President Barack Obama’s lifting of the arms embargo in Vietnam signifies another step toward war, particularly in the South China Sea against the Chinese bosses, one of two major threats to the U.S. imperialists.
For the working class, this strategic move by the U.S. rulers reflects the longstanding sellout politics of the Vietnamese national bosses. It also underscores the need for a worldwide revolutionary movement fighting directly for communism.
The China Factor
Lifting the embargo allows Vietnam to acquire lethal weapons from the biggest arms merchant in the world. The murderous U.S. imperialists quickly set aside their phony concerns over their new client’s “disregard for human rights.” On the one hand, halting the embargo will wean Vietnam away from its arms dependence on Russia, the other main imperialist rival to the U.S. On the other, the new flow of weapons will fortify Vietnam as a regional counterweight to China: “The increasingly tense situation in the South China Sea, and Vietnam’s growing strategic and economic importance, outweigh U.S. concerns about Hanoi’s admittedly terrible human rights record” (Council on Foreign Relations, 5/24).
For U.S. and Chinese bosses, the South China Sea represents a typical capitalist flashpoint. Both sides are attempting to justify their imperialist aggression with treaties that favor their respective empires. China’s ambitious development strategy, “One Belt, One Road,” seeks to expand sea and land military installations throughout Asia and the Middle East. Vietnam, a regional power and target since the Chinese first conquered it in the 1st century BC, represents a potential impediment to some of China’s grand plans.
Both China and Vietnam, for example, lay claim to the Paracel Islands. In 2014, when China temporarily deployed an oil rig (a structure to drill and service oil wells) in the South China Sea, it led to multiple collisions between the two countries’ ships.
Deep-Water Ports and Choke Points
The lifting of the embargo is the latest U.S. action to exploit historic tensions between Vietnam and China for its own benefit: “Above all, Washington wants greater access to Cam Ranh Bay and other strategic ports on the South China Sea” (Stratfor, 5/27). The Vietnamese port, considered the best deep-water shelter in all of Southeast Asia, has well-established strategic importance. In 1975, it was a U.S. military base during the Vietnam War. In 1979, it was an important Cold War naval base for the Russian fleet. Today, the U.S. hopes Cam Ranh Bay will provide reliable access to the South China Sea, countering China and opening the door for more military coordination with Vietnam.
In fact, Vietnam is one of several smaller countries caught up in the region’s big-power conflict. Through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a regional trade agreement excluding China), along with a recent military buildup, the U.S. is challenging China in Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia and Brunei.
Indonesia, by proxy of the United States military, controls the Malacca Strait between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra—the transit choke point for 80 percent of China’s oil imports (Business Insider, 2/6). All imperialists understand that whoever controls the oil transit choke points controls the world.
The ‘Final Normalization’ of Imperialism
The lifting of the U.S. arms embargo represents the “final normalization” of relations between two groups of capitalist bosses that began decades ago. It’s also the latest betrayal of the millions of Vietnamese workers who fought and died, in the jungles and the streets, against U.S. imperialists in the 1960s and ‘70s. Vietnam has pursued a capitalist market economy since 1987, when its rulers opened the country to foreign investment. In 1994, the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam was lifted. Since 1995, when President Bill Clinton restored diplomatic relations, rulers in the two countries have grown steadily closer, with a series of trade agreements and, more recently, a nuclear fuel and technology pact. In 2014, Obama began to relax the arms embargo, a move completed last month. As U.S. companies—from Chevron and Coca-Cola to Intel and Microsoft—pour money into Vietnamese factories and sweatshops, and McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts franchises sprout like weeds in Ho Chi Minh City, business is booming. In 1975, the U.S. ruling class lost the battle in Vietnam and had to beat a humiliating retreat. But today it appears to have won the imperialist war there, at least for now.
The American War
The imperialists knew they weren’t fighting any ordinary enemy. A working class that arms itself with revolutionary politics and guns, with mass backing from the international masses, is more dangerous to the bosses than any imperialist rival. The U.S. bosses responded with genocide: “By the end of the war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II” (Howard Zinn).
The Vietnam War (or what Vietnamese workers call “the American War”) was an example of how a committed, communist-led army can defeat the largest, technology-driven imperialist army. For all of the Vietnamese communists’ political weaknesses, reflecting the decay of the Soviet Union and, later, the defeat of the Cultural Revolution in China, Vietnam represented a revolutionary class war.
