The U.S.-backed French invasion of Mali with its 15 million people is geared to strip this country of its vast natural resources while hiding behind the Bush “war-on-terror” label. They use this label in the hope that it will generate unquestioning support for whatever the imperialists do in its name. This racist attack on innocent workers is occurring in the eighth nation in four years alone in which Western regimes are killing Muslims.
French bosses have a long history of colonization in Mali, having also established military bases in neighboring Niger, Chad and Burkina. So far they have sent in 4,000 troops equipped with armored vehicles, helicopter gunships and 40 airplanes which bombed Northern Mali. They hope for 5,800 more forces from other African capitalist countries.
Initially the air attacks killed 11 civilians, including three children who drowned as they fled into a river trying to escape the bombs, as well as other workers and their families in or near their homes, said the mayor of Konna. He fled the town with his family, reporting “significant infrastructure damage” (News Beacon, Ireland, 1/15). The bombings have displaced an estimated 30,000 people.
This flies in the face of a promise by French Socialist (read capitalist) president François Hollande who said “France would never be in the front line but would only provide logistical aid, without fighting” (le Canard enchainé, 1/23). It also violates the 1995 agreement with Mali on technical military “cooperation” which stipulated that “French soldiers cannot participate in the preparation and execution of war operations” (Canard, 1/23). But, of course, imperialist neo-colonialists regard such “agreements” as mere scraps of paper.
Still Another War for Obama
and U.S. Rulers to Escalate
Obama’s war machine is knee-deep in this French operation. Not only were U.S. rulers “providing intelligence to French forces in Mali” (News Beacon, 1/15) but, “The U.S. military has based a growing number of armed Predator drones as well as F-15 fighter jets at Camp Lemonnier, which has grown into a key installation for secret counterterrorism operations” in the Horn of Africa (Washington Post, 1/14).This is all “part of a more than $500 million…program to train and equip armies across the Sahara….American Special Forces provided Malian infantry troops with training in marksmanship, border patrol, ambush drills and other skills” (NYT, 1/25).
Furthermore, the past “overthrow of the Malian government [which destabilized the country] was enabled by U.S.-trained-and-armed soldiers….Commanders of this nation’s elite army units , the fruits of years of careful American training, defected…taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy” (NYT, 1/14) It was, “An American-trained officer [who] overthrow Mali’s elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists” (NYT).
Meanwhile, NATO countries — Canada, Belgium, Denmark and Germany — “have publicly backed the French incursion, pledging logistical support” (News Beacon). Britain has helped transport French troops to Mali and its Prime Minister David Cameron “has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretense at consultation” (columnist Owen Jones in the British Independent, 1/14).
This invasion has little to do with “terrorism” but rather is based on the usual reason for imperialist adventures: natural resources. Mali is rich in gold (Africa’s third largest producer); diamonds, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, copper, gypsum, phosphate, lead, zinc and lithium. And “Mali’s petroleum potential [is] already attracting significant interests from investors….Mali has stepped up its promotion and research for oil exploration, production and potential exports” (News Beacon). It “could also provide a strategic transport route for Sub-Saharan oil and gas exports through to the Western world” (News Beacon).
Blood for Uranium
The French bosses’ main interest in Mali revolves around uranium whose exploration is now in full swing. Following the 1973 oil shock, French rulers opted for nuclear energy. Its 59 nuclear reactors lead the world. These reactors generate nearly 80 percent of its electricity, making it the world’s largest net electricity exporter. Although Niger has been France’s primary source of uranium, Mali has an estimated 5,200 tons of untapped uranium sources. Malians have set up community organizations in mining areas, protesting the potential environmental degradation and outflow of resources to imperialist beneficiaries.
Much of the instability in Mali stems directly from NATO’s intervention in Libya. The Tuareg people, “who traditionally hailed from northern Mali, made up a large portion of [Muammar Gaddafi’s] army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland, sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in [‘liberated’] Libya” (British Independent, 1/14) Alongside them, “Heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamic fighters returned from combat in Libya...The big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back” played the precipitating role [along with the Mali troop defections] in the collapse of the U.S.-supported central government” (NYT, 1/14, and British Guardian, 1/14). Blowback with a vengeance.
