strategic Partner of Russian Rulers

a href="#Anti-Stalin Lies a Cover for Imperialists’ Mass Murder">"nti-Stalin Lies a Cover for Imperialists’ Mass Murder

LETTERS

Why Compare Israeli Rulers to Nazis?

An Apple For The Principal

a href="#Globalization and Imperialism—Same Garbage">"lobalization and Imperialism—Same Garbage

Oscar Movies Cover for Racism

---

a name="U.S. Bosses’ Plans to Whack Saddam Hussein Derailed for Now">">".S. Bosses’ Plans to Whack Saddam Hussein Derailed for Now

The conflict raging in the Middle East has dealt U.S. rulers a major tactical setback. The bosses could care less about the number of Israeli civilians who die in suicide bombings or the wholesale murder of Palestinian workers by the Israeli military. Despite Bush’s fake humanitarian posturing about dead teenagers, the real issue for U.S. imperialism is the control of oil.

The domination of world energy supplies keeps the U.S. in the driver’s seat internationally. Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq remains an important threat to this domination. Hussein’s a thug, sure, but the real reason the U.S. hates him is his plan for oil deals with the European, Chinese, and Russian rivals of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and other Establishment energy firms. The U.S. ruling class has set a priority on replacing him with a docile, pro-Exxon government in Baghdad. When Bush Jr. took office, the big bosses had all agreed on launching a new war against Iraq. They thought they had only the details to settle. They figured they could afford to ignore the growing armed struggle between the Israeli fascists and Palestinian nationalists.

Ironically, their blunder is playing into the hands of the bin Laden gang, who want to use mass outrage in the Arab-Muslim world as a wedge to drive the U.S. out of the key Persian Gulf oil producing countries. Every Palestinian killed by the Israeli military fans the flames and increases the risks the U.S. would incur by launching a war against Iraq at this time.

Pro-U.S. Mubarak, Saudi Royal Parasites Remember the Shah of Iran

Millions throughout the Arab-Muslim countries are taking to the streets to protest a U.S.-equipped Israeli army that is terrorizing thousands of Palestinians. This growing instability could threaten pro-U.S. governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, especially if the U.S. invades Iraq and slaughters thousands of Iraqi workers. This danger is far greater now than during Bush Sr.’s Desert Storm I in 1991.

Mass anti-U.S. nationalist uprisings could potentially topple the Egyptian and Saudi governments. They remember how in 1979 the Shah of Iran, the former U.S. goon in the Persian Gulf, was toppled. Egyptian President Mubarak faces mounting pressure to revoke the "peace" treaty with Israel. The Saudi rulers may have to appease the irate Saudi working class with some sort of anti-U.S. gesture. Oil prices are already rising because of the struggle in the Middle East, and a temporary anti-U.S. oil embargo would push them further upward, with unfavorable consequences for a U.S. economy that’s not out of the woods.

European Imperialists Want Independence from ExxonMobil

Further complicating the picture is mounting opposition from the major western European countries. They all have energy ambitions of their own. Most would like to conduct their oil business in Iraq and Iran independently of ExxonMobil. The only partial exception is Britain, but even they are wavering. More than 130 members of Parliament, including current and former cabinet ministers, oppose Blair’s Iraq policy.

Workers can learn an important lesson from U.S. imperialism’s predicament. On the one hand, the U.S. appears all-powerful. It’s richer and better armed than any country in the world. Yet the threat of mass uprisings in areas of vital strategic interest seriously undermines its tactical maneuverability. This is exactly what the bin Laden-al Qaeda bosses hoped to exploit. So far, they have made a good bet. Despite appearances, U.S. bosses face limits.

U.S imperialism can still bribe and threaten with more authority than anyone. This is what U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will do on his Middle East tour. However, every "solution" will lead to more problems. The profit rivalry that pits Israeli and Palestinian bosses against each other won’t go away even if Powell manages to make them sign a truce. Far more likely is a deal that would include some sort of U.S. "peacekeeping" force.

U.S. troops patrolling the Middle East will not bring peace. One way or another, U.S. imperialism must attempt to settle its Iraq problem by force. Perhaps a wider war isn’t immediately in the cards. But the dogfight for the world’s main oil supplies will go on, and it will always lead to war. The Arab and Muslim masses have shown their hatred of U.S. imperialism and their willingness to die to defeat it. But it does no good to replace one capitalist with another.

The task of workers, youth and soldiers, who are dying and will continue to die in the oil bloodbaths, is to break with all our oppressors and smash the profit system that causes war and racist-fascist terror. This requires fighting for communism, a society without any bosses. This will be our Party’s slogan on May Day 2002 and throughout the years ahead

Liberals Want U.S. Troops In Middle East

A growing number of voices within the U.S Establishment are demanding U.S. military intervention The liberal New York Times’ foreign affairs pundit Thomas Friedman has been plugging it for the last few weeks. His April 3 column quotes a Middle East expert calling for U.S. troops to "supervise the gradual emergence of a Palestinian state" as "the only solution." And Times columnist Bill Keller warns: "The tighter America clings to…Sharon, the more the Arab rank-and-file is aroused against America, the more the anti-terror alliance is strained, and the more Saddam becomes a folk hero" (April 6). Latest to weigh in is former Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: "The United States should…indicate its willingness to deploy, with the consent both of Israel and of Palestine, a peacekeeping force to enhance security for both parties" (New York Times, April 7 op-ed). Brzezinski speaks with the voice of authority. His 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, outlined the strategy U.S. imperialism is now pursuing in its bloody drive to rule the world for the next 50 years.

Arabs and Jews Unite against Israeli Onslaught

LOS ANGELES, CA, April 5 — Over the past two weeks there has been a series of rallies and demonstrations against the Israeli government’s invasion of the West Bank. One primarily Israeli-American Jewish group held a spirited rally at the Israeli consulate, involving Jews, Arabs, and other opponents of the Israeli fascists. Among the chants were "Sharon, Sharon you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide." Signs calling for Arab-Jewish unity against the occupation were well received.

At the Westwood Federal Building, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and other Arab-American organizations sponsored two spirited rallies and marches. The official theme was the nationalist slogan "Free Palestine." Most of the participants were Arab-Americans.

Most of the criticism was directed at President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. Missing was any mention of the Israeli Labor Party, which is part of Sharon’s government. Israel’s foreign minister and Labor Party leader Shimon Peres, is on the verge of having his Nobel Peace Prize rescinded due to his role in this invasion. On the American side, the Democrats escaped any criticism, even though they are solid supporters of the U.S. "war on terrorism" and the Israeli war on the West Bank. The former, which was the target of other rallies at this site, was not linked to the current Israeli invasion.

But there were also glimmers of internationalism and anti-imperialism. Many signs called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel and to prosecute Israeli officials as war criminals. Others called for unity of Arabs and Jews. One group of American Jews and Israelis carried banners and picket signs that opposed the invasion, occupation, and illegal settlements. While the politics of these events was clearly nationalist, there was absolutely no animosity between Arabs and Jews. In fact, many people in the march were elated to see this group, offered to carry their signs, and engaged them in friendly conversation.

Many of those who marched were way ahead of the leadership on the question of nationalism. They rejected the concept of an exclusive Palestinian nationalism and were openly sympathetic to international unity and anti-imperialism. The idea of Jews and Palestinians overcoming their differences through personal contacts, and joining together in social, cultural and political events, was well received.

As the Israeli invasion continues, we can expect rallies and marches in city after city. And when the U.S. invades Iraq, these actions could swell even further and merge with opposition to the "war on terrorism." Our role is to steer people in an anti-imperialist and internationalist, revolutionary direction.

We need to come with signs and slogans that oppose all forms of nationalism and imperialism, not just a few hawkish politicians in Israel and the U.S. We also need to focus on the role of the U.S. and other imperialists in the Middle East, and oppose the oppressive regimes propped up by the U.S., like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

This political challenge is as hard as it is important. These protest actions are growing. But Palestinian nationalism, replacing one set of exploiters for another, will never lead to international unity of the working class, and the killing will never end. The Israeli-Palestinian war is a product of imperialism, linked to the "war on terrorism" and the need to control the oil and gas reserves of this region. The angry and militant workers and youth of the entire region need communist politics now more than ever, so that their struggle can grow into an international revolutionary storm to sweep away the cause of war and fascist terror: capitalism. That is what the communist PLP is fighting for. Join Us!

3000 March in New York City

NEW YORK CITY, April 6—As part of an international day of protest, 3,000 Arabs, Jews and others marched against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the imperialist oppression of Palestinians. Starting from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall they streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan’s City Hall.

The demonstration followed Zionist death threats against the family of Adam Shapiro. Adam and his Palestinian-American fiancé live in Ramallah where they have been doing humanitarian relief work among the Palestinian resisters. For that he was called a "traitor" (he is Jewish) by right-wingers like the New York Post and the fascist Jewish Defense Organization.

Many Arabs at the demonstration made a point of seeking out the Jews to thank them for coming to the march. This is significant since the media is trying to push the idea that all Jews support Sharon, particularly in the U.S. However, opposing Israeli fascism is in the interest of workers worldwide. Arabs and Jews in many different countries united against the Israeli bosses’ slaughter of Palestinians.

Other marches opposing the Israeli butchers occurred around the world — Buenos Aires, London, Beirut and In Morocco where 300,000 marched. In Israel itself, 15,000 demonstrated against Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, calling for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.

Protest in Ramallah

RAMALLAH, PALESTINE, April 3 — Today 6,000 unified Arabs and Jews marched to the Calandia checkpoint here to try to break the Israeli cordon around the city and bring urgently needed food and medicine to Palestinians trapped by invading Israeli troops. They were also protesting the curfew and occupation as well as the U.S. open support for the Israeli assault on the West Bank. The aid got through but the soldiers and cops engaged in running battles with the protesters, beating them and throwing tear gas bombs each time they regrouped and re-started their chants. Thirty were injured.

NY Teachers, Parents Talk Up Strike vs. Racist School Mess

NEW YORK CITY, April 2 — A group of teachers and parents met today to map out plans to lead education workers in the event of a school strike. New York schools are a mess. Working-class students, mostly black and Latin, aren’t being taught the skills they need—reading, math, test-taking — while facing tightened security and racism and increasingly patriotic propaganda. The pledge of allegiance and the national anthem are being forced on students in many schools.

The rulers might try to use this patriotism to accuse teachers of being "unpatriotic," or "striking during wartime." The union leadership has already adopted a pro-war position, setting us up for such an attack. We must expose the nature of the war as anti-working class, conducted on behalf of U.S. bosses to control the world’s supply of oil. Striking during an imperialist war, and exposing its true nature, can raise the level of class struggle and give leadership to the whole working class.

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), representing 80,000 education workers, has been working without a contract for the last 17 months. The union leadership, relying on politician after politician, has begun floating rumors that we might be forced to strike. There have been repeated calls from the floor of the monthly Delegate Assembly for union members to take action. Passivity won’t work against the city’s unwillingness to negotiate with the union.

Does that mean the union will lead us to fight for better conditions for students and teachers? Does it mean they will demand that the Board of Education act on our belief that "all students can learn?" Never!

Therefore, we’ve made plans to organize strike committees at all schools. We want to win our colleagues to strike against the coming budget cuts and to organize parents and students to join a struggle for better conditions. In the middle of this struggle, it is imperative that we recruit teachers, students and parents to the Party.

We’ll bring co-workers, students and friends to the citywide UFT meeting that will call for a strike authorization vote. We’ll bring students to our April 15 citywide informational picket lines despite the UFT leadership’s ban on students from picketing.

Today’s meeting is the beginning in some schools, and the continuation in others, of the struggle for the rank and file, Party members and others, to become the actual leadership.

a name="Muni Bosses’ ‘Schedule’: Break Workers’ Backs"></a>Mu"i Bosses’ ‘Schedule’: Break Workers’ Backs

SAN FRANCISCO, CA April 7 — MUNI RR Management attempted to balance the budget by changing our work schedules to save $4 million and reduce our take-home pay. We beat back some of the changes and won a temporary victory. Everyone is waiting for the next attack when the summer schedules come out.

Workers are always in conflict with the profit drive. This conflict is getting sharper now as the bosses push their pro-war patriotism. Anyone who fights back exposes their Big Lie war cry, "United We Stand."

Drivers at all 7 Muni Divisions agreed that if one Division did not sign up for the schedules, no one would. This new level of class unity grew out of the last contract fight, which reduced wage progression from 31 months to 18 months. This put more money in new workers’ pockets for a moment, but was management’s first attempt to get it back. The real victory from the contract fight was a new level of class-consciousness and unity among older and newer drivers.

But this battle left us with the same old 12-hour day, OT built into our daily schedules, unsafe running times and the planning of our workday in the hands of management, whose main goal is increasing productivity. We asked our coworkers, "Why are we forced to work long hours so that the OT ends up killing us with high blood pressure and physical breakdown after 10 years of working at MUNI?"

Many workers hate the long hours and OT but don’t see any alternative to meeting the very high cost of living in the Bay Area. Many seek an "individual solution." Doing battle with management changes this outlook, but we have to be there to point out the contradictions of capitalism.

We want to build unity among riders and drivers, and a transit system that serves the working class. In the union, we raise the need to impose and collect a bigger transit fee on the Downtown Business corridor rather than raising fares, cutting service, or reducing labor costs. "Make the bosses pay" is a popular demand, while MUNI cuts service to community lines or off peak hours before rush hour service.

A transit assessment fee passed in 1981 as a compromise between Bechtel, Bank of America, Chevron and the then Mayor Feinstein. In return for doubling the fare from 25 to 50 cents, new developers would pay $5\sq foot of each new building into a Transit Impact Development Fund (TIDF), which they passed on as part of their costs. Old established businesses did not have to pay this.

Under Mayor Willie Brown, a loophole to "exempt" the developers from the TIDF created a budget deficit and Muni management is attacking transit workers to balance the budget. Our union leadership opposes collecting this fee because they don’t want to challenge the Democratic Party and Mayor Brown. Relying on the electoral process as their only strategy has contributed to the steady erosion of wages and benefits over the past 20 years. Unfortunately, this continues to have credibility with some drivers.

The union leaders don’t want to "make the bosses pay." They argue that if you challenge their profits, big business will leave San Francisco, leading to job cuts and unemployment. They believe the workers won’t fight, and the bosses are too strong.

We aim to show workers that without our labor, the bosses are nothing. We don’t need any bosses. We needed a communist society where everything that we produce serves the needs of workers.

a name="A Debate: Reform Union Leaders: ‘Friendly Debate’ or Sharp Criticism?"></">A "ebate: Reform Union Leaders: ‘Friendly Debate’ or Sharp Criticism?

The article "Bus Strikers’ Choice: Rely on Politicians or Rank & File Strength," concerning the recent struggle in Queens, attempts to address some hard questions about bringing up the need for a revolution while fighting for reforms on the job. Resolving this contradiction has plagued the communist movement and is a work in progress at MUNI.

The title asks the key question, but the article is confusing. It seems to make militant action the measure of a successful fight ("Stay out until we get what we want"). But that is a tactical question, which is hard to judge from outside the struggle.

The rest of the article correctly emphasizes that the development of workers’ political consciousness is most important. Challenge should expose why fighting for reforms without trying to develop revolutionary consciousness is a dead end while acknowledging that this is difficult in today’s work place.

We should investigate how struggle affects the working class. What political lessons do the workers draw? Do they gain a better understanding that we will always be on the defensive treadmill under capitalism? Does the struggle help chip away the cynicism and anger that many of our coworkers have towards other workers and passengers?

Communists see the potential of uniting workers and passengers to fight the big corporations. But we also recognize that many of our coworkers think this is impossible. Building this alliance requires changing a lot of workers’ understanding of the world and of the role of unions. Many drivers support a fare increase to help deal with budget shortfalls. Often drivers don’t take a class point of view.

To its credit, the reform leadership of Local 100 is trying to develop this unity with community outreach and opposing service cuts. This is the opposite of the collaboration with management and the Democrats that the old leadership of Local 100, and our International Leadership, did for 20 years.

As Bolshevik organizer Piatnitsky wrote in 1932, "Instead of taking every little fact of treachery [and]…relating just how and when the…reformist leaders…betrayed the interests of the working class…our comrades keep repeating: Social-Fascists and trade union bureaucrats, and that is all. And they think that having said [that]…all the workers must understand just what is meant by these terms…and believe that the…reformist leaders deserved them. This only has the effect of repelling the honest workers who belong to the…reformist trade unions, since they do not regard themselves either as Social Fascists or trade union bureaucrats."

