FLASH: As we go to press, the situation in Afghanistan has changed quite rapidly, but still the rulers’ two-front "war against terrorism" exposes them as something less than supermen, both in Afghanistan and on the home front. At home they still haven’t figured out the identity of the anthrax terrorists, and the FBI has egg all over its face. Overseas, pacifying Afghanistan to make it safe for Exxon Mobil’s oil profits is more easily said than done. True, the short U.S. bombing campaign appears to have routed the Taliban from Afghanistan’s main cities. But appearances don’t tell the whole story. "War in Afghanistan is not fought in cities and towns," says a Taliban mouthpiece quoted by The Times of India (11/14). "The decisive war is fought in the mountains and caves, and they are under our control."

The Islamic fundamentalist army that later produced the Taliban fought a ten-year guerrilla war against the Russians and won. The Taliban think they can duplicate this success, with some differences, against the U.S. The outcome can’t be predicted at this time. However, certain conclusions can be drawn about this war:

The fight to control Afghanistan is far from over. The present phase, according to a Pakistani military affairs expert, "can be interminably long" (Riffat Hussain, Times of India, 11/14). The Taliban have made an orderly retreat. They are "settling in for the long haul" (Stratfor, 11/14).

The guerrilla war in Afghanistan will once again show the limitations of air power. Making plans to corner oil and gas supplies and delivery routes from Kosovo through the Middle East and Afghanistan is one thing. Executing those plans is another, especially when it requires conquering and holding territory. The job can’t be done from the air. U.S. imperialism will require large contingents of ground troops, and the casualties will mount.

The war will spread beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Taliban get most of their supplies from Pakistan. A significant faction of Pakistani bosses supports the Taliban. Cutting off the Pakistani source of Taliban supplies may well force the U.S. to extend the war to Pakistan. The rest of Central Asia and the entire subcontinent, including India, could become involved to some extent in the fighting.

The U.S. is already carrying out plans for military bases in formerly Soviet Central Asian republics like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. These bases will become likely targets.

The so-called "Northern Alliance" is basically a fiction. It’s a motley gang of warlords who may have differences with the Taliban bosses but who also fight for power among themselves. The likelihood that U.S. imperialism can mould them into a stable puppet regime is slim. Therefore, the chances of pacifying Afghanistan for Exxon Mobil in the near future are also slim.

Even if the Taliban and Al Qaeda are routed (their reactionary and repressive policies have alienated many of the people who originally supported them), instability will continue in the region. The rulers of Pakistan won't sit idly while their sworn enemies in the Northern Alliance (and their backers in Iran, India and Russia) takes over most of Afghanistan after Bush promised Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf  to keep the NA outside Kabul. Pakistan might grab southern Afghanistan as a buffer zone. And sooner than later, war will erupt between the Northern Alliance warlords and the Pakistani-back warlords.

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Capitalism After Sept. 11: War, Mass Layoffs and Police State

Unity With Bosses Is Deadly for Workers

a href="#Bush’s ‘Homeland Security’ Would Make Hitler Proud">Bush"s ‘Homeland Security’ Would Make Hitler Proud

Giuliani Dump Firefighters for Real Estate Profiteers

Super-Exploitation at Ground Zero

a href="#Democratic ‘Hawks’ Say: ‘Prepare for American body bags…’">Democrat"c ‘Hawks’ Say: ‘Prepare for American body bags…’

Who’s the Terrorist Who Blew Up Flight 587? Answer: American Airlines CEO

Anti-War Group Forms at Montclair State University

Big Oil Barons Show Enron Who Is Boss

PLP Indicts Imperialism As Cause of War

PL Forum Links Universities To Pro-War Program

Anti-War Sentiment Grows at University of Washington

Racism Elected NY Mayor Bloomberg

a href="#Crisis Won’t Sink the System—That Requires Workers’ Revolution">Cris"s Won’t Sink the System—That Requires Workers’ Revolution

French Workers Strike

LETTERS: Workers of the World, Write!

a href="#Gov’t Is Biggest Terrorist in Chile">"ov’t Is Biggest Terrorist in Chile

Job Cuts Hit LA Garment Workers

a href="#Huber über Alles""Huber über Alles

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Capitalism After Sept. 11: War, Mass Layoffs and Police State

FLASH: As we go to press, the situation in Afghanistan has changed quite rapidly, but still the rulers’ two-front "war against terrorism" exposes them as something less than supermen, both in Afghanistan and on the home front. At home they still haven’t figured out the identity of the anthrax terrorists, and the FBI has egg all over its face. Overseas, pacifying Afghanistan to make it safe for Exxon Mobil’s oil profits is more easily said than done. True, the short U.S. bombing campaign appears to have routed the Taliban from Afghanistan’s main cities. But appearances don’t tell the whole story. "War in Afghanistan is not fought in cities and towns," says a Taliban mouthpiece quoted by The Times of India (11/14). "The decisive war is fought in the mountains and caves, and they are under our control."

The Islamic fundamentalist army that later produced the Taliban fought a ten-year guerrilla war against the Russians and won. The Taliban think they can duplicate this success, with some differences, against the U.S. The outcome can’t be predicted at this time. However, certain conclusions can be drawn about this war:

The fight to control Afghanistan is far from over. The present phase, according to a Pakistani military affairs expert, "can be interminably long" (Riffat Hussain, Times of India, 11/14). The Taliban have made an orderly retreat. They are "settling in for the long haul" (Stratfor, 11/14).

The guerrilla war in Afghanistan will once again show the limitations of air power. Making plans to corner oil and gas supplies and delivery routes from Kosovo through the Middle East and Afghanistan is one thing. Executing those plans is another, especially when it requires conquering and holding territory. The job can’t be done from the air. U.S. imperialism will require large contingents of ground troops, and the casualties will mount.

The war will spread beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Taliban get most of their supplies from Pakistan. A significant faction of Pakistani bosses supports the Taliban. Cutting off the Pakistani source of Taliban supplies may well force the U.S. to extend the war to Pakistan. The rest of Central Asia and the entire subcontinent, including India, could become involved to some extent in the fighting.

The U.S. is already carrying out plans for military bases in formerly Soviet Central Asian republics like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. These bases will become likely targets.

The so-called "Northern Alliance" is basically a fiction. It’s a motley gang of warlords who may have differences with the Taliban bosses but who also fight for power among themselves. The likelihood that U.S. imperialism can mould them into a stable puppet regime is slim. Therefore, the chances of pacifying Afghanistan for Exxon Mobil in the near future are also slim.

Unity With Bosses Is Deadly for Workers

"United We Stand" is ringing more hollow by the day. The more powerful U.S. capitalists had hoped to use the Bush presidency to galvanize the nation in a single-minded crusade against the enemies of Rockefeller’s Exxon Mobil following Sept. 11. But the grotesque spectacle of cops and firefighters fist-fighting amid the carnage at the World Trade Center symbolized a fundamental truth about the profit system: capitalists can’t sustain unity for long, even when a crisis demands it. Rival bosses, like bin Laden, using Islam’s religion as a smoke-screen, are seriously threatening the main Exxon Mobil faction’s grip on Saudi Arabia’s oil, the economic lever that allows it to dominate the world. The bigger U.S. rulers must sooner or later widen the war from Afghanistan to Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. To do this, they need a more fascist crackdown at home (see page 2). But conflicts are erupting from Ground Zero to the highest levels of government.

The New York Times (editorial, 11/5) gave Bush passing marks for managing the tactical debate within the main wing over when to invade Iraq (see CHALLENGE, 11/14) but flunked him for caving in to the right-wing leaders of the Republican Party on domestic issues. "Mr. Bush’s leadership on foreign policy ...has been fair and nonpartisan...consulting Democrats as well as Republicans. On the home front, however, Mr. Bush acts as if he still cannot afford to alienate the right-wing leaders of the Republican Party and the big business and energy interests behind them." In other articles the Times specifically criticized Bush’s huge "tax stimulus" rebates to non- Exxon firms like Enron and Texas Utilities and his refusal to federalize airport security in favor of private firms owned by supporters of conservative Republicans. To the Times, Bush was forsaking his consensus- building mission.

When the aristocratic Bushes migrated from Greenwich, CT, to Texas half a century ago, they undertook the difficult task of keeping the domestic Oil Patch bosses roughly in line with the Exxon Mobil wing’s interests. This job has proved difficult because the two sides frequently have conflicting business interests. When push has come to shove, the Bushes have usually lined up behind the main wing.

In an important act of obedience to the main wing Eastern Establishment this year, Bush Jr. appointed liberal Republican Tom Ridge to the new position of Homeland Security czar. But then Bush failed to define the scope of his powers. A pro-choicer, Ridge has solid Establishment credentials. When running for governor of Pennsylvania, he employed the same campaign-consulting firm used by blueblood liberals like Massachusetts’ Bill Weld and New York’s Arno Houghton. One of Ridge’s main goals is to bring federal law enforcement agencies and the military under one roof. But Congress is balking at plans to put the Coast Guard and Border Patrol under Ridge’s command.

This pattern of attempts at unity followed by sharpening strife has marked Bush’s presidential career from the outset. At their party conventions last summer, Bush and Gore made identical calls for an oil war on Iraq. Seeming eager to put the Clinton impeachment battle behind them, both ran campaigns that the Harris Poll found unusually free of mudslinging. Then came Election Day and the most blatant manipulation of the courts and partisan ballot stealing, mixed with racism, that the U.S. has ever seen. At his inauguration, however, Bush vowed to bury the hatchet in a speech that the main wing’s most influential mouthpiece, the New York Times, called "A New Vision of Unity." By spring, this vision had blurred. Bush successfully backed a huge multi-billon-dollar tax cut package benefiting the corporations and wealthy individuals that had bought his election while it ignored the imperialist needs of the bigger bosses. Sen. Jay Rockefeller denounced the cuts as irresponsible because they endangered funding for U.S. ground troops overseas.

The main wing cannot afford to allow partisanship to hinder imperialism. As its hold on Persian Gulf oil becomes more precarious, it will increasingly resort to bribery and force to impose discipline.

a name="Bush’s ‘Homeland Security’ Would Make Hitler Proud"></a>"ush’s ‘Homeland Security’ Would Make Hitler Proud

With the upsurge of flag-waving U.S. nationalism following 9/11, the bosses are temporarily in a stronger position, and moving quickly, to create a police state. Officially over 1,000 "suspected terrorists" have been arrested, almost all on charges totally unrelated to the World Trade Center attacks. The government refuses to say who they are, where they’re held, or what they’re charged with. This recalls the mass arrests and deportations of tens of thousands of immigrants during the Palmer Raids "red scare" of the 1920s, following the Russian Revolution.

Almost all those arrested since 9/11 are Arab or Muslim, similar to immigrants held in the past five years on "secret evidence." U.S. rulers are counting on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism to get away with these round-ups. They’re also using fear and hysteria to weaken any potential fight-back.

These actions, however, pale in comparison to what the future holds. Under the new "anti-terrorism" law, the government could hold immigrants "under suspicion of involvement in terrorism" — without charging them with anything — from seven days up to indefinite court-ordered six-month period extensions.

"Suspects" are subject to "roving wiretaps," including secret "intelligence courts," combined with the "alien terrorist removal courts" from a 1996 Clinton law. The latter can receive secret evidence against those "suspected" of involvement with "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTOs). U.S. citizens who "materially support" FTOs can be jailed up to 10 years.

Bush’s Homeland Security Council comes right out of the Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman Commission report which last April predicted major "terrorist attacks on U.S. soil" that would convince Americans to "sacrifice blood and treasure" for the greater profit glory of U.S. rulers. These blueprints for fascism hope to consolidate different government agencies which have previously fought each other. States like NY and NJ are creating local task forces to overcome past federal-state antagonisms. The NJ agency can make rules and meet in secret, and force compliance with all its demands for information related to "domestic security preparedness."

Communists in PLP must organize the international working class to fight these horrors. Only capitalism would cynically use the mass murder of thousands in the U.S. to justify killing millions more in a war for oil; would feed mass fear to build a vicious police state. Only communist revolution will destroy the warmakers, whose thirst for maximum profits can mean nothing but devastation for our class.

Giuliani Dump Firefighters for Real Estate Profiteers

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 8 — "The mayor loves us only when we’re dead," declared a Brooklyn ladder company firefighter, reacting to Mayor Giuliani’s decision to stop looking for the remains of the dead still lying in the debris at the site of the World Trade Center "because it was too dangerous."

The hypocrisy of capitalism knows no bounds. After weeks of proclaiming the firefighters as heroes, now that the bosses’ profits depend on starting redevelopment as soon as possible, it’s time to dump the heroes (and hire day laborers under the most exploitative conditions to finish the job — see below). Only a society based on production for need —communism—instead of profits of a few bosses can end this kind of hypocrisy and exploitation.

So the firefighters were bitter at Giuliani’s decision to slash their workforce there from 180 to 24. "Yesterday they were heroes, today they’re going to be landfill," commented one firefighter, referring to the removal of the debris, filled with the bodies of 253 firefighters which have still not been recovered of the 343 who died in the September 11 attacks.

They pinpointed the reason for Giuliani’s decision: the city’s financial and real estate interests want to speed up the removal of the debris in order to begin the redevelopment of the site. Capitalism triumphs again. "They get worried about safety only when it serves their interests," said the Brooklyn ladder company firefighter. "They didn’t worry about it on September 11 or in the weeks after."

The situation was highlighted when 1,000 firefighters refused to follow their union leaders’ call to disperse at a Nov. 2 City Hall rally. "They got their gold," many shouted, referring to the removal of tons of gold bricks stored in basement vaults. They charged that recovery of these assets was the city’s main aim, and to hell with safety and finding the remains of the 253 dead firemen. "The mayor sends us out in fire trucks and now wants to take us out in dump trucks," said one.

They began shouting "Shut it down!" and surged southward towards Ground Zero. They broke through police barricades and marched onto the World Trade Center site, chanting "bring the brothers home." Fistfights broke out between the marchers and Giuliani’s "hero" cops, who arrested a dozen protesters, holding some incommunicado into the night. The heroes who Giuliani was building his reputation on were initially charged with inciting to riot, trespass and other criminal acts. Later all charges were dropped, except for one firefighter.

Ironworkers, construction workers and operating engineers stopped work with their heavy machinery and equipment and joined the protest. Afterwards hundreds marched back to City Hall shouting, "Rudy must go!"

One former firefighter compared Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen (who left his job as union president to become the Commissioner) to a stoolpigeon. "Tell everyone Von Essen is the Fire Department’s Gyp Nolan," said Tommy Gates, referring to the 1930s film, The Informer, in which an IRA member became an informer for the British. (Newsday, 11/6) The head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association labeled Giuliani a "fascist."

In recent years a four-hour slide show dealing with terrorist incidents was given to firefighters, which explained little more than telling them that the first fire companies arriving at a disaster were expected to die.

Now 4,000 firefighters are suffering with chronic coughs and other lung conditions, labeled "World Trade Center Syndrome." They’ve received hardly anything more than dust masks while the cops get filtered respirators. A consultant for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said, "It’s the worst site I’ve ever seen, extremely hazardous."

An Environmental Protection Agency report said the toxic chemicals and metals in the air and soil pose long-term risks for hundreds of workers at the site, including leukemia and bone marrow damage.

Super-Exploitation at Ground Zero

Meanwhile, the capitalist profit motive has reared its head even more intensely in the shape-up hiring of day laborers at $7.50 an hour. They don’t want to pay regular asbestos workers $18 to $22 an hour. "This is another way of exploiting workers," said one laborer. These workers hired to clean up and remove debris are on the job up to 12 hours a day, with no overtime pay and without the most basic safety gear. They had to ask the Red Cross for dust masks and then got the cheapest 99¢ variety.

The ruling class that oppresses workers here for the greater glory of maximum profits is the very same class that has launched a war killing Afghani workers and plans to expand it to control the oil and gas reserves and supply lines from the Middle East to the China Sea. It’s the job of the international working class to strangle that imperialist beast so it can exploit no more.

a name="Democratic ‘Hawks’ Say: ‘Prepare for American body bags…’"></a>Demo"ratic ‘Hawks’ Say: ‘Prepare for American body bags…’

The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 9]

WASHINGTON — Several…Democratic presidential contenders…are urging President Bush to intensify and expand the war….

Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Conn., John Kerry of Mass. and Joseph Biden of Delaware…have taken positions more hawkish than the president. On issues from the use of ground troops in Afghanistan to the targeting of Iraq…. Lieberman and Kerry in particular have echoed conservative activists pressing Bush to pursue the war more aggressively.

"…Lieberman and…Kerry have been closer to us than parts of the Bush administration," said conservative strategist William Kristol, a leader among Republican hawks….

The other leading Democrats — including former Vice-President Al Gore, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri — have supported Bush’s decisions…without reservations….

Biden…told the [Rockefeller] Council on Foreign Relations…."I think the American public is prepared, and the president must continue to remind them to be prepared, for American body bags coming home…."

Lieberman…has been…insistent…in arguing that the U.S. must target Iraq as part of the war…— whether or not it is directly implicated in the Sept. 11 airline highjackings or the subsequent anthrax attack….

a name="Workers Must Swing Away At Rulers’ Liberal Curve Ball">">"orkers Must Swing Away At Rulers’ Liberal Curve Ball

In baseball, the pitch that dips or breaks unexpectedly is much harder to hit than the straight one. In politics, the sweet-talking enemy disguised as a friend is far more deadly than the one who wears a sign saying "Bad Guy." As the rulers’ oil war widens beyond Afghanistan and they develop their plan for a police state on the home front, workers need more than ever to avoid the traps set by liberal politicians, who pose as our allies but slit our throats. Hundreds of millions of lives and the future of humanity depend on our ability to absorb and act on this lesson.

Workers must never choose sides among bosses or line up behind any of their politicians. Our ability to build a movement that can turn the horrors of imperialist war and fascism into the fight for a decent society depends on our recognition of all our class enemies and our reliance on ourselves to win. Our goal remains communist revolution. Our organization is the Progressive Labor Party. Our friends are our fellow workers, students, teachers and soldiers. Our enemies are all the bosses and their agents. No exceptions.

Despite the support Bush continues to enjoy in the wake of September 11, many people understand that this racist and his sidekicks, Vice-President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary O’Neill and Attorney General Ashcroft are no friends of the working class. Their "national unity" act is wearing thin, as every day brings fresh revelations about Bush’s attempts to reward his campaign backers with profit windfalls from the "anti-terrorism" business. Billion-dollar payoffs to the drug companies and the private airline security rent-a-cop companies are just two examples.

To prepare our class for the immense battles that lie ahead we need to see through the murderous schemes being carried out against us under our noses by the liberals, Democrats and Republicans alike.

The first is their oil war disguised as a "crusade against terror." Because Bush is president, he appears as the main "crusader." But the groundwork for the oil wars of the recent past and the present was laid by liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 announced a doctrine bearing his name: "An attempt by any outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

The "Carter Doctrine" led to Bush, Sr.’s. 1991 oil war in Iraq. Months before announcing U.S. imperialism’s determination to control Gulf oil at all costs, Carter heeded his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and cynically provoked the former Soviet Union into a bloody war in Afghanistan. The U.S.-backed anti-communist forces in that war included Osama bin Laden—the demon the bosses now love to hate—as well as thousands of Islamic fundamentalists who are now fighting—as the Taliban— against the U.S. in Afghanistan. These forces also want to replace Exxon Mobil’s chokehold on the Saudi oil prize. So the liberal Carter and his entourage were directly responsible for the process that has led to the present bloodshed and will lead to much more.

Continuing the oil war by other means, the liberal Democrat Clinton’s sanctions policy murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children in his eight-year tenure, terrorized the former Yugoslavia from the air to secure Balkan energy pipelines and attacked workers from Haiti to Somalia and Afghanistan for various tactical goals.

As CHALLENGE reported (11/14), Bush now faces pressure from the Republican "right-wing" to widen the Afghanistan war into Iraq immediately. The Democrats and liberal Republicans like Secretary of State Powell are speaking with the "voice of reason" against this move. But the debate is purely tactical. The "get-Iraq-now" gang is a dirty alliance of domestic oil bosses, whose profits are being hurt by cheap Iraqi crude coming onto the U.S. market, and arms manufacturers who see a chance to grab some quick profits. The Democrats and Powell have a "better idea."

They speak for the main Rockefeller Exxon Mobil wing of U.S. rulers. They don’t disagree about forcing Saddam Hussein out of the picture and setting up a pro-U.S. oil puppet government in Iraq. They also know that the biggest prize of all, Saudi Arabian oil, is facing a serious threat from within, and that a U.S. occupation of that country may be necessary. These liberals believe that the time is not yet ripe for an invasion to seize Persian Gulf oilfields.

Crucial for workers is to avoid falling for the lie that Powell and the Democrats represent an "anti-war" faction of the ruling class. In fact the opposite is the case. Exxon Mobil’s liberal representatives are planning to lead us eventually into the widest, most destructive war in history. On occasion, they will let the truth leak out. The liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman, Gore’s Vice-Presidential candidate in 2000, demanded a "phase two" response to September 11, "stopping short of calling for an immediate strike on Iraq," but nonetheless warning: "As long as Saddam is there...Iraq is going to be a threat to our lives" (Associated Press, 10/16).

On the home front, Bush just signed an "anti-terrorism" law that is really a blueprint for a police state. The bosses’ government will now be able to define as "terrorist" activity any form of militant organizing against it. The disguise is the promise to protect us against repetitions of September 11 and against "bioterrorism." The reality is the rulers’ growing need to govern with mass terror, as conditions sharpen and U.S. imperialism requires more cannon fodder for its oil wars and complete political obedience from the working class. Of course, this blueprint for fascism has been wrapped in the red-white-and-blue and heralded as a measure necessary for the preservation of "democracy."

The liberals play a crucial role in pitching this curve ball. They’re doing so in three ways:

First, the liberal Clinton White House, in addition to paving the way for the present war, also greased the skids for today’s "iron heel" measures. Clinton ended welfare and replaced it with the slave labor "Workfare" scheme. Clinton hired 100,000 more racist cops to terrorize working-class communities. He beefed up border patrols and took other measures to brutalize immigrant workers, thereby preparing the conditions for Ashcroft’s present summary jailing without charges of over 1,000 Arabs. So Clinton in many ways gave the rulers the straitjacket they’re now outfitting for all of us.

Second, the liberals helped Bush write and pass the legislation that legalizes fascism. The law is called the "Patriot Act". When it was still a bill, it was named after Wisconsin Republican representative James Sensenbrenner and liberal Michigan Democrat John Conyers. Conyers, who is black, has made a career of helping the bosses implement their most racist policies. His contributions hark back to avid support for the Vietnam War. The "Patriot Law" he just co-authored "lays the foundation for a domestic intelligence-gathering system of unprecedented scale" (Washington Post, 11/4). It will enable the rulers to brand anyone who disagrees with them or organizes against them as a "terrorist" and will centralize and further militarize every policing function of the state apparatus, from the FBI and CIA all the way to the Treasury Department. Liberal politicians head the cheerleading squad. House Democratic majority leader Gephardt and the rest of his buddies want to authorize billions of additional dollars beyond the $40 billion already spent to hire FBI agents, Customs agents and Border Patrol cops. Florida Democrat Bob Graham, chair of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, praised the Patriot Act as "long overdue" (Washington Post).

Third, some of the police-state liberals are also hypocritically parading as guardians of "freedom," warning that things mustn’t go too far. One such is Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who served as Senate negotiator of the Conyers-Sensenbrenner bill, all the while "agonizing" about the possibility that the new presidential powers it provides "could be used to violate civil liberties" (Washington Post). But never fear: to ease his conscience after getting the bill passed, Leahy will crusade for the Justice Department to "consult" with his Senate Judiciary Committee while the government jails and tortures workers.

The liberal New York Times (11/10) has also added its own editorial "tsk, tsk," calling on the White House to "step in" and make sure the Justice Department can "investigate domestic attacks while respecting the basic rights that we are in this war to preserve."

The imperialists have learned their lesson from Hitler, whose biggest slave labor camp had on its gates the grotesque slogan "Work Makes You Free." Today, the main wing of U.S. bosses wants us to fall for similar lies while lining up for a bloodbath and cheering for the vise they’re clamping around our necks. Our class’s road away from the horrors of oil war and fascism begins by rejecting the liberals’ Big Lies. Only the communist analysis and leadership of the Progressive Labor Party can get this crucial job done.

Who’s the Terrorist Who Blew Up Flight 587?

Answer: American Airlines CEO

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 14 — "I believe that a terrorist blew up the American Airlines plane bound for Santo Domingo. They just don’t want to admit it because then nobody will fly and the airlines will sink completely," a PLP member’s friend told him.

"You’re partially right," the PL’er responded. It was a terrorist act, but one the government won’t go after. It was caused by the greed for maximum profits by the big terrorist, American Airlines. Why doesn’t the new Homeland Security Agency arrest the CEO of AA in Dallas?"

The Airbus 300 plane exploded right after leaving Kennedy airport, killing the 260 passengers and crew members. Up to nine people are missing in the Belle Harbor neighborhood of the Rockaways where burning sections of the plane fell. The second engine of the plane was due for a major overhaul. Engines are supposed to get major overhauls after 10,000 hours of use. This one had 9,700 hours.

Since 1990, the Federal Aviation Administration has recorded at least 37 accidents or incidents for the Airbus 300 series. The plane’s GE engines had a history of problems. Since 1988, the Airbus has returned to airports three times because of smoke in the cockpits.

The lives of the passengers, most of them Dominican workers visiting relatives on the island, including a couple that survived the World Trade Center attack, the flight crew and residents of Belle Harbor, were all sacrificed on the altar of corporate maximum profits. That’s capitalism!

Anti-War Group Forms at Montclair State University

MONTCLAIR, NJ, Nov. 11 — Montclair State University students formed an anti-war group a month ago, with the help of a faculty member who was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Thirty students came to the first meeting. There have been four more since. "Students Against the War" sponsored an anti-war forum last week, attended by about 40 students and several faculty and staff.

The anti-war students represent several different viewpoints, from pacifist (against all war), to liberal anti-war, to various kinds of Marxist and communist viewpoints. PLP’s view is representative. At a meeting of a smaller group today, four of the five students were reading CHALLENGE shortly after the meeting began.

