1. ALL SCENARIOS LEAD TO IMPERIALIST OIL WAR
   1. Scenarios for War
   2. Imperialism Leads to War -- Smash It With Revolution
2. Elections Show Capitalist Parties Partners Against Working Class
   1. NO `LESSER EVILS'
3. U.S. RULERS WAGE NUCLEAR WAR
4. PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS REJECT RIDGE AND WAR PLANS
5. AFSCME Retirees Hear NYC Cuts Linked to Iraq Invasion
6. DEMOCRATS JOIN BUSH IN
   UNION-BUSTING ATTACK ON MILLION
   FEDERAL WORKERS
7. Profits Prevent A Living Wage
8. China's Capitalist Party Rides Roughshod Over Workers
9. Anti-War Conference Shows
   Students Want, Need, Defend Red Ideas
10. Outdoing the Nazis . . . Homeland Insecurity
11. Rulers' Racism Runs Rampant
12. LAPD War on Terror in
    South Central LA
13. WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
    1. Upping the Ante Among Industrial Workers
    2. Does `Bowling' Score A Strike or A Spare?
    3. Scared by Election But Ready to Respond
    4. Millions in Italy Hit
       Bosses' Barrage
    5. ILWU Chiefs Misled Workers on War
    6. Backing Steel Bosses
       Is No Solution
    7. Listen to Your Nurse
    8. Wage System Rx For
       Capitalist Robbery
    9. CHALLENGE comment:

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ALL SCENARIOS LEAD TO IMPERIALIST OIL WAR

Despite the Republican election victory, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class appears to be gaining control of U.S. foreign policy, especially in regards to Iraq.

Several months ago, the Cheney-Rumsfeld "go-it-alone" faction of the Bush White House was spoiling for an immediate fight. However, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon, led by Colin Powell, realized the stakes were far too high to invade half-cocked. They arm-twisted Bush into first getting Congressional approval for war powers and then new UN weapons inspections in Iraq.

The current UN farce is a cover for U.S. concessions to French, Russian and Chinese imperialists, and allows U.S. imperialism to get its ducks in a row before the shooting starts. While we can't predict the timetable, another war to control Iraqi oil is coming. It will lead to a spiral of ever wider and more lethal fighting.

U.S. imperialism's control of energy supplies remains crucial to global domination. The main Persian Gulf oil producers hold 63% of the world's proven oil reserves. Only Saudi Arabia has more than Iraq -- and Iraq may well have vast amounts of as yet undiscovered reserves. U.S. rulers will stop at nothing to control this prize. While their rivals still cannot challenge them directly, every bloody step the U.S. takes will sharpen contradictions within the Persian Gulf, and between the U.S. and its chief competitors.

The capitalist law of maximum profit is written in workers' blood. We must prepare for war by building a mass PLP and the movement for communist revolution.

Scenarios for War

The present situation is still highly fluid, and could develop in several directions over the next few years. Each will lead to the increasing isolation of U.S. imperialism.

In the rosiest scenario for U.S. rulers, Saddam and his Republican Guard are quickly defeated and a new, pro-U.S. puppet government turns Iraq into an investment paradise for Exxon Mobil. Iraqi oil production reaches 8 million barrels a day, and world oil prices go below $20 a barrel. OPEC would no longer have firm control over prices and supply. U.S.-imposed lower prices could wreck the profits and economies of OPEC producers. As a former Iraqi oil minister said, 8 million barrels of Iraqi oil a day would be "the greatest problem ever faced by OPEC." (Fortune, 11/25).

At the other end of the spectrum, the U.S. "coalition" gets bogged down in a tough fight and civilian casualties are high (The international health organization Medact predicts as many as 500,000.) The U.S. wins the military battle, but a prolonged occupation makes U.S. troops easy targets for al Qaeda terrorist attacks. Oil prices rise, and the world economy continues its present slump, or worse. In reaction to worsening conditions, strikes could erupt in the U.S. which would face intense repression from the U.S. bosses' heightened police-state apparatus.

Saddam could sabotage Iraq's oil fields as he did in Kuwait, and Israeli bosses could use the turmoil to further their own military agenda. The bin Laden forces will not give up trying to wrest oil wealth from U.S. hands and Iranian bosses won't allow themselves to be outstripped by a pro-U.S. Iraq. Every scenario runs the risk of fanning anti-U.S. hatred and sparking nationalist/religious rebellions throughout the Arab/Muslim world. Political and economic rivalries between the U.S. and the other major imperialists will intensify as relations begin to resemble pre-World War II Europe.

Imperialism Leads to War -- Smash It With Revolution

The stakes of another Iraq war are very high. The dangers are great. Some members of the U.S. national security establishment aren't ready to let Bush unleash the slaughter. But most signals point to war relatively soon. There is an ongoing build-up of U.S. military hardware and personnel in the Gulf. The Air Force has increased the number of targets and bombing raids against radar and command and control centers in Iraq's "no-fly zones." The U.S. is preparing an Iraqi puppet "exile army." The Horn of Africa, a choke-point along the oil route out of the Persian Gulf, is becoming a U.S. military base to develop "skills that could be applied in Washington's campaign against terrorist groups or on the battlefields of Iraq." (New York Times, 11/17).

Peace is the last scenario we should prepare for. Other contingencies may arise as the inter-imperialist rivalry unfolds, but all roads lead to imperialist war and fascist terror.

But war and fascism can provide opportunities for revolutionary growth. Some are emerging in the mass movement, the military and the class struggle, which will surely sharpen worldwide as the situation ripens over time. Modest gains today can lead to momentous triumphs in the years ahead, and eventually to the only way out of this hell of imperialist war and fascist terror: communist revolution.

Elections Show Capitalist Parties Partners Against Working Class

The Republican victory in the mid-term election is not necessarily a defeat for the Eastern Establishment. Bush and the liberal rulers have clashed over the "Homeland Security" police state and his handling of the economy. A Republican White House and Congress can serve as the liberals' whipping boys while the police state develops. A minimum of "three, four, or five years at best" will be necessary to reorganize the government for fascism, according to the liberals' new pal, John McCain. (New York Times, 11/17). This might be just enough time for a liberal strongman to emerge with a broader program than Bush's half-baked plan for militarizing society divided between government control and a privatization scheme favoring his cronies.

But the rulers need major economic cutbacks now to pay for the costly wars they're planning to launch. Conservative Republican Reagan's budget cuts and anti-worker attacks paved the way for the liberal Clinton's economic assault on workers from 1992 to 2000. A similar process may be occurring, with Republicans leading the charge and Democrats and liberal Republicans administering the coup de grâce.

New York City provides a potential example. Republican Mayor Bloomberg, a former Democrat, is promising devastating cuts in education and services as well as higher taxes. With NYC's unemployment rate steadily rising, these new body blows against the workers have the enthusiastic editorial support of the liberal New York Times. The latter preaches about the "unavoidable" need for "layoffs and other spending cuts, including the city's education and social programs." The Times (11/13) urges billionaire Bloomy to slash benefits for the city's work force, which it calls "out of line with the private sector."

New York will set the pattern for other U.S. cities. The liberal media and politicians may shed crocodile tears over Republican "heartlessness" while simultaneously encouraging it. Democrats and Republicans may squabble over tactics and partisan advantage, but in the final analysis they work as partners against our class, to serve the rulers' need for profit and world domination.

The only political party that serves workers' interests is the PLP. The only way to "vote" for it is to join and build it in the heat of class struggle.

NO `LESSER EVILS'

The Pentagon's recently revealed plan to eavesdrop on people who use the Internet comes not from KKK-lover Attorney General Ashcroft but from the Markle Foundation, headed by liberal Zoe Baird, Clinton's first nominee for Attorney-General. Baird also sits on the Council of Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, two of the Liberal Establishment's key think-tanks.

U.S. RULERS WAGE NUCLEAR WAR

As U.S. rulers prepare for war on Iraq, the civilian population of that country, not Saddam Hussein, will bear the brunt of the hostilities. And it will probably be even more nuclear than the last Gulf War which was, in effect, a nuclear war.

In 1991, the U.S. military deployed hundreds of tons of weapons, many of them anti-tank shells made of depleted uranium 238. This material is 1.7 times more dense than lead. When incorporated into an anti-tank shell and fired, it achieves great momentum, cutting through tank armor like a hot knife through butter.

When uranium 238 hits a tank at high speed it bursts into flames, producing tiny aerosolized particles less than 5 microns in diameter. It is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy alpha particle composed of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Once inside the body it can produce cancer in the lungs, bones, blood or kidneys. It can enter the body in the lung if inhaled, a wound if it penetrates flesh, or if ingested since it concentrates in the food chain and contaminates water. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, meaning the areas in which this ammunition was used in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War will remain effectively radioactive permanently.

Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults. Pediatricians in the Iraqi town of Basra are reporting an increase of 6 to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Because of the U.S.- and UN-backed sanctions, they have no access to drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients. The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the areas where these weapons were used. Among them are babies born with only one eye or missing all or part of their brain.

One medical researcher reported that some U.S. veterans exposed to uranium 238 are excreting uranium in their urine a decade later. Other reports indicate it is being excreted in their semen. Almost one-third of the U.S. tanks employed in Desert Storm used anti-tank shells made of uranium 238, exposing their crews to whole-body gamma radiation. The Pentagon's own studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.

Butcher that he is, Saddam Hussein can only dream of having a fraction of the destructive power possessed by U.S. imperialism's weapons of mass destruction. The hypocrisy of the U.S. ruling class, Republicans and Democrats, is only surpassed by their cold-blooded pursuit of profit. From Baghdad to Washington, DC, workers need communist revolution. This is not some utopian dream, but a practical matter of survival.

PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS REJECT RIDGE AND WAR PLANS

PHILADELPHIA, PA, Nov. 13 -- "It feels like living in Berlin in 1938 [the year before the Nazi's launched World War II]..." That's how one of our friends described the moves toward war and fascism, in the country and in the American Public Health Association (APHA). We can all learn from her sense of urgency.

As 5,000 public health workers and professionals streamed into the giant auditorium for the opening session of the annual APHA meeting, colleagues distributing "WAR VS. PUBLIC HEALTH" leaflets greeted them. Last summer, the APHA leadership invited fascist Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge to be the keynote speaker because "that's where the funding is."

The leaflet and a resolution against collaborating with the oil war was the product of months of phone calls and discussions prior to the meeting.

PLP members in APHA provided leadership to these discussions. We helped organize for a floor demonstration against Ridge, but shortly before his scheduled appearance he became "unavailable." Fearing his replacement would get the same treatment, APHA leaders delayed Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona's speech over an hour.

The next day, at a 6:30 AM Section business meeting, people debated whether or not to support the more strongly-worded version of the resolution, "Opposing the Subordination of Public Health to National Defense and Anti-Terrorism." A young statistician said, "If we take an extreme position we'll be marginalized. Public health people need to be at the table when policy is developed." She seemed uncomfortable talking about politics, maybe because she works for a federal agency. In fact, most of the 60 people at the meeting looked uncomfortable.

Then a hospital research instructor said, "There are some tables we shouldn't be sitting at." That did it. A nurse administrator said, "If we don't take a stand, who will?" A soft-spoken professor added, "We've already been marginalized. Since when has the President or Congress cared what we think? We should just do what's right."

When the section chairman finally called for a show of support for the resolution, every hand in the room went up. Similar scenes unfolded in other Sections and Caucuses. When the resolution came before the Governing Council, 95% voted in favor!

Our political work here shows the potential for moving large numbers of people. A relatively small number of comrades with a few hundred supporters forced Ridge to cancel and had a big impact on this 30,000-member organization. But it also shows the potential danger of being swallowed up by the mass movement and not building the Party forces for communist revolution.

One comrade and a friend met during the debate on another resolution, "Opposing War in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf." After it passed with an 82% majority, they pursued an APHA big shot to request a press release be drafted. They were told that opposing war is "not one of the strategic priorities of the organization," and that their vote didn't reflect the "true opinions" of APHA. After the big shot left, the PLP member gave her friend a copy of CHALLENGE, saying, "That's why I'm a communist. People like that can't do what's right. They're wedded to the system."

With the vast majority of participants, we share the desire to see a healthy population living without the threat of war. But we must wage a tireless struggle to win our friends to see that this is not simply Bush's war; it grows from the nature of imperialism. Only communist revolution can defeat it. This is the difficult task we're committed to carrying out in APHA. Over the coming period, we can consolidate the good work accomplished here by winning more public health workers and professionals to read, write for and distribute CHALLENGE.

AFSCME Retirees Hear NYC Cuts Linked to Iraq Invasion

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 11 -- All our lives workers are told by the media, the school system and all sorts of boosters of capitalism that communism doesn't work and the exploitative free market profit system is the best thing since sliced bread. Once again reality has burst the wishful thinking of the bosses and their boosters. Here in NYC, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg has announced budget gaps of nearly $7.5 billion for the next two years, the biggest crisis since the mid-1970s. It comes at a time when such crises are " ...circulating like a virus through cities all across America." (New York Times, 11/18)

Bloomberg has proposed bridging the budget gaps through service cuts (with layoffs and a hiring freeze), new taxes, aid from the federal government, and give-backs from unionized city workers. But Bloomberg's tax plan has been labeled "dead on arrival" by some State legislators who must approve his plan. (Times, 11/15) Clearly some fairy tales are being passed off as reality here.

Similarly, at the November Executive Board meeting of the AFSCME's District Council 37, representing over 120,000 city workers, the president of one of its larger locals challenged Executive Director Lillian Roberts about the layoffs. She said they would be averted by a union-produced "white paper" calling for voiding of outside contracts. Such challenges in the upper ranks of union hierarchy usually reflect impatience with strategies that will not calm the anger of rank-and-file members.

Such anger appeared at the usually placid DC 37 retirees association, upon hearing of the possible effects of the budget crisis. They want to preserve their health benefits and city services. After hearing that their best hope was to elect "friends of labor," they were mainly quiet. When a recently retired worker argued that workers would have to organize to fight against these cuts, linking the city's budget crisis to the looming oil war on Iraq, he was warmly applauded.

He said the current budget crisis was like the storm in the movie, "The Perfect Storm," combining a fiscal crisis in city, county and state with the expenditures of tens of billions for war on Iraq. To fight it, we must break the State's fascist Taylor law banning government-worker strikes.

The bosses want workers to believe capitalism will rule forever, to fall for the lies of their lackey politicians and the deadened strategies of the stooge union leaders. PL'ers fight to bring clarity to workers, understanding of the problems we face and how to overcome them. We join with them in many types of organizations to build the struggles needed to survive life under capitalism and to illuminate the road to a communist future.

DEMOCRATS JOIN BUSH IN
UNION-BUSTING ATTACK ON MILLION
FEDERAL WORKERS

Those who think the liberal Democrats are more "pro-union" than the Republicans better think again. As soon as the polls closed on Election Day, the Democrats joined the Republicans in giving Bush the Homeland Security Agency he had originally proposed, including his request to by-pass all Civil Service and Collective Bargaining protections for more than 170,000 workers. Those opposing it, like Kennedy, were just maintaining their cover as "friends of labor," after the outcome had already been decided.

The new agency will combine 22 existing ones, like Customs, the Coast Guard, the INS, Border Patrol and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Bush will have the final say on work rules, job assignments, transfers, layoffs and more. Under the new plan, unions and the government can negotiate any issue with a "neutral" arbitrator. But Bush, or whoever follows him, will have the power to overrule any agreement and impose a settlement.

Smelling blood, Bush announced plans to privatize half the federal workforce, more than 850,000 jobs! After a 30-day "public review," he's free to offer these jobs to the lowest bidder, which means lowest wages, lowest health care benefits and no unions. What's more, it will set the tone for all state, county and city workers as well. With union membership at an all-time low and dropping, with the rulers going to war, and with a rapidly developing fascist police state, these union-busting attacks on more than one million federal workers will dwarf Reagan's firing of the striking air traffic controllers and breaking the PATCO union in 1982.

So what will the union leaders do? Probably not much. They've been leading the workers into the arms of U.S. imperialism and support for the profit system for over 60 years. Crippled and blinded by their own patriotism, they couldn't do much if they wanted to. They didn't stop the closing of the steel mills or protect retirees from losing their pensions and health benefits. They didn't stop Boeing from imposing a contract costing thousands of jobs. They didn't even appear interested in stopping Bush from using a Taft-Hartley injunction against 10,500 west coast dockworkers.

All that said, we could see the possibility of a wave of mass demonstrations as workers oppose these attacks. The union leaders, true to form, will try to channel the anger of the workers into support for the same Democratic Party that gave Bush his tax cut, war powers and Homeland Security Agency. PLP can seize the opportunity to lead more workers in struggle and build a mass base for communist revolution, by winning more workers to become CHALLENGE distributors.

Profits Prevent A Living Wage

TOWSON, MD, Nov. 15 -- About 75 Towson students, faculty, staff, and alumni, organized by the Student-Worker Alliance of Towson (SWAT), rallied at the Towson Univ. Administration building today to support the fight for campus workers' rights. Joined by dozens of others from unions, churches, community groups and an area high school, SWAT members marched to demand a living wage, health coverage and the right to organize for all Towson staff, outsourced or not. SWAT gave interim university president Dan Jones a week to respond.

It was eight months to the day since our protest outside now-resigned President Mark L. Perkins's inauguration ceremony. Then the movement was little more than members of the left-wing student coalition Towson Action Group with no broad-based support. Campus police easily harassed or dismissed us quite often.

Students are barred from talking with food service and housekeeping workers about a living wage in the presence of their employers (Aramark or Chartwells). One SWAT member told the crowd, "They said I wasn't allowed to talk to the workers and shouldn't be there."

But during these eight months we've won more than 80 faculty supporters, interviewed and befriended housekeepers, attended shift changes, amassed support from community organizations and produced the largest living-wage rally so far at Towson. In the next eight months we will support the demand that Towson's Chartwells contract -- expiring in June 2003 -- be renegotiated only with contract bids that include living-wage provisions.

We in PLP, while involved in and supporting workers' struggles, must also explain how profits are extracted from the labor of workers. There really can never be a "fair wage" for workers since they produce all value and therefore, as a class, deserve to reap all value, which is impossible under capitalism. While involved in the class struggle, PLP points out -- contrary to liberals and anarchists -- how capitalism lives off constant workers' exploitation and war. The only long-term solution is to fight for workers' power. In this Living Wage campaign, daily contact and interpersonal relations with both students and workers will open up opportunities to win them to fight for this outlook and join PLP.