Challenge should emphasize the hold that capitalism has on the minds of the workers, which makes revolution and a communist society seem to be a "pipe dream." There are reform leaders who are honest, want basic change in society, fight for the working class, but don’t see that building a revolutionary movement is possible among today’s working class. We hope to influence them with a friendly debate, not attack them.

Since we are more familiar with the ins and outs of the transit industry our input might have helped the balance in the article. However, the fact that the article did come out makes us confront our own problems with reform and revolution.

MUNI PLP Club

CHALLENGE RESPONDS

Thanks for sharpening the struggle around reform and revolution. While you may be "more familiar with the ins and outs of the transit industry," as the old Bob Dylan song goes, "You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." The article you refer to was far from perfect, and written from the "outside." But we attempt to draw lessons from many struggles we are not directly involved in, like the war in Afghanistan or the Middle East.

The heart of your criticism is that we mistakenly criticized the leadership of Local 100, either in form or substance, or both. You point to their opposing service cuts and criticize the article for making "militant action the measure of a successful fight." You imply that we are calling names rather than explaining how the reformist leaders "betrayed the interests of the working class," and "repelling honest workers." You say that the struggle to defeat reformism will be won through "friendly debate, not attack[ing]" the reformist leaders.

Without going over the article line by line, the New Directions leadership was criticized for not organizing support among the MTA transit workers and said, "As long as the ‘public’ and ‘private’ transit workers fight separately, they will drag each other down…" Local 100 President Toussaint was quoted and criticized for "trying to ‘force local politicians to take a stand,’ and telling "1,400 workers that a ‘long strike’ would turn the ‘public" against them.’" (NY Daily News, 2/28) It was at this meeting that a militant driver challenged Toussaint saying, "Now that we’re out, we should stay out till we get what we want."

Should the driver not have challenged Toussaint? Should we not have reported it? How exactly should we carry out the "friendly debate?"

But even more to the point, the "reform leaders who are honest…but don’t see that building a revolutionary movement is possible," are the very ones who have a "hold…on the minds of the workers." In California, SEIU organized thousands of home healthcare workers by making a deal to support governor Grey Davis. In New York, over 200,000 SEIU hospital workers got raises in their contracts in return for the union’s backing of Governor Pataki. Toussaint and New Directions won the leadership of Local 100 promising to organize thousands of Workfare slave laborers, who clean subways for poverty wages, into the union. They have done very little to fulfill that promise. "What political lessons [did] the workers draw? [Did] they gain a better understanding that we will always be on the defensive treadmill under capitalism? [Did] the struggle help chip away the cynicism…?" Of course not.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The vast majority of union leaders, even the reformers, will never be won to the PLP and communist revolution. Those that are will come around as the Party develops a mass political base. This means fighting the reformers for the political leadership of the workers. This is a very difficult and complicated process, especially in these political "Dark Ages." We must take a hard line and use flexible tactics, and not be mechanical. But if we don’t fight tooth and nail to expose the reformist traps, we won’t be doing anyone any favors.

L.A. Airport March Hits Immigration Terror Tactics

LOS ANGELES, CA, April 8 — Over 500 workers, students and others marched around LA international airport to protest the recent terror raids by the hated INS (Immigration Department). Community organizations, unions (including SEIU) and churches organized the demonstration. In the last weeks, hundreds of people have been arrested at the airport while traveling to other U.S. cities. Airport workers with years at the airport have also been deported. Simultaneously, the INS has raided the garment industry and other industrial areas.

While the march’s leadership focused on writing Bush, telling him to stop the raids and deportations, many workers angrily chanted more advanced political slogans like, "Workers struggles have no borders"; "The workers, united, will never be defeated"; and "Migra, listen we’re fighting back!"

These raids coincide with the U.S. Supreme Court decision that a worker fired for union organizing has no right to back pay if he’s undocumented. This intensifies exploitation and open robbery by the bosses. An immigrant airport worker, and U.S. citizen, was fired when a 20-year-old arrest for marijuana showed up on his record! The bosses and their government use racism to terrorize all workers.

The attacks and racist raids against Arabs and Muslims after Sept. 11 showed what the bosses have in store for all workers — immigrant and citizen. At the time, the leadership of these organizations sat on their hands. Now, with sharpening attacks against Latino immigrants, these leaders call on Latinos to organize against them, ignoring Arab and Muslim immigrants, even boasting, "Latinos are patriotic Americans." They divide workers and build the big bosses’ pro-U.S. patriotism.

But these attacks are creating another contradiction for the bosses in their drive towards war. Many children and relatives of these deported workers are in the armed forces. The ruling class needs them to kill and die to protect the bosses’ control of oil in the Middle East. These youth can’t be too enthusiastic about that role while seeing their families deported, jailed and super-exploited.

Such contradictions expose the capitalist system and its lies about "democracy, justice and equality." We can turn these racist attacks and deportations around, fighting to build a communist society based on meeting the needs of the international working class, not the bosses’ profits.

By participating with many workers in the activities of these mass organizations, unions and churches, we can win workers to break our capitalist chains. With persistence and boldness, we can lead workers to the profound understanding that the "working class has no borders," and build international solidarity and the fight for communism. Bringing workers to May Day 2002 is an important step in this fight.

Working-Class Unity Sparks May Day Celebration in SSEU Local 371

NEW YORK CITY, April 8 — The bosses use divide-and-conquer as one of their main strategies. Throughout capitalist societies, so-called identity politics prevails. Workers, students and others are taught to identify themselves based on the color of their skin, their country of birth or their religion.

In AFSCME’s SSEU Local 371, we have celebrated Black history night as well as Caribbean, Latino, Jewish and Italian Heritage nights. This year, based on a resolution from the Local’s Delegate Assembly, our class unity will be celebrated on May 7 in our Local’s first ever May Day event.

In previous years, the Local voted to encourage members’ participation in PLP May Day events outside the union. This year May Day is being brought into the Local. At the first organizing committee meeting we discussed the nuts and bolts of the program as well as the history of May Day and of union organizing. It was a new way to learn and teach the lessons of the past and their applications to the future.

Meanwhile, workers can carry the May Day spirit even futher by marching with PLP in Brooklyn on May 4th.

Recovery? Tell It to the Jobless

"It’s all over!" claim the experts. "Recovery’s on the way." But don’t tell that to the millions who lost, and are still losing their jobs. The millions who were thrown on the street will never recover their losses, in wages and benefits. Even when and if rehired, the jobs usually pay lower and pay less benefits.

The new "recovery" is cutting jobs like crazy. According to the Wall Street Journal (4/1):

• After 43 consecutive years of profit growth, Emerson Electric’s streak ended in this recession. With profits down 27%, it’s closing 50 plants in the U.S. and moving much of its production to Mexico and China.

• By 2004, tool manufacturer Black & Decker will shut 25% of its productive capacity and shift operations to Mexico, China and the Czech Republic.

• Albertson’s, the country’s second largest supermarket chain, closed 165 stores. During the "recovery," another 116 will close.

• Fifty percent of employers polled by the Business Council said they will continue to cut jobs or, at best, maintain current employment.

The Wall Street Journal reports that this recession saw one of the worst profit declines since World War II. Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index reports after-tax income fell by 50%. Meanwhile, from 1995 to 2000 corporate debt rose $2.5 trillion!

Corporations are in a squeeze due to "excess capacity in factories" and "intense global competition." "Companies…address the problem by eliminating jobs." (WSJ, 4/1)

A capitalist "full recovery" requires increased corporate spending, which requires strong profits. So far that hasn’t happened. A "recovery" that cuts jobs certainly won’t help workers. With all the talk about "social safety nets," only 38% of the jobless are eligible for unemployment insurance. That represented 7 million workers last year, meaning over 18 million experienced some period of joblessness. How can workers ever recover those losses?

In five previous recessions, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted, then expanded, and then fell again. So it’s entirely possible this "recovery" may be short-lived. Either way, millions of jobs will have permanently disappeared.

On top of this, the rulers’ imperialist "war on terrorism" is being used to brand striking workers as "unpatriotic," further contributing to a decline in conditions for the working class.

"Excess capacity" — overproduction of the means of production — is built into capitalism’s "intense competition." The only solution is abolishing the wage slavery system with its money, profits and bosses. Communist revolution is achievable only by the working class seizing state power, and with it the control over production for the social good.

a name="Bosses’ Oil Wars Deepen Poverty in Somalia">">"osses’ Oil Wars Deepen Poverty in Somalia

Somalia is in the news again, not only because of the racist movie "Black Hawk Down," but also because the U.S. bosses have made it a key part of their oil wars under the guise of "fighting terrorism." In 1992, the U.S. sent troops to Somalia in a UN "humanitarian" mission to allegedly deal with famine there. The humanitarian cover disappeared when the troops’ real role emerged: protection of the region’s oil shipping routes and to make the country safe for Conoco’s oil exploration.

Opposition to the intervention grew. In 1993 the Black Hawk Down incident revealed that U.S Rangers had attacked civilians in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, massacring hundreds. Several Rangers were killed by the enraged populace and their helicopters shot down. The angry crowd dragged some Rangers through the streets to avenge the slaughter. This forced Clinton to pull the troops out.

Today they’re back as part of the "war against terrorism." On March 19, CIA chief George Tenet testified to the Senate Armed Forces Committee that Somalia is "an environment [where] groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda have offered terrorists an operational base and potential haven."

The U.S. media, as usual, danced to the warmakers’ tune, saying that a handheld Global Positioning Device found by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan had belonged to a U.S. soldier killed in Somalia in 1993. "Though the press first reported this discovery as a link between Somalia and al-Qaeda, subsequent investigation had reported that a different soldier lost the device in the heat of [Afghanistan’s] Operation Anaconda in early March." (Middle East Report, 3/22).

The importance of the Horn of Africa—Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Djibouti — was signified by the visit to the area of General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. U.S. ships now patrol the Red Sea while German planes patrol the skies over Somalia 10 hours a day.

The U.S. seeks to make Somalia one of its "anchor states" in Africa (along with Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia). The masses of all those countries suffer extreme poverty and political repression. Now Somalians suffer still more since the Bush administration’s "war against terror" closed the al-Barakat money transfer offices through which Somalis overseas send cash home to relatives.

That’s the nature of capitalism. While millions starve in Africa, the bosses’ oil war turns a calamity into a holocaust. Workers and their allies worldwide need to carry out their own war against the real terrorists, the imperialist bosses.

a name="Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Spawns Endless Conflicts">">"osses’ Dogfight Over Oil Spawns Endless Conflicts

Although seemingly almighty, U.S. rulers are actually fighting for survival in Afghanistan and Iraq. Without control of Middle Eastern oil, especially Saudi Arabia’s huge reserves, U.S. imperialism would lose its main economic weapon. Led by Exxon Mobil, U.S. oil companies exert tremendous leverage over the countries they sell to by regulating the flow of capitalism’s lifeblood. But billionaire Osama bin Laden’s forces are trying to foment an Islamic rebellion that will wrest Saudi oil from the hands of the royal family and its pals at Exxon Mobil. And Saddam Hussein is uniting with Russian and French oil bosses in his own bid to grab a bigger share of Persian Gulf crude. U.S. bosses have already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan workers, and scores of GIs, to protect their vast but shaky oil empire. They are sure to spill more blood as threats increase.

The operations of the U.S.’s flagship oil company, Exxon Mobil, and its allies show just how high the stakes are. Every day, Exxon Mobil pumps 2.6 million barrels of oil out of the earth and sells 8 million barrels of petroleum products, 5.6 million barrels of it to countries other than the U.S. The secret to this wizardry is Saudi Arabia, which sells the lion’s share of its 8-million-barrel a day production to Exxon Mobil at cut-rate prices. Fellow Rockefeller firm Chevron Texaco is also in on the Saudi deal. So is Shell, an Anglo-Dutch business competitor but strategic ally of Exxon Mobil. The Saudi connection enables Exxon, Chevron, and Shell to command 45% of the non-U.S. world market for refined oil exports. Add in BP, which has similar deals with both the Saudis and Kuwaitis, and the U.S.-British share jumps to 59%. As an oil power, France trails a distant third, with TotalFinaElf’s meager 11%. But that could change as French and Russian bosses join to exploit Russia’s and Iran’s production. And BP may yet slip from the fold. It has had sharp strategic differences lately with the main U.S. rulers over Russia, the Balkans and Alaska.

Persian Gulf crude, crucial to U.S. rulers now, will become even more so in the near future. The Middle East hold two thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves. Saudi Arabia alone has a quarter. The U.S. Government predicts that by 2020, Persian Gulf will account for 42% of world oil production, up from today’s 27%. At the same time, oil shipments from the Middle East to Asia will rise from four to 19 million barrels a day. China alone will see a 1700% increase to 6.9 million barrels.

U.S. rulers’ supremacy depends greatly on their ability to dominate petroleum sources and markets. That’s why they brutally counter every threat to their oily racket. Afghanistan is only the tip of the iceberg. U.S. bosses are dead set on deploying a massive ground force to invade Iraq and seize its oilfields. They only disagree about the timing and whether to go it alone or with allies. Potential conflicts with far more powerful foes lie down the road. Washington is taking advantage of Russia’s temporary disarray to set up military bases in the heart of the old Soviet Union, right along oil routes that a resurgent Moscow would seek to control. U.S. troops are back in the Philippines, facing shipping routes to China, while China builds a deep-water navy to safeguard its future oil imports. The profit system generates oil wars without end.

(Sources: The Oil Navigator; The Oil Daily; U.S. Energy Information Administration; company reports)

Iraq: a Strategic Partner of Russian Rulers

U.S. rulers’ plans to whack Saddam Hussein face many hurdles. Exxon Mobil needs to control the Iraqi oil reserve, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. A war against Iraq will heighten even more the rivalry among the world’s capitalists and could lead to wider war. The following from Gasandoil.com and Itar-Tass news reveals Russian oil bosses have a lot to lose from a U.S. war against Iraq.

Russia’s energy minister said in his opening remarks to a session of the Russian-Iraqi Commission for Trade, Economic and Scientific Cooperation that Iraq was Russia’s main strategic partner in the region. Russia "makes political and diplomatic efforts in the UN Security Council with an aim to settle the Iraqi problem and seeks to find mutually acceptable solutions with other countries, first of all with the USA," Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said.

Yusufov said that if the economic embargo was lifted from Iraq, "that would create a basis for full-scale cooperation between Russia and Iraq." According to the minister, Russia will continue efforts in that direction. Yusufov believes that positive changes in the Russian economy were a stimulus for the development of economic ties between Moscow and Baghdad.

He said new technological developments by Russia, in particular to increase the production of oil wells, "could be of great interest for Iraq." The minister said Russian companies had received major contracts to build Iraqi facilities, citing among them the Eastern Al Jazira irrigation complex worth $70 billion.

a name="Anti-Stalin Lies a Cover for Imperialists’ Mass Murder">">"nti-Stalin Lies a Cover for Imperialists’ Mass Murder

The bosses’ media often refers to "innocent millions murdered by Stalin..." This is Cold War nonsense, plain and simple. The demographers Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver, ("Demographic Analysis and Population Catastrophes in the USSR," Slavic Review, 44, No. 3, 1985) estimate that "excess deaths" — defined as any "unusually large number of deaths" between 1926 and 1939 "among people who were alive" in 1926 — were probably between 3.2 and 5.5 million for the entire USSR. This is from all causes, including famine, disease, the entire collectivization process, executions and one significant war, against Japan in Mongolia.

We criticize Stalin and the Bolsheviks for the things they actually did, not for things they never did, but are falsely accused of, and which are widely believed by those who repeat the lies of Cold War historians, many originating with the Nazis. The Nazis had an "anti-Comintern" organization that specialized in this stuff, similar to the Harvard Soviet Studies program, or the Hoover Institution.

Yet none of Stalin-bashers report on "the innocent millions murdered by Winston Churchill." What about the Bengal Famine in India? In contrast to the Ukraine in 1932-33, the Bengal famine really was "man made." Capitalist historians say around four million died. Then there’s the Belgian imperialist, King Leopold, supported by British and U.S. bosses, slaughtering 15 million in the Congo, while cutting off the limbs of millions more. Not to mention the genocide perpetrated by U.S. rulers on hundreds of thousands of Native Americans in this country. And the 13 million black African slaves who died on their forced "trip" to the "New World."