A number of students say they are "anti-capitalist." Capitalism is certainly the cause of the war but there is confusion, and some disagreement, over what "anti-capitalism" means. PL’ers are struggling to show that the war is an imperialist one, over oil, a point on which most anti-war students seem to agree. But PL’ers must struggle harder to show that imperialism is essential to capitalism, and can’t be "reformed" out of capitalism.

Some students are anti-communist, based on anti-communist lies from the educational system and mass media, the old phony "communist" movement in Eastern Europe and the USSR since World War 2 and Trotskyist lies about Stalin. But in general they are very open, and we PL’ers must be more open to them!

Ten to twelve CHALLENGES are being distributed weekly, a big increase since before 9/11. Two students are coming to a PL study group. We’re working to create a study group on campus too.

Most students at Montclair commute, so meetings are difficult to schedule and planning is even more necessary. Organizing by phone and in person, often one on one, has proven much more effective than reliance on e-mail, which not everyone checks regularly. E-mail has been useful for distributing articles, including CHALLENGE articles, to the wider readership of 40-50 students who have joined the local anti-war mailing list.

We need more, and more militant activities: another teach-in, and a march. We’re planning a general open letter or petition against the war, another forum and a film showing later this week.

Most important is to build both study groups and recruit some new members to PLP, so we can win yet others to the only solution that will work for the working class and the human race: a communist society. Revolution is the only way to achieve that goal. We must do much more education by spreading CHALLENGE among even more students and faculty.

Big Oil Barons Show Enron Who Is Boss

Remember the California "energy crisis" earlier in the year? Workers there paid through the nose for the windfall profits of the Enron Corporation, the largest U.S. buyer and marketer of natural gas. But Enron’s gouging of the California market was also viewed as a double-cross by the main energy bosses of the Eastern Establishment. Enron is now paying the price for showing no honor among thieves. It’s just been gobbled up by an Eastern Establishment firm.

Workers should care less who wins squabbles between big bosses. However, studying these fights is important to understand the class forces at work and learn how our side can take advantage.

The Enron case parallels the main rulers’ strong-arm political tactics at home and widening oil war abroad. It proves their aim is to squash all opposition to their agenda for world domination. Briefly, here’s what happened.

Control of Enron had been split for the past few years between the Eastern Establishment and Texans, like its Chairman, Kenneth Lay, who was Bush’s biggest 2000 presidential campaign contributor. When Bush stole the election with Enron’ s help, Lay and his buddies figured they were entitled to a payoff. Bush tried to repay this debt by using the presidency to give Enron a big "emergency tax stimulus" rebate. But Enron wanted more, so it jacked up its prices in California. But the Rockefeller Standard Oil California gang couldn’t tolerate this attempt to take over West Coast pricing by a company it didn’t fully control. So they mounted a counter-attack.

It took two forms. The first was the direct use of state power. Enron became the subject of an investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission, a government agency traditionally loyal to the Eastern Establishment, for insider dealings that wiped out $1.6 billion in shareholder equity. This attack shattered shareholder confidence. The price of shares nose-dived, setting the stage for the second phase, the takeover.

With Enron’ s value down, a company called Dynegy stepped in and bought it. Chevron of the Rockefeller wing owns 27% of Dynegy and Fidelity, an old-line Boston mutual fund company, owns 7%. The takeover involves a cash infusion of $2.5 billion directly from Chevron.

The main rulers’ power grab of Enron signals their resolve to end the days of power sharing with forces they don’t trust who engineer rip-offs behind their backs. The largest single stockholder in Enron is the New York Belfer family, which has long owned gas fields in partnership with the old money Cabot family of Boston. The Cabots and Belfers merged these holdings with Enron. Endowments from these two families have transformed Harvard’s Kennedy School into an important foreign policy "think tank" with a focus on energy. The Belfer Center at the Kennedy School runs a Caspian Studies program funded by Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

The Lay wing of Enron had an interest in keeping cheaper supplies of energy, such as Iraqi crude, off the U.S. market. This isn’t the Exxon Mobil and Chevron agenda. As CHALLENGE has reported, these main oil barons are marketing Iraqi oil on both coasts of the United States and intend to exert "full spectrum dominance" over all the world’s cheapest, most plentiful energy supplies. This is the principal purpose of the so-called "war against terror" in Afghanistan.

Enron’s takeover by the Exxon Mobil-Chevron-Eastern banking wing is an excellent object lesson for workers in the class nature and use of government under the profit system. The government serves the bosses. The bigger the boss, the more compliant the state apparatus. In its first year, the Bush White House has shown divided loyalties between the main wing and Enron-type pretenders. This takeover is one sign among many that the Eastern Establishment means to grab state power by the jugular and wield it to discipline all of society. Our class must have no illusions about who’s in charge or about the need to build a movement that can smash all the rulers and their centers of power.

PLP Indicts Imperialism As Cause of War

BERKELEY, CA—About 500 people from the western U.S. attended the California Schools Against War (CSAW) conference held over the November 10th weekend. PLP students’ and friends’ goal was to introduce revolutionary politics and plans for action and build closer ties to others there.

One opening speaker said "You" — meaning the students AND the U.S. government—"bombed Afghanistan." Nothing about a war of inter-imperialist rivalry and little blaming of capitalism. In the panels and workshops, we explained this was an imperialist war for control of oil, rooted in capitalism’s contradictions.

Little time was allotted for questions or comments in the panels and workshops. The conference leadership clearly was not interested in what people thought.

The PLP-led workshop entitled, "Hart/Rudman Report –Building a Police State" (omitted from the conference schedule "by accident") fought this trend. Thirty attended. We showed how fascism was not planned by one "madman" but by a ruling class bent on imperialist war for oil profits, saying fascism must be defeated by communism. People feared that their own organizing activities could be defined as "terrorism" in the newly-passed Patriot Act. Distributing Party literature and one-on-one conversations produced a contact list.

The next day delegates met to decide the coalition’s future but discussions were limited. Delegates were frustrated, trying to speak but never called on. One delegate rose to say, "I may be out of order, but this process is not democratic at all!" A PLP member said seriousness was needed and therefore we should eliminate "time restraints." When he said, "This is an imperialist war," he was applauded. The moderator halted discussion over this issue and time restraints stayed.

Finally a delegate announced a meeting outside for all those who were unhappy with the proceedings. Around 60 of the 160 total delegates walked outside and started discussing the problems. PLP members said the leadership had no confidence that the masses could understand politics. They see any debate as divisive, and don’t want the war traced to the ruling class. The fact that 60 people organized a dissent group shows there was a clear desire among a majority of delegates to have political discussion. The "moderators" systematically denied that desire. PLP members struggled with many to stay at the conference and fight the leadership’s splitting tactics. After agreeing on a list of improvements, the dissenters returned and presented them to the meeting. An alternative e-mail list was created for those unhappy with the process.

The Southern California Coalition Against the War resolution to organize campus campaigns against war research, racist and pro-war ideology and ROTC, was raised at the conference. The resolution also stated the need to create teach-ins about imperialism and oil. The leadership refused discussion on the resolution, but many students liked it. The leadership pushed formation of a national "coordinating committee" that would make decisions for the student anti-war movement. We said we all needed political discussion of imperialism and about actions to be taken so people would be truly won to doing them.

Some people from the dissenting group talked candidly over dinner about what had happened. PLP members will fight alongside our fellow students to implement the resolution of the Southern California Schools Against the War and help build a bigger anti-war coalition which fights imperialism and racism on the campuses. That could change the nature of future events.

We drew closer to our friends throughout the weekend and heard many positive comments about PLP. We sold about 100 CHALLENGES and distributed many PLP leaflets exposing the universities as centers of racist ideology and pro-war research.

PL Forum Links Universities To Pro-War Program

BOSTON, MA, Nov. 11 — PLP members and friends participated in the regional college conference against war and racism. Over 300 students and workers from 40 colleges attended the panels and workshops the first day.

PLP organized two workshops, one on Mideast/Caspian Sea oil and the war in Afghanistan and another on patriotism/nationalism and the war. Seventy attended the workshop on oil. PLP members gave presentations on capitalism and its drive to maximize profits, which lead to imperialism and war, and explained the importance of Mideast oil (especially Saudi oil) and Caspian Sea oil in prompting the war in Afghanistan. Copies of recent CHALLENGES articles on the topic were distributed to everyone.

During the patriotism/nationalism workshop, one panelist related the importance of Mideast oil to this war. A former Students for a Democratic Society member stressed the importance of building worker/student unity to oppose imperialist war and the universities’ connection to war. He recalled fighting against the universities’ pro-war and racist ideology and opposing ROTC/CIA recruiters and military research on campus during the Vietnam War.

Saturday evening PLP organized a discussion on a communist alternative to war and capitalism; the difference between socialism and communism; how to end war; what revolution means; why capitalism breeds war; the importance of oil; and the need to sharpen the struggle at our colleges.

On Sunday about 110 delegates discussed the future of the northeast campus anti-war coalition. However, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and some other students were determined to run the meeting bureaucratically, stifling real political discussion of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist views. It became clear to many that the ISO is not interested in building collectivity but instead in grabbing power. This bureaucratic maneuvering stems from their opportunistic politics: they blame only Bush for the war and won’t discuss the underlying reasons for it or plan campaigns against it. Their outlook ends up supporting the Democratic Party.

As the war drags on, more students are opposing it. As communists in PLP, we must be in this movement, fighting for a real revolutionary communist answer to imperialist war and capitalism. We must lead the fight against the Universities’ support for military research, ROTC and racist ideology.

Many battles lie ahead. As part of these battles we must indicate that unless we destroy capitalism with communist revolution, there will only be endless wars.

Anti-War Sentiment Grows at University of Washington

Today 200 people rallied against the war on the University of Washington campus. Several speakers revealed the history of, and reasons for, U.S. government attacks on the people of the Middle East. One reported how the CIA trained Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union. Another spoke about U.S. sanctions on Iraq. I explained the main reason for U.S. expenditures of money and effort in the Middle East is to control the worldwide supply of oil. Some applauded while many others nodded in agreement

I also noted a resolution being debated on the floor of our student senate that says students here support the U.S. government’s "war on terrorism." Many people opposed it in committee, including students in the Black Student Union, MECHA and the University Coalition Against the War. Instead, an alternative resolution was drafted resolving that the students not support the U.S. actions. Upon hearing this, four senators asked me to put their names on as co-sponsors. Even more people are expected to support this one in committee.

Many members of a study group I’m forming on campus attended this rally and have become more committed to coming to the study group and campus activities.

We also distributed about 50 CHALLENGES. Lots of people approached me asking for a paper and to agree with what I said. There’s a lot of potential on campus and much work to do.

Although this was a step in the right direction, more than at any other time we must realize the importance of our ideas and be bolder in these coalitions and while speaking at rallies. People must realize that sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is causing this war, as a direct result of capitalist economics. Without seeing this, people will not completely understand our idea that the only way to stop war is to have a revolution for communism.µ

 

—A U. Wash Comrade

Racism Elected NY Mayor Bloomberg

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 7 — "You know who I voted for?" asked my friend. "Green," I responded, knowing well that he, like many Latin and black workers, usually vote Democrat, no matter how bad they are.

"No, I voted for Bloomberg," he responded. I wasn’t really that surprised. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg, a Republican, will become New York City’s next mayor, basically because the liberal Democratic candidate Mark Green blew it.

All the political pundits are saying Bloomberg won because he spent $50 million in ads and got current Mayor Giuliani’s endorsement. Since Sept. 11, the media has turned Giuliani into a national hero. Until then he was the most hated mayor in recent history among black and Latin workers. But the real reason Green lost and Bloomberg won was racism. Despite all the claims by the bosses and their media that, after 9/11, New Yorkers became "more united than ever," the fact is racism is still king in this city.

Black and Latin politicians did very little to turn out the vote for Green because Green’s people waged a racist campaign in Brooklyn during the primary runoff between him and Fernando Ferrer. They spread racism among white voters, saying that if Ferrer won, Al Sharpton would become Police commissioner. (Sharpton led a series of protests against police brutality when African immigrant Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by the cops in the Bronx.) Green refused to fire the campaign workers involved.

So Roberto Ramírez, head of the Bronx Democratic Party political machine, refused to get out the Latino vote for Green. The night before the election, Sharpton basically called for people to vote for Bloomberg. Many black and Latino workers either voted for Bloomberg or sat out the election.

What’s next? Bloomberg’s main job as Mayor will be to impose draconian measures against city workers and workers in general, to make them pay for the economic crisis which NYC faces (worsened by 9/11). Bloomberg knows he needs Democratic support. Immediately after winning the election, Bloomberg met with Weingarten (head of the Teachers’ Union), Saunders (head of District Council 37’s city workers union) and with Ferrer and Sharpton. He must ensure these bosses’ lieutenants follow the rulers’ plan to "rebuild NYC" (meaning workers will pay for it). This will increase racist attacks against black and Latin workers. That’s the real purpose of the bosses’ electoral system.

Nearly 900,000 U.S. jobs have disappeared since March, nearly half since October alone. Workers’ wages fell. Bosses and union leaders blame the layoffs, wage cuts and impending service cuts on the World Trade Center attack. Yet New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote (9/30), "the economic repercussions from the World Trade Center, unnerving as they are, would soon fade out if the economy had been strong to begin with….even before the attack, our economic condition was looking unusually precarious."

Japan, the U.S. and Europe are all in an economic downturn, simultaneously for the first time in 20 years. Argentina is in a sharp crisis, with devaluation inevitable and default probable. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians are doing their patriotic duty by bailing out the corporations, while screwing the unemployed. Health benefits for retired workers are "expendable" but corporate debts must be honored!

The rate of profit has dropped from 13% in 1997 to 8% now. In the 3rd quarter of this year U.S. corporate profits were 25% lower than last year’s 3rd quarter. Overproduction has spread from the high tech industry to steel, auto and aerospace. The bosses "solution" is more layoffs and sharper competition to destroy their rivals, meaning misery and death for workers here and worldwide.

The New York Times (11/11) says, "The problem is that when the world’s pie is not growing, debates over dividing it become fiercer." These "debates" lead to more wars and eventually world wars over control of resources and markets.

Capitalist exploitation and competition for profit inevitably produces consolidation, overproduction, layoffs and war. Workers can’t have any "patriotic" unity with these bosses or their politician/union leader henchmen who are the very ones attacking us! Never has the slogan "Workers of the World, Unite!" been more important.

a name="Crisis Won’t Sink the System—That Requires Workers’ Revolution"></a>"risis Won’t Sink the System—That Requires Workers’ Revolution

The day before the attack on the World Trade Center, the U.S. found itself economically and politically more isolated than it had been for over a decade. It had walked out of the UN Conference on racism, refused to sign on to the Kyoto agreement on global warming and turned its back on agreements outlawing the use of landmines and child soldiers.

In an August article, the British magazine The Economist had written: "If one assumes that growth in the second quarter was close to zero in America and the euro area and that Japan contracted sharply, the …rich economies will have contracted for the first time since late 1990. But, unlike 1990, a growing number of emerging economies are also sliding into recession."

Like others, the Economist sees four negative forces at work.

First, the bursting of the hi-tech bubble. Secondly, since early last year stocks fell 28% worldwide, wiping out $10 trillion worth of stock value. (Millions of workers whose pension plans were invested in these stocks took a major hit.) Third, last year’s slump in energy prices reduced profits in oil-producing countries. And, finally, the spillover from the U.S. downturn. The Economist pointed out that the U.S. "accounted for two-fifths of the world’s GDP [Gross Domestic Product] growth over the past five years….That dependence left the world more vulnerable to an American slump."

The article offers two signs of hope. First, the continual cuts in interest rates by the U.S. Federal Banks to stimulate the bosses’ economy. Secondly, the oil price drop.

Both signs present problems, but the drop in oil prices is especially dangerous since it means a decline in oil revenues. That is already a shaky proposition for the stability of the main U.S. ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. "Accustomed to an annual income of over $100 billion, the Saudi government can’t cope with anything less….The yearly per capita income plummeted to $6,000 in 1993, compared with $14,600 in 1982. Jobs are so scarce that unemployment among new university graduates is over 25%. Its lateness in paying foreign workers has led to sit-down strikes in Jeddah, Qassim and the Easter province." ("The House of Saud," Said Aburish, 1996) These conditions have only worsened since then and are fertile ground for political unrest.

The drop in oil prices also makes the more expensive, lower quality oil fields in other parts of the world increasingly marginal economically. This combined with the general crisis of overproduction — from oil, to steel, to autos to computer chips — means that whichever imperialist power controls the Middle East and Caspian Sea oil production, will in fact, dominate the world’s economies. The current economic downturn will likely sharpen the rivalry among the major imperialist powers for control of that most valuable of all raw materials, oil.

All these contradictions, however, in and of themselves will not sink the system by itself. The only thing that capitalism cannot survive is the working class organized into a mass communist party to make revolution. Presently U.S. rulers have a large measure of unity behind their policies, which can’t be dismissed. Secondly, they are still the world’s number one imperialist power and can export a lot of misery, which they are certainly doing now in Afghanistan. Finally, U.S. workers are not mobilized to oppose the rulers’ fascism and thus far, for the most part, have not fought the bosses’ "sacrifice-for-the-war-effort" ploy. It is up to our Party and our class to take advantage of the bosses’ dilemmas, heat things up and take the offensive. Joining and building PLP is the prerequisite for this to occur.

French Workers Strike

PARIS, Nov. 12 — Workers sitting in at a bankrupt Moulinex microwave plant in western France are threatening to blow the place up unless the company agrees to give $11,000 extra severance pay to each of 1,300 workers scheduled for termination. They have already set fire to one plant. The signs read, "Either the money or Kaboom"; and "Shutdown."

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

a name="Gov’t Is Biggest Terrorist in Chile">">"ov’t Is Biggest Terrorist in Chile

Chile’s rulers have used the September 11 attacks to impose more police state measures on the working class. Soledad Alvear, foreign minister of Chile, has asked Congress here to approve Bush’s call to "fight international terrorism." At the same, Socialist President Lagos has called for the formation of a new intelligence agency to protect the "national interest."

The role played by Pinochet’s intelligence agencies (CNI and DINA) is still remembered by the working class of Chile and of many other countries in the region. They helped murder, torture and persecute thousands of workers and students opposed to the Pinochet-Kissinger-AT&T 1973 fascist coup. They also coordinated "Operation Condor" with the CIA, carrying out assassinations internationally, including the killing of exiled Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. Letelier was a major liberal opponent of Pinochet. It was the first major terrorist act carried out by a foreign body in the U.S., long before Sept. 11.

Amid plans for the new repressive police agency, the government is already set to attack workers. Recently, 100 cops manufactured an "anti-drug" operation, viciously raiding La Legua, a poor neighborhood in Santiago. Instead of providing jobs, the rulers use their cops to jail working class youth with the lame cover of going after a few drug dealers.

This raid is seen by many as the first of many more to come to stop workers from fighting back. Already, the official unemployment rate has reached 15% in Santiago and 10% nationwide.

So when the bosses talk about protecting the "national interests," they mean attacking workers.

A Comrade, Chile

Job Cuts Hit LA Garment Workers

I’m a Los Angeles garment worker who’s just been attacked once more by racist, criminal unemployment. My factory had 120 workers. Now that’s been cut in half. In what turned out to be our last day, the supervisor said, "There’s no work." Then the boss told us, "Those who can collect unemployment insurance should go." But one needs to be a legal resident to qualify. If not, you get nothing.

These are daily experiences in many garment factories. Although the economic crisis of unemployment and low wages has existed for eight years, after September 11 unemployment has risen sharply, leaving thousands more in greater poverty.

Our current plan is to organize with other laid-off workers in community groups and churches for aid, including food and rent money, especially for single mothers, who’ve been hit the hardest.

Garment workers problems have several causes. First, there’s the economic crisis confronting worldwide capitalism. Another factor is racism — the majority are immigrants, many undocumented. Most garment factories don’t even pay the minimum wage, despite working eight hours or more and subjected to speed-up and harassment. The bosses’ drive for maximum profits, their need to beat out the competition for markets, drives the speed-up.

These signify a system in crisis, willingly sacrificing the working class in order to maintain power. We must not allow these conditions to demoralize us. We’re determined to have confidence in our ço-workers to fight these attacks and to lead our class on the road to communist revolution. Everything depends on what we do now.

During my years in this factory, I’ve made many friends. Some are regular CHALLENGE readers. During breaks we discussed political ideas. We fought together against slashing piece rates. We will maintain ties with these workers so they can continue to read and distribute CHALLENGE to other workers and build the long-term fight against this profit-hungry system.

Costurero Rojo

Banks Win, Workers Lose

While newspapers report that workers’ consumption of meat in Mexico has declined 20%, consumption of tortillas is down 10% and tens of thousands are losing their jobs because of the capitalist crisis, not everyone is suffering. Although 5,000 bank workers have been laid off, the profits of five leading banks there have soared.

Under capitalism the rich get richer and the poor poorer, and fewer and fewer bosses control the wealth of each country and of the world. Bank workers are being fired as big banks swallow smaller ones (e.g., Citibank recently absorbed Banamex, Mexico’s largest bank; big Spanish banks are taking over local banks).

The government has cut social services for workers and their families but the banks have been getting a great deal from the rulers. Mexico’s government has paid the big banks regularly the high interests charged for helping bail out the savings institutions going bankrupt after the big peso devaluation in 1994. As Marx said, the state is a loyal servant of the capitalist class.

President Fox, the first in 60 years not from the old PRI Party, naturally, continues to favor the big banks. Fox, Bush’s buddy, came to power promising big changes. Now, because of the world economic crisis, mass layoffs are making life even more miserable for the workers here.

The lesson is that workers should never trust any politician: they all serve the bosses, not the workers.

A Comrade

a name="Huber über Alles""Huber über Alles

CHALLENGE has correctly warned workers throughout the world not to choose sides when bosses fight each other. We should organize to get rid of all the bosses. While U.S. imperialism continues in its Nazi tradition of "collateral damage," murdering civilians with its terror bombings of Afghanistan, the Nazi connection also includes the bin Laden group.

Ahmed Huber, a Swiss businessman and former journalist who converted to Islam, is on the Bush’s administration list of financiers of the Al Qaeda-bin Laden group. Who is this guy? Herr Huber is well known in Switzerland and Germany as a person who has tried to forge links between Islamic fundamentalists and neo-Nazi groups. He’s also a member of the group which claims the Holocaust never happened. He has been a regular speaker at NPD rallies (Germany main neo-Nazi outfit).

What unites Herr Huber with the Islamic movement? Millionaires from the Moslem world are backers of his Nada Management, a financial services and consultant firm.

Indeed, if workers should side with Nazis aspiring to replace the U.S. bosses as the ruling Nazis of the world, we lose.

A Teo

1. Oppose U.S. Bosses' Oil "Crusade"
2. Bush Oil `Crusade' Murders Millions in Afghanistan
3. Among `Evildoers' U.S. Rulers Numero Uno
   Bush's disgusting sermons about punishing "evil-doers" cannot hide the truth about the U.S. rulers' new war:
4. Imperialists' `Anti-terrorist' Love Affair Won't Last
5. U.S. Rulers Sinking In Afghan Quagmire?
6. The U.S. Nazis-Anthrax Connection
7. Nazis Support 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
8. U.S. Sanctions on Iraq = Biological Warfare
9. British GI's Want
   No part of U.S. Afghan War
10. Fascism Comes to the UFT
11. Charleston Five Freed from Home Arrest
12. RCC Students march against
    corrupt college prez
13. Opposition to Oil War Good for Public Health
14. LA Teachers Building Anti-War Movement
15. West Coast HS Students `Sticker' It to Oil War
16. PLP'er Turns Towson Teach-in Sharply to Left
17. Anti-war Struggle Rising Among NYC Welfare Workers
18. Newark PLP Forum Hits Police State
19. Workers of the World, Write
    LETTERS
    1. Fight For Exxon? Youth Say, `Hell, No!'
    2. Taking to the Streets in Germany
    3. `Seems the Problem is Capitalism . . .'
    4. A Little Work,
       Big Results
    5. New York City
       Anti-War March
    6. So Much for
       the `Heroes'
20. Special for Challenge Readers:
    1. NUCLEAR SPRING - A NOVELLA AND SHORT STORIES
    2. Comrades
    3. To Have in Common

---

Oppose U.S. Bosses' Oil "Crusade"

The rulers' lies about the purpose of their war are beginning to wear thin. Even the liberal media have begun to acknowledge that Bush's crusade against "evil" doesn't cover too well for the real goal of world energy domination.

A front-page New York Times article (10/25) quotes a "senior American official" in a rare moment of honesty: "Oil runs the world, and the Saudis are the linchpin of oil production." As CHALLENGE has frequently reported, Saudi oil and gas reserves are the world's largest and cheapest. Losing them would severely threaten U.S. imperialism's top-dog status. The forces that support bin Laden include a broad spectrum of powerful capitalists inside Saudi Arabia who intend to challenge Exxon Mobil's dictatorship there. The war in Afghanistan is, among other things, the first stage of an attempt to ensure, at gunpoint, that Saudi oil and gas doesn't fall into the hands of U.S. enemies.

But if Saudi Arabia remains the grand prize, it doesn't tell the whole story. The law of maximum profit requires the U.S. ruling class to control all important existing and future sources of energy. The Persian Gulf is the biggest. However, the huge potential of the Caspian region forces U.S. imperialism to command that energy source as well. A stable, pro-U.S. Afghanistan is central to that goal. "Afghanistan is as crucial to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East," writes London Guardian columnist George Monbiot ("War and Oil: America's Pipe Dream." (10/23)

Barely two years ago, U.S. rulers under Clinton bombed the former Yugoslavia to bits. CHALLENGE readers will remember that the big lie justifying this atrocity was the "humanitarian" protection of Kosovar refugees. The truth, as we wrote at the time, was that that war was fought for the consolidation of U.S.- and British-run energy routes. Monbiot confirms this estimate, describing the rulers' "critical...concern" as "the development of `Corridor 8,' an economic zone carrying oil and gas from the Caspian to Europe."

