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State of Their Union: Expanding U.S. Imperialism in Haiti
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- 05 February 2010 363 hits
In Obama’s State of the Union address, he grossly insulted the earthquake-stricken working class of U.S.-occupied Haiti. He talked for over an hour, mainly about domestic issues, concentrating on restoring U.S. bosses’ profits amid workers’ misery, while completely ignoring the more than 200,000 deaths — a toll vastly multiplied by the poverty U.S. capitalism forces on Haiti. (See CHALLENGE, 2/3) He passed over the millions more now suffering injuries, disease, homelessness and hunger under the guns of well-cared-for U.S. troops.
This attitude mirrors the racism that U.S. imperialism spreads worldwide, having super-exploited the overwhelmingly black population of Haiti for over a century, making it the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.
The fact is, each dollar of U.S. government assistance includes “33 cents for U.S. military aid,” but only “nine cents for food.” (Associated Press, 1/27/10) This paltry “aid” fronts for stepped-up coercion. While the quake has Haiti’s workers down, U.S. bosses step on their backs. This lays bare capitalism’s utter unwillingness to relieve distressed workers.
Obama, however, did note an opportunity to convert the catastrophe into building U.S. imperialism. He praised “Americans who’ve dropped everything to go someplace they’ve never been and pull people they’ve never known from the rubble, prompting chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A! from people in Haiti. Obama and his ruling-class masters hope their half-baked aid can legitimize a full-fledged military presence.
U.S. Rulers Seek To Rescue Image, Not Haitian Workers
Some U.S. “relief” workers are openly patriotic and paramilitary like the NYPD-FDNY team that put in a brief, highly-publicized appearance in Haiti. But the most committed volunteers are genuinely compassionate people in groups like Doctors Without Borders (DWB). These sincere doctors are being mis-led by war-making bosses with an imperialist agenda. Unfortunately, all these groups ultimately serve the same U.S.-flag-waving purpose.
DWB’s actual leaders plan and carry out even greater assaults on the working class that would disgust most DWB doctors, if they were aware of them. DWB’s advisory (financial, that is) board boasts heavyweight U.S. imperialist credentials. (See box, page 2)
New York City’s police commissioner Ray Kelley, who sent in the cops and firefighters, is continuing his career in making Haiti a pro-U.S. police state. In 1994-1995, Kelley was training Haiti’s police as Director of the International Police Monitors of the multi-national force in Haiti. For this, then President Clinton awarded him a commendation for “exceptionally meritorious service.”
No Honor Among Thieves — U.S. Uses Disaster to Beat Rival
Capitalists and Trash
International ‘Law’
Obama & Co. pounced on Haiti to execute unilateral military action under humanitarian cover, infuriating French-, Russian- and Chinese-allied Venezuelan competitors for cheap Haitian labor. Led by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), (see box at right) liberal U.S. strategists have been cooking up such an operation for some time. An October 2009 CFR report, “Interventions to Stop Mass Atrocities and Genocide” called for the U.S. to “break the law” regarding national sovereignty and UN strictures, when overriding U.S. imperialist interests demand.
The paper cited war zones Kosovo, Rwanda and Darfur. But U.S. rulers grafted the phony humanitarian rationale onto Haiti. It read in part: “Force or threat of force may be used in cases of genocide and mass atrocities to, among other things, protect vulnerable populations, guard relief efforts, degrade perpetrators’ capacity for repression, and signal a willingness to escalate further if necessary.”
The U.S. has even invented Haitian “perpetrators” in the form of thugs hoarding relief supplies. But, to the contrary, workers in Haiti are collectively organizing food distribution. Even the NY Times reported (1/26) that, “New rules of hunger etiquette are emerging. Stealing food, it is widely known, might get you killed....No matter what is found, or how hungry the forager, everything must be shared.” This working-class “communal rationing” contradicts the media’s demonization of young workers in Haiti. (See
article below). The main hoarders are, in fact, the U.S. military, who — wielding police power — effectively control the bulk of supplies.
