The murderous conflict in Syria and the killings in Iraq and Kenya are becoming yet another front in the world’s inter-imperialist rivalry. Bosses are jockeying for position in the fight over Middle East oil and gas. U.S. rulers are using a divide-and-conquer strategy — both to oppress the U.S. working class and to maintain their global supremacy over their capitalist enemies.
It is the task of communists in the Progressive Labor Party to transform this imperialist struggle into a class war to overthrow capitalism. Only communism can end the bosses’ perpetual carnage.
In 1990, U.S. president George H. W. Bush invaded Iraq with more than half a million troops to recapture the Kuwaiti oil fields seized by dictator Saddam Hussein. Soon after, U.S. forces withdrew. Then President Bill Clinton used sanctions and missiles to soften up Iraq for George W. Bush’s grab for the country’s oil wealth. Bush’s advisers thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union, previously the main U.S. rival, gave them an opportunity to take over Iraq swiftly, on the cheap, and with a relatively small army.
Over the next 20 years, the U.S. ruling class killed several million Iraqis and forced four million more to flee the country. But it never achieved its goal, and Iraq remains up for grabs. The U.S. rulers are slowly learning this lesson, as their halting threats to attack Syria indicate.

Bosses Choose their ‘Heroes’

When terrorists killed dozens of shoppers in the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the world’s media published touching stories of the victims’ lives and tales of heroism. But workers in Iraq are suffering a Nairobi-level massacre once a week with scant media coverage. Terrorists’ bombs and bullets have killed more than 4,000 people there this year, including 804 in August alone.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama used the attack in the Navy yard in Washington, DC, to tout the victims as heroes and “patriots” and heighten nationalist feeling in the U.S. Soon afterward, a Sikh Indian Columbia University professor was attacked on the street as an “enemy jihadist.”
Two causes underlie the media’s inattention to Iraq. First, since the murdered Iraqis are mainly poor workers, they matter less to capitalist media barons than affluent mall-goers. Second, full publicity would expose U.S. imperialism’s hand in the slaughter.
In 2003, the small number of troops the U.S. put on Iraq’s soil failed to pacify its warring Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions, the main sources of today’s terror attacks. In fact, it was only when the Pentagon paid off the insurgent Sunnis to switch sides — as the decisive element of its “surge” — that the U.S. was able to put al Qaeda forces on the defensive. While the payoffs stopped when the current pro-Shiite Maliki regime took control, U.S. rulers are still using religion and nationalism to provoke conflicts in their class interests.
Shaky security, among other issues, blocks U.S. and allied oil companies from significantly raising Iraqi oil production. It stands nowhere near the predicted 12 million barrels a day needed to satisfy both U.S. and foreign firms, and Iraqi factions.

Exxon Divides to Conquer

ExxonMobil also seeks to build its share of Iraqi oil by playing one group against another, further fueling sectarian flames. Exxon was supposed to come out victorious in Iraq. As the U.S.’s flagship oil firm, it had won majority rights to Iraq’s West Qurna I oil fields, one of the largest in the world, with estimated resources of around eight billion barrels. But Exxon is pumping less than a fifth of what it should from Qurna:

Exxon entered into a technical service contract with the Iraqi government in 2010, to boost the production rate from the field to 2.8 million barrels per day (MMBD) from 0.25 MMBD. The field is currently producing over 0.5 MMBD and is expected to reach a level of 0.6 MMBD by the end of the year (Trefis, 9/27/13).

The shortfall is mostly due to the constraints that Iraq’s President Maliki, a pro-Iranian Shiite, imposed on the deal (see box).In addition to dividing anti-Baghdad Kurds and the Maliki government, Exxon is emboldening anti-Shiite Sunnis against Maliki’s wishes: “The Ninewa Provincial Council has authorized Gov. Atheel Nujaifi to negotiate directly with oil companies, including ExxonMobil (Iraq Oil Report, 9/18/13). Nujaifi is a leader of the Sunni Mutahidoun political bloc. So is his brother, Osama Nujaifi, who had met with Exxon’s James Jeffrey a month before (National Iraqi News Agency, 8/19/13). Exxon put Jeffrey, formerly Obama’s ambassador to Iraq, on its payroll early this year (Iraq Oil Report, 2/8/13) to grease its anti-Maliki deals with Kurds and Sunnis.

