1. Liberal Rulers Push for a Faster Police State:
   Workers Need Red Leadership
2. Bushites, Liberals: Gangsters All
3. Israeli Seizure of West Bank Will Lead to Wider Mid-East War
4. Democrats Back Bush's Plan to Whack Iraq
5. Peru: Mass Rebellions Answer Rulers' Phony Promises
6. Angry Marchers Condemn U.S. Terror Against Arab, South Asian Workers
   1. AN ATTACK ON ONE IS
      AN ATTACK ON ALL
7. Chicago Cops Get License to Kill
8. Militant Youth Lead Protest vs. NJ School Cuts
9. Dollar, Profits, Consumer Confidence Fall:
   This Is A Recovery?
10. Bus Strikers Blast Billionaire Bloomberg
11. PLP'er Renews Ties At UAW Convention
12. UAW Definition of `Job Security': Layoffs
    1. NEW UAW HEAD: FORD'S MAN IN DRIVER'S SEAT
13. Bosses' Hunger for Profits Starves Millions
    1. So Much Food and Cattle and So Much Hunger
    2. Starvation in the Land of Maize
    3. Yes, U2 Bono!
14. Cuba: Can't Build Communism with Capitalism
15. LETTERS
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. Students Lead
       Teachers, Parents To
       Defy NYPD
    2. Liberals' Fascist Law Aimed at Reds
    3. In Memoriam:
       Haven Wilson
    4. `Free Market' Costly For E. Europe Workers
    5. Building PLP in
       Campus Labor Group
    6. May Day in
       El Salvador

---

Liberal Rulers Push for a Faster Police State:
Workers Need Red Leadership

The main, liberal wing of U.S. bosses is losing patience over the Bush presidency's half-assed efforts to create a police state on the home front. The 9/11 attacks gave the rulers the excuse they needed to launch the first phase of their new war for world domination and to begin militarizing U.S. society. When Bush signed the "Homeland Security Act," the Liberal Establishment praised him for heading in the right direction.

But now, more than nine months later, the same liberals are raking him over the coals for acting too slowly and ineptly. They're aiming to take over the "war against terror." None of this infighting among the bosses bodes well for the working class. For sure, Bush is a racist killer. But the liberals most probably will get their way, and their ruthlessness against our class will make him look like an amateur.

As usual, the New York Times supplies the loudest voice in the liberal chorus. For weeks the Times has been berating Bush, his "Homeland Security" czar Ridge, the FBI and the CIA. Now this main liberal mouthpiece has become even more aggressive. A June 13 op-ed piece by Former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman demand the immediate creation of a Homeland Security Agency. "Not since 1947 [i.e. the start of the Cold War -- Ed.] has a new agency been so needed."

Hart and Rudman don't speak purely for themselves. They have behind them the weight of the Liberal Establishment's key think-tank, the Brookings Institution. A new Brookings' book, Protecting the American Homeland: A Preliminary Analysis, was written by seven leading Brookings experts, including two -- Michael O'Hanlon and Ivo Daalder -- who've helped champion the drive to launch a new war for the conquest of Iraqi oil fields. The book lambastes the Bush administration's "homeland security" shortfalls and leaves no doubt about the liberals' goal of a police state. The main recommendations include:

*Increasing defenses along U.S. borders and in U.S. airspace (Brookings calls this "perimeter security);

*Tightening surveillance, information gathering and visa and immigration procedures;

*Adding 1,000 new FBI agents for "counter-terrorism" a year for five years;

*Securing U.S. nuclear power plants and toxic chemical plants.

Hart and Rudman aren't just two retired senators with nothing better to do. As CHALLENGE readers may remember, they chaired the Clinton-appointed Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, which predicted as early as 1999 that a 9/11-type event or worse was in the works. They scold Bush: "Creating a Department of Homeland Security is...a...step...that should have been taken well before Sept. 11."

For sure, the big bosses don't want a repeat of 9/11. On the other hand, they have to milk the terrorist threat for all it's worth in order to drum up popular support for their police state and war plans. But the Brookings Institution doesn't really expect that nuclear or biological terrorist attacks on a grand scale will materialize. A chart in their new book rates the probability of biological attack with a million casualties as "extremely low"; of an atomic bomb detonated in a major U.S. city as "very low"; and of a successful attack on a nuclear or toxic chemical plant also as "very low." It calls "modest" the estimated likelihood of a "suicide attack with explosives or firearms in a mall or crowded street." (Full text of the book is available at www.brook.edu.)

So even the rulers' main think tank believes that the most probable terror attacks in the future will resemble the tactics of suicide murder-bombings in the current Middle East fighting rather than the doomsday scenario of nuclear mayhem in big cities. The 5,000 additional FBI agents called for by Brookings aren't likely to be of much use against a teenaged suicide bomber. But these agents can certainly join a growing apparatus of political repression.

Just as they used 9/11 to drum up patriotic hysteria for their oil war, the big bosses are now trying to use Bush & Co.'s bungling as a pretext to create a groundswell of demand for more cops, FBI agents and surveillance, i.e., fascism with a liberal face. The scapegoat of the moment is Arab workers and students, but the real target is the working class as a whole, along with soldiers, students and anyone else who doesn't fall for the rulers' agenda and who may organize to do something about it.

That eventually means, above all, our Party. It's no accident that Hart and Rudman compare the rulers' present challenges to the Cold War. The Cold War was an all-out crusade against communism, the deadliest threat the international profit system can contemplate or face. The rulers see a different immediate threat today. The old communist movement is dead. Capitalism didn't defeat it; it died from self-inflicted opportunist political weaknesses. Rival imperialists in China, Russia and Europe have a long-range need to knock the U.S. off its perch as Number One. U.S. bosses, on the other hand, intend to rule the world for the foreseeable future.

Inter-imperialist rivalry and warfare will cause the working class to pay an increasingly heavy price in blood and sweat. A revolutionary Party can grow, at first slowly, and then dramatically, in the crucible of this turmoil. The rulers know this. The "specter of communism" continues to haunt them. Their plans for a police state aim more than anything else to quench the fire of working class militancy once it starts to blaze and to prevent it from becoming red, under PLP's leadership.

The liberals will win out, in the short run. But their police state, and their ceaseless wars (Iraq and its energy wealth seem certain to be the next target, will open the eyes of tens of millions of workers worldwide to see that there must be an alternative to capitalism. It is up to communist revolutionaries to show that such an alternative won't fall from the sky. It can only be achieved by organizing a mass, red-led working-class movement.

Nothing can kill the hope of communism, and nothing can stop the great forward march of human society. Even though this capitalist nightmare seems infinite, every night must have its end. The answer to fascist terror and bosses' war remains: build a mass PLP.

Bushites, Liberals: Gangsters All

Internal self-discipline is an important secondary aspect of the liberals' plan to take over the "war against terror." They don't think the Bush White House has an adequate strategic view of the job at hand. Building a police state and making war to remain the top-dog imperialist call for tough-minded leaders with the ability to subordinate their immediate profit interest to the overall agenda of world domination. The liberals don't think Bush has the "right stuff." One example is the tax cut he passed in 2001. This was a crass, multi-billion-dollar giveaway to his business world pals. The liberals, led by New York Times columnist/economist Paul Krugman, have been lambasting Bush for frittering away money that they want used for the main agenda. Not surprisingly, the Brookings book calls for "freezing at least part of the tax cuts" to help pay the additional $10 billion the liberals want devoted to Homeland Security over and above the $38 billion allotted by Bush. Look for liberal Connecticut Senator Lieberman, who wants to be president, to echo the Brookings line. And don't be fooled by the liberals' hypocritical criticism of Bush's support for "special interests." This remains a tactical fight between merciless gangsters. We don't have a stake in backing either side.

Israeli Seizure of West Bank Will Lead to Wider Mid-East War

Israeli rulers, with backing from the Bush administration, moved to permanently occupy the West Bank and enforce a total fascist police state. An Israeli official told BBC News (6/19) that, "To fully reoccupy Palestinian towns, the army would have to call up reservists and take on responsibility for civil administration."

Sharon's murderous invasion, while drawing support from the U.S., creates problems for Bush's planned proposal for an "interim Palestinian state." This already has been criticized by government ministers in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon who declared there is no such thing as an "interim state." MSNBC News (6/19) reported that, "The support of Jordan and Egypt, which shares borders with Israel and a future Palestinian state, would be crucial to any White House proposal." Without that support, Bush's "plan" is doomed.

Complete seizure of the West Bank could spark widespread uprisings across the Middle East -- not to mention in Palestine itself -- causing big problems for the Pro-U.S. repressive governments throughout the region, playing right into the hands of those anti-U.S. capitalist forces represented by al Qaeda . It also could create more problems for the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The solution for Palestinian and Jewish workers lies not in allegiance to "their own" sets of bosses, whether Sharon or Arafat, but in uniting to fight all bosses and their profit system that exploits all workers. The only way out of this endless butchery is for workers throughout the Middle East to organize to smash all the local and imperialist warmakers.

Democrats Back Bush's Plan to Whack Iraq

When it comes to making war, the Democrats won't be outdone by the Republicans. Top Democratic Party politicians quickly backed a report leaked to the Washington Post saying Bush had signed a plan giving the CIA broader powers to try to whack Saddam Hussein and take control of the huge Iraqi oil fields, putting them in the hands of Exxon Mobil & Co.

"I think it is an appropriate action to take," said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) on ABC's "This Week" (6/16).

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) told "Fox News Sunday" (6/16), "We want to work with the administration and try to find the best way and the best time to do this,"

And Democratic Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a member of the Intelligence Committee, told CNN's "Late Edition" (6/16), "If the President were to authorize that kind of action, I would endorse it wholeheartedly. I don't think it's a question of whether we're going to have to deal with Saddam Hussein," continued Bayh, "I think it's a question of when. We need to get on with the planning, using military, economic, diplomatic -- every arrow in our quiver to deal with this man."

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the only problem he has with the plan is "if it doesn't work. If Saddam Hussein's around five years from now, we've failed," Biden said on CBS's "Face the Nation" (6/16).

Peru: Mass Rebellions Answer Rulers' Phony Promises

PERU, July 18 -- Massive rebellions have erupted in Southern Peru, protesting the privatization of the region's utility companies.

"Never believe a politician's promise" is something workers worldwide understand only too well. Alejandro Toledo, President of Perú and former World Bank official, promised the people of Arequipa that once elected he would maintain state ownership of these utility companies. Soon afterwards Toledo sold Egasa y Egesur, the region's two electric companies, to European multi-nationals.

The working class of Arequipa responded to these broken promises by taking to the streets and confronting the cops. After four days of rebellion, Toledo declared a state of emergency and sent in the Army. They killed two demonstrators. Then thousands rebelled in the city of Tacna, near the border with Chile, in solidarity with the workers of Arequipa. The protestors threw rocks at the cops and government offices and blocked roads. Now, "fearing the spread of protests, the government ordered tanks and troops into the streets of Lima," the country's capital. (New York Times, 6/18)

Workers have seen how privatization of state-owned companies has only eliminated jobs while making a few local and foreign bosses and crooked politicians even richer. Private utility companies will raise electric rates sky-high.

General strikes, rebellions, angry marches and other actions by urban and rural workers and their allies have erupted throughout the Southern Cone -- Perú, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. They are fed up with the bosses' growing attacks to make workers pay even more for their capitalist crisis. These actions are good. Still better would be a fight for a society free of all capitalism -- private or state-owned, where production serves the needs of the workers and their allies: communism.

Angry Marchers Condemn U.S. Terror Against Arab, South Asian Workers

NEW YORK CITY -- Scores of taxi drivers, restaurant and store workers defied the U.S. government's terror and overcame their own fears to join about 400 loud and angry protesters in a rally and march condemning the detention and deportations of Muslim Arabs and South Asians, and escalating wars. The demonstration proceeded through a predominantly South Asian working-class neighborhood. Many, including family members of those detained, overcame the intimidation generated by over 100 arrests by the FBI and the Immigration Service. The diverse demands of the rally included:

* Stopping the detentions and deportations;

* An end to U.S military support for Israel, Israeli occupation of Palestine and U.S.-provoked wars in Kashmir, the Philippines and Afghanistan; and,

* Allocating money for education and social services, not for the Pentagon.

These demands reflected the demonstrators' anger at the increasing repression and worsening conditions in the U.S. and wars abroad where thousands are being killed and millions are forced into living as refugees. This range of protest stemmed from the broad coalition of 50 groups that organized the event, including a large number of South Asian, Palestinian, Jewish, Labor, church and community organizations.

Despite the multi-racial diversity, there were few black and Latin protestors, reflecting the nationalism of some of the groups, content to organize among "their own people" and around a single issue. Many of the organizations sent only one or two representatives instead of organizing masses of their members.

Multi-racial unity and class solidarity signs were evident, like "An Injury to One is an Injury to All." Marchers enthusiastically chanted "Jews, Muslims, Black and White, Workers of the World Unite" when such chants were initiated. But nationalist/classless slogans like "Free, Free Palestine" and "Free, Free Kashmir" were chanted with as much gusto.

AN ATTACK ON ONE IS
AN ATTACK ON ALL

PLP'ers distributed hundreds of leaflets and many CHALLENGES, containing the Party's ideas that demands like "Free Palestine" and "Free Kashmir" will only deliver these workers into the hands of another set of (local) capitalists. It is incumbent on all of us. especially PLP members and friends, to realize that these South Asian workers are now in the front line facing the rulers' onslaught on the entire working class. Therefore, the order of the day is organizing our co-workers and classmates to support those under attack.

Speakers eloquently and passionately described the effects of the current crisis but without a class analysis to trace its causes. But a few speakers did identify capitalism as the root of the problem and U. S. imperialism's relentless need to control the world's economy as the cause of the escalating wars.

Generally the demonstration was a step forward for the anti-war movement, occurring as it did in a working-class neighborhood and joined by members of the community. Many youth marched, including a group from local high schools. It showed people are angry, will fight back and are receptive to multi-racial and class unity.

But such coalitions cannot build a movement to wipe out the problems of capitalism once and for all. That can only be done by uniting all workers internationally into a communist-led fight to destroy the profit system.

Chicago Cops Get License to Kill

CHICAGO, IL June 15- About 50 angry protestors marched today chanting, "Racist Cops, You Can't Hide! We Charge You With Genocide," and "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All Are Part of the Bosses' Plan." We were marching because racist Judge Clayton Crane found five Cook County sheriffs "not guilty" of firing 24 shots into an unarmed black couple's van. These pigs were off duty, in a personal car, and drunk when they chased the couple through the streets of several Chicago suburbs yelling, "Kill them! Kill them!" Fortunately the couple was not injured.

Jesse Jackson led the march and thought what we were saying was "dangerous." But the workers at the march and in the neighborhood disagreed with him. At first some of us were a little apprehensive about leading chants because of past negative experiences with Jackson's PUSH. But after some struggle, we decided we had to do something. We began by leading bold, militant chants expressing the workers' anger towards the cops and the system. As support grew we initiated more leftist political chants.

Jackson thought it was "safer" to simply shut down the march so he led everyone in a prayer and his famous "I Am Somebody" litany. Most of the protestors approached us requesting more chants, saying, "Keep it up." This was not the reaction most of us expected, but it was surely welcomed. We distributed 25 CHALLENGES and made some contacts.

We have tried working in and around this organization without always getting the best response. But we got a great response today. Now we'll focus on doing more with the group while bringing our communist politics to the workers in it. Many of us learned it's possible to do this and we're gaining more experience in doing it. We must expose Jackson and the other misleaders and organize our working-class sisters and brothers for communist revolution. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Militant Youth Lead Protest vs. NJ School Cuts

TRENTON, NJ, June 13 -- Hundreds of students, parents, teachers and other concerned people rallied today against state public school budget cuts. One of newly-elected Governor McGreevey's first acts was to freeze school funding. Since other costs -- payments for private contractors and collective bargaining increases -- are rising, money for things like teaching positions and after-school programs is being cut. After over 30 years of fighting for parity with wealthy areas, urban districts are losing funds which they can't afford to replace with property tax increases.

The energy of the protesters, especially the youth, was electrifying. After a rally at the Statehouse, where many youth spoke, we marched to the Supreme Court. The liberal Education Law Center, which was supposed to represent the best interests of urban children, approved McGreevey's cuts. Then the Supreme Court rubber-stamped the whole lousy deal. But working-class youth, many black and Latino, weren't buying it, As the marchers got louder, many youth took the bullhorn and began leading chants: "They say cut back, we say fight back"; "Ain't no love, for government thugs"; and "They cut our schools and build more jails, we'll fight back `til we prevail."

One speaker pointed out how the rulers' racist cuts and other policies are forcing more youth into prison and into the military to fight and die in a bosses' war for oil. Another said that, contrary to the government's lies, the biggest terrorists of all are those inside the U.S. who use their government positions to cut back education and health care for the working class. Several other speakers said this rally was only the beginning, and that we need to organize a bigger action here in the fall.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were very active in organizing the rally, representing a significant collective effort. Masses of students and some parents both responded to our leadership and took the lead themselves. One hundred and forty-five CHALLENGES were distributed, along with 350 PLP flyers about the cuts. This openness to PLP's analysis shows that the working class is not exactly convinced by the U.S. rulers' patriotic, pro-fascist campaign waged since September 11.

Parents, teachers and students will unite and fight back against budget cuts. We shouldn't rely on the bosses' legal system or their press. (The state-wide newspaper and other N.J. media completely ignored us, while giving front-page coverage to a doctors' rally protesting huge malpractice insurance increases, held the same day and place.) Whatever concessions we may get from McGreevey and the people he fronts for will only be won through sharp struggle.

Ultimately capitalism can never satisfy the aspirations of youth and others for equality and productive, meaningful lives. The bosses proclaim their belief in the growth of the individual and "opportunity for all." But in reality, their class system "tracks" many workers' children onto the unemployment line or into the hands of prison guards or military recruiters. PLP's growth and influence in the mass movement is the only alternative that can and will meet the needs of our class.

Dollar, Profits, Consumer Confidence Fall:
This Is A Recovery?

Suddenly the shortest recession in recent history seems to becoming longer and longer. Recently all the economic pundits were predicting the end of the recession. Now, they ain't so sure. "Weak stock market threatens to undo economic recovery. Slump could slow spending by consumers, businesses," reads a Wall Street Journal headline (6/17).

The London Financial Times' Tom Wolf, commenting (6/12) on the U.S. supposedly leading the capitalist world from recession into recovery, puts it even more bluntly: "This may turn out to be no more than a fairy story for frightened children. Recent falls in the stock market and the U.S. dollar suggest the children are unconvinced." Wolf suggests some hard changes in the U.S. economy, including what he calls the new economic bubble -- letting the dollar fall. But if the dollar falls (some estimate it to be overvalued by 15 to 30%), a worst-case scenario might mean oversea investors would pull out from U.S. stock markets and from investments in Treasury and corporate bonds. The consequent loss of trillions of dollars would really burst the U.S. bubble.

The problems of consumer confidence (worsened by the Enron/ImClone/Tyco-type thievery) and the fall of the dollar are aggravated by an even bigger headache: PROFITS! Capitalism is a profit system. Profits are crucial to its functioning. By the second quarter of 2000, U.S. corporate profits had peaked at $518 billion. By the fourth quarter of 2001, profits had sunk 44.4%. During the dream days of the dot.com "new economy," profitability was hidden by accounting tricks (a la Enron and its Andersen bookkeepers), which netted these CEOs a bundle.

Kevin Phillips' book, Wealth and Democracy, indicates that in 1981 the yearly income of the top ten U.S. CEOs averaged $3.5 million. But those greedy bosses were not happy with such a fortune. By 2000, the top 10 CEOs were averaging $154 million annually, 43 times what was "earned" in 1981! Meanwhile, most workers faced job- and pay-cuts. The "trickle-down" economy praised by the politicians and the bosses' pundits was a mirage. In fact, if the average worker earned, say, $25,000 a year, these 10 CEOs were raking in over 6,000 times that of the average worker! And considering that possibly one-fifth of the workers are below the poverty line ($15,000 for a family of three, $18,000 for a family of four), it's even worse than that. This inequality is growing by leaps and bounds.

Some U.S. rulers and their apologists realize this disparity could weaken workers' support for the system. Thus, a leading liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman denounced this inequality (6/14). Some CEOs are being used as scapegoats for this problem. Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is investigating Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, accusing him of stealing Tyco's money to buy artwork worth millions as well as an $18 million apartment.

Capitalism is based on inequality, so the main way the bosses try to get out of their crisis is through more exploitation, war and fascism. The U.S. ruling class needs to be the top dog in the imperialist world to keep its system afloat. That means war, war and more war (Iraq is the next target). It also means using the fascist laws under Homeland Security to terrorize workers here and abroad to accept this growing inequality of capitalism.

But capitalism will survive all its crises, until workers and students organize to fight for a society without profits and bosses. Join the PLP to accelerate the final bursting of the capitalist bubble.

Bus Strikers Blast Billionaire Bloomberg

QUEENS, NY, July 17 -- About 1,500 bus drivers, mechanics, dispatchers and cleaners struck three private bus lines for the third time this year -- having been without a contract since Jan. 1, 2001 -- but warned that this time they're "out for the long haul." While billionaire Mayor Bloomberg says, The city will not get involved," he was very ready to sign emergency powers to allow scab "dollar buses" to operate along these routes. Workers charged City Hall is involved because the bus lines operate on city subsidies and the mayor has to sign off on any new contract.

Employer contributions to workers' health care benefits appear to be the main issue. Strikers say city officials promised them the same formula as city workers, increased contributions of 19.8% over two years, but reneged on that, now offering only a measly 3.5%. One striker, John Schmahl, 35, said his 6-year-old son has Crohn's disease. "I need medicine and medical attention for him for the rest of his life. Without medical benefits I'm gonna go bankrupt trying to help my son. That's the whole reason we're out here." (Newsday, 6/18).

Many riders voiced support for the strikers, reported Newsday. "I feel sorry for the bus drivers," said one commuter. They should get "everything they ask for."

PLP'er Renews Ties At UAW Convention

"Barbara, how are you doing? It's been a while."

"Oh, it's quiet. I guess the girl is getting old."

