The week of February 16 was a banner week for oil catastrophes — oil train derailments in West Virginia and Ontario, Canada, and a refinery explosion south of Los Angeles.
In Ontario, a train carrying Alberta tar sands crude derailed and exploded. In West Virginia, a train carrying light, volatile crude from the huge Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, derailed in the town of Mt. Carbon. At least 15 cars were set on fire, and at least one house burned down. It took five days to put the fires out, forcing an evacuation of many homes, and potentially contaminating a river used for drinking water.
Why are there so many derailments? Authorities point to tanker cars inadequate for volatiles and vulnerable to puncture, limited maintenance of track, and excessive speed as risk factors. But the Ontario train was using newer, “improved” cars, was traveling below the speed limit, and on tracks that had been inspected two days before. We can only expect more derailments. Not only because tanker cars are unsafe, but the number of oil trains in North American has increased by 4,000 percent in the last five years. They are running all over the U.S., through heavily populated communities next to backyards and schools.
Bakken crude is light, volatile and highly flammable and explosive. Derailments are characterized by explosions sending huge balls of fire high into the sky, one car igniting another in a chain reaction. Since oil trains are often a mile or more long, and each car carries about 30,000 gallons, they have the potential to spread fiery explosions over large areas.
Spills And Leaks Common
Tar sands derailments can also result in explosion, but spills, leaks and derailments are hazardous in additional ways. The crude must be transported heated and under high pressure, because it is so thick and viscous. It also has acidic components. These three factors make it corrosive, leading to frequent leaks and spills. High pressure leaks can spew out geysers, releasing thousands of gallons in minutes.
TransCanada, owner of the Keystone XL pipeline, had a dozen spills in its first pipeline in less than a year of operation (foe.org). Tar sands spills into water create monumental cleanup tasks, as the heavy crude sinks to the bottom in both fresh and salt water. A pipeline rupture in Michigan in 2010 spilled over a million gallons into the the Kalamazoo River, leading to the most expensive oil pipeline cleanup in U.S. history. As of 2013, more than $1 billion had been spent, but 40 miles of the river were still contaminated.
Tar sands are too thick to transport through pipelines or on and off tanker cars without dilution and heating. The diluent is a mixture of light weight, volatile hydrocarbons, including benzene, which is associated with leukemia. When a spill or leak occurs, these volatiles are released into the air. Leaks occur at all phases of transport, transfer onto and off of trains, and through refining. When the oil is heated, its high level of sulfur causes emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, both associated with smog. Sulfur dioxide can also cause or aggravate heart and lung problems.
Tar sands are hazardous at all phases from mining to refining. Many studies have shown elevated levels of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory problems near mines and refineries. And communities near refineries are usually of poor people of color. Communities living near a spill are also at risk. After the Kalamazoo spill, the Michigan Department of Public Health determined that 320 people suffered adverse health effects, including cardiovascular, dermal, gastrointestinal, neurological, ocular, renal, and respiratory impacts.
Pipeline spills are increasingly common. In January, there were at least four major pipeline incidents nationwide, including a gas pipeline explosion in West Virginia; a pipeline spill that saw up to 50,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Yellowstone River, and a gas pipeline explosion in Mississippi.
And these mishaps are the ones we hear about. North Dakota seems to have spills on an ongoing basis. An Associated Press investigation in 2013 revealed nearly 300 oil pipeline spills in ND that occurred over a two-year period and were not disclosed to the public.
The path forward
The week of the triple oil disasters was an example of the extreme weather associated with climate change, with temperatures near zero in the eastern third of the country. The corporate media rarely connects climate change and fossil fuel disasters, though they are closely related. Burning fossil fuels, and a society making almost no efforts toward a sustainable energy path, are the main causes of climate change. How many disasters and extremes of climate will it take to connect the dots, much less change our path? And even if the media and misleaders do connect them, politicians beholden to the fuel giants, like the Koch brothers, are not going to make the change. Oil billionaires fund “research” and candidates who spread the absurdities that climate change is not caused by human activity, or that fossil fuel emissions are not harmful.
