With this issue we return to our biweekly schedule

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Capitalism Kills Again: Turns Natural Disasters into Mass Death

Imperialism Slaughters Millions In Wars For Profit

a href="#Only Rebelling Soldiers Can ‘Bring The Troops Home’ From All Imperialist War">On"y Rebelling Soldiers Can ‘Bring The Troops Home’ From All Imperialist War

a href="#Spitzer: Hit Man For Finance Capital’s Fascist Drive To Discipline Wayward Bosses">"pitzer: Hit Man For Finance Capital’s Fascist Drive To Discipline Wayward Bosses

Wall Street, 2005= Berlin, 1939

a href="#Politics Move Garment Workers To Fight Boss’s Attack">"olitics Move Garment Workers To Fight Boss’s Attack

a href="#Airline Workers Stage Sick-out; Can’t Reform Sick System">"irline Workers Stage Sick-out; Can’t Reform Sick System

New Death Squads: Gangs Ape Murderous Ruling Class

Repression Of Salvadoran Youth Fails to Curtail Crime

Bar-B-Que Yields Meaty Discussion

Racist Attack on ML King Hospital Helps Fund U.S. Wars

a href="#Health Care For Profit And Good Health Don’t Mix">"ealth Care For Profit And Good Health Don’t Mix

Double Death Rate for Afro-American Babies

a href="#Government ‘Snow’ Job on the Deficit and Social Security">Go"ernment ‘Snow’ Job on the Deficit and Social Security

Pizza & Politics: 500 At HS Teach-in Debate U.S. Mid-East Oil Wars

Strike Aftermath: Chicago College Students, Teachers Fight Arrests, Cutbacks

a href="#Big Banks Back Blood-sucking ‘Lenders’ To Squeeze Workers, GI’s">Big "anks Back Blood-sucking ‘Lenders’ To Squeeze Workers, GI’s

a href="#Like The Drug Dealer Says, ‘The First Hit Is Free’">Li"e The Drug Dealer Says, ‘The First Hit Is Free’

a href="#…and whose side is the bosses’ government on?">…a"d whose side is the bosses’ government on?

Bye, Bye Pension; Hello Profiteers

Anti-Communist Liberal Beats Drum for Fascism and Imperialist War

Racist Politicians Use Slave-Era Rules On Prisoners to Hold Power

LETTERS

a href="#Student’s GI Letter Spreads School-Wide">"tudent’s GI Letter Spreads School-Wide

Internationalism Key to Fighting All Nationalism

a href="#Pinochet ‘Trial’ Is Phony Justice">Pi"ochet ‘Trial’ Is Phony Justice

a href="#Bosses Hide Behind ‘Labor Reform’ Schemes">Bo"ses Hide Behind ‘Labor Reform’ Schemes

Red Eye On The News

• Countless battered in Iraq
• A Red world could cope
• Religions lie about sex
• Big Biz likes TV as is
• Legal Aid: anti-red vaccine
• Bush: Armchair Slugger

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CAPITALISM KILLS AGAIN: Turns Natural Disasters into Mass Death

"There’s no reason for a single individual to get killed in a Tsunami. The waves are totally predictable. We have travel-time charts covering all of the Indian Ocean. From where this earthquake happened to hit, the travel time for the waves to hit the tip of India was four hours. That’s enough time for a warning." — Dr. Tad Murtry, University of Manitoba tsunami expert (quoted in interview with free-lance journalist Lila Rjaiva).

Tsunamis are phenomena of nature. However, the mass destruction, disease, and homelessness caused by the December 26 undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean were anything but a natural disaster. The blame for 150,000 deaths and the tens of thousands more who will surely die in the tsunami’s aftermath falls squarely on the profit system. Capitalism murdered these people — mostly very poor workers and their children — just as surely as capitalist bullets and bombs are murdering Iraqi workers in Bush, Jr.’s oil war.

A key to preventing the tsunami’s havoc would have been a simple system of buoys, each costing about $250,000. These detector buoys, called "tsunameters," have been in existence for decades. According to Dr. Eddie Bernard, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, just a few, costing a couple of million dollars, could have done the job.

If the tsunameters had been in place, a warning network would have had to have been established. Several hours could have made all the difference, and hundreds of thousands of people could have been evacuated. But as recently as a June 2004 meeting of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, when experts determined that the Indian Ocean faced a significant threat from local and distant tsunamis, the governments of Thailand, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in the region chose to ignore this warning and twiddle their thumbs.

Individual reasons may vary. The Thai government didn’t want to perturb the lucrative tourist industry with potential false alarms. Many thousands have died in Aceh, Indonesia, but the Indonesian military — the same butchers who in 1965, with CIA guidance, murdered one million workers accused of being communists — has been slaughtering Acehnese workers in even greater numbers for years to keep the energy resources there safe for Exxon Mobil and the Indonesian bosses tied to U.S. imperialism. The rulers of India — as racist as their U.S. counterparts — could care less about the corpses of a few more thousand poor workers.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is using the tragedy to build a coalition with Japan, Australia and India, mainly as a future force against the Chinese bosses. One reason the Bushites felt it necessary to increase U.S. contributions was "because China’s quest for a large Asian leadership role didn’t go unnoticed." (India Times New Network 1/4/05) And India is using this to expand its naval operation throughout South Asia. So even during such a tragedy, all the bosses are mainly concerned with their imperialist goals.

In essence, the overall culprit in the situation remains the racist profit system, which cares very little about the lives of poor Asian workers. The technology to detect tsunamis and avoid their devastation exists. But the social organization needed to do this does not. Right now, the U.S. is by far the richest and most powerful capitalist force on earth. Yet warfare and, at that, warfare for empire and world domination, is the only kind of intervention for which it can mobilize. After hearing of the tsunami, Bush promised $15 million for disaster relief. When a U.N. official called him stingy, Bush found another $25 million. Now he’s all the way up to $350 million and bragging about U.S. generosity. But this sick parody of "A Christmas Carol" stands in stark contrast to the expenses U.S. rulers really consider important (Contrary to the Bushites’ stinginess, immigrants from the affected countries and workers in the U.S. and worldwide have been very generous in their aid to the victims):

•The Pentagon spent $425 billion in 2004 on war and war preparations.

•The cost of Bush’s current Iraq war is approaching $150 billion.

•The U.S. military feeds, clothes, houses, and provides sanitation and health care for 1,246,000 active-duty troops.

•In Bush, Sr.’s Desert Storm I, the Pentagon supported 750,000 troops in the middle of the desert for months.

•The U.S. has an extensive network of seismic sensors to catch nuclear rivals, but it isn’t set up to warn of natural disasters.

You get the picture: billions to conquer the world, and chump change for the victims of preventable disaster.

The real disaster is the profit system. It’s been a long time since the fundamental conflict in society was between humanity and nature. Capitalism continues to make war and tsunami-like devastation inevitable. Workers need the social tsunami of communist revolution. It will take many years of patient, hard groundwork to develop. But it is as inevitable in its own way as the change of seasons, and when our Party leads it, it will send the entire class of war-making profit moguls to a well-deserved grave.

Imperialism Slaughters Millions In Wars For Profit

While it may be difficult to come to terms with the massive deaths caused by this tsunami, one should remember that U.S. rulers dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing 250,000 in one day. A 1975 cyclone killed more than 500,000 people overnight in Bangladesh. A similar toll occurred after a 1970 cyclone, which intensified the conflict between the U.S. and the USSR, since India was armed by Moscow. So the U.S. Navy sent the nuclear-armed Sixth Fleet to threaten the Indian navy.

Cyclones in 1988 and 1991 each killed over 200,000 people.in Bangladesh, although the number of victims was probably many times that. A 1991 CHALLENGE explained the role of the imperialist World Bank — how it dictated rice cultivation in a way that compelled a major population shift, forcing people to live in areas prone to flooding and cyclones.

However, in the current catastrophe warnings were not hard to come by (see adjoining editorial). The U.S. military can guide a missile to any spot on the planet. How come its operators at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii couldn’t pick up the phone and warn Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka of an approaching Tsunami?

All the excuses — "didn’t have the right phone numbers," misjudged the size of the original earthquake — fall flat when, in fact, they did warn the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia, smack in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Perhaps that is the purpose of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center: to warn the U.S. military. The rest of the world can go to hell. After all, right in the middle of an imperialist war in Iraq U.S. bosses refuse to give a count of Iraqi civilians they have killed.

Today we owe the families of over 150,000 dead in Asia condolences and support. But, in this much-touted information age, we also owe them clarity and a solution. Information in the hands of the imperialists is a weapon of mass murder. We need unity and organization on an international scale the working class has never yet attempted. We need one revolutionary communist party and that is the aim of PLP.

It is not to take away from the heartache of our Asian brothers and sisters that we point to the suffering of those in the Congo. Every three or four months they bury as many dead as this tsunami killed. Every three or four months the mass funerals go on and "somehow" the information age ensures ignorance of their grief. The Congolese are burying "only" about 31,000 a month because "peace" has been signed!

In the six years of war before the "peace," 3.8 million people were killed in the Congo. No single country since World War II and the Vietnam War has suffered such a high number of war dead. The wars and "peace" are being fought over which robber capitalist will profit from the wealth of minerals found in the Congo. Minerals like coltan — used in cell phones and computers — sell for as much as $350 a pound. The very tools of the information age have Congolese blood on them!

Our condolences and support spread from the Congo to South Asia. In addition to the immediate aid our brothers and sisters require, we must seize the moment to fill a most strategic need: the development and spreading of our international communist newspaper CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. Information in the hands of the imperialists and capitalists is a weapon of mass destruction. In the hands of the working class, it can be a weapon for revolution and liberation!

a name="Only Rebelling Soldiers Can ‘Bring The Troops Home’ From All Imperialist War"></">On"y Rebelling Soldiers Can ‘Bring The Troops Home’ From All Imperialist War

An active-duty soldier recently wrote to the Syracuse Post-Standard (12/20/04): "The president should ask himself: Why are US troops in Iraq? Because we, the soldiers, are the ones living the everyday, never-ending hell. Soldiers and people dying, a great amount of oil, but still we have not found any weapons of mass destruction. When you ask a soldier who has been living in Iraq for a year why he is there in front of a camera, he might reply that it is to make Iraqi people free. But when he is out of the spotlight, his anger, pain, and hate will come flying out like it does in his everyday Iraqi life."

Catherine Ayro, mother of Lionel Ayro of Jeanerette, LA., a 22-year-old private killed in Mosul, said, "The soldiers in Iraq should all come home. Nobody should be there — nobody!"

Jorge Castro, the father of Spc. Jonathon Castro, 21, also killed in Mosul, is angry at Bush and the Pentagon. He said, "The public affairs people sent me a statement for me to send to the newspapers. I threw it out….He didn’t join the army to ‘fight tyranny.’ He joined the army to go to college." Through a sea of tears, he told CBS News, "What are we doing there? Killing all those people for nothing!" These black and Latino families’ anger is growing.

The day after the attack in Mosul, a New York Times front-page headline claimed, "Fighting On Is the Only Option, Americans Say." The next day, the Times printed ten letters, most expressing the opposite opinion. Surely they received many more such letters. The sharpest was from a relative of a soldier in Iraq saying, "If it was wrong to invade Iraq, how can staying there as an occupying force be less wrong? Innocent civilian lives are lost, and United States service members die right along with them…. If we as Americans don’t agree with the war, we must speak out and say so! Support the troops; bring them home now!"

Anti-war sentiment is growing among soldiers, military families, workers, and working-class high school and college students — especially those most affected by the war. During the Vietnam War, it took ten years before there was anti-war sentiment in the workplace. Today this feeling is growing at work.

Even the Army Times admits that at least one-third of the combat vets are against the war; 39% of active-duty military respondents to their latest poll disapprove of the way the war is being handled. Spontaneity alone won’t end the bosses’ war.

Aggressive organizing is warranted among these angry groups. The only way to "bring the troops home" is when the troops themselves fight for it, like they did in 1946 when U.S. rulers tried to get them to fight their former Russian allies. Even reactionary Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman said the occupation of Iraq will only last as long as the "grunts" are willing to be there.

All this proves the correctness of the communist strategy towards war: "In time of war, …the slogan of transforming the imperialist war into a civil war will remain nothing but an empty phrase unless regular political work is carried out in the armed forces in as serious a fashion as possible." ("Armed Insurrection," by A. Neuberg, p. 154; published by the Comintern in German in 1928, in French in 1931, and in English in 1970 by New Left Review Editions, London.)

In 1981, when the U.S. government began selective service registration, several groups distributed leaflets at Post Office sign-ups. While pacifists told people not to sign up, PLP urged them, if drafted, to pledge to fight racism and for revolution inside the military. In a CHALLENGE article (1/21/81) entitled "Draft Dodging Won’t Stop WW3," PLP members in New York reported on this activity, citing the Communist Third International communist tactics in imperialist wars: "In the event of a big mass movement arising at the moment of the outbreak of war in favor of refusing military service, the Communists must combat the boycott ideology and the pacifist boycott slogan. They must speak quite frankly about the inadequacy of refusal of military service as a means of combating war, and make it clear to the masses that the only correct way of combating the imperialist war is to transform it into civil war. Strenuous propaganda must be conducted urging the necessity for carrying on revolutionary work in the bourgeois Army." History has much to teach us.

a name="Spitzer: Hit Man For Finance Capital’s Fascist Drive To Discipline Wayward Bosses">">"pitzer: Hit Man For Finance Capital’s Fascist Drive To Discipline Wayward Bosses

(First of a series on various ways a police state is developing in the U. S. Future installments will deal with consolidation of finance capital, heavy industry — particularly war industry — health care, education, the media, and the political mechanisms by which the rulers seek to implement fascism.)

For U.S. capitalists, the big story of 2004 was the growth of fascism within their own ranks. The London Financial Times’ choice as "Man of the Year" wasn’t Bush or Kerry or even bin Laden or Putin, but Eliot Spitzer, New York State’s attorney general. Spitzer won the honor for enforcing police state-style regulation of U.S. financiers and anybody who deals with them. Business leaders accuse Spitzer of "using regulation by terror to dictate the detail of how companies are structured, what prices they can charge, and even whom they can employ as chief executive." (FT, 12/24/04)

The U.S. ruling class is brandishing state power to tighten its control over the flow of money. Banks, brokers, mutual funds, and insurance companies engaging in speculation, fraud or any other practice diverting capital away from the rulers’ needs, have felt the heavy hand of Spitzer and federal enforcers. Workers have no interest in backing any of these capitalist forces — neither the big bosses who support Spitzer nor the smaller fry he’s whipping into shape. They’re all our class enemies. Understanding the process can help us avoid this trap.

Recognizing that finance capital controls the economy at large, Spitzer & Co. has targeted the largest Establishment firms. In 2003, he forced J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup to cough up a total of $255 million in fines for shady loans to Enron. Enron had run afoul of the main rulers by cornering the energy supply in California, jacking up prices and temporarily crippling the state’s industries. But September 11 made such robber baron maneuvers — especially the disruption of war production— unacceptable to the rulers.

Next on Spitzer’s hit list came brokerages and mutual funds that were undermining investors’ confidence by lying to or stealing from them. The rulers require a continuous flow of capital (largely workers’ pensions and life savings) into these markets. Merrill Lynch paid a $100 million settlement with Spitzer. Janus, Putnam and other funds refunded over $925 million in fees. All in all, Spitzer has wrung more than $4 billion in fines and restitution from Wall Street firms. In the eyes of one mutual fund watchdog, Geoff Broboff, "the ethical practices of the industry have been restored." Another, Mercer Bullard, praises Spitzer’s intimidation tactics: "If you are working in the industry, you care most about your fate. It’s the powerful image of a couple dozen high-level executives being disgraced, losing their jobs and in a few cases ending up in jail." (San Francisco Chronicle, 1/2/05)

Spitzer’s disciplining of wayward Wall Street executives parallels the climate of fear rulers in Germany spread among similar businessmen at the dawn of World War II (see box ).

Spitzer styles himself the "people’s lawyer," but his main support comes from the top ranks of U.S. capitalists, those with the greatest interest in restructuring the U.S. economy on a wartime footing. A group called "Restore the Trust," created and bankrolled by the Rockefeller Family Fund, has guided many of Spitzer’s reform efforts. While Spitzer rails at "big corporations," he actually strives to consolidate economic control.

Spitzer spent a two-year stint in the mid-’90s at Skadden Arps, the Wall Street law firm that, more than any other, helped bring about the mega-mergers that re-launched the U.S. drive to become the world’s dominant economic power. During Spitzer’s ruling-class apprenticeship at Skadden, the firm represented Mobil, Chase, and Travelers in their respective mergers with Exxon, J.P. Morgan, and Citigroup.

Spitzer takes the same approach to foundations, which function like banks in providing capital to, and thus controlling, non-profit organizations. Spitzer wants to abolish all foundations with less than $20 million in assets, a move that would further strengthen the hand of already powerful foundations like the Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon groups.

For more than a century, politicians’ regulatory reforms of big business have paved the way for U.S. imperialism’s wars. Spitzer claims Teddy Roosevelt, one of U.S. imperialism’s first mass murderers, as his model. TR’s highly selective trust-busting disguised the massive industrial consolidation (General Electric, U.S. Steel, etc.) that eventually enabled U.S. rulers to enter World War I. In 1938, another ambitious New York attorney general, Thomas Dewey, marched Dick Whitney off to Sing Sing. This thieving Morgan associate and ex-New York Stock Exchange president proved a convenient scapegoat for the Depression. But, more importantly, his jailing, signaling the end of Morgan’s power, greased the liberal FDR-Rockefeller camp’s consolidation of finance capital in the run-up to World War II. Complete government control of the economy soon followed.

After Clinton’s anti-trust prosecution of Microsoft, a chastened Bill Gates began investing in the Newport News shipbuilding yards, the U.S. Navy’s sole supplier of nuclear aircraft carriers. Spitzer pretends to aid the investor, the consumer, the "little guy." In one highly publicized media event, he once went to bat for Central Park pretzel vendors. But his, and all liberal politicians’ efforts mainly advance the ruling class’s war agenda.

(Next: The flap over pain-killers and the rulers’ need to tighten the vise on both the pharmaceutical industry and the government agencies which regulate it.)

Wall Street, 2005= Berlin, 1939

Günther Reimann, a German-American journalist, described the pre-World War II climate of fear Hitler’s bosses sought to spread among businessmen reluctant to fall into line for Nazi fascism. Here he quotes one of them:

"The German businessman sweats with fear….He does not know whether he has broken some law, whether and when he will be caught. He wakes up in the morning dreaming of an investigation by some state bureaucrat who has discovered some irregularity of which he, the businessman, knew or did not know. He enters his office fearing that he will find the announcement of a new decree which curbs his business, or that the condition of state finances will lead to some new measure of expropriation. When the office door opens, he expects a tax official who will investigate his business affairs for many years back until he finds some "irregularity." You may think this anxiety unreasonable. But unfortunately I cannot help fearing that I will experience tomorrow what is happening to others today."

a name="Politics Move Garment Workers To Fight Boss’s Attack">">"olitics Move Garment Workers To Fight Boss’s Attack

Southern California — The following fight to organize a work stoppage in a garment factory has lasted over several weeks and was preceded by a year of shop and political struggle. There were two work stoppages last year. The first won the re-hiring of a fired worker while the second one occurred when the boss refused permission for workers to leave for a funeral of a co-worker, but they left as a group. We have regular CHALLENGE sales and leaflets, including one about how much surplus value the bosses steal from the workers; many political discussions about the war in Iraq and the rebellious soldiers who refused orders, as well as a discussion about two students in Mexico expelled from school for refusing to salute and pledge the flag. Most workers thought the students were right because the flag represents the bosses, not the workers. Now the struggle has sharpened again. A group is emerging to give leadership and support to their fellow workers. Now our story begins….

"Starting next week, everyone must punch out and punch in for lunch," announced the boss. He was timidly "booed" by some.

The news angered the 250 workers because there are only two antiquated timeclocks to mark the cards and only 30 minutes to eat. This attack opened up a bunch of other issues: bad treatment, the extra money the boss robs from our already miserable wages and especially, how to confront these attacks.

"We’re discussing important things, not trivial ones!" said one worker to another who had started talking about soccer. "What are you talking about?" he asked, getting interested.

"This is the last straw; they impose their rules and we just accept with our heads down," said Roberto, very angrily, adding, "We have to talk to the boss."

"And this damned forelady is so arrogant, she’s nothing more than a boss’s lap dog!" exclaimed Memo, referring to the harassment by a department supervisor. "She’s never said anything to me and I’ve never seen anything," said the soccer fan. "But," answered some workers, "that doesn’t mean she doesn’t do it to others."

"We have to stop production and unite all the workers to confront the boss!" said Tom, angrily. "No stopping production," exclaimed Jaime, "no, we don’t want to hurt anyone." He was surprised to see the rest of the workers, except for the soccer fan, nodding their heads in agreement with Tom. "It’s better if two or three of us go to the office and talk to the boss," Jaime insisted. "But," said Tom, interrupting him, "the workers must feel our strength and courage. Also, we need to learn to defend our interests together, not individually, because individually we’re weak."

Of the half dozen who participated in the discussion, not all were convinced to stop production, but they helped talk to other workers. This occurred on a Friday. At 9:00 A.M. on Monday morning, a leaflet was distributed hand to hand with the workers’ demands.

Everything seemed to be going well. The work stoppage was planned for 12:30 P.M. that day. No one was supposed to punch out for lunch or punch in again for work. The other workers supported the plan. Their comments poured out: "Count on me….I’m with you all….I’m going to talk to my co-workers back there….I agree, but we have to protect those people with problems….I like the idea that we all talk to the boss because last time, only those who went into the office knew what he said."

"Julia is right," said Tom. "We can’t negotiate behind the workers’ backs. The leaders of the working class can’t flirt with the bosses."

Some workers feared joining the work stoppage; others doubted the rest would support it, saying, "Look, the people won’t support us…The people don’t understand.…Many have problems with their [immigration] status….They’re afraid to lose their jobs."

To be continued….

a name="Airline Workers Stage Sick-out; Can’t Reform Sick System">">"irline Workers Stage Sick-out; Can’t Reform Sick System

CHALLENGE ran two good letters from airport workers recently, the latest featuring a fight against racist attacks on part-timers. Each touted the increased circulation of our paper with the theme that the Party’s ideas were guiding modest class struggle. Meanwhile, baggage handlers and flight attendants staged spontaneous sickouts in cities nationwide, snarling traffic and stranding bags throughout the airline system over the Christmas holidays. It’s good workers are taking matters into their own hands, but spontaneity will eventually have to yield. As the letters imply, only increased class struggle guided by communist consciousness remains viable. Reform of capitalism is a dead letter at the airports.

Last year, the airlines announced $7.5 billion in cuts and at least 20,000 firings. This follows over $10 billion in wage and benefit give-backs and 100,000 layoffs during the prior two rounds of concessions. Last month, United Airline’s pilot union agreed to terminate its pension plan, portending the end of traditional airline pensions. This domino effect may seal the doom of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures defined-payment pension plans country-wide.

"Some new flight attendants will earn just $12,000, less than they might earn at Wal-Mart," reports the New York Times (12/27/04). "There are proposals being floated under the table now for mechanic wages that would make them better off at a Chevy dealership than at US Airways," adds the Dallas Morning News (12/19/04).

This structural reorganization of the airline workforce into a more non-union, low-wage entity, stripped of any reasonable pensions and benefits, follows the pattern set in auto, steel, coal, aerospace manufacturing and machine tools. More than market forces are at work here. The ruling class is searching to revitalize basic industry and transportation networks — systems increasingly falling behind its imperialist rivals. Japan’s total manufacturing output now surpasses the United States ("Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma is Destroying American Prosperity," by Eamonn Fingleton), not to mention the combined production of the European Union and a surging China.

Workers Pay for War Reorganization

Lest "these great [foreign] manufacturing nations serve as a powerful counterweight to the United States’ vaunted position as the world’s ‘sole remaining military superpower,’" as Fingleton warns, the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), in particular, is advising the ruling class to pay more attention to its industrial base. The economy — focusing on basic manufacturing and infrastructure — must become a war economy, using market forces where convenient, the State when necessary.

Without such a "revitalized" (on workers’ backs) industrial base, the cost of maintaining the high-tech military machine necessary for the Iraqi occupation and other imperialist adventures becomes prohibitive. For example, the cost of flying troops to the Middle East will be paid, in part, by airline worker give-backs.

Peter Peterson — Chairman of the CFR and The Blackstone Group, the country’s largest private investment firm — warns that we must choose between "retirement security and national security." He might as well have been looking right at airline workers when making this threat.

Unions Don’t Have Answer

The unions are stymied. "I don’t think anyone has an answer," admitted American Airline pilot union head, Philpot (Dow Jones, 12/02/04). Some unions, like Philpot’s, openly collaborate with management.

"We have not recognized that unions are a business," said American’s head of human resources, Brundage, "We saw them as something difficult we had to deal with, rather than legitimate business partners." Of course, collaboration hasn’t stopped management from instituting billions in cuts and a new round of layoffs.

In a year-end greeting, United Chief Executive Tilton praised employees for exceeding their goal in a new collaborative performance program. In the same message, he reminded his "business partners" that the airline would reward them with cuts in pay and benefits (Dow Jones, 12/22/04).

Meanwhile, the "independent" Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association is raiding the AFL-CIO unions using a racist, dead-end strategy of blaming lower-paid, largely minority workers. The new flight attendants union at Northwest is also unaffiliated.

Others, gathered around the Unity group in the AFL-CIO, endorse the opposite tactic, advocating merging airline unions "to better manage the crisis facing airline workers." (Los Angeles Times, 11/18/04)

‘Crisis’ Offers Stark Choices

None of these groups target the bosses’ imperialist war plans to control Mid-East oil. No matter what the tactic, trade unionism must attempt to "manage the crisis" in periods like this, disarming workers by limiting their outlook to "getting their share of (an ever-decreasing) pie." The union misleaders’ narrow trade union outlook forces them to play a reactionary role, building passivity and cynicism in our ranks. That’s how fascist traitors are born!

Our Party, however, must focus our fire on the system’s main contradiction: linking every skirmish to the inter-imperialist fight over control of the world’s energy sources. Such political consciousness, built over a lifetime of the closest personal ties, is essential to making the case for revolution. A narrow trade union outlook must be defeated within our class if we are to develop such a revolutionary strategy and build PLP, the only way to deal with the 21st century reality of this sick system. Such a firm grasp of reality is the best way to motivate workers to fight back, as the "crisis facing airline workers" intensifies.

Imperialism’s Needs Come First

The "hollowing out" of the U.S. industrial base, relative to its imperialist competitors, has more dire consequences than just extra cost. "The latest in a series of five studies by the Pentagon’s Office for Industrial Policy point to…significant problems with the defense industrial base…, raising concerns about U.S. technology lead in traditional weapons," reports Defense Daily (11/02/04).

The Office of Industrial Policy is pushing for an Industrial Base Acquisition Fund to bribe capitalists (with taxpayers’ money) to invest in U. S. manufacturing capability necessary for the maintenance of imperialist armed forces.

Competitive pressure has forced manufacturers to seek cheap labor abroad. Once foreign capitalists learn how to organize this outsourced production, they acquire the inside track on the next generation of technology. In addition, they obtain physical plants and the knowledge of how to quickly bring that technology to market. For example, when TV production was outsourced to Asia, firms there ended up owning the next generation of technology — VCR and DVD players. Now they have a crucial lead in related laser production, a key military technology.

The ruling class think-tanks have awakened to this threat. Recently, there has been a hue and cry about Boeing outsourcing wing fabrication — a key component of aircraft production — on its new commercial jet to Japan. Nobody seems to know how to stop it, given the success of Boeing’s chief rival, Airbus. One strategy with which all the pundits seem to agree is to establish a large domestic system of low-cost subcontractors. As the needs of the U.S. military machine grow, the ruling class will have to use its State power to force industry to conform to its imperialist goals.

Killing Women in Mexico and Central America:

New Death Squads: Gangs Ape Murderous Ruling Class

On Dec. 23 in a city north of Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, a bus full of passengers was shot up by a group of supposed Maras (gang) members, killing 29 innocent people, mainly women and children. This may have been instigated by the Honduran government or some high-ranking members — the weapons used in the massacre probably came from some in the army — to justify more repression of workers and youth in general and the Maras in particular. In any event, it appears these Maras are not merely "juvenile delinquents," but are hardcore murderers who ape the violence of local bosses and imperialists and prey on working people throughout Central America. The next day these criminals murdered 10 innocent people for no reason whatsoever.

These gangs are at war with the government, probably over who will control drug money. In May, some 100 gang members were incinerated when their jail cells caught fire and the authorities let them burn to death.

These gangs are becoming the new death squads of Central America. Many were trained in the gangs of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, and then were deported back to Central America to proceed with their crimes, often helped by the cops or corrupt politicians.

In Guatemala, these gangs are responsible for many of the 1,500 women murdered since 2001, 500 just in 2004. While the murders of women near Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, bordering El Paso, Texas, have made news worldwide, little is said about a worse situation in Guatemala.

Most victims are poor, young women, killed by men full of hatred towards women. They’re modern Jack the Rippers, slashing their victims’ throats and even cutting them into little pieces, scattering the parts in different places. The victims are "single mothers, factory workers, poor immigrants and prostitutes. Most…are…no more than 20 years old, mainly living in very poor neighborhoods." (Argenpress.info, 12/25/04). All this brutality is used to terrorize women factory workers to prevent them from organizing against super-exploitation.

Just as in Ciudad Juárez, most of these crimes remain unsolved, either because of police incompetence or complicity. Of 383 women murdered in Guatemala in 2003, only 10 cases were solved. Those caught were mostly gang members or other criminals, and even cops.

Many women are raped before being killed. Some are murdered by their own fathers or stepfathers, many of whom had abused their victims.

Magali Urbina was working in a clothing store in Guatemala City. Gang members demanded money for "protection." a la Al Capone, but she had none, being deeply in debt, raising her two children. In early December, gang members entered her house in the Mixco area and, after savagely torturing her and her children, cut their throats, along with Luz Maité López, a pregnant friend living in the same house with her 18-month-old daughter. She tried to escape but her body was discovered in the backyard. Her infant daughter was the only survivor, found alive a few days later because she had drunk the dead victims’ blood.

How can anyone commit such heinous crimes? One good reason is capitalism. These gang members are engaged in the drug trade and other criminal activities, part and parcel of a capitalist society based on money, profits and greed. The "authorities" in these countries are also involved in many such crimes. Directed by the CIA, they created death squads that killed hundreds of thousands of Central Americans fighting for a better life. The Guatemalan Army carried out a racist ethnic-cleansing war, murdering tens of thousands of workers and peasants, mostly Indians. These soldiers were trained and armed by the U.S. government. Col. Efrain Montt, who ruled in the 1980s when the massacres were more intense, was a born-again preacher trained by the same Christian fascists who today support Bush and his murderous imperialist war for oil in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Blame can also be placed on the treachery of the fake leftists who led the insurgent movement in the region. Today, the Salvadoran FMLN and the Guatemala’s former guerrilla leaders are immersed in the electoral game, supporting various forms of capitalism, either pro-U.S. or pro-European. These opportunists betrayed the hopes of million of workers and youth for a better world.

