No Tears for Pope Who Blessed Death Squads

Hundreds Blast Anti-Communists At Transit Union Meeting

Sabotage of Lockheed Strike Shows Need for Communist Class Consciousness

Lessons of the 1970 Postal Wildcat

PLP Anti-War Marchers Raise Political Consciousness

Racism Runs Rampant vs. Haitian, Muslim Students

Muslim Teenagers Threatened With Deportation

Philly Transit, Healthcare Workers Must Unite Contract Battles

Use Wage Fight to Sharpen Class Struggle

a href="#Racist Terror is LAPD’s Main Job">"acist Terror is LAPD’s Main Job

Union Retirees and Social Justice Church Group Discuss Legal Fascism

Legal Fascism Discussed at Church Social Justice Group

Bosses Hunt, Exploit Immigrants and Kill Them in Wars

UAW Helps Sinking GM Screw Workers

Baltimore-D.C. Youth Learn About May Day

Eulogy for Lucia Flammia: Soy comunista, toda la vida!

War Budget Ravages Literacy Programs

a href="#‘Hotel Rwanda’ Fosters the Illusion of Relying on Imperialists">‘H"tel Rwanda’ Fosters the Illusion of Relying on Imperialists

a href="#Students, Faculty Defend Prof Against Right-Wingers’ Anti-Stalin Attack">"tudents, Faculty Defend Prof Against Right-Wingers’ Anti-Stalin Attack

LETTERS

Minnesotans March Against Iraq War

How Would Communism Treat Older Workers?

Links Iraq War to Social Security Privatization

A Class Outlook and Communist Culture

a href="#PLP’ers Make A Difference">"LP’ers Make A Difference

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• Hitler, too, did everything ‘legally’
• Capitalism feeds on unemployment
• Secret rules bleed former colonies
• ‘American dream’ today is gambling
• Crazy Iraq info was gospel to gov’t

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No Tears for Pope Who Blessed Death Squads

Reactionary John Paul II consecrated his considerable energy and talents to a life of anti-communism. For his help in preserving their murderous profit system, liberal U.S. rulers are pouring out their gratitude to the late pope, despite their recent differences with him. The church John Paul led, like all religions, immeasurably helps capitalist classes around the world by preventing workers from identifying the capitalist causes of their oppression and organizing revolution. Catholicism — along with Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Buddhism, and the rest — boils down to the dead-end concept of idealism. In the idealist view, there exists beyond the real, material world a supreme being that guides the course of events no matter what people do. War and oppression become the "will of god." Fighting back is pointless.

John Paul embraced and espoused religious, anti-communist defeatism body and soul. When the Soviet example was attracting thousands of workers into Europe’s communist parties in the 1930’s, John Paul (Karol Wojtyla at the time) entered a Polish seminary, hoping to rise high in the vast church hierarchy. When the Nazis invaded Poland, he joined an underground Catholic sect, which, unlike red-led partisans, followed the official Vatican line, doing and saying nothing that would antagonize the Nazis. The anti-communist Catholic "quietism" young Karol preached helped make Poland the heart of the Nazis’ extermination camp system. During the war, in fact, the future pope developed an admiration for the Nazis that resurfaced when in 1994 he bestowed a papal knighthood on former Nazi officer Kurt Waldheim, who also became UN Secy. General and President of Austria.

A decade before John Paul became pope in 1978, Catholic bishops in Latin America, dismayed that their support for U.S.-backed dictators impelled masses of workers to search for revolutionary answers, concocted Liberation Theology. This doctrine blended grass-roots organizing and mild criticisms of capitalism with Catholic teachings, but explicitly ruled out armed revolution (although many of its rank-and-file followers believed in exactly that). John Paul, however, couldn’t stomach the slightest hint of Marxism. He pulled the plug, forbidding priests to participate in politics and threatened to excommunicate activists in Nicaragua and El Salvador. John Paul did not protest the CIA-trained death-squad murder of El Salvador’s Bishop Romero, a critic of that government’s wholesle slaughter of civilians. Even the Jesuit Democratic congressman Robert Drinan of Massachusetts, who was no more a revolutionary than his mentor Teddy Kennedy, had to vacate his seat under John Paul’s order.

John Paul’s next big anti-communist coup soon followed. By then, serious political errors, such as maintaining wages and a state separate from the party, had turned all the once-communist parties in the world into their opposites. The Soviet sphere and China, which remained threats to U.S. interests, had become thoroughly capitalist. But they falsely still used the label "communist." This offered U.S. rulers the chance to attack their strategic enemies while simultaneously denouncing communism as a corrupt failure.

Ever the opportunist, the pontiff prostituted his services immediately. In addition to funneling funds into Lech Walesa’s reactionary Solidarity union movement, also financed by the CIA and the AFL-CIO, John Paul made a 1979 barnstorming tour of Poland that helped build it and eventually topple the teetering pro-Moscow regime in Warsaw. When Walesa eventually became Poland’s leader, his corrupt government attacked the workers he claimed to represent, with mass layoffs and cutbacks in social services.

Even though today the pundits claim John Paul and Reagan were responsible for the fall of the Soviet bloc, the main reason behind its demise was the contradiction inside the Soviet system as local capitalists drove to eliminate all the gains made by workers under real communist leadership.

The crack-up of the Soviet Union altered the political landscape of Europe, and John Paul’s role there. No longer needing the U.S. nuclear umbrella to protect them, Europe’s rulers began to behave more independently. They rejected U.S. dominance of Persian Gulf oil, a given since 1945. John Paul himself soon cemented his ties to the fanatically anti-communist Opus Dei sect, founded by the now beatified Monsignor Escrivá, private confessor of Spain’s fascist ruler Francisco Franco, and now bankrolled by French capitalists like Claude Bébéar, head of financial giant AXA. When John Paul took a pro-European stance against U.S.-led plans to invade Iraq, the U.S. rulers’ liberal media pounced on the well-known dirty secret that many priests were pedophilic predators.

Criminal cases in U.S. courts have jailed predator priests once coddled by John Paul, and lawsuits have forced the church to sell off crown jewels of its real estate empire. U.S. rulers want to politically distance U.S. Catholics from a pro-European Vatican. The coming pontifical election will in many ways reflect this inter-imperialist rivalry.

Under John Paul, Catholic Church membership rose from 750,000,000 to over a billion. But still the Pope exacerbated the many troubles facing the Catholic church. Many Christians in Western Europe don’t practice their religion. In Latin America, fascistic pro-U.S. protestant sects are gaining ground, particularly in Central America. Many catholic schools and churches are being shut down in the U.S.

All these things present both difficulty and opportunity to those of us who fight for a world without capitalism and its racism, wars, starvation, fascist terror and mass unemployment. That so many people call themselves members of institutions that explicitly condemns communist revolution presents a real obstacle to building a mass revolutionary international movement like PLP. But most people belong out of a desire to be a part of something larger than themselves and to share in some aspect of the social good works the church shamelessly promises but seldom delivers. The majority of the mourners filling the streets of Rome and churches everywhere have aspirations for a world free of exploitation and the hell on earth that is capitalism. Our job is to win them to the rational, communist outlook of building for a revolution.

Hundreds Blast Anti-Communists At Transit Union Meeting

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 6 — The road to revolution is filled with obstacles, some large some small, that slow down the working class. But 650 members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 — almost three times the usual turnout for a union meeting — cleared away a couple of these roadblocks as militant workers ripped into right-wingers who brought up the local’s red president, Mike Golash, on bogus charges.

It was an odd motley crew of right-wing former union officials, black nationalists and white reactionaries whose intent was clear: rally anybody they could against a communist who is providing militant, anti-racist leadership. They don’t care about the union members; they just want to reclaim union office and feather their own nests. Several pro-communists in the union took new steps in the struggle, writing and distributing a leaflet defending Mike, circulating a petition demanding the charges be dropped, and vigorously defending Mike, rejecting anti-communism on the union floor.

The charges were as phony as a three-dollar bill. They claimed Mike hired a union office administrator without official authorization, but the International was forced to overrule them, saying union rules supported Mike’s action. The new office administrator is building a union web site and strengthening the newsletter, among other things, to help increase communication among union members. This is a crime?

The right-wingers also charged a union member took photos at the "Sweetheart Ball" instead of the union hiring an outside vendor. Yet another charge: Mike allowed a union member, having a difficult time due to illness, to use the union hall for a fundraising event. (Aren’t union members supposed to look out for each other?) They also claimed the union’s Committee on Political Education conference was not about elections but about broad politics and fighting management — a charge to which Mike pleads guilty, and is proud of it, since that’s the kind of political education the union needs more of.

Union members were furious with the gaggle of right-wingers out to get Mike, and let them know it. One of Mike’s supporters ripped the microphone out of one of the lying right-winger’s hands and told him to shut the f--- up! When another right-winger attacked Mike for being a communist, a loud chorus of boos erupted throughout the union hall. The vote was decisive — two-thirds voted to reject the charges against Mike.

But these right-wingers are determined. One got in Mike’s face after the meeting, declaring that Mike had won a battle, but they would crush him next time. This is no idle threat. They did mobilize a core of 50 right-wingers and dupe another 200 to support the charges. With a looming battle over health insurance cuts (higher deductibles, co-payments and prescription drug prices) and other basic benefits, a battle that cannot be won without a major fight, the right-wingers will surely blame Mike for any setbacks, and may gain support.

Mike cannot win simply by promising steady improvements through clever negotiating. To maintain communist leadership, workers must increasingly understand the long-term character of the struggle, especially as capitalism’s crisis intensifies and a communist-led union is seen as a threat by more than these bugs in the road. These self-aggrandizing bandits will ultimately be backed by management, the government, and their police forces.

An ever-bigger battle is looming. But the reds are ready!

Sabotage of Lockheed Strike Shows Need for Communist Class Consciousness

PUGET SOUND, WA. — The Aero Mechanic, the newspaper of Boeing’s largest IAM union, hyped Lockheed Machinists’ ratification of a "New Agreement" in its April issue. It rarely covers contracts at other locals, particularly those ending week-long strikes as far away as Georgia, Mississippi and West Virginia. The Aero Mechanic listed all the "goodies" in the Lockheed contract, but omitted the issue that caused the strike in the first place: new workers will still not receive retiree medical benefits.

These strikers threatened to break the IAM/UAW aerospace pattern established the past two years. Showing class consciousness — despite objections by the Local and International leadership — they struck on behalf of the new, younger workers who hadn’t even been hired yet! A Boeing-area local passed a support resolution after the local leadership unsuccessfully attempted to end the whole meeting to avoid discussing the strike’s implications.

As soon as these brave workers overrode the union leadership, the entire bosses’ propaganda machine acted. The media claimed large numbers of scabs; the local Congressmen and Senators called the timing "unfortunate"; the Pentagon threatened to cancel or relocate production. The International — knowing that its job is to guarantee war production as cheaply as possible in order to more efficiently back imperialism’s attacking other workers — immediately met with the company again, quickly following that with a new vote. Democracy in action: keep voting until you get it right!

Under such pressure, it’s not surprising this isolated group of about 3,000 strikers caved in. Nonetheless, many workers in Boeing’s Puget Sound plants were disappointed, provoking discussion on how to end this cycle of attacks and weak responses. "That’s what happens when you have these small groups," said one local Machinist. "When they go out, we have to go out!"

Lessons of the 1970 Postal Wildcat

In 1970, a dozen black, rank-and-file workers stormed the stage at a meeting of the Manhattan-Bronx (N.Y.C.) Postal Clerks Union, chasing the hacks off the stage, starting a multi-racial, illegal, national wildcat that spread to 200,000 in days. "That’s just it!" complained another machine operator. "You just can’t get guys today to chase out the union leadership like they did."

These black, rank-and-file leaders were no doubt greatly influenced by the politics of the day, as was the whole postal workforce. A few years before, Harlem exploded in anti-racist rebellion. Anti-imperialist politics had migrated from the campuses to the army and back again. During that year, 55% of the Army had been involved in mass refusal of orders or outright rebellion against racism and the Vietnam War, according to the Pentagon’s own internal studies. There had been "a general weakening in the authority of all institutions," said the N.Y. Times (3/26/70). The "crisis in…public and private employment… [was caused] by two…factors. One…the erosion of pay envelopes….[Secondly a] general weakening in the authority of all institutions….No longer command[ing]…respect…." this led to "the postmen’s defiance of the law" and their "refusal to heed the pleas of their own union leaders [to]…return to work."

"Oh, that could happen again!" said the same guy who complained workers won’t chase away the union misleaders.

This time we can get it right! No matter how militant the class struggle, the ruling class must eventually prevail if the politics remain within the bounds of capitalism. Indeed, relying solely on militant class struggle ultimately leads to cynicism and the burying of class consciousness as the ruling class reasserts its control. Instead, we must measure our success in the growth of revolutionary forces — our Party, its base and the circulation of our press. None will come quick and easy. "We had class consciousness in the 1980s," said a Salvadoran worker, describing the fierce battles in his native country during that decade—like the massive general strike of July 1980, led by industrial workers.,. "Now, I have something better — communist class consciousness."

Imagine what even a few comrades in the post office with a significant political base built through networks of CHALLENGE readers and sellers could have accomplished during the postal wildcat. Building such political networks of readers and sellers now will help prepare us for when it "happens again" — and could spark it.

PLP Anti-War Marchers Raise Political Consciousness

On March19, three teachers and ten students from my high school joined the anti-imperialist contingent at a local anti-war march. The day before we stayed after school creating posters. One sign depicted an Iraqi woman and a female U.S. soldier and read, "NO LIVES FOR LIE$." The "I" showed a picture of the burning twin towers, signifying the use of 9/11 to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The morning of the march, one student said the day before he’d been "walking home from school. A cop shouted at me, saying I did something wrong, and sprayed me in the eyes with pepper spray. It burned so bad, I thought I went blind." I asked him why he thought the cop acted this way. He replied, "Because my black face fit the description." The student enjoyed the march because we "agitated police and stood up for what we believe in." I heard him screaming, "Racist cops mean…We got to fight back!"

At the march, several of my students chanted on the mike with me, in English and in Spanish. One student was nervous about speaking, but she said, "I felt confident when I saw that everyone wanted to hear what I had to say, and were chanting along with me. I felt so much pain and energy while chanting that I wanted to cry."

Another student mentioned the diversity of the Party marchers. "There were so many people of different colors and ages, and teachers marching with students. We are fighting together instead of against each other."

One student like the chant, "Shitty schools mean…we got to fight back." She said, "I’m happy to see people actually care about how messed up capitalism is. Our schools are garbage, and the rich are just getting richer."

Our school was a sweatshop before it was transformed into a high school. This means small spaces, poor heating systems and few windows. Many of our classes have no textbooks, we have no music teacher, and the copy machine has been broken for a month.

Initially I was hesitant to expose some of my students and colleagues to the Party for fear of being fired. I’ve been teaching for only four months. Some of my students read CHALLENGE, some have heard the word communism. Teachers discuss politics with me at lunch, but I’ve only told a few I’m a communist. After marching with the Party’s contingent, things changed.

My students are excited about participating in an April 20th day of action against imperialist war. So far, more than half the teachers in my school agreed to incorporate the issue of present-day imperialism in their lessons — including the Spanish, Art, Math and Science teachers. One of my students asked about attending May Day; another wants to know more about PLP. Monday morning, I walked into the classroom of a teacher who had marched on Saturday. In big block letters, the "Do Now" on the board read: "SMASH IMPERIALIST WAR. How does imperialism exist today?" I realized I could be more open about my politics with my friends.

Racism Runs Rampant vs. Haitian, Muslim Students

QUEENS VILLAGE, NY, April 12 — Today, dozens of angry parents and supporters picketed P.S. 34 demanding the firing and punishment of assistant principal Nancy Miller and principal Pauline Shakespeare for their racist treatment of Haitian children. After a squabble among two Haitian students, on March 16, Miller ordered 13 Haitian children of a 4th grade bilingual class to sit on the floor and eat their lunch with their bare hands. Talk about Nazi-like collective punishment! Miller said, "In Haiti they treat you like animals and I will treat you the same here." Parents are enraged that these two racists have not been punished although the incident occurred a month ago.

"She’s got to be fired," said parent Francia Devil. Miller has requested a transfer to a desk job in a regional Education Dept. office while the attack is "being investigated."

Since this outrageous act happened in the cafeteria, other adults were probably there and should have stopped it.

Muslim Teenagers Threatened With Deportation

NYC students are experiencing a racist rampage. Recently two 16-year-old Muslim women H.S. students, one from Guinea and the other from Bangladesh, were arrested in the middle of the night by Homeland Security and threatened with deportation, based on pure anti-Muslim racism. The FBI has asserted that both teenagers are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." Teachers and students at Heritage H.S. in East Harlem — which the Guinean youth attended — are outraged. The president of the parent-teacher association, Deleen Carr, said, "I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus." Ms. Carr welcomed the young woman to her house daily, saying, "...how dare they?"

UFT’ers Against the War intends to bring a resolution before the teachers’ union’s Delegate Assembly condemning the arrests and Homeland Security.

The same rulers that increasingly slash school programs to pay for the Iraq war and the Homeland Security police state are pushing this vile racism. All parents, students and teachers must oppose these fascist attacks!

Philly Transit, Healthcare Workers Must Unite Contract Battles

PHILADELPHIA, April 8 — In the next four months, union contracts expire here for almost 20,000 workers in transit and healthcare. Health benefits, pensions and jobs are key issues in both, but they also share a common cause.

The U.S. government continues to cut money from social programs needed to pay for the bosses’ widening wars. This fuels ever-greater funding crises in both industries. They are ultimately insolvable: the needs of the capitalist class to protect its profit empire are diametrically opposed to workers’ needs for transit and healthcare.