The enormous stores of oil and gas from the Bakken fields should be used in moderation, as the U.S. marches on a path to sustainable energy. And there is only one good place for tar sands oil: in the ground. Climate scientists have said that if that oil is burned, it is game over for climate change. This eventuality makes the recent rash of catastrophes only Act I in a much larger, global disaster.
The fact is, capitalists must maximize profits in the short run — that’s competition. Such a system can never step back and make the huge investments needed to safely change over to other forms of energy. There will be no end to climate change or the dangers of oil production and transport until we get rid of this system altogether. We must replace it with communism, a system in the interest and safety of the working class.
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Europe, Middle East Conflicts Threaten U.S. Imperialism
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- 12 February 2015 64 hits
U.S. imperialists recently suffered three major setbacks which intensify global rivalry and thus threaten wider war. In Ukraine, significant territorial gains by pro-Russian forces have U.S. rulers scrambling to arm their Kiev puppet regime. In Yemen a Shiite group friendly with Iran has seized power. Yemen borders Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich cornerstone of the U.S. worldwide empire. In addition, ISIS has swept through parts of Syria and has captured one-third of Iraq where it routed the Iraqi army. Lastly, the U.S. and European Union imperialist rivals are squaring off against Russia. Amid these ramped-up war threats, the international working class has no stake in taking any bosses’ side. The workers in Russia, U.S. and the EU pay the price through lower
living standards, displacement, and death.
Ukraine
“A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the Senate Armed Services Committee has called upon the White House to provide lethal weapons to Ukrainian forces to fight off Russian separatist advances into their territory,” (Military.com, 2/5/15). The Capitol Hill gang pushing for stepped-up fighting included Senator John McCain, leader of the Republican’s imperialist wing, and liberal Senator Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a state which produces helicopters, submarines, guns and other lethal weapons for the U.S. war machine.
The motivation of these pro-wider war lawmakers comes directly from U.S. capitalists, not from workers whom the politicians falsely claim they represent. It was the U.S. bosses who used NATO to weaken Russian imperialist influence in Eastern Europe, which emboldened Russia to reclaim the vital Crimea and eastern Ukranian provinces in the first place. Days before McCain & Co. appealed to Obama, the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council and Chicago Council on Global Affairs think tanks had issued a joint report titled “Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do.” These policy factories get the bulk of their funding from the heaviest hitters in U.S. finance capital and imperialist industry, such as JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Rockefeller family foundations. The senators’ plea essentially parroted this report, which said in summary:
Russian success would fatally undermine Ukraine’s stability and embolden the Kremlin to further challenge the security order in Europe. It might tempt President Putin to use his doctrine of protecting ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in seeking territorial changes elsewhere in the neighborhood, including in the Baltic States, provoking a direct challenge to NATO. Maintaining Western sanctions are critical but not by themselves sufficient. The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive. That requires providing direct military assistance — in far larger amounts than provided to date and including lethal defensive arms — so that Ukraine is better able to defend itself. The U.S. government should provide Ukraine $1 billion in military assistance as soon as possible in 2015, followed by additional…[amounts] of $1 billion in FY [Fiscal Year] 2016 and FY 2017.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper, however, said (2/7/15) Europe’s bosses think an arms deal would amount to declaring war:
Carl Bildt, the former Swedish foreign minister, said a war between Russia and the West was now quite conceivable. A senior diplomat in Brussels, echoing the broad EU [European Union] view, said arming the Ukrainians would mean war with Russia, a war that Putin would win.
Supposedly staunch NATO allies Germany and France stand militarily unready (and in Germany’s case, dependent for energy on Russia). So, while Washington weighs sending missiles and tanks, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande went on an emergency trip to Kiev, Ukraine, and Moscow to buy time. Hollande said the “Ukraine crisis now risked becoming total war” (Guardian).