A strong revolutionary movement fighting against all bosses and for communism can win some of these young people away from the gangs and ultimately erect a communist society that will eliminate these crimes and the capitalist sexist attitudes producing them. We must intensify the building of such a movement, for the sake of all these working-class victims, past and present.

Repression Of Salvadoran Youth Fails to Curtail Crime

EL SALVADOR, Dec. 28 — The government of President Elías A Saca admitted today that the "Super Hard Hand" plan to fight the maras (gangs) has failed. Nevertheless, cabinet member Rene Figueroa said police operations will increase in 2005 in the country’s working-class neighborhoods to "fight juvenile delinquency."

This means that the "hard hand" of right-winger Saca and the previous administration of Francisco Flores (1998-2004) — mass jailings of youth — have not stopped crime. For instance, on Sept. 2, 30 young people were arrested, accused of being gang members. But judges freed a goodly number due to lack of proof.

Instead of creating decent jobs enabling young people to survive the harshness of capitalism, the rulers’ "only answer" is to intimidate workers and youth in general — not to fight the big criminals, including many cops and government officials. (See adjoining article.)

Bar-B-Que Yields Meaty Discussion,

Plan of Action "We workers have to wake up and learn to fight, because nobody will do it for us." That was the slogan for the Bar-B-Que/meeting we organized at a park. From the time I arrived at 11 A.M., the one co-worker already there reserving the space was slowly but surely joined by others, as workers kept coming and coming.

As we cooked, we talked — about family, friends, the Governor of California, cars, the workers who couldn’t come, etc. When the meat was ready, we "attacked" it, and at the same time attacked the ideas of the capitalist enemy.

Soon one comrade began speaking, noting that everyone knew we were getting together to analyze the bosses’ attacks on us; the lack of leadership for the workers; the weakness of the unions; and the need of a labor movement capable of uniting the working class in general. He detailed the cuts in services, hospital closings, higher tuitions, and a future of more such attacks, linking all this to the war in Iraq and a potential draft.

Everyone listened attentively. Then one worker added more of the misfortunes awaiting us. After that, everyone wanted to speak. Someone asked, "How do we connect the war to our problems?" Another said, "We need to know more, to educate ourselves politically. I’ve read CHALLENGE, but I think we need more than that." Another worker offered his house for a study group.

"I thought I’d better come see if you were really having this Bar-B-Que," said a worker jokingly, after driving 25 miles from a church in another part of the city. "I also wanted to see who came and who didn’t." Though he came late, he and his son stayed afterwards to help clean up and continue talking politics. He was very impressed with the number of workers there.

This was a qualitative step. Previously few workers had come to such activities. We’ve been helped by our consistency spreading CHALLENGE and building ties with the workers, the closeness of our families and the ideological struggle. At one point a comrade suggested we need study groups to learn more about the fight for revolution. Two were organized. Most of the workers read CHALLENGE and some help distribute it among their friends.

In addition, some are circulating a petition supporting the soldiers from the 343rd Q.C. who refused their suicidal orders. This petition, which calls for an end to the war in Iraq, got a boost when some soldiers confronted Rumsfeld about better armor for their vehicles. We’re putting forward the petition at the next union meeting. Part of the struggle is to win our co-workers to come to support the fight against the racist, anti-worker, imperialist war for oil profits in the Middle East.

Racist Attack on ML King Hospital Helps Fund U.S. Wars

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 27 — Racism kills. This is clearly evident in the threatened closing of Martin Luther King Hospital (MLKH) here, a public hospital staffed by mainly black and Latino medical workers and administrators. The ruling class needs the resources to finance their oil wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for world domination. Keeping people healthy and alive is secondary, so expenditures for U.S. workers’ health must be cut back.

The rulers’ deliberately under-fund MLKH, and their media then spread racist distortions about it. After the 1965 Watts rebellion, MLKH was built as a political "showcase" in response to community demands. It provides the appearance of concern for the predominantly black and Latino South Central community it serves.

But because of long-standing racism throughout the healthcare system, it’s difficult for MLKH to recruit health professionals. Only 3% of U.S. doctors are black (Chicago Reporter, July-Aug. 1998), and 3% Latino (AMA statistic). Only two medical schools in the U.S. train mostly black doctors — Howard and Meharry, on the East Coast. Few of their graduates want to work at MLKH, with its miserable conditions, an under-funded, non-prestigious institution that doesn’t produce high quality research. Repeated cutbacks have lowered morale.

Racism in health care is so deadly that, "More than 886,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had received the same care as whites, according to an analysis in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health." (Washington Post, 12/21/04)

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Now along comes the Los Angeles Times with a recent five-part series of front-page articles about MLKH, detailing a host of horror stories about incorrect, fatal care, overpaid doctors, fake workman’s comp. claims, etc. The series’ theme implied that the hospital was bad because it was run by Afro-Americans. But almost any hospital would record similar stories. Without excusing the racist and negligent errors made by the MLKH staff, it’s a fact that most hospitals have a poor record concerning patient care (i.e., Kaiser and LA County-USC Medical Center) — mainly because of terrible understaffing and the profit needs of the capitalist class. An estimated 98,000 people die in U.S. hospitals annually due to complications from receiving the wrong medicine, or from acquiring an infection during their stay. (Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine, "To err is human: building a safer health system"; Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, March 2000). This excludes deaths from medical care errors outside hospitals.

The LA Times series was the height of racist journalistic sensationalism to influence public opinion. Spinning many facts in the series distorted the essential truth.

In stating the hospital was mismanaged, the Times didn’t say why. The series noted that another public teaching hospital, Harbor/UCLA, was better-managed, implying that was because it was run by Anglo-Americans. The Times totally omitted the real reason for Harbor’s better productivity: it is one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals, receiving millions in grants and contracts from the U.S. medical establishment — drug companies and the U.S. government which provide far more subsidies to Harbor than to MLKH. Adequate funding engenders better quality medicine.

MLKH doesn’t receive such monies because its doctors aren’t considered "good enough." This reflects the whole racist system of academia. As mentioned above, 12% of the U.S. population is black, but only 3% of medical doctors are black. Afro-Americans are not on editorial boards of medical journals, nor on grant committees. This systematic racism excludes Afro-Americans from the mainstream of academic medicine.

Although Harbor’s medical care funding has steadily declined, its position in academia and relations with the drug companies has compensated for these disastrous cuts — an advantage unavailable to MLKH.

The Times is running this series to justify closing MLKH, saving the County $342 million annually. This will intensify LA County’s current deadly emergency room crisis. Five ER’s and dozens of clinics have been eliminated in the past two years. (N.Y. Times, "Los Angeles Emergency Care Crisis Deepens, 8/21/2004) These facilities serve black, Latino, Asian and white workers. Racism is the cutting edge of attacks on all workers. Northridge Hospital, serving mainly white workers, was closed. A week after the MLKH series, the LA Times admitted that the governor is planning deeper cuts in Medi-Cal and health facilities for all workers rather than raising taxes on California’s businesses. Currently 3,000,000 people in LA County alone have no health coverage.

This threatened closure of a public hospital is part of a massive nationwide cutback in workers’ health care. The bosses believe they can get away with this because they don’t feel threatened by a united working class fighting for health care and for power.

All workers should fight the closing of MLKH. This attack is part of — and diverts attention from — the entire, vast assault on the health care of all workers. Such a system is increasingly incapable of serving the most basic needs of the vast majority of workers. The bosses use racism to divide and weaken us, and blind us to the fact that capitalism is the mortal enemy of all workers. Our health and very lives depend on destroying it!

Double Death Rate for Afro-American Babies

Afro-Americans have always had a higher death rate than Anglo-Americans in the U.S. These higher death rates stem from all diseases. Deaths at birth: 8.2% of Anglo-American babies, 18.2% of Afro-American babies. ("Resolving disparities in infant mortality," Michigan Summit, 2001); Afro-Americans are less likely than Anglo-Americans to be insured or to have a primary care doctor or to have a hospital nearby. (Jet, 10/20/03); Afro-Americans are less likely to visit a doctor because of cost. (Chicago Reporter, July-Aug. 1998).

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The Bush administration has been claiming that the federal deficit was "only" $412 billion. But last month the U.S. Treasury Dept. posted the country’s financial statement on its website with this message from Treasury-Secy. John Snow: "In the fiscal year 2004, government revenues were $1.9 trillion….The net cost of the government’s operations was $2.5 trillion….Total revenues less operating costs resulted in a net operating cost of slightly more than $615 billion."

Translation: When the "net operating cost" exceeds revenues, that’s a DEFICIT. Why was it $203 billion more than the widely publicized (phony) deficit of $412 billion? Because that $203 billion gap "is the amount of Social Security money that the government collected and used for its everyday operations." (John Crudele, NY Post, 12/28/04).

That’s right, the government took the Social Security surplus — the amount of payroll taxes collected that exceeded the amount it paid to retirees — and used it to pay for the military war machine, among other expenses. And then tells us the deficit is actually $203 billion less than it really is.

On top of that, it keeps up this steady chatter about Social Security being "in the hole." Sure, if you keep stealing its surpluses every year! This has been government policy since the Vietnam War, under every administration, Democrat and Republican. While they cry about the "crisis" of Social Security when the baby boomers retire, they’ve stolen TRILLIONS of dollars from Social Security surpluses for 40 years. Just one more scam through which the ruling class swindles workers out of their hard-earned retirement.

Challenge for Youth: Be A Future Revolutionary Organizer of Industrial Workers

We working-class youth have been coerced out of school by the racist school system and forced to work, either for a company, in the army, or in a prison, or it’s the unemployment lines. We must make a decision about who we’ll serve, and what we’ll do the rest of our lives.

Capitalism drives most of these decisions, so we must decide: will we be corporate boot-lickers, subservient to a system that will never serve our interests, or will we rebel and prepare to rise up against capitalism? What must we do to prepare for such an uprising?

Some of us have already joined the Progressive Labor Party and understand the necessity of communist revolution, while some feel capitalism is not the answer, but haven’t yet figured out what’s necessary to take state power away from the bosses and run society in the interests of our class.

Capitalism profits from all the products our labor creates. From the bars of soap we use to wash our hands, to the cars we drive, to the machines that we use to make things, even the guns that cops use to kill black/Latin workers and youth on the streets, and the bombs used to murder Iraqi workers for oil — all this comes from the hands of industrial workers.

These workers are the most powerful because they produce everything that everybody uses. They have the potential, when organized, to stop production bringing this system to its knees. But this alone won’t wipe out capitalism. Stopping production is an important exercise in class struggle, but the bosses will answer back with their state apparatus — cops, courts, prisons, armies. Since they won’t give up their power without a fight, we must be very careful to prepare for their counter-attack on our class.

Our main task in the factories must be to use every struggle, both inside and outside the workplace, to prepare our co-workers to smash the bosses’ state and establish a communist-led workers’ state. From fighting attacks on our health and safety to fighting racist police terror to fighting imperialist war, every assault on our class can become a way to expose the system and show the need for its destruction.

What’s an industrial worker? How do you become one? Industrial workers are factory workers: machinists, welders, machine operators, press-setters and any number of occupations involved in the means of production. One can become an industrial worker either by going to a trade school or going straight into unskilled factory jobs.

Some say industrial workers are fast disappearing. But capitalism cannot exist without producing the things people use. Industrial workers will always exist, as long as people need things to use. And U.S. bosses plan to increase the number of low-paid industrial workers here.

If you who are at a cross-roads in life, young, and have decided to take on this system, what better way to take it down than to become an industrial worker organizing for communist revolution?

Pizza & Politics: 500 At HS Teach-in Debate U.S. Mid-East Oil Wars

BROOKLYN, NY — A guiding principle of being a communist is reliance on the working class and its youth. We believe that not only will workers make a revolution against capitalism and its racism and profiteering, but that working people will build a new world based on collectivity and sharing. Recently, working-class young people at a high school here showed that a communist world is definitely in our future.

Youth are hungry for all kinds of nourishment. They certainly like pizza, but much more than pizza they want to make sense out of this crazy capitalist world. Just before the holiday break over 500 students jammed into a crowded school auditorium for a teach-in about war and imperialism in the Mid-East.

Starting with a young woman’s rousing speech denouncing Bush’s lies about 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction, she blamed the Iraq war on imperialism and oil. She also linked U.S. imperialism’s drive for oil to Saudi Arabia and to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Other activities showcased the talent, political commitment and tireless organizing of many young people. One group stayed after school many days to paint a huge banner depicting Bush the imperialist. It’s now displayed in the school’s halls. The debate team practiced for hours, constantly gaining new members. Rather than debating before a small polite audience, they faced a noisy crowd of 500. These young, inexperienced debate team members did great, under difficult circumstances.

Afterwards many students discussed the issues debated: When should soldiers disobey the orders of their commanders? Were the soldiers of the 343rd Q.C. justified in refusing an order needlessly endangering them? The step-dancing team put on a great show, ending with a poem over the bodies of fallen soldiers. These soldiers were victims of an aimperialist war.

The cheerleaders and the dance team entertained. Poetry was read and exhibited. A Power Point presentation about the war was shown several days later to a smaller group.

An after-school student club and some social studies teachers organized the 2½-hour event, beginning at 3 PM in the auditorium and ending in the cafeteria with a snack of 50 pizza pies. Meanwhile we distributed all kinds of literature, including hundreds of information sheets about the draft, extra credit sheets to be returned to social studies teachers and lyrics from Bob Dylan’s song Masters of War. Best of all, 200 people got their hands on this terrific revolutionary newspaper. Many students signed up for the after-school club.

For communists, for anti-imperialists, for working-class youth, this was quite an event!

But are pizza and politics contradictory? Well, shortly after 5 PM, as the Teach-In was ending and the pizza distribution beginning, things got a little chaotic. Some students let greed take over; maybe some just did not believe everyone would get a slice, although everyone did. While some students rushed to the front of the line, quite a few took the initiative to help with the distribution. It was quite something to see young men and women stand behind, and even on top of the tables and take charge. After the successful distribution of 400 slices, many didn’t even care if they got a slice or not. Political commitment not pizza was motivating them. Next, a discussion about communist political commitment will make a big contribution to the struggle for the world we want. And we will have that discussion!

Strike Aftermath: Chicago College Students, Teachers Fight Arrests, Cutbacks

CHICAGO — The Chicago City College (CCC) strike ended two months ago, but vicious attacks on teachers and students persist. The lose-lose settlement between the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) Local 1600’s union hacks, the administration and their investment bankers, is showing its true colors. The CCC bosses have prepared a blacklist of dozens of part-time faculty who supported the strike; they won’t be rehired. At Daley College, the administration’s plan to lay off part-time faculty was stopped for now, after full-timers marched on the president’s office. Two-thirds of the faculty are part-timers, with no benefits or job security, a group which Local 1600 refused to unionize (they have since organized two separate part-time unions).

A PLP student organizer at Malcolm X College was arrested at a demonstration at City College headquarters just two days before the strike ended, charged with battery and trespassing. We’re organizing a big turnout for his January 20 trial date. In addition, the school administration has dragged him to two disciplinary hearings, threatening him with expulsion. About 60 students and teachers attended his first hearing, and 40 were at the second, despite intimidation. Police arrested a teacher at his home a week later and charged him with assault and trespass for the same demonstration. An international student faces possible deportation.

The more than 150,000 primarily working-class black, Latin, immigrant and women City College students have been bombarded repeatedly with racist cutbacks, layoffs and tuition hikes. The IFT leadership has been complicit in these racist attacks, occurring in this period of war and fascism. The administration is using the new contract as a pretext to increase tuition by $2,700 for nursing students «, and add tuition hikes for all students every semester for the next three years. The CCC bosses are threatening to close colleges, particularly in black neighborhoods.

Working-class college students will pay for the Iraq war and the Homeland Security police state with $300 million in Pell Grant cuts scheduled for next fall. The Pell Grant is the primary scholarship for low-income students. As many as half of the 5.3 million Pell recipients will receive smaller grants; about 89,000 will get none. In addition, the new rules for the 2005-6 academic year "are expected to have a domino effect across almost every type of financial aid, tightening access to billions of dollars in state and institutional grants…" (New York Times, 12/28/04)

Throughout this struggle, PLP has fought for the political leadership of students and teachers. A dozen students attended our CHALLENGE Dinner and gave militant leadership in helping to form the Strike Solidarity Committee, which is now organizing campus clubs. We have formed a new PLP City College club and will increase our CHALLENGE distribution.

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The Sopranos and other Mafiosi are penny ante loan sharks compared to the $7 billion raked in by the "Pay Day Lenders" industry, all of them backed up by four of the country’s ten largest banks. Pay Day Lenders (PDLs), collecting interest rates from 390% to 780%, "trap borrowers in a cycle that few can break without defaulting and facing legal judgments." (Bloomberg News, 11/23/04; all quotes and information from this source.)

"Free and equal access to credit for any legitimate business that complies with all the laws is a cornerstone of the free enterprise system," says Susan Stanley-Jones, spokesperson for Wells Fargo, 4th largest U.S. bank, which makes millions from providing hundreds of millions in credit lines to PDLs, enabling them to exist.

Tell Jason Withrow, a U.S. Navy petty officer second class, about that "cornerstone." On July 4, 2003, Withrow was struck by a car, injuring his back, while on sentry duty at his base in Kings Bay, Georgia. He had to quit his job unloading beer kegs at the base’s liquor store. Unable to pay his bills, the sailor turned to one of the PDLs — Advance America Cash Advance Centers among the thousands that are cluttered around military bases — and agreed to pay a $90 "fee" for a $300 loan, to be repaid two weeks later. Unable to meet that deadline, he rolled the loan over for another $90 fee, "an annual percentage rate of 780%"!

"Withrow got deeper in debt as he struggled every two weeks to pay the fee — let alone the loan itself. He borrowed more cash to service the first fee, and by February 2004, he’d paid about $5,000 in interest on $1,800 in payday loans at four different lenders." That’s what capitalism calls "legitimate business."

Demonstrating just how much the PDLs care about putting GI’s "in harms way," they concentrate on areas around military bases. "It’s legalized thievery," says Sgt. Andrew Perrin at Fort Bragg, NC. "These companies put pressure on soldiers because they can be discharged if they default on too much debt." As they struggle to make payments, "It…can affect a whole unit big time," according to Sgt. Carlton Brown.

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Of the 105 million households in the U.S., 14 million used PDLs in 2003. The overwhelming majority these PDLs target are exploited workers who have bank accounts and jobs but live from payday to payday on an average annual income of $25,000. "Payday lending is structured so you just pay the interest every two weeks," says Georgia State Insurance and Safety Fire commissioner John Oxendine. "They never want you to pay back the principal." Some PDLs even wave the initial fee to attract customers. "It’s similar to what you hear from drug dealers: The first hit is free," says Mark Pearce of the Center for Responsible Lending.

Nine of ten loans are made to repeat borrowers with more than five payday loans per year. The average borrower spends $600 in "fees" annually on a $300 loan. (2004 report in Yale University Journal on Regulation) Those caught in this web sink ever deeper in debt.

The PDLs could not exist without the big banks. They "are profiting from a predatory financial industry," says Matthew Lee of the Inner City Press/Fair Finance Watch. "By partnering with payday lenders, they have enabled them to sprout like mushrooms all over the country." From just 200 PDLs in 1993, they have skyrocketed to over 22,000. In California alone there are 5,626, five times the number of McDonalds in that state. Skirting the usury laws through exemptions, PDLs are legal in 36 states.

JPMorgan/Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Wachovia — four of the five largest U.S. banks — have combined to extend credit lines of a HALF BILLION dollars to the largest of the PDLs. In addition, Wall Street investment houses like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley helped these banks underwrite these loans, all of whom themselves hold stock in the publicly-trade PDLs. All this has enabled PDLs like Advance America — the country’s largest, with 2.290 outlets in 34 states — to reap $6 billion in "fees" as an industry on $40 billions in loans in 2003.

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Just in case anyone thought all this might be "illegal," the government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates state-chartered banks, has approved this wholesale swindle, concluding that "bank partnerships with payday lenders and the exportation of interest rates are not prohibited by federal law."

No matter how much capitalism exploits the working class, it always finds way to top itself. After stealing profits from workers at the point of production, it then robs even the measly wages they receive in their paychecks. Just some more reasons to destroy this murderous system.

Bye, Bye Pension; Hello Profiteers

In preying on desperate people, these payday lenders have come up with a new twist: pension-lenders.

Retired army veteran Kevin Jones was frantically trying to raise money to get his wife out of the Philippines after her home was destroyed in a bombing. He saw an ad by a Florida "financial services" company in The Army Times. Desperate to reunite with his wife and re-settle his in-laws, he signed over his $1,000-a-month military pension to C & A Financial Programs for the next five years, a total of $60,000, in exchange for $19,980 (after fees and insurance) immediate cash. These leeches pay out about $20,000 and make $40,000 profit.

Legal? While it’s supposedly against the law to offer military pension advances, neither the Pentagon nor Congress has prevented the practice. The Pentagon defines it as a "loan based on retired pay as collateral." (N.Y. Times, 12/29/04)

Anti-Communist Liberal Beats Drum for Fascism and Imperialist War

Liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently called Vladimir Putin a "Russified Pinochet or Franco." However, Kristof continued, "a fascist Russia is…much better…than a communist Russia. Communism was a failed economic system, while Franco’s Spain, General Pinochet’s Chile, and the others generated solid economic growth, a middle class and international contacts — ultimately laying the groundwork for democracy." (NYT, 12/15/04)

Firstly, the working class was worse off under fascism in Spain and Chile. Secondly, the "failed communist Russia" built a modern industrial society in 20 years, fought and smashed Hitler’s war machine — history’s most violent up to that time — virtually by itself, all during a period when the entire capitalist world was trying to obliterate the Soviet Union from 1917 on.

Here, in a nutshell, is why we communists must struggle even more sharply against the liberalism of the "blue-state" New York Times than against the "red-state" ideologues of the Bush administration. Kristof is reviving the bourgeois cry of the 1930’s, when liberal apologists for capitalism said, "better Hitler than Stalin."

Kristof conveniently ignores the fact that U.S. imperialism supported Franco, put Pinochet in office, and for over half a century — continuing right up to the present — has backed fascist regimes on every continent except Antarctica. CHALLENGE readers don’t need Kristof to tell us that Russia (and China) are now fascist states — we know that the USA is also racing towards it fast.

Kristof’s double-talk about fascism "laying the groundwork for democracy" is the same twisted logic used to justify the flattening of Falluja, and instituting a police state there, to "prepare for elections." It would justify the USA/PATRIOT Act and other fascist measures the ruling class called for in the Hart-Rudman report as a way to "save American democracy."

Kristof calls communism a "failed economic system" when what failed in Russia and China was not communism, but a socialism that led to state capitalism. For the working class, capitalism, whatever its form, is a monumentally failed system. Citing UNICEF statistics on the misery and death inflicted on children worldwide, CHALLENGE (1/05/05) correctly describes capitalism as "the most horrendous holocaust the world has ever seen."

That same CHALLENGE front-page also explains that "Russian and U.S. imperialism are on a collision course over energy." That means war, sooner or later, and when liberals like Kristof attack Russian fascism, they’re really trying to win U.S. workers to support U.S. fascism in this impending collision.

Some students at my school are very interested in CHALLENGE, because of the information it contains but even more so for its eye-opening communist analysis. Others, however, are reluctant even to look at it. "I don’t want to read that, I support the pro-democracy movement," said one young anti-war activist. "Communism didn’t work," said another. That’s Kristof’s line in action. After some struggle, both of those students have taken and read CHALLENGE. Now it will take a lot more struggle — within the context of our anti-war organizing, and the friendships developing out of it — to win them, and many others like them, to our politics.

That’s important because many students, including these two, say they’d never join the U.S. military, even if drafted. But staying out of the military won’t end imperialist war, just as liberalism can’t stop fascism. As long as ideas like Kristof’s prevail among anti-war youth, they’ll be, at best, ineffective against imperialism, and at worst won to support it in the name of "spreading democracy" or even "fighting fascism." Our job as communists is to combat liberalism, fight anti-communism, and build a worker-soldier-student alliance to turn the bosses’ war into a revolution for communism.

Racist Politicians Use Slave-Era Rules On Prisoners to Hold Power

The New York State electoral system has reverted back to the one embedded in the U.S. Constitution that used slavery to increase the Congressional power of Southern slave-owners — and is just as racist.

The original Constitution counted slaves as 3/5 of a person when apportioning Congressional districts, so the South was granted many more Representatives than warranted by the actual voting population. Of course, slaves had no right to vote, along with no other rights, in the great traditions of U.S. "democracy."

Now along comes the liberal "blue state" of New York to mimic that slave heritage. The 1970s’ Rockefeller drug laws led to mass imprisonment of non-violent, first-time offenders, "many of whom would have received brief sentences, drug treatment or community service under previous laws," (N.Y, Times, 12/26) but now were sentenced to 15 years to life. (All quotes from NYT.)

Nearly all these prisoners — 70% of whom are black or Latino — ended up in upstate New York. Legislators lobbied for new prisons in their sparsely-populated districts. "Nearly 30 percent of the people…counted as moving into upstate New York during the 1990’s were prison inmates."

Interestingly enough, the Census rules count these inmates as "living at their prisons" and therefore "residents" of those upstate counties, even though their actual homes are hundreds of miles away in New York City. Thus, these "prisoners are included in the population counts that become the basis for drawing legislative districts."

A la slavery, these prisoners, as "convicted felons," have no right to vote. But they gave new life to seven upstate New York Senate districts "that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count." Otherwise many of these State Senators would be "merged" out of existence due to shrinking populations. These slave-era rules motivate them to keep filling (and building more) prisons for non-violent offenders, many of whom cannot afford quality counsel and are threatened into plea-bargaining even if they are innocent. The Republican Party relies on its large upstate delegation to maintain its majority and political power, and the Democrats go right along with this racist practice.

As during slavery, once again the racist rulers — who sentence black and Latino youth and others to long prison terms because of alleged possession of a few grams of crack-cocaine — use them as prisoner/"residents" to enhance their rule.

Racism infects every aspect of U.S. capitalist "democracy." It can be destroyed only if the profit system itself is destroyed.

(For a full analysis, see PLP pamphlet, "Prison Labor: Fascism, U.S. Style.")

LETTERS

a name="Student’s GI Letter Spreads School-Wide">">"tudent’s GI Letter Spreads School-Wide

I attend a small high school. Every year there’s a toy and food drive/military package for orphans or homeless people or soldiers. As a frequent CHALLENGE reader I saw an article about the soldiers in the 343rd Q.C. who refused orders in Iraq because they believed it was a suicide mission. I got the idea that since we’re collecting packages for the military, we should write letters to these soldiers who refused their orders.

I suggested it to my English teacher and read the article to her. She thought it was a great idea but said that rather than just a class project, it should be done school-wide. She asked me to read and explain the article to a school assembly. I did, and my teacher made it an extra-credit assignment, and gave us community service hours for doing it.

Everybody in my school sent individual letters to soldiers in the 343rd, along with a small package containing basic items, as a Christmas gift. My letter said, "I thought it was awesome, that thousands of people are reading about soldiers who resisted orders in Iraq. I thought to myself, ‘We never hear about soldiers who resisted, only about how many die each day fighting for ‘freedom’ in Iraq and about their courageousness.’ I also thought that if these soldiers received acknowledgment publicly for dying and trying to save others lives, how come no soldiers are acknowledged for refusing to kill hundreds of more people. Wouldn’t NOT killing someone be considered saving their lives also?

"I truly believe that if more soldiers did this, as a true act of leadership and courageousness, then there wouldn’t be any more soldiers to fight and the weapons could be turned about to the true terrorists, don’t you think? I’ve written you this letter because I truly believe that a soldier to do such a courageous act deserves just as much respect as those who the media publicizes."

A fifteen-year-old comrade

Internationalism Key to Fighting All Nationalism

Recently, a CHALLENGE article entitled "Vote or Die is a Death Threat" condemned the Vote or Die movement led by Sean "P Diddy" Combs and other Hip Hop artists. It also stated that the Pan-African/Black Nationalist movements of the late 1960’s were rooted in the ideology of black superiority.

I agree that nationalism never unites but only divides the working class, and that "Vote or Die" is a death threat misguiding many youth about the cause of society’s social ills. However, I firmly disagree that the so-called Pan-African/Black Nationalist movements of the late 1960’s stemmed from a belief in black superiority over other groups. This distortion hinders our ability to build a base in black communities here and abroad.

The Pan-African movement finds some roots in the Niagara Movement launched in 1906. A young W.E.B. DuBois convened many leading black intellectuals, scholars and activists in Niagara, New York to discuss colonialism and racism — hence the beginning of the modern-day Pan-African movement. Such bold acts as the heroic 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner against plantation owners in Southampton, Virginia, and the publication of David Walker’s revolutionary "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the United States" in 1829 spawned the Black Nationalist Movement in the U.S.. These movements were a direct response to systematic racism and oppression. They weren’t based on a belief in black superiority over whites.

Movements such as Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (NOI) did (and still) argue a supremacy position. These nationalist movements are spiritual/mystic/cultural in character and not expressly political. They’re an ultra right-wing response to racism and oppression, hence the hate they produced. However, cultural nationalism is not political nationalism. There’s a big difference between the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the NOI. The latter argued that whites are the devil incarnate, while the early BPP argued that the state is the root of oppression; many of its chapters and members joined with whites to fight racism. Later, however, the BPP’s nationalism led it to support black capitalism.

Ultimately, nationalism never works for any oppressed group. However, lumping all nationalist groups and their supporters together with no explanation and analysis is a mistake. Yes, nationalism is not a progressive reaction to racism. Political nationalism may initially inspire oppressed people to combat their exploitation. But, with patient struggle, we will win them to understand that anti-racist internationalism based on working-class unity is the correct and effective way to fight racist oppression. PLP’ers can sharpen the class contradictions by fighting racism from this vantage point, both inside and outside nationalist organizations.

Navy Red

a name="Pinochet ‘Trial’ Is Phony Justice"></">Pi"ochet ‘Trial’ Is Phony Justice

For the second time in recent years, we’re being told that General Augusto Pinochet, the bloody dictator who ruled Chile after the 1973 AT&T/Kissinger/CIA-organized fascist coup, will be brought to justice for his crimes. But will he really pay for the murder and torture of thousands or is this just another bosses’ media show?

To believe that Chile’s "democratic" bosses will bring this monster to justice is a deadly mistake. "Socialist" President Lagos represents the third "elected" government since Pinochet surrendered power 15 years ago. But Lagos, like the previous "democratic" leaders, owes a lot to Pinochet’s political base. So he must try to show workers and their allies that his regime is indeed a bit different than Pinochet’s.