Crucial to U.S. and British oil bosses' plans is the need to build Balkan pipelines under their own control. The war in Yugoslavia was fought largely to prevent Russian energy companies from horning in on the business. The imperialists in Washington and London share the same purpose in Afghanistan. That country holds a pivotal position as a possible transport route for energy exports from central Asia to the Arabian Sea.

"U.S. influence and military presence in Afghanistan and the Central Asian states, not unlike that over the oil-rich Gulf states, would be a major strategic gain," according to a former general in the Indian army ("The Oil Behind Bush and Son's Campaigns," Ranjit Devraj, Inter Press services, 10/5). But the oil and gas have no value until they can be brought to market. A route through Russia or Azerbaijan would defeat U.S. rulers' goal of cutting their potential Russian rivals out of the action. A route through Iran would give the anti-U.S. Iranian bosses a big boost toward their own aim of becoming the dominant regional energy force in the Persian Gulf. A route through China would cost too much to be profitable, aside from the strategic advantage it would hand to Chinese rulers, who represent a major long-range threat to U.S. imperialism.

However, a conduit through Afghanistan would give U.S. bosses two treasure troves. It would serve their need to diversify energy supplies as a hedge against trouble in their Persian Gulf paradise. It would also put them in the driver's seat in the scramble for energy riches to be plundered over the next 20 years by marketing oil and gas to India, Pakistan, and China. South and East Asia are areas in which energy demand "is booming and competitors are scarce. Pumping oil south and selling it in Pakistan and India...is far more profitable than pumping it west and selling it in Europe." (Monbiot ).

U.S. rulers are murdering Afghan workers and asking U.S. soldiers to die in growing numbers to corner an energy market with a potential value in the trillions of dollars. Imperialism always hides its greed in the rhetoric of high mission. It always pretends to defend "civilization" against "barbarism" and "evil." But facts are stubborn things. Bush and the Democrats who back him almost unanimously are spilling one oily lie after another.

Bush Oil `Crusade' Murders Millions in Afghanistan

The U.S. oil war in Afghanistan bears a deadly resemblance to Vietnam, Kosovo, and all the imperialists' other "humanitarian" interventions. Civilians are already dying in large numbers for the privilege of being "liberated" from Taliban rule by U.S. bombs. The loss of life over the next few months will dwarf the present tally. The air war has cut off energy supplies in large areas of Afghanistan. Nearly eight million Afghanis are already on the verge of starvation. The harsh Afghani winter, which is about to begin, will prevent even minimal food delivery to many areas. Many workers will die because of the resulting hardships.

Despite the rulers' strict media control, which prevents graphic coverage of the action, stories appear every day about "accidental" bombings of civilian targets, including a Red Cross facility hit twice, as well as homes for elderly people and other non-military sites. U.S. imperialism needs to minimize publicity about civilian casualties in order to avoid rebellions that are sure to erupt against it in the Moslem world. However, the nature of imperialist war makes the slaughter of civilians inevitable.

As horrific as the bombings may be, their deadly effect pales before the mass starvation U.S. imperialism is inflicting on the working class of Afghanistan. Before September 11, between seven and eight million people were already on the brink of death from hunger. This atrocity is the direct consequence of the murderous new "Great Game" played over the last generation by U.S. and former Soviet bosses to win Afghanistan as a strategic prize. Various international agencies, sponsored by different capitalists for their own political purposes, had been maintaining some of these people on a survival diet.

Access to that food is no longer available, however, thanks to the U.S. military. According to the New York Times (9/16), the U.S. demanded that Pakistan halt the truck convoys transporting food and other necessities to Afghan civilians. The UN's World Food Program didn't resume shipments until three weeks later, at a greatly reduced rate. The ongoing air war further reduces the delivery rate of supplies the U.S. military is allowing, which were inadequate in the first place.

To carry out his lofty ethical purpose of making Afghanistan safe for Exxon Mobil, Bush and the Democrats who also back this filthy war are therefore calmly contemplating the starvation death of between three and four million people in Afghanistan alone over the next few months. And this is only a fraction of the price imperialism expects the world's working class to pay for the bosses' oil profits. This is the true meaning of Bush's repulsive, hypocritical press conferences about punishing "evil" and "defending human life."

Among `Evildoers' U.S. Rulers Numero Uno
Bush's disgusting sermons about punishing "evil-doers" cannot hide the truth about the U.S. rulers' new war:

The main immediate purpose of the "war against terrorism" is to consolidate the international empire of U.S. oil and gas barons. Control of oil remains crucial to the big bosses' goal of world domination. The iron law of the capitalist system -- the need for maximum profit -- still applies. The conquest of Afghanistan would be a crucial step to ensure that U.S. energy companies dictate the supply, transportation and marketing of oil and gas in a region stretching from the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia, all the way to East Asia.

Like the September 11 assaults against innocent workers, the ongoing anthrax attacks against postal workers and others play directly into the rulers' hands. Regardless of the anthrax poisoners' identity, the attacks help the big bosses disguise the true nature of their oil war and justify their rapid domestic move toward a police state. The bosses may not be directly instigating the anthrax panic but with the help of their media they are attempting to take advantage of it as they plan for a future of mass terror against workers at home and around the world. For the moment, however, their "Big Brother" posturing hasn't exactly covered them with glory. The Bush White House has done more to reassure the pharmaceutical companies about future profit bonanzas than to convince millions of people that the U.S. government can protect them from bioterrorism.

Evil for evil, U.S. imperialism is unmatched in world history. Its aggression in Afghanistan is adding to that record, creating hundreds of thousands of new refugees, bombing civilians, and threatening to starve millions over the winter.

For all its apparent strength and despite its ability to inflict mass suffering and death, U.S. imperialism's war in Afghanistan isn't going well. The bosses have already murdered a lot of people. They will murder many more. So far, this is their only "success." The Taliban appear skillful and determined. They still have a political base. Bush's attempts to concoct an anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan are stumbling badly.

The war can't be won from the air. A ground invasion promises to be long and deadly for many U.S. troops. It could spread in ways the bosses don't intend, as alliances shift. Millions who now support the U.S. government may soon have second thoughts once the casualties begin to mount.

Despite Bush and Co.'s prattling about their "allies" and the "coalition against terrorism," U.S. imperialism is basically on its own in this war. Its only real ally is Britain, and even Britain has underlying contradictions with the U.S., based on different profit interests between U.S. and British oil companies. The rulers of other countries, big and small, have made at best minor tactical compromises with U.S. imperialism for the sake of later strategic gains against it. Even the Russians, who only appear to have handed the U.S. a peace pipe, are playing a cynical chess game in their own quest to control the Central Asian and eventually the Middle Eastern energy prize. The same is true of Chinese imperialists. Even the U.S.'s closest buddies in the Moslem countries are either keeping their distance or openly defying U.S. wishes. Despite appearances, the main aspect of this war is rapidly sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry.

If the U.S. loses this round, it won't be able to accept defeat and will become even more desperate elsewhere. If it wins, it will continue to expand its empire at gunpoint and its rivals will need to make plans to undermine and defeat it. Either way, the character of the present period remains unchanged, an age of inter-imperialist rivalry. Competition among bosses always leads to war. The profit system and peace are mutually exclusive.

History shows that imperialist war contains the seed of its opposite: communist revolution. The old communist movement of Lenin, Stalin and Mao proved that workers' power could be won from the mayhem of fascism and bosses' bloodlettings. But the first great revolutions reverted to capitalism. They made concessions to bourgeois forces and ideas. We can build on the accomplishments of these giants that preceded us and, learning from their errors, try to avoid their deadly mistakes. So a bright and qualitatively better future can emerge from the dark days that lie around us.

The imperialists are not omnipotent. They have many internal weaknesses. They can be defeated. They rely on terror, bribery, lies and the illusion that things can't change. Communists rely on the deep aspirations of our class worldwide -- abolishing poverty and imperialist wars -- on the truth, and on the as yet untapped fighting potential of hundreds of millions of workers everywhere, who can eventually do whatever is necessary to change the world. Our Party's great task as the storm clouds gather is to learn from workers, soldiers and others how to bring them the unbeatable weapon of communist ideology. The PLP has made some modest progress since September 11. We can make more. History and the survival of our class demand that we measure up to the task.

Imperialists' `Anti-terrorist' Love Affair Won't Last

Don't be fooled by the politicians' and media's hype about the U.S.'s "allies" in this oil war or about a U.S.-led "coalition against terrorism." U.S. imperialism has no allies other than Great Britain, whose rulers have entered the fight to protect the profits of BP Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell, both of whose interests frequently collide with those of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other U.S. energy giants. As for a "coalition," it's a fiction. This is an imperialist war. Its purpose is to give U.S. imperialism what the government calls "full spectrum dominance" around the world. Other imperialists appear to have given the U.S. a free hand to launch its war in Afghanistan. The reasons are purely tactical. The rulers of each country involved all have their own selfish and temporary reasons for not opposing U.S. aggression.

For one thing, neither Russia nor China, which loom as eventual threats to U.S. world domination, can yet challenge the U.S. military frontally. Both need time and room to maneuver. Both the Chinese and the Russians have problems of their own with potentially destabilizing Islamic fundamentalist movements. The Chinese created their own monster in Xinjiang, on the Afghanistan border, when they backed Uighur Muslim separatists to help U.S. imperialism in its 1979-89 proxy war in Afghanistan against the crumbling Soviet Union. Today, the Uighur movement has turned into a threat to the internal rule of Chinese bosses. The U.S. is therefore doing China's own dirty work by intervening against the Taliban, who are politically allied with the Uighur separatists.

The same is true of the Russian ruling class, which has been fighting its own war with Islamic separatists in oil-rich Chechnya. Putin & Co. seem to have given Bush a long list of concessions. However, they are purely tactical, and they can be easily retracted. They also come with a price. It includes western credits and technology and, more than anything, a U.S. guarantee that Russian imperialism will no longer face CIA interference in Chechnya. Of course, guarantees between imperialists are good only until they're broken, but that's exactly the point. All this love-making is basically just a series of cautious maneuvers between deadly rivals. The U.S. goal of controlling international military, political and economic affairs conflicts with the aims and interests of Chinese and Russian rulers. Well before Bush's oil war had begun in Afghanistan, the Chinese military was arguing for the "establishment and maintenance of a new regional security order." Last June, China and Russia, which had already demilitarized their 4,000-mile common border, pulled four Central Asian Republics into a "Shanghai co-operation organization." Chinese leader Jiang Zemin identified its purpose as "fostering world multi-polarization," a fancy phrase for challenging U.S. super-power status (see George Monbiot, Guardian, 10/23).

Both the Chinese and the Russians have an enormous stake in the future exploitation and transport of Persian Gulf and Caspian energy. China, as an expanding imperialist power, needs a dramatic increase in its oil and gas supply over the next generation. It is building a deep-water navy. Russia has no intention of handing over its Caspian prize to Exxon Mobil, et al. U.S.-Russian unity against Islamic fundamentalism is cautious and unstable. If the present fighting in Afghanistan overflows into Tajikstan and Uzbekistan, "Russia will feel bound to intervene" (Financial Times, 10/23). The U.S. already has troops stationed in Uzbekistan. For the time being, however, Putin and his cronies are only too happy to let the U.S. play the heavy for inflicting massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The Russian bosses can keep slaughtering tens of thousands in Chechnya and use U.S. atrocities as a convenient cover.

Then there's the matter of Russian interests in Iran and Iraq, the U.S. imperialists' two biggest headaches in the Persian Gulf. Russian companies have weapons contracts for $1.5 billion with Iran over the next five years, as well as plans to build an $850 million nuclear reactor there. Russian oil firms, along with the French and Chinese, have multi-billion dollar contracts pending for Iraqi oil. If the U.S. imperialists feel compelled to expand the present war to Iraq, the Russians, French and Chinese won't sit still. The Financial Times (10/23) quotes Putin's closest aide as saying, "We do not intend to lose [markets] because the U.S. does not like some country."

Added to this murderous mix comes the Indian ruling class, which has a long-standing rivalry with Pakistan (a U.S. collaborator of convenience, which could easily turn into an enemy in a big hurry). Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons as well as key designs on Central Asian oil and gas. Saudi Arabian oil and gas remain the biggest prizes of all, and U.S. rulers will go to any length to keep them. Yet the Saudi royal family, which the U.S. military keeps in power, isn't playing ball with its big uncle. The U.S. hasn't managed to arm-twist the Saudis into blocking the financial assets of anti-U.S. terror groups, and the Saudis have also refused to give U.S. intelligence services police records of the 14 September 11 highjackers who were Saudi citizens. So even the U.S.'s closest pals are playing a double game, for the sake of their own survival and selfish class interests.

As Thomas Friedman, a key mouthpiece for the interests of the liberal U.S. ruling class whines, "except for the...Brits, we're all alone." (10/26) This war for oil in Afghanistan has several potential immediate outcomes. Every one of them will lead to a drastic sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalry. Every time the conflicts sharpen between the major imperialists, the threat of world war increases. It may still take some years to develop, but the direction is clear and irreversible. Capitalism offers only darkness and death at the end of the tunnel. Communist revolution is the only light. The PLP pledges to keep it alive today so that it can engulf the world tomorrow.

U.S. Rulers Sinking In Afghan Quagmire?

The "war against terrorism" seems to have hit some serious snags. The Taliban are no pushovers. They still mislead workers with religion and nationalism. U.S. efforts to form a coalition capable of ruling in Exxon Mobil's interest have flopped so far. The U.S. suffered a significant reversal when the Taliban captured and executed Abdul Haq, a U.S. agent considered "a key player in eroding support for the ethnic regime among ethnic Pushtuns [a group whose backing is necessary for any government in Afghanistan -- Ed.]... Haq's death is a body blow to U.S. attempts to destabilize the Taliban." (Stratfor, 10/26)

Making plans to corner oil and gas supplies and delivery routes from Kosovo through the Middle East and Afghanistan is one thing. Executing those plans is another, especially when it requires conquering and holding territory. It can't be done from the air.

Compared to the millions of Vietnamese workers and farmers who ground the U.S. military into the dust 30 years ago in People's War, the Taliban aren't much. Compared to the tens of millions of Soviet workers who heroically smashed Hitler's Nazi barbarians in World War II, or to the many millions of Chinese workers and farmers who crushed Japanese imperialism and then drove out Chiang Kai-shek's pro-U.S. capitalist thugs in 1949, the Taliban are even less impressive. Yet, for the moment at least, the Taliban, an under-equipped motley force of national-capitalist holy rollers, are giving U.S. imperialism all it can handle.

We must never fall into the trap of choosing sides when capitalists fight. The brutality of the big capitalist should never delude us into uniting with the smaller one. A boss is a boss is a boss -- they're all rotten. We should view U.S. imperialism's predicament in Afghanistan as proof that although they can inflict deadly damage, they aren't omnipotent. Each of their adventures creates problems they can't solve. The bosses' dilemmas in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf provide our class and our Party with a window of opportunity to organize and grow.

The U.S. Nazis-Anthrax Connection

The evidence is mounting that the current spread of anthrax is coming from "white Christian," U.S. citizen, domestic neo-Nazis, not Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group. These home grown fascists have been responsible for the vast majority of previous terrorist acts on U.S. soil, from the Oklahoma City bombing to anthrax attacks on hundreds of abortion clinics and doctors to the bomb planted at the Atlanta Olympics.

Bush and the media blamed bin Laden (and Iraq) to generate popular support for imperialist wars in Central Asia and the Middle East, and to pass the "anti-terrorist" law (similar to the laws passed in Hitler Germany), to build a fascist police state. After the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, Clinton and the media directed suspicions at, and rounded up Arabs, before it turned out that all-American Timothy McVeigh was the culprit.

Last May, former FBI director Louis Freeh testified to a Congressional committee that domestic terrorists had planned "potentially large-scale, high-casualty attacks" including blowing up a large propane storage facility in Elk Grove, Calif., raiding National Guard armories and right-wing militia attacks on electric power lines in several Southern states.

Anthrax and vials of bacteria causing bubonic plague were recovered from Larry Wayne Harris, a U.S. microbiologist and member of the fascist Aryan Nation. He had participated with the racist Christian Identity Church and wrote a book on Germ Warfare whose "scope and depth of information...make it an effective do-it-yourself manual for mass destruction through biological terrorism" (Intelligence Report).

From January 1998 to April 2001, there were 172 false anthrax reports in the U.S., one-third against abortion clinics. Some of the current anthrax threats sent to abortion clinics, "contained references to the Army of God, a militant anti-abortion group that had endorsed violence against clinics and doctors." (William Lutz, N.Y. Daily News, 10/18)

The Washington Post (10/24) reported that investigators "say privately that the mailings do not have the earmarks of an al Qaeda terrorist operation and seem more likely to have come from a domestic source." The N.Y. Post (10/26) reported that federal agencies believe that "members of several [U.S.] anti-government hate groups...have obtained anthrax...from several U.S.-based laboratories before it surfaced in Florida, Washington and New York." The Post also said that the FBI was analyzing a dozen letters, "including several that pre-date the World Trade Center attacks and the anthrax scare that were sent to various media outlets [which]....had similar messages and handwriting as the [current] germ-tainted notes."

Many of the targets of the present anthrax letters -- Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and "liberal media" spokesmen like Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather -- are the kinds of people the neo-Nazis have hated for years.

The Washington Post (10/26) ran a front-page article reporting that, "A government official with direct knowledge of the investigation said...the totality of the evidence...suggests it is unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former Soviet Union or Iraq." It is far more likely that the anthrax was either stolen from the U.S. military or supplied by neo-Nazis within the military. Many of the religious fundamentalist groups linked to the neo-Nazis were also heavily involved in electing President Bush.

As these links of anthrax to the neo-Nazis spread, the FBI might, just might, arrest some of them in order to calm the panic and use it to claim that the people can look to the rulers for "protection." But meanwhile the government will use the anthrax attacks that are infecting and killing postal workers to enforce the new "anti-terrorist" laws, tighten the screws on U.S. workers and crush any mass opposition to their imperialist wars.

Nazis Support 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

"Anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is all right by me," declared Billy Roper, the coordinator of the National Alliance, the largest umbrella organization of U.S. neo-Nazis. And Gary Bruer, whose racist writings are circulated widely among white supremacists groups, posted a website message reading, "Is there not a single person who has received these anthrax letters that isn't an avowed enemy of the white race? Tom Brokaw [NBC anchor], Tom Daschle [Senate majority leader] and the gossip rag offices have all been 100% legitimate targets." (N.Y. Observer, 10/28)

U.S. Sanctions on Iraq = Biological Warfare

"Researchers have just learned...that the U.S. government expressly destroyed Iraq's sewage and water treatment facilities, knowing full well the result would be widespread disease and epidemics. In short, biological warfare. The U.S. refuses to allow Iraq to import chlorine to purify water.

"According to the UN, 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, have died from disease and malnutrition caused by U.S. sanctions. Thousands more Iraqis have died from cancers linked to U.S. depleted uranium munitions." (Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, 10/24)

British GI's Want
No part of U.S. Afghan War

Twenty-two thousand "British soldiers taking part in a big exercise in Oman...displayed little public enthusiasm to join the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan," reported the British Financial Times (10/24). "I just want to go home," said Wayne Knighton, a senior aircraftsman. Another said, "The one thing on my mind is to get home."

Mark Jones, a member of Britain's joint helicopter force, said his family was worried he could go to Afghanistan. "I have to reassure them I am just here to carry on with" the exercise in Oman.

Only some officers said they were "keen to swap the rigors of [the] Exercise...for [a] full-blown war in Afghanistan."

Fascism Comes to the UFT

NEW YORK, NY, October 16 -- Once again the leadership of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has shown its true (fascist) colors. At this month's Delegate Assembly (DA), several teachers held up a sign reading "Don't Sacrifice Students' Education -- No War Contract." Delegates around them joined their chants "No give backs, no war contract."

After they were escorted from the auditorium, UFT president Randi Weingarten gave the assembled delegates an angry lecture, saying that in a "democratic assembly" acts of "physical harassment" used instead of "words" were the equivalent of "terrorism." As she spoke, boos erupted from around the room. DA members were so outraged that a protest letter is now circulating demanding that Weingarten apologize for her repression of dissent.

The UFT leadership is busily exposing itself as the class enemy of the workers it supposedly serves. At this same meeting the leadership presented a resolution supporting the U.S. war in Afghanistan. It called on teachers to train their students to be patriotic citizens. Many delegates vehemently opposed this resolution. Finally a PLP comrade gave an impassioned speech linking the history of U.S. imperialism with the current war and called on teachers to protest this war as they did Vietnam. Although the pro-war resolution finally passed, afterwards many delegates approached the comrade with hugs and handshakes to thank her for her speech.

The UFT rank and file can and must be won to see the truth about its leadership. Weingarten & Co. do not serve the interests of teachers or students. No matter which mayoral candidate they decide might give teachers a fraction more wage increase, the UFT leadership supports the war machine that will send our students to die while killing other youth and workers. These union leaders are part and parcel of the capitalist system which needs them to help keep the working class miseducated. It's the job of communist teachers and students to see through the illusions in the system and recognize the need for revolution.

Charleston Five Freed from Home Arrest

Charleston, SC--Five dockworkers who were among hundreds of fellow unionists attacked by 600 riot cops in January 2000 were released from more than 18 months under house arrests. The workers, four black and one white, were fighting the unloading of a ship by scab labor. Their trial is due to start in mid-November. The International Transport Workers Federation, with millions of air, sea and land members worldwide, had pledged to organize an international one-day strike when the trial opens.

RCC Students march against
corrupt college prez

BOSTON, Oct. 28 -- A large group of Roxbury Community College (RCC) students marched through the halls of this predominantly black school protesting the corrupt and racist practices of president Grace Brown and her administration, demanding they be fired. A teach-in on the RCC crisis was scheduled for Oct. 31. See next issue for full story.

Opposition to Oil War Good for Public Health

ATLANTA, GA., Oct. 30 -- Thirteen thousand public health workers attended the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) here last week at which opposition to oil wars became official policy for the coming year. Hundreds of workshops convened under the conference theme of "One World - Global Health."

The struggle over war and biological weapons dominated the meeting. Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party concentrated on building the struggle against imperialism and war. They distributed thousands of leaflets entitled, "Terror or Territory? Why the US Makes War" and many CHALLENGES with a special anti-imperialist supplement. Representatives on the policy-making Governing Council introduced a resolution calling on APHA to oppose "wars motivated by economic objectives, such as dominance over regions rich in petroleum reserves (which) are not in the interests of ordinary civilians or the soldiers of the countries concerned."

We had attended numerous meetings to argue against the war and leafleted and lobbied the 200 members of the Governing Council. With some friendly modifications, the resolution passed the Governing Council and will serve as interim policy for the coming year (and permanent policy if ratified next year), a significant step forward.

People attending the hearing applauded the resolution and thanked the presenter for raising it. However, the real test will be winning the thousands of public health workers and others to understand how the war serves the interests of the oil companies and the needs of capitalism to secure resources and markets. One question asked was, "So then, what do we replace this system with?" This can lead to discussions rejecting a system based on profiteers' control of oil and help workers take power to organize a society based on sharing according to need.

While the struggle against war dominated our work, it is not the only issue demanding attention. Due to many years of government cutbacks from the Carter to the Clinton administrations, public health departments are seriously under-funded and insufficiently trained to protect the public against emergency situations. Now with the anthrax deaths, the federal government is appropriating millions for vaccine development and drug stockpiling (with a sweet deal for Bayer, the manufacturers of Cipro). Yet little is available for tens of thousands of young people infected with HIV, for children unvaccinated for measles, and for seniors unable to afford prescription medications. U.S. capitalism pumps billions into its wars for oil and markets and a minimum to keep the working class barely healthy enough to work.

Another issue involved members and friends of the Coalition Against CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity). We won a battle against this private organization that pays $200 to women who use drugs if they agree to sterilization or long-term birth control use, typically targeting poor black women. Last year, the Governing Council passed interim policy rejecting CRACK's strategy, and APHA members and leaders publicly condemned their coercive and racist methods.

CRACK threatened to sue APHA for libel. When APHA's policy committee tried to withdraw the resolution from consideration this year, activists mobilized support to retain it among grass roots organizations, epidemiologists, students and physicians. The decision to withdraw was overturned and the resolution became permanent policy. Supporters will use this victory to develop wider opposition to CRACK and to launch a campaign for much-needed drug treatment programs for women.

We also campaigned against the over-medication of young children with Ritalin and other psychological drugs, pointing out that social problems contribute to children's behaviors more than biology. Plans are under way to sponsor a session on this next year.

Our efforts here taught us that many professionals will organize against racism and imperialism, and fight to ensure the health of the public. Many were outraged that APHA took pharmaceutical donations from, and named an award after, GlaxoSmithKline, a leading HIV drug manufacturer that refused to lower prices in Africa.

As one Party member said to a room of anti-war activists, "It's time we raise our ideas about communism and taking state power with our friends and colleagues. It's not enough to oppose another war without building support for revolution." She spoke for all of us.

LA Teachers Building Anti-War Movement

LOS ANGELES, CA, Oct. 29 -- Many teachers with differing viewpoints are trying to build a movement against the war in this city's teachers union. In the union's Human Rights Committee, there was agreement on introducing a resolution against the war in Afghanistan. However, there was a debate about whether or not to say that this is a fight over control of oil profits, and to condemn international AFT union president Sandra Feldman for her letter to President Bush offering the union's support for efforts "to hunt down and punish those who committed these atrocious acts as well as those who harbor and help them."

Most committee members, feeling this would make the resolution less likely to pass, were unwilling to criticize Feldman and didn't think the war was for oil or oil profits. Others arguing that it was a war for oil, convinced some and interested others.

On the floor of the union's House of Representatives, there was a sharp fight about the resolution. It nearly passed, losing by only 70 to 79. It was clear, however, from the sharp disagreement, that there was a lot of patriotism and support for the bombing, and that any resolution condemning the bombing would have been defeated, whether or not it included oil or Feldman.

More teachers are reading CHALLENGE, which makes sense out of the current situation. In one local area meeting, a motion passed to support the coalition anti-war demonstration this weekend. At the demonstration, high school students played an enthusiastic role, carrying signs saying, "End terror for oil profit" and "No war for oil" and in leading chants against war for oil.

