Hundreds At Anti-War Conference: Must Organize to Fight Imperialism

Class Consciousness and Red Politics Key to Crushing Warmakers

Brass Wants Token Sacrifice From Elite School Youth

Bosses To Bankrupt Workers: Drop Dead!

PLP H.S. and College Students Bring Revolutionary Ideas to Anti-War Conference

Hundreds March for Immigrant Rights; Need to By-Pass Liberal Dems

a href="#CUNY Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War">CU"Y Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War

Union Misleaders Derail MUNI Work-Action

Boeing Union Resolution Supports Lockheed Strikers

General Strike Hits France to Keep 35-Hour Work-week

Philadelphia City Hall Scandal: ALL Politicians Are Crooks

Palestinian and Israeli Workers Must Unite to Tear Down Apartheid Wall

600 Protest Racist LAPD Murder of Teenager; Boo Ex-Police Chief

a href="#Everyone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics">"veryone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics

Concentration Camps: Second Nature to Capitalism

LETTERS

Staying in for the Long Haul

Banning Unions Before They Start

a href="#A ‘Life-Changing’ Experience">A "Life-Changing’ Experience

a href="#Youth’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference">"outh’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference

a href="#Women ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’">Wo"en ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’

a href="#‘Million Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature">‘M"llion Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature

a href="#Eastwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled">"astwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled

a href="#Reviewer’s Response">"eviewer’s Response

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• Poll makes Marx a Founding Father
• Iraq shows limits of US power
• Vets left uninsured and homeless
• Over $500 billion yearly for army
• Double death rate for black men
• Inter-imperialist rivalry heating up
• Afghans’ abusers set up Abu Ghraib
• ‘Democracy’ serves Big Business

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Hundreds At Anti-War Conference: Must Organize to Fight Imperialism

NEW YORK CITY, March 5 — "Imperialist War Means: Fight Back!"; "Racism Means: Fight Back!"; "Shut It Down!"; "Students and Teachers, United, Will Never Be Defeated!"

An explosive mix of militant urban youth and radical teachers’ chants rang through the hall at the close of today’s conference of Educators to Stop the War as 750 East Coast teachers and students from schools and colleges as far as Florida and Indiana convened to discuss how to stop the war in Iraq. The title itself was a call to action for teachers from kindergarten to grad school, and by 260 students, half from high school.

The event was sponsored by U.S. Labor against the War and many teacher union locals from SUNY, CUNY, and Rutgers. PLP teachers and students also worked hard to build the conference and brought many participants.

The title raised the key question: who can stop the war, and how? Teachers and students allying with soldiers and industrial workers? Protests? Prolonged resistance in the army and the workplace, such as strikes and rebellions? What about the politics of the Iraqi insurgency? Can we end imperialist wars while leaving capitalism intact, or take the road to revolution? These questions were prevalent but challenged: "I’m just a student with asthma from the Bronx," asked one. "What does capitalism have to do with me?"

Some hoped education could be a "free zone" in capitalism. Many didn’t think about class as the "hidden curriculum" of capitalist schooling, reproducing this brutal system with deep links to the imperialist war machine. (However, everyone understood the role of recruiters in schools, a hot topic with students.)

Teacher unionists debated their contract and education budget fights as struggles against a "war contract" and a "war budget." But teachers were galvanized by the young students, who clearly loved being with their teachers as equal comrades in struggle. "Student-teacher alliance" was the cry everywhere.

The Conference generated tremendous excitement and hope in a period of downturn in anti-war actions. Communists presented a glimpse of schooling in the communist society PLP fights for: multi-racial and non-sexist; collective leadership; non-hierarchical, with presentations from high school students and doctoral faculty; soldiers and vets offering their perspective; Marx’s "relentless critique of absolutely everything"; the role of the Party pushing constantly for working-class interests. Communist schooling will be the ultimate student-teacher alliance.

Soon the success of the conference emerged, anti-war action against military recruiters exploding at CCNY (See page 3). Other counter-recruiter protests were blocked by police at Bronx Community College, and were planned at Hunter College March 16. Many, including PLP, wanted to make April 20 a day of such mass actions, linking anti-war to contract and tuition demands.

It was an action-oriented conference, with an emerging student-teacher alliance in 42 workshops discussing: organizing in the teacher unions, schools and campuses, in curriculum and teaching methods, the roots of the war, and critiques of ideologies that support the war. The more than 150 workshop presenters were one-third black, Latino/a, Asian or Middle Eastern, more multi-racial than most anti-war events.

Some leaders of Educators to Stop the War red-baited PLP and its allies. They don’t want communists and their ideas to influence anti-war activists and to challenge liberal anti-war organizations like United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). But the war in Iraq is an imperialist war for U.S. ruling-class interests, it does have its roots in rival capitalists’ drive for endless accumulation, we do need a full understanding of these processes to know how to better fight the warmakers. Finally, communism — for all its past weaknesses — has been the only philosophy with the ability to mobilize millions to end capitalism itself, the root of modern war.

Organizing mass militant action at work, fighting racism that pervades capitalist education, building unbreakable lifelong ties with co-workers, bringing them closer to communist thinking by patient work, and forging a mass party out of daily struggle, is the way ahead. A global worker-soldier-student-teacher alliance can create a communist future, free of imperialist war and capitalist mis-education.

Class Consciousness and Red Politics Key to Crushing Warmakers

A recent meeting of the Progressive Labor Party’s Steering Committee discussed a lengthy, detailed report about the contradictions facing U.S. rulers. The report covered the state of inter-imperialist rivalry and the likelihood that the present oil war in Iraq will soon broaden. It reinforced the estimate that the economic and military rise of Chinese capitalism will eventually lead to armed struggle with the U.S.

The PLP leadership confirmed its view that this remains a period of widening war for world domination and that although the U.S. will remain top dog for some number of years, the general trend will see its chief competitors in Asia and Europe gain strength and boldness. PLP’s Steering Committee once again endorsed the idea that communist revolution can be forged in the crucible of the world war that will erupt in coming decades.

The discussion took into account the wide tactical maneuverability the bosses still enjoy and underscored the importance of properly assessing their strength and the advantages they hold over the working class at the moment.

The most important of these advantages remains the low level of communist class consciousness in the U.S. and throughout the world in general. Weak class consciousness leads to weak class struggle. Both at home and abroad, the rulers are getting away with racist murder. From the military’s routine slaughter of civilians in Iraq to the denial of health insurance to 45 million people here, CHALLENGE constantly describes the atrocities U.S. capitalism commits daily.

The self-inflicted failure of the old communist movement has temporarily placed our class in a position of weakness without historical precedent since Marx and Engels wrote "The Communist Manifesto" nearly 160 years ago. Strikes provide a good gauge of working-class militancy. In the U.S., they are very low by historical standards. Scabbing — the use of strike-breakers to replace striking workers — has risen steadily since the benchmark year of 1981. Then Reagan hired scabs to replace 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, without a peep from the labor union brass. The percentage of unionized workers continues to decline. In both the U.S. and Europe, the union "leadership" has long since made the commitment to serve as the bosses’ henchmen in the system’s drive to suck maximum profit from our labor power.

The bad news is the present picture is bleak. The good news is we can do something about it. The working class is still paying dearly for the deadly errors committed in the course of previous revolutions. But errors can be analyzed and corrected. This process will be long and difficult, but can be accomplished. The profit system can neither solve nor abolish the contradictions and problems it creates. That job remains the role of the working class and the responsibility of its communist party, the PLP.

Our chief task today is rebuilding militant, communist class consciousness until it becomes the order of the day throughout the working class. The word "scab" must once again become the foulest word in any language, and scabbing must come to include not just strike-breaking but also the failure to respond vigorously to any and all attacks against our class brothers and sisters worldwide.

Even in these difficult times, opportunities arise. CHALLENGE articles about actions against racism, economic attacks or imperialist war in Iraq prove that the bosses can never totally extinguish the flame of class struggle. But we can do better, particularly on the ideological front of promoting and sharpening class consciousness.

As always, the correction of weakness or error begins with leadership. Our Party’s Steering Committee recognizes its responsibility in this regard. As May Day approaches, we challenge ourselves once again to deepen our commitment to the principle of militant, revolutionary, international communist working-class solidarity against all bosses and all forms of scabbing.

Brass Wants Token Sacrifice From Elite School Youth

As U.S. rulers pursue an agenda of ever widening war, they face a crisis of class consciousness in their own ranks. Very few children of the ruling class serve, even briefly, in the war machine that maintains their wealth, power, and privilege. But the more far-sighted of the rulers fear two consequences: (1) Working-class GIs and their families will rebel against having to bear an obscenely high casualty rate; and (2) the ruling class will soon lack the military expertise necessary for an all-out mobilization.

General Josiah Bunting wrote an article for the Winter 2005 "American Scholar" entitled "Class Warfare: It is Wrong that America’s Most Privileged Families Have Abandoned Military Service." He decries "the deepening chasm that is separating those who serve from those whom they serve."

Bunting laments the declining numbers of war dead among alumni of the elite Lawrenceville School near Princeton, where he was once headmaster: sixty in World War II, ten in Korea, five in Vietnam, and none for Gulf War I or the current slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the working class continues to bear all the killing and maiming, he worries, domestic tranquility could suffer.

Bunting sees a need for the token burden sharing of WWII, in which young Roosevelts and Kennedys, but few Rockefellers, saw heavy action. Bunting hopes for a sea change. Envisioning world-wide conflicts, he dreams of a fully militarized future, in which the children of today’s rulers "appointed or elected to offices...will carry the inestimable benefit of having themselves done what they will be asking another young generation to do."

Bunting speaks for the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists. He recently oversaw the admission of women to the Virginia Military Institute. Bunting now presides over the New York-based Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, which, under him, increasingly focuses on military leadership and the relationship of the military to the rest of society. This foundation counts as "life trustees" General William Westmoreland, who commanded the U.S. genocide in Vietnam, and Jeremiah Milbank, whose family has managed the Rockefellers’ billions for over a century.

By choosing the "American Scholar" as his vehicle, Bunting targets administrators at elite universities, who, while cashing Pentagon research checks, persist in hindering military recruitment. One college president who needs no convincing, however, is Harvard’s Larry Summers. Last June, he held the first commissioning on Harvard grounds of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) since 1969, when students led by the Progressive Labor Party booted the bloodsuckers out. Summers is pushing to re-establish Harvard’s ties to the military completely. When the rulers’ media complain about Summers’ abrupt shifts to the right, they’re attacking his lack of finesse, not his politics.

Along with Bunting’s persuasion, the rulers are using the coercion of state power to bring their own class in line by putting more of its children in uniform. A bill before Congress, variously known as H.R. 3699 and the Solomon Amendment, will end the ability of colleges to block recruiters and ROTC. It sailed through the House last year, with overwhelming backing from Democrats and Republicans.

The rulers know that, ultimately, only one solution exists. They can hardly expect their pampered offspring to renounce selfishness willingly. Selfishness lies at the heart of capitalist philosophy. Pining for the Good Old Days, Bunting says that, in 1956, Princeton sent 400 of its 900 graduating seniors into the military and that the figure for 2004 was nine out of 1,100. He pointedly leaves unsaid the glaring fact that the great "motivator" back then was the draft. The rulers will have to restore it, sooner or later.

Bosses To Bankrupt Workers: Drop Dead!

The latest change in the bosses’ bankruptcy laws is one of the more blatant pieces of class legislation enacted in decades. It will extract another pound of flesh from working-class families ruined by health costs and job loss and add billions to the already swollen profits of the banks and credit card companies. Meanwhile, Congress refused to raise the already paltry minimum wage above the 1996 level, which is falling even further below the poverty line.

These kinds of fascist attacks on workers will continue until the working class mounts an organized fight-back to limit them and eventually turns them back on the ruling class with a communist revolution eliminating the capitalist system that breeds them.

Most people are forced to file for bankruptcy because of sudden illness, layoffs or divorce. A Harvard study found that medical bills account for over half of all bankruptcy filings, and most of those families had health insurance but it didn’t cover the cost of medical debts. One-third of all bankruptcies are filed by people with incomes already below the poverty line.

This new law — already passed by the Senate and soon-to-be enacted by the House — will push millions of working-class families still deeper into poverty. It will require debtors with incomes above the median in their states to file for bankruptcy under a Chapter 13 proceeding, in which a judge orders a repayment plan, rather than under a Chapter 7 filing where debts are erased once most of the debtors’ assets are liquidated. This will force hundreds of thousands of families to make large payments to creditors from their current income even if they subsequently lose their jobs or incur huge medical bills.

Meanwhile, the wealthy will retain their loophole of the "asset protection trust" which enables them to maintain their riches even if declaring bankruptcy.

The banks and credit card companies have been pushing for such legislation for eight years. The likes of the American Bankers Association, Ford Motor Credit, GMAC, Visa, MasterCard, Citicorp, Capital One and MBNA, among others, have made more than $40 million in political contributions over that period, an investment that will now reap a multi-billion dollar bonanza.

Interestingly, the ten states with the highest bankruptcy filings are "red" states in the South and West, many of whom voted for Bush based on racism and support for the Iraq war. Even though all ten voted Republican last November, their Senators will still punish them with this new law. But the Democrats are guilty as well — 14 Democratic Senators joined 55 Republicans to bar any filibuster from killing the bill, including such stalwarts as Delaware’s Joe Biden, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow (whose state has one of the country’s highest unemployment rates, driving workers to bankruptcy).

As the U.S. debt burden skyrockets, billions will be extracted by the banks from bankrupted families. Bankruptcy filings leaped from 200,000/yr in 1978 to 1.6 million last year. In 1946, consumer debt was 22% of after-tax income. By last year it had jumped to 110%. The probability that a family’s income will be cut in half from one year to the next has doubled from the 1970’s to over 20%. That could mean that tens of millions can slide from relative comfort into poverty due to illness or job loss, and then be subject to the impossible squeeze of this new bankruptcy swindle.

The credit card companies prey on the weakest sections of the population: credit card debt among seniors has increased 149%, and among families with income below $10,000 it’s rocketed 184%. A family of three earning a minimum wage and working five days a week, 52 weeks a year, is already below the federal poverty line.

All capitalists in general are like vultures circling above tens of millions of families falling deeper into debt, and then swooping down with this new bankruptcy rip-off to dig their profit talons into defenseless debtors. They’ll keep succeeding until the working class stops them.

PLP H.S. and College Students Bring Revolutionary Ideas to Anti-War Conference

NEW YORK CITY, March 5 — Over 250 high school and college students at the Educators to Stop the War Conference were on the verge of marching on an Army recruiting station in Harlem until we discovered the center was closed. About 50 of us were from one Brooklyn high school where we made buttons and held a forum with two soldiers speaking, to build interest in the event. Students who attended the conference were very moved by it.

The militancy at this anti-war conference was unexpected, but the revolutionary leadership given by young PL’ers changed the tone of the day. Students were fed up with limiting anti-war activity to marches — which end up supporting Democratic Party politicians — and wanted to take direct action against the war machine.

We made plans to return to our campuses and high schools to organize more students for a demonstration at a recruiting center in the near future.

A multi-racial contingent of PL students led workshops on Creating a Student Anti-war movement, Stopping Military Research and Homeland Security Programs on Campuses, Recruiters and the Draft, Racism, Imperialism and building a teacher-student alliance. These workshops helped make the conference a huge success. We were able to advance the Party’s line against pseudo-leftist and liberal reformist ideas.

In the Recruiters and the Draft workshop one student described how he helped kicked military recruiters off the City College campus one day last fall. An ex-recruiter revealed how he was duped into becoming a salesman for the military. Another speaker discussed the draft, explaining that an economic draft existed already for many workers, even before the Iraq War. He declared that when the "real draft" comes we should advise youth who will go in and actively organize soldiers to stop the war rather than dodge military service. He said while students’ and teachers’ anti-war activity is important to opposing the war, only U.S. soldiers and industrial workers in solidarity with workers in Iraq can stop it. We need to support these workers’ actions. Some further comments from students about their feelings on the conference:

"I think the conference was a good step towards making people knowledgeable about the war. It was good to see teachers and students come together on a more synchronized level. It was a good experience and other things should be done to follow up."

"I think I understand the war a bit more and it makes me want to get involved to assist the movement. I would like to see more students involved in protesting this Imperialist war. There should be workshops in the school to explain the war to students."

"In order to show how informed we students are and how we disagree with the war, the entire school should walk out to voice our opinions on the war. I realized that the minority of the country is controlling the majority of the working class. It makes me think about how wrong this government is. I am not sure if I totally agree with the concept of communism, but I would like to learn more."

"I do believe capitalism is a very bloody type of government. The war is being fought by poor and working-class soldiers and they are killing other poor and working-class people. END THE WAR NOW!"

The conference and the militancy of many of its participants show that following Bush’s re-election the "depression" suffered by many who oppose the imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq is over among many activists. We must ensure that the idea of "It’s not just Bush, it’s also the Democrats and capitalism" takes hold among many of these anti-war activists. Being anti-imperialist means being anti-capitalist and a communist, serving the working class and helping lead a working-class movement to totally destroy capitalism.

Hundreds March for Immigrant Rights; Need to By-Pass Liberal Dems

QUEENS, NY, March 12 — Capitalists and their flunky politicians in the Federal, State and local governments have no shame. They’ve launched virulently racist attacks against immigrants, especially since 9/11, blaming them for the problems created by capitalism itself.

Immigrant workers are fighting back here on two fronts: against denial of drivers’ licenses and against budget cuts for adult education, but all within the limits set by the bosses. However, as CHALLENGE readers know, this is very much like running on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast. While waging these important struggles, it is vital that we raise the bar by building a movement for a communist revolution as the best and longest-lasting solution to eliminate these vile anti-immigrant attacks.

On March 5, more than 300 immigrants and other workers and students marched in Jackson Heights as part of the Queens Drivers License Coalition to demand that officials and the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) end their discriminatory and irresponsible plan to suspend the driver’s licenses of about 300,000 immigrant workers (cab drivers, delivery truck drivers, etc.). Over 7,000 immigrants in NYS have already lost their licenses because of the new rule requiring a valid Social Security number to obtain a legal driver’s license.

Shouting "El Pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!" (The people, united, will never be defeated"), and "Inquilaab zindabad!" (Freedom now!" in Bengali), the protesters’ leaflets and demands that the politicians stop their irresponsible plan were well-received by thousands of passers-by.

Fight Adult Education Budget Cuts

Also, in recent weeks dozens of teachers and students in the CUNY Adult Literacy Programs have begun organizing against the Bush administration’s proposal to cut by 2/3 the amount of federal money for adult education. The vast majority of students in these programs are immigrant workers looking to earn their GED diplomas in order to improve their jobs and/or go on to college. They’re planning a protest demonstration for April 22.

The weakness in both of these struggles is the tendency to look to politicians, especially liberal Democrats, for help. The strength has been the involvement of many immigrant and other workers. These cuts are aimed at many groups. The ruling class hopes each group will struggle for itself only. Each one must reach out to other groups to support each other. In these struggles, PLP’ers must show how these attacks on immigrants and major cutbacks in social services are part and parcel of the imperialists’ endless wars and Homeland Security police state, supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

a name="CUNY Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War"></">CU"Y Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War

NEW YORK CITY, March 9 — About 15 students and professors at City College — part of the City University of New York (CUNY) — entered the annual Career Fair and brought the message to the college administration and the Army that fighting in imperialist wars is not a career option. Upon entering the Great Hall, campus security met us and announced that any type of protesting or anyone entering with anything remotely political would be escorted out.

At the fair, we saw the careers the administration and ruling class are offering working-class students as they raise our tuition and cut financial aid. Military and police recruiters dominated the Fair. Tables for the National Guard, Army, Marines, Air force, NYPD and State Troopers lined the row of "employers."

Some of us began distributing leaflets linking CUNY’s $500-a-year tuition hike to the Iraq war. We assembled next to the National Guard table, near a line of students who were having their resumés reviewed. We started chanting, "U.S. out of Iraq, Recruiters off our campus!" In three minutes, campus cops surrounded us and told us if we didn’t stop chanting we’d have to leave. We chanted even louder. Everyone in the Hall took notice.

The guards then threw us out of the Great Hall. We rallied in the hallway but were told we couldn’t protest there either, that we had to go outside in front of the building. Someone called to us, "Whose school?"; we replied "Our School!" This chant prompted students inside the fair to pump their fists in solidarity, forcing security to close the door to the Fair, isolating most of us from those inside.

Since they couldn’t get us to stop chanting or to leave and more students were assembling in the hallway, they started threatening to arrest us. We didn’t budge. They brutally arrested three people, throwing one on the floor and pushing his face into the wall. Another cop assaulted a second person from the back and his buddies stomped on him. The third was taking pictures and screaming at the cops, along with all of us, to let them go. We then distributed literature to all the students who were standing around.

We all made speeches in our classes, urging everyone to join a rally we were having the next day protesting tuition hikes and supporting the "Great Hall Three." They’re charged with misdemeanor counts of "assaulting an officer, resisting arrest" and "disturbing the peace."

The next day a vigorous picket line took place, joined by other students, including PLP, and the City College chapter of the faculty and staff union. The administration "answered" by arresting a professor — charging her with assaulting an officer — and suspending one student, while defending their fascist campus security.

While we weren’t able to kick the recruiters off the campus, in trying to silence us they’ve added more fuel to our fire. This class war is a long-term one. As the college administrations join more and more the bosses’ plans to militarize the entire society, the unity of workers, students and soldiers to build a mass communist movement is the road to end this system based on endless wars and of police state.

Union Misleaders Derail MUNI Work-Action

SAN FRANCISCO, March 13 — "Union Shuts Down Cable Cars"… "Wildcat"…"Strike"…"Job Action." On March 2, these were unusual headlines about this city’s Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 250a which covers all transit operators for SF MUNI. Drivers at many garages greeted this action with enthusiasm and solidarity. "Great!…Finally…See, we can do it…Let’s spread it!" "If anything happens to the cable car drivers we all should go out." "We can run the show, we can bring the City to a stop." Momentarily our potential power was a reality.

Then the cable car operators returned to work while the top Downtown TWU leadership negotiated. When "Union Apologizes for Job Action…" hit Friday’s headlines, drivers were pissed off — "Apologize for what? Can [General Manager] Burn’s discipline the union or the cable car operators?" But the Downtown TWU leadership frittered away a chance to stop service and pay cuts and a fare increase.

In appearance the union leadership called the job action because MUNI management refused to follow the contract in a grievance appeal for two cable car operators. But in essence the real cause of this action was general frustration and tremendous anger after nine months of continuous threats to cut wages and transit service, and raise MUNI fares. Drivers have constantly demanded a real plan for action from the union leadership. Frustration intensified when the transit bosses adopted a budget on Feb. 28 that cut $13.5 million in services, demanding labor "efficiencies" and $13 million in fare increases — but absolutely no increased revenue from downtown Big Business.

The Cable Car action came after a rumored "sick-out," and although unorganized, some workers stayed off at two work-sites. Management flipped at the very whiff of a MUNI "sick-out" and prepared contingency plans and counter-attacks. The Downtown TWU leadership attacked the rumored MUNI action as "unauthorized." Then they called the Cable Car action a few days later.

Management, City politicians and the media had poured gas on this potential fire for months. When the union leadership lit the match, the cable car drivers did the rest, pulling all cable cars into the garage and struggling for solidarity, to overcome individual concerns over losing pay.

We drivers have an unsolvable, antagonistic relationship to MUNI management and the Downtown Corporate Businesses that run SF. Their attacks on us stem from capitalism which dictates a widening war for Mid-East oil and tax cuts for the rich. This won’t go away by changing General Managers. Negotiations usually amount to lowering the wages and benefits of the newest and future workers, often our children, to pay for any improvement for more senior workers.

In discussions following these actions, communists in PLP have tried to encourage more workers to become leaders of our class. The lessons learned will last longer than any material gains.

True to form, the top union leadership didn’t spread the action or organize riders to join us, while refusing to challenge the right of Big Business to profit from our labors. Unions now function to negotiate the terms of our exploitation and contain our struggle. A work stoppage can change the power equation somewhat but the bosses will regroup to hit us again.

Management and the union leadership will exploit a divided workforce (along lines of "race," nationality, age, new hires vs. senior workers, different garages, etc.). We need an integrated PLP-led group that advances communist ideas, such as raising the class consciousness and unity of all workers — viewing transit as a service that’s vital to the working class; uniting with passengers, other city workers and all drivers.

We need organization, not spontaneity, to confront such a powerful enemy. Media-driven actions don’t work. In a war, we need a general staff to plan and evaluate the battles. Historically, communist parties have played this role.

Communists fight for the working class to take over so our class runs society and shares the fruits of our labors. Transit workers in a communist society would collectively decide, along with passengers and other workers, how to best meet everyone’s transit needs. Communism is the only alternative to the profit system.

Class Consciousness Wins One:

Boeing Union Resolution Supports Lockheed Strikers

SEATTLE — The union leadership tried to adjourn the last membership meeting early, but were shouted down, in a voice vote, by shop stewards and rank-and-filers determined to discuss unity with Lockheed Martin strikers. Twenty of us prepared a resolution supporting these workers who’ve taken the lead this contract season. The union mis-leaders feared going on record opposing solidarity, so they and their hangers-on abstained and the resolution passed unanimously. There’s still a deep yearning for class unity that can be tapped when we lead boldly or even when workers spontaneously fight back.

These 2,800 Marietta, Ga. workers struck mainly over a provision denying retiree health care benefits to newly-hired workers. "How can we ask someone to join the union and then slap them in the face!" said one Machinist, during the contract vote at which over 70% rejected the deal recommended by the IAM Local 709 leadership. Since the average age in the plant is 54, these workers struck for a workforce that largely has not even been hired yet. The strikers hit the bricks March 8 for the second time in three years.

Breaking the Pattern; Taking the Lead

These Marietta strikers broke the pattern set by the IAM and UAW in aerospace. Lockheed IAM Locals in Palmdale and Sunnyvale, CA as well as three UAW Boeing Locals already accepted similar contracts with the same provision dividing older from newer workers. "It’s very rare that you see the local of a union break from a pattern that’s been established in bargaining," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. (Fort Worth Star Telegram, 3/9)

The International sees the danger to their plans to guarantee production, particularly war production. "This could be the crack that will eventually blow apart the whole plan for a sellout," said a past union officer in Seattle, referring to the strike and our support resolution. Upcoming contracts at Boeing on September 1 and next year at the Forth Worth, TX. Lockheed plant hang in the balance.

The International has quickly moved to settle, while offering only lukewarm support for the strikers. "The majority has spoken at Local 709 and the international will support them," said John Crowdis, national IAM negotiator, "I’m disappointed we weren’t able to reach an agreement… They believe they’re fighting for what’s right." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/8) The union had already scheduled new talks for March 12.

Georgia U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson and Representative Phil Gingrey, both Republicans, have come to the aid of the International, warning that the timing of the strike was "unfortunate." (Columbus, Ga. Ledger-Enquirer, 3/9) They implied that production might be shifted to Lockheed’s Fort Worth plant by a Pentagon that wants cheaper weapons to run its "stunningly expensive war in Iraq" and other imperialist adventures. "It’s [Lockheed’s Marietta plant] an old facility in which the workforce is difficult to deal with," said Loren Thompson, a war analyst at the Lexington Institute. "I’m sure Fort Worth and St. Louis [Boeing subcontractor] are wondering what this strike means for them."

Conscious of Our Class’s Revolutionary Role

The broader implications of this strike-support resolution didn’t escape the rank and file at the meeting or those on the shop floor. After it passed, many stewards took copies back to their shops. A lower-level union functionary noted that the top union leadership was opposed to the strike. "This is really messed up," he complained.

"I hope there is no attempt to do anything like this with retiree medical care in our contract and I don’t care how you try to disguise it," said another retired member, who made a special trip to attend this meeting.

All agreed that the local leadership didn’t want to publicize this strike because it might upset their plans for the next contract, hence the attempt to adjourn the meeting before it arose. "This dishonesty pissed me off more than anything," said an assembler at lunch the next day. We vowed to write our own reports on this strike, not trusting the leadership to implement the reporting provisions of the resolution.

Class consciousness carried the day at this meeting. Given the bosses’ determination to steal our retirement, both private and public, to finance their imperialist wars, our class also needs to be conscious of our historical role. We industrial workers can help lead the way to revolution, where imperialist war and the need to steal from workers to finance these bloodbaths will be nothing but history. Then the only weapons we produce will be destined to support the working class.

FLASH — As expected, the IAM agreed to a new deal to shut down this pattern-breaking strike. Details were not released but the company is on record saying it would not reward Marietta strikers for rejecting the offers that others have accepted. Lockheed Local 709 members were under extreme pressure from the company, the government, the union hierarchy and the media, which claims there are larger numbers of scabs this time around than last time.

On March 15th, a tentative agreement was reached but the workers will remain on strike until the result of the vote is known.

General Strike Hits France to Keep 35-Hour Work-week

A massive general strike shook France on March 10, with mass marches across the country. Capitalism worldwide is trying to make workers pay for their crisis. One 32-year-old auto striker, Moussa, showed the anger and frustration which led to the strike:

"I’ve been working for the past two and a half years for Citroën, I make 1,200 euros [$1,600] a month. Management wants to force us to accept workless days paid at 60%, but I can’t accept that.…Management is offering to let us make up the workless days next year, but I don’t want to. The work conditions are too hard. We would have to work on Saturdays, in other words, six-day weeks, when we’re already really tired after four days! It’s hard on the assembly line. You have to be fast, patient, resilient, and the bosses keep us under pressure all the time…"

Philadelphia City Hall Scandal: ALL Politicians Are Crooks

PHILADELPHIA, March 12 — The scandal that has hit this city is just one more example of the kind of corruption found among all capitalist politicians, from mayors to governors to senators to presidents. We live under a system controlled completely by rich bosses. Mayor John Street answers to these people, not to the workers of Philadelphia.

