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Nuclear Iran Intensifies Splits in U.S. Ruling Class
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- 12 March 2015 30 hits
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress and the drama surrounding it highlight geopolitical shifts and internal divisions dogging U.S. imperialists. As U.S. foes Iran, Russia, and China get stronger, the two main factions of the U.S. capitalist class are competing to assert control over U.S. foreign policies concerning oil and nuclear-rich Iran.
The main wing of U.S. capitalists, under Obama, seems more reluctant to rely on Israel as the gatekeeper of the Middle East. But some leading Republicans are dancing to the tune of billionaire donors such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who advocates for little or no accommodation with U.S. enemies and instead points to Israel as a viable solution. Netanyahu’s speech illustrates that the U.S. capitalists are at odds and are unprepared for the impending imperialist crisis with Iran.
No matter which ruling faction comes out on top, workers worldwide will ultimately pay the price. Workers will both finance and fight a war that will only serve the bosses. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, however, is organizing the working class worldwide not only to fight against the next global war for profits that Netanyahu’s speech forecasts, but to rid the world of the capitalist system that generates these wars along with racism, nationalism and sexism.
Iran Looms over the Middle East
Netanyahu’s hollow bluster and Obama’s need to negotiate both stem from Iran’s rising regional might, backed by Russia and China. Pro-Iranian groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi forces combat Israel, the U.S. and other allies in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen respectively. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard now has troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, in the latter 10,000 men six miles from Israel. Though Netanyahu won’t admit it, Iran’s preparedness makes an Israeli, U.S., or joint strike on its nuclear plants impractical:
The Iranians are not fools. They observed the ease with which the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. They buried theirs deep underground. It is therefore not clear…tshat the United States could destroy Iran’s nuclear program from the air. It would require, at the very least, special operations on the ground, and failing that, military action beyond U.S. capabilities…The Israelis are quite aware of these difficulties. (Stratfor, a U.S. strategy analyzing group, 3/3/15)
Liberal Democratic politicians, including Obama, servants of U.S. financiers and industrialists, ExxonMobil and JP Morgan, have long-term global military requirements that for now will allow them to make concessions with Iran. They are thus easing off support for ineffective Israel. U.S. imperialism’s main journal, Foreign Affairs, published a piece on March 2 headed, “The Breakup: The Slow Demise of U.S. Bipartisan Support for Israel.” It said in part:
In the fall of 2013, AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] lobbied for a bill that…. would have required the United States to “stand with Israel” if Israel decided to attack Iran. The bill…won the support of 43 of 45 Republicans, but only 16 of 55 members of the Democratic caucus.
Many Republicans, however, have personal wealth-enhancing outlooks far narrower than the Liberal Democrats’ vision of post-world war domination. Liberal journalist Bill Moyers, who served U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam Genocide criticized the U.S. Republican party/Netanyahu alliance by outing its’ profit motives:
Everything you need to know about…Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Tuesday was the presence in the visitor’s gallery of one man — Sheldon Adelson…The party’s presidential hopefuls line up to kiss his assets, scraping and bowing for his blessing, which when granted is bestowed with his signed checks…[He, in 2013] denounced President Obama’s diplomatic efforts with Iran and proposed instead that the United States drop an atomic bomb...” (BillMoyers.com, 3/4/15)
U.S. Lack of Preparation
It’s not that Obama and the far bigger capitalists he serves are against using nuclear weapons. Just the opposite is true. Until and unless the main wing of U.S. rulers can mobilize the population militarily, WWII-style atomic bombs remain their inter-imperialist trump card. The British ruling-class-owned Economist (3/7/15) notes, “The Nobel peace laureate [Obama] in the White House has asked Congress for almost $350 billion to undertake a decade-long programme of modernisation of America’s arsenal.” Competition, however, is widespread:
Russia’s defense budget has grown by over 50% since 2007, and fully a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons…China…is adding to its stocks and investing heavily in submarines and mobile missile batteries… North Korea…is working on missiles that can strike the west coast of the United States.
The Economist offers a grim, accurate observation of the bosses’ hardball: “No government could allow itself to lose a war that it would win if it were to reproduce nuclear weapons.” When Obama & Co. speak of peace negotiations, grab your helmet!