West Coast HS Students `Sticker' It to Oil War

The September 11 attacks drew mixed emotions from West Coast student and teacher Party members and friends. We felt sadness and pain at the deaths of so many of our working-class brothers and sisters. We feared that bombing Afghanistan would kill many more workers. We were angry with those who committed the 9/11 attacks, as well as with those whose policies made war and this attack inevitable.

At ensuing meetings we tried to clarify the events and discuss how to build a long-term movement against the war. One person had been wearing a black armband. A former student and campus worker said she was denied a candle at a university vigil and made to feel unwelcome because she was a "lowly" campus worker, not a student. Others related attacks on immigrants, including Moslems, Arabs and even Mexicans.

We analyzed how the U.S. bosses are using this attack as an excuse to send ground troops to seize control of Middle East oil reserves and institute more fascism here against workers and youth in the U.S. who will oppose the bosses. We showed "The Three Kings" at a high school movie night, a film that admitted the Gulf War was a fight for oil, but said the U.S. should have taken out Saddam Hussein.

We shared our analysis with our friends but began feeling overwhelmed by the American flags around us and the reaction of many teachers and students. We decided we had to take the initiative, to build a broad movement opposing the war and struggle sharply with our friends and within this movement for people to understand this war was not against terrorism but for control of oil.

Teachers at one school received permission from the Social Studies department to invite speakers to discuss U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, what's happening in Afghanistan, Hart-Rudman and the growth of fascism and anti-immigrant racism here in the U.S. We also planned T-shirts showing U.S. soldiers propping up a gasoline pump, and to distribute stickers saying "No War for Oil!"

When the bombing of Afghanistan began we were having a picnic and were able to ensure that students at three different high schools had the stickers. The next Monday 400 students wore those stickers, with a big black oil drop, overlaid with the words in red NO WAR FOR OIL. On the Friday morning before the Social Studies assembly, we distributed CHALLENGES and 300 leaflets with the same oil drops and headline.

We have really emphasized the oil question, using articles in the bosses' press and cartoons from the Internet, and shared them with our friends. We've overheard other teachers trying to figure out if oil is somehow involved.

In the Social Studies class discussion, after a speaker discussed oil, one student member spoke eloquently about how working-class students, especially black and Latin, have no stake in this system. Since we don't own oil wells or stock in oil companies, we should definitely not go to kill and die for them in the Middle East.

PLP'er Turns Towson Teach-in Sharply to Left

TOWSON, MD, October 15 -- The Baltimore CollegeTown Network sponsored a "teach-in" panel tonight entitled "Crisis in Context: Terrorism and the American Response." About 800 people attended, including many students. The panel was moderated by Goucher College's president and featured a representative of Voice of America's (VOA) Pashto Service, another from VOA's Dari broadcast service, a University of Maryland Law faculty member (and former adviser to Janet Reno) and three "terrorism and military specialists" from the Brookings Institute, University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University (see photo above).

Several left-wing panelists reportedly resigned in disgust when they saw the above list. One panelist was conveniently omitted initially, Joe Morton, professor of Peace Studies at Goucher College He was the only one without pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist leanings.

The initial statements from all panelists combined lasted at least an hour. All except Morton refused to delve into the question of U.S. terrorism in the Middle East. Instead they concentrated totally on the "essentials" of "homeland security" and a superficial "analysis" of the Taliban.

Their prevalent right-wing agenda hindered Morton when his turn came because he had to go "against the grain" after all previous panelists had established an ultra-nationalist mood. But when the floor was opened, things changed.

The first speaker, immediately identifying himself as a communist and Party member, dove headlong into explaining the dark past of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, starting as early as the mid-1950s and the rule of Iran's Shah. He brought that "three-letter word" nobody mentioned, oil, to the forefront. Most of the audience applauded thunderously at various points. Finally the panel moderator cut him off and he sat down to more modest applause. This forced the entire panel to deal with issues it had ignored; the debate shifted sharply to the left.

The next speaker drew on these same themes, including control of resources, U.S. support of fascistic and dictatorial governments in the Middle East -- including Israel -- for decades, and the gradual but steady extermination of over a million children in Iraq from U.S. economic sanctions and bombings since Desert Storm. Both continue in full force today. This speaker was also cut off before he could finish.

The third speaker was less vocal, but by then it didn't matter. The panel was clearly incompetent to address such issues, skirting around them and emphasizing "the present, not the past." The audience laughed uproariously and clicked their teeth at such an obvious display of fancy verbal footwork and attempts to justify the unjustifiable. When the moderator asked the VOA's Pashto Service representative (an Afghan immigrant) if all these claims about the U.S. committing international atrocities and building up Osama Bin Laden were correct, she replied coolly, "I think it is." Many questioners following this were seeking the real issues behind September 11th.

The pro-capitalist, ultra-nationalist, skirt-around-root-causes theme never fully re-emerged once audience members stepped forward. As the crowd filed out, we distributed a Party flyer. Most took it and a few gave their names. Others congratulated the PLP comrade for his courage, and for sparking views that otherwise probably would have been completely ignored. Out of these efforts, we will work to expand our club in Baltimore.

A Student Comrade

Anti-war Struggle Rising Among NYC Welfare Workers

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 17 -- "I liked what you said tonight", exclaimed a delegate in Social Services Employees Union Local 371 (SSEU) as he made a small donation to PLP. The delegates assembly had just debated a resolution opposing the Homeland Security Agency and also war as the answer to the attack on the World Trade Center. Although the resolution was defeated by a 3 to 1 margin, it was a good start in combating the bosses' pro-war patriotic offensive. After the meeting, several delegates continued the discussion and offered suggestions on how to raise these issues in the future.

At our worksites the struggle is taking other forms. At one office the aim is to have workers put up a poster reading, "END ALL Government, Police, Religious, Ethnic TERROR. UNITE ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD! The text is written over a world map. This poster is being posed as an alternative to flying the bosses' flag. At another job site, the city bosses have attacked a delegate for circulating a PLP anti-imperialist flyer. We're planning to fight this attempt to silence us.

Some co-workers have argued that terrorism must be fought and that therefore Bush's war must be supported. The Local 371 leadership argues that anti-war resolutions are "premature."

We've said that we're caught in the middle of a battle between two sets of bosses who are fighting for control of the world's wealth, and in particular its oil. We shouldn't take sides with either but rather fight in the interests of our class worldwide!

Newark PLP Forum Hits Police State

NEWARK, NJ, October 20 -- Tonight 27 people attended a forum sponsored by a New Jersey PLP club to discuss the World Trade Center attack.

A Party speaker labeled the bombing of Afghanistan not as a "war against terrorism" but as phase one of the first oil war of the 21st century.

A second speaker related this to the growth of fascist laws in the U.S., among them the "New Jersey Domestic Security Preparedness Act." It establishes a nine-member task force:including the State Police Superintendent, the Attorney General and three appointed members, at least one a "bio-terrorism" expert. This will be the state connection to the federal Homeland Security Council. It will have the power to make regulations with no public input, to issue subpoenas and to go to court to force "anyone who doesn't furnish information required by the law to do so." Other new laws broaden the definition of terrorism and increase the mandatory penalties to 30 years in jail. This could include militant anti-racist action against the KKK/Nazis.

A lively discussion covered everything from the possibility of World War III to whether the U.S. government had something to do with the WTC attacks. When the question arose about what we could do, one worker pointed out the critical importance of getting CHALLENGE to more people. Others raised the need to make more friends in our neighborhoods, interact with people in a more communal way and raise issues with our co-workers.

The forum ended with a call to join PLP. Many stayed to eat the delicious food prepared by our host and continue the discussions. This forum showed a good response from PLP's friends in New Jersey in fighting the growth of war and fascism following the WTC attack.

Workers of the World, Write
LETTERS

Fight For Exxon? Youth Say, `Hell, No!'

I teach at a New York City high school. Just two days after the World Trade Center attack, I discussed the event with both teachers and students. Along with the grief and sadness, many are following the ruling class's drumbeat of racism and patriotism, but when that was challenged, a number either backed down or had no answer.

A discussion among a group of teachers in the lounge led to the "culture of Arabs." One teacher, an African immigrant, said "only Arabs highjack planes; it's part of their culture." (!) I asked if he meant all Arabs worldwide. He replied, "You know what I mean."

Another teacher, a Christian minister, said terrorism is an underlying root linking all followers of Islam. I asked him if racism is an underlying root of all Christians because many Christians believe in racism. He had no answer.

Then another teacher said Arabs just "hate freedom." I asked her, do you mean all people fleeing economic and physical repression hate freedom? Unbelievably she said "yes." We have our work cut out for us.

I reminded my colleagues we teachers have a responsibility to counter the racism U.S. leaders are passing off as patriotism, that our students will be on the front lines fighting students from Afghanistan or some other poor oppressed country. We must talk to our students about the racism many of our working-class Arab brothers and sisters are facing.

Another teacher said that much of the discussion reminded him of when he was living in Georgia. He said some teachers were expressing a lynch-mob mentality. Again, there was no response.

In class, my students told me how some kids on their block were planning to attack Arab workers at a neighborhood store. When I asked them how they felt about that, they honestly said they didn't know. I told them they must be careful not to get caught up in the hype being drummed into all of us. Most of all, we must resist becoming racist thugs for the bosses. I reminded them how Japanese-Americans were put into concentration camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that we must fight against racism in all its forms.

One student asked how old you must be before being drafted. I said eighteen. I asked him how old he was. He quietly responded, "eighteen but I'm not going in the army." That sentiment was echoed around the classroom.

Since these initial discussions, a few weeks had passed and things are getting clearer. I've raised the idea in my classes that the U.S. is waging war not necessarily to fight terrorism but to control the world's oil. In one class I took down a globe and the students and I mapped out the areas where the current battles are occurring, and their relationship to the oil fields. They immediately saw how the countries were connected and that this indeed may be a war for oil. Not one student completely disagreed with the idea.

Most of my students are at or near 18. I reminded them they would be asked to fight this war for the bosses. I asked if they were willing to fight for the oil companies. One student responded, "If you put it that way Mister, hell no!" Again most students seemed to nod their heads in agreement.

A NYC Teacher

Taking to the Streets in Germany

(The following are excerpts from a letter received from friends in Germany's MLPD party who recently visited the U. S.)

Thank you once more for showing us your city and for explaining the situation for the U.S. working class. It was really good to get a deeper view of what's going on. Your Chicago friends' description of their political organizing was very important to us.

You can imagine how shocked we were hearing about and seeing the terrorist murders in New York and Washington. In our newspaper we published your editorial in which you explain that, "These bombardments are not part of the international class struggle of the working class against capitalism. They damage the class struggle...."

The U.S. and NATO are already threatening to bomb other countries, as they have done in the Balkans. We're participating in demonstrations against a possible new war. Lots of people are in the streets saying Schröder (the Chancellor) does not speak in the name of the people when he backs U.S. policy. In the factories there is a very politicized situation, a lot of discussions.

We heard that there are demonstrations in the U.S. too, especially at the universities. Could you send us some information as soon as possible?

Thanks and greetings,

Comrades from Germany

`Seems the Problem is Capitalism . . .'

For about two years I've been active in a pro-Democratic Party group. It concentrates on elections and community problems, usually with very little emphasis on national and international events. Recently I was surprised when the person leading our meeting started talking about the Twin Towers. After briefly introducing the subject, he asked for comments or questions. Everyone spoke and not in patriotic terms.

People expressed their fear of a vast unleashing of racism nationwide and of its affect on black and Latino workers, as well as the ruling class's attempt to win them to racism against Arabs or Muslims. One person asked about the history the government doesn't teach us, which could help explain why the world hates the U.S. so much. Another was suspicious about the government spending so much on security ($30 billion for the CIA and FBI and $300 billion on the armed forces) but not to have anticipated these attacks. He insinuated that the government knew about it but allowed it because they want people to support their wars.

Everybody commented and no one supported the war against Afghanistan or against terrorism. Near the end I presented the Party position, including that this was a war for oil profits. Everybody listened. Some exclaimed, "That's exactly what I thought!" Any doubts they had about the imperialist motives behind this bosses' war were being dissipated. One woman who has considerable confidence in the electoral process, and to whom I had previously explained that racism was caused by the profit system, told me afterwards, "It seems to me the problem is capitalism, the search for profits."

A Comrade

A Little Work,
Big Results

If you want to gain confidence in the Party's communist ideas, just do a little something. Soon after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, I distributed a flyer to teachers, explaining this was a war for oil. I included a somewhat liberal resolution that I planned to present at a larger union meeting. Reactions to this flyer were varied and very encouraging.

The next morning I received a note thanking me, indicating agreement with most of the flyer. Later that day I had a heated discussion about the U.S. world role. Was the U.S. an imperialist country that savaged most of the world for profit or was it a great democracy? Was it the best country in the world, that had made a few mistakes (killing millions in Vietnam) and compromises (arming Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran) along the way? Somehow Hitler and the Nazis came up in the conversation. I was somewhat agitated and said U.S. rulers were worse than Hitler. Well, my friend flipped out. "How could I say such a thing?" My friend left, outraged at me. Then several people joined me. They explained I was correct, citing genocide against the Native Americans, slavery and the Vietnam War as three examples of U.S. government atrocities. I mentioned the million Iraqis killed since the Persian Gulf War, including 500,000 children.

The next day several others told me how glad they were I had distributed the flyer. One very shy fellow pulled me aside, saying how nice I had said what people were afraid to say. Many people were grateful for an opposition voice. I tried to explain I had a communist perspective but this was very difficult in short conversations. I offered CHALLENGE to everyone for a fuller analysis. Six people took it. One said she had always liked communism but just wasn't sure it could work.

Several students were upset about my flyer and wanted to see it. I obliged. One student saw a cartoon about oil pipelines through Afghanistan. She suggested I distribute it as a follow-up to the flyer.

There's a lot to do. The working class is wonderful. People really want to understand what's going on. One teacher who supported the war was still very interested in receiving anti-war information from a communist perspective. He wants to read CHALLENGE and talk about it.

Every day comes with a little struggle, a little excitement, as we inch ever closer to a decent world, communism. Between the working class and communism, life is really worth living.

Brooklyn Teacher

New York City
Anti-War March

In New York City on October 27 there was a vigorous anti-war rally and march in midtown Manhattan. Speakers at the Times Square rally and the teach-in which followed correctly pointed out the horrors of fighting another imperialist war for oil - massive attacks on workers in Afghanistan and in the entire Middle East. Many U.S. workers, who up to now have been largely deceived into believing that this is a "war against terrorism," will also suffer.

Comrades distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and other PL literature and made numerous contacts. The large police presence was very intimidating. Firemen also joined the threat. The herding of all demonstrators into metal pens, surrounded by cops, made it very difficult to get in and out, an example of growing fascism.

One political drawback was the revisionist ideas of the March leaders. At the workshop I attended on the politics of the Middle East, Palestinian nationalism was presented as "good," while others, such as the Jewish/Israeli one, were presented as "bad." They're doing the bosses' work by dividing the working class according to ethnicity. Nationalism is designed to lead workers to support "their" bosses' wars. Never has the PLP's idea of opposing all nationalism been more necessary. A united working class can truly never be defeated. It's unfortunate that honest people who are anti-imperialist can be confused by this, but the correctness of our ideas will prevail.

NYC comrade

So Much for
the `Heroes'

It's just an ordinary day in a NY public high school, except that students will be released early for parent-teacher conferences. A representative of the Municipal Credit Union (MCU) visits our school offering various financial services to the staff: bank accounts, loans, insurance, etc. Usually the rates and fees are better than the big banks'.

It turns out that MCU was located on Church St. across from the World Trade Center. Its main records were destroyed. In fact checks and deposits with the MCU are still running a few days late. I overhear that Con Edison cut off the lights of one city worker because an MCU check bounced. I wonder how many flags Con Ed is flying...

Thousands of city employees bank with the MCU. Their accounts were totally inaccessible for two days after September 11th. So the MCU decided to just credit balances to its depositors and do the bookkeeping later. As the representative notes, "people need to eat." Not bad.

It didn't take city workers long to notice the change. All accounts were replenished at $500 every day for thirteen days straight. Then many depositors began withdrawing cash from ATMs, exceeding their original balances. Now many face charges as District Attorneys try to help the MCU catch up with the missing money.

I ask the MCU man whether any particular branch of city employees behaved the worst in this little episode. His response is immediate and unequivocal: the cops.

Try reading this story in your local newspaper. Long live CHALLENGE!

A New York Reader

In these times more than ever we need to give our friends a communist gift

Special for Challenge Readers:

THREE books for the price of one

NUCLEAR SPRING - A NOVELLA AND SHORT STORIES

Envisions a communist future growing out of World War III

Comrades

In 1975 in Boston, the racist anti-busing movement turned violent.

The anti-racist reaction to these events are part of the history of our class. The personal struggle to improve our lives now is drawn in these pages.

To Have in Common

A novel about a hospital strike during which workers run the hospital; 

Nine stories about people in ordinary circumstances developing communist values.

All three books for only US$20, send check or money order in name of Challenge Periodicals, to PLP GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, USA

 

(This issue of Challenge has a special supplement on the war against Afghanistan and how the fight for oil profits is is main cause)

---

Front Page :Patriotism Protects Profits

War Fever, Not Anthrax Is The Real Epidemic

What is Anthrax?

Editorial 1: U.S. Bosses Terrorize the Unemployed

a href="#‘Low-Income Workers Left Out in Cold As Layoffs Mount’">Lo"-Income Workers Left Out in Cold As Layoffs Mount

Editorial 2: Nissan Clobbers UAW . . . and Ford and GM, Too

Never Unite With Any Boss: Fight Massive Aerospace Layoffs

Rank-&-File Strike Solidarity Shafted by Liberal/Fascist Union Honchos

a href="#Excerpts from Union Machinists’ Open Letter To Boeing Workers:">"xcerpts from Union Machinists’ Open Letter To Boeing Workers:

Anti-War Movement Growing on Campuses

U.S. Is No Novice When It Comes To Terror Bombing

a href="#Bosses ‘Sacrifice’ Crap Lays Off NYC Workers">Bo"ses ‘Sacrifice’ Crap Lays Off NYC Workers

Florida Comes To NYC Mayorality Election

a href="#Afghanistan—Latest Chapter of New World Disorder">"fghanistan—Latest Chapter of New World Disorder

Letter From Israel

a href="#Terrorists—Big and Small">"errorists—Big and Small

Mobilize in Mexico Against Bush and Fox War

LETTERS

Michigan Workers Build Solidarity

a href="#NCO’s Had Better Watch Their Back">"CO’s Had Better Watch Their Back

Uniting With Arab Workers

a href="#‘9/11 has made me believe in what PLP fights for’">‘9"11 has made me believe in what PLP fights for’

Stands Up to Boss Attack Over WTC

---

CHALLENGE SUPPLEMENT, Oct. 31, 2001

U.S. Rulers Expand War For Oil To Central Asia

Afghanistan has always meant oil.

Bosses Bicker Over When To Invade Iraq

a href="#The ‘Vietnam Syndrome’">Th" 'Vietnam Syndrome'

U.S. Rulers Mask War Aims With ‘Crusade’ Crock

It Is All About Oil, Stupid!

---

Front Page

Patriotism Protects Profits

The present and future mass slaughters on all sides of a coming oil war should help the world’s workers learn the bitter lesson that "patriotically" uniting behind any capitalist means mayhem or death for us.

U.S. rulers are attempting to mobilize workers here to sacrifice our blood for the "national interest." It is clear that our class has nothing to gain from backing the terrorist atrocities that killed thousands on September 11. But we have even far more to lose by marching off to fight and die for Exxon’s super-profits.

The bosses are spouting one big lie after another to win our loyalty. The latest is their media’s hero-worship of the racist police, whose main job is to serve as the profit system’s first line of defense against workers in the class struggle. Suddenly the capitalist newspapers and television are idolizing the same blue-suited, armed Klansmen who have been gunning down black working-class youth for years under orders from above, and who will ruthlessly break strikes, as they always have. The U.S. "national" interest is the interest of the Exxon Mobil gang that holds state power. We mustn’t allow ourselves to be suckered into confusing our class interest with the rulers’ flag-waving lies.

The same principle applies in evaluating the bosses now lining up to fight U.S. imperialism. The bin Laden terrorists and other factions in the Muslim world can wrap themselves in the justified hatred millions of oppressed workers everywhere feel toward the murderous U.S. ruling class. Many people worldwide, as well as some here who sincerely oppose U.S. imperialism, are rooting openly or secretly for the defeat of the U.S. Empire in the present struggle.

But this is a fight among bosses. No worker anywhere should choose sides when capitalists do battle to realign the pecking order among them. There is no "lesser evil" capitalist. The laws of the profit system have an iron logic, regardless of the nationality or religion of the capitalist who dominates at any given time. This the logic of maximum profit. Replacing the barbarous, brutal Saudi royal family with another group of exploiters won’t reduce the misery of workers in the oil fields or diminish the inevitability of imperialist war. Replacing the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran with the present regime of holy roller nationalist mullahs hasn’t improved the life of Iranian workers one bit — and the threat of oil war involving Iran is as great as ever.

Workers who want to smash imperialism must not choose sides among imperialists or would-be imperialists. All-class unity behind any boss is a deadly loser. Our job is to build revolutionary unity among the workers of the world, across all borders and against all bosses.

War Fever, Not Anthrax Is The Real Epidemic

Anthrax is making big headlines. While the news media would have us believe we were in the middle of an epidemic, as of October 15, a tabloid editor in Florida is still the only American to die from the disease. US workers are much more likely to die from injury on the job, a stroke, or a racist cop’s bullet, than see a case of anthrax.

An anthrax epidemic is impossible, since the disease cannot be passed from person to person (see box). But that doesn’t stop the newsroom editors and TV news producers, with ever-increasing government direction, from playing on our fears to justify a police state and a major ground war.

More than 10,000 members of the American Public Health Association (APHA) will attend the annual meeting in Atlanta on October 22. This year’s theme is "Global Health," with a major focus on bio-terrorism. The ruling class will try to win public health workers to help spread the bio-terrorism hysteria. The struggle over ideas is likely to be intense. This must be resisted, exposing the hysteria based on lies, thereby calming exaggerated fears. This provides an atmosphere to fight against capitalism. At last year’s meeting, we saw a video of military jets flying in formation during the playing of the national anthem. This was followed by a keynote address by the U.S. Surgeon General in full military dress uniform. And that was before the current war.

Public health workers, students and professionals can truly promote "global health" by fighting for a world without racism and imperialist war. A communist society, run by the working class, would mobilize millions to provide desperately needed health services and build up health infrastructure, from Afghanistan and Iraq to lower Manhattan.

An imperialist oil war is not in the interests of the international working class. U.S. bombs will kill thousands of workers in Afghanistan. About 5,000 children die in Iraq every month, from US-imposed sanctions and the aftereffects of depleted uranium bombs dropped during the last Gulf war. Fighting the growing pressure to militarize public health, including the panic over biological and chemical warfare, is an important current struggle.

What is Anthrax?

Anthrax is a disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, a germ that infects livestock and wild animals in many parts of the world. Human disease occurs after exposure to an infected animal or to the spores, microscopic seed-like particles. The spores typically infect the skin of agricultural workers or gardeners, since they can remain dormant but infectious for years in the soil where an infected animal has been.

How would anthrax be used in germ warfare?

Spores are the form of the bacterium which bio-terrorists – including the US and British Armed Forces – have developed for spreading the disease. In a dry form, spores can be ground into a fine powder, which if inhaled can infect the lungs, leading to death in a few days.

How do you get anthrax?

The disease is transmitted to humans by infectious forms of the bacterium, usually spores, entering the body through the lungs, skin or the intestinal tract.

How bad is the disease?

The respiratory form of the disease is fatal in 90 to 100% of cases, the intestinal form (from eating meat of infected animals) can kill 25% of those who develop symptoms during an outbreak, and the skin or cutaneous form, is not fatal unless untreated.

Is anthrax contagious?

There has never been a confirmed case of respiratory anthrax being passed from one person to another. Epidemics of this disease are unknown.

[Sources: Center for Disease Control website and Journal of American Medical Association, May 12, 1999.]

EDITORIAL 1

U.S. Bosses Terrorize the Unemployed

As the U.S. ruling class drops bombs on Afghan workers, U.S. workers are on the receiving end of another type of bomb from those same bosses — mass unemployment.

During the year 2000, 18.5 million U.S. workers experienced joblessness at one time or another, according to the bosses’ government’s own calculations. If that was the figure for a "prosperity" year, the amount of workers without a job for some period during 2001 — when the bosses’ economy tumbled into a recession — may very well reach somewhere between 20 and 30 million. (Note that if you work just ONE HOUR in the course of a month, you are NOT counted as unemployed!)

The latest government report, for September, reports a job loss of 200,000 as compared to the previous month. And this excludes the layoffs occurring in the hundreds of thousands after the Sept. 11 attacks. If you worked one hour before that date, you’re counted as "employed" for the whole month.

Factory employment in September fell for the 14th consecutive month, reaching the lowest point in ten years, losing more than a million jobs since July 2000. Service jobs had the largest drop in a decade. "The unemployment numbers," reports the New York Times ((10/5) "were likely to become significantly worse" next month.

‘Jobless SafetyNet in Tatters’;

a name="‘Low-Income Workers Left Out in Cold As Layoffs Mount’"></">‘L"w-Income Workers Left Out in Cold As Layoffs Mount’

Such were the headlines over a report from Gannett News Services (Sept. 2) about how the budget was balanced during the Clinton years on the backs of the unemployed.

The $93.4 billion surplus in state and federal unemployment benefit trust funds at the end of 2000 was put into what the Democrats and Republicans call the "unified federal budget." This allows the bosses’ government to use this surplus to either balance the budget and/or pay for things like the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq. (That’s what they did with Social Security surpluses for 20 years, using hundreds of billions to pay for the "defense" budget.) Therefore, with less money available for unemployment benefits, they just cut out millions from qualifying:

• A former welfare recipient in Ohio laid off from a minimum-wage job making $154.50 for 30 hours of work can’t collect unemployment benefits because one needs a $169 weekly wage to qualify;

• In ten states, a parent who can’t work week-ends because of children at home can’t collect benefits;

• Thirty states disqualify workers from unemployment benefits if they didn’t work "full-time" (more than 30 hours a week).

