As they celebrated last week’s drone strike that killed al Qaeda big shot Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, Obama & Co. continued to lie about the dangers workers face from this escalating campaign. U.S. bosses claim that “surgical” drone strikes, using unpiloted aircraft, avoid civilians. They say that drones offer a low-cost, politically low-risk means of prosecuting their “war on terror” without engaging U.S. troops. Finally, White House hypocrites preach that they apply the strictest “moral” and “legal” standards in deploying the drones.

But history tells us that wars cannot be won by remote control. The drones represent an early stage of a bloody, high-risk strategy that could soon have “allied” U.S. and Pakistani armies shooting at each other. They cannot possibly replace the ground troops the U.S. bosses will need in their war to control the areas with huge reserves of oil and natural gas and the pipelines that transport them. (It’s for this reason that the U.S. “withdrawal” from Iraq moves at a snail’s pace; there are 30 U.S. bases that need to be secured there.)

Moreover, the drones won’t help the hundreds of thousands of workers in Pakistan on strike against poverty pay, unpaid wages and brutal working conditions (see CHALLENGE, 10/5). They won’t benefit those who suffer from the capitalists’ austerity policies across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. And they certainly won’t relieve the racist unemployment, home foreclosures and worsening healthcare faced by tens of millions of U.S. workers. The trillions spent on war only exacerbate these problems for workers everywhere.

In fact, the Pentagon uses drones both to pinpoint high-level targets and to spread terror through indiscriminate slaughter. John Brennan, Obama’s top advisor on terrorism, finds his boss’s robot assassins faultless: “There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency [and] precision…that we’ve been able to develop” (Los Angeles Times, 6/29/11).

Brennan lied. Two years earlier, after Obama latched onto the drones as a regional cure-all for U.S. imperialism, insider Daniel Byman (a Brookings fellow and former analyst for the CIA and Congress) exposed their probable rate of civilian murders, warning of a backlash:

U.S. drone activity in Pakistan has killed dozens of lower-ranking and at least 10 mid- and high-ranking leaders from al Qaeda and the Taliban. Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks [as of two years ago]. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died....U.S. strikes that take a civilian toll are a further blow to its legitimacy — and to U.S. efforts to build goodwill there (Foreign Policy, 7/14/09).

Of the untold hundreds of innocents killed so far by drones, nearly half are children, according to a recent study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Contrary to plan, these attacks actually help to build jihadist groups by turning slain leaders into martyrs and bereaved relatives of civilians into sworn U.S. enemies.

The Next 9/11 — and the Rockefeller Wing’s Planned Counterattack

If and when drone-fired hatred fuels a terror attack in the U.S., its rulers are cynically seeking to use it to expand the Afghanistan war into Pakistan. In August, their leading foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), issued “Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 13: A Pakistan-Based Terrorist Attack on the U.S. Homeland.” Acknowledging the “generous support” of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, it read in part:

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the most likely Pakistani outfit to attempt a unilateral strike against the United States or to cooperate with al-Qaeda. The TTP has threatened attacks against the U.S. homeland, considers itself at war with Pakistan, has been a regular target for U.S. drones, and already attempted one attack against the United States when it trained and deployed Faizal Shahzad to trigger a car bomb in Times Square in 2010....An operation involving conventional explosives is most likely. The casualty count likely would be among the largest determining factors in terms of how Washington responds, and it is difficult as well as unrealistic to affix a precise number. This contingency presumes an attack claiming at least fifty people and as many as five hundred, assessing possible responses along this range.

On September 22, departing Joint Chiefs of Staff boss Mike Mullen significantly upped the likelihood of U.S. action against Pakistan by telling Congress that the terrorist Haqqani Network “has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government and is, in many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.”

Four days later, speaking on National Public Radio, CFR mouthpiece Daniel Markey interpreted Mullen’s remarks as a green light for the Pentagon death machine:

You could see conventional forces in Afghanistan moved up to the Pakistan border to support cross-border attacks that would probably start out small but could expand. And you could see a variety of other combined efforts that could even include a more extensive bombing campaign that went beyond the use of drones.

Capitalists’ Laws Serve Their Own Class; Communist Revolution Needed for Pro-Worker Rules

The farcical but widely accepted concept of capitalist “justice under law” aids the war-maker Obama, who has enlisted his alma mater: Harvard Law School (HLS). Just before Awlaki’s demise by drone, John Brennan advised an HLS forum (AP, 9/16/11), “We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves….”