We must unite with Haiti’s workers and report their class solidarity in our shops, unions, barracks, community organizations, churches and schools, while organizing direct working-class relief, as best we can, to the workers on Haiti’s streets, by-passing the U.S. imperialists who have looted the country for over 100 years.
The profit system not only magnifies natural disasters’ effects on workers but uses them to further exploit our class. Our Party’s long-term goal is the earthquake of communist revolution that will bury the murderous billionaire class in the rubble of capitalism once and for all.
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Wall Street Big Shots Run Doctors Without Borders
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- 05 February 2010 360 hits
• Doctors Without Borders (DWB) Chairman (and Exxon Mobil and JP MorganChase heir) Richard Rockefeller, M.D. heads the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the main bankroller of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think-tank. Rockefeller’s CFR has helped guide every U.S. military invasion since World War II — massacring millions in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan while training death squads in Latin America.
• DWB board member Robert van Zwieten toils for the Asian Development Bank (ADB). U.S.-dominated ADB provides the main funding for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, a chief objective of Obama’s deadly Afghan surge.
• DWB board member Elizabeth Beshel is global treasurer of Goldman Sachs, which, while it doles out multi-million-dollar bonuses to its officers, serves Obama’s job-destroying regime as an unofficial Treasury Department aide.
• Victoria Bjorklund, also on DWB’s board, is a partner at Wall Street law firm Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. In a typical deal, Simpson greased a $2-billion loan from JP Morgan to Shell Oil and the Saudi national oil company, both major beneficiaries of U.S. war-making in Iraq, Pakistan and now Yemen.
• Partners in Health (PIH) is another relief operation in Haiti that betrays sincere activists. It is the founded and funded creation of Harvard University which functions as the U.S. rulers’ leading ideology factory. Imperialist blueblood James Houghton, director at Exxon and JP Morgan, leads Harvard’s governing body. In liberal guise, the university’s Kennedy School fine-tunes government schemes for wars abroad and police crackdowns at home.
PL’ers must work in these bosses’ “aid” organizations and win the many honest people within them to understand that while they are already making very positive contributions to the working class, the ruling class wants to use these groups to further their imperialist interests.
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Eyewitness Report on Haiti’s Workers’ Heroism Inspires HS Students, Staff
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- 05 February 2010 389 hits
NEW YORK CITY, February 3 — “We will have to rebuild Haiti all over again. Maybe this time we should make it communist,” exclaimed a student. “What do you guys think?” she asked. This occurred at our emergency student government forum last week in a local high school about the crisis in Haiti
Thirty students attended to hear a report from a high school student and a staff member who had just returned from Haiti. Representatives from two local student governments and their advisors also came. The students and staff were extremely inspired by the moving account of how working-class people are dealing with the horrors of capitalism and imperialism.
One speaker explained how his family organized food for their neighbors and tried to help everyone in the community. He then related the chaos, disorganization and long lines at the U.S. Embassy. People were exhausted, hungry and thirsty. They were forced to sign promissory loans to repay the U.S. government for their return flight to the U.S. which really angered the audience.
A staff member who went to Haiti to see her family and help out explained how she got there — riding a horse from the Dominican Republic for the last leg of her journey! She brought nutrition bars and water to give out to everyone she saw. She described how so many buildings were destroyed but that the U.S. Embassy remained intact. If the recently rebuilt embassy could withstand the quake, why weren’t workers’ homes, schools and hospitals built with the same care?
Students raised many important issues connected to the earthquake: was U.S. imperialism or Haiti’s history of dictatorships mainly to blame? How the media is using racism to further attack Haiti’s working class; and what we can do to support the people there.
