A strong, quiet man, Knut Langsetmo preferred deeds to unnecessary words. He was only two days away from this 60th birthday. He was a dedicated friend to many and a beloved comrade. Knut was a scientist and a communist, a scholar and a warrior. Born in Norway, Knut grew up in Minnesota. Although a talented student and swimmer, he chose to work as a truck driver for several years after high school. This experience helped develop his anti-racist, pro-working class political consciousness, as well as the grit and work-ethic that made him a successful scientist.
In his mid-twenties, Knut enrolled at the University of Minnesota to study biology, eventually earning a PhD. It was here that he met the International Committee Against Racism and the Progressive Labor Party, beginning a lifelong commitment to organizing for an egalitarian society.  He also joined the National Guard to win GIs away from serving the U.S. war machines.
During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, neo-Nazi and Klan organizations attempted to hold rallies in Minnesota and other parts of the Midwest. Knut helped to lead workers and students to oppose these groups. Drawing on his experience in the military, he drilled groups of students and workers in preparation for attacking these fascists. He provided tactical leadership at many anti-fascist counter demonstrations, forcing the racists to crawl back into their holes.
At the University of Minnesota, Knut was active in the anti-apartheid movement on campus. He was a key leader in the demonstration that seized the administration building, demanding the university divest its investments in South Africa. Knut later moved to Boston to do his post-doctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In spite of the heavy academic demands placed on him, he remained an active member of the Boston PLP organization. There were many tense and sometimes violent demonstrations against the local racists, the Klan and the police.
Knut enthusiastically participated in all of these demonstrations as well as distributing literature, organizing study groups, social events and other Party building activities.
Knut made a key contribution to the communist movement by helping to establish the web version of CHALLENGE newspaper. He recognized early on that the internet could be an important tool for spreading ideas and organizing political activity. For many years, he maintained the www.plp.org website, scanned and digitized key Party documents and many articles from PLP magazine, The Communist. This was especially important to the international work of the Party, enabling groups of workers and students from around the world to study PLP’s ideas.
In his scientific career, Knut was very forthright about his political convictions. You could always find CHALLENGE and other political literature when visiting his lab or office. After leaving MIT, Knut went to Boston Biological Research Institute (BBRI) where he spent the majority of his career. There he became the go-to person for the many experiments being conducted, often putting others’ work before his own. He became a teacher and mentor for dozens of young scientists. What he contributed to these young co-workers was more than just scientific techniques and procedures. He shared with them a communist understanding of the world and the need to change the social order.
This past spring, Knut learned that he had late-stage cancer. He thought first about the impact that this would have on his family, especially his teenage daughter Signe, as well as his friends. He fought to maintain an upbeat attitude for the many people who came to visit. Although he had been dealt a horrible hand, Knut felt that he was fortunate to have lived the life he did. He understood the world both scientifically and politically. He fought courageous battles against racism and capitalist exploitation, and for communism that will have a lasting impact. He was a great father and a wonderful friend. His life was special, not only because he understood the world, but because he had worked to change it. Bella Ciao comrade Knut, rest assured, you will be remembered.

For the international working class, the moves by Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin to rid Syria of chemical weapons ring hollow. Neither capitalist front man honestly seeks to end the slaughter of our sisters and brothers there. Even if chemical weapons were to be eliminated — a dubious outcome — the war in Syria will not end. Many more workers will still die. Already, two million people have been forced to flee their homes. More than two million live in extreme poverty, on less than $2 per person per day.
Obama and Putin do not care about these workers or about the 1,400 who reportedly were killed in last month’s gas attacks. Both of these imperialist stooges are exploiting the attacks to gain leverage in a rivalry headed towards a far more deadly global war. Obama tried to use the gas attacks as an opportunity to launch sophisticated missiles and kill still more workers while proving yet again that the U.S. can unleash massive military force anywhere on earth. An unmatched capacity for killing underpins the U.S. global empire. It assures protection to allies and clients and destruction to enemies.