The urgency for revolutionary communist PLP leadership was never greater. When the pro-capitalist union leaders aren’t fighting each other, they ally with one group of bosses or another and make concession after concession. They will never organize the working class for communist revolution, the only solution for these capitalist funding crises. PLP here will participate in these contract fights to spread the need for workers to join PLP and fight for communism.

On April 15, the contract expires for 5,000 transit workers in Transit Workers Union Local 234, employed by SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority). SEPTA is demanding that workers begin paying for health benefits and prescriptions.

The union agreed to extend the original March 15 contract expiration date by 30 days. In early March, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announced a surprise federal grant which meant "no need for service cuts, layoffs or fare increases." Rendell nonetheless warned transit workers against striking, declaring that a strike would "anger" state legislators and jeopardize further state funding.

For several years, Local 234 union leaders have been fighting each other. At one point, the International stepped in and took over the local. Because of the infighting and the continuing funding crises, the previous union leaders decided to accept a one-year contract with no salary increase. A former union activist complains that, with the contract expiring in just one week, "nobody knows what’s going on."

The more than 12,000 Local 1199C healthcare workers — whose contracts expire in July — have an advantage over their transit brothers and sisters. PLP has been active in that Local for years and PLP members are playing significant roles in these contract fights. They explain how a capitalist system in a period of war and fascism increases these healthcare cuts. We organize the workers to build a revolutionary movement, not just limiting our fight to winning the local contract battle — something pretty difficult to do these days! PLP is also organizing healthcare workers to support transit workers should they strike.

In transit and healthcare, the real crisis is the lack of communist class-consciousness among the workers. The solution is more workers reading CHALLENGE and joining PLP.

Use Wage Fight to Sharpen Class Struggle

NEWARK, NJ — "Should I be struggling with my fellow workers to fight for better wages?" asked George, a Party club member here and an immigrant worker from a Central American country. He makes bricks for a construction company for $7 an hour.

"Have you talked to your co-workers on whether they’d want to fight for higher wages?" asked comrade Linda.

"Yes, we all feel the same way," answered George. "Every year we get a measly 20-cent raise, while every summer the work doubles. They’re making plenty of money off of us to be able to give us more."

Then comrade Francisco said, "It would be a great struggle to launch against your bosses; it would expose the contradiction between the workers and the bosses. But we must show that this is the essence of capitalism. The bosses rely on you and your co-workers for cheap labor."

Then George said, "Many of us came here from Latin America thinking life would be better, but in reality many struggles here are almost the same. Eighty percent of us are immigrant labor."

A few months ago George’s arm was crushed in a brick-making machine. Fortunately, no bones were broken but his arm was in a sling for several weeks. These workers have no health benefits.

"Well, should I struggle with my workers for better wages?" George asked again.

"Of course you should," replied Francisco, "but we also have to emphasize that capitalism will never resolve workers’ problems. If we press hard enough, the bosses may throw crumbs — more wages, better benefits — at us. They will, however, continue to exploit us for our surplus value [the source of their profits]. We need to win our fellow workers to fight for a new society, communism, where workers worldwide will run things."

"Yes," George responded, "I guess, with these particular struggles we, as well as our fellow workers, learn that we can fight and sometimes win and lose. But we need to learn to keep fighting the bosses."

"Exactly," exclaimed Linda. "And don’t forget to distribute CHALLENGE to show them workers are doing the same around the globe."

a name="Racist Terror is LAPD’s Main Job">">"acist Terror is LAPD’s Main Job

LOS ANGELES, March 28 — "The LAPD has declared war on black and Latino young men," I said to a middle-aged black man as I handed him a leaflet about the two latest victims of police terror: Devin Brown and Tony Diaz, both murdered by the LAPD. "This has been going on for years," he responded. "It’s not new."

"Here’s our newspaper [CHALLENGE] saying we need a communist revolution to change all this," I said. "They’re killing our young people here and in the war in Iraq. Over 1,500 U.S. soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed. They’re not sending the politicians’ or rich folks’ sons and daughters, just our own," I continued. "This paper shows the revolutionary potential of the whole working class, especially the youth. We’re asking for a donation." The man pulled out a $5 bill and took the paper.

Earlier this month, teachers in three different union area meetings passed a motion proposing that the union condemn the cops’ racist murder of Devin Brown as a violation of human rights. The motion will now go to the union’s House of Representatives.

At several schools, students have distributed hundreds of leaflets condemning racist police terror and the war in Iraq. They call for the unity of students and workers to march on May Day as part of building a mass movement against these evils and the capitalist system that relies on them. Another group of students is circulating a petition against the LAPD’s racist attacks.

Workers and youth in the community have been outraged at these recent police killings. Several marches and rallies have condemned them, but the leadership is proposing "community oversight of the LAPD" to reform the police department, and to "stop the killing of us by us." These two demands, while on the surface sounding good, divert us from the real culprit, the capitalist system itself. They’re spreading the illusion that the LAPD and the system can be reformed to stop racist killings — this at the very time we’re being attacked even harder. A leopard doesn’t change its spots.

The misleaders use the highly-publicized teen homicides (mainly gang shootings) to try to build support for the cops. These shootings have been declining slowly for several years. Besides, gangs and gang ideology were encouraged by the cops and their capitalist masters — including Hollywood and the music industry — in an effort to keep young people from uniting against racism, unemployment and the capitalist system behind them. The gangs actually copy the rulers’ wars for control. We can’t rely on the cops or their fascist ideas to end the gangs.

"Community oversight of the police" is a trap to involve workers and youth in fingering others and going along with the rulers’ drive towards their police state. We must reject this trap and expose the police as armed agents of the ruling class whose role is to protect and serve the racist capitalist system in crisis.

To continue their imperialist wars for control of oil profits, U.S. rulers are cutting more from education — Gov. Schwarzenegger is slashing millions from California’s education budget —while closing the MLK trauma center and many other social programs. This lowers all workers’ standard of living. As workers and youth fight these fascist attacks, the rulers will use their racist cops to terrorize us and use their "reform movement" to try to pacify us.

Workers need a different outlook to avoid the "police reform" trap. The bosses will send increasing numbers of youth into the military and into low-wage jobs with few benefits. Capitalism needs police terror. By organizing our class against their fascism and war machine, building unity between students, workers and soldiers with a multi-racial, international working-class revolutionary communist movement, we can challenge the rulers’ imperialist war and fascist police terror, and ultimately destroy them.

We invite youth and workers to march on May Day and to join the fight for our future: a communist society run by the working class in our own interests.

Union Retirees and Social Justice Church Group Discuss Legal Fascism

NEW YORK CITY, April 5 — At a meeting of the Hispanic/Solidarity committee of AFSCME’s District Council 37, retiree activists heard Lynne Stewart present the chilling facts of her recent trial. She was convicted of "providing or concealing material support to terrorist activity" and making false statements to the government (saying she would abide by "special administrative measures"). She was then disbarred.

Following her presentation, one long-time activist noted that, "If they can attack an activist lawyer like Ms. Stewart, then we’re all threatened." A committee leader concluded that the changes in laws and rules, which were the basis for her conviction, were clear steps in the development of fascism.

The discussion turned to building concrete support for Ms. Stewart, including inviting her to speak at other union, retiree, church and community meetings. It was clear to the audience that broadening the defense campaign was more important than merely sending personal letters to the sentencing judge calling for leniency.

Finally, there was a wide-ranging discussion over why this was happening now. One black worker recalled former activist and anti-racist lawyer Alton Maddox who has been barred from practicing law for the past 16 years, wondering why there wasn’t a widespread movement to defend him. Another noted the post-9/11 round-up of hundreds of Muslim and Arabic men, none of whom were ever charged with any crimes, and raised the possibility of the Patriot Act being used to break workers’ strikes.

Bringing this "outside" issue to the committee proved to be an exciting and useful day for the retired unionists, and for Lynne Stewart and her husband.

Legal Fascism Discussed at Church Social Justice Group

Seventy-five people came to a recent talk by Lynne Stewart about her case and its "implications for defense lawyers and our civil liberties." A social justice group of a large urban church I attend sponsored the event.

Although Lynne had nothing to do with supporting or aiding terrorism, she’s been convicted of violating rules for lawyers and conspiring to help her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, foment terrorism. She faces a 30-year sentence.

Lynne explained that although other lawyers were involved in the Sheik’s legal defense, she was "chosen by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be his poster girl." In short she’s been persecuted so the U.S. government, under "Homeland Security," can demonstrate how far it will go to break its own "rules and laws" and gut peoples’ so-called Constitutional rights to squash any dissent. As Lynne put it, "Fascism in the U.S. is no longer creeping, it’s galloping."

The attentive audience rose to applaud Lynne’s courage in fighting her conviction. Plans were made to write hundreds of letters to the judge who will sentence Lynne on Sept. 23. He will no longer use the old "sentencing grid," but under new guidelines implemented in early 2005 will have "latitude" to use his own "discretion." We plan to bring as many church members as possible to court that day.

During the question and answer period, a young lawyer described his fear and asked Lynne how she overcomes hers. She spoke about her path from a Queens girl to one who came to understand the vile nature of racism and her decision to fight it and all forms of oppression. Yes, there is fear, she said, but the desire to do the right thing is stronger.

Another person asked if a Democratic Party election victory would have made a difference. "Not really," she answered. "I’ve come to understand that corporate wealth rules America, not a particular party."

I spoke, pointing out that Lynne’s case shows we’ve reached a new stage in the development of fascism in the U.S. Now the IRS is investigating liberal churches and institutions and civil rights organizations for so-called tax violations, a clear attempt to muzzle political dissent. The church congregation recently endorsed a mildly-worded resolution against "excesses" in the Patriot Act. The church lawyer and institutional leaders have refused to make it public for fear of further IRS probing. A fight is underway, pitting the principles of the social justice activists here against the political and institutional interests of the church leadership.

Before the program began I placed 50 copies on the literature table of a speech I gave at a local church in November, on a panel with Lynne Stewart and others. It outlined the development of U.S. fascism, how it’s linked to the global objectives of U.S. imperialism, how fascism was defeated in the past and how we must fight it now. All 50 copies were taken. One friend said the speech was "as straight to the point as an arrow." I plan to invite him and a few others to our May Day program.

The Party’s roots are growing deeper. We’re seizing the moment and preparing for the long-term struggle to defeat fascism with communist revolution.µ

A comrade

Bosses Hunt, Exploit Immigrants and Kill Them in Wars

LOS ANGELES, CA. — "They didn’t want to renew my driver’s license," exclaimed a garment worker. "I’ll have to risk having my car taken away." He’s lived in California 15 years, has a family and needs his car to get to work. The DMV denies driver’s licenses to hundreds of immigrant workers because they’re undocumented.

Life in the U.S. is becoming harder for all workers, but for undocumented workers it’s already a living hell. They suffer super-exploitation in garment sweatshops, steel foundries, construction and aerospace parts production. The bosses impose minimum wages, speed-up and deny benefits. Without a driver’s license or ID, one can be arrested and deported for jay-walking or forced to pay up to10% of a check to have it cashed.

With U.S. bosses fending off imperialist rivals and stuck in a quagmire fighting for Iraq’s oil, they need to squeeze all workers more, but especially the undocumented. To accomplish this, one group of bosses want to openly use the racism and terror of groups like the "Minutemen." Other bosses have a liberal approach: win millions of undocumented workers, their children and the immigrant population in general to patriotism, and promise an amnesty program. They hope to get low-paid, "grateful" and stable workers for their expanding war industries and enlist patriotic soldiers for their wars. But they could get the opposite!

The "Minutemen" have gotten floods of publicity about their campaign to "patrol" the border and stop undocumented workers from immigrating. They’re also demanding Bush use the Army to seal the border and more widely implement the fascist Homeland Security Act. Although they boasted they’d have thousands, barely 200 racists appeared, with a similar number of reporters.

They bosses scapegoat undocumented workers, blaming them for all the problems caused by their decadent capitalist system. Yet undocumented workers contribute greatly to the bosses’ economy. Although they’re ineligible for Social Security and other benefits, seven million undocumented workers contribute about $7.5 billion annually in Social Security taxes. (New York Times) Despite the bosses’ rabid anti-immigrant racism, there are more than 30,000 non-citizens on active duty in the armed forces. Another 25,000 have become citizens, or applied for it post-9/11. Another 11,000 are in the Reserves. The liberal bosses hope they can lure many more.

Workers and soldiers, whether citizen, legal immigrants or undocumented, are brothers and sisters of one international working class. We have the same interest: destroying this rotten system. Immigrant workers play a growing, key role in industry and the military. They can help turn the situation into its opposite by rejecting the bosses’ patriotism and nationalism, uniting with citizen workers and organizing against every attack, aiming to fight for power for the whole working class.

The bosses and their politicians, whether open fascists or liberal fascists, belong to the same capitalist class, which lives off our exploitation. In order to fight their attacks, we should take our struggle to our unions, churches and mass organizations. In the struggle for driver’s licenses, amnesty or higher wages, we must show that the only lasting victory is the growth of a mass, revolutionary communist party fighting for workers’ power.

The upcoming May Day celebrations can help our unity and understanding grow in the factories, schools, churches and everywhere, a foundation for building a revolutionary communist movement to smash racism, imperialist wars, capitalist borders and exploitation.

UAW Helps Sinking GM Screw Workers

DETROIT, MI, April 3 — GM chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, took direct control of the company’s North American operations today to try to strengthen the company’s weakening grip on the domestic auto market. In the first quarter, GM’s domestic market share fell to 25.7% from 27% a year earlier, according to the AutoData Corporation. A decade ago, GM held about 33% of the domestic market. Overall U.S. market share for GM, Ford and Chrysler sank to a low of 57.6% in February.

GM’s two most senior North American executives, Robert A. Lutz and Gary Cowger, had their responsibilities reduced. Peter Morici, a University of Maryland business school professor, compared it to "moving around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic."

GM cut production by 12% in the first quarter and 10% for the second quarter, and will permanently close three assembly plants in Baltimore, Lansing, Michigan and Linden, NJ. They will continue a five-year trend of cutting 1,000 to 2,000 white-collar jobs annually. At a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, GM vice-chairman Lutz said that GM might phase out another brand, as they did with Oldsmobile.

The world’s largest automaker announced an $846 million loss for the first quarter of 2005, its second consecutive quarterly loss, and the largest since 1992, when GM was on the verge of bankruptcy. GM stock plummeted by 14% — the steepest decline since the 1987 stock market crash — to under $28, down from over $80 five years ago. GM’s bond rating was downgraded by all major ratings firms, indicating Wall Street’s lack of confidence in the company’s future.

GM is facing a sharp decline in sales and market share, increased competition from Asian and European auto bosses and rising material costs. Health care costs are expected to climb from $5.2 billion last year to $5.6 billion (Chrysler’s health care costs are about $2 billion; Ford, about $3 billion). Over 1.1 million current and retired workers and their families make GM the largest private health care provider in the U.S. (about two and a half retirees for every GM worker still on the job).

GM is counting on the UAW to help them out of their deep financial hole. They may negotiate a buyout package similar to the one it got from its German union last fall, when Opel cut 12,000 jobs. But healthcare will be the big target. GM will look for concessions similar to the ones UAW gave Caterpillar and DaimlerChrysler, forcing workers to pay more of their health care costs. Lutz said, "It’s very difficult to say how or where this is going to go, but we have to maintain the dialogue and impress upon our partners [the UAW] how important this is." If "dialogue" fails, GM could threaten to go to bankruptcy court, like many airlines and steel companies have done to eliminate their healthcare and pension responsibilities.

In the 2003 contract talks, the union conceded increases in co-payments for drugs and some doctors’ visits. Last month, Chrysler and the UAW agreed to raise out-of-pocket medical expenses for 35,000 workers, retirees and their families who use preferred-provider plans. Chrysler began secret talks with the UAW about six months ago, and negotiated those changes without re-opening its national contract. They used a little-known pact, negotiated in 1982 but never invoked, allowing Chrysler to seek relief if health costs spiral out of control. Stephen D’Arcy, in charge of automotive practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Detroit said, "There’s going to be significant changes in the way health care is provided to auto workers, retirees and their families in the future. This is just the beginning."

The crisis of GM reflects the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry and the capitalist crisis of overproduction. Morgan Stanley auto analyst Stephen Girsky said, "They have too many plants, too many workers, too many models, too many dealers and their employee benefits are too high."

GM’s problems reflect the decline of the U.S. auto industry over several decades. But the real crisis facing workers is the lack of any leadership that fights pro-war patriotism/nationalism; that would never accept "what is good for GM is good for workers"; that would fight racism and anti-communism; and that wouldn’t accept concessions destroying jobs, wages and benefits. This loyalty to the bosses’ profit system has brought the UAW and U.S. labor movement to the brink of extinction.

To remain the top imperialist dog, the rulers must rely more and more on their military muscle, ultimately leading to another world war. That’s how the imperialists settle their battles for markets, resources and cheap labor. This May Day we will fight to win more industrial workers, soldiers and youth to build a communist leadership that will eventually bury the warmakers and their agents inside our ranks.

Baltimore-D.C. Youth Learn About May Day

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1 — Workers and students here and from Baltimore gathered to watch the May Day video, eat pizza and discuss politics, in preparation for the upcoming May Day march in Brooklyn. After socializing while having pizza, two young comrades presented the history of May Day and the Progressive Labor Party. Then we watched the May Day video and discussed the issues talked about by workers in the march: workers’ rights; how capitalism takes power away from workers and why; questions like "Do workers have power?" and "How can workers obtain power?"