The leadership shown by the working class in Vietnam over decades of resistance to French, Japanese, and U.S. imperialism, inspired millions worldwide. Black soldiers shot and fragged their commanders; some joined the workers’ army in Vietnam.
Back in the U.S., inner-city rebellions by Black workers were challenging the capitalists. Muhammad Ali, heavyweight boxing champion of the world, said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me n-----.” In 1964, a fledging group called Progressive Labor Movement, later to develop into the international Progressive Labor Party, initiated and gave leadership to what became the anti-racist movement against the Vietnam War. On May 2, thousands of workers and students marched and rallied in cities nationwide. In New York City, more than a thousand people heard PL speeches about the necessity to smash capitalism. They broke a police ban on demonstrations in midtown Manhattan, winding their way through Times Square to the United Nations, demanding: “U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!” It was the first national demonstration against the U.S. imperialist invasion and the forerunner of countless protests in the years ahead.
The result was the Vietnam Syndrome, the working masses’ anti-imperialist sentiment resulting from fightback and anger over working-class casualties in a failed ground war. U.S. bosses have yet to recover. To this day, they’ve been unable to reestablish the military draft they need for the next big ground war.
The bosses are learning that military might doesn’t win wars. Class commitment wins wars. If the U.S. rulers expect to counter China in the South China Sea, a possible step toward a global conflict, they must overcome the Vietnam Syndrome by feeding nationalist, racist propaganda to prepare the working class for perpetual war.
In 1968, after Ho Chi Minh and his forces first agreed to negotiations with the imperialists, the three-year-old PLP made an intensely unpopular criticism of the Vietnamese communist leaders. We said they had taken the reformist, nationalist route, selling out the international working class and any potential for communist revolution.
Nearly five decades later, history has handed down its verdict. Our Party was correct. Fighting imperialism is not enough; we must smash capitalism for all time. No longer a young organization, PLP is now an international party spanning five continents and 27 countries. We still hold high the red flag where the Vietnamese communist leadership dropped it. Soldiers, let’s turn the guns around and join the fight for communism!
BROOKLYN, June 1—Hundreds of students — female and male, Black and white — are uniting to build a movement to fight the racist and sexist dress code at Brooklyn Technical High School. The dress code singles out female students for wearing clothes that are “too revealing.” On May 25, to protest this policy, hundreds of students decided to break the dress code. Some coordinated online using #SkinOutSpeakOut to organize male-female and multiracial twin outfits and highlight the administration’s racist and sexist enforcement of the code. Hundreds of students wore Progressive Labor Party’s anti-sexism buttons to support the struggle.
Sexist, Racist Administration Exposed
When Principal Randy Asher heard about the protest and couldn’t persuade students to shut it down, he called in the superintendent and sent six deans to carefully inspect all 5,500 students on their way in. Unsurprisingly, the administrators cited Black and Latin female students most for violating the dress code. (Only 16 percent of Brooklyn Tech students are Black or Latin, as compared to 69 percent in New York City public schools overall.) As a dean wrote up two female students, a male student passed them several times in short shorts and a tank top that revealed his stomach. The dean did nothing, even though the boy’s clothes showed more skin than the girls’. This scene was caught on video and forced some students to open their eyes. (Later the boy was threatened with suspension for “causing a riot.”)
Sexism and racism are so blatant at the elite Brooklyn Tech that one dean wrote up a Black female student and explained, “If you were an 80-pound Asian girl, this would be a different story.” Dress codes teach youth that different standards prevail for men and women. They sexualize women and make female body parts “taboo.” Within capitalist culture, Black and Latin women are especially sexualized and targeted.
A Principal With No Principles
Principal Asher’s sexist hypocrisy has been exposed by the case of his friend Sean Shaynak, the math and physics teacher the school hired during Asher’s tenure. Several years ago, according to Federal Court documents, Shaynak showed up at a school dance in drag, lifted his skirt at female students, and made “lewd and sexually suggestive gestures.” Asher was present but took no disciplinary action against the teacher, who ran a prestigious aerospace program that brought significant donations to Tech (DNAinfo, 1/12/15).
For Shaynak, this was not an isolated incident. According to the federal suit brought by four former female Tech students, an assistant principal “informed principal Asher of the sexually harassing and inappropriate behavior by Shaynak,” but Asher still took no action (DNAinfo). In August 2014, Shaynak was arrested after sending a female student a Snapchat photograph of his genitals. In January 2015, he was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree kidnapping, disseminating indecent material to a minor, endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct.