These workers have received very little benefit from the economic bonanza these "democratic" regimes say they’ve created. So they must give workers some crumbs. The Pinochet show trial is one such crumb. Actually, Pinochet could have learned much from how Lagos and other "democratic" leaders rule. Their methods of social control are much more effective than Pinochet’s brutality, which was generating increasing social unrest despite the heavy repression. These new rulers — many from the fake left — know well that capitalism is a dictatorship of the bosses against the workers and their allies, so they create a dictatorship with more subtle "democratic" methods than the old fascist General’s iron hand.

These new rulers now talk about capitalism with a "human face," or "economic growth for all." But in essence, the gap between bosses and workers has actually grown under this "bourgeois democracy." The rich are richer and the poor poorer. Patricio Malatrassi, an economist at the Alejandro Lipschutz Institute, notes that 95% of Chile’s business people are very happy with "socialist" Lagos, indicating which side the government is on. He says that in 2004 transportation costs rose 9.5%, basic food needs up 16.8%, telephone charges up 4.8%, and so on, while wages barely rose 0.8%. These are the official figures; the real ones are worse.

Chile might have a greater Gross Domestic Product than other Latin American countries, but most of this wealth goes to a few bosses and the imperialists. The workers get zilch.

While we hope killer Pinochet gets his due before he dies in bed, it won’t really matter much because the conditions he engendered will remain, though with a "democratic face." We shouldn’t expect any real justice until we get organized to fight capitalism and build a worker-led society, communism.

A reader in the Southern Cone

a name="Bosses Hide Behind ‘Labor Reform’ Schemes"></">Bo"ses Hide Behind ‘Labor Reform’ Schemes

National Public Radio broadcast a program on how "pro-labor" sneaker manufacturers in Jakarta, Indonesia pay their union workers a higher wage (proportionate to their economy) than non-union workers in Texas. The spokesman for the Jakarta bosses said notes describing workers’ unions, benefits and working conditions were inserted in every sneaker box so consumers would not feel guilty about helping to exploit fellow workers, a common condition throughout that area.

A woman called in thanking the spokesman for giving workers an opportunity to choose products made in a "fair environment." Another caller cursed the spokesman, calling him an anti-labor liar who was using foreign workers to "steal American jobs." The spokesman replied that Jakarta workers were showing labor solidarity with U.S. workers who opposed exploitation by demonstrating the benefits of unionization.

The bottom line for the bosses in this contradiction is that ALL bosses steal the surplus value workers produce and use it to make war on the international working class by reducing us to poverty, servitude and war. "Labor reform" schemes go back to the early 19th century and attempt to portray the bloody capitalists as benevolent leaders. But these reforms have always failed because capitalism is a predatory system dependent on increasing labor exploitation. Any boss who doesn’t do this is soon ruined and out of business.

The bottom line for workers is ending production for profit by building the PLP to win a communist system that will convert all our production into use value to serve the needs of the international working class.

Radio comrade

Red Eye On The News

Below are excerpts from mainstream newspapers — Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Countless battered in Iraq

An Army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in Vietnam veterans…

Veterans say…extensions of duty in Iraq are emotionally battering, even for the most stoical of warriors….

"People see the figure of 1200 dead…. Much more rarely do they see the number of seriously wounded. And almost never do they hear anything at all about the psychiatric casualties. (NYT 12/16/04)

A Red world could cope

[A]Natural disaster …may doom the community to future disasters, on an even greater scale.

The tendency is to rebuild in the same place (because there isn’t room elsewhere) in the same way (because there isn’t money for better construction).

Some of the world’s largest cities, and hundreds of others, sit on faults and flood plains. Whole regions — the Indonesian archipelago, Central America — are dotted with active volcanoes, their slopes crowded with farms and towns….Threat monitoring and effective warning systems…are expensive, but far less costly than repeated disasters. (NYT 1/2/05)

Religions lie about sex

Not only have abstinence-only programs failed, they’re telling our kids lies.

The Southern Baptist Convention claims that in the 10 years since launching its "True Love Waits" program, over 2.4 million teenagers have taken the virginity pledge. But….88 percent of teenagers who had pledged virginity until marriage ended up having premarital sex and…their rates of STD [sexually transmitted disease] were identical to those of teenagers who had not signed the pledge. Most troubling of all…virginity pledgers were less likely to use condoms, less likely to seek out medical care for an STD and less likely even to know they’d contracted one. They proved more irresponsible than kids who took no pledge at all.

No wonder such programs have failed. They don’t tell teens the truth….One text, for example, teaches that simply touching another person’s genitals "can result in pregnancy." Others assert that sexual activity increases the risk of cervical cancer, that having an abortion means a woman is more prone to commit suicide….

All abstinence-only government grants go to so-called "faith-based" or "church-based" organizations….It’s religion over science, and our kids are suffering. (Tribune Media Svc 12/3/04)

Big Biz likes TV as is

If anything is to blame for what appears on our screens it is the free market….Sex and violence sell well everywhere; high culture does not. So the entertainment titans keep dishing up more of the same….

The bottom line of capitalism is that if somebody will buy it, somebody will make it….

The real engine at work here, for better or worse, is the profit motive….Let’s face it: There’s not much money to be made off children’s piano recitals…or performances by your local orchestra. (Creators Syndicate, 12/1/04)

Legal Aid: anti-red vaccine

The Legal Aid Society….was not set up as an act of altruism — or even an attempt at social or legal fairness.

Instead…legal aid societies were initially designed to co-opt recent immigrants into "buying in" to an American society that provided them with lawyers when they had legal difficulties.

…."By convincing impoverished immigrants, its primary constituency, that justice was within their grasp it would deflect them from anarchy, socialism and Bolshevism and would strengthen their loyalty to American institutions."

How much has reality changed? (NYT, 12/22/04)

Dropout rate nearly half

While officially New York City’s dropout rate is put at about 20 percent, education officials say that 40 to 50 percent of city schoolchildren never earn their regular high school diplomas. (NYT, 12/17/04)

Bush: Armchair Slugger

Mr. Bush…was born into one of the most privileged families in the United States…As Jim Hightower memorably cracked... "He is a man who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." (NYT, 12/20/04)

(This is a three-week issue of CHALLENGE. We wish our readers a 2005 full of struggles against capitalism)

1. FIGHT OVER OIL CONTROL: PUTS U.S. AND RUSSIAN BOSSES ON COLLISION COURSE
2. Ukraine: Oil Routes Pit Russia's Rulers vs. U.S. Pro-Nazi `Democrats'
3. One Child Dies Every 3 Seconds: A Capitalist Holocaust: One Billion Children in Extreme Misery
4. Changes in Bush's Cabinet Reveal Tightening Vise in Ruler's Police State
5. HOSPITAL WORKERS MUST MUTINY AGAINST WAR CONTRACT!
6. GI's Stand Up for Each Other Against Brass
   1. Three Years After Mass Rebellion, Strike Wave Spreads; Red Leadership Needed
7. Fight Over Social Affair Produces Political Payoff
8. NJ Events Show Workers Seeking Alternative to Capitalism
9. Action Protesting Falluja Massacre Spreads Anti-War Organizing
10. It's Not Just Iraq Oil: U.S. Agri-Bosses Get Seed Control
11. CIA-Trained Salvadoran Mercenaries `Graduate' to Iraq
12. Militant Campus Anti-war Action Sparking Growing Struggle
13. LETTERS
    1. Force Needed To Oust Bosses
    2. PLP's Ideas Guiding Airport Struggles
    3. Hunters and Racism
    4. More Than Higher Minimum Wage Needed
    5. Union Silence on War Hurts Workers
    6. APHA'ers Reject Pfizer's Plug
    7. Oppose Racist-Nazi Culture
14. Workers Have No Stake In FMLN Election Race
15. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. US trade makes big hit
    2. Ukraine: new-style US coup
    3. Hush up Iraq prison abuse
    4. Sexism = AIDS for women
    5. Liberty and justice for all
    6. Society Causes Student Suicide
    7. Judge OKs apartheid $$
16. RACISM as `American' as NFL
17. Teaching U.S. Racist History Leads Youths On Road to Rebellion
18. Students Support Soldiers Who Refused Suicidal Order

---

FIGHT OVER OIL CONTROL: PUTS U.S. AND RUSSIAN BOSSES ON COLLISION COURSE

Competition between Russian and U.S. rulers is intensifying in the all-important energy sector. The two sides' meddling in Ukraine's current electoral circus reflects one aspect of a much larger conflict. (See box page 2)

The world's biggest bosses' quest for oil has killed millions of workers. It will continue to do so until the working class, united in a communist party, puts a violent end to the profit system.

The Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom's impending purchase of the Yukos oil company significantly advances Russian president Vladimir Putin's plans to dominate wide swaths of Europe and Asia by wielding the oil and gas weapon. State ownership is crucial. Valery Draganov, a Putin-backer in Russia's parliament said, "There is...agreement in the society about increasing the role of the state in the economy. The state protectionism will increase our effectiveness and competitiveness." (London Financial Times, 11/30/04) Former Soviet-bloc countries like Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary already depend on Russia for every drop of crude they use. Putin is trying to boost Russia's market share in the 15 nations of the "old" European Union, now standing at 15% for oil and 20% for gas.

Putin's energy schemes directly challenge Exxon Mobil and the other U.S. oil giants, who back Bush's genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the Kremlin's seizure of Yukos began last year, when Putin jailed its CEO Mikhail Khordokovsky just as he was about to sell Exxon Mobil a 50% share in his firm. In 2003, Exxon chief Lee Raymond said he considered Russia a safe place to invest. But the Gazprom deal has him singing a different tune: "The latest data may say my judgment was premature." (Bloomberg, 12/8/04)

The price Putin & Co. paid for the Yukos grab contrasts sharply with the cost of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The prize in each case amounts to 1.7 million barrels a day (Iraq's current flow and Yukos's usual production). To secure Iraq's reserves, U.S. rulers had to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and waste the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqis and over 1,200 GI's -- and counting. Yet they still haven't finished the job. Putin only had to send out a handful of cops and stage some phony court proceedings.

While Russia's military currently lags far behind the U.S war machine, the Kremlin's fascistic economic control goes way beyond what U.S. rulers have managed to pull off. Bush's emerging second-term cabinet, however, is set to tighten the screws. (See article, page 2.)

Like all capitalist rivalries, Putin's energy ambitions have a deadly, military side. Russia has been at war for ten years in Chechnya, the site of a major export pipeline. In June 2004, Russia bought the right to station thousands of troops in Tajikistan by investing in energy projects there. After Lukoil began a $1-billion gas project in Uzbekistan in 2004, Moscow began arming and training its army, to Washington's dismay. (Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia's Revival," Brookings Institution, 2004)

Ultimately, Russian and U.S. imperialism are on a collision course over energy. Any capitalist bent on being the world's dominant oil broker must control the unmatched reserves of the Persian Gulf by armed force. "Right now U.S. rulers have the upper hand there, however precariously. But Russia has been active in the region lately, waving both the carrot and the stick. On December 7, Putin met with Iraqi "President" Allawi and agreed to forgive 90% of Iraq's $10.5 billion debt to Russia so that "the Iraqi government will reconsider agreements reached between Russian oil companies and the Hussein government on development of Iraq's vast oil reserves." (Radio Free Europe, 12/10/04) Meanwhile, Russia is furnishing most of the technical support for Iran's fledgling nuclear arms program. An Iran with nukes would open many more battlefronts in an already war-torn Middle East.

Ukraine: Oil Routes Pit Russia's Rulers vs. U.S. Pro-Nazi `Democrats'

Ukraine's election scandal goes deeper than the poisoning and election fraud perpetrated by the pro-Russia camp. U.S. forces stand just as guilty of interference. Billionaire George Soros, the Democratic National Commitee (DNC) and the White House have given over $65 million in aid to the "opposition." This "pro-democracy" movement includes anti-Semitic pro-Nazi forces like the Bandera group. (They fought alongside the Nazis when the latter invaded the Ukraine, but later the Nazis turned against them). For the imperialists, Ukraine is a strategic energy transport corridor at the crossroads of Russia, Europe and the Caspian region. Nearly 90% of Russia's natural gas exports to Europe are routed through Ukraine.

To break Russia's stranglehold, Chevron Texaco and Dick Cheney held talks in late 2003 with Ukraine's president Kuchma and Prime Minister Yanukovich on pumping Chevron's Caspian crude through the Ukraine to Western Europe. When the Ukrainian leaders showed reluctance, U.S. financier George Soros began donating heavily to the opposition Yushchenko party, particularly to its student wing, Pora. Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security consultant to four U.S. presidents) flew to Kiev in May 2004, met with Kuchma, and made speeches about NATO support for an "independent" (read "pro-U.S.") Ukraine. The threat was clear: Play ball with the U.S. on the oil route or you'll get the NATO bombing treatment rained on Serbia 1999-2000, when it tried to counter U.S. pipeline schemes. Brzezinski had written in his 1997 book, "The Grand Chessboard," that the Ukraine was one of five crucial "pivots" in the Eurasian region, control of which he considered critical to control of the world. A pro-western Ukraine could undermine the power of Russia: "Without Ukraine," he wrote, "Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."

But the deadly U.S. war machine is stretched thin, and Russia is feeling its oats. Ukraine's rulers sided squarely with the Russians. "This year, under pressure from Russia, Ukraine has reversed the flow of a new pipeline that was built to carry Caspian oil...up towards Poland. Instead it will now carry Russian exports...to Western Europe." (Economist, 12/11/04)

One Child Dies Every 3 Seconds: A Capitalist Holocaust: One Billion Children in Extreme Misery

Fighting racism, exploitation and imperialist war is fighting for life for billions of workers the world over. That's why Progressive Labor Party is striving to build a new international communist movement, to destroy capitalism which has become the greatest serial killer in world history.

Yes, CHALLENGE has been documenting this repeatedly, but anyone needing further confirmation need only read a UNICEF report released on Dec. 9. It states that among the one billion children suffering extreme deprivation because of poverty, AIDS and wars, one child dies every three seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If a nuclear war killed 100 million people, it would only equal the number of children dying from this extreme deprivation every ten years. This poverty, lack of health care and war-caused death are created by a system whose foundation stone is the drive for maximum profits. Truly, capitalism's attack on the working class, and especially its children, is the most horrendous holocaust the world has ever seen.

The UNICEF statistics are numbing:
* "More than 29,000 children die every day of mostly preventable causes" (NY Times, 12/10/04) -- that's over 10 million per year;
* Nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in wars since 1990 were children;
* Of the world's 2.2 billion children, 640 million live on dirt floors or in extremely overcrowded housing;
* Almost a half million children died of AIDS last year;
* Over two million children are "employed" in the sex "industry";
* "Global military spending was $956 billion, while the cost of effectively combating poverty would be $40 to $70 billion." (NYT)

But $70 billion might only lift the 1.4 billion workers up to what the International Labor Organization (ILO) defines as the "poverty line": $2 a day. Half of the world's 2.8 billion workers now earn below that figure. (550 million earn less than $1 a day!) And, of course, raising them to slightly above $2.00 a day (or $3 or $4) would hardly lift them out of poverty. Eliminating poverty cannot be accomplished under capitalism, a system that thrives on working-class poverty. As the ILO report states, the 186 million who were unemployed in 2003 "represent the tip of the iceberg...since more than seven times that number...are employed but still live in poverty."

UNICEF reports that child poverty is not restricted to "developing" or poor countries. "It has worsened in...Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Italy." And, surprise, surprise, "the United States sill had a child poverty rate substantially higher than any of those European countries -- at 21.9%." (NYT) Parenthetically it says child malnutrition has risen in Iraq, under the banner of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," no doubt.

The goal, is to reduce by half the 550 million workers below the $1-a-day figure by 2015! That's "achievement" under capitalism: "lifting" 275 million workers over the dollar-a-day line in the next 11 years! Meanwhile, according to previous UN reports, 50 million people die every year from preventable causes.

This holocaust is occurring in a world in which the working class is mounting very little fight-back. Because the international communist movement went under, the working class is left with too little leadership to point the way out of this massacre.

Anti-communists have always claimed that revolution causes widespread death. Yet it is capitalism that is murdering tens of millions. It is capitalism,especially U.S. imperialism, that launches war after war, to grab oil, markets and the "right" to exploit workers. It is capitalists who are privatizing even such a basic necessity of life as water.

Death during revolution would be infinitesimal compared to the profit system's wholesale murder. Communist revolution that would destroy capitalism, its bosses and profits and wage-slave system, would SAVE hundreds of millions of lives. That is the only way out of this dark age that the bosses' system has created.

Changes in Bush's Cabinet Reveal Tightening Vise in Ruler's Police State

Although the major liberal bosses would have preferred Kerry in the White House, they have a plan B. They will now concentrate on forcing Bush's second administration to carry out its tactical agenda for oil war and a police state.

The White House cabinet represents a key component of their scheme. The situation remains in flux. Nonetheless, a trend has emerged:

* It's no secret that as Secretary of State, Colin Powell openly pushed the liberal agenda against some of Bush's more narrowly-focused pals among the bosses. But the new nominee for the position, National Security Adviser Condeleeza Rice, is hardly an enemy of the warmakers. A protégé of imperialist guru Brzezinski, Rice sat on the board of Chevron Texaco, which now profits from the Pentagon's slaughters in Iraq and elsewhere. Count on her to push for a dramatic expansion of the infantry -- more boots on the ground -- to secure Persian Gulf oil for Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, et al.

* Bernard Kerik, Bush's original choice for Homeland Security, is out in quick disgrace. First using racism, blaming a nanny for being an undocumented immigrant; then his extramarital affairs with two women, along with his ill-gotten sudden multi-million dollar fortune and his mob connections, hid the real reason for his demise: the need for someone who's more in tune with the liberal agenda for fascism.

At his 2001 swearing-in as New York City police czar under Giuliani, Kerik had explicitly cited his disagreement with the "community policing" strategy of Giuliani's first top cop and now LAPD chief, Bill Bratton. Community policing turns schools, churches and neighborhood organizations into a network of stoolpigeons for the cops and, therefore, for the big bosses. This program represents a cornerstone of the Hart-Rudman plan to mobilize U.S. society for war. The liberals want to build a mass base for fascism by getting the working class to participate actively in its own repression. The openly racist Kerik-Giuliani style of policing assumes the job can be done simply by giving a small minority of uniformed cops a "shoot-to-kill" blank check. The liberals think a more subtle, devious approach is necessary. They understand that Hitler was on to something when he concocted the Judenrat ("Jewish Councils") to get a section of Jewish traitors to help carry out deportations to the concentration camps.

* To get more people to believe the lie that the bosses' government can represent workers' interest, Bush has nominated two Latino candidates to the cabinet: Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General and Gutiérrez for Commerce. As a member of the White House legal staff Gonzáles concocted the now notorious "torture memorandum," which sanctioned the brutal abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay and gave a legal green light to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. As CEO of Kellogg, Gutiérrez closed the Battle Creek Corn Flake factory, laying off 500 workers, and then had the gall to tell workers that making the company "leaner and meaner" was in their interest.

The Bush cabinet is still in flux. However, none of it is good news for the working class. We must guard particularly against hoping that the appointment of liberals will improve the situation either in Iraq or on the home front. Our situation will improve only when we rely on our own class and build our own forces, particularly the PLP.

HOSPITAL WORKERS MUST MUTINY AGAINST WAR CONTRACT!

PHILADELHIA, PA., Dec. 1 -- Union Local 1199C contracts for thousands of hospital workers here expire in July 2005. Patient care continues to suffer as the hospitals cut staff and increase workload. For example, the Intensive Care Nursery at one major hospital no longer has a housekeeper for a full day. The attacks on 1199C members include layoffs, reduced work-hours, benefit cutbacks and the looming bankruptcy of the union Health Benefit Fund. The union's prized Pension Plan has seen cuts and will probably see more.

The U.S. bosses' war budget impels these attacks on the working class. These cuts help pay for the U.S. capitalists' war to control Middle East oil. As the rulers commit more troops and expand the war, there'll be further attacks on workers here. Every union contract becomes a war contract.

The soldiers in the Army's 343rd Quartermaster Company show how to really fight back. One whole platoon of 19 refused to obey orders to deliver contaminated fuel without adequate protective escort. The U.S. bosses fear such actions will grow to challenge the imperialists' reasons for the war. In World War I, communist organizers in Russia were able to transform soldier rebellions into a vital force for communist revolution.

Local 1199C members must mutiny against our war contract. The key demand must be to improve patient care with more full-time jobs. Make the bosses pay. We also must fight for better benefits.

At the November city-wide 1199C delegate meeting, a member cited direct action against the war shown by the 343rd Company. He called on the union to "bring the mutiny home" in our coming contract fight. In the past this delegate's comments usually brought silence from the floor and criticism from the union President. This time, however, the delegate received a good measure of applause.

But mutiny alone is not enough. Even more important is for more hospital workers to become communists and join PLP. Our enemy is not just the local hospital bosses or whoever wins the White House. Our enemy is a capitalist system in a period of war and fascism.

Only communists can analyze the whole world picture. Communists understand that even if we win some reforms, the bosses -- with their state power -- will always find ways to take them away. That's why PLP believes we must turn every struggle into one that advances the fight for communist revolution.

In past contract struggles a few more workers became CHALLENGE readers. Some joined PLP. Party members played important roles in these contract fights and had some success in bringing communist ideas into workers' debates about the contract. But that wasn't enough then and it's not enough now.

CHALLENGE readers in the hospitals must be won to join PLP now! There's no other choice. The union leaders preach negativity, telling us we have no alternative but to accept cutbacks. They keep us tied to capitalism. Communist revolution is the only way to break the cycles of capitalist war and suffering. From Iraq to Philadelphia, the workers' enemy is capitalism. Join PLP to abolish the wage system and live a in communist society, free of bosses and profits, and therefore free of racism, unemployment and war.

GI's Stand Up for Each Other Against Brass

There's nothing like going to sleep and waking up with the same people (still alive). That's how strong relationships are built. Now some of these relationships are turning very political. Everyone's becoming friends, except with the brass. Here in training, everyone's tired of being away from home. The tension is growing.

People are generally angry at how hard we have to work, from 4 AM to 6 PM. We must carry heavy equipment, loading it and unloading it constantly.

The day we arrived at a new training location, we were tired and just wanted to relax before going to bed. But when we moved into our tent, my group was given a small section to set up our cots. We were all mad. We'd been told we'd have MORE room, and here we were with our cots closer together than at our previous base.

One soldier who I identified as a "rebel" from the start (and with whom I'd quickly made friends) placed his cot in the "wrong" spot, but only one row away from where he was supposed to be. Nonetheless, the commander-in-charge moved him without letting him know.

The "rebel" was furious. He exclaimed, "F--k this....I'm sleeping outside!" Picking up his duffle bag and cot, he headed towards the exit. No one thought he was serious since it was drizzling outside, and recent rain showers had left mud everywhere, making living outside ridiculous. Well, there's something about a rebel to admire. When one makes up his or her mind to stand up and oppose the system, he/she will act on it.

This was a perfect opportunity for me to talk to him and show him support, so I followed him. After things calmed down, my relationship with him took a qualitative leap. We discussed the structure of the military, about its purpose: to defend the bosses' profits and how the brass are really out to screw us, endanger us and keep us in line. I told him I admired him for what he'd done. I also remarked that we'd find ourselves in worse situations once we were sent to the Middle East.

Without minimizing his bravery, I told him that acting together as a group can produce even better results, especially when facing more difficult conditions. After talking for about two hours, we made a pact to stand up for each other when things get rough. Later, another soldier told me he respected my stand, and told the "rebel," "never let them break your spirit!"

Another time, after watching the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," we had a good talk about this being a war for oil profits, not for "democracy." Some people got pretty angry about that.

One day I heard three soldiers talking about communism. One had heard some positive but vague things about it from relatives and was explaining this. I joined the conversation, saying I'd heard that too. The others wanted us to define communism, which we did. The soldier who had some knowledge about it thanked me for my help. We agreed to talk more.

These are just a few examples of the opportunities here. I foresee a lot more.

A Red GI

Three Years After Mass Rebellion, Strike Wave Spreads; Red Leadership Needed

BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 15 -- This month marks the third anniversary of the "Argentinazo," the mass rebellion by workers, youth and unemployed that forced President de la Rua to flee in a helicopter from the Casa Rosada (Presidential Palace), ending his government. A series of interim rulers followed until the current President Kichner won a new election. However, a combination of the rebellion lacking a mass revolutionary communist leadership and the Peronista union hacks aiding the bosses enabled the ruling class to ease the economic collapse, cutting wages and making the working class pay even more for the crisis.

But workers, employed and unemployed, continue to fight. "Union conflicts and strikes return with a vengeance" says Clarin (12/5), a leading daily here.

Recent strikes by railroad, telephone, subway and government workers, and teachers have expressed their class's anger. The bosses and their media tried mightily to turn the public against the strikers, but they failed.

Many strikes have overcome the sellouts, exceeding the limits set by these union hacks. Subway workers here struck for the second time this year demanding higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. The House of Delegates who are shop stewards led the strikes and have become the subway workers' real leadership, after many years of organizing, breaking the control of the right-wing union leadership. The subway workers physically blocked the rails to ensure the trains didn't run. Though not winning all their demands, they've learned many new forms of struggle.

The telephone workers seized the main telephone building. The company's armed goons failed to kick them out. The public turned against the bosses so the government was forced to listen to the strikers, intervening without openly siding with the company.

Many workers are young, influenced by the 2001 rebellion. One 20-year-old phone worker told Pagina12 (Dec. 12): "What we did was [to] go back to the old sit-down strike, instead of just a `Sunday' strike...[nothing militant]. This is not new but it's being applied in a different political situation. You can do it if you have enough active workers to support it; otherwise the company can break you..."

For many of these young workers, these strikes are becoming "schools in warfare," as Lenin described them. But much more is needed. Otherwise the bosses -- with the union hacks' help --will eventually take away whatever they gained. They must turn these struggles into "schools for communism." The key missing element is revolutionary communist leadership. These young militants must be won to become fighters for communist revolution.

Fight Over Social Affair Produces Political Payoff

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 13 -- Sometimes an apparently insignificant political conversation and action may seem to amount to nothing, but recently at Medgar Evers College here the work of a comrade paid off in a big way. A dispute over a social event led to some deeper political understanding.

Students pay an activities fee every semester. The Student Government Association (SGA) oversees the spending. For several years the fees have not been spent but the money is never returned to the activities fund. One reason the fees are unspent is because most SGA-planned activities are denied approval or are curtailed, with a litany of excuses -- no space, public safety, etc. Although students pay for activities semester after semester, they have no control over their money.

This term an end-of-semester party was planned. The day before the scheduled party, the Administration cancelled it. Why? "Not enough public safety officers" and the area was "unsafe" when the party was scheduled to end.

This was the last straw. Immediately ten students met and went to one Vice-President's office demanding to be heard. Rejecting his excuse and "compromise" offer, we sprang into action. After having a political discussion, the group decided to print a flyer. Some wanted to indict Public Safety as the guilty party. Others pushed to condemn the entire administration. They won.

Many flyers were posted throughout the school. A petition was circulated. Next a comprehensive leaflet was written denouncing the administration and calling for action from the student body, saying we would not allow cancellation of the party. The next morning students were greeted with flyers calling for a rally. Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 flyers were readied for distribution in the event our demands weren't met.

Later that day some student leaders met with the head of the security and two Vice-Presidents. Besides agreeing to scaling back the party's closing time from 3 AM to 2 AM, we had vowed beforehand: NO COMPROMISE. Every excuse for canceling the party melted away after students threatened to have the party regardless of what the administration said.

Although fighting for a party seems insignificant, the real struggle was over who controls the money from students' fees. Many good discussions arose about the use of the police force, who would be called if we refused to leave and had a party. Even further, we decided that even if we lost, we were determined to make a statement.

Instead of following a liberal line saying that we were right but should use the "proper channels," our most important lesson was that through collective struggle we can win.

Our biggest victory was that some students were drawn closer to the Party. Hopefully a formal study group will begin at the college, and students will fight together against a decrease in the quality of student life. The bosses and their college administrators believe that students, like those at this mostly black college, deserve only a life of war and fascism (90% of all NYS soldiers who have died in Iraq are non-white). As part of the war budget another tuition hike is planned, forcing many Medgar Evers students to drop out.. We can use the confidence gained in the struggle to mount a collective fightback against all these other attacks.

NJ Events Show Workers Seeking Alternative to Capitalism

NEWARK, NJ, Nov. 20 -- About 60 people, including many black and immigrant workers, attended two PLP-sponsored fund-raising dinners in New Jersey during November, following a militant Election Day demonstration at the military recruiting center here (see CHALLENGE, 12/1/04).

Three dozen friends attended the three events. Despite some of them being upset over the re-election of Bush, there's a small but growing thirst amongst our friends for a real alternative to capitalism. The pre-election debate amongst them was sharpened. CHALLENGE helped clarify various questions with these workers. All this expanded opportunities to raise communist ideas among people with whom we have long-term friendships.

For example, at one dinner, one speaker outlined the material basis for the post-election dismay felt by many honest people, including the low level of class struggle. Another speaker discussed how decisions would be made under communism. These two, and one other presentation, sparked a flurry of questions from workers, ranging from how we deal with the lack of a current model for a fully communist society, to how to deal with religion and "multi-ethnicity" after a communist revolution. Party members posed answers to all these questions. After dinner, discussions continued for another two hours in three smaller groups. Almost every PLP member brought at least one non-Party person to the event.

Several long-time friends said they were impressed with the high political level of this "standing-room only" event. Now we must make a concerted effort to win many of these workers to join PLP -- which we did not do at the event itself -- while trying to answer their questions in more detail. We must also sharpen the class struggle within the mass organizations in which we're active to help do this. We're planning social events and a PLP forum on a communist view of terrorism, and of the "war on terrorism."

Action Protesting Falluja Massacre Spreads Anti-War Organizing

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA -- Half a dozen students and several friends, angered by the U.S. assault on Falluja, gathered at a busy intersection near their college on Veteran's Day, waving signs reading, "Support the Troops -- Bring Them Home"; "No More Blood for Oil Profits"; and "Stop U.S. War Crimes." Lots of motorists honked horns in support. "We really made a difference today," said one student organizer. This action and subsequent events exposed the difference between "free speech" liberals and anti-fascist activists in fighting fascism.

Four police cars soon arrived, blocking an entire lane of traffic. The cops tried to intimidate the protestors, asking them to move. The students stood their ground, so a cop said, "We can't make you move, but we can ticket the people who are honking." They then issued $100 citations to four cars (mostly black or Latin drivers). Instead of scaring people, it made them angry. Two ticketed drivers left their car and joined the rally.

A community activist called the town council's liberal member, who came immediately and stayed until the rally ended. They complained to the next town council meeting about the police, and got the issue placed on the agenda of the following meeting. Word spread quickly, as local liberal activists organized to defend "free speech."

Considering the fascist assault on Falluja that sparked the rally, this "free speech" campaign was at best naive and at worst a diversion. As one student said later, "They're turning Falluja into a police state, and that's exactly what they'll do here, too." We'd better not repeat the mistake of pre-fascist Germany when communists and other workers relied on elections and "constitutional rights" instead of organizing to destroy fascism at its capitalist roots.