People asked how communists can legally exist today, how people perceive communism and how we can open up our fellow workers’ consciousness. This led us to a discussion about fighting for multi-racial class unity, and how the ruling class divides us by "race" in order to oppress us. Since many of the participants had never heard of May Day or the Progressive Labor Party, we partly focused on ways the ruling class uses fear to create an atmosphere of anti-communism.

Everyone took a CHALLENGE and a flyer about upcoming events. After the formal presentation, many of the youth stayed to talk more about capitalism and how to change it. Even speaking informally, a young comrade’s knowledge and class analysis of who controls wealth in the U.S. impressed an audience member. The comrade gave him the "Who Rules the U.S." article for more detailed information. The evening concluded with the youth leaders arranging for follow-up with the workers who attended, to consolidate their coming to May Day.

Eulogy for Lucia Flammia: Soy comunista, toda la vida!

At the Boston May Day dinner and at a memorial service the following day, we paid our final respects to Lucia Flammia, our dear friend and comrade for 15 years. Lucia was a wonderful mixture of militancy and passion, determination and stubbornness. Both as an individual and as a comrade she made a positive impact on many peoples’ lives. Lucia loved life, and did her best to enjoy her life. She never held back. Whether she was cooking for and entertaining her friends and family, enjoying a night on the town or demonstrating against the evils of capitalism, she always did it with gusto and more. When those attending one of Lucia’s social gatherings often asked her why she prepared far more food than could possibly be eaten, she would reply, "Don’t worry, I’m Italian and that’s the way we do it."

Lucia first met PLP as a student at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She was already a committed communist and was working to organize against budget cuts and the English proficiency exam. She helped lead a student march to take over the president’s office. The president was dumbfounded as Lucia yelled in her face. The students joked that the president ran from the wrath of Lucia. Lucia wanted to show students here how Italy’s students did things, so they would learn to be militant.

Lucia soon joined PLP and was involved in many activities. She went to Seattle to help organize soldiers; mobilized residents of a Boston housing project to protest the police murder of a young man; and helped organize the Worcester community to protest the brutal police murder of Cristino Hernandez. Lucia used her knowledge of Spanish and Italian to enthusiastically bring the communist ideas of PLP to immigrant workers here as well as in other countries. While a professional tutor at Roxbury Community College, she organized the other tutors to demand their paychecks, delayed by the administration. Many people admired and loved her.

People sometimes say that communists are the best people they’ve ever met. However, communist are still people, with all the flaws and weaknesses people have. But communists differ in that they struggle collectively to transform both the world and themselves so that humanity can move forward.

Lucia’s communism was born in the struggles of the Italian partisans against fascism. She came from a communist family. Her grandfather attended the founding convention of the Italian Communist Party. He later organized the peasants of his region to seize the land from a local prince and the Catholic Church and to establish a commune when World War II ended. As a young girl, Lucia’s mother served as a courier for the communist anti-fascist underground.

During the 1970’s, Lucia participated in the massive left-wing youth movement that swept Italy, including communists as well as anarchists and the terrorist Red Brigades. As the movement began to destabilize the country, the Italian police responded with a combination of massive repression and encouragement of drug use among the young militants. In the aftermath of the Red Brigades’ kidnapping and execution of the former Italian prime-minister, Aldo Moro, 13,000 leftists were rounded up, imprisoned and tortured. Massive cynicism and depression swept the movement. Many of the best communist youth became shackled with the chains of addiction and alcoholism. Some recovered, some died, and some, like Lucia, fought a lifetime battle to stay sober. For much of her life, Lucia won that battle and was able to accomplish many things. She worked to raise a son and to rebuild the communist movement. Ultimately, she became a casualty of the class battles that she and other Italian youth had fought 30 years earlier.

The Italian partisan song Bella Ciao, which means beautiful goodbye, says that if I die, pick up my gun and continue to fight. It says that I am a communist all of my life. Lucia, too, was a life-long communist, and we know that she would want us to continue her fight.

Bella Ciao, Lucia. You will be missed and you will be remembered!

War Budget Ravages Literacy Programs

NEW YORK CITY, April 12 — Millions of U.S. workers are facing drastic federal budget cuts for many already under-funded programs, like medical care and housing. Little-known adult literacy programs face a proposed 64% cut in federal funding. Meanwhile, money for the military, FBI and CIA, is being increased.

Over 50,000 mostly low-income and immigrant adults here attend literacy and ESL classes to improve their English language abilities, prepare for the GED exam, and/or improve their overall academic skills. The cuts will ravage this program.

Adult literacy staff and students in NYC are fighting back with letter-writing campaigns, petitions and demands on politicians. Staff in the CUNY adult literacy programs has spearheaded a coalition, including some community-based programs, in planning a large "Rally to Protect NYC Adult Literacy Programs" for April 22 at 10 A.M. in Union Square. Several students will give important speeches.

Progressive Labor Party supports these efforts but feels certain aspects could undermine the best interests of current and future students. First, by focusing almost solely on adult literacy programs, the coalition is not reaching out enough to others affected by the budget cuts and might allow the rulers to use one group against another. Last week thousands of healthcare workers rallied in Manhattan against budget cuts. Imagine how much more powerful a unified demonstration with those workers would be in fighting the war budget and fascist Homeland Security. The bosses are waging an offensive against the entire working class to appropriate even more federal tax dollars for their imperialist military machine.

Secondly, by relying heavily on the "good will" of mainly Democratic Party politicians, the anti-budget cut coalition is trusting the fox to protect the hen house. Some coalition leaders decided not to connect the dots, not to show the direct link between the budget cuts for adult literacy programs and the government’s continued war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They fear alienating some of the politicians "friendly" to our struggle. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Salvadoran Workers Support May Day

SAN SALVADOR April 12 — "May Day is a great opportunity worldwide to carry forward the fight for unity of the international working class," declared a university professor here. Wherever we march, PLP sees May Day as an occasion to show the workers that the red flag of communism is alive and well and that, one day, the working class will destroy the fascist, racist, capitalist system.

On this day, the bosses’ borders don’t exist for the working class as millions of workers march to end the bosses’ oppression.

PLP is the force pushing for the abolition of the wage system, and the profits imposed by the capitalist bosses. Those who negotiate with the fascists are either dangerously naïve or represent another arm of the capitalist system whose goal is to fool the international working class.

Expressions from workers common on these marches include: "CHALLENGE is the only paper that calls things by their correct name and calls for international workers’ unity"; "Give me another to take to a friend"; "I’ll help you pass out leaflets." Communist ideas belong to the working class and we must share them with everyone.

Since the fight of the Chicago martyrs in 1886 — where May Day was born — the working class has shown the bosses that our struggle continues through every worker who is oppressed in every corner of the world. The millions of workers worldwide who the bosses have killed, "disappeared" or tortured reminds us we should ignore the misleaders who say capitalism can work for us through elections while the working class dies from hunger and war.

Men, women, children, students, farmworkers, soldiers — let’s unite our forces to defeat the enemies of the working class. Organize in your neighborhood, factory, school. Join study groups and help bring CHALLENGE to your friends.

a name="‘Hotel Rwanda’ Fosters the Illusion of Relying on Imperialists"></">‘H"tel Rwanda’ Fosters the Illusion of Relying on Imperialists

In 1994, the Rwandan genocide took millions of working-class lives. "Hotel Rwanda" follows the experiences of Paul (Don Cheadle), a Rwandan manager’s assistant at a wealthy Belgian four-star hotel. The movie begins shortly before the murder of president Juvenal Habyarimana and the start of the Rwandan massacres. Paul is portrayed as the unintentional hero in a country of chaos where people are brutally murdered for their ethnic background; men, women and children are cut to pieces with machetes, bodies cover the streets. "Hotel Rwanda" through its well-crafted script and its gruesome and often heart-wrenching moments makes the strong case that the U.S. should have intervened.

The movie boldly blames the lack of intervention on racism. A pivotal scene in which the U.N. allied forces are sent "to save" the people and the refugees in the hotel makes this clear. The commander of the U.N. forces (Nick Nolte) argues with the head of the allied forces because their orders were to escort the tourists — not the Rwandan people — out of the country. Immediately afterwards the U.N. general tells Paul, "They think you’re dirt. You’re black. You’re not even a n-----. You’re an African."

This argument masks the real reason why capitalists support U.N. interventions in any country: whether or not they’ll profit from their resources and labor. The world’s bosses don’t care about the massacres of innocent working-class people.

"Hotel Rwanda" briefly describes the origin of the ethnic cleansing. The conflict began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when imperialist European bosses changed Rwandan history. "Imposing their own racist superiority on the Tutsi ‘Hamito-semites’ and a corresponding inferiority on the Hutu." (N.Y. Times, 8/30/03) The Tutsi’s were only 18% of the population but were given many of the government and administrative jobs. This segregation and racism created by the imperialists caused the tensions that propelled the massacres of millions of Tutsi people. The Hutu’s misdirected their hatred towards their own working-class brothers and sisters, the Tutsis. The Hutu’s nationalism, like many nationalist and ethnic movements, encouraged workers to fight one another instead of their real enemy, the imperialist bosses. Actually the Tutsi’s were, and still are, the favored ruling class for the Belgian imperialists.

As the movie’s plot thickens, the Rwandan refugees fight for their survival within the walls of this four-star Hotel de Mille-Collines owned by the Belgian giant Sabena. During the genocide, the company called the Belgian government and stopped the militia from killing all the refugees for a few days. Paul, the main character, plays the role of the bosses’ lackey. He even charges the refugees for staying in the hotel. He mainly wants to keep up the "dignity" of the hotel. In the midst of his struggle, Paul realizes he’s just being used as a ruling-class stooge.

This film fosters the illusion that only pleading for help from foreign capitalists can save the working class from racist genocide. The movie’s timely release directly relates to U.S. interest in a UN intervention in Sudan, specifically Darfur. Intervention for "human rights" is a capitalist excuse. Sudan and its neighboring regions are strategically important for their oil reserves. If U.S. bosses "intervene" in Sudan under the guise of "human rights," they can get a bigger piece of the profits at the expense of their rival oil bosses in China who are now exploiting Sudan’s oil.

The real murderers are the capitalists whose every step is based on maximum profits. They put the machetes into the hands of the Hutus and they push nationalist/racist propaganda. Workers can never be free from racist genocide until we smash the system that creates these superficial separations. Fighting for communism is fighting for the future of the international working class.

a name="Students, Faculty Defend Prof Against Right-Wingers’ Anti-Stalin Attack">">"tudents, Faculty Defend Prof Against Right-Wingers’ Anti-Stalin Attack

Students, former students and faculty have come to the defense of a professor whose research on Stalin has brought the slander of some right-wingers and an attack by editors of his university’s student newspaper.

Grover Furr, a Montclair State University English professor, has been researching the Stalin years in the Soviet Union since the 1970’s. "I opposed the Vietnam War," says Furr, "and respected the Vietnamese Communist Party for its anti-imperialism and defense of the peasants against the landlords, the French imperialists, and the U.S. imperialists who replaced the French."

"But in the 1970’s I was told: ‘The Vietnamese communists could not be any good, because they got started under Stalin, the biggest mass murderer of all time.’ So I thought I should learn something about Stalin."

What he found was that the anti-Stalinists, from Khrushchev to Robert Conquest and the Trotskyists, were liars. "Amazing!" says Furr. "Trotsky started the lies. Khrushchev elaborated them. And the defenders of capitalist exploitation loved Khrushchev, drank up whatever he said, and made up yet more stuff. It’s all false."

More recently Furr has been refuting anti-Stalin lies on an academic mailing list, H-HOAC, where his knowledge of Russian enables him to prove anti-communists are lying. Furr suspects this spurred the recent attack on him as "A Scholar For Stalin" in David Horowitz’s far-right scandal sheet "Front Page." He learned Russian in college to read Russian literature. But now he’s able to read documents from formerly secret Soviet archives, documents, Furr says, which show Stalin to have been a highly principled fighter for the working class.

"The article takes anti-Stalin lies as fact and then attacks me for proving they’re wrong," Furr declares. "But he also claimed I’m ‘indoctrinating’ my students, though he never spoke to any of them, nor visited my classes. He made it all up."

Furr says this attack produced very little. "This article has a link urging readers to bombard me with e-mail. I received a total of eight!"

But then the student newspaper wrote a viciously anti-communist editorial and cartoon charging that Furr teaches "communism" and that his department should consider "disciplining" him. "They took all their facts, even my photo, from Horowitz’s page, though their office is a few hundred yards from mine. They did no fact-checking at all. When I met with them, they were very embarrassed."

What did Furr do? First he sent an e-mail to all his students, with the URLs of all the attacks on him, explaining that it was his responsibility to do so, since he was charged with "indoctrinating" them. Then he sent the same e-mail to the university’s faculty and staff.

The campus reaction has been very supportive. "I’ve received many e-mails from former students, including two former editors of the student newspaper who were then, and are now, political conservatives. They all wrote to defend me and my teaching, pointing out the unethical nature of the editorial and cartoon, both of which were based solely on Horowitz’s lies."

The student newspaper has now printed a full page of articles supporting Furr and criticizing the editors. But so far they’ve made no retraction, or even correction, though they state it’s their policy to correct factual errors, and have not put the letters on their web page.

Meanwhile Furr has received many more e-mails of support than the newspaper has published. "My students, present and former, and my colleagues have rushed to defend me, and attack the student newspaper for their outrageous lies about my teaching. I have always treated my students with respect."

"What the anti-communists fear is the truth," says Furr. "The truth shows that capitalism is terrible, and that the communist movement, with all its failures and errors, was the best thing produced for working people in the 20th century." He believes, "We’re still suffering the effects of its collapse."

Part of the criticism leveled at Furr was his links to some articles on the PLP web page. "PLP is a good source of political analysis of the Stalin years and the history of the communist movement," says Furr. "I’m glad to link to articles on the PLP page, and of course to many other articles elsewhere on the Internet that expose the horrors of capitalism and imperialism. There are other ‘pro-Stalin’ sites," says Furr, "but as far as I can tell, PLP is the only source that tries to look at the Stalin years dialectically — not only defending the Bolsheviks’ achievements but also trying to identify and understand their mistakes."

"Naturally I’m called a communist for standing up for the truth," says Furr. "In the capitalist world, being called a communist is a kind of badge of honor. If you make the supporters of exploitation squeal with anger, maybe you’re doing something right. Keep up your good work," Furr says to CHALLENGE.

What’s next in his research? "I’m writing an article to show, in detail, that Khrushchev’s infamous ‘Secret Speech’ of 1956, in which he viciously attacked Stalin, is at least 90% lies," says Furr. "Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists, and others, like PLP’s founders, thought this must be true," Furr says. "But they did not have the evidence to prove it, which is now available from formerly secret Soviet documents."

"I’m also writing an article summing up very strong evidence that Trotsky was, in fact, conspiring with the Nazis and Japanese fascists, more or less as charged in the 1937 and 1938 Moscow Trials," Furr concluded.

LETTERS

Minnesotans March Against Iraq War

About 1,900 black, Latin, Native American, Asian and white workers and students marched in Minneapolis and St. Paul to observe the second anniversary of the U.S. bosses’ imperialist invasion of Iraq. About 1,500 marched in the Loring Park neighborhood of downtown Minneapolis while 400 rallied at the State Capitol in St. Paul. The liberal and revisionist (fake leftist) leadership of the demonstrations misled the marchers with pacifist politics.

Pacifism is no match for the murderous racist bosses who control state power. A violent armed struggle for communism, with a clear class analysis of who are the friends and enemies of the working class, is the key to ending our oppression at the hands of the bosses. Pacifism did not end slavery. It was ended by the militant efforts of people like Harriet Tubman and John Brown and by the Civil War.

The marchers were way ahead of the leadership. There was a lot of anti-imperialist sentiment. Many people driving by honked their horns in support. There was a "counter-demonstration" of seven pro-war fascist Bush supporters.

There are good people in the working class who hate U.S. policies that have murdered more than 100,000 Iraqis and 1,500 U.S. soldiers. They need PLP’s revolutionary politics as we build for May Day and communist revolution, from Minneapolis to Baghdad.

Minnesota Red

How Would Communism Treat Older Workers?

The March 16 editorial on the trillion-dollar Social Security swindle did a great job exposing liberals as the workers’ worst enemies. The Democrats and unions claim they are defending Social Security against Bush and the nasty Republicans. But the editorial showed that for forty years, eight presidents, three Democrats and five Republicans, have all stolen $2,000,000,000,000 in workers’ money which was supposed to be set aside for our retirement. Instead of preserving the money we paid in Social Security taxes, the bosses raided its so-called "trust fund" to pay for their war machine. They stole $7,100 per person in the U.S. And as the editorial points out, they plan to steal another $2,600,000,000,000 over the next ten years, which works out to more than $9,000 per person per year.

The article was great at exposing the liberals, and called for communist revolution, but missed an opportunity to explain how communism works. In an article about retirement under capitalism, we should discuss retirement under communism. Retirement is a polite word for firing workers, paying them pennies on Social Security, forcing them to take low-paying, part-time jobs or live in poverty, and telling them how lucky they are to be unemployed. Only capitalism would think it makes sense to get rid of the most experienced workers and isolate them from young workers.

Under communism, older workers would have jobs appropriate to their condition (fewer hours, less physically demanding), and would be encouraged to share their experiences with the next generation. By explaining to our readers how we would do things differently under communism, we can point how we can do better.

A long-time reader

Links Iraq War to Social Security Privatization

About 60 people attended the March monthly meeting of the Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA) to discuss how to stop Social Security privatization. Ed Ott, Political Action Director of the AFL-CIO City Central Labor Council, outlined the unions’ strategy — continuing to use rallies, petitions and the Internet to pressure the politicians.