Just after the al-Awlaki killing, HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith reminded New York Times readers (9/30/11), “In a lawsuit brought last year that sought to prevent the government from targeting Mr. Awlaki, a federal judge ruled that in wartime the Constitution left it to the president and Congress, not the courts, to decide military targeting issues.”

In other words, laws are what the bosses say they are. In any time or place, the ruling class, in its own interests, determines what is “legal” and what is not. Slavery enjoyed the U.S. Constitution’s legal blessing for 78 years. The U.S. bosses’ legal scholars today find drone attacks and full-scale, undeclared, unilateral invasions perfectly legitimate.

The working class worldwide suffers from U.S. imperialism’s march to wider wars.  Our class’s answer remains to intensify class struggle against these murderous rulers and their poisonous profit system. We can see this happening in Pakistan’s mass strikes, and in workers’ mass protests in Greece, France, and Italy. We see renewed struggle beginning to emerge in the U.S., with the fight-backs by West Coast longshoremen, New York City hospital workers and anti-Wall Street demonstrators in cities across the country.

The needed and essential ingredient in these struggles is to divert them from the dead-end impossibility of reforming capitalism and into schools for communist-led revolution. We must win workers and youth to see that only a worker-run society that destroys the bosses and their profit system can put an end to their atrocities. The greater good of the working class will then be the ultimate law.

NEW YORK CITY, Sept 10 — “The PSC is here to say, we support you all the way!” These words echoed across the eastern edge of Central Park when a group of professors from the professional Staff Congress (PSC), a union of CUNY professors and staff came to support them. They have an increasing history of supporting striking workers all over the region. They proclaimed their solidarity with the strikers of the Loeb Boathouse Restaurant. The workers walked off the job more than a month ago because managers were sexually harassing women workers, stealing their tips and, most recently, firing 30 workers as retribution for attempts at unionization.

The supporters were there to show that the divisions — by job title, by country of birth, by “race,” by gender, etc. — that capitalism imposes on us can be smashed. Tearing down these divisions is an essential prerequisite for the working class to take power from the bosses and so every opportunity to chip away at the barriers should be seized. We saw a small glimpse of the future, when workers will be united under communist leadership to destroy capitalism and its ideas.

Capitalism teaches us that mental and manual labor are different and that this division makes solidarity between workers impossible. This is capitalist nonsense and the presence of professors in support of waiters and dishwashers proves it! No matter the nature of the work, capitalism exploits it for profit.

Multi-racial unity was on display to oppose the division of “race” and racism that capitalism shoves down our throats. The striking workers are primarily immigrants from many countries, including Mexico, Ecuador and Albania. This racist capitalist system means that these workers are subjected to super-exploitation. They had wages and tips stolen, were subjected to harassment and sexual abuse and generally treated poorly by the boss.

But supporting them on the picket line were mainly white workers from the U.S. who saw that, as workers, their fight was the same, regardless of their “race” or where they were born. Once again, a communist future could be glimpsed, where borders are smashed and workers are united in creating and running a new society.

A picture of what a society not based on the super-exploitation of women might look like could also be seen. Women were there, shouting the loudest and giving leadership to the strike. Some of these women had been subject to sexual harassment by managers at the Boathouse and this issue was a major factor in the decision to strike for both the female and male workers.

While rank-and-file workers stood united and proud, NYC’s union hacks showed they dance only to the bosses’ tune.  The sellout Central Labor Council (CLC) did nothing to mobilize the thousands of union workers who were marching in the New York Labor Day Parade (which ended less than half a mile from the restaurant) to go to the Boathouse to give their support. Nearly every union leader at the march followed the lead of the CLC and abandoned the workers.

Despite this sellout by labor hacks and the presence of scabs, the strikers made a non-stop cacophony with drums and shouting, enough  so the restaurant did very little business during the strike. On September 21st the strikers won an important victory when the owner, Dean Poll, agreed to a union contract that restored the fired workers and promised sick days, vacation, and health care. In a time of relentless attacks against the working class, this is notable.

Let us not be fooled, however. Capitalists only give in to our demands when we force them and even then we get crumbs. Yes, the strike ended in victory, but Dean Poll continues to make profit from the labor of the restaurant workers! And Poll, like all bosses, will constantly look for ways to take back what we’ve won.

This is the best-case scenario for the working class under capitalism, but it’s not the best we can do! Our ultimate liberation from Dean Poll and the capitalist system he embodies requires that we overcome the false barriers of union hacks, job title, “race”, gender, and “nationality.” As we say, the workers united will never be defeated.