Workers Pay the Price
The troops needed by the U.S. ruling faction which Obama represents will come from working class youth. Obama and his supporters are working to entice jobless youth, immigrants and undocumented workers into joining the military by promoting nationalism, racism and sexism. Once there, they will fight and kill their working-class sisters and brothers. The picture also looks grim if the Republican ruling-class faction wins.
Only a communist revolution under the leadership of PLP can put a stop once and for all to racism, sexism, nationalism and all wars. Join us today!
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U.S.-Israeli Nuclear Cooperation
The Israeli-U.S. hypocrisy over their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program knows no bounds. While it long been known that Israel itself has nuclear weapons, a U.S. Defense Dept. report detailed how the U.S. aided Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb while violating international standards.
According to “Courthouse News,” Roger Mattson — formerly of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff — said, “I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the U.S.”
Grant Smith, director of the think tank Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, told a Washington, D.C. District Court late last year that, “In 1987 the Department of Defense discovered that Israel has a nuclear weapon, detailed it and then…covered it up for 25 years in violation of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing U.S. taxpayers $86 billion.”
“The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards,” wrote Smith. “The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology.” But meanwhile, U.S. rulers continue to shell out $3 billion a year in aid to Israel.
Smith further told the court that, “Under two known gag orders — punishable by imprisonment — U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program.” Furthermore, the 1987 government report entitled “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, found that, “As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapons field in about 1955 to 1960….The Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.”
So Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rant about an Iranian nuclear threat while the Israelis themselves have been stockpiling H-Bombs for decades.
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Black, White, Latin Workers & Students UNITE TO FIGHT RACISM
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- 12 March 2015 28 hits
SEATTLE, March 7 — The struggle in Washington against racist police violence has continued at a high level since the decision not to indict the Ferguson kkkop who murdered Michael Brown last August. Rallies of 50 to 100 people have been held weekly in the downtown area of the city. When others — particularly people from the Black community — have been in charge, events have drawn much larger numbers.
The Martin Luther King day march on January 19th brought out the largest crowd in years as organizers and speakers spoke directly to the problem of police violence. A multiracial crowd of 15,000 people marched through Seattle stopping at the youth jail, the courthouse, and the former Yesler Terrace housing projects — the first racially integrated housing projects in the U.S. Demolition of Yesler Terrace began last year as part of an effort to gentrify the traditionally Black Central District neighborhood. Marchers joined in as we shouted “No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police” and “Racism Means, We’ve Got to Fight Back!”
After the march, a series of exposés in a local paper kept racist policing on the front burner. A video was released of police attacking marchers at the end of the MLK march. A teacher from Garfield High School — a predominantly Black school in the Central District — who had led students in walkouts was pepper sprayed by police in a targeted attack. In another post-march attack police attacked marchers after claiming a marcher had assaulted a cop. Later The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper, released surveillance footage that revealed the cop injured himself when he tripped and fell chasing a marcher. Those arrested for assault were quickly released without charge.
Later on Jan. 28, The Stranger obtained camera footage of a kkkop arresting a 69-year-old William Wingate for walking while Black. The cop fabricated a story that Wingate swung a golf club at her — an accusation easily disproved in the video — and then prosecutors conned Wingate into signing a plea for misdemeanor unlawful use of a weapon. The ruling was dismissed only after public outcry.
Further revelations showed that the arresting cop had a history of making racist comments online, and attacking people in the street. The cop pleaded with prosecutors to throw the book at Wingate. Far from being a “rogue cop” this cop actually had served as a training cop for the department for years.
City officials are reeling from the Wingate controversy, the released video from the MLK march, the video released of a kkkop punching a handcuffed and restrained Miyekko Durden-Bosley so hard that he shattered her right orbital socket, and continuing stories coming out of city hall that show that efforts to reform the racism and violence of Seattle Police Department (SPD) have been a complete failure. The cop in the Wingate incident was relieved of duty and the head of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) took time out from defending racist police violence to paradoxically claim it had no place at SPD — feigning support for reforms that SPOG has viciously fought every step of the way. Local bosses’ news media even dutifully stopped reporting on marches with the MLK march receiving only the barest of attention.
Then on Feb. 10, police in Pasco, WA — a town servicing largely Latin migrant farm workers in the Yakima valley — fired 17 shots in a busy intersection during rush hour murdering Antonio Zambrano-Montes. As always police lied stating that Montes — a mentally ill 35 year old — had endangered them by throwing rocks. Video taken by passersby and released the next day clearly showed police shooting at Montes as he ran away, finally killing him when he turned around with his hands up. Despite efforts to quiet local rage at police violence, Pasco has erupted in protest. In Seattle, Montes joined the names of Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and John T. Williams as the latest victim of racist police and vigilantes.