Prior to the November, 2003 mayoral election, a listening device was found in the Mayor’s office, eventually revealing that the FBI was investigating the wide-spread "pay-to-play" scandal in the Street administration. "Pay-to-Play" means "if you want favorable action from City Hall, you’ll have to pay for it."

FBI involvement in such routine corruption doesn’t mean it has become a crime-fighting organization. The FBI is just as corrupt as the politicians. Street and his cronies have funneled hundreds of millions to themselves while claiming the city is "broke." This "investigation’s" purpose is to send a clear message to small-fry politicos that such sloppy selfishness won’t be allowed by the big capitalists who rule Philadelphia.

The fact is: (1) ALL politicians are crooks, no matter what their skin color; and (2) Counting on a black mayor to "do the right thing" is no different than letting a fox "guard" the chicken coop. When workers need higher wages or better mass transit, Street cries "poverty." But when the bosses want a downtown, no-tax, "enterprise zone" or a cut in their taxes, Street always claims it "benefits" the city. These anti-worker schemes create bosses’ benefits on workers’ backs.

Black politicians claim that because they’re black they’re "better." But black politicians are just as corrupt, anti-worker and pro-boss as white politicians. Many people voted for Street thinking he was "better" than Republican Sam Katz. But BOTH are hucksters. Only the color of their skin and the particular business people who back them are different. Neither has ever fought for workers’ interests.

The FBI just released a tape of a telephone conversation between Street and one of his cronies, Philadelphia lawyer Ronald White. White was up to his ears in the pay-to-play scandal but died last November before his trial began. Street and White were caught on tape discussing how they were "now forced to play the race card." These two-bit crooks want people to think they’re being attacked "just because we’re black." What hypocrisy! All mayors and city officials have enforced the real effects of racism: cops gunning down black teenagers at will as well as black people suffering from higher unemployment and lower wages. These guys couldn’t care less about the sufferings of any workers. Once again, nationalism gets you nowhere. Elections under capitalism are designed to maintain the capitalist system. They only give workers a choice of who will oppress them. Workers need internationalism and a communist system to smash all bosses and their politician servants.

Palestinian and Israeli Workers Must Unite to Tear Down Apartheid Wall

I was part of a 12-person U.S, medical delegation, including 10 Jews, wh ich recently returned from 11 days in the West Bank, occupied by Israel for 40 years. This was the latest of several trips to provide medical assistance and gather information, in partnership with Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. We found that Israel has created conditions for the Palestinians resembling the oppression Jews themselves have suffered in the past.

The most startling aspect of the Occupied Territories (OT), which include the West Bank and Gaza, is the overwhelming presence of the Israeli military and the Wall. There are over 700 checkpoints in an area the size of New Jersey. One cannot travel over 30 minutes without being stopped. Access to every city is controlled by concrete barriers and barbed wire, where people and vehicles must line up to be scrutinized by teenage Israeli soldiers with machine guns. No Palestinian can pass a checkpoint or leave his/her town without a permit. In 2003, only 56,000 permits were issued for a population of 2,300,000.

Israel plans to surround the entire OT with a 2-story-high wall, now over 1/3 complete. Although the OT border was decided in 1967 and labeled the "Green Line," Israel is building 85% of the wall inside this border, thereby seizing 11.5% of territory supposedly in the West Bank. This is partly to surround Israeli settlements illegally built throughout the Palestinian territory, and partly to capture the land on the western border containing the greatest underground water supply. Israelis and Palestinians have separate road systems, with the former able to whiz from the settlements to Israel on modern highways while the latter drive on indirect rutted roads.

The inability of people to move freely has a tremendous impact on health. Even pregnant women about to deliver must stop at checkpoints and may not be allowed to pass. Fifty-six births have occurred at these barriers, causing several deaths. Fearful of this, fewer women are getting pregnant; 30% of new-borns are delivered at home. Although several sophisticated tertiary care hospitals exist in the West Bank, patient access is virtually impossible.

A new medical school in East Jerusalem has an impressive faculty and student body, but days are lost as faculty and students try to travel from clinical settings to the school for lectures and exams. The medical library has no journals later than 2001; obtaining replacement parts for CT scanners can take over a month. Patients with chronic conditions like diabetes or kidney disease cannot get regular access to medications, specialists or dialysis, even if only a short distance from these centers. Up to 70% of children’s inoculations may be ineffective because the long delays in transit render the vaccines useless.

Israel has seized control of 90% of the water, so farmers’ crops wither while Israeli settlers enjoy swimming pools and gardens. Barriers block many farmers from their fields. Palestinians can’t work in Israel, which now imports "guest workers," creating an unemployment rate of over 50% in most Palestinian cities and villages. Two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line. Mental health and family relations suffer as children witness their parents being humiliated daily by soldiers and attacked by settlers.

The ostensible reason for this apartheid is to "protect Israel from terrorist attack," but terrorists do not cross checkpoints, and an agile person could easily skirt the barriers. Instead, the system degrades, impoverishes and humiliates all 3.5 million Palestinians and reinforces virulent racism among Israelis. Lack of contact between the two groups encourages nationalism and makes unified resistance very difficult.

There are fight-backs on both sides, sometimes uniting Israelis and Palestinians. Together, hundreds have gathered to harvest olives in barricaded groves or blocked or torn down sections of the fence and wall. Hundreds of Israeli students have refused to serve in the occupation; many have gone to prison. However, the so-called militant factions in Palestine, such as Hamas or the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, seem to fluctuate between cooperating with the Fatah party of Arafat and Abbas or launching terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. This is the nature of "national liberation" politics, followed by many OT activists.

The Israeli peace movement still believes Jewish persecution is "special" in the world, and that a Jewish state is needed to protect worldwide Jewry from present and future persecution. They don’t grasp the universal nature of racism and nationalism as bosses’ tools to oppress and divide workers and induce them to fight wars against each other. Many on both sides see Bush and Sharon as "special cases" of warmongers and fail to understand that U.S. imperialism’s need to control Mid-East oil will insure ongoing war and support for a militaristic Israel, no matter who’s in office.

In the 1970s, Israeli and Arab communists, friends of PLP, were building a revolutionary movement uniting workers in Israel and Palestine to fight for a united society without capitalism and racism. The politics of this small group was powerful enough for the Golda Meir regime to jail them for ten years. This movement must be rebuilt, based on the communist politics of fighting for multi-ethnic and international unity of all workers and youth. That’s the road out of the hell of endless wars and terror affecting the Middle East and the world.

600 Protest Racist LAPD Murder of Teenager;Boo Ex-Police Chief

LOS ANGELES, Feb 26 — Over 600 people marched to protest the LAPD police murder of Devin Brown. While politicians leading the march chanted "Stop the Killing," most marchers added, "LAPD, Stop the Killing!"

At the post-march rally, politicians tried to turn this outpouring of anger into a campaign opportunity for the Mayoral election. When mayoral candidate and ex-police chief Bernard Parks tried to co-opt this outrage, speaking about the "supposed excessive force" the police used against Devin Brown, many audience members booed and loudly expressed their anger at the word "supposed" in his speech. He barely stayed on stage for ten minutes.

Many bought CHALLENGE, agreeing that the bosses are increasing their terror because they fear the revolutionary potential of angry black and Latino youth in the military and in the factories.

Since this killing, the police killed 23-year-old Tony Diaz, shooting over 100 times into a moving vehicle. They claim he shot at them first, a story his friends refuted.

On May Day, PLP will march against racist police terror and the imperialist war in Iraq, calling for an alliance of workers, soldiers and students to fight for communist revolution to end these capitalist evils for good.

a name="Everyone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics">">"veryone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics

"The Myth of Ability," by John Mighton. Walker & Company, New York 2003.

Mighton is a University of Toronto math professor who demonstrates in this short book that all children are equally capable of learning mathematics — a principle — as will be seen — that can be applied to political development as well. Mighton disproves the almost universal belief that children differ in ability based on their genetic make-up.

He has developed a written program called JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) for teaching teachers how to teach — demonstrating that every child can be a prodigy, if taught correctly.

Mighton says the main aspect of correct teaching lies partly in the breaking down of mathematical ideas into the most basic elements, but mainly in convincing every child that she or he is capable of learning math at the same high level as the fastest students in the class. A student’s initial speed is generally a culmination of a series of events in early childhood, often not discoverable since it is interwoven in their daily lives. Nevertheless Mighton found that proper training can overcome these initial differences.

The main obstacle to learning math is discouragement after not succeeding immediately, stemming from teachers and parents falling for the myth that math ability is an innate genetic quality. Consequently, teachers and parents only reinforce the child’s discouragement when the latter doesn’t succeed immediately, crating a vicious circle in which success breeds success and failure breeds failure.

Mighton has written a JUMP program and taught it to hundreds of teachers and volunteers who are not necessarily mathematically trained themselves. The volunteers help teachers in Canada’s overcrowded classes, enabling entire classes of children — without exception — to succeed in math.

Mighton’s says no class should proceed until every child has grasped the current step. His methods include holding the interest of children who grasp a concept more quickly, and this changes from one step to the next.

Mighton has discovered that children’s intellectual development happens in discontinuous leaps and bounds. JUMP convinces teachers who initially believe that a particular child is incapable of learning that they were wrong. The implications of this approach go far beyond teaching children math. The principles apply to political work as well.

Part of the working class’s ability to win a revolution depends on its revolutionary Party becoming convinced that every worker is capable of learning to think as a dialectical materialist and to act as a communist. That every worker is capable of adopting a class outlook and understanding that capitalism is the source of almost all our problems. That every worker is capable of learning that only a revolution led by a revolutionary communist party, the PLP, can end the almost universal misery and horror of imperialism, racism, sexism, endless war and genocide.

PLP has adopted and developed this principle of universal political ability. However, capitalist propaganda about inherent ability and the dominance of one’s individual genetic makeup over her/his life partly undermines the conviction of many of us. Most professionals buy into that myth and lie. While PLP’s success in organizing workers, students and soldiers is a much greater antidote to this fatal capitalist concept, Mighton’s book is a partial antidote and can reinforce our resolve.

The ruling class — through research grants from its foundations, through think tanks, publishing houses and publicity in its mass media — fosters the belief that ability is innate and genetic. It serves the rulers’ interests for the working class and its children to believe they’re incapable of doing higher math or any kind of serious conceptual thinking, whether about science, literature or politics.

A recent U.S. governor’s conference bemoaned the fact that most high school students are ill-trained to cope with the technological world. They realize that they suffer from a shortage of scientists who can help develop increasingly sophisticated weaponry for the ruling class’s imperialist designs of control over the world’s oil supply and other resources, as well as over markets and labor supplies. The high school drop-out rate is also cutting into the ruling class’s ability to train workers to run the industrial machine. So they are looking for ways to train more, but not most, of the working class because generally they want to keep workers in the dark about their own abilities.

The book is particularly useful for PLP teachers and parents. It should help in struggles to improve the quality of teaching in the schools, a reform that is possible only to a very limited extent under capitalism, but can help organize working-class students for capitalism’s demise.

Concentration Camps: Second Nature to Capitalism (Conclusion of a five-part series.)

May 5 marks the 60th anniversary of the raising of the Red Flag over the Reichstag, the Nazi parliament in Berlin. Previous articles detailed OSS (predecessor of the CIA) recruitment of war criminals like SS Major Von Braun and other top Nazi scientists. They later became top honchos in NASA. Auschwitz and other concentration camps were used not only for the Nazi "final solution" but also to make super-profits for German industrialists. But the Nazis did not invent concentration camps; they are part and parcel of modern capitalism-imperialism.

The Southern slave plantations and Indian reservations in the U.S. preceded Auschwitz, murdering untold black and Native peoples. The Southern plantations resembled the Nazi labor camps, extracting huge profits from slave labor.

At the end of the 19th century, the British interned many thousands in concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer Wars. Actually many capitalist countries have used concentration camps at one time or another. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans were interned in camps in California and the Western U.S.

Today, U.S. bosses have their own concentration camps in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan, and even send prisoners to be tortured in other countries. Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has written a book entitled, "Guantánamo: What the World Should Know," comparing the U.S. interrogation camps in that naval base to the WWII Nazi camps. Ratner states that the 1949 Geneva Convention specifically bans such camps to mistreat "enemy combatants," that they should be treated as POWs. That Geneva agreement was meant to prevent Nazi-type atrocities.

The U.S. government refuses to recognize prisoners in Guantánamo and other camps in Iraq and Afghanistan as POWs, instead labeling them "enemy combatants": "There is no legal justification for what they do, it matters little what they call the prisoners," adds Ratner. "The U.S. interrogators don’t use the regular questioning methods demanded by the Geneva Convention. They harass prisoners from morning to evening, torturing them, using cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, violating international treaties."

Ratner recalls that the U.S. military in Afghanistan put hundreds of people arrested by the Northern Alliance (U.S. allies) in containers so densely packed that the prisoners literally lay on top of one another. The heat was unbearable. Then soldiers shot the containers full of holes, slaughtering several hundred prisoners inside.

To whose who know the history of capitalism, how it was born in blood worldwide — as Marx said in "The Genesis of Capital" — none of this is surprising. But many still believe the U.S. is fighting "for democracy" in the Muslim world, and that torture is committed by "bad regimes" (like Saddam’s). But concentration camps, torture and mass terror are universal aspects of capitalism. The cruelty and murder may vary according to particular situations, but whether it’s Auschwitz or Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo, terror and capitalism go hand-in-hand.

Bosses Desperate to Win Latin Youth for Its Imperialist Wars

In the U.S. Army’s latest TV commercial, a Latino youth is talking to his mother. "You taught me right from wrong; how to have confidence in myself. You want me to go to college," he says, trying to convince her of something. Soon the scene fades to blank with a big "Go Army" symbol and a phone number to call the recruiter.

The bosses are desperate for young Latino soldiers and for low-wage labor to work in their war-retooled industries. They’re campaigning to win Latin youth to believe the illusion that their future lies with U.S. imperialism. One of the bosses’ tricks is promoting new "American" heroes for us to die for.

In February, the City of San Antonio and corporate sponsors like Doritos organized a massive Martin Luther King Day march. Despite San Antonio being a racist city with a small black population, its MLK march of 60,000 was the country’s largest. In late March, San Antonio will sponsor a Caesar Chavez March.

To some, this seems like progress: the U.S. has recognized past racism and has become "more democratic." Many workers and students may march again to pay homage to these past struggles. But these marches are actually tools to fool workers into thinking freedom can be achieved through patriotic U.S. politics.

As head of the United Farm Workers (UFW), Chavez represented the powerful and connected, not the working class. During the Vietnam War, he argued that farm workers should rely on their class enemies, the federal government and the war-making Democratic Party, to win their rights. While militant farm workers organized to stop scabs, Chavez insisted upon pacifism, organizing boycotts that took workers far from the workplace — the site of their real power. Rank-and-file Mexican and Filipino workers tried to build unity, but Chavez promoted divisions. Most importantly, Chavez attacked undocumented workers.

The UFW organized vigilante squads to attack immigrants trying to cross the border, and required that workers wanting to join the union produce legal immigration papers. Chavez argued that U.S. workers would be better off if undocumented immigrants were barred from the U.S.

This divide-and-conquer line promoted U.S. nationalism — the idea that Chicanos were "better" than undocumented immigrants because they were born in the U.S. Yet ultimately farm workers were just as exploited as before. No wonder U.S. bosses are interested in promoting nationalists like Chavez to the working class. Facing declining Army enlistments, they hope to shovel large numbers of Latin youth into their army to fight and kill other workers in imperialist wars.

In Iraq, U.S. imperialists are fighting to keep oil away from their rivals. To justify this war, they claim they’re spreading "democracy" worldwide. Elevating union sellouts like Chavez as U.S. heroes is part of their effort to win workers to support U.S. imperialism. Workers and students must demand "U.S. out of Iraq!" and work to smash all imperialist wars and all nationalism with revolutionary communist internationalism. We should attend these marches with our friends to spread those ideas. We must challenge the bosses’ efforts to offer us heroes and holidays.

We should bring friends we meet at these bosses’ events to May Day — the working class’s real holiday. We celebrate the millions of working-class heroes who have stood for uncompromising unity against the racist and imperialist bosses.

LETTERS

Staying in for the Long Haul

My Senior Officers decided not to send me before the Captain for missing a day due to inclement weather. Their decision was based on what they perceive to be a change in my attitude towards the brass. They’re wrong; tactics may change, not the outlook.

A group of us had been struggling against a tyrannical Officer, managing to slow his attacks. However, the chain of command began to closely monitor my buddies and me. Usually, when you can’t report back on time for duty, you may be assigned extra duty. However, in my case, they took me before a Disciplinary Review Board.

At the hearing, the NCO (highest enlisted person) accused me of "skipping duty," having a "superiority complex" towards the Chain of Command and treating white superiors different from black superiors (even though some of my buddies who I’ve been struggling with are white). After the draconian hearing (essentially attempting to discipline an insubordinate worker), I decided on my own to either consciously disobey orders or leave the base. I left the base and met with a comrade.

He talked some sense to me — stay in it for the long haul, accept whatever discipline they hand out, momentarily hold back on directly attacking the brass, focus on building the base but don’t get too far ahead of them.

When I returned, several of my buddies (one white, one black) chastised me for leaving the base. They said I should have stayed and continued to struggle instead of running off. Both were right. Another buddy agreed with them. I felt my individualism had let down both my base and the collective by taking matters into my own hands instead of relying on my buddies and the Party for guidance.

Since the incident, while reducing direct attacks on the brass, I’ve continued to carefully distribute CHALLENGE and base-build. As a result, four buddies joined me at a local meeting about police brutality and some have committed to attend May Day.

I’ve learned that right now there are limits to our struggle, a practical feature of living under a bosses’ dictatorship. This has also taught me to have some patience and a stronger faith in the people I’m working with — to look to one’s base. I will continue to take a longer-term approach, knowing that we must stay in this struggle for the long haul in order to build a workers’ state. All Power to the Workers!

Red Soldier

Banning Unions Before They Start

When is a custodian not a custodian? Apparently, when he or she is not a member of a union. By labeling them "clean-up crews," public school districts have been able to keep some of the most essential workers without union protection, and in some cases without contracts. According to a number of school representatives, workers who are not already in a union are not to be labeled custodians.

In the local school system I attended, the custodians, teachers’ aides and typists had gone three years without a contract, despite mass support from both faculty and staff. This increasingly common practice is forcing thousands of workers into low-paying jobs without benefits or decent working conditions.

A friend who is a part-time custodian at an upstate New York school told me about some of his experiences. First, it’s stated up front that no employees shall join or form a union. Secondly, part-time workers are sometimes forced to stay until 10:00 P.M. (well beyond their normal shift, thus extending beyond legal part-time hours) but are denied contracts. Raises were promised every six months depending on job performance evaluation; however, no evaluation was ever made — therefore, no raise.

My friend told me about a worker who was the model employee: he stayed late when needed, never called in sick or took personal days, always worked to the best of his abilities and never complained. The only time he missed work was to look after his sick child. Apparently, under his contract as a full-time custodian, he had exhausted his sick days (which he had been forced to use not for himself, but for his child) and was fired on the spot.

Abuses like this against workers happen all the time, many of whom are unaware of their rights as workers. Upon hearing this, I gave my friend pamphlets on workers’ rights and offered him some copies of CHALLENGE to distribute amongst his fellow workers. He was more than happy to take them and told me that the others would be very excited to read them. I’m awaiting a report on the situation and remain ready and willing to do whatever it takes to help them in their cause.

A new comrade

a name="A ‘Life-Changing’ Experience"></">A "Life-Changing’ Experience

On February 26th, my family and I went to a CHALLENGE/May Day Dinner at a friend’s house. I was the only high school student among many adults and children. Little did I know my eyes would be opened to all the hardships we must endure, everyday things we take for granted. Amid all the eating and hanging out, suddenly a conversation began about the things happening in our world, ranging from the war in Iraq to personal issues. I discovered many problems we don’t know about but need to be researched.

The people at the dinner are very involved in workers’ struggles, in spreading the truth and their ideas on what’s going on. Newspapers only give some of the facts. Who better to hear the truth from than those who actually live it?

We heard that CHALLENGE is written by the working class and has information we can’t get from a regular newspaper. It also teaches workers and students how to fight back.

Amid my amazement, the new May Day DVD was played. I marched on May Day four years ago but didn’t know much about why we were marching. This discussion revealed the importance of the march. I noticed people of all ages participating. I was inspired by all those people standing together, fighting for one cause, particularly by all the youth my age. It made me question what I’m learning in school. The video made me think, "Why shouldn’t I be able to stand up against the cruelty of racism and sexism in the work-place, my school and in my daily life? Why can’t I stand up against police brutality? WHY?" The dinner answered my question: "Why not?"

In the video a woman said she attended May Day as a "present" from her best friend. When she continued "…and it’s the best present I could ever get," it struck me that the ability to stand up to what others might fear is life-changing.

One person at the dinner said cops had approached her son after he greeted his friends and accused him of purchasing drugs. So many emotions ran inside me hearing that. Her son is my age. Now I want to let people know my opinions on people’s struggles and about my own. We made plans to organize a CHALLENGE student study group and involve my friends.

We’re off to a good start. Thirteen May Day DVDs and many CHALLENGES were distributed. I’m happy knowing that I too can contribute to the objectives of CHALLENGE and its supporters.

Bronx high school student

a name="Youth’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference">">"outh’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference

Some friends and I helped lead a workshop at the Educators to Stop the War Conference. I really enjoyed it. It was good to learn things about topics I never would have otherwise. I also was able to present a speech about my feelings as a youth growing up in New York, about my experience at a college fair, and what I face in the future if this society remains the same.

I liked the reaction to my speech. Many people asked a lot of questions and were interested in what I had to say, including my view that capitalism offers no future to youth, that we need a communist revolution.

I think it’s important for more youth to become active in the type of work my friends and I have been exposed to. We’re taken more seriously as young adults who matter, who have important things to say. The conference was very beneficial for others to see three young panelists who care enough to take action; and for us to see adults who care about the youth.

High School Red

a name="Women ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’"></">Wo"en ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’

Solidarity greetings on International Women’s Day (IWD) from political prisoners in Peru.

Women along with our male brothers must carry forward the struggle for common interests, not reducing them to gender, and fight for a better material and spiritual life. United we must break the chains that bind us. And as women suffering double oppression, we clearly see the need to break them.

In primitive communities life was not ruled by economic or social pressures. Those pressures came with slave societies (Greece, Rome, Ancient Egypt) where a state apparatus was formed. This led to women’s first major defeat, the end of matriarchal society, turning men against us. Women entered domestic servitude, beholden to their husbands, even though both belonged to the same social class. The state, religion and the family structure were used to keep women down.

We’re never told that women discovered agriculture because their daily duties led them to see how seeds sown into earth developed and flourished. Just this fact exposes how the role of women in history’s social and economic development is always ignored.

The church continued this oppression. "St." Thomas de Aquinas labeled women the "embodiment of the devil, perverse," helping keep women oppressed and ignorant. Feudalism maintained women in domestic chores, without the right to learn reading and writing In many societies women had to walk behind men.

The 20th century saw women joining the struggle for social emancipation of all. The great revolutions of the last century helped spur the fight against oppression of women. Their participation in production as workers and the great social upheavals helped women not only to fight for many rights which they deserved but also for the need to share everything with their fellow male workers. The idea that women hold half the sky helped shatter the narrow concept that it was just a gender fight, but rather one for total liberation from class oppression.

We are always fighting to break the isolation and rules our jailers have imposed on us here. Our comrade Myriam suffers very inhuman total isolation from the rest of us, even after 10 years of imprisonment.

These are our brief comments on IWD. We hope you succeed in your goals, and would appreciate any help in ending our isolation.

Revolutionary prisoners, Chorrillos, Lima, Peru

CHALLENGE COMMENT: The struggle for the liberation of women and all workers is linked to the struggle to defeat capitalism in all its forms: free market, state capitalist, Christian or Islamic fundamentalist. The defeat of the international revolutionary movement has been very costly for all workers in Peru and worldwide. But the struggle will continue, this time for a communist society where men and women will finally be freed from all forms of oppression.

a name="‘Million Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature"></">‘M"llion Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature

The letters in CHALLENGE (3/16) regarding the review of "Million Dollar Baby" (3/2) were unnecessarily negative. The comrade from the "Frozen North" deserves a great deal of credit for analyzing a bit of capitalist culture, especially since such critiques are rare in CHALLENGE.

Resources are in short supply I’m sure; and, true, the review could have been longer and more explanatory. However, the letter writers’ missed the comrade’s correct point: capitalism chooses what to portray and how to express the portrayal. In this case Eastwood created a film in the genre of hopelessness, a sub-species of the main genre: collective struggle is impossible. Daytime TV specializes in this field, particularly the "innocent victim" variety.

Capitalist culture is intended to manipulate the audience to accept a particular view of "human nature": greedy, helpless, mired in religious superstition, pointlessly brutal and rescued only by a "hero." Clearly the letter writers were profoundly affected by this manipulation.

In the absence of Communist culture, PLP should be destructively critical of the capitalist view of "human nature" in all its media forms. Instead of being "gut wrenchingly" moved, workers might become angry at such insidious manipulation.

A long-time reader

a name="Eastwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled">">"astwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled

My friends and I think the movie "Million Dollar Baby" is fascist because it promotes euthanasia or murder of disabled people. The working class is under attack, and our disabled, ill and elderly are the most vulnerable. Politicians discuss taking apart Social Security and Medicare; Medicaid and in-home support services are slashed; millions have no access to health care whatsoever; and the bosses’ wars disable more people daily. So what does Hollywood offer us? Death in the form of an unlikely injury with suicide as the only reasonable resolution.

Director and millionaire Clint Eastwood is no friend of the disabled. Angered by a lawsuit against a hotel he owns where restrooms were inaccessible, he testified before Congress against the Americans with Disabilities Act, calling it "a form of extortion." He’s made a movie in which no one on the hospital staff offers support, counseling or medication to someone struggling with depression from a new and devastating injury. Eastwood’s message is clear: life with disability is without value and better ended. This was a position implemented by the Nazis in the 1930’s and extended to the elderly and other "undesirables."

In the article, "Why Disability Studies Matter," Leonard J. Davis points out, "It’s a lot easier to make a movie in which we weep for the personal defeat of a person who loses a leg or two, or cry with joy for the triumph of an individual with disabilities, than it is to change the whole way we as a society envision, think about, and deal with people who are disabled." As workers and organizers, we need to learn to look beyond individual problems to societal causes. Disability is a part of life that sooner or later touches us all. How can we raise these issues with our friends, neighbors, and co-workers? How would a communist society deal with and integrate those with illness and limitations?

a name="Reviewer’s Response">">"eviewer’s Response

I don’t think my review of "Million Dollar Baby" (CHALLENGE, 3/2) deserved such nasty, uncomradely attacks as printed in CHALLENGE (3/16). One writer says the Morgan Freeman character was anything but an uncle tom: "He could have been any color." That’s true, and Freeman is a good actor, but he was chosen for the role, I contend, for the same reason a black actor was chosen to play the betraying Judas in "Jesus Christ, Superstar." In whose interest was making the bad guy in that movie black? Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice do their fascist jobs very well, regardless of their color, but anyone who doubts that the rulers use them for other motives is sadly naïve. Would it be wrong to call them uncle toms?

My examining the two vicious black fighters and comparing them to Freeman’s character suggested his was not the best way a black character might have acted. He accepts with an ironic smile an incredibly racist, though naïve, remark from one fighter. Couldn’t he have explained to the guy that he was a victim of racist propaganda, but should watch his mouth in the future? Apparently Eastwood felt this would have been wrong. (Freeman was right in beating up a black fighter who had been sadistically pounding on the same man who called Freeman the "n" word. But from a structural point of view, what did this imply?)

A comrade once told me a southern guy he worked with said to a terrific black co- worker, "If I ever use a word that offends you, please forgive me. That’s how I was raised." The black worker replied: "Sure, and if I wind up punching you out, please understand that’s how I was raised." Which irony do you prefer?

Also, I don’t see that Eastwood’s previous openness as a fascist figure has been modified, either by this movie or "The Unforgiven," A friend suggested I see "Unforgiven." When I told a friend I thought Eastwood’s a fascist, the friend said, "He was a fascist, but here he’s apologizing for it." After seeing it I told him, "Unforgiven’s more fascistic." In the last scene when Eastwood’s riding out of town, one of the bad has a perfect shot at Eastwood’s retreating back but doesn’t fire. This simply implies he’s a Nazi "superman." Many people watch movies and think they’re just looking in someone’s window. No! Writers and directors are using a general over-riding metaphor — called by fascist poet T.S. Eliot "the objective correlative."

I don’t think the movie is an "indictment of boxing," or that it’s a "great film," though my review said it was generally well-made and well-acted. Which makes it even worse, having more power to suck us in. "The Godfather" was a great movie, but I have no illusions about its not being racist, anti-Semitic, pro-business and ultimately fascist. It was wonderfully written, made and acted, and its power is what I have against it. More so than this movie, which — except for what happens to Maggie — is a fairly trite story, and not at all anti-boxing. (If the film had continued the rise of Maggie’s character, there essentially wouldn’t have been a movie.)

Why didn’t anyone attack my point about the disgusting anti-white working-class message of the film? Doesn’t that matter? My charge of racism against black people was denied, not answered.

The tone of the letters is the way to shut people up. It takes more thought and political arguing than is shown by saying, "I liked it." So what? I somewhat liked it too, until after some thought I separated what it says from how it says it. Hollywood, and especially Eastwood, with his pro-vicious cop, anti-people persona he carries around like a third arm, poisons and deludes good people. I think the two fans fall into this category. Cleaning up at the Oscars further proves my point.

Perhaps I’m way off in my analysis, but don’t question my motives: prove me wrong. If you only want people to repeat what they "feel," you’re not going to have any dialogue at all. You can’t learn without struggle.

North Country Red

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Excerpts from mainstream newspapers exposing a bit of the true nature of the system

Poll makes Marx a Founding Father

Most adults haven’t read the Constitution since grade school….