China's Capitalist Party Rides Roughshod Over Workers

Many pundits claim the recently concluded 16^th Congress of the Chinese "Communist" Party propelled that country towards capitalism. But China has been a developing capitalist power for over thirty years. A party of the working class, fighting for communism and waging class struggle, was put to rest a long time ago.

Outgoing President Jiang Zemin welcomed millionaires, landowners and factory owners into the "C"P (Capitalist Party). Advancing his "three represents" theory, he said that "all people's interests are basically identical: we must allow people to advance together to the common goal of prosperity [and] encourage them to create social wealth." (The Guardian, London, 11/13)

Jiang declared that the "three represents" are his legacy, supplanting the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But this "new theory" is basically Mussolini's old Corporate State (workers and bosses uniting to end the class struggle). He warned U.S. imperialists that China would use force against anyone who "separated Taiwan from China." As China becomes a more powerful capitalist country, it could face many military confrontations with the U.S. over control of Asia.

While Jiang paid lip service to China's unemployment and the gap between rich and poor, the restructuring of state-owned companies has left 48 million workers jobless. Millions of workers have not abandoned the class struggle and have participated in strikes and mass rebellions, reacting to the reversal of many gains made by workers and peasants. According to professor Wang Shaoquang of the Political Science Dept. of the Univ. of Hong Kong, "the disparity in the standard of living between rich and poor is one of the highest in the world." (El País, Madrid).

The seeds of this capitalist restoration were planted under Mao's concept of "New Democracy," and were fully realized with the defeat of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in the 1960's. When the communists seized power in 1949, they claimed they were building a "new democratic state" where workers, peasants, the petit-bourgeoisie and sections of the national bourgeoisie shared power. This is impossible, since only one class can hold state power.

By the 1960s, China was reverting to capitalism instead of going forward towards a communist society. Mao, who made a great contribution to the communist movement, initiated the Cultural Revolution to rout the "red bourgeoisie." But when more than 40 million revolutionary workers and youth tried to go all the way to communism (establishing the Shanghai Commune), Mao and the infamous Gang of Four smashed the Red Guards.

When Mao died in 1975, Deng Xiaoping (one of the leading "capitalist roaders" attacked during the Cultural Revolution), arrested the Gang of Four, dismantled the Commune system and started the huge transfer of wealth from workers and peasants to private capitalists, leading to the 16^th Congress.

We have learned a lot from the defeat of the old communist movement. The main lesson is that you can't build communism by making concessions to capitalism. You can't share power with capitalist rulers. Long Live the Red Guard! Fight for Communism!

Anti-War Conference Shows
Students Want, Need, Defend Red Ideas

"I stayed up last night thinking about how the workers of the world could take power," said a participant in a college student conference discussing what was missing from the liberal-led anti-war movement and how to struggle within it.

There were three sessions: anti-racism, anti-imperialism, and the worker-student alliance. All three topics produced vigorous discussions and some plans. We related the importance of anti-racism to a class analysis of the world. Racism comes from the bosses' need to make super-profits and justify exploitation and war with racist lies, all growing out of the wage system. We reviewed the dangers of nationalism and the need for revolution. A Latino student organization leader said he saw how PLP differed from other groups because we put the fight against racism front and center in the fight against capitalism.

The anti-imperialist section focused on the causes of economic crisis and why the imperialists fight over oil. A student explained how Exxon-Mobil drives for control over Iraqi oil so it can sell to, and control the supply of, oil to its capitalist rivals.

The last session opened with a worker demonstrating how workers are open to revolutionary ideas. Lately mechanics on his job have told supervisors, "The problem with this war drive is that it's covered with oil." The conference emphasized the potential power of the dockworkers and urged people to fight in campus groups to demonstrate at the docks against the war.

Some students described their organizing of an alliance with campus workers. Another told of increased interest in the Party's ideas during and after a campus workers strike in which they denounced the bosses' war budget, blaming it for the cutbacks in education. We pointed out that the working class has the power to oppose imperialist war by stopping the bosses' war production and by viewing soldiers as members of the working class in the fight against these oil wars.

The day-long conference left everyone with plans and the motivation to carry out these ideas on their own campus. It was inspiring to hear our friends recount their own rich experiences organizing around and defending PLP's ideas and putting forward the need for revolution.

The best part came that night in a discussion of the fight for workers' power, communism, starting with a group reading of Road to Revolution IV. With the floor open to all, questions were asked about socialism, religion, motivation and the basis of ideology. PLP members discussed the best way to answer questions people raise about human nature and collectivity. Members and non-members answered the questions and introduced other ones.

One was how can we stop some people from wanting more than others. We talked about the power of the collective fighting to eliminate oppression and, in the process, changing ourselves to be motivated by what's needed to improve the collective, not just the individual. There are many examples from the Soviet Union and China of putting the collective first, like the fight to defeat the Nazis. It was obvious that people are very interested in analyzing how the working class can make a revolution.

Finally there is the importance of exposing the university itself as part and parcel of capitalism, its role in war research and promoting U.S. imperialism. Much of our work must be done right inside the classroom, challenging the bosses' ideas that are an integral part of the curriculum.

The conference organizers came into the day somewhat leery about how receptive people would be of PLP's ideas. Those at the conference were much closer to the Party than we expected. Many are ready for and want to hear and understand our line. It became clear we can be much bolder in raising the need for communist revolution and for the PLP.

Outdoing the Nazis . . . Homeland Insecurity

Racism and fascism usually initiate attacks on one group of workers and end up attacking most workers. Recently the Homeland Security Agency said it will spy on thousands of Iraqi immigrants living in the U.S. Now the latest Homeland Security bill should make everyone feel more INsecure than ever. Here is what New York Times (right-wing) columnist William Safire says (11/14) it will do:

"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as `a virtual, centralized grand database.'

"To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a `Total Information Awareness' about every U.S. citizen."

Hitler's Nazi Gestapo would envy U.S. rulers!

Rulers' Racism Runs Rampant

During the Vietnam War, U.S. General Mark Clark told reporters that one American life was worth more than 50 Vietnamese lives. Well, it seems Bush's chief political strategist Carl Rove has raised even Clark's racist ratio to 66 to 1. When questioned after a recent speech by a woman who politely asked "if the administration was concerned over the possibility that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American-led invasion," Rove responded: "I'm more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11." (New York Times, 11/14)

LAPD War on Terror in
South Central LA

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 - New LAPD chief William Bratton is leading the LA cops on a rampage of racist murder in South Central LA, with five "officer-involved" shootings in three days. Four people are dead and two are seriously wounded, including one Latino marine. Bratton is unleashing "a sustained crackdown on gang-related violence in South LA," using "gang-related" as a pretext to terrorize black and Latin workers and youth. The papers have lied about these cases. Families and friends of the victims are angry despite priests and grief counselors trying to calm them. Liberal Bratton has ordered a 30% increase in the number of cops to attack the working class harder.

Bratton, previously police chief in NYC and Boston, is a leading proponent of "community policing" and the "broken windows" theory to intensify police repression by involving local residents under the guise of fighting "quality of life" crimes. (More next issue.)

WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!

Upping the Ante Among Industrial Workers

I want to thank "Consolidated Red" for his letter (CHALLENGE, 11/20) about "Two Steel Workers in the Lunch Room." It rang true. Joe, like many workers, often raise issues in a way that reflects the limits of the agenda imposed by the bosses and their labor lieutenants. "Consolidated Red" showed how to break through those limits -- linking the particular grievance to developing war and fascism. He also asked for suggestions for a campaign to help "[develop] all our contacts with steel workers." We need more letters like this!

I work in aerospace, another industry plagued by massive layoffs. Here's my suggestions to start this discussion. First, we need a campaign to increase CHALLENGE circulation. More hand-to-hand sales will give us the confidence to advance our ideas in the unions and among industrial workers in general.

More readers and sellers allow us to up the ante, as well as directly present our revolutionary politics to a broader audience and sharpen the contradictions between the working class and the bosses. Necessarily, that means intensifying the contradictions between workers and the union misleaders, even as we become more involved in the day-to-day work of these unions.

CHALLENGE networks allow us to raise demands that reflect our class interests both inside the unions and to workers in the plants and connected communities. We want these demands to put the interests of the international working class above all. Campaigns against racist layoffs, for jobs or even a shorter work-week should never be presented as a cure-all for capitalism's evils. Nor can we allow these campaigns to be distorted along nationalist lines. We raise such demands in a particular situation not to reform capitalism but to sharpen the division between the bosses' agents and workers at large.

This clarification of class interests offers an opportunity to win workers to a revolutionary understanding. It instills some confidence that workers can be won to fight for their own interests. If combined with communist base-building and study that emphasizes the primacy of revolution over reform, such class struggle can win recruits to the Party.

Thanks "Consolidated Red" for opening this discussion. Much more needs to be said and done. We must hear more about campaigns among industrial workers in CHALLENGE.

Aerospace Red

Does `Bowling' Score A Strike or A Spare?

Michael Moore's new movie, "Bowling for Columbine" is being shown at local theaters and not just the one or two that typically run documentaries. Maybe it's because Moore has established a reputation (with his other films and TV shows), or maybe it's because of the topic, violence. I expected the film would be just another argument for gun control, but it's more sophisticated than that.

Moore argues that the easy availability of weapons can't be the sole or even main cause of the extremely high rate of homicides in the U.S.. Canada has a high level of gun ownership, but a far lower homicide rate. So Moore looks for other reasons -- including a foreign policy that regularly resorts to military solutions, and a culture that idolizes police and military violence. He concludes that corporate and political elites have a vested interest in keeping the population in a state of anxiety about crime, even when crime rates are falling, in order to stimulate consumption.

The film has some decent political aspects, though never taken far enough. There's one sequence where Moore shows the U.S. repeatedly overthrowing elected leaders and replacing them with tyrants who terrorize the population, or intervening militarily in countries, causing millions of deaths. It's a powerful few minutes, though Moore never explains the reasons for these foreign interventions.

There's also a very good segment where Moore examines why a six-year old boy brought a gun to school in Flint, Michigan and accidentally killed a classmate. He shows the mother being forced into a Workfare program, leaving early every morning to work two jobs in a suburban mall. Even with the two jobs, she's unable to pay her rent and so she and her son move into her brother's house, where the boy finds a hidden gun. With the mother at work, the son is unsupervised and tragedy results. Moore blames an uncaring governmental policy of forcing single mothers to leave their children and accept low-wage employment.

Moore indicts corporate greed and U.S. military violence as contributing to the high levels of violence in the U.S., but never links this to an anti-capitalist critique. So the documentary comes off as a populist satire of the American fixation with guns and violence, with no real recommendations for change.

Probably most viewers will conclude that gun control legislation and less mayhem on TV are needed. Democrats and some Republicans can support both these goals, so the documentary doesn't challenge the political and economic status quo, despite its occasional, heartfelt anti-imperialist and anti-racist senti

ments. Am I being too easy on the film or too hard?

A Reader

Scared by Election But Ready to Respond

Although I don't necessarily agree with all your positions, I'm an avid reader of CHALLENGE and await it's online installments daily.

I'm a registered Democrat living in Philadelphia and can honestly say I'm scared to death about the election outcome. We have an overt fascist in power (Baby Bush) and now the voting public has sent to power the party that will send us down the road to fascism the quickest.

The Republicans and many Democrats support a totally unsubstantiated war on Iraq. They have absolutely no proof Hussein has any weapons of mass destruction and even if they did, why should we demand he dismantle them? Who is the ONLY country in the entire world that's actually used nuclear weapons against another sovereign country during a time of peace or war? The UNITED STATES. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. Who the hell are we to demand that other countries either not attain or get rid of weapons of mass destruction? Maybe the world should demand that weapons inspectors come into our country and dismantle ALL nuclear weapons as well as the plenty of government-built chemical and biological weapons in our arsenal? Why is it okay for us to have weapons but others are not allowed?

We were the most reckless with these weapons. We actually used them against others and ended up killing hundreds of thousands.

As a gay man, a Jew and someone who is partnered with an African American man, I am scared. The Republican party, and the Bush family in particular, is heavily homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist. It was Bush, Sr. who took on to his 1988 election committee known former Nazis.

I think now is the time for action. I'm not even sure what I'll do right now. I have to sit down with my partner (who is equally upset and equally politically minded), and figure out how we can respond.

Please know that even though I do not agree with some of what you espouse, I'm thankful there are groups like yours who keep watch over the fascists out there -- including especially those right here at home.

A Concerned Philadelphian

Millions in Italy Hit
Bosses' Barrage

On Oct. 18, millions of workers here in Italy joined protests and rallies in 120 cities. White collars, blue collars, students and teachers united against the abolition of Article 18 of the Workers Statute of Rights, which protects against unfair firings. They also protested the new budget cuts, and the imminent dismissal of over 200,000 FIAT autoworkers.

In Florence and Rome, more than 200,000 workers marched. Support for the strike exceeded 50% of the workers in virtually every industry, with 80% in Public Transportation.

The protest was called by CGIL (the "left" union), without the support from the CISL and UIL ("moderates") for the first time since 1960. CISL and UIL and the moderate "left" parties betrayed the workers by selling out to Berlusconi's government.

These fake-left parties and the two "moderate" unions lose members daily. The day after the strike they were trying to belittle it and the number of workers in the streets. With this hateful attitude, they're showing they're the worst enemy of the workers!

The millions of workers who joined the strike demonstrated they will fight the bosses' and fake leftists' drive to destroy their future.

Bandera Rosa

ILWU Chiefs Misled Workers on War

At recent anti-war rallies in Seattle, there's been a smattering of organized labor participation, both from Organized Labor Against the War and the dockworkers union (ILWU). At the first rally an ILWU representative apologized for his union's lack of support. He said that after the dockworkers' "labor dispute" was settled he was sure they'd "do the right thing. We did the right thing in Vietnam, and we'll do the right thing this time," he promised.

But we ask, "What is the right thing?" From a working-class perspective it would be the dockworkers leading the way for the anti-war movement by refusing to load arms and supplies bound for the U.S. imperialist war machine moving into Iraq. Unfortunately the ILWU considers the "right thing" to be taking an official stance against the war but not backing it up with any real action -- just as they did in Vietnam and every other war with the exception of the Bolshevik revolution. Then dockworkers refused to load arms supplying the U.S.-backed counter-revolutionaries fighting to defeat the Bolsheviks. Without a communist analysis and leadership, the ILWU will continue to "support our troops" by allowing the bullets and supplies to be shipped. The potential power of this union, indeed of the entire working class, became crystal clear when Bush threatened to send federal troops onto the docks to break a strike, calling it a "threat to national security."

If the anti-war movement expects to stop the war, it must involve the working class. If our Party hopes to sharpen the struggle over this war, we must push the organizations we're active in to recognize the imperialist nature of this war and the power of the working class. We should up the ante in the anti-war movement by struggling to gain support in the various organizations for dockworkers' struggles, while raising the idea that dockworkers have the power to stop shipments of goods necessary for the war effort. As we sharpen the struggle in the unions and the mass organizations, the Party must focus on recruitment.

A Comrade

Backing Steel Bosses
Is No Solution

I saw the letter in CHALLENGE about two steelworkers discussing the union District Director's support for consolidation of the steel industry. One worker thought it might make the union stronger while the worker in PLP warned this is part of developing fascism.

The New York Times (11/14) reported the failed attempt of Corus, Europe's second largest steel maker, to take over CSN, a big Brazilian steel producer. The consolidation of British Steel and Hoogoven of the Netherlands created Corus. It hasn't made a profit since 1998, plans on eliminating 10,000 jobs and has shut down 20% of its steel-producing capacity in Britain. One analyst pointed out, "The collapse of the deal says more about the global steel market than it does about the climate of foreign investment in Brazil."

Steel producers around the world are in a classic case of what Marxists call a "crisis of overproduction." From the capitalists' viewpoint, too much steel can be produced that cannot be sold for profit. The capitalists' response to their predicament is to slash production and jobs.

The District director's plan to have the union help the bosses consolidate is no solution. There are millions of projects that need steel and millions of workers that want to work. But the driving force behind capitalism is to make maximum profits, not meet workers' needs.

A few months ago, some Bethlehem Steel workers felt that if LTV went under, it would make their own company stronger. Now ISG, the gang of financiers that took over LTV and reopened it with slashed benefits, is contemplating buying Bethlehem!

Workers can struggle and we can make a living for a while. But steelworkers around the world are hurting. The answer is not consolidation but continuous daily struggle to win workers to communist revolution. In that process we fight for every job and fight against anything that weakens our class, like racism, sexism and nationalism.

Red Reader

Listen to Your Nurse

Recently I had a minor surgical procedure. While the doctor was cutting and stitching the nurse asked me, "What do you think of Homeland Security?" I replied it was a cover for further attacks against workers.

The nurse, a middle-aged white woman with 25 years on the job, said, "It's just union-busting. Can you imagine consolidating 20 agencies and over 100,000 workers and taking away their civil service and union protections?" I said it was bigger than just the government workers and she cut me off saying, "That's right. Look at the dockworkers. They're going to use this against all of us!"

She gave up a supervisor's job in the OR to work in this clinic. She had nothing good to say about the various unions at the hospital because she sees the bosses getting away with murder while the union leaders sit on their hands. Finally she said, "I may have been a supervisor, but I come from a long line of railroad workers who were all fighters."

A Reader

Wage System Rx For
Capitalist Robbery

I'm a young worker from a rural area in Latin America where I worked on my family's farm. Once I went for a job in the capital city but the pay was too low. Then a friend in the army told me the army paid very well and that if I volunteered I could leave whenever I wanted. I joined but soon discovered that neither was true. Later I came to the US.

Here I went to a school to learn to sew and became a garment worker. I've been working here for three years.

I've been working in the same shop for the last seven months. The boss seems to trust the workers. He drinks beer with us, gives us candies and cookies, jokes with us and lets us use the office telephone for personal calls.

I told my brother and he warned, "Don't trust the bosses. They're all shameless thieves. Because you trust them, you probably don't write down the work you've done, leaving everything to the bosses' `honesty.' He's probably stealing you blind."

"That's impossible," I replied. "My bosses are good people. They're Koreans, from a far-off continent. They put up with a lot from me when I didn't know the work very well. The boss herself taught me the operations. And they joke with me and treat me well."

A month later, a co-worker came to me and said, "My check's only for $120, and I worked very hard for a whole week." I advised him, "Tell the boss, because I worked on a similar machine and I got more."

He talked to the boss who then agreed he'd made a "mistake" and had shorted him $70. When I heard this, I started to doubt the boss. "If he does it with another, maybe he does it with me," I thought. I began detailing all the work I did.