Obama’s second term has begun by joining newly elected French Socialist/capitalist president Hollande in still another racist/imperialist war spreading across northern Africa. In order to extract valuable natural resources for the profits of French, U.S. and other capitalists, they are killing black workers, much as their racist cops kill black and Latino workers on the streets of big U.S. cities and as French bosses super-exploit black African and Arab immigrant workers in France. Such racist wars are used to try to win masses of French workers to accept austerity in the name of restoring French bosses’ power.
It is only a communist revolution that creates a society run by and for the workers that can end this profit-hungry capitalist hell.

By choosing Chuck Hagel as his Secretary of War to head the U.S. killing machine, Barack Obama is intensifying a dogfight among bosses over war policy. The same struggle recently did in Obama’s beloved General David Petraeus and was an underlying issue in last November’s election. Neoconservatives are seeking to make war “on the cheap” (reliance on drones and special forces instead of heavy troop deployment).  They are fixated on Iran’s threat to Israel. Obama’s camp, by contrast, is focused on longer-haul preparation for a broader global conflict. The neocons’ latest volley is a phony charge of anti-Semitism against Hagel, who has questioned whether the U.S. ruling class is best served by giving Israel a political blank check in its war of occupation against the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the liberal New York Times (1/10/13) claims that Hagel, who was wounded in Vietnam, “harbors a healthy skepticism about deploying American troops.” Hagel’s great sin in the neocons’ eyes is failing to push for a U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran. It’s not that the former U.S. senator has any aversion to bloodshed, however. Like Obama, Hagel represents the dominant finance wing of U.S. capitalists, a faction that believes the survival of its class will ultimately hinge on winning an all-out struggle with China or another imperialist rival.
Hagel currently chairs the Atlantic Council, a think tank that helps develop foreign policy for the benefit of its imperialist bankrollers. Topping its donor list are Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, Citigroup, the Rockefeller Family Trust, George Soros, NATO and the Defense Department.
Last month this outfit issued a report titled “Envisioning 2030: U.S. Strategy in a Post-Western World,” which takes a close look at Asia and particularly China. The paper urged Obama to “frame second-term policies from a more strategic and long-term perspective, recognizing…the likelihood that the United States’ actions now will have generational consequences.” To the Atlantic Council, “opposition to any hegemon or hegemonic coalition dominating the Eurasian landmass” is the top priority.
Targeting Capitalist China
The report specifies that prime strategic concerns for the U.S. include “China’s military build-up (12 percent annual increase in defense spending since 2000) and lack of transparency; diplomatic differences (e.g., Syria, Iran, North Korea); and China defining its ‘core interests’ in East Asia with an ‘anti-access, area denial’ strategy that would conflict with U.S. freedom of navigation and, over time, displace the United States in East Asia.”
Hagel & Co. pretend to hope for “deepened cooperation” with China. But they also acknowledge a “historic pattern of a rising power posing a strategic threat to the status quo. If this pattern holds true with China, and “the United States-China relationship becomes more competitive than cooperative…this could be catastrophic for the world.…Conflict will be difficult to avoid.”
Addressing China’s vast troop superiority, the Atlantic Council thinks the U.S. is already on track toward mustering sufficient cannon fodder: “China’s growing strength and assertiveness has, in effect, helped the United States galvanize a potential coalition of allies and partners, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and India to check Chinese power.” As an “ace in the hole,” Hagel’s “Envisioning 2030” features a spreadsheet emphasizing the huge U.S. advantage over China in nuclear weapons. (It warns, however, of Russia’s near nuclear parity with the U.S.).
In choosing Hagel to head the U.S. war effort, Obama represents the interests of Exxon, Rockefeller and Soros. Anti-Hagel forces are led by Israeli-U.S. casino magnate and publisher Sheldon Adelson, who spent nearly $100 million in campaign donations in a fruitless effort to defeat Obama last year. “The Republican Jewish Coalition, on whose board of directors Mr. Adelson sits, was among the first to criticize the Hagel nomination” (NYT, 1/13/13). A close friend of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, Adelson is hell-bent on U.S.-Israeli bombardment of Iran’s nuke sites.