What about the famine in the French colony of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in 1931? Also "man-made." One recent scholar said: "...mortality in this famine, partly due to French taxation policies that were more rigid than Soviet procurement policies in 1932, was in proportional terms considerably greater than in the Soviet famine..."

These are but a few of the horrors of the "free world." We are all getting an overdose of this kind of "freedom" in the new and rapidly expanding American invasion of Afghanistan.

Unlike the communists around the world, with all their great weaknesses and failures in trying to build communism through socialism, Churchill, the myriad French governments, Roosevelt, Canada’s MacKenzie King and the other "leaders of the West" never were on the side of workers, farmers and others organizing against exploitation and murder. To say nothing of the fascists who ran the governments of pre-war Poland: Pilsudski, Bor-Komarowski, and the rest.

These "leaders of the Free World" did not fight colonialism and imperialism, as the communist movement did. Quite the contrary; these "Free Worlders" were the imperialist mass murderers.

Workers of the World, Write!

LETTERS

Why Compare Israeli Rulers to Nazis?

My liberal pro-Israel friend, a little mad and puzzled, asked me: "Why does the left always attack Israel, even calling it fascist? Aren’t the Arab governments more brutal and fascist than Israel? Israel is just defending itself from those who want to destroy it."

Indeed, the Arab rulers are brutal and fascist. Most care little about their own people or the Palestinians. After all, the more pro-U.S. Arab bosses, like the royal leeches ruling Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, used Palestinians as cheap labor in the oil fields until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Then most Palestinians sympathized with Saddam because of their hatred towards those rulers — and their U.S. imperialist allies — exploiting them. Other pro-U.S. rulers like Egypt’s Mubarak have kept their people super-exploited and politically repressed.

The more anti-U.S. rulers like those in Syria and Saddam himself have combined heavy political repression with some benefits from the oil wealth to part of the population (at least before Desert Storm, and the subsequent embargo of Iraq).

But the Israeli ruling class is also fascist, even though it hides behind parliamentary bourgeois democracy. Israel was founded after World War II based on expelling millions of Palestinians from their homeland. It has brutally exploited Palestinian labor and turned the Occupied Territories (seized by Israel after the 1967 six day war) into an Apartheid-like Bantustan. The Israeli army and police treat Palestinians like "sub-humans" (the way the Nazis treated Jews, Russians, etc.). The recent Israeli army invasion of the West Bank has launched fascist attacks on thousands of civilians.

Many in the U.S. know little about this because the U.S. media is very pro-Israel. When one Israeli civilian or youth is murdered by a suicide bomber, it’s big news, but when Palestinian children or youth are murdered by the Israeli army, it’s hardly reported. Robert Fisk in London Independent (2/24) quoted an Israeli official saying, "We should study what the German army did in the Warsaw ghetto." This kind of attitude prevails among Israel’s rulers, not only Sharon but also many in the so-called Labor Party. After all, some of Israel’s founders were part of the Judenrat which helped the Nazis carry out the holocaust by trying to stop revolts by Jews in Europe.

There are Jewish soldiers, workers and youth who are refusing inside and outside Israel to be part of the Israeli rulers’ onslaught against Palestinians instead of the fascist Sharon and all the Zionist butchers. They should be applauded and supported, not the fascist gang of Sharon and all other Zionists.

A comrade

An Apple For The Principal

I’m a high school student in in California. The harassment and insults against the students by the administration is constant. The students are sick and tired of the situation. The following example shows how the students feel.

A few days ago as hundreds of students were eating in the over-packed lunchrooms a fight started between two students. The principal and her goon squad (security squad)ran over to separate the students and arrest them. All the students stood on the tables and started throwing apples at the principal. Some hit her on the head, others on the back. The security guards also got their deserved apples. The principal had to leave the area immediately amid whistles and shouts of joy by the students. Many students congratulated each other that they had rebelled, even though temporarily, against the bosses’ oppression, in this case the administration.

A Happy Student

a name="Globalization and Imperialism—Same Garbage">">"lobalization and Imperialism—Same Garbage

I’m a garment worker. I had to present a paper to other garment workers on "What is Globalization?" Even though I’ve read Challenge for years and participated in discussions, I didn’t know how or where to start. But I decided to look at my own life and use that experience.

I wrote the following:

I began my day at 6:45 am when my alarm clock went off. It was made in China. I got up and bathed with soap made in Mexico. I dried myself with a towel made in India. My underwear was made in Taiwan and my Levis pants were made in El Salvador. My shoes are of leather made in Brazil and my belt was made in Thailand. Now that I was dressed, I blended a drink with bananas from Honduras. My blender was made in Mexico. Then I drank Colombian coffee. I went to work in my old car made in Japan. My boss, who is from Taiwan, was waiting for me. Don’t you think that the international working class makes everything?

Fortunately or unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of work to do. That gave me time to think and I remembered that several years ago I heard talk of a "Free Trade Agreement" among three countries who were neighbors, supposedly "brothers." At that time, I thought that the Free Trade Treaty (NAFTA) would benefit our brothers and sisters, the Mexican farm workers and urban workers. But then I found out I was wrong. Before NAFTA, my boss paid me 20 cents for each piece I sewed. Afterwards, she lowered it to 12 cents. We stopped production. But we achieved little since the boss threatened that if we didn’t do the work, she’d send it to Mexico where they would do it for much less. Other workers in Mexico or China were not to blame. The blame was on the system of capitalism and imperialism, which force workers to work for poverty wages.

In conclusion what I understand by globalization is super-exploitation of the workers by the bosses in the richest countries all over the world. The name has changed, but the exploitation is the same. And the solution is the same: smash globalization or imperialism with communist revolution.

With this introduction, I started our discussion and our plans to mobilize workers for the May Day march.

Communist Internationalist Garment Worker

Oscar Movies Cover for Racism

The Front page article in the last CHALLENGE (4/10), "Oscars Mask Racism," was pretty accurate in describing how the sweep of the best actor and best actress by Denzel Washington and Halle Berry plus the lifetime award given to Sidney Poitier, don’t mean Hollywood has become a bastion of anti-racism or that racism is not rampant all over the U.S.

Of course, these black artists are very talented. But there is another side to the prizes they got this year: the movies they won them for. Denzel Washington in "Training Days," plays a disgusting cop in the LAPD. His character is a Ramparts division type of crooked, vicious and vile cop, even more than a regular policeman. Indeed, all cops no matter the color of their skin are enforcers of the bosses’ racist system. The movie shows that politicians are behind the vicious cop Denzel plays, but there is still the meaning that while there are bad cops of all colors, in general most cops aren’t like that.

That meaning is even more direct in the role played by Halle Berry in "Monster’s Ball." She played the role of Leticia, a woman facing the racism of a small Louisiana town and dealing with a husband on death row and a son dealing with an obesity problem. Berry ends up having a love affair with Hank (played by Billy Bob Thornton), a second-generation racist prison guard. Berry basically looks to a racist to save her from her rotten life, even though Hank changes his racist ways after his own son dies. This vicious racist "repents" and becomes "anti-racist." The fact that Leticia falls in love with this guy is like making a movie where a Jewish woman falls in love with a Nazi camp guard who after all his crimes, changes his mind.

Dr. Asa Hilliard III, professor of education at Georgia State Univ., said that when looking at the symbolism of these and other Oscars won by black artists: "More often than not, you will find some form of negative portrayal. None of these roles have really been powerful roles that touch on our most heroic people, not individually, but as a people." (Daily Challenge, NY, April 3).

Of course, if movies were really anti-racist, then Hollywood wouldn’t be the cesspool it is now.

Rex Red

1. Oscars Mask Racism
   1. HOMELESS KIDS GET NO OSCARS
2. Arab and Jewish Workers Needs Unity
   Capitalism and Peace Can Never Co-Exist
3. Pipelines to War
   1. "War against terrorism? Not really. Reminder: it's all about oil.
4. Wall Street Banker: Founded on Slavery, Built on Prisons
5. Arab and Jewish Workers: Unite Against All Bosses
6. Terrorists Can't Sidetrack million marchers in Italy
7. Pakistan: Steelworkers Occupy Mills
8. Volkswagen: Fight Against Layoffs Needed
9. Students Back Workers vs. Million $ Univ Pres.
10. Fascist Round-Up of Immigrants is Attack on All Workers
11. Mt. Sinai Cutbacks Are Health Careless
12. Central America:
    Feast For Bosses, Famine For Workers
13. Fight For May Day Now Builds the Future
14. !,000 Students March Against Firings of Counselors
15. LETTERS
    Workers of the World, Write
    1. Why No Campaign Against U.S. Army Pedophiles?
    2. Learning Through Practice
    3. Make the Bosses
       Mop the Floor
    4. Researchers Lie For Drug Dollars
    5. The Law of
       Class Struggle
    6. No Honesty
       Among Fascists

---

Oscars Mask Racism

The billion people watching the Oscars were given the message that racism was on the way out in the U.S. Hosted by Whoopie Goldberg, Denzel Washington won best actor, Halle Berry won best actress, and Sidney Poitier received a lifetime achievement award. For the first time in history, a black actor and black actress swept the lead acting awards.

To be sure, these and many more black actors are as "talented" as any. And the treatment of black people in the motion picture industry is a history of racist exclusion and stereotypes. But as with the emergence of extremely talented black sports "superstars," the rulers use the few high profile black "success" stories to mask their racist terror against the masses.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in world history, with 70% black and Latin. Hundreds of thousands are forced into prison labor "earning" a few cents an hour. Black workers suffer double the unemployment rates and one-third less family income than white workers. More black youth are in jail than in college. Black infant mortality rates rival those of the world's poorest countries. No Oscars there.

In U.S. wars, black and Latino youth make up 40% of the front-line combat troops defending the Rockefeller oil billionaires. U.S. rulers are ready to throw a few more crumbs to black superstars to try to win the allegiance of black workers, the very group they oppress and fear the most. The perfume of multi-millionaire "artists" in $20,000 gowns and Armani suits cannot cover this foul odor.

HOMELESS KIDS GET NO OSCARS

One way to judge a society is how it treats its children. While U.S. rulers spend ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER WEEK to maintain their naval armada protecting Big Oil in the Persian Gulf, consider the following:

* 1.4 million children are homeless in any given year. They make up 40% of the nation's homeless, have more health, hospital and developmental problems than non-homeless kids, and are more likely to be homeless as adults.

* In Chicago there are 6,000 shelter beds for a nightly homeless population of 20,000, half of them families with children. The majority sleeps in cars or abandoned buildings.

* In New York City, 13,000 children slept in homeless shelters or temporary apartments this winter. Families comprise 75% of the city's 32,000 homeless (nightly average), up 23% in one year, the largest one-year increase in the city's history.

* Seventy percent of homeless children suffer chronic illnesses like asthma and anemia.

* Almost half of all school-age homeless children suffer emotional problems like anxiety and depression.

* Currently there are 4.5 million more "extremely low income families" in need of housing than units available. (In 1970 there was a surplus of 300,000 units.)

* From the late 1970s to the late 1990s, New York City's poorest 20% saw their income decline 33%.

* In 1999, more than 25% of New Yorkers paid more than half their income for rent.

[All above information from the Sunday New York Times Magazine (3/24) "The Hidden Lives of Homeless Children" by Jennifer Egan]

This is the "American Way of Life" the ruling class is spreading with its "daisy cutter" bombs. The devastation of generations of children is directly caused by a capitalist profit system that keeps cutting wages and jobs, and waging wars big and small. Its real estate interests reap fortunes from throwing working-class families out on the street to gentrify neighborhoods with luxury housing for the likes of the Oscar crowd.

Arab and Jewish Workers Needs Unity
Capitalism and Peace Can Never Co-Exist

Escalating violence in the Middle East has become a huge stumbling block for U.S. rulers' plan to attack Saddam Hussein. Decades of their backing of Israeli fascists -- supplying them with $3 billion annually, including the weapons with which to slaughter the Palestinians -- has enraged Arab workers in the region and, in turn, impelled criticism from Arab rulers (see below).

The Bush gang wrongly thought it could afford to launch the next phase of its latest oil war while ignoring the increasingly murderous struggle between Palestinian and Israeli bosses. Workers will pay a huge price in blood for the imperialists' miscalculations. We can also turn their quandary to our class's advantage by drawing proper conclusions and acting on them to build our Party.

Peace and imperialism can never co-exist. The Bush crowd has taken the politics of the absurd to a new level, by shamelessly admitting that they need to stop the fighting in the Middle East only to make war in the Persian Gulf. As one Bush administration underling told the New York Times (3/24): "...the key to dealing with the United States' strategic interests, the key to dealing with Iraq is through the peace process." So, according to the White House's twisted capitalist logic, peace equals war. But this is nothing new. Since the Carter administration, U.S. rulers have been trying to force a settlement down the throats of Israeli fascists and Palestinian nationalists. Every one of these deals has exploded in their faces.

The failure of U.S. arm-twisting in the Middle East isn't due to the rulers' incompetence but rather to the profit system's essential nature. The rivalry between Israeli and Palestinian capitalists is a miniature version of the inter-imperialist conflicts that pit the U.S. ruling class against the rest of the world. Israeli moneybags want to be the top dogs in the Middle East. Arafat & Co. wants a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. Within both the Israeli ruling class and the Arafat crew there are also internal contradictions, splits over market share, and divisions over tactics. All this fighting and infighting leads to a mountain of working-class corpses.

Pipelines to War

(The following excerpts of an article written by Pepe Escobar and published in the January 25 OnLine Asia Times confirm CHALLENGE's estimate that U.S. rulers' so-called "War on Terror" is really a cover for their attempt to forge a worldwide energy monopoly.)

"War against terrorism? Not really. Reminder: it's all about oil.

"A quick look at the map is all it takes. It's no coincidence that the map of terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is practically interchangeable with the map of oil. There's Infinite Justice, Enduring Freedom--and Everlasting Profits to be made: not only by the American industrial-military complex, but especially by American and European oil giants...

"Afghanistan...is ultra-strategic: positioned between the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, between Turkmenistan and the avid markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan, Afghanistan is at the core of Pipelineistan...

"It's enlightening that all countries or regions which happen to be an impediment to Pipelineistan routes towards the west have been subjected either to a direct interference or to all-out war: Chechnya, Georgia, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia and Macedonia. To the east, the key problems are the Uighurs of China's far-western Xinjiang and, until recently, Afghanistan...

"Central Asia ia crucial to Washington's worldwide petro-strategy. So is a `friendly' government in Afghanistan...

"As for U.S. corporate-controlled media--from TV networks to daily newspapers--they just exercise self-censorship and remain mute about all of these connections."

Wall Street Banker: Founded on Slavery, Built on Prisons

NEW YORK CITY, March 21 -- Bearing a larger-than-life puppet of the biblical Egyptian slave-owning Pharaoh (with a strong resemblance to board member Henry Kaufman), about 50 militant activists picketed Lehman Brothers Investment Bankers' corporate headquarters. They were protesting Lehman's profiteering from racist private prisons.

The demonstrators carried a banner reading "Lehman Brothers: Born on Slavery, Built on Prisons." The company was founded in 1850 in Alabama as a cotton brokerage house profiting from slavery. The family owned slaves and sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.

Currently Lehman is the lead underwriter of the country's largest private prison deal, refinancing Correction Corporation of America's $1.1 billion debt. It also financed Cornell Corp's $42 million stock offering to finish building a private immigration jail in rural Mississippi. Cornell CEO Steve Logan said, "There are over 900,000 undocumented individuals of Middle Eastern descent [in the U.S.]. That's [equal to] half our entire prison population...The federal business is the best business for us. It's the most consistent business and the events since 9/11 [are] increasing that business."

The U.S. ruling class is using 9/11 to intensify racism against Muslims from the Mid-East and South Asia based on the big lie that they are all tied to the attack on the World Trade Center. Thousands have been detained without charges for minor violations of immigration law, and the government plans to jail thousands more. Lehman Bros. and the private prison industry are making a killing building prisons for immigrants.