On the Saturday before pay day we turn in the tickets from which our pay is computed. On seeing the paper the boss wanted me to sign, he hadn't included work I'd done cutting 510 pieces. He told me he'd "forgotten" I'd done that job and credited me for the 510 pieces.

I told my brother all this and said he'd been right all along. Now I write down all the work I do. Last week I caught the boss trying to rob me of 100 pieces I'd made. My conclusion? "Don't trust any boss. All are thieves."

A worker who opened his eyes

CHALLENGE comment:

Thanks for sharing your experience. All workers need such understanding if the working class is to destroy capitalism and all the evils it produces. This won't happen if workers believe bosses can be our friends.

But the bosses rob much more from us every day. The worker's labor adds value to the natural resource, converting it into a useful product. The boss sells this product, deducts his expenses for materials, machines and workers' wages and the rest is his profit. The workers' wages represent just a fraction of the value they produced. This value added by - but not paid to - the worker is called surplus value, or profit, stolen from the worker's labor.

Under communism, without bosses, profits or money, workers as a class will reap the full value their labor produces and will distribute it based on their class's needs.

 

Hart-Rudman Report 2: A Blueprint for More War and a Fascist Police State

a href="#It IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap">It"IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap

a href="#‘Maverick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq">‘M"verick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq

a href="#War Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!">"ar Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!

• a href="#How Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers">Ho" Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers

a href="#PLP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show">"LP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show

Liberals Divert Huge Anti-War Marches Away From Anti-Imperialis

California Campus Workers Blast War, Police State

Profit System Grinds Down Home Health Care Workers

Anti-Cop Rebels Confront Bush On Iraq War

a href="#Laws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool">"aws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool

LETTERS

a href="#Rely on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’">Re"y on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’

Anti-Racists Block KKK Movie

Unions A Tool Of Rockefeller Forces

Two Steel Workers In The Lunch Room

Bring Anti-War Message to Mass Organizations

Red Eye On The News

---

Hart-Rudman Report 2: A Blueprint for More War and a Fascist Police State

Another war with Iraq appears to be only a matter of time. U.S. bosses may haggle about the timing and details of this adventure, but they all share the strategic goal of world domination. This requires maintaining a chokehold on their rivals’ access to the world’s cheapest energy supplies, which are concentrated primarily in the Persian Gulf. A series of increasingly bloody wars will force them to militarize society to try to crush any organized, militant opposition to their agenda, at gunpoint if necessary. War and fascism go hand in hand.

The Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century laid out the broad outlines for a "Homeland Security" reign of terror months before 9/11. However, the rulers still don’t have their house in order. So former Senators Hart (Democrat) and Rudman (Republican) have just produced a sequel, entitled "America Still Unprepared — America Still in Danger." It is the brainchild of an "Independent" Task Force convened by the Council on Foreign Relations, a key Rockefeller-led think-tank.

Hart-Rudman II implies a scathing criticism of Bush for not moving far enough and fast enough toward fascism. The report’s recommendations include:

•Immediate, emergency action to shore up "homeland security," especially now that war with Iraq is likely.

•The government must intervene to ensure the security of U.S.-based refineries, pipelines and power grids. H-R II wants the feds to control ruling class upstarts like Enron while protecting the energy infrastructure from al Qaeda.

•The private sector must share its security expertise with the government. Companies that comply will get the carrots of government information and an exemption from anti-trust actions.

•The National Guard must "make homeland security a primary mission." This includes treating the victims of bio-terrorism and "maintaining civil order." Striking workers and anyone contemplating militant activity should expect to be arrested or shot by the National Guard.

•Local and state cops must have access to "terrorist watch lists" available to the State Department.

•Massive infusions of federal cash must be made available to implement these and other measures. Therefore, repeal the Bush-sponsored 2001 tax cut, which hinders the plans for a police state by enriching individual members of the ruling class while sacrificing the class-wide agenda favored by the liberals.

The report’s co-signers include two former Secretaries of State, three Nobel prizewinners, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former CIA and FBI director and a bunch of financial, legal and medical heavy hitters. The rulers are deadly serious about carrying out this agenda. If the Bush White House is not up to the task, the rulers will find a new cast of characters to do the dirty work.

The next war could eventually lead to far wider armed struggle throughout the Persian Gulf. Over the very long run, U.S. imperialism will probably have to go it alone against their Chinese, Russian, French and other competitors. We are entering a new period of inter-imperialist rivalry. U.S. rulers will stop at nothing, including world war and the use of nuclear weapons, to remain top-dog in the international profit system.

Capitalism makes war and fascism inevitable. Peace movements like the present one, backed by the same liberal rulers who are organizing wider, far more lethal wars, can’t stop the inter-imperialist rivalry. Voting and legal action cannot stop the advance of fascism.

The way to confront imperialist war is to win workers, soldiers and students to understand that as long as capitalism exists there can’t be peace. Making revolutionary war to get rid of all the warmakers is the only solution to endless imperialist bloodbaths. This requires bringing communist politics to the mass actions and organizations of workers and youth. At the moment, the rulers have the upper hand. But they are not invincible. As conditions sharpen, their weaknesses will magnify and multiply. Imperialist war and police terror will provide many opportunities for our Party to grow. Our efforts can eventually turn this period of homicidal rivalries among the world’s bosses into a movement for communism and workers’ power.

a name="It IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap"></">It"IS About Oil—Iraq’s Is Plentiful and Cheap

Many in the anti-war movement are beginning to link oil to the U.S. bosses’ plan to attack Iraq. Even the liberal media has been forced to mention the oil connection, albeit always emphasizing it is "not the main reason" to invade Iraq (Sunday New York Times News of the Week section, Nov. 4).

But it is the main reason. The U.S. ruling class spends tens of billions to maintain a permanent naval and military force in the region, fully aware that the control of Middle East oil supplies and profits is crucial to keeping their rival imperialists at bay. That’s why French, Russian, Chinese and other oil companies and their governments are not too happy with the U.S. plan to turn a post-Saddam Iraq into a U.S. protectorate. Even the chairman of BP (ousted from Iraq in the ’60s) said he’s worried that U.S. oil companies plan to carve up Iraq for themselves. For that reason a section of the British ruling class is bitterly opposed to Tony Blair being a lapdog of Bush.

The world’s biggest corporations are oil companies, headed by the biggest financial capitalists. The Rockefeller section of the U.S. ruling class controls Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest corporation. Without oil, capitalist armies and industries can’t operate. Today there’s no alternative energy to oil. And the cheapest and best quality is in the Middle East. Iraq has 11% of the world’s reserves (second only to Saudi Arabia). With 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and at least 220 billion barrels of probable reserves "Iraq is universally acknowledged to be the new promised land of oil…The war of positioning for a possible post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi environment is getting more ruthless by the minute. American oil conglomerates are openly courting representatives of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella opposition. The darling of Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco is Ahmed Chalabi….Dick Cheney’s pal and major contender for the title of Iraq’s number one opposition figure…" writes Pepe Escobar (ATimes.com).

Chalabi already favors creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraqi oil fields once Saddam is gone. This is the main reason France and Russia oppose the U.S. vision of a future Iraq.

Iraqi oil is plentiful and cheap. "Industry sources in the Gulf and Singapore confirm the production cost of a barrel of oil in Caspian Sea is around US$8. The same thing in Iraq costs only 70 cents. So the new oil frontier in Central Asia for the moment is little more than a mirage." (Atimes.com).

That is why the U.S. rulers must wage imperialist war to control Iraq.

a name="‘Maverick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq"></">‘M"verick’ Wellstone Supported Wars from Kosovo to Iraq

Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was known as a "maverick" in the Senate, who supposedly defended workers and opposed Bush’s war aims. Many of those who demonstrated for peace in Washington on October 26 viewed him as a friend and fighter for social justice. But in his last Senate speech before he died in a recent airplane "accident," he boasted of having voted for the use of military force in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Wellstone was loyal to the Liberal Establishment and its plans for imperialist war and home-front fascism. His "opposition" to the war on Iraq was unprincipled. He thought the US shouldn’t act alone, but with the blessings of the UN. He supported the USA Patriot Act and the fascist Israeli rulers.

The Institute for America’s Future (IAF), a small foundation that lists the Rockefeller Foundation as its main financial supporter, formulated his social and fiscal policies. He appeared regularly at IAF conferences and referred to its research almost exclusively in his campaign literature.

The IAF opposes tax cuts and the privatization of Social Security. This is consistent with the Hart-Rudman recommendations for massive funding of a reinvigorated "Homeland Security" police state. The IAF echoes the Brookings Institution, the Council of Foreign Relations and other liberal think-tanks, who support "nation building" and a massive U.S. occupation of Iraq. The IAF also demands a homeland security bill with more muscle than Bush and Ashcroft have shown.

Wellstone was no "lesser evil." That’s why his memorial service turned into a pep rally for the "un-maverick" former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale. Liberals like Wellstone remain the major political threat to our class. In the name of "peace" they will launch imperialist wars for world domination. In the name of "defending our democratic civil rights," they will move ruthlessly toward a fascist, "homeland security" police state.

We don’t need the mis-leadership of liberal sweet-talkers funded by the most murderous ruling class in history. We need to build our own revolutionary forces under the leadership of the communist PLP. Wellstone was a mouthpiece for the bosses. We shouldn’t mourn him. We should organize the movement to smash them all.

a name="War Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!">">"ar Maker, Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!

LYNN, MASS, Nov. 5 — About 2,500 GE aircraft engine workers in the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communication Workers of America (IUE-CWA) Local 201 went on a four-day strike at the General Electric River Works plant here. The strike involved just over half of the plant’s 4,400 workers, who build and test engines used in jets and helicopters. GE’s aircraft engine business employs about 26,000 worldwide.

GE is the world’s most profitable electronics company and a major war contractor, with 310,000 workers internationally. It netted $16 billion in profits last year, much of it from supplying the weapons to be used when young workers are sent to kill and die in a Middle East oil war.

Earlier this month, GE Aircraft Engines announced it would eliminate 1,000 jobs this year and as many as 1,800 jobs next year, adding to the growing list of aerospace workers being tossed overboard, including 30,000 at Boeing. GE boss Gorham said, "The aerospace industry is in crisis mode..."

The capitalist crisis of overproduction, too much productive capacity, is sending millions of better-paying manufacturing jobs to wherever labor is cheapest. GE has been farming out work to Romania, Russia, China, Mexico and other countries where wages are about $2 an hour.

The job action was sparked when GE failed to replace machine operators lost through attrition. When these operators are not replaced, maintenance problems arise and equipment is shut down. If the machines aren’t running, the work gets shipped out.

Despite their best intentions, the workers are trapped by the pro-capitalist, patriotic outlook of the union leadership. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka opposes sending defense contracts abroad because it "will teach production techniques" to U.S. imperialism’s rivals. (Boston Globe, 10/20) The IUE-CWA leaders have been unwilling and/or unable to fight the massive speed-up, outsourcing and mandatory overtime forced on GE workers in recent decades. They want to save the very same bosses who are attacking us and will support the bosses’ war drive.

Locals in Erie, Pa. (the largest) and Schenectady, N.Y. have also issued strike notices as things heat up for national contract talks next spring. The current contract expires in June, which could mean a strike in the midst of a Middle East oil war. Such a strike would defy the U.S. bosses’ "national interest" crap and meet the class interests of both U.S. and Iraqi workers.

In 1970, GE workers went on a nation-wide strike at the height of the Vietnam War. Nixon told the workers to return to work because they were hurting the war effort. On a picket line in Schenectady the workers chanted, "Screw the War Effort!" Now here we are decades later, facing another war and another GE strike. Building a mass PLP and fighting for communist revolution will stop this endless treadmill. "War-Maker, Strike-Breaker, Smash GE!"

a name="How Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers"></">Ho" Anti-Communist Union Hacks Served Bosses To ‘De-Unionize’ 250,000 Workers

The union bosses have been screwing GE workers for over 50 years, when they set up the IUE to bust the left-led UE that wouldn’t kowtow to the U.S. bosses’ Cold War. When the dust cleared, the IUE had stolen 350,000 workers from the UE, which was left with 50,000 of its original 650,000 membership. This anti-communist attack left 250,000 unionized workers out in the cold. Now GE workers are divided among six unions, and many are in none. These divisions have weakened workers’ resistance (and put zillions in the pocket of former GE CEO Jack Welch).

a name="PLP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show">">"LP Exposes City Colleges’ Pro-War Show

CHICAGO, IL Oct. 22 — "Don’t believe anything the government tells you about why they’re going to war. Nothing!" declared a black marine Gulf War veteran who condemned U.S. involvement in past wars at the Chicago City Colleges’ Town Hall Meeting entitled "Iraq: Where Are We Heading?" About 300 black and Latin students and faculty attended the meeting from the seven city colleges.

There were three mandatory meetings to script the televised forum, and prepare us with the "dos" and "don’ts" of debating. In these meetings, many students supported the war.

One "don’t" emphasized was, "Don’t attempt to persuade someone." The forum was to encourage students to vote, not to debate or, more importantly, not to oppose U.S. imperialism.

Despite the moderator’s facade of "neutrality" and obvious support for war, there were stirring debates. After the first two scripted questions, two student panelists supported a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Then a PLP student panelist from Malcolm X College, a veteran who had been stationed in the Middle East, raised the question of oil. Many students in the audience spoke passionately against the war.

The moderator tried to center the debate on terrorism and other smokescreens like religion and morality. Nevertheless, the students’ anger and opposition intensified as we linked war, racist police terror and the massive education cutbacks at the City Colleges. One student we didn’t even know made copies of the CHALLENGE article on the cuts, approached a comrade and said, "Here, give these out."

In closing remarks, the PLP comrade declared that capitalism is the root of imperialist wars and that revolution, not voting, is the answer. Not surprisingly, this was cut from the broadcast version. We distributed about 100 CHALLENGES and even more PLP leaflets. Afterwards we discussed our communist politics with students. Many liked what they heard. Later a group of us confronted the Chancellor to demand the college pay for a bus to the anti-war march in Washington D.C. While we could have done better, this is an example of how the bosses’ drive to war can provide us with the "on-the-job" training we need to build a mass anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement and a mass base for PLP. The ruling class will give us many more opportunities, and we can’t afford to pass them by. µ

Liberals Divert Huge Anti-War Marches Away From Anti-Imperialis

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26 — Over 50,000 workers and students marched here, joining hundreds of thousands who demonstrated in Washington, D.C., in the biggest anti-war demonstrations since Vietnam.

The crowd marched down Market Street, passing bank after bank that fund the "war against terrorism" and department stores selling garments made by exploited workers targeted by the Patriot Act. The contradictions of capitalism were everywhere.

The demonstration itself was a confusing mix of revisionist (phony leftist) and liberal politics. The march Call, "Drop Bush, not bombs," did not criticize imperialism, the cause of war, nor the liberal democratic leadership. The latter favors more preparation than the Bush administration is offering, in order to ready people for a long-term war throughout the Middle East. The Congressional vote two weeks ago shows liberals support war.

PLP played an active role. The sharpened contradictions enabled us to discuss with our friends the differences between reform and revolution. Our anti-imperialist banners, speeches and chants stood out. Our leaflets and CHALLENGES brought the much-needed message of working-class revolution against capitalism as the only solution to end wars for profit.

A group of Southern California students drove to the march together. We collectively raised money on our campus so many more people could make the trip. We prepared meals, shared the clean-up, had long political discussions and made new friends. In short, a multi-racial group worked together without hostility and collectively struggled about how to fight against racism and imperialist war. Our success builds confidence in the collective fight of the working class to liberate itself from capitalism.

Our next step is to get CHALLENGE to workers and students who couldn’t join us, so we can organize more struggles against racism and imperialism on our campus and throughout the world. One class, one fight; workers of the world unite!

California Campus Workers Blast War, Police State

BEREKELEY, CA., Oct. 18 — Delegates at a Univ. of California (UC) campus union state-wide convention applauded a worker’s condemnation of the "War on Terrorism" as a War on Workers. The worker related UC’s attack on employees to the U.S. rulers’ current drive to invade Iraq for control of Mideast oil and the creation of a police state at home. The delegates then passed resolutions condemning both. This was especially significant given that the union represents workers at UC’s two nuclear labs.

These developments were no accident. On October 14-15, lecturers, clerical workers, staff researchers and technicians struck five of the nine UC campuses. University bosses assumed workers would accept pay cuts and increased health care costs. They thought workers wouldn’t strike because "we’re lucky to have University jobs." They were wrong!

The University, a powerful ruling-class tool, has sharpened its attacks on workers. Its chief negotiator said, "We’re not interested in employees that can’t pay their rent." That enraged many workers.

The strike was preceded by lively discussions about the need to strike and rally co-workers. UC is seen by some as a "worker-friendly" haven. Workers’ direct actions defied this view. They don’t want collections to lobby politicians.

On one campus, we organized rallies and invited student support. At one rally, a union member attacked capitalism and advanced the need for workers uniting to take power. Only education under workers’ control would serve our class’s needs.

On the strike’s second day, this organizing produced a rally and march through campus of over 450 workers and 150 students. Hundreds more wore red ribbons in support. We shut down several large construction sites. Our worker/student alliance message was well received. Our chants and energy reverberated throughout the campus. Workers gave and received leadership.

Amid these actions and excitement, real political advances occurred. For example, after a deeper discussion of the differences between socialism and communism, one student said she better understood the need for revolutionary communism. Others saw CHALLENGE for the first time and were open to it.

This sharper class struggle helps develop bonds of friendship and heighten class consciousness. We all grow. We learn that workers need communism. Only one organization, the PLP, can make that happen.

Profit System Grinds Down Home Health Care Workers

NEW YORK CITY — "The boss of Premier Home Health Care Services and 1199/SEIU leadership are good for nothing. We were sold out," declared a home health care (HHC) worker about the contract settlement that averted a Sept. 18 strike.

The HHC workers — mostly black and Latin women — provide compassionate care in the homes of people discharged from hospitals. The latter try to minimize patients’ hospital stays to increase their profits. Therefore, patients tend to have more ailments upon discharge and need extra assistance at home. HHC workers administer medication, monitor pulse and temperature, assist with physical therapy exercise, bathing and feeding, dress the patients, run errands and accompany them to doctor appointments.

This strenuous work is just as important as a health care worker’s in a hospital. However, wages are much lower. The new contract left the HHC workers the lowest paid in the state. It grants a 20% increase this year (above the present $6 to $7 an hour) and a similar increase in 2003; health insurance worth 79¢ an hour; participation in the union education program; and five paid vacation/sick days after working 1,400 hours.