"We may be getting old, but the quiet is bigger than both of us."

That's how two old friends got reacquainted at the UAW Constitutional Convention. This led to a brief discussion on how the working class is defenseless without a mass communist movement, in the face of growing fascism and war. Twenty years ago we had fought against the use of asbestos on the brake line at a Detroit-area auto plant. Addresses, phone numbers and CHALLENGE were exchanged, along with promises to stay in touch.

Other old friends greeted me with shock and surprise. "You're a delegate? How did that happen? Boy, have you changed!" With most of them I was able to discuss the dialectical category of Appearance and Essence. I explained how we were "marching into the enemy's camp" in order to build a mass communist movement. Again, addresses, phone numbers and CHALLENGE were exchanged.

For the most part, the Constitutional and Special Convention was one large perk, aimed at rewarding the loyal and corrupting new forces. The theme was, "America is a Union," and every session began with the national anthems of the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. Huge breakfasts, dinners and open bars were all part of the coronation of president Ron Gettelfinger and the new International Executive Board.

At the same time, many black, Latin and women delegates were in various leadership positions. Resolutions were unanimously passed against racial profiling, for affirmative action, for universal health care, against the racist round-up of Arab and Muslim citizens and immigrants, and more.

The president of the United Steel Workers, Leo Gerard, addressed the convention. This is the same guy who led the pro-boss Stand Up for Steel campaign and draped himself in the American flag (even though he is Canadian!). He gave a moving talk describing the conditions of steelworkers in other countries. Then he talked about the attacks on the health care and pensions of U.S. steelworkers. "The workers in other countries are not our enemy," he said. "The system that pits us against each other is our enemy!" Standing ovation.

After he finished, a black woman delegate from Detroit spoke from the floor. "I'm so proud of our union. I never thought I would see the day when we would bring to life the slogan, `Workers of the World, Unite!'" More applause.

But tucked away in the resolution on International Affairs and Labor Solidarity was the sentence, "The international consensus in the fight to eliminate terrorism must be maintained in addressing the dangers posed by Iraq." And there is the fingerprint of U.S. imperialism that they can't hide.

A pretty smart guy once asked, "What would you say about a union that was on strike for ten good demands on wages and health care, but demanded Hitler's birthday as a paid holiday?" That one demand would expose the essence of the strike and make the other demands meaningless. In the same sense, the union's support for an expanding oil war for U.S. imperialism shows what this is really all about.

Before the First World War, there was a socialist movement that also gave lip service to the international working class. But when the war broke out, Lenin described how they all "ran to the tents of their masters." The UAW leadership and the "left" of the labor movement is a poor imitation of that old movement. They are wedded to the ruling class and the profit system, and leading us to war.

On the other hand, there are many people we can win and influence, some at this convention and many more on the shop floor. But we've got to be in it to win it. It's a very complicated process that demands our full attention. The stakes are too high for anything less.

Convention Delegate

UAW Definition of `Job Security': Layoffs

LAS VEGAS, June 18 -- The UAW Special Convention for the 2003 contract talks with Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler made "job security" its top priority. This has also been the case for the past 30 years. Since 1978, union membership has fallen from 1.5 million to around 700,000, and about 50% of the domestic auto industry is now non-union. Real wages have grown by only 1.3% while the bosses have seen their pay rise by 109% -- not counting the millions in bonuses and stocks options. According to newly anointed UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, the goal in 2003 is "to improve upon what we have already done." Make room at the unemployment office!

The next round of talks is sure to be a series of concessions demanded by the auto bosses. The "Big Three" are losing market share to their European and Asian rivals, even as the U.S. market remains relatively strong. When this contract expires, there will be a rash of plant closings as the shrinking "Big Three" cut capacity to match this smaller market share. As head of the union's Ford department, Gettelfinger sat by as the company announced plans to eliminate 35,000 jobs, or 10% of the workforce, and shut down at least five plants. Meanwhile, the union has been unable to organize even one European or Japanese assembly plant in the U.S., and new plants are being built from Tennessee to Alabama to Mississippi.

The bosses intend to demand health care cuts. Gettelfinger's response is to ask the bosses to push for national health care. "The current crisis cannot be solved at the bargaining table," he said.

And he's right. The current crisis facing autoworkers is a result of the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. This rivalry, and the bosses' goal of world domination, is leading to more wars and increased fascist terror. The growing war in the Middle East and Central Asia, including plans to invade and occupy the oil fields of Iraq with 200,000 troops, is about controlling the flow of cheap oil. No one, not even Exxon Mobil, needs cheap oil more than the auto bosses.

The answer to this crisis is building a mass, international communist movement from deep inside the factories and the boss-led UAW. The fact is things will get much worse before we are strong enough to make them better. But in this period of war and fascism, there is plenty of room to grow and influence thousands of autoworkers. Building unbreakable ties, based on class struggle and an expanding base for CHALLENGE, will lay the basis for bigger revolutionary victories in the future. This happened to a small degree at the convention. It can grow in the months ahead.

NEW UAW HEAD: FORD'S MAN IN DRIVER'S SEAT

New UAW president Ron Gettelfinger has already secured his place in history. Just as Doug Fraser will always be known for organizing 1,000 paid goons to break the Mack Ave. Sit-Down strike with baseball bats in 1973, Gettelfinger will forever be linked to the deadliest accident in the history of the U.S. auto industry.

On February 1, 1999, six workers were killed and 14 were injured when gas inside one of the boilers at Ford's River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, ignited, causing a massive explosion and fireball. Donald Harper was killed instantly. Warren Blow, Ron Moritz, Ken Anderson, Cody Boatwright and John Arseneau died from burns and other injuries over the next three weeks.

With emergency vehicles at the scene and bodies still being removed, Gettelfinger told a news conference, "It was a safe facility, there's no question about that." The following day, when asked if Ford's cost-cutting had led to unsafe conditions in the plant he said, "I don't think there has been an erosion of safety...When there is cost-cutting, Ford's concern has always been with the people impacted."

The blast was the direct result of Ford's cost-cutting, including the elimination of 9,000 jobs and $2.2 billion in spending the previous year alone. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health administration found that Ford was aware of the potential for disaster, but decided not to spend money on the 78-year-old power plant. The union ignored the safety grievances of powerhouse workers -- including three of the men killed in the explosion -- about the very boiler that exploded.

Bosses' Hunger for Profits Starves Millions

Every four seconds worldwide someone dies from hunger and malnutrition. Six years after the first World Summit on Hunger, which aimed to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, more people than ever are hungry, 815 million according to FAO (the UN Food and Agriculture Organization). Three hundred million are children, 12 million of whom die each year of hunger and preventable diseases before reaching the age of five. Hundreds of thousands of children go blind because they lack vitamin A. No wonder the second World Summit on Hunger, begun earlier in June, was being labeled a failure even before it began.

UN chief Koffi Annan and FAO head Jacques Diouf blamed it all on the lack of aid from the "industrialized" (imperialist) countries. Many NGOs (Non Government Organizations), which held their own separate summit, agreed. They complained that only Berlusconi (Italy) and Aznar (Spain) attended, representing these imperialists who are the main cause of the problem, along with the local rulers and exploiters of the poorer countries.

The UN is asking $24 billion more in aid annually from the imperialist countries to fight world hunger. But between 1990 and 2000 just the opposite occurred -- the aid from the imperialists and international agricultural loans to poorer countries was cut in half.

Anti-hunger activists say hunger would diminish if the U.S. contributed a fraction of what it spends for its "war on terror." But that's exactly the cause of world hunger: the capitalists' "war on terror" is another drive for maximum profits by making war to control the world's cheap labor and resources (especially oil).

So Much Food and Cattle and So Much Hunger

Argentina, one of the world's leading producers of wheat and cattle, typifies the problem. Since last year's economic collapse, millions have lost their jobs. For the first time in modern history, hunger is a problem here. Diario Río Negro reports (6/10) that, "One can see hunger and clear signs of empty stomachs in the high schools of the city of Neuquén. Students are fainting in the classrooms more frequently....With empty stomachs `no one can learn,'" said one high school principal. Four out of 10 H.S. students drop out."

Starvation in the Land of Maize

The Mayans "named Guatemala Iximulew -- land of maize -- for its fertile soil. Now it is a land of hunger."(London Financial Times, 6/11). Recently at least 126 children have died of hunger. Six thousand more are expected to die here. In the last two years hurricanes and drought have worsened the problem in Central America generally. Last August, drought destroyed 80% of the maize harvest. Farmworkers and poor peasants, working as coffee-pickers, have suffered through a drop in world coffee prices. Last year 300,000 such jobs were lost in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. This combines with capitalism's extreme poverty -- almost 60% of Guatemala's 11 million people "live" on less than $2 a day.

Since Central America's civil wars ended over the last decade, of the region's 28 million people the number of hungry people has risen from 5 million to 6.4 million (UN figures). That's why CHALLENGE called the "peace" deals between the U.S.-supported death-squad governments and various nationalist guerrilla groups the "peace of the cemetery."

Yes, U2 Bono!

Bono, lead singer of the U2 rock band, and Paul O'Neill, former Alcoa CEO and Bush's Treasury Secretary, toured Africa for 10 days recently. It was basically a benefit show for MTV and Rolling Stone Magazine, unrelated to the hunger and AIDS ravaging Africa. Despite spats over O'Neill's arrogance -- lecturing to African health care and public health workers on the "wonders of the free market" -- they actually complemented each other. Bono, now a lead singer for capitalism, agrees with the Bush administration that "free markets" will take care of everything. He only wants the U.S. and other rich countries to "give a little more aid."

Bono stood next to Bush at the UN Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico a few months ago. There Bush announced that the U.S. would help "eliminate world poverty" with a few crumbs in aid.

The main way U.S. bosses eliminate poverty is by killing millions of poor people with their oil wars (their "war on terror"). Iraq -- where the U.S. embargo has caused malnutrition and hunger, killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, particularly children -- now faces Bush's "solution" to the problem: a massive invasion to seize the huge Iraqi oil fields for the benefit of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Shell and other U.S. and British oil companies.

Can hunger be eliminated? Yes. The world produces enough to feed everyone. But production and distribution are not based on need but on gaining maximum profits for a few. Under communism, production will correspond to need, not profits. Everyone will be guaranteed their share of as much food that's produced by the worker-run revolutionary society. For the sake of our class's starving children, let's fight for communism.

Cuba: Can't Build Communism with Capitalism

Millions of people marched from one end of the island of Cuba to the other to say, "Yes to the constitutional reform proposed by representatives of civil society declaring the socialist system untouchable, and pronounced a loud `no' to the fascist methods outlined by George W. Bush under the cloak of the anti-terrorist crusade, a speech he made at West Point." (Granma, 6/15)

This largest mobilization ever in Cuba was followed by the collection of over 8,000,000 signatures backing the constitutional reform. Unfortunately, the desires of millions of Cubans for a society without the gross inequalities and suffering so common in the capitalist world are already being sabotaged by capitalism's presence in the Cuban economy.

Cuba, like the rest of the world, has been hard-hit by the worldwide economic recession and by 9/11. It's Cuba's worst situation since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the consequent loss of trade and subsidies, leaving Cuba without 85% of its markets and supplies. Its Gross Domestic Product dropped 31%. But prior to 9/11, the Cuban economy was slowly recovering, becoming one of the fastest growing in the hemisphere (7% a year). Then, by the end of 2001 its growth rate sank to 1% and now is down even more.

Sept. 11 has hit the Cuban tourist industry, and raised oil import costs. Venezuela used to ship oil to Cuba at a special reduced price. In exchange, Cuba provided Venezuela with doctors and other skilled labor. But since the attempted coup in Venezuela against Chavez, and because of the problems facing the mostly government-owned oil company, Venezuela doesn't ship any more oil to Cuba. Now it must pay $1 billion a year for oil (1/3 of the amount spent for all imports).

Sept. 11 has also reduced funds sent by Cubans in the U.S. and other countries to their relatives on the island. And the world economic recession has lowered the price of Cuban exports, mainly sugar and nickel. In May 2001 sugar sold for $200 a ton. Now it brings only $155. For the first time in modern Cuban history, the government has closed 71 of the country's 156 sugar mills, laying off 100,000 workers -- 2.5% of the labor force. Worse still, the government has had to raise prices of basic goods.

Essentially the problem facing Cuba is capitalism. Though the Cuban government claims "capitalism will never return" and has organized the masses for socialism, the fact is the profit system has already returned, and in force.

A significant question facing revolutionaries is: can a small country or region, particularly an island like Cuba, easily blockaded by the big imperialists, build a communist society? It's not an easy question, and is related to internationalism, building a worldwide revolutionary movement to fight capitalism on many fronts. But in Cuba's case, the Castro regime did not try to build that kind of society from the beginning. First, it attached itself economically and politically to the Soviet Union, which (by the 1960s) had abandoned workers' power and was already on the road to state capitalism. Socialism in Cuba was state capitalism from the beginning. Then, when the revolutionary Red Guard forces in China tried to build a communist society (the first mass attempt in modern history to move from socialism to communism), Castro shunned that possible momentous leap by allying with the Soviets who had completely broken with China.

As PLP's Communist magazine article "Cuba Smoke (Spring 1991), pointed out: "One thing is certain: complete free market capitalism is eventually bound to come to Cuba, as it did to the other Socialist countries....Even if the Cuban workers wish no more than to keep the radical reforms brought them by the revolution, even if they wish no more than to avoid the East German-type catastrophe of massive unemployment and destruction of the health care, housing, education and welfare programs they worked so hard to create, they have only one option: organize their own revolutionary communist Party...." Then, workers and their allies can fight for a self-sufficient communist Cuba, where production serves both its own workers and that of revolutionaries fighting worldwide for the same goals.

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!

Students Lead
Teachers, Parents To
Defy NYPD

On June 4, I attended a teachers union-organized rally at City Hall in NYC as part of the campaign for a new teachers contract. This action differed from all others because thousands of teenagers came and were the best part of it.

Some think the students participated only because a number of hip-hop and rap stars were appearing to support the union. But the students' support for the teachers was strong and touching, and it transformed the rally from another "stand-around-and-listen" one into a lesson in what we can do when we don't buy the bosses' "good behavior" line.

The NYPD had set up "cattle pens" on nearly every block of Broadway near City Hall, and forced people to walk as much as half a mile out of the way to get into one. They blocked off streets between the pens and wouldn't let anyone move from one to the next.

But when the pens became very tightly packed, the students demanded to be let through. The crowd of teachers, parents and students in my pen alternated contract chants with demands of "Let us through!" and kept moving slowly forward until the front of the pen was so crowded that it seemed about to burst.

Cops ran back and forth. Cops on horseback were called in. Soon block after block, they were forced to open the pens and let the crowd move. Many of the cops were clearly scared -- they are used to pushing docile crowds around for the bosses. Eventually, we were able to move all the way to the front of the rally at City Hall.

Does this sound like disorderly conduct? Not at all! Throughout the whole process, the crowd moved together--no one was shoved aside or trampled. Teenagers helped older people over obstacles, made sure that no one, young or old, fell or was pushed into danger. It was a moment when it was clear that we were there as workers and workers-to-be, brothers and sisters--not a collection of groups, but one class.

If we can preserve that kind of spirit in all our schools and neighborhoods, we can win much more than a strike or a contract -- we can win the world for our class.

A not-too-old guy in Brooklyn

Liberals' Fascist Law Aimed at Reds

Thanks for the sharp analysis of how liberal politicians are doing the bosses' work of promoting fascism. Often I hesitate to struggle with my friends who are active in liberal-led peace and justice activities. Reading CHALLENGE reminds me how critical this struggle is.

But I don't agree that all these liberals want to "criminalize any political activity that opposes the system, from the mildest protest to more militant, revolutionary organizing." Some of them expect a mass anti-war movement to develop, for example around Iraq, and are already preparing to take it over and limit its goals.

In California, Senate Bill 1680 would limit penalties for misdemeanors related to political demonstrations to a fine of no more than $100 and/or two days in jail. The Senate passed it 27-9. Liberal darling Jackie Goldberg introduced it in the Assembly, which approved it in committee. The full Assembly will vote on it soon.

This bill says, "Political free speech...makes the United States of America and California truly great." Paying homage to Thoreau, Margaret Sanger, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez, it encourages "peaceful non-violent civil disobedience" for the "worthy purposes of exposing injustice and seeking to improve society."

This bill aims to encourage mild (though seemingly militant) protest in order to prevent revolutionary organizing. It correctly identifies these as polar opposites. It warns that harsh sentences for peaceful protests "are counter-productive, and may create a dangerous apathy which could manifest itself in violence."

The bill specifically excludes any protest that "threatens to cause physical harm to property or bodily harm to persons" as well as any protest that actually causes harm. The judge will decide on any particular case. What will judges say about "Death to the fascists" or "Turn the guns around...shoot the bosses down"?

As the Neville Brothers put it in a song, "There's freedom of speech....as long as you don't say too much." SB 1680 is a fascist law disguised as "progressive."

While some backers of SB 1680 undoubtedly mean well, the effect of encouraging civil disobedience builds the idea that the bosses have the "right" to state power. They get to make and enforce laws and policies while we get to suffer the consequences of breaking them.

We need to join liberal groups and movements in order to struggle and win the good people in them -- and they are mostly good people! -- to see through this subterfuge. Workers and youth must smash the rulers' fascist strangle-hold and end their devastating wars by taking power into our own hands, not by peacefully submitting to the bosses' laws.

California Reader

In Memoriam:
Haven Wilson

Recently a good friend and dedicated comrade, Haven Wilson, died tragically in Sausalito, California. She was 56 and had been a past member of PLP.

Haven had been caring for her aged parents. Her father died from cancer and her mother was suffering from a stroke.

Haven was principled, caring and inspired. She battled capitalism and believed workers could build a better society based on communist ideas.

We worked together at the phone company where Haven was an active union steward who always put the workers first. Recently, she was an active member of PUEBLO (People United for a Better Oakland), and very much respected.

I'll always remember the message on her telephone answering machine:. "The revolution's not here yet and neither am I. Please leave a message."

Oakland Comrade

`Free Market' Costly For E. Europe Workers

A New York Times article (6/12) entitled, "As Poland Endures Hard Times, Capitalism Comes Under Attack" reports on 6,000 Szczecin shipyard workers who've been jobless and without pay since March. Sensing violent protests, the government ordered the first re-nationalization of a formerly state-owned company. These same workers were fooled by the reactionary. anti-communist "Solidarity" movement in the 1980s into fighting against what they thought was a "communist government." (In fact, state capitalism really ruled Poland and all of the former Soviet bloc).

The few who've benefited from capitalism are those now considered the middle class throughout Eastern Europe. But this comes at the expense of millions of workers. They are now super-exploited. They no longer have subsidies for housing, education, health care, vacations, unemployment insurance and retraining, family allowances, youth programs and other gains from the socialist past. All this means massively higher profits for the bosses. Some profits trickle down to the managerial class, and to those who provide services for the wealthy and the managers.

A friend related experiences with some of his college students from Eastern Europe. A Slovakian student said straight out that things were much better under "communism." A Polish student had the same impression. A Serbian student was horrified by the bombing of Yugoslavia, and knows things were much better before the break-up, in fact before the war.

I'm in regular contact with some Russians and read quite a bit of Russian stuff. There is tremendous anger at the catastrophic decline in living standards and life expectancy. There's also a great sense of defeatism, cynicism, nationalism and anti-communism, as well as turning towards religion -- and a rosy view of the Brezhnev years (far too rosy!).

The cynicism is hard to overcome, but it can and must be. Workers worldwide, not only in the former socialist countries, have suffered greatly because the bosses and their agents inside the working-class movement have been able to combine anti-communism and passivity to turn the clock back on the progress of humanity towards a society without capitalism. Those of us who fight for a communist future -- learning from the many errors and strengths of the old movement -- must do even more to fight to win workers and youth to see that the only answer to the hell of capitalism is to fight for communism.

Red Tovarich

Building PLP in
Campus Labor Group

Given the contemporary fascist political climate, our work within mass organizations is more important than ever. Yet our position within these organizations poses a problem. How does one incorporate revolutionary politics into reformist movements? My experiences as a student at a major eastern university illuminate this question.

I joined a labor action organization that draws its members primarily from the labor school at the university and especially future AFL-CIO union organizers. At one meeting I proposed that the theme for our May Day celebration be against the war on terrorism. At this point I got a negative response. Preferably the slogan should be for communist revolution, after all this is May Day. However, the club members prefer a vague and opportunist slogan for peace and freedom. I felt that I had compromised my position by just calling for an anti-war position, and even that wasn't conservative enough for them.

My proposal to hold a real position was not lost on the club members however. I argued against the war on terrorism further with a few members I knew well and sent them articles I found online about US military presence abroad. Furthermore I set the stage for a more advanced May Day slogan next year. Even within this struggle I won some ground, with the leader changing his position from, "why should we call for peace if these people [Hamas in Iran, Iraq and Syria] want to kill us" to acknowledging Bush's insidious plans for world domination.

This organization opposes revolutionary politics. However, I continue to have a long-term perspective and I plan to keep heightening the contradictions between their reformist goals and capitalism. Next year I will continue to expose US imperialism during the meetings and one on one with members of the group. I will recruit to PL those members who see the futility in this world system.

Young Comrade

May Day in
El Salvador

On May 1, thousands of workers and others marched in El Salvador, chanting "Long Live May 1st"; "Long live the Martyrs of Chicago for giving their lives to fight capitalism." The mass of marchers warmly received our newspaper DESAFIO-CHALLENGE. Even though President Paco Flores' cops took over the sidewalks to intimidate the marchers, we were able to pass out our literature.

The bosses' press here tried to insult the marchers, saying they were all "agitators." Yes, workers and students are agitated -- because of the failures of capitalism, and the lies of its media. But they are more than that. Many are organizing to change the situation.

We in PLP have the potential to grow even more, showing workers and youth that capitalism is a dead-end hell, from Afghanistan to San Salvador to Los Angeles, and that the only solution is to fight for a society without hunger (killing many in Central America), wars, fascist repression and unemployment. That society is communism.