Meanwhile, war has killed over 5,000 in the Ukraine, and 43 percent of Ukraine’s workers are food-deprived (ten million people). It has also seen youth unemployment hit the 53 percent mark. However, Western and Russian rulers need more than arms; they need youth to join the military to use those weapons and they will incite racism on both sides to try to win their allegiances.
In reality, the youth have three choices in Ukraine and among all war-bent capitalist countries during such crises: join the military, join one imperialist faction over another, or join a communist movement.
Yemen
Early this month, Houthi fighters, an insurgent group, took power in Yemen. Business Insider (2/7/15) says:
The biggest loser from the Yemeni government’s fall is …Saudi Arabia. The monarchy feared that a collapsed Yemen would exacerbate the threats posed by both Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…as well as the Houthis, Shi’ite militants allied with Iran, which is still Riyadh’s top geopolitical rival.
Saudi Arabia, the largest and most profitable source of oil on the planet, lies further encircled by Iranian influence. Tehran-leaning Shiites (including strengthening Badr militias, increasingly successful against ISIS), dominate bordering Iraq, despite the presence of U.S. troops there. President Franklin Roosevelt’s pledge to defend the kingdom in return for U.S. access to its oil has secured the lifeblood of U.S. imperialism since World War II. Under U.S. military protection, ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest seller of refined petroleum, counts Saudi Arabia as its biggest source, and the Saudis count Exxon as their biggest customer.
Today, keeping Roosevelt’s Saudi promise remains indispensable for U.S. rulers, even as it proves more difficult. In late January, Obama — who hadn’t bothered to attend or send a representative of any importance to the massive rally following the Paris massacre — personally led a gold-ribbon delegation to Saudi Arabia to reassure the new king. It featured former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other top ruling-class figures linked tightly to Big Oil. They were major architects of both Iraq wars as well as Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo. (Chevron named an oil tanker after Rice when she sat on its board.) The delegation included the commander of U.S. Mideast operations, along with the CIA chief and warmonger McCain.
Obama understands his capitalist masters’ needs in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. That’s why the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) praises his latest National Security Strategy (NSS) document, which “reaffirms the importance of NATO as the hub of a global security network and pledges to deepen its cooperation with the EU in countering Russian aggression in Ukraine” (CFR website, 2/7/15). The CFR also lauds his Saudi-inspired NSS identification of “major energy market disruptions” among “top security risks” requiring drastic U.S. action. U.S. rulers’ coming requirements also explain Obama’s new budget request. It seeks an additional $60 billion for the military, mainly to buy “the sorts of weapons systems needed for a big war against a major power: aircraft carriers, stealth fighter jets, and submarines” (Slate, 2/2/15).
While these billions are slated for war, the “recovery” the Obama administration is touting is fraudulent. The unemployment they claim is declining, when combined with the “hidden unemployment” — long-term jobless who are not counted, the underemployed (part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs and workers on welfare and first-time job seekers, also uncounted — all adds up to over 30 million.
That’s why PLP says we need communism, where everyone has a job, producing for the good of the entire working class, and unemployment is history. Our class needs a mass Party. Join and build PLP!
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Bosses Prepare for War
While these war regions may be far from U.S. shores, U.S. oil bosses’ interests to stay top dog leads them to drag workers and youth into a killing quagmire. The U.S. is preparing workers for war with budget cuts and military recruitment.
Obama and the capitalists he serves need troops on the ground to battle their opponents. This means luring millions of youth into the military to fight in the bosses’ wars for profit, while killing their sisters and brothers worldwide. They hope that some version of the Dream Act will induce immigrant youth to enlist in the armed forces. They also hope that capitalism’s massive racist unemployment will force masses of Black, Latin and Asian youth to join the bosses’ military — the “economic draft.”