This agreement will have little impact on the home care workers’ ability to feed, clothe and house their families.

The capitalist home health care system is built for profit. It works through agencies that make millions off these low-paid workers and the lack of patient care. It’s financed by Medicaid and Medicare. The money comes from workers’ taxes and bosses’ taxes extracted from the working class.

Medicaid and Medicare are channeled through Certified Home Health Agencies (CHHA) which keep a substantial amount for administrative costs and their own profits. They employ mostly nurses and therapists. CHHA subcontract to Licensed Home Care Service Agencies, who in turn are paid by the CHHAs to cover their administrative costs and profits. At the bottom of this profit pyramid is the little left for the home health care workers themselves, the only productive group in the entire system.

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduced Medicare funding for home health care. The Clinton/Bush Congressional Budget Office has projected a $69 billion cut between 1998 and 2002. These cuts help pay for the U.S. bosses’ oil wars. They aim to reduce health care funding and drive down the wages of the entire working class. We must answer these attacks by building the PLP around the revolutionary communist ideas in CHALLENGE.

Anti-Cop Rebels Confront Bush On Iraq War

CINCINNATI, OHIO, Oct. 7 — "All indications are that this will be…a war about oil…we should address…the domestic terrorists like the KKK," declared a black worker to 5,000 people protesting a war on Iraq. They demonstrated as Bush spoke at the Cincinnati Museum Center. The crowd included many black workers and youth, from dozens of churches, several universities and high schools. Some carried signs reading, "No blood for oil."

This largest anti-war protest here in decades can in part be traced back to April 2001, when Cincinnati police murdered Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black youth. Black, Latin and white workers and youth fought back. Police used shotguns loaded with beanbags to shoot mourners at Thomas’s funeral, and met other protests with a massive number of cops in riot gear. On June 2, 2001, 2,500 demonstrators marched against racist police terror, the largest integrated demonstration in Cincinnati’s modern history. PLP participated in that rebellion and was warmly embraced by the workers. (One friend met at that time provided the information for this article.)

Miami University students carried a large banner while Earlham College students from southern Indiana chanted and snaked their way through the crowd. Others came from universities in Lexington, Kentucky. Earlier a group of 15-year-old students distributed 1,000 leaflets at Walnut Hills High School. Students from many other schools were also there. Black, Latin, Muslim, Middle Eastern and white youth could be seen everywhere.

A few hundred protesters blocked the exit from the Museum Center parking lot, keeping several hundred Bush supporters from leaving. Cops on horseback rode through the crowd and arrested six demonstrators.

While the size, youthful energy and integrated character of the protest was impressive, the politics were not. It was led by the Democratic Party, through the leadership of various mass organizations, as a way to bash Bush and get out the vote. The aspirations of the anti-war demonstrators will never be realized by marching behind these liberals who gave Bush the war powers he was seeking, and is planning an even deadlier conflict. Only communist revolution will end imperialist wars. Building the Party here is a step in that direction.

a name="Laws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool">">"aws Are Bosses’ Fascist Tool

(This is another in a series of articles analyzing the "legal" development of fascism.)

The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, has given the rulers a green light to massively wiretap everyone who disagrees with the "war on terror." Under changes in FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), tracking "foreign intelligence" must be a significant aim of the wiretap, even if "domestic law enforcement" is the main purpose. The law makes it easier for the FBI to get wiretaps (including on multiple computers or phones), and encourages intelligence sharing between the FBI and CIA.

Ashcroft applied to the secret court for even more power. This court itself is long-standing. During the Johnson and first Nixon administration (1968-1972), at the height of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the government was wiretapping many revolutionaries, anti-war radicals and liberals, much of it without a warrant. Legal interpretations of the Constitution’s 4th Amendment and supsequent Supreme Court decisions required warrants for wiretaps, mandating the government to show "probable cause" a crime had been, or was being committed.

Supposing Ashcroft decides an anti-war activist who encourages civil disobedience on federal property is aiding foreign terrorists. And supposing some of these people meet with Iraqi, Palestinian or other organizations that the FBI considers "fronts for terrorism." The Patriot Act allows the FBI to tap the phones/computers of these people because "foreign intelligence" is a "significant" purpose of the wiretap. Now Ashcroft wants to give these wiretaps to criminal prosecutors to go after the activists. Before the Patriot Act, this was illegal.

The secret court was angry that under Clinton, and later Bush, the FBI was already sharing information from "foreign intelligence" wiretaps with criminal prosecutors, and denied Ashcroft these additional powers. But that ruling is only a slap on the wrist. Even if upheld on appeal, it only prevents the open sharing of evidence between intelligence investigators and criminal prosecutors. Nobody’s been punished for past violations. The government is appealing to the FISA appeals court. If it loses, it can appeal to a secret session of the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the Patriot Act, more warrant requests will be granted.

Many people are becoming more aware of the Gestapo tactics of Ashcroft and others. Both the New York Times and Washington Post have featured Op-Ed pieces calling for "reining in" the more openly fascist aspects of FISA and the Patriot Act. The internal struggle within the ruling class is reflected in the fact that the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee sat on the secret court opinion for three months. It was finally made public in late August, followed closely by major media attacks on Bush and Ashcroft (not Clinton) engineered by the liberal rulers.

The liberals are upset over the clumsiness and arrogance of Ashcroft and Bush. No one is questioning whether there should be a secret court. The liberals want to limit Ashcroft and have confirmation power over whoever is proposed to head Homeland Security.

Revolutionary communists must unmask ruling-class wolves who pose as friends. The liberals are no more "anti-fascist" than they are "anti-war." Liberal Democrats like Carter and Clinton are up to their ears in these fascist laws. The ACLU claims fascism can be stopped through vigorous public debate, and new laws to "fix" the old ones. The rulers use "democracy" when it helps them maintain power but scrap it when fascism better suits their needs.

LETTERS

Workers Of The World Write!

a name="Rely on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’"></">Re"y on Workers, Not ‘Lesser Evils’

After a lecture on Iraq and U.S. foreign policy, a group I belong to met to plan an anti-war demonstration. People were steamed that "our" representative, a Democrat, voted for Bush’s war resolution.

Someone suggested we march by his office with a big poster of a voided check made out to him. "We should send our money to the ones who voted against Bush." "I voted for him already, by absentee ballot," another said. "Now I wish I hadn’t."

"But, objected a Green Party activist, "he’s still better than a Republican on education and welfare," to which another Green responded, "Someone can be a really great person, but if they kill someone, they’re a murderer."

I was cheered at the widespread disgust with Congress. People were particularly angered because "our" Senator admitted that phone calls, e-mails and letters were overwhelmingly against the war resolution, but she voted for it anyway. Our friends made a lot of those calls, but for what?

Then I realized they were mad at Congress because they still rely on politicians to stop war or improve society — a dangerous illusion.

Then someone raised the West Coast longshore situation. When Bush’s "homeland security" chief, fascist Tom Ridge, told the union a strike would interfere with the "war on terrorism," ILWU leader Stallone reassured Ridge he would never allow such a thing. But imagine if longshore workers did strike against the war! After all, in 1919 they refused to load ships with arms to attack the new Soviet revolution.

"It might take a long time to convince workers to oppose the war, but I’d bet on that before I’d take my chances with Congress," he added.

This group of mostly middle-aged, middle-class white folks seemed more skeptical about the working class than their congressman. Without a pro-working-class perspective, anti-war activists will cling to "lesser-evil" imperialist politicians, or throw their bodies "against the machine" in grand but ineffective pacifist gestures, or lapse into cynicism. But relying on workers to build an anti-war movement will open the door to more meaningful discussions about communist revolution.

Later I spoke with a woman who, with two friends, had raised anti-war signs on a main street in one of the port neighborhoods. She said responses were positive, especially from truck drivers. I wish I’d known that, to tell the group. But there will be lots more opportunities for conversation, because everyone wanted to stay in touch.

A Reader

Anti-Racists Block KKK Movie

Workers organized and stopped the scheduled October 5 showing of D.W. Graffiti’s film "Birth of a Nation," part of a "classic" film series co-sponsored by Maryland’s Prince Georges County Public Library System and the Greenbelt Theatre. The 1915 film glorifies the Ku Klux Klan who use it to recruit members.

Author Donald Bogle wrote, "Griffith presented all the [stereo] types with such force and power that his film touched off a wave of controversy and was denounced as the most slanderous anti-Negro movie ever released." (Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films).

This scheduled film showing followed several recent incidents of racist police brutality in the County and four Nazi demonstrations in the Washington, D.C. area. A letter to the theatre owner expressed outrage, asking the film be canceled. The owner had an employee reply, "I tried to contact the NAACP to get a speaker on the Negro point of view…I did not contact the KKK because I had some of the same concerns about the movie as you did." The Library Director claimed it would be an "academic discussion." Co-workers, friends and colleagues made opposing calls to the Director. By the second day the movie was pulled.

This campaign generated intense discussion. Initially, most people were appalled at the movie but felt discussing it would teach young people analytical and critical thinking. But the theatre employee’s letter changed peoples’ minds. They agreed it should not be shown at all. Racist speech should not be tolerated, period. The first chapter of Donald Bogle’s book was copied and widely distributed, marshalling wider support for this campaign. We’ll celebrate this victory and show Bill Cosby’s film "Black History, Lost and Stolen," which critically discusses "Birth of a Nation."

I’ve been in a book club for the past five years, formed to discuss issues of race and bridge cultural gaps. Several book club members were willing to talk to the theatre owners and demand that he cancel the showing. We’re making sure the movie does not pop up again unexpectedly.

The role of music, films, books, TV and radio programs all need to be analyzed more frequently in CHALLENGE and with our friends, children and co-workers. A neighbor thought young people would find the black-face characters in the movie ridiculous. I explained how my 20-year-old son, raised with anti-racist values, found it sickening and disgusting. But what about a 20-year-old with racist values? The neo-fascist National Alliance is growing rapidly among young white workers through its white supremacist music and attracted many young people to their August march.

Red

Unions A Tool Of Rockefeller Forces

I want to reply to the comment from "A reader" (CHALLENGE, 11/6) about the letter in the paper Oct. 23 about the West Coast dockworkers. First, I completely agree with the comrade that the job of communists is building a mass international PLP, not reformism (fighting for reforms as our goal). But I disagree over a political assessment of the role of U.S. unions today.

Unions play a vital role in supporting the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class in its struggles against other capitalist forces with heavy investments centered on domestic oil and other domestic industries. This is an ongoing dispute that sees periods of unity disrupted by periods of struggle within the ruling class. Both sides agree, of course, on keeping profits flowing at the expense of workers' lives.

The letter points out that the New York Times praised Bush for using Taft-Hartley to open the West Coast docks. In the view of the letter, this is evidence of the overall unity of the ruling class when dealing with workers.

But Taft-Hartley isn't ordering workers back to work after a strike (like it did in 1971). It is ordering the PMA - the bosses - to end their lockout of the workers. The ILWU leaders are glad to be back at work, although they don't like Taft-Hartley.

The Bush administration had originally spoken through Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Czar, who had warned the military would load ships in the event of a dockworkers' strike. I think the New York Times editorial was praising the Bush administration for using Taft-Hartley instead of its original Tom Ridge plan. The Bush administration backed down. Democrats, including Tom Daschle, attacked the Ridge plan.

Furthermore, a Times editorial (10/20) entitled "The Week of Living Dangerously" said:

"Congress has left town without approving the Homeland Security bill. Although this particular failure has many parents, the Bush administration's insistence on tying the plan to an ideological attack on job security for the new department's unionized employees is the biggest stumbling block."

Homeland security and the unions, with Bush and Rockefeller forces at loggerheads with each other!

The unions are very important to the Rockefeller forces as an ideological tool, as long as, (1) they don't organize militant working-class struggle, like a march with auto workers against the lockout-caused layoffs at Nummi Motors, or stop supplies to overseas military bases (in which case the Rockefeller forces would certainly use troops also), or (2) to the extent that they don't become schools for communism. The ILWU knows this and has carefully avoided mobilizing the working class.

A long marcher

Two Steel Workers In The Lunch Room

PL'er: Did you hear the District Director is calling for the steel mills to consolidate? He says Europe and Japan have already done it, and consolidation is coming here to the U.S.

Joe: Did he give any reasons?

PL'er: Yes. He said when he hired in during the 1970's there were 18,000 workers in the plant. Now there are less than 6,000, but the plant makes the same amount of steel. He said you would think the steel companies made lots of profits, but they didn't. The auto companies would tell the steel mills that since your making steel more cheaply, you should sell it for less. There was always one company ready to undercut the price.

Joe: So he thinks that fewer, larger mills could stand up to Detroit?

PL'er: That's right. He said the mills could tell the auto companies, "Our workers are efficient and productive, and they deserve good wages and benefits. The price will stay where it is."

Joe: Well, I guess fewer companies might make the union stronger. We used to have one steel contract for everybody. When the union started negotiating separately with individual companies, it really weakened us. So it would be like going back to the "good old" days. We would have the power to shut down the whole industry, like they do in Europe. That's what we need, but the union will never do it.

PL'er: The Director's call for consolidation reminds me of the so-called "corporate state" under Mussolini in Italy in the 1920's-30s. The fascists tried to convince the workers that what was good for the corporation was good for them! This is a dangerous illusion that the Director is planting among us. He may get away with it temporarily because workers don't see any alternative.

He said nothing about the approaching war with Iraq, but his call for a more efficient steel industry will help the bosses simplify war production. He's telling us to get down in a crouch and try to fend off the blows and hopefully we'll survive. But we must come out swinging, using our heads and communist politics to win workers to communist revolution—the only way we'll survive.

*********************

We're in the midst of developing all our contacts with steel workers. This struggle will continue. All suggestions for a campaign will be greatly appreciated.

Consolidated Red

Bring Anti-War Message to Mass Organizations

I went to the Washington, D.C. Oct. 26 anti-war march with a co-worker and her friend. Another friend who has been to many of the anti-nazi rallies also hooked up with us. My co-worker’s sign read, "Don’t send the snipers to Iraq" (the sniper and his accomplice had just been caught days before). She said a U.S. invasion of Iraq will terrorize workers there like the sniper was doing to workers in the Washington, D.C. area. My sign said, "Jobs for all, No racist war." I wore a T-shirt saying, "Fight racism with multi-racial unity."

We stood at Constitution Gardens listening to the speeches. My co-worker was heartened by the large numbers. We struck up conversations with folks in the crowd. My co-worker, an African American, was disappointed at the low turnout of black people. She vowed to return to her organizations and try to win people to build for and attend the next anti-war march (January 18).

We discussed how best to do that. She tends to fight battles by herself instead of gathering support from friends or co-workers. I reminded her that I usually have a base of support in the union meeting when I introduce an important resolution such as opposing a Nazi rally.

We were interviewed by an independent media reporter from a small radio station on Chicago’s Northside. I’m sure it was because of the anti-racist messages on my sign and T-shirt. We both talked about the racist nature of war. We reported our plans to introduce an anti-war resolution in our union. Other marchers overheard this comment. We talked with New York City teachers who told us of their unsuccessful struggle to get such a resolution passed at a union delegates meeting. They will try again.

We were angry at the march organizers for allowing the speakers to go on for over three hours. Many workers left the rally site, took to the streets and were starting to march! We made plans to bring up a resolution at the next union meeting.

D.C. Red

Red Eye On The News

Below Are Excerpts From Mainstream Newspapers That Contain Important Information:

Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, MG=Manchester Guardian

"Grande" Mexican muralist was lifelong revolutionary

Siqueiros, a towering figure in the history of Latin American Art, is remembered especially as one of Los Tres Grandes, along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, who pioneered the use of monumental public murals to tell epic stories of poverty, rebellion and the tortured history of their native Mexico….

Siqueiros was a militant communist….who fought in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War….

The same issues Siqueiros painted about in 1932 still exist today in Mexico, in places like Chiapas, as well as throughout Latin America and the rest of the world. (NYT, 10/29)

US sucked Saddam into Kuwait

In the week before invading Kuwait President Saddam asked for, and received, permission from the US government, which had supported him in the war against Iran. He asked the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, what Washington’s response to an invasion would be. She assured him of the US government’s continued support. After the invasion, James Baker, then US Secretary of State, tried to deny that she was acting on his instructions. But she had kept the cable he sent her, and made it public. (MG, 10/23)

Famous photographer stays Red

…94-year-old Henri Cartier-Bresson, the world’s most famous photographer….still regards communism as "the best idea."

"Above all, my parents were ashamed of money. It was suspect, immoral and dangerous." As a child, Cartier-Bresson pinned…in his bedroom the headline of an article he had cut out of L’Echo de Paris: "Where does the money come from?…Cartier-Bresson said, "it’s a question that still bothers me."(MG. 10/16)

‘No Child Left Behind’ just another political lie

Washington, Oct. 14 — Less than a year after passage of No Child Left Behind, the sweeping overhaul that promised a new era of accountability in public education, federal, state and local officials are taking steps…to weaken crucial elements of the law.

The law demands that schools put a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom by 2006….

States and school districts have begun maneuvering to soften the law’s effect, while the federal government has proposed regulations that would deem even teachers in training "highly qualified." (NYT, 10/15)

Iraqi chemicals home-grown?

We ought to know exactly how many chemical weapons are in Iraq. After all, they were made in the USA and we should have copies of the receipts. (Mark Russell, Tribune Media Service)

Majority will not rule if US runs Iraq

Listen to the American hawks ….After overthrowing Saddam Hussein we’re going to turn Iraq into a flourishing democracy.

But I’m afraid it’s a pipe dream, a marketing ploy to sell the war….

"There will not be a democracy in Iraq, not a real democracy," said Mohammed Al-Jassem, editor of the newspaper Al-Watan in Kuwait. "That would mean allowing a Shiite state. America and the gulf countries cannot afford that."