Another recent survey found that two out of three Americans believe that Karl Marx’s blueprint for communism — "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" — is part of this nation’s defining document. (L.A. Times)

Iraq shows limits of US power

A low-tech enemy force estimated at about 10,000 fighters has stymied the mightiest military establishment the world has ever seen. To be sure, the adversary cannot defeat us militarily. But neither can we defeat it…

The actual limits of American power now lay exposed for all to see…. (LA Times, 2/23)

Vets left uninsured and homeless

But when a vet does return to home and hearth you might suppose that at the very least he would be well cared for. Forget it. The president has reduced the income threshold for entitlement to health care. Now if you earn more than $25,000 from all sources, you’re medically on your own. Consequently whole regiments of vets have no health insurance at all, while damage to their lungs, brains and nervous systems is not considered "service-connected." Nor are there any longer housing programs, so traumatized vets are homeless far beyond their ratio in the community. (Liberal Opinion Week, 3/2)

Over $500 billion yearly for army

To fund the war machine needed to push foreign policy objectives in the Middle East and to guarantee military dominance in the world….[yearly] spending will rise to $419.3 billion, not including the $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, and billions more for the military hidden in other agency budgets.

U.S. military spending is now larger than the rest of the world’s combined. The second largest is by China, at $51 billion….

Double death rate for black men

Middle-aged black men are dying at nearly twice the rate of white men of a similar age, reflecting lower incomes and poorer access to health care, a study has found….

The death rate for black men ages 45 to 54 was 1,060 per 100,000 in 2000, compared with a rate of 503 for white men. (NYT, 2/10)

Inter-imperialist rivalry heating up

Adm. William Fallon,…to become commander, U.S. Pacific Command said…the United States must closely watch China’s "unprecedented" growth in military spending and maintain a "credible" deterrence against North Korea to facilitate six-party nuclear talks.

"Although the economic relationship between the United States and China is expanding, we must gain greater insight into China’s growth in military spending, its intentions toward Taiwan, and its regional strategy in Asia and the Pacific," Fallon said….

…Fallon said the planned U.S. military global realignment will not affect the capabilities to defend South Korea and Japan and to deal with a possible crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

As for the stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, Fallon said, "The U.S. Pacific Command’s job is to facilitate ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at addressing the threat, while maintaining a credible deterrent posture." (Navy Times, 2/28)

Afghans’ abusers set up Abu Ghraib

Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public….

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said….

…The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there. (NYT, 3/12)

‘Democracy’ serves Big Business

Watching the 109th Congress, one would be forgiven for thinking our Constitution was the blueprint for a government of Big Business, by Big Business and for Big Business….

Here’s the agenda….First, limit people’s power to right wrongs done to them by corporations. Next force people to repay usurious loans to credit card companies that make gazillions off the fine print. Then, for coup de grace, hand over [U.S.] history’s most successful public safety net [Social Security] to Wall Street.

Of course,…."Tort reform," "eliminating abuse of bankruptcy" and "keeping Social Security solvent" are the preferred Beltway phrasings for messing with the little guy. (LA Times, 2/23)

1. Fallout Among Imperialist Thieves:
   Bush Trips Over Europe's Bosses' Flirtation with China
2. The $4.6 Trillion Swindle: War Budget Is Killing Social Security
3. Bush Energy Czar Serves Big Oil
4. U.S. Rulers' Nuclear Arms Deadly for GI's, Iraqi Civilians
5. Rally Against Fascist Frame-Up of Lynne Stewart
6. Boeing Boss's Nationalist BS Falls Flat
7. Jailing of Boeing Swindler Won't Help Workers
8. Fight Airport Bosses' Racist Attack on Immigrant Workers
9. Roxbury Students, Faculty Back Vets Opposing Iraq War
10. Stroger Hospital Workers Fight for Anti-Racist Contract
11. Sailor Brings History of U.S. Racism to Navy Buddies
12. LA Elections: Democrats Line Up Behind Racist Warmakers
13. Racism Over Cop Murder of LA Youth Mirrors U.S. Slaveowners
14. Liberal Democrats Grease Path for Slimeball Negroponte
15. Building PLP in El Salvador
16. Iraqi Oil Workers Oppose Occupation's Anti-Union Attacks
17. Robots Won't Solve U.S. Bosses' `Vietnam Syndrome'
18. Nazi Concentration Camps:
    Model For Capitalist Factories
19. LETTERS
    1. Condemn Killings of Iraqi Unionists
    2. Nazis Bolstered Argentine Fascism
    3. Workers Agree: Rebellions Looming
    4. FIght Stewart Verdict As `Legal' Fascism
    5. Building Worker-GI-Student Alliance
    6. Anti-Communists Spread Lies About Stalin
    7. CHALLENGE's Jab At `Million Dollar Baby' Missed Target
    8. More Million Dollar Baby
20. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Violence vs. recruiters grow in US
    2. `Democracy' blocks workers' will
    3. Chinese die of fever cured by Reds
    4. One reason TV is replacing reading
    5. Making a joke of the next war
    6. How to save Medicare: Die Sooner
    7. New East Europe: Profits, poverty
    8. Money talks in danger-drug vote
    9. `Liberated' by US, Afghans suffer

---

Fallout Among Imperialist Thieves:
Bush Trips Over Europe's Bosses' Flirtation with China

Europe's disputes with the U.S. over China and Iran point to the future shape of grand alliances, as competition among the world's imperialists sharpens. Bush's trip to Europe highlighted two quarrels. Despite U.S. objections, the European Union (EU) will lift its ban on selling arms to China. And the EU will offer diplomatic bribes and business deals to a nuke-bent Iran, while the U.S. threatens armed force. It appears that China, Europe (essentially France and Germany) and Iran envision a long-term strategic partnership directly opposed to the U.S. The other major players are Russia and India. Bush's talks with Putin failed to dampen Russia's nuclear aid to Iran or its plans to keep Europe beholden to a nationalized Russian oil and gas industry. Energy-hungry India will side with the power that can guarantee it decades of supplies, most likely the Russia-Iran camp.

Oil and gas lie at the heart of the imperialists' struggle. But the stakes go beyond energy. What's looming is a re-division of the world like the one Lenin described in "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism," on the eve of World War I. China desperately needs fuel for its rapidly growing economy. Last year it signed a $100-billion 25-year deal with Iran for liquefied natural gas. And for China to control the sea lanes that supply it, "intelligence projections [indicate] that the size of the Chinese fleet could surpass that of the United States Navy within a decade." (New York Times, (2/18)

For European rulers, ending the arms ban represents far more than a business deal. The CIA fears, "A China armed with weapons technologies from Europe facing American forces in the South China Sea could forever change the post-cold war geopolitical order. Growing links with China could eventually shift EU allegiance away from the 60-year-old transatlantic status quo: An EU-China alliance, though still unlikely, is no longer unthinkable." (London Financial Times, 2/10) A nuclear Iran, friendly to the EU and China, would further weaken U.S. rulers' grip on Saudi Arabia and Iraq. U.S. rulers have proved willing to spill barrels of workers' blood to retain these treasures.

The imperialists slaughtered hundreds of millions of workers in the 20th Century, carving up the globe into spheres of influence. This murder for profit will continue until a mass, international PLP leads a communist revolution. For now, the capitalists have the upper hand, and aligning their forces for inter-imperialist battle is the order of the day.

Irwin Seltzer of the Hudson Institute warns, "We are witnessing nothing less than the geo-politicalization of the world's oil and gas industry. Governments rather than traditional commercial enterprises are taking control. And those governments have interests hostile to America's. China is forging closer economic and political ties in the Middle East, and not only because it needs more oil. Its rapidly increasing trade with Iran is not the ordinary buying and selling of profit-driven companies....A new supply of oil and a chance to thumb its nose at the American embargo are an irresistible combination for this emerging superpower."

The Hudson Institute speaks mainly for Wall Street investors worried about dwindling U.S influence in Europe. Seltzer continues, "Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been developing a new policy instrument to reassert Russian power, Russian gas and oil-exporting companies that already all but dominate Europe's energy. According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020 natural gas will account for 62% of Europe's energy consumption, and Russia will supply two-thirds of that gas. This has more than commercial consequences. When Gerhard Schroder told a television audience that Putin was a `dyed-in-the-wool democrat,' the German chancellor was indicating he was not prepared to bite the hand that controlled the valves of the pipelines that warmed his country. Germany already gets 35% of its oil and 40% of its gas from Russia, figures that will increase as it pursues its policy of winding down its nuclear power industry." (London Sunday Times, 1/30)

India, predicted to soon surpass China in population, has long been allied politically with Russia. Energy requirements are leading India, like China, into direct competition with the U.S. for cheap Middle East oil. Chevron Texaco's CEO David O'Reilly said in a February 15 speech in Houston, "We're seeing the beginning of alliances between Asian entities and Middle East entities for the long term. It's very important that our government recognize that." By "government" O'Reilly means Bush, the Pentagon, and the entire U.S. war machine.

The working class also has its marching orders: build a mass international revolutionary party -- the communist PLP. Then workers, soldiers and students worldwide can marshal their forces to turn the endless wars leading to another imperialist world war and the plague of capitalism into a revolutionary war for communism. It's a long hard road, but every step we take helps. Marching on May Day and increasing CHALLENGE circulation will shorten that road.

The $4.6 Trillion Swindle: War Budget Is Killing Social Security

The debate over Social Security masks a trillion-dollar swindle that's been pulled off for nearly four decades by every Democratic and Republican president who has occupied the White House. The crisis is not of Social Security, but of U.S. capitalism, mired in a multi-trillion dollar debt resulting from 40 years of military spending for imperialist wars in Vietnam, Grenada, Central America, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq and more, that has stolen at least $2 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund. The forecast is that it will steal another $2.6 trillion over the next ten years.

In 1968, the Johnson Administration's spending on the U.S. invasion of Vietnam was spinning the Federal budget into bottomless debt. The Social Security Trust Fund's income from payroll taxes was exceeding the amount paid out to retirees. So the Johnson gang figured out a way to "balance the budget" by "folding" what was then a few billion dollars in Social Security surplus into what would now be called the Unified Federal Budget, even though it was illegal to take money from the Trust Fund and spend it for purposes other than Social Security.

By this sleight of hand, Johnson was able to announce a "surplus," masking the federal deficit generated by the enormous expenses of the Vietnam War. To avoid the appearance of stealing the Trust Fund's surplus, the government gave the Fund Treasury notes equal to what it "borrowed," and promised to pay it back with interest. This scheme laid the basis for what is now a $2 trillion debt owed to Social Security.

By the early 1980's, Reagan's military budget was running wild and the federal deficit was soaring. The Unified Federal Budget meant that any surplus from Social Security could be used "to pay for everything from jet fighters to thumb tacks." (NY Times, 1/21/90)

Reagan set up a commission, headed by current Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which proposed -- and the Democratic-controlled Congress passed -- an increase in Social Security taxes to 12.4% (6.2% of wages combined with 6.2% of the payroll contributed by employers) so the Baby Boomer generation would be able to collect Social Security when it started retiring. The share paid by employers is actually the workers' money since our labor produced it.

The Greenspan Commission pulled off a neat trick. The Reagan Administration was cutting the income tax rates for the rich -- down from 70% to 28%. While corporate income taxes fell by 23%, Social Security taxes rose 23%. "The burden of taxation was shifted from the income tax to the Social Security tax...[75%] of all Americans now pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in income taxes. [Therefore]...the expenses of government are financed more by a tax on the poor and the middle class and less by a tax on the wealthy." (NY Times, 1/21/90)

The Social Security surplus grew sharply and is now running at $200 billion a year. These surpluses, as part of the "Unified" Federal Budget, help pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and make the federal deficit appear smaller than it really is.

"Since 1983, American workers havebeen paying more into Social Security than it has paid out in benefits, $1.8 trillion more...So what has happened to that $1.8 trillion? The...payments have all been spent." (NY Times, 2/20/04) Another $200 billion of surplus was gobbled up in 2004. According to Bush's 2004 Social Security "reform" proposal, "Surpluses in the Social Security Trust Funds will total $2.6 trillion over the next ten years."(A Blue print For New Beginnings,

whitehouse.gov/news/usbudget/blueprint/bud04)

That means by 2015 the Federal government will owe the Trust Fund $4.6 trillion in accumulated surpluses.

Now Bush & Co. want to push Social Security further into the hole by setting up private accounts, swelling the coffers of the Wall Street investment houses who'll handle these accounts. This will require either an older retirement age, benefit cuts for future retirees or both, to make up for the shortages this "reform" will create. Bush even had the gall to tell black community and religious leaders they should support his "reform" because black people have a shorter life span than whites, and therefore many never even collect Social Security. These "leaders" didn't even protest Bush's use of U.S. capitalism's racism -- the cause of these shortened lives -- as a "positive" aspect of his "reform" proposal. (See CHALLENGE, 2/16.)

The Democrats are crying "foul," but it was Johnson, Carter and Clinton, just as much as Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, who spent trillions of Social Security surpluses on wars and corporate welfare instead of preserving them for future retirees who paid for their retirement with the tax increases passed 20 years ago.

Capitalism will always try to solve its crises on the backs of the workers, who produce all value in society. This will continue until the working class, led by its revolutionary communist party, destroys the bosses' state power and establishes a communist society here retired workers will be provided for by the social value produced by our entire class. Profits and imperialist wars will not be part of that picture.

Bush Energy Czar Serves Big Oil

Samuel Bodman, Bush's new energy secretary, has loyally served the Eastern Establishment wing of U.S. imperialism all his adult life. Fresh out of MIT in 1965, Bodman joined American Research & Development as technical director. ARD channeled Boston bosses' venture capital into high-tech start-ups making products with military applications. ARD launched computer pioneer Digital.

At ARD, Bodman trained under General Georges Doriot. Starting in 1940, Doriot helped plan U.S. industrial mobilization for World War II as deputy director of R&D for the War Department. Bodman later became president of Boston's blueblood Fidelity, the world's largest mutual fund. Mutual funds concentrate scattered wealth into the hands of a few finance capitalists, who in turn, put it to uses -- like imperialist war -- that serve the capitalist class as a whole. After Fidelity, Bodman took the helm of the Cabot Corporation, a chemical and energy company owned by a family synonymous with U.S. imperialism. The first famous Henry Cabot Lodge championed the U.S. invasion of Spanish territories in 1898. The next one helped the U.S. carry out genocide in Vietnam.

Bodman will put the war needs of imperialist giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco ahead of the interests of the U.S. coal companies and small oil drillers that his predecessor Spencer Abraham tried to serve. Chevron boss David O'Reilly was speaking directly to Bodman when he said, "we need alignment of energy policy with other policies central to our national interest -- environmental, economic, trade, and national security." (Houston speech, 2/15)

U.S. Rulers' Nuclear Arms Deadly for GI's, Iraqi Civilians

There's a nuclear war raging, and it's in Iraq. Considering the tons of depleted uranium (DU) used by the U.S. military, "The Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war." (S.F. Bay View, 2/2/05).

"The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence," according to Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law. "Of the 580,000 soldiers who served in...the first Gulf War,...11,000 are now dead! By...2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability," reports Bernklau. "This astounding number of `Disabled Vets' means that a decade later, 56% of these soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!" Disability rates in 20th century wars were 5%. In Vietnam it was 10%.

Marion Fulk, a nuclear chemist who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and worked on the Manhattan Project that constructed the first atomic bomb, says the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers in the current Iraq war is "spectacular." Bernklau reports that, "This malady [Gulf War Syndrome] from uranium munitions, that thousands...have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness." (Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169)

A special report published by scientist Leuren Moret ("Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets. A death sentence here and abroad") named DU as the definitive cause of the Gulf War Syndrome.

Of course, these figures of DU-caused deaths of U.S. soldiers in the first Gulf War, the bombing of Iraq throughout the 1990's and the current Iraq war -- put in "harm's way" by the administrations of Bush, Sr., Clinton and Bush, Jr. -- does not include hundreds of thousands of deaths of Iraqi civilians. They will be affected for decades by the DU embedded in the ground from bombs rained down on the country.

When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for "destroying things and people,"Fulk was specific: "I would say it's the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!"

Rally Against Fascist Frame-Up of Lynne Stewart

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 17 -- Tonight about 500 people attended a rally in a community church here as part of a "national day of outrage" protesting the conviction of defense attorney Lynne Stewart. PLP members sold over 100 CHALLENGEs. The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and the National Lawyers Guild organized the event. Following a panel of speakers, there was a speak-out from the audience.

Several speakers, including Stewart, said this case marks a leap forward in fascist moves by the ruling class. The whole post-9/11 atmosphere was used in the trial to "persuade" the jury to railroad Stewart. Prosecutors charged that Stewart's act of issuing a press release on behalf of her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, made her and one of her co-defendants guilty of "supporting terrorism." No violence resulted from the release of this statement. Stewart was really convicted because the prosecution highlighted her anti-U.S. government politics. This verdict is an attack on anyone and everyone who militantly opposes imperialism, racism, and other attacks on the working class.

However, the political outlook of the meeting's organizers is a defensive strategy for fighting back. Although developments in the U.S. were compared to those in Nazi Germany, there was no real attempt to show the historical role of the working class, particularly under communist leadership, in defeating fascism. And growing U.S. fascism was not placed in the context of the worldwide conflicts that give rise to it. So, without such an alternative approach, we're left with liberal outrage and demands for the return of stolen civil liberties.

At least two speakers did point out the connection between this case and U.S. rulers' imperialist war plans. One said the Hart-Rudman report, written before 9/11, devised the concept of "homeland security." He said the bosses need a national security police state in order to mobilize the population to support Mid-East oil wars. Stewart's conviction reflects how the capitalists' control of state power is being used to further these goals. The only real alternative to the police state and endless wars of capitalism is to build a mass communist-led movement to fight for a system without any bosses: communism.

The Stewart case provides a great opportunity -- and responsibility --for PLP'ers to point out to our friends the role of the state under capitalism, and other communist ideas. We should raise this case in all the organizations we belong to and activate many workers and students to participate in the fight back. We can organize Party forums to discuss the case, and all political questions linked to it. We should also try to bring out as many people as possible to a rally outside the U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan on the day of Stewart's sentencing this September.

Boeing Boss's Nationalist BS Falls Flat

"Don't you want to be number one?" asked the big boss at a general meeting of hundreds of Boeing workers, pleading with us to shout back our approval. He had just finished detailing how Europe's Airbus was "beating" Boeing. We've never had a presentation like this before, but the biggest shock was our answer: dead silence, a silence that spoke volumes.

"We need a little more enthusiasm!" he prodded. Now we were getting angry so he dropped the whole subject and sent us back to work.

This presentation was slick, professional and computerized, indicating it was prepared at the corporate level. No doubt all Boeing workers are being subjected to this nationalist "pep-talk."

Workers Ponder Propaganda Change

The next day a group of us pondered what all this meant. "This has nothing to do with us," said one Machinist, "It's all about Boeing and Airbus corporate [biggest bosses]."

"I was going to say something about those figures," said another, referring to how Airbus reinvests twice as much as Boeing in airplane manufacture.

"Yeah, but maybe that silence was the best answer!" offered a third, to laughs all around.

Usually, the bosses' propaganda focuses on production metrics, promising that our security lies in meeting production goals. This was the most overt attempt ever to whip us up against a foreign rival.

This nationalist appeal fell flat with this group. But have no illusions; the bosses and their labor lieutenants haven't given up. In fact, as reported in the last CHALLENGE, the union leadership plans a big nationalist campaign during the contract fight.

We must increase the circulation of our paper to answer this company/union propaganda. We plan to rebuild our CHALLENGE networks during the contract fight, the summer project and over the next year -- equaling the level we had preceding the recent layoffs. We have our own metrics: CHALLENGE sales indicate internationalist, communist politics are being considered as an alternative.

(Next issue: "How the fight against racism dovetails with the fight against nationalism," and "War reorganization marches on with the sale of the huge Wichita plant.")

Jailing of Boeing Swindler Won't Help Workers

Michael Sears, former Boeing Co. chief financial officer, was sentenced to four months in prison February 18 for illegally hiring an Air Force official, who was simultaneously awarding the company an aerial tankers contract worth billions. The scandal-ridden deal has since been withdrawn.

"Four months at the country club," was the cynical response of workers at our plant. Even if just four months in the worst dungeon, we should have no illusions that this sentence was motivated by the desire to seek justice.

The bosses have embroiled us in a "stunningly expensive war in Iraq." They've tried to substitute high-tech weapons for larger numbers of committed troops, which, apparently, the bosses don't have and can't recruit any time soon. The ruling class intends to pay for these weapons by mainly attacking the working class, but they're also disciplining their own.

As Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney in Alexandria and leading member of the Procurement Fraud Working Group, sees it, "the government has been pouring enormous sums of money into contracting [for war]." (Washington Post, 2/19)

"Mr. Sears had a clear choice," McNulty said. "Instead of respecting the integrity of the government's procurement system, he chose the financial interests of his company over the best interest of America." (Our emphasis -- Ed.)

We workers can't fall for this "national interest" garbage. The "national interest" is the interest of the biggest bosses. Sears ran afoul of the needs of imperialism. Good riddance to bad rubbish, but let's have no illusions that this represents anything other than more trouble for the working class.

Fight Airport Bosses' Racist Attack on Immigrant Workers

The class struggle has sharpened at the airport where we work. We had a spirited union meeting at work organized by the workers and their shop steward who is a PLP member. Workers distributed fliers inviting their co-workers. We're trying to fight management's racist attacks on immigrant workers, both part-timers and full-timers. During the meeting, one manager tried walking by but quickly left the area after the workers spotted him.

In the short term, we need multi-racial unity and internationalism. In the long run we need all this plus communist revolution. This struggle has produced three more CHALLENGE readers.

During the meeting we drafted a letter for the union to give to the bosses accusing them of institutional racism by deliberately hiring Latin workers for full-time positions and Africans and Asians for part-time work. This color-coding of job categories divides the workers and allows the bosses to reap racist super-profits.

Also, full-time Latin immigrant workers are having their immigration status questioned. Some are being fired, even though they received letters from the Immigration Service giving them a grace period until September to put their papers in order. The bosses want to replace them with more part-timers, to pay lower wages without benefits, which is an attack on all workers.

We want an apology from the company to workers who had their immigration status questioned, and we want all workers who were fired for this to be rehired. One woman was not only fired over her immigration status but was also sexually harassed by her supervisor. We want an end to color-coding of jobs and more full-time jobs. If nothing changes, we'll broaden the struggle and invite others to look at the company's racist hiring and promotion practices.

Airport Red

Roxbury Students, Faculty Back Vets Opposing Iraq War

BOSTON, MA, Feb. 4 -- "You are not a murderer. You're one of the heroes of our generation."

So commented a member of an audience of over 50 students and faculty at Roxbury Community College (RCC) to Michael Hoffman, Iraq War veteran and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Michael explained that he joined the Marines because his friends joined, that his brainwashed mindset was to stay alive and get back home, and that he felt remorseful for having participated in Operation Shock and Awe, the initial invasion of Baghdad.

As soon as he finished, someone in the audience called him a murderer, setting off an intense discussion about the choices soldiers face and the role they play. Michael responded by accepting his guilt but also condemning the guilt of the U.S. ruling class that sent him and other young working-class men and women to kill and maim innocent Iraqis and be killed and maimed for oil.

Owning up to his participation in a genocidal war was the first step toward dedicating his life to building the anti-war movement. A psychology professor further defended Michael, explaining that soldiers must be normal to be accepted into the military, but then the military brutalizes them, making them psychologically abnormal.

Two RCC students who helped organize the event presented a class analysis of the war. One student exposed the real reason for the war as not just for oil for use and profit, but also the strategic power it gives the U.S. ruling class over its imperialist rivals. He said the recent elections in Iraq were a farce, which the U.S. orchestrated to legitimize a layer of Iraqi elite, "a lot of little Saddams," with whom they can wheel and deal.

Another student urged the audience to take a stand against the war by confronting military recruiters who go after "people who look like me." He spoke persuasively for a new kind of anti-war movement that does more than organize marches, but also aims to damage the war machine. He announced a plan to oppose military recruitment and many students signed on.

An RCC faculty member recalled the tens of thousands of soldiers in Vietnam who resisted and rebelled against racism and imperialism, hastening the U.S. defeat and the end of the war. Back then, students were targeting their own colleges' active support of the war, striking, shutting down ROTC programs, chasing military recruiters off campuses. She pointed out that today military recruiters are walking around freely right here at RCC.

The growth of the anti-war movement among soldiers and vets is a big step forward in the fight against U.S. imperialism. PLP is playing an important role in bringing anti-imperialist war consciousness to RCC; its influence is growing modestly here.

A group of students who know from their own life experience that capitalism is a fatally flawed system is now gaining an historical perspective. They're being exposed to a real alternative -- communist revolution. As budding student organizers, they're sharpening the struggle among many other students to see working-class politics as the key to liberation.

Stroger Hospital Workers Fight for Anti-Racist Contract

CHICAGO, IL, Feb. 22 -- About a dozen Stroger Hospital (formerly called Cook County Hospital) workers attended the monthly meeting of SEIU Local 20 tonight to call for a demonstration to mobilize workers around our contract fight and demand an end to racist firings. While the local leadership was able to sidestep the resolution for these demands this time, still Stroger workers are getting valuable experience in the class struggle, and a new fighting anti-racist leadership is emerging throughout the hospital.

Dozens of workers have been fired since the new "reform" union leadership took office two years ago, with three times as many firings as the rest of the County Health System combined! Racist Food Service boss Anjad Ali has fired one-third of these. Just as the union has no plan to answer the County's rejection of almost every contract proposal, it also has had no response to the racist firings except to file grievances. Stroger workers proposed that re-hiring all fired and suspended workers should be a principal contract demand, instead of fighting each individual case one at a time. We should strike to end this reign of racist terror against workers and patients.

In December, Stroger workers led the fight to defeat Local 20's "New Vision" dues increase. Hundreds signed petitions asking to delay the vote until after the new contract is resolved. Instead, the SEIU leadership tried to gift-wrap the dues hike as a "strike fund," even though they aren't fighting anybody! They held special meetings and had their staffers working overtime, distributing expensive, glossy literature pushing the dues hike. They organized rides to the polling places for "Yes" votes, while 40 Stroger workers stood in the lobby waiting for a ride that never came. But the workers had another "vision," and the leadership was defeated.

Last spring, we fought and saved the jobs of 10 black respiratory therapists threatened with mass racist firing. The union's initial response then was that they had no choice but to honor a bad agreement made by the previous leadership. If we have learned nothing else from these struggles, it's that our political understanding and organizational strength determine our ability to fight back.

The bosses are trying to terrorize us so they can force us to pay even more for their imperialist war in Iraq and fascist Homeland Security police state. Bush's new federal budget gives more than $750 billion to the Pentagon and Homeland Security while cutting everything from food stamps to day-care to literacy programs. County President Stroger and the County Commissioners, almost all Democrats, just voted unanimously to cut tens of millions from the new budget.

We will have to fight like hell to hold on to what we can, and to get our fired brothers and sisters back. But the long-term victory is in building a mass PLP and winning many Stroger workers to participate in May Day! That's what we fight for, today and every day.

Sailor Brings History of U.S. Racism to Navy Buddies

I invited several of my Navy buddies to attend our local Amnesty International group meeting at a local university. Four came, three from my shop and one from boot camp on another ship. Our senior comrade brought a goodly college contingent.

The topic was Racial Profiling/Police Brutality. I was asked to make the presentation as an African American. I reviewed police brutality against African Americans back to the kidnapping and sale of indigenous Africans into chattel slavery as a criminal act and extreme form of brutality. I covered the Underground Railroad, the catching of runaway slaves, mob violence, the Ku Klux Klan instilling fear and perpetuating racism on behalf of the ruling class, and the complicity of the capitalist state in this brutality. (In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson showed Birth of A Nation at the White House; it portrayed the Klan as heroes, not terrorists.)

I also touched on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's and all the violent police brutality against protestors in Alabama -- the terror bombing of homes, unleashing vicious dogs on defenseless Civil Rights workers and the Alabama National Guard's attack on 600 protestors on Selma, Alabama's "Bloody Sunday." And I included recent cases, from the killings of Amadou Diallo and Archie Elliott to the rebellions both in Los Angeles and Cincinnati.

My friends enjoyed the discussion. My white buddy from boot camp said he was profiled for entering black neighborhoods and attending parties with friends there. A black friend stressed the need to actively organize. While posing liberal solutions -- voting and lobbying politicians -- it's good he wants to get involved. Through this process, we hope to sharpen the contradictions, demonstrating the uselessness of reform and the ultimate need for working-class revolution.

My buddies are looking forward to the next meeting. We're working to involve more sailors.

My most important points were: police brutality is an extension of ruling-class violence against our class, the workers, in order to discipline us to serve in the rulers' wars and profit machines; that racism is economic super-exploitation of black and Latino workers, plus the ideology to justify it. Police brutality ultimately is used against all workers, especially those who fight racism and class exploitation. No constitutional amendments, no civil rights laws and no liberal politician can change this. Only a mass movement establishing a dictatorship over the bosses will end police violence against workers.

I hope my buddies will one day (after much struggle) join the Party and devote their lives to our class.

Navy Red

LA Elections: Democrats Line Up Behind Racist Warmakers

LOS ANGELES, March 1 -- The relentless march towards militarization, war, cuts in wages and benefits, and racist police repression is reflected in U.S. cities. Los Angeles is no exception. The country's second largest city is a Democratic Party stronghold. Multi-million dollar fund-raisers hosted by limousine liberals from the entertainment and real estate industries help fund national Democratic candidates.

City government here is almost entirely run by local Democratic Party politicians. Mayor James Hahn is a Democrat, as is nearly every City Council member. Los Angeles is a "blue city."