But Putin outfoxed Obama. He exploited the U.S. president’s difficulties —notably a divided U.S. ruling class — in mounting a strike on Russian (and Chinese) ally Syria. As a result, Putin comes across as the “the good guy.” (Can a Nobel Peace Prize be far off?) He succeeded in brokering a deal that halted U.S. action, at least for the time being. But Putin is no less hypocritical than Obama. He hopes to use the situation to increase Russia’s power in the battle for control of the region’s oil and gas reserves and pipelines.
Broader Regional War Looming
Reasserting Moscow’s influence, Putin has called into question the ability of U.S. imperialism to defend its interests with lethal force. If he gets away with it, he could enable others to develop their own nuclear capabilities. Far from establishing peace, the Obama-Putin bargain over Syria brings broader regional conflict even closer than before.
Weeks before Putin’s coup, Stratfor (8/27/13), an outfit that provides geostrategic intelligence to U.S. corporations, declared, “This is no longer simply about Syria. The United States has stated a condition that commits it to an intervention. If it does not act when there is a clear violation of the condition, Obama increases the chance of war with other countries like North Korea and Iran.”
Obama didn’t blunder when he drew his “redline” on Syria’s chemical arms a year ago. U.S. imperialism needs to establish these tripwires to justify its use of military force. But now that he has failed to follow through, the credibility of the U.S. war machine stands at risk. This sequence of events can only embolden other U.S. foes building weapons against Washington’s wishes.
U.S. allies, too, have cause for concern. Saudi Arabia and Israel, the cornerstones of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, were counting on the military umbrella that Obama aimed to open in Syria. Similar fears are shared by the twelve former Soviet bloc nations that belong to NATO but lie on or near Russia’s borders. In the Pacific, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines must now be wondering about how far they can count on unconditional U.S. protection against aggression from China’s bosses.
Back in 2008, Putin made clear his anti-U.S. imperialist intentions by invading what was formerly Soviet Georgia. The world saw “Russian tanks entering a U.S. client state, defeating its army and remaining there until they were ready to leave” (Stratfor, 9/10/13). At the time, the U.S. was bogged down in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But even as they have withdrawn and wound down from wars in those countries, it has taken a toll on the U.S. rulers’ home front.
Masses Oppose Obama’s War
While George W. Bush’s “shock-and-awe” invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq gained a measure of popular support in the U.S. (though not without mass demonstrations in opposition), this is no longer the case. Polls show nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population opposed to Obama’s strike in Syria. Students and faculty at the City University of New York are campaigning to kick out former CIA director and war criminal general David Petraeus from his new post as honors professor. Mass popular resistance to Obama’s proposed war strikes in Syria has grown in Britain, Germany and the rest of the European Union. In France, President Francois Hollande’s backing of Obama has met with widespread protests. Polls show a majority of the population in opposition to Hollande’s Syria policy.
Obama tried to share the responsibility for a U.S. strike in Syria by seeking Congressional approval, on the premise that Congress represents the “will of the American people.” Hogwash. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives routinely endorse policies that oppress the working class. While cutting all manner of social services, they repeatedly approve war budgets in the hundreds of billions to fund more than a thousand military bases in 130 countries. This spending has been sanctioned by every president since World War II.
Obama has tried to weaken working-class opposition to his war plans with the claim that conditions are “improving” in the U.S. In fact, unemployment and underemployment remains well above 20 million. One of five children lives in poverty. Racist murders by the rulers’ cops are regular events. And 95 percent of the recovery from the Great Recession has landed in the pockets of the top 1 percent (NY Times, 7/10/13).
The liberals who say they oppose Obama’s war adventures claim that Putin’s deal will yield a “peace dividend” to fund social services for the working class. But capitalism does not function that way. Workers have yet to see a dividend from the end of the Vietnam War or from any conflict since then. Wages have stagnated for the last 50 years. The purchasing power of today’s minimum wage is less than what it was in the 1970s. Bosses always drive for maximum profits and always will, as long as capitalism exists. That is the nature of the beast.