After he left, I took the floor to explain why privatization is bad, how there’s no current crisis of Social Security, how benefits would be cut, how the government was out to destroy Medicare and Medicaid. But I then linked the drive for privatization to the war and occupation of Iraq. That war is eating up hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used for workers’ services. I said that "patriotism" on behalf of the U.S. government is against workers’ interests. As Samuel Johnson said long ago, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

An ARA leader from the teachers union replied that although he agreed about the war, and that all unions agreed on the need to fight privatization (and are winning that fight), the unions are divided on Iraq. Suddenly the meeting’s main issue became not Social Security but the war in Iraq.

Speaker after speaker outlined why the unions must fight this war openly, along with privatization; that it wasn’t only an economic question of the amount of money spent on the war; or that the war’s purpose was seizing Iraqi oil for U.S. corporate profit. The war, they said, was destroying everyone’s quality of life through the Patriot Act, the complete media censorship; and through a general increase in corporate fascism. The great majority strongly sided with linking U.S. imperialist strategies with Social Security privatization, with the need of U.S. capitalists to squeeze the assets of U.S. workers for the former’s drive to maintain global supremacy.

Afterwards, one organizing committee head approached me to say, "Your bringing up the connection between the war in Iraq and the privatization of Social Security changed the whole nature of the meeting and brought an energy to the meeting we hadn’t had before." He said the unions must openly deal with the war issue, that the only way there could be any real unity of the labor movement comes from the struggle of ideas, not from solidarity without struggle.

At least for this meeting, economism was exposed, developing unity on a higher level, more political in a larger sense and therefore more effective.

AFSCME ARA member

A Class Outlook and Communist Culture

As a member of PLP’s new cultural committee it was good to see the lively discussion in recent issues over "Million Dollar Baby." As one long-time reader wrote, "PLP should be destructively critical of the capitalist" views. Under capitalism, we’re constantly bombarded with culture full of racist, sexist, materialistic and self-destructive messages. As communists we strive to resist these ideas by struggling amongst ourselves and with our friends, family and co-workers. Criticizing the rulers’ media through a class outlook helps us keep things in perspective.

Of course, we must simultaneously struggle to build our own communist culture, in two main ways. Firstly, we should all "hang out" with both our comrades and our base of friends and try to be "good communists," being as collective as possible, having to function under the profit system. Secondly, we can build communist culture by literally making it. There are many in and around PLP who write, sing, rap, draw and create other kinds of art. We should encourage everyone to submit their work and in turn struggle over how to best represent our Party and use our skills for the good of the working class.

Currently the committee is reproducing a two-CD set of past PLP musical albums. We hope to have them ready by May Day. We’re also creating and beginning to revise new work for a new PLP CD. Self-critically we’ve been limiting ourselves to mostly musical culture and so far have not contributed much to critiquing capitalist culture. One idea is to write a more in-depth pamphlet on the role of culture and the media under capitalism. Do others feel this would be useful? Please send comments and suggestions to Challenge at PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, or e-mail: cd188@juno.comµ

Culturally Red Student

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As reported in CHALLENGE (April 13), PLP’ers played a much-needed role at the national conference of the mostly Latino student group MeCHA, held in Cal State Northridge, Los Angeles.

As a college student in PLP and MeCHA, I learned that nationalism can and must be fought and internationalism built. I also learned the importance of working in national organizations to build a strong base for a revolutionary movement.

Imperialism and war were hot topics as many students want the war to end. In a workshop I helped lead, we discussed the role of students, workers and soldiers in the anti-war movement. The students wanted a solution to endless war and were open to building an anti-imperialist movement.

I said that under capitalism we will always have wars because this system runs on maximum profits and competition for world markets and low wages. I explained that we need a system where there are no profits or exploitation, that we need a communist revolution.

This provoked much discussion; almost everyone agreed with many aspects of PLP’s line. Many students, however, wanted a solution right now; they didn’t have a long-term outlook. I invited everyone to march on May Day as something we could do right now to help build the anti-imperialist, communist movement. This fits our strategy to make building for May Day a focus of our activities there.

This conference revealed what collective effort can accomplish. It was truly inspiriting to see the great work of other comrades. I left ready to continue our work because I know what a difference PLP makes, and now many more students know that too.

A red Mechista

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Hitler, too, did everything ‘legally’

…Sen. Robert Byrd compared George W. Bush to Hitler last month….quoting historian Alan Bullock to make the following point:

"Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the state: The correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal." (Hearst Newspapers, 3/18)

Capitalism feeds on unemployment

The headline said it all: "Weak job growth boosts market."

You see, when there’s bad news on your street (the lack of new jobs), there’s joy on Wall Street. As one market analyst explained it: Since the economy is not spinning out enough new jobs even to keep up with the increase in the number of new workers entering the job market, "there’s not a lot of labor-cost pressure in the system."

When economists use the term "labor cost," they mean you — or, more specifically, your wages. By holding down your wages, corporations fatten their profits, stock price rise, and Wall Street’s high-rolling investors rejoice. Twisted as it is, this in fact, is the economic policy in the United States today. Another market analyst explained that January’s lack of growth has created the perfect economic environment: "It really is the sweet spot," he gushed.

Unless, of course, you need a job or are struggling to make ends meet on stagnant wages, which includes most people. (MinutemanMedia.org 3/10)

Secret rules bleed former colonies

Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules by Philippe Sands

By far the most important body of international law concerns trade and overseas investment. Sands shows how rules governing overseas investment began to take shape in the 1960s as a direct response to the emergence of the newly independent former colonies and a conscious attempt to shackle their political freedom. It is these laws — secretive, hidden from view and, and about all, binding — that have underpinned the neoliberal globalization project. The chapters on trade and investment reveal how biased these rules are in favor of the West, and how they are made and exercised in institutional recesses that are unaccountable, even to cabinets, let alone parliaments, and utterly invisible to the public eye. (GW,4/14)

‘American dream’ today is gambling

Ah, the American dream.

If it was once about working hard to build a life, it has been replaced by reveries of striking it rich through toil no more onerous than dipping into the pocket for a buck to play Take 5 or Pick 10. This is the modern American dream, exploited enthusiastically by governments….

To see the corrosive potential of those get-rich-quick seductions, you had to go no farther the other day than West 33rd Street, where The Daily News has its office….

A misprinted number two weeks ago led hundreds of people to believe that they had each won the top prize of $100,000….

"Thousands of people thought they had their shot at the American dream," said Steven Gildin, lawyer in Briarwood, Queens, who plans to file a class-action suit.

… "A lot of people keep their hopes alive on these lotteries."…

The lure, understandably, is irresistible to many living in or near poverty…. "You will not see one Armani suit in the crowd,"Mr. Gilden correctly observed on 33rd Street.

…Nearly all the protesters are blacks and Latinos… (NYT,4/1)

Crazy Iraq info was gospel to gov’t

The claim — that Mr. Hussein was building a hidden network of mobile labs in Iraq capable of producing a witch’s brew of biological weapons — was based almost entirely on the account of a single Iraqi defector, code named Curveball….

"You don’t want to see him because he’s crazy".…Curveball, the official was told, had had a nervous breakdown.

There were also reports of a drinking problem and unexplained disappearances. What was more, the official was told there were serious reservations about the reliability of Curveball’s information and about whether he was a "fabricator…."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell,…made Curveball’s claims regarding mobile labs a crucial part of his presentation to the United Nations Security Council….

Analysts who voiced concern about Curveball were "forced to leave"… (NYT, 4/1)

1. Capitalism Thrives on Murder and Torture
   PL'ers Chase Jesse Jackson From Anti-War Rally
2. Schiavo Case Exposes Bosses' Extreme Hypocrisy
3. The Texas Oil Massacre: Profit Drive Kills 15 Workers
4. PLP Youth Lead Anti-Imperialist Contingent
5. Brooklyn anti-imperialist war forum
6. Anti-Oil War Politics Spark MeCHA Convention
7. Students Demonstrate Against Two-Year War in Iraq
8. UAW Pro-boss Nationalism Continues to Destroy Union
9. 230,000 Students Go On Strike in Quebec
10. Steel Union Hacks Suck Up to Companies Killing Workers
11. Philly Hospital Contract Fight: `No Cuts Due to Iraq Oil War'
12. Baltimore Students Strike Against Racist School Under-funding
13. Educators Call for Local Job Actions Against Budget Cuts, War
14. PL Students Link Anti-Sweatshop Fight to Imperialist War
15. Gutter-Fascists, Liberals, Homeland Security Gang Up On Immigrant Workers
16. Robots: Revolt Falls Prey to Idea of `Good Bosses'
17. Rulers Direct `Global War on Terror' Against U.S. Workers
18. LETTERS
    1. STUDENT STANDS UP TO NAZI COP
    2. GI's Question Iraq War
    3. `Million Dollar Baby' Anti-Working Class
    4. Movie `Probed Human Condition'
    5. CHALLENGE Needs More Coverage of French General Strike
19. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Dems won't curb US imperialism
    2. Some GI's desperate to get out
    3. Recruiters can't sell war, go AWOL too
    4. Blame higher-ups for torture
    5. Capitalism undermines Russia
    6. Locked-in janitors accuse bosses
    7. `US aid' really anti-red fund
    8. Arabs know invaders want loot
    9. Lawbreakers steal school funds

---

Capitalism Thrives on Murder and Torture
PL'ers Chase Jesse Jackson From Anti-War Rally

CHICAGO, IL, March 19 -- City College students, led by PLP, headed the anti-imperialist forces in today's anti-war rally, marching under the banner, "CCC Students Against Imperialist War." The day's high point was chasing millionaire sellout Jesse Jackson from the stage in Federal Plaza. We started chanting, "Jesse Jackson Means We Got To Fight Back!" A comrade's speech exposed Jackson's support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he had no business at an anti-war rally. Security tried to shut the comrade up but other workers defended him. People encouraged us to go on stage. When we did, Jackson scurried down like a rat and left the rally in his limo.

Earlier in the day, we joined one of the feeder marches, chanting, "Soldiers Turn Your Guns Around, Shoot The Profit System Down!" While march organizers argued with the cops about what street to take, we made speeches linking the war to inter-imperialist rivalry and calling on students, teachers, workers and soldiers to destroy this system with communist revolution. Many were drawn to our line and bought CHALLENGE. When we finally did march, many joined us and gave contact information.

After an hour of stall tactics by the cops and protest organizers, we led a breakaway march down another street with hundreds following. Immediately the cops and organizers took the other half down the original street we proposed. By this time other comrades and marchers joined our contingent. While the Trotskyist International Socialist Organization (ISO) was chanting, "Iraq for Iraqis," we chanted, "Asian, Latin, black, and white, Workers of the World, Unite!"

Throughout the march we called on workers to unite under the red flag of communism, to March on May Day (born in the streets of Chicago), and to destroy capitalism. Workers responded. We sold all 250 current CHALLENGES we had and then sold some older issues.

Two days earlier, about 60 students and teachers from various Chicago City Colleges (CCC) attended a forum sponsored by S.P.E.C. (Students for Public Education Club). This group formed out of the Strike Solidarity Committee (SSC) during the 2004 CCC teacher strike.

Two days before the forum, an S.P.E.C. planning meeting turned into a huge struggle around whether we should take a stand against imperialist war.

A week earlier, a PLP member made a motion for a City College contingent at the March 19 anti-war rally. Everyone agreed and we distributed a flyer connecting the war to cutbacks in education. The administration told the group's leader that the war has nothing to do with education, and if we didn't stop distributing the flyer they'll cut our funding. So at our meeting, the "leadership" decided we shouldn't leaflet or oppose the war. Two ISO members said we shouldn't call the war " imperialist." This struggle exposed the limits of reformist politics and tctics.

Overall, this was an important victory because we took our revolutionary line into the mass movement and challenged the bosses and fake leftists for political leadership. We confronted nationalism, pacifism . We also opposed the idea of supporting without criticizing Baath-fascist politics of the insurgency. Amid a huge police presence, one of their speakers had even encouraged the crowd to support the cops!

We left with high spirits and new potential comrades who saw the differences between our line and the rest of the so-called "left." Young people took leadership, renewed their commitment, and expressed serious interest in the Party as an alternative to capitalism. The next day we had a club meeting with two new students.

`It's Not Just A Few Rotten Apples'The liberal media are filled with hand-wringing articles that condemn atrocities the U.S. military commits against prisoners of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Pundits like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman decry the murder of 26 prisoners in U.S. custody since 2002. A Times' lead story (3/27) announces: "U.S. Is Examining Plan To Bolster Detainee Rights."

The pompous, self-righteous scribblers in the bosses' press would have us believe these atrocities are "aberrations," deviant behavior that can be fixed by throwing the book at a handful of criminal elements in the military. Just punish the bad apples, the theory goes, and the U.S. armed forces can set themselves straight to carry out their mission properly.

The real atrocity is imperialism itself. Murder and torture of prisoners and civilians are standard operating procedure and cannot be otherwise under capitalism. Wars like those the U.S. is waging in Iraq and Afghanistan are genocidal by their very nature. The mass slaughter of civilians, the high percentage of casualties among women and young children, the devastation of cities and rural areas, come as inevitable by-products of wars waged for conquest, profit and domination.

Of course, those who murder prisoners of war deserve the severest punishment. But this begs the question. The U.S. rulers' plan to conquer Iraq and its oil has already caused more than a million deaths. In the Democrat Clinton's eight-year presidency, economic sanctions alone killed hundreds of thousands, mostly small children, through starvation, drought and preventable or curable disease. As CHALLENGE reported last fall, The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, estimated that nearly 100,000 Iraqis had died since Bush, Jr. launched Desert Storm II in 2003. A study in 1991 shortly after Bush, Sr.'s Desert Storm I described conditions for civilians throughout Iraq as "apocalyptic," after the military action had killed tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

But Iraq is no exception. U.S. bombs and bullets are slaughtering thousands of Afghani civilians. The Clinton-NATO air war over the former Yugoslavia in 1999 poisoned water supplies, perhaps for decades, with an incalculable consequence of future mortality among civilians. When U.S. rulers went to war in Vietnam, they murdered millions, using a variety of obscene weapons and tactics, whose only reason for existence was to spread terror and mayhem among civilians. These included carpet-bombing, flesh-burning napalm, agent orange defoilation and "strategic hamlet" concentration camps.

In World War II -- the so-called "good war" -- the U.S. military copied the Nazis in routinely bombing and slaughtering thousands of civilians in places like Dresden and Tokyo. The U.S. is still the only power to have dropped atomic bombs. It did so over hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and now in Iraq routinely uses nuclear-type weaponry -- containing depleted uranium -- with deadly consequences not only for the immediate victims but also for future generations of unborn and never-to-be-born.

This type of genocide is not exclusive to U.S. rulers. As the world's main military power, stopping at nothing to defend and extend its economic and political domination, U.S. imperialism naturally commits the greatest number of atrocities at the present time. However, it has plenty of worthy predecessors, and until communist revolution ends imperialism altogether, it will have worthy successors.

Hitler and the Nazis are the most obvious and well known masters of past genocide. But they learned from other European bosses. Hitlerite racism took more than one page from the U.S.-born "eugenics" movement. British colonialism and imperialism established an admirable record of mass murder throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The bosses love to sing the praises of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a great statesman and "savior" of Western civilization. Well, Churchill helped concoct the idea of mass terror bombing against civilians in the Middle East during the 1920's, when air warfare was in its infancy. France, the birthplace of "The Rights of Man," systematically tortured and exterminated civilians throughout its colonial history in western and northern Africa. For years, apartheid regimes in South Africa carried out racist havoc while their U.S. pals looked the other way. U.S. supplies Israel with billions of dollars worth of arms with which to slaughter masses of Palestinians, such as the murder by Sharon-led Lebanese fascists of thousands in refugee camps in the early 1980's. During the Cold War, dozens of fascist butchers throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America used U.S. weapons and "foreign aid" to back the U.S. rulers' anti-communist crusade.

The examples are so numerous because imperialism knows no exceptions. Imperialism = mass murder and atrocity. The biggest of all the big lies would have us believe that the killings of Iraqi and Afghani POWs and the shooting of women and babies represent "exceptional behavior."

The truth is that in its imperialist form, the profit system is the bloodiest, cruelest, most genocidal type of social organization in history. Its "peace" is the peace of the grave, and its wars can never serve a purpose other than determining the international pecking order among the world's biggest gangsters and thugs. Turning these wars into their opposite -- mass armed struggle for communism and a revolutionary new society -- will take generations. But it remains the only goal worth fighting and, if need be, dying for.

Schiavo Case Exposes Bosses' Extreme Hypocrisy

The current media/religious/political feeding frenzy surrounding the permanently and severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo gives the word "hypocrisy" new meaning. Schiavo, the victim of medical malpractice 15 years ago, suffered irreversible brain damage with no possibility of recovery.

Her husband collected about $1 million; about $700,000 went for Terri's care. Her husband and parents have been fighting for years over whether or not to continue her hospice care, and as we go to press, it appears she's near death.

The Bush brothers, W. and Jeb, and Republican slime-ball Tom DeLay, who declared that "God has brought us...Terri Schiavo," jumped at the opportunity to pander to their Christian fundamentalist base who have staged a vigil at the hospice center demanding that Schiavo's feeding tube be reconnected. According to the Miami Herald, Governor Jeb sent state police to seize Terri and remove her from the hospice, but the mission was canceled when a judge ordered all police to make sure she wasn't moved. Senate Majority leader Frist, an MD, went so far as to diagnose Terri from a four-year old videotape. To hear them tell it, she's talking and about to jump up and walk out of the center. Of course, they also believe in mysticism and reject science.