El Salvador comrade

 

Bosses’ Oil Wars Spill Tons of Workers’ Blood

a href="#India-Pakistan Nuclear Brinkmanship Spawned by War ‘Against Terror’">In"ia-Pakistan Nuclear Brinkmanship Spawned by War ‘Against Terror’

a href="#War Against ‘Terror’ Is Fight for Control of the World">Wa" Against ‘Terror’ Is Fight for Control of the World

Liberal Democrats Leading Charge to Whack Iraq

a href="#10,000 Teachers March, But Bosses’ ‘Democracy’ Won’t Cut It">Mexico" 10,000 Teachers March, But Bosses’ ‘Democracy’ Won’t Cut It

Los Angeles: Amnesty Marchers Side-tracked Into Electoral Quicksand

a href="#Teachers Support PLP’er Against Racist Red-baiting Union Hack">"rooklyn: Teachers Support PLP’er Against Racist Red-baiting Union Hack

a href="#NJ School ‘Standards,’ Budget Cuts Destroying Youth">NJ"School ‘Standards,’ Budget Cuts Destroying Youth

War Budget, Enron Plunder Sucks California Schools Dry

NYC: Local 1199 Betrays Homecare Workers

NYC: Rulers Rx for School Problems: Drug the Children

a href="#Racist Killer Cops Are Bosses’ ‘Insurance’ vs. Rebellion">Chic"go: Racist Killer Cops Are Bosses’ ‘Insurance’ vs. Rebellion

a href="#‘Shakira, Shakira, Sweatshop Diva!’">‘S"akira, Shakira, Sweatshop Diva!’

Memoirs of a World War 2 Vet: Bush Insults the Millions Who Died Fighting The Nazis

a href="#Capitalism’s Inherent Thievery Spinning Out of Control">"apitalism’s Inherent Thievery Spinning Out of Control

Apartheid: South Africa? Or Long Island?

LETTERS

Fascist Bureau of Intimidation

a href="#Gould Exposed ‘Scientific Racism’">Go"ld Exposed ‘Scientific Racism’

a href="#Bush on Cuba: ‘Free Elections’ Florida Style">Bu"h on Cuba: ‘Free Elections’ Florida Style

Capitalism Fattens Itself and Us, Too

a href="#Bosses’ Elections a Bad Brew for Workers">"olombia: Bosses’ Elections a Bad Brew for Workers

Racism Defines A Society

---

Liberals Lead Drive to Whack Iraq

Bosses’ Oil Wars Spill Tons of Workers’ Blood

U.S. rulers will most likely launch another war to seize the oil fields of Iraq. Many obstacles, both internal and external, stand in their way, but the imperialists aim to overcome or disregard them to start this war. The nature of their profit system leaves them no choice.

U.S. bosses intend to rule the world for the foreseeable future. This goal requires that they control the international oil business, particularly the cheapest supply sources. Iraq has the second largest crude oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. An imperialist who could make a deal for Iraqi oil similar to the arrangement Exxon Mobil and other U.S. firms enjoy in Saudi Arabia could eventually become a rival super-power.

Russian and Chinese bosses both have long-range strategies for unseating the U.S., and Iraqi oil stands at the center of their plans. European bosses want Iraqi oil to further their own ambitions. However, no rival is strong enough to challenge U.S. supremacy head-on. This weakness will persist for the foreseeable future, so U.S. imperialists are determined to exploit their relative superiority now. That’s why U.S. rulers feel they must invade Iraq. The liberal Eastern Establishment figures the stakes are too high not to take the gamble. Millions of workers could die in this new oil war, but the rulers have always happily accepted the working class’s blood as the price to pay in defense of their maximum profits.

The road toward this war hasn’t been smooth for the bosses. They’ve encountered a number of political problems without which they might already have landed troops in Iraq:

•The rulers of other Arab nations fear a U.S. invasion of Iraq will lead to mass uprisings against them, so they refuse to back it.

•The U.S.’s inability to stem the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains an important roadblock. U.S. bosses need their Israeli client as a gunslinger to protect their interests in the Middle East. However, tilting too obviously toward unconditional support for Israel threatens to unleash more nationalist-religious anti-U.S. uprisings in the Arab world. On the other hand, disciplining the Israeli bosses too severely runs the risk of alienating a needed junior partner who specializes in pro-U.S. dirty work.

•The Pakistan-India conflict has confronted the U.S. with another headache. These two rivals are at each other’s throats for a favored middleman position in the rising East Asian economy. To launch its "war against terror" in Afghanistan, the U.S. had to make concessions to Pakistani president Musharraf. The deal didn’t sit too well with Indian rulers. Now that Pakistan has moved troops away from the Afghan border, al Qaeda might mount another attack against pro-U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

•For obvious reasons related to their own oil interests, Russia’s Putin and other European bosses aren’t giving the U.S. a blank check to invade Iraq.

On the home front, U.S. rulers aren’t exactly a juggernaut of efficiency. The much publicized foreign policy rift between Powell’s State Department and Rumsfeld’s Defense department reflects real tactical differences over how, when and with whom to launch the Iraq oil war. Despite Bush’s patriotic West Point graduation mumblings, the "war against terror" hasn’t been chalking up brilliant successes within the U.S. Spearheaded by the New York Times, the liberal politicians and media have led the cry for increasing the speed and effectiveness with which the U.S. moves toward becoming a racist police state. The main whipping-boy is the F.B.I. The Times thunders: "Wary of Risk, Slow to Adapt, F.B.I. Stumbles in Terror War" (6/2).

Persistent "Vietnam Syndrome"—the unwillingness of working class soldiers and sailors to die enthusiastically for U.S. imperialism—worries the bosses. The post-9/11 flag-waving hysteria hasn’t significantly altered military recruiting patterns. The young men and women who "volunteer" for the bosses’ armed forces still come overwhelmingly from the most economically oppressed. A significant faction among the Joint Chiefs of Staff is concerned about the military’s political reliability once casualties start to mount. So we are seeing the ironic spectacle of some fascist generals restraining the war fever of the fascist liberal politicians.

However, these obstacles confronting the U.S. ruling class should not lull us into the illusion that an oil war against Iraq won’t happen relatively soon. Imperialism always leads to war. That’s what we must prepare for. The authoritative voices among U.S. bosses are those of the liberals, like the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon: "We’re Ready to Fight Iraq…American adversaries should have no doubt about our ability to mount a large-scale military operation, and to do it soon if necessary" (Wall Street Journal, 5/29). The cry among liberals to "go it alone," without allies if necessary, is mounting.

Communist philosophy — dialectical materialism — teaches that ideas are a product of developments in the constantly changing real, external world. Its opposite, philosophical idealism, holds that the real world is a reflection of ideas. U.S. rulers are the biggest idealists of all because they believe their system will endure and that they can sit in the driver’s seat forever. They think social development stops with capitalism, and that they can stop history’s forward march by making war. Therefore they will continue to make war as long as we let them.

They hold the upper hand, for now. But we shouldn’t succumb to appearances. When they launch their oil war, they will give our side an opportunity to grow. We have a long road to travel before our class can challenge them for power, but we can grow, however modestly, under all conditions. Under some conditions, we can grow rapidly and decisively. Imperialism will never lead to anything but war. The only alternative is joining the Progressive Labor Party and engaging in its historic struggle for communist revolution.

a name="India-Pakistan Nuclear Brinkmanship Spawned by War ‘Against Terror’"></">In"ia-Pakistan Nuclear Brinkmanship Spawned by War ‘Against Terror’

India and Pakistan have been at war several times since both became independent of Britain after World War II. But now that both countries have nuclear weapons, a new war would be deadlier than all previous wars combined. Under the cover of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism, the rulers of India and Pakistan are on the brink of nuking millions (esimates run up to 14 million casualties just in the early stages of a nuclear war)..

Actually such a war is partly an extension of — and is linked to — the U.S. attack launched against the Taleban-Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan on Oct. 7. This U.S. imperialist intervention has sharpened all the contradictions in the region.

Ironically the winner of a Pakistani-India war could be Al-Qaeda. According to the strategic intelligence service Jane.com: "…there is mounting evidence that many of the Al-Qaeda militants who fled Afghanistan have regrouped in Pakistan with the aim of destabilizing relations between the two states through a series of high-profile terrorist attacks in India and Kashmir. If so, then concerns that Al-Qaeda could gain access to nuclear weapons may be realized."

Despite repeated claims by the government of General Pervez Musharraf that Pakistani forces have secured the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan (an effort receiving $75 million in U.S. aid), the evidence is clear: both Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces have escaped into Pakistan where very limited efforts have been made to track them down. Intelligence reports indicate that significant numbers have attached themselves to the groups responsible for launching attacks against Indian targets in the disputed region of Indian-administered Kashmir and in India proper.

The two main militant groups bolstered by the fugitives from Afghanistan (many having been trained by Osama bin Laden’s forces) are the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Toiba. The former is alleged to have attacked Kashmir’s regional state assembly last October, leaving around 40 people dead. The latter has claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks against Indian targets and is calling for jihad or "holy war" to "liberate" all of India from Hindu rule and restore Muslim control. Meanwhile, the Hindu fundamentalist rulers of India aim to destroy Muslim Pakistan.

Despite repeated pledges from Musharraf to crack down these militant groups, Western intelligence experts suggest it would be impossible for them to operate as effectively as they do without some collusion with Pakistan’s notorious ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence agency). The ISI had close links to both the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda. As Jane.com has been warning for months, the real risk of bin Laden obtaining weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear missiles) comes not from illicit deals with the Russian mafia, but from Al-Qaeda’s close relationship with Pakistan’s military and security services.

Meanwhile, U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan continue to make enemies among the general population, killing civilians and even Afghans on "their side." (U.S. troops killed several pro-U.S. Afghan soldiers near the Bagram air base on May 31.) Now Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who fought with the CIA against the Soviet army and allies in the 1980s, has called for a jihad against the U.S. and Britain, following the CIA attempt to kill him by launching a missile on his motorcade a few weeks ago. This warlord has much support inside Afghanistan, and is now seeking an alliance with his former foes in the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He’s also supported by Iran and by elements inside the Pakistani intelligence services.

a name="War Against ‘Terror’ Is Fight for Control of the World"></">Wa" Against ‘Terror’ Is Fight for Control of the World

So the war against "terrorism" launched by Bush is now turning into unending wars which could lead to millions of casualties. As CHALLENGE has repeatedly noted, capitalism means war, war and more war, particularly in this age of world capitalist crisis. Each capitalist gang masks the real reasons behind these wars, using religion, patriotism, nationalism, etc. The true cause is the need for each set of bosses to reap maximum profits and be the only bully in the ’hood. A major part of the U.S. bosses’ status as the sole superpower lies in controlling the flow and profits of oil (particularly the largest and most profitable oil fields in the Persian Gulf). Without such oil capitalist industries and armies can’t operate, and without control over this oil U.S. imperialism would find it more difficult to squeeze their main rivals into submission. The final blow to the British Empire as the reigning world’s superpower was its loss of control of that region, basically to the U.S., especially after World War II.

Al Qaeda represents capitalist forces which want the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia, the entire Middle East and Central Asia. The rulers of India and Pakistan each want to control South Asia and part of Central Asia. Washington’s "war against terrorism" is so full of holes that it’s forced to ally itself with Pakistan, whose missiles were designed by North Korea, labeled by Bush as part of the "axis of evil." Pakistan is also backed by China, which sees the U.S. and India as roadblocks on its own road to rule Asia.

The working class’s answer to this swamp is not through "two, three many jihads" or allying ourselves with one group of imperialists against another. The only way out is building an international communist movement to smash the cause of war — capitalism. Not an easy task, but it’s the only real choice the workers of the world have.

Liberal Democrats Leading Charge to Whack Iraq

[If there’s any doubt that the recent liberal media attack on the FBI/CIA is aimed at fueling an oil war and a police state, read Dick Gephardt’s hard line…,]

WASHINGTON, June 4 (AP dispatch) — House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt is offering support to…use force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"I share President’s Bush’s resolve to confront this menace head-on," the Missouri Democrat said.

"We should use…military means where we must to eliminate [this] threat…."

"We are fighting a new war and will have to be ready to strike when necessary, not just deter," Gephardt said in the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. "But on the home front we are moving too slowly to develop a homeland defense plan that is tough enough for this new war…."

He said he would support adding troops to the armed forces, proposed an overhaul of a logistics and supply system that he described as sluggish, and offered to…build support for military modernization.

a name="10,000 Teachers March, But Bosses’ ‘Democracy’ Won’t Cut It"></a>10"000 Teachers March, But Bosses’ ‘Democracy’ Won’t Cut It

MEXICO CITY, May 30 — After 16 days of a continuous "plantón" (picket line), dissident teachers rallied today to protest the sellout by the leadership of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE).

Led by the CNTE, a group opposing SNTE leaders, over 10,000 marched demanding an increased educational budget and union democratization, while opposing changes in the pension plan. H.S. students and striking Petrochemical workers from Michoacan joined the protest in solidarity. The teachers came mainly from Oaxaca, Michoacan and Guerrero, where their union locals are negotiating for their demands. They are rejecting the 5% wage increase the union recently accepted.

During the protest a CNTE delegation met with an aide to President Fox, and decided to give Fox "the benefit of a doubt" about starting serious negotiations with them. The CNTE used the marchers’ militancy to engage in this useless talk with the government. Now, the CNTE leadership is continuing the "plantón" in the Zócalo (central square) waiting for the federal government to begin serious talks. Even though the CNTE leadership says it opposes Fox, they still give him some credence. This is based on these union dissidents’ deadly illusions in the capitalist "democratic" system.

During the march, teachers distributed a leaflet with pictures of Fox, former President Salinas and Elba Esther Gordillo, former SNTE President. Salinas privatized many of Mexico’s state-owned industries while stealing millions from the government treasury at the same time his brother was laundering drug money through Citibank. Ms. Gordillo and Salinas signed the "National Agreement to Modernize Basic Education," an attempt to privatize public education and turn it into centers serving corporations.

But the fact is education — public or private — is a failure for most working-class students. The needs of capitalism can never square with those of working-class students and teachers, particularly amid a worldwide capitalist system saturated with wars and fascism. The best lesson teachers and students can learn from this struggle is that capitalism in all its forms can never satisfy us as an exploited class. We need to learn how to fight the bosses, for a society where production serves our needs: communism.

Amnesty Marchers Side-tracked Into Electoral Quicksand

LOS ANGELES, CA. — On May Day, over 10,000 people participated in a march organized by pro-immigrant groups, the AFL-CIO, churches and the local radio and TV. The main demand was for amnesty and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.

Hundreds of workers in different contingents chanted pro-worker slogans like, "Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated"; "Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders"; and, "Jobs Yes, INS No, Workers to Power." PLP’ers distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and 3,500 leaflets about the revolutionary history of May Day, and called for unity of black, Latin, Asian and white workers to fight racism.

Although the anger and militancy of so many workers showed the potential for fighting racism in the current police-state, patriotic pro-war atmosphere, the main aspect of the march was quite different.

The organizers direct the fight for amnesty towards getting "our elected officials" to pass a law. Illinois Democrat Congressman Luis Gutierrez champions this demand and marches pushing it. These politicians use it to win more votes for themselves and to build patriotism among immigrants. Currently that means supporting the bosses’ plans for an oil war.

The reactionary politics pushed by the bosses and their politicians have influenced some workers. For example, hundreds from a textile plant marched enthusiastically with signs and banners. But one of their leaders said, "In our plant we don’t need any union because the bosses give us good benefits." The bosses will never give workers anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Bosses’ profits come from workers’ labor.

PLP’ers played an important role in contingents of garment workers and community organizations, exposing reactionary pro-war, pro-boss ideas and pushing a pro-working class revolutionary line.

We have a long road ahead, but as the Chinese philosopher Tzu said 2,400 years ago, "If we want to wage 100 battles and come out victorious...know the enemy and know yourself." Currently that means winning workers and others amid struggles inside the bosses’ organizations away from the enemy’s ideology and to the politics of communism.

a name="Teachers Support PLP’er Against Racist Red-baiting Union Hack">">"eachers Support PLP’er Against Racist Red-baiting Union Hack

I’m a PLP member and a teacher at a large Brooklyn high school. I’ve been a union delegate and attended monthly union Delegate Assemblies (DA) for several years. I always report to my chapter and analyze events, both in the school and elsewhere. I ran for chapter leader two years ago as a communist. The school administration organized against me and I lost the election, but the significant number of votes I received was a victory. I continued attending meetings and writing reports. Many people counted on me to help them understand what’s happening.

The teacher who opposed me and was elected chapter leader is the administration’s guy, and now he’s union president Randi Weingarten’s guy too. He rarely calls union meetings. His reports to the staff simply repeat the union leadership’s reports.

In May, after 18 months without a contract and repeated calls by opposition delegates for a walkout, the union leadership asked the DA for strike authorization. Weingarten wants to appear like she’s fighting for the members and our students, but has little desire to lead a strike. The strike authorization passed almost unanimously.

A delegate from my school put copies of the resolution in our mailboxes, but didn’t include amendments that called for local action, including school strike committees. I reported on these additions and a call at the DA to include pro-student demands. I also reported on a comrade’s proposal to continue having May Day marches, since the union had called a contract rally on May 1. I suggested we form our own school strike committee.

The chapter leader failed to even call a chapter meeting to discuss the strike issues. Instead he put out a newsletter that attacked me. He cited my election defeat and called me a "cancer or better yet, a communist that rejects all American ideals...an uninvited guest that refuses to leave...[who] forces her radical views on the staff" and should "take her chaotic ideals to her neighborhood, where she resides."

My friends were furious. Some English teachers who edit his reports refused to work on the section attacking me. At a meeting the next day, one of my friends challenged him. He started yelling but my friend interrupted and finally got her say. She charged that if anyone had said, "Go back to your neighborhood" to either of them (they are both black), they would have considered it racist. She said his attack on me (I am white) was racist, and reminded the staff that I live in her neighborhood. She backed my right to publish reports, and laced into him for his nastiness and rudeness.

He kept on interrupting her, and other friends of mine — some of whom disagree with my politics — joined the fray. He screamed that he hates that I sit quietly and "get my friends" to yell at him. The only time I yelled, I asked if he thought the members couldn’t think for themselves.

One delegate called for a return to the strike discussion. I reported on the union struggles and the strike issues. Because of my Party work, and help from other comrades and friends, I know far more about this than he does. By the meeting’s end, the chapter leader looked pretty stupid.

Friends at school stop me and shake their heads at the chapter leader’s behavior. Some of the younger teachers, with previous doubts, are now convinced he’s worthless. Others wonder why he thinks the members can’t think and make decisions for themselves.

In the midst of class struggle,

A Brooklyn teacher

a name="NJ School ‘Standards,’ Budget Cuts Destroying Youth"></">NJ"School ‘Standards,’ Budget Cuts Destroying Youth

NEWARK, NJ, June 3 — For many years, New Jersey parents, teachers and students have fought for parity in funding for elementary and high schools. This struggle began in the late 1960s as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement and the fight against racism. But eight decisions by the New Jersey Supreme Court have not made urban schools equal to those in wealthy areas. And since Sept. 11, a far more punitive approach to the interests of working-class parents, teachers and students has become the pattern.

• Striking teachers in Middletown, NJ, were forced back to work under threat of mass jailings and firings. One politician branded the strikers "un-American."

• The new high school standardized test will result in more students failing, only giving them a "certificate of attendance," not a diploma, increasing unemployment.

• City and state budget cuts threaten to decimate many programs. For example, the Irvington school system is laying off 270 employees, a huge percentage of its total staff.

It is good that some parents, teachers and students are organizing to fight the cuts. But the other attacks listed above and many more have gone unchallenged. Why? U.S. rulers are trying to convince workers of ideas which are harmful to our class interests. For example, since September 11 more people believe that all "Americans," regardless of class, need to unite with the government so as not to hurt the "fight against terrorism."

But the reality is we live in a class society. The government represents the interests of the ruling class. Family income in cities like Newark, East Orange and Irvington actually declined during the "boom" years of the 1990’s (Newark Star-Ledger, 5/24). Wealthy areas can afford increased property taxes to avoid the cuts that will have to be made in urban and middle-income districts. Raising "standards" combined with cuts in urban districts is a blueprint for large numbers of students to drop out. This will lead to many more children winding up in prison or being forced into the military to fight and die in a war to secure U.S. bosses’ control of oil.

The state government jailed striking teachers fighting for better conditions. The federal government is profiling and jailing tens of thousands of immigrant workers who happen to be Muslim. But meanwhile the criminal bosses of Enron stole hundreds of millions of dollars and go scot free while thousands of workers are laid off and their pensions destroyed. The ruling class uses racist cops to shoot and kill black and Hispanic youth like Amadou Diallo, Earl Faison and those in the van on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Although under captialism we can never reap the full fruits of our labor—most of it stolen by the bosses—the working class is not powerless to change things. Some now realize the power we have. More of us will do so as the fight against their oppressive system gets sharper. Workers must take power away from the ruling class with a communist revolution. Then we can build a society without bosses and profits and oil wars, and education will serve the interests of the working class.

War Budget, Enron Plunder Sucks California Schools Dry

LOS ANGELES, June 3 — Students, teachers, and other school employees here face a Board of Education contract offer that threatens to increase class size by two students per class in grades 4-12, reshuffle classes at mid-year, cut medical insurance and freeze wages. This is unacceptable.

The Board of Education claims it has no money. California schools are funded through the state budget, which faces a $23.6 billion deficit. (Before Enron manufactured an "energy crisis" and stole billions, there was a state surplus.) But there’s always money — it just depends on where it’s spent.

Workers produce all value. A huge chunk is stolen as corporate profit. Another chunk fills the tax coffers which pays for whatever the ruling class decides. Right now federal assistance to education is $11 billion nationally but the 2002-2003 federal budget calls for an $86 billion increase for war and Homeland Security, for the tools of a fascist police state. The military budget is approaching $400 billion annually. No wonder the budget for schools and social services is being cut. Workers’ tax money must pay for military bases that protect the bosses’ oil investments in the Mid-East while killing workers in the process. (See editorial, page 1.)

The union leadership’s response — cut administrative expenses, rather than classroom instruction — doesn’t deal with the reality of the bosses’ worldwide imperialist plans.