Workers Fight Back
Now as always, however, the working class is fighting back against this profit-mad system.  Workers in the fast food industry, among the lowest-paid in the country, have engaged in a thousand strikes in 60 cities to demand that their minimum wage rates be doubled. In Mexico, 80,000 teachers have struck and demonstrated in cities across the country, fighting the rulers’ cops in their struggle against anti-worker government reforms. In France, 80 percent of the working class opposes another pension reform that would lower their standard of living even more. Many of them are fighting back in mass street demonstrations.
Striking subway motormen have stormed train stations in Buenos Aires to win their annual bonus. Sanitation workers have joined them. Teachers in Uganda have struck for a 40 percent wage hike.
Demonstrations, strikes and mass protests are a good start. But they cannot overcome the fact that the bosses control the means of production and also hold state power through their laws, courts, cops and military. They use this power to enforce their system and control the mass media. Their politicians attempt to divert our class into dead-end reforms.
This is why the Progressive Labor Party is organizing for a communist revolution to wipe out the bosses’ system and its wars, unemployment, poverty, racism and sexism. This can be achieved only in a society that eliminates bosses and profits and puts the working class in control. Building a mass PLP to smash the bosses’ dictatorship is our goal. Join us!

MEXICO — Thousands of striking teachers, battling tear gas and water cannons, are continuing their month-long protest against President Neito’s racist educational reform of privatization. Teachers occupied Zocalo Square for three weeks before being brutally evicted. Protesters used steel grates and plastic traffic dividers to block the streets. Many were arrested. This is a direct battle against the ruling class and its state.

GREECE — Like Mexico, teachers and civil servant workers are on strike for a week in response to a new law of planned layoffs demanded by foreign creditors. While the bosses get bailed out, thousands of public sector workers are losing their jobs, and tens of thousands are coerced with pay cuts. Thousands marched through the streets of Athens to parliament chanting, “Let’s kick the government, the EU, and the IMF out!” Students and other workers occupied the schools in solidarity.

NEW YORK CITY, September 16 — Shouts of “David Petraeus you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” rang out as nearly 100 people protested against the former general and CIA Director as he entered the Macaulay Honors College to “teach” his seminar. City University of New York (CUNY) students and more than 20 professors and staff were joined by high school students and teachers.
The corporate media consider Petraeus to be a military genius, a warrior-scholar. In fact he is a war criminal. In Iraq he was put in charge of creating the Special Police Commandos, a paramilitary unit with thousands of troops known for exceptional brutality, and the establishment of 14 detention centers that tortured and killed prisoners on a daily basis. In Afghanistan, Petraeus terrorized the population with nighttime special-forces raids and drone plane attacks which killed thousands of civilians.
PLP students and professors helped plan and build the rally. Challenge was distributed and banners displayed. A comrade spoke about the need for building a better world, a communist world. Others advanced the need to build a massive international movement to defeat imperialism. We need to build this movement on every campus, in the cafeterias and in the classrooms.
While many people with various ideas spoke, one highlight was the remarks of two high school students. One spoke about the horrors of war and how war was “unnatural.” The second explained that she would probably attend CUNY, but that her mother wouldn’t be happy with her attending a school with murderers on the teaching staff.
Petraeus’s invitation to teach at CUNY is only one part of a plan to militarize the university. A social science division at City College was named after General Colin Powell and Reserve Officer Training Programs (ROTC) have been established at three campuses.
At a fourth campus, College of Staten Island professors are organizing to resist the administration’s imposition of ROTC on their campus (more on this next issue).
Last week after the rally, students chased Petraeus, screaming at him as he walked toward the subway. This time the NYPD whisked Petraeus into an SUV parked in front of the building. With an unmarked police car following, the vehicles moved quickly down the block where police cars with flashing lights were ready to clear the intersection. Despite these maneuvers, students were able to block the intersection and catch up with the SUV, chanting “Petraeus, Out of CUNY!” and “Every week David!”   
Yes, we will be back every Monday to harass this monstrous war criminal but we must certainly step up our daily campus activities to win masses of students to see that only by destroying capitalism can we have a decent future.