The list of contradictions and hypocrisy is almost too overwhelming to mention. President Bush ran for reelection demanding a cap on medical malpractice suites, and as Governor of Texas, signed a law that would have terminated Terri's care long ago. DeLay voted for a $15 billion cut in Medicaid that will remove feeding tubes from thousands of patients, and pulled the plug on his own father 16 years ago. Randall Terry, an anti-abortion fascist serving as spokesman for Terri's parents, has a close ally serving time for murdering a doctor who performed abortions.

Most of these religious fascists kneeling at the hospice are also on their knees praying for the execution of young black men on death row, even those who are minors, or severely brain-damaged or retarded. And they have nothing to say about the "right to life" of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed over the past 15 years by two wars and ten years of U.S.-backed sanctions. They have nothing to say about the millions dying from AIDS and curable diseases throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. And it's doubtful if they'd be there if Terri were black.

The "liberal" Democrats are as bad or worse. They are Bush's accomplices in imperialist slaughter worldwide. They chose to hide under their desks when the Republicans staged a late-night Schiavo show to pass "Terri's law" for Bush to sign in his pajamas. Meanwhile, the opportunist Jesse Jackson joined the religious chorus demanding the feeding tube be reconnected.

Under communism, money won't be a factor in medical decisions. Life will truly be precious, and every life will be society's responsibility, not left to the "personal choice" of a husband or mother. And the bosses and their politicians, media vultures and fascist gangs will no longer exist.

The Texas Oil Massacre: Profit Drive Kills 15 Workers

TEXAS CITY, TEXAS, March 26 -- "It looked like a...war zone of bodies being loaded up," said a fire department official (New York Times, 3/24) in describing the effects of the enormous blast that rocked BP Amoco's huge oil refinery here on March 23, killing 15 workers and injuring another 100. And the root cause for this attack on workers' lives was every bit the same as the one causing the deaths of tens of thousands dying in the Iraq war zone: the drive for oil profits.

The blast occurred during a "start-up" of the refinery, following a 3-week maintenance shut-down. "It is a more dangerous period because of the high level of activity," said a chemical safety board official. "Equipment is being opened....potentially exposing flammable materials to air.... Welding, cutting and grinding and use of power tools are all...sources of ignition." (NYT, 3/26)

"The shutdown periods are kept as brief as possible, especially in the past few years when the difference between the cost of crude oil and the value of gasoline and other products has been large, making profits strong.... The pressure to complete the work is intense." (NYT, 3/26; our emphasis -- Ed.)

There's plenty of profits to be made from this plant, BP-Amoco's largest, which refines 460,000 barrels of crude per day. That's why the oil companies turn to non-union contractors to cut costs using workers who "aren't as well trained" and "did not have the job security to raise safety concerns" with the bosses, according to Allan Jamail, an official with Pipefitters Union Local 211.

All 15 workers who were killed were supplied by contractors.

"Accidents" are nothing new at this refinery. On March 31, 2004, a series of explosions rocked the plant. Last September two workers were killed by superheated steam. The previous month OSHA cited 14 serious safety violations and proposed a $63,000 fine, but settled for $13,000 when the company "promised to make changes." Now the drive for oil profits, and therefore the intense drive to make these shut-downs as short as possible, have destroyed so many workers' lives.

At first, many thought the blast was "an al Qaeda terrorist act." It was terrorism alright, but by the biggest murderers of them all: oil bosses and their drive for maximum profits.

PLP Youth Lead Anti-Imperialist Contingent

NEW YORK CITY, March 19 -- "The Working Class is under attack, Cops out of the 'hood, troops outta Iraq." This wasone of the many chants PLP-led students and teachers bellowed through Harlem streets in the anti-imperialist section of the 2nd anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was the first time most young PL'ers experienced an anti-war march in a working-class neighborhood.

While gathering at Marcus Garvey Park, we began making speeches and distributing CHALLENGE to the many workers, Iraqi war veterans, students, teachers and professionals there. Almost everyone stopped to read our literature and discuss our political world view. When we started marching our militant chant moved onlookers to chant with us. Our energy brought the feeling of May Day and inspired us even more when workers pumped their fists in solidarity.

Our section drew the most energetic vibes from those watching. Our chants urged people to join PLP and condemned all Republican and Democratic politicians as murderers -- our class enemies.

As hundreds of people took CHALLENGES, they asked about our group, and gave positive feedback. Our collective spirit had an impact on others, and drew them to us, rather than us having to go after them. We had a marked influence in the march. Our ability to function as a unit sparked others' willingness to listen.

Recently, as we've rooted ourselves deeper into the working class, it's produced a qualitative change -- more people, weary of just talking, are taking to our action-orientated revolutionary ideas. They want more direct action against the oppressive instruments of the state. We must keep our eyes on the prize of a communist revolution, and win those we work with to make that prize their struggle also.u

Brooklyn anti-imperialist war forum

BROOKLYN, NY, March 18 -- On the eve of the 2nd anniversary of the Iraq war, high school and college PL'ers, and friends held a forum at Medgar Evers College here. Young people who led it reviewed some of their successful campaigns against the profit system's increasing attacks on students and the working class.

After each presentation, we had a short discussion on the topic. This showed to people that while as communists we've been fighting this exploitative system for some time, we're not particularly smarter nor have everything figured out; the input of all is needed to arrive at a correct way forward for the international working class.

The students who attended were filled with militancy and liked our revolutionary ideas. The students at Medgar Evers are tired of the deplorable treatment they receive from the administration and are ready to take action. One woman told us she was here for the long-term struggle. Another high school student read a moving poem explaining why she became a communist.

Afterwards, we made signs with anti-imperialist slogans to carry at the anti-war march the next day. Small groups met to discuss world events and what the working class's outlook should be in responding to ruling-class attacks.

These conversations were very productive in building for May Day at our respective schools. Many agreed that taking a long-term outlook and organizing among industrial workers, soldiers and students could build a massive working class party to lead communist revolution, ridding us of the profit mongering bosses.

Anti-Oil War Politics Spark MeCHA Convention

LOS ANGELES, March 24 -- Last weekend MeCHA (a mostly Latino student group) had its national conference at Cal State Northridge. About 800 students registered, mostly from Western states. The theme was "Education, Not War." Those bringing information about the nature of imperialism were greeted enthusiastically. The chapter representatives unanimously passed a resolution to oppose the imperialist war in Iraq and build a campus movement against the war and the cutbacks in education caused by the war, allying with workers and soldiers in the process. Many students helped to make this resolution a reality. About 80 students marched to a nearby recruiting center to protest the war and military recruitment.

Some PLP students participated and helped lead several of the workshops, highlighting the importance of building a base for anti-imperialism and revolution in national organizations. While many MeCHA leaders advocate voting for "progressive" politicians, many Mechistas are looking for an alternative. They're open to PLP's ideas and plans for action, including fighting ROTC, supporting workers' struggles, celebrating May Day, the international workers' day, and breaking through the limits of reform movements. About 100 at the conference came away with CHALLENGE and 240 got PLP's leaflet inviting them to May Day.

One workshop discussed the anti-war movement and the role of students, workers and soldiers in fighting imperialism. Students want the war ended. They wanted a solution to endless war and were open to building an anti-imperialist movement, and reaching out to workers and soldiers. Another workshop discussed why the anti-war movement must be anti-imperialist. The presenter explained how capitalism inevitably leads to imperialism and war. A second presenter explained how we need to fight the universities' role in war, targeting recruiters, military research and the cutbacks caused by the growing war budget.

We presented a vision of a communist future based on production for need, not profit. Many wanted to stay in contact with the Party and learn more about imperialism, PLP and May Day. Some students wanted to have similar presentations on their campuses.

The conference encouraged us to be more active in mass organizations and to push for more coordinated action against the war, the cutbacks and racist terror. What we've accomplished is based on participation over several years in the mass movement, developing friendships among students who are more open to discussing imperialism and its connection to capitalism. Some want to know how we can stop all wars for profit, not just the current one.

The struggle in MeCHA and on the campuses must continue and heat up. To students wanting a quick solution to end the war, we stressed that it will be a long-term struggle, but we also need to act against imperialism now. Our revolutionary communist message stands out to students who are questioning the limits of the current reform movements. We underestimated how open people are and how thirsty for leadership and answers in the fight to end racist, imperialist war.

Students Demonstrate Against Two-Year War in Iraq

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, March 15 -- More than 150 students, workers and faculty gathered outside the Administration building at a local university to protest the U.S.-led war in Iraq and its "war on terror." The event was organized by an alliance of progressive student groups.

When classes let out at 12:30, protestors began a circular march with signs reading, "No More Imperialist War!" and "If War is the Answer, We Are Asking the Wrong Question." One student with a bullhorn led everyone in popular anti-war chants.

Once a sizable crowd had gathered, they listened to speakers from an array of cultural, religious, political and humanitarian organizations, exhibiting true anti-imperialist solidarity within the campus community. The speakers addressed the illegal occupation of Iraq, Abu Ghraib atrocities, and the rise of fascist and racist policies at home, like increased attacks on immigrants and the murder of 13-year-old Devin Brown in South Los Angeles.

Students distributed a leaflet condemning the university administration's "open endorsement of spokesmen of imperialist terror," viewing this as a "deliberate effort to win students and workers to a pro-war, pro-torture mindset." The leaflet referred to numerous apologists of U.S. imperialism who had been invited to speak at the university recently. More importantly, the leaflet stressed the need to build a student-soldier alliance, and to actively support all soldiers who resist and rebel against the injustices of U.S. wars. The success of this protest, as well as of other recent activities on campus, reflects a more general change in the political attitude and outlook of students and workers that bodes well for the growing fight against imperialism worldwide.

Red Friend

UAW Pro-boss Nationalism Continues to Destroy Union

DETROIT, MI, March 16 -- UAW President Ron Gettlefinger was itching for a fight. It wasn't going to be with Chrysler -- he just gave them precedent-shattering health care concessions. It wasn't going to be with GM or Ford who are cutting production, closing plants and slashing jobs. It wasn't going to be with the parts suppliers, where he has negotiated two- and three-tier wage systems that don't offer pensions or health care for retirees. And it wasn't going to be with the transplants, where the UAW still hasn't organized one "foreign"-owned plant.

Instead he decided to attack some Marine reservists, young workers and potential union members who drill at the armory a few blocks from Solidarity House, UAW headquarters. For more than a decade, the UAW had let reservists use the Solidarity House parking lot during drill weekends. But Gettlefinger decided he was going to ban any reservist who drove an import, or sported a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker, even on a Ford!

Now, if the UAW was doing this as an anti-war position, some of this could be defensible, but the UAW is pro-war and racist. So by the time the story hit the papers, TV and radio talk shows were bombarded with anti-union hate calls. Union-busting companies, hired to thwart UAW organizing campaigns, were spreading the story like wildfire. Having succeeded in shooting himself and the union in the foot, Gettelfinger raised the white flag and backed off on the ban. But the Marines told him they had found other parking facilities.

Attacking imported or transplant cars is the type of racist, nationalist, pro-boss ideology that has just about destroyed the UAW. Back in the 1980's, when Japanese auto bosses were gaining a significant grip on the U.S. market, the union banned foreign cars from their parking lots and sponsored flag-waving rallies where workers took sledge-hammers to imports. Two racist Chrysler employees beat Vincent Chin, a young Chinese student, to death in a Detroit bar because they thought he was Japanese. All this drove workers further into the arms of the bosses, disarming them in the face of huge racist cutbacks and job losses. Loyalty to the bosses set the workers up to go down with the ship, rather than mutiny.

Communists have another idea. We fight racism and struggle to smash all borders and win soldiers to really fight the warmakers. We are loyal to no boss. Workers of the world, Unite! That's our banner. And we're organizing industrial workers and soldiers to build a mass PLP to lead the working class to communist revolution.

(Next issue: what is bad for GM is what is bad with U.S. capitalism).

230,000 Students Go On Strike in Quebec

Quebec, Canada-- Students on strike in opposition to $103 million cuts in university programs by the liberal government

Steel Union Hacks Suck Up to Companies Killing Workers

GARY, IN, March 16 -- Recently in Northwest Indiana, a worker was killed at BP Amoco when a defective guard rail broke. OSHA fined the company $1,500! A contractor was killed at a local steel mill. OSHA cited the company for unsafe practices and fine it $10,500, later reduced to $4,380! Twelve steelworkers have been killed here in several years. The average fine was $3,791. From 1991 to 2003 the average fine for "serious violations" of OSHA rules has been $862.74.

Last September, electrician Herbert Tolman was killed at US Steel's Gary Works while working on an overhead crane. He and three other crew members were changing a wheel, work they were not trained to do.

OSHA cited the company for using unsafe material and improper training. US Steel was fined $6,125 for his death, while the three workers who survived, plus two supervisors, were fired (one supervisor was at home in bed when Tolman was killed.) The only difference between US Steel and the Nazis' use of collective punishment is that the Nazis would have just shot the other workers.

We can expect more attacks and deaths. All the mills are working short-handed, forcing people onto jobs for which they've not been properly trained. The bosses call it "teamwork" and "problem-solving." We call it speed-up and profiteering.

This is all part of the consolidation and restructuring of the steel industry. In Northwest Indiana there used to be almost a dozen companies; now there are only two: Mittal Steel and US Steel. Lakshmi Mittal owns what used to be Inland, Bethlehem, LTV and Acme and is now the world's third richest man. Workers at what used to be LTV, now ISG, soon to be Mittal, are experiencing the same sort of speed-up and job-jumping that caused Herbert Tolman's death. Practically every department is working short. At the pickle line, workers on 12-hour shifts eat lunch at their station. There's no one to cover breaks.

Steel union president Leo Gerard and the rest of his leadership support the industry's consolidation and restructuring. They even invited ISG head Rodney Mott to speak at the union convention last year, the same Mott who has made millions off the backs of thousands of LTV retirees and laid-off workers.

Franco, head of Local 1066, hasn't organized any action against the murder of Herbert Tolman or the firing of his co-workers by US Steel. No demonstrations or pickets, let alone a strike. When OSHA fined US Steel $6,125 for killing Tolman, Franco said, "OSHA tries to do the right thing."

Behind these attacks and industry restructuring is a permanent war economy and the ability for U.S. bosses to compete with China's bosses. They know the only way they can survive global competition is to drive down costs by bringing us in line with reduced man-hours and increased productivity. The bosses see the threat of war on the horizon, and the union bosses are their willing accomplices. Fighting to sharpen the class struggle and win more CHALLENGE-reading steel workers to participate in May Day will be our response.

Philly Hospital Contract Fight: `No Cuts Due to Iraq Oil War'

PHILADELHIA, March 25 -- In July, union contracts expire for thousands of Philadelphia hospital and nursing home workers in Local 1199C. Specific issues at each institution may differ but several things can unite the entire local. Hundreds have lost jobs. Part-time work is replacing full-time. Workloads have increased. Patient care is worse. The Benefit Fund covering healthcare is running out of money. The Pension Fund is facing more cuts. The Jefferson Hospital bosses want to double the amount union members already pay for healthcare.

All these attacks have sharpened because the capitalist profit system that causes them is in crisis and war. That's why workers need political contract demands that attack capitalism and war, not just the local bosses. Such demands will help build the communist movement that can destroy the bosses' system. And that's why CHALLENGE and PLP members in the union are linking the contract fight to that bosses' system.

One hospital's negotiating team approved a contract demand of "No Cuts Due To the Iraq Oil War." Compared to several years ago, many more workers agree the war is about oil and oil control. Many people blame it for draining money away from social programs like healthcare. The idea that this is a "war" contract is no longer seen as so radical.

However, the 1199C leaders omitted this demand from the list for the membership to review. When confronted with this "oversight," union leaders said, "Don't worry, we'll put it in." That still hasn't happened. The union leaders clearly won't risk anything that might point workers towards communism.

Responding to their crisis, the bosses have stopped pretending that workers or any opposition have legal rights. The continuing development of open fascist dictatorship in the U.S. labels strikes "a threat to national security." With low wages and mass unemployment, the bosses believe finding strikebreakers will be easy.

Union members are forming rank-and-file groups to organize for a strike. We're especially trying to build more leadership among young workers, particularly women. There have already been some small group confrontations with the bosses over issues related to short-staffing.

PLP members are participating in these actions. Those who see strikes as a school to build communist revolution will show the greatest determination. We've discussed how each comrade's work in mass organizations could be tied to this city-wide contract struggle, and how the collective, not just the PL'ers who are hospital workers, should lead the Party's actions in this battle.

There's truly a lot at stake for 1199C members. The increased activity in these contract fights can be intense. The more active union delegates can't walk anywhere without being stopped by workers who want some discussion. It's easy for PL'ers to get lost in the reform issues. The workers' greatest gains would be more CHALLENGE readers and more PLP members to give greater communist leadership to the workers. That's our main goal in this fight.

Baltimore Students Strike Against Racist School Under-funding

BALTIMORE, March 16 -- "Asian, Latin, black and white, against under-funding we must unite!" and "Potato chip, potato chip, crunch crunch crunch, Nancy Grasmick, feel our punch!" were powerful chants of striking high school students and adult supporters at a strike rally near Maryland's State Board of Education in downtown Baltimore today. The more than 200 participants expressed deep anger at State Superintendent of Schools Grasmick for under-funding public education in this predominately African American city. And they cheered a PLP speaker while eagerly grabbing all his CHALLENGES.

The school under-funding issue clearly illustrates the communist understanding that capitalist government, courts, jails and police -- their state power -- are organized violence to suppress the working class. Capitalism's own court system has repeatedly ruled that: (1) Baltimore City public schools are providing inadequate education; (2) Maryland violates its own constitution which requires the state to provide every student with a "thorough and efficient" education; and (3) Maryland must provide $2,000 to $2,600 more per student to the City schools each year. That additional money would only achieve "adequacy," certainly not equality with the wealthy Howard and Montgomery Counties, but state officials have still not fulfilled the court rulings.