When it comes to protecting his students from the dangers of sleeveless shirts, Principal Asher is a model of tough enforcement. When it comes to protecting them from sexual predators on his own turf, he’s been a lot less interested and effective.
Smash Capitalism to Smash Sexism
Although sexism targets women, they cannot be the only ones to fight it. Men must join in the struggle, too; communists must explain how it is in men’s best interests. Like racism, sexism is created by capitalists to steal more profit from the working class. It allows them to pay women workers less and keep men and women divided, lowering everyone’s wages and blocking effective fightback. In addition, the capitalist bosses save billions of dollars in unpaid childcare and housework by women who are raising the next generation of workers. Whenever we allow sexist ideology to poison the working class, the capitalists win.
The anti-dress code struggle at Brooklyn Tech is an important battleground in our fight against capitalism. The school’s students — male, female, Black, white, Latin, Asian — are uniting. They are beginning to understand the connections between racism, sexism and the profit system. When students reject these anti-worker ideologies, we move one step closer to smashing capitalism worldwide.
Overpowered Administration
Responds with False Promises
The day after the dress code protest, Black female leaders organized a speakout, much like the one they organized in last winter’s #blackinbrooklyntech campaign (See CHALLENGE 2/10). Students spoke about getting dress-coded and targeted by the administration, and how they were routinely objectified and sexualized. Male students attacked the dress code for targeting women. The speakers pointed to the recent shift away from student passivity, and to the future of this new activism at Brooklyn Tech. Students are beginning to see sexism and racism as oppressions that stem from the capitalist profit system. Most important, the power of multiracial and male-female unity has grown stronger. That’s the biggest lesson of this school year, and it has been learned by hundreds, if not thousands, of students.
Asher’s administration is trying to intimidate this courageous movement by monitoring and disciplining student leaders. At the same time, the principal is attempting to pacify students with a reform “action plan.” But the administrators refuse to release the action plan or do anything of substance. They’re counting on the activist students graduating or losing their fighting spirit over the summer.
The Fight Continues
Seeds of resistance at Brooklyn Tech are just taking root. Since last winter, when the #blackinbrooklyntech campaign began to raise anti-racist consciousness, students have grown bolder and more confident. They are grappling with how to overcome the losing idea that fighting racism is a problem best left to Black students alone. Students who insist on expressing anti-Black racism have been marginalized. In many classrooms, teachers have taken a firm anti-racist stand. Dozens used their unassigned periods to implement plans supporting anti-racist education. Now the fight is expanding to tackle sexism and involve more of the school community. Students are already planning how to keep the struggle going next year.
There is still more work to do. More teachers and students need to be won to the fight so that it can continue for years to come. Sexism and racism must be understood as integral parts of capitalism. PL’ers are already selling CHALLENGE at Tech (see letter). Some students have come to Party study groups and May Day. As the struggle continues, we can sharpen our discussions to talk about communist revolution. The true power of student unity is felt not in struggle for reforms, but in the fight for revolution to overthrow the capitalist class. The bosses’ system seeks to win over today’s youth—tomorrow’s workers—to accept a future of growing inequality, fascist repression and imperialist war. When young people are won to the struggle for a communist future, where there is no need for racism and sexism, larger victories lie ahead. Join the fight!
Workers protests U.S. President Obama’s recent visit at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. Hypocrite-in-chief Barack Obama concluded his visit to Japan with no apology for the most deadly terrorist slaughter in the history of the world, the 1945 U.S. atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Instead, he called for a “moral awakening” and “a world free of nuclear weapons.” He laid a wreath. He embraced survivors of the racist atrocities that murdered more than 200,000 women, men and children, the vast majority of them civilians burned to death. Whenever the imperialists fight, it’s always the working class that suffers the bloody horrors.
But actions speak louder than words. In response to the sharpening inter-imperialist competition between the U.S. bosses and their capitalist counterparts in Russia and China, Obama has engineered “a $1 trillion program to rebuild the American nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years. A new Pentagon report shows that he has eliminated fewer nuclear weapons than any president since the end of the Cold War” (New York Times, 5/28). In particular, the recent development of smaller—and therefore more usable—nuclear weapons by “an economically declining Russia, a rising China and an uncertain United States…threaten[s] to revive a Cold War-era arms race…” (NYT, 4/16).