At the town council meeting over 100 people filled the chamber, and for over an hour speaker after speaker (aged 8 to 80) supported the anti-war rally, criticized the cops and demanded the council apologize to the ticketed drivers and get the citations dropped.

A rally participant compared Falluja to Guernica (destroyed by the fascists in Spain in 1936), saying it showed how far U.S. rulers will go for maintain oil profits and global empire. She said the Veterans' Day protest honored U.S. soldiers -- like those of the 343rd QC -- who think for themselves rather than blindly follow orders. A student said it was important to oppose U.S. war crimes. Two ticketed drivers spoke and supported these points.

But most of the speakers -- including the councilman who'd been at the rally -- stuck pretty much to "free speech" and the obvious lies in the police report. The other four council members seized on this, saying they, too, were for "free speech" but the tickets "had nothing to do with the war." They said they "couldn't believe" that their cops could possibly have done anything wrong -- they wouldn't "tie the hands of the police." This in a town where the police have been notoriously racist!

"I was shocked," said one student. "This is a liberal town, voting 80% against George Bush. They're Democrats." Another person responded, "That tells you something about the Democrats! Just because someone voted against Bush doesn't mean they share our views or values. Kerry wasn't against the war, either."

Underlining this point, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) just returned from a junket to Iraq saying: "Bush should tell the American people the truth, that U.S. troops will have to stay in Iraq for three, four or even five more years."

The students plan to hold a monthly rally at the same location, and are enlisting more classmates to help. They'll continue to show videos, host speakers and conduct other educational activities on campus. Conversations have become deeper. Some youth have begun reading CHALLENGE. "I never paid much attention to politics before because it was too depressing," said a mother of two, "but I have my kids to think about so I guess I have to pay attention."

It's Not Just Iraq Oil: U.S. Agri-Bosses Get Seed Control

U.S. bosses are not only after control of Iraq's vast oil wealth (second largest after Saudi Arabia), they also want control over its agriculture, to making Iraq a captive customer for U.S. agribusiness as well as for genetically-altered food.

Before Paul Bremer, former U.S. Proconsul in occupied Iraq, left his post last June, he signed some 100 orders that effectively operate almost as laws. Order 81 forbids Iraqi farmers to keep the seeds from a previous harvest, meaning they can't use the same seeds twice. Each year they must buy new seeds. The world's seed business is dominated by five companies: Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical.

International organizations like GRAIN and Focus on the Global South denounced Order 81, saying Iraq is part of multi-national agribusiness's drive to impose a monopoly over seeds, thereby controlling agriculture and the world food supply.

For millenniums, farmers have kept, reused and freely shared their seeds. But the world's imperialists are using the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to privatize what Mother Nature produces -- seeds, plants, proteins, genes and even human cells.

Imperialist agribusiness wants to use IPR to force anyone planting anything to pay royalties to the corporate "owner" of the seeds. "Guilty" farmers can be prosecuted the same way Microsoft and music giants go after those who copy "pirated" versions of their software, music, etc.

So Iraq, the cradle of world's agriculture -- the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom -- will now become a test for agri-bosses' profiteering. And Order 81, arbitrarily invoked by Bremer without consulting even the Iraqi farmers, is the tool to do that.

Iraq also has become a testing ground for genetically-altered food, rejected by the European Union (EU) and even by Africa's poorest countries. El Grupo de Reflexión Rural (GRR, an Argentinian farmers' defense group) says the struggle between the EU and the U.S. over transgenic foods is part of the world's fight over access to markets, linked to the invasion of Iraq. "Biotechnology is very important to the interests of the empire, and the industrial genetic multinationals help the war effort, playing their part in the world's food market," declared the GRR (Feb. 2003). "After the war, and taking advantage of population starvation, they will surely send aid in the form of transgenic food, not only to subsidize U.S. farmers but also to `prove' that genetic engineering is the solution to world's hunger."

U.S. food expert Peter Rosset says: "With the Iraq war and with new military bases in the countries of the Southern parts of the world, the U.S. is seeking advantage over its competitors in the new war to colonize the Third World."

So the war in Iraq is another battleground in the imperialists' fight to control the world's resources and so-called free trade. Don't expect France, Germany, China or Russia to support the U.S. war efforts in Iraq. And expect many more "trouble" spots worldwide (Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, etc.) as the world's imperialists gear up for endless wars and eventually World War III.

(Information from La Jornada, Mexico, 12/5 and from http://www.bioseguridad.tk/)

CIA-Trained Salvadoran Mercenaries `Graduate' to Iraq

EL SALVADOR - Recently, thirty-three men and six women went to Iraq last month to work as mercenaries for private security agencies like Triple Canopy. Their contract for at least six months involves guarding oil pipelines, diplomatic missions and businessmen.

During the civil war here, the CIA trained these men and women to kill in cold blood under any circumstance. They graduated with "honors" in torture, disappearances and assassinating workers. It's easy to imagine what they will do against Iraqi civilians.

These mercenaries - including retired captains and lieutenants as well as members of the Special Forces - will be paid $1,200 to $2,200 a month. In El Salvador the minimum wage is $144 a month. "If they're dying of hunger at home, at least if they die in Iraq, they'll leave life insurance for their families," a worker commented ironically.

Enemies worldwide are threatening the global hegemony of U.S. imperialism. Capitalism's internal weaknesses are emerging more rapidly. Rank-and-file U.S. soldiers' morale is low. Many are now seeing this is a war to benefit the Haliburtons and Big Oil. The GI's goal is to come out of this war alive. This won't help U.S. imperialism against a politically committed opponent despite having a reactionary leadership. That's why the U.S. needs to contract mercenaries from poorer countries.

In contrast, the Soviet Red Army's discipline in World War 2 grew from the commitment to maintain a society that benefits the working class.

A recent poll revealed that more than 80% of Salvadorans oppose sending soldiers from here and didn't believe this oil war is for liberation of the Iraqi people. On the contrary, they thought it could lead to Salvadorans being targeted by terrorist groups. There are currently 360 Salvadoran soldiers in Iraq making up the 3rd Cuscatlan Batallion.

Only the bosses and their government benefit from this war, while demonstrating their loyalty to U.S. rulers. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran military continues oppressing those who oppose their capitalist system.

The working class here and abroad must keep fighting this oppressive capitalist system. PLP is the only weapon workers can actually use to take on the imperialists. CHALLENGE is our most effective tool in confronting our class enemy. We aim to spread distribution networks for the paper, as well as build study groups in factories, universities and in the bosses' army based on these communist ideas in CHALLENGE.

Militant Campus Anti-war Action Sparking Growing Struggle

CALIFORNIA, Nov. 22 - Chants of "Black, brown, Asian, white! Workers, students, soldiers, unite!"; "Attacks on Falluja mean...Fight back! Imperialism means.... Fight back!" loudly bounced off the walls of our campus buildings. As one group of students listened and headed for class, another group soon took their place. The empty, silent campus quadrangle was quickly transformed by a few determined working-class students into a vibrant anti-war demonstration. Amid growing attacks on workers in Iraq and the U.S., there's an untapped revolutionary potential.

This event was born out of one student in a campus organization raising the importance of backing the soldiers of the 343rd QC who refused orders in Iraq, and later distributing a petition to rally support (which sparked more general political issues). The discussion lasted two weeks and generated formation of a commission to take action. A good third of this organization, rather than depressed by Bush's re-election, was thirsting for political action and responded to this idea. They decided to organize a demonstration against imperialist war and its racist consequences.

Lots of dedicated collective work over long nights among this small group did whatever needed to be done. Some promised to deliver short speeches. They came through, detailing the effect of racist budget cuts on working-class students. One speaker critiqued the anti-Bush movement, exposing capitalism as the source of workers' problems, while calling for support for the 343rd. He encouraged everyone to get involved. Another student advocated communist revolution to end imperialist wars and racist terror.

Over 270 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed and many comrades had exciting conversations with students about communism. One student organizer said a better connection between the budget cuts and the war could have been made, but overall most felt the demonstration was an overwhelming success.

A professor invigorated by the event said it was about time that somebody did something on our campus. The anti-war movement had been dead since early last year. Our rally affected the entire campus. Students from a speech class told a speaker they learned a lot. Some teachers stepped forward to defend the students. Others debated the merits of the rally. Such actions are vitally necessary in the long-term fight to free the world of exploitation, capitalist oppression and racist, imperialist war.

Now an anti-war coalition has been formed. A group of students continues to plan for the upcoming term. These humble beginnings can bear great results, helpful in combating depression and cynicism in the fight to build PLP.

LETTERS

Force Needed To Oust Bosses

One late October night I joined PLP members as they drove into San Francisco to support the locked-out hotel workers. We drew a warm reception from the protesters at the Westin St. Francis. One worker told me, "We're really glad when you guys come. Some people on the night picket lines aren't vocal enough." The PLP members, however, did not share this trait.

As we marched on the picket lines, we witnessed various anti-worker individuals. Scabs leaving work mocked the protesters with, "I've got money, bitches, I got money!" and other profanities, their soulless taunts belying the nature of their selfish materialism.

Hotel patrons also insulted the locked-out workers. Several had the guiltlessness to stand outside the hotel, wine-glasses in hand, with disapproving sneers plastered on their faces. They muttered among themselves and gave us disgusted glares, wondering when the protesters would just leave.

These instances highlighted the economic disparity between the wealthy patrons and the working class. Is it right to belittle workers fighting for their livelihood? Is it conscionable to scorn the poor who are striving against an economic machine that controls them? The rich did not care because their financial security was not at stake. Their concerns were entirely self-centered.

As we left that night, I realized that the San Francisco hotel lock-out was but one instance of exploitation in a world filled with injustice for the poor. Owners would never voluntarily concede power. They would have to be forced.

West Coast friend

PLP's Ideas Guiding Airport Struggles

CHALLENGE is becoming a familiar sight at the airport where I work. Communist ideas don't fall from the sky; only through political struggle waged by communists can the workers learn about the PLP's ideas. There's been some very lively, serious struggle about why the Party does political work at the airport; the real nature of the bosses' sham U.S. elections; and the deadly imperialist Iraq war.

This was reflected in the workers' rejection of the anti-communist smear tactics a union misleader launched against the union shop steward, a PLP member. When communist and non-communist workers develop personal ties based on mutual respect and friendship, it's very difficult for the bosses to break them.

We're engaged in a fight to get full-time hours for part-time workers. Part-timers outnumber full-timers 2 to 1. They're from Ethiopia, Somalia and Laos, and are victims of racist super-exploitation. The racist bosses drive their wages down, threatening the full-timers' wages as well. Many immigrant and non-immigrant workers have united around a petition demanding full-time hours for part-time workers. Obviously, the bosses may reject this since it would cut into their profits. During this struggle many part-timers have become CHALLENGE readers.

Only through a communist revolution can the international working class gain a better life in a society without racist bosses to oppress workers. Once millions of workers worldwide fight for this goal, the bosses are finished. Like Mao Zedong said, "Dare to struggle! Dare to win!"

Airport Red

Hunters and Racism

Many workers in St. Paul, Minnesota, were shocked to learn about the violent confrontation involving Laotian Hmong worker Chai Vang and six white Wisconsin hunters he allegedly shot in a dispute over a hunting spot. While there may be different versions of the story, one thing is for certain: racism played a big part in the confrontation. Vang claims the six hunters surrounded him, threatened him and called him racist names to get him to vacate his spot on private land, and actually fired first as he was leaving.

It's ironic that Vang and many others in the Hmong community have been victimized by racism, since their immigration to the U.S. was a reward for the Hmongs providing fascist death squads for U.S. imperialism during the Vietnam War. Also, some of the Wisconsin hunters were Vietnam vets and were indoctrinated with the bosses' anti-Asian racism that they retain today. This tragedy proves that racism and capitalism are a deadly combination for workers.

The ruling class is the only one who benefits from racism because it reaps billions in super-profits from all workers. The only solution is a communist revolution led by PLP, where workers build an international, integrated communist society.

A St. Paul Reader

More Than Higher Minimum Wage Needed

On Jan. 1, New York State's minimum wage will rise to $6 an hour, and by 2007 to $7.15. For full-time workers, working 52 weeks a year without layoff, it will mean an annual salary increase from $10,700 to $14,900. Slightly more than one million workers will benefit.

It took six years of lots of work by hundreds of volunteers, knocking on 100,000 doors and making thousands of phone calls, holding demonstrations, etc. to achieve this.

"This was a victory for us, the working people," a happy and proud Leonor Torres told NY Daily News columnist Albor Ruiz (12/9). Ms. Torres is a garment worker who hails from Cuenca, Ecuador, and has been a New Yorker since 1982. For three years, she has put much of her time and energy into making the wage hike a reality. "I'm happy thinking about how many families will benefit from this," said the short, personable 48-year-old grandmother. "And I'm proud to have been part of this tremendous effort."

"This is really a historic event," said Alex Navarro, communications director for the Working Families Party. This party was a major force behind the campaign for a higher minimum wage. The WFP is supported by unions like UNITE.

It's obvious that when workers are motivated like Ms. Torres, they can move mountains. But the struggle for a higher minimum wage should be seen from another angle. The WFP has become the third largest political force in New York, after the Republicans and Democrats. But it's mainly an electoral party, and is subservient to the Democrats, like many of the unions behind it. Electoral politics aren't enough.

I'm glad the minimum wage is increasing but prices are rising at an even faster pace; $7 an hour won't make ends meet in NY, and that's in 2007. Workers need at least $15 an hour. But even that won't free us from being wage slaves and subject to the mass racist unemployment constantly operating under capitalism.

The working class needs the energy of workers like Ms. Torres, but the opportunist, pro-capitalist leaders of the WFP and UNITE are just misusing her to maintain illusions in capitalism as "working for the little people."

We need to win the honest workers in groups like WFP to understand that any wage under capitalism is wage slavery. We need to fight for the abolition of wage slavery, for communism!

A Manhattan Comrade

Union Silence on War Hurts Workers

Faced with threats of massive layoffs, fare hikes, token booth closings and service cuts by New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), the Transport Workers Union (TWU) held a membership meeting at Javits Center on December 4 to prepare for the 2005 contract negotiations. The leadership stressed the need to win allies among the riding public who would also be hurt by the MTA cuts. However, the rank and file had already exposed this as hypocrisy because of the union's failure to call a single demonstration to unite with the public and show the MTA we mean business. The workers presented a motion to strike if there were any layoffs. Then the leadership said public demonstrations and threats to strike didn't mean much if we can't guarantee worker support. They got that right. Under TWU's "leadership," a militant fight-back has been non-existent.

There was no mention at the meeting or in the latest issue of the TWU "Express" about how the Iraq war was hurting the lives of NYC transit workers and riders who have been overwhelmingly opposed to the war.

When I got the mike during the discussion period, I said the MTA's poverty cries and cutbacks because of the Iraq war were no different from the deficit complaints former TWU leader Mike Quill faced from Transit Authority (now MTA) bondholders and President Johnson's wage freeze to finance the Vietnam War.

Quill told the bondholders they would freeze in hell before he let transit workers be dragged into poverty.

I maintained that elections never won us the right to organize unions, to smash segregation which forced civil rights laws or to stop the Vietnam War. I concluded that it was the fighting spirit of transit workers who took part in all those struggles, along with millions of other workers, that kept us from being reduced to poverty, de facto slavery and war.

There were some cheers and handshakes and a worker who used to be active with PLP told me he missed getting all the real news in CHALLENGE. I gave him our paper and we discussed how the "leadership" talked about needing allies while spending our union dues on politicians who support the anti-strike Taylor Law and Iraq war. As we parted he said he'd subscribe to CHALLENGE. I recalled somebody saying, "What you do counts."

Retired Transit Worker

APHA'ers Reject Pfizer's Plug

When I attended the November convention of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Washington, D.C., I noticed a leadership trend to the right. An obvious sign was a bag given out to members to hold the many papers distributed by the APHA. The bag was paid for by Pfizer, the giant pharmaceutical company, and displayed its logo. Pfizer makes medications like Viagra, Lipitor and Celebrex.

Last year many members turned the bag inside out in protest, so as not to show the logo. Pfizer must have noticed this because this year it distributed a bag that could not be turned inside out. Although there was no organized protest, many members were unhappy and said so.

A friend of mine and I plan to organize a protest next year, which hopefully will provide an opportunity to increase the sale of CHALLENGE.

Red Pharmacist

Oppose Racist-Nazi Culture

On November 6, a committee against racism at my church demonstrated against the Lyric Opera, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary featuring German composer Richard Wagner's anti-Jewish work "Das Rheingold" (Gold of the Rhine River), the first and most racist in Wagner's Ring Cycle series. Wagner was a major developer of modern racism and the grandfather of National Socialism (Nazism). Hitler claimed one couldn't understand National Socialism unless you understood Wagner. We asked the Lyric to inform its patrons about Wagner's racism but they refused.

Our integrated group leafleted, chanted and picketed the box office, wearing yellow stars of David in memory of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), November 9, 1938, when Nazis smashed the windows of Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes, and beat and killed many.

Our 150 leaflets were gone in 30 minutes. Many people listened. Some said Wagner's art made his anti-Jewish racism irrelevant. One guy said he agreed with Wagner's racist ideas. One of our picketers had lost family in the Holocaust. A Latin telephone worker denounced the Lyric for pushing Nazi art and SBC Communications for being a sponsor and giving away free tickets while planning thousands of layoffs.

A black college professor said Wagner not only hated Jews, but all other "inferior races," stating that racism is used to inflict terror on millions of people, from the Holocaust to Iraq.

"Das Rheingold" is a racist allegory about Jews (the Nibelungen) corrupting the German ruling class (Wotan and the other gods) through their control over money (the Rhine gold). And to ensure his audience would get the racist message, Wagner wrote pamphlets and articles outlining his anti-Semitic ideology.

Mrs. A. Watson Armour, of the Armour meat company, is a major financial supporter of Wagner's operas. The Armour Company incited a race riot in Chicago in 1919 to break a meatpackers' strike.

Wagner's music inspired the SS (Hitler's elite killers) in the concentration camps and was also featured at the premiere of the pro-KKK film "Birth Of A Nation" of racist director D. W. Griffith. His music was used when Vietnamese were being slaughtered in the movie, "Apocalypse Now."

The next day, 15 church members showed solidarity with our action and remembered Kristallnacht by wearing the yellow stars after church service. One day, Wagner's true nature will be fully revealed and his operas will never be played again. Communist revolution will outlaw racist "art," and true working-class culture will throw racism into the trash can of history.

Chicago comrade

Workers Have No Stake In FMLN Election Race

SAN SALVADOR -- "And you, who are you going to vote for?" asked Juan, a co-worker at the factory. "The question isn't who you're voting for, but why are you voting at all?" answered Maria. These kinds of conversations were common among workers during the elections for the leadership of the FMLN.

Medardo Gonzáles, alias "Comandante Milton Méndez," an ex-guerrilla commander of the FPL ("Popular Forces of Liberation," (one of five groups that formed the FMLN during the Salvadorian Civil War), and Oscar Ortiz, also an ex-FPL commander, were contending for the FMLN's top post last month. Both were very clear. "You can't think about governing the country without first negotiating with big capital," said Ortiz. Gonzáles, representing the FMLN's more "radical" wing, agreed, saying: "If we did it before in order to sign the peace accords, why can't we do it now?"

"Comandante Milton" received political help during the election from Shafik Handal, ex-Secretary General of the defunct Salvadorian "Communist" Party and current FMLN president. He also got help from some European Union imperialists. On the other side, Ortiz received financial help from U.S. imperialists, using it to commandeer a big hotel in the center of a rich neighborhood, where he wined and dined quite a few journalists.

While "Comandante Milton" won the election, the result would have been no different for workers had Ortiz won. Both candidates' ambitions were to take power and fill their pockets at the expense of the working class. Both represent the interests of the most bloody and genocidal capitalists in history.

According to the electoral census, the FMLN has approximately 90,720 members. Of these, only 51.6% went to the polls. The fact that more than 43,000 members didn't vote indicates that neither candidate represents the interests of the working class.

History shows us that the FMLN's top leaders have always been allied with the capitalists. The Salvadorian Civil War, which caused so much death and suffering for the working class, was a fight between one section of the ruling class allied with the Russian and European bosses and another section allied with U.S. bosses. This fight continues, temporarily transferred to the electoral process. The FMLN leadership used workers' aspirations -- their desire to break away from the U.S. imperialists -- only to sacrifice them to the Russian-European imperialists. Eventually this fight will lead to World War III.

But the workers have another alternative. We can and should fight for true Communism, not the fake variety that imperialism's faithful servants have tried to pass off as real. Organizing PLP clubs and expanding CHALLENGE readership will make it possible for us to break free of the chains that the servants of this capitalist system have wrapped around us.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

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

US trade makes big hit

[John] Perkins has just written a book, Confessions of an Economic Hit-man....

When a leader of a country refuses to cooperate with economic hit men like Perkins, the jackals from the CIA are called in.

Perkins said that both Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Boldos of Ecuador -- both men he worked with -- refused to play the game with the U.S. and both were cut down by the CIA -- Torrijos when his airplane blew up, and Roldos when his helicopter exploded, within three months of each other in 1981.

If the CIA jackals don't do the job, then the U.S. Marines are sent in. (Russell Mokhiber, (11/19) http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com

Ukraine: new-style US coup

The crowds in the street include a large contingent from western Ukraine....

Their traditions are not always pleasant. Some protesters have been chanting nationalistic and secessionist songs from the anti-semitic years of the second world war.

Nor are we watching a struggle between freedom and authoritarianism as is romantically alleged. Viktor Yushchenko... and some of his backers are also linked to the brutal industrial clans who manipulated Ukraine's post-Soviet privatization....

In Ukraine Yushchenko got the western nod, and floods of money poured in to groups which support him....

Intervening in foreign elections, under the guise of an impartial interest in helping civil society, has become the run-up to the postmodern coup d'etat....Instruments of democracy are used selectively to topple unpopular dictators, once a successor candidate or regime has been groomed....

Ukraine has been turned into a geostrategic matter not by Moscow but by the US. (GW, 12/9)

Profit system from hunger

Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on Earth has quintupled since 1950. The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops. (GW, 12/9)

Hush up Iraq prison abuse

Two Defense Department intelligence officials reported observing brutal treatment of Iraqi insurgents captured in Baghdad last June, several weeks after disclosures of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison created a worldwide uproar....

They were threatened and told to keep quiet by other military interrogators.

One...had witnessed an interrogator... "punch a prisoner in the face to the point the individual needed medical attention."....When the D.I.A. official took photos of that detainee, the pictures were confiscated....

Two D.I.A. officials...had been instructed "not to leave the compound without specific permission even to get a haircut," threatened, and told their e-mail messages were being screened. (NYT, 12/8)

Sexism = AIDS for women

The AIDS pandemic rampaging around the globe will not be stopped without radical social change to improve the lot of women and girls, who now appear likely to die in greater numbers than men, United Nations agencies said last week.

Infections among women are soaring....In many countries women's subordinate status and lack of education and economic power have made it impossible for them to negotiate sex with men or to ask for the use of condoms. (GW, 12/9)

Liberty and justice for all

Many companies have started suing their own retired employees in order to cut their pension benefits....

Here's the part I love: the companies' legal argument is that the "lifetime" coverage specified in the contracts does not mean the lifetime of the workers, but the "lifetime" of the labor contract. Cute, eh? (Liberal Opinion Week quoting, Molly Ivins)

Society Causes Student Suicide

You write of depressed and suicidal college students as if their problems were purely psychological....

What if students develop psychological problems because, in our society, jobs are scarce, personal relationships are frequently tenuous, and the future is often frightening?

...Some students do need psychiatric help. But university administrators, as well as journalists, would be well advised to ask whether student depression is a symptom of much larger problems. ( Letter to NYT, 12/8)

Judge OKs apartheid $$

A federal judge in New York dismissed a human rights suit yesterday against 35 major corporations that did business in South Africa under apartheid...

"This court must be extremely cautious in permitting suits here based upon a corporation's doing business in countries with less than stellar human rights records," Judge Sprizzo wrote, warning that such suits could have "significant, if not disastrous, effects on international commerce." (NYT)

RACISM as `American' as NFL

The Terrell Owens/"Desperate Housewives" promo on Monday Night Football illustrates how deeply embedded is racism and, in particular, the racist fear of black men. Modern capitalism was forged in the hell of slavery, and the myths and fears used to justify it have been internalized and passed down for 400 years.

The anger at the commercial has little to do with a woman dropping her towel, except for the fact that it occurred in front of a black man. The National Football League (NFL), and commentators who were "shocked" at the image of the black athlete and the naked white woman, ignored the fact that the NFL has been using sex to sell football for decades.

Once television provided football with the opportunity to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, sex -- already marginally present in the form of young women in scanty outfits -- was given more prominence to induce people to watch. The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders set the mold of the modern cheerleader, with busty costumes and hot pants. Today virtually every team has its own version.

The NFL gets its millions from TV because stations can charge advertisers enormous sums. Commercials during the Super Bowl cost several million dollars per minute. Sex is integral to the commercials. From the fantasy of sleeping with blond twins while watching football and drinking beer, to overcoming impotency with the latest drug, the League has been profiting from sex. Starting in college, the NFL's "minor league," sex is a standard part of the recruiting process, as young athletes are feted with girls, booze and drugs on "recruitment weekends."

For the NFL, or anyone else, to pretend football and sex haven't been in bed for years, and to cry "foul" over this particular commercial as being "too sexual" is sheer hypocrisy. It exposes the role of "race" and racism in the reaction to the image.

Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy might have had a point when he said the promo perpetuated stereotypes of black athletes as caring more about sex than their team, but he ignored the huge racist reaction to the image of the black man with a white woman. The complaints over the ad weren't generated by a concern over Terrell Owens' dignity. It was about a deep fear of black men, a central myth of U.S. capitalism, pushed as both a justification for slavery and an excuse to viciously attack any sign of black rebellion. It's been used to maintain all sorts of racism, from paying black workers lower wages, to the cutting of welfare, and more.

One of Hollywood's earliest movies, "The Birth of a Nation," was a racist fantasy dedicated to burning the image of the "dangerous black man" into the nation's psyche. It featured the KKK "rescuing white women" from "rampaging black men" freed from slavery. President Woodrow Wilson championed the film, telling all Americans to go see it. And it had an effect.

The Scottsboro Boys who were jailed for many years, falsely accused of raping a white woman, and Emmit Till, a 14-year-old boy beaten to death for whistling at a white woman, are just two of countless brutal attacks against black men justified by this racist myth.

More recently we have witnessed the beating of Rodney King, and the cops' murder of Amadou Diallo, as well as the imprisonment of a million black men.

In the essay "The Road Not Taken," Lerone Bennett, Jr. describes how racism and slavery was forced on the early settlers by the rulers of the colonies to divide and control black and white indentured servants, expressly to make money:

"How was all this done?.... By the creation of a total system of domination, a system that penetrated every corner of colonial life and made use of every colonial institution. Nothing was left to chance. The assemblies, the courts, the churches, and the press were thrown into the breach. A massive propaganda campaign confused and demoralized the public, and private vigilante groups supplemented the official campaign of hate and terror.

....It was all done deliberately....to mold the minds of whites, to teach them the new ideas, and to let them know who was to be loved and who was to be despised."

Bennett shows how laws were the heart of a massive campaign aimed not just at blacks, but also very much at disciplining whites.

Except for white slave-holders raping black women, laws were enacted to prevent intermingling of blacks and whites. And there was always a lot of resistance. White women were "whipped, banished, and enslaved to keep them from marrying black men." "The severed heads of black and white rebels were impaled on poles along the road as a warning....Some rebels were branded, others castrated. This exemplary cruelty, which was carried out as a deliberate process of mass education, was an inherent part of the new system."

Whether we're conscious of it or not, the images and ideas whipped into these early settlers, black and white, and reinforced by hundreds of years of laws and mass culture, still haunt us today.

Teaching U.S. Racist History Leads Youths On Road to Rebellion

To paraphrase the Russian revolutionary Lenin, "There can be no thought of revolution without winning large sections of the bosses' armed force to revolution."

I teach U.S. history to black and Latino working-class high school students. In this period of wars and economic crisis, it's good to expose and confront the military recruiters and their lies. But no matter how many recruiters we kick off our campuses, the ruling class will still send young workers to fight their wars. Many of my students will be in the military. Some will choose it more or less consciously; more of them will be forced by an economic draft to make that choice after a year or two of dead-end jobs or trying simultaneously to support themselves and go to college part-time. A draft would force more of them into the military. But even without a draft, a substantial number of my students have joined and will continue to join.

What's a communist teacher's response to that reality? What should these young people do in the military? How can we prepare them for this experience and the choices they will face?

I try to help them take a critical view of what they will be taught in the military. I start the semester asking them why they think the only thing our state standards for U.S. History includes about Native Americans is the Navajo Code Talkers. We discuss how history indoctrinates them into fighting for "their country." I ask them to think about other reasons to study history; what they expect from their history class. In this initial discussion, students express many ideas, including patriotism and rejection of U.S. patriotism in favor of nationalism.

Then I ask them to look at the photograph of U.S. soldiers surrounding a mass grave of Native Americans massacred at Wounded Knee and imagine they're one of the soldiers. They must write a letter home from a young soldier to his cousin explaining what's happened and how he feels about it. As students read their letters aloud in small groups, they see some soldiers are won to a racist view of the "enemy," while others realize they've committed an atrocity. I ask students what they might have done if they had opposed the massacre.

This early in the semester, not too many students are thinking about organizing mass action, but the seeds are planted. When we discuss the massacre at Jolo in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, students begin to understand imperialism. In reviewing how soldiers joined with the workers to make the Russian Revolution, they can see the historic role soldiers have played in revolutions.

We discuss strikes, class consciousness and organized struggle. When we study the Vietnam War, we see a wide range of soldiers' responses, from the My Lai Massacre to fragging their officers.

Every student in one of our classes is to some degree under our leadership. It's good if they enter the military and organize under that leadership. We can prepare them to see through the racist and patriotic crap they'll be fed, that the real enemy is the bosses and the brass, the capitalist system, and not other working people. They can learn that soldiers have always had options: to fight for the bosses or to fight for the working class. We can have the confidence that they're not merely victims of the recruiters -- they have the potential to be a force to change the world.

Of course, this is just the beginning. We must develop close ties with these youth and continue to struggle with those who enter the military. This is an indispensable part of our strategy, now and in the future.

Students Support Soldiers Who Refused Suicidal Order

Over 50 students, staff and faculty demonstrated against the military recruitment center near our campus recently. The protest supported the U.S. soldiers of the 343rd Quartermaster Company who refused to carry out their mission; condemned the imperialist war machine that's killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 1,270 U.S. soldiers; and opposed military recruiters on our campus.