Last summer, the court ordered the State and City to target additional dollars for immediate educational improvements, like filling teacher-vacancies so students wouldn't suffer near-total lack of learning from a succession of substitutes. The City totally ignored that court order, while the State first ignored and then appealed it. The real power behind the scenes, the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) -- the area's largest businesses -- does what's best for themselves, what's best for capitalism. They're perfectly willing the break their own rules. Immediately after the August court order, GBC President Fry said, "I don't think it is best to have your school system run through a court . . ." (Baltimore Sun, 8/6/04).

Today, that arrogance was enforced by a large number of cops at the rally, prepared to violently prevent strikers from approaching the nearby offices of the Maryland Department of Education.

Students -- members of Algebra Project -- did a terrific job, leading today's rally, doing much of the planning and organizing, chairing the event, and giving most of the speeches.

A PLP member's speech was received enthusiastically. He explained that Baltimore's educational genocide was caused by racism, maintenance of the city's class structure and funneling billions of dollars to the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq.

Firstly, in the 1960's, when Baltimore was mostly white, the City's school system was fourth in money per student among Maryland's 24 school districts. A decade later, when African American students became the majority, Baltimore's per-pupil funding plummeted to 21st, remaining low ever since!

Secondly, the schools' real function is to re-create today's class structure in the next generation. Since 65% of Baltimore area jobs are unskilled, companies benefit when the schools churn out large numbers of poorly-educated students to fill low-wage jobs. An over-abundance of unskilled workers creates intense competition for these unskilled jobs, driving wages lower and profits higher.

All this delights the GBC, which is why CEO Bonnie Copeland was promoted from her GBC position to head the Baltimore school system. Upon her appointment, GBC President Frye said: "Having worked with the Greater Baltimore Committee for many years, Bonnie brings the clarity and focus of a business perspective to one of the most important management positions in the region." Education assuredly is the ruling class's business!

Finally, less than one-half of one percent of the billions spent on the war in Iraq would double Baltimore's education budget. The deadly U.S. war for world domination, by oil companies in particular and U.S. imperialism in general, is simultaneously a war on education.

The PLP member, cheered throughout this speech, then held CHALLENGE aloft and encouraged everyone to read Progressive Labor Party's communist newspaper. The call was heeded -- he ran out of papers.

The struggle continues. Participants are learning a great deal. Dare to struggle, dare to win!

Educators Call for Local Job Actions Against Budget Cuts, War

MANHATTAN BEACH, CA, March 23 -- Delegates to the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) convention advocated job actions to fight cutbacks. They defied leaders who tried to limit union activities to media campaigns and electoral politics. Leaders lamely pushed the slogan "Stop Arnold" but teachers and classified staff embraced anti-war politics. They carried signs saying "Schools Not Bombs -- US Out Of Iraq."

CFT delegates reaffirmed opposition to the Iraq war and occupation. Some rallied at lunchtime outside the convention to mark the second anniversary of the war. They voted to support students trying to ban military recruiters from community colleges.

Delegates were angry (and some frightened) by Governor Schwarzenegger's campaign to cut pension benefits and education funds and impose "merit" pay. He slanders public employees as "special interests" while raking in huge donations from financial, real estate and other large corporations.

The CFT leadership responded by joining other public employee unions to support Democratic politicians. State Treasurer Phil Angelides (running against Schwarzenegger) and Assemblyman Dario Frommer. (majority floor leader) received enthusiastic applause at the convention but delegates were less enthusiastic about a dues increase to pay for this.

CFT leaders pushed a "Don't Sign the Petition" drive to oppose the Governor's attempted ballot initiatives. They called for a weekday rally in Sacramento. Who can go to that?

These dead end policies to support the Democrats, the other party of war and cutbacks, were countered from the floor. Several local-sponsored resolutions for a statewide work-stoppage to fight the cutbacks were killed in committee. But activists inserted a call for "local actions" into the Sacramento rally resolution. Then an amendment proposing "job actions" was offered from the convention floor. A heated struggle followed.

Many delegates rose to argue that job actions, including strikes and especially a general strike, are labor's most effective weapons. Several recalled a speaker who asked us to think about "a twenty- or thirty-year strategy for workers to gain power." One said that workers' power lay not in a contract but in their international solidarity and the power to shut down production. Unfortunately, nobody spoke for the need for revolution to win power. The problem is not "neoliberalism" but capitalism itself.

Meanwhile, union officials whined that work stoppages are "illegal." A few delegates complained that "if we have job actions now, what will we do later?" "More militant actions," others responded.

"We didn't think we'd win the vote," one delegate commented later, "but we thought it would be good to start talking about militant action." To the surprise of many, the amendment passed! Now it's up to locals to plan these May 25th actions.

As fight-back develops against budget cuts and the war, opportunities will increase to deepen class consciousness and understanding of the imperialist war system and the need for the long-term fight to destroy it with communist revolution.

PL Students Link Anti-Sweatshop Fight to Imperialist War

AUSTIN, TEXAS, Feb. 11 -- A group of PLP students were among 200 attending the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) national conference here. We distributed about 50 CHALLENGES and 100 PLP leaflets titled "Students, Workers and Soldiers Must Unite to Smash Imperialist War for Oil." We exchanged contact information with nearly everyone we met.

Many students in USAS are very committed to fighting exploitation and oppression. Besides meeting people and distributing literature, our other main goal was to pass a resolution against university support for war.

Our proposal explained that universities are ideological factories for capitalism which justify racism and imperialism, that they concretely aid and abet U.S. imperialism's mass slaughter in Iraq by supporting its war machine. Universities develop U.S. foreign policy, conduct critical military research, train military officers and recruit students to be soldiers.

Many students were against the war in Iraq. A few, like at Seattle Community College and City College New York, had recently driven military recruiters off their campuses. Our proposal called for multi-racial, worker-student campus campaigns opposing military recruiters, ROTC and military research, and to encourage soldiers to refuse to kill innocent Iraqis.

When someone said an anti-war proposal has nothing to do with stopping sweatshops, we linked the two: major imperialist powers move factories overseas in search of cheap labor (sweatshops) and make wars to capture resources and markets. Capitalism has led to imperialism -- capitalist competition on a global scale -- and always results in war.

The proposal also called for opposing professors, think-tanks and administrators who push pro-"war-on-terror" or pro-war-in-Iraq positions. Some students disagreed, claiming this violates their free speech. We said professors who advance pro-war policy and who do weapons research are carrying out violence against workers and must be stopped.

We received more support for the anti-war proposal (which was narrowly defeated) than at last year's conference. Some students spoke in favor, including the importance of students and soldiers uniting. We also supported the anti-racist proposal which had a class outlook on -- and opposed university support for -- racism. This one was accepted overwhelmingly.

Many people were interested in PLP's views. Some liked our anti-war leaflet, sparking a good discussion about PLP's ideas. During workshops and meetings, we explained that racism and sexism are class issues (hurt all workers while benefiting bosses), not race or gender ones. Some agreed and believed our politics were good. A few were very receptive to the view that only communist revolution can eliminate racism, sexism, war and capitalism. But we must improve our practice, launching more campus campaigns against military recruiters, sweatshops and the above evils. Such activities will steel us and sharpen us politically.

During the Vietnam era, militant student-led struggles against any military presence on campuses (attacking and even burning down ROTC buildings from Harvard to the Univ. of Puerto Rico) further emboldened U.S. soldiers to rebel against the war via sabotage and mutiny.

The U.S. ruling class wants all colleges to become recruiting grounds for soldiers and centers for war research. Today, U.S. students must play an important role in the movement against the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq. As students, we must not let our campuses become havens for the war-makers! Students, workers and soldiers who target the facilities, materials and institutions used to make war can help stop the war machine. A worker/student/soldier alliance must be built to fight exploitation, sexism, racism and imperialist war, moving on to defeat capitalism itself with communist revolution.

Gutter-Fascists, Liberals, Homeland Security Gang Up On Immigrant Workers

On the same day that the liberal N.Y. Times published an editorial criticizing the Bush administration for not securing U.S. borders, allowing terrorists to easily enter the country, a deranged Native American youth in Minnesota went on a rampage killing his grandfather, the latter's companion, a teacher and six students at his school. While himself a victim of racism against Native Americans, ironically this youth was so twisted he praised Hitler. Many around the world saw this as U.S. ruling-class violence breeding domestic terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is following the Times' advice, launching a multi-million dollar security initiative along a 260-mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border trying "to shut down the main artery for illegal immigration into the United States. "(MSNBC.com)

The operation, run by the Customs and Border Protection unit of the Department of Homeland Security, will increase the number of agents in the region 40%. It's designed to thwart both "illegal immigration" as well as the potential for "terrorist infiltration" along the border area -- the "Tucson sector."

The goal is to "establish and maintain operational control" of the border, according to planning documents for "Operation Full Court Press," the initiative's code name. It will redeploy Black Hawk helicopters and significant numbers of air and ground forces.

The border's militarization is being joined by a mobilization of the Minutemen, an anti-immigration fascist group.

Thus, the liberals, the gutter fascists and the bosses' government are joining hands to militarize the U.S. even more. This is an attack not only against immigrants entering the U.S. to be super-exploited, but is also an attack against all workers. This militarization will be used increasingly against anyone opposing racism, cutbacks in social programs, the war in Iraq, etc. We in PLP pledge to build international and multi-racial unity to fight these attacks. Join us on May Day to march against a racist police state and imperialist war and for communism.u

Robots: Revolt Falls Prey to Idea of `Good Bosses'

"Robots," a new computer-animated film, is both entertaining and full of politics. It's supposed to be a kid's movie, but the adults in the audience were laughing constantly. The jokes are clever, and will appeal to both adults and younger kids. As for the politics...they're both good and bad.

The "Robots" society is all robots and machines, and includes different classes. All the robots seem to be built and sold by one corporation. Due to falling profits, the company's owner (Bigweld, an older guy played by Mel Brooks), hands over the company's operation to a young, super-greedy boss, "Ratchet" (remember "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?). He wears robot gear resembling a flashy business suit, is controlled by his twisted, evil mother, and -- like all bosses -- only cares about making the company more profitable.

In contrast, Bigweld's goal had been "to make things better." He had allowed the poorer, older model robots to buy the spare parts they needed to continue to exist. But Ratchet stops producing these spare parts, forcing the poorer robots to buy the flashy new parts they can't afford. (This is an obvious jab at the computer, DVD and other industries whose products become obsolete after a few years, forcing us to "upgrade." Some critics see this plot-strand as an attack on the plastic surgery and similar industries that con us into spending big bucks to "improve" our appearance).

Even worse, horrifying new machines are sent around the city rounding up the older-model robots for melting down in the oven, paralleling the Holocaust.

The film's big political weakness portrays the original owner, Bigweld, as basically altruistic, while the new boss is an evil Hitlerite. This seems to mirror the "anyone-but-Bush" movement, looking to some mythical past when capitalism was "better."

The movie does have major political strengths, too. It also focuses on a poor family, with a dishwasher dad and a wide-eyed young son named Rodney Copperbottom who heads to the city to try making it as an inventor with the robot company. After being viciously ridiculed and then turned down, he discovers the new boss's operation.

At first he helps the robots who are too poor to upgrade and buy new parts by repairing them with cheap spare parts. Soon he realizes the need to confront the company directly, and leads an armed struggle of the poor robots against the fascist corporate robots!

The movie ends with a hilarious musical number in which all the blue-collar robots celebrate their victory, joined by one corporate robot (played by Halle Berry) who has defected. Unfortunately, this revolt was fought only to reinstate the old, "less exploitative" version of corporate capitalism in which the poor are allowed to survive, rather than the new genocidal version in which they are rounded up for the ovens.

This movie is worth seeing. It features almost constant puns, satire, cultural references, etc., geared toward the parents in the audience. The slapstick visual humor should appeal to both pre-teen kids and their parents. For example, one hilarious character is an older female robot who's known for taking in those who can't make it on their own. She's described as somewhat "earthy cruncy" with an ass so big it knocks over the other robots around her.

Robin Williams plays one of the "Rusties," the blue-collar family that helps lead the uprising. The politics are clear enough to be understood by kids (in fact, the 9-year-old I took described it as a movie about class conflicts even before we saw it) but it can be discussed by adults, too.

Rulers Direct `Global War on Terror' Against U.S. Workers

The ruling class is widening the "global war on terror" to go after U.S. citizens. A leader in this process is new Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. As a federal judge, he said that the challenge for the ruling class was to be able to detain U.S. citizens without trial, just as they have done with immigrants. As our Party stresses, racism is the cutting edge of fascist attacks, which end up hurting the entire working class.

Going after U.S. citizens inside the U.S. is controversial because it goes against all the hype about a "Bill of Rights." Plus, each group of bosses worries that once a crackdown starts; it could be used against their favorite storm troopers (like the violent anti-abortionists). Chertoff laid out a series of options (see the ABA's National Security Law Report, October 2004):
* Declare "suspects" to be "illegal combatants" who can be held indefinitely without charges or lawyers;
* Haul civilian "suspects" before military commissions that are allowed to ignore normal court procedures;
* Change existing laws to allow more use of secret evidence and to make more activities illegal for "supporting" terrorism (for instance, outlawing "terrorist propaganda" which could then be used against any group or individual that opposes the war).

Last year's intelligence "reform" said that terrorism suspects have no right to bail. The suspect is presumed guilty. This was used for the first time to hold Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen who the FBI had the Saudis arrest when he was in Saudi Arabia. They held and tortured him for two years. He was brought back to the U.S. and charged with plotting to kill Bush, even though the head of the Washington FBI office wrote that there was no case against him. Now he's locked up, and his family cannot visit him unless they agree to say nothing about how he's being treated or what he tells them.

The FBI is being transformed from a "crime- fighting" to an anti-terror organization. It's adding lots of agents and following people who have committed no crime - just as it persecuted communists in the 1950s and civil rights and anti-Vietnam-war activists in the 1960s. Rules restricting the FBI were radically re-interpreted by the Clinton administration after the Oklahoma City bombing, and then entirely re-written by Attorney General Ashcroft after 9-11. The liberal-led 9-11 Commission argued that even more "intelligence" should be collected. (For an idea, see the February 2005 ABA National Security Law Report)

Bush's budget will hire 500 more "intelligence analysts." Congress wants to make sure these "analysts" -- spies to report on workers who oppose administration policy -- are in every one of the more than 100 field offices. The ruling class is using anti-Muslim hysteria to establish this network, but the FBI will have lots of resources to look at other dissidents. The FBI started collecting intelligence on "domestic terrorists" after the murder of the husband and mother of federal Judge Lefkow in Chicago. Before the Republican and Democratic conventions, the Feds bragged about how much they know about anarchists and anti-globalization activists. Before Bush's second inaugural, Washington police chief Ramsey refused to deny that his cops had infiltrated protest groups, and emphasized how closely the Feds were following various groups.

Meanwhile, the CIA is under attack and losing its powers. New director Porter Goss plans to fire hundreds of top officials. The new National Intelligence Director is taking over the job of briefing the President and preparing the "national intelligence estimates" (the annual definitive estimate of what all the spy agencies think will happen in each problem area). The FBI is recruiting people inside the U.S. who have contacts abroad or immigrants who may return abroad. The military plans to further expand its own network of spies.

There are several reasons the Bush gang is gutting the CIA. It hates them for talking too much and producing stacks of books and op-ed articles attacking their plans. They even exposed a covert agent to punish her husband for publishing a critical book. But mainly, they need to develop new repressive techniques that break from the old Cold War model, which can apply to foreigners first, but then to U.S. workers too.

This is not some Bush right-wing plot. The Democrats often criticize Bush for "being soft" on homeland security. Chertoff himself has long-time liberal credentials (see CHALLENGE, 2/2/05).

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is on the cutting edge of spying on protesters. One thousand cops work in the NYPD's own intelligence agency, under a former high-ranking CIA officer David Cohen, laying the "stepping stones to more radical groups," to quote an analyst cited in the New York Times. Another 100 work on the FBI-led "Joint Terrorism Task Force" (these units now exist in more than 100 cities). They have hired Ivy League graduates, fluent in Middle East languages, starting at $50,000-75,000 a year. The NYPD has offices in Britain, France, Israel, Canada, and Singapore and liaison officers in dozens of cities throughout the U.S.

The crackdown on domestic dissent has been limited. But the ruling class is working to put in place all the things it needs to outlaw dissent: intelligence on protestors, laws which prevent challenges to indefinite detentions and the atmosphere to justify rounding up innocent civilians on suspicion. The enemy is at work.

LETTERS

STUDENT STANDS UP TO NAZI COP

Around 5:00 P.M. on March 10th I was headed home from my school-required internship. I walked toward crowded Times Square, the center of NYC, the quintessential city of the capitalist U.S. That was where I, a 16-year-old Latina, almost got arrested for the lamest "crime" ever.

You'd think the world's most powerful nation wouldn't waste time on such trivia. But U.S bosses have perfected oppression so people who just want to live decently find themselves perpetually at dead-ends. So, these bosses, the biggest criminals of them all, put a zillion cops on the streets to keep people from resorting to some real change. NYPD cops are ordered to hide in subway stations and accuse people -- especially black and Latin teenagers -- of possible "crimes."

Entering the station, I used my mother's disability Metro card in the turnstile and put it back in my wallet with her picture hidden.

Then two cops approached me, one demanding I show him the Metro card. I did. He looked at my mother's picture, then asked for identification. I produced it. He told me I wasn't allowed to use my mother's disability Metro card. I said, "Sir, she's my mother; why can't I use her card?"