TEL AVIV, September 25 — The Israel Railways union went on a partial strike in response to the management’s plan to privatize rolling stock maintenance to an outside company. While the management pretends that this outsourcing will not harm the current workers’ jobs, in reality this will open the way for a wider privatization of rail services under the Israeli regime, causing job loss and pay cuts. The rail workers are fighting for their jobs, as well for the job conditions and pay of future workers hired by Israel Railways.

The Israeli “labor” court has decreed the strike “illegal” on the management’s request, but the workers are fighting on despite the anti-worker decree. On September 25th, the workers shut down the opening of a new rail line in Rishon Le’Zion, defying the court’s order and showing management that they will not give up their jobs to make profits for whatever sub-contractor the management will choose to privatize transit services.

This struggle receives very negative coverage in the Israeli media, with the rail workers shown as “criminals” and “terrorists” because they dared to strike and disrupt train traffic for a few days in defense of their jobs.

This is why international solidarity is important. Give these transit workers a hand in face of management plots and court and media onslaught!J

Please sign this petition in support of this strike:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/israrail/

In addition, please send protest letters to the following addresses:

Israel Railways Customer Service, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by regular mail to Israel Railways – Customer Service Department, Tel Aviv Station, Savidor Central, POB 18085, Zipcode 61180.

Yisrael Katz, Israeli Minister of Transportation, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

NEW YORK CITY, September 26 — “Part-time, Full-time Faculty Unite, Same Struggle, Same Fight!” More than 500 City University of New York (CUNY) professors and students picketed outside the Board of Trustees meeting to protest the Board’s racist vote to take away health care for adjuncts (part-time professors) by next year.

CUNY is a working-class university system. Its make-up is mostly Latino, black, and immigrant workers and students. This cutback would affect over 10,200 people across the CUNY system.

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing CUNY faculty and staff, called the protest. A delegation of 70 or so workers and students also went inside to present a petition signed by thousands calling on CUNY to provide adequate funding for adjunct professor health insurance.

This large and spirited rally was an inspiring demonstration of unity between full-time and part-time professors, and a growing realization that the two-tier system of labor at CUNY is a threat to all workers. Adjunct health insurance was won in 1986, and like all reforms, it is now being taken back.

The reliance on 11,450 adjunct workers, who now teach more than half the classes, has increased dramatically in recent years. These workers are the lowest-paid with the least job security. They receive an inferior health insurance plan compared to full-time workers. The two-tier system was set up to fail, as only 13% of adjuncts receive health insurance to begin with. The proposed cut will make healthcare even more unattainable.

CUNY has refused to boost its contribution to the PSC Welfare Fund, which pays for adjunct health insurance. Though the cost of insurance has increased 400% of its cost in 2002, very few workers are receiving healthcare.

PLP professors and students came to the rally with friends from campuses all over the city. Students distributed 50 CHALLENGEs and 300 fliers entitled “Fight for Adjunct Health Insurance, Eliminate the Disease of Capitalism.”  A professor read the headline and said, “Yes, capitalism really is a disease that needs to be eliminated.”

Many friends at CUNY are realizing the futility of reforms and agree that capitalism will not provide the basis for real education. “The public university system is broken,” said one professor from Hostos Community College, “and we can no longer believe in the false promises of the CUNY trustees or the system as a whole.”

More CUNY workers and students are witnessing the contagion of capitalist crisis and crippling austerity regimes imposed on workers worldwide, causing tremendous misery. Such discussions must be at the forefront in our classrooms in conjunction with the building of worker/student solidarity inside the university and the surrounding communities.

CUNY Chancellor Goldstein announced at the trustee meeting that he would bring up funding from NY State to save adjunct healthcare. PSC leadership saw this as a victory. But all unions serve to make compromises with these bosses, and continue to provide cheap labor. PLP must continue organizing at CUNY to fight for more than measly scraps the bosses toss at workers.

Clearly, this does not signal a victory but a chance to discuss how capitalism thrives off  inadequate health care, the exploitation of part-time professors, and job insecurity — what Marx called the reserve army of labor that is integral to capitalism. As our flyer said: “The longer capitalism survives, the more people will suffer from joblessness, homelessness, hunger, and low wages, and the more countless thousands will die or be maimed in imperialist wars.

As professors and students we should resolve to tell those in our classes and on our campuses the truth: that capitalism needs to be treated like smallpox or malaria, a disease we need to eradicate. Our homework should be to organize for an egalitarian society — communism — that makes capitalism a relic of the past. Progressive Labor Party is working toward that goal. Please join us.”J