Maliki Using Syria War vs. Exxon

Maliki, for his part, has jumped on the Syria crisis to temporarily chase Exxon from Qurna:

An Iraqi Shiite militia group has threatened to attack U.S. interests in Iraq and the region if Washington strikes Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad is backed by Tehran.....Exxon, particularly at risk because as an American firm, is taking no chances, re-basing most of its workforce from the southern West Qurna-1 oilfield project to Dubai until tensions ease. (Reuters, 9/11/13).

Exxon’s short-term plan is to ally with Sunnis and Kurds in an effort to destabilize Shiite-led Baghdad. In fact, Exxon keeps threatening to abandon its pumping operation in Iraq (see box) — a potential problem for Maliki, since Iraq lacks this expertise.
The Middle East’s political complexity makes Exxon’s path a tricky one. The oil company’s main allies, the Saudi monarchs, are Sunnis, but so are al Qaeda fanatics. And Exxon’s hired hand Jeffrey is urging a dialogue with Shiite bosses, even as his employer demonizes them:  “Keep in mind that the states where Shiites are a majority — namely Iraq and Iran — probably have more than 300 billion barrels of oil reserves between them. That is almost two-thirds of the reserves of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, including Saudi Arabia, and more than 20 percent of global reserves.”
Obama understands it would take more than a million troops to conquer Syria. With Congress paralyzed and the U.S. public leery of another Middle Eastern war, the best Obama could do was to brandish a U.S. missile strike —   and then back off as soon as Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the U.S. an out. Confronting Iran would require at least as many troops. Global conflict with China or Russia would demand a full military mobilization.

Answer Imperialism’s Hell with Communist Revolution

All of these imperialist maneuvers spell more death for the workers of the world. Besides the 100,000 killed in Syria, two million workers and their families have been forced to flee their homes to tent camps in nearby countries. U.S. drones are killing thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, on top of the tens of thousands slaughtered by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the millions killed by the two Iraqi wars and Clinton’s sanctions, including half a million Iraqi children. This does not include the 500,000 U.S. GI’s suffering from post-traumatic-stress syndrome, which results in 18 suicides a day.
There is only one answer to this world capitalist carnage, and to the mass unemployment, racism, sexism and poverty the profit system engenders. That answer is mass communist revolution, which the Progressive Labor Party is organizing. Build PLP. The time to join is now!