But the Hagel crowd fears that an attack on Iran will only entrench the Ayatollah and intensify anti-U.S. feelings among Muslims. Israel’s gutter-racist rulers are a growing liability for the Hagel-Rockefeller faction. “Envisioning 2030” mentions Israel only in the context of a Palestinian problem that will endure through 2030.
Hagel in the Imperialist Mold
In boosting Hagel, liberal Time Magazine (1/8/13) tellingly evoked U.S. leaders of the last world war: “FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were men whose judicious application of American blood and treasure flowed from an appreciation of the country’s political, economic and military limitations as well as its potential….Hagel is a man very much in the mold of these men.”
These three presidents, respectively, put 16 million U.S. workers in uniform during World War II; dropped genocidal atom bombs on workers in Japan, and led the U.S. invasion of Europe. As Exxon heir Senator John D. Rockefeller IV said of Hagel, “This is the type of proven leader we need at the Defense Department.” Retired General Colin Powell, creator of the military doctrine for “overwhelming force,” gushed on NBC-TV (1/13/13), “He will fight a war if it’s necessary, but he’s a guy who will do it with great deliberation and care.”
It stands to reason that Hagel will “deliberately” scrap useless Cold War weaponry, using the money to develop more advanced weapon systems to fight future wars. He will also back Obama’s Dream Act in order to funnel an influx of Latino immigrant youth into the military death machine with the promise of citizenship. The bosses are desperate to expand U.S. ground forces, which are absolutely necessary to hold a landmass in any future conflict.
Beware Rulers’ Nationalist-Racist Barrage
To accomplish their aims, the rulers need the support of the U.S. working class that both fights the bosses’ wars and produces the weapons required for them. To get it, they will intensify the barrage of racist and nationalist propaganda to defend “our” country against the U.S. bosses’ rivals, currently China.
But the capitalists face problems in reaching their goal. Millions of black and Latino workers and youth are either incarcerated in prisons or victims of constant racist attacks by the police. They are impoverished by the capitalist system and especially by mass racist unemployment. They cannot be counted on to carry out the bosses’ war plans.
Furthermore, the Great Recession has become a way of life in the U.S. The world economic crisis is even more devastating to masses of workers in the “coalition” countries the U.S. is counting on for cannon fodder for its global goals. How willing will those workers be to fight for U.S. imperialism?
Obama’s domestic “four-year plan” involves more intense anti-immigrant policies — where funding already exceeds the outlay for the CIA, FBI and DEA combined — alongside cuts in education, health care and wages. Hundreds of thousands of teachers have been laid off, with more to come. Insurance companies, HMOs and the big pharmaceutical firms are counting on the profits to be milked from Obamacare. Meanwhile, Obama has already agreed to cuts in Social Security and Medicare, on which millions of retirees depend. He also helped GM and Chrysler cut wages in half for newly hired autoworkers.
Upwards of 30 million workers in the U.S. are either jobless or can’t find full-time work. Millions of them will never find another job, an insoluble problem that is intrinsic to the bosses’ system. Capitalism has full employment only when the rulers “employ” workers to fight world wars.
What Everyone Does Counts
Our class doesn’t need another global conflict, however “careful” and “deliberate” the capitalists’ war-makers are portrayed. What we need is the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party to lead class struggle against the capitalist bosses and build PLP into a mass party. What we do in the coming period is crucial in explaining to our class why increased austerity, economic crises and war strategies are all that an imperialist system has to offer. Communist ideas historically have led the international working class to meaningful advances — whether in World War II, against Jim Crow racism, or in the mass unionization of workers in basic industries.
Our ultimate victory will come from winning masses of workers to understand that only communist revolution can destroy the bosses and their profit system and establish a worker-run society without these evils. To this end, what every one of us does counts.

WESTERN CAPE PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA, January 12 — Thousands of farm workers toiling in this area’s vineyards and on grape and fruit farms have been wildcatting since October 30, demanding doubling of their starvation wages. The region is of huge financial importance to both wine production and tourism, but the farm workers still feel the brunt of Apartheid abuses, which is netting huge profits for the vineyard owners, in a $3.3 billion industry.
The strikers have clashed with bosses, scabs, private security goons and the police who have fired rubber bullets at the workers and called in helicopters for reinforcements. But the workers have answered back.