Some union members are proposing a split-roll property tax (tax the rich). But the discussion must be made broader: who produces and pays the taxes and who controls the state.

The proposed education cuts are directly linked to the funding for war and fascism. Some teachers are demanding "No War Contract!" Some students in student organizations are calling for "Books not Bombs!" and talking about learning the truth about workers struggles worldwide. A fight against the attacks on students is part of the fight against intensifying war and fascism. Students and teachers need to build a force that can take on the union hacks as well as the Board of Education.

We are also educating ourselves — teachers and students — about the fight over the long haul to get rid of capitalism and build a communist system where the wealth that we produce is in our hands and goes to improve the life and education of the working class, not to kill workers around the world to protect the bosses’ profits.

Local 1199 Betrays Homecare Workers

I teach English as a Second Language (ESL) to homecare workers, part of the 210,000-members SEIU, Local 1199 in NYC. Homecare’s 80,000 workers comprise the Local’s largest division. There are thousands more non-union homecare workers here and many homecare provider agencies.

The number of homecare workers will increase as the most "cost effective" option to care for the large number of aging baby boomers. Homecare is part of the third largest and fastest-growing segment of the NYC economy, the non-profit sector.

NYC homecare workers are overwhelmingly women, almost exclusively immigrant, mostly Hispanic, Caribbean black and Asian, plus growing numbers of Russians. Many are former factory workers whose bosses have moved mainly to free enterprise zones in the workers’ countries of origin. They still face exploitation similar to their experiences as immigrant women factory workers. Hourly wages range from $6 (non-union) to between $7 and $9 (union). The SEIU-1199 contract includes 12-hour shifts with no time-and-one-half pay after eight hours. Workers on duty in the home for 24-hour shifts are only paid for 12 hours.

Home health aides are certified to provide other care, such as taking blood pressure and giving medications. But while these aides perform home attendant, housekeeper and medical responsibilities, they usually earn less as non-union workers. Obviously home health aides are in demand by homecare agencies. Entrepreneurial job-training welfare-to-work programs receive thousands of dollars to train and place home health aides in non-union, low-wage jobs.

Local 1199’s answer to this racist exploitation is to support a living wage law — usually $10-an-hour for workers paid by agencies with City contracts. Backing living wage legislation while ignoring homecare workers’ long hours and the potential class struggle power of such a huge union is mainly a conscious political gesture by 1199 to pull the largely immigrant workers into the electoral arena. It is not primarily to gain a significant reform. And even this goal may be illusory amid wartime budget restraints and scapegoating of immigrants.

In my ESL classes we are discussing and researching these issues, exploring why such conditions exist and are tolerated by both workers and clients and what rank-and-file workers can do. I’ve introduced CHALLENGE to some of my students. Two are joining a Party study group and one has joined the Party. We need to investigate the future of homecare in an imperialist U.S. at war, and particularly the living wage legislation currently being sponsored in the NY City Council.

A comrade

Rulers Rx for School Problems: Drug the Children

NEW YORK CITY, May 28 — As conditions in the schools worsen and the stresses on children increase, the schools are relying ever more heavily on psychiatric drugs to control children. From 4 to 5 million children are now on various psychoactive drugs, and the prescription rate continues to rise. PLP members have been participating in a group of health workers and community activists here involved with this issue. The group began organizing four years ago against racist research at Columbia Medical Center, which attempted to show that violence and crime spring from biological abnormalities in the brains of young black and Latino boys. However, these same researchers are now mainly promoting the use of Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs for children as young as three. Drug companies pay for, and the federal government sponsors this research.

They tell teachers and child welfare workers that a child having trouble behaving or learning in school has a neurological disease — the problem comes from within the child. Environmental factors, such as large classes, inexperienced teachers without adequate support, and family stresses — unemployment, poverty, emotional problems, lack of sleep or poor nutrition — are not even considered. Psychiatric training is now almost all about pharmacology — counseling is hardly included in many programs. Genetic and biologic abnormalities supposedly account for all problems.

Recently a mother of a 2nd grader who lives in a working class Manhattan neighborhood contacted the group. Her son’s class was totally out of control, with 34 students and a new teacher. Although not behind academically, her son may have been one of the noisiest kids in the class. The school vice-principal told the mother her child had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), needed Ritalin and should be placed in special education. Even the school psychologist disagreed, suggesting he only needed a more structured learning environment, but the boy was sent to a psychiatrist at Columbia. After 15 minutes, this doctor said the child must be medicated. The mother disagreed and appealed to her school district. They told her if she didn’t medicate her son, she’d be reported for "medical neglect." This parent put her son in Catholic school (where he’s doing very well in a small class), an option she can ill afford.

After publicizing this case in the school district, the group was contacted by a social worker and a psychologist in special education at the district level. They’re disturbed about the frequency with which drugs and special ed are recommended and know almost nothing about Ritalin or other drugs. But they say they have nothing else to offer children — no small classes, tutoring or counseling. Nonetheless, they’re anxious to help better educate their colleagues. Our group hopes to participate in this effort.

The reliance on diagnosing diseases whenever people are unable to adjust to their environment is part of the growth of fascism. Not only is there direct coercion of parents and children here, especially poor, mainly black and Latino families, but children are blamed for society’s problems.

In the course of these struggles PLP members have presented many of the Party’s ideas, showing that in a fascist, war-driven police state, instead of dealing with children’s real problems, they will just be drugged into submission, unable to fight for themselves and for a system that serves the working class. Slowly we’ve introduced CHALLENGE and other Party literature to a few people we’ve come to know. We need to step up this effort since more and more of our friends will be questioning the ruling-class "solutions," if not capitalism itself. The opportunity to learn from history and revitalize the communist movement is in our hands. Our children’s future depends on it.

a name="Racist Killer Cops Are Bosses’ ‘Insurance’ vs. Rebellion"></a>"acist Killer Cops Are Bosses’ ‘Insurance’ vs. Rebellion

CHICAGO, June 1 — Headlines read: "Officers won’t be charged." The cops here have the green light to further terrorize and kill black workers. In three separate incidents all charges were dropped against these racist cops, including the two black cops who murdered unarmed motorist Latanya Haggerty and unarmed college student Robert Russ and the ones who gunned down a man on his front porch in Harvey (an all-black Chicago suburb).

By mid-week Judge Clayton Crane acquitted four white Cook County Sheriffs’ cops and one former cop of hunting down unarmed black motorist Corey Simmons and Dominique Mapp. The couple’s sport utility vehicle (SUV) allegedly cut off the cops’ SUV on the cops’ way home from drinking at a sheriffs’ fund-raiser. The cops chased the couple through several communities, in a fusillade of more than 20 shots. Judge KKKrane said the charges of attempted murder were unfounded.

On the one hand, State legislators are aiming to balance their war budget on workers’ backs — slashing funds for healthcare, childcare and education. Fearing rebellions against these attacks, they need this racist police terror to pacify the working class. This creates a sharp contradiction for the ruling class, since it also needs these workers and youth to fight in their oil wars

The fact that the liberals are leading the way towards this fascism (see CHALLENGE, see pp. 1-2) was apparent at today’s protest at the Cook County Sheriff’s office led by misleader Jesse Jackson. While 200 mostly black workers and youth protested these dropped charges, Jackson clearly expressed his service to the ruling class. On the one hand he called for peace in the Middle East. But he supported U.S. rulers’ aims to control oil there to "maintain our way of life." Whose way of life? Rockefeller’s Exxon Mobil and U.S. imperialism’s drive to exploit the world’s workers for maximum profits. While appearing to condemn police terror, he’s clearly willing to send these same anti-racist workers and youth to fight and die for the profits of the bosses.

PLP’ers participated in this protest, distributed CHALLENGES and collected phone numbers from demonstrators who asked us to contact them. We aim to intensify activity in mass organizations to expose the Jackson liberals and their ilk.

a name="‘Shakira, Shakira, Sweatshop Diva!’"></">‘S"akira, Shakira, Sweatshop Diva!’

NEW YORK CITY, May 31 — Chanting "Shakira, Shakira, Sweatshop Diva," several protestors crashed the Latin pop singer’s live appearance on NBC-TV’s Today Show. Shakira’s latest hit, "Underneath Your Clothes," has promoted Delia’s clothing, manufactured at Danmar, a Brooklyn sweatshop. One protestor, Maria Arriaga, was fired from the sweatshop after reporting the rotten conditions. She and many other workers, all Latino, were forced to work nights and Saturdays without overtime pay to sew garments for Delia’s. The latter gave away free Shakira CDs to customers in exchange for Shakira promoting her clothing line. Shakira also appeared as Delia’s "poster child," appearing in a catalogue mailed to four million teenagers.

As reported in CHALLENGE (6/5), Shakira also promotes Pepsi, which super-exploits workers, mostly women, at its Pepsi Snacks plant in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Shakira’s boyfriend is the son of former President De la Rua, kicked out of power by a mass demonstration of hundreds of thousands who surrounded Argentina’s presidential palace. De la Rua had to flee in a helicopter. Shakira has nothing but praise for this exploiter.

These "superstars," particular Latin and black, are promoted in the U.S. as "models" to show youth they "can make it" under capitalism. Apparently, workers in sweatshops are not included.

Memoirs of a World War 2 Vet:

Bush Insults the Millions Who Died Fighting The Nazis

[[Bush’s recent European trip reinforced the picture many have of Dubya as an idiot. London’s Independent said Bush "sometimes seems unsure which European country he is visiting." London’s Daily Mirror reported "bumbling Bush was lost for words last night." Even in important moments, like signing the treaty with Putin to "reduce" nuclear warheads, Bush made a fool of himself when he was filmed discarding a piece of gum in his hand before signing the treaty. Worse yet was Bush insulting the memories of the tens of millions who died fighting the Nazis by first laying a wreath honoring Red Army soldiers who smashed Hitlerism and then traveling to Normandy, France, to compare World War II to U.S. imperialism’s current "war against terrorism." WW II was a war against fascist terror, of which U.S. imperialism is now the world’s champion.

The following, by a PLP WW II veteran, was first published in CHALLENGE in 1995, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Nazi terror regime when the Red Army entered Berlin and raised the Red Flag over the Reichstag.]

When I was a teenager living in New Jersey and seated on a train from Bound Brook to Trenton, I noticed my English teacher sitting right behind me, talking to a friend. The latter said the Nazi invasion of Russia would triumph in six weeks. (This was the length of time The New York Times’ military "expert," Hansom Baldwin, wrote it would take the Germans to defeat the Soviet Union.)

I remember vividly to this day my English teacher’s reply: the Nazi hordes would "never defeat the Red Army." I only knew the teacher as a student, so I didn’t really understand why he said the Russians would win. In my limited circle we all supported the Soviets. And if my English teacher said they would win, that was good enough for me.

As the war progressed the Soviets seemed to be losing every step of the way. My family, friends and I all felt real bad about that. Every day you picked up the paper, you read that the Nazis took this city and that city. The Nazis claimed they killed zillions of Russians and captured what was left of the Red Army. It seemed the Nazis were as "invincible" as they and other capitalists claimed. But somehow, the Soviets continued to fight.

As the war ground, on the Germans entered Stalingrad. Somehow we all knew, as many "experts" claimed, that if the Russians lost Stalingrad they would lose the war. And it looked like they would lose. Our spirits sank to new lows when we heard about each Nazi advance in Stalingrad.

Then, as if by magic, the Nazis’ relentless drive into Stalingrad began to slacken. The next thing we heard was that the "defeated" Red Army and all their "dead and wounded" soldiers had trapped the huge German armies ringing Stalingrad. We saw movie newsreels showing the heroic Red Army herding the bedraggled, dazed and defeated Nazi "supermen" harmlessly into prisoner-of-war camps. We, and much of the world, breathed audible sighs of relief because of the great victory of the Red Army at Stalingrad.

Shortly thereafter I landed in the U.S. Army. We were shown a training film called, "The Battle for Stalingrad." It depicted the incredible mass bravery of the Red Army soldiers and of the Soviet workers who kept on producing the Red Army’s weaponry inside Stalingrad at the very moment the Nazis seemed to control the city. (This film was taken by Red Army photographers, many of whom were killed in action.) The workers and soldiers never wavered. They kept working and fighting until victory.

But the most fantastic thing in the movie was how, while the Red Army was fighting for every wall, house, apartment, etc. they were being reinforced by people and machines from east of the Ural mountains. These troops, artillery, tanks, etc. poured into Stalingrad in seemingly limitless numbers. Lines of troops crossed the Volga River as far as the eye could see. Ultimately, the Soviets outproduced and outfought the "invincible" Nazis. Hitler’s legions did have enormous resources but their forces were outfought at every turn at Stalingrad.

After that the war turned in the Soviets’ favor. Amid heavy fighting, the Soviets were pushing the Nazi beasts out of the Soviet Union and inevitably back to Germany. By the time I landed in Italy, the situation on the Russian Front was so favorable that, at our first orientation, a U.S. Army captain told us, "Uncle Joe will save you yet."

I was taken aback. I didn’t expect a U.S. officer to say something positive about Stalin. Being naive and incredulous, I turned to my buddy and asked, "Who is Uncle Joe?" His answer was short and sweet, "Stalin, you dope."

Our present situation is not totally unlike the Red Army’s at Stalingrad. The international working class has its back to the wall. The bosses gloat over the demise of the international communist movement. Our forces are small. Tactically, the bosses are stronger than we are. But because of our communist ideology we can reverse the present situation. Our forces can ultimately triumph. Stalingrad was one outstanding example of this.

a name="Capitalism’s Inherent Thievery Spinning Out of Control">">"apitalism’s Inherent Thievery Spinning Out of Control

Given the history of Enron-type swindles, a few people may go to jail, but it’d be a shock if it were more than that. A 1990 Wall Street Journal review of the Savings & Loan scandal said that the list of scoundrels was "so long that some observers conclude there is something profoundly wrong with the country’s political and financial systems, which appear easily undone by feckless and reckless behavior. In fact, they say, the behavior of this legion calls into question the performance of this nation’s professional class itself." No kidding!

Now the New York Times (6/2) headlines the "Boom in White-Collar Crime." The Times reports "a surge in business fraud and corruption….[and] a marked increase in accounting and corporate infractions, fraud in health care, government procurement and bankruptcy, identity theft, illegal corporate espionage and intellectual property piracy." The article says it’s not new, citing "the savings and loan crisis a decade ago,…a wave of corporate scandals in the 1970’s, and…during the Great Depression."

The editor of White Collar Crime Reporter says, "White-collar crime is spinning through the roof….The incidence and amounts of money being stolen are incredible." Why? "If you want to commit a crime," says the founder of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, "fraud is the way to go. The take is better and the punishment is generally less."

Of course, neither the Wall Street Journal nor the Times mentions the biggest thievery of all — the robbery of the working class through capitalist exploitation. Workers produce all value in capitalist society but most of it is stolen by the bosses in the form of surplus value: paying workers as little as they can get away with and keeping the balance as profit. This adds up to trillions every year. That’s what keeps bosses, including the likes of their media mouthpieces, in business — and in power through their control of the government. The white-collar fraud is just the icing on the cake.

Apartheid: South Africa? Or Long Island?

NEW YORK — "It’s almost like a township in the South African sense," during apartheid. That’s how Queens College sociologist Andrew Beveridge described the racist segregation on Long Island, billed as "the nation’s most segregated suburb." (New York Times, 6/5) A study sponsored by the Long Island Community Foundation found that "74% of Long Island’s blacks would have to move to be evenly dispersed across the population."

The Times reports that, "Long Island’s suburbs got off to a segregated start when….the initial leases in Levittown, America’s pioneering post-World War II suburb, announced in bold capital letters that its homes were not to be ‘used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.’"

For those who look to the courts for change, note that the Supreme Court nullified Levittown’s racist rules in 1948. Today, 54 years later, the Times says, Levittown is over 99% white.

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

Fascist Bureau of Intimidation

Last October, I was working out at 24-Hour Fitness in San Francisco. Several of us got into a heated discussion in the locker room about 9/11. One guy said, "bin Laden is really an asshole for killing all those people." "You’re right," I said, "but Bush is an even bigger asshole; he’s killing people all over the world for oil profits." Then I made a few more points about capitalism, racism, fascism and war.

One person in the group had received CHALLENGE before, and we had been friendly prior to all this. But during the discussion, he attacked me the sharpest. "You should be thankful for all that you have here in America," he said. I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that he called the FBI.

Several days later, two FBI agents appeared at my apartment. "Do you belong to 24-Hour Fitness? Someone reported you were talking about 9/11, Bush, bin Laden, Afghanistan and oil wars" they said. "A lot of people are talking about these things," I replied. "Of course," they said, "you have the right to freedom of speech." "Thanks!" I replied, "and this ends our discussion" "But we have to file our report," they announced. I said, "Goodbye," and closed the door.

At a meeting of PUEBLO, [People United for a Better Oakland], a friend suggested I call the National Lawyers Guild about the FBI visit. A Guild lawyer said they had received a number of calls about people being visited by the FBI. A woman at the Guild said several liberal reporters wanted to do a story about my experience. Later, CBS-TV called and came to interview me.

On May 15th, CBS "Eye on America" ran my story. Although they had "promised" to run it several months ago. It’s interesting they picked this week, coinciding with "revelations" that Bush and his crew knew about the possibility of an attack months before 9/11.

So don’t rely on the media and the powers-that-be. Rely on the working class and build PLP. Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE.

Oakland Comrade

a name="Gould Exposed ‘Scientific Racism’"></">Go"ld Exposed ‘Scientific Racism’

Biologist Stephen Jay Gould died of cancer on May 20. Renowned for his evolutionary theories and popular science writings, he was a lifelong foe of theories of biological determinism and "scientific racism." His influential books, like "The Mismeasurement of Man" and "Ever Since Darwin," proved the racist history of IQ testing and the non-existence of "race" as a scientific category. His scientific ideas bear the stamp of dialectical reasoning. Gould’s view of life was richer and more multi-layered than that of biodeterminists, who look for a single engine of change.

As a scientist, Gould was best known for his controversial idea (with Niles Eldredge) of "punctuated equilibrium," which says that the pace of evolutionary change is not smooth but proceeds in fits and starts. In the fossil record, many organisms seem to putter along over eons without obvious change, then change drastically in a relatively short time. In "Wonderful Life" Gould enriched Darwin’s theory by emphasizing the role of contingency (historical quirkiness).

Though he claimed to have learned Marxism "at my father’s knee," Gould was politically liberal rather than anti-capitalist. While campaigning against the racist theories of Jensen in the 1970’s, he shunned open confrontation, and sat out the battles led by PLP and other anti-racists against sociobiology and his Harvard colleague E.O Wilson. By the ‘90’s, he was mainly campaigning against creationist influence in the schools, and hoped to reconcile religion and science (an impossible quest).

Red Biologist

a name="Bush on Cuba: ‘Free Elections’ Florida Style"></">Bu"h on Cuba: ‘Free Elections’ Florida Style

In Jay Leno’s May 20th monologue, he referred to Bush’s Florida speech that day addressing right-wing Cuban exiles celebrating Cuba’s "independence day" — actually the day in 1902 when the U.S., which seized Cuba from Spain in the 1898 war, made the island a U.S. protectorate through the Platt Amendment. Bush, countering Jimmy Carter’s recent visit to Cuba, said the U.S. embargo will end only when Cuba holds "free elections." Leno joked: "Just like his brother Jeb held in Florida on Nov. 4, 2000."

That was the day when the state police and other racist authorities physically barred many African-Americans, Haitian immigrants and others from casting ballots. Widespread fraud throughout Florida prevented determination of a winner for over two months — unprecedented in U.S. presidential elections. Then, to protect the interests of the entire ruling class, the Democrats made a deal with the Republicans, accepting the racist fraud which landed Dubya in the White House.

Meanwhile, Dubya and the right-wing Cuban exiles in Southern Florida also attacked the Castro government because it has "sunk the Cuban people into poverty." Well, when it comes to poverty, they needn’t look too far. According to the latest Census figures, the percentage of poor families has "risen in Southern Florida, including Miami-Dade county, which, at 14.5%, is higher than the state’s 9% average." (Sun-Sentinel.com, 5/29). In that region, the highest poverty rate was about 47% for single women with children under five in Miami-Dade.

Many of these poor workers are immigrants, like the Cruz family who came there from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, in 1988. The father works for Mecca Farms, living in a company mobile home with a cracked living room floor and undrinkable tap water. His $300-a-week wage, for very hard work, pays mostly for food and clothing.

Because of heavy anti-communism that right-wing Cuban exiles foster in Southern Florida, the fight-back against this exploitation is almost non-existent. Poverty and rotten living conditions are the "fruits" such anti-communism doles out to workers.

A reader

Capitalism Fattens Itself and Us, Too

The article "Capitalism Gives Heart Attack to Workers in China," (CHALLENGE, 6/5) proves a recent report by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) about the rise of obesity in both the imperialist and poorer countries of the world. Most of us see obesity as a problem of the imperialist countries, instead of dialectically, as a problem of capitalism poisoning the whole world. According to the FAO, the world produces enough to feed the entire planet a healthy diet. It’s a problem of distribution and bad food.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, 780 million of the 815 million suffering hunger worldwide live in the poorer countries. Additionally, there are now as many undernourished people in the world as there are overeaters. In Togo, 10% of the population is underweight while almost 20% are overweight. In Ghana, 20% are underweight and 20% overweight. The latter is mainly an urban problem, where a more sedentary population eats less healthy food. In Sub-Sahara Africa, obesity and hunger are both increasing, particularly among women. In Colombia and Brazil, 40% are overweight, similar to many Western European countries.

In inner city poor neighborhoods, like New York’s Harlem, there are more diseases caused by obesity than in the general population due to fried and fast food hamburger joints. Lack of fibers, fruits and vegetables and over-consumption of sugar and saturated fats lead to heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, etc. And the fatter one gets, the harder it is to exercise.

The solution is not easy. Replacing all fast food restaurants and most processed food producers with restaurants serving healthy and tasty food would be an answer (but virtually impossible under this profit system). Exercise is another answer. Some people act individually, but obviously that’s not the answer since the problem continues to grow.We are constantly bombarded with ads for Big Macs, Coke and Pepsi, etc. We also don’t have enough money or time to eat properly. Therefore, the answer’s not that easy. I know; I’m an overeater. The answer lies in what CHALLENGE always proposes: fight for a new society without bosses and profits.