The Democrats are just as much servants of the ruling class (big-time bosses) as Bush: more cops and jails, tax breaks for the rich, regressive taxes on the working class, cutbacks in health care and other public programs, wage and benefit cuts for public employees and police attacks on black and Latino youth. In recent months:

* The LA City Council passed an enormous tax cut for local businesses, costing the city over $100,000,000. Its rationale: give the entertainment industry a boost.
* The City Council gave tax breaks, also worth over $100,000,000, to a billionaire, Phillip Anschutz, to build a downtown hotel / luxury condominium complex.
* To offset this loss of income and long-term budget reductions due to Federal and State government siphoning of funds for imperialist war, many City Council members want a half-cent sales tax increase to hire more cops. In addition, they're regularly piling on increased fees for basic municipal services, such as garbage collection and water.
* They have also stuck it to most City employees. With union leaders' tacit approval, the Mayor and Council have denied City workers a cost-of-living adjustment this year, while the cost of their benefits, like health insurance, creep up every year. Hirings and promotions have been frozen for most of the past 15 years.

Even when pressed, none of these Democrats ever link the cutbacks in local government (which they implemented) to the Iraq war or the mammoth budgets of the Pentagon and the spy agencies to fight the "War on Terror."

The best example is Antonio Villaraigosa, a former teachers' union organizer, Speaker of the California State Assembly, current Council member, and Mayor Hahn's strongest opponent in the election. Villaraigosa is the liberal charmer favored by local "progressives" who remember his union days, but not what he's saying currently. Now he's championing tax cuts for business and more racist cops, paid for by workers, as well as pseudo-progressive talk of "reviving local communities" through powerless community councils. These councils are part of a hidden agenda to build support for community policing and patriotism to support U.S. rulers' military plans.

Villaraigosa's approach, almost word-for-word, comes straight from the liberal ruling class think-tank, the Brookings Institute, in its book "United We Stand." It advances strategies for reviving a military draft that relies heavily on Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam. His book "Bowling Alone" calls for neighborhood councils to revive a sense of community. They want to persuade local communities in large multi-ethnic cities like LA to believe they have a stake in the system and will accept cutbacks and military service as part of their "civic duty."

This electoral process is a dangerous trap perpetuating the bosses' capitalist system while spreading the illusion we can "reform" it. We shouldn't fall for this or other lies advanced by politicians like Villaraigosa, Parks and Hahn. Their pretense to defend our interests is only a smokescreen to more efficiently implement the bosses' plans for war and fascism. We must win our class to fight for workers' power by injecting our communist analysis into struggles against the bosses, large and small.

Racism Over Cop Murder of LA Youth Mirrors U.S. Slaveowners

I'm very angry about the media depiction of Devin Brown, the 13-year-old who was shot dead by the LAPD. (See CHALLENGE, 3/2) They're smearing him as a supposed "gang member" or a "kid who went bad" -- as if that would somehow justify what the cops did.

One of my friends has a niece who attends Audubon Middle School, where Devin went. She says teachers there remember him as a respectful and well-behaved student, even though he cut classes a lot. These teachers got mad at the reporters swarming all over the school trying to dig up some dirt on Devin after he died. When the reporters tried to talk to students without their parents' permission, some teachers tried to chase them away. Also, teachers and students took up a collection for Devin's mother to show their sympathy and help out a little.

The media are pointing fingers everywhere except at the problem. Besides demonizing Devin, they're blaming his mother, the school and his whole community. The truth is Devin's mom (who lost her husband not long ago) works two jobs trying to keep her family together. She's the kind of mom who's always at the school, checking on her kids. People at the school were talking to Devin and trying to help him get to his classes and deal with the loss of his dad.

Fingers should be pointed at the cops who shot this little boy. The papers are getting more upset about a tiger on the loose that was killed in the Valley this week than they ever were about Devin.

They say that in this black working-class community there's not enough "supervision" so kids "run wild." To me this sounds like an excuse to turn even more cops loose to terrorize black youths. It sounds like former slave-owners saying free black people "needed to be enslaved" to "keep them from running wild."

There's an after-school program at Audubon that's also district-wide. A military officer runs it and has the kids saluting, doing push-ups and all that stuff. They're trying to get the students used to the idea of being in the Army. Remember the Super Bowl commercial with the soldiers marching by and people clapping? "Be a hero, join the military." Every other billboard in the neighborhood has the same thing. Maybe they let the cops get away with killing and terrorizing kids here to try to make sure these future soldiers won't step out of line.

I really liked the CHALLENGE article about Devin's case. I'm making copies for some friends.

LA Reader

Liberal Democrats Grease Path for Slimeball Negroponte

In appointing John Negroponte to be the first National Intelligence Director -- overseeing a $100 billion spy operation with a secret budget -- Bush picked a veteran CIA operative responsible for some of the worst crimes of murder and torture in Central America. And the liberal Democrats just love him.

While Negroponte has the Republicans in his hip pocket, the Democrats gushed all over him at Senate hearings approving his present post as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and therefore the real chief of the U.S. occupation there. This, after compiling the following record:

* As U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte played a key role in organizing the military repression in that country, and deliberately falsified State Department "Human Rights" reports, covering up death squad horrors.
* The New York Times credited Negroponte with "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua," despite being banned by Congress; this included the trading of guns for drugs on CIA aircraft (which used a special airfield operation in Arkansas set up by Clinton when he was that state's governor in the 1980's).
* According to the Maryknoll Order of Catholic nuns, Negroponte oversaw the notorious CIA-trained Honduran death squads of the so-called Battalion 3-16 who murdered many U.S. church missionaries and religious activists in the early 1980's.

Yet at the Senate hearings on his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee asked not one question about his role in promoting death squads and covering up murderous abuses. Delaware's Joseph Biden slobbered all over him and Connecticut's Christopher Dodd said, "I happen to feel he's a very fine Foreign Service officer and has done a tremendous job in many places."

Off of their support for his ambassadorship, liberal Democrats like West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, Indiana's Evan Bayh and California's Diane Feinstein will no doubt be rubber-stamping him as National Intelligence Director. Both parties will be endorsing him as the point man to spread his death-squad specialty around the world in support of U.S. imperialism's wars for control of oil.

Building PLP in El Salvador

EL SALVADOR -- Last December, CHALLENGE readers and PLP members met to discuss the struggle to organize workers here into the revolutionary, international communist Progressive Labor Party and the measures that the government of Tony Saca has implemented against the working class. Forming clubs, as well as political, ideological schools are part of this work. We made a plan to march on May Day and committed ourselves to recruit new workers to study groups where we read CHALLENGE.

A comrade asked if the FMLN could become the government just by having street marches. The response was that even if the government is changed, the capitalist bosses will never hand over power to the workers through elections. Workers' power can only be achieved by organizing a mass base for PLP to smash the bosses who exploit us and destroy capitalism with communist revolution.

A comrade from another part of the country participated and helped strengthen this fight. Another comrade said we can't keep putting up with unemployment, price increases for goods, electricity and telephones, or with threats to workers who denounce the atrocities the bosses commit.

They continue their crimes -- like the war in Iraq, bombing workers and their families -- all a product of capitalism's drive for profits. We should support the brave soldiers who've resisted and refused to follow the orders of their officers, lackeys of the murderers who run the wars, the U.S. Pentagon.

With capitalism in power in El Salvador, children lack medicine, food, and education, like those worldwide. Under communism the working class will produce and distribute according to need so that we can all live decent lives.

Iraqi Oil Workers Oppose Occupation's Anti-Union Attacks

Iraq's industrial workers have been relatively absent -- temporarily -- from the struggle against the U.S./UK occupation. The situation calls for building a revolutionary communist leadership among these workers. In the fight against British colonialism and the King in the first half of the 20th century, oil workers, led by the old Communist Party, were crucial to ousting both.

After World War 2, many industrial workers who had had jobs supplying the British Army fighting the Nazis were laid off. Protest strikes erupted. The CP had an industrial working-class leadership and led many unions, on the railroads, the docks and in the oil fields. In April 1946, workers struck the Iraqi Oil Petroleum Co. (owned by BP, Shell and French interests) combining demands for 25% to 40% wage hikes with political demands against the monarchy and British colonialism. Concentrating on picketing the K3 pumping station around the clock, 3,000 well-organized strikers halted oil production completely. One strike leader declared, "The dictatorship of the proletariat was established at K3."

When the bosses cut off the water and food supply to the station, located in the middle of the desert, the workers marched over 150 miles before being stopped and suffering many arrests. This militant action inspired many more struggles among all workers, peasants and students.

In 1948 a massive urban uprising broke out, uniting students and workers, and forcing the fall of the minister who had leased air bases to the British Royal Air Force. Many were killed, and communists were executed, but the struggle continued until the fall of the monarchy and the end of British control a few years later.

Today, oil workers are beginning to play an active role against the imperialists, but they need more than just militant trade union leaders. A revolutionary leadership is necessary, not only to fight the occupation forces and their stooges but also to take control of the insurgency away from former Saddam soldiers, Baathist Arab nationalists, assorted jihadists and religious fundamentalists.

Eleven days after the fall of Baghdad, workers in Iraq's southern oil fields formed the Southern Oil Company Union, which today has 23,000 members in ten oil and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya and up to Anbar province. They organized in the face of the U.S. military's maintenance of Saddam Hussein's repressive 1987 ban on basic union rights and the right to strike.

The union defied the attempt by Vice-President Dick Cheney's Halliburton,subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root's use of occupation troops to seize their workplaces. It forced the troops to leave and compelled the Kuwaiti subcontractor to hire 1,000 Iraqi workers, replacing the ones they brought with them.

Then they struck against U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer's edict establishing a $35 monthly minimum "wage" for public sector workers while paying up to $1,000 a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. The August 2003 three-day walkout shut down all oil production and forced a 217% increase in the workers' minimum wage.

The union is independent of all political parties and opposes all privatization as a neo-colonialist attempt to follow the military occupation with a permanent economic occupation.

In a Feb. 18 article in the British Guardian, the union's General Secretary, Hassam Juma'a Awad, says, "The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq." He declares that, "From the beginning, we were left with no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources....When the occupation troops...allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering." Iraq's unemployment rate is 70%.

Awad says that, "Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight." He charges that, "Our communities have been attacked with chemicals and cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes."

Awad also writes that, "The occupation has deliberately fomented a sectarian division of Sunni and Shia.... Before our families intermarried, we lived and worked together....Today we are resisting this brutal occupation together, from Falluja to Najef to Sadr City."

The union sees itself "as a necessary part of this resistance," fighting "using our industrial power, our collective strength as a union" to defeat both still-powerful Saddamist[s]...and the foreign occupation."

The union is calling for the withdrawal of all occupation forces and their military bases, and says any timetable "is a stalling tactic." The oil workers believe that "those who voted in [the] elections...are as hostile to the occupation as those who boycotted them.... Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer...are...speaking only for themselves and the minority...whose interests are dependent on the occupation."

CHALLENGE calls on all workers to support these Iraqi oil workers in their struggle against U.S. imperialism. We believe that the workers of Iraq must be won to organizing a true communist party, not one which allies with nationalist bosses -- nor the phony one now part of the U.S.-authorized Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. Its president is deputy leader of the U.S.-imposed Prime Minister Allawi's party. Iraq's workers can link their long history of struggle against all previous dictatorial regimes to communist ideas, to truly emancipate the working class from all domination by imperialists and local religious fundamentalists who want to wrest control of Iraq's oil and resources for their own class interests.

Robots Won't Solve U.S. Bosses' `Vietnam Syndrome'

Conceding the political problems of fielding an imperialist army, the U.S. military hopes to replace human soldiers with robots. The "advantages"? "They don't get hungry. They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot." (NY Times, Feb. 16).

Obviously the military is having all these problems and more with today's army. As one junior officer recently wrote to a right-wing web site, "The brass has become so fearful of casualties in Iraq that the military has stopped actively patrolling in many of the areas where the insurgents are strongest."

In another doomed attempt to solve a political problem with technology, the military plans to spend $127 billion on a project called Future Combat Systems of which robots are a crucial part.

Today, after many years of development, robots play a small role as bomb disposal tools. Assuming this massive expense doesn't go the way of the Patriot anti-missile system and Star War initiative as complete duds, the military's dream of a soldier that won't rebel ignores the primary lesson of Iraq, as well as Vietnam. While technology can be useful, in war politics trumps it every time.

The Vietnamese were able to beat the far superior U.S. military by winning the masses' commitment to anti-imperialism. In Iraq, a small -- and even somewhat isolated -- nationalist/fundamentalist insurgency has been able to gain some popular support and fight the U.S. to a standstill by exploiting the destruction wrought by the U.S. military over the last 15 years.

The U.S. military has a big problem: they are hated. This erodes their ability to rule Iraq, as well as the commitment of U.S. soldiers for the war. Sticking the stars and stripes on another killing machine won't make the U.S. more popular. Nor will it make U.S. soldiers feel better about what they're doing. The Nazis, and the U.S. in Vietnam, far out-killed their opponents. And in Italy, the saying went that Mussolini killed and killed the communists until there were two million of them.

History's greatest military victories were achieved by people exhibiting extraordinary heroism out of a vast political commitment. Robots never could have defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad, never could have driven the U.S. out of Southeast Asia, and robots will never defeat the working class's quest for a decent life.

Nazi Concentration Camps:
Model For Capitalist Factories

(Fourth of a series.)

On Jan. 27, 1945, the Red Army reached Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration/death camp. There were few survivors. Those who hadn't been murdered in the gas chambers were forced to walk to other Nazi camps. The holocaust ended only when the Red Army reached Berlin and raised the Red Flag over the Reichstag on May 5, 1945.

Auschwitz and many other Nazi concentration camps were not only death camps, but also were ideal capitalist operations from which hundreds of companies could use their slave labor to make super-profits. Since millions of German workers were being sent to fight a losing battle against the Red Army and the red-led partisan movement on the Eastern Front, German bosses demanded manpower from the Nazi government to maintain production. So some 12 million slave workers were sent from the Eastern Front to labor in the concentration camps for German -- and U.S. -- companies.

Friburg University history professor Ulrich Herbert says it wasn't the Nazi regime which forced those millions of workers into slave labor, but German companies like Blohm und Voss, Scheering, Deutsche Reichsbahn, Thyssen. Mannesmaann, etc. (Michael Marek writing for DW-World, web page of the German news agency Deutsche Welle, 1/25/05.)

Dietrich Eichholz, another German historian, said that German industrial wealth rose by 17 times from 1939 till 1945 due to the super-profits extracted from those slave workers. He adds that the Nazi regime lost the war, but German industry definitely came out winning. Their profits came from Jewish slave labor, who received no wages, Polish and Soviet prisoners of war who were paid very low wages, and prisoners of war from Western Europe who received the same wages as German workers whose wages were already severely cut when the Nazi regime took power in 1933.

Although the Allies broke up some of those German companies after the war, many still operate today, and very few are compensating the 1.5 million slave laborers or their relatives who are still alive. Any who are paying are doling out only a fraction of their war profits. (The German government itself is contributing to that indemnization fund).

As pointed out in previous articles, U.S. companies also benefited from the death camps. Soviet-era documents made public in the late 1990's showed that -- in addition to hundreds of German companies using Auschwitz inmates -- the Ford plant in Cologne was among 400 industrial enterprises exploiting this vast pool of slave labor the Nazis made available (www.jta.org/aug99/22-ford-htm). Ford officials deny this, saying the documents show only that vehicles produced by Ford were used at Auschwitz and that the company did not control its European operations in Nazi-occupied areas. But the fact remains that Ford did receive profits from Nazi Germany during the war through Swiss banks, as did GM's Opel company and IBM, whose keypunch system was used in the concentration camps. After all, Henry Ford and the Führer ran a mutual admiration society. Ford was the international distributor of the Protocols of Zion, a virulent anti-Semitic forgery created in the early 20th century by the Tsar's secret police.

Thus, Nazism was not just a creation of the evil minds of Hitler & Co. It grew directly from German capitalism, with the help of bosses worldwide who first saw Hitler as a tool to crush the Soviet Union, which had freed 1/6 of the world's surface from the profit system.

(Next: concentration camps did not begin, and have not ended, with the Nazi era.)

LETTERS

Condemn Killings of Iraqi Unionists

The following anti-imperialist letter of solidarity was sent to our brother and sister workers of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions upon hearing of the assassination of their International Secretary Hadi Salih. On January 4, he was bound hand and foot, tortured, strangled and shot at home, murdered in front of his family. In the past few months there have been a string of attacks on union activists in Iraq, including striking textile workers being shot, the transit workers union hall being shelled, and many arrests. These attacks have come from the U.S. military, the Iraqi government and the insurgents. Please reprint this for our CHALLENGE readers as PLP encourages internationalism, builds for May Day and fights for communism.

"We the members of [this union] send this letter of international solidarity to our brothers and sisters of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions over the brutal murder of your International Secretary Hadi Salih.

We understand that Salih, who opposed the fascist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, may have been assassinated by right-wing forces with connections to U.S. intelligence.

We understand that many nations like Iraq have U.S.-backed death squads that assassinate union activists and others so that workers can be better exploited by U.S. multi-national corporations. This explains the rash of political assassinations of many trade union activists in Iraq who oppose the U.S. invasion/occupation.

Our local union is integrated and has workers from many different nations. Many of these workers came to the U.S. seeking a better life only to be super-exploited by institutional racism. From here to Baghdad, we have the same enemy, same fight. You have our sympathy and support."

A Reader

Nazis Bolstered Argentine Fascism

The series on the Nazis and their post-World War II CIA connections has been very useful. But Nazi-like murderous activities did not stop with the end of the war. On Feb. 23, a press conference at a Medical College in Buenos Aires by the Commission of Former Workers and Relatives of the Mercedes-Benz Disappeared Ones presented the latest investigations of journalist Ms. Gaby Weber, a German-born writer living in South America, who wrote the book, "The German Connection -- Nazi Money Laundering in Argentina." The conference revealed that the former production manager of Mercedes-Benz (today DaimlerBenz) in Argentina, Juan Ronaldo Tasselkraut, has a son and two nephews he adopted illegally and who could be the children of people disappeared during the dirty war waged by military regime of the late 1970's.

Tasselkraut worked for Mercedes-Benz (MB) until recently. In 1977, he turned in Hector Ratto to the cops. Ratto worked at the MB Gonzalez Catan plant. He was taken to a concentration camp. There, in front of Ratto, Tasselkraut gave the cops the address of another worker, Diego Nuñez. That same night Nuñez was kidnapped by the cops.

It's presumed that Tasselkraut's son was the child of one of those workers murdered during the dictatorship. Tasselkraut later hired Ruben Lavallen as the MB plant security chief. Lavallen was a police officer at the Investigation Bureau, where he was involved in the kidnapping and torture of 15 militant MB workers. In May 1978, a couple was taken to Lavallen's police precinct, and they were never seen again. Lavallen adopted the couple's 22-month-old daughter.

The military dictatorship actually set up a maternity ward at a military hospital in Campo de Mayo base (the biggest military torture center). The babies were given to officers or to those very close to the dictatorship. MB even donated a neonatology device to the maternity center.

Some 30,000 people were murdered during the military dictatorship. Argentina's high-ranking military officers never hid their Nazi sympathies. They even flew swastika flags in their torture centers. Other auto companies, like Ford, helped the military dictatorship carry out its dirty war.

Ms. Weber revealed in her new book that MB and many other Nazi-tainted investments grew tremendously in Argentina beginning in the early 1950's. Adolf Eichmann, who along with Himmler led the holocaust, worked for many years at the Buenos Aires MB plant before being kidnapped by Israeli agents in the early '60s. Once a Nazi always a Nazi.

Red Anti-Nazi

Workers Agree: Rebellions Looming

Some conversations I've had at work reveal great potential in workers' reactions to increasing police terror, cutbacks, war and racism. To murder over 100,000 Iraqis and 1,500 U.S. soldiers, the ruling class must attack the working class and try to coerce us into accepting fascism and their plans for a greater war against their imperialist rivals. They will continue to cut social services and pensions. Simultaneously, they murder the child of a black worker in Los Angeles and tazer a 54-year-old Chicago worker to death. They intend this racist terror to keep workers passive and accept the thin gruel of reform and nationalism. LA police Chief Bratton says if the city doesn't increase the sales tax by a _-cent to pay for hiring more racist cops, "the city would go up in flames."

The LA Times reported that black workers say the police hate them. A study showed that 6 of 10 black workers disliked the LAPD. Bratton and other liberal politicians want to change the policy of shooting into vehicles, a complete turn-around since a year ago, when racist Bratton told parents to "restrain their children" after the cops murdered two Latino youth.

This led me to think about the possibility of another LA rebellion, and how to build PLP at work to prepare for such an uprising. My factory contains primarily Latino contract workers who work long hours with no union. Conversations with them are quite revealing. One worker, a black vet, said the war in Iraq was even worse than Vietnam, with all the deaths and the cutbacks here. He said an uprising was coming. After the murder of Devin Brown, another worker reminded him that even Bratton warned of a possible uprising.

Later a Mexican immigrant worker said Mexico is rife with corruption. An immigrant from India said it wasn't just Mexico -- there's corruption everywhere. Another worker said it's here in the U.S. too. A fourth said the "free market system" guarantees that only a select few have wealth and everyone else is left out. He said the decline of the dollar means worse conditions for us. The vet said, "People are so tired of this, the cutbacks and the war and racism. I think there's going to be a revolution."

The police shooting of Devin Brown and the court decision letting other racist killer cops go free are signs of the times. This terror, the bogus "reform" of the cops and the move for more cops are directed at a whole generation of black and Latin youth who the bosses plan to grind up in their military and industrial machine. These angry young workers represent great revolutionary potential. Our job is to arm them with an internationalist, communist outlook. Then no amount of terror and patriotic reforms will stop them from fighting for power for the working class.

Factory Comrade

FIght Stewart Verdict As `Legal' Fascism

The conviction of defense lawyer Lynne Stewart drew reactions among my friends in the large urban church to which I belong, ranging from shock to recognition of the "legal" fascism we've so often discussed in the three years since Patriot Acts I and II. To paraphrase an old saying, "First they came for the Muslims, then the South Asians, then the immigrants, then the protestors, now the lawyers."

U.S. rulers want to win people to sacrifice themselves in imperialist wars for "freedom," to endorse Homeland Security schemes to militarize U.S. society and to give up programs like Social Security and Medicare for the war effort. But if they can't win us, the Lynne Stewart case shows they will break all their "rules" to silence dissent and directly terrorize, oppress and brutalize the working class and others.

The church's leading congregational body passed a mild statement condemning aspects of Patriot Act I as "excesses" that tread on "our civil liberties and constitutional rights." The church's liberal leaders sermonize about "standing up" to George Bush and the Christian Right but even that mild statement is now being "examined" by church lawyers for possibly violating the church's tax status.

I've framed the struggle against the Patriot Act in terms of U.S. imperialism's strategy for the 21st century and fascism's role in this process. One can't say fascism's "a little bit bad," and that it's possible to defeat it by "legal" means, based on the illusion that the Constitution defends "us," rather than the capitalists who hold state power. The Lynne Stewart case spurs examination of the historical fight against fascism, the role of communists and the need to defeat fascism with revolution by destroying the capitalist system which spawns it.

I've issued the following statement and proposal in my name on the Lynne Stewart verdict to some congregants and to seven church higher-ups. Some friends agreed to help me.

Dear Congregants,
The decision against Lynne Stewart was based on lies, distortions, demagoguery, false patriotism and fear. Despite the actions of many in the U.S. to curb the Patriot Act's attack on civil liberties, Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales have gotten what they set out to get. This is another significant step down the road to open fascist repression against anyone who would resist, protest and/or defend his or her principles. Now is the time to stand up and speak out. Silence and fear are dangerous! They cannot be options. Proposals: Write a church-wide statement of support for Lynne Stewart; send such statement to local elected officials; organize an event at the church in which Lynne and/or her lawyers can speak to the congregation; prepare the congregation to go en masse to the sentencing on Sept. 23.

I introduced this statement to the church's social justice group to which I belong -- and made a strong political argument for it -- asking the group to endorse it and pass it on to other groups in the church. The majority wanted to "tone down the language," saying the goal should be to get a resolution passed. I said that on principle I had to "speak what I see" and that controversy, debate and exposing the church's institutional position are important parts of the process. The social justice group has re-written the statement, eliminating references to fascism.

I've also met with several other individuals about making Lynne Stewart's case a church-wide issue. Some will help. We plan an April event at which Stewart or her lawyers can explain the case to the congregation. There will be a lot of controversy. Top church leaders will attempt to limit debate, confine it to "patriotism," following the Democratic Party position, and "protect" the church's tax status.

PLP has some support here, including a few CHALLENGE readers. Most congregants support the Democratic Party; some are strongly anti-Bush. Ideological controversy will intensify between PLP's ideas and liberal Democratic ideas among our friends, and within the congregation between liberals and conservatives and between the congregation and the church leadership.

My friends and I have seized the opportunity to speak out and act boldly in the moment, while understanding that our goals to build the PLP and make communist revolution are long-range.

Red Churchgoer

Building Worker-GI-Student Alliance

Recently, I leafleted a nearby military base with a group of students from the organization I belong to at school. We all agreed it was a really good experience. It's led to many productive conversations with my friends about the kind of movement needed to fight imperialism and fascism.

Initially, when our group reported to the rest of the organization about our trip, some students reacted negatively. One argued, "What's the point in talking to these soldiers? They chose to go into the army. They know what they're doing." Another student explained that it's important to reach out to soldiers because most are working-class youth who joined after being promised a stable job or money for a college education, not because they're completely won to the ruling class's imperialist agenda. More importantly, they literally have the power to directly impact imperialism.

Then the first student slightly changed his position, saying, "Well, if we want to organize at the point of production, then we should focus on the workers who build the weapons for war."

The conversation continued, some agreeing that if we're serious about revolution, we need to build a movement based on an alliance among workers, students and soldiers. Other students still weren't convinced.

But the trip to the military base and the conversations about it prompted these students to help organize an anti-imperialist conference that criticizes the passivity of the current anti-war movement and focuses on reaching out to the military and to industrial workers. Soon we'll make another trip the military base.

From this experience, I've learned that students are open to organizing a revolutionary communist movement based on a worker-student-soldier alliance. Mainly we must take the initiative and provide the political leadership that's lacking.

Student Leafleter

Anti-Communists Spread Lies About Stalin

The London Financial Times ran an article (2/26) on Corin Redgrave that said:

"The audience then asked a few questions that allowed Redgrave to say Stalin had Mayakovsky put to death."

Evidently no one bothered to correct this statement. The utter contempt of anti-communists -- in this case, Trotskyists -- for the truth never ceases to amaze!

Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were, and probably still are, leaders of the Workers Revolutionary Party, a Trotskyist cult that imploded a few years ago. This group and its leaders made deals with Libya's Khaddafy and even Saddam in exchange for money., even when leftists were being shot in Iraq.

This lie is all the more amazing, since Mayakovsky is an extremely well-known and celebrated poet. He committed suicide in 1930. NOBODY suggests that Stalin had anything to do with his death. On the contrary: Stalin was a huge fan of Mayakovsky's. Here's a quotation:

"In November 1935 Lidia Brik [Mayakovsky's friend, who took charge of his papers after his suicide] wrote a letter to Stalin in which she brought to his attention the delays and hindrances in publishing Mayakovsky's works and in celebrating his memory. This letter served as the basis for the following note by Stalin to the secretary of the Central Committee: `Comrade Yezhov, I ask you sincerely to pay attention to Brik's letter. Mayakovsky was and remains the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Indifference to his memory and works is simply a crime. In my opinion, Brik's complaints are correct. Get in touch with her or invite her to Moscow. Please involve Tal' (head of publishing section of the Central Committee -- editors) and Mekhlis [editor of Pravda] and, please, do everything that we have neglected. If you need my help, I'm willing. Greetings, Stalin.'
"Thus did Stalin insert himself into Mayakovsky's fate. This is why one of the main squares of the Sadovoy ring [big circle in center of Moscow] and one of the most beautiful Metro stations carry Mayakovsky's name. On this square a memorial to the poet was published, his museum is set up on the Taganka, and his works began to be published, studied in literature departments, and taught in schools."
http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/mayakov.html

Anti-communist lies abound in discussions of Soviet-era culture. One constantly reads that "Stalin persecuted Mikhail Bulgakov" or "Stalin killed Osip Mandel'shtam." In reality, Stalin HELPED Bulgakov and got him a job at a prestigious theatre. When Boris Pasternak, noted Soviet but anti-communist writer, later author of "Doctor Zhivago," called Stalin about Mandel'shtam, Stalin told him he was not being loyal enough to his friend -- and then got Mandel'shtam a job.

Mayakovsky is better known than either of these figures. How can anybody say this kind of crap, have it printed, and then NOBODY points out the lie?

The moral of this sorry tale is: NEVER believe ANYTHING an anti-communist source says or writes about communism, Stalin, the USSR, etc., until you've checked it out yourself!

history buff

CHALLENGE's Jab At `Million Dollar Baby' Missed Target

The analysis (CHALLENGE, 3/2) of "Million Dollar Baby" as racist is ridiculous. Why is Morgan Freeman an "Uncle Tom?" The author gives no reason, just states it as fact. I didn't find him that way at all -- just an old tired boxer that took a lot of punches and never made it. He could have been any color. He was chosen because he's a fine actor. And the movie would have a "different message" if the German champ had been white and the other opponents black? What caricature does the German champ represent? It certainly is not one of color, just a nasty champion willing to do anything to maintain her championship. That's not a caricature, that's the way it is. 

This movie was an indictment of the world of organized boxing. Eastwood plays a trainer who cares about his boxers and probably over-protects them. That's why the black boxer he's training leaves him. Eastwood is over-protecting him and he wants the ring. Interesting that the reviewer ignores the fact that Eastwood protects the black boxer out of love for Morgan Freeman who lost an eye under his tutelage years before.

The characters in "Million Dollar Baby" could have been any color. I thought the film was remarkable and the tension, after Swank is hurt, emotionally gut-wrenching. Was this film revolutionary or anti-racist? No. Did it condemn our racist, capitalist society? No. But the reviewer was really grasping for straws in condemning it as a racist film. And the final paragraph also doesn't hold up anymore: the films called fascist were ones like "Dirty Harry," films that Eastwood starred in, not produced or directed. Many of his films, such as "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River" were not fascist at all, but rather anti-western and anti-detective movie statements respectively. Honestly, I don't think that review should have been printed.   