In the town of Grabow the strikers armed with clubs have been fighting running battles with riot cops. They have barricaded key highways to cause maximum disruption and to prevent scabs from getting to the farms. It was only when they set fire to bushes, caravans, bulldozers and police cars that the government began to pay attention.
The strikers blocked the major highway running through DeDoorms, hurling stones. The town is in the center of one of the biggest vineyard areas producing for the grape export industry. On January 9, the wildcatters burnt tires and cars and threw stones at the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. The battle closed the main highway linking Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The workers are demanding a wage hike to $17.65 per day, more than double their current $8 daily wage. One worker told Reuters he had worked on the farms since the 1970s when the daily wage was 45 rand [$5]. “Now we get 65 rand [$8]. What is that?” he said. “We want 150 rand [$17.65].”
 A strike leader, Shaun Janca, told the Daily Maverick, “We work our whole lives but still we have nothing.”
The area is one of the most affluent and financially viable produce areas in the country but pay the workers hunger wages. An August 2011 report from Human Rights Watch detailed the horrendous working and living conditions practiced by local farm owners: housing unfit for living; exposure to fertilizers and pesticides without proper safety equipment; lack of access to water while working in dehydrating conditions; lack of toilet facilities; threats of evictions and pressure on workers to stop them from joining unions.
The bosses also hire immigrant workers from outside the country who often don’t have passports. This enables profit-hungry farm owners to super-exploit a vulnerable migrant labor force and set them against local workers.
This uprising follows on the heels of widespread strikes of platinum miners and truckers who suffer from similar conditions and battled for some of the same demands several months ago, seeing the cops murder 34 of their brothers. South Africa is seething from the continuation of the Apartheid of the old white regime that is now run by the African National Congress government. Black oppressors have joind white ones and capitalism’s racist exploitation reigns on. A strike leader told the BBC that they have been met with nothing but “naked racism and white arrogance.”
Such militant struggle by these farm workers needs to be turned into class struggle against the whole racist capitalist system to emancipate the working class from the hell of the profit system.

NEW YORK CITY, January 16 — The worldwide capitalist system is facing an economic crisis that the bosses are trying to solve on the backs of workers. Here, this means high unemployment, hospital and school closings and attacks against many of the few remaining good-paying jobs. Therefore, it’s significant that 8,800 school bus drivers and matrons are striking against cutbacks by New York’s ruling class.
Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott pretend to care about students, but their lies shine through, given that they’ve slashed the budget for public schools. Furthermore, Bloomberg has overseen attacks on city workers, higher transit fares and less funding for hospitals — all of which means that the entire working class will suffer. Meanwhile the city spared no expense in getting Wall Street back up and running after hurricane Sandy. In this context, it’s a great thing that bus drivers and matrons are standing strong.
This strike should be viewed as a good thing for students. When workers stand up and resist, we are teaching young people about the importance of not accepting capitalism’s injustices. A school bus strike has not occurred in NYC since 1979. When workers don’t resort to strikes, it only encourages the bosses to take more from us. Only when we strike do we force them to recognize our importance, that it’s we workers who produce all value. And we remind ourselves and the next generation of our potential power.
It is no mere coincidence that the city government’s attempt to open up city contracts affects mainly black and Latino workers and students. Capitalism’s racist nature means that in times of crisis it is black and Latino workers who suffer the most. In employment, health care and education, racism acts to super-exploit a section of the working class. Bloomberg & Co.’s attempts to undermine bus driver/matron job security will make school bus companies places with higher turnover and unsafe conditions. The bosses hope this will then weaken unions and reduce wages.
Unfortunately, even if this strike forces the bosses to concede the workers’ current demands, more fights lie ahead. No matter what gains unions and social movements achieve under capitalism, the bosses will always use their state power to take them back. This is because their system is inherently unstable and competitive. When the economy crashes, workers are expected to pay the price. The constant competition among the bosses in the U.S., China and Europe leads to wars worldwide over oil, markets and other resources. This then spells more cutbacks for publically funded workers here. This is the future that capitalism offers workers of the world: war and poverty.
 That is why the Progressive Labor Party fights for communism. We want to build a world free of the bosses and their exploitation. We want to smash racism, the main tool of the bosses to maintain their power. As we encourage all New Yorkers to stand in solidarity with the striking bus workers, we invite you to join us.