I began questioning him: Why do the lights go off when people swipe their cards through the turnstiles? What are they looking out for? How important is it for cops to hang around subway stations just to make sure nobody's using other people's Metro cards? What happens to people who must go somewhere and can't afford to pay because they can't get jobs?

The cop gave me a serious look and said he would write up a summons and arrest me, saying I would be fined for using my mother's Metro card. I was scared and angry even talking to a cop. All I'd done was borrow a piece of plastic to make it to my internship and back home without a problem.

I started shouting, "I'm being arrested because I'm poor!" When the cop said he was "just doing his job," I screamed that's what the Nazis had said.

I shouted more questions -- why and where had he been hiding; what did he think about my mom and me having to share her Metro card simply because she couldn't afford to give me four dollars for the day's trip. I asked if he knew that people had to use parents' or friends' disability Metro cards for the same reason, why was fining them the next step in resolving this issue. I told him and the gathering crowd that if my mom couldn't afford to give me four dollars, how could she afford to pay a fine.

I figured if I'd be arrested for some stupid nonsense, I might as well make it worthwhile. I placed my wrists in front of me and shouted about how racist, oppressive, unnecessary and unimportant his job was. I asked him whether he thought that he was helping members of society.

I told the people watching that the real criminals go free, while the bankers and the MTA raise the fares and make the working class pay for their imperialist wars and the interest on the debt the government is creating.

He asked the other cop what he thought should be done. They both looked at me, then at the people watching and listening. The train was arriving; the cop told me to never do it again. I laughed and told him maybe he should follow his own advice. I was pretty sure he knew what was behind all this: the Metro card, transportation fare, people of color, workers, money, oppression, a fear system.

I boarded the train and the cops went back to watching the lights at the turnstiles and deciding whether the people matched what the lights determined. I took deep breaths and looked around. The people who had witnessed the scene seemed happy for me.

I realize that a different cop might have arrested me. But either way, I learned that fighting back makes you and the people around you stronger and less afraid.

Communist Student

GI's Question Iraq War

A lot of soldiers in Iraq talked about the elections there. They were really much like those in the U.S. Even though many Iraqis voted, the election won't solve their problems. I said people wouldn't get what they want or need through the elections. They're just choosing from different evils.

Governments use religion to control the masses. That was true of Saddam Hussein's government. So one element has been "defeated." Ironically, the organization replacing Saddam is the U.S. military. Now it's the Super Power that rules.

Some soldiers think at least the U.S. military is better than Saddam. But it was the U.S. who helped put Saddam in power in the first place to give the U.S. access to Iraq's oil. Also, there have been many more deaths from U.S. sanctions, bombings and military invasion than even the murderous Saddam committed. All over Iraq, people are really poor. Most housing doesn't have plumbing, with the few exceptions of spectacular artsy houses. Innocent Iraqi workers have been killed so U.S. rulers can control the oil and low-wage labor. The Iraqi people's problems are caused by capitalism and imperialism. So imperialists can't be the "good guys" or the solution.

Iraqi workers enter many U.S. bases to collect trash, take out sewage without gloves and do other very hard jobs. Some are paid about $7 a day. Some younger workers just work for one meal a day. Even though many soldiers want a better life for the Iraqi people, that's not the military's mission, even though they say it is. These are things that we talk about -- imperialism is the enemy of all workers.

Since the military constantly changes what soldiers will be doing, people move around a lot. Some friends have been in some pretty tough situations. Many realize how worthless this war is. Even people who originally volunteered for harder assignments feel far differently when actually in them.

People are thinking about these things. One guy complained a lot, but would also justify why we're here. His problem for a long time was with the armed forces as an organization. But recently he changed. Now, not only does he dislike the military structure, he distrusts its whole reason for existing. Most important is to emphasize the big picture: why we're here to begin with. More of us talk about this.

An issue that may seem small is big here -- the slowness of the mail. For the brass, this means little. But for us it's very important. As we press this issue, we know that small struggles can lead to bigger ones in the future.

Red GI

`Million Dollar Baby' Anti-Working Class

CHALLENGE NOTE: The following two letters are the last we will print in these pages about Million Dollar Baby movie.

I strongly disagree with the two letters (3/16) criticizing the review of "Million Dollar Baby." The original review was on target exactly because it did not focus on the debate over euthanasia, but on the film's anti-working class aspects. Neither of the two critics said a word about the anti-working class stereotypes that Maggie had to "escape from." Her family is portrayed in vicious, terribly stereotyped ways. And wasn't one of the villains a black female prostitute?

But don't take my word for it; listen to Clint Eastwood's response to conservatives who were criticizing his film; he said something like, "All the bad people in the film were either black or welfare cheats. Why are the conservatives complaining?"

An aspect of fascism is the suppression of creativity in culture and various other individual "rights." Many liberals and leftists focus on the reactionary culture rather than on the anti-working class nature of fascism. The cultural aspect is important, but fascism's main danger isn't from those who are "cultural conservatives and pro-capitalist/anti-working class in their politics and economics," such as many in Bush's base. The main danger is from those who are "culturally liberal and pro-capitalist/anti-working class in their politics and economics." Politicians like Schwarzenegger and other cultural relativists appeal to those who oppose those aspects of fascism that threaten their own middle-class individual rights, while the anti-working class core of their ideas is primary.

One critical letter actually apologized for Eastwood's performing in the "Dirty Harry" films, considered pro-fascist even by moderate liberals, saying he didn't direct those films, he "only starred" in them.

Films can be reactionary and still have some positive aspects. We should become skilled in understanding and pointing out both aspects. But in discussing the positive, we should be clear about those film's basic reactionary nature. Otherwise, we risk misleading people into failing to expose anti-working class culture. And if we don't, who will?

Midwest Film Fan

Movie `Probed Human Condition'

Rather than answer each criticism of my response to the review of "Million Dollar Baby," I'd rather discuss why I liked it. The main characters are interesting, and flawed. Each has traits I admire (a certain strength, respect for others, loyalty to friends and real feelings for their fellow man). Obviously they're also in a terrible business. I think boxing should be banned. They're clearly loners caught inside a lonely world of boxing. And they have no class understanding of the world.

The interaction of the characters had depth and probed into the human condition. The turn of events and Eastwood's ultimate decision also made the film deeply moving and emotional. I fail to see how euthanasia -- which Eastwood eventually accepts to end the life of the woman boxer -- makes the film fascist. Is it fascist to end one's life because of a grave injury? It may be right or wrong, but each case should be taken individually. I don't believe it was a "fascist" move to end her life. I know communists who have pulled the plug on their loved ones, are they fascists? I don't think so!

We don't have much communist culture to look at. Movies, certainly controlled and manipulated by capitalist ideas, are a form of entertainment that gives people a break from the rotten world we live in. Yes, it's also a way to indoctrinate and get people to accept this world and be mired in the cynicism of most movies. So it's vital to critique these movies and discuss them with our friends. But if every movie that has bad ideas -- and almost all do -- are fascist then we should just dismiss all of them and forget why we're attracted to aspects of the film.

I did like "Million Dollar Baby," and laughed almost continually at "Sideways."  There is clearly something about these films that's attractive and entertaining. I don't think it should be dismissed and swept under the fascist rug. That's too easy. Despite what some of the letters implied, I don't think I was suckered into Eastwood's "fascist ideology" and view of the world.

Talking to friends about how our world view contrasts with Eastwood's cynical and individualist view is well worth the discussion. I just didn't agree with the reviewer's ideas on the film. I also felt -- as I stated -- that the reviewer's interpretation was just wrong in many places. If I hurt his/her feelings I didn't mean to. I was just stating how I felt. Strong criticism, from either position, makes for a more lively discussion. It's all good! 

Big Red

CHALLENGE Needs More Coverage of French General Strike

The clip that appeared in the last issue of CHALLENGE about the general strike in France in the very least should have been a full article. It really should have been the editorial. In this period of low class-consciousness and struggle, we as a working class need to know what's happening around the world involving any portion of the working class. The bosses' media didn't inform the U.S. working class about it, and we shouldn't expect them to. CHALLENGE, on the other hand, is the working-class paper and as such should have done a better job disseminating news and analysis of this important event.

Brooklyn reader

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Dems won't curb US imperialism

Kerry considers himself to be a national-security-oriented Democrat....

Most national-security Democrats...agree that the Party should be more open to the idea of military action, and even pre-emption, and although they did not agree about the timing of the Iraq war and the manner in which Bush Launched it, they believe that the stated rationale -- Saddam's brutality and his flouting of United Nations resolutions -- was ideologically and morally sound....

Lieberman...is unapologetic about his defense of Bush's Iraq policy, saying, "Bottom line, I think Bush has it right...."

Few of the most frequently mentioned contenders for the Party's Presidential nomination in 2008 -- including Clinton, Bayh, Edwards, and Biden-- belong to the Democratic Party's left. Instead, the most likely would-be nominees are at pains to appear hawkish on defense. Hilary Clinton has been particularly skillful... (The New Yorker, 3/21)

Some GI's desperate to get out

One by one, a trickle of soldiers and marines -- some just back from duty in Iraq, others facing a trip there soon -- are seeking ways out.

Soldiers, their advocates and lawyers who specialize in military law say that they watched a few service members try ever more unlikely and desperate routes: taking drugs in the hope that they will be kept home after positive urine tests, for example; or seeking psychological or medical reasons to be declared nondeployable, including last-minute pregnancies. Specialist Marquise J. Roberts is accused of asking a relative in Philadelphia to shoot him in the leg so he would not have to return to war. (NYT, 3/18)

Recruiters can't sell war, go AWOL too

The Army is seeking 101,200 new active-duty Army and Reserve soldiers this year alone to replenish the ranks....That means each of the Army's 7,500 recruiters faces the grind of an unyielding human math, a quota of two new recruits a month, at a time of extended war without a draft....

At least 37 members of the Army Recruiting Command, which oversees enlistment, have gone AWOL since October 2002...

"The recruiter is struck in the situation where your're not going to make mission, It just won't happen," the New York recruiter said. "And your're getting chewed out for every day for it. It's horrible." He said the assignment was more strenuous than the time he was shot at while deployed in Africa....

One recruiter in the New York area said that when he steps outside his office for a cigarette, he often is barraged with epithets from passers-by angry about the war.

In January, the brother-in-law of a prospective recruit lashed into him. "He swore at me," the recruiter said, "and said the he would rather have his brother-in-law in jail for selling crack than in the Army." (NYT, 3/27)

Blame higher-ups for torture

...The American Civil Liberties Union....charges that Mr. Rumsfeld personally authorized unlawful interrogation techniques....It contends that the abuse of detainees was widespread and that Mr. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were well aware of it....

According to the suit, it is unreasonable to believe that Mr. Rumsfeld could have remained in the dark about the rampant mistreatment...It cites a wealth of evidence readily available to the secretary, including...internal government reports, and concerns expressed by such reputable groups as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

(The committee has noted, among other things, that military intelligence estimates suggest that 70 percent to 90 percent of the people detained in Iraq had been seized by mistake.) (NYT, 3/28)

Capitalism undermines Russia

The Russian academy of sciences has estimated that since 1995 the poorest fifth of Muscovites have seen their incomes drop by nearly two-thirds. The next richest 50% have seen their income fall by a third. Only the top 20% have got richer -- by 50%. The cash has mostly gone abroad, draining the reserve of capital necessary for investment in business. (GW, 3/24)

Locked-in janitors accuse bosses

Three immigrant janitors will file a lawsuit today against two supermarkets in the Bronx, accusing them of endangering their lives by locking them in at night, with the fire exits blocked or padlocked....

The lawyers plan to file the lawsuit...today, the 94th anniversary of the Triangle fire, in which 146 garment workers died when locked and blocked factory doors prevented them from escaping a fire. (NYT, 3/25)

`US aid' really anti-red fund

The cold war entrenched corruption in some African countries, where aid bought the support of the leadership rather than benefiting the poor.

"In too many cases, such as US aid to Mobutu [Sese Seko, former dictator of Zaire], aid has ended up in bank accounts because a kleptocrat was seen as preferable to a communist." (GW, 3/24)

Arabs know invaders want loot

The shape of the contemporary Middle East -- the shape that we are trying to get Syria and Iraq and the others to change -- was in large part designed by the British after 1918....Officials who did the designing proclaimed Arab independence as their goal, but meant by that a mere formal independence subject to continuing British influence and control.

The West, embodied now by the United States, speaks the language of freedom again but, unsurprisingly, is not widely believed in the Arab world. A Middle Easterner need not be especially cynical, considering the region's oil and strategic situation, to suspect that America is pursuing its national interests rather than disinterestedly promoting democracy and the welfare of western Asia. (NYT, 3/24)

Lawbreakers steal school funds

Albany, March 18 -- As state lawmakers strive to put together a budget by the April 1 deadline, any attempt to comply with a court order to pump more money into New York City's public schools has been left out of the debate....

Many said they felt most betrayed by the Assembly's proposal...which would bring total spending to just more than half of the $1.4 bullion increase that a judge ordered spent on the city schools alone. (NYT, 3/19)

 

Hundreds At Anti-War Conference: Must Organize to Fight Imperialism

Class Consciousness and Red Politics Key to Crushing Warmakers

Brass Wants Token Sacrifice From Elite School Youth

Bosses To Bankrupt Workers: Drop Dead!

PLP H.S. and College Students Bring Revolutionary Ideas to Anti-War Conference

Hundreds March for Immigrant Rights; Need to By-Pass Liberal Dems

a href="#CUNY Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War">CU"Y Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War

Union Misleaders Derail MUNI Work-Action

Boeing Union Resolution Supports Lockheed Strikers

General Strike Hits France to Keep 35-Hour Work-week

Philadelphia City Hall Scandal: ALL Politicians Are Crooks

Palestinian and Israeli Workers Must Unite to Tear Down Apartheid Wall

600 Protest Racist LAPD Murder of Teenager; Boo Ex-Police Chief

a href="#Everyone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics">"veryone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics

Concentration Camps: Second Nature to Capitalism

LETTERS

Staying in for the Long Haul

Banning Unions Before They Start

a href="#A ‘Life-Changing’ Experience">A "Life-Changing’ Experience

a href="#Youth’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference">"outh’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference

a href="#Women ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’">Wo"en ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’

a href="#‘Million Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature">‘M"llion Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature

a href="#Eastwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled">"astwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled

a href="#Reviewer’s Response">"eviewer’s Response

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• Poll makes Marx a Founding Father
• Iraq shows limits of US power
• Vets left uninsured and homeless
• Over $500 billion yearly for army
• Double death rate for black men
• Inter-imperialist rivalry heating up
• Afghans’ abusers set up Abu Ghraib
• ‘Democracy’ serves Big Business

---

Hundreds At Anti-War Conference: Must Organize to Fight Imperialism

NEW YORK CITY, March 5 — "Imperialist War Means: Fight Back!"; "Racism Means: Fight Back!"; "Shut It Down!"; "Students and Teachers, United, Will Never Be Defeated!"

An explosive mix of militant urban youth and radical teachers’ chants rang through the hall at the close of today’s conference of Educators to Stop the War as 750 East Coast teachers and students from schools and colleges as far as Florida and Indiana convened to discuss how to stop the war in Iraq. The title itself was a call to action for teachers from kindergarten to grad school, and by 260 students, half from high school.

The event was sponsored by U.S. Labor against the War and many teacher union locals from SUNY, CUNY, and Rutgers. PLP teachers and students also worked hard to build the conference and brought many participants.

The title raised the key question: who can stop the war, and how? Teachers and students allying with soldiers and industrial workers? Protests? Prolonged resistance in the army and the workplace, such as strikes and rebellions? What about the politics of the Iraqi insurgency? Can we end imperialist wars while leaving capitalism intact, or take the road to revolution? These questions were prevalent but challenged: "I’m just a student with asthma from the Bronx," asked one. "What does capitalism have to do with me?"

Some hoped education could be a "free zone" in capitalism. Many didn’t think about class as the "hidden curriculum" of capitalist schooling, reproducing this brutal system with deep links to the imperialist war machine. (However, everyone understood the role of recruiters in schools, a hot topic with students.)

Teacher unionists debated their contract and education budget fights as struggles against a "war contract" and a "war budget." But teachers were galvanized by the young students, who clearly loved being with their teachers as equal comrades in struggle. "Student-teacher alliance" was the cry everywhere.

The Conference generated tremendous excitement and hope in a period of downturn in anti-war actions. Communists presented a glimpse of schooling in the communist society PLP fights for: multi-racial and non-sexist; collective leadership; non-hierarchical, with presentations from high school students and doctoral faculty; soldiers and vets offering their perspective; Marx’s "relentless critique of absolutely everything"; the role of the Party pushing constantly for working-class interests. Communist schooling will be the ultimate student-teacher alliance.

Soon the success of the conference emerged, anti-war action against military recruiters exploding at CCNY (See page 3). Other counter-recruiter protests were blocked by police at Bronx Community College, and were planned at Hunter College March 16. Many, including PLP, wanted to make April 20 a day of such mass actions, linking anti-war to contract and tuition demands.

It was an action-oriented conference, with an emerging student-teacher alliance in 42 workshops discussing: organizing in the teacher unions, schools and campuses, in curriculum and teaching methods, the roots of the war, and critiques of ideologies that support the war. The more than 150 workshop presenters were one-third black, Latino/a, Asian or Middle Eastern, more multi-racial than most anti-war events.

Some leaders of Educators to Stop the War red-baited PLP and its allies. They don’t want communists and their ideas to influence anti-war activists and to challenge liberal anti-war organizations like United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). But the war in Iraq is an imperialist war for U.S. ruling-class interests, it does have its roots in rival capitalists’ drive for endless accumulation, we do need a full understanding of these processes to know how to better fight the warmakers. Finally, communism — for all its past weaknesses — has been the only philosophy with the ability to mobilize millions to end capitalism itself, the root of modern war.