We should have no illusions about how the bosses will use anti-immigrant racism and anti-communism to enhance their profit system. In 1920, the infamous Palmer Raids attacked and deported thousands of immigrant workers. This and other government racist actions led immediately to the resurrection and huge growth of the Ku Klux Klan. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans were interned, their land given to the growing West Coast agribusiness. In both cases, it was easier for the ruling class to get away with it because many workers were won to the racist lies, and communist leadership was not strong enough to win workers to fight this attack. Today's incarceration of immigrants based solely on national origin carries on this fascist tradition.

We in PLP must step up our fight to win workers to multi-racial and international unity to defeat this fascist onslaught. We will only eliminate private prisons and the profits from them when we destroy capitalism.

Arab and Jewish Workers: Unite Against All Bosses

NEW YORK CITY, March 5 -- Over 200 Palestinian, Jewish and other workers and students protested the scheduled appearance of Ehud Olmert, mayor of Jerusalem, and former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani at Cooper Union. Chanting "Jews and Arabs Unite, End the Occupation," "Giuliani, Olmert, You Can't Hide, We Charge You with Genocide," and carrying a huge puppet of Olmert as the "Butcher of Jerusalem," the demonstrators showed their fierce opposition to the terror against Palestinian refugees, both in the occupied territories and in Israel.

Both mayors were there to share their "fight against terrorism." In reality, they are the terrorists. Olmert supports "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem to rid it of all Arabs. Giuliani, whose own racist police force ran amok during his reign, has been a firm supporter of Israel's war of genocide.

Neither Olmert nor Giuliani showed up. Olmert stayed in Israel because suspected Jewish terrorists set off a bomb in a Palestinian grade school in East Jerusalem.

A few militant anti-racists stood up in the audience to reveal T-shirts reading, "We are all Palestinians" in Hebrew, English and Arabic. The ultra-right-wing Zionists weren't able to stop them as they marched out of the hall. Today's militant action followed a conference of over 100 activists concerned about the lack of a unified response here to the Israeli government's collective punishment of Palestinians, demolishing homes, bombing civilians, etc.

Israeli rulers super-exploit Arabs and target Jews of color: Ethiopians, Mizrachim (Arab) and Sephardim (Mediterranean). They have reduced their dependence on Palestinian workers by importing tens of thousands of "guest workers" from Africa and Asia who toil under the most oppressive conditions in the fields and factories. This has created a permanent class of unemployed Palestinian workers in the occupied territories.

Today 5.5 million Palestinian refugees live in overcrowded and deteriorating camps, including 1.4 million living in Israel as second-class citizens. Israeli settlers have taken their homes and land and the Israeli army has destroyed their crops. Over 370 Israeli reservists have refused to participate in this slaughter.

The demand for "right of return" -- the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to the homes (and homeland) they were forced to evacuate in 1948 and 1967, means Arabs and Jews would have to share the land that was once historic Palestine. When Jewish, Palestinian and Arab friends advance this demand, we must take a revolutionary outlook and fight for the unity of Arab and Jewish workers against all capitalist oppressors. We have a big stake in winning workers to reject a nationalist view by putting forward communist ideas and spreading them to our brothers and sisters in the Middle East.

Palestinian and Israeli workers are natural allies, because their common enemy is racism, capitalism and imperialism.

There will be no peace in the Middle East until we unite as one working class and fight to smash all the local and imperialist warmakers. Then, we can build a society where we all share what we produce according to needs. The building of a mass revolutionary communist Party uniting all workers and soldiers in the Middle East is the way to achieve this. That's what we in PLP fight for.

Terrorists Can't Sidetrack million marchers in Italy

Brigate Rose (Red Brigades) has taken responsibility for the March 19 assassination of Marco Biagi in Bologna, Italy. Biagi was an adviser to the Labor Ministry working on a plan to make the labor laws more favorable for the bosses and easier to fire workers. The Red Brigades label Biagi a "representative of the ideas and even the dreams of Cofindustria," the bosses' association representing Italy's main capitalist wing. But does this assassination help the working class or its enemies? It came suspiciously four days before a scheduled mass workers' protest against the right-wing Berlusconi government and his anti-working class policies.

The "Red Brigades for the Construction of a Fighting Communist Party" (the group's official name) was active in the 1970s, kidnapping and murdering Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Many of its leaders were arrested and the movement appeared disbanded.

Ever since the police murdered young Carlo Giuliani during the anti-globalization protests in Genoa last July, the mood of the masses has changed:

* Three hundred thousand turned out for a mass demonstration on July 21, just a few days after that killing (the first murder of a protester in Italy in 25 years), Many were rank-and-file workers.

* On July 24 and 25, about 500,000 protested in 100 towns throughout Italy against Berlusconi and the police.

* Last Nov. 9, to counter a "USA Day" called by Berlusconi backing the U.S. war against Afghanistan, 100,000 demonstrated against the war (compared to 40,000 who turned out for "USA Day").

* A week later, during a nationwide auto and steel workers strike, 150,000 strikers rallied in Rome.

* On Dec. 20, 50,000 students protested in Rome against the so-called educational reforms (an attack on students).

* On January 19, 100,000 demonstrated -- half of them immigrant workers -- against the government's new racist immigration laws.

* Since the beginning of the year there have been several strikes by teachers, airport workers, transport workers, etc., and 80,000 workers rallied in Rome on Feb. 15, organized mainly by Cobas (a dissident "rank-and-file" unionist group).

Shortly after the Biagi murder, the mass march planned for Rome took place. Two million workers and others from all over Italy protested the government plan to suspend Article 18 (which gives workers some protection from unfair firings). The march, the biggest here in recent history, is a build-up for a nationwide general strike scheduled for April 5, also opposed terrorism.

Many workers see the "rebirth" of the Red Brigades serving as provocateurs to deflect the budding mass movement of workers. Three months ago, the government removed bodyguards protecting Biagi and other officials, even though Panorama (a magazine owned by media billionaire Berlusconi) leaked a secret police report warning of possible terrorist attacks against the suspension of Article 18.

Individual acts of terrorism can never replace the mass struggle of workers and their allies. As in this case, they try to hinder those struggles. So even if Red Brigades is not a creation of the government's dirty tricks, it is objectively helping it.

These fake left terrorist groups also sabotage the building of a real fighting communist movement. They give more credibility among the workers to the union reformists and the electoral socialist and fake-communist parties that want a more "humane" capitalism as an alternative to right-wingers like Berlusconi.

Pakistan: Steelworkers Occupy Mills

KARACHI, PAKISTAN--On March 8, production in the Pakistan Steel Mills ceased when workers took control of all the gates, allowing no one in or out. The shocked bosses called the cops, but they couldn't get in either as the workers maintained control of the mill.

The bosses insisted the action was politically motivated, accusing some political parties of joining together to "disturb the industrial peace." They had a point. Pakistan is ruled by a military dictatorship supporting the U.S. oil war in Afghanistan and such open defiance undoubtedly has political implications.

For over two decades, Pakistan Steel bosses have successfully divided the unions and workers along ethnic, nationalist and religious lines. Militant union leaders were systematically fired and barred from entering the mills. But workers' anger grew. Resistance has been building for a long time. On March 8 the volcano erupted.

The workers moved into action without warning. They demanded the immediate firing of company chairman Colonel Afzal -- a corrupt army colonel who put the workers' jobs and safety at risk. They also demanded an investigation into last June's industrial "accident" that left nine workers dead and two crippled for life.

The workers organized with military precision, forming themselves into several battalions to seize the mills. They held clandestine meetings, using numbers instead of names. Different sections of workers picketed and took control of the mills' ten entrances while workers inside occupied their work areas.

The workers who began work the night before had to remain and the morning shift workers were not allowed in. The top bosses, including Afzal, were physically prevented from entering. The managing director and the general manager (both top-ranking military officers) finally got inside but a strike organizer asked their chauffeurs to park on the side and invited them to walk to their offices, where they were immediately locked in. Then 15,000 workers poured out of the main gates and onto the national highway, blocking it for several hours.

The workers charged that the bosses' failure to carry out the required safety maintenance led to even more accidents after the June 2001 disaster. The money saved was being shown as profit. The authorities, clearly rattled by these events, conceded most of the demands and the workers agreed to re-open the national highway and end the siege.

This struggle shows the potential power of the industrial working class. It also shows how the oil war in neighboring Afghanistan is sharpening all contradictions. From Karachi to Rome, from Puebla to S. Korea, industrial workers are beginning to stir. Mass marches, strikes and general strikes are part of the spontaneous upsurge caused by the sharpening contradictions of imperialism.

But neither spontaneity nor reformism will ever defeat imperialism. Only a communist-led working class, consciously fighting for a communist world without borders or bosses, can do that. If that seems a long way off, it may be. But it can only be achieved through the conscious efforts of an international PLP with a mass base among the workers. What we do, or don't do, will play a major role in determining just how far off it is.

Volkswagen: Fight Against Layoffs Needed

PUEBLA, MEXICO, March 22 -- On the same day that Bush, Fox and other "world leaders" were meeting in Monterrey "to help the world's poor," Volkswagen began eliminating 250 jobs here. This followed workers' refusal to accept a wage-cut.

The plant produces 400,000 units annually, mainly for the U.S. market. VW will cut production by 20,000 to 50,000 this year because of low sales, particularly in the U.S. They will also reduce production by closing the plant for periods of time, another way to cut labor costs.

The first out the door are "eventual" (temporary) workers. More than 1,550 eventuals were let go between 2000-2002, while only 130 ever achieved permanent status.

But Eduardo Sotomayor, chief of VW labor relations, warns that the company will gradually eliminate permanent jobs, 1,350 of the 11,500 union jobs at the plant.

VW promises to recall fired workers and restore wage cuts when sales improve. José L. Rodriguez, head of the VW Independent Workers Union is basically supporting VW's claims. But capitalism is based on extracting maximum surplus value from workers, so low wages and increased productivity will likely remain. The sharpening inter-imperialist fight for auto market share is slashing autoworkers' jobs.

The hypocrisy of capitalism knows no bounds. The way to fight poverty and unemployment is to fight the cause: capitalism. A VW strike for jobs, supported by VW workers from Wolfsburg to Sao Paulo, as well as by autoworkers worldwide, is a good beginning. It would inspire all autoworkers who face layoffs and plant closings. The building of a mass revolutionary communist movement among autoworkers is the best victory this struggle can produce.

Students Back Workers vs. Million $ Univ Pres.

TOWSON, MD, March 15 -- Towson University pays its janitors (through its Aramark subcontractor) an average of $6.10 an hour. But this is what it forked over for its new President, Mark L. Perkins:

*$56,000 on his recent inauguration ceremony;

*$1.4 million for renovations on a mansion for him in Guilford, Maryland;

*$25,000 for a new home stereo system;

*$30,000 rugs to adorn the mansion's floors; and,

*An average yearly salary of $208,000.

Meanwhile, students graduate from universities every year with an average debt of $17,000.

The Student Worker Alliance of Towson (SWAT) -- a subdivision of Towson Action Group-- has grown steadily over the past few months, fighting for a higher wage ($8.50/hr) for campus workers, particularly those contracted through Aramark. SWAT visits workers at shift changes, pushes living-wage petitions three days a week (signed recently by more than 1,100 students) and tries to maintain pressure on the administration.

On March 8,, it demonstrated outside the Towson Center, holding signs and banners as faculty, alumni and nearby Maryland governmental representatives filed in. Later SWAT performed street theatre and chanted near their Auburn House reception. This action was broadcast on two Baltimore TV news programs and made several local papers, including the Baltimore Sun.

A letter to the Sun from three SWAT members asked. "Whether this behavior [the inauguration and the mansion] demonstrates maturity or simply a selfish concern for appearances."

"We're against spending for indulgences when workers on campus are living in poverty," a sophomore from Silver Spring told the Sun during the protest.

The cops threatened "to cart us all off to jail," saying they "had a bus ready" if we didn't follow their directives. When we moved, they backed off. The bosses don't feel threatened much by a living-wage campaign. They would from an anti-capitalist, pro-communist action, such as Towson Action Group's September 25th street theatre action which condemned U.S. imperialism's actions following 9/11. Hundreds of right-wing students chanting "U-S-A" threw rocks and spat on us.

Some SWAT members understand reform organizational activities are only minimally effective. We are advancing the idea that communism is the only thing that can emancipate the working class from capitalism's horrors.

SWAT's actions at the inauguration were intended to jumpstart our living-wage campaign, an effort to not only win higher wages for campus workers but also to spread pro-worker sentiment throughout the community.

The potential exists for a community-wide response to our actions. The more we sharpen the struggle, the more our message will spread to the wider Towson and Baltimore areas.

Fascist Round-Up of Immigrants is Attack on All Workers

We were discussing our plans to build May Day. "Fascism?" asked Elmer. "How can you call it fascism? It's not like we're being rounded up and sent off to concentration camps like in Nazi Germany!"

Harold had just said that with the war in Afghanistan, the plans for invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act, we're in a period of war and fascism and May Day is more important than ever.

"Listen, " Elmer continued, "don't get me wrong. I'm inviting my friends to May Day. But I don't really see how you can call it fascism when we're not being rounded up."

"Well, maybe you and I haven't been rounded up," said Anita, "but they've rounded up a couple of thousand Arab and Muslim young men, and are planning to detain more. They were picked up based on their ethnicity and religion. What do you call that?"

"That's really true," said Hector, getting into the conversation. "It reminds me of the quote in the latest CHALLENGE: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist...then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew...when they came for me, there was nobody left to speak up for me." If we don't fight it when they come for Muslims and Arabs, then next they'll attack all immigrants. And if they get away with that, they'll attack citizens."

"They've already moved on to attacking other immigrants," said Anita, who is active in an immigrants rights organization. "They've used 9/11 as an excuse to put anyone with a deportation order who hasn't reported to the INS on the FBI's wanted list. And those people were mostly Mexicans, Caribbeans, and Central Americans."

"And teachers who went on strike in New Jersey were called unpatriotic and put in jail," added Harold.

"And the cops who sodomized Abner Louima were let off," said Latrice. "Since 9/11 even the rappers aren't saying anything bad about the cops."

"Well, I see what you mean," said Elmer. "I didn't say things were great! All I said is that they haven't started rounding us up yet."

"Who do you mean by us?" asked Latrice. "OK, they haven't rounded up anybody in this room. But aren't Arab workers and students just as much a part of our class as Central American immigrants or N.J. schoolteachers or Abner Louima? Aren't we one international working class?

"That's how they win workers to accept fascism and soldiers to fight their wars. They want us to think that "we" and "us" are words that apply to citizens of one country or people of one ethnicity. But communists understand that "we" refers to the working class.

"Those kids that are dying in Palestine? That's us! Those Afghan civilians without medical treatment? That's us! The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died because of the U.S. embargo on medicines? That's us! The soldiers on both sides of their oil wars? US! Our class! Our brothers and sisters! The bosses and their wars and fascism are murdering us around the world. That's why we have to stop them. And they have plans to force more youth from here into the military--sooner than we may think."

"OK," said Elmer. "I get it. We are under attack -- because we're all part of the same class. And I see that we have to take May Day more seriously than ever this year."

"Exactly," said Latrice and Harold together.

"Who's having the next house party?" "Who can we get to help with the leaflets, to bring them to their friends?" "Who can help bring other people as they see the seriousness of the situation?"

Mt. Sinai Cutbacks Are Health Careless

NEW YORK CITY, March 20 -- Over 200 members of the health care workers union (Local 1199, SEIU) protested outside Mount Sinai Hospital, charging that budget cuts and a planned layoff of 300 are why care has been going downhill at this East Harlem institution.

The State Health Department is investigating 17 liver transplants at Mount Sinai following the death of journalist Mike Hurewitz. He died from a bacterial infection Jan. 13, just three days after surgeons successfully transplanted part of his liver into his sick brother. When Hurewitz died (choking on his own blood), an inexperienced doctor-in-training had been left in charge of 34 patients. Only now, after the deaths of five transplant patients at the hospital over the last two years, has the State Health Department been forced to widen their probe.

Mount Sinai spokeswoman Joan Lebow said personnel cuts have not affected the quality of care, claiming they had "minimal impact on bedside care."

But the workers told a different story. They say the problems are absolutely due to personnel cuts and the planned 300 layoffs will just make it worse.