Fat and not proud

a name="Bosses’ Elections a Bad Brew for Workers">">"osses’ Elections a Bad Brew for Workers

In April here in Colombia, Bavaria brewery bosses called on workers to unite with it to "defend democracy" and participate in the electoral farce held late in May. (Uribe, the Presidential candidate of the death squads, won). Union leaders supported this call, hoping to win some "friends" in the bosses’ parliament, as the way to collect some crumbs for workers. While these ruling-class patriots ask workers to defend the system, the bosses’ state expands its war against the guerrillas. Bullets and ballots are the choices offered by capitalist democracy.

Bavaria bosses understand well that patriotism and elections add up to fooling workers while attacking them. Bavaria has closed 15 plants in three years leaving 3,000 workers jobless. The cover for these cuts is the need to "restructure" Bavaria. Many technicians and engineers went along with this and many of them also lost their jobs.

Such restructuring is actually due to capitalism’s crisis of overproduction, causing millions of workers to lose their jobs which happens worldwide.

We in PLP are committed to explain to these workers the real cause of these job cuts, to expose how the bosses’ patriotic electoral circus is a trap for workers, and to show them the only way out of this living hell is to fight for a society where workers rule and produce for their needs, instead of for the profits of leeches like the Santodomingo bosses (among the richest in Colombia and owner of Bavaria). That system is communism.

A comrade, Colombia

Racism Defines A Society

I disagree with the letter "A Clearer Definition of Racism Needed" (CHALLENGE, 6/5). It proposes the following definition: "Racism is the idea that there are fundamental differences between the different human population on the globe."

I believe that fundamentally racism is not an idea but rather defines a society. A racist society is one where racial (or similar) categories are used to create and perpetuate lower wages (super-exploitation), higher unemployment, more intense police terror, and higher rates of imprisonment for a particular group of people. The U.S. is a racist society. People identified by the category "black" receive (on average) lower wages, suffer twice as much unemployment, more intense police harassment and are imprisoned at seven times the rate of "white" people. Racist ideas are used to justify that racist super-exploitation and oppression, but material racism is primary.

Palestinians are the "black" people of the Middle East. They live in intensely impoverished towns and camps and are a major source of low-wage labor for local capitalists.

The actions of the Israeli military are racist: the Israelis are determined to keep Palestinian workers in their inferior position, to retain and extend Israeli control of crucial resources and land.

The actions of Palestinian suicide bombers follow the nationalist logic of replacing Israeli oppressors with Palestinian. They are also effectively racist against Palestinian workers: they do not fight capitalism and the racist super-exploitation of Palestinian workers. Ultimately they will strengthen the grip of racism on these workers. For proof, look at how racism in South Africa is stronger under ANC rule.

For years we have distinguished nationalism from racism and said that the key to fighting nationalism is to fight racism. We would not work extensively inside pro-Israel groups; they are racist. We would work inside nationalist-led anti-Zionist groups; the rank and file are there because they hate racism. They are tired of being treated as inferior beings. We would fight the nationalist leadership by sharpening the fight against anti-Palestinian racism, fighting Zionism, fighting for better wages and against police terror.

The key to communist politics in the Middle East is not just internationalism and the battle against all forms of nationalism. It is also the fight against racism. We must point out how all nationalism, including Palestinian, extends racism against Palestinian workers.

Another Chicago comrade

1. Conflict Among U.S. Bosses Reveal
   Liberal Rulers Want Stepped-Up Fascism
2. India-Pakistan: Imperialist War Is Fundamental (ist)
3. It's No Conspiracy--Capitalism Based on War and Terror
4. SSEU Militants Launch First Union May Day Event
5. These May Day Marchers Will Return
6. Teach-in Exposes UC-Berkeley Nuclear War `Factory'
7. Colombia's Fascist Cops Can't Stop
   May Day Marchers
8. Workers Won't Yield To Pepsi (Sweatshop) Generation
9. RACIST PROFITS GO BETTER WITH STALE COKE
10. Faculty-Student-Worker Solidarity Fights War, Cuts
11. Must Kick Out INS Recruiters
12. Real Cause of Violence Is Racist LAPD
13. U.S., European Bosses Fight Over Exploitation of Latin American Workers
14. THE FIGHT OVER CUBA
15. PUSHING NAFTA SOUTH AND THE EU OUT
16. Nationalists' Aim: Out Fox Mexico's President Over Cuba
17. Capitalism Gives a Heart Attack to Workers in China
18. U.S. Bosses Legalize Police State
19. Bosses' Courts Legitimize Witness for the Persecution
20. Workers of the World, Write!
    LETTERS
    1. `Peace Now' Politics A Dead End
    2. Protestors Dump Bosses' Flags
    3. A Clearer Definition of Racism Needed

---

Conflict Among U.S. Bosses Reveal
Liberal Rulers Want Stepped-Up Fascism

The liberal politicians and media, representing the Eastern Establishment, are taking Bush to the woodshed for ignoring warnings about the threat of a 9/11-type attack. He may well have been asleep at the switch. That incompetence has given the liberal wing of the ruling class the opening it needs to wrest leadership of the "war against terrorism" away from the Bush gang.

This is more than a factional dispute. Despite the partisan wrestling over the 2000 presidential election, the bosses are united on the goals of ruling the world for the foreseeable future, launching a war to seize the Iraqi oilfields and enforcing a racist police state. After 9/11, the Bush crowd got a renewed honeymoon with the liberal establishment to help launch the first phase of the imperialist oil war in Afghanistan, whip up a patriotic, pro-war frenzy and lay the foundations of the "Homeland Security" police state.

The Bush "revelations" reflect the rulers' impatience with his administration's incompetence on the home front. The Vietnam Syndrome -- the fear of workers and soldiers refusing to accept massive casualties-- still haunts the bosses. They can't afford the militant, mass, anti-imperialist protests that accompanied their Vietnam massacres. Such a movement might force them to take it over to control it and limit its goals. Otherwise they would try to crush it outright. Ruling the world requires a heavy price in workers' blood. Sure, the imperialists want to prevent al Qaeda from launching a repeat of 9/11 or worse, but more importantly they need to win, pacify, or terrorize the U.S. working class and population as a whole.

Basically, Bush has bungled the job so far. He got a terror bill passed and established a Homeland Security office. But the liberals don't think he's moved efficiently or ruthlessly enough to implement the measures they require. Specifically, they object to the following failures, outlined in a May 12 New York Times editorial:

* Bush and "domestic security" czar Ridge have no "coherent explanation" of their priorities and have failed to build class unity in Congress for changes the liberals want made.

* Ridge hasn't forced the FBI to share information with local police. The result is less than the well-oiled law enforcement machine the liberal rulers are demanding for more effective control.

* The liberals want a computerized tracking system for "suspects" and a tighter noose on international students. The main targets at the moment are undocumented immigrants, a first step providing an important opening wedge. The ultimate goal is anyone who opposes the rulers' policies. According to the Times, the tracking system has "barely gotten off the ground."

* Bible thumping, KKK-friendly Attorney General John Ashcroft is playing the same turf game as the FBI.

* Combating the threat of "bioterrorism" gives the rulers a good excuse to use health care delivery as an important means of social control. The Times criticizes Ridge for his lack of involvement and his indifference to partisan "squabbling" over control of federal healthcare grants.

When the Bush forces stole the presidency, many worried that fascism had arrived. They had a point. The U.S. ruling class has been headed toward fascism for years. But it is a serious mistake to view Bush as the "real enemy." The main danger is never the obvious bad guy, but rather the "wolf in sheep's clothing." It was the liberal Clinton, the "first black president," who carried out the most racist attack on U.S. social services in history. Similarly, it will be liberal Democrats like Daschle, Jay Rockefeller, Kennedy and Gore (along with some liberal Republicans) who implement intelligence databases, centralize all police agencies and impose fear and control through checkpoints in train stations, highways and airports. It will be the liberals who criminalize any political activity that opposes the system, from the mildest protest to more militant, revolutionary organizing.

The liberal rulers will adapt Hitler-like police state methods to U.S. conditions. They're just warming up. While the Bush crowd agrees with this goal, it hasn't much of a clue about how to implement a step-by-step program to achieve it. When the liberals go after Bush in earnest, their real target will be us, and the workers of the world. In the name of fighting terror, the biggest terrorists in history, grind down our living conditions, send our children off to kill and die in oil wars -- "for our own good" -- and jail those who oppose this.

Bush and the liberals have the same strategic purpose and the same definition of victory. Only the playbooks differ. We have different aims and tactics. Our aim is communist revolution. We measure our progress with the growth and increased influence of PLP.

India-Pakistan: Imperialist War Is Fundamental (ist)

India and Pakistan are on the verge of a major war. One million troops are massed along the border. The Indian rulers are demanding that Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, rein in the Islamic militants whose latest attack killed 32 at a Kashmir army camp. The Indian army retaliated, aiming artillery fire mainly at civilians. As usual, innocent workers and peasants are the victims when bosses go to war.

This area has been suffering a "low level" war for 50 years. The current flare-up threatens to become a major conflict involving not only these two nuclear powers, but also the U.S., China and Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists. The Muslims, helped by bin Laden's Al Qaeda, want to oust the Indian army from Kashmir, claiming it for themselves. The Hindus are itching to destroy Pakistan and wage ethnic cleansing against over 100 million Muslims living in India.

Meanwhile, Bush and Blair sent Christina Rocca and Chris Patten, representing the big warmakers in the U.S. and Britain, to try to halt a war between the warmakers in India and Pakistan. They realize such a war will advance al Qaeda's strategy, embroiling the U.S. and Britian in still more wars.

Israel is also involved: "There is a rumor that India has been advised by its ally Israel to take out Pakistan's nuclear installations so that the whole problem of Pakistan's recently acquired [nuclear] parity with India is solved once and for all." (Asia Times Online, 5/21)

The Pakistani regime, a key U.S. ally against al Qaeda, is now facing what Professor Shamini Akhtar, of Karachi University's international affairs department, describes as a three-front war: "in its own tribal areas (along with U.S. troops looking for al Qaeda and Taliban forces), on its northeastern border with India, and on its domestic front, where militants are agitating against...Musharraf's alliance with the U.S." (Asia Times)

Meanwhile, China is unhappy with U.S. military expansion to bases in former Soviet republics on its border. It also resents U.S. use of its new post-9/11 alliance with Musharraf to drive a wedge between Pakistan and China. Beijing also sees India as a rival for its interests in that part of Asia. So the U.S. might have to offer China heavy concessions for its help in avoiding a major war between India and Pakistan which could upset "Phase 2" of Bush's "war on terrorism" -- invading Iraq to seize its vast oil fields.

On the eve of World War I, Lenin wrote that capitalism makes war inevitable. As wars spread worldwide, workers, soldiers and their allies internationally must understand we have to unite to smash the warmakers with communist revolution.

It's No Conspiracy--Capitalism Based on War and Terror

Conspiracy theories are running rampant worldwide about "What did Bush know and when did he know it?" Ever since 9/11, there have been bits and pieces emerging that point the finger at the CIA, the FBI and the Bush administration as either having foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks or actually plotting them or blinding themselves to the fact that they were coming.

However, what many of these exposés have in common is their attributing whatever happened or didn't happen to "the bad guys in Washington"-- to "rogue CIA operatives" or right-wing forces in and around the White House and the Pentagon. And these "bad guys" are "threatening American democracy" so "we" should never have allowed the Bushites to steal the Presidency from "the good guys"-- the Democrats.

But these "exposés" don't point the finger at the real culprit: capitalism. It's the profit system, especially its main driving force, U.S. imperialism, that creates wars, fascism, poverty, mass unemployment, racism and religious fundamentalists. This in turn produces the terrorism and the battle for control of oil that lead not only to 9/11s but to the murder of millions in fights between imperialist bosses.

The "democracy" that the "good guys" are allegedly defending is a sham. The "good guys" -- the liberals like Kennedy, Clinton, Daschle, Carter, the New York Times, CBS and their media cohorts -- are among the main perpetrators of the oppression afflicting billions of workers worldwide. In the name of "human rights" and "spreading democracy" and "fighting terrorism," they are the biggest terrorists of all--bombing Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia, destroying Afghanistan, invading Panama, establishing dictatorships in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador and killing five million workers and peasants in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Their next target is Iraq and Saddam Hussein who they label as "worse than Hitler," the same Saddam who they armed for eight years in his war with Iran. All this so Rockefeller's Exxon Mobil can better control Mid-East oil supplies.

So their "committees" to "investigate" who knew what when serve to mask their actions driving towards their real goal: world domination. The "good guys" only concern about "who knew what when" is to figure out how to streamline their government to overcome its staggering ineptness (see page 1) so it can better oppress the workers of the world.

SSEU Militants Launch First Union May Day Event

NEW YORK CITY, May 7 -- "It was good for the first time. Next time we'll do even better," was how numerous members of AFSCME's Social Services Employees Union (SSEU) Local 371 evaluated the local's first-ever May Day celebration. Over 100 members -- including friends and family -- attended, observing the international workers' holiday.

For many years, this local has endorsed May Day marches. This year, a resolution of the delegates (shop stewards) initiated an annual union May Day celebration!

Bringing May Day into the mass organizations has both benefits and drawbacks. On the positive side, the local's May Day publicity reached all of our 15,000 members. A committee of some 20 union members met three times to plan the dinner and program. Workers who knew little about the history of this working-class holiday learned about it from a long-time rank-and-file union leader. Committee members told us how May Day was celebrated in their country of origin. Everyone attending the dinner received a flyer printed by the union containing an excerpt from the PLP May Day pamphlet. It described how the International Workingmen's Association, organized by Karl Marx, eventually created the first international May Day celebration based on the 1886 Chicago general strike and subsequent Haymarket Massacre.

The negative aspect was the keynote speaker's message. He urged channeling political activities into the Democratic Party. He told the mainly activist audience to do what they're already doing: get involved in the day-to-day issues on their jobs. He said nothing about the revolutionary history of May Day or how it reflects the international unity and needs of the working class. Of course, he and the rest of his cohorts will continue to use Labor Day as "the workers' day," sanctioned by the bosses as a patriotic "holiday" and bereft of any working-class content.

PLP has fought hard to rebuild the celebration of May Day in the U.S. We have guaranteed that our communist ideas are heard. We can and should build the massive potential for May Day organizing in the unions and other mass organizations.

These May Day Marchers Will Return

Red flags and communist chants were witnessed by thousands in Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles as PLP marched to celebrate May Day, the international working class holiday. In 1971 PLP revived this revolutionary tradition. Since the late 19th century, the rulers and their agents inside the labor movement have used "Labor Day" in early September to try to bury May Day. PLP's marches this year took on special significance since they occurred in an atmosphere of a growing police state and pro-war patriotism. The following letters come from participants in the Brooklyn march.

Participating in the May Day march and selling CHALLENGE papers was a new and positive experience for me. I'm very glad I had the opportunity to be a part of this holiday with such special people in NYC. I want to thank my two professors and my friends for struggling with me to come. I will definitely march and bring more people next year.

Chicago State University Student

Coming to the march was where my experience began, personally and emotionally. From the discussions that occurred on the bus ride from Chicago to New York I felt the truth of my everyday life prevail, (I know it's not just me.) It was a positive emotion. I was awakening with the truth. That's the path to recognizing now, at the age of 26, what at 18 I usually ignored.

Overall, I finally have some idea of what communism is -- that's something I've wanted to know. This march made me bolder.

Chicago Marcher

The May Day march was great! I'm definitely not the same person who got on this bus. I can honestly say I enjoyed it! It was a learning experience. I didn't know when I was asked to come on the march what it was all about. My friend gave me CHALLENGE to read a few hours before boarding the bus. I've met great people with great ideas and thoughts. I felt that the march really served its purpose, because I felt that we touched the people in New York.

First, but not last

Teach-in Exposes UC-Berkeley Nuclear War `Factory'

BERKELEY, CA.--With PLP leadership, the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition sponsored an April 10 teach-in entitled, "University of Mass Destruction" to expose how the University of California (UC) functions as a military tool.

The first speaker, from Western States Legal Foundation, explained the change in U.S. nuclear policy from the Cold War doctrine of "deterrence" to one justifying the use of smaller tactical nuclear weapons. She said that even turning Berkeley into a "Nuclear Free Zone" is meaningless since the City Council has never acted on the related laws --like refusing city contracts to institutions involved in nuclear research -- for fear of angering the UC.

The second speaker, from Tri-Valley Cares, said Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory (only 30 miles from San Francisco) produced high plutonium levels within the city of Livermore. She also revealed that the UC manages all the nuclear labs for the Department of Energy and that every U.S. nuclear weapon was designed by a UC employee.

The last speaker, a PLP member, said $42 million was given annually to UC-Berkeley by the Office of Navy Research, Army Research Office and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. The Navy's "Autonomous Operations Project" develops computer software and communication technology used in unmanned robotic military weapons like the CIA's Predator aircraft used in Afghanistan. Berkeley researchers are modeling a remote control helicopter outfitted with video cameras, global positioning technology and an on-board computer. UC is also researching the Mobile Offshore Base (MOB) comprising five aircraft carrier-sized ships linked into a mile-long runway on the ocean. This would enable B-52's to land at sea, not needing nearby airbases to conduct future wars.

The PLP member explained how the above examples were discovered with only minimal investigation, that there are probably others. He said the universities are capitalist "factories" producing weapons technology, and workers for these technology-intensive industries, amid anti-working class ideologies. Only universities run by the working class can serve workers' interests. Even eliminating UC's management of the nuclear labs wouldn't end nuclear weapons development. Capitalism will always find ways to produce more powerful weapons. The Berkeley Stop the War Coalition is a start in trying to build working-class movements and to celebrate working class holidays. He called on people to march on May Day in Los Angeles against weapons development, war, racism, poverty and for working-class power.

We distributed literature to the group and strengthened ties with our friends involved in building the teach-in.

Colombia's Fascist Cops Can't Stop
May Day Marchers

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Over 50,000 marched here on May 1 to celebrate the international working class holiday. It was organized by the union federations and other reformist organizations who used it as a rally to tie workers to the bosses' electoral circus (later this month). The revolutionary meaning of May 1, honoring the Martyrs of Haymarket Square, was buried.

The hacks are supporting Luis Eduardo Garzón, a pseudo-leftist union leader, who simply praises the bosses' "democracy" as the mantra for change. Never mind the country's raging civil war, rampant unemployment, the death squads murdering workers with the help of the U.S.-armed and -trained Colombian Army. Garzón tells workers "voting for him" is the solution.

Many workers and youth took up chants like: "Down with the electoral farce, long live the world communist revolution"; "They keep us alienated with drugs, sex and religion, only communism will liberate us"; "Terrorism and Fascism sustain capitalism"; "Let's study the cause of this madness, give up ignorance and bury capitalism"; and "Smash imperialist war with communist revolution."

Like everywhere else in Colombia, capitalist violence appeared. The cops attacked some demonstrators, there was some shootings and broken windows, and some arrests were made, making it impossible for the march to end in its traditional rally at Bolivar Square. Many protestors avoided being photographed by police agents, pictures which usually end up on the death squad hit list.

Afterwards, PLP members and friends discussed the march and our role in it, to learn from our strengths and weaknesses so as to improve our work among workers and youth. We all agreed to continue our ideological battle for communism, against all forms of reformism and opportunism, using CHALLENGE and other literature as our tools.

The road ahead is not easy, but it's the only one leading to workers' power.

Workers Won't Yield To Pepsi (Sweatshop) Generation

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA -- Shakira, Britney Spears, Shaq O'Neill, David Beckham and Sammy Sosa are among the many show biz and sports superstars used by Pepsi Cola to advertise its products. Recently it was revealed that Delia's clothes for young women, promoted by Shakira, the very popular crossover Latin singer, are manufactured in a Brooklyn, NY, sweatshop employing Latino woman. Shakira immediately canceled ties to Delia's. But dropping Pepsi altogether (as much a sweatshop-type exploiter as Delia's) is another question since Shakira's boyfriend is the son of former Argentine President De la Rua, who she has praised. He fled the Presidential palace in a chopper on Dec. 20 when hundreds of thousands surrounded it and demanded he resign. He did.

Pepsico Snacks (producers of Fritolay, Doritos, Santitas, Wow, etc.) employs about 400 workers in its Argentine plant. Seventy percent are women, including many single moms or sole breadwinners in their families. This country suffers mass unemployment stemming from the deep capitalist crisis. Many workers must toil double shifts to make ends meet.

Worse still, since January, Pepsico fired 130 workers, most of them temps. Rank-and-file union delegates charged the union leadership of siding with Pepsico throughout these attacks.

Union leaders enforced the company's rotten conditions. Elsa works a packing machine, set to run much faster than it's supposed to. Three women bring boxes to where they're to be filled, continuously, all day, with only 30 minutes break to eat and go to the bathroom. Elsa has constant pain: "The machine makes you work at maximum speed. Sometimes, when I sit on the floor at home to play with my son, my wrists hurt so much I can't get up. We stand for eight hours on the job with nothing to lean against."

Varicose veins is the main illness suffered by workers. One won a suit against the company to get medical treatment for the illness, but the union helped Pespsico, agreeing that varicose veins is not covered by the health insurance program.

Another worker, Rosalba, says summer heat is unbearable. The fans run hot air which smells like fried food. Julia has blisters on her hand from frying potatoes in hot oil. And the few available seats are aluminum, which burn in the heat if you sit for a while.

When nearly all the workers chose a committee, without the union leadership, to fight for the fired temps' jobs -- and were supported by two union delegates -- Pepsico threatened the committee members and those delegates because it's agents in the union leadership had lost control.

The workers are being backed by many others, particularly from plants in similar struggles (Zanon workers and the mostly women workers of Brukman). They're also supported by pro-worker lawyers and others. But Pepsico refuses to re-hire the fired workers.

Unfortunately the working class is waging struggles against imperialist conglomerates like Pepsico without international solidarity. Communists in PLP believe the working class has no borders, that its interests are the same worldwide, and while the names of their oppressors may vary, they're all part of the same system: capitalism.