….Kuwait rulers seem to think, based on assurances from U.S. officials, that Shiite domination is potentially so destabilizing that democracy is not even an option for Iraq….The prattle about creating a democratic model on the Tigris is just a shrewd White House marketing attempt to bait and switch. (NYT), 10/18)

1. Profit System Breeds Imperialist Oil Wars
   1. SECURITY COUNCIL GANGSTERS FIGHT OVER IRAQI SPOILS
   2. NO `LESSER EVIL' IMPERIALISTS
2. RULERS USE SNIPER SCARE TO IMPOSE POLICE STATE MEASURES
3. North Korea Road to Free Market Capitalism Hits a Nuclear Bump
4. GARMENT WORKERS BEAT BACK PAY CUT
5. Not Only Bushites, Democrats Also Want War
6. ANTI-WAR RALLY AT
   FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY
7. . CAPITALISM AND FORD ROUGE COMPLEX:
   HAZARDOUS TO WORKERS' HEALTH
8. Crisis of Overproduction Hits FIAT
9. MD's and Health Workers Strike
   Against Privatization
10. Capital And Labor Will Never Mix
11. Link Faculty Contract Struggle With
    Fight Against Oil War
12. Workers of the World, Write!
    LETTERS
    1. Reformism Is Not The `Job Of Communists'
    2. Atrocities Against Migrant Workers
    3. `The Revolution Is Waiting On Us!'
    4. Using Films To Fight Imperialist War
    5. Problem Is Lack of Care, Not Drugs
    6. It's a Fight for Oil Profits

---

Profit System Breeds Imperialist Oil Wars

Over the past two weeks, several events have combined to slow down Bush's "Oil War Express" on the way to Iraq:

*While the DC sniper scare made the Bushites changed their focus for the moment, they used the sniper murders to win support for "Homeland Security" and his police state measures.

* In Indonesia the terror bombing that killed 200 civilians proves that al Qaeda and its pals are far from done.

* CIA chief Tenet told Congress that the likelihood of another mass terror attack on U.S. soil is as great now as in the months before 9/11.

* North Korea, another nation in Bush's "axis of evil," just admitted having had nuclear weapons for several years.

Tactically, the liberal U.S. rulers have come out on both sides of Bush's war plans. On the one hand, Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Richard Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman have given him the green light. On the other, The New York Times, in its lead editorial on October 20, complains that Bush has unnecessarily delayed approving the "Homeland Security" bill, that the Immigration and Naturalization Service is a "mess," and that Bush's boast about having routed al Qaeda is "to say the least, premature." The Times concludes by warning Bush to get his "priorities in order" before beginning "any risky foreign initiative."

The liberals agree that U.S. oil giants must control the spigot of Persian Gulf energy wealth. They understand that this means military action, but are increasingly concerned about timing and consequences. That's why they are also backing the latest version of a peace movement. They want to buy time in order to prepare for a future of Persian Gulf oil wars on a scale far grander and deadlier than Iraq.

A number of military bigwigs side with the liberals. Among them is the former head of the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, Anthony Zinni, who said, "I'm not convinced we need to [invade Iraq] now...[Saddam] can be deterred and is containable at this moment." He warns that war with Iraq will require hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, and that the cost will be high. More significantly, he predicts that installing a pro-U.S. government in Iraq "will [not] occur easily." (Salon.com, 10/17)

Bush/Cheney seem to think they can oust Saddam on the cheap, leave a few troops for show, and then set up a puppet regime that will pump the oil in any direction the U.S. wants. The liberals want to get rid of Saddam, but fear that an ill-conceived invasion could provoke mass anti-U.S. uprisings throughout the Arab world, upsetting their goal of dominating the world's richest oil supplies for the foreseeable future. This is the bin Laden-al Qaeda strategy, and so far, U.S. rulers have yet to prove that they can counter it.

SECURITY COUNCIL GANGSTERS FIGHT OVER IRAQI SPOILS

Further complicating matters is the effort to win UN Security Council approval for invading Iraq. The details of arms inspections and "weapons of mass destruction" is a smokescreen. Developing the world's second-largest oil reserves is what concerns the imperialists at the UN.

The Bush gang is trying to guarantee that the U.S. will honor the multi-billion dollar contracts that the Russian and European oil barons already have in Iraq. But Saddam Hussein has dropped the surcharge on Iraqi oil, encouraging French, Italian and Spanish oil firms to sign new deals. He's also trying to increase ties to Russian energy businesses. One of them, Zarubezhneft, may have won concessions worth up to $90 billion. "There are now over 30 deals signed and ready to be implemented the moment that sanctions are lifted." (The Economist 10/10)

The price for European and Russian "support" for war will increase as their investments in Iraq grow. A pro-U.S. Iraqi puppet government declaring all contracts signed by Saddam null and void would drastically sharpen the contradictions between the U.S. and their European and Russian "allies." The liberals want a more measured approach toward sharing the Iraqi energy treasure with potential junior partners. But agreements among imperialists are built on sand, broken whenever a better deal comes along. Imperialist rivalry inevitably leads to war.

NO `LESSER EVIL' IMPERIALISTS

A shaky post-Saddam Iraq may require an open-ended U.S. military occupation of Iraqi oil fields and the entire Persian Gulf. The liberals know that for many reasons, both on the home front and internationally, they aren't ready. Yet.

The profit system offers us a choice between a two-bit, half-cocked war-maker like Bush and an Exxon Mobil Democratic Party war machine with long-range plans to dwarf any slaughter for oil that he can envisioned. No one should mistake these liberals for "lesser-evil" alternatives to Bush & Co.

Our hope lies in destroying the profit system, which makes imperialist oil wars inevitable, not in a liberal-led "peace movement." We should fight, but not for the rulers' agenda. Our battles must lead to revolutionary communism. Building a mass, international PLP is the key to achieving this goal.

RULERS USE SNIPER SCARE TO IMPOSE POLICE STATE MEASURES

Washington, D.C., October 24--As we go to press, two suspects have been arrested for the sniper case, one of them a Desert Storm vet The politics of the following article, even though written before the suspects were caught, still applies.

First, the PLP extends its sympathy to the innocent working class victims of these assaults and their families and loved ones. There is no possible rationale for murdering innocent people.

At the same time the capitalists are using the sniper to practice their plans for domestic repression of the working class. The rulers fear opposition to the war and depression which lie ahead. Why not get ready, they think, for the inevitable opposition? They've already passed a host of new laws that make civil liberties an outdated joke. The day of the shooting in Ashland, Va. (Sat. Oct. 19), every car leaving DC and going to Maryland at Chevy Chase Circle (and other sites) were stopped and searched -- over 80 miles from the scene of the crime! Drivers were detained, trunks were opened and items were pulled out. Terrified drivers allowed these illegal and invasive searches thinking they would help find the sniper even though they made no difference. These measures set up people for fuller fascist measures in the future, for any excuse the cops might invent.

Capitalism creates the conditions for murderous rampages. For example, the government mobilized 1000 cops, complete with helicopters and rooftop snipers, to protect 300 Nazis in August in D.C. The Nazis are terroristic, racist murderers, like the Chicago area serial murderer a couple of years ago who was a member of Matthew Hale's racist World Church of the Creator. In fact, on the Nazi website, two books are prominently advertised--the Turner Diaries, a manual for race war that was a blueprint for Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing, and Hunter, a manual for white supremacist urban snipers which strongly parallels today's maniac. The Nazis love this kind of terror! And the ruling class loves them! It keeps the Nazis around as possible paramilitary forces against communists and others who fight back against the capitalist system. If the sniper is not a white supremacist, he/she is acting just like one!

In this case, the police implemented a post-9/11 collaboration plan among all police agencies in the area in order to deal with the sniper; the military, in partnership with the FBI and multiple police departments, is flying special surveillance planes in the Washington, D.C. airspace in a clear departure from the late 19^th century law banning the use of the military for domestic purposes. None of their high-tech gadgets or collaborative planning has helped track down the sniper, but it has surely been good practice for using more repressive measures against urban rebellions and mass protest.

And so, as we mourn with the families and victims of the sniper, we must keep a clear perspective and a clear eye on the prize - capitalism has much worse in store for us, and the depredations of the system can only be stopped by workers' revolution.

North Korea Road to Free Market Capitalism Hits a Nuclear Bump

The revelations that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons (with help from Pakistan, the U.S. "ally") come in the middle of its turn towards free market capitalism. The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) had a reputation as the last "hard line communist" country. Communism is a political and economic system based on workers' needs. Under communism, private profit and wage slavery won't exist. But, this is far from the reality in North Korea.

A few weeks ago, the North Korean government announced the establishment of an "international financial zone" in Sinuiju, an area that borders China. This free market zone, the "Korean Hong Kong," will operate autonomously with its own legal and economic system. It will issue its own passports and name its own police chief. As The Economist (10/12) says: "The idea of a capitalist zone in Sinuiju appeared to be...even bolder than China's decision in 1980 to establish what it called `special economic zones,' in which capitalist-style policies were introduced."

Yang Bin, the second richest man of China, was named director of this new region. Yang, who holds dual Chinese-Dutch citizenship, owns the Hong Kong-based EuroAsia Agricultural Holdings. He was arrested as he was crossing the border from China to North Korea, accused of tax violations and of siphoning money from his Hong Kong company to Holland Villages, a Dutch construction company he also owns. The Chinese ruling class is afraid that their North Korean "allies" might offer even cheaper labor than that available in China. This is capitalist competition -- not communism.

In July, the North Korean government announced the end of its rationing and distribution system that gave workers free food and electricity. One government official said the new method has been instituted to make workers "show enthusiasm for work." Workers' wages rose by an average of 1700%, but the price of rice increased by 43,750%! "Increased wages for factory and corporation workers fell short of what they had anticipated, and some corporations, due to fund shortages, issued `promissory certificates' to their employees instead of wages in cash." (English.chosun.com, 9/4). Workers must now increase their productivity to get paid.

Meanwhile, North Korea's road to normalize relations with Japan, South Korea and the U.S., and get their investments, hit a little nuclear bump. North Korean admissions that it is building nuclear weapons have caused a major turmoil, putting the Bushites on the spot. Knowing well that U.S. imperialism now only attacks militarily weak countries with oil (like Iraq), the military powerful North Korean rulers are using the nuclear issue "as part of a broader strategy to push Washington into final peace talks...And, as the U.S. has tacitly revealed that it does not consider a pre-emptive military strike an option for dealing with a state already in possession of nuclear weapons -- as opposed to one still developing them like Iraq -- Pyongyang is fairly confident that Washington will engage in negotiations rather than military brinkmanship."(Stratfor.com, 10/18).

While government officials and bureaucrats might become richer as the country runs into free market capitalism, most North Korean workers will suffer even more exploitation. Free markets will never solve the problems caused by capitalism. Only by establishing a communist society, where workers rule without bosses, can we serve the needs of the international working class.

GARMENT WORKERS BEAT BACK PAY CUT

`If you don't leave, I am going to call immigration," yelled the angry garment boss. "Call the `Migra' if you want. We don't care," answered one of 300 garment workers facing down the boss in a 6-hour sit-down strike. "We'll lock the doors and won't let them in and we won't allow anyone to leave either."

It all started when workers found out that the boss had knocked off two pennies from the piece price of their operation. The boss said she had no alternative but to lower the piece rate because the manufacturer, Lucky Brand, lowered the price it paid her for each garment. The workers refused to accept this.

Other workers not immediately affected by the cuts, decided to take on the fight as their own. As one worker put it, "We are all in the same boat. What affects one affects us all." Women workers took the lead, going from section to section until all the sewing machines stood idle and all 300 workers had joined the strike.

The boss went crazy. Never before had she faced the unity and militancy shown by these workers. Her first reaction was to yell, "If you don't want to work, go home!" The workers responded, "We are not working and we are not leaving. We won't let you bring in other workers to do our job."

The boss tried different tricks and threats but the workers stood firm. The strike started at 8:00 A.M. No worker went to breakfast. At lunchtime, no one went out lunch. By 1:30 P.M., the boss was desperate. She ordered her foreman to start closing the doors, while yelling at the workers to go home. The workers refused one more time. "I'll call the cops to kick you out and arrest you!" roared the boss. "Call the cops, we don't care. We are not moving. We are fighting for our rights," responded the workers.

Then the boss used the biggest threat of all: to call the hated "Migra." When this failed, the boss gave into the workers' demand.

This was a very impressive show of workers' power. The unity, determination and fighting spirit of the working class shone brightly in spite of the individualism, selfishness, competitiveness, pessimism and despair that the bosses constantly barrage our class with.

It was a spontaneous strike. Its demands were very modest. Some of the workers know our Party, and our communist ideas played a small conscious part in the struggle. Yet it is very inspiring to see workers militantly taking on our class enemies. It is completely the opposite of the electoral approach preached and practiced by the bosses' politicians, their leaders in the unions and community organizations.

It bodes well for the communist movement. It shows that workers are mad and ready to fight. It is up to us to build the ties and develop the tactics and strategy that will enable us to lead the workers' daily struggles for survival with communist ideas. CHALLENGE and PLP must grow among these workers so that these struggles will become part of the fight to eliminate the bosses and their exploitation with communist revolution.

Not Only Bushites, Democrats Also Want War

LOS ANGELES, CA. Oct. 6 -- Over 5,000 anti-war demonstrators marched towards the Army Reserve building here to protest the impending war in Iraq. Unlike recent anti-war demonstrations, large numbers of parents, children, workers and spectators joined students and activists.

PLP showed a powerful and much needed presence by carrying banners attacking imperialism and holding red flags high. A multi-racial contingent of youth and workers marched under our banners. We distributed a couple of thousand leaflets, hundreds of CHALLENGES, for which we received donations, and led other marchers in anti-imperialist chants. Our signs and chants were in clear contrast to the hundreds of "Stop Bush," signs distributed by march organizers.

The liberals are trying to focus people's anger solely towards Bush. Yet the vote in Congress to give Bush power to attack Iraq reveals the class nature of imperialism. It is the capitalist class, including Gephardt, Daschle, and all the other profit-mongers that perpetuate endless imperialist war to protect their power.

Several comrades invited friends from the anti-war coalitions and campus organizations where we are active to join us for dinner afterwards. The energy in the room was extremely moving. A comrade stood and invited everyone to sing the Internationale in English and Spanish. This provided a revolutionary atmosphere, dramatically different from the march.

We introduced ourselves and shared our ideas, which covered a wide range of topics. One friend spoke about the need to turn the anti-war movement into a revolutionary anti-imperialist movement to smash capitalism. Another friend spoke about a communist future where our children will live in a world without exploitation and the miseries of capitalism. Several people spoke about fighting for immigrants' rights, indigenous rights, and fighting racism. Others said how happy they were to see they are not alone in opposing the war. CHALLENGE was distributed to all and plans were made to meet again.

We learned several things from this experience. The liberals maintain a stranglehold on most anti-war demonstrations, and we should not spend most of our time fighting for the leadership of coalition meetings. Our strength lies in doing the hard day-to-day work of fighting racism, fascism and connecting the struggle of workers with the political struggle on our campuses, at our jobs and at our places of worship. This is where we build long-term friendships and honest political alliances. With our friends and allies we can sharpen the contradictions inside the reformist movements. We can also create alternative spaces (like the restaurant where we had dinner) where people can express their righteous anger and revolutionary hope for the future. The best way we can give leadership to these demonstrations is by winning people to fight imperialism, racism and to ally with the working class so that we can fight for communist revolution.

ANTI-WAR RALLY AT
FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY

FROSTBURG, MD, Oct. 11 -- Today about 75 demonstrators in this tiny coal mining town rallied against the U.S. imperialist oil war. Speakers included a philosophy professor, a history professor, a PLPer and an alumnus of the school, a member of the Feminist Majority League as well as a student who was pro-police and pro-military but anti-war. We rallied to educate the students and workers and build a mass antiwar movement.

About 10-15 pro-war demonstrators said they were coming to "f *** them up!" The PLP member welcomed all in attendance, including those who were pro-war, because he did not want to "preach to the choir." This disarmed the hostility of the pro-war forces. Of all the anti-war speakers, only one, other than the PLP member, gave the true reason for the war -- which is oil.

Although the rally was held indoors due to inclement weather, the crowd participated in chants and was given a variety of information including CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets.

A pro-war Gulf War veteran gave a speech, which consisted of the same flag-waving racist propaganda that the fascist administration has been dishing out for over a year. The response he received was less than encouraging. The crowd laughed, only the other pro-war folks in the room clapped. Another pro-war veteran demanded to speak, but stormed off with the rest of his fascist friends when he was told he would have to wait until the planned speakers had finished.

The PLP member spoke about how U.S. imperialism wants to control the 100 billion barrels of oil reserves in Iraq, and showed a map of the Iraqi oilfields, making the connection between capitalism, oil and U.S. imperialism. He discussed the corporate connections of the Bush administration and the large U.S. military buildup to protect the oil pipelines and shipping routes in Afghanistan and the Philippines. He said, "The U.S. is the only country to use nuclear weapons on another country...and...is currently using chemical and biological weapons...to eradicate the coca crops in Colombia, poisoning water supplies, destroying livestock, and...killing children."

The audience gave him a standing ovation. One demonstrator said, "He told the truth. He urged people to get involved." Teachers thanked him for giving a message that "needed to be heard." This rally showed that people are hungry for change and for a revolutionary party to take charge and lead the way towards a better future. People in this tiny coal-mining town seek revolution. Developing a PLP group is the next item on the anti-war agenda!

. CAPITALISM AND FORD ROUGE COMPLEX:
HAZARDOUS TO WORKERS' HEALTH

DETROIT, MI, Oct. 16 -- "Capitalism makes war on the working class on the job every day." (CHALLENGE 10/23) And the bodies are piling up. Two workers, ages 21 and 25, are in critical condition after they inhaled steam, causing internal burns, and their skin was burned as well. They were performing routine maintenance on a device that washes a byproduct gas on Blast Furnace B at the Rouge Steel plant. The gas is then transported for use in a new power plant across the street. Around 10 A.M. steam hit the men. This was at least the sixth accident at the Rouge complex since 1999.

The workers were lowered from the furnace by a crane basket and rushed by helicopters to the University of Michigan hospital. Both had second- and third-degree burns and injuries to their airways. If they survive, they will be hospitalized for months. One Rouge worker said, "The high-pressure steam will cut right through you. It can cut your arm off, your leg off." Rouge Steel boss Hornberger said there wasn't any pattern of safety problems. But a Rouge worker said, "Nothing's changed. They're never held responsible for any deaths."

Even though the State Department of Consumer and Industry Services, a government agency, which oversees workplace safety in Michigan, and Rouge Steel, is "investigating" how the steam escaped. The government always protects capitalists like Henry Ford, a friend and admirer of Hitler, and the founder of the Rouge Steel plant. A Rouge worker said, "Nothing's changed. They're never held responsible for any deaths." But workers must make the change and hold the bosses responsible as we move toward communism -- where safety of the workers is primary.

According to the UN's International Labor Organization (ILO), at least half of the 5,000 daily job related deaths could be prevented by safe working conditions, and all accidents are preventable. But under the profit system, profits come first. The best health and safety measure we can take is to build a mass PLP and literally, fight for our lives.

NO PATTERN OF SAFETY PROBLEMS?