The day before the protest, union head Dennis Rivera officially endorsed Republican Governor Pataki for re-election, breaking ranks with fellow union leaders who usually support the Democratic Party candidate. Rivera himself has long been a big shot in the NY State Democratic Party machine. In January, Rivera made a deal with Pataki, providing a 13% wage increase for Local 1199 members. But, of course, like all deals with politicians and bosses, this doesn't protect patients from lousy health care nor workers from layoffs like those at Mt. Sinai, affecting mostly black and Latin workers.

Rivera and all union leaders have proven able at supporting politicians in exchange for a few crumbs (which usually disappear quickly). But when it comes to fighting for workers' best interests (including opposition to oil wars and fascist attacks), these hacks are mostly on the wrong side -- outright agents of the bosses.

Rulers' War on Terror Murdering Colombian UnionistsCOLOMBIA -- To be a union activist here is to put your life at risk. In 2001, 1,500 were murdered. On March 20, another unionist joined the death list. Rafael Jaimes, treasurer of the USO (the oil workers union) in the refinery at Puerto Petrolero was murdered in Barrancabermeja by the fascist paramilitary death squad AUC, linked to the Army. He was slain a few feet from his house when two men on a high-speed motorcycle drove up to his car and shot him without saying a word. Almost simultaneously two other fascist killers shot at the USO office in the same city.

When workers at the oil refinery heard of the murder they immediately stopped working in protest. The bosses of Ecopetrol (the state-owned oil company) were hard-pressed to keep the refinery operating. Army and police units were sent to the refinery entrance to ward off acts of sabotage by the angry workers.

On March 8, while the USO was negotiating with the government to end a strike protesting the death-squad kidnapping of another union activist, Gilberto Martínez, the union also denounced death-squad threats against other trade unionists. Of course, the government well knows who these murderers are, since they're mostly controlled by the Army, so nothing was done. This is the same government and Army the U.S. is supplying with billions in military aid to expand Bush's misnamed "war against terrorism" (actually terrorism against workers). Ninety-eight million of that aid will go to protect Occidental Petroleum's pipeline here.

We must encourage workers worldwide to show solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters in Colombia, and oppose U.S. bosses' imperialist war by building a mass communist movement to turn these wars into revolutionary struggle to smash capitalism once and for all.

Central America:
Feast For Bosses, Famine For Workers

Famine has gripped Central America. President Bush visited El Salvador and pushed U.S.-controlled free trade as the answer to this desperate situation. But his proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement is hardly going to remedy the worsening disaster in rural Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. The capitalist market (regulated or unregulated) and resulting crisis of overproduction is leading to starvation for 700,000 Central Americans while another million suffer serious food shortages.

Hardest hit are coffee plantation workers and maize farmers. Coffee prices have spiraled downward since the 1989 collapse of the International Coffee Agreement, which assigned countries production quotas. In recent years prices plummeted further with a surge in exports from Vietnam and Indonesia, where the World Bank encouraged expansion of coffee acreage. With the market glutted, many coffee farmers didn't even bother to harvest this year, causing evictions from plantation housing, increased migration to teeming city slums and severe hunger among the unemployed. (LA Times, 3/22)

Maize farmers, too, have felt the capitalist squeeze. Since 1992, Central America has had intra-regional free trade in grains and almost no tariff protection against low-cost imports. Forced to compete with highly subsidized U.S. farmers, many Central American farmers have abandoned food production, gone bankrupt and lost their land.

Some of Central America's most conservative figures -- Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo and Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo -- acknowledge that the intensity and suddenness of the food emergency create outright famine, worse than the region's characteristic hunger.

Famine is always rooted in economic policies and political decisions. Washington spent billions of dollars and waged three proxy wars killing hundreds of thousands during the 1980s to guarantee that Central American rulers remained loyal to U.S. imperialism and tied to its World Bank and capitalist market.

Apparently the gap between rulers and ruled in the four affected countries is so large that policymakers feel little pressure to address the crisis. Right now, tens of thousands of Central Americans are heading north. In contrast to the 1980s and early '90s, most are not escaping war and repression. Many are abandoning farms that failed because of capitalist market policies and the dumping of U.S. grain. Others are trying to escape life in the free trade zones, where factory owners enjoy huge public subsidies and workers face immense exploitation.

Central American land could produce decent living standards for all who live there, if they had irrigation systems, shelter from the ravages of global capitalist market forces and distribution according to need. But this requires an anti-capitalist revolution and the building of a society in which workers will be in power: communism. Workers in Central America fought hard for what they believed would be an end to capitalism. Their leadership (Sandinistas, FMLN, etc.) refused to use this tremendous hatred of exploitation and commitment to make an all out-fight for workers' power. Today workers in Central America are paying a terrible price for this failure. We in PLP are trying to win workers to fight to break their chains of oppression. Slowly but sure workers will do it. The future is ours--join us!

Fight For May Day Now Builds the Future

Some of us in our PLP section involved in mass organizations clearly see opportunities for communists to give political leadership to the ideological and class struggle. There are also opportunist dangers, like failing to build a base for communism. May Day always reminds us that there's nothing spontaneous about building our Party. Working together politically with workers and youth and answering their many serious questions requires time and thought.

On the one hand, the U.S. rulers' war for global supremacy is expanding while unchecked racism and fascist rules dominate domestically. The collapse of the old communist movement has left the working class generally rudderless, cynical and passive. On the other hand, below the surface, the working class continues seeking answers on how to move forward. Sooner or later it will absorb the historical lessons about the strengths and weaknesses of socialism and rebuild the movement for working-class power and communism, the only way to eventually destroy imperialism.

Given this outlook, building for May Day 2002 will require a more resolute and positive effort than ever. Hard work may bring only modest results at this time. But this is laying the foundation for younger and newer comrades to fight bigger battles in the future. So we should be more determined to overcome obstacles and struggle against sluggishness and pessimism.

This said, our section has mailed 560 people invitations to this year's May Day march. Two hundred others will receive personal invitations to May Day activities. They will be asked to invite their family, friends and co-workers, as the invitation says, "to advance the cause of the working class around the world for communism...to show our commitment to a world free of imperialist wars, free of racist police states, unemployment, profits for the few and misery for the many..."

We will turn Party club meetings, study groups, brunches, dinners and other gatherings into May Day forums and organizing meetings. We can talk about the history of May Day on our jobs, in our classrooms and organizations. Bringing friends from these organizations can advance our political work and leadership. May Day provides the opportunity to talk more about the Party's analysis of the world situation and our strategy, especially with friends, co-workers and students with whom we haven't had these discussions in depth.

As these efforts unfold we'll rely more on newer comrades and new workers and students we know to help circulate CHALLENGE and build for May Day. Their participation and confidence can help re-invigorate others. In turn we will ask these new friends to commit themselves at a higher level to the working class and join the PLP. The results may be small right now, but the effort must be big!

!,000 Students March Against Firings of Counselors

CHICAGO, IL March 25 -- Last week nearly 1,000 students and faculty from the seven City Colleges, black, Latin, Asian, Native American and white, held walkouts and marched on City Hall chanting, "They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back!" The protest was a show of solidarity against the firing of the Chicago City Colleges system's entire counseling service, it was the second protest in two weeks.

The first on March 7 was at the meeting where the Board voted to fire the 19 counselors and replace them with untrained, part-time, non-union "registration specialists." Most CCC students are underpaid workers of color; many are single parents. This attack on public education and union workers began last year, when the board "privatized" CCC business offices. It is threatening similar action against the janitors and librarians.

Due to poor organization, our participation from Malcolm X was minimal as compared to the busloads from other schools such as Daley, Wright and Harold Washington. In one-on-one conversations, PLP members linked these firings to the mass layoffs of LTV steelworkers and the funding of the oil war in Afghanistan and the Middle East. We also raised the need to fight for communism and march on May Day.

This struggle, in a period of growing war and fascism, shows the potential for workers and students to struggle around the mass layoffs caused by the crisis of capitalism and imperialist war. It also shows the potential for building a mass PLP. However, the struggle at Malcolm X must be deepened and intensified.u

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write

Why No Campaign Against U.S. Army Pedophiles?

The sexual abuse of children is not limited to the Catholic Church. On March 22, a child protection agency (Casa Alianza) in Honduras, Central America, denounced the victimization of children in prostitution, pornography and sexual tourism. The agency reported "sexual exploitation of children by members of the U.S. armed forces" in the 1980s.

Since then 400 U.S. soldiers have been stationed in the Palmerola military base 50 miles north of Tegucigalpa, Honduras' capital city. Casa Alianza says the use of boys and girls as prostitutes serving those soldiers continues today.

Why no big campaign against this type of child abuse? Besides the obvious reasons -- perpetrated by the military on poor children in a poor country -- it doesn't serve the interests of U.S. imperialism and its mass media to expose this. Which raises another question: why is the U.S. Catholic Church being attacked for the same perversion committed by U.S. soldiers in Honduras?

CHALLENGE (3/13) says the Boston Globe and the New York Times started the campaign for church reform against the pedophile priests because the main wing of the U.S. ruling class wants to win 64 million U.S. Catholics to the "liberal" cause (primarily, war in the Middle East).

Has the Pope Joined bin Laden on U.S. Rulers' Enemy List?

In addition, the Pope -- on his last legs -- has turned increasingly against U.S. imperialism since the implosion of the former Soviet Union. The same Pope -- who, during the 1980s, worked with Reagan and the CIA to topple the pro-Soviet regime in Poland and even the Soviet regime itself -- is supporting the interests of European imperialists against those of the U.S. The Pope, like Cardinal Egan and other top U.S. church leaders, belongs to the fascist Opus Dei group, begun under Franco's Spain. Its conservative ideas are not compatible with the liberal agenda of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class.

So the Pope et al has sort of become like Osama bin Laden, while during the Cold War they were CIA assets, now they have joined the "enemy camp" as far as U.S. imperialism is concerned

Red and Former Catholic

Learning Through Practice

On March 22, our PLP club held our May Day potluck dinner. We watched and discussed the inspiring Party videos about the Farmworkers' Summer Project and May Day and described past May Days. The turnout was small. I was disappointed, feeling cynical and subjective. After the dinner, my father, a more experienced Party member, said I'll just have to visit people and show them the video at their house. Then I became more self-critical and optimistic.

The small turnout reflects the motto of these times, "Hard Work, Modest Results; Little Work, No Results." Although I struggled with a handful of students in my classes, our friendships are still too superficial. I need deeper ties with them.

One problem is I participate in functions held by groups but haven't seen people outside of school. I haven't become a true friend.

In addition, I haven't guaranteed mass CHALLENGE sales this semester and my hand-to-hand distribution is minimal. However, this morning a student phoned to ask about the dinner and apologized for not coming. I'm sure that by building deeper friendships outside of school, and using CHALLENGE, he and others will come to Party functions and bring their friends.

The potential for building the Party exists. The 1,000 student protesters are one example.[See article next page-Ed] However, the struggle at Malcolm X must be intensified. We're on Spring Break this week and I will be making phone calls and visits. Hopefully, through this struggle many will stand side by side with the inspirational comrades who fought racism at Morristown, march on May Day and eventually join in building a communist world.

More Committed

Make the Bosses
Mop the Floor

Our friend and co-worker Vera has the impossible job of trying to single-handedly keep a 50-bed newborn intensive care unit clean. The other day, there were a bunch of men and women in suits in room 3008 -- always a bad sign in a hospital. They were an inspection team from Vera's department, fingering the tops of shelves looking for dust and the like. This unit used to have two environmental service workers assigned to it, but now one worker must do it alone. Vera furiously tried to scrub some ancient stain off the linoleum, while another supervisor was asking her where her mop was. "Oh," she said, momentarily abandoning the scrubbing, "Just tell me where the problem is. I can get it." She was literally sweating as the bosses poked around looking for more imperfections in her work.

A few minutes later there was a commotion in front of the clerk's desk. I saw Vera on a stretcher. A doctor was starting an I.V. in her arm. She had collapsed right in front of the elevator. Several of us stood there talking under our breath, staring angrily at the suits. What business did they have coming to our unit, harassing our friend until she fell out? If looks could kill, not one of those bosses would have made it off the floor alive.

Later there was a steady stream of workers to Vera's hospital bedside. She was in better spirits by the next day. At one point the meanest boss in housekeeping, Mrs. Hall, came by to "check" on her. After harassing Vera to the point of collapse, now she acted all concerned. What a hypocrite! Posing as a friend and protector for the woman she had pretended to not even know when part of the Gestapo inspection team! These bosses have no shame.

Forget it, Mrs. Hall. The big bosses in Washington say cut Medicaid to pay for their oil war. The state bosses in Springfield make the cuts. Then the county bosses downtown cut the staff, so no more housekeepers can be hired. They tell the little bosses like Mrs. Hall, "Work the ones you've got till they drop." And she does, without batting an eye.

Fortunately for Vera, all the workers and professionals on our unit, one of the biggest in the hospital, love her. If the bosses want to help, they should resign so their fat salaries could be used to hire more people who actually do the work, people like Vera.

When communists ran the hospitals in China 40 years ago, all managers had to spend at least one day a week doing real work, like mopping floors and cleaning toilets. Communists realize that working people create everything of value. Respect for that fact -- and for the working class -- led to their policy of managers wielding mops. Maybe we should try that in our hospital.

A Reader

Researchers Lie For Drug Dollars

Free-market capitalism is promoted as giving the greatest advantage to the greatest number of people. One more arena in which this is clearly false is health care.

The Nation magazine ran a story (1/28) on how big drug companies fund most medical research in the U.S. and keep medical journals alive through their drug advertising. For researchers to maintain this major source of their income, they often publish articles in medical journals that include only those aspects of their research that make the drug appear to be more effective and/or safer than other competing drugs, omitting any information leading to the opposite conclusion, that would tend to undermine drug company profits. In other words, they lie about their data.

This lying has become scandalous enough for the editors of some leading medical journals in the U.S. and England to publicly declare they would deal with this lying (they called it "bias") in their journals. Their plan was to require researchers to disclose their sources of funding and to affirm that the drug companies did not prevent the disclosure of information damaging to their profits. Big deal. Since thousands of researchers have already shown that their research funding takes precedence over honesty, this new policy will make no real difference.

As long as the drug monopolies control billions of dollars, they will be able to control both researchers and journals. If researchers or journals damage drug company profits, they won't survive. Under capitalism being slaves to corporations is a simple matter of life and death. That's how the free market works. It's even more so for the hundreds of millions of people whose doctors prescribe unsafe or ineffective drugs, based on understanding doctors receive from reading medical journals.

The liberals' solution for this problem -- more government funding of research and of medical journals -- masks the fact that government politicians depend just as much on funding from big corporations as do researchers and journals.

No, there's only one escape from free-market capitalism's assault on health: a system based on public need, not private profit, as the determining factor in health care, and in everything else. Then the working class would fund the research and would punish any researchers who lied. It would no longer be to anyone's advantage to pay for lies. On the contrary, it would only be to our advantage for researchers to stick to the truth. Of course, that's true now, but there's nothing we can do about it because the power to control research is not in our hands--yet.

A Doctor in the Dark (at least about some things)

The Law of
Class Struggle

I attended a public seminar on Organized Labor and New York City Politics recently that featured spokespersons for unions representing over 600,000 workers. The speakers debated the merits of traditional Democratic Party-supporting unions endorsing Republicans to gain economic benefits for workers, and whether this fragmented NYC labor, reducing its power to win concessions from employers.

The panel seemed to agree that unions were individual businesses providing benefits for their own members which required making such deals. Some panelists even protested that they were being coerced by labor traditions to support the city's general labor interests -- i.e., health, welfare, housing, community, immigrants, etc. -- when they felt their only responsibility was to their own workers' jobs and paychecks. One panelist felt a union can protest workers' suffering all it wants but if it can't persuade politicians to pass legislation benefiting their union, they're out of business.

When the floor was open, I said I was in the 1966 NYC transit strike which not only won long-denied benefits for transit workers but broke President Johnson's national wage freeze and led the way for other unions to fight back. I said that all the Democrat, Liberal and Republican politicians (who supported the Vietnam War-related wage freeze) turned their backs on our union's needs. But we stayed united and won our demands because we showed the bosses who really produces all the profits and runs the City. Then the City bosses demanded huge fines against our union for breaking the no-strike law. We said we would only return to work if the bosses legislated an exemption for us from the no-strike law. The bosses' politicians all screamed that we had a gun to their heads. We said, "That's right; the gun of organized labor."

