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Profits, Control over Oil Drives U.S. War on Syria
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- 04 September 2013 350 hits
Barack Obama and the U.S. capitalists he serves care nothing about the working-class children murdered in Syria or anywhere else. The war in Syria is two years old and has already killed 100,000 people, with nothing but useless rhetoric from Obama along the way. Now he is ready to slaughter thousands more in a racist attack on yet another Middle Eastern country.
In its imperialist assault on Iraq, the U.S. ruling class had no qualms about dropping bombs with depleted uranium, which causes widespread birth defects and cancer in children. It is now using drones to terrorize thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. The U.S. military used Agent Orange and napalm to spread death and destruction among millions in Vietnam. Later, in the 1980s, the U.S. supplied sarin, the lethal nerve agent that may have been used in Syria, to one-time ally Saddam Hussein. He used it to kill thousands of Kurds in Iraq and untold civilians in his war with Iran.
Profit, not morality, drives Obama to bomb Syria, which houses a Russian naval base. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, by allegedly gassing his own citizens, crossed Obama’s “redline.” But rather than safeguard civilians, Obama’s ultimatum is one of several tripwires meant to assure U.S. global dominance in weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Obama’s real targets are potential nuclear powers Iran and North Korea, allies of rising U.S. rivals China and Russia.
Assad, with arms supplied by Russia’s Putin, has scored a tactical coup in the civil war. Sapped by a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. rulers had hoped to avoid fighting in Syria as they prepare for broader, global combat [see CHALLENGE, 7/31/13]. But with their need to control world oil supplies, Syria is sucking them even deeper into the Middle East quagmire.
The hypocrisy of Obama & Co. knows no bounds. U.S. imperialists, both conservatives and liberals, have far surpassed Hitler’s death toll of innocents. Supposedly “outraged” at Assad’s alleged killing of 426 children, Secretary of State John Kerry seems to have forgotten the orders he gave as a naval officer in Vietnam in 1968, in an encounter with Vietnamese civilians: “Open fire; let’s take ‘em” (Boston Globe 6/16/03).
Obama’s war machine also ignores the “collateral damage” its drones indiscriminately inflict from Pakistan to the Philippines. Kerry’s predecessor, Madeleine Albright, declared it was “worth it” when President Bill Clinton’s sanctions wiped out half a million children in Iraq (“60 Minutes,” CBS, 6/12/96). Nor is poison gas “morally obscene” to the White House when Middle East crude oil supplies are at stake:
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent. The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence (Foreign Policy magazine, 8/25/13).
As U.S. bosses chastise or condone others’ use of WMD’s, they keep the lion’s share for themselves. The Pentagon maintains the most destructive nuclear, chemical and biological capabilities on earth. U.S.-sponsored arms “reduction,” “non-proliferation” and “elimination” treaties invariably seek to maintain a U.S. advantage.
When Britain, “the staunchest U.S. ally,” opted out of the Syria strike plan, and Obama was forced to seek Congressional approval, the disarray of U.S. imperialism was exposed for all to see. While every member of Britain’s Parliament and the U.S. Congress advances capitalist interests, they also reflect the rulers’ divisions. Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron represent Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and the big banks behind them. But the UK Labor Party, which torpedoed a resolution to shell Syria, is allied with Lakshmi Mittal, the billionaire owner of Arcelor Steel and the party’s biggest donor. Since Mittal does huge business with Iran, Labor urges “engagement” with Teheran rather than the bombardment of Syria, an Iranian satellite.
In any case, the effectiveness of Obama’s proposed air-war foray seems doubtful. If Assad survives to maintain his rule, it will embolden Iran and North Korea and their backers in Moscow and Beijing. If the strike somehow weakens Assad, then what? Will anti-U.S. al Qaeda militants gain the upper hand among the Assad opposition? Or will the U.S., already stretched thin by its failed adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalate the war by using ground troops to occupy Syrian soil?
Much more than Syria lies at stake here. Saudi Arabia, with its unsurpassed oil reserves, remains the lynchpin of the Middle East crusade U.S. rulers launched in World War II, when President Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defend the Saudis against any attack. Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden represented a non-royal faction of Saudi capitalists who were excluded from the nation’s oil wealth — and hell-bent on seizing it. Meanwhile, ascending imperialist China — which must have oil in quantities only the Middle East can furnish — would benefit from any anti-U.S. regime in the region. This explains Obama’s refusal to aid Islamist anti-military forces in Egypt.
The only useful action against U.S. imperialism can come from the international working class, the class that fights and dies in the bosses’ wars. According to U.S. polls, a majority disapproves of Obama’s Syria scheme, despite nationalist appeals by Obama and the ruling-class media to “support America.” In fact, the interests of the U.S. capitalist class and the U.S. working class are diametrically opposed. Class struggle is a collision of the exploiters and the exploited.