Previous campus meetings produced political discussion championing the idea of "U.S. troops out of Iraq" while opposing the recruiters. The latter implement capitalism's mission: an economic draft of low-income youth to fight wars for oil companies' profits. Recruiters fill their quotas by lying to working-class youth about college tuition, bonuses and other "benefits," following their bosses' in the White House who lie about the whole imperialist invasion.

At the protest, an Iraqi war veteran condemned the murderous war and massive civilian casualties, like the recent slaughter in Fallujah. Others emphasized that U.S. workers and soldiers have more in common with Iraqi workers than with the recruiters and their military superiors and corporate sponsors.

While we struggle against the most blatant symbol of militarism and war on our campus -- the recruiters -- we must expose the recruiters as tools of imperialism, the inevitable product of capitalism in crisis. If we do kick the recruiters off our campus, as good as that might be, it only means they'd continue recruiting elsewhere.

While intensifying our outraged opposition, on campus and in the streets, neither student and civilian demonstrations alone, nor pacifist politics, can end imperialist war. The CHALLENGE article (12/15/04), "Armed Forces Mutinies During the Vietnam Era," reveals that soldiers and sailors who mutinied against their brass and rebelled outright against the imperialist mission were important in helping oust U.S. bosses from Vietnam.

Many students and workers on campus have friends and family in the military. We'll continue to urge them to share their concerns and outrage over an increasingly horrendous occupation that devastates the Iraqi people and puts U.S. youth at ever-increasing risk. To end imperialism, we must build unity between students, workers and soldiers to fight for revolution and workers' rule.

 

a href="#Genocide in Fallujah Follows Hitler’s Footsteps:">"enocide in Fallujah Follows Hitler’s Footsteps:

Write To Soldiers Who Resisted

All the Mirages that are Fit to Print

a href="#Warm Welcome for China’s Bo$$e$; Chile Reception for Bush">"arm Welcome for China’s Bo$$e$; Chile Reception for Bush

a href="#Mexico’s Bosses Side with Bush">"exico’s Bosses Side with Bush

a href="#Workers’ Contract Demand: No Cuts Due to Iraq Oil War">"orkers’ Contract Demand: No Cuts Due to Iraq Oil War

Debate on How to Fight Fascism

a href="#Navy’s Rules Help Bosses Rule">"avy’s Rules Help Bosses Rule

a href="#PL’ers Fight Giving Amnesty to U.S. Imperialism">"L’ers Fight Giving Amnesty to U.S. Imperialism

Link War to Union-Busting, Budget Cuts at Mass. Colleges

a href="#Garment Workers Get to the Source of Bosses’ Profits">"arment Workers Get to the Source of Bosses’ Profits

a href="#El Salvador: Communist Politics, Best Tool For Teachers’ Struggle">"l Salvador: Communist Politics, Best Tool For Teachers’ Struggle

a href="#Indonesia: ‘Lesser Evils’ Murder Millions">In"onesia:‘Lesser Evils’ Murder Millions

History Lessons Teach Students How to Fight War

Basketball Brawl Blocks Real Class Struggle

History of Military Rebellions, Part II: Armed Forces’ Mutinies during the Vietnam Era

Students Know a Racist System When They See One

LETTERS

Military Moms Oppose War

Colombia; China: Rampaging Capitalism

a href="#‘No Fascist Death Squad Left Behind’">‘N" Fascist Death Squad Left Behind’

Fascism: by Choice or Contradiction?

PLP Sparks Campus Action vs. Iraq War

Communist Recalls Mussolini Execution

a href="#WW2 GI’s Rejected Bosses’ Orders to Fight Soviets">WW" GI’s Rejected Bosses’ Orders to Fight Soviets

Red Eye On The News

• Iraqis see oil as US motive
• 10 more years in Iraq?
• US incinerates Iraqis
• Hammer & sickle for Bush
• Red Cross: US tortures
• Coke grabs people’s water

• ---

a name="Genocide in Fallujah Follows Hitler’s Footsteps:">">"enocide in Fallujah Follows Hitler’s Footsteps:

Massacre For Oil Profits

Class-consciousness has temporarily sunk so low that the U.S. military’s continuing atrocities are not provoking the mass outrage they deserve. The media’s sanitized coverage of the war zones explains a minor aspect of this passivity. With pro-war reporters embedded with the troops and pictures of carnage banned, many people don’t comprehend the sheer terror of the U.S.’s genocidal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions aren’t demonstrating against U.S. rulers’ war crimes mainly because there’s no mass working-class movement attacking capitalism as the root of imperialist war.

The Progressive Labor Party has this class-based outlook. We led hundreds in demonstrations and forums protesting the Abu Ghraib torture. We can and must lead many times more. The U.S. war machine provides endless opportunities to expose the essential deadliness of the profit system and to organize where we work, live and go to school.

Last month, a U.S. Marine executed a wounded, unarmed prisoner at a mosque in Fallujah. The British newspaper, the Independent 11/24), confirmed that such wanton murder, ordered by the brass and fueled by racism, is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops in Iraq. It’s worth citing at length:

"Allegations of widespread abuse by U.S. forces in Fallujah, including the killing of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in an attack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city. They said that as well as deaths from bombs and artillery shells, a large number of people including children were killed by American snipers. U.S. forces refused repeated calls for medical aid for injured civilians, they said....

"The refugees from Fallujah describe a situation of extreme violence…. Men of military age were particularly vulnerable. But there are accounts of children as young as four, and women and old men being killed....The claims of abuse and killings, from different sources, appear, however, to follow a consistent pattern.

"Dr. Ali Abbas, who arrived in Baghdad from Fallujah four days ago, worked at a clinic in the city which was bombed by the Americans....Dr. Abbas, 28, said: ‘We had five people under treatment and they were killed....We contacted the doctors at the Fallujah hospital and said how bad the situation was. We wanted them to evacuate the more badly injured and send drugs and more doctors. They tried to do that, but they said the Americans stopped them. One of things we noticed the most were the numbers of people killed by American snipers. They were not just men but women and some children as well. The youngest one I saw was a four-year-old boy. Almost all these people had been shot in the head, chest or neck.’

"The family of Aziz Radhi Tellaib were killed before the battle for Fallujah began. He had been driving them to Ramadi to visit relations when the car was hit by fire from an American Humvee....Mr. Tellaib freed himself but could not save the rest of the family. Those who died included Mr. Tellaib’s wife Ahlam, 26; his sons Omar, seven, and Barat, three, and his daughter Zainab. Also killed were his niece Rokyab, 26, her three-year-old son Fadhi, and three-month-old daughter Farah.

"Mr. Tellaib, 33, a merchant, said: ‘We were stopped, in a line of cars, by some Humvees which had overtaken us. One soldier waved us forward, but as I drove up there was firing from another Humvee. I was shot in the side of the head, and my wife and elder son were shot in the chest. I think they must have died then....’

"Rahim Abdullah, 46, a teacher, said that anyone in the street was regarded by the Americans as the enemy. ‘I was trying to get to my uncle’s house, waving a piece of white cloth as we had been advised when they started shooting at me. I saw two men being shot. They were just ordinary people. The only way to stay alive was to stay inside and hope your house did not get hit by a shell.’"

Lancet, the British medical journal, estimated that U.S. forces had killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians before the current massacre in Fallujah. One eyewitness said that U.S. troops typically retaliated for car-bombings by torching civilian homes. And even the ultra-imperialist New York Times reports (11/27) that "400,000 Iraqi children are badly malnourished, and suffering in some cases from irreversible physical and mental stunting."

Organizing against these crimes opens the way for Party-building. We can kick out military recruiters who seek to transform young workers into cold-blooded murderers of their class brothers and sisters. We can expose phony union hacks, who join with bosses in backing U.S. imperialism. We can support striking workers fighting pay cuts that fund the rulers’ war effort. We can attack politicians who shift funds from social services into war, even as they demand more cops and prisons.

We must understand, however, that nothing short of a revolution of millions of workers united in a communist Party — the PLP — will bring the war criminals to justice. We may still be far from that goal, with a long, hard road ahead. But our Party can and will grow until our class achieves it.

Write To Soldiers Who Resisted

For those readers who would like to write to the solders of the 343rd Quartermaster Company who refused orders to deliver contaminated fuel on what they described as a "suicide mission," the following are the names of some and the address to which letters should be sent (no later than the end of January).

Spc. Amber McClenny; Spc. Major Coates; Sgt. Larry O. McCook; Spc. Scott Shealy; Spc. Adam Gordon; Sgt. Justin Rogers; Sgt. Peter Sullivan; Spc. Desmond Jones; Sgt. Michael Butler.

343rd QM

Tallil AB

APO AE 09331

All the Mirages that are Fit to Print

N.Y. Times’ columnist David Brooks wrote (11/26) how "prosperity is booming all over the world." Sure, if he’s talking about Bill Gates, Carlos Slim (Mexican telecommunication boss), Halliburton, Exxon, Toyota or the rising Chinese bourgeoisie. For the rest of the world, misery is booming.(Brooks should look out his window from his posh office onto Times Square and see the homeless.)

Shortly after Brooks’ column, the same paper reported that the AIDS epidemic has driven life expectancy in Africa back to the level of the 1800’s. At the same time, French professor Pierre Crawn of the International Organization of Chemical Scientists teaching in Luanda, reporting on the impact of malnutrition in Asia, Africa and Latin America, said that 14 million children die each year in the poor countries because of preventable diseases, hunger and wars. (Granma, Havana, 12/1)

What’s behind this mass murder of children? Capitalism and imperialism. The world’s imperialists and their local boss-servants in the poorest countries are the only ones enjoying the "prosperity" of well-paid misinformer David Brooks.

a name="Warm Welcome for China’s Bo$$e$; Chile Reception for Bush">">"arm Welcome for China’s Bo$$e$; Chile Reception for Bush

Bush was "welcomed" to Santiago, Chile, by thousands protesting his criminal war in Iraq. "Socialist" President Lagos’ cops responded in fascist Pinochet style, brutally attacking the demonstrators, using live bullets. Many were injured and arrested.

Bush came to APEC (Asian-Pacific Economic Forum) with his unchangeable and failed agenda of unilateral imperialism. As we reported previously, the former chief of the Southern U.S. Military Command had warned Bush and Congress of the danger of "radical populism" in Latin America. But Bush’s only alternative is including Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba in his "axis of evil," while Chile and Mexico are in his "axis of good." But now it appears Bush may have to include most of Latin America in his "axis of evil."

Bush’s visit was overshadowed by China’s growth in U.S. imperialism’s domain. Guy De Jonquist wrote in the London Financial Times (11/19) about the "inexorable economic ascendancy of China." replacing U.S. leadership in APEC. A front-page New York Times (11/20) article reported that "while the U.S. may still regard the region as its backyard, its dominance is no longer unquestioned. Suddenly, the presence of China can be felt everywhere, from the backwaters of the Amazon to mining camps in the Andes."

China has used its growing wealth (based on the super-exploitation of Chinese workers) to buy everything from Chile’s copper (replacing the U.S. as number-one buyer), to Bolivia’s tin, Venezuela’s oil, Brazil’s iron ore and other natural resources, to níckel from Cuba. When the small Caribbean island of Dominica broke with Taiwán, China responded with $116 million in aid. China’s bosses use only 6% of their US$500 billion in reserve to pay for its investments. It might increase this practice, fearing to compensate for the rapid fall of the dollar.

China’s bosses understand the world situation very well. They know they must prepare for an inevitable war against the U.S. and/or other imperialists. Meanwhile, more Latin American bosses, though as anti-working class as the imperialists, are rushing to break from the U.S.’s unilateral squeeze. However, workers must be very careful. Some fake leftists and others are trying to win workers to side with other imperialists and local bosses against U.S. imperialism. Workers can only expect more exploitation and misery from any side in this capitalist dogfight. Our only side is with the international working class, which must fight for a society without any bosses — communism.

a name="Mexico’s Bosses Side with Bush">">"exico’s Bosses Side with Bush

Before the APEC summit, Mexico’s Secretary of Energy, Fernando Elizondo (linked to the Monterrey capitalist group), had given the U.S. Northen Command the right to exploit "Project Mexico’s" oil fields. But most Latin American rulers don’t want to follow President Fox’s pro-U.S. line (similar to previous Mexican Presidents Zedillo and Salinas). There are also powerful sections of Mexico’s bosses who want a bigger share of PEMEX, the world’s seventh largest oil company.

In the energy field, China — Brazil’s second largest trading partner after the European Union — is investing heavily in Latin America. Argentina and China have signed a $20 billion deal to develop oil and gas fields and to build railroads. But these deals won’t make much difference for workers in Argentina, who, like those in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, have seen their wages and standard of living drop in recent years. We’ve already seen many strikes in Brazil for higher wages and against cutbacks. But Lula, the former autoworkers’ union leader elected as President "of the workers," has proven himself to be the "President" of the Sao Paulo bourgeoise, Latin-America’s most powerful capitalist group.

Again, workers have no "friends in high places" in the capitalist world. But we need more than mass militant strikes; we need to turn those struggles into schools for communism and fight to smash all the bosses. That’s PLP’s goal.

a name="Workers’ Contract Demand: No Cuts Due to Iraq Oil War">">"orkers’ Contract Demand: No Cuts Due to Iraq Oil War

I’ve been organizing for PLP on my present job for almost 25 years, and a union delegate for 20 years. Capitalism’s attacks on workers get worse and worse. The decades of Party work have created a momentum and dynamic that continues to provide growing opportunities. Some examples:

I have a new young black co-worker, a nursing student at the school where my wife and I met over 20 years ago. It so happens the Party led a major campaign against the racist, anti-working class restrictions at that school. He’s also a vet who was stationed in Kuwait. His brother (who I know) is in Iraq now. I just got him his first CHALLENGE.

Then there’s the African worker who asked me who I was voting for. "I don’t vote," I told him. "I’m a revolutionary. I like the ideas of communism." His eyes widened and I expected a negative response. But instead he told me excitedly, "I also like the ideas of communism! I wanted to get books on communism, but I didn’t have the time!" He also just got his first CHALLENGE.

Finally, and most strikingly, at a recent union meeting the union leaders and the union delegates were reviewing demands submitted by the membership for our contract negotiations this summer. The delegates were divided by job title into small groups. We were to assemble a unified contract-demand list from the individual sheets turned in by the workers of each job title.

Each group had a secretary who read the demands aloud to the group. At one point our group’s secretary suddenly smiled and looked at me. "No cuts due to the Iraq oil war," she read. "I wonder who this is from?" Everyone laughed and looked at me.

In a friendly way I argued why it was important to include such a political demand. I expected some negative feedback. I’ve known some of these folks for years and most aren’t shy about telling me to stick my head up my ass. My particular group included an ex-Marine Corps Sergeant and a Vietnam War vet.

To my surprise, everyone looked thoughtfully at each other and said, "O.K." This wasn’t an "O.K." just to appease me, but rather more of an expression of actual agreement. "Hmmm," I thought, "Something different’s going on here."

Then it came time for our group’s Secretary to read our demands aloud to the entire meeting. She went through the list then abruptly stopped and shyly looked at me. I knew she was a little afraid to read the demand about the Iraq war. The union leader chairing the meeting can be very intimidating and had already given some of the other delegates a hard time.

"Don’t worry," I said to the secretary, "I’ll read it." Then came a deep voice, "No, I’ll read it!" It was the Vietnam Vet. This black brother took the paper and read the anti-Iraq war cuts demand. He finished by declaring, "I hate this war!"

The room was silent. The union leader stared at me, poker-faced. I spoke briefly, repeating the same argument I had made to our smaller group. Again the union leader stared at me. I waited for the usual brush-off or attack.

"So how would we phrase this?" the union leader asked. "’No cuts due to the Iraq War’?" Some of the union delegates and I quickly figured out the wording and the union leader jotted it down on the official demands list. "Hmmm," I thought, "Something’s different here."

The union leaders have not changed. They’re still loyal to capitalism and their mission is to keep the working class chained to the system. What’s changed are the workers and the Party’s relationships with them. Our next step is to organize the workers into a real campaign against our war contract.

Debate on How to Fight Fascism

NEW YORK CITY — A Veterans Day forum on the Patriot Act and Homeland Security, held in a church here, dealt with the issue of whether or not we are living in an era of developing fascism. A debate exposed the difference between those fighting to destroy the capitalist system — as the root cause of all the racist attacks on the working class — and building a worker-run society free of profits, and the liberals who often call themselves radicals but are really only advocating reforms of a system that can’t be reformed. By not identifying capitalism as the source of the Patriot Act police state and of oil-driven imperialist war, many of these liberal reformers deliver us into the arms of the fascists.

The three panelists, all women, included Lynne Stewart, a civil rights lawyer currently on trial accused of "aiding terrorism"; an anti-racist, anti-fascist community organizer and a lawyer from the New York Civil Liberties Union. The community organizer exposed the current fascist nature of capitalism. Ms. Stewart told the audience to "resist, resist, resist, resist." Only the liberal NYCLU lawyer presented no alternative program to fight the attacks of the ruling class — just trust the system, a nationalist belief in "your country" and "your constitution."

Ms. Stewart outlined her case, how prosecutors are now going after lawyers to stop them from vigorously defending their clients, setting the stage to deny any rights to anyone opposed to the government’s fascist policies. She exposed a double standard, how Martha Stewart’s publicity agent and lawyer were allowed to transmit messages for her, but how her client — accused of terrorism — was barred from having a press release sent to Reuters. She’s threatened with 40 years in prison.

The community organizer detailed the intensifying fascist repression under U.S. imperialism and its increasing racist nature, tracing the cause to capitalist competition over oil. She said we must fight back by spreading ideas within all organizations in the community. She confided later that she feared there might be a strong reaction to her use of the terms "fascism," "capitalism" and "imperialism," but said that where action is necessary we must be prepared to stand up to disagreement to help people understand what’s really happening.

After two speakers from the floor exposed the current growth of fascism, the NYCLU lawyer objected to the classification, saying it was not so, and that to identify it as fascism would alienate many.

The audience listened with an open and eager ear. They were looking for answers, despite fear of terrorist attack and of the homeland security police. PLP’s ideas to put workers in power are the only alternative to the hopelessness and powerlessness generated by the bosses and their media. A real struggle of ideas emerged, between acceptance of the more repressive conditions versus struggling against them. The audience raised questions about the Hart-Rudman bill, how the Patriot Act could get passed so quickly for so large a document, about the GI’s who are refusing to fight, about military recruiters in the schools, and about future expectations.

The liberals’ answer — to fight against abuses to the Constitution and Bill of "Rights," one struggle after another — does virtually nothing to stop the rise of fascist repression, declining living standards, mass racist unemployment and oil wars. The ruling class always suspends constitutional "rights" when threatened, even in so-called "liberal" times. Liberal reforms are then whittled away — welfare, social security, the social safety net — amid the rulers’ drive for maximum profits.

A week later the Church organized a demonstration against the war and the Patriot Act in front of Brooklyn’s State Supreme Court building. Despite the rain, 40 people turned out to protest, carrying banners and signs demanding an end to the war, better housing, more jobs, attacking fascist repression and labeling capitalism as the problem. We must help people understand that the longer we remain inactive, the more repression the ruling class will get away with.

a name="Navy’s Rules Help Bosses Rule">">"avy’s Rules Help Bosses Rule

Recently, the Equal Opportunity (EO) Officer addressed all the new sailors aboard our ship. I was skeptical, but thought I’d give him a chance to present his overview. The Officer is a 21-year Navy veteran and is currently a Chief (Chief/E7 is the rank most enlisted members achieve over their entire military careers).

A native of South Georgia, he experienced racism first hand in boot camp when he entered the military. He related an incident where a white recruit, bunked on the top rack, refused to sleep at night because he believed this black recruit and his comrades would cut his throat. The EO officer used this to stress how the media and society perpetuate stereotypes. As a young sailor, he also encountered racism in Spain. I thought he made some decent points.

Later he talked about "race" and ethnicity. He asked us, "What is "race"?" I said "race" was constructed by the U.S. ruling class to divide and control white and black workers. It turns out this was not the correct answer for the U.S. Navy!

According to the Navy, a person can belong to whatever "race" they want. He said Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and George Bush can all belong to the same "race." The better point is that Bush, bin Laden and Hussein all belong to the same class (the bosses) and are all enemies of the working class.

The EO officer also briefed us on how to file discrimination and sexual harassment complaints. The final word on one’s complaint is the Commanding Officer (the ship’s Captain). What if the Captain ruled a discrimination or sexual harassment complaint was invalid? He said the sailor could file a grievance to a higher level, but stressed that the appeal would more than likely be overruled. An honest man! Truly no hope.

He later asked the sailors what happened to the Indians once they encountered the pilgrims. I am sure the EO officer was not expecting all the sailors to respond that they were KILLED! He "corrected" us, saying they were "moved" to reservations, ignoring the genocidal character of this act. I found the class’s response encouraging — a sign of our potential to expose ruling-class ideology even in the Navy.

Ultimately, the EO officer reinforced the idea that the ruling class has taken the best from the Civil Rights, Feminists and even LGBT movements (the Navy has a policy toward treatment of gays and lesbians), in order to strengthen their drive towards being the number one imperialist.

This presentation showed the danger of reform — the ruling class using honest reform advocacy for its own goals. Only when we build a working-class-movement that smashes the construct of "race" and identity and the bosses’ state will the world’s workers be truly be empowered. All Power to the Workers!

Navy Red

a name="PL’ers Fight Giving Amnesty to U.S. Imperialism">">"L’ers Fight Giving Amnesty to U.S. Imperialism

COLLEGE PARK, MD, Nov. 13 — PLP members and friends lost a resolution demanding immediate removal of U.S. troops from Iraq but won the struggle to expose liberal reformers to dozens of students who listened intently to our communist alternative at the Mid-Atlantic region of Amnesty International (AI). The meeting here at the University of Maryland campus discussed human rights issues and the future of this movement. PLP members at two universities have worked in AI to win human rights activists to a revolutionary communist outlook, generating a small base of students and activists within the organization.

This group attended several workshops — on women’s rights, environmental issues, racial profiling, the death penalty, and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Information gained there laid the basis for sharper discussions.

At day’s end, a resolutions session allowed members to vote and recommend policy to the organization at large. PLP influenced introduction of an emergency resolution calling for immediate removal of U.S troops from Iraq due to the inability of the U.S. to stop committing human rights violations. The flattening of Fallujah, inducing thousands of civilian deaths, was compared to the destruction of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, by Nazi Luftwaffe pilots flying for dictator Franco.The Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, chronicled this attack in his historic painting, Guernica (photo left).

We knew this resolution would lead to a big fight. As a matter of policy, AI doesn’t oppose war, nor does it take sides in armed conflict. It advocates only that parties "respect" human rights during wars — an untenable and hypocritical position in an age of imperialist aggression. Moreover, AI is very sensitive to its "donor base" of major foundations and rich liberals. So both liberals and conservatives attacked the resolution.

Conservatives attacked it for being too radical. One AI high school student from Fairfax County (the nation’s richest county) — in a remarkable piece of doublethink — said AI should work with the Bush Administration as the only feasible way to reduce human rights violations! Liberals attacked the resolution, saying it wouldn’t work and would thus damage AI’s credibility, reducing donor contributions. They said the masses lack the power to compel the U.S to withdraw; therefore, we should focus only on individual violations.

However, our base was bold in its fight. Six students spoke vigorously for the resolution. One from Howard University (who previously felt the U.S. should stay in Iraq to "clean up the mess" it had made) clearly saw through the hypocrisy of the liberals and conservatives, saying that staying in Iraq was like telling a woman whose husband had beaten her within an inch of her life to "stick with her man" and maybe he’d change. A Penn State student declared that the entire world sees the U.S. with blood dripping from its hands, that failing to support the resolution would lead the world to think that AI also had blood on its hands — and that they would be right!

We lost the vote (25-44) but won the struggle by exposing to our base the limits of liberal reform, as well as the only real alternative to liberal/conservative reform — communism and the PLP. Immediately afterwards, we had a sit-down meeting with seventeen friends and supporters, distributing CHALLENGE and depicting the communist world we hope to build.

Feedback and questions continued for forty-five minutes. People were pumped and ready to learn and act. The discussion carried over to a late-night dinner. Building this base and struggling led to this modest growth of our revolutionary movement, even as AI’s reputation as a "bold" human rights organization was diminished forever in the minds of dozens of students.

Link War to Union-Busting, Budget Cuts at Mass. Colleges

BELMONT, MA, Nov. 6 — "Romney Says Cut back, We Say Fight Back!" chanted 40 community college faculty and students, as they marched through the quiet streets of this wealthy Belmont neighborhood, boldly taking our message to the Governor’s house. Our union chapter at Roxbury Community College enabled faculty and students to express their anger at this fascist’s union-busting, budget-cutting tactics. It pushed the MCCC (Massachusetts Community College Council) to rely on the members and respond more militantly to anti-union attacks.

Progressive Labor Party helped create a rank-and-file spirit for this militant action and fostered student participation, which generated sparks of life and enthusiasm. In addition, PLP linked the budget cuts to the war in Iraq, attempting to deepen political consciousness.

With Governor Romney at the helm, the State’s ruling class aims to transform public higher education into institutions in better sync with imperialism’s needs. By streamlining courses and programs (while cutting full-time faculty), they hope to produce better-trained workers for Massachusetts industry as cheaply and quickly as possible. Above all, they need the military to have an open door for recruiting.

The main obstacles to this agenda are firstly the faculty/staff unions, which intend to protect our interests, even though it’s within the limit of narrow trade unionism. Secondly are the many faculty, staff and even some administrators who are committed to giving students a real education, not just job training. This stark contradiction between what the ruling class wants and what faculty holds dear has led Romney to try to bust our unions.

The immediate spark for the march was Romney’s veto of a bill that would fund the raises of thousands of higher ed employees. Simultaneously, he raised the salaries of the State’s 3,000 managers by up to 7.5%. Romney strategy is to make our unions seem impotent and unable to deliver even what the contract has negotiated. If he succeeds, he’s one step closer to destroying the unions altogether.

In addition, he’s hell bent on "solving" the state budget crisis on the backs of workers and students, funneling more of the public budget into corporate pockets. Public higher education here has been cut 26% since 2001. This has increased fees 50%, forcing many students out of school completely. Last year, the State spent more on prisons than on higher education, reflecting growing fascism.

For several decades, the MCCC’s collaborationist strategy has fostered the illusion that the college administrations and the Democratic Party can be our "friends" if we play politics skillfully. This has obliterated class-consciousness and weakened the unions. Winning the professors and their allies to march and picket against one of their class enemies has started the ball rolling towards the kind of militancy needed to defend ourselves.

This action laid the basis for developing closer ties with the faculty and students, as the struggle continues.

a name="Garment Workers Get to the Source of Bosses’ Profits">">"arment Workers Get to the Source of Bosses’ Profits

LOS ANGELES — "If we need four tomatoes, that’s how many we’ll produce. That’s what Tom thinks," a worker concluded as I walked into the lunchroom.

I quickly got involved in the ongoing discussion, one I think resulted from a PLP leaflet distributed a few days before. The leaflet exposed how the bosses steal the surplus value we produce, explaining that the pants we produce have both use value and exchange value. The exchange value creates the profits for the bosses but leaves millions worldwide without enough clothes. Use value, on the other hand, represents workers’ needs. The leaflet concluded that our goal is a communist society where only use value exists — production to meet the needs of the international working class, not the imperialist capitalist bosses.

On the back of the leaflet were photographs of the pants we made in the factory and their prices in the stores. When the workers saw how much profit the bosses make off the pants, it caused a big commotion.

"Yes," I answered, "it’s about a different system in which everyone will be able to meet their needs. We all wouldn’t get exactly the same because we all don’t have the same exact needs. For example, maybe five tortillas satisfies Juan’s hunger; maybe Jose needs 10; but Jesus needs only one. Each would get different amounts but all three would satisfy their hunger, would have their needs met. That’s what communism will mean."

Another worker explained, "Let’s say we produced only tortillas. Then our factory would have tortillas for everyone."

"That’s right," I said. "But under this capitalist system the rich keep most of the value we produce. We receive only the bare essentials needed to survive. It’s absurd."

"Well," interjected another worker, "we must remember that we haven’t studied. Those who have studied need to earn more."

"Not true," I declared. "In human terms, that’s absurd. A rich person needs the same as a poor person in order to live. Both the intellectual and the worker need a home in which to live. We must understand who’s more important for society."

"Yes," said another worker. "If this were a tortilla factory, we’d be making tortillas from the corn produced by the farm workers. But the lawyers, for example, what do they produce?"

"Yes, we’re the most indispensable because we produce everything of value. We don’t need the bosses. They’re parasites who don’t work and who live by sucking our sweat and blood. We don’t need production for profit, only for use value to meet the needs of the international working class. Intellectuals don’t deserve more than us. There would be no special privileges for anybody. We would all contribute according to our commitment and receive based on our need."

"This sounds good. We should support Tom because we’re all workers," concluded a quality control worker who always participates in our discussions.

The day the leaflet was distributed, one woman worker — citing the huge profits the bosses make on the pants — said, "This makes me so mad. I have to be so humble just to ask for a penny increase in the piece rate for an operation. Next time I won’t be humble!"

Referring to the Party leaflet, another worker said, "I’m saving this to use when we need to fight against piece-rate cuts." Many workers carefully folded the leaflet and put it in their pockets to keep.

a name="El Salvador: Communist Politics, Best Tool For Teachers’ Struggle">">"l Salvador: Communist Politics, Best Tool For Teachers’ Struggle

In a few weeks, the National Convention of the Teachers’ Union ("ANDES June 21") will meet to elect a new Executive Committee (EC). The 2003 convention was attended by only 600 of the 14,000 members. "It does me no good to participate," said one teacher, "because they won’t make any real changes in favor of teachers."

Members view Arnoldo Vaquerano — who’s been running the union for two years — as just an opportunist who will remain in power even if a new EC is chosen. There are 18,000 unemployed teachers in El Salvador, meaning 630,000 children are denied these teachers’ services. Contrary to hacks like Vaquerano and the system he serves. PLP teachers are bringing communist politics to the teachers, uniting with their students and parents to fight both for a decent education and against the rotten conditions which impoverish and alienate our students.

Rather than hire the unemployed, the rulers take advantage of teachers’ low wages by forcing them to work a second shift for one-third the salary. We must launch a militant fight for higher salaries and jobs for unemployed teachers, while showing how education under communism will serve the entire working class, not just a few bosses’ needs for cheap, semi-skilled labor.

Historically the teachers union has played an important role in national politics. Unfortunately, it’s always been used to support leaders and organizations which, at best, want to reform the unreformable — capitalism — and, even worse, fight openly to keep the working class under the yoke of the bosses’ system.

Organizations from countries like Norway and Brazil and those in the European Union give money to "ANDES June 21." This promotes their influence in fighting for control over what has been the backyard of U.S. imperialism. It also helps guarantee a corrupt and pro-capitalist union leadership, blinding teachers to communist ideas. Vaquerano uses teachers’ dues and invitations from these bosses to take trips — with his wife — to Europe and throughout the Americas.