The 1,100-acre Rouge complex comprises six Ford Motor Co. plants and Rouge Steel. Recent serious accidents at the Rouge complex:

Feb. 24, 2001: One man is killed and another injured when a steam turbine ruptured while the men were testing it.

Jan. 6, 2001: Four explosions and spillage of 2,000-degree molten steel at the Rouge Steel plant left two workers with minor injuries.

Jan. 7, 2000: Molten steel exploded in a vat at Rouge Steel, sparking a series of small fires and causing two minor injuries.

Aug. 19, 1999: One worker died and four others were treated after being overcome by fumes while performing routine maintenance work at Rouge Steel.

Feb. 1, 1999: A boiler undergoing routine maintenance exploded at a Ford power plant within the complex, killing six employees and injuring 14. State regulators later found 15 workplace safety violations for which Ford was fined $1.5 million.

Source: Detroit Free Press library.

Crisis of Overproduction Hits FIAT

ROME, Oct. 18 -- Millions of workers took part in mass protests in support of a general strike all over Italy. The strike, against the government's plan to make it easier for bosses to fire workers, also supported FIAT workers. FIAT has become the latest victim of the worldwide capitalist crisis of overproduction. "The central problem is that the European car market has long had too much manufacturing capacity--30% too much..."(TheEconomist.com, 10/16). As always, workers pay for the bosses' economic ills. FIAT is planning to close plants and eliminate thousands of jobs, and its workers have held several strikes to fight for their jobs.

Today's strike was not supported by two of the three major union federations (CISL and UIL) in Italy, which are hoping to make a deal with the rightwing Berlusconi government. Meanwhile, the CGIL union federation, which organized the general strike, is using the working class to bring in a "lesser evil" government.

No bourgeois government functions in the interests of the working class, they all represent the bosses. The power shown by workers in Italy, through their mass general strikes in the last year, must become a school for communism. Workers must learn from their struggles that the only solution for workers' is to build a revolutionary communist movement to smash capitalism.

MD's and Health Workers Strike
Against Privatization

SAN SALVADOR -- "This is a strike that we're going to win," said a doctor, a member of the Union of Doctors and Workers of the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security (SIMETRISSS) that is striking against the privatization of the Institute. Rightwing president Francisco Flores suspended his vacation to Europe to try to deal with this enormous crisis.

Another doctor said, "We always waited for others to take the initiative to strike in the Social Security Institute (public healthcare). It was time that we saw that the capitalist system affects all the workers no matter what they do."

A patient of the Social Security Institute(ISSS) said, "One can survive the privatization of electricity or the telephones. But with health care as a commodity to generate profits, a person has only one choice, pay or die."

Salvadoran capitalists have targeted the ISSS for several years. The businessmen's group ENADE 2002 concluded, "Social Security must be modernized and this can only be done by making it private." The World Bank and the IMF have told the local pro-U.S. capitalists that privatization can lower their debt. "The electoral parties have tried to profit from our struggle," said one of the doctors. The FMLN, as the voice of European imperialism here, prefers the "social security" system á la European. But "private" or "public," there is no "lesser evil" boss.

When Social Security was established in 1950, there were jailings and disappearances. The bosses saw it only as an expense, even though the money for it comes from the profits generated by the labor of the workers who use it. Now that the institution presents the possibility of being profitable, they fall on it like starving hyenas.

We support the striking workers who are showing that there are only two classes -- the oppressed and the oppressors. But militant union struggle by itself will never liberate the working class from the chains of the bosses' profit system. Only by destroying capitalism can we build a society that serves the working class. To lead the workers to power we must involve ourselves in the battles in which our class confronts the capitalist enemy. That's why PLP is supporting the strike. In this struggle we can spread communist ideas and expand the circulation of CHALLENGE. "The working class has no borders!"

Capital And Labor Will Never Mix

BRAZIL -- On Oct 6, Workers Party (PT) candidates Luiz Ignacio Lula de Silva (ex-union leader) and his multi-millionaire vice-presidential running mate, Jose Alencar, won 46% of the votes. Even if Lula and the Workers Party win the Oct. 27 runoff election, poverty and chronic unemployment will continue. Brazil is the ninth richest economy in the world in natural resources and productivity. It also has one of the highest rates of poverty with millions of workers and their families facing starvation.

The Brazilian ruling class, represented by the big industrialists in São Paulo, the church, the hierarchy of the army and part of international finance capital, is using the Workers Party to negotiate with the IMF. "Lula represents labor and I represent capital," said Alencar, who owns the Coteminas textile company, with a payroll of more than 18,000 workers. Enrique Iglesias, president of the Inter-American Development Bank said of Lula, ".... the markets will negotiate with him." The Financial Times, representing liberal European capital, asked the IMF to "give an opportunity to Lula and to Brazil." Roberto Setubal, owner of ITAU, the second largest private bank in Brazil, supports Lula's candidacy and defended him in a meeting of big finance capital in Washington, DC.

Lula's past as a union leader and his past anti-American rhetoric maintain the illusion that his election will benefit the workers. But the downturn in the Asian, African and South American economies has been caused by overproduction and overcapacity internationally, not the lack of a "workers" president (whether a "leftist" like Chavez or a rightist like Lech Walesa). We need communist revolution that will base production on meeting the needs of the working class and not capitalist profits.

The nationalist bosses want Lula's PT to breathe life into the MERCOSUR trading block (Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina). They want to dominate the South American trading block as a counter weight to the Free Trade Agreement pushed by Washington, and to strengthen their position in doing business with European and U.S. imperialists. Brazilian rulers dream of leading an alliance with Venezuela, and MERCOSUR.

The U.S. imperialists are using the IMF loan of $30 billion to save the bankrupt Brazilian capitalists and U.S. investments in Brazil. This is both a threat and a bribe. South America is one more battlefield between U.S. and European imperialists. Workers have nothing to gain by supporting Lula and the PT. We must build a mass international communist movement which will lead the working class to power that's the goal of PLP.

Link Faculty Contract Struggle With
Fight Against Oil War

RIVERSIDE, CA-- Nearly 300 teachers, students and campus workers picketed a visiting accreditation team session at this large college. Solidarity among the main teachers' union, two campus workers' unions, and the student union continues to grow. Some marchers are in the Students for Justice, which sponsored a teach-in of 500 students on the Middle East crisis and U.S. plans to invade Iraq. These two streams of political activism need to be linked into one political movement.

Faculty contract negotiations have stalled. Teachers are talking about job actions, including a strike, for the first time in campus history. The president, who has never taught, is trying to break the union through backroom negotiating with the faculty senate. As with the Chicago teachers (CHALLENGE 10/23) the status of Part-Timers is a major issue. They are over 800 strong and teach 50% of the English and math courses and 30% of all classes. They have no health care, job security, or conference hours, and they are among the lowest paid Part-Timers in the state.

The college is awash in money, but the president refuses the most minimal concessions. Even the conservative accreditation team criticized the college's morale problem. Hundreds of students have supported the faculty and are ready to go on strike. The campus is buzzing with activism.

In this atmosphere, Students for Social Justice has raised broader political issues, sponsoring the teach-in on the imperialist struggle over control of oil. One major issue is challenging the assumption, promoted by so-called leftists like Tom Hayden, that we are all to blame for the oil wars because of our wasteful lifestyles and gas guzzling SUV's. Not many students have SUV's on this working class campus!

At the teach-in, one speaker showed how only 14% of the oil consumed here comes from the Middle East, while Europe and Japan must import much or all of their oil. The intense imperialist rivalry over petroleum resources will profit the wealthiest oil companies like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco but will provide nothing for working people except cutbacks in social services and genocidal war.

Other speakers criticized U.S. policies and the atrocities in Afghanistan since 9/11 in which "nation-building" amounts to bombing civilians and hiring warlord thugs to do their bidding. Another person spoke about their recent trip to Palestine and Israel where full-blown Israeli government fascism holds Palestinians in the most abysmal conditions. Finally, an attorney addressed the abuses in the USA PATRIOT Act and related legal assaults on all immigrants. When a member of the audience pointed out that oil profits went to the ruling class and called for a fight to end the capitalist profit system, he was applauded.

A core leadership group is growing in Students for Social Justice. Some of them are attending anti-war demonstrations off-campus for the first time. Ideologically, they are shaking themselves free of anarchist influences and liberal illusions through a combination of activism and study of capitalism's contradictions and the bloody legacy of imperialist war. An anti-war rally is planned for next week.

Workers of the World, Write!
LETTERS

Reformism Is Not The `Job Of Communists'

While I agree with much of the letter "Dockworkers Need Militant Solidarity" (CD, 10/23), I disagree with the main point. The letter claims that the lockout of 10,500 West Coast longshoremen was a result of a "simmering division in the U.S. ruling class...over how to conduct a war on Iraq." It implied that the Bush gang was behind the PMA (Pacific Maritime Association) while the "liberal Rockefeller, Exxon Mobil, imperialists" were behind the union.

There are contradictions within the ruling class, but when it comes to attacking the workers, there is usually more unity than disunity. As the CD editorial pointed out, the New York Times praised Bush for using Taft-Hartley to open the docks saying he "was fully justified," and that "most Presidents would have taken similar action under the circumstances."

The bosses are united in driving down the workers living conditions, pensions, health care, etc. Clinton and Bush, Democrats and Republicans, all backed NAFTA and doing away with welfare. While the liberals want to use the unions to campaign during elections and to win them to war, the fact is that union membership nationally has dropped to about 10% of the workforce. In formerly union-dominated industries like auto, steel and coal mining, between 30%-40% of the workforce belonged to unions. For their own political purposes the AFL-CIO has "organized" some janitors and home health care workers, but that hasn't put a dent in the overall trend. The LA garment center remains a 150,000-worker open shop. The liberals didn't come to the aid of the longshoremen any more than they defended the Boeing workers from their recently imposed contract.

The letter also implies that we should demand a shorter workweek with no loss in pay, and concludes, "The job of communists in the unions is to demand and organize action against lockouts, against layoffs and outsourcing of jobs, and against the war plans of all the U.S. bosses!"

I think this is reformism based on frustration at the slow pace of the revolutionary struggle. The main job of communists, in the unions or anywhere else, is to fight for communism by building a mass, international PLP. That is why we fight layoffs, outsourcing, war plans, or police terror. PLP spent a long time fighting for the shorter workweek, and decided some time ago that it did more harm than good in building the Party and mass communist consciousness.

We are on our own "Long March" to communist revolution. We have to struggle with each other against mechanical thinking. "Objectivity" and "Patience" must be our watchwords.

A Reader

Atrocities Against Migrant Workers

Governments around the world have vastly increased security efforts since Sept. 11, 2001. But, as a recent wave of government-sanctioned atrocities against migrant workers shows, this new "security" protects only the rulers' wealth and profits. Three weeks after the Twin Towers fell, Senegal's President Wade convened an anti-terrorism conference in Dakar, urging delegates from 30 African nations to focus their military on security issues.

On Sept. 26, 2002, the Senegalese navy packed over 1,200 workers and their families on a state-owned ferry built for half that number. The ferry quickly capsized and more than a 1,000 passengers died. At about the same time, 120 Somalis and Ethiopians seeking jobs in Persian Gulf oil fields boarded another boat. Its engine failed and the craft drifted for 17 days in the Gulf of Aden, crossing the paths of countless U.S. warships, none of which bothered to help. The U.S. Navy has an armada in the Gulf, protecting Exxon Mobil's tankers, seeking al Qaeda forces, and preparing to invade Iraq. By the time the boat finally washed up back in Somalia, at least 70 workers had died of thirst or starvation.

Just as horrifying was the discovery on Oct. 15 in Iowa of the skeletons of 11 workers who had been locked into a railroad freight car four months earlier in Mexico. A smuggler had promised them good jobs in U.S. Tightening cargo inspection at U.S. borders is supposed to be a centerpiece of U.S. rulers' multi-billion dollar Homeland Security scheme. But because Mexican migrants represent cheap labor to U.S. bosses, the workers' future coffin rolled unhindered past Customs and the Border Patrol. When the labor market turned downward, the smuggler, the potential employer, and the Feds all left the workers to rot.

The African and Mexican workers died because capitalists use the meaningless concepts of "race" and "nationality" to pay some workers less than others. The hardest hit have to flee their homes in search of wages. The rulers also push the lie that uprooted workers are somehow responsible for the ills of capitalism. The city council of Holyoke, Mass., and the mayor of Lewiston, Maine, citing unemployment, oppose the resettlement of 1,500 Somalis in their cities.

For all their talk of "security," capitalists cannot and will not safeguard workers' lives. Our Party's goal is to build a movement that can put an end to the profit system and profit-driven murders like these.

An Internationalist

`The Revolution Is Waiting On Us!'

"We're not waiting on the revolution, the revolution's waiting on us." That captures the spirit offered by young workers to our Oct. 12 cadre school. About 30 workers met to study the situation facing the working class, learn from history and steel us to build the Party in this period of growing fascism and war.

The biggest "positive" was the young people. They were leaders of significant portions of the school and made inspiring comments throughout the day. Older members can bring stability to the Party, but the energy of the youth is necessary to achieving communist revolution.

It was a good meeting. We need more like this. The commitment of cadre determines everything. The bosses appear strong. The old communist movement has collapsed. But dialectics teaches us that the internal is primary. We can make the Party strong by using Party literature to strengthen coworkers, friends and ourselves.

We discussed the layoffs and cutbacks, while the rulers push ahead for an oil war in Iraq. We discussed the struggle of a comrade and her coworkers in an upcoming union election. The current president is a black woman and our comrade is white. She is known as a fighter for the workers, but black nationalism is being pushed to create divisions. She has mixed feelings about running on a slate against the president because she has known her for a long time. While the president has made deals with the bosses, someone pointed out that all union leaders make deals, including those on the slate she may run with. Someone else said it's not what class you're born into, but what class you serve. The important thing is to build the Party from this election struggle. We need a plan to win our personal and political base closer to the Party.

Another comrade said that in his union, he submits 50 grievances but sells only five CHALLENGES. He is somewhat cynical and demoralized at the huge task facing us. He feels better actually winning something for the workers, like back pay or sick leave. Over the years, probably hundreds of his coworkers have seen the paper, and voted for him. Doing political organizing every day, on the same job, with the same workers, is very hard. He needs more help from his collective in focusing on specific workers and struggles.

We will struggle with each other to raise our level of commitment, learn more, and do more for the Party. We have to be able to act independently. Every activity can put us in touch with good people. So seize the time! Know your friends and enemies. Build the Party!

Chicago Reader

Using Films To Fight Imperialist War

A group of high school and college teachers have been compiling articles, cartoons, and films about Iraq to share and use in our schools. These resources provide some understanding that, despite the government's excuses, the coming invasion of Iraq is an imperialist war aimed at tightening U.S. control over Persian Gulf oil. Two films we've been using recently are "Forum on Iraq: Sanctions and the Politics of Weapons Inspections," a 30-minute video that features two opponents of a U.S. invasion, and "Hidden Wars of Desert Storm."

In the "Forum" film Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, argues that his UN inspection team dismantled the Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and that the Iraqi regime has not had the time or resources to rebuild. The second opponent is Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest and leader of Voices in the Wilderness. This group brings food and medicine to Iraq, defying the U.S.-led sanctions which have caused the deaths of up to a million Iraqis.

Both Ritter and Harak offer clear evidence that the Bush Administration has repeatedly lied about Iraq. Harak correctly states that the policy-makers' true goal is to install an Iraqi regime friendly to U.S. oil companies so that they can squeeze out competing French and Russian firms. Yet neither Ritter (a Republican) nor Harak (a pacifist) offer a clear understanding that this war is an unavoidable outgrowth of capitalism.

"Hidden Wars" runs for an hour, and contains both fascinating footage of the 1991 Gulf War and interviews with military and government officials. The film questions the official version of that war, showing for example how the U.S. lied about Iraqi forces massing on the Saudi border in order to be allowed to establish a huge military presence there. It also has a historical section that students find interesting. They learn how U.S. imperialism has been intervening in the Persian Gulf for decades, helping to overthrow leaders and aiding tyrants like the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein when it was convenient.

The final part of the film looks at how thousands of U.S. soldiers became sick after returning home -- the "Gulf War Syndrome." The U.S., which uses working-class soldiers as cannon fodder in its wars, denied any link between its use of depleted uranium in its weapons and the cancers that have wracked the bodies of these soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

"Forum on Iraq" can be purchased for $25 from JDM Productions, Inc, 139 Fulton Street #917, New York, NY 10038. Information about buying "Hidden Wars" can be found at http://www.hiddenwars.org.

NYC Teacher

Problem Is Lack of Care, Not Drugs

I would like to respond to the article on "warping Children's Brains with Psychiatric Drugs" in CHALLENGE (10/9). I am a comrade psychiatrist who has spent her life in public healthcare facilities treating children who cannot afford private treatment. The important issue the writer raises is that children are being given medicine to control their behavior without an "in-depth investigation of what, if anything, is bothering the child, which may range from lack of sleep to learning disabilities to boredom to stresses in the home." I would add "coming to school hungry" to that list.

A "Blue Ribbon Panel" of child psychiatry, pediatrics, education and public health experts conducted a national review in the early 1970's. They concluded that if these medicines were prescribed without a thorough investigation of the causes of the child's behavior, they could be misused. And further, that too often the necessary remedial education was not provided.

But "drugs" are not the problem. Appropriate medicine does not "warp the brain." It is a lifesaver for many children and adults with psychiatric problems. It would be incorrect to wage a campaign against "mind-altering drugs" when many patients need medicine as part of their treatment. The problem is that too often, appropriate treatment is out of reach for all but the wealthy.

We must raise more specific issues than simply "the growth of war and fascism" as the cause. Since Johnson's "Great Society" went up in the flames of the Vietnam War, poor children have been treated increasingly as expendable by the ruling class. Public education at all levels, from Head Start to job training for youth, and remedial education have been starved for funds. Teachers who are underpaid, and burdened with classes that are too large, cannot spend the time needed to help children with learning or behavioral problems.

The same goes for health care, including psychiatric care, which used to be readily available in public hospitals and clinics. Most often the necessary "in-depth investigation" is unavailable in money-starved city and county clinics and millions of children have no health insurance. We need to stress that our younger generation is being ruined in order to pay for imperialist war in which many other children will be killed.

A Comrade

It's a Fight for Oil Profits

A recent experience at a college anti-war teach-in bodes well for our Party. Hundreds of students were present to hear speakers discuss the U.S. preparations for war in Iraq. While the politics of the panelists varied, several talked about the importance of oil in Iraq. It was explained that the U.S. is fighting to control Iraq's oil, not for consumers, but for oil profits made by selling the oil to countries in Europe and Asia.