We call on CHALLENGE readers to support the Pepsico workers in Argentina, E-mail their rank-and-file delegates at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

RACIST PROFITS GO BETTER WITH STALE COKE

The racism of U.S. corporations knows no bounds. The following is taken from an article in the New York Times (5/19):

"Marching with bullhorns and spreading their message over talk radio, dozens of Coke drivers, plant workers and salespeople are accusing their bosses of inching up profits for almost a decade by pawning off expired soda cans and bottles on minority communities across North Texas.

"Rather than throw the old drinks away...factory managers...salvage[d] truckloads of old, unsold drinks from stores in predominantly white areas...to cart them to the poorest neighborhoods...."

"For years...[workers] stripped expired soda cans from their cardboard sheaths, stuffed them into fresh boxes with new dates stamped on the side, then piled them on store shelves as if they were new....What co-workers called the fire sale....

"They would use Windex cleaner to erase the expiration date on the bottles."

"I knew what we were doing was not right," said William Wright, a coke deliveryman for 14 years. "But every time I brought it up, I'd hear, `I'm the boss. You do what I say.'"

Faculty-Student-Worker Solidarity Fights War, Cuts

OHIO--Chanting, "Strike! Strike," over 400 students, teachers and campus workers marched in the greatest show of solidarity in a generation against a large, public college administration here. One teacher called it a "critical mass, a movement whose time has come." This was the culmination of a year-long struggle, which has laid the groundwork for a possible campus-wide strike in the future.

Several teachers accused this "non-profit" institution of hoarding money in slush funds and not making educating students a priority.

The newly-formed Student Union charged the college bookstore with price-gouging. Several campus workers called for solidarity of workers (including welfare recipients), students and faculty. Campus workers suffer a "pass system," requiring them to get a permission slip to leave their work area. Another speaker said we need money for schools, rather than jails and war.

Since 9/11, four teach-ins and campus union organizing have united the mainly working-class and immigrant students, faculty and campus workers. Just two weeks after 9/11, over 800 students attended a day-long Students for Justice (SFJ) "Teach-in on the Terrorist Attacks: What the Media Won't Tell Us." While the Administration held a "healing" vigil, SFJ provided critical information on oil politics, a history of U.S. government state terrorism, the CIA's clandestine operations and past support for fascists including Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, etc. Speakers placed oil and imperialism front and center.

The successful teach-in stemmed from previous organizing, including a labor conference featuring domestic and farm workers. Twenty-five teachers invited their students, which helped establish SFJ as a credible campus voice. The campus newspaper's right-wing attacks, which included some red baiting, gave SFJ even greater credibility, sparking letters and campus wide networking spreading the SFJ's ideas.

In late November a teach-in on the Patriot Bill and the assault on dissent drew 75 people. In March, 300 attended another, better-organized teach-in. While there were "expert" speakers, students comprised more than half the panel, discussing current and past U.S. government repression.

Faculty union activism has grown, in reaction to threatened cuts in health benefits and the use of part-timers. Collective bargaining is stalled for the second consecutive year and teachers are irate. New leadership emerged after a series of union meetings, with 50 to 80 teachers attending. They organized the first successful test of the faculty/student/worker alliance; a campus-wide demonstration with 175 students and campus workers.

SFJ is a mix of pacifists, liberals, reformers, environmentalists, anarchists and Marxists. Some people are interested in a study group on capitalism and the history, strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement. Out of this, a genuine anti-imperialist, anti-racist leadership can emerge.

Must Kick Out INS Recruiters

Recently my southern California college's Sociology department held a job fair. The usual bosses' agents were there -- LAPD, Army, Marines -- recruiting for the rulers' current imperialist war. Two Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents showed up also, in full uniform carrying semi-automatic handguns, handcuffs, baton, mace, etc. They distribute a flyer reading, "INS: A job with borders, but without boundaries." It was the first appearance of INS recruiters; except for cops, college rules prohibit anyone from carrying firearms on campus.

This school has a high percentage of blacks, Latinos, Chicano and Asian students. During the late '60s, thousands held multi-racial demonstrations, occupying the administration building, and fought incredibly hard to integrate our campus. We're very proud of this history of struggle, which is why many students and professors were angered by the INS's presence and felt an era of intimidation was returning.

I belong to a very large and well-respected Chicano empowerment group. At a recent meeting, a bold friend of mine expressed concern about the INS's presence. He encouraged the group to take immediate action, including confronting the INS agents. He spoke passionately about preventing xenophobia (patriotism and hatred of "foreigners"), protecting our learning environment and fighting intimidation. I then said the attack against Muslim students is an attack against us all.

There was a clear division over what to do. Only a handful of students advocated direct action. Others argued the INS has a "right to free speech." Some even said there was a need to protect the border. This sparked intense discussions about racism, nationalism, and the role of the INS.

We learned several things: (1) The ruling class is stepping up its attack on immigrants everywhere, and using fear and intimidation to discipline the entire working class while it slowly builds a police state; (2) the bosses' racist and nationalist propaganda is spreading fear and indecision among all communities, including oppressed communities; (3) It's more important than ever to be involved in mass organizations to help sharpen the contradictions and meet others opposed to racism and fascism.

Finally a small group of students went from the meeting and, on their own. confronted the INS agents. They asked sharp questions and made it clear the INS was unwelcome here. In addition, the large campus group wrote the school newspaper and the president of the university condemning the INS. The direct action advocates are now visiting other campus organizations, explaining what happened and organizing to confront the INS or any other racist agency that comes on campus in the future.

A Young Comrade

Real Cause of Violence Is Racist LAPD

The liberal Police Commission recently fired LA Police Chief Bernard Parks, mainly because he didn't implement "community policing." What's community policing? I found out when the LAPD held a rally at the corner of Florence and Normandie in South Central LA, one "flashpoint" of the 1992 rebellion. The rally included black and Latino youth, community leaders, city officials and lots of cops. The cops billed it as a "stop the violence now" crusade and promised jobs for youth in South Central. They urged the community to help them in "stopping violence and drug dealers."

These racist murderers are some of the most violent and vicious killers anywhere. These same cops beat Rodney King and shot thousands of black and Latin workers. They want workers to squeal on other workers to build more open fascism. This "stop the violence now" crusade mirrors the "war on terrorism." The bosses need workers' support for a new oil war and require our passivity in the face of health care and job cuts. They can offer workers only more prisons and racist killer cops.

The bosses can never serve workers' class interests. That's why all workers must unite and, with the leadership of PLP, fight to smash fascism and war and establish a society free from exploitation.

A comrade

U.S., European Bosses Fight Over Exploitation of Latin American Workers

Latin America has become a battleground between U.S. imperialists and their rivals in Europe (and to a lesser extent in Asia). The hatred of U.S. imperialism by the workers and youth in Latin America needs to be channeled through a revolutionary force. Unfortunately, reformists and nationalists allied with European imperialism -- Fidel Castro, Lula of Brazil, Chavez of Venezuela -- are co-opting that anger into a fight for capitalism without U.S. dominance.

In trying to repel U.S. imperialism's rivals for control of Latin America, the Bush administration has launched several counterattacks: from refusing to let the IMF bail out Argentina to supporting the coup (that failed) in Venezuela to increasing military aid to the Colombian Army and death squads. The Bush administration has also used U.S. lackeys in Latin America -- Presidents Fox of Mexico and Battle of Uruguay -- to attack Cuba's human rights record. But it has backfired. A recent survey in Uruguay showed only 7% supporting the government's breaking of diplomatic relations with Cuba. As the Uruguayan economy declines, tens of thousands of workers and others demonstrated on May 12 against President Battle's economic policies. Mexico's Congress has even barred Fox from traveling to the U.S., angered over recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings banning labor rights for immigrant workers in the U.S. (See CHALLENGE, 5/22, on the hypocrisy of U.S. and Mexican bosses preaching to anyone about racist terror against workers.)

THE FIGHT OVER CUBA

While some sections of the U.S. ruling class are trying to make a deal with Castro -- witness Jimmy Carter's visit to Havana -- the Bush administration is still influenced by the right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami and the Christian right in the Republican Party which are behind every U.S. attack against Castro internally and around the hemisphere. The Castro regime uses anti-U.S. nationalism to induce the productive Cuban working class to work harder to attract European and, lately, Chinese investment.

But Bush's attacks on Cuba are also linked to the struggle for total U.S. domination of Venezuela and against the Colombia guerrillas. This U.S. fight opposes the nationalist rulers and European bosses aiming for markets and influence there. Complete control of Venezuelan oil becomes increasingly important for U.S. war plans in Iraq.

But while Castro is seen by many workers and youth as a revolutionary alternative to imperialism and capitalism, the truth is that Fidel's revolutionary credentials have long gone sour. The achievements made by workers and youth at the beginning of the revolution when they forced the government to seize the imperialists' and local capitalists' businesses did not lead to workers' control of society but rather to deals with the Soviets (who, by the 1960s, were state capitalists). The social changes won by the workers are mostly gone now because of the increasing exploitation of Cuban workers by European, Canadian and other imperialists. (The right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami want to be the exploiters along with their U.S. imperialist masters, as they were before 1959 when Cuba was basically a U.S. colony).

Workers in Mexico still remember Castro's visit there in 1985 to legitimize the fraudulent Salinas government, betraying those forces who had always supported the Cuban regime. Castro is concerned with what he can get from capitalism, not with the liberation of the working class. His anti-U.S. rhetoric creates illusions in many who really want to fight capitalism.

PUSHING NAFTA SOUTH AND THE EU OUT

U.S. rulers want a Latin America-wide NAFTA. Fox and the bosses in Mexico's state of Nuevo Leon pushed for this in the Monterrey assembly of the Organization of American States. They tried -- but haven't succeeded so far in -- excluding Castro and getting rid of Venezuela's Chavez.

To stop European and Asian capital penetration in Latin America, U.S. bosses want to dissolve the merger of the Spanish bank VVB with Mexico's BANCOMER, accusing VVB of laundering money. (Citibank does the same thing.) The U.S. stopped an IMF rescue loan during the Argentine financial crisis to impede the advance of European imperialists. They also did it to break MERCOSUR (a trade group with strong European ties). Brazil's rulers want to defy U.S. imperialism and intend to rebuild MERCOSUR with more European investments. The European bosses continue to use anti-U.S. nationalist bosses to expand their influence.

We workers gain nothing from supporting any imperialist, nationalist or liberal bosses, all enemies of the working class. In coming battles, our Party can grow by fighting to bury them all with communist revolution, the only road to working-class liberation. PLP took this message to the massive demonstration this May Day in Mexico City.

Nationalists' Aim: Out Fox Mexico's President Over Cuba

Mexico's fascist president Fox and the bosses' group COPARMEX side with the Bush Administration over Cuba, saying "our trade with Cuba doesn't even represent 1% of our exports. With the U.S., we have 80%. Nothing ties us to the Cubans." They want more U.S. investment and therefore attack Cuba, serving the Bush administration. Fox met with Cuban dissidents in Havana, encouraged their occupation of the Mexican embassy there, and backed the U.S. resolution in the UN condemning Cuba for human rights violations. Fox participates in the Northern Command, as a U.S. security zone under U.S. military control.

Within Mexico, Fox's anti-Castro turn is opposed by Carlos Slim, head of the TELMEX telecommunications empire and Latin America's richest boss. Slim plans to expand his investments in Cuba's telecommunications.

Slim also wants Fox to demand that banks invest in the internal Mexican market, to depend less on exports. Mexico's Congress rejected Fox and COPARMEX's push to privatize the energy sector. COPARMEX labels Congress an obstacle while Congress defends nationalist bosses like Slim, who want a bigger share of the profit pie.

Capitalism Gives a Heart Attack to Workers in China

The rapid "economic development" of China has spawned one of the hallmarks of industrial capitalism: cardiovascular disease. The risk of heart attacks and strokes is rising sharply. According to the Wall St. Journal (4/25), nearly 30% of adult Chinese have high blood pressure and one-third have high cholesterol levels. Nearly 13% have diabetes or elevated blood-sugar levels.

Some years ago, China was known for having very low rates of heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Cholesterol levels were remarkably low, far less than anything seen in the developed Western capitalist countries. What happened?

The likely culprit is what the WSJ calls, "Westernized living patterns." These include smoking, lack of exercise and fast food diets.

Last year there were 430 McDonalds restaurants in China. Kentucky Fried Chicken has 600. Workers in Beijing ride bicycles to work, while workers in the more prosperous city of Guangzhou ride motor scooters. The combination of high-calorie foods and reduced physical activity is leading to an epidemic of obesity in China and other developing countries like India, Egypt and Mexico.

Pfizer, Inc. and other big drug companies are drooling at the prospect of selling drugs for lowering cholesterol and high blood pressure to millions of Chinese. A Pfizer company spokesman says they want to " increase awareness" among doctors of the extent of the cardiovascular disease epidemic.

Capitalism has brought vast riches to a small class of old and new bosses. For the workers it has brought mass exploitation, unemployment, prostitution, drug addiction, an emerging AIDS epidemic and even some starvation. Now we can add coronary heart disease, stroke, obesity and diabetes, followed by profiteering drug companies poised to make billions off the diseases created by the profit system.

Heart and other chronic diseases may be inevitable under capitalist economic development. But there is another path: communist development and public health. Food production and consumption need not be geared toward big agricultural conglomerates and fast food empires. Governments don't have to be addicted to the taxes and profits from tobacco production. Smoking can be eliminated. Regular exercise can be built into every workplace and community.

These "living patterns" can prevent the chronic diseases of capitalist development. When Chinese and other workers around the world win the fight for communist revolution, these healthy patterns will become part of everyday life for young and old alike.

TABLE

Deaths from cardiovascular disease per 100,000 people ages 35-74),

Russia 854

China 339

U.S. 272

France 146

Japan 136

U.S. Bosses Legalize Police State

(In our last article (5/8), we raised the possibility of the U.S. government declaring a PLP chapter in another country a "foreign terrorist organization" (FTO), thereby subjecting anyone in the U.S. giving "material support" to that chapter up to 10 years in jail or more.)

Now, say PLP wanted to challenge in court being put on the FTO list. Grounds for appeal are very limited. Also, the law designates the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to hear all appeals. This court's judges have always been the most trustworthy defenders of the capitalist legal system. So PLP would have a snowball's chance in hell of winning this appeal.

Under the same "material support" law being used to charge Lynne Stewart [lawyer for a man convicted in a previous "terrorist" case], the government also has the right to sue a person or an institution "about to engage" in activity that violates the law. For example, the government claims that left-wingers in the U.S. want to send people and equipment over to a country where PLP comrades are fighting the fascist government. The U.S. rulers decide to sue them in court to stop them.

Then let's say the left-wingers requested information from the government about evidence it has indicating "support for terrorism." But there's another special provision in the law allowing the government to refuse to disclose any evidence based on "classified information." So the bosses' government can use "secret evidence" against both citizens and non-citizens in legal proceedings. No longer does anyone have the legal right to see the evidence being used against him/her.

Where did this law come from? In the early 1980s an Immigration Service internal task force studied how to make immigration law serve U.S. rulers more effectively. Their report proposed the "anti-terrorism" laws. Then Clinton's Democratic administration joined with a Republican-controlled Congress to put these laws on the books. The Republicans always championed vicious, ant-immigrant ideas. But more dangerous to the working class is the wolf in sheep's clothing, the Democratic Party and Clinton who pose as a friend of immigrant workers and the oppressed. The racist, fascist and anti-worker laws passed under Clinton are not limited to immigration. An "effective" death penalty law, slave labor Workfare, the gutting of habeas corpus rights, and other "anti-terrorism" laws are all part of the fascist Clinton/Democratic Party legacy. (Future articles will examine some of these laws.) The rulers' legal system can virtually never serve workers' interests. But the bosses can always manipulate it to favor themselves and legalize a U.S. police state.

Historically communists have been the strongest fighters against fascism. Since fascism is always the ultimate form of capitalist exploitation, a revolutionary solution is required. While we are fighting this police state, we in PLP must point out to workers the need to fight for communism as the only alternative to fascism, legal or otherwise.

Bosses' Courts Legitimize Witness for the Persecution

Passage of the terrorist Patriot Act appears to many as outright fascism. But what's already on the books? Government agents are immune from prosecution in every one of the following actions, as sanctioned by the Supreme Court (SC) or a federal Court of Appeals (CA). Prosecutors may:

* Violate civil rights in initiating prosecution (SC, 1976);

* Knowingly use false testimony and suppress evidence (SC, 1976);

* File charges without any investigation (CA, 8th Circuit, 1986);

* Knowingly offer perjured testimony (CA, 9th Circuit, 1987);

* Suppress exculpatory evidence --tending to acquit a defendant. (CA, 5th Circuit, 1979);

* Be immune from lawsuits for conspiring with judges to determine the outcome of judicial proceedings (CA, 10th Circuit, 1986); and,

* Knowingly file charges against innocent persons for a crime that never occurred (CA, 10th Circuit, 1986).

All the above cases were published and therefore can be cited as precedents in future decisions. According to Don Harkins, editor of the Idaho Observer, "The federal government [has] managed to stack the legal libraries of this country with published decisions which support the positions of government officials, while rulings contrary to government interests go unpublished and, therefore, become unavailable."

In December 1995, the Wall Street Journal reported that "many government agencies, whenever they win an unpublished case, routinely ask to have it published and the court usually complies, but if they lose, down the memory hole it goes." The latter cases, even if discovered by individuals later, cannot be used as precedents because they are "unpublished."

Imagine what the bosses' persecutors can do with the kinds of court-sanctioned decisions cited above, especially with the Patriot Act on the books now.

Workers of the World, Write!
LETTERS

`Peace Now' Politics A Dead End

I participated in the recent anti-war rally in Tel Aviv organized by the "Peace Now" movement, a coalition of anti-war liberals and pacifists. The speakers were mostly from what is called here the "Zionist left." Some of them support bringing in a U.S. peace-keeping force ("letting the cat watch the milk"). Most support the "Oslo accords" and negotiating with the corrupt anti-working class Arafat gang. All support the nationalist line of "Two states for two peoples"--West Jerusalem capital of the Jewish state and East Jerusalem capital of the Palestinian state.

Some slogans called for establishing peace in order to revive the sliding economy, i.e, using Palestinian cheap labor to increase profits. Some raised the racist slogan of "Bring OUR boys back home," notorious in the anti-war movement in the Vietnam days. The line was so liberal that no speaker from the revisionist "Communist" Party was allowed to speak although its line was no different than the rest of the rally. The organizers claim 100,000 attended; the police say 60,000 so the actual number was somewhere in between.

This is the largest anti-war rally since the second intifada began 20 months ago. It occurred after it seemed the whole population was behind the acts of aggression against the Palestinian people. This demonstration and similar ones against Israel abroad probably impelled the Sharon government to postpone the invasion of the Gaza strip.

A Friend in Israel

Protestors Dump Bosses' Flags

Recently some friends and I attended a West Coast rally of well over 100 people, sponsored by a liberal mainly Jewish group. They were calling for "no Mid-East war, no Israeli occupation of Palestine, no terror."

Some of us had reservations about going because the large demonstrations against Israeli fascism in our city heavily promoted Palestinian nationalism. Their leaders refused to criticize the suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, even when the bombers attacked neighborhoods (as in Haifa) where Jews and Arabs usually lived together as friends and neighbors.

However, at this rally there were no national flags. The banners and posters were almost all for "Peace" or "End the Occupation." Hand-made signs included "I'm a Rabbi for Peace," and "Religion Condemns Nationalism and Imperialism." (Most religions -- or at least their leaders -- bless whatever war their own government declares.)

Then some Palestinian youth appeared carrying a sign saying, "Suicide Bombers Are Resistance Heroes." Apparently this has happened before, but the Jewish organizers were too liberal to say anything about it. This time it was different. The adult accompanying the youth, seeing we didn't like their sign, said, "Why don't you want our flags here, you would want to have American flags wouldn't you?" I told him I wasn't in charge of the rally, but if I were, no, I wouldn't want any national flags because I am against all nationalisms. He couldn't answer that.

Meanwhile, a friend was distributing leaflets from her religious coalition opposing both the Occupation (state-sponsored terror) and also individual terrorist acts like the suicide bombings.

Then some us pointed out to the rally organizers that the "suicide bombers" sign contradicted the rally's message. They then spoke with the Palestinian youths, and won them to lower their sign.

Afterwards we were all glad we'd gone. We were able to stand up against the Israeli fascists and their U.S. imperialist backers, and simultaneously expose the politics of nationalism and anti-imperialism. We'd made a little difference that day, more than just being a few extra bodies.

Later a PLP friend noted that the U.S. is not the only imperialist power in the region, and that Palestinian nationalism is fronting for European imperialists just as Israeli Zionism fronts for U.S. bosses. So while it's good to oppose nationalism with calls for working-class unity, it's not enough. We should also oppose all imperialists, and not fall into the "lesser evil" trap -- "some are better than others." I've been sharing that idea with my friends. Over the long term, I'm trying to show them that to fight for lasting peace, we must eliminate the source of wars for profit: capitalism.

A comrade

A Clearer Definition of Racism Needed

In the "What We Fight For" section of our paper we state, "Communism means abolishing racism and the concept of race." I agree with this statement 100%. However, I don't think we're all in agreement with what racism is. I would like to see somewhere in the paper, "Racism is the idea that there are fundamental differences between the different human populations on the globe." Whether the alleged differences are genetic, cultural or regional is immaterial. As the racist logic goes: if there are real differences, then one population is better adapted, more fit, more desirable than others. This leads to the validation of exploitation and oppression.

One may argue that the genocide by the Israeli fascists is racist, but the Palestinian human bombers are not racist because they are not oppressing the Israeli population. It is a false assumption that in order for an act to be racist, the dominant group must perpetrate it against the oppressed group. For example, the racist assault by the Israeli army is justified by convincing the Israeli population that all Palestinians are potential human bombs. "It is part of their essence to blow themselves up to be martyred." Therefore, the total destruction of whole cities is justified.

On the other hand, Palestinian bosses must win martyrs to the idea that all Israelis are fascist, that fascism is part of their essence, and it doesn't matter who you kill because "they're all equally guilty." The racist crimes against the Palestinian people are of a much greater magnitude than the crimes of terror bombing by the Palestinians. Nevertheless, it is only a matter of degree.