In the recent presidential election, the union leaders backed Handal (former head of the defunct phony leftist "Communist" Party and now head of the FMLN), symbolizing the alliance between the leadership of the FMLN and the union. If Handal had won the election, Vaquerano would have become Minister of Education. Handal represented the wing of the FMLN and of the Salvadoran capitalists that want to diversify their options, seeking closer ties with the European imperialists. Also, they want to win us to the illusion that elections can solve our problems.

In this upcoming convention, PLP teachers plan to make communist ideas a mass issue, showing that purely trade union politics, by their very nature, can never destroy the capitalist system. The building of a mass PLP and the widespread distribution of DESAFIO is the best education teachers can receive.

a name="Indonesia: ‘Lesser Evils’ Murder Millions"></">In"onesia: ‘Lesser Evils’ Murder Millions

In this country’s first direct presidential election, Susilo Bamabang Yodhoyono (SBY), defeated his old boss, the incumbent Megawati Soekarnoputri. SBY, a retired army general and former Minister for Security and Political Affairs, has been accused of war crimes against the people of East Timor. His election is being hailed as a "success for democracy" in the world’s fourth most populous country, with the largest Muslim population. SBY is promising local bosses and imperialist investors he’ll open up Indonesia even more as a source of cheap labor with nearly 40 million unemployed. He plans to "get tough" on domestic terrorism and political corruption to provide a more stable situation in which to exploit this cheap labor. As one of the world’s most culturally diverse countries, with a history of racist violence, Indonesia will be an easy target for bosses seeking to play one group against another to depress wages.

Indonesia has a history of ruthless dictatorships following its independence from the Dutch and Japanese imperialists after World War II. In 1955 the government held the first and only general election. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had a huge base and led most unions and other mass organizations. They held the government’s #2 post under President Sukarno, who was backed by the fascist military.

On Sept. 30, 1965, General Suharto, commander of the Army Strategic Reserves Command, used the killing of seven high-ranking army officers (linking it to the PKI) as an excuse to launch the largest anti-communist massacre in history. They slaughtered nearly one million PKI members and their families, with targets supplied by the CIA.

In 1966, Suharto assumed power. His fascist military regime, supported by U.S. imperialism and Soviet state capitalism (opposed to the pro-Chinese Indonesian communists), outlawed the PKI. In December 1975, U.S. president Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Suharto the "green light" to invade the small island of East Timor which had recently gained independence from Portugal. Fretilin was the Marxist political party leading the East Timorese independence movement. The Indonesian military killed over 200,000 East Timorese during the invasion and subsequent 25-year occupation.

Suharto remained in power until May 21, 1998 when the Asian financial meltdown, student-led protests and brutal rioting throughout Jakarta and other major cities ousted him. Although recent administrations have promised to prosecute those responsible for the atrocities committed under Suharto, they’ve only widened the war against the people. In August 1999, the Indonesian military again slaughtered civilians and destroyed towns in East Timor, forcing a third of the population to flee. In 2003, Sukarnoputri declared martial law in a province of North Sumatra called Aceh, which contains huge gas and oil deposits and sits astride the Straits of Malacca, through which oil tankers reach China, Japan and the rest of the Far East.

Weeks before the run-off election, the Islamic Defense Front, a fascist pro-government group used by the military to incite ethnic and religious riots, held an anti-U.S. protest in Jakarta to protest a planned meeting between U.S. President Bush and Muslim leaders. They called for ending diplomatic relations with the U.S. and a boycott of Indonesia’s presidential election. Others wanted to elect an Islamic fundamentalist. As Indonesia pursues the prosecution of Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the 66-year-old Mulsim cleric accused of leading an al Qaeda-linked group, Jemaah Islamiah (JI), it’s clear that many Indonesians support him and the building of a right-wing, anti-Western, pro-Islamic state. JI has been blamed for the Bali bombings, the Marriott Hotel attack and the suicide car bombing outside the Australian embassy this past September.

Challenging this are the pro-democratic student groups such as the PRD (Partia Rakyat Demokratik — The People’s Democratic Party), who led the street demonstrations for Suharto’s removal and bore the brunt of the retaliatory attacks by military and fascist thugs that killed many students in May 1998.

It is ironic that the Muslim fundamentalism built here with CIA help to "fight communism" could come to power through a Presidential ticket led by Abu Kabar Ba’asyir. This could turn the Indonesian archipelago into an anti-U.S., fundamentalist-run region. The chickens come home to roost once again.

All this spells more death and super-exploitation for all workers and youth in Indonesia. The former communist movement made the deadly error of uniting with "lesser evil" bosses like Sukarno. They paid for it in blood. Today, a new communist-led movement must be built, uniting all workers and youth and fighting for a society without any bosses: that’s the goal of the communist PLP; join us!

History Lessons Teach Students How to Fight War

Recently I taught History to special education students in a Queens, NY high school. In this week-long unit, our class studied manifest destiny, the war with Mexico and the acquisition of most of southern and western United States. The textbook I had to use makes blatantly false statements. About Native American genocide and being forced onto reservations, the book states: "Some Native Americans were misplaced from their homes; some were even killed."

When discussing manifest destiny — that the U.S. has the "God-given right" to conquer all of North America — students tied manifest destiny in 1845 to manifest destiny today in the Middle East. They cited the war in Iraq, as well as U.S. corporations reaping profits there.

The textbook uses racism to justify the U.S. invasion of Mexico, saying Mexicans were "uncivilized and inferior." It says Mexicans disagreed with U.S. ideas of "self-government," and attacked the U.S. Actually, the U.S. military attacked on the Rio Grande, part of Mexico at the time.

But the textbook failed to mention several facts, firstly, that the Mexican War was a dispute over slavery. I asked students to write a slaves’ perspective living in Texas, and who they would prefer to control it. One student replied that it didn’t matter; either way she’d still be a slave, no matter who held the chains.

Secondly, the book didn’t state it was a war between the Mexican upper class and the U.S. upper class. The textbook portrayed the war as all workers banding together to fight "the enemy." In reality, it was the poor who fought (an economic draft?). We also discussed military recruiters being offered $2 for every recruit (a large sum in 1845). There were frequent desertions and mutinies among U.S. troops.

Another student noted that recruiters still receive commissions for every recruit. He pointed to a Latin JROTC member in the class and said, "I’m not going to Iraq to kill another poor person." The class erupted in heated discussion.

Afterwards, the cooperating teacher told me these students don’t need to know the truth. "The truth won’t be on the regents. They can’t handle this stuff. So stick to the textbook." I was also told to stop pronouncing the names of towns and people with a "Spanish accent," because "it was inappropriate."

At the end of the week, the class took the exam. Every student passed, even though the average grade is usually in the twenties. The essay question was: "Why did the United States go to war with Mexico?" Significantly, one student wrote, "Capitalism."

Basketball Brawl Blocks Real Class Struggle

The Romans had the spectacle of the Christians vs. the lions, but we’re stuck with the tawdry brawl of drunken fans and pro-basketball player Ron Artest. Capitalist culture has dipped so low that even the "diversions" lack character. Arguments rage over whether Artest’s suspension was fair, while we’re supposed to ignore U.S. military razing an entire Iraqi city of 300,000. The question isn’t who’s more at fault between Artest and fan louts — they’re all no good. What we must reject is the attempt to make us care more about whether "our" team wins than we care about fighting back against the daily exploitation we face.

Millionaire players and billionaire sports owners have their "struggles" plastered all over the media, while workers’ struggles to make ends meet get little coverage except in CHALLENGE. We have no stake in who gets the lion’s share of sports’ profits — there’s no lesser of two evils. Players in phony unions routinely cross picket lines of workers making less than one percent of the players’ salaries.

Ron Artest was provoked by drunken fans who were probably taking out their frustration with the alienation of life under capitalism, but to say (as some have) that his suspension was racist is an insult to the millions of black workers who face the real super-exploitation on the job and police brutality in their communities. Professional athletes, for the most part, are pampered and excused from any responsibility for their actions so that greedy team owners can get the wins that feed their ego and pocketbooks.

Many of us enjoy watching sport contests, but that doesn’t mean we must take them seriously.

Workers have no pro team of our own, any more than we have a country of our own. Our team is our class. Keeping our eye on the ball means reading CHALLENGE and learning how to struggle and win the class war and not allowing ourselves to be distracted by the sports circus.

History of Military Rebellions, Part II:

Armed Forces’ Mutinies during the Vietnam Era

By 1971, the U.S. military high command assessed its ability to fight the Vietnam War in the bleakest of terms. In his famous report, Marine Colonel Robert Heinl claimed, "The morale, discipline and battle-worthiness of the US armed forces are, with few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States." ("Armed Forces Journal," June 1971).

U.S. service personnel resisted, refused and rebelled in a variety of upheavals. By the late 1960’s, soldiers in Vietnam had turned "search and destroy" missions — designed to eliminate the Vietnamese opposition — into "search and avoid" endeavors in which U.S. soldiers resisted their official orders. David Cortright reports that lower-ranking soldiers had organized 250 anti-war committees and underground newspapers. By 1969, Cortright claims, the army had ceased to function as an effective fighting force and was disintegrating rapidly. ("Soldiers in Revolt," 1975)

By 1968, the 82nd Airborne, often viewed as one of the Army’s most effective fighting units, was under strength. Breaking with precedent, the command ordered soldiers who had just completed a year of Vietnam combat to do a second tour of duty. The crack troops, not known for political protest, complained in massive numbers, and the Army backed off, fearing an embarrassing revolt. As a compromise, the command offered the skilled paratroopers a month’s leave if they would accept the Vietnam assignment. Of the 3,650 troops, 2,513 refused the offer, and the 82nd was reduced to a stateside unit. Soldiers were refusing to return and mutinies in Vietnam were rising.

In August 1969, the first reported mass rebellion in Vietnam occurred as 60 army personnel of "A" Company, 3rd Battalion/196th Infantry effectively mutinied. "A" company had incurred heavy casualties in the Songchang Valley south of Da Nang, and the 60 exhausted and angry men refused their captain’s orders. Ranking officers quickly arrived to squelch the mutiny and after much cajoling, most of the 60 begrudgingly moved out to their next combat duty station. Despite the overt mutiny, none received any reprimand.

In November, 1969, 21 men of "B" company, 1st platoon refused to advance toward combat at Cu Chi near the Cambodian border. Battle-hardened and nearing the end of their year of duty, the soldiers clearly believed the political goals of the war weren’t worth risking their lives.

In April 1970, a 7th cavalry company from the 2nd Battalion refused to advance on an NLF (National Liberation Front) position from a route that would have invited heavy casualties. They utilized "working it out," meaning that the rank-and-file soldiers refused their initial orders and then bargained with their superior officers for alternative plans.

From May 1970, mutinies increased as President Nixon escalated the war by ordering the invasion of Cambodia. On May 7, 16 soldiers, from a camp called Fire Base Washington, refused to advance with their units into Cambodia. On May 11, another group from the 3rd Battalion/8th Infantry refused to board helicopters headed to Cambodia. In December, in "C" Company 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry, 23 enlisted men with their commanding officer, Lieutenant Fred Pitts, refused what they believed was a dangerous mission. Pitts and the ranking Sergeant were removed from their command; Pitts pleaded guilty "to disobeying a direct order" and received a suspended sentence, a very lenient punishment for mutiny in combat.

By 1971, mutinies escalated and the army high command found sharp resistance from soldiers who defended mutineers, intensifying the rebellion against the brass. In October, six soldiers of "B" company, 1st Battalion/12th Infantry refused a patrol mission near the Cambodian border. When the high command threatened them with court martial, several platoons of soldiers rallied to their defense and refused to advance. Sixty-five men signed a petition condemning their mission as unnecessarily dangerous. Journalist Richard Boyle documents these extraordinary events in his book, "Flower of the Dragon."

Of all U.S. troops in Vietnam, black GIs were the most militant and posed the greatest resistance to U.S. commanders. Cortright states by November, 1970, "…black radicalism had already seriously hindered U.S. fighting capabilities, with brothers very seldom trusted in combat, apparently for fear they might turn their guns around." ("Soldiers in Revolt," pp. 39-40).

Black GI combat refusals were often rooted in a combination of racial politics and anti-war ideologies. Racial tensions did exist between white and black enlistees, but black soldiers demonstrated deep-seated hatred for the discriminatory practices of army brass. In court martial discharges, 23.4% receiving punitive discharges were black; only 16.9% were white.

The two largest military prisons in Vietnam for U.S. soldiers, Da Nang Marine Brig and Long Binh Jail (LBJ) bulged with inmates who suffered overcrowding and harsh conditions. As early as 1968, black prisoners had led the largest military prison revolts in history. At Da Nang, Marine prison inmates seized control of the central prison complex and were only overcome when 120 Marine MPs stormed their barricades. At LBJ, hundreds of soldier inmates waged pitch battles with MPs for several hours; one inmate was killed, 58 inmates and five MPs were wounded, and 23 were hospitalized. Immediately following the pitched battle, approximately 200 black inmates staged a no-work strike and held out for nearly a month.

The refusals, mutinies and prison rebellions no doubt reverberated through the ranks of the armed forces. While the primary revolts were in the Army and Marines, the Air Force and Navy experienced critical revolts.

From May 22 to 25, 1971, Travis Air Force base had the largest mass rebellion in the history of the air force. It began when a confrontation occurred between black personnel and MPs, who arrested a small number. Subsequently, 200 black and white airmen protested against the arrests, and ultimately 600 black and white rebels clashed with MPs. The officers’ club was burned. Of 135 GIs arrested, most were black; Travis was in a virtual state of siege for days.

Finally, by 1972, resistance within the Navy intensified, often as sabotage, taking large ships out of commission. On July 10, 1972, a huge fire was ignited on the USS Forrestal, docked in Norfolk, inflicting over $7 million damage and delaying its deployment by two months. Just three weeks later, sabotage on the USS Ranger caused a three-and one-half-month deployment delay; sailors had placed twelve-inch bolts in the ship’s gears.

These two sabotages and delayed deployments set the stage for a violent uprising aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. The ship had just completed its Vietnam mission and was to return home, but because the Forrestal and Ranger were out of commission, the Kitty Hawk was ordered to return to Vietnam. Hundreds of African-American sailors led a rebellion that left dozens injured and seriously undermined the ship’s operations. Just weeks later, a non-violent strike on the USS Constellation occurred as the ship was docked in San Diego. Over 100 black and white sailors protested racism and bad discharges. The Navy, desperately seeking to avoid violent revolt, buckled and reassigned many dissidents to shore duty.

Students Know a Racist System When They See One

NEW YORK CITY -Recently I had the opportunity to introduce some of our communist politics to high school junior English classes, teaching a lesson in intensifying the contradictions between the school curriculum and communist politics. Our school is completely segregated; 80% of the students live in poverty.

Students worked in groups to identify and analyze societal conflicts, picking issues like poverty, racism and war. Searching for sample editorials students could use as models to practice editorial writing, I found one on-line claiming "The Draft Will Not Make a Comeback." I combined that with two others, one criticizing John Kerry as pro-draft and one from CHALLENGE. I then let my students argue it out.

Student groups each analyzed a different editorial and gave presentations to the class. The discussions showed: (1) black and Latin youth don't trust the government and want nothing to do with fighting a bosses' war (only one student in two classes — a JRROTC recruit — voiced any support for the war and he was drowned out so much he changed his mind!); (2) students have many questions about the power the bosses have over them ("Can we go to Canada or the Dominican Republic?" to avoid a draft); (3) youth generally (like the working class as a whole) still feel immobilized when it comes to making a break with the capitalist lifestyle. They want solutions to come to them, that is, through elections as opposed to direct action.

They also have difficulty understanding the deeper political issues raised by PLP and with the reading level of CHALLENGE. These obstacles, however, are simply part of a process of their political development under the leadership of our Party, in this case, my leadership as their teacher. They're learning!

There's a saying that opportunity knocks loudest when one is prepared. The next week a major newspaper did a full-page feature spread on the possibility of the draft, complete with a large picture of a recruitment poster that read: "We Really, Really, Really Want You."

Meanwhile, we found a major international magazine featuring our neighborhood in its latest issue. The topic? Military recruitment. Among a swamp of openly vicious racist stereotypes, the article claimed the military can't meet its goals in the cities because the "target population" can't speak English, and "the majority are illegal immigrants, convicted criminals, or both." There was even a racist/sexist slur against teenage mothers. One recruiter sickly lamented that youth from the city "not only want the army, they need the army."

The students were furious. We discussed how capitalism needs to build racism while simultaneously needing black and Latin youth to support capitalism — a contradiction.

We decided to write letters to the magazine's editor. I was careful to explain how publishers of such magazines are tied to the same ruling class that pushes these wars, and how the working class needs its own ways of "publishing" our ideas. The students' letters were their best work of the semester, and, for some, the best of their lives.

I fought for students to participate in a march and demonstration against the war at the neighborhood recruiting center. Two came. We used the opportunity to denounce to thousands of passers-by the racism of military recruitment, the need to destroy capitalism and the bosses' need for imperialist wars for profit. One student read her letter over the megaphone, despite her mother's fears. A young comrade in our club also wrote, rehearsed, and delivered a powerful speech representing the views of communist youth.

This project has opened the doors to discussing the war in Iraq and issues such as the soldiers who refused orders. We made a school bulletin board that sparked more discussion. We also have a Party study group with four new youth recruits to the Party. The struggle is intensifying!µ

LETTERS

Military Moms Oppose War

I meet with a group of military families opposed to the Iraq War. At first, I mostly exchanged e-mails with one member. Eventually, she invited me to join her at an anti-war march. I helped her carry a banner saying, "Bring Them Home Now!" (Her son was in Iraq then.)

Soon afterwards we attended a peace vigil where I met a few more members of her group. Some wanted to have monthly meetings. At the most recent one there was a struggle about the organization’s future. I proposed we hold a rally outside the local Army base on March 19 or 20, the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. There’s already one planned at Ft. Bragg, N.C. I also proposed we canvas the apartment complexes around the base where many military families live, distributing leaflets about the rally and our organization.

These suggestions were seriously debated at the meeting, and in subsequent e-mails. Some opposed my ideas, saying we’ll be seen as "outsiders" and the brass will tell people to stay away from us. They said we’ll get the military wives and their husbands "in trouble" if we urge them to join us or participate in any way. People liked the same old tactic of bringing our demands to politicians. (One of my ideas was accepted, a demand to drop charges against the members of the 343rd Quartermaster Co. who refused to transport fuel in unarmored trucks through hostile territory.)

I feel the future of this organization is in question. We can remain a smallish group of families who correspond over the internet and rely on politicians to bring our soldiers home and end the war; or we can reach out to the masses of military families who live in poverty around these bases. It’s crucial that we involve these largely black and Latin soldiers and their families.

Neither peace marches nor politicians will end the war. N. Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote (11/21) if the morale of U.S. troops in Iraq falls, it will influence when the war will end. Actually, if the level of the insurgency intensifies and the refusals of GI’s to carry out orders grow into a mass rebellion (as in Vietnam), that will determine when the war will end.

I would like to hear about other folks’ experiences involved in similar struggles around the country. We should encourage people to join such organizations. Young people who have siblings or spouses could join also.

The struggle will sharpen. We need to be there to fight for reliance on rank-and-file soldiers. I’m confident these families will see that PLP offers the only strategy to ultimately end imperialist wars.

A Military Mom

Colombia; China: Rampaging Capitalism

On a recent visit to China to see a friend teaching in an exchange program we saw what capitalism looks like in its most rampant form. Social relations have broken down. Communities are being torn up by developers. While people inside their homes are very hospitable, never let you pay for anything and give whatever they have since a business relationship is not involved, outside the home capitalism’s values trump everything. As in the U.S., there is mostly mindless TV.

Most cities we visited are an unregulated collection of endless buildings, co-ops and condos for a lot of rich people, but overwhelmingly people have crap. We saw people trying to mimic Americans, flaunting a lot of big-time spending, but that’s a small number compared to the entire 1.4 billion population.

Hundreds populate the streets with knapsacks, a "sub-species" who have little or nothing to eat. There’s a certain amount of "make work" to put pennies into the hands of the poor, but thousands line the streets bargaining, begging one to buy what is really cheap junk. They are very poor; they’re lucky to make a sale or two a day. Medical care is greatly reduced, compared to revolutionary China.

Much of the contact with people inescapably involves being sold something. Virtually everything is a rip-off. Although the "law" says nothing pre-1947 can be taken out of the country, we were still being offered "200-year-old antiques." All of it is fake, including clothing.

Basically the capitalist government is sucking the countryside to support the cities. Peasants are not paid what their produce is worth. Men and women are driven to the cities to work erecting the endless buildings, going from site to site to find work. Construction goes on 24 hours a day.

We saw a lot of racism directed against the Ughir people, Muslims, or non-Han. In the city of Xian in the Muslim quarter, we saw cops beating a man unmercifully. He escaped but they caught him and beat him again, while a lot of people were yelling at the cops.

Inside the schools there was a beautiful atmosphere because it didn’t involve a business relationship. Mainly English, science and math are taught — little humanities or history. Education is ostensibly "free," but millions of peasants who have been driven to the cities are not considered "residents," and must pay for their children’s education. But even those for whom schooling is "free" must pay for the final exams. If they can’t afford the fees, they can’t get a diploma.

In a country in which to become rich is glorified, the government blocks out any criticism. All stuff from the outside is jammed. Nationalism has replaced whatever internationalist outlook most people might have had. While there is widespread feeling against the war in Iraq, the government would rather keep criticism of the U.S. low-key at this point. So given the strong nationalism pervading the country, most people appear to take their cue from the government and keep their criticism of the war muted as well.

If ever a people needed a communist revolution, it’s here.

Greying Red Travelers

a name="‘No Fascist Death Squad Left Behind’"></">‘N" Fascist Death Squad Left Behind’

On October 12, hundreds of thousands of workers marched throughout Colombia in a one-day general strike against the Uribe government that has been complicit in the many murders of trade unionists by right-wing death squads. Soon afterwards, Bush visited Colombia to support the Uribe government, one of the few loyal allies of the U.S. in South America, where Chinese, European and even Russian imperialists are making inroads. Typically, U.S. bosses choose the worst cutthroats they can find, like the death squads and Uribe, who have turned Colombia into the world’s most dangerous place for trade union activists (along with many other workers and even children). Twenty-three teacher-unionists have been murdered over the past year, mostly women.

On the day of the general strike, the union representing faculty at the City University of New York (PSC) held a spirited picket line at the Colombian embassy in support of the general strike and the Colombian teachers’ union, FECODE. Those of us at the rally were inspired to be demonstrating on behalf of our sisters and brothers in Colombia.

Now the death squads are threatening reprisals. The AUC sent a letter to Colombian university staff union with the names of six teacher/unionists they will execute, warning, "That all other members of this organization must renounce their membership now. The trade union must disappear." This is a chilling example of the fate of unions under fascism.

The university union, SINTRAUNICOL, are asking U.S. workers to write President Alvaro Uribe Velez at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. demanding he protect the targeted unionists (with a copy to the union). Activists are using this letter-writing campaign to build awareness of events in Colombia and to organize a solidarity movement. But it will have little effect on Uribe, who is from a prominent ranching family with close ties to both the paramilitaries and billionaire drug traffickers. Uribe came to power on a platform of using billions of dollars of U.S. military aid — Plan Colombia, begun under Clinton — to crush the guerrilla groups that now operate in 40% of the country and to protect oil pipelines and the international oil companies operating here.

We should alert our students, co-workers and neighbors about how the U.S. "democratic" rhetoric is belied by support of fascist repression in Colombia.

NYC Teacher

Fascism: by Choice or Contradiction?

An important letter entitled "Is This Fascism?" in CHALLENGE (9/8/04) essentially, even if not intentionally, challenged our Party’s line that fascism only grows out of capitalism in crisis. The author seemingly agrees there are no "lesser-evil" bosses and that fascism is instituted by the whole ruling class. But he/she then argues that because of the failure of the old communist movement and the general historical "weakness" of the working class — only 10% of the workers are unionized — the bosses, are not threatened by the workers. Since they also are not endangered by any other imperialist power, they are rather choosing to implement fascism "because they can," to further strengthen their political control and increase their profits. I feel this analysis contains fundamental and dangerous errors.

Inter-imperialist rivalry, intensified by capitalism’s inherent contradictions, has shaken the U.S. economically and politically. World overproduction and the falling rate of profit have decreased the bosses’ industrial base in the U.S. Since January 2001, the U.S. has lost 2.5 million manufacturing jobs. From 1995 to 2003, the Steel Industry alone has lost approximately 50,000 jobs, a 30% decrease from only 171,000 jobs (which was down from 400,000 in 1980!). The consequence? Racist unemployment comparable to depression times and a nearly $500 billion trade deficit: the sign of a relatively declining and increasingly unstable economy. Add to this, military failure in Iraq (also devastating economically), an army that fewer working-class youth are rushing to join, the rise of the euro, and a booming China, and the U.S. bosses’ political prestige doesn’t look so hot either. Now, add to the picture these factors:

• From 1998 to 2003, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the "Protective Services" sector (Homeland Security) has grown 15%. More specifically, from 1998 to 2003, there’s been a 16% increase in cops on the street (from 513,040 to 609,920 — 96,920 more cops!), a 39% increase in police detectives, a 7% increase in "correctional" officers and jailers (from 387,930 to 417,420) and a nearly 50% increase in bailiffs.

• July 22nd, 2004, "Homeland Security’s Best Kept Secret" (US Newswire 7/23) — the "Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004" — was signed into law by President Bush with bi-partisan support. Backed by the LEAA, a fascist cop organization, it’s estimated that with this bill one million off-duty and retired cops will now not only be armed, but also practically federalized by the ruling class. Any off-duty or retired police officer can now carry concealed weapons and "do their job" — oppress the working class, especially the black and Latin portions of it — anywhere in the U.S.

Thus, it’s evident that "fascism" is not a choice. Rather, it has a material basis of intensifying contradictions propelling its development. Over-emphasizing the bosses’ choice for fascism is dangerous because it is the same error committed by the old communist movement. It implies lesser-evil politics — revisionism — and we should avoid it.

A comrade

PLP Sparks Campus Action vs. Iraq War

"At the same time that the U.S. government is attacking Fallujah, seizing their hospital, and ripping patients out of their beds, the same ruling class is closing hospitals here in Los Angeles to pay for their war. Thousands of poor workers will die here because of lack of medical care....The madness of this war and…of these budget cuts only reflect the madness of the entire capitalist system — a system that will stop at nothing to protect its profits, a system that has no limit to the amount of suffering it will inflict on the workers of the world."

This was part of a speech given by a comrade who helped organize a small but spirited demonstration on a large working-class college campus the day after the invasion of Fallujah began. Most people in the campus anti-war group are still deeply depressed over the election. This event helped lift some of them out of their daze. A group that was bigger than expected, given the speed of the planning, participated and another 400 students took our leaflets. A combination of these direct actions led by PLP and a sober anti-imperialist, communist analysis of the world situation will help to resuscitate the faltering anti-war movement and push it in a more revolutionary direction, as well as lead to PLP’s growth.

Alongside disappointment and disillusionment, an interesting shift is beginning. People who were uninterested in hearing about fascism a year ago are now much more ready to discuss it. People who wouldn’t have made time for a study group on imperialism are now making time. We’re building upon this shift and planning more study groups and forums to help the people we’ve been working with move from the reformist anybody-but-Bush mindset to a revolutionary outlook.

In other schools in the area, leaflets were distributed exposing the murderous invasion of Falluja and supporting the members of the 343rd who refused their orders. This has stimulated lots of interest and discussion.

LA Red Youth

Communist Recalls Mussolini Execution

CHALLENGE brings out the best in people. One day I was selling the paper outside the phone company building where I work when an older lady approached me and asked, "Is this a communist newspaper?" "Yes," I replied. "Well," she said proudly, "I was a communist in Italy during World War II, when they dragged the executed fascist dictator Mussolini and his mistress through the streets of Milan." A proper fate for all fascists.

Oakland comrade

a name="WW2 GI’s Rejected Bosses’ Orders to Fight Soviets"></">WW" GI’s Rejected Bosses’ Orders to Fight Soviets

After hearing about the atrocities in Falluja, I spoke to a veteran comrade who had a bright view of the potential for turning a bad situation into its opposite.

At the end of World War II, U.S. rulers wanted President Truman to send the U.S. troops who had fought the fascists in Italy to Manchuria to fight the Soviet Red Army. The GI’s composed the following words to the tune of Lily Marlene:

Please Mr. Truman, won’t you send us home.

We have conquered Naples,
We have conquered Rome.
We have subdued the Master Race,
So please give us some shipping space
And send us home.

Many thousands of these GI’s then threw their guns into the Mediterranean. They didn’t fight the Russians. They went home.

This was one of many incidents of soldiers rejecting the bosses’ orders en masse and taking the side of the international working class. In the face of the fascist attacks in Fallujah and throughout Iraq, the history of soldiers’ standing up against fascist, racist imperialist orders should be told, retold and studied. (See article on Vietnam, page 8) We must do everything in our power to fight for anti-racist, anti-fascist and communist ideas and action among the youth and the entire working class. We have a lot to learn from the past and those who fought for workers’ internationalism and communism in the face of tremendous obstacles.

A comrade

Red Eye On The News

Below Are Excerpts From Mainstream Newspapers That Contain Important Information:Abbreviations:

NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

• Iraqis see oil as US motive

"It is sad to say this, but after 18 months the United States still hasn’t convinced Iraqis that it means well, said Yitzhak Nakash," the Brandeis University expert on Iraq . "We have never been able to persuade Iraqis that we aren’t there for the oil." (NYT, 11/11)

• Iraq war was long-planned

On Feb. 19, 2002, I visited central command headquarters for a briefing on our mission in Afghanistan… "Senator," he said, "we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan. …Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action In Iraq…"

General Franks was telling me this 13 months before the beginning of the combat operation in Iraq… (NYT, 10/24)

• 10 more years in Iraq?

For months, Iraqi recruits for [police and National Guard] forces have been the victims of assassination and car bombs….

Local American commanders and security officials say…that many are reluctant to show up and do not tell their families where they work; they… present a danger to American troops they fight alongside, and are unreliable because of corruption, desertion or infiltration.

Given the weak performance of Iraqi forces, any major withdrawal of American troops for at least a decade would invite chaos, a senior Interior Ministry official, whose name could not be used, said in an interview last week. (NYT, 11/30)

• US incinerates Iraqis

"Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water," the [Washington] Post explained more than 20 paragraphs into the story. "Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns."

The Post quoted a hospital physician, Kamal Hadeethi, who said: "The corpses of the mujaheddin which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."

But…Tuesday morning, on NBC’s "Today" show, a network correspondent in Baghdad mentioned phosphorous shells just long enough to say that they are "meant to burn through metal bunkers." Presumably an account of effects on human beings would not have gone well with viewers’ breakfasts. (Norman Solomon, "Creatons Syndicate," 11/14)

• Hammer & sickle for Bush

Using tear gas and water cannons, riot police officers dispersed hundreds of rock-throwing protesters on Friday after thousands of people had gathered peacefully to demonstrate against the presence of President Bush at a weekend summit meeting here [in Chile]….