We also reviewed some history, pointing out how U.S. bosses, including Disney, have long reaped profits there. In 1993, Disney chairman Michael Eisner made $203 million while workers sewing Mickey Mouse pajamas made 12 cents an hour. We said students and staff should take matters into our own hands and organize relief and solidarity activities that are not micro-managed by supervisors and principals. One student suggested organizing walkouts and protests against the U.S. military occupation which defends U.S. corporations that pay Haiti’s workers starvation wages.
We understand the desperate situation in Haiti and were very thankful that these two friends could share what they saw and did. But students and teachers did leave with a feeling of optimism, that we must be involved in everything, from fund-raising to solidarity trips, to support our working-class brothers and sisters in Haiti.
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D.C. Metro Bosses Hike Fare, Kill 2 Workers; PL’ers’ Target: Capitalism
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- 05 February 2010 404 hits
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 27 — Tonight Metro bosses held public hearings, asking the public to comment on whether the transit system should raise fares, reduce service, or transfer funds from the maintenance budget into operations. Some choice! All of these actions would harm workers and intensify racism.
PLP’ers testifying at the hearing condemned the “choice,” demanding no cuts in service, no fare increase, and no attacks on workers, calling instead for a mass militant movement led by labor to fight for proper funding (from the bosses who have made billions from the transit system). Another person declared that these cuts were fundamentally racist because of their disproportional impact on black and Latino workers. But today’s capitalist system in crisis is unlikely to respond favorably even to the most militant actions of workers, making a revolutionary organization critical to the future.
The former president of the Metro workers’ union condemned the Metro Board as the worst ever, putting the deaths of two track workers the day before squarely at the feet of the Metro Board. These deaths were not accidents, but negligent homicide by Metro because of their forced overtime and failure to deploy flag people. Metro has systematically ignored the many safety problems that workers have brought to their attention because correcting them would cost money. Workers’ lives aren’t worth spit to the bosses.
Within 48 hours of the public hearing, the Metro Board raised fares, declaring that the testimony of the public favored that option. What liars! And exactly what we’ve come to expect from capitalism.
Which way forward? Many Metro workers read CHALLENGE and are beginning to understand the need to build a stronger PLP organization at Metro that targets the entire system of capitalism. As Obama’s wars grow and a fascist police state becomes more and more apparent, revolutionary action against the racist system of capitalism becomes ever more urgent. Workers, riders: fight back with slow-downs and strikes, with the goal of fighting for workers’ power — communism. Take up the red flag of revolution as we battle back against every attack from the bosses!
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PL’s Ideas Catching On: Airport Cleaners Vote Strike vs. Bosses’ Racism
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- 05 February 2010 373 hits
MID-WEST AIRPORT, February 1 — At the packed SEIU union hall, metro area and airport cleaners voted unanimously to strike against the racist bosses. The metro area cleaners are preparing to fight against unfair labor practices, contract give-backs and racism. Meanwhile, janitors in a downtown office building filed two formal complaints against the cleaning bosses for blatant racism. New black cleaners are forced to wear different uniforms from the Latino cleaners at $2.50 less pay!
This racist super-exploitation is designed to increase the bosses’ profits and maintain a racially-divided work-force. But this divide-and-conquer attempt failed — all the black, Latino, white and Asian immigrants and citizens voted not to clean one single building until our demands are met.
At the airport, the cleaning bosses distributed a letter, implying that we would lose our jobs if we strike against them. The union steward immediately informed airport cleaners that this is just a fascist scare tactic; the bosses know the airport is crucial to the success of the metro area strike.
Greetings To Immigrant Strikers In France
Meanwhile, the airport workers sent a letter of international solidarity to the striking immigrant workers in France. We explained [in both English and French] that their situation is similar to undocumented Latino immigrants here who are targets of racist immigration raids in the U.S., and that all workers must fight racism globally. We also sent them a package of CHALLENGES .
We have a study group of airport workers to discuss CHALLENGE articles and PLP’s revolutionary ideas. We are struggling with these workers to distribute the paper. The Party must grow to enable the international working class to destroy capitalism with communist revolution.