Big Red

More Million Dollar Baby

The review of Million Dollar Baby (see CHALLENGE 3/2) was superficial and incorrect. It gave little evidence to back up the claim that racist images or ideas are strongly portrayed in the movie. Additionally, the reviewer ignores examples of positive black figures (e.g., the first boxer or Freeman's character).

While this movie was not anti-capitalist or revolutionary, it was a great film. It's mainly about self-esteem, courage, forgiveness and love. Swank as Maggie, a poor working-class person, had such low self-esteem that she was willing to subject herself to the incredible brutality of boxing. Being a poor worker meant that she had little hope for her future beyond what she might accomplish as a boxer.

Maggie's struggle is an individualistic one, not one to improve the lives of other workers. This fits well into the "American dream" myth, which is why Hollywood liberals liked it. Additionally, its heart-wrenching portrayal of paralysis and disability will resonate with people whose sons and daughters are soldiers coming back from the war in Iraq paralyzed and injured.

Boston Reader

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Violence vs. recruiters grow in US

Since the beginning of 2003, there have...been more than a dozen...often violent incidents aimed at military recruiters or property throughout the country....

...On Jan. 20, the day of President Bush's inaugural, several hundred students at Seattle Central Community College surrounded two Army recruiters on campus, shouting insults and hurling water bottles until the recruiters were escorted away by campus security. The protest was covered by The Army Times, and several recruiters said that they feared such situations might become more common. (NYT, 2/21)

`Democracy' blocks workers' will

...A 2003 Pew poll asked people if they favored the government "guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means repealing most of the recent tax cuts".

Universal healthcare won, 67 percent to 26 percent.

...Nothing has happened...The profit-grubbing medical lobby of pharmaceuticals, insurance companies and the American Medical Association....continues to thwart the will of the American people. (Boston Globe, 2/7)

Chinese die of fever cured by Reds

...Nationally, nearly 900,000 people have the disease [Snail Fever] and an estimated 30 million are at risk....

What is most frustrating to people like Mr. Guo, whose wife has the disease, is that snail fever was largely eradicated in China during the 1950's as part of the national campaign ordered by Mao Zedong. Mr Guo, 56 recalled regular efforts to sweep the lake of the snails that serve as host bodies for the parasites....People were required to have check-ups and that those infected received free medical care, including drugs that can neutralize the disease.

But the constant attention needed to control the disease has waned, and it gradually returned... because of neglect of the rural health system. (NYT, 2/22)

One reason TV is replacing reading

...New York City...officials say 100 of the 650 elementary schools have certified librarians; 25 percent have no library... (NYT, 2/23)

Making a joke of the next war

...Mr. Bush met with European leaders at the headquarters of the European Union, and ...he did not rule out, as he has not in the past, military action.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," he said, then added, to some laughter in the room, "and having said that, all options are on the table." (NYT, 2/23)

How to save Medicare: Die Sooner

Though Social Security's fiscal direction has taken center stage in Washington of late, Medicare's future financing problems are likely to be much worse....

So, how can Medicare's ballooning cost be contained? One idea is to let people die earlier. (NYT 2/27)

New East Europe: Profits, poverty

...GDP in the former communist states fell between 20% and 30% in the decade after 1989....

Only Poland had managed to return to its 1989 level of output by the end of the 20th century. Hungary, considered by many the most "advanced" economy of the region, had to wait until 2002.

While a minority have seen real wages rise, for the vast majority in the countries in question the transition process has witnessed a spectacular fall in living standards....

Inequality has risen sharply...Unemployment is widespread, particularly among the young: in Poland, 39% of under-25s are without a job....

Reformers blame problems on the legacy of 40 years of communism. But could it be that the reform process itself is responsible?...Following the IMF-EU economic prescription has caused hardship for millions. (GW, 2/24)

Money talks in danger-drug vote

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx should not return to the market....

...Studies have shown that, taken as a whole, money does influence scientific judgments... (NYT, 2/25)

`Liberated' by US, Afghans suffer

Average life expectancy for Afghanistan's 28.5 million people is 44.5 years, at least 20 years lower than that of neighboring countries....

...And 20.4 percent of the rural population does not have enough to eat....

Most glaring are the inequalities that affect women and children, still some of the worst social indicators in the world today....

One-fifth of the children die before the age of 5, 80 percent of them from preventable diseases, one of the worst rates in the world. Only 25 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, and one in eight children die from lack of clean water.

Afghanistan now has the worst education system in the world the reported concluded... (NYT, 2/22)

 

Lynne Stewart Conviction: Rulers Break Own Laws to Build Fascism

Racist LAPD Terrorists Kill Black 8th Grader

KACHING!!! Cops Rewarded Million$ for Racist Brutality

War Budget Means Social Insecurity for Workers

a href="#Students’ Siege Disrupts Speech by Rulers’ Torturer/Apologist">St"dents’ Siege Disrupts Speech by Rulers’ Torturer/Apologist

Build Community Support to Fight Police Brutality

Buenos Aires: Subway Workers Block Tracks, Win Wage Hikes, Struggle Continues…

Cops, Homeland Security: Big Danger For D.C. Metro Drivers

a href="#Boeing Workers Must Ground Union Hacks’ Pro-Boss Garbage">"oeing Workers Must Ground Union Hacks’ Pro-Boss Garbage

Garment Workers Sew Red Ideas into Class Struggle

a href="#Chicago Cops’ Stun Guns Latest Homeland Security Execution Weapon">"hicago Cops’ Stun Guns Latest Homeland Security Execution Weapon

a href="#‘Million Dollar Baby’ Is No Knockout">‘M"llion Dollar Baby’ Is No Knockout

CIA, Vatican Helped 5,000 Nazi Murderers Escape To Fight in Cold War

Imperialist Holocaust In Congo Massacred Millions

Thousands Protest Lack of Affordable Housing in NYC

LETTERS

Russian Free Market Spawns Nazi Skinheads

Berlin Workers Still Honor Red Army

Opposing Recruiters Is No Game

Building Worker-Soldier-Student Alliance

PLP Classic Songs on One CD

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• US gets noble when there’s oil
• Tyrant? Play ball, you’re OK
• Bosses super-exploit immigrants
• Gov’t outsources torture
• US: Sickness often means mass ruin
• Sell killer as long as you can
• Not so gung-ho on Iraq
• Torture orders came from the top

• ---

Lynne Stewart Conviction: Rulers Break Own Laws to Build Fascism

The bosses are moving quickly and ruthlessly to solidify important aspects of the police state they require to launch their next round of wars for world domination. The February 10 conviction of attorney Lynne Stewart for "providing material support to terrorists" and "violating special prison administration rules" provides a case in point. It should be a wake-up call for revolutionaries and militant workers everywhere.

Stewart is a defense lawyer who has taken anti-government stands in representing unpopular clients. During the trial, Stewart denied supporting terrorism, or inciting any violent acts. She was indicted under Clinton’s 1996 Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty law, mainly for issuing a press release to Reuters from Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. He was imprisoned after being convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center — an act PLP denounces, as we do of all terrorists.

Stewart’s clients may or may not have been guilty, but that’s not the point. The main questions here are the rulers’ willingness to violate their own laws and the actions workers and communists must take toward this reality.

Stewart’s conviction was based on recordings the government had made of conversations between her and her client. This is a clear violation of "attorney-client privilege," supposedly one of capitalist democracy’s most "sacred" rights. The Department of "Justice" (DOJ) also violated something called "the right of an accused to have zealous [i.e. enthusiastic — Ed.] counsel represent him." Yet, according to the New York Times, one day after Stewart’s conviction, the legal case against Stewart was feeble: " The government never showed that any violence ever resulted from Mr. Sattar’s calls or from any action by Ms. Stewart or Mr. Yousry; there were no victims in this case.…Ultimately the jury appeared to have been persuaded by the fact that Stewart, a lawyer, had clearly violated the legal letter of the prison rules."

Violating prison administrative rules is a procedural offense, usually subject to fines, not a felony. Stewart now faces 40 years in jail. One co-defendant Mohammed Yousry, the translator was also convicted of five counts, with no proof of guilt except that he translated.

The government’s justification here is the need to "protect" us from terrorists. The DOJ constantly referred to 9/11 in the Stewart case. But the authority to wiretap attorney-client communications existed before 9/11, through something called the "crime-fraud" exception. A set of regulations called "Special Administrative Measures" (SAM) can also be implemented to prevent people in jail from communicating not only with the outside world but also with their legal counsel. The DOJ only has to decide that the subject of conversation lies "beyond the scope" of legal representation.

Hitler took power through legal elections. As CHALLENGE has often warned, fascism will come to the U.S. wrapped in red-white-and-blue legality. So the bosses no longer like attorney-client privilege? Presto! They enact a new law or regulation that abolishes it. Why not? After all, they hold state power.

This is an important lesson for the working class. It is an attack on anyone who seriously challenges capitalism. It is even more proof that the Clinton "Counter-terrorism" law and others, like the Patriot Act, have long since established a national security police state. As Bush and the Democrats rip apart social programs and pour money into their imperialist war plans and homeland security, these laws will be used to crush dissent.

Right now, the government’s image of terrorism is a racist caricature of Arabs and Muslims. As the rulers expand their oil wars, they will continue to use this vile tactic, and, as in the Stewart case, will extend it to anyone who defends Arabs and Muslims accused, rightly or wrongly, of terrorism. This is flagrant hypocrisy coming from the U.S. government, which every day, extends its record as the greatest perpetrator of terrorist murder.

But something else is happening here. For some time, the bosses have enjoyed a low level of class struggle on the home front and have so far managed to avoid Vietnam-type mass rebellions in their military. They can’t maintain this advantage forever. The more far-sighted among them — as indicated by the 2001 Hart-Rudman Commission’s Report on National Security in the 21st Century — understand that they must take steps to squash working-class mass militancy when they’re unable to nip it in the bud. The Lynne Stewart conviction precedes measures the rulers have in store for the leaders of working-class rebellions that will surely erupt as war and fascism sharpen. Today the target may be a lawyer who represents anti-government defendants. However, the strategic enemy for the bosses remains communist revolution. Its specter will haunt them until it eventually destroys them. But they will do a lot of damage along the way, including no-holds-barred police-state terror against PLP and anyone who dares oppose them.

Our Party didn’t do enough to oppose these fascist attacks. Stewart has stated that she opposes fundamentalism and terrorism as a strategy, but her politics of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" led her to mistakenly portray Islamic fundamentalists as freedom fighters. Clearly, PLP has many political disagreements with her. But the prosecution and conviction of Stewart could help suppress the growing fight-back against war and fascism. This trial will be used by the government to brand all revolutionaries and militant workers as "terrorists." It is a deadly error for us to underestimate the potential for the working class to be won to these politics. We should raise resolutions in our mass organizations condemning this verdict, and calling for action to oppose its consequences.

You can’t fight fascism by relying on the courts, because as the Stewart case shows, the rulers own the courts and will use them exclusively in their class interests. Nor can you fight it by uniting with the supposedly "anti-fascist" liberal wing of the ruling class. It doesn’t exist: all bosses are driven to fascism to solve the crises of their system. The only antidote to fascist terror is a mass base for communist revolution among workers, soldiers and students — and the class struggle that will lead to working-class seizure of state power.

Racist LAPD Terrorists Kill Black 8th Grader

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 14 — "Black people fear the police as much as they fear the gangs. In fact, the LAPD is considered the biggest gang in the city," one speaker told the LA City Council after cop Steven Garcia murdered 13-year-old Devin Brown on Feb. 6, firing 10 shots into the car the youth was driving. Devin and a friend had taken a cousin’s car out late at night. If it wasn’t South Central LA., the cops would have stopped the youth, given him a ticket, and taken him home.

The racist murder has sparked vigils, demonstrations and meetings about racist police terror. Meanwhile, the day after the killing, police invaded the area (83rd and Western) with shotguns. PLP members and friends have participated in discussions and rallies, distributing a leaflet exposing the LAPD as racist terrorists serving the capitalist system, calling for actions again the killing and for communist revolution to end this terrorism and its source — capitalism.

There have been several high-profile press conferences in which Police Chief Bratton and other cops "explained" what happened when Devin backed his car into a police car and Garcia fired into Devin’s car and killed him. But Garcia and his partner had exited their car before the youth’s car backed into it. They were in no danger whatsoever. Garcia shot to kill.

Bratton claims the car was stolen, but Devin’s family said it was his cousin’s car. Bratton and the LA Times are trying to push the lie that Devin was a "good kid gone wrong." His family and teachers say the opposite. Most people in the area don’t buy Bratton’s story. They know the cops’ racist record hasn’t changed.

While this killing occurred, Bratton has been lobbying the LA City Council for a new city sales tax to finance more cops. In today’s LA Times, Bratton claims the LAPD needs them to make LA "safer" and to prevent such attacks. In fact, a series of community meetings is intending to push for more cops. The City Council has refused Bratton’s request for now, given the anger at the racist murder of 8th grader Devin.

This killing comes on the heels of several racist decisions exposing the role of the courts in defending and protecting racist police who injure and kill African American men. In January, a jury awarded $2.4 million to two Inglewood police officers who were videotaped striking handcuffed African American teenager Donovan Jackson (see box). And a week ago, the LA County District Attorney said he wouldn’t prosecute the cops involved in the televised beating with flashlights of another African American, Stanley Miller.

Some African American community spokesmen have recently condemned Devon’s killing but called for working more closely with the police to formulate "new rules," like the promised one that police won’t shoot at a moving vehicle "unless they feel threatened." (They always "feel threatened.") This fits in with Bratton’s call for "community policing" in which community leaders become promoters of the LAPD in exchange for tiny "reforms." Bratton’s main "reform" is to add more cops, meaning more racist terror.

U.S. rulers claim to be fighting a "war on terrorism" at home and abroad. They’ve killed 100,000 Iraqis and over 1,450 U.S. troops, wounding tens of thousands more. They’re carrying out that same war on LA streets and throughout the country, directed especially at black and Latino youth.

The City Council is organizing community meetings to "answer questions" about this killing. They could face anger and answers they haven’t bargained for.

We condemn this racist killing and will fight for Garcia to be punished, taking this message to schools, unions, work-places and churches. But there’s no reform of the LAPD that will change its racist nature. That’s why the direction of this fight must lead in the long run to revolution for workers’ power — to destroy the racist terrorist bosses and their system once and for all.

We don’t want cop power, we want workers’ power. Crime and gangs have been created by capitalism. These problems can’t be solved with more cops, but by workers organizing independently of the cops to protect our own class, as we fight to eliminate the #1 criminals — the ruling class.

KACHING!!! Cops Rewarded Million$ for Racist Brutality

LA cops Jerry Morse and his partner Bijan Darvish were caught on video tape punching a handcuffed African American teenager, Donovan Jackson, and slamming him against a patrol car in Inglewood in July 2002. The video was broadcast and provoked outrage throughout LA, especially in Inglewood. But neither cop was ever convicted of a crime. Juries deadlocked twice in the assault case against Morse.

Morse was fired for his attack on the teenager, and Darvish was suspended for ten days for filing a false police report. They sued the city of Inglewood for "discrimination" and in January a jury awarded Morse $1.6 million and Darvish $810,000. The City is considering appealing the decision.

We can't expect justice from these bosses' courts that let racist cops off scot free and then reward them for their racist crimes!

War Budget Means Social Insecurity for Workers

U.S. rulers need to steal more and more from the working class in order to finance their rapidly advancing agenda of war and fascism. Bush’s proposed budget has this deadly goal. "In 2006, defence spending is scheduled to rise by 5% and homeland security spending by 3% while other programmes are to be cut." (The Economist, 2/12)

This racist budget slashes funds for food stamps, child care, public housing and health care to help pay for the extra $81 billion Bush is asking for the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will fall especially heavily on black, Latin and immigrant workers, a higher proportion of whom depend on food stamps, public housing and public health care, reflecting the racist nature of the cuts. While workers and their children suffer, the Pentagon’s total spending will soar over the half-trillion-dollar mark. The "reforms" of Social Security now under debate also represent a massive shift of capital from the working class to the war machine.

As drastic as the cuts are, the main U.S. rulers fault Bush for not being ruthless enough and not providing for further military mobilization. The Concord Coalition, headed by Pete Peterson and Warren Rudman, is the Establishment’s chief watchdog for fiscal policy. In a February 7 statement, it said, "The main problem with this budget is not what’s in it, but what’s left out. It assumes that the upcoming $81 billion supplemental spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan will be the last one."

Key agents of imperialism, Peterson and Rudman have a clear vision of the U.S.’s expanding war needs. Peterson is chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the rulers’ foremost foreign policy factory. The CFR played a leading role in the weapons hoax that "justified" invading Iraq, and it also drew up the occupation plans. The CFR "differed" with the Bush gang, saying that it didn’t use enough troops to carry out the invasion. The CFR is now pondering U.S. options in Iran and North Korea, in which fiscal policy factors heavily. Rudman co-chaired the pre-9/11 Hart-Rudman Commission, whose reports form a blueprint for keeping the U.S. as the world’s top imperialist far into the future. Hart-Rudman demands ever- widening military adventures, establishing a domestic police state, and a massive sacrifice of "blood and treasure" to support both efforts.

The rulers see much of the treasure coming from cuts in Social Security. On the eve of the latest Iraq invasion, the Concord Coalition warned of "an urgent long-lasting demand for new spending on national defense and homeland security." (1/10/03) At that time it only hinted at plundering Social Security. "The nation now faces two history-bending challenges: global terrorism and global aging. Meeting the first may require marshaling new resources far above the extra spending already legislated. We know that meeting the second will test the ability of society to provide a decent standard of living for the old."

The rulers have since let the cat out of the bag. Concord now says, "Ensuring a more sustainable system will require change, meaning that someone is going to have to give up something, either in the form of higher contributions, lower benefits or a combination of both. No Social Security reform will succeed unless this fact is acknowledged up front" (1/9/05). Medicare is next in line for the rulers’ looting, "If we can’t make the hard choices on Social Security we can never hope to tackle the problems of our health care entitlements."

Private accounts are just a smokescreen in the Social Security flap. Reducing workers’ benefits to finance the rulers’ warmaking is the real issue. Bush is luring his conservative base with the bait of privatization. But it turns out that almost all "private" accounts would be managed by the ultra-Establishment State Street and Mellon banks. A member of the Rockefeller Foundation sits on the board of each institution. The capital in such accounts would further U.S. imperialism just as well as under the government scheme.

U.S. rulers have already robbed steel workers of their retirement to put that industry on a war footing. Over the past decade, liberal investor Wilbur Ross formed International Steel by buying up bankrupt companies like Bethlehem and canceling pension plans. Ross has sold International to the Anglo-Indian Mittal group, but his cost-cutting ensures the existence of functioning steel mills on U.S. soil, in case demand for tanks and warships spikes. Thus, the raid on pensions aims at funding current wars and rebuilding infrastructures crucial for future ones.

The profit system is based on capitalists’ systematic theft of wealth from workers, the creators of all wealth. When foreign rivals threaten, the rulers devote vast amounts of these stolen assets to war. A system that steals food from children and the elderly so that it can bankroll mass murder must be smashed.

a name="Students’ Siege Disrupts Speech by Rulers’ Torturer/Apologist"></">St"dents’ Siege Disrupts Speech by Rulers’ Torturer/Apologist

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA—Forceful protests by students and faculty met the arrival of John Yoo on our campus, invited as part of the Chancellor’s "Distinguished Fellows Lecture" series — one that also included the infamous Viet Dinh, co-author of the Patriot Act. As Assistant Deputy Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003, Yoo has been called the "principal intellectual author" of the Bush administration’s "torture memos" — interrogation policy directives whose aim was to "increase flexibility for harsh interrogation [and] reduce the risk that Americans could be prosecuted for torture or war crimes." (Hajjar, The Nation, 2/7).

PLP students and friends from other schools joined the protest while building the communist struggle against imperialism, racism and fascism, and the capitalist system that breeds them.

Yoo, a summa cum laude Harvard graduate, is currently a professor at the Boalt School of Law at UC Berkeley. Yoo’s memos have been used to justify the indefinite detention and torture of "enemy combatants" and "terrorists" in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yoo, and others like the current Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, are the prime architects of the fascist policies that led to the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. These policies are meeting with a fight-back.

Two weeks before Yoo’s appearance, professors gathered over 400 signatures on a petition urging the Chancellor to withdraw his invitation as a "Distinguished Fellow." He refused but instead set up a "panel discussion" before the evening lecture where professors could debate Yoo on the "merits" of his legal arguments. This was not enough for the students.

In the afternoon, progressive student clubs rallied outside the Student Center chanting and giving speeches, alerting other students to Yoo’s lecture. Carrying a banner reading, "There Is No Debating Torture," and chanting, "Hitler rose, Hitler fell . . . John Yoo can go to hell," students marched through the Student Center and into the debate room. Holding up pictures of the Abu Ghraib tortures and signs saying, "Imperialism breeds Fascism," the protestors accused Yoo of fascist war crimes before being removed by police.

The students’ actions changed the tone of the "panel discussion," from a civil "academic debate" to a confrontational exchange. One panelist called Yoo a war criminal. Another read a description of the tortures at Guantanamo and asked, "Is this torture? Yes or NO!" The audience joined in demanding, "Yes or No!" People interrupted Yoo, calling him a racist and a fascist, while others stormed out during his talk.

This afternoon protest set the stage for the larger demonstration planned for Yoo’s official "Distinguished Fellows" evening lecture. More than 100 students and faculty members gathered outside the hall where Yoo was to speak. Audience members could see and hear the chanting protestors outside through a glass wall. PL’ers distributed CHALLENGE and a leaflet linking Yoo’s and the U.S. rulers’ fascist policies to those of the Nazis, calling for a worker-student-soldier alliance to end imperialism with communist revolution. Students were open to talking about Yoo and the war in Iraq. Some agreed on the need to smash imperialism and fascism in order to end wars and injustice.

As Yoo took the podium and waved to the protestors outside, students became even more incensed. They chanted, "John Yoo, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!" Other students stood up during his speech and called Yoo a fascist torturer for U.S. imperialism. The demonstrators outside marched into the building chanting. When the police kicked them out, they reconvened outside. In fact, the lecture was cut short because of the demonstration

It’s no surprise that the apologists of endless imperialist wars are appearing on campuses nation-wide. While the rulers are waging their profit wars on the backs of workers and students, cutting jobs and social services, they simultaneously need to convince workers and students of the "justness" of their so-called war on terror. After all, young workers and students won’t be convinced to fight and die in these wars if they know it is for the oil profits of Exxon, Halliburton, etc. The university is a crucial site in this ideological war.

It’s possible the demonstrators underestimated the willingness of the students to stop Yoo. Many students see more clearly now that the University plays an important role in building fascist ideology to support imperialist war. Some people seem to have made a leap in commitment to fight these evils. One person told us, "This was the best thing that happened on this campus in ten years." Another said, "This is the most important thing we’ll do all year." This bodes well for the future growth of PLP.

Build Community Support to Fight Police Brutality

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, Feb. 12 — Today over 50 people attended the inaugural showing of a documentary about the 1993 police murder of Archie ("Artie") Elliott III and the ensuing government cover-up. The showing was held at St. Paul’s Baptist Church and organized by Dorothy Copp Elliott, Artie’s mother, who has been a tireless fighter for justice in her son’s case and in the general struggle against racist police brutality.

The Peoples Coalition for Police Accountability plans to show the documentary — along with another short video made at a recent Amnesty International program on racial profiling and police brutality — at several other churches and public libraries. This will help build community awareness of how police kill and brutalize with impunity, and to demonstrate how we fight back.

This campaign demonstrates the importance of building grassroots activity around critical aspects of racism in a wide range of mass organizations. Many participants in these activities learn from these efforts that the capitalist system is determined to use the police as a terrorist force against the working class, especially African Americans, in order to stifle dissent and put a lid on any insurgency against their profit-hungry system. We’re constantly lied to by police, prosecutors, and politicians. The latest example is that "somehow" the darling of the liberals, States Attorney Glenn Ivey, has "lost" the entire file of Artie Elliott’s case! After hitting this brick wall enough times, many activists learn that the brick wall must be destroyed through revolution, and some have already joined Progressive Labor Party to make this happen.

Buenos Aires: Subway Workers Block Tracks, Win Wage Hikes, Struggle Continues . . .

BUENOS AIRES, Feb. 14 — The 1,900 workers operating this city’s Subte (subway system), transporting 800,000 riders daily, have won another victory in their unceasing struggle against the bosses of Metrovias — which has a contract to run the system — the government and the union hacks. Blocking the tracks helped win a 19% pay raise, which, on top of last December’s hike, totals 44% in wage increases. Their fight is important for the world’s workers in these days of endless capitalist wars, repression and economic crisis, with workers mostly on the receiving end of the bosses’ attacks. Overall, Argentine workers’ wages are now 20% below rates of 2001.

These subway workers must remain on constant alert since the bosses and the hacks will continue to try to take away these gains and smash the workers’ unity. The best lasting victory for these workers is turning their struggles into schools for communism.

After a week of striking, in addition to winning the wage hike, workers will also be paid for the days they struck, plus a night-shift differential. The lowest-paid worker’s earnings will rise from 618 pesos ($220) monthly to 910 ($325). The highest category will go up from 1,530 ($546) to 1,910 ($682). In last spring’s militant struggle, the workers won a 6-hour work-day which forced the bosses to hire more workers (although still below the 3,000 total of a few years ago). And very little is being invested in repairs and maintenance, endangering workers and riders. Plus Metrovias wants to introduce automatic ticket machines, which could lead to more job losses.

The workers’ fight began in November. In early February, they stepped up the struggle, initially stopping work for 3 hours each day, then 4, then 5 and finally 24 hours. Nine times the workers went onto the rails, blocking trains from running.

Meanwhile, workers were countering the lies of the bosses and the media, which accused them of being "high-paid" and tried to pit riders against them. They also had to make sure the UTA (Transportation Workers Union) bosses wouldn’t sell them out. The workers exposed the bloated salaries of the Metrovias executives’ as the real ones being overpaid, incomes many times that of the workers. The workers championed their right to a decent living for themselves and their families. Many youth rallied to support the strikers.

Finally, UTA union head Juan Manuel Palacios, after refusing the strikers’ call for other transport workers (like bus drivers) to strike in solidarity, pretended he was still controlling the workers and suddenly announced a 19% wage-hike deal with Metrovias and the government (Metrovias gets 65 million pesos a year in government subsidies). But, the workers’ real leadership — the House of Delegates — first learned about it on TV. At 1:00 AM, the UTA sent copies of the deal to the five subway lines. When agents of the leadership arrived at the Virreyes station, the delegates barred them from the meetings. "Rank-and-file workers, not the UTA, decide if the strike is over," declared a delegate (Pagina12/web, 2/12) Eighteen hours later, after all the shifts had discussed and approved the agreement, the strike ended.

Already the bosses are counterattacking: "During the week-long conflict, the company tried to run emergency services using supervisors, but workers went onto the tracks to stop the trains. Metrovias tried to get injunctions against the blockade. It will now pursue these demands since the deal doesn’t call for the dropping of the legal demands." (Pagina12)

So, the workers must not lower their guard; the struggle must continue.

Cops, Homeland Security: Big Danger For D.C. Metro Drivers

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 15 — About 70 workers picketed Metro headquarters on Feb. 10 around the issue of safety on the buses after a number of drivers had been attacked. The situation is complicated because the knee-jerk reaction of many people is to demand more cops. Some drivers want a cop on every bus!

But PLP member and ATU Local 689 President Mike Golash fought for a communist outlook, calling on his local to take the lead in fighting racism and poverty. He also got the local to refuse an offer from the D.C. police to give mace to every driver. (Some workers want every bus to carry a notice containing that section of the Homeland Security law making attacks on transit workers a federal crime. This would draw workers into collaboration with a fascist law that would, among other things, bust their union. More on this in a future issue.)

More than anything, today’s rally was a step in what could be a series of pickets and job actions to prepare workers for a possible strike this summer. Talks began on February 14 for a three-year contract, and workers would have to be politically and organizationally ready to wage a struggle that would be illegal under the fascist Department of Homeland Security. And during any possible walkout, the true role of the cops will be clear, not to "protect" the workers but to smash their strike!

CHALLENGE sales are slowly increasing, as is the potential for growing. The old right-wing union leadership is downloading Metro CHALLENGE articles from the web and distributing them, to "prove" that Mike wants to build a revolutionary movement to smash racism, poverty and imperialist war. They think this will discredit him! As May Day approaches and the war in Iraq deteriorates, as the contract fight unfolds and workers defend their red leadership from attack, a significant story is developing here.

a name="Boeing Workers Must Ground Union Hacks’ Pro-Boss Garbage">">"oeing Workers Must Ground Union Hacks’ Pro-Boss Garbage

The contract with Boeing’s largest union, the International Association of Machinists, expires September 1. Large is a relative word: membership has sunk from over 44,000 to slightly over 16,000 due to layoffs and outsourcing. The union leaders’ answer to these cutbacks is to try to sell themselves to management. These class traitors’ chief selling point is the union’s ability to blunt class consciousness, to persuade union members to view their future in the narrowest economic terms and in the "national interest." In the run-up to the contract, our Party and friends will expose this path to ruin, particularly during our summer project. Building the road to revolution will measure our success.

District 751 President Mark Blondin let the cat out of the bag during an interview with the Tacoma News-Tribune in January. After mouthing the patently absurd assessment that "things are looking better than they did the last time around," he got to the meat of the matter.

The union helped Boeing win more business. "We were a major part of the team that helped recruit the [new 787 Dreamliner] to Washington," he pleaded. Never mind that he led the racist charge to cut the state’s poorest workers off unemployment insurance to help finance the state’s $3.2 billion giveaway to the company of our hard-earn tax dollars. Latin farmworkers were particularly hard hit. "We’re [also] backing Boeing 100 percent [in lobbying and dirty tricks to rescue the scandal-ridden 767 air force tanker contract]."