People in the audience were very attentive and asked many questions. One main question was, "What can I do?" This is a good sign. The students leading the teach-in urged them to join a campus group that will be planning activities against the war.

Someone else said that he concluded from the panel discussion that all this killing and mayhem is being caused for the control of oil profits; and that the root cause is the capitalist profit system itself, which has to be destroyed. The person attacked the liberals as being just as much warmongers as the Bushites, and called for an alliance with workers, like the dockworkers who are being attacked by the bosses. The audience applauded and many asked for the leaflets and CHALLENGES that this person carried.

College Student

 

War On Terror Hits Dockwokers

• ILWU 3-Tier Weakens Struggle

Liberal Democrats are Also Warmakers

The Profit System Makes War Inevitable

Garment Workers Talk About War

Working Under Capitalism Is Dangerous To Your Health

And Now Another 1.6 Million Die from War, Murder and Suicide

a href="#Brazil Elections: Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing">"razil Elections: Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

Part-time teachers struggle at Chicago City Colleges

a href="#USAS Conference – Boston, MA, August 2002">"SAS Conference – Boston, MA, August 2002

Real Unemployment Figures Explode Myth of Prosperous 90s

Red Eye On The News

LETTERS

Bavaria Brewery Enforces Plan Colombia

PLP at Anti-Globalization DC Protests

Jailbreak from Greens Jail

Dockworkers Need Militant Solidarity

Anti-Muslim Racism on the Rise as War Looms

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War On Terror Hits Dockwokers

The latest targets in Bush’s "War on Terror" are not some small suspected terrorist cell, but the 10,500 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers. Bush invoked the strike breaking Taft-Hartley law, ordering workers back to work for an 80-day cooling off period. They had been locked out since September 27. The last President to use Taft-Hartley was Nixon to break a dock strike in 1971.

There will be no outcry from the liberal Democrat "pro- labor" politicians. On the contrary, the liberal New York Times editorialized that "Mr. Bush was fully justified," and that "most Presidents would have taken similar action under the circumstances." Labor Solicitor Eugene Scalia said this is the first time a president has taken such action during a lockout. He previously represented the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) employer group as a private-sector lawyer.

Before negotiations broke down on Oct. 6, the union agreed to work under their expired contract and end the lockout for shipments to Hawaii and Alaska and for military cargo. They had reached a tentative agreement on how new technology would be implemented on the docks. Then the PMA backed off, giving Bush the green light.

The lockout shut down 29 major West Coast ports from Seattle to San Diego and cost the bosses around $2 billion a day. (West Coast shipping accounts for about 3% of the Gross Domestic Product). Key sectors of the economy that use just-in-time inventory, like auto and computer manufacturing, scaled back production and closed plants.

The PMA wants to cripple the union and speed up the number of containers loaded and unloaded per hour. They want workers to compete with dockworkers in Hong Kong, who move three times more cargo per acre at a fraction of the wages. The union wants the new jobs created by new technology to be in their bargaining unit. Union workers moved a record amount of cargo in the last three months, and five workers died in the last seven months due to the incredibly high volume of cargo moved at the West Coast ports.

ILWU President James Spinosa offered to concede hundreds of union jobs to technology and outsourcing while the PMA imposed speedups and firings. In Portland and Oakland, workers protested and refused overtime. When locals passed resolutions to enforce the safety code, the PMA locked out the workers indefinitely.

The ILWU was founded by the old communist movement and opposed the war in Vietnam and apartheid. More recently they staged one-day strikes to stop the execution of Mumia and played a prominent role in the anti-WTO demonstrations. They hoped concessions would satisfy the bosses and that Democratic Party politicians would keep the White House from getting involved. U.S. bosses are in no mood for this type of challenge and will do everything necessary to whip the workers into line.

Instead of calling a strike, Spinosa is trying to outdo Ashcroft and Ridge as the defender of "national security." Before the contract expired on July 1, Homeland Security furher Ridge told the union that any job action would hurt "national security." Spinosa countered, "…anything our country needs in the interests of national defense, this union will provide." (Pacific Business News, 10/1) Oil imports and military cargo vessels were getting through.

Longshore workers are key to U.S. Homeland Security plans for a police state. At dozens of U.S. seaports and border crossings, special trucks are the "newest high-tech weapon for U.S. customs inspectors in the war on terrorism" (San Francisco Chronicle, 9/21). One contract issue is whether the use of gamma rays by security scanning devices could pose a serious long-term health hazard, similar to asbestos.

Bush and Co. want to make the new Homeland Security Agency a non-union shop. They feel that even the slightest organization of the workers is a threat to national security. The liberals and union leaders are out to prove they are more red, white and blue than the "right-wingers." Both sides are leading the working class to fascism and war.

When millions of workers fought under communist leadership, sailors mutinied to defend a general strike in pre-revolutionary Russia. Longshore workers in Seattle threw military weapons into the Pacific Ocean that were being loaded for the invasion of the infant Soviet Union. As conditions sharpen over the coming years, a mass PLP will have the opportunity to transform these struggles into a force for revolutionary communism.

ILWU 3 Tier Weakens Struggle

The media claims that union dockworkers make $85,000 a year. The average pay is actually $68,000, unless a worker works double shifts, seven days a week, or is a foreman. But that’s not half the story.

The ILWU has three classes: "Steady men," "A men" and "B men." "Steady men" work every day, even if no ships are in the harbor. The "A men" work every day a ship is in port, and are guaranteed six days pay a month. That’s about half the 10,500 union membership. The other half is "B men," who only work when a ship’s in the harbor and all the "Steady men" and "A men" are working. "B men" get no work guarantees, and pay the same union dues as the other two groups.

Then there are 11,500 non-union "casuals." These workers are allowed into the union after accumulating 3,000 hours. They only work if the other 10,500 union members are all working. Many must juggle multiple temporary jobs along with dock work to support their families. For most it takes seven years to get into the union, and then they’re "B men."

How did this all happen to a communist-led union that was founded in the cauldron of the 1934 General Strike that shut down the Bay Area? The signing of the 1962 "mechanization" agreement that brought in containerization guaranteed "jobs for life" for all union members. But the bosses cut the workforce by not replacing all those who retired, quit, were fired or disabled. In effect, the union stopped fighting for the future of all working class young people who would be seeking jobs on the docks and the number of jobs dropped precipitously. The U.S. Labor Department used this contract as a model of how to usher in job-cutting mechanization and automation without a strike.

Slowly but surely, such pro-boss contracts spread the racist atmosphere that would shut out future black and Latin job seekers. The current union leadership boasts of its patriotism and support for the war. This ties the workers into defending the very system that exploits them and kills millions of our class brothers and sisters in imperialist wars. Once union officials become pro-capitalist, these developments are inevitable.

Liberal Democrats are Also Warmakers

The stakes are enormous as the bosses debate the details of invading Iraq. They all agree that U.S. imperialism must expand its chokehold on the energy treasures of the Persian Gulf and that this means war. They run the risk of needing to have the U.S. military occupying the entire region, slaughtering and terrorizing tens of millions of Arab Muslim workers and provoking mass anti-U.S. uprisings that could dwarf the Vietnam war.

The continuing status of U.S. imperialism as the top dog of the international profit system is at stake. This is why many liberal bosses, politicians, and their media mouthpieces have begun to rein in the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz faction of the Bush White House that wants to "go it alone" in Iraq. They forced Bush to address the UN in September. On October 5, the New York Times applauded Bush’s October 1 statement that "the military option is not the first choice" in Iraq.

The liberals want to cut deals with their most important junior partners in international crime to get them on board. The Russians are at the top of the list. U.S. and Russian oil bosses want Moscow to become an important U.S. energy supplier in the future. The Russians need money, and the U.S. energy barons would like to diversify their own sources of supply. This will take years to achieve. In any event, the U.S. will always need to control cheap Persian Gulf crude. So "a quick victory over Iraq seems to be a faster and easier way to maintain U.S. energy security…" (Stratfor.com, 10/2).

The Russians have considerable interests in Iraq. The Iraqi government owes them billions in arms debt, a holdover from the Cold War. More significantly, Russian energy companies, as well as the French and Germans, have multi-billion dollar energy contracts pending to develop Iraqi oil and gas fields. They want assurances before the invasion, that the U.S. will honor these contracts after Saddam is gone. New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Keller sums up the situation: "…Saddam Hussein represents an insufferable menace, and…a convincing preparation for war is a prerequisite for any serious reckoning with him…[but] it would not kill us to offer some public assurances that Russia’s genuine economic stake in Iraq will be protected if Saddam is overthrown" (Oct. 5). This is what the liberals mean when they call for "the broadest possible international unity,": make sure all the jackals get a bite.

While the liberals joust with the Bush White House, preparations for war are well under way. The Pentagon is preparing for a "rapid massing of U.S. forces around Iraq in the weeks ahead" (Washington Post, Oct. 5). This mobilization allows for an attack as early as January and for a faster deployment once U.S. diplomacy manages to bribe Russian, French, and other imperialists into OK’ing the massacre. Liberal Democratic House Minority leader Gephardt waved a peace flag at a Sept. 29 fundraiser, then returned to Washington to broker a deal authorizing Bush to launch war in Iraq as he sees fit. Other important Democratic senators greasing the war machine’s skids include presidential hopefuls Joe Lieberman and John Edwards. Most House and Senate Democrats, writes the pacifist Nation, "are expected to vote in favor of authorizing Bush to mount a war—even a unilateral one—against Saddam Hussein" (Oct. 3).

War is coming, possibly within the next few months. While the New York Times calls for "farsighted" Congressional debate before the bloodletting begins (Editorial Oct. 5), we shouldn’t be fooled into believing that one gang of U.S. bosses wants peace while another wants war. The liberals’ caution is based on some of the possible far-reaching consequences: widespread urban fighting, use of Iraqi chemical-biological weapons against Israeli cities and Saudi oil fields, pre-emptive attacks against U.S. forces, unilateral Israeli pre-emption or retaliation, instability without end in post-Saddam Iraq, and an outbreak of anti-U.S. violence throughout the region by millions of impoverished, angry Arab workers with nothing to lose.

Imperialist war is not the end of history. Previous experiences in World Wars I and II proves that it can lead to the growth of revolutionary communist movements and the armed seizure of power by revolutionary communist parties. The class struggle has entered the early stages of a new period in the bloody rivalry for super-power status among the world’s bosses. Our job, in the years and decades ahead, is to create the conditions for a new period of international communist revolutions. Our Party’s modest growth in the short run, can help set the stage for this momentous transformation.

The Profit System Makes War Inevitable

NEW YORK CITY—On Oct. 6, tens of thousands of people took part in mass anti-war rallies in several cities, called by Not In Our Name (NION). The biggest one was in Central Park with about 20,000 demonstrators. PLP participated in several of these protests, distributing thousands of leaflets and hundreds of CHALLENGES.

Contrary to a year ago after 9-11, anti-war sentiment among the population is growing. A NY Times/CBS opinion poll reflects a widespread concern over Bush’s plans to attack Iraq. The poll, devised by the liberal media to reflect their own position, shows that 44% of those polled don’t want a "pre-emptive attack" against Iraq, and want the UN inspectors to be given a chance. While 54% said they would back military action even if it involved substantial U.S. losses, that figure dropped to 49% if the attack involved huge Iraqi civilian casualties. In addition, only 49% would support the war even if it became a prolonged one.

This poll reflects that the liberal Establishment section of the ruling class fears that "going it alone" in Iraq could be a domestic and international disaster for U.S. imperialism á la Vietnam (the Vietnam Syndrome still haunts the U.S. bosses). It also reflects that more people are concerned about being unemployed, paying the rent, putting food on the table and being able to retire with a pension and getting health care than about Hussein.

The morning after Bush’s latest televised speech on the need to invade Iraq (based on a "slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence," London’s Guardian, 10/9), the New York Times editorial warned, "Not quite four decades ago, Lyndon Johnson learned to his and the nation’s sorrow that taking a reluctant country to war can severely damage the body politic. President Bush must be mindful of that danger as he draws the US ever closer to military conflict with Iraq."(10/8)

These protests, as well as those to be held on Oct. 26 in Washington, DC and on the West Coast, reflect the liberal point of view pushed by the NY Times. The fake leftists and celebrity organizers of NION do the work of the liberal bosses. The speeches at the rallies ignored the fact that imperialism and war go hand in hand. They called for everything from alternative energy sources to letting the UN inspectors do their work. But they didn’t have any analysis about why the U.S. needs war now to protect the bosses’ oil in the Middle East.

The only difference between the Bushites and the liberals is how and when U.S. imperialism should wage war to control the flow and profits of oil (see front page). Peace doesn’t have a chance under capitalism. As communists we don’t welcome war, but we do understand that it will happen as long as imperialism exists. Our task is to organize a mass communist movement that will prepare workers, soldiers and students to destroy the war makers and strike breakers once and for all. Join PLP

Garment Workers Talk About War

Angel: I don’t know much about history. I didn’t have much schooling. But I think this war is bad. It’s a question of those in power — and those who always suffer and die are the poor. But what can we do? We can’t do anything. We have to put up with it.

Alex: I don’t know anything about these things. At my job, no one talks about this. I’m new at the factory, and I haven’t made friends yet. The older ones talk among themselves, but not about these things. But I say they should stop this war because many innocent people are dying, especially children.

Jorge: The policy of the U.S. government is to obtain oil profits and spill the blood of innocent people. The fight is for oil in Iraq, to have more control, and make more millions. The war isn’t necessary. It will mean the deaths of innocent people: old people, women and children, who don’t know why or for what. But the millionaires in their competition don’t care about the lives of human beings, of the workers.

Sonia: Lately the news media is bombarding us with stupid patriotism. They ask that we pray for all the heroes who died in the Twin Towers. I don’t think they’re heroes. Yes, a lot of innocent people died without knowing they were going to be sacrificed for oil profits, the bosses’ thirst for profits. If they had known they were going to be sacrificed, they wouldn’t have been in this job.

Susana: I think about what will happen to my children. I don’t care if I die for my cause or my convictions. But workers who die to make capitalism more powerful, and think they’ll be heroes, are only leaving their children more years of exploitation, more years without providing solutions or changes in the way of life of the whole working class. I think the best inheritance we can leave our children and the youth is communist ideology so that maybe they can see our red flags over the White House or the Capitol, like the day the workers waved the red flag over Stalingrad after defeating the Nazi’s.

Lupe: I am filled with anger every time they talk about war, to think that so many people can be won to support the destruction of other human beings. Just to listen to the lies the bosses bombard us with everyday on the radio and television. They repeatedly tell you in a hypnotic manner that the devil of terrorism, Saddam Hussein, has to be smashed and that we must kill thousands of Iraqi’s to prevent this devil from attacking again. This doesn’t fool me. But if I didn’t know about politics, I would also be swallowing this fishhook. Fortunately I know a little bit about dialectics, thanks to PLP. And I can analyze the cause and effects of this bosses’ war. War means two important things: power for the bosses and destruction for workers. I don’t think it should be too hard to help a fellow worker to think the same way, to see the truth behind the news.

Working Under Capitalism Is Dangerous To Your Health

More than three workers die every minute worldwide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from occupational injuries and illnesses. These 5,000 daily deaths — "much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices" — add up to two million a year, says an April 24th report by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO). The study revealed that:

• Accidents cause 350,000 deaths a year;

• For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty;

• Work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together;

• Hazardous substances kill 340,000 per year, asbestos accounting for 100,000;

• Exposure to daily occupational hazards such as dust, chemicals, noise and radiation cause untold suffering and illness, including cancer, heart diseases and strokes;

• Farm labor, construction and mining are the three most hazardous occupations.

The ILO says at least half the deaths from accidents could be prevented by safe working practices and that ALL accidents are avoidable and preventable. But workers know that unsafe conditions are directly traceable to the bosses’ drive to reap maximum profits by cutting corners on safety and by deliberately ignoring the danger of diseases at the workplace.

Capitalism makes war on the working class on the job every day. Truly, capitalism is a killer.

And Now Another 1.6 Million Die from War, Murder and Suicide

A new report by the UN’s World Health Organization says violence kills 1.6 million people per year worldwide. (They don’t include the two million the bosses kill at the workplace as "violence.")

This latest total includes war, suicide and murder. The report says, "Violence…is tied to income; the vast majority of violence-related deaths occurred in low-income countries." Interestingly, "violence, particularly war, seems to beget more violence…After wars, the levels of assault and violence remain higher than before," because more guns are available and more people have been trained to fight.

The report also says the solution is to treat violence as a "public health problem." But wars and low incomes are caused by capitalism, the same as workplace deaths and injuries. And the solution is the same — get rid of the profit system.

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Socialist Lula da Silva got 47% of the votes in the Oct. 6 Presidential election in Brazil. Since he didn’t win a majority there will be a second round in a few weeks. Some time ago, Lula, former head of the Metal Workers Union and head of the Labor Party (PT), changed his tune of favoring class struggle to one of "love and peace" with the bosses. He finalized it by choosing a millionaire textile boss as his running partner. This made him the favorite candidate of a large section of the São Paulo (the New York of Brazil) bourgeoisie and other bosses, religious leaders and even of many generals. They see Lula as the best way to control the angry masses of Brazil and avoid an Argentinean-type of mass rebellion. The PT already runs 7 cities in Brazil, including São Paulo. The PT politicians have been able to make workers sacrifice for the well-being of capitalism. It is clear that Lula will most likely win the election.

Lula promises to tax the rich more and fight the deep inequality in the country by doubling the buying power of workers, but these are just words in air. The reality is that the economy of Brazil is on the verge of collapsing because of the worldwide recession, the crisis of overproduction and the war among the imperialists for control of the world’s markets and labor. Eventually the working class will realize that Lula is nothing but a capitalist wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.

Some U.S. imperialists don’t see Lula as their ally. Lula’s PT has sponsored mass anti-free market activities in Brazil (the most recent one in Porto Alegre, a city run by the PT). These activities are mainly against the U.S. imperialists, and are supported by many who see the European Union as a "kinder imperialist." But many among the U.S. bosses also see that Lula can be good for U.S. interests in Brazil. After all, Lula has promised to keep on paying Brazil’s debt to the world’s bankers, keep public spending down, and open the Brazilian economy to more foreign investment. All of this is part of an IMF and World Bank $37 billion rescue plan for Brazil.

These promises to the world’s imperialists show that all the pro-working class promises made by Lula in his campaign are empty ones. Lula and the PT, just like the PRD in the cities it controls in Mexico, will just keep a lid on public spending, making workers accept more austerity measures.