So, by staying united and facing jail we won our strike, encouraged other unions to fight back and, most importantly, demonstrated how to win labor legislation without turning our backs on the rest of the working class. I also said that racism, like that exhibited in the Green-Ferer Democratic primary, has always hurt labor while anti-racist struggles like supporting Abner Louima and civil rights have united labor.

Listening to some of today's most influential labor "leaders," I couldn't help feeling they sounded like wage-slavers who are selling off our lives to the highest bidder. Most of labor's gains have been won through mass struggles. But by themselves, they haven't provided justice for workers because we haven't made the real fight, the one against the bosses' "right" to exploit us and use the profits from our labor to build their state power (cops, courts, military) to suppress our needs.

I feel fortunate that workers have a communist party like the PLP to give us political insight and a newspaper like CHALLENGE to get our messages to the working class.

Retired Transit Worker

No Honesty
Among Fascists

A letter (CHALLENGE, 3/27) titled, "What Next? Sainthood for Hitler?" concerning anti-Semitic fascist evangelist Billy Graham, included a line: "Supposedly Graham was more ecumenical than gutter fascists like...Jimmy (I love prostitutes) Swaggart."

A recent funny yet pointed book called The Bush Dyslexicon correctly says it's not a good idea to take George Bush's stupidity as a weakness, since he seems shrewd enough to be getting every fascist policy quickly O.K.'ed by all the Democratic "opposition."

Author Mark Crispin has an interesting insight into the Swaggart story. (Jimmy Swaggart, if you don't recall, suddenly appeared in front of his deceived congregation and cried about how sorry he was for his weaknesses, which turned out to be his going to motels with prostitutes.)

Crispin writes that this latest George Bush "persuaded Dad [George H.W. Bush] to go along with the strategic smear of Jimmy Swaggart just two weeks before the South Carolina primary [in 1988], where Swaggart's man Pat Robertson was threatening Bush's chances; and so Bush/Atwater leaked word of Swaggart's motel assignations to the local press -- a covert op that saved the state for Bush, Sr." Showing, of course, that fascists can't even trust each other.

Interestingly, Crispin goes on to say, "And, crucially, it was W. [the current meathead in the White House] who ensured that the notorious -- and effective -- Willie Horton ads could be blamed plausibly on mavericks unaffiliated with the Bush campaign." These were the infamous racist ads that Bush, Sr. used to win his election over Mike Dukakis.

Lefty

 

a href="#Editorial: From the Middle East to Afghanistan, Workers Must Organize Against Rulers’ Oil Wars">"ditorial: From the Middle East to Afghanistan, Workers Must Organize Against Rulers’ Oil Wars

• People, Not Technology, Determine the Outcome of Warfare

Pentagon Targets the Whole World with Nuclear Weapons

All Not Going Well for U.S. Hi Tech War

• With Afghan "allies" retreating, 1,000 U.S. troops were deployed,

Machinists Strike Lockheed War Plant

Queens NY Bus Drivers Must Rely on Workers, Not on Politicians

a href="#Colombia: Don’t Let Union Hacks Do Bavaria Bosses’ Dirty Work">Co"ombia: Don’t Let Union Hacks Do Bavaria Bosses’ Dirty Work

a href="#The Gestapo Would Have Been Jealous…">"he Gestapo Would Have Been Jealous…

a href="#Bush Expands Clinton’s Slave Labor Workfare Program">"ush Expands Clinton’s Slave Labor Workfare Program

a href="#Judge O.K. Cops’ Torture of Black Workers">"udge O.K. Cops’ Torture of Black Workers

Billions for War, Nothing for Steelworkers

Labor Hacks’ Role in Developing Fascism

Anti-War Conference Avoids Real Cause of War

In Memoriam: Comrade Philip Williams

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!

Night School Students Lead the Way for Struggle

Money for Cover-ups, Not For Schools

What Next: Sainthood for Hitler?

Hare Hell for Krishna Kids

a href="#Guess Who’s Using Bio-Tech Warfare? The U.S.">"uess Who’s Using Bio-Tech Warfare? The U.S.

Lessons Learned Trying to Build the Party

---

a name="Editorial: From the Middle East to Afghanistan, Workers Must Organize Against Rulers’ Oil Wars">">"ditorial: From the Middle East to Afghanistan, Workers Must Organize Against Rulers’ Oil Wars

GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.

General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an
elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.

General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.

—Bertolt Brecht, German Communist Poet

U.S. rulers’ failure so far to stop the escalating violence in the Middle East has become a serious threat to their plans for a broadened oil war in the Persian Gulf. The imperialists took a big gamble by launching their Afghanistan adventure amid sharpened Israeli-Palestinian fighting. The Bush White House bet that young Arab workers’ hatred of Israeli fascism wouldn’t turn into mass uprisings throughout the Arab world directly confronting U.S. interests. With each passing day, that bet is beginning to look like a loser.

When the rulers used 9/11 as an excuse to launch the first round of their new oil war in Afghanistan, they figured their main military problems would be the Taliban and, eventually, the potential willingness of the Iraqi army to put up a better fight than it had in Bush Sr.’s 1991 Desert Storm. They miscalculated the potentially explosive political effect of combining the U.S. military’s slaughter of Muslim civilians in Afghanistan with Israeli military butchery of Palestinian workers, men, women, and children.

Thomas Friedman, the liberal New York Times’ main foreign policy analyst, understands this threat to the big bosses’ most vital interests: "…the most heated anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiments that I’ve ever felt [are] dangerous. The notion is taking hold that with a combination of…a baby boom and terrorism, the Arabs can actually destroy Israel. Some…even fantasize that they can undermine America." (Times, 3/10)

This was precisely the bin Laden-al Qaeda strategy: organize acts of terrorist provocation that would force the U.S. and Israeli bosses into retaliating with military atrocities that would in turn stimulate anti-U.S. rebellion throughout Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Such rebellion is far from unthinkable. It could help precipitate the fall of the present pro-U.S. Saudi regime and its replacement by a gang of rulers who would try to kick out U.S. oil companies. This is bin Laden & Co.’s primary goal.

The forces loyal to bin Laden represent a significant wing of Saudi capitalists, who want to capture the lion’s share of oil wealth for themselves. These bosses use religion and nationalism to fan the anti-U.S., anti-Israel hatred of millions of oppressed Arab and Muslim workers. They are allied with local capitalists with comparable aspirations in every country where the U.S. has extended its "war against terrorism" — Indonesia, the Philippines, Georgia, etc. But the eye of the storm remains the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

One nightmare scenario for U.S. imperialists would be a mass-based alliance against them among the bin Laden-supported Saudi bosses, the Egyptian ruling class and Iraqi rulers. Other combinations are possible. The Syrians and/or Iranians could get into the act as well, together or separately. We can’t predict whether or how such events might materialize. But the longer the fighting continues in the Middle East and the more widespread it becomes, the more such liabilities increase for U.S. imperialism.

Furthermore, U.S. rulers are playing a very dangerous game in Iraq. They all agree that the Saddam Hussein regime must be replaced with a pro-U.S. puppet government. But getting the job done won’t be a pushover. Some "experts" in the Bush camp (led by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz) push for immediate action, believing that any show of force by a small U.S. contingent would "immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand." (Seymour Hersh, "The Debate Within," New Yorker, 3/11) Liberals in the State Department and the military, led by Colin Powell, know this is a pipe-dream. Hersh quotes a top retired officer who contemptuously dismisses the Perle-Wolfowitz scenario and warns of the potential for mass revolt: "We’ve got a bunch of people who think it’s going to be easy. We’re set up for a big surprise." Another former U.S. ambassador to the Middle East told Hersh: "If we have to have three months of bombing, with civilian casualties, we’ll have real problems with the Arab world."

The liberals know that any serious effort to dislodge Saddam Hussein would need between 200,000 and 300,000 troops, plus supporting units and 700 to 1,000 aircraft, as well as one to five carrier battle groups (Hersh). And that’s just for Iraq alone. The military intervention required to stem uprisings in, say, Saudi Arabia — particularly if they were supported materially by al Qaeda-type troops from other countries — could rapidly produce a scenario that might dwarf even the immense, long, and bloody U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

People, Not Technology, Determine the Outcome of Warfare

Perhaps this scenario won’t unfold at all. Perhaps it will, but not for a long time. Yet it cannot be excluded as a possibility. That alone should give workers reason to think about what our class should fight for during these bosses’ oil wars. We can draw three important lessons from these rapidly sharpening contradictions:

First, imperialism always leads to war, because it is a system based on the ruthless scramble for maximum profit. Competition among bosses inevitably ends with armed struggle. They cannot resolve such major differences by any other method.

Second, despite appearances, the best-equipped, most technologically advanced army doesn’t necessarily always win. People, not technology, decide the outcome of warfare. As the Vietnam War glaringly proved, armies win or lose based on the political and ideological commitment of their troops and the populations involved. The present battles in Afghanistan and the Middle East confirm this. The religiously and nationalistically motivated forces opposing U.S. and Israeli imperialism are putting up an impressive fight despite the enormous disparity in hardware. And the fight has just begun.

Bad ideas can inspire people to act heroically. This is the case in the Middle East and on the other fronts of the present war. The German fascist army fought to the bitter end against the Soviet Red Army. Workers and youth armed with little more than rifles and stones are giving the U.S. and Israeli military machines a run for their money. But religion and nationalism are deadly, self-defeating traps. Even if al Qaeda’s forces win, Arab and Muslim workers would continue to suffer the horrors of life under capitalism. Changing from one capitalist oppressor to another won’t help. Military heroism isn’t sufficient by itself. It must be wedded to the goal of communist revolution. No other political ideology will serve the needs of the international working class.

In the past, workers have fought gallantly for aspects of communism, against terrible odds. They will do so again and can avoid the mistakes that finished off the old communist movement. The job is hard and long — but the goal can be achieved. Learning to achieve it is our Party’s mission and commitment. A successful May Day 2002 will serve as an important positive step in this vital process.

Pentagon Targets the Whole World with Nuclear Weapons

The Bush Administration’s "new" nuclear proposals would nuke anyone who they decide is their enemy. Previously they alleged they would use nuclear bombs only against a country that used them against the U.S. (Of course, that didn’t include Japan, where they slaughtered 250,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — equal to the deaths of 80 World Trade Centers — when Japan was about to surrender.) They allegedly opposed proliferation of atomic weapons, as long as they could maintain their own stockpile.

Initially "only" Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya are targeted. Then it was extended to include "potential adversaries," Russia and China. But it doesn’t end there. They finally say that the U.S. must be prepared for any contingency. "Contingencies can be categorized as immediate, potential or unexpected." "Unexpected" covers the whole world!

This latest pronouncement has liberals and their leading mouthpiece, The New York Times, furious. The Times (editorial, 3/12) said such a policy would make the U.S. "a rogue state," breaking nuclear treaties (non-proliferation and test-bans), excluding "allies," and ignoring the uproar such a policy would provoke internationally, especially in the Muslim world. These liberals, and the main wing of the ruling class they represent, see the Wolfowitz/Perle group putting this forward as blowing the U.S.’s cover in its drive for world domination. These are the same forces who think they can go it alone in seizing Iraq using hi-tech weapons and very few U.S. troops. (See adjoining editorial.) The liberals don’t oppose U.S. nuclear supremacy or nuclear blackmail but maintain it must be employed without, if possible, provoking more problems than U.S. rulers can handle.

The proposed policy coincides with the intention to conduct a "war on terrorism" in 40 countries for 50 years or as long as it takes. The USA Patriot Law is the fascist corollary of this imperialist policy — to squash any rising domestic resistance to this mass murder of the international working class.

This intention to prepare to pulverize any opponent of U.S. imperialism demonstrates the futility of "persuading" the rulers to agree not to use nuclear bombs. For years groups like SANE campaigned for a ban on testing atomic weapons. The "test-ban" treaty was hailed as the answer to nuclear war. Now the desperate U.S. ruling class has shown how much such treaties among imperialists are worth. Imperialism means war. It always has and always will.

The rulers would have us believe that atomic war means "the end of the world." They figure that threat can scare anyone opposed to them to knuckle under to their demands. But remember, World War I produced the Russian Revolution. World War II brought the Chinese Revolution. Nuclear blackmail is just as likely to lead to the beginning of the end for world imperialism.

Yes, the world’s bosses can very well kill millions, even hundreds of millions of workers (nearly 200 million in 20th century wars alone). U.S. bosses have been the vanguard killer for two centuries, from Native Americans to enslavement of black people to Hiroshima to Vietnam to Afghanistan. But they cannot kill the international working class, nor the ideas of communism that will lead our class to turn their imperialist atomic blackmail into class war for workers power, no matter how long it takes or what the obstacles. All the more reason to build for May Day and build a communist movement to lead the working class to crush these mass murders and their capitalist system.

All Not Going Well for U.S. Hi Tech War

The U.S. military is touting its latest battle with Taliban forces in Afghanistan’s Paktia province as a huge victory and has announced withdrawal of its attacking soldiers. However, as is true with much of the Pentagon’s "disinformation" campaign, there is appearance and essence.

A March 8 analysis from the Stratfor.com intelligence newsletter summarizes Operation Anaconda as "a new phase" of the U.S. intervention, showing that, "The U.S. has yet to find an effective response on the ground to guerrilla warfare. Dominant air power…might not be enough to win the war." Its analysis reveals that "only a few dozen militants have been killed…and U.S. losses have been significantly higher than the eight dead and 40 wounded officials have acknowledged."

"Stratfor says this battle "signals the beginning of a protracted guerrilla war that will allow Afghanistan to continue to serve as sanctuary for al Qaeda."

The U.S. found that, "Enemy forces in the area were actually much larger" than they estimated….Most…were Taliban forces….fighters… with several years of guerrilla experience and intimate familiarity with the region, [that] launched surprise attacks….The first [was an] ambush of about 100 U.S. troops" and another one that killed six U.S. soldiers.

With Afghan "allies" retreating, 1,000 U.S. troops were deployed,

"But this option has not worked well:…ground forces have come under heavy fire and suffered losses and helicopters also proved vulnerable." That’s when they began using high-altitude B-52 bombers to escape the Taliban’s small arms fire.

The Taliban is using "a classic guerrilla tactic: Dozens of militants draw the attention of U.S. units while guerrilla groups in the rear of the attackers stage hit-and-run operations….Taliban forces have…outwitt[ed] allied forces [before]," abandoning Afghanistan’s cities with almost no losses only to regroup in the countryside and prepare for future battles. These weathered warriors are too skillful to simply lie still and wait for U.S. air power to destroy their main forces."

Last year the U.S. claimed "hundreds of enemies were killed during the bombing of Tora Bora…but fewer than 10 prisoners were taken and few corpses were found."

In their quest to control the oil routes from Central Asia, U.S. imperialism has allied itself with dope-smuggling warlords and massacred thousands of innocent civilians. This has turned the masses against the U.S. and its puppets, the same masses they claimed to have come to save from the Taliban. Again, this proves the old adage that "it’s easy to start an imperialist war but not so easy to know how it will end." (See front-editorial for analysis of how U.S. oil wars aren’t going according to plan).

Machinists Strike Lockheed War Plant

MARIETTA, GA, March 12 — "I can stay out the rest of the year if I have to," said Sid Parker, 57, an F-22 jet technician who began working at Lockheed in 1963. "Four weeks or four months don’t matter to me."

Lockheed Martin workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 709, rejected the company’s contract offer by nearly 4-1 March 10, sparking the first strike at the plant in 25 years. Lockheed is the world’s largest war contractor, building the F-22 fighter jet and the C-130 transport plane. They recently won the largest war contract in history, $200 billion to build F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Workers at two California Lockheed plants ratified new contracts.

Lockheed said it would "implement contingency plans to support our business commitments," and called the rejected contract their "best and final offer." The strike involves about 2,700 of the plant’s 7,000 workers, the rest being white-collar workers.

Objectively, a strike against a major war-maker, in time of war, in a period of rising unemployment, after decades of consolidations and concessions, has immense potential for showing international solidarity and building class-consciousness. But the cynical, patriotic union leaders are fighting for the outlook that war is good business for aerospace workers. They have led workers to give concessions in the past, to save Lockheed. Now they want to share some of the billion-dollar contracts being signed.