Who pays for the multi-billion dollar war budget? All workers do! Our class already suffer from stagnant and declining wages, a 23 percent jobless rate (see Shadowstats.com), reductions in social services and healthcare and mammoth cuts in education budgets, all of which hit Black, Latin, and immigrant workers the hardest. The rulers then use their racist cops to terrorize Black and Latin youth — from Ferguson, Missouri, to New York City and L.A. — to prevent them from rebelling. Capitalism’s sexist exploitation forces women workers to accept one-third less in earnings than men workers, putting even more profits in the bosses’ bank accounts.
All this sets the stage for cutting white workers’ wages — Obama’s deal with General Motors and Chrysler chopped newly-hired auto workers’ wages in half. Thus, racism and sexism affects ALL workers, Black, Latin, Asian and white.
The capitalist class needs all these cuts to pay for their war preparations. So the wars in far-off regions directly land on U.S. workers’ backs.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is organizing the working class in the U.S. and worldwide not only to fight back against these war-driven attacks, but to overthrow the capitalist system altogether. A communist revolution to eliminate bosses, profits, and war will create a society run by and for the working class.
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Students and Faculty Stand Up vs. Racist Administrations
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- 12 February 2015 63 hits
BOSTON, January 27 — On a bitter cold day with a major snowstorm brewing, a group of students at Roxbury Community College — boldly standing up to the administration’s naked attack on their education — rallied outside the Academic Building, reaching hundreds of fellow students and others with their fliers, petition and passionate voices. A few days into the new semester, they were protesting larger class sizes and cuts to dozens of sections and many low-enrolled courses. Roxbury is a mainly Black and Latin community college and these cuts are a racist attack on students.
Student-Worker Unity
One hundred and forty students eagerly signed the protest petition and some held up signs. Several faculty members came outside to lend their support. A few days later, the students received unanimous backing for their petition at a faculty meeting and they are now planning to deliver the petition to the administration.
The cuts would slash costs and prove to wealthy foundations and legislators that the administration is running an “efficient” operation (code word for budget cuts), one of the performance measurements that will determine the amount of the college’s state funding. The cuts were made without faculty or student input or regard for how they would affect students’ learning or academic plans.
Just like in K–12, wealthy foundations (i.e., Gates, Lumina, Boston), are setting the agenda for Education Reform in the community colleges to focus their mission on training for mostly low-level jobs to serve the local business economy. The ruling class wants higher education, especially the public colleges which are directly under its control, to produce the wage slaves (and soldiers) that capitalism requires.
The Roberson administration was hired to implement the local ruling-class agenda. For the most part, they’ve been getting away with layoffs and cutbacks because students, faculty and staff are not organized to defend their own interests. Most students are in the dark about what’s happening, and like the rest of society, have been conditioned by individualism to think narrowly. Faculty and staff are more aware and are deeply troubled about the corporate direction towards which the college is being led. However, they’re demoralized and afraid to confront the administration.
Furthermore, the long-standing division within the workforce is weakening the fightback. While cuts in sections and increases in class size hurt students the most, adjunct faculty also bear the brunt of the attacks. The general historic disregard for adjuncts causes a lack of urgency among full-timers. This, combined with the union’s refusal to fight this two-tier system of employment is the ultimate betrayal.
Some faculty mistakenly think they will have a better chance of keeping their jobs if they stay on the “good side” of the administration. They’ve been conditioned by 40 years of sellout unionism to rely on liberal politicians and other “friends in high places” to protect their interests. Students, faculty and campus workers may very well learn the hard way that we need to fight back, both in the short run and the long run.
Progressive Labor Party’s uncompromising outlook of defending working-class interests was instrumental in inspiring students in the Pizza and Politics group to take action. Their rally shows that students do respond to bold, honest leadership. In fact, action is the only way to wake up the “sleeping giant.” The Student Government Association’s absence shows that they’re a bought organization. Their real purpose is to control the student body by refusing to organize students to address the real issues at hand.