This Gannett News Services dispatch says the government reported only 38% of last year’s jobless — 7 million workers — qualified to receive jobless benefits. That means 62% of the jobless, another 11.5 million, couldn’t collect unemployment checks, which adds up to a total of 18.5 million workers who were jobless at some time during 2000. And these are pre-recession figures!

Such are the fruits of U.S. capitalism’s profit drive, grinding workers — especially at the lowest end of the wage scale — into the dust. The bosses will do anything to squeeze workers so they can spend billions for war, and kill workers’ children to boot. Talk about terrorists! No one beats the U.S. ruling class.

EDITORIAL 2

Nissan Clobbers UAW . . . and Ford and GM, Too

DETROIT, MI, October 5 — The United Auto Workers suffered a stinging defeat when 4,500 Nissan workers in Smyra, Tennessee, voted 2-1 to remain non-union. This repeated the margin of defeat at a previous UAW effort in 1989, and comes after abandoning a campaign to organize Daimler workers in Alabama last spring. Another attempt to organize 9,000 Honda workers in Ohio is underway. In over 20 years, the union has failed to organize a single foreign-owned "transplant" assembly plant.

According to the Detroit Free Press (10/5), "Detroit’s auto makers may be lamenting the [UAW’s] defeat…as much as the union." The Free Press said, "Executives at GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler had been ‘silently rooting’ for the UAW," and quoted the president of an engineering firm that consults automakers and suppliers as saying, "Nothing would make those executives happier than to see everyone unionized." That’s because U.S. auto bosses have higher labor costs than Nissan, placing the former at a big disadvantage. They want the competition to have to pay the same in pensions, healthcare and work rules. And if the UAW can’t do it by organizing non-union plants, they’ll have to do it through give-backs at unionized ones.

"Transplant" workers make comparable, but lower, wages compared to Ford, GM and Chrysler workers. Also, there are no pensions, grievance procedures or work rules. On-the-job injuries are more than double, and workers have no seniority or job assignment protection. The turnover rate is very high, with many more "new hires" than veterans. These are young workers on their first good paying jobs, in areas that are historically anti-union. A fat paycheck and a new SUV in the driveway, plus threats and intimidation from the company, are formidable obstacles to any organizing drive.

But the problems run much deeper than such obstacles, high-priced union busters, or what kind of campaign to run, which certainly are factors. With the sharpened rivalries and the worldwide crisis of overcapacity, the UAW leadership is absolutely loyal and committed to the U.S. auto bosses. Their patriotic, nationalist outlook plus fat paychecks have made their fates inseparable. This Nissan defeat is a reflection of the "second invasion" of Japanese and German automakers made possible by the fact that GM, Ford and Chrysler are getting a shrinking share of a dwindling domestic market.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks pushed an economy already rolling down hill into a full-blown recession. According to the Oct. 8 Business Week (BW), auto sales are expected to drop to 16.1 million this year, down from 17 million last year. For 2002, sales are projected at just 15.2 million. A Merrill Lynch analyst said, "The impact…on the U.S. auto sector is devastating."

Ford is expected to lose $274 million in the third quarter and earn $604 million for the year, down from $3.5 billion last year. GM is expected to earn $2 billion for the year, down from $5 billion last year. Despite 26,000 firings in February, the Chrysler recovery is in deep trouble. To attempt to reverse this profit trend and get back to the previous year’s levels, the auto bosses will make deeper cuts and close plants here and internationally.

They are not alone. According to BW, Boeing is expected to see earnings fall 35% next year. The CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplane said, "Never in our wildest dreams did we believe we’d be in this kind of situation." As for steel BW says the mood is "pitch-black." "This industry is devastated and there could be a lot of pain and agony ahead." Of course, no mention is made of the pain and agony inflicted on the workers by the bosses’ past massive profits or the increased exploitation that is coming as the bosses use the gloomier profit picture as an excuse to squeeze workers even more.

In its own way, the failed Nissan campaign is a reminder that the union leaders are indeed ruling class lieutenants in the labor movement. Either you serve the bosses, or you serve the international working class. In this time of heightened war and rapidly developing fascism, every worker must organize against their union leaders and stand with the workers of the world.

Never Unite With Any Boss: Fight Massive Aerospace Layoffs

"I can’t believe how passively we are accepting these layoffs," complained a machinist, who decided to help distribute an open letter on the subject to aerospace workers. "People are just rolling their tool boxes out the door."

Internationally between 500,000 and a million aerospace workers will lose their jobs in the coming months.

"It’s because we lack class-consciousness," volunteered another union member at the meeting.

"Yeah, but that begs the question," responded the machinist, now clearly frustrated. "Why do we lack class-consciousness? I know a little history. It wasn’t always like this."

"A big part of the answer is that our understanding of class has been poisoned by nationalism. All this flag-waving undermines our ability to organize as a class. The weakness of the communist movement on this has opened us up to bosses’ attacks," answered a comrade self-critically.

The meeting decided to write an open letter labeling the bosses’ nationalism, "the patriotism of profits." About two dozen workers reviewed the draft with the majority giving valuable suggestions sharpening it considerably. For two weeks we distributed the letter massively within the plants.

Workers Expose Bosses’ Lies At Mass Crew Meetings

Amid this distribution, the bosses held mass crew meetings. They said it was like the Gulf War. The terrorist attack was an "external shock" they couldn’t have predicted and couldn’t be blamed for. The union followed suit with a headline blazoned across its paper’s front page, "Terrorism Impact Hits Home."

A number of workers boldly questioned the bosses’ pleas of innocence. In many ways, this crisis is completely different from the Gulf War. This "external shock" occurred when the industry was already in a capitalist crisis of overproduction. As the open letter said, the company had spent $6.7 billion over the last three years buying back its own stock in a desperate gamble to drive up the stock price. Much of this money was borrowed. The company was in hock. "Is the company going to end this speculation, or are they just going to continue to fire us to pay for more speculative adventures?" asked one worker. As expected, the bosses refused to answer.

"United We Stand" — Who’s "We"?

The bosses may have inadvertently hit on one truth. This is like the Gulf War in that the "War on Terrorism" is, more than anything else, about controlling Mid-East oil. The horrendous murder of thousands of innocent workers has given the U.S. ruling class the excuse they need to build a fascist police state to pave the way for that oil war.

Nonetheless, capitalism’s logic must assert itself. The union leaders, tied to the capitalist system, said we must first fight for government money to "save the airline industry." How far did this support for the airline companies get our class? The airline CEOs "thanked" us by introducing federal legislation to outlaw strikes! Capitalism, especially in crisis, intensifies exploitation, even as it builds for war. The continued attacks on aerospace workers have opened up more eyes than even a few weeks ago.

"I’m so disgusted after the meeting with the boss that I took my flag down," said a bench mechanic. "I didn’t believe you before, but I do now. It’s about which empire controls the oil! It’s time we started kicking some trash cans [a reference to the pre-strike tradition of "rolling thunder," the banging of metal on metal, hour after hour, throughout the factory].

Many other workers have not taken down their flags, even some who will soon be laid off. Nonetheless, the "United We Stand" banners throughout the plant must increasingly ring hollow, as the only "uniting" for many of us will be on the unemployment lines.

Two trends exist in the plants: nationalism and class-consciousness. These two trends are incompatible. "Workers of the world, unite" and "never unite with any boss" must be our guiding mottos as we broaden the fight against these layoffs.

Rank-&-File Strike Solidarity Shafted by Liberal/Fascist Union Honchos

SEATTLE, Oct. 15 — "At a time when striking is being called ‘unpatriotic,’ it is important to remember that you are fighting for your class brothers and sisters and that our fight is international."

This simple sentence in a support letter to be sent to the striking Minnesota state workers was enough to set off the biggest debate at my Union meeting in a long time.

When the Strike Committee of the University of Washington chapter of SEIU Local 925 met on campus a few weeks ago, one member’s proposal that such a letter be sent was agreed to. The member who proposed it volunteered to write it and present it at the Organizing Council (OC) meeting the following week.

This member’s draft letter saluted the actions of the state workers, mentioned our own strike earlier this year and included the above phrase. She sent it to all Strike Committee members, and showed it to some other union members in her office. Everyone except the union hack thought it was good. The hack wrote his own version, saying. "I referred to the world situation in a different manner." Yes, a very different manner — there was no mention of international working class solidarity! He also said the letter must be approved by the Executive Council, a higher body that meets less often, further delaying this already late response.

A co-worker proposed a slightly different sentence: "Your strike being called unpatriotic by your local newspaper is the height of hypocrisy in an era when strong unions and international worker solidarity are needed more than ever." They agreed to present that version at the meeting.

I really hadn’t believed Party members when they told me the SEIU, traditionally a "liberal" union, would be just as fascist about this oil war as the Machinists, whose president called for revenge following the Sept. 11 attack. Well, here was clear proof. The OC’s right-wing all supported the hack’s arguments. One said, "All of our members don’t believe like we do. We don’t want to offend anyone." Translation: we have orders from the International to push patriotism and help the bosses get these workers in line to maintain profits. However, rank-and-file support for mentioning internationalism moved the letter to the Executive Council with that sentence, for them to determine the final version.

That evening I discovered that 1199-SEIU, the union for most NY City healthcare workers, had published an ad in the New York Times jointly with the hospital bosses agreeing to extend their contract deadline from October 31 to March of 2002. Round one goes to the bosses, whose labor lieutenants have been charged with keeping workers in line.

The lessons? (1) Scratch a liberal union hack and you’ll find a fascist; and (2) Don’t underestimate how serious the ruling class is in its push towards fascism.. They need all of their labor misleaders to control their union members. They don’t say it’s unpatriotic when Boeing lays off 30,000 workers or 135,000 are dumped by the airline bosses. It’s only when workers fight for themselves that the bosses push this fascist line.

Our appropriate response is: sell more CHALLENGES, helping workers realize that nationalism is deadly for all workers. Discuss with co-workers the role of the unions in the move toward fascism. Make sure you and your co-workers, classmates, shipmates fight this drive.

a name="Excerpts from Union Machinists’ Open Letter To Boeing Workers:">">"xcerpts from Union Machinists’ Open Letter To Boeing Workers:

"Boeing Chief Executive Confident On Profits" screams the Financial Times (9/21) headline. Mulally calls an editorial critical of Boeing’s layoffs, "hurtful and sad."

Hurtful and sad! Imagine how hurtful and sad the next year will be for those 30,000 families of laid-off workers, not to mention the untold thousands that will be downgraded and shuffled from plant to plant. Many of these Boeing jobs will not likely reappear if management gets its way.

Five hundred thousand may be laid off in the travel industry alone. We should have no illusions that the layoffs, downgrades and benefit cuts will be limited to the travel industry. The economic attacks on our class will spread worldwide.

No doubt, some of the layoffs at Boeing were already planned. A systemic crisis of overproduction had already spread throughout the world. Boeing had spent $6.7 billion…buying back its own stock — nearly twice what management had invested in the company. Large parts of the company were put in hock…to artificially jack up the stock price. [CEO] Condit referred to commercial production as the "cash cow" for all sorts of speculative adventures. As the crisis sharpened after September 11, the logic of the system necessitated intensified attacks on the company’s workforce, lest this "cash cow" be threatened.

Where profits are concerned, "United We Stand" goes out the window. Thousands — and, in this case, perhaps millions — of our working-class brothers and sisters will be "united" on the unemployment lines. Meanwhile, the captains of industry are "united" defending their profits and perks.

The horrendous murders of thousands of innocent workers on September 11 has given the U.S. ruling class the excuse they need to pave the way for an oil war and a police state. In the same vein, CEOs in industry after industry have used this atrocity as a signal for layoffs and cutbacks. We can expect Boeing to attack our standard of living and working conditions in the next contract. History has shown the company will wrap these attacks in the flag.

We must prepare for the forthcoming contract battle now. First, we have to reject the passive outlook that accepts job cuts. We must advance a class conscious outlook. "You lay off my brother or sister and you attack me" must be our motto.

Crumbs in the name of retraining for non-existent jobs are not the answer. Lining up behind the bosses to "save the airline industry" is a loser. We’ve already seen how that means protecting profits and bonuses of the CEOs and layoffs for us.

You can bet your last dollar — and it might very well be your last dollar —that management will work out a scheme to blame other workers for the bosses’ attacks on us. Make no mistake about it, dividing us along national or racist lines only weakens our ability to organize against the bosses’ attacks. The bosses’ nationalism is the patriotism of profits. Contrary to lining up behind airline industry bosses, we must understand that our interests and strength lie with the workers all around the world.

We are known as "the fighting machinists." In these difficult times, we must be sure who is on our side and who is not.

Concerned Union Members

Anti-War Movement Growing on Campuses

BINGHAMPTON, NY—PLPer’s at SUNY here have led two teach-ins exposing the imperialist and capitalist roots of terrorism and "retaliation." Twenty-five students came to the first teach-in, examining how inter-imperialist rivalry kills workers and what they could do about it. Those attending wanted more teach-ins, to discuss how to take an active stance against anti-Arab racism and U.S. rulers’ war plans.

Many of the same students, along with some new ones, returned to the second teach-in. We discussed the importance of oil and how capitalists are willing to use workers’ blood to secure oil profits. Connections were made between bin Laden and Exxon-Mobil’s goals for Saudi oil. We talked about how this supposed "war on terrorism" is really a war for control over the flow of oil and represents the U.S.’s need to secure its power in the Middle East. Students expressed the need to choose anti-racism and workers’ rights rather than choosing bosses’ sides in an imperialist war.

During both teach-ins, many CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed. The PLPer’s and others there seemed pumped to continue to organize against imperialism and war.

PLP students have also been actively involved in organizing a rally and speak-out against the war. Many graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and community groups are joining together to oppose the bombing of Afghanistan. We’ve also been preparing a pamphlet on the history and politics of events in Afghanistan and the Middle East, as an alternative to patriotic, nationalist and distorted information spewed out in the mainstream media. We will use this pamphlet, along with leaflets and CHALLENGES at the event. We’ve seen many opportunities to incorporate anti-imperialist, anti-nationalist and pro-communist ideas into the growing anti-war movement.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 15 — Students from several southern California schools gathered at the Univ. of Southern California on September 12 to protest a lecture by Clinton’s former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. It was on Albright’s watch that the U.S. ruling class committed numerous acts of terrorism — the Iraqi sanctions (currently killing 5,000 children per month), the war in Kosovo—which terrorized working-class neighborhoods with daily bombing. Now Albright is on a national speaking tour spreading propaganda and lies hoping to gain support for the current oil war.

When PLP’ers arrived, they rallied the group and started picketing. Holding signs reading, "Capitalism terrorizes the working class," we chanted, "Albright, Albright, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide." We stopped picketing at key moments and invited open discussion. Students listened to our exposé of the office of Secretary of State as being one of the main arteries of the ruling class’s imperialist foreign policy. We declared that Bin Laden and George Bush both represent competing ruling classes who are fighting for control of the world’s oil supply. They both will use terrorism, nationalism and racism to divide and exploit the working class and secure total imperialist control. We can end them only be destroying capitalism with working-class revolution.

When the protest ended, several people thanked us for our leadership and wanted more information. Although many students went inside and applauded this mass murderer, the PLP members saw that if we’re bold, take leadership, and offer a revolutionary class argument, people will listen.

Fifty Students Sign Up

Last week, our campus PLP study group participated in a student club activity setting up a table with PLP literature, a red flag and a giant banner behind us depicting workers fighting fascism. Students were interested in our placards reading, "Students Against Oil War" and "Capitalism is the Cause of all Terror." We had many conversations involving a communist analysis and how it differs completely from the media’s.

A Middle Eastern woman was especially moved by our display. She sat down next to our table and quietly but very emotionally told us it was good to see what we were doing, that "we needed to talk about the present situation." We also distributed CHALLENGE and invited students to our study group, as well as to a PLP forum. Over 50 students signed our contact sheet for more information. This positive experience taught us that PLP can play a decisive role in the outcome of this crisis when so many are simply trying to understand what’s going on.

BOSTON — PLP members at Boston University (BU), Harvard and Roxbury Community College (RCC) have been active in the growing anti-war movement on campuses here. We’ve been involved in the Boston Campus Anti-War Coalition (BCAWC) that led the student anti-war actions in Boston. Students at UMASS-Boston, Harvard, BU, Northeastern, Emerson and others have been a key factor in leading the anti-war protests. On Sept 20, the BCAWC organized a rally and march of about 800. On Oct 14, Boston students played an important role in a city-wide rally and march of over 2,000 (see letter).

PLP’ers are linking this current U.S. oil war to our university administration’s support of U.S. imperialism by allowing and supporting military research on campus. We just won the BCAWC to unanimously endorse a call for protests against military research at all Boston colleges (e.g., at BU and MIT).

At a recent Harvard No War meeting, one PLP’er said trying bin Laden in an international criminal court would be hypocritical because the biggest war criminals are those running the U.S. government — bin Laden’s war crimes pale compared with those of the U.S. ruling class. He urged the anti-war movement to make clear that a major cause of war and terrorism is U.S. imperialist policies. He also declared that the Harvard No War Group should definitely fight Harvard’s promotion of imperialism, past and present, including its support for the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, conducted by its former Professor and war criminal, Henry Kissinger, as well as the Kennedy School of Government’s help in planning and supporting war in the Middle East and central Asia.

Since Sept 11, PLP college members have distributed over 1,000 leaflets and many CHALLENGES at BU, RCC. Harvard and others.

Many students are upset by this war and want "peace now." We must explain that as long as capitalism exists, we’ll only have more war. We’re planning study groups on imperialism and a teach-in on the Mid-East and oil.

Boston Marcher Takes to Subways

I just returned from an anti-war rally of 2,000 in Boston, including old and young pacifists to anarchists and radicals to students and workers. PLP members passed out about 1,000 leaflets exposing the war in Afghanistan as an imperialist fight over oil, the world’s most important resource. We distributed CHALLENGES and 500 leaflets calling for our upcoming demonstration against police murders.

The rally assembled in downtown Boston and was followed by a short march to an integrated, working-class neighborhood. The response to our leaflets was amazing. Most people along the route took the anti-war leaflets with interest, only a few politely expressing disagreement. One Caribbean man gave $5 for a copy. We carried a banner saying, "Oppose U.S. Imperialist War for Oil." Many speakers and signs simply called for "peace" and "negotiations" with the terrorists. Our leaflet made the strongest argument about the importance to U.S. rulers of controlling Mid-East oil.

During the march we led chants such as "Arab, Latin, Black and White, Workers of the World Unite"; and "1, 2, 3, 4, We don’t want your Racist War; 5, 6, 7, 8, We don’t want your fascist state." We witnessed little pro-war patriotism.

On the subway home I was talking to some student peace activists when a working-class guy, seeing a peace sign, challenged us. The students said, "We want justice without violence," but I gave him a PLP leaflet, talked about oil and how Bin Laden is a smaller capitalist competing with the U.S. He agreed, but still loudly declared that we should "bomb them all." Others on the train became interested. I gave a copy of DESAFIO to a Latin couple who were listening. As they got off the train they and another woman who’d been listening thanked me (for explaining things to the pro-war guy). A Latino man asked for a DESAFIO. I began to tell him it was a communist paper and he replied, "I know," pulling out a dollar for two copies.

When I left the train, I ran in to another marcher, gave him CHALLENGE and exchanged phone numbers and addresses. He invited me to an anti-war meeting in our neighborhood.

There were exactly five pro-war counter-demonstrators near the opening rally. I pointed this out to a Boston Globe reporter (the media loves to focus on these tiny counter-demonstrators, and lies about the size of the anti-war rallies). I said, "What are you going to report as the size of the march, 200?" We must realize that the media will mislead people about the anti-war movement. So get out there, march and sell CHALLENGE! People may even thank you for it. A Boston Comrade

Texas Students And Faculty Oppose Racist Oil War

After the September 11 terrorist bombings, students and faculty participated in teach-ins to raise awareness about U.S.-Arab relations and to give historical context to Middle East politics. PL members exposed the imperialist oil interests behind the plundering of the region now under attack by U.S. cruise missiles.

The audience, including many Mexican-Americans and others, expressed concern about the U.S. attack as a potential race war. Arabs have already been assaulted here. In one city, a Pakistani man was forcibly removed from a jetliner. In the same city, rock-throwing goons attacked a Middle Eastern restaurant.

The U.S.-Mexico border has been on a heightened state of alert, despite Mexico’s President Vicente Fox’s blessings for the U.S. war on Afghanistan. Bush and Fox represent the interests of bosses at the border where thousands of Mexican workers live and die working in maquiladoras or trying desperately to cross into the U.S. The bosses not only conspire against the international working class, but now are united to attack all foes of U.S. imperialism.

Many active duty soldiers and reservists have been called to fight the "war on terrorism." Some of these working-class youth see this for what it is: open season on any opposition to U.S. economic interests. We are organizing a film showing and discussion that will relate this war to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Comrades everywhere must stand and reveal the true nature of recent world events. Build a mass PLP that can take whatever the rulers dish out, and advance.

A Texas comrade

U.S. Is No Novice When It Comes To Terror Bombing

This term I’m teaching a large first-year University technology course. The third lecture took place just after the WTC bombing so I began with a discussion of that.

I said like everyone else I found it hard to believe what had happened — but only because it happened in the USA. Elsewhere it’s not unusual to see large numbers of civilians wiped out in wartime attacks on cities. I told of a French friend whose parents’ home town was completely destroyed by U.S. bombs the day after D-day. In fact, during World War II, 1,700 cities in Europe and Asia met the same fate.

I said many people wondered what could motivate the attackers to destroy thousands of innocent lives. Is it because, as the media says, they’re "madmen." Or, as Bush says, "they don’t share our values"? Just the opposite. The attackers were driven by nationalism, the idea that people of one’s own country are worth more than others. And by the principle that the citizens of another country are responsible for their rulers’ actions. That is exactly what U.S. rulers want us to believe.

I mentioned the bombing and blockade of Iraq, and the bombing of Belgrade. These attacks killed hundreds of thousands of civilians but were justified as punishment for the crimes of Saddam Hussein and Milosevic.

Today when it comes to terror bombing, the U.S. has no real competition. [During WWII they tried to match the Nazis and Japanese fascists when] they destroyed almost every major city in Germany, and every one in Japan.

In fact, the WTC was not the first 9-11 terror attack. On September 11, 1944, the British Bomber Command dropped 580 tons of incendiaries on Darmstadt, a small German town of little military or industrial importance. The firebombs created a firestorm (as planned) and more than 10,000 civilians were burned alive or suffocated in their shelters.

Yet the Darmstadt 9-11 was nothing compared to the March 10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo, led by General Curtis LeMay. The Tokyo raid created a much bigger firestorm and killed ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND Japanese. After the Tokyo raid, LeMay’s commander sent him a telegram:

CONGRATULATIONS. THIS RAID SHOWS THAT YOUR CREWS HAVE THE GUTS TO DO ANYTHING. Bin Laden couldn’t have said it better!

When I asked for the students’ own views, I was pleased to learn that for the most part, they agreed! A student with a Slavic accent spoke movingly of how little concern was shown for the people bombed in Belgrade. Another student said his fiancé was Japanese and that her family was very distressed by the jingoistic "Pearl Harbor" movie (in which Ben Affleck volunteers for a suicide bombing mission on Japan).

A few people said that, after all, the poor and downtrodden have no choice but to resort to terror. I said, not necessarily, and explained how the young Soviet Union beat off the invasion by 14 different nations from 1918 to 1925. Not by bombing and terrorizing the workers of the U.S., Canada or Britain, but by appealing to their international solidarity. Communism doesn’t need nationalism and terror to win — and put an end to these catastrophes forever.

I’m sure I didn’t convince everyone but they listened very carefully. In fact the reception was much more positive than that given similar talks during the Gulf War. This is good news for us and bad news indeed for the U.S. terror bosses.

Red Prof

a name="Bosses ‘Sacrifice’ Crap Lays Off NYC Workers"></">Bo"ses ‘Sacrifice’ Crap Lays Off NYC Workers

NEW YORK CITY, October 14 —- CHALLENGE was right on target when it pointed out (10/3) that "we should not be fooled by the bosses’ call for unity and shared sacrifice." We live under a class dictatorship where the bosses use every trick in the book to maintain their system of exploitation and find ways to profit from every tragic occurrence. NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani has already announced plans to slash most city agency budgets by 15% (except police, fire and Board of Education, cut by "only" [!] 2.5%.) This will mean major cuts in city services and jobs.

Contrast that with the massive bailouts promised to the airlines (but not the airline workers) and the insurance companies by the Bush administration and the incentives Giuliani has dangled before businesses promising to stay here. NOT ONE BOSS IS BEING ASKED TO SACRIFICE ONE DOLLAR OF PROFIT.

A recession, starting before September 11 and fiscal shocks after the attack on the World Trade Center combined to produce a deficit forecast of $1.6 billion in this current fiscal year and $4-$6 billion more for the next one.

Workers should not be fooled by calls to save "our" city like those made during New York City’s fiscal crisis of the 1970’s. Back then, it was the working class that bailed out the city bosses’ financial mess. Union leaders like Gotbaum of AFSCME poured billions of city workers’ pension dollars into municipal bonds when city bankers wouldn’t touch them. Tens of thousands of "permanent" city workers were laid off. There were drastic cuts in city services for working-class families.

A state-authorized Financial Control Board headed by Wall Street banker Felix Royatan actually ran the city via its power to void any contracts with unions or businesses. This board could be back in business whenever a deficit of $150 million exists. Quickly, trustees of the two biggest city worker pension funds jumped in to pour our money into Wall Street investments to shore up the shaky stock market. Then major city unions suspended negotiations on contracts that had already expired over a year ago.

Workers will be asked to be "patriotic" and sacrifice because of terrorism. We should refuse. Our only pledge should be to ally with workers of the world. When civic or union leaders call for cuts, we should fight back. When they speak of terrorists we should expose the terror capitalism causes every day worldwide and that U.S. capitalism has caused the lion’s share of it. If we’re to sacrifice, let it be in our class interests, in the fight for a communist future!