Lockheed’s Marietta IAM workforce is 53.5 years old on average, with 21 years at the plant. They have valuable skills, and many jobs require special security clearances. Most workers are near the top of their pay scales, making the plant’s operating costs relatively high.

The main strike issues are job security, pensions and retirement benefits. "Each year, they want to take away, take away and take away," said Mike Turner, an aircraft mechanic on the C-130J, F-10 and F-22 fighter jets. "It’s all about take-aways." He has kids and aging parents to look after, and his wife was recently diagnosed with cancer.

Sharon and her husband Bob have 37 years at Lockheed Martin between them. Sharon has been laid off nine times in her 16 years there. Every time, she’s had to dip into her savings to meet family expenses."I’m sitting up on a bubble right now," she said."Bob planned to retire this year, but can’t afford to now."

This strike shows the hypocrisy of the bosses’ war cry, "United We Stand." Between bosses and workers, there is no "we." The fact is, without these workers, U.S. imperialism would not have the weapons to make war. With all the touting of high-tech, the support — or at least the passivity — of industrial workers is crucial to the existence of capitalism. All the more reason to win these workers to rebel on behalf of their international class interests.

The strikers must reject the union leaders’ outlook of "sharing" in the billion dollar war contracts. We have a larger obligation to strike against the bosses’ wars and to build international solidarity. Communist leadership among the workers is needed to make this a reality.

Queens NY Bus Drivers Must Rely on Workers, Not on Politicians

QUEENS, NEW YORK, March 1 — Here in the land of "ground zero," the class struggle is raging. About 1,400 drivers and mechanics struck three privately owned commuter bus lines here as part of a series of two-day walkouts for a new contract. The bosses’ war hype of "United We Stand," doesn’t include these drivers and mechanics.

The "reform" leadership of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 is trying to "force local politicians to take a stand." (NY Daily News, 2/28). The newly elected "militant" president Toussaint told the 1,400 workers that a "long strike" would turn the "public" against them.

The latest action followed a one-day strike on January 7. One driver challenged Toussaint by saying, "Now that we’re out [this time], we should stay out till we get what we want." (News)

He was told to "have patience," but the driver shot back, "Patient? I’ve been working for this company for 15 months and we haven’t got a contract since I got here."

The city and state subsidize these private bus lines with workers’ tax money. Former-mayor Giuliani proposed competitive bidding for current and future private bus routes (rubber-stamped by current mayor Bloomberg), as a direct attack on the 32,000 Local 100 members who work for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). This gives private bus operators the incentive to offer low bids with the expectation of hiring non-union, low-wage drivers (they pay $2.50 an hour less in wages than MTA, not counting benefits). The word is out that the workers’ main concern is job security, and all TWU jobs are at stake.

But the "militant reform" New Directions leadership is not organizing support among the MTA transit workers. In Dec. 1999, Giuliani threatened MTA workers with jail and fines, while his cops chased them off street corners to prevent them from even talking about a strike. As long as the "public" and "private" transit workers fight separately, they will drag each other down, forced to accept cuts to keep their respective bosses "competitive."

The rulers are spending over $400 billion at home and abroad for the "War on Terrorism," a war supported by most union hacks, including the TWU International leadership. The bosses want the working class to pay for their wars, plus carry them through this latest recession, a permanent feature of capitalism. All this helps create budget "deficits" running into the billions. So "everyone" must tighten their belts — except the profiteering bosses.

The first payoff made from the city treasury (out of workers’ taxes) is the $4 billion given to the Wall Street bankers as their profit from interest on loans to the city (no wonder there’s a "deficit"). Mass transit is a vital social service, bringing millions of workers to their jobs daily and to shop in the big department stores. Furthermore, the buses and subways raise the value of real estate because of its access to mass transit. This enables the bosses and the landlords to reap huge profits. Why shouldn’t they pay for a decent contract? Why should profits be made on the backs of transit workers, without whose labor the city, business and the banks couldn’t function?

The millions of workers who use mass transit can be won to support the drivers in an all-out strike against the bankers and bosses. The question is, will the union rely on these millions of workers or on bosses’ politicians? Will they take aim at all mass transit or play by the bosses’ rules of "public" and "private?"

This struggle can show how capitalism functions solely to make profits for bosses. As the struggle sharpens, more and more workers will see that the pro-war patriotic and "united-we-stand" propaganda pushed by the bosses and their media don’t apply to workers fighting for their class interests. The ideas of PLP will then be grasped by blocs of workers who will see that a new society is possible where transit workers and those they serve function together for the greater good of the entire working class. That’s communism.

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COLOMBIA, March 4 — Last year, the 72-day strike by Bavarian brewery workers shook the powerful Santodomingo capitalist group, Colombia’s leading monopoly and its first real multi-national corporation. The striking workers were united, militant and class conscious, and supported by many other workers and their families. They not only confronted the company but also the state repression by the bosses’ henchmen, the cops. This was particularly heroic in a country where paramilitary death squads kill militant trade unionists by the thousands. So why do these same workers feel so demoralized a year later?

Besides the company’s post-strike attacks lies the role of the Bavarian workers’ union leadership. They’ve done little to fight the many bosses’ attacks, which include disciplining workers for "infractions" like talking on the job. Aiming to slash the workforce and avoid another strike, the bosses want to divide workers and attack us group by group.

Instead of building on the militancy, unity and consciousness developed during the strike, the union hacks spread passivity, relying on the bosses’ laws to "answer" these attacks (as if these laws didn’t serve the company). They are also pushing the upcoming national elections as another "solution." But the recent attacks by the Colombian army against the guerrilla-controlled region of Caguán, backed by U.S. military aid, advisers and intelligence, expose these elections as a dead-end for workers.

The union has demoralized workers. Some have accepted the company’s "early retirement" plan and joined the ranks of Colombia’s 10 million unemployed. Others have left the union altogether. But abandoning the struggle is not the answer.

The solution is to intensify the ideological struggle with our fellow workers, and confront the bosses and the treacherous union hacks. We must trace these attacks back to the capitalist system’s drive for maximum profits. The strike’s most militant workers must be reactivated to re-join the fight. These militant workers can provide leadership for the rest of the Bavarian workers.

PLP calls on these workers to learn from both the victories and setbacks of this struggle. Capitalism will never satisfy the needs of the working class. The only answer is to build a Party that fights for communism, where production satisfies the needs of our class, not the bosses’ profits.

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In Nazi Germany, the Gestapo relied on a vast network of informers whose job was to rat on suspected enemies of the Reich. The U.S. Patriot Act — a joint Republican-Democrat effort — has given birth to a Gestapo clone called TIPS (Terrorism Information Prevention System). Under TIPS, run by the Justice Department, people in jobs that allow them easy access to homes, businesses and mass transit, will be recruited to spy on terrorists. Mail and package deliverers will be among the potential spies.

A pilot program is planned for August in ten cities with a population of 24 million. In its first phase, the goal is to recruit one million stoolpigeons, or 4% of that 24 million.

Reports from this nest of spies will be entered into a police database. The spied-on person might never know he/she is being watched. Already the Patriot Act allows for installing listening and other devices in someone’s house without much evidence of the person being a "terrorist." This is a more vast and fascistic version of the FBI’s old Cointelpro program, which spied on, and kept secret files of, millions involved in the anti-war and anti-racist civil rights movement of the 1960s-’70s.

TIPS will be coordinated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), created under Reagan to carry out a mass invasion of Nicaragua in the 1980s when the Sandinistas ran that country. FEMA had the cover of coordinating actions taken during natural disasters, but it also has the same responsibilities during rebellions and "terrorist acts." It now has an additional job of confining in concentration camps anyone considered to be a "danger to national security."

Just like FEMA, Bush’s recently announced Shadow Government was a creature of the Reagan administration. It will have powers to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and give the President and FEMA control of the country, by-passing Congress.

These fascist spy programs are aimed at the entire working class. If workers in any industry, for instance auto or steel, struck "against the national interest," these fascist measures could be used to stop, jail and even kill them.

But Hitler’s Nazi regime and its murderous concentration camps, spy agencies, torture chambers and invasions ended 988 years short of its planned 1,000-year reign, mainly by the Red Army and the communist-led resistance movement. Our job today is to learn from the heroic feats of these ant-fascist fighters, as well as their mistakes, and build a massive communist-led movement to make sure the U.S. bosses’ plan for a new fascist Reich will meet a similar fate.

Workers and youth should well remember the famous statement by the German pastor, Rev. Martin Niemoller in 1945: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak."

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NEWARK, NJ, March 8 — More slave labor. That’s the sum total of the Bush administration’s recent welfare "reform" proposals that build on the 1996 Clinton law which Bush lauded as "a good start."

Clinton’s fascist law forced all adult recipients who were not disabled and could not find jobs to "work off" their welfare benefits and food stamps in the dead-end of Workfare. This worked out to a "wage" that could go as low as $1.66 an hour (CHALLENGE, 1/16/02), with no right to join a union. This is truly slave labor. At its peak in New York City under former mayor Giuliani, Workfare slave laborers in transit, sanitation and other city agencies reached 40,000.

Now Bush and his bosses want to force all people on Workfare to work 40 hours per week instead of the previous 30, for the same benefits pushing the hourly "wage" even lower. It would also require all states to force 70% of all recipients into jobs or "work activities" by 2007. (Previously states could reduce the number of Workfare equal to the number of recipients dropped from the rolls.) And any recession at that time would make life even more repressive for the jobless.

Rep. Cardin of Maryland told the New York Times (2/27) that this would force states "to put people in unpaid Workfare positions…rather than providing the skills necessary for a person to be successful in a wage-earning job." Still more slave labor.

Workfare, like prison labor, is part of the ruling classes’ worldwide drive to lower wages and bust unions. Capitalism’s iron law drives each boss to strive for maximum profits or lose out to the competition. New Jersey has contrived the latest twist to this low-wage drive. When welfare recipients call a toll-free number to report problems with their benefit cards, the phone is answered not by workers in Green Bay, Wisconsin who formerly performed this work for $12/hr. but by workers in Bombay, India, earning $3 an hour!

So far, Workfare can only be used by non-profit or government agencies. But as U.S. wars for oil expand beyond Afghanistan, don’t be surprised if bosses here begin using slave laborers in war production (a la Nazi Germany), or in "homeland defense" jobs.

The law keeps the racist, anti-immigrant restrictions on benefits. Bush also attacked unemployed fathers, implying they’re all irresponsible and don’t care about their kids. In reality it’s the bosses and their White House servants who are attacking children. The vast majority of those affected by these new laws are children. And they follow a 60% cut of those receiving welfare benefits, with additional cuts coming when recipients reach their cut-off dates, attacking still more children. Whether it’s sanctions and bombings killing working people in Iraq and Afghanistan or welfare cutbacks here, U.S. bosses are responsible for genocide.

Under communism, there would be no unemployment, and therefore no need for welfare. Decent lives for working people, especially children, would be the number one priority.

We must fight these attacks started by Clinton and expanded by Bush. Welfare Repeal is all part of the rulers’ fascist drive, which includes mass round-ups of Muslim and Arab immigrants and the legalization of police torture and terror, all to control any working-class resistance to the expanding imperialist oil wars.

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BROOKLYN, NY March 9 — PLP members rallied today against the February 23 Federal court decision to throw out the convictions of three cops involved in the torture of Abner Louima. The workers and youth in the mostly black working-class neighborhood of Flatbush are very angry with the bosses freeing these racist, sadistic torturers. We distributed over 2,500 communist leaflets and sold many CHALLENGES.

The rulers are throwing another bone to the racist cops, telling them it’s O.K. to be Nazi storm troopers. For those workers and youth who believe the bosses and their media propaganda that "United We Stand," this should remind us once again: cops are not our "heroes."

Meanwhile opportunists like Democratic Party hack Al Sharpton can only "demand" that the freed cops are not reinstated into the NYPD and that they should be tried again. Sharpton, who supports Bush’s "war on terrorism," doesn’t want to rock the boat with the mass demonstrations of the Giuliani era. Such actions like those protesting the NYPD torture of Louima and murders of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, shot in cold blood, are not now on the agenda of black politicians. One way or another, they’re all helping the bosses’ war plans.

Workers and students should never forget that the cops are the front-line killers for the ruling class. The cops’ main role during this period of war and fascism is to quell dissention and instill fear in the working class such as their refusal to tolerate any kind of militant demonstrations at the World Economic Forum. Given all this, we must organize our fellow students and workers to continue to fight for our class against these cops.

Billions for War, Nothing for Steelworkers

EAST CHICAGO, IN — "That’s right! They come up with billions of dollars for their wars," declared an LTV worker, "but they don’t want to give up anything for us!" He was among 30,000 steelworkers who traveled from Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., February 28, to fight for their jobs, pensions and health care.

But union leaders had no intention of fighting for these displaced workers. Instead they organized a pro-war rally and demanded 40% tariffs on imported steel. The depths to which the union bosses have sunk were revealed in their ban on signs attacking Bush. It was to be all USA, all red-white-and-blue.

Steel War

The rally opened with chants of "USA! USA!" Tom Usher, U.S. Steel’s CEO, gave the opening speech and called himself an American steelworker. Nobody mentioned that this flag-waving hypocrite bought a plant in Slovakia where the workers are paid $2 an hour. USWA President Leo Gerard called on the government to save the steel bosses so U.S. rulers can wage war on workers around the world. Gerard and all his "personal friends" from Congress rattled on about 40% tariffs. All this patriotic hogwash left no room for organizing workers to fight back.

On March 6, Bush imposed tariffs as high as 30% on most steel imports from Asia and Europe. The Wall Street Journal (3/7) called this, "perhaps the most dramatically protectionist step of any president in decades." The WSJ didn’t mention that the U.S. ruling class needs a minimum steel industry to guarantee steel for war production.

The European Union could retaliate by imposing sanctions on U.S. exports. It’s early yet, but a steel war could be the start of the slippery slope towards a full-scale trade war and ultimately a shooting war. In 1930, the notorious U.S. Smoot-Hawley tariff Act spawned a round of retaliations from other nations that collapsed the level of world trade to a fraction of what it had been in the late 1920s. This contributed to the Great Depression and the start of World War II.

Protesting steelworkers were told to unite with the steel bosses against foreign steel and support the U.S. bosses’ "war on terror." In short, unite with anybody BUT other workers. This nationalist poison will only isolate U.S. steelworkers and lead to support for imperialist wars against workers everywhere.

Workers want more. Many are open to the PLP. Hundreds took our leaflet that said, "Billions for War—Nothing for Steelworkers." With better planning we could have distributed thousands, and many CHALLENGES. Also, we should have made a banner with the leaflet’s slogan, as we had planned. One Party friend saw the leaflet and said, "Damn, that would have made a great banner!"

New bosses are going to reopen the shattered hulk of what was LTV. They are just front men for the bankers who ran LTV, and who collected their "secured debts" while we lost pensions and health care. They will cut jobs and benefits, and may try to keep out older workers, "troublemakers" or those with health problems.

We are fed up with the bosses walking away with million-dollar bonuses, while retired steelworkers die because they can’t get health insurance. We are tired of fighting to keep the crumbs we had already won.

The oil war in Afghanistan is spreading, along with more fascist attacks against the working class. The steel bosses and politicians cannot wage war without the support of industrial workers. Steel production to serve the international working class will be at the center of a communist world. Participating on May Day, and building an international PLP, is the order of the day.

Same Enemy-Same Fight!

World steel production has taken a dramatic nose-dive. World steel capacity is around one billion tons per year, but final steel production for 2001 was around 830 million tons. On Dec. 19, officials from the world’s biggest steel producers met in Paris to discuss how to cut capacity and raise prices.

US steel production is down and about 30 steel companies have declared bankruptcy since 1998. U.S. Steel is considering buying several ailing competitors, including Bethlehem, Wheeling-Pittsburgh and National Steel, but wants a government bailout of $13 billion to cover legacy costs for pensions and health care.

The merger of NKK and Kawasaki Steel, Japan’s second and third biggest producers, will form the world’s second biggest steel company. In February, a merger of Arbed, Usinor of France and Aceralia of Spain formed Luxembourg-based Arcelor, with capacity exceeding 45 million tons.