No matter how the administration responds to student demands, the real victory will be for these students and many more to commit themselves to serving the working class and learning more about PLP. Even if the administration was forced to back down today, they will always look for an opportunity to advance the agenda they’ve been hired to carry out for tomorrow. We must keep fighting back to maintain our momentum at the same time as we build the revolutionary communist movement that can lead the working class to a lasting victory.
INDIANA, February 9 — The Fall semester of 2014 saw a growth and renewed focus on political work on campus. This is a look into the rebuilding process of Progressive Labor Party’s presence here. Through involvement in battling racism on campus and in our neighborhoods — mainly regarding the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and murder of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico — the war against global capitalism has gained more forces.
Struggle = School for Communism
Through the semesters over the last couple of years, PLP’s work on campus has been sporadic and inconsistent. The last major struggle on our campus was our fight to remove a racist, zionist professor from campus a few years ago. That struggle was a great learning experience. We were able to create a strong multiracial collective of Black, white, Latin, and Palestinian students, that would go on to develop a campaign against the bombing in Gaza taking place at the time.
Another important struggle protested the racist murder of a young man named Stephan Watts in a Chicago suburb. PLP was instrumental in that struggle. We attended rallies, disrupted, and on a few occasions shut down, city council meetings. The battles were great schools for communism and class struggle.
People grew closer to PLP. Many of them graduated, transferred or left to work, and we were unable to keep consistent contact with them. In that time, PL’ers on campus learned valuable lessons in class struggle and base-building. We had spent so much time developing the quantity of people that we neglected the fact that in order to get a good quantity of people, we had to first look at the quality of people we were meeting. We had focused on “low hanging fruit” which distracted us from students who may have not fully understood all the theory but were ready to fight against racism and its root cause, capitalism.
PLP Leadership Builds Multiracial Unity
The Fall semester of 2014 proved to be a very rewarding one, in terms of building a sound collective of students and bringing many of these students closer to PLP. In the beginning of the semester, it appeared that we might have been too optimistic because we got involved in three student organizations: Black Student Union, the Latin student group, and a multiracial collective called Students for Social Change.
It is important to note that the protests around Ferguson and Ayotzinapa played a significant role in galvanizing the students on our campus. This resulted in forums, trips to Ferguson, marches, petitions, and three protests, on campus and a local city hall.
The Party and our friends helped provide leadership, inspired by 50 militant workers and students. We took the streets, which caught the cops off guard and showed, even momentarily, the true power of the working class. We gained many contacts after that rally, some of which have come regularly to PLP study groups. This is an important development for the working class because these things usually don’t happen in “big, bad, and conservative” Indiana. It shows that the working class is looking for an alternative, and that alternative is communism.
The most important development of this political work was a coalition developed and maintained between all three organizations, which created a strong multiracial force on campus — something that had never been done before. Black students were passing out flyers about the struggles in Mexico surrounding the 43 missing students. Latin and white students were holding “Fight Back like Ferguson” signs at protests on campus. These struggles resulted in many students from all three organizations becoming closer to PLP and being exposed to revolutionary politics.
Communism Is The Only Answer
Last semester we recruited a new member, and many more became closer to the Party and attended our study groups. Four travelled to New York for a college conference, and others have accompanied the Party on trips to Ferguson. We also saw veteran comrades, who had taken some steps back become very involved in providing leadership to the campus base.
This struggle to completely destroy capitalism is a long, frustrating, and brutal one. But it is a fight that we must fully immerse ourselves in, if we wish to build a communist society. The working class is yearning for an alternative to this system that murders us, closes our schools and hospitals, and sends us off to fight in imperialist wars. Communism is that alternative, and the Progressive Labor Party is the organization to make that happen. Join Us.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haïti, February 8 — Since early February, the streets have been filled with barricades, burning tires and burnt-out vehicles in efforts to demand lower gasoline prices. These actions follow a series of struggles over the last couple of years against the high cost of living.