Florida Comes To NYC Mayorality Election

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 15 — "It looks like Florida again" was a common comment heard about this city’s runoff election for the Democratic Party’s mayoral candidate. The Board of Elections released a new vote total showing Mark Green leading with 392,492 votes to Fernando Ferrer’s 371,436. The previous figures were 417,329 for Green and 387,523 for Ferrer.

"Revisions in the vote total—the result of accidental double counting by the police Thursday night—triggered a firestorm of complaints yesterday from Ferrer and his supporters, who called into question the accuracy of either count."(Newsday, Oct. 15).

It seems that racism and fraud are increasingly becoming the norm in U.S. elections. Bush "won" with the help of his governor brother and the cops who prevented many black people from voting for Gore in Florida (without a peep from the Democratic Party). Now liberal Green is following the same road. First he waged a racist runoff, with his supporters telling white voters that a vote for Ferrer, who is Puerto Rican) would be a vote for Al Sharpton (who is black and backing Ferrer). Then, to make sure Green won, the cops (who hate Sharpton because — for his own political ambitions—he has organized many protests against police brutality) double-counted votes.This demonstrates how racism is always part and parcel of capitalism and its electoral system.

CHALLENGE doesn’t support either candidate. All of them represent capitalism. No matter who’s the next Mayor, his job will be to ensure workers sacrifice for the war effort and for the "rebuilding" of the financial district, partially destroyed by the terrorists on Sept. 11.

Ferrer was attacked by Green and the New York Times for being "divisive" — for saying there are two cities: the rich one and the poor one—in this period when "national unity" is crucial for the rulers. Then Green and his supporters used the age-old divisive racist scare tactics against a Puerto Rican candidate and his black supporters while cheating to steal the election.

Capitalism never disappoints when it comes to topping its own racism, even against some of its own lackeys.

a name="Afghanistan—Latest Chapter of New World Disorder">">"fghanistan—Latest Chapter of New World Disorder

In the first week since Bush, Jr. began bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, already the "smart" bombs have done their job of missing their targets and killing civilians. The question now is whither the Bush, Jr./Tony Blair war?

If they thought the Taliban would collapse after a few days of mass terror bombing, someone in the White House and 10 Downing Street needs to read history. In 1857 Frederick Engels wrote how the British/Indian invasion of Afghanistan was crushed — of 16,000 troops only one made it back alive. The U.S.-British imperialists should have listened to the Soviet generals who warned them about Afghanistan being a trap. Their choices now are:

• Reliance on the unstable Northern Alliance creates two problems: (1) This collection of warlords spent so much time fighting each other after taking power from the regime abandoned by Russia's Yeltsin that they could not hold it and were easily defeated by the Taliban. However, (2) if the Alliance did manage to take and hold power, Pakistani rulers won't accept it since the Alliance is supported by Pakistan's two main enemies, India and Iran, and armed by Russia.

•Sending U.S. and British commandoes into Afghanistan’s caves and mountains to hunt down bin Laden and his Al Qaeda gang. It’s not an easy task, some say almost impossible. If this fails, a ground invasion could suffer the same fate as past Soviet and British armies.

•Even should the Taliban and bin Laden group be defeated, the big winner will be Russia. Already, Putin, helping the U.S. in its war against the Taliban/bin Laden, has won a lot of concessions in Russia’s war in Chechnya. Putin claims the Chechen holy warriors fighting Russia are trained by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Also, Russia will become stronger in the oil-rich Caucasus, weakening the government of Georgia (a key U.S. ally). Many fundamentalist warriors in Chechnya come from the refugee camps in Georgia.

Whatever happens in Afghanistan, world disorder will increase, from Saudi Arabia to Central Asia, and more wars will follow. Workers and youth must not be fooled into siding with any bosses in this conflict. Our class interests don’t lie with Bush, Blair, Putin or the holy warriors, but with organizing to fight for a society without any bosses — communism.

Letter From Israel

September 11 was (unfortunately for the workers who lost their lives) a catalyst that sharpened inter-imperialist rivalries. We can see it in the Islamic world in countries like Pakistan where the masses have been led astray by bin Laden and the Taliban, but the rulers sided with U.S imperialism, which then lifted its embargo.

Something similar, though on a smaller scale, is happening in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas. There the Arafat gang seized the opportunity to attack Hamas, which took to the streets in support of the Taliban and bin Laden. Thus, Arafat did the Zionist’s dirty work, the role intended for him when Israel brought him from Tunis to sign the notorious Oslo agreement. Arafat wants to put an end to the Intifada that went too far (from his point of view), and he got some promises from the Bush Administration. The latter needs him in the so-called "coalition against terror" to demonstrate the principle that the U.S. is not fighting Islam but terrorism. I think we’ll seeing in many "Islamic" countries something similar to the above scenario.

Just one note on the U.S. press. It is totally mobilized to serve the interests of the U.S ruling class. The mask of democracy does not exist, and the "holy" principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is not seen anywhere as far as bin Laden goes. This can be seen in the negotiation with the Taliban, who were ready to hand over bin Laden if the U.S provided solid evidence (it seems that they did not have it), but they were so eager to attack they managed to convince the U.S. public bin Laden is the only party responsible for September 11. I guess they know he’s not, and this is why they keep warning the public about possible attacks similar to September 11.

Another amazing thing is the vulnerability and the panic displayed by U.S imperialism on the day of the attack: closing all airports, closing the stock market for four days (a record), stopping major league baseball (things they did not even do after Pearl Harbor). On top of it all, they flew W. Bush to Nebraska !).

Not even one helicopter went up to try to save lives, to try to put out the fire in the towers, or to pick up people who went to the roof trying to save themselves. Instead they sent the poor fireman to their death in the burning building, even though every second-class engineer knows that 50 tons of burning petrol will easily melt the steel construction that holds the towers. This is why the second-hit tower went down first; it was hit lower, and the heat needed less time to travel to the bottom of the building. All these things are signs that imperialism, with all its missiles, police and technological know-how, is "human" after all and is very vulnerable.

It’s a pity that PLP is not a mass party yet, and thus the U.S. working class succumbed to nationalism and patriotism. The ruling class has a field day as millions are willing so easily to give up their civil rights, thus putting their faith in the biggest terrorist of them all, U.S imperialism.

A long-time Party Comrade from Israel

a name="Terrorists—Big and Small">">"errorists—Big and Small

In his press conference last week, President Bush said some people all over the world hate the U.S. The usual response from Bush and the U.S. media is that the U.S. "is a free democratic country" and those who dislike the U.S. "hate our freedom."

Well, in general the opposite is true. Millions see U.S. imperialism as a supporter of the world’s worst regimes, from the corrupt Saudi monarchy to the brutal Israeli rulers. The bin Laden group is taking advantage of this to build a case for itself in the Moslem world. They emphasize that the U.S. has tens of thousands of troops in the "holy land" of Saudi Arabia to protect the corrupt and reactionary Saudi king and his 20,000 princes.

There are many workers and youth worldwide who hate imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, but are confused about what happened on Sept. 11. Some see it as a "big blow against imperialism" and therefore as a "progressive action." They point particularly to the suicide attack against the Pentagon, the military center of U.S. imperialism.

As Marxists, we must condemn this idea. Firstly, there’s nothing progressive about using hundreds of passengers in commercial jets as cannon fodder. The use of "collateral" damage is something the imperialists always use and justify. Second, there is nothing progressive about the bin Laden group or whoever did the suicide bombings. They are violently anti-communist, rich and reactionary; they will just impose a regime seeking a better deal for their faction of bosses from any or all imperialists.

But most important, individual acts of terrorism, isolated from the masses, just give the bosses an opportunity to do what Bush and the U.S. bosses are doing: wage war and impose a global police state. The Nazis burned their own Reichstag (parliament), trying to strengthen their fascist regime by blaming their strongest opponents. They arrested the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov, but he used his trial to expose the frame-up and denounce the Nazis before the world. Instead of killing workers in the name of some God or reactionary cause, we revolutionaries use the the 9/11 attack and the war in Afghanistan to win masses to our side . We expose the real motives of the bin Laden and U.S. bosses—oil.

The thousands murdered on Sept. 11 were mostly working people, many from the Middle East, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, etc.. Once these and other workers grasp communist politics, they can be mobilized to fight for a world without Bushes, bin Ladens, Blairs, kings and gods.

A. Teo

Mobilize in Mexico Against Bush and Fox War

MEXICO CITY — The terrorist attacks of Sept 11 have opened a higher level of political discussion among students and workers. Many students celebrated and said U.S. bosses are "getting back what they have done to millions of people around the world." They describe the events as a "social consequence" of U.S. imperialism.

Unlike U.S. comrades, the Party here had to fight against nationalism disguised as "hatred" of the entire U.S. population. We‘ve explained that the attacks in New York and the bombings in Afghanistan are caused by inter-imperialist rivalry. We’ve also explained that the main victims of this attack were class brothers and sisters, workers with families, many of whom were immigrants from dozens of countries as well as U.S. born workers.

The youth club has been having study groups. In the marches (one had 20,000 people), we’ve distributed leaflets containing the CHALLENGE editorial and have carried banners reading, "Capitalism only produces exploitation, poverty, racism, and war for the working class. LET’S DESTROY IT!"; "Turn the Imperialist War into a Civil War for Communist Revolution"; and "Workers of the World, Unite!"

The day the bombing started in Afghanistan, there were mass protests in front of the U.S. Embassy. One Party banner said, "No Worker to the Imperialist War." We chanted, "Bush, Fascist, Imperialist Criminal" and "Bin Laden and the CIA—birds of a feather"; "First Yugoslavia, then Afghanistan, NATO is committing genocide." Our friends who aren’t in the Party, but who participate with us have been won to:

(1) This is a war among the imperialists; the working class has nothing to win and everything to lose by siding with any of them.

(2) It’s reactionary simply to demand "peace" because in times of "peace" they kill and exploit the workers of the world.

In our study groups we’ve discussed the urgent need to build the Party. If we don’t , the working class will be unable to destroy capitalism and its wars and exploitation.

We’ve started to emphasize the following:

Wars and crises go with capitalism. Here, as everywhere, President Fox and all the capitalists are using the terrorist attacks to justify more layoffs, cutbacks and wage-cuts.

It’s always been communists who’ve ended the bosses’ world wars.

It’s a time of danger and opportunity. Now more than ever, capitalism shows its genocidal nature. It’s time to fight to win masses of workers and students to communism.

Workers of the World, Write!

LETTERS

Michigan Workers Build Solidarity

State of Michigan Mental Health workers took a stand against the war and sent relief aid to the victims of the NYC terrorist bombing. After September 11, everyone was discussing the attacks, the threat of war and areas of the world many of us had never thought about before. While there is overwhelming sympathy for the victims, and some degree of patriotism, support for the bosses and an oil war is very thin. For the most part, workers want to know what is really happening, and many are turning to PLP to find out.

We explained that Bush, Giuliani and the bosses were using this tragedy to whip up racism, nationalism and war fever. We talked about how capitalism and the U.S. ruling class murder thousands daily to secure their profits. We said that all these victims are our casualties, the workers of the world. While everyone doesn’t agree with everything, workers are eager to talk.

We organized workers to attend our last union meeting where we passed a resolution unanimously to send $1,000 to the World Trade Center victims, based on a worker-to-worker solidarity, not patriotism. These activities, plus the very modest increase in the CHALLENGE readership, are sure signs that despite the massive, non-stop war propaganda, workers are open to PLP.

Detroit Comrade

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My sister's nephew is in the military. His unit was placed on high alert and sent overseas. Before that my sister talked with some soldiers in his unit and learned the following.

Right after September 11, the whole atmosphere at the base changed. Now every vehicle driven onto the base was being searched. Long lines of cars became common. All leaves were cancelled. Soldiers were told to be ready to leave on 24 hours notice. Rumors circulated about going to Afghanistan. A few soldiers ordered to leave immediately (probably to a point near the battle zone) were moved to a building fenced and patrolled by armed guards.

Tensions were high. My sister's nephew was among a small group of soldiers and some NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) training with gas masks in a simulated chemical weapons attack, using real but less toxic gas. Shortly after the gas was released, an NCO ordered one GI to take off his mask to see if the gas had dissipated. Some soldiers asked the NCOs why they didn't take their masks off first. One NCO replied that in a battle situation they had to follow orders or risk getting shot. The soldiers then told each other this wouldn't happen if the NCOs got shot first.

Before the September 11 WTC attack, the bosses were promoting the military as an "Army of One," where workers could learn a skill and receive college tuition. The "Army of One" is really an army of two classes: the working class represented by the rank-and-file soldiers and the ruling class represented by the brass and their lackeys.

As bombs rain on our Afghan brothers and sisters and workers here are fooled into waving the flag, it appears that the rulers are all-powerful. However, that is just appearance. The essence of imperialist war is workers dying for the bosses and their profits. With PLP's leadership, soldiers can be won to refuse to fight a racist, imperialist war for oil and to turn their guns around as a class. When that happens the days of the bosses and their horrific system will be numbered.

A Reader

Uniting With Arab Workers

Monday night after soup kitchen we had a discussion of issues concerning the September 11th atrocity. At its peak 22 people were involved, by far our largest political meeting ever. There was gratitude that no one personally close to us had died, but the reality of over 6,000 deaths – most of them working people – is just beginning to sink in. Our priest — a union activist — calculated that at least 150,000 jobs are now lost because of the World Trade Center destruction. He is very angry that most of these workers will receive little or no long term support from any unemployment sources.

A colleague of mine from work had read the current CHALLENGE and did a superb job of fighting for our line, that what ultimately is at stake is the U.S. bosses’ desperation to control the oil of the Persian Gulf. An activist friend from a neighboring church suggested we reach out to other congregations, particularly mosques. So we planned to tour the largest one in town in a couple of weeks. We agreed to build ties with some members there, and a number of other Christian and Jewish groups in order to have an ongoing study of how U.S. imperialism has brought us to this crisis and how we can fight war and racism together at the grass roots level.

Most important, another volunteer at the kitchen agreed to take five CHALLENGES per issue to distribute.

Shaken but Unsubdued, Red Churchmouse

a name="‘9/11 has made me believe in what PLP fights for’"></">‘9"11 has made me believe in what PLP fights for’

The three weeks since college started up again has been one of the most intense political times in my life. Early on I felt the political tension on campus. Several Arab students had been beaten between Sept. 11 and the semester’s opening on September 25.

Several groups had posted leaflets reading, "Islam is not the Enemy, and War is not the Answer." A march for "Peace and Justice" had the biggest turnout of any political event in four years here. My work had to take advantage of the growing contradictions around us.

I distributed CHALLENGES at the Peace and Justice rally and made several contacts. From this group and from some close friends we started a PL study group of eight people. We planned to read CHALLENGE every week, post signs and pass out leaflets to combat the campus Republicans’ fascist signs. In the campus plaza next to signs which read "Love it or leave it" and "Support our troops" we placed posters reading, "No blood for oil" and "Oil imperialists, you can’t hide, We charge you with genocide."

Overall this time has made me believe in what PLP fights for. For the last three years I’ve been telling friends that an oil war was coming; they thought I was paranoid. Now they see it was true and it has brought them closer to our ideas. Building ties and struggling with friends really does work.

We are organizing a November concert to benefit "Victims of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East" and hope to get some well-known acts to perform. We wrote a letter to our school paper citing September 11 as a step in the war between rival imperialists over oil. It was attacked by fascists on campus but also received a lot of favorable responses. We’re trying to win these people to our group.

Anti-imperialist Students

Stands Up to Boss Attack Over WTC

Since Sept. 11, I’ve learned some hard lessons. Following the attacks, individuals and our agency encouraged patriotic/nationalistic propaganda. Our department was giving free "united we stand" flag posters. We were receiving patriotic e-mails. Signs appeared saying, "They will pay." I finally had it, and hastily e-mailed a PLP flyer, encouraging everyone to "keep an open mind." In retrospect, I acted too quickly.

I had a great lunch with some friends, discussing imperialism, communism and capitalism. Later that evening I had a great dinner with one of these friends and her husband because he was the one "interested in politics." We debated while she listened.

A few days later, a co-worker told me some workers were angry. She said their arguments were based on ignorance, and confided in me that she was not very patriotic either. She thanked me for showing her Party literature.

I was beginning to feel like I would not get any response from my supervisor. Again out of frustration, I responded to another patriotic e-mail. A friend told me some workers were talking behind my back. I was called in by one of the managers. My friend and I decided that if management wanted to do something about my "politics," then they would need to do something about all the nationalist "politics" too. Another close friend was very supportive and suggested I call the union before meeting with management. The union rep told me to go it alone unless the meeting was for disciplinary action.

The manager claimed he simply wanted to provide me with some "words of advice." He warned me that my e-mail had evoked a lot of anger in my co-workers and that he had received a "flood of complaints." My PLP study group discussed my situation at work and was very supportive.

The following week I received a phone call from someone claiming to be an investigator with the District Attorney’s Office. Then I received a "memorandum of concern" from my supervisor, who had already told me if I didn’t like this country, I should leave. I felt overwhelmed, but a friend helped me organize an "emergency meeting" with seven other friends.

The next day I sent out an explanation to diffuse the situation. I explained that I was in mourning like my co-workers, but had a different view as to what should come next. I was called into the manager’s office for the third time, but this time I didn’t go alone. He admitted that out of a building of 1,300 workers, he had received only 8 to 10 complaints. He was no longer trying to intimidate me, but rather to cover his ass. He knew that I was not going to keep quiet, and that I was gaining support. I continue to receive backing from co-workers and friends I never knew I had. They have come by my desk, sent e-mails, and called.

I’ve learned some valuable lessons. Don’t get too comfortable because "freedom of speech" is only an illusion. Learn to plan with others rather than react impulsively. One last thing: ALWAYS have confidence in your friends and the work you do. Don’t ever let the bosses isolate and scare you.

California Worker

CHALLENGE SUPPLEMENT, Oct. 31, 2001

U.S. Rulers Expand War For Oil To Central Asia

Bush’s "war on terrorism" is for control of the world’s cheapest oil supplies in the Persian Gulf which allows the U.S. to keep its super-power status. Loss of this control means the end of U.S. world supremacy. Therefore, the political and military conquest of Central Asia with its vast future reserves is indispensable to Rockefeller/ExxonMobil’s goal of world oil domination (see map above).

According to military expert Michael Klare, the danger to U.S. oil rule is "most acute in a vast triangular region stretching from the Persian Gulf in the west to the Caspian Sea in the north and the China Sea in the east. Within this ‘Strategic Triangle’ can be found some of the world’s largest concentrations of petroleum, along with numerous territorial disputes of powerful states." (Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2001, p.49).

The demise of the old communist movement has left U.S. imperialism dominant but increasingly threatened. These include nationalist-religious challenges, such as bin Laden and others who want the Persian Gulf’s energy resources for their own class interests. Also there is the potential emergence of Russia, China and the European Union as super-power competitors. Clinton’s 1999 air war against the former Yugoslavia was part of this process. The Balkans form the western flank of the Middle East and provide a vital link in the energy transportation system.

In the current war U.S. rulers are already committing atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of desperately poor Afghani workers are joining the two million refugees forced into exile by more than 20 years of bosses’ wars for control of that ravaged country. Bush & Co. are bombing cities and causing so many civilian casualties that they no longer bother to pretend otherwise.

Bush openly states that Afghanistan is only the beginning. The U.S. wants the huge Baghram air base in Afghanistan, now under control of the Northern Alliance. They also intend to gain control of airports and areas in Turkmenistan (Pravda, Sept. 20). The New York Times (10/13) reported on U.S. plans to use Uzbekistan as a military base in return for "guaranteeing" that country’s security (from Islamic or Russian bosses). The hunt for bin Laden will lead into Kyrgystan, which by next spring should "emerge as a hotspot in the anti-terrorism campaign" (Stratfor.com, 10/10). These three countries are former Soviet republics.

According to Stratfor, the rulers’ tactical goal is "a conventional military cordon around Central Asia." If the September 11 atrocities had not occurred, U.S. imperialists would have found another excuse to do what they’re doing internationally and at home. In fact, they rehearsed the operation under the Clinton presidency.

On September 15, 1997, 500 U.S. paratroopers from the army’s 82nd Airborne Division landed in Kazakhstan for war games. The mission was "to link up with friendly forces from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, and Uzbekistan and engage in simulated combat against ‘renegade forces’ opposed to a regional peace agreement" (Klare, p.1). Now Bush has the 10th Mountain Division in Uzbekistan.

This war has long been in the planning. As early as 1993, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that the Clinton White House would "advance America’s economic security with the same energy and resourcefulness we devoted to waging the Cold War" (Klare, p.8). War games in 1997 and 1998, coupled with the1999 Clinton/NATO air war over the former Yugoslavia for Balkan energy pipelines, exposed U.S. imperialist strategy for the period ahead. Bush’s expanding war in Central Asia, establishing U.S. military bases in parts of the former Soviet Union, is a logical extension of the Christopher "doctrine."

Currently the Bush White House seems somewhat divided over attacking Iraq (see article on next page). This is an important, but secondary tactical disagreement. However, on fundamental strategic questions, the rulers are absolutely united. This includes maintaining U.S. super-power status, holding on to Persian Gulf oil, guaranteeing that Russia can’t use Caspian oil to threaten the U.S. energy monopoly and using military force and their state apparatus to crush threats from rival bosses or revolutionary workers.

As Klare says, "This is not a Democratic strategy or a Republican strategy. It is a strategy that enjoys near-unanimous support from both sides in Washington…From this perspective, it mattered little who won the presidential election in November 2000 — the same strategy would prevail under George W. Bush or Albert Gore." ("Permanent Preeminence: U.S. Strategic Policy for the 21st Century," NACLA Newsletter, Nov.-Dec. 2000).

This war will continue for many years. It will grow and eventually pit the U.S. against other great-power rivals like Russia and China. The ultimate death toll in this imperialist butchery will far surpass the casualties of World War II. The rulers will exploit or concoct terrorist incidents as provocations to justify their own genocidal military adventures. They will further militarize society on the home front and do their utmost to stifle mass rebellion. All in the name of "humanitarianism, freedom and democracy."

The profit system can hide behind many disguises. But its essence remains instability, war, oppression and mass carnage for workers everywhere.

Communist revolution remains the only hope for humanity. Our Party is committed to keeping the flame of that hope alive and burning brightly, in the face of all obstacles the rulers throw in our way.

Afghanistan has always meant oil.

From Peter Schweizer’s Victory (1994):

As one member of the Saudi royal family told the New York Times [02/08/80]: "The Soviet military presence in Cuba is not nearly so serious a threat to western military as the Russians in the Gulf and in the Horn of Africa."

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was also widely interpreted in Saudi ruling circles as a move toward the Persian Gulf, with the end hope of capturing rich oil fields on the Arab peninsula. The head of Saudi Arabian intelligence put Soviet objectives in the region in very clear terms: "The answer is simple: our oil….At this moment we do not expect an invasion, but we do expect the Soviets to use their power to maneuver themselves into a position to make arrangements for a guaranteed oil supply." [same NYT edition]

Bosses Bicker Over When To Invade Iraq

Immediately after the terrorist atrocities of Sept. 11, a debate arose among U.S. rulers concerning Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, a deputy secretary of defense, said the U.S. should seize the opportunity to invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the other hand, called for more long-term coalition-building against the U.S.’s many enemies, not just Iraq. On one level, the spat reflects maneuvering among groups of U.S. capitalists competing for profits. But, more profoundly, it reveals the "world’s only superpower’s" growing dilemma, in the face of its abiding need to control the Middle East’s oil. Forces beyond Washington’s control dictate both the Powell and the Wolfowitz scenarios.

For decades now, the "Vietnam Syndrome" (see box) has haunted U.S. rulers. This, combined with an unraveling of the 1991 Desert Storm coalition, has frustrated the fondest dream of the main Rockefeller wing of U.S. capitalism: seizing Iraq’s oil fields. The best U.S. rulers can manage in Iraq is a haphazard bombardment campaign, which, though it kills many workers, flops militarily. Powell aims at gradually building popular support within the U.S. for invading Iraq with a massive force that will also include many allies. Vice-President Cheney and the New York Times side with Powell, the latter labeling an invasion as "premature now but necessary in the long-run, a step that the nation is not yet prepared to take"(our emphasis, ed.).

But an event such as the collapse of Saudi Arabia’s revoltingly corrupt royal family could force the Pentagon to go it alone in Iraq, and soon. So the Eastern Establishment also has Wolfowitz’s Plan B up its sleeve. His "invade now" proposal issues directly from a meeting of the Defense Policy Board he and Defense Secretary Rumsfield attended on Sept. 19 and 20. Exxon Mobil loyalists Henry Kissinger and Harold Brown, both members of the Trilateral Commission, headlined the meeting, which recommended "the occupation of southern Iraq with American ground troops to install an Iraqi opposition group based in London at the helm of a new government" (New York Times, 10/12). "American troops would also seize the oil fields around Basra in southeastern Iraq."

The shakiness of the U.S.-backed oil monarchies also compels the main wing to retain policy rivals Scott Ritter and Richard Butler as potential advocates for whichever direction it has to pursue. Both took part in UN arms inspections in Iraq in the late 1990s. Ritter has appeared on Exxon Mobil-funded PBS and at the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) proclaiming that Hussein poses no immediate threat. Butler, the CFR’s "resident diplomat," calls Hussein the most dangerous tyrant since Hitler.

Another side of the debate involves opportunistic bosses pushing for an Iraqi war to boost their bottom lines. On Sept. 20, conservative scribbler William Kristol published an open letter urging Bush to carry the fight to Baghdad. One co-signer was Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that lobbies for arms merchants like Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop. Christian Coalition honcho Gary Bauer also endorsed the "Whack Iraq" letter. In his ill-starred run for the White House in 2000, Bauer received major funding from the Independent Petroleum Producers’ Association. Exxon Mobil’s recent large-scale imports to the U.S. of Iraqi crude, which sharply undercut the prices of the domestic product, have turned the traditionally isolationist Oil Patch into sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein.