Some argue that the Palestinian acts are not racist, but desperate acts against a superior military force, that in order to be racist, you must have the power to oppress. While suicide bombers are desperate, these are still racist acts. Killing children just because they're XXXX, cannot be justified or diminished as a racist act.

All humans are essentially the same. When the human genome project was completed, the racists were chomping at the bit to hear of any genetic differences between "races," classes, nationalities or regions. They were dismayed to find none! If it is not genetic, it is learned. If it is learned, it can be unlearned and corrected. Any superficial differences only add to the spice of life. The extent to which we believe in "race" is the extent to which we are won to racism. We must be clear on what racism is so we can stamp out all vestiges of it. Death to Racism!

Chicago Reader

Edit--The Chicago Reader makes some interesting points. What do our readers think? Send us your comments.

 

PLP Marches for Communism on May Day 2002

May Day: Red Flags Over Brooklyn

a href="#Can’t Jail May Day">"an’t Jail May Day

a href="#Editorial :U.S. Rulers’ Oil War Heads for Iraq">"ditorial :U.S. Rulers’ Oil War Heads for Iraq

Editorial: Mid-East Dog Fight Shows: Imperialism, Nationalism, Terrorism Means Death for Workers

Garment Workers Celebrate May Day Inside Factories

F-O-X and B-U-S-H Spell Racist Terror

May Day In Mexico City

Billions For War, Racist Cuts For City Colleges

a href="#The ‘Jobless Recovery’">Th" ‘Jobless Recovery’

a href="#Unions Stifle Workers’ Anger at NYC Bosses’ Budget Cuts">Un"ons Stifle Workers’ Anger at NYC Bosses’ Budget Cuts

U.S. Military Builds Bases for Oil Bosses

Oil, Venezuela And The AFL-CIA

AFL-CIO Fronts for U.S. Imperialism

a href="#May Day Politics Enter Teachers’ Contract Fight">"ay Day Politics Enter Teachers’ Contract Fight

LETTERS

Biggest Tragedy in Argentina: Capitalism

Nationalism A Dead End

Inspired by April 20th March

Matter Existed Before Big Bang

Teachers Must Fight For Students

---

PLP Marches for Communism on May Day 2002

"Fight for Communism! Power to the Workers!" "Asian, Latin, Black and White, Workers of the World, Unite!"

These and many other chants rang out at the spirited PLP May Day Marches in downtown Los Angeles and Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY, on May 4. The marches were organized by black, Latin, Asian and white youth who took responsibility and initiative in bringing their friends and leading the marches. They carried a powerful message of internationalism and communist revolution to counter the bosses’ terror, racism, nationalism, fascism and war and were well-received. Workers joined in the street. In L.A., over 700 bought CHALLENGE and thousands took PLP leaflets. A thousand CHALLENGES were also distributed in Flatbush.

The first May Day marches since 9/11 were organized under conditions of increasing fascist attacks: Migra raids, increasing police terror, the mass arrests of Arab immigrants, huge cuts in health care, nationalist propaganda and war. Although ten years ago in LA we marched here under marshal law (following the 1992 rebellion), the situation today is much more serious. The march organizers are learning to do so under the new conditions and to begin to rely on more of our fellow workers and students to help organize the communist movement.

Wonderful May Day dinners — with songs, a skit and inspiring talks — were also organized in LA, New York, Chicago and other cities. In one dinner, a speaker explained that even though we are still a small organization, politically our Party is stronger because we’re learning to guarantee leadership to the working class under any and all conditions. He stressed the need to organize in the classrooms, mass organizations and churches. "Our Party is on the right path. The rivalry among the imperialists and the building of fascism is pushing our Party to make the changes necessary to lead the working class on the road to revolution. This is our historic responsibility just as it was for the Red Army that crushed the Nazis and just as it was for the communist partisans in Italy who defeated fascism."

One comrade reported that workers on the street were eager to pay for CHALLENGE and were inspired by our march. Youth spoke about organizing for the Party in their schools. A marcher told of the need to organize against racist policies where she works, policies that would keep black students out of the school. A comrade who has been active on his campus and made many friends vowed to be bolder in the fight against all forms of nationalism. A young comrade invited her friends to join the Party to fight for the interests of the whole working class, for a society where our class produces to meet our own needs. A veteran comrade said that youth must organize to lead our class to revolution in the midst of the wars looming in our future.

A participant said our march represented our class’s interests, unlike some of the more mass demonstrations occurring recently. The million people marching in France against Le Pen on May Day embraced the right-wing Presidential candidate as the "lesser evil" to Le Pen. But there is no lesser evil capitalist. This dangerous illusion sets our class up to be victims of the bosses’ fascism and wars. Only communists in PLP in these movements point out that the only way to end fascism and wars for profit is with communist revolution.

Our place — now and always, under fascist conditions and even during the most deadly of imperialist wars — remains with the working class. We will not allow ourselves to be torn from them. This May Day we fight for our Party to preserve and promote revolutionary communist leadership for the working class. Workers of the World, Unite! Fight for Communism!

May Day: Red Flags Over Brooklyn

BROOKLYN, NY, May 4—PLP celebrated May Day with a militant march through the Flatbush neighborhood, under sunny skies with red flags swirling in the spring wind amid communist chants like, "The only solution is communist revolution." Thousands of residents in this mostly black immigrant neighborhood warmly greeted the march, some joining, and a thousand CHALLENGES were distributed.

Several dinners in various parts of the city followed the march. One involved students, soldiers and others. Participants heard talks about the history of May Day, the world situation and the development of PLP.

A presentation on the birth of May Day linked us with the struggles of past revolutionary movements to advance the fight for communism. The speaker reviewed the lessons from the successes and failures of the Russian and Chinese communist movements, especially the importance of a revolutionary party and the involvement of as many people as possible in the ideological struggle to advance communism.

A soldier reported on world events, the war in the Mid-East, and the fascist nature of pop culture. She stressed the need for young people to study politics to understand world events and combat ruling-class ideas.

A final speaker detailed the global growth of war and fascism and the failure of capitalism to provide a life for workers with a decent future, saying our efforts bit by bit can re-build the communist movement, leading to victory for the working class.

For many at the dinner it was their first May Day celebration. The entire day was very spirited, generating a positive attitude about the movement.

a name="Can’t Jail May Day">">"an’t Jail May Day

(The following letter was read at the various PLP May Day celebrations in the U.S.)

One of my most memorable May Days occurred in 1986 when I was a student activist imprisoned by the military dictatorship where I lived. We always celebrated May Day with public gatherings and readings about its history, starting with the Haymarket martyrs.

A few days before May 1st, my fellow political prisoners decided we must celebrate this year, even inside prison. But the jail administration refused permission for us to hold a rally in the central courtyard.

We kept on pressing him, saying he allowed religious ceremonies, so why not our holiday. He still refused and then the guards began terrorizing prisoners, trying to "convince" us to drop the idea. But many of us still wanted it.

Our supporters outside the jail were preparing for a rally. As May 1st neared and tension mounted, we sent a delegation of our allies and friends on the outside to the warden’s house and threatened that if he didn’t give in, he and his family would face the consequences. He then agreed to the rally but warned us to keep it small. (We had already announced to our fellow prisoners that we would gather no matter what the warden’s decision.)

May Day arrived and the jail was ringed for a two-mile radius by an army battalion and anti-aircraft guns stationed in the watchtowers surrounding the central courtyard. Despite all this intimidation and other threats, almost 500 inmates joined us. We made speeches celebrating the international working class. Because of so many workers killed in our police state, we had a slogan that Asia is red because of the blood of workers here and those in Chicago.

An International Worker

a name="Editorial :U.S. Rulers’ Oil War Heads for Iraq">">"ditorial :U.S. Rulers’ Oil War Heads for Iraq

U.S. bosses’ ruthless drive to rule the world for the next several decades is entering a new stage. Control of international oil supplies remains crucial to their grand strategy. Their "war against terror" must be viewed in this context. The next major move they’re contemplating is an invasion of Iraq, to replace the Saddam Hussein clique with a government ready to do the bidding of Rockefeller’s Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company.

A new war for Iraqi oil has stood high on their agenda ever since they failed to oust Hussein & Co. during their murderous Desert Storm of 1991. The Rockefeller/Democratic forces made sure the Bush, Jr. gang took office with this intention. However, not even a super-power can totally control the force of events. Renewed fighting in the Middle East has temporarily thrown a monkey wrench into U.S. imperialism’s military plans for the Persian Gulf. But not for long. The rulers in Washington are working overtime to bribe and/or threaten into line all the participants in this conflict. Their latest gimmick is a Middle East "peace" conference next summer, which won’t solve any of the basic conflicts in the Middle East. Its only purpose is to allow the Iraq invasion to go forward.

The U.S. Liberal Establishment originated this scheme with that aim. Its leading mouthpiece, the New York Times, described the key requirements and timetable for launching the new oil war: "The Bush administration…is concentrating its attention on a major air campaign and ground invasion, with initial estimates contemplating the use of 70,000 to 250,000 ground troops…But …any offensive would probably be delayed until early next year, allowing time to create the right military, economic, and diplomatic conditions…These include…waiting until there is progress toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian military conflict." (4/28; our emphasis — Ed.)

The U.S. imperialists will probably get their way, but at the cost of sharpening the political gap that divides them from every other force in the world, big and small. They’re likely to bully Arafat & Co. into accepting a U.S.-enforced no-man’s land that may temporarily cool down the fighting in the Occupied Territories and West Bank. The tactics will involve even greater terror and atrocities against Palestinian workers. And the U.S. can certainly find ways to rein in its currently reluctant Israeli vassals, who, despite occasional appearances, are basically doing U.S. imperialism’s dirty work in the region, by acting as a police force against Arab workers and Arab bosses. Israel is the only nuclear power in the region.

Most importantly, although Arab rulers from Saudi Arabia to Oman will squawk at U.S. support for Israel and U.S. plans to invade Iraq, they can’t do too much about it. Monopolizing Iraqi oil and eliminating Saddam Hussein and his opposition to U.S. oil control is important enough for the U.S. ruling class to stop at nothing to get its way. If necessary, the big bosses are prepared to go it alone. That’s why their military options include launching attacks on the Persian Gulf from as far away as the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.

Millions of workers have already died for U.S. imperialism’s ferocious need to rule the world by dominating international oil supplies and pipeline routes. Millions more will die in its next oil war. But unquestionably conditions will emerge that will allow our Party to grow amid this mayhem. Our goal is clear — communism! Nothing less will do.

Editorial: Mid-East Dog Fight Shows:

Imperialism, Nationalism, Terrorism Means Death for Workers

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide, especially outside the U.S. and Israel, condemn and oppose the atrocities committed by U.S. and Israeli rulers in the Middle East. Every worker should. The slaughter of Palestinian workers, particularly the massacre in the Jenin refugee camp, adds to a long list of brutalities by the racist Israeli rulers that would make Hitler proud.

However, in some ways far more dangerous, is the deadly temptation to support Arafat, Hamas, al Qaeda, and other forces leading the movements against U.S. and Israeli aggression. They are all bosses. None of them has anything to offer the Arab and Muslim masses except the same capitalist wage slavery under different leadership. They want to be players with the imperialists, not smash them.

Arafat represents capitalists who want a Palestinian state that gets money from both U.S. and European rulers. Hamas has the same ambition but tilts more toward the Europeans. Al Qaeda wants to channel the anger of Arab and Muslim masses into taking over the driver’s seat from U.S. oil firms in the Persian Gulf.

Millions of people internationally have been misled into actively or passively supporting these leeches. The motive is understandable. But solidarity with Palestinian and Arab workers and youth will never realize its revolutionary potential by supporting Arafat, Hamas, and al Qaeda. They are bosses with essentially the same outlook as the U.S. and Israeli ruling classes. This is a dogfight among gangsters. Backing the little ones against the big ones merely helps the little ones get bigger. Workers spill blood and sweat and remain under wage slavery no matter who wins.

The international working class, including in the Middle East, is paying a heavy price for the political failures of the old communist movement that led it to believe in "lesser evil" capitalists and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Our Party learned this lesson the hard way during its early years, when U.S. imperialism was committing genocide in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese workers put up a heroic fight, defeating the seemingly invincible U.S. military machine.

But if mass heroism were all that were required, racist oppression, imperialist war, and fascist terror would have been defeated a long time ago. The international working class has always shown an unending supply of courage.

The leaders of that great struggle took aid from anyone who would give it to them, especially the bosses of the former Soviet Union who by then had become full-blown imperialists. When you depend on your class enemy for help, you end up following his orders and become just like him. Millions of Vietnamese died thinking they had sacrificed their lives to build a decent society. What their descendants got was the same old rotten profit system with all its horrors. Ask the workers in Ford and Nike factories in Vietnam.

While it ended badly, the struggle in Vietnam had elements of communist aims, at least at the beginning. Millions were mobilized to wage "people’s war," which still inspires all workers who hope to rid the world of capitalism. Arafat, Hamas and al Qaeda have no such elements. In fact, they are all flagrant anti-communists and pro-capitalism. Al Qaeda was created by the U.S. and Saudi bosses to wage an anti-communist "holy war" against the Russians in Afghanistan. Fundamentalist Hamas was basically built up by the Israeli spy agencies to sabotage the first Intifada in the 1980s led by secular nationalist Palestinians. And after the Oslo "peace deal" of the early 1990s, Arafat and his Palestinian Authority were trained and financed by the CIA and the Saudis.

The job of communists is to tell the truth, no matter how unpopular it may seem at the time. We do not echo the slogans of nationalist misleaders. We are not in a popularity contest. We fight for communism and we are headed uphill against what most workers have been led to believe.

Millions of workers can grasp and fight for internationalism and communist revolution as they have in the past. We have entered the capitalist and nationalist-led mass movements, including the movement against U.S.-Israeli aggression, to challenge the misleaders for the political leadership of the workers. We’re committed to help workers recognize friends from enemies. That is a vital step toward liberation.

During the Vietnam period, we fought nationalists and opportunists of all stripes. Today the road is harder and the stakes are higher. We will not waver. We will learn to put forward our ideas with skill and thoughtfulness. The worst prison is the one you don’t know you’re in. Marching for Arafat, Sharon or Bush won’t free any workers from the living hell of capitalism and imperialism.

Garment Workers Celebrate May Day Inside Factories

May 1 is International Workers’ Day, when millions of workers around the world march against the bosses and the terrible conditions caused by capitalism. "Today we’re celebrating with this meal and with marches…" said a garment worker to more than 100 co-workers during lunch inside the factory.

For several days before May 1, a group of these workers launched a campaign to celebrate May Day. They talked to workers about it one by one and asked for donations for the food, encouraging them to participate. Although older and younger workers don’t know each other that well, this campaign helped overcome that obstacle. Unity grew. Many workers were surprised at the success of this activity. In a pre-dinner meeting, one worker very encouraged by the plans, described the events by saying, "If the mountain won’t come to me, I’ll go to the mountain."

In another garment factory, other workers did the same thing. Both Latin and Asian workers came to their May Day meal. The effort to move these workers with revolutionary ideas is encouraging us to be bolder and more political in our struggles.

Some of these workers participated in an "Immigrants Rights March" on May 1 and some came to PLP’s May Day.

Garment Workers in Struggle

F-O-X and B-U-S-H Spell Racist Terror

MEXICO CITY, May 1 — May Day here and in Cuba was enveloped by the fight between President Fox and Fidel Castro. Mexico’s Fox has become the latest U.S. government battering ram against Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Shortly after May Day, the Bush administration accused Cuba of supplying Libya and Syria with the know-how to build "weapons of mass destruction." (WMD) Meanwhile, some Latin American leaders, with U.S. support, charged Cuba with human rights violations.

This fight has nothing to do with human rights and there is virtually nothing to link Cuba to WMD. Rather it is a cynical ploy by U.S. bosses and their lackeys in Latin America to bolster the failing U.S. foreign policy in the region, particularly in Colombia and oil-rich Venezuela, "while simultaneously boosting support at home for the war against terrorism." (Stratfor.com, 5/7). As U.S. bosses expand their "war against terror" (mainly over oil supplies) in the Middle East and Central-South Asia, they need to guarantee that their "backyard" doesn’t fall to European and Asian imperialists. They understand that Castro, Venezuela’s Chavez and others represent forces favoring U.S. rivals. [The next CHALLENGE will analyze that dogfight.].

May Day In Mexico City

A defender of human rights was murdered here. The rulers say she "committed suicide," but there’s evidence linking her murder to military leaders. More than 400 women have been raped and murdered in Juarez. The authorities say "the size of their skirts" caused the murders. Misogyny isn’t the only ingredient in these horrendous crimes. These are workers from the maquillas (sweatshops) — many indigenous — who have emigrated from southern Mexico seeking work.

Racism is another ingredient in these murders. Ten million indigenous people live a marginal existence here. Fox and the Congress passed a law condemning the indigenous people to 4th class citizenship. The bosses also enacted a new fascist labor law which indiscriminately fires workers and restricts their right to strike.

Fox drips with the blood of his victims when he talks about "human rights." He completely ignores the deaths of undocumented workers at the U.S. border and fails to challenge the U.S. Supreme Court when it condemns immigrants to slavery, all because he doesn’t want to disrupt trade relations.

PLP forces marched on May Day in Mexico City to expose U.S. bosses as the world’s number one terrorists and violators of workers’ rights. Mexico’s ruling class is in no position to preach to anyone on that score. We also linked the sharpening imperialist rivalry to the oil wars and to the fascist terror and to massive job losses suffered by the international working class. The only solution is to destroy capitalism and fight for communism.

Billions For War, Racist Cuts For City Colleges

CHICAGO, IL April 30 —Hundreds of students walked out of their classes and demonstrated their anger and frustration after the City College Board of Trustees fired the coordinators (those responsible for registration and administrative problems). Two thousand students signed petitions against the cuts and a contingent delivered them to the Mayor’s office. Union reps and students pointed out the need for the coordinators, warning that firing them will force extra duties on the teachers. The Trustees "listened" and then fired them.

Last month, scores of students came to the Trustees meeting to defend the college district’s counselors (who handle students’ personal problems). Many told of counselors who had literally saved their lives, helping them through family crises, domestic abuse or drug problems. Chancellor Wayne Watson said some of the testimony nearly brought him to tears. Then without any hesitation, they fired all the counselors.

Before that, they fired the Information Technology workers, maintenance workers and accountants, in order to privatize and cut their costs. The plan to outsource and privatize the district’s services has been in the works for some time. Unfortunately this is just an appetizer. The main cuts have yet to be served.

The coordinators, like the counselors, are part of the faculty union. At a recent union meeting, teachers were keenly aware that all of these cuts are preparing the groundwork for our contract negotiations. Our contract expires June 30. They attack and threaten us because they have less money and less of a need to educate all of our students.

At one meeting Chancellor Watson claimed, "We serve too many students." This is ludicrous since thousands are turned away at each registration. Watson is following the capitalist logic of not educating immigrant and working-class students when their chances of reaching a four-year university are continually undercut by the higher cost and elitism of those institutions.

In one study, the median family income for students at one state university was $82,000. The figures are obviously higher at the private elite institutions. And why educate immigrant students when the bosses have just empowered the police to deport them as part of their "Homeland Defense"? As fascism intensifies, immigrant and working-class students are being tracked into the army or low-paying jobs for the global economy.

a name="The ‘Jobless Recovery’"></">Th" ‘Jobless Recovery’

Today millions of workers cannot add to the bosses’ war cry, "United We Stand." They’re on the unemployment lines. The latest Labor Department jobless report says the unemployment rate jumped to 6% in April, during "recovery," higher than it was in the depth of the recession! The "recovery" pundits are predicting it will continue to rise in coming months.

Only 38% of the total unemployed are eligible for unemployment insurance (UI). Nearly four million workers were receiving benefits in mid-April, a 19-year-high and a million more than April 2001. If that four million represents only the 38% of the unemployed, that means another six million are officially out of work. This may not even include 1.3 million who’ve given up looking (and therefore not counted as unemployed). It does not include millions still on welfare who can’t find jobs, the two million in prison (two-thirds of whom are jailed for non-violent, mostly minor drug possession offenses) nor all those who joined the military because they couldn’t find jobs. All told, the real figure is at least somewhere between 15 and 18 million.

"Recovery" is out of sight for these workers. The number of workers unemployed for more than six months — the maximum time for most workers to collect benefits— is almost double from a year ago. Nearly two million workers exhausted their UI since Sept. 11.

Capitalists are hailing the supposed 5.8% rate of growth in the economy in the first quarter of 2002. According to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (4/30), that’s probably more than double the true growth rate. The jobless are spending whatever savings they might have, and many have none. Since Clinton’s "Welfare Reform," those either exhausting or ineligible for UI now find it harder than ever to collect welfare.

Capitalism offers workers a constantly expanding oil-war, a "recovery" that slashes jobs and a growing fascist police state for those who resist such death and destruction.

War and fascism are their tools for super-exploiting workers in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America, while driving down wages and living conditions in the US. The bosses call it "democracy." We call it wage slavery. All the flag-waving patriotic mumbo-jumbo will never bury the fact that between bosses and workers, there is no "we."

a name="Unions Stifle Workers’ Anger at NYC Bosses’ Budget Cuts"></">Un"ons Stifle Workers’ Anger at NYC Bosses’ Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, May2 — What role can unions play during economic downturns? Many were built during such crises, often led by communists, in order to survive and intensify struggle against their bosses. Today, the opposite is true: without communist leadership, union "leaders" can hold back workers’ anger.

With contracts of over 120,000 city workers expiring by next month and a $5 billion city budget deficit looming, you might think (or hope) that city worker unions were preparing to strike against layoffs, give-backs, budget cuts, pension reductions, etc.

Although PL’ers and others urge such preparations, the union leadership mainly pushes workers into the "lesser evil" arms of the Democratic Party hacks, calling for "progressively" raising taxes to fill the budget gap. They say "we won’t let the city balance the budget on your backs." But where "No contract, no work!" once defined unions’ bargaining strategy, now contract extensions of a year or longer are increasingly the rule. Given the fact that the bosses get away with not paying any increases during these lengthy contract extensions, they are actually getting interest-free loans to balance their budgets, precisely on the workers’ backs (even if the workers later receive retroactive pay).