On February 25, 500 students and workers walked out at the University of Washington against racism: budget cuts, attacks on custodial workers, and police violence. That same day, students walked out at the Bothell and Tacoma campuses, too. At Seattle University, a walkout for union rights for adjunct (part-time) professors also took on the issue of cop terror. While these marches always lean toward passing the next reform, people have been unusually open to more revolutionary possibilities. As the fight against the police in Seattle continues, we will heighten the struggle to turn calls for reform into calls for revolution. Racist violence will not end until capitalism is destroyed.
BROOKLYN, March 6 — Students and workers distributed leaflets, signs and made speeches in Haitian Creole, English and Spanish denouncing recent racist attacks on workers from the Dominican Republic (D.R.) to the U.S. Passersby in East Flatbush, a largely Caribbean and Latin neighborhood, stopped to take over 400 CHALLENGEs. Many chanted along and some stopped to give speeches on the bullhorn in Creole.
On Feb. 11, Henry Jean Claude, known as “Tulile,” a young worker from Haiti who shined shoes and did odd jobs for a living, was found hanging from a tree in a public park in Santiago, D.R., hands and feet bound. This lynching follows last year’s carnival parade where the Minister of Culture Jose Antonio Rodriguez allowed 50 white-robed and hooded KKKers to march. Racist speech inevitably leads to racist action! The day before Tulile’s body was found, a small group of Dominican nationalists gathered in Santiago to burn a Haitian flag and call for deportation of Haitian descent.
Local police immediately and without investigation said that racism was not a factor in the lynching, revealing themselves to be what PLP labels all cops under capitalism: KKKops. These same police arrested two Haitians for the murder in a blatant attempt to cover up government-inspired racism against Haitians in the D.R.
The Dominican ruling class has a long tradition of racism and nationalism directed against Haitians in a concerted effort to crush solidarity and unity between workers in the D.R. and Haiti. Workers from Haiti have been migrating to the D.R. for almost a century because of rampant racist unemployment and poverty created by the capitalist system.
This past week, the U.S. bosses declared that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death in Cleveland, Ohio by playing with a toy gun in a park, and that KKKop Darren Wilson would not be indicted by the federal government for the shooting death of 18-year-old Mike Brown. What do the murders of Henry Jean Claude in the D.R., Tamir in the U.S. and refusal to indict killer cop Wilson have in common? The answer is simple: CAPITALISM!
This world-wide economic system cannot not survive without racism. The bosses use racism to divide and conquer. Workers are taught to scapegoat their working-class brothers and sisters for the failures of capitalism. When unemployment is rising, the bosses fuel anti-Haitian racism in D.R. and anti-Black and anti-immigrant racism in the U.S. to keep workers from blaming capitalism. Capitalism can never provide full employment, even in the “best” of times. Only communism will be able to provide jobs and a decent life for all workers and their families. Under communism, we will need collectivity to run society. All decisions made will be in the interest of our class, so racism will not be tolerated!
Let the militant march of 10,000 anti-racist Haitians on Feb. 25 in Port-au-Prince inspire us to reject racist government policy, from Ferguson to Santo Domingo! We call on workers on both sides of the island of Hispaniola to reject the bosses’ ideology and stand together to fight racism and nationalism. And likewise, wherever capitalist-inspired racism and nationalism rear their ugly heads, let workers stand together and fight the bosses who exploit us all! Let’s use the coming May Day — the International Workers’ Day — to build a movement together to reject and smash racism and nationalism and fight for communism and an egalitarian society in the interest of all working people.
LOS ANGELES, February 21 — In the aftermath of Ferguson, graduate students at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have been motivated to fight racism and police brutality on campus. The university bosses have responded by organizing forums on “policing equity” and promoting a new vice-chancellor position of “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Many Progressive Labor Party members protested in Ferguson against the racist no-indictment decision of killer kkkop Darren Wilson, and were arrested. One such PL’er suggested that students here on campus organize their own forum to point out how the university system is complicit in producing and perpetuating the racist ideas that underpin police terror against Black and Latin workers.