The Brazilian bosses dream of joining the club of the imperialist masters of the world. That is why they don’t want just to be lap dogs of U.S. imperialism. This means that they need to control the MERCOSUR (the Common Market with Argentina and other smaller regional economies) and not become part of the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. To do that they must diversify, e.g. use the European imperialists to counter the U.S., and oppose U.S. plans (like Plan Colombia) that keep it in total control of South America. All these lead to a sharpening rivalry among the world’s imperialists and capitalists.

We in PLP must again warn workers that it is very dangerous to believe that some former union hack turned capitalist politician can save us from the hell of capitalism and imperialism. The only road to our liberation is the long, and hard struggle for a successful communist revolution.

Part-time teachers struggle at Chicago City Colleges

CHICAGO, IL October 8 — Today picketers greeted Truman College Board of Trustee member, Wayne Watson. In the midst of massive budget cuts, and negotiations for a new contract, part time teachers will take a strike authorization vote in two weeks. The old one expired on June 30. Teachers are demanding full-time jobs, one sick day per month, paid vacation and health care benefits with classroom hourly pay equal to Chicago Public School teachers. We also demand one hour’s preparation pay for every four hours of classroom instruction.

The City Colleges of Chicago serve 160,000 students, mainly immigrant workers who do not speak English, adults working long hours, young workers who didn’t finish high school, young single parents, etc. Severe city and state budget shortfalls, caused in part by cuts in federal funds, might close down this slice of public education for good.

Over the summer, the Illinois Community Colleges Board (ICCB) reported that state budget cuts of $500 million would have a big impact on the City Colleges. Grants and special budgets were eliminated or reduced. The $11.3 million Special Populations grant to help disabled students was wiped out. The $160,000 Special Initiatives grant and the $150,000 Leadership and Core Values grant were eliminated. Adult education was cut by $3.7 million, the base operations money by $1.9 million. At Daley College, the positions of coordinators, tutors and counselors have all been cut. At Truman, 43 employees were laid off. Student financial aid was slashed and more cuts are coming.

The Board has offered 750 Adult Education teachers and coordinators no raise for this year and 20 cents an hour for each of the following three years. They refused to give any paid sick days, health insurance, vacation days or increase in prep time. While the Board claims poverty, they voted to give administrators a 4% raise. Administrators with seven years seniority get free, lifetime health insurance. Adult educators and coordinators get none. Administrators get $500/month transportation allowances while their offer to us won’t pay for a bus ride.

At several campuses, PLP teachers and students are pointing out that the bosses’ priorities are war and a police state not educating immigrants and workers. We have participated in pickets, marches and teach-ins against the cuts. The best education workers and students can get out of this struggle is to learn how to fight for a society that serve their needs and not those of the warmakers and their stooges. Join the communist PLP.

a name="USAS Conference – Boston, MA, August 2002">">"SAS Conference – Boston, MA, August 2002

BOSTON, MA — Six PLP members were asked to leave the affiliate’s conference of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) last August. USAS works closely with SEIU and UNITE and is a training ground for union activists and future misleaders. The ruling class needs groups like this to win workers and students to support the Democratic Party, the fascist Homeland Security and the invasion of Iraq.

We were expelled on the first day of the conference, solely on the grounds of our communist politics. A comrade from the Worker/Student Alliance at SUNY/Binghamton submitted a proposal that put forward anti-racist politics. But the USAS leadership destroyed this, the only proposal dealing with racism and proposed nothing in its place. Furthermore, any attempt to discuss, question or change USAS policies were put down.

When we asked why we were being expelled, some of the leadership whimpered, "I’m sorry, it just has to be this way." Others said, "There will be no discussion!" When we refused to leave, these liberal fascists called the police and we were thrown out.

Removing us did not keep us from fighting. We distributed a leaflet describing our expulsion to students attending the conference. We participated in USAS rallies to support striking Boston janitors and GAP workers, showing up with our own signs calling for international working class unity.

We defied the leadership and returned to the conference the next day. Three PLP members awaited the start of the "Solidarity Training" workshop, which was supposed to improve USAS anti-racist work. When the leadership told us we had to leave, we stood and explained to others that they were going to call the police to throw us out to prevent discussion on putting fighting racism on the USAS agenda. Sure enough, the police were called again and we were forced to leave. From the speech we gave at the workshop, to the suppression of our anti-racist proposal, to the presence of the police, everyone got a crystal-clear picture of the agenda of the USAS leadership.

We sold Challenge and made contacts with over 10% of the students at the conference. We found that some students were supportive of us, bothered that we were thrown out, but felt intimidated by the leadership. We explained our anti-racist and anti-imperialist ideas, and how only communist revolution can end sweatshops, racism, and fascist-style leadership. The most important battle for the student movement is exposing the role of the universities in building racism and support for imperialist war.

Real Unemployment Figures Explode Myth of Prosperous 90s

For decades CHALLENGE has been exposing the "official" unemployment and poverty rates as phony. Now the bosses’ media is finding it increasingly difficult to hide this fact.

While we’ve always known that one trick the rulers use is to omit from the jobless figures workers who’ve given up looking for work, it turns out that the numbers of such workers are far larger than customarily reported. Millions of male workers have dropped out of the labor force over the past "prosperity" decade, unable to find work paying nearly what their old blue-collar jobs paid. The bosses, in true capitalist/imperialist style, have moved many of these jobs to low-wage areas of the world. Over five million workers are forced to accept disability checks — averaging $800 a month, far less than unemployment insurance benefits — and are not counted in the unemployment rates. And even for those who keep looking and are counted, there has been a "long-term rise in the duration of unemployment."

The New York Times reported (9/29) that, "Today the real level of unemployment for men approaches the level of the recession-mired early ’80s." This increase occurred under Clinton’s so-called prosperity decade. In addition, as CHALLENGE has consistently reiterated, the prison population has skyrocketed to over two million (doubling under Clinton’s watch). This not only takes these workers out of the "official" labor force but causes millions more in their families to "suffer many of the consequences of joblessness," such as evictions and lack of health care. No wonder the French say the "U.S. has jailed its unemployment problem."

The Times admits this "Rise in the number of ‘missing workers’ calls into question the ‘great achievement’ of the 1990s economy." Of course, this mouthpiece for the ruling class does not admit it "calls into question" the ability of capitalism to provide a decent life for the working class. The Times even printed an op-ed article in the same issue entitled "Poverty Is More Than a Matter of Income."

While recent Census Bureau figures stated that 33 million people in the U.S. live below an all-too-narrowly defined poverty level (see CHALLENGE, 10/9), when measuring the assets of the poor, 25% of the U.S. population are "asset-poor." That is, if they lost their jobs and "had to live on only net worth — savings, home equity and other assets — they could survive at poverty levels for only three months."

Astoundingly, if they only had liquid assets to ride out unemployment (that is, not giving up their home), "the poverty rate jumps to nearly 40%"!

But this is not surprising when one considers that the top 20% of households own 83% of U.S. wealth (assets). and the bottom 60%, the majority, own less than 5%. Still worse, the bottom 40% own LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of total U.S. wealth.

All this, of course, hits black and Latino workers doubly hard because the bosses’ racism forces them to suffer double the jobless and poverty rates of white workers, and fills the jails with 70% black and Latino prisoners.

Given this sorry picture of U.S. capitalism sitting on the backs of its working class, now the rulers want to enhance their ability to intensify this hell by embarking on a series of imperialist wars to further control the world’s oil supply and increase their pool of exploited workers worldwide.

Yes, Karl Marx was right in analyzing the profit system as one that rests on the robbery of the value workers produce and control of the state apparatus to enforce that robbery. Need any more reason to join with the revolutionary communist PLP to wipe out that system and build a communist society that eliminates bosses, profits and their endless wars?

Red Eye On The News

RED EYE reprints clippings from the New York Times, British Manchester Guardian Weekly, and many other well-known capitalist publications. From their own papers we collect material which communists find useful in exposing capitalist maneuvers and weaknesses. Especially useful for students and others who want an "official source for important facts. Abbreviations: MG= Manchester Guardian; NYT= New York Times; MM=Multinational Monitor; LOW=Liberal Opinion Weekly; FT=Financial Times

Arabs distrust US plan for Iraq

A senior Arab official said Washington had not shared any of its ideas on who might rule Iraq if Mr. Hussein is ousted by force. "Everyone is asking, ‘Where is the Karzai for Iraq?’" he said, referring to Hamid Karzai, the American-backed leader of Afghanistan.

"But what is Karzai?" the official said, "He’s a U.S. stooge. No one wants a U.S. stooge in the region." (NYT 10/8)

US oil firms $upport war

A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition.

(MG 9/25)

People don’t want this war

Representative Lynn Woolsey, Northern California Democrat, said mail and calls from district residents were running 200 to 1 against a war with Iraq.

(NYT 9/21)

Capitalism-as-usual (no security) comes to Japan, and schoolkids turn violent

YOKOHAMA, Japan — By sixth grade, a growing generation of preteenage rebels has begun walking in and out of classrooms at will, mocking the authority of adults and even attacking teachers who try to restrain them.

Similar problems show up in higher grades too, with nearly half of all high schools reporting violence, higher dropout rates and problems like student prostitution.

"Up until now, Japan was a society in which children obeyed adults, but this relationship between children and adults is no longer workable, because the system was built around the idea that by doing well in school you should enter a good company, and having lifetime security," said Naoki Ogi, an education expert. "Over the last 10 years, however, Japan hasn’t found a way out of its economic depression, and from the children’s viewpoint, the academic record-oriented system has collapsed. Moral values are collapsing, too.

"So children feel they have no one they can trust, no adult society they can look up to."

(NYT 9/23)

Darwin said humans gain by cooperation, NOT by dog-eat-dog

So why is it that most of us don’t know what a great guy Darwin was?

In his case, bias has been compounded between his theory of evolution by natural selection and the perversion by philosopher Herbert Spencer of one aspect of this idea, so-called "social Darwinism." This is the view, explicitly rejected by Darwin, that all human existence is a cutthroat competition in which only the fittest are meant to survive.

This idea isn’t science at all. Our capacity to cooperate has given our species a powerful selective advantage. What a hideous irony that the tiny amount of science that many of us think we know is merely a perversion of a profound spiritual insight — that all life is kinship.

(MG 9/25)

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

Bavaria Brewery Enforces Plan Colombia

"You are with the company or against it!" Repeating fascist Bush’s warning to the entire world, the Bavaria brewery bosses are telling workers to accept the company’s new contract offer. The company is using its flunkeys in the plant to force workers to quit the union (Sinaltrabavaria). The bosses even offered workers $300 as an incentive to quit the union.

Unfortunately some workers, lacking any class-consciousness, accepted the bribe and gave up the years of struggle it took to get the few benefits from the company. This is a betrayal of those workers who are still fighting for the union and our rights.

This is the kind of democracy the bosses want. In Colombia, only 3% of the labor force is unionized. Now that the friend of the Death Squad, Uribe, is President, the attacks against unionists will increase. Already, the death squads have killed thousands of unionists in the last few years (CHALLENGE has had numerous articles on the murders of several Coca Cola union activists). Unfortunately, many union leaders still have illusions in the bosses’ democracy. The Sinaltrabavaria leaders are still hoping to defeat the company’s latest attacks through legal means.

PLP supports the struggle of Bavaria workers for their union. At the same time, we must point out the limitations of struggling just for trade unionism in this time of growing war and fascism. The best way to fight the bosses and their terrorist death squads is to build a massive struggle for a society where workers produce according to their needs, a communist society without any bosses.

Red Worker

PLP at Anti-Globalization DC Protests

The last weekend of September in DC saw PLP’ers engaged in a wide variety of agitation and base building during the protests and demonstrations. On Friday during the "People’s Strike" comrades handed out leaflets about the Oil War, about PLP, as well as some Challenge/Desafíos. Several Latino workers were very responsive to the Desafío distribution.

On Saturday comrades did the same at the Anti-Globalization Rally at the Washington Monument. Many ISO folks were out there, but people seemed to be much more responsive to us. People were finding out who the REAL revolutionaries are!

On Sunday comrades distributed Challenge and leaflets to over 900 demonstrators at the Anti-War Rally in Dupont Circle. Throughout the whole weekend, we handed out over 1,500 leaflets and distributed over 250 Challenges.

Forward to REVOLUTION! Forward PLP!

Komrade

Jailbreak from Greens Jail

Recently, the Green Party candidate for governor of California, Peter Miguel Camejo, spoke on a Los Angeles university campus. He said that the African American and Latino communities are prisoners of the Democratic Party, and the Greens represent the "jailbreak." While he presented many interesting facts about the world situation, his analysis reveals that the Green Party is really a prisoner of doomed reformism.

We wrote a statement/question to expose the failure of electoral politics and move the discussion to the left. The participation and comments of others helped sharpen the question.

After the speech the floor was opened for questions. A comrade said, "After studying the Patriot Act, secret evidence, secret trials, the arrest and deportation of thousands of our Muslim and Latin brothers and sisters, the FBI requesting student records even on our own campus without probable cause, the TIPS program asking workers to spy on other workers, the Homeland Security department threatening to break the dock worker’s strike, many people including myself think we are in a time of growing fascism…" She said that historically electoral, reformist parties like the Greens spread deadly illusions about the nature of fascism and misled workers and students towards elections instead of organizing to fight capitalism, the cause of war and fascism. "How would you differentiate the Green Party from these failed and ultimately dangerous reformist parties?" she asked.

Camejo revealed there is absolutely no difference. He said "the U.S. is not in a period of growing fascism" because "most citizens and the Republican and Democratic Parties still believe in democracy." He said we could reform the system by voting for Green Party candidates. This is exactly what the German and Italian Social-Democratic Parties said even as Mussolini and Hitler took power.

Capitalist elections never lead to workers taking power. The Greens won’t fight for workers’ power or to end capitalism: the source of racist inequality and wars for profit. They want the capitalist pie divided more equally, which will not happen, especially in this period of crisis. The Greens are appealing because they give many facts that Democrats and Republicans cover up. But unless they are connected to a larger political-economic analysis of imperialism, they mean nothing. While the Greens feel they are a jailbreak from the Democratic Party, the only jailbreak for the working class is studying dialectical materialism and fighting for communist revolution.

After the event we distributed CHALLENGE and made plans to meet several people for coffee to discuss these ideas further. Since then, Governor Davis again betrayed immigrant workers by refusing to sign a bill granting drivers’ licenses to those in the process of becoming permanent residents. Some immigrants’ rights leaders are supporting Camejo for Governor in response to this slap in the face by Davis. Many people are attracted to the Greens because Davis was involved with the energy companies in robbing the California treasury of billions of dollars. But no politician can change the nature of capitalism. Fighting the illusion that capitalism can be worker-friendly and peaceful is an important step toward building a mass PL to destroy capitalism.

Red not Green

Dockworkers Need Militant Solidarity

The Bush gang invoked the Taft Hartley Act to reopen the 29 West Coast ports shut by the lockout of 10,500 Longshoremen. The bosses are playing hardball. In Oakland alone some 30 carriers move 20% of West Coast exports, including electronic parts and foodstuffs from the Central Valley.

These negotiations hit at the heart of a simmering division in the US ruling class that has resurfaced over how to conduct a war on Iraq. US bosses with heavy investments in domestic oil and domestic industries have cultivated mass movements in groups like the Christian Fundamentalists. The liberal Rockefeller, Exxon Mobil, imperialists have replied by turning, among other things, to the unions. The ILWU has been a poster boy for the liberals, and has not won any favors with the White House. But it is the strategic role the West Coast ports play in the Bush scheme of things that has brought Tom Ridge and the matter for Homeland Security into the picture.

It is a sorry state of affairs for dockworkers, made even sorrier by a union leadership that is not prepared to tap into the potential strength and unity of the whole working class to answer these attacks.

Over 4,700 autoworkers at the joint GM-Toyota NUMMI plant were laid off when the engines and transmissions shipped via the port to this just-in-time assembly plant could not be unloaded. Yet no march of autoworkers and longshoremen protesting the lockout was called.

The port of Oakland lies next to some of the poorest neighborhoods in California. Yet, the union doesn't demand that the benefits of automation be passed on to the working class through a shorter workweek with no loss in pay. (The union won the 6-hour day over 30 years ago. Longshoremen work 8-hour shifts with 2 hours of overtime.)

Longshoremen are vital links in a chain of West Coast workers who create billions of dollars every just-in-time day. Their enormous potential is wasted by pro-capitalist, pro-Rockefeller union leaders. The job of communists in the unions is to demand and organize action against lockouts, against layoffs and outsourcing of jobs, and against the war plans of all the US bosses!

A Reader

Anti-Muslim Racism on the Rise as War Looms

On September 13, a racist woman in a roadside restaurant claimed she overheard three Muslim medical students making "suspicious comments." The students had stopped to eat in Georgia on their drive south to Larkin Community Hospital in Miami where they were assigned to work. The racist called the cops who sent out bulletins all over Florida for three young men, including one with a long beard wearing a skullcap. The students were pulled over on a Florida highway, their car was ransacked and they were held and questioned in a hot police van for 17 hours. Despite news reports that some of their belongings had been "detonated," they were finally released and the police called it "a mistake."

The only "terror" involved was experienced by the Muslim students. The hospital withdrew its offer for their medical training, even though this harassment was based on racist profiling. Ayman Gheith, who is from Illinois, finished his pre-med courses at the university where I teach and is well thought of here. Family members and classmates were shocked and angry. An article appeared in the campus paper. Meanwhile, cops and pro-war patriots hailed the racist as a good citizen who did the right thing!

This is what the rulers have in mind when they speak of Homeland Security, a nation of snitches reporting to the police, who can detain or kill a "suspect" on the whim of an ignorant racist. Thousands of immigrants have been rounded up, questioned, held without charges and deported in the name of the "War on Terror." This racist is a good Nazi soldier, goose-stepping in line. And we can expect to see more.

Homeland Security Fuhrer Tom Ridge is the scheduled keynote speaker at the APHA (American Public Health Association) Convention in Philadelphia next month. While over 45 million live with no health insurance and public hospitals like Cook County are reduced from 900 to 400 beds, the entire emphasis of public health is being turned toward "fighting terrorism" (bio-chemical attacks, anthrax, etc). For the Muslim students held in Florida, for the thousands being detained and deported, for the millions with no insurance, and the millions more with no hospital beds, we should give fascist Tom Ridge the welcome he deserves.

By the way …

Quote of the Year

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trial, 1946

Barefoot Doc