When asked why Airbus is "outselling and out-producing Boeing," he declined to expose the company’s frittering away of more than $15 billion of our labor to speculate with company stock. Instead, he attacked European governments for creating an "unfair advantage" with "launch aid," parroting his master, CEO Harry Stonecipher.

Essentially, he argues that after all this loyal service to Boeing in the name of US capitalism, why not throw us [the union leadership] a bone so we can have something to show the workforce. Don’t hold your breath!

The Handwriting Is On the Wall

The only thing Boeing plans to throw is retirees off medical coverage. "Boeing is using Southern California as a proving ground in its effort to reduce the amount it must pay in health benefits to retirees." (Los Angeles Business Journal, 2/8) "On Jan 1, the provisions of a recently negotiated contract with the United Aerospace Workers’ Long Beach-based Local 148 denies health benefits to any new hires once they retire. The move follows a deal struck last year with two other UAW locals, Paramount-based Local 887 and Santa Susana-based Local 1519, that call for no health coverage upon retirement for members hired after May 15, 2003."

"The bosses are trying to pit young workers against old!" is the way one friend saw this before suggesting we offer a series on anti-racist, revolutionary and class struggle history in the industry to counter the bosses divide-and-conquer strategy.

We Have To See Past Our Noses

No matter what form the sellout takes in September, the most dangerous development would be allowing the union misleaders to win us to the bosses’ nationalism. Politically, this rotten ideology leads us to support their endless oil wars and war reorganization of industry. We intend to enlist Boeing workers, families and friends to help organize military personnel and industrial subcontractor and temporary workers, up and down the coast. CHALLENGE can be the tool to win these two groups of young workers to pave the way to smashing the bosses’ oil wars and war economy with communist revolution.

Garment Workers Sew Red Ideas into Class Struggle

(This concludes the series contained in the last three CHALLENGES describing the fight in a garment factory over the cutting of the lunch half-hour, slashing wages and defending a militant worker — Tomas — who was threatened with firing.)

After lunch, the boss ordered everyone to the cutting area, saying, "Someone from the company wants to talk to you." The workers gathered and the boss came in with a man who looked like a racist cop. This guy asked the boss to leave and presented himself as a "representative of the Lucky Brand company." He said he was a lawyer, had worked with the National Labor Relations Board and knew the law.

With arrogance and contempt, he said, "I’ve come to resolve a problem." Referring to a paper Tomas had given to a co-worker the day before, he said, "To stop production is against the law. This is the last day that the person who wrote this will work in this factory." The bosses’ supporters applauded.

After allowing some workers’ questions, he said it was necessary to form a committee to deal with these problems, and that he would name its members. He told Tomas to go to the office. The boss’s step-son gave Tomas two checks and then fired him. Knowing this was "illegal" according to the bosses’ labor laws, the company "lawyer" drew the boss’s step-son aside and came back to tell Tomas to return to work, and that he wanted him to be on the workers’ committee.

Everything seemed to be back to normal but work became "slow" so Tomas and his co-worker were laid off for several days. Tomas returned several times to the factory but the boss insisted there still wasn’t enough work, that he would call him. Meanwhile, his co-worker was rehired. The boss insists that Tomas has not been fired.

During this period, the co-worker visited Tomas’ apartment at home with his family to pass the time and discuss events in the factory as well as the general problems of capitalism. They’ve kept in close touch with the workers who told them the boss had ordered several workers to do Tomas’ job. When they refused, they were sent home. Since then there have been discussions with other workers in their homes about CHALLENGE, the war, fascism, the nature of capitalism, and the need for them to join a PLP study group.

The struggle continues on many levels. Losing one reform struggle is not losing the war against the bosses. Win or lose, the workers learn many things. Many have shown solidarity with and respect for Tomas, his ideas and leadership. When CHALLENGE is sold outside the factory, the lunch tables are covered with it. At lunch time, the workers sit reading it. Discussions continue about the war in Iraq, racism, the wage system and production for need.

This whole struggle has inspired us to redouble our revolutionary efforts. The workers are being won not only to fight the company but also the capitalist system itself. They will continue to receive CHALLENGE and leaflets, which they will also help write and distribute. Bringing communist ideas into the heart and soul of the working class is the key fight, even more so given the increasing attacks on the working class to pay for imperialist war.

Regardless of how able we become in fighting over reform issues, the bosses will always win as long as they hold state power. We must win ourselves and our co-workers to understand that the only lasting victory for our class is how many workers join study groups, read and distribute CHALLENGE and are recruited to PLP. This, and only this, will put our class on the path to its final liberation, communist revolution.

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CHICAGO, IL, Feb. 11 — A 54-year-old man was killed today when the police used a Taser stun gun to subdue him. He had refused to leave the hallway on the 26th floor of an apartment building where he had been invited. His "capital offense" was screaming at the police, "If you come near me, I will give you HIV," and threatening to bite them.

A few days earlier, a 14-year-old ward of the state went into cardiac arrest after a police sergeant shot him with a stun gun at a residential group home. Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris said he believed the boy was sitting on a couch when police arrived and was no longer violent. The boy is recovering.

Chicago police have been using Tasers on a trial basis since April. Top cop Philip Cline said he would continue using the 200 Tasers the department has now, but temporarily halted plans to distribute more. About 6,000 police agencies use Taser stun guns, made by Taser International Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz.

In November, Amnesty International reported 74 Taser-related deaths since 2001 and concluded the devices were "contributing to widespread human rights abuses." Last year in Miami, a 6-year-old boy was shocked in a school office, and a 75-year-old woman was shot with a stun gun in a nursing home in Rock Hill, S.C. An Air Force study found that multiple shocks from a Taser led to heart damage in pigs.

A stun gun fires two wires with electrified tips that send up to 50,000 volts into their target, shocking and immobilizing the person.

On the same day as the electrocution, the city announced plans to create a 1,000 mile-long Homeland Security fiber-optic grid with cameras and biochemical sensors to "fight terrorism and crime."

Last September, racist Mayor Daley said the city would add 250 cameras to more than 2,000 already in use, making it the largest video surveillance system of its kind in the world. The new Homeland Security Grid will add even more cameras, made possible by a $53 million settlement with the RCN cable company who will provide 388 miles of fiber-optic cable. Cook County and the city will add another $40 million in federal homeland security grants. Thirty-two miles of lakefront from Evanston to Chicago's South Side, including Lake Shore Drive, parks, water filtration plants and public venues like Navy Pier will be wired into the new system. The grid will be monitored at the city’s 911 center.

This is the future the bosses have in store for us while retired steel workers lose their pensions and healthcare; Cook County hospital workers prepare to strike for their health care and to keep their jobs; City College students face tuition hikes and other racist cutbacks; and the City prepares to close schools, lay off workers and open more military academy high schools. The only answer to war and fascism is communist revolution. As we build a fighting PLP, we have to keep our eyes on a bigger May Day, recruiting new members and spreading CHALLENGE.

a name="‘Million Dollar Baby’ Is No Knockout"></">‘M"llion Dollar Baby’ Is No Knockout

("Million Dollar Baby has been hailed as a "great movie" by liberals while right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh and Debbie Schlussel have attacked it as "left-wing diatribe" because of its message on euthanasia, implying that director Clint Eastwood is a "commie." Below is what a CHALLENGE contributor from the "Frozen North" writes about the movie.)

Everybody you talk to says "Million Dollar Baby" is terrific. While "Baby’s" not exactly a "feel-good film," it’s been nominated for seven Academy Awards — merely Hollywood’s way of patting itself on the back and drumming up more business. Merit means little.

"Baby" is a generally well-made and well-acted movie (especially Hillary Swank’s Maggie). The dialogue of the male characters is mechanically "cute." I won’t discuss all the plot’s twists, which, honestly, I didn’t see coming. Still, it’s worth analyzing why the movie is so awful politically.

For openers, it’s doubly racist.

Hillary Swank plays Maggie an all but impoverished, uneducated white working-class waitress who wants to become a boxer. The movie starts in a gym where an older man Frankie, played by Clint Eastwood, is training a young black man who shows promise of becoming champion. Morgan Freeman plays the gym’s black custodian and former boxer.

Maggie wants to make some mark in life. She has a lot of heart but little talent. She tries to get Frankie to manage her, but he refuses, calling "girl boxing" a freak show. Predictably, first Morgan Freeman’s character and eventually Frankie get won over to her dream.

A local black fighter sadistically taunts both Maggie and an untalented and mentally retarded young white fighter nicked-named Danger. (Danger is first seen making "innocent" racist remarks to Freeman, who takes the comments with no complaint or observations, and eventually encourages him to keep getting his head punched in.)

Maggie’s first opponents are semi-talented white women, who she always beats in the first round. Maggie wheedles Frankie into getting her better fights. The better fighters are black or Latin. Becoming a major draw, now Maggie can get a title shot with the champion, who is black, from Germany. and famous for fighting dirty. For various reasons, Frankie holds out on signing the fight.

If the nasty fighter had been white, or her opponents black, the message here might have been different. As it stands, not only this one fighter but the female champion are terrible caricatures.

Here in the movie Morgan Freeman’s role is that of the "Uncle Tom," character, dramatically necessary here to cover up the movie’s inherent racist messages. Boxing’s no picnic, but the two black fighters, the young man and the female champion, are vicious almost beyond belief. And why is she black? She’s from Germany; it would be reasonable to have a blonde woman play her. But Eastwood & Co. chose a vicious black person for us to focus on.

A second aspect of the movie’s intentional anti-working class outlook is Maggie’s family background. Call them "rednecks" or "white trash," they’re mean, rotten people who seek to get as much from their daughter’s fighting as they can, while openly laughing at her. It might be argued they must be that bad to justify Maggie’s desperate need to succeed in a foul profession. Just remember, writers and directors choose how they portray bad guys. These aren’t real people we see on the street. So how about this alternative interpretation:

What if the family had been thrown into poverty by the millions of jobs destroyed by capitalism’s unlimited greed? If they had the same bad attitudes but also had some basis for them, wouldn’t they at the least be more interesting people? Instead, they are simply contemptible dirt.

Why should we see any relation between white and black poverty? Don’t expect rich Hollywood to make any basic criticisms of capitalism.

(B. Traven, in his classic book "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," portrayed nasty Mexican bandits — then spent page after page giving the reader the economic reasons for their manner. But when Hollywood made the book into the movie, they saw no need for us to understand these people as the victims they were. But capitalist culture seems to be able to scratch up sympathy for murderous exploiting rich characters.)

For years Eastwood and his movies have been called fascist, a charge he laughs at. A realistic examination of "Million Dollar Baby" should tell us fascism is no laughing matter.

CIA, Vatican Helped 5,000 Nazi Murderers Escape To Fight in Cold War

(Part III —The previous article showed how Nazi scientists under SS Major Wernher von Braun were recruited by U.S. rulers to work in their space program, leading to astronaut Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon.)

One of the most precious prizes obtained by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, predecessor of the CIA) was Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, one of Hitler’s chief intelligence officers. Five years after World War II had ended, Gehlen was still on the job. From a walled-in compound in Bavaria, he oversaw a vast network of intelligence agents spying on Russia. His top aides were among the most notorious Nazi war criminals. Gehlen and his SS unit were hired as CIA agents when they revealed their massive records on the Soviet Union to the U.S.

Gehlen derived much of his information from his role in one of the war’s most terrible atrocities: the interrogation, torture and murder by starvation of some four million Soviet prisoners. Prisoners who refused to cooperate were often tortured or summarily executed. Many were executed even after having given information, while others were simply left to starve to death. The Gehlen group members, knowing that if they were seized by the Red Army they would be summarily executed, maneuvered near the end of the war to be captured by advancing U.S. troops.

In 1945, two months before Germany surrendered, Gehlen and a small group of his most senior officers carefully microfilmed their vast holdings on the USSR, packed the film in watertight steel drums and secretly buried them in a remote mountain meadow in the Austrian Alps.

General William Donovan and Allen Dulles of the CIA were tipped off about Gehlen’s surrender and his offer of Russian intelligence in exchange for a job. The CIA was soon jockeying with military intelligence for authority over Gehlen’s microfilmed records—and control of the German spymaster. Dulles arranged for the establishment of a private intelligence facility in West Germany, naming it the Gehlen Organization.

Gehlen promised not to hire any former SS, SD, or Gestapo members, but he hired them anyway, and the CIA didn’t stop him. Two of Gehlen’s early recruits were Emil Augsburg and Dr. Franz Six, who had been part of mobile killing squads, which executed Jews, intellectuals and Soviet partisans wherever they were found. Other early recruits included Willi Krichbaum, senior Gestapo leader for southeastern Europe, and the Gestapo chiefs of Paris and Kiel, Germany.

With CIA encouragement, Gehlen’s group set up "rat lines" to evacuate Nazi war criminals from Europe to avoid prosecution. By establishing transit camps and issuing phony passports, the Gehlen group enabled more than 5,000 Nazis to relocate around the world, especially in South and Central America. There, mass murderers like Klaus Barbie (the butcher of Lyons, France) helped governments organize death squads in Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and elsewhere.

While the U.S. participated in the war crime tribunals of key Nazi officials and maintained an alliance with the Communist Soviet Union, secretly the U.S. was launching the cold war and needed the Nazis’ help in that eventual struggle.

The Nazis escaped justice for their war crimes not only with help from the OSS-CIA, but also from the Vatican through Lucio Gelli, a member of the fascist P2 Masonic Lodge. He was responsible for the murder and torture of hundreds of Yugoslav partisans. Gelli's agreement with U.S. intelligence to spy on the communists after the war helped save his life.

(Source: V2Rocket.com. Next: The concentration camps as death camps for surplus labor, and also as high-profit operations eventually operated by German companies while also reaping millions for Ford, GM, IBM, etc.)

Imperialist Holocaust In Congo Massacred Millions

A statue of Belgian King Leopold II, erected in the heart of Congo’s capital city of Kinshasa, mysteriously disappeared the day after it appeared early this month, removed by the same workers who had installed it. Perhaps the anger of the city’s inhabitants over the fact that Leopold was responsible for the slaughter of ten to fifteen million men, women and children had something to do with it.

Leopold’s enslavement, kidnapping, rape and murder of half the country’s population, one of history’s most horrible holocausts, is perhaps the world’s least known examples of genocide. When the novelist Joseph Conrad journeyed up the Congo River, he described what he saw as "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." It all stemmed from the genocidal, exploitative nature of capitalism and imperialism.

In 1884, Leopold maneuvered to seize the Congo and make it his personal fiefdom, creating an immensely profitable business. In 1890, the demand for inflatable rubber tires for automobiles and bicycles created a huge market for natural rubber. It grew wild in the Congo. Retrieving it necessitated climbing high trees, cutting vines, collecting the sap and bringing it back to a central location. Workers had to be forced to stay in the forests "for days at a time to do work that was…arduous — and physically painful." ("King Leopold’s Ghost," by Adam Hochschild, 1999)

Leopold’s "solution"? A militarized system of terror, taking women and children as hostages, releasing them only if men brought back their quotas of wild rubber. Resisters had their hands, ears, noses, breasts, and heads chopped off, killing them along with their families. Leopold established a slave labor regime: if a village failed to meet its quota of rubber, all adult males, women and children were executed.

From 1897 to 1900, 3,000 Congolese soldiers revolted, uniting across all ethnic lines to fight the colonialists (who had organized a Congolese army to enforce Leopold’s "laws").

A worldwide movement developed protesting Leopold’s holocaust. Mark Twain was a leader of its U.S. branch. He charged that Leopold was the slayer of 15 million Congolese, labeling him "greedy, grasping, avaricious, cynical, bloodthirsty…"

An Englishman, E. D. Morel, organized the Congo Reform Association, backed by Liverpool businessmen who opposed Leopold because he had kept British capitalists out of his Belgian colony.

Once the Belgians had exhausted wild rubber supplies, they began cultivating it on plantations, using forced labor. Copper, gold and tin mining were developed. Miners were routinely whipped. "Safety conditions in the mines were abysmal." (Hochschild) Thousands of workers died every year. "More than 80 percent of the uranium in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki [atomic] bombs came from the heavily guarded Congo mine of Shinkilobwe."

Eventually exposure of the holocaust forced Leopold out — but only after he had amassed a huge personal fortune. He died in 1909. During his rule, Congo’s population declined from 20 to 30 million to nine million. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, labeled it "the greatest crime in all history." Soon the U.S. and Britain developed vast investments there, in copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, tin, manganese and zinc, sucking huge profits from this super-exploitation. In 1960, Belgium was forced to grant independence to the Congo. An anti-colonialist — Patrice Lumumba — was elected the country’s first president, hoping to reduce this imperialist carnage. Nearly immediately the U.S. had him assassinated. When Hochschild was visiting the Congo as a student, "A drunken CIA agent was boasting how they had organized the murder of Patrice Lumumba." (London Financial Times, 4/4/99) They then installed a loyal puppet, Joseph Mobutu, who had served in the Belgian’s colonial army. He ruled on behalf of U.S. imperialists for 35 years, amassing a fortune of $4 billion while poverty ravages the population. When the Cold War ended, the U.S. interest in Mobutu waned, but the French developed ties with him. Since then U.S. and French capitalists have vied for control of the Congo, supporting one or another of neighboring African rulers’ armies that have been warring over the country’s rich natural resources. The UN reports 3 to 3.5 million people have died since 1998 because of the conflict in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Global capitalism/imperialism is the source of racist genocide and exploitation in Africa. It cannot be reformed because the drive for maximum profits, the intense competition for control over raw materials, markets, and cheap labor is inherent in the capitalist system. The working class of Africa is paying for the absence of a communist movement to organize a fight against all imperialists and their local henchmen. Join PLP to build a new revolutionary international communist movement and end this imperialist hell.

Thousands Protest Lack of Affordable Housing in NYC

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 2 —Today this city saw its largest demonstration for public and low-income housing in decades, encompassing a multi-racial, multi-generational crowd of around 8,000 people. Many were angry over the city’s inadequate supply of public housing; no new housing projects have been constructed in years. A large section of the protestors marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and joined others at the City Hall rallying point.

The demonstration differed with past actions in its demands and grassroots character. It included block associations and neighborhood, tenant and ethnic groups, with an especially large Asian participation as well as large black, Latino and white contingents, rather than primarily people affiliated with tenant organizations. Their average age was much younger than in previous protests.

Even though the speakers were controlled by right-wing union leaders, the protesters were not. They didn’t limit their demands to merely strengthening existing regulations — greatly weakened over the past ten years — but called for changes in the whole course of the city’s housing construction and renovation, advocating a primary emphasis on increasing affordable housing for working people, opposing the erection of just luxury housing.

Not surprisingly, many of the reformist union leaders and community activists who addressed the crowd did little to link the crisis of affordable housing to either racism or to the war in Iraq that costs tens of billions. Firstly, this crisis has a very racist character, since black, Latin and Asian workers’ wages are the lowest in the population; therefore, a greater proportion of their earnings is spent on rent. Secondly, the war budget has increasingly affected this city — reducing federal monies to the State and City — forcing cutbacks in public education, rising tuition in the public colleges (CUNY) and attacks on professors’ contracts.

Still, speakers advocated voting their way out of society’s problems, showing their loyalty to the Democrats. Yet Democrats in Washington have consistently voted for Bush’s war budget.

However, the Progressive Labor Party spread the view that elections can’t fix capitalism, a system that has always created wars for profit, and will always use the working class to pay for and fight such wars. One young woman who took a copy of CHALLENGE responded, "Hell, yeah, we need revolution! Communism sounds good to me." A system based on the needs of the working class, where not only housing but education, healthcare and power itself are guaranteed to all, is something many think is worth fighting for.

LETTERS

Russian Free Market Spawns Nazi Skinheads

The CHALLENGE article (2/16) on the Red Army liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago contrasts sadly with the rise of neo-Nazis in Russia. There have been many racist attacks there by skinhead gangs. On Feb. 6, 2004, skinheads armed with knives and bats murdered a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St Petersburg. She was stabbed 11 times. Shortly afterwards, an Afghan man died in a Moscow hospital, a week after being beaten by a gang of skinheads. Abdul Wasi was attacked with bottles and metal bars as he walked home. Mr Abdul, who leaves a three-month-old daughter and a Russian wife, remained in a coma for a week before dying of a brain hemorrhage.

The attacks are continuing. Skinheads severely beat a pregnant woman from India in the Arbat district. She lost her baby. Skinheads also beat a black U.S. Marine assigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Forty-four people were killed in Russia in 2004 in racist incidents.

There are up to 80,000 skinheads throughout Russia, almost as many as in the U.S., Britain and Germany. Many are linked to fascist parties like the Russian National Alliance or the Freedom Party. Many skinheads also have their own gangs, like The Russian Fist of St. Petersburg, with some 400 members. They’re also being trained by KKK members from the U.S. or Nazis from Germany, who enter Russia.

Why do such groups flourish in the land that suffered so much from the Nazis during World War 2? There were fascists and racists in the former Soviet Union, but they were kept in check. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, these groups emerged.

Vladimir Simonov (of the RIA NOVOSTI news agency) wrote the following (reprinted in ARGENPRESS.info, 2/8/2005):

"The sudden change from a centralized to a market economy…caused a serious economic recession, and millions lost their jobs.…Four million children and teenagers were left homeless, just 30% less than during the years of the bloody civil war of 1918-21.

"These ‘children of the reforms’ were left confused, open to any primitive calls to violence. Youth gangs were formed fearing anything ‘foreign,’ particularly people of different skin color. Meanwhile, the new free market theorists in essence rehabilitated Nazism. Textbooks were written without mentioning the great victory of the Red Army, even saying this victory ‘put a brake to the economic progress of Russia’ and allowed the Soviets to ‘subjugate the peoples of Eastern Europe.’ If the Red Army had been defeated, Russians would have tasted Bavarian beer decades before, according to the teachings of the free marketers. Cheap copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism were sold openly in the streets, while anti-fascist books were hardly available, considered too ‘leftist.’ According to sociologist Alexander Tarasov, an expert on youth problems, including the skinheads, these textbooks are a basic source of information for students, so a good number of them have reached the conclusion that ‘Hitler was better than Stalin,’ and that ‘Hitler was right.’"

PLP is more than correct when it says the collapse of the old communist movement was a huge defeat for workers worldwide. It’s time we redouble our efforts to build a new international revolutionary movement, avoiding the mistakes of the old one, to free humanity once and for all from the scourge of fascism and its creator, capitalism.

Red Anti-Nazi

P.S.: The new "social reforms" imposed by Putin, cutting many services (like free public transportation) for retirees, have been met by a wave of protests across Russia. They’re the first mass working-class protests since the miners took to the streets in 1998. Retirees are angry because the "reform’s" monetary compensation — covering only 18 trips a month — falls far short of what they’ve had. Many retirees must work to supplement lousy pensions. These 18 trips only cover nine days.

These kinds of protests need left political leadership, not the kind offered by the old totally pro-capitalist CP, but a real communist one. That’s the only way to counter the growth of fascist skinheads and massive government cut-backs.

Berlin Workers Still Honor Red Army

On a recent trip to Germany heading to Berlin, some local revolutionary activists kindly showed me some important historical sites. Despite what I thought I knew about history, what I saw surprised me. The U.S. media and schools spread the lie that the Soviet socialist revolution was a total failure that supposedly oppressed the people of Europe. But it’s clear that many working-class people there understand and appreciate the revolution’s valuable accomplishments despite its ultimate collapse. This is true even in Berlin, where the Berlin Wall supposedly "proved that communism is bad."

There’s a plaza in the center of the city dedicated to Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels. In addition to statues, there are beautiful metal pillars with etched-in scenes showing workers in struggle, including the Vietnamese defeat of the U.S. invasion.

Elsewhere there’s a large beautiful park, the same one where earlier communist revolutionaries such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht gave speeches 90 years ago. After World War II, the park was re-dedicated in honor and appreciation of the Soviet Red Army for its role in freeing Germany, and the rest of Europe from the Nazis. At one end is a beautiful, huge statue of a Soviet soldier with a child on one arm and a sword in the other, smashing a Nazi. At its base is a small room with a mural depicting scenes from the war. There’s an almost identical statue in Russia, solidifying the ties of friendship expressed after the war between the German and Soviet working classes. Outside are twenty large monuments, ten on each side, each one displaying a picture and a quote from Stalin about the war, discussing the tasks and the progress of the struggle to smash the Nazis. Ten of the monuments have quotes in German, the other ten, with matching pictures, have quotes in Russian.

Now it’s true that German capitalists and so-called moderate "socialists" would like to hide the accomplishments of the communist movement, but as one activist told me: "The feelings among the working class are so strong that the government would not DARE to close down or even neglect these parks!"

Most importantly I gained a deeper understanding of the spectacular successes of the Soviet Revolution, despite its ultimate demise. Even after 50 years of Cold War, millions of Europeans understand the significance of the Soviet Revolution and the struggle against capitalism. Tens of thousands, including thousands of Turkish immigrants, marched on May Day in Berlin, and hundreds of thousands marched around the world.

One important way capitalism controls our minds is by limiting our information and therefore our vision of an anti-capitalist, pro-communist understanding of the world. Schools in the U.S. and worldwide, intentionally hide this knowledge, creating cynicism and defeatism within the working class. Many young workers and students are angry at capitalism’s abuses — economic hardship, intense racist oppression and war.

But it’s not enough to just feel anger. We, especially our young workers and students, must study and learn the lessons of the past, not simply because they’re good stories, but because they open our minds to the realities of the power of the working class and the possibilities of creating a new communist world.

Red Traveler

Opposing Recruiters Is No Game

Ben, a teacher friend and member of my church, was talking to me about military recruiters at his high school. He said students there seemed barely aware of them. Then he related an interesting story.

Four years ago, Scott (who Ben says is a communist), came to Ben’s school to do research for his graduate thesis. He got to know the students pretty well. One of them, Clyde, had recently spoken to the recruiters and was about to enlist in the Marines. The only thing left was signing the papers. Scott had been a Marine himself for six years, serving a tour in Vietnam. He wished he’d never joined. He and Ben tried hard to persuade Clyde not to enlist.

Finally, after failing to convince him, Scott and Ben challenged Clyde and his buddy to a "2-on-2" basketball game to settle it. If Ben and Scott won, Clyde would agree not to sign up. But if Clyde and his friend won, he wouldn’t hear any more static about not joining.

The next day, they were out on the court. All four played as if it were a matter of life and death. It came down to the final point, see-sawing back and forth for what seemed like forever. Finally, Clyde sank one from the far corner — a three-pointer. It was all over. There would be no more static. Clyde signed his papers a few days later, and shortly afterwards left for training camp.

For over a year Ben heard nothing from Clyde. Then, around last Christmas Ben heard from Clyde, calling from a Marine base somewhere in the U.S. Clyde told Ben joining the Marines had been a big mistake. "You know, Mr. Lewis," Clyde said, "I think about that game every day. If only I’d missed that shot ….."

Ben said that Clyde hasn’t been to Iraq yet. But we’re wondering how long it’ll be before he ships out. Meanwhile, the recruiters are still in the school, and there’s been no effort yet to get them out. We’re discussing it. We need to ask people at the church; they may have some ideas.

Old-time Red

Building Worker-Soldier-Student Alliance

After several weeks of pushing for the need to build a student-worker-soldier alliance, my campus group agreed to support a trip to a local factory and reach out to workers there. So several weeks ago, six of us arose at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday and traveled to the plant to talk to the workers. We distributed a leaflet containing workers’ letters describing conditions they face as well as their frustration with having relatives in the military fighting a war that’s obviously not in their interest — actually an imperialist war for control of Iraqi oil.

Afterwards we talked over breakfast about the significance of building an anti-imperialist, anti-fascist movement, how the only serious way to do this is by uniting workers, students and soldiers. We also discussed why PLP fights for communism.

One student asked, "Do you guys really think communism works?" Another replied, "The reason it’s so hard to envision a communist society is because we have grown up and been educated in a selfish, capitalist society."

One young woman was so enthusiastic about that morning’s experience, she asked me to speak about it at an anti-war rally she was helping to organize the following week. I agreed and invited a friend from my campus group to work with me on a speech calling for a worker-student-soldier alliance and for communism.

At the rally the crowd applauded our conviction that the only way to end imperialism and fascism was to fight for communism. But the organizers didn’t seem too happy about that. However, several days later my friend who helped organize the rally told me she really respected the Party for taking a strong stance against imperialism and calling for communism. She also asked when the next factory trip would take place.

This recent series of events have shown me that students and the working class in general are increasingly tired of war and fascism and more open to PLP’s revolutionary communist ideas. Furthermore, it has become increasingly clear that the anti-war movement’s reformist leadership is incapable of truly explaining the nature of war and fascism and how to fight it.

The ball is in our court; it’s time to take the offensive, and fight for the Party’s line. We must be bold and assertive; we can only grow, and where we fail, learn how to grow.

West coast college youth

PLP Classic Songs on One CD

The 1970’s PLP LP’s "Power to the Workers" and "A World to Win" are now available on one CD. It includes songs by the PLP Singers — in English and Spanish — such as: "Unemployment Blues"; "Challenge, the Communist Paper"; "Bella Ciao"; "Se�or Inversionista"; "Every Time I see a Cop, I think of Clifford Glover"; "The Song of the Deportees"; "The Internationale" and many more.

Rekindle old memories and live new ones. Send $10 payable to Challenge Periodicals,

Rand mail to PLP, Box 808, GPO, Brooklyn, NY 11202

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

US gets noble when there’s oil

…No nation is capable of sustaining a long war on the basis of idealism. War is so costly, both in resources and lives, that it can only be sustained when a nation’s direct interest… is at stake….

It’s no accident, for example, that our government’s interest is bringing democracy to other countries seems to rise in direct proportion to how much oil lies beneath their territory. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1/27)

Tyrant? Play ball, you’re OK

Rice offered a little more information naming six countries as "outposts of tyranny"…Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe….She could just as easily have snapped off the names of six of our allies — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan and Egypt….