Under the fascist State Taylor law, public employee strikes are illegal. Recently, NYC transit workers were threatened with jail and fines if they merely uttered the word "strike."

Since the 1970s, the State’s Financial Control Board (FCB) has required cities and counties to have "balanced budgets." In the mid-1970s, the FCB "imposed massive cuts, including the elimination of nearly 64,000 city jobs..." (The Chief, 4/26) The FCB could void any city union contract. The courts nullified sanitation workers’ "iron clad" no-layoff clause due to "fiscal necessity." (Not surprisingly, they didn’t void the billions in interest the bankers collect from the City treasury.)

Meanwhile, AFSCME’s District Council 37 leaders cut deals that invariably sold out workers "to save ‘our’ city." More recently, 35,000 workers in the slave labor Workfare program sought court protection under existing labor laws. They lost when a judge ruled that Workfare jobs are "training," not employment. Then and now workers can’t rely on the bosses’ institutions or pro-boss labor leaders.

As in the 1970s, current service cuts in Mayor Bloomberg’s contingency plan for saving $500 million would hit black and Latin working-class communities the hardest. They include the cleaning budget for the Department of Homeless Services shelters, Health Department reductions in tuberculosis control and services for pregnant women, a 10% slash in the Parks Department workforce and cutting sanitation pick-ups and highway and bridge cleaning. If firefighters thought that the patriotic frenzy after 9/11 would save them, think again. They face 200 job cuts and the closing of eight engine companies. When the bosses preach "United We Stand," it’s likely they’re standing on workers’ backs.

We don’t have to take these attacks passively. Workers in NYC unions are longing for leadership. Communists can offer class consciousness and solidarity to counter the bosses’ patriotism, nationalism, racism and sexism. We can champion the need to bust anti-worker laws with mass militant action. The trust, friendships and understanding forged in such class struggle can indeed turn unions into schools for communism.

U.S. Military Builds Bases for Oil Bosses

Back in 1999, when the Clinton administration claimed its "humanitarian" war on Yugoslavia would save the Kosovo-Albanians from genocidal "ethnic cleansing" by the Milosevic regime in Serbia, CHALLENGE was one of the few voices in the world to expose it as basically a war to control oil routes and pipelines from the Caspian Sea to the Balkans. Today, it is clear that U.S. rulers used its intervention specifically to establish Camp Bondsteel, an enormous, self-sufficient, high-tech base for 7,000 troops, 55 Black Hawk and Apache helicopters, with "downtown," "midtown" and "uptown" districts, and the best-equipped hospital in Europe.

Colonel Robert McClure wrote in the engineers professional Bulletin, "Engineer planning for operations in Kosovo began months before the first bomb was dropped…Planners wanted to…reach base-camp…as quickly as possible." Before the bombing started, the Washington Post confessed, "With the Middle East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly-over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil."

Bondsteel is smack in the middle of this energy corridor, close to the U.S.-sponsored $1.3 billion Trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline project (Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria Oil). Reuters reports that Exxon Mobil and Chevron are financing AMBO, which will pump oil from tankers docking in Bulgaria, through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlore. From there it will be pumped onto tankers bound for Europe and the U.S.

Bondsteel is the lynchpin in the control of this oil route. A senior British military officer told the Washington Post, "…the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to stay." And this base will be large enough "to accommodate future military plans."

The base is so huge that joking troops ask, "What are the two things that can be seen from space? One is the Great Wall of China; the other is Camp Bondsteel!"

Bondsteel was built on contract to Brown & Root Services, a subsidiary of Haliburton Oil, as part of a long-range plan to privatize the building and servicing of military bases. Before becoming Bush’s vice-president, Dick Cheney was Haliburton’s CEO. More than 7,000 Albanian workers built Bondsteel, working around the clock, seven days a week, for $1-$3 an hour, in an area with 80% unemployment. A Brown & Root manager said they "can’t ‘inflate’ wages" because they didn’t "want to ‘over-inflate’ the local economy." They are now Kosovo’s largest employer.

Brown & Root’s profits surged with U.S. military expansion. They got their first contract to support U.S. Army global operations when Cheney was Bush, Sr.’s Secretary of War. In 1992, it grabbed $62 million in Somalia. In 1994, it doubled its earnings to $133 million in Haiti. In 1999, when Cheney was CEO of its parent company Haliburton, it received a 5-year contract worth nearly $1 billion to build bases in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia. But Bondsteel became "the mother of all contracts." The nearly 10,000 soldiers in the area joke that, "They’re missing a patch on their camouflage fatigues…. ‘one that says Sponsored by Brown & Root.’" (Government Executive Magazine, Feb. 2002)

Other bases are being planned in Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia to control future oil pipelines and energy corridors linking the Caspian region with Europe and beyond. U.S. bosses are prepared to spill the last drop of workers’ blood to achieve their goal of world domination through this control of oil supplies while reaping billions in profits. The communist leadership of PLP is crucial to winning workers and soldiers of all countries to organize a revolution against U.S. bosses’ genocidal war plans.

Oil, Venezuela And The AFL-CIA

The AFL-CIO support of the pro-war patriotic hysteria and police state measures like the Patriot Act continues its decades-long support for fascism worldwide.

An agency directed by the AFL-CIO played a key role in the April 19 military coup attempt in Venezuela. While overseeing mass concessions and layoffs of unionized workers at home, these bosses’ labor lieutenants conspire against the international working class.

Through the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), an AFL-CIO-run agency largely funded by the U.S. government, the AFL-CIO provided aid and "technical advisors" to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV). CTV President Carlos Ortega was one of the main participants in the attempted coup. He joined with Pedro Carmona, the head of the main big business association, the fascist Opus Dei Catholic group and others in organizing a "general strike," an anti-government march on the presidential palace and a cut in production at PDVSA, the state-owned oil company. (Carmona was Ortega’s boss in the Venoco petrochemical plant, which helped coordinate the local aspect of the coup. For an analysis of how the failed coup was part of the fight among local and international bosses over oil, see CHALLENGE, 5/8.)

The coup was prepared over months. On February 12, ACILS and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) sponsored a trip for CTV representatives. They met with AFL-CIO leaders to discuss coup possibilities.

The Reagan administration created the NED in 1983. Among the founding directors were Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker.

Over the past two years, the NED quadrupled its funding for Venezuelan operations to nearly $1 million. Out of this, $154,377 was given to ACILS for its activities with the CTV. While ACILS was expanding its operations, CIA director William Tenet told Congress that the volatile situation in Venezuela was one of the main concerns for U.S. foreign policy.

The ACILS executive director is former State Department operative Harry Kamberis. A veteran of the Asian American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI), his chief "labor" experience was propping up the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), to defend Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship. Between 1983 and 1989, the AAFLI gave the TUCP nearly $6 million to work with the dictatorship, the employers, police and fascist death squads.

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney gave the American Institute for Free Labor Development (see box) a face-lift by creating ACILS, while maintaining the network of international offices and personnel. It continues as an arm of U.S. imperialism, under the cover of "fighting sweatshops" and "international labor organizing." European and Asian imperialists are trying to make inroads into Latin America. ACILS plays a vital role in building pro-U.S. labor movements while taking on European and Asian factory owners.

ACILS receives roughly $15 million a year from the government. This includes a $45 million, five-year grant from the Agency for International Development, $4 million from the NED, $1 million over two years from the State Department and $300,000 from the Labor Department. The AFL-CIO kicks in another $1 million a year.

Since the end of World War II, the AFL-CIO has funded and trained fascist unions to support the demands of U.S. imperialism and steer workers away from communist revolution. They are responsible for the deaths of millions of workers. In the final analysis, they will share the same fate as the union leaders who marched for Hitler.

AFL-CIO Fronts for U.S. Imperialism

For decades, the AFL-CIO served U.S. imperialism in Latin America through the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which became internationally known as the CIA’s "labor front."

In Guatemala, AIFLD organized a United Fruit Company-backed company union to enforce labor peace on the banana plantations. In Guyana in the early 1960s, AIFLD organized a series of strikes and racist attacks between East Indian and Afro-Caribbean workers to destabilize and overthrow the nationalist regime of Cheddi Jagan. In Brazil in 1964, AIFLD-trained union leaders backed the military seizure of power. In Chile, AIFLD distributed CIA funds to professional and managerial employees, as well as backed truck owners’ strikes, to cripple the economy and set the stage for the military’s seizure of power in September 1973. AIFLD advisors flooded El Salvador during the civil war, building a pro-military peasants’ association.

a name="May Day Politics Enter Teachers’ Contract Fight">">"ay Day Politics Enter Teachers’ Contract Fight

BROOKLYN, NY, May 1 — Up to 12,000 teachers and others demonstrated today at Board of Education offices to protest 17 months without a contract. The usual union signs read, "Enough is Enough," and "I don’t want to strike, don’t force me." The usual politicians said they were "100% for us," and union president Randi Weingarten gave her usual weak speech about how "we’ve had enough." As usual, the existence of racism, lousy education, our students’ problems and the destructive effect of war on their future and our contract were omitted (except in PLP’s literature).

Though chants were mild, occasionally there were calls for a strike. But the demonstration had another character to it, a May Day character. In addition to the distribution of PLP May Day literature and CHALLENGE, the political discussions raised by PLP members and friends were part of a culmination of an 8-year struggle calling for union endorsement of a May Day march.

In 1994 on the floor of the UFT delegate assembly(DA), PLP raised the call for a May Day march. That first vote won maybe 20 delegates out of nearly 700 to vote for a May Day demonstration. The number grew until last year when about 150 people voted to support PLP’s May Day. Many who were not involved with PL shouted from the floor, "Why don’t you let them have their march?" After each motion, many delegates (even many who wouldn’t vote for it) would say the union should have it. PL members were also involved in many other motions for working-class demands as well as in struggles in their schools.

Recently, the union’s inability to negotiate a contract, the growing dissatisfaction with the leadership’s Unity Caucus, the growth of the Progressive Action Caucus (the main opposition), and a new grouping of independent delegates angered by the union’s lack of militancy all have combined to open more teachers to PLP’s ideas. PLP’s activity at the DA and in their schools has played a role in galvanizing people around militant, working-class ideas. The leadership’s Unity caucus has recently swallowed New Action, an older more militant group and has tried to attract the independents.

At the March DA, a PLer’s May Day motion won quite a few delegates’ votes. During a discussion of how to save our pension fund from "Enronitis," he suggested that the May 1 demonstration could march to City Hall with flags and banners condemning Enron and capitalism, a "May Day" march. Though it didn’t pass, it drew widespread interest.

At the April DA the union suddenly announced today’s May 1 demonstration "to further negotiations." Then, in front of 1,400 delegates, union president Weingarten directly addressed one PL’er: "Well, PLP has finally got it’s May Day." Shortly afterwards the secretary of the union, second in command, said we’d have red shirts, but we "wouldn’t have any pictures of PLP members on them."

Though the union leadership was clearly trying to co-opt the communists and placate the militants, this represented some recognition of the support that our 8-year struggle has won among scores if not hundreds of delegates. When communists raise May Day, it enables us to advance the whole struggle against capitalism and for communism amongst masses of workers. It now behooves PL’ers and their friends in the union to build on this modest spreading of communist ideas to build the Party and move the fight for revolution forward.

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

Biggest Tragedy in Argentina: Capitalism

[We recently received the following report about conditions in Argentina before and since the mass rebellion of Dec. 20.]

The streets are deserted since people basically have no money to do anything. Businesses are a shadow of their former selves. Movies, bingo parlors, shopping centers, bars and particularly photo studios are suffering. Nobody’s celebrating anything worth taking pictures of nor wants to keep images of the rapid fall in their lives. Public hospitals, the last resort in the past for patients without any resources, are now full because it’s the only medical service available to millions of newly jobless left without any social safety net. Businesses selling home appliances are like a museum of life in this 21st century: TV sets, refrigerators, VCRs, microwaves are all "on exhibition" — nobody is buying them. Auto traffic is also way down; gasoline is a luxury very few can afford. Those who can "gas up" buy just enough for their next immediate trip.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund squeezes workers even more. The crooked politicians sell their souls to the multi-national corporations. Workers’ poverty grows and grows, denying us our dignity as human beings since we cannot afford the basic necessities of life. Those who can try to leave the country to find a better life.

There are enough things wrong here to fill a very thick book. The latest reports say that a million people fell under the poverty line in the first three months of 2002; 30% of the workforce is unemployed. But things are bad worldwide, not just here. There is much wealth in each country, but workers remain impoverished by the bosses’ pillaging of oil and everything else, our land and even water.

A Comrade in Argentina

Nationalism A Dead End

All nationalism must be rejected. The argument that indigenous Palestinians can use any or all tactics against all European Israeli usurpers is factually incorrect and reactionary because it endorses terrorist tactics against civilians. Anyone who advocates the death of a people based on "race," ethnicity, religion or nationality is reactionary, even if they are non-combatants, play no decision-making role in their government and are mostly from the working class.

Following this to its logical conclusion, Native Americans should start suicide bomb attacks against European interlopers and their numerous descendants who currently occupy their land and whose ancestors murdered about 95% of North America’s pre-Colombian population.

In the Russian Far East there is now a movement to stop "illegal" Chinese immigrants moving into historically Russian areas. Should Russians initiate terrorist bomb attacks against Chinese immigrants? This is the same logic that justifies attacks on Israeli civilians.

The Israeli right-wing argues that the Jews who moved to Israel were the descendents of Jews who originated in pre-Islamic Palestine. They say that the Palestinians are there "at the expense of the area’s true indigenous people." They use this to justify the Israeli settlers violent actions. This is the absurd foolishness of trying to understand and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a nationalist prism.

Of course, some Palestinians argue that the Canaanites were there before the Hebrews came from Egypt in Biblical antiquity, and they are the ancestors of the modern Palestinians. And on and on and on…

Nationalist claims all lead to racist ideologies and fascist practices. They also lead to reliance on outside imperialists and to the creation of oppressive class societies.

Two-thirds of the Israeli Jewish population are from Islamic countries, not Europe. But even if they were all from Europe, terrorist attacks on working-class people are fascist tactics. This applies to the Sharon-Peres attacks on the West Bank as well as the Likud and Labor Parties’ settlement activity, home demolitions, collective punishment and deportations. It also applies to suicide bombers attacking Israeli civilians who play no role among that country’s political or military rulers.

We need a class approach that unites the Israeli and Palestinian working class. Israeli workers must fight racism against Palestinians to build this unity. In the long run, only communist revolution can rid the Middle East of capitalism, the source of racism, nationalism and imperialism.

A Comrade

Inspired by April 20th March

Two of us of Jewish background had a very inspiring experience in Washington, D.C., on April 19-20. We participated in a teach-in and workshops and marched with the Palestine Solidarity "feeder" march, the largest of the day, to the rally of 75,000 (Washington Post estimate) at the National Mall.

At the teach-in a young Jewish woman just back from the West Bank described Palestinian life under the reign of terror imposed by the invading Israeli Army. A young Palestinian woman, whose family survived the 1982 refugee camp massacre in Lebanon, also spoke. And a black minister gave a rousing speech linking anti-racism and anti-imperialism.

We participated in workshops on Palestinian history, eyewitness accounts from the West Bank, the SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Taxpayer Aid to Israel Now) campaign and U.S. war crimes against Iraq. The workshops were filled with energetic, open-minded young people. We made new friends and our comments were well received. Afterwards we shared experiences at dinner with some progressive Muslim friends.

We were inspired by the spirit and size of the Palestine Solidarity march. The Muslim participants spanned from Taliban to secular Marxism. We talked with a variety of Muslim, Jewish and other groups. Some of the better chants were, "Sharon, Bush, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!" "Not a nickel, not a dime! The occupation is a crime!" "No more murder in our name! The occupation is a shame!" Young women led many of the chants. Jews Against the Occupation, Not In My Name, Jewish Mobilization for a Just Peace and other Jewish and Jewish/Palestinian groups marched.

The only anti-Jewish racism we saw came from about two dozen members of the New Black Panther Party. They charged into the march with signs featuring swastikas, denouncing Jews and Judaism, and championing Saddam Hussein. These fascist provocateurs were not welcomed; the hundreds of African-American marchers shunned them. There may well have been more anti-Jewish racism we were not aware of.

A few days later we attended a Muslim Students Association forum with about 50 people. An anti-Zionist Jew spoke. Several local Jewish community leaders aggressively put forward a Zionist line. The mainly Arab audience united with the speaker to refute the Zionist lies.

Many people at the April 20 march really impressed us with their pro-communist political views, their commitment, enthusiasm and anger against imperialism. We should be fully involved in the Palestine solidarity movement, Muslim student organizations and the anti-Zionist Jewish organizations which contain people nothing like the rulers’ racist stereotypes. They’re as open to our ideas as black organizations and church groups. If we ignore these movements because we think Muslims are less open than Christians, or because Palestinians and Arabs are "more nationalist" than blacks and Latinos, we’re buying some of the rulers’ propaganda and making a profound mistake. Going to these mass mobilizations only as agitators, we will probably be turned off by the pacifist, reformist, nationalist speeches, which will prevent us from developing meaningful ties with thousands of honest people.

Standing outside this movement, merely denouncing Israeli and Palestinian nationalism in our literature, and just calling upon Jewish and Palestinian workers to unite, we will only make ourselves irrelevant. Palestinians are the Mid-East’s super-exploited workers. They’re currently at ground zero of the U.S. "war against terrorism." We must support their struggle and fight to win others to support them. There are tens of thousands of Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and South Asian students on U.S. campuses. We must join their struggle against Zionism and imperialism if we’re going to win them to our Party.

A Comrade

(CHALLENGE comment: Indeed, we must be among the masses to win them. But, we also must point out the real nature of what they are following. See editorial on page 2 for what communists should be doing in this and other nationalist-reformist capitalist-led mass movements.)

Matter Existed Before Big Bang

Dialectical materialism says that matter has always existed and will exist forever, constantly changing. Therefore, the Universe is infinite. It wasn’t created out of nothing as religion teaches, and as many Big Bang theorists like Stephen Hawkings tend to imply. The universe did not begin 14 or 15 billions years ago, the time the latest pictures from the Hubble space telescope says the Big Bang occurred.

Recent findings prove there was something before the Big Bang. Science magazine’s web page posted (on April 25) a report by Paul J. Steinhardt of Princeton Univ. and his colleague Turok of Cambridge Univ. (UK) A new model of the Universe, saying it had no beginning and will have no ending. They propose that the universe goes through an endless cycle of Big Bangs, expansion and stagnation driven by something they call "dark energy." They base their model on the recent proven findings that the universe is moving apart at an accelerating rate, something the old model of the Universe didn’t take into account. Therefore, the Big Bang was not the beginning, but a transition between two cycles in a continuous process of cosmological rebirth.

BBC World News (4/25) reported that the new model accounts for several important features we see in the Universe, such as why everything looks the same in all directions and the fact that the cosmos appears "flat" (parallel lines will never meet, however long).

The two proponents of the new model agree there are still many unanswered questions, like what happened before the Big Bang. The Big Bang idea implies something was suddenly created out of nothing, that the Big Bang was actually the beginning of time and space.

Cosmology is one of the most difficult sciences. "We sit in this tiny planet in the middle of this vast Universe…all we can do is pick up the light that happens to fall on us and deduce some things about the Universe," said a cosmologist to the BBC. But one thing is certain. If the universe is infinite, it has existed forever and will never cease to exist.

Red Star

Teachers Must Fight For Students

NYC teachers have been working without a contract for over 18 months. We make tens of thousands of dollars a year less than nearby suburban teachers. The union leaders, who’ve done little to fight this, have recently been talking strike. But since they haven’t called a strike in 27 years, almost nobody — including the Mayor and most teachers — takes this threat seriously.

The union leaders don’t believe in strikes and fear losing the automatic dues check-off, a Taylor Law penalty for a walkout. They want us to accept the modest salary increase and longer school day recommended by a state fact-finding committee.

The Progressive Action Caucus (PAC) is a pro-student, multi-racial teachers’ group willing to confront the leadership’s passivity over threatened large-scale school budget cuts. A recent PAC flyer, entitled "Don’t Vote for Half a Contract," urged teachers to oppose the fact-finding proposal because it doesn’t offer NYC teachers salary parity with the suburbs.

But the main reason teachers should oppose the proposed contract is that it will maintain an apartheid education system. Over a million mostly black and Latin working-class students receive a vastly inferior education compared to students in wealthy private schools and the affluent suburbs.

NYC students have the largest class size in the state, the most dilapidated school buildings and the least services. Many drop out and many more learn very little. Only 12% of black students in the 8th grade meet the State’s basic math standards.

NYC government is controlled by huge international banks, Wall Street investment firms, insurance and real estate businesses and other Fortune 500 corporations. They want the public schools to produce a future working class with proper skills and an acceptable work ethic, while keeping education costs down to maintain low corporate taxes. Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg says he’ll give teachers a raise while cutting hundreds of millions from the school budget, worsening an already terrible educational system.

Teachers must defend our working-class students. Not only should we refuse a deal with deep budget cuts, but we should also demand an education for our students equal to that of students from wealthy families. We need no more than 10 in a class, extra help for those who fall behind and new buildings to relieve overcrowding.

Bloomberg and his class maintain there’s no money for such things. Yet their government finds hundreds of billions to pay for its oil wars.

The top 5% of NYC taxpayers make over $200,000 a year. Their average income is 21 times greater than the bottom 20 percent, indicating the vast wealth expropriated from the international working class. A tiny stock transfer tax, and a very small increase in the city’s tax on this top 5%, would net an extra $1.8 billion a year for the schools. Of course, the rich will not tax themselves to help working-class students.

PAC can galvanize these students and their parents by exposing the apartheid school system, and demanding that the capitalists pay for educational equality out of the surplus value that workers have created. PAC could explain that our lower salaries stem from a racist school system that cares little about retaining experienced teachers since it has so little regard for their students. We should view the current battle as part of a class struggle where we don’t just win a few more dollars, but learn how to create a sharing, communist society that respects and educates its youth.

A NYC Teacher