Corus (the merger of the British Steel Corporation and Dutch steel maker Hoogovens) recently announced a year-long pay freeze for steelworkers because the company is losing $1.6 million a day. This follows the announcement of plant closings and 6,000 job cuts by next year.

Steelworkers around the world have the same enemy, and the same fight! Nationalism can only serve the bosses. International solidarity and strikes are what steelworkers need. A measure of our success will be winning steelworkers to join us on May Day!

Labor Hacks’ Role in Developing Fascism

The development of fascism in the U.S. did not start with the fascistic Patriot Act imposed after 9/11. The FBI’s mass spying on individuals began during the Democratic Roosevelt Administration under J. Edgar Hoover who invigorated it with the Cointelpro program during the Vietnam War and civil rights struggle. Since the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, preparations for fascism accelerated. Then came the total collapse of the labor movement in every major struggle by workers against the bosses’ attacks. These included:

• In August 1973, the UAW organized 1,000 union goons, including Klansmen, to crush the Mack Avenue sit-down strike, the first in auto since the 1930s. Led by Workers’ Action Movement and PLP, the workers occupied the Chrysler plant to protest unsafe conditions. The hacks not only attacked the demands of the workers, but like low-life scabs, attacked the workers with baseball bats. The UAW leadership smashed the strike after Chrysler and the Detroit police had failed. In 1979, UAW president Fraser (who organized the assault to take back Mack Ave. for the bosses), was added to Chrysler’s Board of Directors in exchange for massive concessions in wages and benefits, and over 500,000 jobs to Chrysler, Ford, and GM.

• When Reagan smashed the 1981 air controllers’ strike and busted the PATCO union with 10,000 scabs, the AFL-CIO and their Democratic friends did nothing. This set the stage for sellouts of militant strikes at Eastern Airlines, Greyhound, Hormel meatpackers, Caterpillar, among coal miners — the list goes on and on.

• Just as the AFL-CIO leadership, staunch backers of the Democratic Party, supported the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, it has supported every major imperialist adventure since, from Desert Storm, to the 1999 Balkan air war to the current "war against terrorism."

The fascist measures now suffered by many workers and youth under the Patriot Act have long been in the planning stage, as outlined in Clinton’s Hart-Rudman Commission report (exposed in CHALLENGE over the last year). The bosses needed a pretext to impose such draconian domestic measures. They got it on Sept. 11.

Anti-War Conference Avoids Real Cause of War

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 24 — College students, professors and workers convened at Columbia University for the first national anti-war conference since Bush & Co. began its imperialist invasion last fall. Over 25 colleges and universities as well as various political organizations were represented, including PLP.

Workshops dealt with imperialism, the role of oil and the function of workers in the bosses’ war. At the "New York City Labor Against the War" workshop, a union leader explained how he had been working with other union heads to organize workers against the war.

During the Q&A period one PL member suggested clarifying to the workers that this is an imperialist war about oil. The union leader categorized this as unusable "leftist jargon." Such excuses are part of the reason why workers in general are so passive against the war, mass layoffs, fascist terror, etc. It is clear that this message must by-pass these bosses’ lieutenants and brought directly to the rank and file.

At another workshop, "The Politics of Oil," the group discussed the role of oil in the Middle East. PL members pointed out that the working class will not benefit from the war and that the capitalist group bin Laden represents is mainly fighting to control Saudi Arabia’s oil, something workshop leaders ignored. One member said Clinton’s Hart-Rudman Report had predicted the 9/11 events and outlined the government’s fascist response. Workshop participants asked for further resources on these issues and took CHALLENGES.

In a larger gathering, two proposals on "points of unity" were to be debated (so we thought). A Peace group from Columbia Univ. (heavily influenced by the ISO — International Socialist Organization) put forward one while students from SUNY-Binghamton — including PL’ers — advanced the other. The latter linked the role of U.S. imperialism to the cause of the war; exposed the universities as institutions that support and promote war and fascism; and put forth the crucial idea that control of oil is behind the conflicts in the Middle East.

The ISO and other liberal reformers revealed their true opportunist colors when they said that, although they agreed with the SUNY points, those proposals were "setting the bar too high" for other students and workers to become involved in the anti-war movement. (!) They then railroaded the discussion, using the tactics of structural and procedural questions to monopolize the discussion. Some rank-and-file students who came for the discussion left because it became so convoluted. The liberal points were adopted, sidestepping the views about war, capitalism and exploitation.

The opportunists leading the conference think they’re fighting against the war but by ignoring the relationship of capitalism and imperialism to the war are allying themselves with the Democratic Party liberals who support it.

PLP students and friends will continue to work, and build the Party, in these anti-war conferences. We need to overcome the opportunists like the ISO and their liberal friends who have no confidence that workers can understand that capitalism is the cause of war and fascism. Students need to realize that the only solution is communist revolution.

In Memoriam

CHICAGO, March 11 — Tonight members and friends of PL here bid farewell to one of our best. A memorial service was held for Philip Williams who recently passed away at 52 after a brave and courageous battle with cancer.

Phillip, a Jamaican immigrant, had been a member of our Party for almost 20 years. The many stories told at this service revealed his reputation as a fighter for the working class. PLP says racism must be smashed. Philip put that idea into practice, helping to organize against the Nazis and KKK throughout Chicago and Illinois. As a Chicago Housing Authority painter, he was a leader in fighting for his co-workers. But he also demanded that his fellow workers do a good job painting the apartments for the working-class tenants. Anger at the boss was no excuse for a bad paint job. He loved painting, and brought to it an artistic flair and love of color.

Philip’s comrades and friends related how he always said what was on his mind. If he agreed or disagreed with a political point, you knew it. Many of us can learn from this quality. For communism to work we must have everyone’s open and honest insights and opinions, not gossip behind closed doors.

Testimonies made it clear Philip had genuine love and commitment for his friends family. He went the extra mile to help friends with painting and construction projects. He protected, encouraged and defended his and other children, while helping them meet the challenges of life head on and strive for excellence and independence. And he loved to cook for the many social gatherings given by himself and his wife Kathy.

At home and at work, Philip defended the equality of women, taking the lead in standing up to sexism on the job and participating equally in housework at home. He was a hard worker and deeply thoughtful man, who put the needs of his family and friends before his own.

Philip remained optimistic and positive throughout his illness, never succumbing to fear or despondency. This enabled him to live a full year longer than expected, living fully and happily until the end. Throughout, his great love for his wife deepened. He became an even more affectionate and thoughtful father.

Philip would want us, and especially the youth among us, to live honestly and respectfully, in a way to deserve and command respect; to stand up for our rights; to love and honor people, not money; to be one’s self and do what’s right. And, as he said in his last message to his daughter Kaya, "Have fun."

As a human being and a communist, Philip Williams will continue in our hearts. We shall miss him dearly. He leaves behind a loving family, friends who are honored to have known him and a legacy of multi-racial and international unity.

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

Night School Students Lead the Way for Struggle

I’ve been taking an English class in an adult school for six months and have made some friendships. Among the five closest friends, we’ve had many discussions about how the ruling class uses nationalism to manipulate workers in their wars for control of the wealth. We used the events of September 11 and those following it as an example. I gave them newspaper articles and some liberal magazines that reviewed the problem more profoundly. Later I showed them CHALLENGE. They now read it regularly.

I’ve also made friends with the teacher. She is very open. When she frequently questions the attitude of the police and the kind of people they protect, I then present aspects of communist ideas to the class. Privately, using what English I’ve learned, I have more political discussions with her, from a working-class point of view. She has also started reading CHALLENGE.

One night she said that we need to unite the teachers and the students because the Governor wants to end night English classes in the high schools, transferring them to college campuses, making them inaccessible to most students. This provoked a lively discussion. I proposed formation of a school-wide student committee to fight this. The teacher said, "That’s a very good idea, but the other teachers aren’t discussing this problem." "O.K.," another student said, "but we can talk about it." Everyone got very excited. My closest friends and I spoke in two other classes and then wrote a leaflet informing the students about the problem.

Later the teacher attended a meeting with all the night school English teachers in the County. They discussed the leaflet. It was criticized because no one had taken responsibility for writing it. But now we plan to have our first formal meeting to plan a student committee.

Many of these students work in the garment and other basic industries. We’re linking the problems in the factories to the budget cuts in social services all due to the U.S. bosses’ war economy. These struggles are creating the opportunity to build a base for CHALLENGE, for May Day and for communist revolution.

A worker learning about English and the class struggle

Money for Cover-ups, Not For Schools

Here’s an addition to the excellent articles on the pedophile priests (CHALLENGE, 3/13) and the role of religion. It’s since been revealed that the Catholic Church has paid even more millions to settle suits against pedophile priests, and that the bishop of Palm Beach, Florida who himself replaced another pedophile priest, resigned because he’s a pedophile. Now, this same church that has spent untold millions to cover up the sins of its priests and bishops refused to grant a decent contract to Catholic High School teachers in New York when they struck three months ago. More evidence of the anti-working class nature of the church hierarchy.

A Reader

What Next: Sainthood for Hitler?

What Do Billy Graham and Queen Isabella have in common?

The Nixon tapes keep on exposing this rotten capitalist system. They recently revealed Reverend Billy Graham talking anti-Semitic trash with Nixon. Graham’s attacks on what he labels "the Jew-controlled media" were so blatant that even Tricky Dick himself had to tell him "you can’t say that in public." This is the same Graham who publicly was palsy walsy with Jewish religious leaders.

This also shows that all these religious holly rollers are essentially the same. Supposedly Graham was more ecumenical and respectable than gutter fascists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Jimmy (I love prostitutes) Swaggart. Well, what else can you expect from a man who blessed U.S. imperialism’s war against Vietnam.

Another famous racist and anti-Semite now in the news is Queen Isabella "the Catholic" from 16th century Spain. It was under the reign of Isabella and her husband Ferdinand that Jews and Arabs were expelled from Spain and under whom the Inquisition began. Isabella sent Columbus to the New World to begin the colonization and genocide of the Native population, as well as to expand the holocaust-slave trade of Africans begun by the Portuguese colonialists.

But now the push to make Queen Isabella a saint of the Catholic Church has taken a big step forward. This idea started under fascist Franco, but has been dormant since his death in the 1970s. The defenders of sainthood for Isabella claim she expelled the Jews and the Arabs not because of anti-Semitism (since "some members of her court were Jews"), but because they were "foreigners," not citizens of Spain. Her big "achievement"? She united Spain as a Catholic country.

What next, Torquemada the Inquisitor, Hitler, Chester the Molester for sainthood?

Former Catholic, Current Red

Hare Hell for Krishna Kids

The articles in CHALLENGE (3/17) about the pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church were very useful. As one said, abusing children is not unique to the Catholic Church. It’s now well-known that it occurred in the group Beatle George Harrison made famous, the Hare Krishna.

NY Newsday reports (3/3) that, "Thirty-six years after the religious group’s first U.S. temple opened in lower Manhattan, Melody Gedeon and 90 other former Krishna children, including seven in New York State, are suing the organization for what they say were years of physical and mental abuse in the schools known as gurukulas. The suit…seeks $400 million in damages from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or Iskcon, as the movement is known.…In the heyday of the Krishna movement, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, thousands of followers put their children in gurukulas to indoctrinate them into the faith."

The complaint outlines gruesome acts said to have been carried out by adult devotees, allegedly with the encouragement of movement leaders seeking to crush resistance to their beliefs. The lawsuit originated when ex-pupils began commiserating about their experiences. It charges that children were regularly raped and sexually molested, deprived of food and sleep, forced to eat moldy or insect-ridden food, and made to eat their vomit when they threw up. They were locked in dark, rodent-infested rooms, denied adequate medical care, barred from parental contact and beaten until their bones broke.

"The kids were always being abused. It was hellish," said Uddhava Samanich, a college student in Utopia, Queens. As a child, he spent several months at the upstate Lake Huntington gurukula, where he said brutal beatings — including some with hot carrots — were common for infractions such as talking to children of the opposite sex, missing the pre-dawn wake up calls, or simply skipping stones in a lake.

For Ms. Gedeon, who entered a boarding school at 7, problems began when she was 8 and was molested by a male devotee. "I went to a teacher and told her this guy had put his hand up my sari and into my underwear. She told me it was my fault, that something inside me must have incited him," Gedeon said. When she was 9, Gedeon said church elders said she should prepare for marriage because she was growing breasts. She was never married off, but she said she was raped for the first time at 13 by a 27-year-old married devotee.

"When everyone found out this married man was taking me, they immediately came to me and said ‘How dare you! You broke up their marriage!’" said Gedeon, who now lives in Miami Beach, Fla. "Nobody asked me if I was OK, not even my mother. The brainwashing was so deep, you just didn’t question anything."

Even the pupils who were spared sexual abuse say they lived with day-to-day physical and mental battery that included wake-up calls as early as 2:30 a.m. to recite hours of prayers, rules that banned most music, books, television, newspapers, socializing with other children and brutal beatings for those who violated the codes. Lessons consisted primarily of memorizing Krishna’s teachings. History and geography were virtually ignored, they said.

If there were a hell, these religious child abusers will surely go directly there. As for the parents of the abused children, many of whom sought to escape the anti-war and anti-racist struggles of the ’60s and ’70s with mysticism crap, you shouldn’t have listened to guru Harrison.

A Teo

a name="Guess Who’s Using Bio-Tech Warfare? The U.S.">">"uess Who’s Using Bio-Tech Warfare? The U.S.

When U.S. rulers decided to go to war in Afghanistan, the New York Times carried a front-page interview with a Russian general who had experienced such a war. He said the U.S. could not defeat troops who retreated to caves, unless it used poison gas inside these caves.

Now the U.S. has proudly announced the use of "hyperbaric bombs." This bomb converts the atmosphere of the cave into a mixture of gases which, when breathed, cannot sustain life. In effect, those inside are suffocated.

There is no difference between this weapon and poison gas, except that the U.S. can piously claim it doesn’t use poison gas.

Ancient Red

Lessons Learned Trying to Build the Party

For seven years I’ve tried to advance PLP’s ideas in an old-line right-led organization with several million members here and scores of millions worldwide. With the Party’s help, I’ve learned some lessons and firmed up some views I’d like to share. Criticism, of course, is welcome.

Join or create a sub-structure that can lead and expand class struggle indefinitely. Of course, no bosses’ organization is designed to conduct real class struggle. Our local chapter has long entertained anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-war causes, but has never had a standing "social action" committee. Because of this, the few comrades we’ve recruited there lurch along from issue to issue without me providing an effectively coherent focus. So the chapter leader (who’s aware of my Party activity) and I planned to approach the Board with a proposal to collectively concentrate long-term on our own Congressperson and her staff.

We’re developing "advocates" and "annoyers" who will visit her office regularly on issues that we slowly shape into demands, then follow up when the old Pol fails to "deliver." Of course, meanwhile we’re working to explain to our larger base why she both won’t and can’t deliver quality results for the whole working class. This will much sharply define our theoretical work within the Party club and provide a better way to introduce and evaluate possible new comrades. We can also begin to expose and somewhat limit the maneuverability of one of the rulers’ main agents in the community. (Our chapter leader does not now understand this goal, but I think — with struggle — she will be increasingly open to it.)

Always tie local anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-fascist issues to other somewhat comparable issues that expose U.S. imperialism. Over the thirty years I’ve worked with, and in, the Party we’ve usually tried to sharply link the particular object of struggle to the general picture of developing U.S. imperialism. However, in practice most comrades and myself have usually focused on one primary struggle at a time, while also guaranteeing CHALLENGE distribution for a fuller presentation of our ideas. This will likely continue. But the post 9/11 consciousness of the U.S. as the world power makes it clearer that a link-up of the local-global is essential wherever possible. At every opportunity we’ve related "the dying children of Baghdad, the frightened children of Bethlehem, and the homeless children of our own city."

The Party club will highlight these points in our work with the congressional staff. The chief federal official in our community surely has responsibility to defend or oppose U.S. foreign policy oppression as well as to scrutinize how much federal money the city gets for homeless relief and how it’s used. Hence, it’s easy to link the global with the local in every meeting, and eventually to expose this representative as the bosses’ lackey she is.

If we’re expanding the writing for, and reading of, CHALLENGE within the organization during the "struggle with/struggle against" the politician, recruiting to PLP at higher and higher levels of practice and understanding should become more routine, not just in our local chapter, but more broadly. This process means survival and then victory for our class!

A Comrade