Joining Obama at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was Shinzo Abe, Japan’s hard-right prime minister, who led a successful 2015 campaign—backed by the U.S.—to “re-interpret” the country’s pacifist postwar constitution and free its “Self-Defense Forces” to engage in overseas combat. Obama’s pivot to Asia is heavily tilting toward a remilitarized Japan as a once-and-future regional counterweight to China. As a former Japanese Foreign Ministry official observed, “Abe’s approach is a kind of ‘military pacifism’ that takes war as a given” (NYT, 5/27).
When the rulers talk of peace, as Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht once noted, the workers know that war has already begun. The lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the U.S. ruling class will stop at nothing to preserve its state power and profit. Which means the next world war is only a matter of time.
Bombing Japan to Save It—for U.S. Imperialism
For seven decades, U.S rulers have tried to justify the A-bomb attacks by maintaining they were needed to force Japan’s surrender and avoid a U.S. land invasion and a million U.S. casualties. In reality, Japan’s rulers were ready to surrender before Hiroshima:
• According to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, a board of military and civilian experts established by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, “Certainly…in all probability prior to November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bomb had not been dropped…and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” Hiroshima Lies
• A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, later the U.S. National Security Adviser, “confessed that he had pulled it out of the air to justify the bombings” (8/5/2005).
• By the spring of 1945, Japan’s entire industrial and military machine had ground to a halt, severing its oil lifeline. By June, U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay complained that there was nothing left to bomb in Japanese cities except “garbage can targets.”
• The arch-racist Truman’s diary referred to a decoded Japanese cable indicating Japan was about to surrender unconditionally, as “the Jap[anese] Emperor [was] asking for peace.”
• General (and future president) Dwight Eisenhower believed that Japan “was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary…and no longer mandatory to save American lives” (Eisenhower: Mandate for Change, 1963).
• General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Pacific commander, considered the A-bombs “completely unnecessary from a military point of view” (James Clayton, “The Years of MacArthur, 1941-1945,” Vol. II).
A Genocide Aimed at USSR
If overwhelming evidence shows that the genocide at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was militarily unnecessary, and that Japan was on the verge of unconditional surrender, why did President Harry Truman order the A-bombs dropped? The true purpose was to warn the then-socialist Soviet Union that the U.S. had a new and devastating weapon, and was ready to use it against any threat to the U.S. imperialists’ world dominance. The obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki signaled the beginning of the Cold War between capitalists in the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Some supporting evidence:
• On June 6, 1945, Stimson told Truman he was “fearful” that the U.S. Air Force would have Japan “so bombed out” that the A-Bomb “would not have a fair background to show its strength.”
• With the Soviet Red Army ready to enter the war against Japan by August 8, the U.S. rushed to use the bomb two days earlier, to play what Stimson referred to as a “master card”: “Let our actions speak for words. The Russians will understand them better than anything else….We have to regain the lead…in a pretty rough and realistic way….We have coming into action a weapon which will be unique” (Stimson diary).
• James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state, told Stimson, “The atomic bomb might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war” (Truman: Year of Decisions).
As A-bomb scientist Leo Szilard, in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes, recalled:
Mr. Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb…in order to win the war….Mr. Byrnes’s….view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.
—A Personal History of the Atomic Bomb, Leo Szilard, 1949.
In an implicit indictment of the liberal Democrat Truman administration, Szilard said, “If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities…we would have defined [it]…as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremburg and hanged them.”
In this era of a U.S. “war on terror” and Obama’s bald-faced lies about eliminating nuclear weapons, it’s important to remember that he represents the capitalist class that stands guilty of the genocide in Japan. To this day, only the U. S. rulers have used nuclear weapons in war. It remains for the international working class to mete out justice to the most murderous criminals the world has ever known.
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From Frisco5 to 500: Take Over Intersection, Build Confidence to Fight
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SAN FRANCISCO, May 31 — “We plan on being here until we get justice or we’re hospitalized,” said one of the Frisco Five hunger strikers at San Francisco’s Mission police station. Five brave members of the working class, women and men, started a hunger strike on April 20 in response to the viciously racist police murders in San Francisco (see box). The multi-racial group of fighters is inspiring working-class brothers and sisters to fight back against San Francisco’s blatant terrorization of Black, Latin and immigrant lives. Putting actions into words the #Frisco5 bravely took over City Hall on May 6 (see CHALLENGE, 6/1). The events described here are from a PLP member whose collective organizing has helped lead to the eventual city hall shutdown. The growth of this anti-racist struggle is symbolized by the fighters’ new name, #Frisco500.