MEXICO CITY, September 30 — It’s been a month since teachers from states throughout Mexico, organized in the National Coordinating Committee (CNTE), struck against the rulers’ attack on workers in the guise of education reform. Now the struggle has spread throughout Mexico as other teachers, parents and diverse groups of workers and students join the fight.
The bosses’ government, headed by the criminal lackey of imperialism and the local capitalist class, President Enrique Peña Nieto, is pushing this reform. It will privatize schools and put them out of reach for most working-class children.
When teachers nationally learned of this cruel news, their struggle grew through massive actions in areas normally controlled by the sellout leadership of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), along with the Mexican bosses’ three largest parties: PRI, PAN and PRD. The national strike of workers and students grew from 300,000 to 500,000. More than 300,000 protesters occupied the Mexico City center. Huge marches have blocked the international airport there. Numerous actions at the state level have strengthened the movement to squash these latest fascist laws.
No Peaceful Retreat
September 13 marked the historic battle of the Heroic Children of Chapultepec against the 1847 invasion by U.S. imperialism. The Mexican ruling class spent millions of pesos on this “patriotic holiday” in a crude attempt to mobilize people to cheer the president — and as a pretext to send 4,000 federal cops to brutally evict the CNTE from the city center. These fascists expected us to peacefully retreat on our knees. Instead, teachers, neighbors and students courageously resisted the attack. The goons injured hundreds and arrested 32 CNTE members. But many cops who “lost” their weapons got what they deserved. While the cops emptied the plaza, the bosses’ campaign to build Mexican nationalism and patriotism failed.
This is how the dictatorship of the ruling class works. The capitalists disguise it as “democracy” and use their laws, ideology, and repressive apparatus to impose their interests on the working class. When that doesn’t work, they resort to more open fascism — to military dictatorship and state terror.
The violent eviction in Mexico City, far from diminishing the struggle, sparked a nationwide expansion. CNTE grew stronger. On September 19 and 20, it organized a 48-hour national civic strike. Twenty-eight of 58 union locals, including SNTE members, joined militant actions. They effectively shattered the control of the sellout leadership headed by Juan Díaz de la Torre.
Trade unions and peasants, university students in Mexico City and parents, community police in Guerrero and Michoacán — all have joined the struggle. They have blocked roads, ports and airports. They have taken over custom offices, bridges and government buildings.
Bosses Scapegoat
Teachers
Since August, the liberal capitalist dictatorship, masquerading as a democratic government led by Peña Nieto, began implementing a series of “structural reforms,” a pro-capitalist and anti-working class project. They are backed by the leadership of the main bourgeois parties (PRI, PAN, PRD and PVEM), grouped in the so-called “Pact for Mexico.” They are also supported by the mafia of goons and pimps who compose the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
The treacherous Pact for Mexico first cooked up a criminal plan to impose labor reform and privatization of the education sector. They launched a huge media campaign to extol the virtues of the reforms. At the same time, they waged relentless attacks against the SNTE and teachers in general, blaming them for the backwardness of education in Mexico. Local 22, the militant Oaxaca local, was particularly targeted for a media lynching by the media.
Televisa fired the first shot with “De Panzazo” (“Belly Flop”), a mediocre film produced by the deceitful Carlos Loret de Mola and sponsored by the Mexicans First Industrial Group, whose main interest is to turn education into a lucrative business. This pack of hounds was joined by TV Azteca, the press, radio and other media owned by the ruling bosses.
Constitution: For and By the Bosses
The Mexican Constitution legitimizes capitalism, a system designed to serve the capitalists and exploit the workers. In a move to maximize their profits, the bosses’ stooges recently amended Articles 3 and 73. These changes legalize repressive measures in education and steal back the gains we have won through the blood and lives of thousands of fighting workers in this country and worldwide, including the SNTE teachers’ strike and numerous struggles by the CNTE over the last 30 years.
After militant CNTE members trapped them in their legislative chambers, these thieving deputies hid in the Banamex executives’ auditorium. There, protected by their capitalist masters, they passed the secondary laws that were later approved by criminal-in-chief Peña Nieto.
Under capitalism, education is constructed to serve the needs of the bosses. It teaches students a full curriculum of bad ideas, from individualism to competition among workers. Now the bosses are determined to make a bad system worse. They have the legal justification to strike the final blow against education workers’ employment and labor rights, and to eliminate free, secular, public education. Through the punishing mechanism of standardized evaluation, they are making teachers’ employment conditional on passing the test. The tests will lead to temporary contracts without labor rights or job guarantees.
Over time, the bosses plan to lay off 1.5 million workers, teachers and school support personnel. In rural areas, education will be under municipal control. In cities, it will be privatized and controlled by private companies and universities. Televisa and TV Azteca have already established a competitive education project. Parents and students will be forced to pay high enrollment fees. Families who cannot pay will go without. Educational inequality and illiteracy will soar.
The workers’ growing resistance movement has the potential not only to repeal the bosses’ nefarious reform laws, but also to remove the sellout SNTE leadership. These would be positive steps, but they are not enough. The only true solution for teachers, students, and parents is to overthrow the fascist government that oppresses us and to establish a communist society under the leadership of a mass Progressive Labor Party.
Beyond Reform Struggles, to Communism!
Trade union struggles may achieve temporary benefits for workers. But these gains are inevitably reversed by the rulers as they move from one capitalist crisis to the next. Reform movements, no matter how militant, cannot destroy capitalism. The working class must go beyond nationalist, pacifist groups like Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement, which seeks to benefit local bosses. Workers must reject armed nationalist movements, like those in the Middle East, that serve the imperialist powers. We must recognize that today’s “socialism” is a state-capitalist fraud led by a new class of oppressors and exploiters. As we have learned from hard experience in the Soviet Union and China, socialism does not lead to communism.
Our fight must be directly for communism, for a new system of production and distribution without oppressors and exploiters. In a communist world, we would study and work collectively for the common good, to serve the needs and wellbeing of the whole working class. This is the goal of the Progressive Labor Party. Join and build it!
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BROOKLYN, NY, September 21— Over 200 people rallied and marched in Flatbush to demand justice for Kyam Livingston. Kyam was a 37-year-old African-American mom who was denied medical attention while in Brooklyn Central Booking and died in police custody. The death of Kyam, due to the callous indifference of the cops, is yet another instance of the racist reign of terror which is U.S. capitalism.
It has been over two months since Kyam’s murder by the NYPD, and still no one has been held accountable. The NYPD has refused to release the videotapes documenting what happened to Kyam and will not release the names of the officers responsible for her death. Marchers called out, “We want the tapes! We want the names!” as they followed in Kyam Livingston’s final footsteps.
Today’s march and rally focused on Kyam Livingston’s murder. But this particular instance of state-sanctioned terror must be seen in the context of a pattern of death after death after death of mainly young black and Latin working-class victims. As one speaker declared, there is something wrong with a system in which such deaths go unpunished. The threatened closings of three hospitals serving central Brooklyn’s black and Latin working-class communities, he pointed out, will certainly lead to more deaths. There is something wrong with a system in which money for needed hospitals can’t be found, but money for imperialist war budgets is never in short supply. Such a system must be smashed.  
Speakers at the rally included the family, the family’s lawyers, city council representatives and labor movement officials. Ms. Anita Neal, Kyam Livingston’s mother, vowed never to stop until justice was served and the officers responsible for her daughter’s death were prosecuted. Progressive Labor Party will join with the family and friends of Kyam Livingston in their fight for justice. We must point out that that racist police terror won’t end until we overthrow the capitalist system that creates, profits from, and promotes the conditions under which Kyam and countless others have died.