At the heart of all this bickering is a tactical spat over the allocation of oil profits among big bosses and the timing and details of their oil war. They are not arguing over whether or not imperialism needs war. All these bosses are enemies of the working class. We have no choice among them. Our only alternative is the patient, steadfast commitment to communism and to the eventual destruction of the bosses as a class.

a name="The ‘Vietnam Syndrome’"></">Th" ‘Vietnam Syndrome’

Although U.S. rulers murdered three million Vietnamese, they couldn’t win the war. The Vietnam Syndrome developed when large sections of the U.S. public became convinced the war was not in their interest, especially as tens of thousands of GI’s were being killed, and millions began protesting at home against the war. U.S. soldiers and sailors also rebelled, shooting their officers, sabotaging aircraft carriers and deserting in the hundreds of thousands. PLP played a central role in influencing the anti-war movement in an anti-imperialist direction, until the ruling class, through its liberal wing, took it over to turn it away from revolutionary politics.

a name="U.S. Rulers Mask War Aims With ‘Crusade’ Crock"></">U.". Rulers Mask War Aims With ‘Crusade’ Crock

U.S. rulers continue to disguise their imperialist war as a crusade against terrorism. The atrocities of September 11 gave them the excuse they needed to begin the first phase of this war.

The media hysteria about anthrax and other real or imagined threats helps them to:

•Expand their war from Afghanistan through Central Asia as a prelude to securing the oil fields of the Persian Gulf;

•Warn anti-U.S. Saudi bosses, including those outside the bin Laden gang, that U.S. imperialism will stop at nothing to keep the Saudi oil prize;

•Create a ring of military bases to prevent the emergence of alliances involving Russia and/or China that would threaten U.S. imperialism’s super-power status;

•Implement the strategic goal of a police state at home, in order to stifle class struggle that could eventually give rise to a mass revolutionary communist movement led by PLP;

•Fool U.S. workers into relying on the murderous state apparatus to guarantee our security.

For the time being, the rulers enjoy significant mass support. However, it is far less solid than what they will need for the working class to accept mass casualties. It appears strong but stands on shaky ground. Many workers and others can learn over time to see through the rulers’ Big Lies and act in our deepest class interest.

Imperialist war and the bosses’ police state will provide the raw materials. The imperialists will soak their hands in our blood as never before. The key to defeating them lies in our Party’s collective hands. We must act resolutely, defiantly and resourcefully to teach the truth about this war and provide the leadership necessary for turning imperialist slaughter into working class internationalism and communist revolution to overthrow imperialism and the profit system everywhere.

It Is All About Oil, Stupid!

(The following is excerpted from an article in the Oct. 16 New York Times by Mark Danner, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of "The Massacre at El Mozote.")

The Spectacular of Sept. 11 prepared the battlefield; the blows that are sure to come will strike more effectively at the true target: Americans’ commitment to the country’s role in the world, and particularly the Persian Gulf….

The "evildoers" who gave their lives on Sept. 11 and those who sent them….want to bring about a new order of purity and righteousness in the Islamic world and particularly in the moderate states of the gulf, where they see only wealth and corruption and autocracy, all of it held in place by the power of America, the inheritor of the old colonial order. They see American planes and ships not as symbols of freedom but as the mainstay of the corrupt order they seek to replace….

President Bush…calls on Americans to battle a vast, worldwide enemy — an enemy of apocalyptic proportions that hates "our freedoms" — by appealing to them as representatives of an indispensable nation…. Unfortunately, as we know from the last quarter-century or more, political support thus purchased tends to be brittle and weak, having been built on emotion. In the days and hours following the next terrorist Spectacular, or the next, Americans may well begin to ask themselves why exactly they are being targeted and what exactly it is they are risking their lives for. Crusading against evildoers is likely by then to seem a less satisfying answer.

The American troops and warships in the gulf, the unpopularity of our presence there, the fragility of the regimes we support — these facts are not secrets, but among Americans they are not widely known. In the gulf, as in other places and at other times, America stands not for freedom…. Its interest is in the unfettered flow of oil from the gulf to the industrialized world. Now, as in 1991, American policy makers will struggle to achieve this interest within the bounds of the forbearance of the American public. We should be aware that it is precisely that forbearance that the terrorists have begun to attack. That they have chosen a point of vulnerability is incontestable; that our leaders are prepared to defend against that political vulnerability — rooted in a longstanding refusal to speak honestly about the country’s interests — even now is less clear.

1. U.S. Bosses Enforce a Police State to Launch
   War for Oil
2. Minnesota State Workers' Strike Breaks Pro-War `National Unity'
3. Ruthless Exxon-Mobil Empire Faces Biggest Threat in History
4. U.S. Military and Economy Need Cheap Oil More than Ever
5. Rulers' Media `Experts' Admit Oil's the Issue
6. U.S. Imperialist Rivals Know What Bush & Co. Are Up To
7. `Blowback': The Logic of Capitalism Creates Its Own Monsters
8. Anti-War Anti-Racism Sentiments Grow Among College Students
9. El Salvador: Oppose All Forms of Terrorism and All Imperialists
10. The Only Workers' Flag Is Colored Red
11. Nazi Judge Defends `American Values'
    Another Cop Gets Away With Racist Murder
12. Union Local Rejects War
    1. PLP MADE THE DIFFERENCE
13. 1199-SEIU Uses `Crisis' As Pretext for Sellout
14. The Other September 11th: CIA Reign of Terror in Chile
15. Bosses Pull Racist Fast One At Boston's Roxbury College
16. Workers Oppose Red-Baiting Attack on
    Anti-War Shop Steward
17. Cook County Workers Build International Unity
18. Workers of the Worldç Write!
    LETTERS
    1. Mom to GI Son: `Fight For Workers' Power!'
    2. Media Frenzy Builds Anti-Arab Racism
    3. Anti-Racist Jews Active Against War
    4. Capitalism's Terror Kills Every Day
    5. Terror vs. Immigrants An Old U.S. Story
    6. Workers See Through Patriotic Circus
    7. Workers' Solidarity Is Best Medicine

---

U.S. Bosses Enforce a Police State to Launch
War for Oil

U.S. rulers have started their latest oil war. They are temporarily targeting Afghanistan, but their strategic goal is to secure the Middle East. They are disguising this war as a "crusade against international terrorism." The atrocious murders in September of thousands of workers and others in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. have given them the cover they need to conceal their true motives under a cloak of flag-waving patriotism.

At the moment Bush and the ruling class as a whole enjoy significant popular support. However, the war's imperialist character will become clear over time. Workers who allow themselves to be fooled into supporting the new mass slaughter for Middle Eastern energy supplies can come to recognize their error. Millions will eventually learn the hard way -on the battlefield and in the tightening vise of the rulers' police state -that our class's only rational choice is to turn the guns around and fight for communist revolution.

Our Party has a decisive role to play in this process. What we do to guarantee the survival and growth of the communist movement in the years ahead will determine the course of class struggle and, to a great extent, the future of humanity. The period that has just begun is the most serious challenge to the working class since the start of World War II. It is fraught with grave danger. It offers great opportunity. Our organization must steel itself to meet a communist party's responsibilities. Despite appearances and many enormous obstacles, our class can train itself to seize power and rid the world of the profit system.

Oil is the lifeblood of imperialism. The imperialist who controls the largest amounts of the cheapest oil supplies can rule the world. At present, and for the foreseeable future, these supplies lie in the Middle East. U.S. "superpower" status has been based for decades on calling the shots about how Middle Eastern oil would be pumped, shipped and refined -- and about how much it would cost. No Middle Eastern oil nation's government has been too corrupt, criminal or brutal against its working class for U.S. tastes-as long as the billion dollar profits keep flowing to the coffers of Exxon Mobil et al. The big prize is Saudi Arabia (see page 2), with the world's largest oil reserves. "The oil of eastern Saudi Arabia...is present in huge quantities and located at shallow depths in flat lands with no vegetation...and very near the water for transportation. It...remains the cheapest oil in the whole world." (Saïd Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud)

Neither the U.S. ruling class nor the anti-Exxon Saudi capitalists such as bin Laden -- who use religion to cover their own oil dreams -- will hesitate to turn the Persian Gulf red with workers' blood in order to control this wealth. The next war has already started. When bosses fight among themselves, workers must never choose sides among them. We have only one side, the international working class. We have only one banner, the Red Flag. We have only one Party, the PLP. And we have only one goal: communist revolution. In the difficult days that lie ahead, we must never lose sight of it.

Minnesota State Workers' Strike Breaks Pro-War `National Unity'

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, Oct. 2 -- Over 28,000 Minnesota State workers got a taste of just how U.S. rulers will use their fascistic "anti-terrorist" campaign on the "home front" when the National Guard was ordered out to break their state-wide strike. Accused of being "unpatriotic" during a "national crisis," one of the striking unions' regional directors declared, "People say let's return to normal...Strikes have long been a part of American life."

The workers had accepted numerous past contracts with wage "increases" far below inflation levels. Now they want to catch up, but Gov. Jesse Ventura wants to balance the budget on the workers' backs.

Ruthless Exxon-Mobil Empire Faces Biggest Threat in History

The profits of Exxon Mobil & Co. are now more seriously threatened than ever. The first sign came with the takeover of Iran in 1979 by Islamic Fundamentalist holy rollers. They used nationalism and religion as a cover for taking control of the oil there after booting out the murderous U.S. puppet, the Shah. In 1991, U.S. rulers butchered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers to prevent Saddam Hussein from raising oil prices and making deals with U.S. competitors. A decade and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, Hussein still rules Iraq and the U.S. continues to plan another war to destroy him and bring Iraq into the Exxon Mobil orbit.

But despite their seriousness, these problems pale before the nightmare brewing for U.S. imperialism in Saudi Arabia. The Persian Gulf holds the world's biggest oil reserves and Saudi Arabia's are bigger than any other Gulf nation's and also the easiest to extract. Only Iraq comes close. Exxon Mobil, already the biggest customer for Saudi crude, has a deal in the works to get the lion's share of Saudi natural gas riches.

The Saudi royals are known for their love of mass terror, as well as their degeneracy, self-indulgence, corruption, extravagance and support for fascists around the world. What saves them is their continued alliance with U.S. oil companies and their willing manipulation of supply to keep prices low, in accord with U.S. oil companies' wishes.

But this sweetheart arrangement is on very thin ice. Three things have kept the House of Saud in power: U.S. support, a reign of terror against workers in general, particularly foreign-born oil workers, and an ability to create a welfare state for the benefit of a large labor aristocracy of Saudi citizens. However, the economic "good times" are over. Per capita income is plummeting. Many Saudi-born university graduates can't find work. The government is in deep debt, worsened by U.S. imperialism's arm-twisting, which forced the Saudi rulers to fork over $65 billion for Desert Storm in1991. By maximizing its profits in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Big Oil has created a scenario for another Iran.

U.S. bosses have chosen Osama bin Laden as their main target in the "war against terror." Bin Laden is indeed a terrorist and an enemy of all workers. As the last issue of CHALLENGE indicated, he was a terrorist the U.S. was only too happy to fund and train back in the 1980s, when he fought against the U.S.'s Soviet rivals in Afghanistan. He joins many other Frankensteins made in the U.S.A.

But bin Laden and his horrible tactics represent much more than one ruthless individual with wealth and political ambition. Bin Laden reflects the growing threat to the Saudi royal family and, therefore, the continued U.S. control of Saudi oil and gas. The worsening economic conditions in the country, the Saudi government's many internal contradictions, general social decay, as well as periodic strikes by foreign workers in the oil fields in Saudi Arabia "have shaken the kingdom to its foundations," wrote a serious London-based Palestinian journalist in 1997. "The only thing keeping Saudi Arabia from disintegrating or falling to an Islamic group is the absence of a cohesive force capable of replacing the royal family...But [such groups] are gaining strength at a rapid rate" (Saïd Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, St. Martin's Press, 1996, p. xvi).

Aburish wrote those lines five years ago, when anti-U.S. fundamentalist terrorists had already attacked U.S. troops on Saudi soil and the Clinton White House was "desperately trying to stop Saudi Arabia's decline into chaos." (ibid, p. xvi.)

From the U.S. imperialist viewpoint, "chaos" means loss of the Saudi oil fields. Bin Laden admits that they are the ultimate prize he hopes to win for his faction of bosses. In a 1998 interview, he "claimed that the United States has carried out `the biggest theft in history' by buying oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. According to bin Laden, a barrel of oil today should cost $144. Based on that calculation, he said, the Americans have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims..." (Associated Press, 9/28).

For U.S. imperialism, led by Rockefeller's Exxon Mobil, the stakes are in the trillions. War is their only option to maintain their grip on the cheapest supply of the world's most crucial resource. For the international working class, the only option is to overthrow these exploiters and establish a society without profits or imperialist bosses.

U.S. Military and Economy Need Cheap Oil More than Ever

Oil is not only the lifeblood of a modern capitalist economy. It's also more than ever the lifeblood of a modern imperialist military machine. The September 24 Washington Times offers the following evidence to explain why the U.S. government should send soldiers and sailors to murder and be murdered in the Persian Gulf:

* A contemporary 17,500-member U.S. Army armored division uses twice as much oil every day as an entire 200,000-man field army did during World War II.

*. The needs of each soldier require 800% more oil today than during World War II.

* The Department of Defense accounts for nearly 80% of all U.S. government energy use. Of that total, nearly 75% is consumed in the use of jet fuel. During the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. and its puppet "allies" were able to fly about 10,000 air sorties against Iraq only because Saudi Arabia suspended all its civilian jet fuel sales and redirected jet fuel production to military uses.

* The huge expenditure of energy required to transport U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf in 1991 could be "far exceeded in some future conflict."

* For each additional barrel of oil required for direct military use in wartime, civilian use will rise by 150%.

* Oil accounts for 96.4% of all U.S. transportation energy use. Without petroleum, no goods or materials could be transported and workers couldn't get to work.

* U.S. oil imports now account for 56% of total domestic use.

Rulers' Media `Experts' Admit Oil's the Issue

Washington Post, September 22: Bush's opening military moves against international terrorism will come in Central Asia. But that desolate region is only the hiding ground for the assassins and plotters who have declared war on America. This crisis begins in the Persian Gulf and must end there. . . . [Islamic fundamentalism, anti-U.S. terror, and the Taliban] are extensions of the conflicts of the Persian Gulf, the world's biggest oil reservoir, and host to an unsteady but deep American involvement. Bin Laden, a native of Saudi Arabia, has made no secret of his motivation in striking at Americans: He wants to drive U.S. forces out of Saudi Arabia, where they have been stationed for a decade as a shield for the Saudi royal family...It is impossible to separate the strategic context of the Gulf from the dangers Americans face from terror" (Jim Hoagland).

Business Week, September 26: "The horrific Sept. 11 attacks...are opening a new blood-soaked chapter in the difficult history of the U.S. in the Middle East...world dependence on Gulf oil supplies has been growing..."

New York Times, Sept. 26: Apparently, the greatest single motivating factor for the terrorists...was the continuing presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia...[Energy conservation would only minimally reduce] the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf. The reason is that even if the U.S. became self-sufficient, our allies in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere would still be highly dependent on imported oil...(Paul Krugman).

CHALLENGE comment: The author means that the U.S. rulers must keep European, Japanese and Chinese bosses dependent on Exxon Mobil et al.

Fortune, Oct.1: "The Middle East is now Bush's crucible." (Bill Powell)

U.S. Imperialist Rivals Know What Bush & Co. Are Up To

French oil bosses are locked in a vicious dogfight with Exxon Mobil, Chevron and British energy giants for control of Persian Gulf profits. The French media most loyal to the interests of TotalFinaElf (the French-Belgian giant whose merger reflects this sharpening competition) have their own reasons for exposing U.S. rulers' hypocrisy. Although the French oil barons' motives are as rotten as Exxon Mobil's, the following accusation about the real motives of the Bush "anti-terror crusade" rings true.

"The old Cold War veterans surrounding President George W. Bush are undoubtedly not too unhappy with the turn of events. Perhaps they even consider it a lucky break. The September 11 attacks have given them a major strategic element which the collapse of the Soviet Union had denied them for ten years: an opponent. At last! Everyone has figured out that the designated opponent -- under the cover of terrorism -- is henceforth Islamic fundamentalism. The most dreadful consequences are now likely, including a modern version of McCarthyism, which would target the opponents of globalism [i.e. U.S. imperialism's continuing superpower status -- Ed.]. If you liked anti-communism, you'll love anti-Islamism!" (Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde Diplomatique, 10/2)

`Blowback': The Logic of Capitalism Creates Its Own Monsters

Suddenly U.S. rulers and their mouthpieces in the mass media have discovered "how awful" the Taliban is. A few even admit the Taliban was a direct outgrowth of the CIA's $3 billion financing and training of the "holy warriors" --including Osama bin Laden himself -- who fought the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But they won't admit that the logic of capitalism and imperialism always impels the bosses to create even more enemies for themselves than they had at the start. Funding the "holy warriors" in Afghanistan, using bin Laden and the Saudi monarchy as moneybags and the Pakistani army and intelligence services as supervisors, was justified by Carter-Reagan-Bush Sr. as the way to topple the Soviet Union. But like most CIA adventures since its creation after World War II, it has "blown back" in the U.S. bosses' faces.

*In 1965, the CIA organized general Suharto to topple the nationalist regime of Sukarno in Indonesia and to wipe out the powerful Communist Party there. Suharto and the CIA used Moslem fanaticism to justify the murder of one million communists and others. Suharto ruled Indonesia with an iron hand, making it "safe" for Exxon-Mobil and investors like Henry Kissinger and family. Today, a few years after Suharto was overthrown, Indonesia is a hotbed of Moslem fundamentalists who now threaten U.S. interests there and are siding with bin Laden.

*In the early 1980s, after the overthrow of the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran by equally fascist (but anti-U.S.) Shiite Islamic fundamentalists, the CIA supported and pushed Saddam Hussein to wage war against Iran. For eight years over a million Iraqi and Iranian workers and soldiers died in this reactionary war. Now bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are running 1 and 2 on the U.S. enemies list. They are all on the world's workers' hit list since Hussein, the Iranian Mullahs, bin Laden and the CIA have murdered millions of of workers and youth (including tens of thousands of leftists) in the Middle East and Central Asia.

* Panama's General Manuel Noriega was another CIA "asset," used against the nationalist ruler General Torrijos, who negotiated the nationalization of the Panama Canal. In 1989, Bush, Sr. (a godfather to one of Noriega's children) ordered an invasion of Panama and Noriega became another CIA "blowblack." Several thousand Panamanian civilians died when Stealth planes bombed Chorillo, a working-class neighborhood, during the invasion. The U.S. Army buried them in mass graves.

*Now a possible invasion of Afghanistan could turn into a major long-range disaster for U.S. bosses. Even if bin Laden is captured and many hundreds of thousands are massacred, the anti-U.S. tide in the region will flood the Middle East, particularly oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has big support among local bosses who don't want to share the oil bonanza with Exxon-Mobil.

*Another war against Iraq, as a by-product of the attack against bin Laden, will isolate the U.S. even more. French, Chinese and Russian oil companies, which have heavy investments in Iraq, won't be pleased, and eventually the "war against terrorism" could turn into a major world war.

Workers from New York City to Kabul pay with their lives for these "blowbacks." It's time we stop supporting "our rulers" and become the only blowback the bosses' system can't survive -- fight for a society without Exxon-Mobil, holy warriors and big and bigger terrorists -- communism. Join PLP!

Anti-War Anti-Racism Sentiments Grow Among College Students

Thousands of students across U.S. college campuses participated in teach-ins and vigils and planned more actions to oppose another U.S. imperialist war for control of Middle East oil. PLP members were active in both exposing U.S. rulers as the biggest terrorists of all, and in distributing hundreds of CHALLENGES and thousands of leaflets.

They encouraged students to reject the liberals' pacifism and provoked thought about the necessity for communist revolution as the only way to end terrorism. U.S. bosses, fearful of campus opposition that marked the anti-Vietnam War movement, are trying to steer students in the direction of a "humanitarian imperialism," or "vengeance with justice" (Colin Powell), dropping a few bags of food and then bombs on Afghanistan. But millions of honest students can be won away from this ruling class line.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 1--PLP'ers at Santa Monica College here used the heightened contradictions between reactionary and revolutionary ideas to point out that the World Trade Center attack resulted from sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, while denouncing anti-Arab racism. They ran out of CHALLENGES at a Sept. 26 teach-in and distributed many more in their classrooms, sparking discussions among entire classes about communism.

Answering student fears about the argument that "you're-either-for-us-or-against-us" (on the side of the terrorists), they explained that terrorism is a tool of the ruling class, whether state-sponsored like the sanctions on Iraq killing hundreds of thousands of innocent working class families and the actions of the racist LAPD, or the terrorism in New York.

Refused permission by a school dean to hold an anti-war rally on campus (she said the school's rules were "more important" than allowing students to voice their thoughts on a coming war in which they might do the dying), they turned a musicians' concert into a speak-out against racism and imperialist war, with the musicians' approval. Now they're planning a teach-in with an anti-imperialist, anti-racist theme, while beginning to work in groups where students are thinking about a coming oil war.

On Sept. 29, they joined with school friends as part of a PLP contingent in a march of 2,000 against a Middle East war. Many eagerly took PLP leaflets, bought CHALLENGE and joined chants against a racist oil war and for workers of the world to unite.

NORTHEASTERN, USA September 26 --Over 400 students and faculty on a multi-ethnic, working-class campus in the Northeast attended a teach-in organized by members of the Student Government, the Islamic Student Organization (ISO) and PLP. Some professors urged their students to participate.

Many students had friends or family members who died in the Sept. 11 attack. Many Muslim students have experienced severe harassment. One professor had gone "ballistic" after the disaster, calling for bombing Afghanistan and declaring the U.S. a "Judeo-Christian" nation. Feelings were running high.

While the politics of liberal multiculturalism and patriotism was espoused, it was also counteracted by a clear presentation of anti-racism and anti-imperialism. One professor laid out the genocidal nature of U.S. foreign policy. A member of a South Asian women's organization called for multi-ethnic solidarity in the face of xenophobic attempts to divide "model Asians" from "bad Asians." A high school teacher spoke eloquently from the floor about the geopolitics of oil and was applauded when she called Bush "the biggest terrorist of all."

These views contradicted those of an Afghanistan "expert" largely uncritical of U.S. foreign policy, embracing many of its anti-communist premises. A journalism professor said that "true" media reporting should rise above political bias (an impossibility in a class society). But the overall impact of the teach-in was overwhelmingly positive. Over 100 students took PLP flyers.

The ISO is planning another teach-in and there is the beginning of an anti-war movement on campus. Members and friends of PLP are at the center of present and future organizing efforts.

BERKELEY, Ca., Oct. 2 -- On the night of Sept. 11, 2,000 students attended a candlelight vigil at the University of California-Berkeley. A PLP member charged that the terrorists in the White House and on Wall Street had created this situation. He asked how long we would eat the bitter fruit of the capitalist tree, and merely try to trim its leaves, rather than cut the whole thing out at the root once and for all.

PLP'ers will be attending meetings of an anti-war coalition and aim to hold a teach-in on campus while expanding CHALLENGE circulation.

SOUTHWESTERN, USA--About 800 students attended an all-day teach-in organized by a campus group at a community college in the Southwest about the terrorist attacks and the war build-up in the Middle East. Speakers said we should identify as a class with others in our class internationally, rather than with U.S. rulers. A student attacked the growing racism against Arabs and called on her fellow students to unite to stand up to it. Another quoted a Latin American author who said if you want to get at terrorism, start with Henry Kissinger, strategist for the Vietnam War and the CIA coup in Chile.

When a student asked if Middle East people had "different values" than those in the U.S., a speaker commented that bin Laden, U.S. bosses and all capitalists want to control and profit from Middle East oil. Bin Laden uses religion as a cover while U.S. bosses use "democracy."

A PLP member in the audience was well received when he said capitalism and imperialism means a rich man's war but a poor man's fight and called for revolution. Many students took PLP flyers and bought CHALLENGE.

CHICAGO, September 22--In the nights after the World Trade Center

bombing racist flag-waving mobs gathered on South Harlem Avenue in Bridgeview harassing motorist thought to be Muslim or Arab. Today

twenty-three students and friends from Chicago State University gathered at a middle eastern restaurant in this area to express friendship and opposition to anti-Arab racism.

El Salvador: Oppose All Forms of Terrorism and All Imperialists

On Sept. 15, during the 150th anniversary of Salvadoran "national independence," thousands of workers and students marched to denounce the rotten conditions imposed by the capitalist system here. When the marchers reached the Presidential Palace, dozens of U.S., Israeli and Salvadoran flags were burned, protesting U.S. imperialist policies and the government's support of Bush's warmongering "crusade."

Some people mistakenly chanted support for the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center as a "progressive act." But this mass terrorism killed mostly workers (including many low-paid Salvadoran workers and others from all over the world employed at the WTC). To really fight imperialism one must oppose all the imperialists, (both those from the U.S. as well as the equally fascist local bosses opposing them (like the gang of billionaire bin Laden) who want the oil bonanza for themselves.

Meanwhile the hypocritical Salvadoran President "deplored terrorism," conveniently forgetting that his Arena Party was founded by CIA agent Colonel "Blowtorch" D'Abuisson, the head of the death squads responsible for most of the 100,000 workers and youth murdered during the 1970-80s civil war here.

All this makes the work of the PLP even more important, particularly in bringing DESAFIO-CHALLENGE to many more workers and youth, explaining how workers must never side with any bosses, big and not so big. That's cutting our own throats. Building the communist PLP is the only way workers can free themselves from the mass terrorism of capitalism.

Farabundo Rojo

The Only Workers' Flag Is Colored Red

Interest in politics and world events took a giant leap after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, people get only one side of the story. The media is not neutral!

Before Sept. 11, I had distributed a leaflet in my shop exposing how our bosses had become rich freezing our wages and that rotten working conditions had killed one worker. So I felt very confident giving out a PLP leaflet about the attacks.

Workers didn't reject it but neither were there the favorable comments that accompanied the previous leaflet. There was an eerie silence in the shop, which I didn't quite understand. I showed my indignation towards the media's nationalist drive to win workers to support war, talking about oil as the big reason behind it all. Again, some workers kept quiet but others nodded their heads in agreement.