Universities Churn Out Racism, Sexism
Last week, several student organizations came together to hold a forum on diversity in the curriculum and student body at UCLA’s graduate student programs. A student who has been involved with Black Lives Matter spoke first about why students need to get more involved in actions to fight the racist policing of students on campus. A PL student followed and presented pictures from his visit to Ferguson and discussed his experience fighting the police.
It is important to be involved in campaigns demanding a more diverse student body. It is also important to expose that the university system is another organ of capitalist rule. The first college in the U.S. was Harvard, created to train the next generation of ministers, magistrates, and public officials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The history of universities in the U.S. is entrenched in slavery. The holy trinity of bondage was the church, the state, and the university. The universities are central to developing scientific racism to justify slavery and genocide. This history gives a glimpse of the nature of universities under capitalism.
The racism in education in the U.S. can be understood as facilitating the political economy of capitalism, which is built on the racist super-exploitation of Black, Latin and immigrant workers. Many Black and Latin students will have access only to vocational training to fill the ranks of workers needed in the low-wage healthcare, clerical and public sector industries. Some will fill the ranks of workers in research universities who produce the racist and sexist material for capitalist culture. Many others will simply have access to the imperialist military machine. A young college professor participated and added that faculty are afraid to speak up about confronting the university’s racism because they fear losing their jobs.
Forum, Step Forward to Fighting Back
This forum was the first step in the process of organizing students and professors. It generated much enthusiasm and excitement in a part of the university that has been traditionally passive. Some are committed to confronting the college bosses’ call for “policing equity,” an oxymoron. The term exposes the underlying capitalist propaganda that students and racist cops can get along.
Only the working class — not courts, cops, and politicians — can be trusted to fight for equality. Working-class equality doesn’t include the bosses and their government. Many of our friends correctly want to connect the struggles against racist police terror to anti-immigrant racism: deportation and detention. There is much to be done on the campuses today. Continued unemployment means the student population on campuses will continue to grow. And as colleges and universities grow, and occupy an increasingly central position within the political economy of capitalism in the U.S., they will become ever more important centers of political struggle. It is up to communists to steer these struggles toward revolution by building a wide international network of fighters.
NEW YORK CITY, February 13 — Today, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) bus driver with 30 years on the job was arrested after his bus accidentally struck a 15-year-old girl, injuring her leg. On Christmas Eve, another driver with almost eight years on the job was arrested after his bus accidentally struck and killed a 78-year-old man. The two bus operators, Francisco DeJesus and Reginald Prescott, were charged with failure to yield, a misdemeanor, and have been suspended without pay pending investigations.
This is how Mayor de Blasio and the racist NYPD plan to cut down on traffic fatalities, in a new plan called Vision Zero. They criminally charge bus operators for traffic accidents, while the cops walk away from racist murders.
Not only are MTA bus operators not “reckless drivers,” they are among the safest drivers in the city. Collectively they drive thousands of miles and move two million riders each day on the busiest streets, often with faulty equipment.
In 2013, 176 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents. After a particularly tragic killing of a young child at an extremely dangerous intersection, de Blasio attempted to target reckless drivers by lowering speed limits, adding street lights at 1,000 intersections, adding speed bumps, and enacting stiffer enforcement of traffic laws.
Also, the law passed by the City Council exempts drivers “engaged in work on behalf of the City, the state of New York....” like cops, fire, and Emergency Medical Services workers. It should certainly include bus operators.
Mass transit around the U.S., is one of the last stable, well-paying jobs for Black, Latin and immigrant workers, and it is under attack. On top of budget cuts, privatization and the increased use of temporary, part-time workers, many cities are imposing criminal background checks on transit workers. PLP-led bus operators in Washington, DC have waged a mass struggle against this. Now NYC bus operators are threatened with being criminally charged for traffic accidents. Building a campaign of racist hysteria to portray transit workers as criminals behind the wheel is the beginning of a massive racist assault on all transit workers and public mass transit.
Transit Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelson has barked at the arrests and has threatened safety slow-downs in retaliation. But so far, there has been no bite, just bark, as he tries to get the City Council to specifically exempt bus operators from the new law. Shutting down the transit system and taking over City Hall, even for a day, might get their attention.
For our part, PLP is organizing an anti-racist movement among transit workers that can respond to police terror in our communities and on our jobs. We’re building a movement that will put transit workers on the road to communist revolution, where mass transit will be free and safe, and where the racist bankers and bosses and former union hacks will be a thing of the past.