PHILADELPHIA, PA, September 24 — Today Local 1199C members marched around Jefferson Hospital and then several blocks to the headquarters of Aramark, a subcontractor famous for low wages. A few years ago Aramark took over management of Jefferson’s environmental services, dietary and transportation departments. The march protested the attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions by Aramark and Jefferson itself. A protest letter written by a Jefferson worker was delivered to the Aramark bosses.
One strength of the march was that it was organized by a group of rank-and-file union delegates and that almost two hundred workers responded despite some organizational problems. The workers were angry and enthusiastic. Energy was high as we marched around the hospital and even more electric as we marched into the lobby of Aramark’s headquarters.
However, this energy is limited and undermined by how most of us view this struggle. Almost all the union members expect the union leaders to lead it and see the fight itself mainly as an effort to defend what was won by earlier generations of union members. This view cripples us.Workers storm into Amarak Headquarters, while dumbfounded security guards and administrators watch.
Unions were organized to get workers a bigger piece of the pie under capitalism. While there’s no denying the benefits of past union struggles, the problem is that they never had the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism itself. Even if unions are victorious, the bosses still make their profits and keep state power, that is, they run the government. And since our labor creates all wealth, any profit the bosses make is theft from us. No matter what wage and benefit increases we win, under the profit system the bosses still profit and the working class never gets the wealth we create. Only communism can do that.
Yes, we must fight tooth-and-nail to protect our hard-won union benefits and wages. But we can’t forget that unions and union leaders accept and defend capitalism. Unions accept that the capitalists have a “right” to profit from our labor and that the capitalists have a “right” to make laws to restrict workers’ struggles. And when the inevitable crises of capitalism drive the bosses to fascism and crushing of the unions, the union leaders cannot provide the leadership we need.
For example, the day before the march the union leaders attempted to convince the delegates to call off the march. The Jefferson union delegates refused, but many union members were amazed and felt betrayed. We need to remember this lesson.
Trying to stop the Jefferson workers’ march was the union leaders actually doing what they’re supposed to do under capitalism: protect their positions as class collaborators, prevent us from seriously fighting the bosses’ attacks, and blind us to the need for communist revolution. Our older brothers and sisters fought hard, sometimes giving their lives, for the wages and benefits the bosses now take back. Let’s get off this damned merry-go-round!
We’re not just in a fight against Jefferson and Aramark, we’re in a fight against fascist attacks on the working class that are worldwide and connected. Our fight to protect the union at Jefferson must have the ultimate goal of building a movement to overthrow the capitalist system that always takes back whatever victories we might win.
Only communist revolution can give us a system run by workers, for workers. We urge more Philadelphia hospital workers to read and distribute CHALLENGE and to join PLP study groups. (Call 267-319-3515 for more info.)