The fact is, however, that when totalitarian nations…play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. (Creators Syndicate, 1/20)

Bosses super-exploit immigrants

…Because the basic job of the line is cutting flesh — hard, manual labor — the dangers are very high for meat workers….Meatpackers, driven by the brutal economies of the industry, always try to hire the cheapest labor they can find. That increasingly means immigrants whose language difficulties compound the risks of the job. The result, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, is "extraordinarily high rates of injury" in conditions that systematically violate human rights.

In fact, the report finds, some major players in the American meat industry prey upon a large population of immigrant workers who are either ignorant of their fundamental rights or are undocumented aliens who are afraid of calling attention to themselves. As a result, those workers often receive little or no compensation for injuries, and any attempt to organize is met with hostility.

The industry has little incentive to improve conditions… (NYT, 2/6)

Gov’t outsources torture

The title of Ms. Mayer’s [New Yorker] article is "Outsourcing torture." It’s a detailed account of the frightening and extremely secretive U.S. program known as "extraordinary rendition."

.…Extraordinary rendition is the name that’s been given to the policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side with contract killings.

Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Jordan are torturing terror suspects at behest of…the United States…. (NYT, 2/11)

New era betrays Iraqi women

…This is supposed to be one in a series of pioneering public meetings to address the growing inequalities of women in the new Iraq. A year ago, in the weeks after the invasion, hundreds of women marched in the streets outside this hotel in central Baghdad. The women were optimistic, most walked without veils and they made forceful speeches in front of the TV cameras.

Those days of mass protest are over. Today there are barely a dozen women present. Half are veiled and most have come with male relatives or colleagues for protection. It is a quiet indictment of the occupation and underscores the astonishing collapse in security, particularly for women, that it has brought.

The few women there describe how things have changed for them since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent rise in Islamic parties. Many more cover their hair now, sometimes in belief, often through peer-group pressure or simply to protect themselves in anonymity. (GW, 2/10)

US: Sickness often means mass ruin

Hundreds of thousands of Americans file for personal bankruptcy each year because of medical bills — even though they have health insurance….

Many lost their jobs — and their insurance — because they got sick, while others faced thousands of dollars in co-payments and deductibles and for services not covered by their insurance.

…One….respondent to the survey was able to pay for hospital stays for lung surgery and a heart attack but could not return to his old job. When he found a new job, he was denied coverage because of his pre-existing conditions….

…The high cost of continuing coverage under Cobra, the federal rule that allows former employees to stay on health plans for a time if they pay the entire cost, "is a cruel joke to these people,"….

"If you’re sick enough long enough, you’re in deep trouble in our society"… (NYT, 2/2)

Sell killer as long as you can

Celebrex, the popular arthritis and pain medicine from Pfizer, sustained another blow yesterday when the company acknowledged that a 1999 clinical trial found that elderly patients taking the drug were far more likely to suffer heart problems than patients taking a placebo….

…The study was never published… (NYT, 2/1)

Not so gung-ho on Iraq

Cadets don’t have to study the opinion polls to know they’re heading off to an unpopular war. Applications to the military academies are down substantially. (NYT, 2/9)

Torture orders came from the top

…At Abu Ghraib prison…the….problem was confined,…the Bush administration has asserted, to a few soldiers acting on their own.

"The Torture Papers," the new compendium of government memos and reports chronicling the road to Abu Ghraib and its aftermath, definitively blows such arguments to pieces…[A]damning paper trail … reveals…the roots that those terrible images has in decisions made at the highest levels… (NYT, 2/8)

Elections Will Not End Imperialist Butchery

PLP Youth Bring Communist Politics To Counter-Inauguration Protest

a href="#NYC and Newark: Demonstrate Against War, Back Defiant GI’s">"YC and Newark: Demonstrate Against War, Back Defiant GI’s

Remember the 1967 Vietnam Election?

a href="#No Such Thing As ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialist War Machine">No"Such Thing As ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialist War Machine

a href="#International Unity Needed to Fight Ford’s Wage-Cutting">"nternational Unity Needed to Fight Ford’s Wage-Cutting

a href="#Colombia Teachers Confront Fascist Uribe Gov’t, Harvard Union-Busters">"olombia Teachers Confront Fascist Uribe Gov’t, Harvard Union-Busters

a href="#Airline-Court-Banker Gang-up Squeezes United’s Workers">"irline-Court-Banker Gang-up Squeezes United’s Workers

Garment Workers Gear Up for Stoppage to Defend Fired Militant

Hospital Workers Confront Bosses Over Low-Wage Hires

Bush & Co. Use Racism to Push Social Security Privatization

Liberal Politicians Are Also Warmakers

a href="#Harvard President’s Sexist ‘Theory’">Harv"rd President’s Sexist ‘Theory’

Nazi Death Camp Experiments Led to U. S. Space Program

From Ford to Jim Crow to Auschwitz

LETTERS

Opposing U.S. Death Squad Base

a href="#HiP HOP: Imperialist Weapon in Paraguay""HiP HOP: Imperialist Weapon in Paraguay

Editorial Needs More Specific Facts

Clarification ...

Challenge And PLP Need Your Support

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• US brought ‘tsunami’ to Iraq
• Civilian deaths make vet rebel
• GIs quiet, but want to go home
• US Prison abuse ‘everywhere’
• Wonderful democratic choices!
• Nazis best pals for CIA
• India: women rebel against rape
• Democrats: doormat for fascism
• No freedom for Al-Jazeera TV

---

U.S. Bosses View Iraq As A Military Base With A Very Large Oil Reserve:

Elections Will Not End Imperialist Butchery

The January 30th Iraq elections have been hailed as a "victory" for the U.S. war strategy. We’re shown entire Iraqi families voting "to defy terrorism." Well, indeed, many Iraqis did vote — mainly Shiites ordered by their religious leaders and Kurds wishing some kind of autonomy and control of Kirkuk’s oil fields on their territory (possibly provoking a Turkish incursion) . But the fact remains that capitalist elections are a farce in general. In Iraq, they’re even more of a farce, occurring amid an insurgency, occupation and daily U.S./UK air bombardments more devastating than those during Operation Shock and Awe.

U.S. bosses want these elections to justify their war and occupation of Iraq but, "Despite the exhilaration, the election may do little to win international support, assure a friendly government in Baghdad or prevent the spread of civil strife…." says the LA Times (1/31). "Even with international blessings, the balloting is unlikely to persuade balky European and Arab powers to do much more on the ground to support the U.S. effort, diplomats said…. On the eve of the vote, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin reiterated France’s support for the removal of all foreign troops from Iraq, and two former British foreign ministers, Douglas Hurd and Robin Cook, urged withdrawals of U.S. and British forces. Last week, Sen. Edward Kennedy said U.S. troops should begin an immediate, phased withdrawal."

Many Shiites voted not only because of orders from Al-Sistani, their religious leader, but also for ending the occupation and the strife affecting their daily lives. The best interest of the Iraqi people is not what the U.S. bosses have in mind: "…the U.S. project in Iraq has never been about democracy. It’s been about getting control of Iraq’s vast, virtually untouched oil reserves, and extending Washington’s military reach over the region. ‘Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath; you can’t ask for better than that,’ Wall Street oil analyst Fadel Gheit told" the Toronto Star’s Linda McQuaig (1/30).

To control that oil, U.S. bosses are spilling tons of blood, including over 1,400 U.S. soldiers’ deaths, as well as thousands of Iraqis, many of them innocent civilians. Under pressure, BBC’s Panorama program retracted a January 30th report that in the last six months more than 2,000 civilians were killed outright by the occupation forces and their Iraqi stooges, while the insurgents accounted for 1,200 deaths. The figures, collected from public hospitals, exclude deaths of insurgents.However, the real totals are far worse, as reported by the British medical society’s magazine "Lancet"which estimated that since the beginning of the war civilian deaths could be as high as 100, 000, considering the complete breakdown of Iraq’s medical system and resulting spread of disease.

In a January 30 speech, New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh reported that the U.S. is "systematically bombing [Iraq]….There’s no air defense. It’s simply a turkey shoot…. To carry out an election…bombing is key…. Iraq is being turned into a "Free-Fire Zone…. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner….

"I called him…and he picked up the phone and he said, ‘Welcome to Stalingrad.’"

The hype by U.S. rulers and the embedded U.S. media about the elections being a "turning point" recalls the same stuff when Saddam’s statue was toppled (staged by the Army Psy-Op branch); when Bush landed on the Lincoln aircraft carrier, proclaiming in a banner "Mission Accomplished"; and when Saddam was captured. The war will continue and may spread to Iran if the Iranian rulers use their influence over Iraq’s Shiites to become the real winners of the January 30th farce.

Sixty years ago Iraqi workers and youth were united in the fight against the king and British imperialism. The old Communist Party was one of the largest political forces in the ‘40s and ‘50s,including Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkomans, Moslems, Christians and Jews. On May Day 1959, one million people marched under the red flags of the Iraqi CP. But the old communist movement’s error of uniting with "progressive bosses" (like the Baath Party) led to the defeat of the working class. Today, the ICP is part of the U.S.-led Provisional Government. Workers and their allies in Iraq need a new communist movement, to fight all the bosses, fundamentalist reactionaries and imperialism.

PLP Youth Bring Communist Politics To Counter-Inauguration Protest

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 20 — Armed with revolutionary communist politics a group of young PLP’ers and friends, mostly in our early and mid-twenties, gathered with thousands of students and workers to protest the 2nd Bush inauguration. Our presence was important, given that many people we knew seem disorientated after the election, having put all their hopes into defeating Bush.

At the pre-march rally we sold several hundred CHALLENGES and our popular "It’s-not-just-Bush-it’s-Capitalism" buttons. Our main banner, "We Need Communist Revolution, Not Liberal Politicians" and our poster containing the Bertolt Brecht poem telling the general, "man has one defect: he can think," attracted many people searching for a different analysis than the "anybody-but-Bush" line they’ve been hearing. We noticed many people at the march wearing our buttons and responding positively to our chants denouncing imperialism, Democrats, Republicans and the whole capitalist system. Some of our friends who led militant chants were pleased at the positive reception from the marchers.

Approaching the White House — with no one really chanting — the march resembled some sort of parade. The anger present at the first inauguration march was missing. Our contingent took a break to discuss this mood and then re-joined the protesters at the White House rally. Barricades, armed guards and visible snipers, plus a booming announcer from a nearby loudspeaker recalled a Nazi armed camp. Getting a spot on the parade route required waiting in long lines and passing numerous security checks. Scuffles erupted between protestors and fur-clad Bush supporters as they passed by in their cowboy hats. Given this less-than-ideal atmosphere at the White House, and seeing the lack of "real people" there, we encouraged some people around us to rally in a working-class neighborhood. A group of teenagers left with us.

Though the neighborhood wasn’t busy at that time, we did sell CHALLENGE and had meaningful conversations with workers. One friend contrasted the reception of the protestors during the march and that of these workers, remarking, "In the community…people were even more receptive to our revolutionary communist ideas." We heard that a transit worker and regular CHALLENGE reader later told a comrade he was happy to see us in the neighborhood as he drove his bus on his route that afternoon.

‘Not left enough to be right…’

Later we gathered at one comrade’s house for dinner and an evaluation of the day’s activities, provoking some important struggle and understanding, especially for the friends we had brought. Some were disappointed in the march’s size: "I thought there would be more people [protesting]. This is Washington, D.C., right?" Another friend complained that the rally lacked unity. We explained that we were offering workers and students a real political program to unite around. Ultimately he agreed. "There were a lot of leftists there, but they weren’t left enough to be right!....It’s important to fight capitalism."

The only way to prepare for this fight is to build PLP, the revolutionary communist organization of the world’s workers. That means developing close ties to workers and youth and reaching out to masses of workers both through agitation and participation in their mass organizations.

Marches like this one enabled our base to help deliver our message to the workers of Washington by leading chants, selling CHALLENGE and offering suggestions for our plan for the day. They moved closer to PLP as they realized they were helping build awareness of an alternative road for humanity besides capitalism — communism!

We will develop closer ties with our new friends through a bi-weekly study group and more political struggle among the masses. Our first priority will be a trip to an armory to talk to soldiers about the pivotal role they can play in defeating U.S imperialism.

a name="NYC and Newark: Demonstrate Against War, Back Defiant GI’s">">"YC and Newark: Demonstrate Against War, Back Defiant GI’s

NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 20 — A coalition of neighborhood and church groups, including teachers and students, held a spirited counter-inauguration demonstration today in Union Square. With signs and chants, we called for U.S. imperialism to get out of Iraq and for support of soldiers who refused the brass’s orders in Iraq. Despite the bitter cold, many people joined our chants, engaged in conversations and gave their names for future events. Although participants felt the event was positive, in discussing it afterward we agreed that we should have struggled harder to get more people out.

NEWARK, NJ, Jan. 20 — On this inauguration day, one local peace group and the Green Party announced that an anti-war motorcade would travel through towns in the Newark area, ending with a mass rally at the federal building here. Although the motorcade took place, the organizers didn’t hold the rally.

Despite this, and the cold weather, about 20 strong-willed people carrying signs picketed for about an hour. Chants of "1-2-3-4, We won’t fight your oil war; 5-6-7-8, We don’t want your fascist state"; and, "Support soldiers who resist, U.S. out of Iraq" were picked up by the crowd. These and other militant chants competed with pacifist songs sung by a few of the marchers. A number of the young people who participated were very open to the politics behind our ideas.

Remember the 1967 Vietnam Election?

In 1967, the White House and the media hailed the South Vietnam elections as a turning point in that war, just like they are doing in Iraq. The Vietnam War continued until 1975 when the U.S. was militarily defeated.

(From The New York Times, Sept. 4, 1967)

‘U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote’

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election…. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong….

"A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.

"The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays…."

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In December, the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. imperialism’s top think-tank, appointed Columbia University professor Robert Shapiro "to research the social and political attitudes of soldiers and officers in the U.S. Army." This move reflects the rulers’ ongoing effort to win military cadre to their liberal, imperialist ideology.

The ruling class has long worried that an increasingly conservative officer corps might someday not follow its masters. In 1992, Colin Powell, then the Establishment’s darling, awarded first prize in the National Defense University’s strategic essay competition to Lt. Col. Charles Dunlap for his "Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012." The rulers’ media renewed the warning following the growth of right-wing militias and the anti-government Oklahoma bombing by ex-GI’s.

In 1997, Wall Street Journal reporter Thomas Ricks’ book, "Making the Corps," depicted the U.S. Marines "veering so far to the political Right and nursing such a deep contempt for American society that one military analyst concludes, ‘The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil.’" (Chicago Tribune, 12/14/97) Newsday columnist Robert Reno (11/23/97) added, "It’s not just the Marines who reflect a far-right culture. If present trends in all the services continue, we will have an all-Republican officer corps by 2005."

The rulers have tried mightily to thwart these prophecies. Throughout the ’90s, they replaced the heads of the main officer training academies with liberals, who hypocritically championed women’s rights. In 1991, Gen. Howard Graves became superintendent at West Point. Graves had been Powell’s personal assistant and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Fresh from heading the Army’s War College, where he instructed future invaders of Iraq in the arts of mass murder, Graves punished some West Point football players for harassing female cadets. Graves later headed Texas A&M, home to the nation’s biggest ROTC contingent. He steered its 3,000 cadets on an imperialist course, establishing a joint research program with the CIA.

In 1996, Gen. Josiah Bunting, oversaw the Supreme Court-mandated admission of women to the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), another major supplier of young officers. Bunting has an impeccable Establishment pedigree. (He once ran the posh Lawrenceville School near Princeton.) Bunting helped transform VMI into a private institution governed by a board of ruling-class trustees. It had long been part of the state university system, under the thumb of a provincial Virginia legislature. In his 1998 book, "An Education for Our Time," Bunting, calling for "enlightened warriors," urged that private, liberal colleges take over the bulk of officer training from the traditional military schools.

But memories of campus rebellions in the ’60s and ’70s, led largely by PLP, make universities balk at fully adopting the rulers’ militarist agenda. Liberal scribe E.J. Dionne, who writes for the Washington Post and is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (another Establishment policy foundry), recently blasted colleges’ demands for the right to bar the military. "The idea of keeping recruiters away from elite universities is a large mistake — for the military, for our country and for liberalism itself. The growing separation between the military and many parts of our society, especially its most liberal and elite parts, is a huge problem. Closing that divide should be one of liberalism’s highest priorities. It should be a high priority for the military, too." (WP, 12/4/04) Dionne stresses the need for liberal ideology in the officer class. "Liberals especially should be worried about the growing divide between the armed forces and many parts of our society. They should acknowledge that if liberals stay out of the military, their chances of influencing the military culture are reduced to close to zero."

The rulers need liberal officers who can convince troops that U.S. imperialism "betters humanity" as it kills for capitalists’ profits. PLP has always stood for GI’s organizing for communism and rebelling against all the brass, whether they’re Klansmen or Ivy Leaguers.

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MEXICO CITY, Jan. 28 — Ford is planning to close its Wixom, Michigan, assembly plant, sacking hundreds of workers, while simultaneously opening a new line in its Hermosillo plant here. The latter will build Ford’s Fusion, competing with Toyota’s Camry sedan, the best-selling car in the U.S. market. Hermosillo’s Ford workers make $4 an hour, which can’t feed a family of four in this locale. Michigan Ford workers earn six times that.

Ford is trying to re-gain its No. 2 spot among the world’s automakers (taken over by Toyota). This plan includes lowering its labor cost. In its Cuautitlan plant near here, Ford replaced 3,000 workers earning $5 an hour with subcontracted workers earning $2 an hour. Bosses destroy the standard of living of workers from Michigan to Cuautitlan.

Ford claims that to compete with Toyota, its only alternative is to lower labor costs. All auto bosses are doing the same. This need to constantly slash workers’ wages is built into capitalism. It directly opposes the need of workers on both sides of the border to fight for a decent life.

Ford’s Board of Directors controls the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers in Mexico, Brazil, the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, forcing workers in these plants to compete against each other for jobs. On January 2 in Dearborn, Michigan, UAW hacks led a "protest" against Ford moving more production to Mexico. These hacks are pushing workers to support nationalism and Ford’s plan for workers to fight other workers. This divides and weakens all Ford workers. Union misleaders have proven again to be the bosses’ best servants in getting workers to accept this onslaught.

Contrary to these nationalist divisions, communists organize for the international unity of all workers, including a worldwide strike, to fight plant closings, mass layoffs and all bosses’ attacks. Amid another round of fascism and endless wars, capitalism worldwide wants workers to pay with our lives and jobs for their crisis. Workers must not see ourselves as Ford, GM or Toyota or as Mexican, U.S., Brazilian, Canadian, South African or British employees. We are one international working class fighting a common enemy. Only by following that idea can we defeat these attacks and move to eliminate all auto bosses in a fight for workers’ power — for a society based on production for need, not for a few profiteers.

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BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — On Jan. 15-16, President Uribe’s right-wing government and his minister of Education Maria Velez held exams to hire new teachers. The teachers union (FECODE) organized protests in several cities opposing these exams because they aim to replace union teachers. Anti-riot cops brutally attacked the demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets, killing one and injuring many more; 130 were arrested.

Undercover cops took pictures for use against those arrested, and to threaten teachers daring to mount future protests. The cops even exploded pipe bombs and blamed the teachers.

In 2000, Alberto Alasina, linked to Harvard Univ., proposed an "education reform," basically to break FECODE. Teachers and public employees in Colombia are among the better paid in Latin America. The Harvard-linked report proposed eliminating national wage standards, having each city set them. The government is also demanding that teachers pay 100% towards their pensions, four times their current contribution.

The Uribe government wants to use this plan — backed by the IMF and World Bank — to lower wages, making workers pay for capitalism’s crisis and for the war Colombia’s bosses are waging against the guerrilla movement here. While claiming these exams are to hire new teachers, Uribe has promised to cut 105,000 teaching jobs, claiming there are "too many teachers" (meaning unionized and better-paid). In fact, more teachers are needed; just look at the TV news showing how many parents and other non-teachers are volunteering in the countryside and poor neighborhoods to teach children to read and write.

FECODE is Colombia’s only remaining large union. From the 1960s to the ’80s, it was very active and militant. Teachers were jailed and killed while fighting for and winning many reforms. Today, they’re fighting for their union’s survival, facing the government and death squads. But FECODE’s executive board has limited the struggle in Bogota to pacifist marches and rallies to hear anti-Uribe capitalist politicians. FECODE has become increasingly an electoral front for liberal and fake-leftist politicians (Duzan, Avellaneda, Robledo, Borja, Navarro). They offer no real answer to the attacks of a capitalist system immersed in wars and fascism.

PLP members are actively involved in these struggles, along with students in many neighborhood schools, and their parents. We’ve participated in the FECODE marches, bringing our communist politics to workers and students.

Workers must learn from what happened to unions like Telecom, Bavaria Brewery, BCH and others whose leaders followed an electoral-legal-pacifist road: today they don’t exist as unions. Electoral politics are the most dangerous because workers are squeezed into following the bosses’ game plan, a lose-lose proposition. PLP is fighting to become a real revolutionary alternative to this dead-end road, using CHALLENGE-DESAFIO as our political road map.

a name="Airline-Court-Banker Gang-up Squeezes United’s Workers">">"irline-Court-Banker Gang-up Squeezes United’s Workers

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2 — "A lot of people are saying enough is enough. We’re ready to strike," declared Richard Turk of the mechanics/cleaners union Local 6 here, reacting to United Airlines’ latest effort seeking give-backs of $1.364 billion annually, or a total of nearly $7 billion over the next five years.

Understanding that their rejection of the company’s proposals could lead to liquidation of the airline, Turk said, "We have been beat up for so long, people are just fed up."

As we go to press, the bankruptcy court judge has imposed a temporary 10% wage-cut on the mechanics and cleaners starting today and lasting until May 11, which will give $21 million back to the company. Meanwhile, he has approved wage- and benefit-cutting contracts involving the pilots (12%) and flight attendants (9.5%), all of which will save United $311 million a year, meaning 1½ billion dollars over the 5-year contract. He then used these give-back contracts to justify his order for temporary cuts of the mechanics/cleaners, saying they were necessary "because a period of turmoil for the airline required sacrifice from the workers" as well as "to maintain good relations with unions that had approved concessions." (NY Times, 2/1) Talk about divide and conquer!

This gang-up of United, the bankers and the courts would turn the so-called "American dream" into a nightmare for the airlines’ 120,000 active and retired workers. But this scenario is built into the way capitalism operates.

United says it needs to comply "with the terms of the loan keeping it aloft in bankruptcy court protection" and make it "more competitive in a brutal environment" marking today’s airline industry rat race. (All quotes and information from Wall Street Journal, 1/31) So, to comply with the bankers’ terms, the judge could then void the union contract and allow United clear sailing in lowering wages and benefits, as well as terminating pensions for all working and retired employees, all to "stay afloat."

This dog-eat-dog nature of the capitalist system impels the bosses to toss workers’ lives to the four winds in their drive to extract maximum profits off workers’ backs or face corporate extinction. Amid today’s war economy and U.S. imperialism’s drive for world domination through control of oil profits and resources, those ruling-class needs work against investing in shaky situations like the one besetting the airline industry. The only "concession" offered to companies like United is transporting troops and equipment to Mid-East war zones, but that will probably be insufficient to save the company. Meanwhile, this dependence on war kills the children of airline workers and over 100,000 Iraqi workers and their families.

The 7,000 mechanics and cleaners, members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), rejected concessions agreed to by their union leaders by a 57% margin and voted 85% in favor of striking if the judge voids their current contract. United is demanding nearly a half billion in give-backs from the AMFA alone over the next five years, via a 5% pay cut for mechanics and double that, 10%, for cleaners — a racist demand of these many black and Latino workers — plus increased outsourcing, and cuts in overtime, vacations and sick leave.

This would come on top of the $5 billion in concessions over the last two years — a $4.50 hourly wage reduction and outsourcing of all heavy maintenance which slashed over 3,000 jobs. It was that 2002 sellout contract that caused the mechanics and cleaners to dump the Machinists’ union (IAM) in favor of the AMFA. But since unions operating under capitalism defend the system at all costs, now the AMFA leadership turns around and repeats the betrayals of the IAM in order to "save the company." United — encouraged by the fascist Homeland Insecurity police state atmosphere — says a strike would be illegal. It remains to be seen whether the workers are "fed up enough" to defy such an attack. Of course, if the labor movement as a whole was ready to back the United workers and shut down the entire airline industry — a move they refused to do when Reagan fired 11,300 air controllers in 1981 — it would give the workers a fighting chance.

But don’t hold your breath. The way the AFL-CIO operates today, it’s becoming virtually irrelevant. Only communist leadership ready to defy the bosses’ laws and state power would launch such a general strike, which would raise the ante to a level that would expose the whole system. This could win workers to see that rejection of the profit system entirely via communist revolution — not merely one sellout contract after another — would end their nightmare and gain them a decent life.

Garment Workers Gear Up for Stoppage to Defend Fired Militant

(Previously — see CHALLENGE, 2/5— four garment workers aired the shop’s grievances to the boss: about the new time clock system robbing workers of part of their lunch time; a demand to fire the Hitler-like forelady; and a demand for an end to the boss’s scam enabling him to undercut the minimum wage. Strike possibilities were discussed amid an agreement that the boss face the entire shop on the results of the meeting.)

At the afternoon break, the workers slowly left their machines. Waiting for them to gather, the boss spoke on the microphone near the time clock. Suddenly, about 20 shipping department workers marched in. Everyone thought they’d come to join the struggle but, as it turned out, they were organized by the area supervisor to support the boss.

Most of the 60 workers in that department hadn’t received the leaflets or revolutionary literature because at that time production and shipping were located in separate buildings. The production workers had decided not to distribute a leaflet to the shipping department about the plan so as not to alert the boss. Thus, the shipping workers were not a party to the plans.

"We want to work," said one shipping worker. "We have no problem and support the boss."

"We have nothing against you," responded a tall worker amid a group of his co-workers. "We’re all workers."

"We all work in the same factory," said another shipping worker, "and you didn’t take us into account. We’re isolated; we know nothing about this."

Contradictions sharpened and tempers flared amidst a verbal struggle between the two groups. Some workers calmed the situation and gradually everyone returned to their machines. A work stoppage hadn’t materialized. Someone probably had alerted the boss and he prepared, while we hadn’t organized the shipping workers.

Due to insufficient work, Tomas didn’t return to the shop for several days. "Hi, how are you?" asked Ana. "How did things go on Monday? It’s a shame that I couldn’t come to work that day."

"I’m writing the story of what happened," replied Tomas. "This is part of it. Read it and tell me what you think," he said as he handed it to her.

The paper ended up in the boss’s hands. The worker said that someone in the shipping department saw it and told the boss, who came to her machine yelling and demanding to see it. Another worker asked Tomas, "What did you do for that woman that put you in such a bad light with the boss? She says you gave her a paper."

Nobody had to wait for the boss’s answer. He went in a fury to Tomas and ordered him to come to the office. Tomas shot back, "I’m not going anywhere. If you have something to say to me, say it here."

"You’re bad," said the boss. "There’s no more work for you. Just finish today’s work."

Tomas asked for his check and a signed paper explaining why he was being fired. The boss refused and left in a rage.

Soon he returned and said angrily, "Just finish what you’re doing and come to the office for your checks."

"I’m not going, and you’re not going to fire me so easily," Tomas responded loudly.

Tomas called over a quality inspector about a "problem" with the job and asked him to "tell the others that they’re firing me; they need to know what’s happening."

Tomas slowed everything down for the remaining hour before lunch when he would be able to speak to the other workers. During that hour he explained to another worker who was active in the struggle that the boss had fired him. She told him firmly, "Don’t leave and don’t move from your machine."

By 12:30 pm, word had spread and the general proposal was: "Don’t leave. Return to your machines." Without Tomas’ knowledge, a group of workers had a plan to halt production the moment the boss tried to force Tomas to leave. Surmising what the workers were up to, the boss decided to change tactics and terminate Tomas while avoiding the anger of the rest of the workers. (To be concluded next issue.)

Hospital Workers Confront Bosses Over Low-Wage Hires

BROOKLYN, NY, JAN. 21 — On December 16, a group of health care workers representing both day and evening shifts went to a Brooklyn hospital’s Human Resources department to demand that the nursing department abandon its plan to bring in agency workers at $7 an hour (with no benefits) instead of hiring more unionized nursing techs at $16 to $17 an hour.

The Local 1199 union delegates were given short notice about the plan. One worker wrote a petition which many signed, but the short notice limited the number of workers marching to the department office.

At the meeting, one worker reported that the union hall is filled with laid-off workers whom the hospital should hire for these positions. Nursing management stated that agency workers’ duties would be to sit at the patients’ bedsides and inform nurses about the patients’ needs.

Until recently, nursing techs performed this job. However, due to short staffing, nursing techs are spread thin and can no longer spend extended amounts of time at patients’ bedsides.

In winter more patients are being admitted to the hospital. Surely this plan is to increase hospital bosses’ profits. While management claims these workers will only sit at patients’ bedsides and inform nurses about their needs, not one health care worker present involved with direct patient care believed a word of that. Before long, these agency workers will most likely be doing other jobs in the hospital as well.

So far, after one month, the hospital bosses haven’t hired any agency workers, but they will go to any length to maximize their profits. From communists who participate in such actions, workers can learn that the fight is against capitalism, the real root of our problems.

The hospital bosses know that competition in the health care industry impels hospitals to minimize the number of workers they employ, while forcing small hospitals in poor neighborhoods to close. Thus, capitalist competition creates a huge pool of unemployed workers from which these lower-paid workers can be hired and increase hospital profits.

The 1199/SEIU leadership is collaborating with the hospital bosses and the politicians, allowing the hiring of hundreds of per diem and agency workers, skilled and unskilled. These workers receive no benefits, sick time or paid vacations and must pay for their own health insurance, saving more millions for the bosses.