Then one day I saw a big U.S. flag in the window near the eating area and a sign saying "united we stand." Angry, and seeing this as a call for war, I took the flag down. The worker who had put up the flag complained, demanding it be put back up. I said loudly that it was pro-war propaganda which would lead to more deaths. "Isn't it enough with all the people murdered at the WTC?" Another worker asked me in a conciliatory tone, "Why are you doing this?" A fellow worker from India seemed to agree with my actions. The few others in the cafeteria kept silent. Two hours later the flag was back up.

This time I took it down more calmly, explaining that since the company had forbidden me from distributing literature on their private property, the ban should also apply to pro-boss literature. This time no one said anything but after I left, a worker (who is a little nutty) announced over the PA system, "[my name] took down the U.S. flag."

This sharpened the ideological struggle. Many workers came to me. Some were curious. Others tried to calm things. One woman angrily told me, "You have no right to do that. There's a lot of pain for all those dead people. Don't believe that everyone is in agreement with you." She left before I responded.

Another worker fairly pleaded with me, "Why don't you show respect towards the flag of our country?" I drew him a map of the U.S., put in factories, hotels, fields, buildings, etc. and asked him, "What belongs to you?" He responded "nothing," understanding that the country is owned by the rich bosses, not by workers.

Then he said, "But it's the flag of our government." "Our government?" I asked him. "Yes, we elected it," he replied. I asked him who he voted for? "Al Gore," he answered, "because he was more favorable towards Latin people." "How do you know that?" I asked "That's what the TV news showed," he said. "Who owns the TV stations?"

He finally admitted he was beginning to understand how the flag, the government, the news media were all on the bosses' side. However, then he said, "But the government must protect our lives, right?" I responded: "Does the boss here care about your life? He doesn't, so why should the bosses' government care about our lives?"

He said, "Why so much propaganda in the media about how the government cares about all the people buried alive at the WTC?" I replied, "Don't be confused by that; think about what our boss here really cares about -- profits. And so does the bosses' government."

"Now I see why oil is so important," he said, "since it plays a big role in the profits of the big bosses."

Another worker told us the boss's son had put the flag back up and that a worker tore down one of my communist newspapers to show how much he loves the company. She begged me not to get into more trouble. I didn't take down the flag.

Now I'm more patient in winning workers to view nationalism and patriotism as bosses' tools for war and a police state. Some are beginning to see that supporting patriotism means uniting with their torturers and exploiters, the bosses. Understanding that, they'll also see that the red flag is the only one representing the international working class.

Nazi Judge Defends `American Values'
Another Cop Gets Away With Racist Murder

CINCINNATI, OHIO, September 27 -- Today Nazi Judge Ralph Winkler found racist cop Stephen Roach not guilty of shooting 19-year old Timothy Thomas in the back last April. Roach murdered Thomas after he ran because of unpaid traffic tickets!

He had been the 15th black male shot by the cops in six years, and the workers rebelled. At that time liberal Democrat mayor Lukens and Republican governor Taft sent in the state police and alerted the National Guard to enforce a racist dusk to dawn curfew. The rebels warmly embraced PLP. Hundreds bought CHALLENGE and dozens gave their addresses and phone numbers.

Now Judge Winkler went on the most reactionary radio station in the city and claimed that Thomas was responsible for his own death! Some young outraged workers took to the streets and the mayor imposed another curfew amid reports of fires and broken windows. In the midst of a pro-war patriotic orgy the last thing the bosses need is another anti-racist anti-cop rebellion on the "home front."

At the same time, GE's Aircraft Engine division GE plans to cut costs by half a billion dollars due to the downturn in the airline industry. They announced possible massive layoffs, including some of the 8,000 workers at its nearby Evendale plant. This will only add fuel to the fire. Unemployment in the mostly black Over-The-Rhine neighborhood is over 40%. This is the "freedom" and "democracy" the racist bosses want us to go to war for.

We will maintain our contacts with the workers who welcomed us last spring. Capitalism and its racist cops cannot be reformed. Communist revolution will allow the working class to mete out justice to the war makers and racist police terrorists.

Union Local Rejects War

Last week over 90% of the members at our union local voted to reject war as the answer to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Prior to the membership meeting, several of us collected signatures on a draft resolution demanding that the U.S. not invade Afghanistan, Iraq or any other country. The union executive board voted to change the wording to "not harming the innocent." At the membership meeting, there was no support for militarism. The few who abstained wanted more discussion on the resolution, including a statement that we stand together to eliminate fear, ignorance, and hatred."

Before the meeting there was also a sharp e-mail exchange. One worker's message said terrorism has been used primarily by governments (Palestine and Israel, Nazi Germany, the U.S. in Vietnam, Russia in Chechnya) and should not be seen as an ideology supported primarily by Islamic extremists, and that bombing Afghanistan would not end these attacks. A few workers said they would be willing to fight for America against its enemies, but the majority responded that military retaliation against a whole population would only involve U.S. workers in another Vietnam. A common thread among almost all of the e-mail was solidarity with the victims and support for their families.

PLP MADE THE DIFFERENCE

Years of circulating CHALLENGE and struggling over its ideas prepared us to withstand the avalanche of patriotism fomented by Bush & Co. The support and urging of our PLP club enabled us to organize this activity, to plan how to raise the resolution among our co-workers, with the executive board and at the local meeting.

Discussion of the resolution and the political questions surrounding it brought people closer to the Party's ideas. In winning workers to circulate it, we built their confidence in being able to organize and in understanding the strength of our class. That's all part of our efforts to recruit several new members in the coming year -- our most important goal.

To protect Arab workers from attack, we got the idea of an "escort service" from the last CHALLENGE. Now more than ever it is important to read CHALLENGE as soon as it arrives, to circulate it as widely as possible and to share our experiences through the paper. Organizing to protect Arab workers will enable us to win people away from nationalism and patriotism and to an international working-class outlook. We're digging in for a long struggle in which we will use many creative approaches to building the Party.

No one at the executive board or the local meeting said this attack and the response to it was "not union business." The times really are changing.

1199-SEIU Uses `Crisis' As Pretext for Sellout

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 1 -- The 1199/SEIU leadership called an emergency meeting on September 20 about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of innocent workers and about extending the contract expiration date from October 31 until next March 31. They said there's simply insufficient time to negotiate a contract during this crisis and that "the public" would not support the workers, especially if we strike.

It's been obvious that the union bosses were already delaying their plans amid the downturn in the capitalist-run economy since they didn't negotiate all summer.

The meeting room was filled to capacity. Many workers came forward to address the crisis, all condemning the terrorism. One noted that the working class had responded heroically to the needs of the victims and their families. Many others were very angry about the overall situation (an anger that should be directed against the capitalist system, the real cause of the instability worldwide).

Some expressed patriotic feelings, "ready to go to war, if necessary." One quoted the Bible, saying "money is the root of all evil," that we must "rely on god." Others opposed any contract delay, especially since it's already been extended from July to October. Many workers are feeling the economic pressure of feeding their families and paying high rents. One said her hospital had already voted to call for a strike if no agreement was reached.

The hospital bosses will surely welcome the contract delay. It will give them enough time to use this crisis to lay off workers, especially since the bosses stated two months ago they "had no money." But over the past five years, the healthcare industry has been very profitable. The HMO's and hospitals made billions in profits; the money did not go to healthcare workers.

We should unite all workers against layoffs, no matter when the contract expires. There are many Arab workers in the hospitals. We must guard against those expressing hatred towards our Arab working class brothers and sisters. As fascist terrorism from all bosses increases, exploitation of workers will intensify, driving down wages and benefits. We cannot rely on bosses' politicians, their union flunkeys and contracts to improve living conditions. Healthcare workers and the working class overall must mount a struggle against capitalism, a system which breeds nationalism, racism, sexism, poverty and imperialist war.

The Other September 11th: CIA Reign of Terror in Chile

SANTIAGO, CHILE--September 11, 2001, will always be remembered as a "day of mass terror" killing thousands. On Sept. 11, 1973 another mass terror hit workers and youth in Chile. But it wasn't bin Laden who led that terror gang, it was the CIA and its lackeys in the Chilean Army under orders of International Telephone and Telegraph. It began when the Air Force bombed La Moneda, the presidential palace, to overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende. The military coup led by General Pinochet ended up jailing and murdering thousands of workers and youth. The brain behind this mass terror was Henry Kissinger, Nixon's Secretary of State, who had declared, "We don't have to accept that a country goes Marxist just because its people are irresponsible." This is the same Dr. K who is paraded today by the War Networks (CNN, etc.) to rant about "international terrorism." What gall!

But contrary to the capitalist class and its lackeys like Kissinger, who helped murder millions in Southeast Asia and then thousands in Chile, revolutionary communists oppose all forms of terrorism against workers and their allies. The thousands murdered on Sept. 11 died at the hands of those who copy the big bosses that kill workers and their families day after day.

So following the latest tragedy, our PLP group in Chile distributed hundreds of leaflets attacking this terrorist act and the big bosses as the worst terrorists of the world. They were read by thousands and passed around all over Santiago. They spread the truth about the tragedy, countering the misinformation spewed out by the local and international mass media.

While the government of President Lagos and the local press showed their support for Bush's plan for war and called for "more democracy" (where workers have the "freedom" to be exploited by bosses), our leaflet exposed how violent capitalism is every day of every year: 1.2 billion people worldwide try to survive on less than a dollar a day. Tens of thousands of children die DAILY because of hunger, malnutrition and preventable diseases.

Our leaflet offered the only answer to this mass terror: build an international revolutionary movement of millions of workers to fight for a society without starvation, unemployment and terrorism against workers -- that's communism.

Bosses Pull Racist Fast One At Boston's Roxbury College

BOSTON, MASS., Sept. 24 -- On Sept. 6, Gov. Swift announced that Roxbury Community College (RCC) would be placed under state receivership (control by state appointees) for mismanagement of financial aid money and other abuses. The next day the Boston Globe reported that two local black politicians, Marie St. Fleur and Diane Wilkerson, charged a racist double standard was being applied to RCC. Swift then backed off full receivership, allowing current RCC President Brown to remain involved if she cooperated with the investigation and audit of RCC finances and also with any changes to the college.

The big corporations are pressuring Swift and the Board of Higher Education (BHE) to get public education in Massachusetts to serve business, such as providing a larger pool of trained workers to stay competitive. Last year MassInc, an influential think tank sponsored by Fleet, Fidelity, State Street Bank and other financial giants, called for integrating public colleges into a "state-wide economic development strategy" designed to "meet the workforce, research, and other needs of businesses."(see www.massinc.com)

For them, community colleges are an untapped resource. State receivership will give them a free hand to downsize or reshape RCC. It's no coincidence that the one college serving an explicitly minority population is being attacked first.

Wilkerson's and St. Fleur's cries of racism to defend Grace Brown are merely cronyism in disguise. If they cared any more than Swift about the education of RCC students, they would not have defended the corrupt and vindictive Brown administration all these years, or rescued her from a similar crisis in 1996. They would have responded to the many student protests against the failure of Brown's administration. Wilkerson and St. Fleur want to use RCC as a patronage in "their community." The Governor's "retreat" helps keep the black bosses happy so they'll continue trying to keep black workers in line.

Eliminating the Brown administration is no solution, although it's necessary. Students, faculty and staff must see the bigger picture: Brown is a small time despicable agent of Swift and the BHE. The latter pair, in turn, are the paid stooges of the big capitalists, who have no commitment to educating working-class people, black, Latin or white. The bosses want a large pool of docile and minimally trained workers. Once Brown & Co. are removed (or possibly just disciplined), we will be confronting the capitalist class directly, determined to transform first RCC and then all community colleges into vocational training centers.

The RCC take-over mirrors every sector of the U.S. The rulers are asserting control over our lives more directly and violently. The entire social "safety net" -- welfare, health care, free education -- is in tatters, either eliminated or incorporated into the capitalist system (workfare, privatized social security). Workers who don't fit in to this new system of control are ruthlessly suppressed. Witness the bosses' reign of terror against black and Latin youth under the drug laws and so-called zero-tolerance policing as well as the continuing demonization of black and Latin women on welfare. It all adds up to fascism, aimed first at non-white workers and then at the rest of the working class.

The Progressive Labor Party is advancing this class analysis inside the RCC faculty union, among students, and inside the RCC Reform Task Force, an organization of mostly adjunct professors who are trying to oust the Brown Administration. We're fighting hard against the narrow perspective that eliminating Brown is a solution. Reliance on the bosses' media or black caucus to save us is a diversion and illusion . Stopping the rush towards fascism led by these capitalist politicians can only be defeated by a revolutionary communist movement.

Workers Oppose Red-Baiting Attack on
Anti-War Shop Steward

NEW YORK CITY, Sept. 27 -- The bosses have been temporarily successful in trying to twist workers' grief and anger over the deaths at the World Trade Center into a flag-waving, bible-thumping lust for war. We have answered back and begun to win some workers.

On Sept. 11, work virtually stopped as ears were glued to the radio. Condemning all forms of terrorism, I tried to explain how our anger at the terrorists resembled the deep-rooted anger felt by millions worldwide toward the U.S. government for its long history of terrorist attacks waged through the CIA and the military. I described several examples, including the CIA's training of Bin Laden and links to Saddam Hussein and Panama's Manuel Noriega. Most workers listened. Several agreed. Some didn't comment. Only one shouted, "I don't want to hear your shit."

Three hours later our building was evacuated. As we looked south, we could see a plume of dark smoke rising into the sunny blue sky. With most public transportation shut, some of us walked across the 59th Street Bridge to Queens with tens of thousands of others. We escorted a Muslim co-worker most of the way home. A lengthy political discussion with two friends, including a regular CHALLENGE reader, ensued while walking through bumper-to-bumper traffic, climbing over fences and concrete barriers, etc. We noted how the U.S. flag and patriotism are used to hide the distinction between the bosses who make wars for corporate profits (from oil in the Middle East) versus workers forced to do the fighting and dying.

Later, two PLP members stopped by, and we agreed to have a club meeting and speak to as many people as we could.

Returning to work Thursday morning, I spoke to individuals and to groups of workers in the lunchroom. As a veteran shop steward, I spoke mostly about the terrorist attack and the possible carnage from a major war if the biggest terrorist of all, the U.S. government, attacked innocent civilians. Again, most workers listened. Several agreed including some wearing flag-pins and red, white and blue ribbons. Most said nothing. One angry worker said, "I don't want to talk to you."

After lunch, a top manager said that one worker complained that I talked about communism and the WTC disaster during my union meetings. He warned me to speak only about "union business."

That afternoon and the next morning I spoke to workers about the anonymous rat-fink who went to management to get me in trouble. I had run for shop steward on the basis of fighting grievances AND on sharing my communist ideas. I said if I couldn't continue to include my political opinions in my reports then I might quit as shop steward. I asked the workers for their opinions, which would weigh heavily in my decision. Over the next several days, many co-workers told me they wanted me to continue as their steward, communist ideas and all.

On Sept.15 and 16, a leadership meeting and a well-attended club meeting helped deepen our understanding of this political crisis. We agreed to hold a dinner/discussion the following Saturday. One member invited my wife and I to her home to talk with friends and relatives. Another discussion, with Spanish-English translation, occurred among eight people. Plans were made to meet with their social club in two weeks. On September 22, an excellent discussion took place among club members and seven co-workers and friends. Everyone took one or more CHALLENGES. The next three days at work over 45 CHALLENGES with penetrating analysis about the current crisis were distributed, 50% more than usual. The struggle continues.

Cook County Workers Build International Unity

CHICAGO, IL Oct. 1 -- Workers at Cook County Hospital struggled to overcome the shock of the terrorist attacks and build an international, multi-racial response. We met the evening of the attack and set about organizing discussions among our friends and lending support to on-the-job fund-raising efforts for the victims. The next day our first leaflets appeared. We made contact with an Islamic community group that had been attacked in the racist backlash. About 150 CHALLENGES were sold hand-to-hand in the first few days.

Based on a long history of struggle and trust among the workers, many came to us to get our analysis and seek help. A number of workers and doctors of Central Asian origin, including U.S. citizens, were "investigated" by the FBI after the September 11 attack. Some computers were seized. Co-workers were taken into a room, one at a time, and interrogated by the FBI. They were asked if they "felt safe" around those being investigated, and were warned to keep quiet about their interrogations. Some of these workers did not give in to the atmosphere of intimidation and racism being pushed by the FBI and County bosses. The Party is fighting this racist backlash legally and in our unions.

Meanwhile, we held two dinner/discussions in a comrade's home, involving about 25 people from half a dozen countries and various ethnic groups. Workers got a better understanding of the imperialist oil war that really lies beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center. PLP members drew confidence from the reactions of our friends and political base.

There are many weaknesses in our work. Times like these make our shortcomings painfully clear. But we have built a solid base among the workers in this hospital and their response to the Party and its ideas in the crisis gives us every reason for optimism.

Workers of the Worldç Write!
LETTERS

Mom to GI Son: `Fight For Workers' Power!'

September 11 - when thousands of workers died as victims of terrorism - is a day that changed the lives of millions of workers. Everyone has felt the impact in one way or another.

Our family has a child in the military. My son is trapped by the wages he's paid and by the supposed opportunity for "adventure and personal growth," together with the idea of proving you're "brave." Also, there's a constant barrage of propaganda that the U.S. has the world's most powerful military.

He and the family openly discuss our positions about the war and the terrorist attacks. We both know the bosses are manipulating us to win our support for an oil war. We understand that in these bosses' wars, our youth, especially black and Latin youth, are used as cannon fodder to attack other working-class youth who belong to other armies manipulated by other bosses and their interests, also using patriotism.

It's a difficult situation for my son, knowing all this and being in the military. To clear up his confusion I go between hugs, tears and communist ideas. I told him if he's in the military, he should be more active in advancing ideas he knows are true: that workers are victims on every level when the bosses fight. And that the world needs an army that fights for workers' power, not for the power of the bosses - an army that fights against capitalism.

For my part, as a mother, besides condemning terrorism and putting forward these ideas to my co-workers, also victims of this manipulation, I suffer from the pain of being separated from my son. So I sought psychological help for myself and my daughter who also misses her brother. We've found false information and "advice" from "professionals" who tell us to "be proud" because my son "will defend America." I say to them, "Hell no! Neither the bosses, nor their flag, nor their oil nor their patriotism is worth the life of one worker!" That's why I'm writing to CHALLENGE - to show I'm against this war. That's why I participate in political discussions. My best therapy is to have more comrades and more friends open to discuss these events from a dialectical, communist point of view.

Red Mother

Media Frenzy Builds Anti-Arab Racism

My heart goes out to all the victims and the families of those caught in the crossfire of this horrible anti-worker terrorist reaction to capitalism.

The working class, the majority of those who worked in the WTC and the Pentagon, as well as those passengers on the four highjacked airliners, did not deserve to lose their lives in the bosses' fight for control of Middle East oil. The reactions to this attack seem to be to against all persons (and even those who appear to be) of Arab descent.

An incident on Sept. 11 at Cal State University at Long Beach involved a student of apparent Middle Eastern heritage who parked his car in a handicapped zone of a school employee lot and ran to class. Because of a severe shortage of student parking many use any available spaces. This occurs countless times on campus, but this time an employee immediately assumed him to be a potential "bomb threat" and the campus was evacuated very chaotically. A police bomb squad was called. The student returned to find his van disassembled and its windows shattered. He was severely interrogated and harassed. There was no bomb. Some people at the school have now decided to look out for the safety of the large number of Middle Eastern students there.

Another incident involved a local fast food restaurant, "Taste of India." On the Sunday following the WTC blast, a barrage of cops were quite disappointed when this restaurant they had intended to investigate was closed. When a cop realized the doors were locked and employees were nowhere to be found, he shouted, "He's not here!" Four officers remained, presumably awaiting a confrontation.

The media is feeding fear and building U.S. patriotism for the bosses. It's very important to fight the racist terror now mounting against Middle Easterners and win co-workers, students and neighbors to fight it.

Americans are experiencing what millions in other countries have faced for years when the U.S. government attacked them. The ongoing fight for control of oil is between the bosses of different nations. The working class is cannon fodder to use and promote their causes. To quote an African proverb, "When elephants stampede and wrestle, it is the savanna that suffers."

An anti-racist, anti-imperialist fighter

Anti-Racist Jews Active Against War

Anti-racist, anti-war predominantly Jewish organizations have been active here in New York since the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

On Sunday, September 23, over 150 members and friends of a number of Jewish groups formed a Days of Awe coalition to hold a traditional service, which, in this case, had a strong political content. The Days of Awe, the period between the holidays of Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur, is when observant Jews attempt to cast off their sins.

This coalition group gathered at the Hudson River to throw bread on the water while speakers denounced U.S. government and business policies that exploit the people and resources of the Middle East. They also condemned the U.S. government's war drive, anti-Arab racism and Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

These groups have also been supporting the anti-war demonstrations in Brooklyn and in Manhattan's Union Square and Times Square. They are currently organizing to build the October 7 demonstration and march from Union Square to Times Square.

NY Red

Capitalism's Terror Kills Every Day

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center killed an estimated 6,000 people, most of them blue and white collar workers getting their daily dose of exploitation from the bosses.

This was not the only terrorist act committed on workers and their families that day.The World Health Organization says an average of 30,000 children die daily worldwide from famine, disease and war. The capitalist system, embodied by U.S. imperialism, multi-national corporations and their lackeys worldwide cause these massacres.

The bosses and their capitalist system will use this killing of workers by terrorists as an excuse to push their fascist agenda on the working class. We can expect more anti-communist propaganda mixed with racism, nationalism and patriotism. Bush has declared a "war on terrorism." But it's actually a war between big terrorists like Bush and little terrorists like Osama Bin Laden. Workers must not take sides. We must unite Asian, Latin, black and white and smash capitalism worldwide.

These are dangerous times for the working class internationally. It's also a great opportunity for us to advance communist ideas through PLP and CHALLENGE.

A CHALLENGE reader

Terror vs. Immigrants An Old U.S. Story

The day of the terrorist attack in New York and Washington was a sad day, one of continual discussion among many people in my garment factory. Everybody had questions and ideas about what happened. One worker asked, "You're political, what do you think about this?" I explained that this was part of the fight between different bosses for control of Middle East oil.

Over lunch some workers said this was the work of some crazies, that the Islamic religion makes them commit terrorist acts. But the majority of workers at my table understood it's for the control of profits. The conversation turned to how rising unemployment and poverty would affect us. These problems were becoming very serious in the garment industry even before this terrorist attack. Many of these workers have read CHALLENGE and Party leaflets for years.

We discussed how the Spanish language media has launched a nationalist, patriotic pro-U.S. campaign calling for war, saying that this country has "opened its doors" to us and fed us. But many workers know that the majority of us immigrant workers are here because the bosses' and U.S. government's imperialist economic and military policies have sown terror, death and poverty for decades in our countries of origin. As the back-to-work bell rang, a humble worker said, "You're right. In one hand they offer amnesty to some and in the other they'll give us a rifle to fight for them."

LA Garment Worker

Workers See Through Patriotic Circus

My confidence in the working class was bolstered in a weekend where we distributed 200 leaflets and 20 CHALLENGES at the post office, and spent a Sunday afternoon talking with almost 20 workers about the government's moves towards war and fascism. Workers seemed open to the idea that the terrorist attacks represent a fight between bosses and that workers will gain nothing by going to war.

Despite the mass jingoistic, nationalist patriotic propaganda campaign, some co-workers and some old and new friends of the Party had a lively discussion about the government's moves. Everyone participated. People expressed fear of terrorist attacks and government police state tactics. We agreed that war and fascism are part of the capitalist system. Anti-Arab racism has included shootings and physical assaults against "Middle Eastern looking" people. An anti-Islam demonstration at a mosque in a Chicago suburb included a large confederate flag, like a Klan rally.

The bosses will pass laws to attack communists and others opposed to imperialist war. Our response must be to organize in mass organizations, build strong ties with friends and co-workers and increase the circulation of CHALLENGE. These events have helped me see beyond the patriotic circus the bosses are orchestrating. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Joe Smith

Workers' Solidarity Is Best Medicine

In July a PLP health conference in Chicago brought healthcare workers and patients together to organize in healthcare centers. A group of us from New York saw enthusiasm visible throughout. Most participants were healthcare workers; I was there as a dialysis patient.

My first kidney failure occurred 20 years ago, just after I arrived here as an undocumented refugee from El Salvador's civil war. Like many others who left then because of persecution by the army and death squads, I applied for political asylum but was repeatedly denied. Then I learnt I needed dialysis as a matter of life and death. My job insurance only covered me for a month. I could not get Medicare because I was undocumented.

I entered a public hospital where the health care workers bent and broke rules to treat me, even though I was undocumented. After receiving dialysis in the pelvis prevented me from walking for the next six hours, the staff would do the impossible and find transportation to take me home. Sometimes a willing ambulance driver would piggyback me onto someone else's ride. Despite the fact that bosses use borders to divide workers I felt they would never report me to Immigration. I saw workers reaching out to each other in need.

I recall 1981 was one of the most violent years of El Salvador's bloody 12 year war. Massacres, heavy bombardment of villages and killings by death squads left beheaded and mutilated bodies on roadsides everywhere. I knew this was all financed by the U.S. Government who spent $1 million a day in military supplies for over 12 years. The U.S. trained the Salvadoran army and death squads. Meanwhile, I saw from my experiences in public hospitals U.S. bosses would not provide decent health care for workers at home. Today, the situation is being repeated in Colombia; the U.S. government is funding the killing of civilians to protect its corporations.

Years later I obtained a green card and a job with health coverage and had received a kidney transplant. What a relief, I thought. Then I lost my insurance and discovered the medication cost $500 a month! As a legal resident I was eligible for Medicare but it did not cover post-transplant treatment, and harassment from hospitals and collection agencies were tormenting me. I felt the same insecurity as when I was undocumented and had no security.

My transplant rejected recently; now I'm back in dialysis. My Medicare covers 70% of my bills; supplementary insurance picks up the rest. You'd think that finally I don't have to bother with hospital bills. Wrong. Insurance companies make mistakes and don't pay bills and co-payments are high. Medicare requires a monthly premium.

Undocumented or citizen, I've concluded that under capitalism workers cannot have decent health care. Workers may fight to improve conditions but drug and insurance corporations run health care for their profits. This PLP conference was important because it strengthened the Party's commitment to spread our ideas of organizing for communism, where heath care strictly benefits the working class, as healthcare workers and patients. A Comrade