At the moment, the widespread working-class disgust with U.S. rulers has yet to find organized political expression. This is the task of Progressive Labor Party. We must organize and influence demonstrations against the Obama war machine. From our base in mass organizations, we must expose capitalism’s attacks on the working class — including its wars, its racist cop-killers, its mass racist unemployment and poverty, from Bangladesh to Cairo, from Greece to Mexico to the U.S. Only the overthrow of capitalism, and the creation of a communist society run by and for the international working class, led by a mass revolutionary PLP, can free workers from the ravages of a profit-driven ruling class. Build PLP. Join us!
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Mexico: Teachers’ Strike Hits Capitalist Education
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- 04 September 2013 362 hits
MEXICO CITY, September 2 — For the last two weeks, 80,000 Oaxaca teachers from the CNTE (Coordinator of Education Workers) Local 22 have been on an indefinite strike against the education reform proposed by the bosses’ government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. They have organized massive blockades of government buildings, the stock exchange, TV stations and the Mexico City airport.
Teachers from the states of Michoacan, Guerrero and the Federal District have joined these protests. Members of Progressive Labor Party have participated as well, distributing more than 5,000 flyers advancing our communist politics. We’re planning a series of talks on dialectics with a group of teachers who are participating in the struggle.
At one distribution, a teacher told us, “I already have that flyer, I kept it to make copies and pass around.” Two other teachers asked us to spread the struggle, and we said we were doing just that. We explained that this fight is an inspiration to the working class worldwide. Both teachers raised their fists in agreement and comradeship.
Bosses’ Atrocities Spark Workers’ Rebellion
Class struggle is the motor of history. The capitalists’ greed is limitless. Their system’s inequities and atrocities have sparked workers’ rebellions around the world.
In Mexico, the bosses have used Pena Nieto and other stooges in the congress to pass the secondary law of education that regulates “competency exams” for teachers. The hiring and firing power then is taken away from the unions and schools. Their future plan is to eliminate the state-owned companies for oil, electricity and water, the only industries left to privatize. The bosses divide up their loot from our natural resources. “Labor reform,” meanwhile, creates a legal framework for the capitalists to super-exploit the working class.
By using standardized tests, without concern for the cultural social and economic differences of certain regions, indigenous and marginalized communities will be at a disadvantage and as a result will be evaluated in a racist manner. In Mexico, the capitalists have concentrated their educational investments in the country’s most industrialized northern regions, which generate profits. The southern regions are left behind. These reforms will be used to foster an increase in racist inequality.
In the capitalist jungle, only the “most capable” survive (meaning those who get “better” evaluations) — those who follow the system’s ideology. That’s fascism. The bosses need a working class that’s easy to control, is productive but with a minimum of technical training. The reforms, through evaluations, try to standardize our youth with a fascist and competitive ideology.
Teachers’ Struggle Fights Passivity
Police and military terror, a product of the so-called war on drugs, along with the alienating culture promoted by the bosses’ mass media, have induced passivity among large sections of the working class and in many trade unions. The militancy of the CNTE’s class-conscious teachers is therefore vital to class struggle.
The debate over energy reform, now active among politicians in the electoral parties PRI, PAN and PRD, aims only to establish which group of bosses will control the energy wealth. PRI and PAN want to share oil profits with a sector of Mexico’s capitalist class and the U.S., European, and Chinese imperialists. The fake left PRD, led by Andres Manuel López Obrador and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, pretends that the profits will go mainly to Mexican bosses. Neither proposal has any benefits for workers. Only under a communist society, where the working class holds state power, will resources be distributed among those who produce all value through our labor.
Under capitalism, oil belongs to the “nation.” That bourgeois concept has divided workers for hundreds of years, in every corner of the world. But the working class has no nation!
Oil wealth inevitably winds up in the pockets of the big bosses even when considered “state property.” Over the last 12 years, with the government led by the right-wing PAN, oil earnings were the highest in history, with total profits of more than $70 billion. During Felipe Calderon’s recent six-year term, the number of millionaires in Mexico increased by 32 percent, while officially 53 million workers live in poverty.
In the criminal capitalist system, everything is a commodity; for the capitalists, everything is driven by profit. The bosses will never worry about workers’ well-being. We must not fall into the trap of fighting for one group of bosses’ politicians in their squabble over energy wealth.
Today we fight for our jobs, for public education, and for the freedom of political prisoners. But we are also fighting to destroy capitalism, the root of inequality, racism, sexism, imperialism and war. Our aim is a classless society, communism, led by a mass revolutionary Progressive Labor Party.
WASHINGTON, DC, September 3 — Public health workers, Progressive Labor Party members, Metro transit workers and community residents are leading a fight against racist unemployment enforced by new Jim Crow policies at the regional transportation agency.
In late 2011, Metro stopped hiring people who had criminal records even though they had served their sentences and passed all the job requirements. They also re-ran background checks of workers who left the job due to work violations or extended sick leave. If they discovered a conviction, they fired the worker.
Metro fired one worker after she served a small amount of time for fraud. Her crime: reporting a lower income in order to receive a childcare subsidy! Another worker lost his job but found one driving at another bus company.
Metro provides the best-paying jobs in the area for a largely African American workforce. Over 7,000 mostly black men and women will return to DC from prison this year. Most served time for non-violent and drug crimes. The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights just reported that black workers accounted for 80 percent of these arrests even though drug use is similar across all sections of the city among rich and poor, blacks and whites. They need jobs in order to succeed.