After months of working in the Mario Woods Coalition (see box noting the cop murder of Mario Woods), I got to know a few of the hunger strikers and many supporters. Based on this, the Coalition asked me to organize an action at a discussion led by kkkops Adachi and police chief Suhr. I agreed and planned on using this opportunity to organize the young people in the Coalition to lead the action — it’s the youth who’ve been systematically excluded from leadership positions and responsibilities even though they are the spirit and bodies of the Coalition.
The meeting lasted all of two minutes and we shut it down. We went back into the streets where lots of the older “leaders” gave speech after speech, ranging from reformist “solutions” such as “not all cops are bad” to “we just need a new mayor.”
The crowd was large enough to block one lane of traffic on a major street. Seeing our numbers, I proposed to some of the young organizers blocking the entire street as a symbol of our power. They agreed but wanted approval from the hunger strikers. I went to the striker who I’m closest to and asked if they’d be okay with that. They agreed, but by that time we had decided to take the entire intersection of 17th and Valencia. I made a quick speech and 100 workers and students seized the intersection, chanting, “Whose streets? OUR STREETS!” and “Black cop, white cop all the same. Racist murder is the name of their game!”
The latter chant directly opposed the mis-leaders’ ideology about the cops “of color” and female cops not being our enemy. The Party continuously puts forward the truth about the racist history of police forces in the U.S., going back to 19th-century slave patrols, and how they serve a critical role in terrorizing, intimidating and dividing the working class for their capitalist masters.
We controlled the intersection. Many youth, particularly young women, stepped forward to lead a multitude of chants and show San Francisco the power we possess when organized. After an hour, we finally gave the street back. Young people talked about how “powerful” they felt and that “it was a part of healing” to organize the action.
Afterwards many of us decided to stay the night to provide security for the hunger strikers while they slept. On the strike line we had hours of political discussion, emphasizing the question of reform vs. revolution. I distributed 15 CHALLENGEs and introduced myself to this new group of young people as a member of PLP.
The youth would no longer be silenced. This group would become the leadership of the #Frisco500 and the seizing of City Hall.
*****
Police Murders in San Francisco
KENNETH HARDING, age 19 (July 16, 2013): Multiple witness state SFPD shot Harding in the back while fleeing a transit fare evasion. Cop Richard Hastings, who received a Medal of Valor for shooting Kenneth Harding, is later arrested and charged with repeatedly molesting a 15-year-old boy.
ALEX NIETO, age 28 (March 21, 2014): The SFPD killed off-duty security guard Alex Nieto, shooting him 14 times in the head and body.
MARIO WOODS age 26 (December 2, 2015): Mario Woods had 20 gunshot wounds, including six in the back, killed by multiple SFPD officers in broad daylight.
LUIS GONGORA age 45 (April 7, 2016): Homeless immigrant Luis Gongora was shot seven times and killed within 16 seconds of contact with police.
AMILCAR PEREZ LOPEZ, age 20 (March 21, 2016): A witness statement and an autopsy report show that Perez was shot a dozen times, six from behind, four times in the back, once to the head and once in the right arm. Perez-Lopez was employed, living in a small boiler room paying $300 a month in rent.
Jessica Williams, age 29 (May 19, 2016): A mother of five, pregnant at the time, shot and murdered by Sergeant Justin Erg.
Four years ago this month, Shantel Davis, 23-year-old Black woman, was brutally shot and murdered by NYPD detective “bad boy” Phillip Atkins. Shantel was at her grandmother’s researching college programs just hours before.
Shantel’s family, Progressive Labor Party, friends, residents, and community groups had protested in the streets every saturday for months, then every month—rain or shine. One of the chants were, “We will always remember Shantel. We’ll always fight for Shantel, we’ll never forget Shantel.”
In the Flatbush neighborhood, we have helped build a group called “The Justice for Shantel Davis Committee,” which also organizes an annual youth basketball tournament at Tilden Park.
In Shantel’s name, join the four-year commemoration of her life and the antiracist, antisexist fightback that grew out of this police killing.
We are meeting at the site of the killing: E. 38 Street and Church Ave, Brooklyn, NY on Tuesday, June 14 at 7 PM.