"We want Bush to know that he is not welcome here" said Monica Ceron, a college student who was wearing a "Bush Stinks" T-shirt and a red headband…with the words "Down with Bush" and a hammer and sickle. "Our government may want to do business with him, but the Chilean people oppose his genocidal war on Iraq and his designs on Latin America." (NYT, 11/20)

• Red Cross: US tortures

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba….

Some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners’ mental health and vulnerability to interrogators, the report said….

The Red Cross said publicly 13 months ago that the system of keeping detainees indefinitely without allowing them to know their fates was unacceptable and would lead to mental health problems. (NYT, 11/30)

• Coke grabs people’s water

Corporations like Coke contribute to water scarcity by gobbling up water supplies for use in bottling operations….

Coke’s niche in the bottled water market is bottling tap water from municipal water systems around the world. It literally takes people’s water, then sells it back to them….

In parts of India, Coke’s water bottling has forced communities into major crises. At least five Indian communities face severe water shortages and health problems because of Coke….

In the village of Mehdiganj, the exorbitant water consumption of Coke’s 24-hour-a-day bottling factory has caused groundwater levels to sink by 40 feet….

This month, thousands of people in India will march 150 miles, from one Coke bottling facility to another, demanding that the plant inMehdiganj be shut down…. (Patti Lynn, MinutemanMedia.org, 11/10)

1. 2004 Election Results Mean:
   WORKERS AND SOLDIERS NEED RED POLITICS
2. Union Hacks Opened Door For Bush Re-Election
3. Workers vs. Bosses: Only One Class Can Rule
4. Students Drive Marine Recruiters Off CCNY Campus
5. Who's Dying in Iraq?
6. U.S. Army Traps Poor Workers in Rich Man's War
7. Challenge Warmakers At California College
8. College PL'ers Unite Anti-war Marchers with Striking Profs
9. SF MUNI Drivers in Solidarity with Hotel Workers
10. VW Workers Victimized by Union-Boss Partnership
11. Home Health Aides Can Be Real Force for Working Class
12. What criminal can get away with that?
13. At APHA Convention:
    Condemn Health Workers' Participation in Torture
14. APHA Members Back Hotel Workers
15. Profits of Globalization, Mass Poverty and World War III
16. From Vietnam to Iraq:
    The Fire Next Time
17. Anti-Imperialist Action Is Cure For Election Blues
18. LETTERS
    1. Airport Workers Fight Anti-Communism
    2. Turn Anti-war Feelings into Anti-Imperialist Action
    3. China-U.S. War Sooner Than Later?
    4. Recruiters Can't Hide Death in Iraq
    5. Want College Info? Beware of Cops
    6. Cheer Anti-war Vets At Nov. 11 Parade
    7. Union `Study' Evades Hiring of Black Workers
    8. Disabled, Home Care Workers Have Same Class Interests
    9. Vote Or Die Is a Death Threat!
19. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Troops expose lies on Iraq
    2. Sec'y cites US war crime
    3. Public anger hits US allies
    4. Profits outrank death risk
    5. US backed Iran despotism
    6. `Winning friends' in Iraq
    7. 100,000 Iraqi civilians die

---

2004 Election Results Mean:
WORKERS AND SOLDIERS NEED RED POLITICS

From a working-class point of view, the November 2 election reflected both dangers and opportunities. Bush's victory showed that racism and religion remain powerful weapons in the rulers' ideological arsenal. On the one hand, U.S. rulers led millions of workers down the dead-end road of electoral politics. Sixty percent of eligible voters turned out -- up from 52% in 2000. But this same figure shows that the capitalists' success is far from complete. The 40% who stayed away from the polls -- nearly 80 million people -- far outnumber Bush's 59 million votes or Kerry's 56 million. And an unprecedented push to register young workers and students had no significant effect. "An Associated Press exit poll survey found that fewer than 1 in 10 voters...were 18 to 24, about the same proportion of the electorate as in 2000." (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/3) Although class-consciousness today is woefully low, we in PLP must redouble our efforts to win millions of non-voters (as well as many of those who actually voted) away from "choosing" which ruling-class servant is going to oppress us all.

Bush's victory shows that many people have been won to fascist ideas. But a key reason for Kerry's collapse offers encouragement. Many people in the U.S. don't want their children, or themselves, used as the rulers' cannon fodder. Kerry had a mission. His imperialist backers were counting on him to capitalize on the Sept. 11 attacks and U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to begin a thorough militarization of the nation that would ensure the U.S.'s worldwide dominance into the next generation.

The New York Times' endorsement of Kerry demanded that he usher in an era of "shared sacrifice." A program of mandatory, universal national service starting in high school was the cornerstone of Kerry's early campaign. Young people, said Kerry in a May 2003 speech, could choose between the military and fascist homeland security. But when U.S. troop shortages in Iraq made resuming the draft a real possibility, mass hostility erupted.

On October 8, Time magazine reported 64% opposition to the draft. A week later, ABC News said 77% were against it. Kerry had already dropped national service like a hot potato. In the debates and on the campaign trail, Kerry confined himself to the usual Democratic lies about more jobs and better health care. Both candidates wore out stacks of bibles swearing they would never restore the draft. Nearly 60% of the voting pool cast ballots for Bush and Kerry. More than three-fourths, however, are unwilling to let the U.S. war machine waste their sons' and daughters' lives for Exxon Mobil's profits.

Pundits say that the election reflects growing support for the rulers' so-called war on terrorism. Enlistment statistics belie such claims. "The Army Research Institute projects that only 27% of Guard and Reserve soldiers intend to re-enlist -- an all-time low. The Army National Guard fell nearly 10% short of its 2004 recruiting goal of 56,000 enlistees. In addition, many former soldiers mobilized under a special program have refused to report; they've been to Iraq and don't want to return. The pool of young people who have committed to join the Army next year is only 18% of the total required." (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 10/22)

Tens of millions of people -- mostly working-class -- fear Bush's brand of war and fascism. But millions more, certainly among the tens of millions who voted for Kerry, don't necessarily see through his version of war and fascism. They still have the illusion that somehow the Democrats can make things "right." The millions of non-voters are not, at this point, a threat to the ruling class. Opposing the draft, and telling military recruiters to shove it, are all to the good. But lasting change won't come until masses of workers and rank-and-file soldiers do, in fact, embrace politics -- revolutionary communist politics -- and build a party that will eventually crush capitalism. That's the goal of the Progressive Labor Party.

Union Hacks Opened Door For Bush Re-Election

Much has been said about the backwardness of workers who voted for Bush. They've been called religious nuts, racist idiots and even Nazis. Indeed, many of them are reactionary. But why do workers in Ohio, West Virginia, Iowa and other "red" states vote for "moral values" while seeing their jobs and standard of living go down the drain? Before the elections, a CHALLENGE article on Ohio provided a partial answer: the Democrats and their union hack lieutenants offered no real alternative.

If the AFL-CIO in all its factions (from its president John Sweeney to "dissidents" like SEIU's David Stern) had fought the massive job losses maybe some of these workers wouldn't have been taken in by the Bushites' reactionary ideas. But there was no alternative. Instead the AFL-CIO invested hundreds of millions and used tens of thousands of volunteers to bring out the vote for Kerry and the Democrats, who were basically aping Bush: Kerry wanted 40,000 more troops to "fight terror." Even the "dissident" union leaders' so-called "Million Workers March" was basically an anti-Bush, pro-Democrat rally of a few thousand workers.

Very little energy and resources went to support strikes among San Francisco hotel workers, Southern California grocery workers or home attendant workers in NY, or any other recent working-class struggles. To the contrary, the union leaders have done everything possible to betray and sell out workers in the last 40 years. Where was the labor movement when Reagan busted the striking air controllers' union? Or when Clinton dismantled welfare and imposed slave-labor Workfare, destroying union jobs in NYC and other major "union cities"? Didn't the leaders of the auto, steel, machinists', miners' and other industrial unions make wholesale concessions to the bosses, eliminating hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs since the 1980s? These hacks have been too busy supporting the U.S. bosses "war against communism" -- backing death-squad governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa -- and currently supporting the racist "war on terror."

Communists understand that politics are in command, that class consciousness cannot be built by pro-capitalist union hacks. The level of class consciousness among U.S. workers is lagging. But, things can change. When PLP began in the early 1960s, workers and students here were considered "backward," anti-communist, racist, etc. Similar to today, reactionary groups, many led by liberals, ruled the roost. Suddenly, the anti-war movement grew, along with the civil rights anti-racist movement.

Many people joined PLP because it was in the vanguard of many of those struggles: from the first public anti-Vietnam war march in NYC to playing an important role in the Harlem Rebellion, the first of many anti-racist rebellions that shook the U.S. Workers and students were politicized. In addition to the growth of these movements, mass wildcat strikes erupted like the 1970 national postal walkout. The reactionaries were set back, including racist KKK thugs, whose attempts to spread their racist filth were fought by tens of thousands throughout the U.S., many led by PLP.

Of course, the '60s were different. Although the Soviet Union had already sold out, the Cultural Revolution in China and the fighting Vietnamese workers and peasants inspired millions worldwide. Today, one can hardly be inspired by the Islamic zealots fighting the Christian fascists who rule the White House, but the class struggle will sharpen. In contrast to the '60s, the U.S. now is an imperialist power in decline, and must intensify its attacks on its own workers to pay for its endless wars. It's up to us, not the union hacks and their collaborators, to turn reactionary-minded workers into class conscious fighters for their class interests.

Workers vs. Bosses: Only One Class Can Rule

(The previous articles in this series have explained the state as the key instrument for maintaining the bosses' dictatorship over the working class and the rest of society. Bush's re-election changes nothing in this analysis. Had Kerry won, the U.S. would also have remained a capitalist dictatorship. Since the reversal of workers' power in the former Soviet Union and Peoples' Republic of China, every state in the world represents the tyranny of the profit system. Workers and their allies must never choose between supposed "lesser evil" bosses. All previous class societies have been a dictatorship of a minority over the overwhelming majority. Our goal remains to smash the capitalist state apparatus root and branch and replace it with a revolutionary communist state: the Dictatorship of the Working Class, the rule of the overwhelming majority who produce all value.)

The state as an instrument of class rule came into existence with the rise of social classes. It will continue to exist as long as they do, because classes reflect a society based on antagonism and therefore the need for organized violence to maintain the ruling class in power. The triumph of communism will also require a state. (The abolition of classes altogether is a topic for future discussion.)

The revolutionary dictatorship that will enable workers to rule society will be a state of a thoroughly different type from any other in history. Firstly, it will represent the dictatorship of the vast majority over a small minority. Secondly, it will eliminate exploitation and profit as the basis for social organization. Socialism in the former Soviet Union and China provided a glimpse of this state, but the communist parties that led those societies committed deadly political errors that transformed the burgeoning workers' dictatorship into its opposite.

The Progressive Labor Party's document, "Road to Revolution IV," summarizes them. The key error involved misunderstanding the crucial need to win workers to fight for communism and misleading them to fight instead for socialism, a halfway house in which revolutionary communist form disguised capitalist content. Now, even the pretense of communist form is long gone in Russia and modern China.

The great communist revolutionary Lenin set the tone for this error as it relates to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In his classic work, "State and Revolution," he argued that the state and the communist party should remain two separate entities. Another great revolutionary, Mao Zedong, compounded the error and took it one step further to the right, in his essay "On New Democracy." Where Lenin had argued that the state and the Party were separate, implying therefore that non-communists could participate in a communist state apparatus, Mao openly advocated the concept of the state as an alliance between communists and "progressive" capitalist forces. Antagonistic classes cannot share power. History has exposed the tragic bankruptcy of these positions. Lenin and Mao are titanic figures in the history of our movement, and we say that we stand on their shoulders. But their theory of the state was wrong, and it led to political practices that destroyed the old communist movement and caused our class to suffer the worst defeat in its history. This was not their purpose, but it was the result -- we must face facts.

We need to fight for something different. The Progressive Labor Party believes that the overwhelming majority of the world's workers can eventually be won to fight for a communist dictatorship of the proletariat. This will be a long, very difficult process, but it is the only goal worthy of a communist party. Anything less will merely prolong the horrors of the profit system. We must break thoroughly with the fatal illusion that society should be ruled by any other organization than the Party. The working class must not entrust the building of its own society to non-communists. "Democracy" under the profit system permits parties to exist for two reasons: to represent tactical camps among the bosses and to delude workers into marching behind the banners of one or another.

Today, tomorrow, forever, in good times and bad, weak or strong, we hold only one banner: the red flag; we fight for only one goal: communism; and we envision only one Party as the instrument of the working class's dictatorship, composed of hundreds of millions of workers.

We understand the grueling, long-range character of the course this grand strategy implies. History has shown that the dictatorship of the proletariat is easier to achieve than to maintain and preserve. It has also shown that the world's bosses will stop at nothing to strangle a fledgling communist state in the cradle. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, every participant in World War I, including the bitterest of capitalist enemies, united to send troops to crush the new Soviet Union, which had freed one-sixth of the world from capitalism. This action failed, but it cost the lives of seven million Soviet soldiers and civilians. Barely a generation later, the imperialists then allowed the defeated German bosses to rearm, giving Hitler the special assignment of wiping out Soviet socialism. Hitler also failed, but not until his hordes had murdered tens of millions more.

We should expect no less brutal a response once we or our successors succeed in establishing a communist state anywhere. When conditions eventually ripen for a revolutionary seizure of power in the United States or any part of the world, we can assume that the process will follow the massive destruction of major warfare, including armed struggle in the region where the revolution is occurring. We can also assume that other imperialists -- Chinese, Russian, European, Japanese -- will imitate the capitalists after World War I and the bosses who backed Hitler against the Soviet Union in World War II.

History also shows that the working class can take anything the murderous bosses dish out. The main danger comes from within, in the form of political and ideological concessions to capitalist values that in turn lead to practical betrayals, often despite the best of intentions. The only guarantee against this disaster is a Party that wins many millions of workers to join it and build communism. This is the core of the communist state apparatus.

In other words, our class here and worldwide should expect a very long-range future of sharpening and widening struggle. The transfer of power from the bosses to our class will take many years and much blood and sweat. We must never retreat on the principle of working-class dictatorship of and by communists. This lesson has cost too many working-class lives for us to abandon it now or at any time in the future. It's a hard lesson, but it holds the key to the future of the working class and humanity.

Students Drive Marine Recruiters Off CCNY Campus

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 15 -- Last week we drove Marine recruiters off the City College campus, located in the middle of Harlem, a black and Latin working-class neighborhood. Military recruiters are on the prowl more than ever to recruit working-class youth to fill the shortage of troops needed by the U.S. ruling class to fight their imperialist wars.

Two weeks before, the recruiters had set up a table in our campus's main lobby, which we discovered only when they were leaving. One comrade cleverly asked them when they would return. "Next week, same time, same place," they replied. We immediately prepared our friends and other students on campus for their next visit.

When the recruiters arrived and put up their table. We set up another table right beside them, circulating a petition for fellow students to sign if they opposed military recruitment on campus and to bar them from the school. Over 100 signed in less than a half hour and took our CHALLENGES as well as a leaflet debunking myths spread by the military. We led people in chanting, "Hey recruiters, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!" and "Exxon, Mobil, BP, Shell, take your war and go to hell!"

After only 20 minutes, the two Marines started packing up their table. Then we started chanting, "The students, united, will never be defeated!" Students standing nearby joined the chant.

Afterwards, we had a brief discussion with some fellow students who were interested in forming a campus anti-war/anti-military recruitment group. We also plan to go after the administration for allowing recruiters on campus and will protest at the neighborhood recruiting office.

The following week the recruiters failed to show, so we sold CHALLENGE and made speeches exposing the massacre in Fallujah.

The past several weeks have been filled with modest success but we understand it takes one step to start a journey.  We realize that the students were with us; by intensifying our efforts in developing closer ties with them and working through our student clubs, we can win these students to our revolutionary politics.

Who's Dying in Iraq?

Who are the young men and women dying in the massacre at Fallujah, or in Mosul, Baghdad and the rest of Iraq? American or Iraqi they have a lot in common. Jeffrey Lam, the child of Chinese immigrants, lived in Queens before joining the Marines.

He went to Bronx Science H.S., Pace University. He, like many others, has been described as a nice kid who had friends, did well in school. Then he joined the Marines because he was won to fighting in this imperialist war.

The Iraqi obituaries are similar, but dwarf in number the U.S. deaths. Over 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed, at a greater rate because the U.S. has more firepower.

The New York Times interviewed a low-level insurgent commander, who described their strategy in Fallujah. After deciding how many of their forces to save, they leave those wanting to become martyrs to draw the U.S. into a fight, and use the mounting civilian casualties to build anti-U.S. sentiment.

The Times described a wounded father in Falluja pleading for medical help from the U.S. soldiers as his wife and daughter lay shot in a house. The U.S. had attacked hospitals because they didn't want the doctors reporting the civilian casualties.

It is the sons and daughters of the working class who are being slaughtered in a cynical war to control the flow of oil.

The insurgent strategy is working to some degree. As expected, U.S. rulers are more than willing to kill tens of thousands of civilians. Fighting has now flared up all across Iraq. But there are also some signs in the U.S. military of soldiers becoming disillusioned with war. These flickers of consciousness need to be kindled. Soldiers who reject the bosses' orders need all the support we can organize, and need our politics to see there is an alternative to capitalism's butchery.

U.S. Army Traps Poor Workers in Rich Man's War

It is hot here in Iraq during the day. Today, my duty involves waiting for some TCNs (Third Country Nationals) hired to move some drums used by GIs to empty their guns. Two soldiers can do it in half an hour, but the war machine gives a million-dollar contract to a private contractor. The latter farms out the work to a subcontractor who in turn hires workers mainly from Pakistan, India and Nepal to do the job for very low pay.

Another story (of thousands here): Alam is a 22-year-old Nepalese man who came to Iraq because he was offered a job -- the only job he could find -- as an office worker in a Kuwait cafeteria. His dream ended there. He didn't know he was headed for Baghdad, not Kuwait, being part of the first group of TNCs to enter Iraq with the U.S. Army when the invasion began in 2003. He was to work in camps set up by the invading army.

Alam had only two options: either work in these camps or return to Nepal paying his own way. During the first weeks in Baghdad all he heard every second was missiles, shootings and explosions. After a month working in one of Saddam's palaces seized by the U.S. Army, a young man knocked on the front door in the building where he was living to ask for something to eat. When Alam came down from the second floor, he heard an explosion -- the young man had blown himself up. Alam was shocked and started running and yelling: "The Americans have weapons, helmets and gas masks to protect them, I have nothing!"

Gathering his belongings and, without knowing where he was going, he asked someone to take him to Kuwait. But he ended up working at a base south of Baghdad, a relatively safer place. But he can never forget what he had seen. He couldn't leave Iraq; they had taken his passport. He's now forced to remain in the middle of a war of rich against poor, where each day a few get rich and the many get poorer.

A GI somewhere in Iraq

Challenge Warmakers At California College

California--This term on campus has been filled with surprises and struggles, including an exposé of the mass murder and misery that U.S. imperialism has wrought in Iraq; its relation to worsening conditions for workers and students here; and a direct challenge to military recruiting on campus. PL'ers related all this to capitalism and the need for revolution

It began with a forum on labor, education and the military, organized by a group we're involved in. To dramatize the event, we handed out 400 pages, each filled with 63 ribbons, each ribbon representing the death of an Iraqi, and posted them on a tall picket fence. They completely covered the fence. We also posted photographs of dead GI's, including personal stats and how they died. These displays had a powerful effect on people viewing them, trying to grasp the amount of destruction and misery imperialism brings to the working class.

The forum's speakers linked the current imperialist war to conditions here. Hotel and other workers talked about cutbacks they're facing and a possible strike. One worker was fired for union activity, exposing the bosses' drive to maintain profits against rebellious workers. Military speakers outlined the miserable V.A. benefits and educational grants, which they're still waiting for. The speakers had a lot in common -- we're all working class!

We passed around an address, urging people to write their support to the families of the 18 soldiers in the 343rd company who refused to carry out orders -- more working class solidarity. We discussed the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry and the vital role soldiers play in resisting imperialism; these workers in uniform have the power to stop the war machine in its tracks through rebellions. They need worker/student support. A person in the audience declared that a system based on greed for a few, exploitation and war can only be ended with revolution for workers' power.

Weeks later we challenged the presence of military recruiters on our campus. They gradually were increasing the amount on duty, with no reaction from students. Eventually, the recruiters stepped up their presence, putting on a show with drag race cars and motorcycles. We decided to organize an immediate flash protest. We marched into the campus's main courtyard carrying banners with pictures of dead GI's while chanting, "Military recruiters off our campus!" and [the massacre in] "Fallujah means Fight Back!" Many people cheered and joined the chanting, bringing out a surprising number of students.

Then cops set up police tape around the military's luring traps. One comrade yelled, "Why are the police protecting the military so much!" In fact, students asked the same question. We explained that the cops and recruiters work for the same government and the same ruling class and that class needs more working-class people in the military because there aren't enough soldiers to keep fighting this war.

We realized we needed to specifically emphasize the need for military rebellions. Without rebellions, the war machine still runs.

The event demonstrated the power PLP has -- when we organize these kinds of struggles, changes happen. If we don't do it, as we learned, nobody will. So, let's do it!

College PL'ers Unite Anti-war Marchers with Striking Profs

CHICAGO, IL, Nov. 3 -- Tonight, the night after Bush's re-election, hundreds of people participated in an anti-war demonstration in Federal Plaza. A group of City College students under PLP's leadership, who've been active in the three-week-long teachers' strike there, linked the war and fascist Homeland Security to racist cutbacks in health and education, and offered communist revolution as the only solution. We planned to drive the point home by leading the rally to march to a "candlelight vigil" in Millennium Park, to support the strikers.

The night be-fore some of us made communist banners for the events. One read, "No Racist Cuts for War and Fascism!" The other, symbolic of the candlelight vigil, depicted a lit candle igniting a fuse to sticks of dynamite representing imperialism, education cuts and oil wars. Two arms broke their chains, one holding a copy of CHALLENGE and the other with a clenched fist. It was a long evening, but it showed the power of working collectively.

We proudly displayed both banners at the anti-war rally. While the organizers were calling for peace, we connected the war to the bosses' oil profits and homeland fascism, and attacked capitalism, not just Bush. We distributed hundreds of PLP leaflets and about 40 CHALLENGES to workers eager for a real solution to capitalism's unending wars for profit.

Then we led a break-away march to the vigil, organized by the Strike Solidarity Committee, a group of city college students and some faculty. Our banners led the march as we chanted, "Racist Cuts Mean, We Got to Fight Back! Oil Wars Mean, We Got to Fight Back!" We ignited the crowd already there to join our chants. We distributed more CHALLENGES and PLP literature to the students and striking professors, explaining that racist cuts in education, health care, pensions, and social security are financing the hundreds of billions of dollars the ruling class needs for the war in Iraq and fascist Homeland Security. As long as the bosses hold power, the needs of the working classes will never be met.

A young comrade from Malcolm X College made a speech about the necessity of fighting the system and called for communist revolution. We chanted, "The Only Solution is a Communist Revolution!" Many agreed, saying, "Yeah, it's revolution time." Out of this struggle, we made a few more contacts with students and more teachers, who are potential revolutionaries with valuable leadership experience.

We're learning how to work in mass organizations and build the Party, developing deeper, stronger relationships with old and new friends, and learning how to become better Party leaders. We're also gaining experience in collectively writing politically sharper leaflets, and in distributing and writing for CHALLENGE. We're now forming a PLP City College Club with some students close to joining the Party and with more who are interested in our ideas.

SF MUNI Drivers in Solidarity with Hotel Workers

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Nov. 16 -- Hotel workers in Local 2 of the UNITE-HERE union have been locked out for almost two months. Many transit workers at SF MUNI have demonstrated real class solidarity. "It's an important strike for all of us...if they lose, we all lose...I'm glad to be out here on the picket line but I wish we could do more..." At least for a day, a hotel picket sign with the MUNI solidarity poster ended up at a MUNI garage taped over a management poster.

The lockout presents many opportunities to bring a communist analysis of workers' struggles in this capitalist war economy. One driver spoke for many who recognize, "As long as scabs are in there and guests are checking in, the hotel owners won't give in." This sparked speculation about our own situation. Another said, "If we ever go out...there won't be anyone driving at MUNI...Not scabs, not supervisors...no one!" A group of us then discussed how to organize a job action, how to get enough drivers involved and how to respond to any attacks.

Some argue that Mayor Newsom is helping the workers when he threatens the owners with economic sanctions to end the lockout. Others agreed with the solidarity poster we took to the picket line: "Same Enemy, Same Fight -- Muni and Hotel Workers Unite -- Muni Supports Hotel Workers Fight."

The hotel owners and Newsom are basically on the same side. "Newsom's campaign got big money from the Hotel and Restaurant Associations because he ran on a platform of cutting city government. Cutting health care and layoffs is their common theme to fix the city budget and the hotels' shrinking profits."

A PLP member explained that in today's world of wars, strikes are illegal. The bosses control the politicians, laws, police and union leadership. This is the state apparatus, which sometimes appears neutral, but is there to control the workers. This produced more debates about voting and whether "ordinary people" like us could run society.

The union leaders picked the night of the monthly membership meeting to urge drivers to picket in solidarity with the hotel workers. This was just an excuse to call off the meeting while many issues regarding our schedules and take-home pay remain unresolved. They also instructed us not to wear our uniforms, making it impossible for many drivers to participate, since most of us are in uniform 12-14 hours a day with split shifts and long commutes home. In contrast, the union and management gave us time off to vote for Kerry or Bush, in or out of uniform.

Fascism and the Patriot Act were discussed after a supervisor complained about the solidarity poster in a driver's window. One driver said, "The bosses have the technology for total control and a police state. Many people seem to be just giving up their rights out of fear."

Many workers have bits and pieces of the big picture. A communist outlook is needed to bring it all together. Consistent engagement with our co-workers on and off the job with CHALLENGE, conversations and actions, with individuals and groups, and with organized study, helps to develop this outlook. You can put the pieces of a puzzle together, but you need the picture on the box to guide you. In this lockout, our picture includes the state apparatus, profits, political economy, war and fascism. CHALLENGE often says that strikes can be "schools for communism." School is in session at MUNI.

VW Workers Victimized by Union-Boss Partnership

FRANKFURT, Nov. 3 -- Volkswagen averted the first strike in its history, "promising" a seven-year job guarantee in return for a 28-month wage freeze. The 103,000 VW workers will get a one-time lump-sum payment of 1,000 euros, while the company will reduce labor costs by nearly one-third by 2011, its main objective in these talks.

Michael Fichter, a labor relations expert at the Free University of Berlin said the new contract "shows a remarkable ability to work together," and "is an example of the social partnership culture." This is university double-speak for nationalist class collaboration and the rise of fascism. It resembles what the U.S. auto industry has experienced since the 1980's.

VW pledged to invest in six plants in western Germany now that they're more competitive with low-wage factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other Central European countries. But they also said they would continue to shift production outside of Germany if "the economic equation was right."

Volkswagen's union, IG Metall, gave up the demand for a 4% pay increase under the cover of "warning strikes" at several factories. The union's chief negotiator said, "We achieved our goal of securing jobs."

The new contract also cuts wages for new workers. "From now on, new employees will work on the same level as our competitors," said a company spokesman. "We never asked as much from workers as in this round of negotiations."

Volkswagen's assault on the workers follows DaimlerChrysler and GM's Opel division winning concessions on wages and work-rules, reducing labor costs. VW and Opel in particular have excess capacity in their German factories. G.M. will slash 12,000 jobs from its European work force, mostly in Germany. VW plans to eliminate its excess capacity in the next two years. That doesn't square with "job security."

The week-long wildcat strike of Opel workers in Bochum last month reflected the anger of the workers who wanted to fight for their jobs. IG Metall, like the UAW in the U.S., cynically used the wildcat to get a say in how the cutbacks would take place. The only thing the Opel wildcat "achieved" is that G.M. is now negotiating the details of the cutbacks with the union.

As the inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens between the U.S., Europe and Asia, all the liberal and "social-democratic" labor leaders will, as Lenin said before World War I, "run to the tents of their masters." Ultimately, this nationalism will lead to more fascism in the workplace and eventually, another world war. Meanwhile, PLP has an opportunity to build a revolutionary communist movement among these basic industrial workers who are tied together across all borders. That international solidarity will lay the basis for turning the next world war into the last one.

Home Health Aides Can Be Real Force for Working Class

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 2 -- The big fight for overtime pay for home care workers is part of a bigger picture, of a half-trillion dollar war budget attacking the working class through job loss, declining wages and cutbacks in services, as well as the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis and nearly 1,200 GI's. Both presidential candidates took aim at Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Home care in NY State is a big program, with about 900 home care agencies, employing 250,000 workers. (See N.Y. State Association of Healthcare Providers, Inc. 2003 report on homecare.) Medicaid serves 186,000 sick and elderly patients and Medicare serves over 176,000. Thousands more have home care through private insurance and managed-care plans. In January, Medicare recipients will suffer a 17% increase in payments deducted from their Social Security checks, and it's possible patients will be slapped with $30 co-pays for home care services. "Many patients will have to choose food or homecare," said one worker. "And these are our loved ones!"

The government, insurance companies and health care agencies favor homecare because it's cheaper than nursing home or in-patient hospital care, due mainly to the racist exploitation of home care workers. The majority are immigrant, non-white women, many ex-factory workers. They work long hours for low pay and no overtime.

Most NY State non-union home care workers earn $5.15/hr.; union rates are $6.50 to $9/hr. Many routinely work 50 to 70 hours a week with no overtime pay, or a few pennies extra, just to make ends meet. Some work 24 hours at per diem pay -- which calculates to 12 hours at straight time and a night differential of $17.

Local 1199-SEIU is the biggest homecare union. The home attendant contract says there's no guaranteed work-day, -week or -year or hours of work; 24-hour-a-day workers are labeled "sleep-in" cases. They receive a per diem, not hourly, wage. Some 1199-SEIU home health aides will receive a so-called "living wage" of $10 an hour by 2007-2008 -- a bandaide covering a gaping wound. Actually the union "living wage" campaign was more about electing Democrats than fighting for workers.

A home attendant working 60 hours a week, 42 weeks a year for 15 years at $8/hr. straight base pay, has been robbed of $3,360 a year in overtime pay, or $50,400 over 15 years! If working 24 hours a day, 4 days a week at $113 a day with no overtime, 42 weeks a year for 15 years, the overtime robbery is $28,000 yearly or $420,000 for 15 years!

What criminal can get away with that?

The criminal is the whole capitalist system that robs and exploits workers while treating the sick and elderly like commodities and killing our children in wars for imperialist gains. It is a system that doesn't deserve to exist. "We need a revolution; I'm for that," said a Party member. "Let's fight for overtime and learn about capitalism and communism and how to prepare for revolution. The struggle is big and difficult, but the future is in our hands, if we will take it."

NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is prosecuting one Brooklyn agency for "legal" overtime pay. Now some agencies are counter-attacking against the growing fight for overtime. They're telling workers that by January weekly hours will be limited to 40. A worker needing more hours can work 40 at one agency and 20 at another. A few agencies say federal money for homecare is being held up because workers are not meeting "federal standards."

Agencies may take more slave-labor Workfare workers and part-timers, who are ineligible for union membership and benefits if working less than 80 hours a month. If home care workers don't unite and fight back, conditions will worsen and all workers will be dragged down to our level. That's how racist division and exploitation work. Many home care workers are scared and have been intimidated.

So what to do? "Let's strike," said one worker. "O.K.," said another, "But let's get ready first." A rank-and-file committee is continuing to collect names on our petition -- directed to NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and 1199-SEIU chief Dennis Rivera -- calling for overtime pay and a $17 hourly wage, and for equality with workers in hospitals and nursing homes. We've distributed thousand of flyers entitled, "Stop Robbing Us" at union meetings and rallies, at the home health aides' strike last summer and at the Central Labor Council union rally at the Republican National Convention. We're organizing a rank-and-file committee to reach out to co-workers. We're making ties with union delegates committed to our cause. We've held several meetings and are planning a larger one. We want to protest in NYC and Albany.

As the campaign broadens, we must be prepared for government and union efforts to co-opt, buy off and counter-attack. The best preparation involves workers becoming conscious of how the capitalist system works and who are our friends and enemies. More workers are reading CHALLENGE. A few are interested in PLP. These are the workers who are the potential core leaders. Let the fight continue!

At APHA Convention:
Condemn Health Workers' Participation in Torture

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 15 -- The recent convention of the American Public Health Association (APHA) passed two resolutions introduced by PLP members and friends. One condemned participation of health workers in torture, as happened at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The other denounced the denial of public services to undocumented immigrants and the criminalization of those providing such services.

For 15 years PLP members and friends in the health field have been participating in the American Public Health Association (APHA), a group with over 50,000 members, including community and public health workers, nurses, doctors and students. We've been at every national convention, usually attended by about 12,000 people, and involved in some local chapters. PL'ers and friends are deeply integrated into several working sections and have been elected to APHA's Governing Council. We've introduced, and won passage of, resolutions opposing wars for oil and against the militarization of public health.

The resolution on torture drew the historical lesson that doctors under past fascist regimes have been won to cooperate with the State. It called for education opposing fascist ideology in health professional training. Some of the most prominent "progressive" forces in APHA opposed using the word "fascist," and even any reference to Nazi Germany. This stimulated vigorous discussion lasting several days. Ultimately, it passed easily, replacing the term "fascist" with its definition as an ideology of racism, nationalism, militarism and suppression of civil liberties.

The second resolution -- condemning the denial of public services to undocumented immigrants -- (which passed as a Proposition in Arizona) was rejected by the APHA leadership as "repetitious" of old resolutions. But the Governing Council demanded its reintroduction and passed it, recognizing the new heights of anti-immigrant hysteria.

Party members and friends distributed thousands of leaflets exposing fascist trends in health care, including the above issues as well as the lack of treatment for AIDS worldwide and drug company control over prices and research. We were accompanied by hotel workers, who face drastic cuts in health coverage, but whose hotels APHA patronized.

About 20 people, including new and old friends, attended our breakfast for those who wanted to fight fascism in health care. There we planned resolutions and session proposals for next year. We're hoping to sponsor a group of talks focusing on government control of health care, including the alteration of science for political ends (global warming), and the need for health workers to choose loyalty to their patients over loyalty to the State or employers. This opposes the Administration's plan for universal mental health screening, massive psychiatric drugging and anti-immigrant policies. In one city where we're active in the local chapter, a grass roots campaign against racial disparities in health care will continue.

The APHA claims it represents the progressive, activist voice in health care, and is officially in favor of a single-payer national health plan. However, even though the convention was in Washington, and many members were calling for a mass march on the capitol -- which easily could have been organized after the opening session -- the leadership planned only a poorly publicized demonstration on Tuesday morning, in the middle of regular business. Thus, with no publicity, only a few hundred people showed up.

The leadership emphasized lobbying Congress, not on organizing a mass movement. Although the members have passed many progressive resolutions over the years, the organization takes little or no action to implement them.

Through our long-time consistent work, we've influenced many and are highly influential with a smaller number. We struggle with them to recognize that capitalism causes the problems in health care and society and cannot be reformed away. These struggles in the APHA expose the phoniness of the liberals, who are so blinded by the rulers' "democracy" blather that they avoid struggle or uttering words like "fascism" more than they care about fighting for what the members want.

APHA Members Back Hotel Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Hotel workers and APHA members jointly leafleted the APHA annual meeting in support of health benefits for hotel workers who are working without a new contract at the Holiday Inn and the Marriot and Hilton hotels. This activity grew out of local efforts by PLP members and friends to merge the forces of labor and public health in fighting for health care access and improved conditions of life for all workers. Soon many of the 12,000 APHA members were wearing stickers backing the hotel workers. Distribution continued at the booths of the medical care section and the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association throughout the convention.

The leafleting represented a move forward for the MWPHA in its effort to seriously fight racism and health disparities. Workers and professionals must unite in many such struggles to lay the basis for revolutionary change in the society and in health care.

Following the presidential election, many public health advocates were ready to renew the struggle for workers' health. Some joined the APHA rally for public health funding and lobbied Congress. Others protested the mayor's willingness to close D.C. General Hospital some years ago and open a baseball stadium instead, with profits flowing to the baseball owners.

Profits of Globalization, Mass Poverty and World War III

Between 1948 and 1995 world trade expanded from $124 billion to $10.7 trillion. During this period, no "third world" country prospered. World Bank and International Monetary Fund regulators made sure the biggest finance capitalists gained the biggest profits. "Free trade" apologists claim this is how the market operates. But there's little "free" about world trade. The current intensifying competition among the major imperialists resembles Europe in the years before World War I. In his recent book, "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic," Chalmers Johnson documents the growth of world trade and U.S. military expansion. By September, 2001, "the Department of Defense acknowledged at least 725 American military bases outside the United States."

In his 1916 classic, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," Lenin described how industries combine to control production and the market. Industrialists depend on the biggest banks to finance their expansion and devour their competitors. "The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still `reigns' and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the big profits go to the `genius' of financial manipulation."

The largest monopolists use the government, especially the military, to press their economic advantage internationally. In "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist....And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army." In the 83 years between Lenin and Friedman, imperialism has not changed how it functions.

The capitalists monopolize even the most fundamental necessities of life, food and water. The level of overall government agricultural subsidies in Western countries rose from $182 billion in 1995 to $362 billion in 1998. In 2002, these subsidies were six times greater than the total foreign aid from rich countries to poor. This led to dumping cereals, beef, pork, milk, butter, tomatoes and sugar on the international market. Poor countries can't compete, and stop producing many food products. Then, when milk prices rise, they have little choice but to import.

U.S.-based multinational agri-businesses also use "intellectual property rights" to extract profits from weak international competitors. For example, RiceTec, Inc., of Alvin Texas, attempted to patent a hybrid of India's basmati rice, which has been farmed for centuries. By owning patents, capitalists can charge royalties and licensing fees and even control who farms when and where. Similar behavior by pharmaceutical corporations severely restricts anti-AIDS medicines, leading to millions of preventable deaths, especially in the poorest areas of Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The continual drive for maximum profits pits the big capitalists -- who dominate manufacturing, oil, finance and agriculture -- into direct competition with upstart rivals or with each other, ultimately boiling over into armed conflict, as izn the Mid-East oil wars. Anticipating increasing challenges to its control of the area, the U.S. expanded its military bases in the Gulf region from one permanent base in 1990 to its current 15. Johnson concludes in his "Iraq Wars" chapter, "...the United States has been inexorably acquiring permanent military enclaves whose sole purpose appears to be the domination of one of the most strategically important areas of the world. Of course the United States has an interest in the oil in the region..."

Friedman claims U.S. imperialism and military power will bring peace and "democracy" to the Mid-East and beyond. Lenin had a different take on modern imperialism when he described it on the eve of World War I. His assessment has been borne out in the past 90 years of wars, and provides the most realistic predictions for 21st-century imperialism.

Lenin and his fellow communists did not fear the gathering war clouds in 1914. They viewed history as a science. They understood that imperialist war is inevitable under capitalism, and opens the door to communist revolution.

There's no use being sad about the weather. Just prepare for it. Capitalism has existed for only a few centuries. We can make sure that the 21st Century is its last. By building a mass international PLP among workers, soldiers and youth, we can turn the next world war into communist revolution. Then workers will produce what we need, and share it.

From Vietnam to Iraq:
The Fire Next Time

After suffering through too many pundits' post-mortems of the presidential election, it was refreshing to see CHALLENGE point the way forward with a history of GI rebellions. A good number of students, industrial workers and military families here were encouraged to read of "Red GI Off to Iraq with Red Ideas." Organizing in the bosses' armed forces is a crucial tactic to answer imperialism and, what looks like, an inevitable draft.

Unfortunately, the first paragraph on the front page "muddied the waters," in what was otherwise an extremely useful and timely series of articles. It concluded that "the army's mission will be seriously undermined" when hundreds of soldiers refused to report to duty. In my opinion, that's overblown. A nuisance, maybe even a big one, but hardly anything that would really challenge imperialism.

During the Vietnam War, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, fled to Canada. This passive response to the war never really threatened the bosses' imperialist plans. It couldn't!

However, when hundreds of thousands of soldiers "turned the guns on imperialism," General Westmoreland, supreme U.S. commander in Vietnam, began screaming in White House meetings to withdraw before the bosses lost the whole army. The jig was up!

The third paragraph points to a much more promising course of action. It tells of the Army's 343rd Quartermaster Company's refusal to obey orders. The army has sequestered the five leaders and will probably throw the book at them in hopes of intimidating others who want to do the same -- or more! At least two of these working-class leaders are black, making this a racist attack to boot.

During the Vietnam War, the Army employed similar intimidation tactics, most notability in the case of Private Billy Dean Smith. The brass wanted to convict Smith of fragging, blowing up an officers' barracks with a fragmentation grenade, the first case of its kind. They hoped white GIs would not rush to the aid of this African-American. In answer, our Party launched a campaign against this racist attempt to intimidate soldiers. So did others. I personally helped organize a demonstration of a few hundred supporters in a city near where I was stationed. In the end, Smith was freed and the GI movement grew.

It's a shame our Party did not have more members in the bosses' military at that time. The rebellion in the armed forces was a mass movement, but it lacked sufficient revolutionary communist leadership. The sharper we are on this question, the more prepared we will be for "the fire next time."

Red Veteran

Anti-Imperialist Action Is Cure For Election Blues

Despite all the disillusionment after the election, when students and workers are offered a real alternative to the crass opportunism and reformism of "anybody-but-Bush" liberals in the form of anti-imperialist and communist ideas, they respond -- with their fists in the air! My campus has traditionally had a reputation for its apathy and conservatism when it comes to politics and political practice. Yet, two recent events organized by the student-led anti-war group within which I've been base building have revealed a very different campus. A recent forum on the possibility of a military draft in the near future for US youths and an emergency demonstration against the offensive in Fallujah have shown me not only how receptive students and workers are to leftist and communist ideas and criticisms, but also how willing they are to participate in political actions that take a strong anti-imperialist stance against the racist and fascist abuses of the US ruling classes.

Over 130 students attended our forum on the potential reinstatement of a military draft in the U.S. Students sat on the floor and crowded at the doors after the 100 available seats were all taken, eager to listen to the presentation and engage in discussion over a future draft. Many important points were made, including that we already have a back-door draft in the form of an "economic draft" and the Bush administration's stop-loss policy. The U.S. need to wage endless imperialist wars to maintain its global domination means that the ruling class will need more "boots on the ground" to fight their profit wars. With enlistment down and resistance in the military beginning to become apparent, the US rulers will have no option but to draft working-class men and women to carry out their warmongering imperialist murderous plans. Many students were open to our ideas, agreeing that electoral politics will never end the atrocities of capitalism and its perpetual wars for profits. The need to build an anti-imperialist social movement, made up of workers, students and soldiers, was accepted as the only real solution to the evils and injustices of monopoly capital.

A large number of students were very excited and motivated by the ideas and arguments put forward at our forum, and began to come to our weekly meetings. The recent offensive in Fallujah, begun less than a week after the election, allowed us to channel this motivation into an emergency demonstration on our campus against the military escalation in Iraq with its mass slaughter. Surprisingly, we were able to plan a rally and march within twenty-four hours. At the rally, we distributed over 400 leaflets linking the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the cutbacks in education and health care, to attacks on workers' wages and pensions, and to the growing problems faced by students and workers here in the US. The rally brought out students, campus workers and even some professors. Speeches were made that outlined the real reasons for the US ruling class' war in the Middle East: the need to control Middle Eastern oil reserves and commercial markets to ward off potential imperialist rivals and maintain global hegemony. More importantly, the rally demonstrated that even on a supposedly conservative campus like mine, students and workers are willing to voice dissent and build resistance when presented with the truth.

The forum and especially the demonstration have brought my friends closer to PLP and attracted a number of new student activists who I can get to know. We are planning another demonstration next week. Despite all the talk of disaffection and disillusionment after the election, the opposite is becoming clear also. When offered something other than the crass opportunism and reformism of "anybody but Bush" liberals, when offered real change in the form of anti-imperialist and communist ideas, students and workers respond---and do so with their fists in the air!

LETTERS

Airport Workers Fight Anti-Communism

At the airport where I work, we recently published the first issue of a monthly newsletter called Airport CHALLENGE, and we're taking on the anti-communist attacks from a union misleader.

Airport CHALLENGE appears in English and Spanish with a communist view of the news and political struggles. The first edition was well received, especially among regular CHALLENGE readers. Because the post-9/11 U.S. looks more like a fascist police state, we should all develop many ways to get the Party's ideas to workers.

This issue reported a political struggle within the union, exposing a right-wing shop steward who turned traitor to become a company supervisor. He is so politically bankrupt that he tries to hide his own treachery by spreading anti-communist rumors and lies on the second shop steward, a PLP member.

Anti-communism is the bosses' tool to keep workers from gaining a revolutionary perspective on who their real enemy is, the fascist bosses and their capitalist system. Anti-communism, like its evil twin racism, is used to divide communist and non-communist workers from fighting back against the bosses' racism, sexism, etc. This way capitalism is saved and the bosses continue to oppress us all. Once millions of workers embrace PLP's communist politics, nothing will save the bosses from communist revolution, not even nuclear weapons! As a wise old comrade once said, "The worst prison is the mental one workers don't know they're in." Smash anti-communism and capitalism and join PLP!

Airport Red

Turn Anti-war Feelings into Anti-Imperialist Action

Recently a temporary anti-war exhibit opened in Monterey, California a few blocks from the Naval Post-Graduate School and the U.S. Army's Defense Language Institute where interpreters and interrogators are trained. Some wind up working in the torture chambers at military prisons like Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The memorial, located in a small one acre park, consists of 1,033 individual markers mounted on four-foot stakes with biographical details on each U.S. serviceperson who died in Iraq. To truly reflect the carnage that U.S. imperialism has brought down on 100,000 Iraqis killed since the invasion in March 2003 would require an immensely larger plot of land.

Hundreds of pacifist anti-war protests like this memorial and the more militant actions like last month's 343rd Quartermaster Company GI refusal of orders are the latest welling up of something the bosses hoped was dead but is now coming back to haunt them - the Vietnam Syndrome. We must apply our communist ideas to the anti-war sentiment and pacifism while struggling against their political weaknesses as we tried to do among the millions who marched against the start of the Iraq war and the millions before who protested the ten years of the Vietnam War.

Both Bush and Kerry support U.S. imperialism's war to maintain control of Mid-East oil. While we note the rise of anti-war feeling, we continue to organize for communist revolution, not just to end a war but to eliminate the cause of war. To this end our transit club is studying the latest prescription of the bosses' Council on Foreign Relations' Peter G. Peterson to put the U.S. on a permanent war footing, and we're circulating a petition to support the rebellious GI's.

Our goal is to turn the ghost of the Vietnam Syndrome into the breathing reality of the working class, led by its communist party, PLP, driving a stake through the hearts of the capitalist rulers once and for all.

Some of us know from our own experience over the last several decades that anti-war movements and even G.I. rebellions alone cannot end imperialist war. Only organizing a movement to overthrow the cause of imperialist war - capitalism's need for greater profits, markets, and resources - will root it out.

Canary Row Comrade

China-U.S. War Sooner Than Later?

This spring, I spent two weeks traveling around China, both in big cities and in the countryside. I thanked my city hosts for their hospitality, saying I would like to return the favor if they ever came to the U.S. They politely said they'd like to visit the U.S., but it's becoming impossible for Chinese citizens to obtain a visa to the U.S.

When the discussion turned to politics, I said I thought our countries would soon be at war. To my surprise, my friends sadly but wholeheartedly agreed.

In the countryside, restaurant owners, high school students and taxi drivers constantly asked me to compare China to the U.S. I asked them what they thought of the possibility of China going to war. Gravely they all said that one way or another that would happen soon.

I tried to figure out how this diverse group of people had formed this same idea. When I returned to the U.S., I read different Chinese newspapers almost daily. While most articles had the approach that the Chinese government was encouraging friendly business and cultural relations with the U.S., in July an incident occurred that answered my question.

Nearly all non-American trade with China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Indonesia travels through a mile-wide channel called the Straights of Malacca. Piracy is common there. The U.S. government claimed that if pirates could board cargo ships, so could "terrorists." They announced they would send warships to the Straights to guard against "terrorism."

Within hours of that announcement, China, Indonesia and Singapore made a joint public denouncement of this "obvious plot to control 60% of China's oil imports." The three governments said in so many words that the U.S. was making a direct imperialist challenge to their countries' trade and resources and that such a direct threat was intolerable. Within two days, Singapore sent their own warships to the Straights, pre-empting any U.S. deployment.

This incident was thoroughly reported in the Chinese media as a conflict between imperialists. I was surprised to see how directly the Chinese government challenged the U.S., and how widespread the coverage was in China. With such stories on the evening news, it's no wonder most Chinese see world war on the horizon. All summer, the Chinese government has made no secret of stockpiling oil, steel and other raw materials, driving up worldwide prices.

My conversations in China and this conflict over the Straights of Malacca led me to believe that this inter-imperialist rivalry might boil over even more quickly than I had ever imagined.

A reader

Recruiters Can't Hide Death in Iraq

At the Newark, NJ election day rally at a recruiting center (see CHALLENGE, Nov. 17), our chants disrupted the recruiting process enough to have one recruiter call the cops. Before they arrived, one recruiter closed the shades in a vain attempt to shield the potential recruits from our politics. When the cops came, one recruiter weakly responded to our chants by moving the large cardboard soldier cut-outs next to the window where we were marching. One demonstrator pointed out that the soldiers dying in Iraq were made of real flesh and blood, not cardboard.

Brick City comrade

Want College Info? Beware of Cops

I'm a NYC high school junior, and recently went to a college fair at the Javits center to get information on colleges. What I assumed would be a peaceful event filled with kids talking to college representatives, soon turned into a riot filled with kids being yelled -- and arrested -- by cops!

Many people showed, mostly African-American, Hispanic and Asian, so many that we were all waiting in a packed crowd outside to get in. Those in charge told us we'd have to wait. Then they let in a few people at a time, but they took in only three groups in an hour; many more were still waiting outside. Then, after letting in one more group, they told us the fair was over; we wouldn't be allowed in.

Well naturally, after waiting for an hour and a half the crowd would be angry, but we still remained non-violent.

Some people left but many stayed and began to chant, "Let us in! Let us in!" The officials continued saying there was no more room, that the colleges had "run out of information." More people left, but when many refused to go, the cops were called. About 10 showed up with some sheriffs, who explained to us how the colleges ran out of information. Then the cops yelled for us to "Get out!" They announced on a bullhorn that if we didn't leave they'd start arresting people. I began to feel I was in the twilight zone. I guess it was my first experience of a true capitalist society, arresting teens for trying to enter a college fair!

More people left after this but a good number went in. The cops barged into the crowd screaming to "get out." One cop was pushing people who wouldn't move. Then they began arresting kids. One boy was arrested for trying to go up the escalator to enter another way. A girl was arrested because she told a cop who grabbed her not to touch her. Similar arrests were made.

After the cops left, my friends and I went to the fair's exit to try to get in there; we didn't want to leave after standing for so long. But a guard stopped us, repeating the same crap the cops had told us -- no information left.

When a college representative ap-peared, we asked them if they had any information left. She said yes, and asked why we didn't come inside. We told her what had happened. She was appalled and said she'd be glad to give us information; she had 22 boxes left!

My friends and I began asking for information from more college representatives who came out and gladly gave us brochures, pamphlets and pens, and anything else they had. We left the Javits Center with bags packed with information about many colleges.

I couldn't help thinking of all the others who had left, and the ones who were arrested -- kids who came just to go to a fair, not a club or a concert, to find out about colleges. Those who got no information went home empty-handed because they were lied to and refused entry. Now why do you suppose that is?

High School youth

Cheer Anti-war Vets At Nov. 11 Parade

The TV news broadcasts of the NYC Veteran's Day parade showed only the Armed Forces drill teams marching in flashy uniforms accompanied by military bands. There was no footage of the militant, anti-war and wheelchair vets who were demanding the U.S. get out of Iraq and bring the troops home now.

From the time our anti-war veteran's group stepped off at 26th street to the parade's end at 56th Street, we were welcomed with loud cheering, clapping, and heartfelt hugs and embraces for those of us near the barricades. A young woman yelled out, "Bring my husband home, please," to our marchers, which included the mother of a soldier in Iraq. One vet had a sign showing how many millions of dollars the CIA spent training Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Looking into the faces of teenagers in the crowd, I had flashbacks to my own teens, being drafted to fight in an imperialist war in Korea. The purpose of this parade was to prepare youth for a draft, which in many ways has already begun. Our Party needs to reach out to these kids so they feel supported and less isolated.

The day before I had been picketing with the vets at the VA hospital to prevent the VA from shutting it down. Vets like these are 33% of the homeless in the U.S. They're part of a half million soldiers denied treatment for the effects of Agent Orange, a poison sprayed on people in Vietnam, and for cancer-causing depleted uranium embedded in destroyed military equipment covering much of Iraq. Over 120,000 vets are on a 6-month wait list for a doctor's appointment. Many wounded vets are housed in ancient, cold and inaccessible World War II barracks where they must walk blocks in the snow to get to an outdoor toilet.

If PLP keeps spreading our politics to future soldiers - like at recent recruitment-center rallies - about how capitalism/imperialism causes wars, we can supply the understanding these soldiers will need not only to organize against the brass, as many did in Vietnam to help stop that war, but to take it to the next level - communist revolution as the Russian soldiers did in 1917.

Korean War Vet

Union `Study' Evades Hiring of Black Workers

The activity in support of the hotel strike in San Francisco has been consistent and enthusiastic. However, the CHALLENGE article (11/17) contains an error.

All that glistens is not gold and the union's diversity clause to force bosses to hire black workers really isn't progressive. It turns out the union is demanding that the hotels hire an ombudsman to sit on a diversity committee to discuss the possibility of hiring black workers in the future, not demanding outright hiring now.

"There is an awful lot of anger," Langston Hughes used to say, "in a dream deferred." The anti-racist rebellions of the 1960s played out this story over and over again. Black workers demand immediate redress of racism; reactionaries suggest a (time-delaying) "study" of the situation.

Perhaps we could return to the picket lines with a simple demand like 10 of the next 15 workers the hotels hire must be black, a demand that strikers and their supporters could take to schools and churches asking for picketing support.

Also, we might awaken the revolutionary potential dormant in the whole working class if PLP clubs elsewhere carried the same demand to hotels in their areas. This would address the question of workers' unity in a direct and dynamic way.

Black workers joining the hotel workforce in greater numbers would counter the isolation so often felt by immigrant workers. It's demands like this that build the kind of unity we need.

We should also link the general attack on all U.S. workers stemming from the rising racism in, and the unbearable costs of, the U.S. war in Iraq to the particular situation hotel workers face here.

SF strike supporter

Disabled, Home Care Workers Have Same Class Interests

A recent article, "Home Attendants 'Zoned for Slavery,'" outlines the brutal working conditions for union members who provide home health services in New York City. It's important to build class-consciousness among these workers. To do that we must put their exploitation in context: Who are the people who rely upon home health services? Why is providing the care they need valued so little? Why is more paid to perform a task in a nursing institution than in a person's home?

The folks who need home health care services are workers, their children, siblings, and parents. Whether disabled from birth, an accident, illness or old age, they're working-class folks. I live in California, but I suspect the situation is much the same all over: Low-income disabled and elderly people get care through In-Home Support Services (IHSS) which receives funding from both the federal and state governments. Washington has cut its contribution, and California, in turn, is slashing the program. This program is for poorer people; the majority of those receiving Social Security do not qualify for IHSS because their incomes are "too high."

Caring for the working class -- particularly those who cannot produce -- is not a big priority in a capitalist society based on profit. Both the workers who provide this vital assistance and the folks who need it are treated as expendable. They're natural allies and many disabled people know it. The latter have lobbied and demonstrated for better treatment and compensation for those who assist in their survival. When they can, they supplement their helpers' wages from their own limited resources.

Finally, why is the pay better (though not by much!) in an institution? One factor is the nursing-home industry, a powerful, profit-making group which supports laws favoring institutionalization over in-home care. Disabled workers are forced into these warehouses because they cannot get government aid to stay home in their communities. Also, where more service workers are concentrated in one place (a hospital or nursing home), they may be able to squeeze a little more out of their bosses.

Disabled Worker

P.S. A good source is author and commentator, Marta Russell, whose website is http//www.martarussell.com.

Vote Or Die Is a Death Threat!

One method the bosses use to control the working class is pushing nationalism. Simply put, this belief says your group of people is superior to another group of people. One example is Pan-Africanism or black nationalism, from the late 1960's up to today. The current "Hip-Hop Power" political movement under Russell Simmons, Puff Daddy and others, wants to forge a new nationalism by making Hip Hop a political force. They seek to create a Hip Hop Party as a feeder to the Democratic Party, with a Hip Hop political action summit.

Recently I attended Russell Simmons' "Get Out The Vote Concert." It said electoral politics is the answer to the oppression of the working class. The concert was squarely aimed at students, sponsored by Playstation 2 and featured Hip Hop celebrities racing video cars. The black nationalist group "Public Enemy" also appeared, as did Mary J. Blige, and other artists who appealed to youth. They all pushed voter registration and are a major part of "Hip Hop Culture," another word for Hip Hop nationalism.

The real danger came from Democratic Congressman Charles B. Rangel, who spoke along with Democrat Andrew Cuomo. When Rangel appeared, I started yelling, "No Draft!" and began informing those around me that he sponsored the draft bill recently defeated in Congress. The audience was receptive to my ideas; some participated in shouting at him. Rangel seemed visibly shaken.

Seeing Andrew Cuomo speak also suggests he might be a potential Hip Hop candidate for political office.

The amount of glitz, glamour and cash being given to the "Vote or Die" movement clearly shows the ruling class's commitment to ideologically attach students to the system. We must show that voting is like choosing between Pepsi and Coke - either way they're both soda, contain no nutritional value and will kill you if it's all you drink.

By struggling with those who came with me, leading a chant that clearly shook Rangel, and patiently building in the arts, I'm able to keep spreading our advanced political line. More Party members should enter the arts - film acting, slam poetry and writing. Every open mike, every bare stage, every homemade movie, and every music track is a potential artistic tool for recruiting to PLP. We must create Communist culture through the arts to oppose the sugary poison of the bosses' rotten "Vote or Die!" politricks being spoon-fed to the youth.

Manhattan Comrade

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations:

NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Troops expose lies on Iraq

Carlos Perez quit school, left his job as a firefighter in Long Island, New York, and joined the US Marine Corps.

"To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge," said Perez, 20.

Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of September 11 and the war he is fighting....

"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said....

Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews Marines from a platoon known as the "81s"expressed in blunt terms their frustration....

"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years," said Lance Cpl Edward Elston, 22.... It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal....

Several members of the platoon said they were struck by the difference between the way the war was being portrayed in the US and the reality of their daily lives....

"But when you're here, you know it's worse everyday." (GW, 10/28)

Sec'y cites US war crime

"We lucked out," Mr. McNamara, now 88...who was secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson....says of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. "It was luck that prevented nuclear war." Of the firebombing of Japan in World War II, and his boss, Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, he recalls: "LeMay said that if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. I think he's right." (NYT, 11/6)

Public anger hits US allies

Hungary announced Wednesday that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq....

Many governments face increasing public opposition to the war....

Spain's Socialist government withdrew its 1,300 troops after it swept into power last March.... The Dominican Republic withdrew 302 soldiers, Nicaragua 115 and Honduras 370. The Philippines withdrew its 51 in July....Norway withdrew 155 military engineers....

Poland, the fourth largest contributor, with 2,400 troops, says it intends to withdraw by the end of next year, and the Netherlands, with 1,400 troops, said this... rotation of troops would be its last contribution to Iraq.

New Zealand is withdrawing its 60 engineers and Thailand said it wanted to bring home its 450 troops. Singapore has reduced its contingent to 33. (NYT, 11/4)

Profits outrank death risk

Merck and federal officials should have withdrawn the painkiller Vioxx from the market as early as 2000 because studies of the drug had clearly shown that it doubled the risk of heart attacks among users, according to a study released yesterday by The Lancet, a British medical journal....

"Vioxx, Merck and the F.D.A. acted out of ruthless, short signed and irresponsible self-interest," wrote Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. (NYT, 11/5)

US backed Iran despotism

Like most observers, Mr. Pollack sees the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh as a defining moment for Iranian attitudes toward America. "What is the most knotty for the United States," he writes , "is that the popular Iranian version of history portrays Mossadegh as a wildly popular prime minister forging a new, democratic Iran fully in command of its own destiny, who was overthrown by American agents to prevent Iran from achieving political and economic freedom."

"....There is a kernel of truth in it, and therein lies the rub; the United States did help to overthrow Mossadegh, and it was culpable in the establishment of the despotism of Mohammed Reza Shah that succeeded him." (NYT, 11/9)

`Winning friends' in Iraq

Troops were still combing the deserted houses in southern Falluja on Sunday....

Fearing booby traps, the troops generally entered the houses only after tanks rammed through walls....

Outside Falluja, the insurgency rages on, amid intelligence reports that the battle has become a big recruiting draw for young Arab men in mosques from Syria to Saudi Arabia. (NYT, 11/15)

100,000 Iraqi civilians die

About 100,000 Iraqi civilians -- half of them women and children -- have died since the invasion, mostly as a result of coalition airstrikes, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.

The biggest death toll recorded by the researchers was in Falluja. (GW, 11/11)