While they squeeze workers here, especially reducing or eliminating their health care, the ruling class — in its drive to control oil resources — spends a billion dollars a week in Iraq, where health care is virtually non-existent.

Making the fight against capitalism is essential in developing a mass base for communist ideas. In a communist society, these ideas will determine that health care will exist not for profit but to improve the quality of life for all.

Bush & Co. Use Racism to Push Social Security Privatization

Racism knows no bounds for U.S. rulers. Its effects have now become the latest "reason" why the Bush administration is urging black workers to support his scheme to privatize Social Security. The New York Times (1/26) reported that, in a meeting with black "religious and community leaders," Bush encouraged them "to support…personal investment accounts to Social Security, which White House officials say could benefit blacks because they have a shorter average life span than whites and end up putting more money into the retirement system than they take out."

Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters that black men "have had a shorter life span than other sectors of America," and therefore privatization "will enable them to build a nest egg…to pass…on to their survivors." (NYT)

This is the height of hypocrisy. First these rulers use racism — in employment, wages, housing and health care — to "shorten the life span" of black working people and now turn around to try to use that attack on their living standards to convince black workers that it’s a benefit and they’d be "better off" building up private accounts so, as racism continues, they can leave these "nest eggs" to their families!

Forget about the fact that, (1) because of lower wages (69% of white workers’ family incomes), double unemployment rates and greater numbers without health insurance, millions of black workers can hardly escape poverty, much less build up any "nest eggs"; (2) this alleged "advantage" — a shorter life span — is dependent on continuing these racist conditions; and (3) it exposes one more effect of racism: that for 70 years millions of black workers have been "putting more money into the retirement system than they have taken out."

The "logic" here is that if racism gets worse, and shortens their life spans even further, it will be a "boon" to building up even greater private accounts. Now there’s a future to look forward to.

Of course, it somehow didn’t occur to Bush nor, it seems, to these black "leaders" that without racism (an impossibility under capitalism which is dependent on it for super-profits) black workers — and all workers — would lead better lives.

The punch line here is that there was not one peep out of any of these black "leaders" about smashing racism, the cause of the shorter life span in the first place, nor did any of them challenge Bush’s "logic." As CHALLENGE reported recently, nearly 900,000 black people died in the 1990’s solely because of inferior health and health care, all because of the above racist conditions.

The answer: shorten capitalism’s life span! The sooner we bury it, the sooner will all workers live longer and more productive, poverty-free lives.

Liberal Politicians Are Also Warmakers

"Bring the troops home now!" Last summer, Democratic Party liberals rejected that slogan as "too radical" and advocated the line "Stop Bush." Now many of these same people are pushing this very same "radical slogan," calling the Iraq war a "tragic mistake" because part of the U.S. ruling class is seeking a deal with the European Union and other capitalist powers. Why? They realize the U.S. is losing the war.

The real tragedy would be for anti-war activists to follow the misleadership of liberal anti-communist gurus like Tom Hayden, George Lakoff and Naomi Klein, continuing to support the imperialist Democratic Party after the defeat of its pro-war candidate John Kerry. Leaders of major anti-war groups are supporting Hayden’s program to "end the war in Iraq." Hayden wants us to believe that "public opinion — if strategically focused — can end this war." He correctly states that U.S. plans for Iraq include "American military bases, a privatized market economy, ready access to oil, [and] a prime target for... proselytizing in the region" [winning recruits].

Hayden does not question the U.S. imperialist goal of "dominance," let alone its capitalist roots. Like Kerry, he questions the unilateralist policy of the Bush administration. He wants us to believe that the Democrats can be pressured into becoming an "anti-war party."

Investment opportunities in the "market economy" and "access to oil" in the Persian Gulf region are critical to the continued dominance of U.S. imperialism in the face of challenges from rival imperialists, and U.S. military bases are essential to this plan. In suggesting that "public opinion" can change this, Hayden obscures the fact that the only way to end wars for profit is with workers’ revolution to destroy capitalism and its imperialist wars.

Hayden promotes the lie that the U.S. is a "democracy" rather than a capitalist dictatorship. "When trapped between imperial elites and their own insistent constituents," he asserts, "members of Congress will tend to side with their voters." Don’t hold your breath. He claims "that is how the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia were ended in 1975." But U.S. forces were driven out of Southeast Asia by "national liberation" armies that — unlike most U.S. troops — had a real commitment to their cause. Also, massive rebellions in the U.S. armed forces helped end the wars.

Hayden builds nationalism. "We" Americans, he says, must change "our priorities" and restore "our respect in the world." Hayden wants to "send the clearest possible message to mainstream public opinion" in order to build an alliance with the likes of Coble, Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley, Jr. This racist populism is the opposite of the worker-student alliance we need to fight imperialism and racism.

Hayden urges solidarity with dissident veterans, soldiers, and their families, but his solution is to help those who refuse to serve to run away to Canada. This reflects the fact that many people want to reach out to the soldiers. He talks about supporting soldiers’ grievances (lack of armor, extended tours of duty) but never suggests trying to organize against imperialist war inside the military.

Finally, Hayden’s idea of international solidarity is to use Global Exchange to organize a "peace coalition" that will protest when U.S. officials speak in Europe and elsewhere. His program would use the energy of anti-war activists to promote an imperialist strategy where closer relations to European imperialists might place U.S. imperialists in a better position to confront the rising challenge of Asian imperialism. It will take a long-term fight to end the capitalist system and its inevitable bloody wars for profit.

Hayden’s SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) began in the 1950’s as the youth wing of an anti-communist "social-democratic" movement tied to the United Auto Workers. Then in December 1964 — still small, and with little influence — it called for a spring protest against U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Members of the newly-formed Progressive Labor Party joined SDS as well as this mass protest. By the end of 1965, SDS had dropped its official anti-communism in response to a growing and increasingly radical youth movement inspired by worldwide anti-imperialist struggles. In 1969, the majority of the delegates to the SDS national convention voted to follow PLP leadership and build a worker-student alliance against the war, against racism and against the capitalist system behind them.

Apparently Hayden learned a lesson. Instead of calling for a new mass organization, he now tells activists to join and work within the Democratic Party itself. But while times are different, PLP is alive and well, fighting on the campuses and within the working class to lead actions against racism and imperialism and to show many students and workers the potential and need to fight to eliminate imperialist war with communist revolution.

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Spawned by EugenicistsYou can bet something bad is brewing for workers when Harvard’s president makes outrageous comments suggesting that "innate sex differences" between men and women explain why so few women have become professors of mathematics or science.

This nonsense spewed out recently by Lawrence Summers has generated a firestorm of protest from liberals and feminists. They’re right — as far as they go — to condemn Summers, but only a communist analysis can explain the full danger of his apparently off-hand remarks.

Summers’s assertion is based on the genetic "theory" of intelligence, behavior and society, a lie that’s been around for a long time. It started at the end of the 18th century, with the beginnings of industrial capitalism, when a British pseudo-scientist named Thomas Malthus explained that the best social policy toward improving conditions for the working class was to do nothing — because workers were innately "inferior" and therefore could not gain anything from improvements in education, housing or sanitation. Malthus advised letting workers die of starvation or disease after they had outlived their ability to work and reproduce themselves.

Malthusianism was later renamed "Social Darwinism," a crude distortion of Charles Darwin’s theory about the evolution of species. Social Darwinism provided a crass, self-serving justification of the profit system’s class structure and horrible inequalities. About 100 years ago, some U.S. "scientists," many from Harvard, founded the "Eugenics" movement, which refined and codified this nonsense. They claimed intelligence was in the genes, that rich people were "biologically programmed" to be smart and poor workers to be dumb, criminal or both.

Harvard eugenicists like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard contributed to the racist deaths of millions of U.S. workers during the first half of the 20th century. Their "theory" — that the dread disease pellagra afflicted only the "unfit," who supposedly got it by eating each other’s feces — convinced enough Washington policymakers to prevent the government from seriously studying the disease’s cause.

By 1915, a heroic doctor named Goldberger discovered that a vitamin deficiency caused pellagra. We’ll never know how many Southern agricultural workers — black and white — died of pellagra before Roosevelt’s New Dealers realized that these workers would be needed for the military in World War II and figured out that giving them vitamin supplements might be in the bosses’ interest.

The U.S. Eugenics movement served as the key inspiration for Hitler & Co. The Nazi eugenics courts, sterilization programs and, by extension, the pseudo-science that led to the gas chambers, all owe a huge debt to U.S. Eugenics, a debt the Nazis happily recognized.

In the modern period, Harvard scribblers have continued to spread these lies and resurrect them whenever needed:

In 1969, when the Nixon White House was looking to justify racist violence and economic attacks against black workers, Arthur Jensen, a professor of educational psychology at Stanford, published a rant in the Harvard Review of Education "explaining" that the government was wasting money on trying to improve education for black children because black people had fewer "intelligence genes" than white people. Within weeks, Jensen’s garbage was getting front-page play in major publications and hailed in Washington and academia as a "scientific breakthrough."

Edward Banfield, another Harvard "genius", wrote in "The Unheavenly City" that "lower class individuals," as he called black workers, actually liked slum conditions and didn’t want to change them. No need for housing and education reform here.

In 1973, when Nixon was freezing wages, Richard Herrnstein, a Harvard Psychology Department professor, began publishing drivel about the direct link between genes and "socioeconomic status." For 20 years, Herrnstein published a mountain of vicious foolishness related to this racist crap (including "The Bell Curve"), some of it jointly with Charles Murray, another Harvard "expert". Herrnstein has since died, but Murray’s still around. Last January 23, the New York Times, which has widely published these genetic determinist racists, printed a Murray column justifying Summers’s BS about women in math and science.

The mid-1970s witnessed the crowning glory of Harvard genetic racism, when Harvard professor E.O. Wilson, trotted out "Sociobiology," a masterpiece of verbal diarrhea, which "explained" that all of society and all social behavior can trace their causes to genes. Somehow, Wilson’s accomplishments as an ant expert qualified him to make this claim. He became a media darling, won a Pulitzer prize and now reigns as Harvard’s resident sage.

Lately, one Steven Pinker, also at Harvard, and whom Summers admires, has carried the ball and seems to have motivated Summers’s statement about women.

Summers is no dummy. He served as Clinton’s Treasury-Secretary and helped implement Clinton’s notoriously racist forced-labor, union-busting scheme known as "Workfare." It’s hard to believe that Summers tossed out his ridiculous comment about women in math and science with no forethought. Harvard is the rulers’ major university. It’s a center and magnet for science, politics and ideology. Ideas coming from Harvard exert huge influence on educational, public, and foreign policy. In various forms, racist genetic determinism has stood at the center of the bosses’ pseudo-science since the dawn of the 20th century. A ruling class hell-bent on a fascist police state and widening wars needs this venom more than ever, just as the Nazis did.

That, in CHALLENGE’s view, is the underlying reason behind Summers’s comment about women. He was floating a straw in the wind. We can expect much more of this in the period ahead. Genetic determinism — about women, workers, Arabs or anyone whom the bosses need to oppress, exploit, or conquer — is here to stay.

Exposing and destroying this venom remain key tasks for PLP and the working class. We’ve carried out many past struggles against it, but we can’t stop now. Racist, sexist, anti-worker genetic determinism will live as long as the profit system rules. The struggle to smash it is inseparable from the struggle for revolution, communism and workers’.

Nazi Death Camp Experiments Led to U. S. Space Program

(Part II: how U.S. rulers hired hundreds of Nazis scientists and other war criminals to build the U.S. space program and launch the Cold War.)

January 27 marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Red Army. In mid-February of 1945, as the Red Army rolled the Nazi war machine back towards Berlin, SS Major Wernher von Braun and his team fled to southern Germany in a vain attempt to regroup their rocket and jet propulsion operations. But it was too late. By early May, the Red Flag flew over the Nazi Reichstag in Berlin. Von Braun and his gang moved to the Austrian border and surrendered to the U.S. Army’s 44th Infantry Division.

This was the beginning of von Braun’s love affair with U.S. imperialism. As reported last issue, the secret Army-OSS "Operation Paperclip" (the OSS later became the CIA), "cleansed" von Braun and hundreds of Nazi scientists of their war crimes and brought them to the U.S., circumventing a Roosevelt-Truman ban on hiring hardcore Nazis.

The Nazi scientists were moved to New Mexico, where hundreds of captured Nazi V2 rockets were tested. Then in 1950, von Braun’s gang was transferred to the Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Alabama to develop tactical ballistic missiles, from which the Saturn rocket was developed to compete with the Soviet Union in the space race.

Meanwhile, von Braun’s image was cleaned up even more, becoming a feature in Disney’s TV show, "The World of Tomorrow." In 1970 von Braun became NASA’s associate administrator.

In 1984, a von Braun assistant, Arthur Rudolph, fled to West Germany, following investigation of his war record. During the war, he had been operations director of the Mittelwerk factory at the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camps,— used exclusively for the Nazi rocket progam — in which 20,000 workers died from beatings, hangings and starvation. Despite his being an ardent Nazi since 1931, Operation Paperclip cleaned Rudolph’s record and brought him to the U.S where he designed the Saturn 5 rocket used in the Apollo moon landings.

A third top Nazi to become a leading NASA boss was Kart Debus, a former member of the Brown Shirts (SA), and later of the elite killer force (the SS). He became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. It’s not hard to imagine these Nazis saying, "Mein Führer, the moon landing is for you."

From Ford to Jim Crow to Auschwitz

But before and during the war, the process had been reversed. The Nazis used the U.S. bosses to make their fascist system work. The Nazi Nuremberg laws and the Eugenics pseudo-science of "racial purity" were based on the Jim Crow super-racist discrimination laws in the U.S.

But the Nazis used the death camps for another purpose: as slave labor for their war machine, reaping huge profits for German and U.S.-owned companies. On April 30, 1942, Oswald Pohl, chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Office, reported to Reichsführer Himmler that priority was now being given to the economic use of the concentration camps, forcing inmates to work until they dropped dead. Krupp and Siemens took advantage of this slave labor, mainly at Auschwitz. IG Farben set up a synthetic rubber plant in Buna — the third camp in the Auschwitz complex — using 35,000 slave laborers, 25,000 of whom died. (Raul Hilberg, La destruction des Juifs d’Europe, Fayard, 1988)

Volkswagen, DaimlerBenz and Opel (owned by GM) also used such slave labor to make super-profits while building vehicles for the Nazi war machine.

IBM profited handsomely from its keypunch tabulation system, used to identify and catalogue inmates at the death camps. ("IBM and the Holocaust"; Edwin Black, Laffont, Paris, Feb. 2001)

Ford plants in Germany produced trucks and engines for the Nazi war machine. Henry Ford and Hitler had a mutual admiration society. Ford’s photo hung in the Führer’s office. In 1938, Ford was given the Great Eagle Cross, a top Nazi honor. Ford and Hitler were notorious anti-Semites — Ford distributed worldwide the Protocols of Zion, a forgery concocted by the Tsar’s secret police in the early 1900s. The Nazis copied Ford’s assembly line methods in their war plants, both inside and outside the slave-labor death camps. The Nazis’ treatment of death-camp inmates followed the cattle-handling method used by the huge Chicago meatpacking houses.

Today, the U.S. prison system employs these slave-labor methods to force many of its 2.1 million prisoners (most of any nation worldwide) to work inside at pennies per hour for companies like Microsoft, Dell, Boeing, IBM, AT&T Wireless, Nordstrom, Honeywell and Hewlett-Packard among many others. The fact that 70% of the prisoners are black and Latino exposes this racism as a continuation of slavery that allegedly ended with the Civil War.

(Next: how the CIA used Nazi war criminals to launch the Cold War; how the CIA developed LSD and PCP based on Nazi research and why these fascist atrocities are not just aberrations but part of a capitalism system immersed in endless wars.)

LETTERS

Opposing U.S. Death Squad Base

For three years a main project in my church-based work has been organizing to close the "School of the Americas [Assassins]" (SOA), the Ft. Benning Ga. facility that has produced thousands of fascist death-squad leaders for U.S.-backed Latin American dictatorships. After a year’s work at the regional level, our committee developed a small movement that drafted and passed a resolution against the SOA at the annual denominational convention. Through this we drew closer to a number of people —some in the military — who are open to expanding the church-wide discussion of U.S. imperialism. Following this victory, I flew to Georgia to participate in my third SOA-Watch action.

Driving into Columbus, Georgia, near Ft. Benning, I saw buses from everywhere — Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, the northeast, California — but also including Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as well! High school and college teachers and students, parents and friends — largely Catholic-organized, white and maybe 20% Latino.

With all the weaknesses of liberalism, pacifism, philosophic idealism, still many, many mainstream workers and students from "the heartland" opposed one of the most obvious tips of the imperialist iceberg. The situation is similar to ’66 -’67 in its potential for PLP to struggle to bring our ideas to a one-sided, liberal-led movement, to sharpen the contradictions within it and to RECRUIT! No wonder the bosses’ media have made sure no one knows the annual SOA/WATCH action has grown from 16 to over 16,000 in less than a dozen years. Real potential for trouble for the ruling class!

I distributed 1,000 brochures describing the work of our justice and peace coalition. Young people were especially receptive to an "old-timer from the ’60s." I made five contacts.

By participating in the struggle to close the School of the Assassins, I’ve discussed imperialism and linked SOA to the U.S. oil war in Iraq and fascist torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons. I’ve made new friends and encouraged the leadership of old friends, including church members and clergy. When they discover they’re not alone, these people can do the vital "low profile" work needed to resist and smash fascism, and be won closer to and into PLP in the process.

There’s much work to be done!

Red Churchmouse

a name="HiP HOP: Imperialist Weapon in Paraguay""HiP HOP: Imperialist Weapon in Paraguay

Coming to Paraguay, I expected to hear folkloric or polka music in the traditional Guarani language. To my surprise, I did hear that music, but most of it was drowned out by Eminem, Fat Joe and Snoop Dogg. At first, being away from the U.$., I welcomed hearing a tune in a familiar language that I understood. But then reality dawned on me. I began to experience first hand the danger of hip hop, a weapon of cultural imperialism.

Video clips on TV which show half-naked women and promote drugs and alcohol get heavy rotation. Several Paraguayan youth have spoken to me of a downloaded Nelly video clip from Black Exploitation Television in which credit cards are swiped using the rear ends of women in thongs. U.$. hip hop culture dominates Paraguay, second only to forms of Argentine and Brazilian music that are equally degenerate and degrading.

This culture implants materialistic, unrealistic desires and goals in Paraguayan youth. It reinforces U.$. imperialism amongst the youth (although Brazilian, Argentine, Korean, Japanese, German and Chinese imperialists also have their hands in the neo-colonial pot of gold known as Paraguay). By adopting the individualistic, anti-social culture of the oppressor, workers and youth weaken their ability to struggle collectively against class enemies, making them easy pickings for the rich.

The U.$. Empire’s use of cultural imperialism is just like its predecessors in Rome, Britain and China. In China, the Ch´ing Dynasty ingrained a sense of cultural superiority that was supported by Confucianism. British colonists encouraged their subjects to imitate them, thus reinforcing the Empire.

Imperialist and terrorist, Zbigniew Brezinski crows about the power of such cultural imperialism in The Grand Chessboard, writing that "despite some crassness, American culture enjoys an appeal that is unrivaled, especially among the world’s youth. Cultural domination has been an underappreciated facet of American global power. America’s mass culture exercises a magnetic appeal, especially on the world’s youth. Its attraction may be derived from the hedonistic quality of the lifestyle it projects, but its global appeal is undeniable."

Cultural imperialism is an important tool the U.$. ruling class needs and uses to enhance its agenda of increased profits from, and oppression of, the world’s workers. Although there’s a lot of underground and progressive hip hop such as Talib Kweli, Dead Prez and the Roots, it’s just that — "progressive." Someone once said that progress is just a less oppressive form of the current condition.

It’s up to us in PLP to put out real revolutionary music as well as the spoken word, that’s not degenerate and doesn’t mislead the masses into aspirations for a world of diamonds, fast cars and fast women. Only PLP can develop the kind of creative music that can spread revolutionary ideas as well as a lifestyle worth dreaming and singing about — an egalitarian communist society from each according to commitment to each according to need. This is just one more challenge that I know the Party is willing to accept with revolutionary fervor! Not a step back!

Comrade in South America

Editorial Needs More Specific Facts

Our PLP club discussed the 2/2/05 editorial. It was well researched and made several important points about the Eastern Establishment connections of several Bush appointees. The dumping of Bernard Kerik as Homeland Security chief was clearly due to a lot more than just his "nanny" problems, sex life or Mafia ties. The overwhelming confirmation of Condi Rice by the Senate, including most Democrats, despite a few feeble protests, backs up these points. The recent resignation of Douglas Feith, head of the Pentagon special intelligence program, and neo-con hero, also supports these arguments.

However, the editorial does not present a convincing case to support its title that the new Bush Cabinet "Mirrors Big Bosses’ Drive for War." This is especially true for relatively new readers unfamiliar with the ruling-class forces fighting behind the scenes in these power struggles. Only weak connections were made between the bosses’ war plans and either Michael Chertoff or Robert Zoellick, the two cabinet picks discussed in the editorial.

This was a missed opportunity. Zoellick was Bush’s foreign policy advisor in the 2000 campaign. He was clearly ahead of the curve when it came to the U.S. bosses’ drive to control Iraqi oil. In a May 2000 debate against Gore’s National Security Advisor held at the Washington Institute, Zoellick said the Iraqis were gaining ground. He noted Russian support for Iraq (they were then asking the U.N. to lift sanctions). He called for striking Saddam and "taking away pieces of his territory."

In addition, the editorial didn’t mention the increased U.S. war moves against Iran over its supposed development of nuclear weapons. (Zoellick had railed against Iranian "weapons of mass destruction" in the 2000 debate). These plans have now been confirmed by the Seymour Hersh New Yorker article about covert intelligence operations in Iran, and the recent comments by Cheney, giving the Israelis the green light to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.

Finally, although he is clearly not an Eastern Establishment candidate, it should have been noted that Alberto Gonzales, the Bush pick for the government’s top "justice" official, openly advocates using torture. Sure, he was attacked in the Judiciary committee hearings and required to do a "mea culpa," but he was confirmed. That doesn’t disallow the point that the ruling class is preparing for wider wars, and is willing to expand the limits of atrocities openly committed in the name of U.S. imperialism; rather, Gonzales’ confirmation supports it.

In conclusion, either the editorial wasn’t titled correctly, or it should have backed up the main point with more specific evidence.

New Jersey Comrades

Clarification ...

(of article on drug companies in CHALLENGE, 2/5)

Firstly, the rulers’ attack on drug company profits goes hand-in-glove with their political and economic assault on workers. Both reflect an overall disciplining of society as the rulers gradually but inevitably undertake a full-scale military mobilization. The loss of profit the Feds inflicted on Merck over the Vioxx medication simultaneously entails the far worse attack on workers — layoffs, wage reduction and speed-up. The Vioxx flap stems directly from President Franklin Roosevelt’s establishment of state control by means of the clinical trial regime. Workfare, prison labor and the prison boom in general today take the place of the New Deal’s WPA, PWA and CCC.

Secondly, there are four big players in the health care fight: drug makers, insurers, industries like auto with huge health costs, and, most importantly, the ruling class as a whole. Unions and doctors, once important, now sit on the sidelines. The ruling class’s interest lies in rationalizing this welter of interests, in subjugating the needs of individual firms to the wartime needs of the state that serves the main capitalists. In Clinton’s first term, he tried but failed to impose discipline on the health industry. Bush, revealing his true Establishment roots and his close ties to the biggest bosses, is starting to succeed. The rulers’ ultimate goal is to bring all industry, including health care, under their direct control as they organize society for intensifying imperialist wars.

Challenge And PLP Need Your Support

Dear Friends and Comrades,

Everyday events point to a sharpening of contradictions besetting world capitalism.

The U.S. imperialist war in Iraq is worsening for U.S. rulers so now they threaten to dig themselves an even bigger hole by attacking Iran. The assault on the working class, here and abroad, is intensifying. The Bushites’ plan for privatizing Social Security, increasing tax cuts for the rich and slashing funds for social services even further in their attempts to handle the system’s financial crises all means a still greater burden on the working class.

This is especially true for black and Latino workers who suffer the double oppression of racism in greater joblessness, worse health care and leaving a whole generation behind in capitalism’s "schools."

But, as PLP and Challenge continues to point out, the liberals/Democrats have no answer for the working class. If anything, they are more dangerous. The lesser evil alternative reached new heights in the recent election in the "anybody-but-Bush" campaign, which in turn led to a greater post-election "depression" for millions of honest Kerry voters.

However, PLP members took the offensive against this "depression" by organizing even more so against the war, raising the issue of supporting rebellions among GI’s, and linking the imperialist war to the cuts and layoffs and worsening health care at home. Therefore, Challenge and PLP-organized activity generally is needed more than ever.

But the ruling-class squeeze on the working class as a whole puts the squeeze on the ability to finance these activities as well. Costs for PLP’s printing, insurance and international activities, among other expenses, have all risen. In addition, the costs for this year’s May Day celebrations — about 12 weeks away — are upon us.

Yet communists will never allow capitalism’s financial pressures to force us to retreat. This has never happened in PL’s 43-year history. If anything, the opportunities created by imperialism’s sharpening contradictions should inspire us to advance. So we’re asking our friends and members to meet this challenge and contribute whatever possible for CHALLENGE and for PLP. We can turn a bad thing — the rulers’ taxes — into a good thing by donating government tax refunds. Raising money is a political question. How important is the existence of the Party and its ideas to the life of the working class?

Checks or money order can be made out to CHALLENGE PERIODICALS and sent to PLP, Box 808, GPO, Brooklyn, NY 11202, or cash can be given directly to PLP members and forwarded to area Party leaders.

This fund drive can demonstrate the fact that recent events inspire us to demonstrate how PLP’s line, more than ever, is the answer to what many may view as insoluble and hopeless problems.

Fight for communism!

The International PLP

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• US brought ‘tsunami’ to Iraq

[Colin] Powell said of the tsunami, "The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing." He said, "I have never seen anything like it in my experience."

Yes, he has. It was in Iraq. The tsunami was us….

In Iraq we kill off thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of innocent civilians…Iraqi civilians are homeless. We call it liberation….

No flags have been flown at half-staff for Iraqi civilians. There have been no moments of silence in Congress. There have been no speeches by Bush mourning "the tens of thousands of children who are lost." (Boston Globe, 1/10)

• Civilian deaths make vet rebel

Sean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11 attacks and was, in his own words, "red, white and blue in all the way" when he deployed to Iraq 16 months later….

Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian causalities he witnessed, Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing number of Iraq veterans who have formed or joined groups to oppose war….

"Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are three different men," Corporal Huze said. "I don’t think I can ever have the blind trust in the government like I had before…. (NYT, 1/23)

• GIs quiet, but want to go home

Soldiers on point do not debate…exit strategies or disengagement ....They…just want to get through the patrol…their tour in Iraq, and then go home…

"It’s a funny thing: They don’t want us here, and we don’t want to be here," said First Sgt. Robert Wright…. (NYT, 1/29)

• Order-givers aren’t indicted

"In Nuremberg, it was the generals being prosecuted. We were going after the order-givers. Here [at Abu Ghraib] the government is going after the order-takers."…the trial’s judge… "refused to allow witneses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock One….

…There have yet to be any criminal charges leveled against any of the prison’s officers, let alone anyone higher up in the chain of command.

Nor are there likely to be any… (NYT, 1/23)

• US Prison abuse ‘everywhere’

…No one has any reason to believe any longer that these incidents were restricted to one prison near Baghdad. They were everywhere: from Guantánamo Bay to Afghanistan, Baghdad, Basra, Ramadi and Tikrit and, for all we know, in any number of hidden jails affecting "ghost detainees" kept from the purview of the Red Cross….Many of the abuses seem specifically tailored to humiliate Arabs and Muslims, where horror at being exposed in public is a deep cultural artifact…

…The Schlesinger panel has officially conceded… that Americans soldiers have tortured five inmates to death. Twenty-three other deaths that occurred during American custody had not been fully investigated by the time the panel issued its report… (NYT, 1/23)

• Wonderful democratic choices!

While Republicans listed changes in Social Security as their No.1 objective, Democrats made enlarging the armed forces and providing new military benefits as their top goal. (NYT, 1/25)

• Nazis best pals for CIA

…The American government worked closely with Nazi war criminals and collaborators, allowing many of them to live in the United States after World War II.

Historians who have studied the documents made public so far have said that at least five associates of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jews, had worked for the C.I.A….

…The C.I.A. tried to recruit two dozen more war criminals or Nazi collaborators.

American officials have defended the recruiting of former Nazis as having been essential to gaining access to intelligence after World War II, particularly about the Soviet Union…. (NYT, 1/30)

• India: women rebel against rape

In Nagpur, India, a group of women took matters into their own hands not long ago. In a nation where the conviction rate for rape is only 4%, the women of Nagpur meted out their own justice. A repeat rapist, who appeared to be getting off one more time, was stabbed and stoned to death. Three others had their houses burned down by a mob of 50 women. In the former case, the police detained five women, but were forced to release them when more that 400 women blocked the courtroom demanding that they be set free. A number of other cases of personal justice have occurred in Nagpur.

Arvind Jain, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court pf India has advised young women not to hesitate to kill a man who tries to rape them, because the Indian law makes it easier to defend one’s self of murder in self defense that to fight a rape case… (Pythian Press, 1/10)

• Democrats: doormat for fascism

In the book [Crimes against Nature, Paul] Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis. "While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as … a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically though the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism. Sound familiar?"….

…Visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power… (Mokhiber & Weissman, 1/21)

• No freedom for Al-Jazeera TV

…Early last year [the network]…Al Jazeera was kicked out of Iraq….American pressure on the station…has drawn charges of hypocrisy, especially in light of President Bush’s repeated calls for greater freedoms and democracy in the region.

"It’s completely two-faced for the United States to try to muzzle the one network with the most credibility in the Middle East, even if it does sometimes say things that are wrong," said an Arab diplomat. (NYT, 1/30