In Haiti, the price of gas has not gone down, even with a reduction in price on the international market. It has become clearer to many that the rulers here will go to great lengths to protect their racist criminal profiteering and that the government is putting even more money stolen from the working class into their own pockets.
Despite Sellout, Students Continue to Mobilize
On February 2, a confederation of transport unions and the political opposition to current president and U.S.-favorite, Michel “Haiti-is-open-for-business” Martelly, called for a two-and-a-half day strike. They demanded USD$2.20 reduction in gas prices. The first day paralyzed almost all of the economic, political and social activities of the country. However, sellout leaders called it off after day one, having negotiated a US10¢ reduction in gas prices. The sellouts also got government jobs and other crumbs for themselves. The average cost of gas at the pump in Haiti now is about US$4.20. In comparison, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. in August was $3.60, and is now $2.20.
In the face of the sellout, some progressive forces inside the State University (UEH) called for a mass mobilization to continue the struggle. They reasoned that lowering the price of gasoline in Haiti would result in also lowering the viciously high cost of living for the working class, which gets steadily worse as capitalism continues to do its dirty work.
On Feb. 5 at 10 AM, a march was organized by students and workers to the offices of the Minister of Finance/Economy, followed by a sit-in. The police came, armed to the teeth, and dispersed the demonstrators with tear gas, water cannons (filled with chemically treated water), rubber and live bullets, and batons. No one was spared this violence by the armed forces of repression who have all of state power at their disposal. Yet, as news of the attack spread, militant student organizations from other campuses joined the resistance. The police attempt to spread terror throughout the working class was not allowed to go unanswered.
Fake Left Sides With the Oppressors
It is also becoming clearer to many here that the opposition and other political parties are organizing to put themselves in Martelly’s place. They hang onto the coattails of the working-class movement, whose demands are just but whose organizational level is not yet developed enough for the task at hand. The working class is also saddled with a so-called trade union movement that is either openly on the side of the bosses or somewhat less openly so. These forces are constantly in conflict for the leadership of struggles. But because they are all ready to sell out at the drop of a hat, they weaken the mass working-class movement.
The Progressive Labor Party in Haiti understands that this struggle is on the wrong road when workers and students let themselves be influenced by the “militant” speeches of the bourgeois politicians on the fake left (who only call for the reform of the capitalist system) and other political parties vying for power. The bosses’ press buries the revolutionary aspirations of the working class and covers every syllable of the sellouts’ speeches because they hide the true nature of capitalism and imperialism — the system depends on the super-exploitation of workers in order to make profits, and they will not give up easily. Only armed struggle for communist revolution and an egalitarian system without money, racism, sexism, wars and profits will change the lives of the billions of workers around the world.
Workers Need Determined, Communist Party: PLP
On campus, we are determined not to let the leadership of the student-worker movement fall into the hands of those close to the fake-left or openly bourgeois parties. For progressive and revolutionary-minded students, all struggles need the analysis and leadership of a well-organized revolutionary communist party, the PLP. Our Party is still young and developing in Haiti. Despite living under very difficult conditions, we are working to build a solid party, well-entrenched in the working class.
On Feb. 8, a mass meeting was held at the social science branch of UEH. The agenda was to analyze the current situation, and take stock of the progressive forces and their political line in relation to the bourgeois politicians. With leadership from PLP, it was agreed that students and workers need a determined, unapologetic revolutionary communist party to give direction to workers’ struggles in this and the coming period.
Our Party must be bold and militant in word and deed, and fight ceaselessly in the interests of all sections of the working class: unionized and non-unionized, employed and unemployed, urban and rural, young and old, women and men, worker and student. For the current fight, we need to do a better job in raising the political consciousness of workers and students. We need more literature explaining why the local and imperialist bosses have kept workers in Haiti from “enjoying the benefits” of the current drop in gasoline prices. We need to expose how the current crop of criminals in power — Martelly & Co. — serve the interests of their imperialist masters, and how to prepare the groundwork for building our international communist party. Dare to struggle, dare to win.