These intentional racist arrest and hiring practices enforce the same Jim Crow policies maintained in the U.S. for centuries, keeping black unemployment rates twice or more than that of white workers, and incarcerating masses of black workers.
Meanwhile, the City wants to turn over 25 bus lines to a for-profit company that will further reduce wages, good-paying jobs, health benefits and pensions.
It’s time to fight back! The Health Disparities Committee of the Metro Washington Public Health Association will rally on September 12 at Metro headquarters to demand an end to this ban on hiring and its privatization plans. Members and friends collected close to 1,000 signatures on our petition. People lined up to sign it and many organizations plan to attend the rally to speak and picket.
It will be Metro workers who can win this campaign. They have the awesome power to shut down the city with the support of the riders and the public. Students and professional workers need to unite with them to further their needs for higher-paying jobs and good transportation. Multi-racial and ethnic solidarity among residents, public health and Metro workers paves the way for greater working-class unity and strength. It will demonstrate to us that we can fight this system and eventually overthrow capitalism whose goals are further private ownership of bus, school, and health systems in order to make more profit for a very few.
Join the struggle and attend our PLP study/action group to learn how to build more anti-racism so we can take power and re-organize mass transportation and other services to benefit our class in a communist society.
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Fascism in Schools: Philly Bosses Bust Teachers Union
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- 04 September 2013 428 hits
PHILADELPHIA, PA August 16 —Today, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) effectively destroyed its teacher union (the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers or PFT.) It declared that it is a “distressed school district” that “cannot efficiently educate its children” unless it is allowed to cancel its contractual obligations with its teachers and other employees.
In June, the SDP laid-off approximately 40% of its staff claiming that it was “financially broke.” It is now seeking to re-hire some of them in the cheapest possible way by suspending seniority rules, changing salary schedules, and allowing principals to choose the “best” teachers for the students. The SDP will “re-hire” only those teachers whose salary is the lowest or those who are “willing” to accept an immense wage cut and not complain about it. None will get any of the “commonly accepted” benefits and protections. In other words: SMASH the union.
‘Changing Horses in Mid-Stream’
This is a perfect example of what PLP means when we describe capitalism as a dictatorship of the bosses (capitalists.) The rulers never tire of telling us that “we are a country of laws” and “the law must be obeyed.” But sometimes, the bosses don’t have laws to supposedly “justify” what they do, so they change them or create new ones to fit their needs. This is exactly what is happening here. It’s also exactly what happened when the government bailed out the banks and the auto industry using workers’ tax money. The bosses have declared war on the working class.
The Only Response: Fight Back!
The bosses are using both Philadelphia and Detroit as test cases to see how far they can push workers and see what kind of resistance the working class will organize. Teachers must join with other SDP employees, parents, and students, and not rely on politicians, union leaders, or “community organizers” to lead the struggle. Their main role is to pacify workers’ anger. A real fightback would include all Philadelphia workers. If the SEPTA (transit) workers, the sanitation workers, and the municipal clerical workers went on strike in support of the teachers, the rulers would be sure to get the message.
What Does ‘Winning’ Mean
Winning in this situation does not necessarily mean that the SDP backs down, partially or completely. Even if the SDP reverses itself, education under capitalism will always be racist, anti-working class, competitive, and mind-numbing. Winning means PLP fighting for a class-conscious working class. That would mean that workers would understand that the only way to solve their problems is by overthrowing capitalism and establishing a communist society without social classes, racism, bosses, the wage system, endless wars, and all of the other horrors that capitalism creates. Winning this battle means convincing large numbers of people that capitalism cannot be reformed; it must be smashed.
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Workers Confront Obama’s Imperialist Attack on Syria
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- 04 September 2013 335 hits
Newark, NJ— Members of the Progressive Labor Party joined about 25 other workers today to protest the U.S. ruling class’s planned attack on Syria. Called by the community organization, People’s Organization for Progress, the rally leaders criticized Obama and then discussed the history of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. But they stopped short of identifying capitalism and inter-imperialist rivalry as the main reasons for attacking Syria. CHALLENGE was welcomed by workers in the demonstration and on the streets.
Brooklyn, NY, August 30 — Students, teachers, and workers, Asian, black, Latino, and white rallied against the racist murders of Shantel Davis in Brooklyn and the looming racist bombing Syria. The protesters pointed to racism as a necessary element of capitalism. The racism that allows fascism to be built at home, illustrated by racist police murders, is also the bedrock that facilitates imperialism abroad.
PLP rallied in this Flatbush neighborhood because it experiences racist police terror each and every day. It is important to win black workers to struggle against all forms of nationalism, enabling them to be won to communism. They are crucial to communist revolution.
The Flatbush community had a positive response to our presence. Many good conversations occurred about communism, why we should oppose Obama’s bombing of Syria, and the links between racism and imperialism. As of this writing, the U.S. has yet to bomb Syria. Obama parroted the same Weapons of Mass Desrruction lies as his predecessor Bush. In building an anti-war movement, we must keep class war for communist revolution front and center.