Organizing mass militant action at work, fighting racism that pervades capitalist education, building unbreakable lifelong ties with co-workers, bringing them closer to communist thinking by patient work, and forging a mass party out of daily struggle, is the way ahead. A global worker-soldier-student-teacher alliance can create a communist future, free of imperialist war and capitalist mis-education.

Class Consciousness and Red Politics Key to Crushing Warmakers

A recent meeting of the Progressive Labor Party’s Steering Committee discussed a lengthy, detailed report about the contradictions facing U.S. rulers. The report covered the state of inter-imperialist rivalry and the likelihood that the present oil war in Iraq will soon broaden. It reinforced the estimate that the economic and military rise of Chinese capitalism will eventually lead to armed struggle with the U.S.

The PLP leadership confirmed its view that this remains a period of widening war for world domination and that although the U.S. will remain top dog for some number of years, the general trend will see its chief competitors in Asia and Europe gain strength and boldness. PLP’s Steering Committee once again endorsed the idea that communist revolution can be forged in the crucible of the world war that will erupt in coming decades.

The discussion took into account the wide tactical maneuverability the bosses still enjoy and underscored the importance of properly assessing their strength and the advantages they hold over the working class at the moment.

The most important of these advantages remains the low level of communist class consciousness in the U.S. and throughout the world in general. Weak class consciousness leads to weak class struggle. Both at home and abroad, the rulers are getting away with racist murder. From the military’s routine slaughter of civilians in Iraq to the denial of health insurance to 45 million people here, CHALLENGE constantly describes the atrocities U.S. capitalism commits daily.

The self-inflicted failure of the old communist movement has temporarily placed our class in a position of weakness without historical precedent since Marx and Engels wrote "The Communist Manifesto" nearly 160 years ago. Strikes provide a good gauge of working-class militancy. In the U.S., they are very low by historical standards. Scabbing — the use of strike-breakers to replace striking workers — has risen steadily since the benchmark year of 1981. Then Reagan hired scabs to replace 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, without a peep from the labor union brass. The percentage of unionized workers continues to decline. In both the U.S. and Europe, the union "leadership" has long since made the commitment to serve as the bosses’ henchmen in the system’s drive to suck maximum profit from our labor power.

The bad news is the present picture is bleak. The good news is we can do something about it. The working class is still paying dearly for the deadly errors committed in the course of previous revolutions. But errors can be analyzed and corrected. This process will be long and difficult, but can be accomplished. The profit system can neither solve nor abolish the contradictions and problems it creates. That job remains the role of the working class and the responsibility of its communist party, the PLP.

Our chief task today is rebuilding militant, communist class consciousness until it becomes the order of the day throughout the working class. The word "scab" must once again become the foulest word in any language, and scabbing must come to include not just strike-breaking but also the failure to respond vigorously to any and all attacks against our class brothers and sisters worldwide.

Even in these difficult times, opportunities arise. CHALLENGE articles about actions against racism, economic attacks or imperialist war in Iraq prove that the bosses can never totally extinguish the flame of class struggle. But we can do better, particularly on the ideological front of promoting and sharpening class consciousness.

As always, the correction of weakness or error begins with leadership. Our Party’s Steering Committee recognizes its responsibility in this regard. As May Day approaches, we challenge ourselves once again to deepen our commitment to the principle of militant, revolutionary, international communist working-class solidarity against all bosses and all forms of scabbing.

Brass Wants Token Sacrifice From Elite School Youth

As U.S. rulers pursue an agenda of ever widening war, they face a crisis of class consciousness in their own ranks. Very few children of the ruling class serve, even briefly, in the war machine that maintains their wealth, power, and privilege. But the more far-sighted of the rulers fear two consequences: (1) Working-class GIs and their families will rebel against having to bear an obscenely high casualty rate; and (2) the ruling class will soon lack the military expertise necessary for an all-out mobilization.

General Josiah Bunting wrote an article for the Winter 2005 "American Scholar" entitled "Class Warfare: It is Wrong that America’s Most Privileged Families Have Abandoned Military Service." He decries "the deepening chasm that is separating those who serve from those whom they serve."

Bunting laments the declining numbers of war dead among alumni of the elite Lawrenceville School near Princeton, where he was once headmaster: sixty in World War II, ten in Korea, five in Vietnam, and none for Gulf War I or the current slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the working class continues to bear all the killing and maiming, he worries, domestic tranquility could suffer.

Bunting sees a need for the token burden sharing of WWII, in which young Roosevelts and Kennedys, but few Rockefellers, saw heavy action. Bunting hopes for a sea change. Envisioning world-wide conflicts, he dreams of a fully militarized future, in which the children of today’s rulers "appointed or elected to offices...will carry the inestimable benefit of having themselves done what they will be asking another young generation to do."

Bunting speaks for the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists. He recently oversaw the admission of women to the Virginia Military Institute. Bunting now presides over the New York-based Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, which, under him, increasingly focuses on military leadership and the relationship of the military to the rest of society. This foundation counts as "life trustees" General William Westmoreland, who commanded the U.S. genocide in Vietnam, and Jeremiah Milbank, whose family has managed the Rockefellers’ billions for over a century.

By choosing the "American Scholar" as his vehicle, Bunting targets administrators at elite universities, who, while cashing Pentagon research checks, persist in hindering military recruitment. One college president who needs no convincing, however, is Harvard’s Larry Summers. Last June, he held the first commissioning on Harvard grounds of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) since 1969, when students led by the Progressive Labor Party booted the bloodsuckers out. Summers is pushing to re-establish Harvard’s ties to the military completely. When the rulers’ media complain about Summers’ abrupt shifts to the right, they’re attacking his lack of finesse, not his politics.

Along with Bunting’s persuasion, the rulers are using the coercion of state power to bring their own class in line by putting more of its children in uniform. A bill before Congress, variously known as H.R. 3699 and the Solomon Amendment, will end the ability of colleges to block recruiters and ROTC. It sailed through the House last year, with overwhelming backing from Democrats and Republicans.

The rulers know that, ultimately, only one solution exists. They can hardly expect their pampered offspring to renounce selfishness willingly. Selfishness lies at the heart of capitalist philosophy. Pining for the Good Old Days, Bunting says that, in 1956, Princeton sent 400 of its 900 graduating seniors into the military and that the figure for 2004 was nine out of 1,100. He pointedly leaves unsaid the glaring fact that the great "motivator" back then was the draft. The rulers will have to restore it, sooner or later.

Bosses To Bankrupt Workers: Drop Dead!

The latest change in the bosses’ bankruptcy laws is one of the more blatant pieces of class legislation enacted in decades. It will extract another pound of flesh from working-class families ruined by health costs and job loss and add billions to the already swollen profits of the banks and credit card companies. Meanwhile, Congress refused to raise the already paltry minimum wage above the 1996 level, which is falling even further below the poverty line.

These kinds of fascist attacks on workers will continue until the working class mounts an organized fight-back to limit them and eventually turns them back on the ruling class with a communist revolution eliminating the capitalist system that breeds them.

Most people are forced to file for bankruptcy because of sudden illness, layoffs or divorce. A Harvard study found that medical bills account for over half of all bankruptcy filings, and most of those families had health insurance but it didn’t cover the cost of medical debts. One-third of all bankruptcies are filed by people with incomes already below the poverty line.

This new law — already passed by the Senate and soon-to-be enacted by the House — will push millions of working-class families still deeper into poverty. It will require debtors with incomes above the median in their states to file for bankruptcy under a Chapter 13 proceeding, in which a judge orders a repayment plan, rather than under a Chapter 7 filing where debts are erased once most of the debtors’ assets are liquidated. This will force hundreds of thousands of families to make large payments to creditors from their current income even if they subsequently lose their jobs or incur huge medical bills.

Meanwhile, the wealthy will retain their loophole of the "asset protection trust" which enables them to maintain their riches even if declaring bankruptcy.

The banks and credit card companies have been pushing for such legislation for eight years. The likes of the American Bankers Association, Ford Motor Credit, GMAC, Visa, MasterCard, Citicorp, Capital One and MBNA, among others, have made more than $40 million in political contributions over that period, an investment that will now reap a multi-billion dollar bonanza.

Interestingly, the ten states with the highest bankruptcy filings are "red" states in the South and West, many of whom voted for Bush based on racism and support for the Iraq war. Even though all ten voted Republican last November, their Senators will still punish them with this new law. But the Democrats are guilty as well — 14 Democratic Senators joined 55 Republicans to bar any filibuster from killing the bill, including such stalwarts as Delaware’s Joe Biden, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow (whose state has one of the country’s highest unemployment rates, driving workers to bankruptcy).

As the U.S. debt burden skyrockets, billions will be extracted by the banks from bankrupted families. Bankruptcy filings leaped from 200,000/yr in 1978 to 1.6 million last year. In 1946, consumer debt was 22% of after-tax income. By last year it had jumped to 110%. The probability that a family’s income will be cut in half from one year to the next has doubled from the 1970’s to over 20%. That could mean that tens of millions can slide from relative comfort into poverty due to illness or job loss, and then be subject to the impossible squeeze of this new bankruptcy swindle.

The credit card companies prey on the weakest sections of the population: credit card debt among seniors has increased 149%, and among families with income below $10,000 it’s rocketed 184%. A family of three earning a minimum wage and working five days a week, 52 weeks a year, is already below the federal poverty line.

All capitalists in general are like vultures circling above tens of millions of families falling deeper into debt, and then swooping down with this new bankruptcy rip-off to dig their profit talons into defenseless debtors. They’ll keep succeeding until the working class stops them.

PLP H.S. and College Students Bring Revolutionary Ideas to Anti-War Conference

NEW YORK CITY, March 5 — Over 250 high school and college students at the Educators to Stop the War Conference were on the verge of marching on an Army recruiting station in Harlem until we discovered the center was closed. About 50 of us were from one Brooklyn high school where we made buttons and held a forum with two soldiers speaking, to build interest in the event. Students who attended the conference were very moved by it.

The militancy at this anti-war conference was unexpected, but the revolutionary leadership given by young PL’ers changed the tone of the day. Students were fed up with limiting anti-war activity to marches — which end up supporting Democratic Party politicians — and wanted to take direct action against the war machine.

We made plans to return to our campuses and high schools to organize more students for a demonstration at a recruiting center in the near future.

A multi-racial contingent of PL students led workshops on Creating a Student Anti-war movement, Stopping Military Research and Homeland Security Programs on Campuses, Recruiters and the Draft, Racism, Imperialism and building a teacher-student alliance. These workshops helped make the conference a huge success. We were able to advance the Party’s line against pseudo-leftist and liberal reformist ideas.

In the Recruiters and the Draft workshop one student described how he helped kicked military recruiters off the City College campus one day last fall. An ex-recruiter revealed how he was duped into becoming a salesman for the military. Another speaker discussed the draft, explaining that an economic draft existed already for many workers, even before the Iraq War. He declared that when the "real draft" comes we should advise youth who will go in and actively organize soldiers to stop the war rather than dodge military service. He said while students’ and teachers’ anti-war activity is important to opposing the war, only U.S. soldiers and industrial workers in solidarity with workers in Iraq can stop it. We need to support these workers’ actions. Some further comments from students about their feelings on the conference:

"I think the conference was a good step towards making people knowledgeable about the war. It was good to see teachers and students come together on a more synchronized level. It was a good experience and other things should be done to follow up."

"I think I understand the war a bit more and it makes me want to get involved to assist the movement. I would like to see more students involved in protesting this Imperialist war. There should be workshops in the school to explain the war to students."

"In order to show how informed we students are and how we disagree with the war, the entire school should walk out to voice our opinions on the war. I realized that the minority of the country is controlling the majority of the working class. It makes me think about how wrong this government is. I am not sure if I totally agree with the concept of communism, but I would like to learn more."

"I do believe capitalism is a very bloody type of government. The war is being fought by poor and working-class soldiers and they are killing other poor and working-class people. END THE WAR NOW!"

The conference and the militancy of many of its participants show that following Bush’s re-election the "depression" suffered by many who oppose the imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq is over among many activists. We must ensure that the idea of "It’s not just Bush, it’s also the Democrats and capitalism" takes hold among many of these anti-war activists. Being anti-imperialist means being anti-capitalist and a communist, serving the working class and helping lead a working-class movement to totally destroy capitalism.

Hundreds March for Immigrant Rights; Need to By-Pass Liberal Dems

QUEENS, NY, March 12 — Capitalists and their flunky politicians in the Federal, State and local governments have no shame. They’ve launched virulently racist attacks against immigrants, especially since 9/11, blaming them for the problems created by capitalism itself.

Immigrant workers are fighting back here on two fronts: against denial of drivers’ licenses and against budget cuts for adult education, but all within the limits set by the bosses. However, as CHALLENGE readers know, this is very much like running on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast. While waging these important struggles, it is vital that we raise the bar by building a movement for a communist revolution as the best and longest-lasting solution to eliminate these vile anti-immigrant attacks.

On March 5, more than 300 immigrants and other workers and students marched in Jackson Heights as part of the Queens Drivers License Coalition to demand that officials and the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) end their discriminatory and irresponsible plan to suspend the driver’s licenses of about 300,000 immigrant workers (cab drivers, delivery truck drivers, etc.). Over 7,000 immigrants in NYS have already lost their licenses because of the new rule requiring a valid Social Security number to obtain a legal driver’s license.

Shouting "El Pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!" (The people, united, will never be defeated"), and "Inquilaab zindabad!" (Freedom now!" in Bengali), the protesters’ leaflets and demands that the politicians stop their irresponsible plan were well-received by thousands of passers-by.

Fight Adult Education Budget Cuts

Also, in recent weeks dozens of teachers and students in the CUNY Adult Literacy Programs have begun organizing against the Bush administration’s proposal to cut by 2/3 the amount of federal money for adult education. The vast majority of students in these programs are immigrant workers looking to earn their GED diplomas in order to improve their jobs and/or go on to college. They’re planning a protest demonstration for April 22.

The weakness in both of these struggles is the tendency to look to politicians, especially liberal Democrats, for help. The strength has been the involvement of many immigrant and other workers. These cuts are aimed at many groups. The ruling class hopes each group will struggle for itself only. Each one must reach out to other groups to support each other. In these struggles, PLP’ers must show how these attacks on immigrants and major cutbacks in social services are part and parcel of the imperialists’ endless wars and Homeland Security police state, supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

a name="CUNY Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War"></">CU"Y Students Blast Military Recruitment for ‘Career’ in War

NEW YORK CITY, March 9 — About 15 students and professors at City College — part of the City University of New York (CUNY) — entered the annual Career Fair and brought the message to the college administration and the Army that fighting in imperialist wars is not a career option. Upon entering the Great Hall, campus security met us and announced that any type of protesting or anyone entering with anything remotely political would be escorted out.

At the fair, we saw the careers the administration and ruling class are offering working-class students as they raise our tuition and cut financial aid. Military and police recruiters dominated the Fair. Tables for the National Guard, Army, Marines, Air force, NYPD and State Troopers lined the row of "employers."

Some of us began distributing leaflets linking CUNY’s $500-a-year tuition hike to the Iraq war. We assembled next to the National Guard table, near a line of students who were having their resumés reviewed. We started chanting, "U.S. out of Iraq, Recruiters off our campus!" In three minutes, campus cops surrounded us and told us if we didn’t stop chanting we’d have to leave. We chanted even louder. Everyone in the Hall took notice.

The guards then threw us out of the Great Hall. We rallied in the hallway but were told we couldn’t protest there either, that we had to go outside in front of the building. Someone called to us, "Whose school?"; we replied "Our School!" This chant prompted students inside the fair to pump their fists in solidarity, forcing security to close the door to the Fair, isolating most of us from those inside.

Since they couldn’t get us to stop chanting or to leave and more students were assembling in the hallway, they started threatening to arrest us. We didn’t budge. They brutally arrested three people, throwing one on the floor and pushing his face into the wall. Another cop assaulted a second person from the back and his buddies stomped on him. The third was taking pictures and screaming at the cops, along with all of us, to let them go. We then distributed literature to all the students who were standing around.

We all made speeches in our classes, urging everyone to join a rally we were having the next day protesting tuition hikes and supporting the "Great Hall Three." They’re charged with misdemeanor counts of "assaulting an officer, resisting arrest" and "disturbing the peace."

The next day a vigorous picket line took place, joined by other students, including PLP, and the City College chapter of the faculty and staff union. The administration "answered" by arresting a professor — charging her with assaulting an officer — and suspending one student, while defending their fascist campus security.

While we weren’t able to kick the recruiters off the campus, in trying to silence us they’ve added more fuel to our fire. This class war is a long-term one. As the college administrations join more and more the bosses’ plans to militarize the entire society, the unity of workers, students and soldiers to build a mass communist movement is the road to end this system based on endless wars and of police state.

Union Misleaders Derail MUNI Work-Action

SAN FRANCISCO, March 13 — "Union Shuts Down Cable Cars"… "Wildcat"…"Strike"…"Job Action." On March 2, these were unusual headlines about this city’s Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 250a which covers all transit operators for SF MUNI. Drivers at many garages greeted this action with enthusiasm and solidarity. "Great!…Finally…See, we can do it…Let’s spread it!" "If anything happens to the cable car drivers we all should go out." "We can run the show, we can bring the City to a stop." Momentarily our potential power was a reality.

Then the cable car operators returned to work while the top Downtown TWU leadership negotiated. When "Union Apologizes for Job Action…" hit Friday’s headlines, drivers were pissed off — "Apologize for what? Can [General Manager] Burn’s discipline the union or the cable car operators?" But the Downtown TWU leadership frittered away a chance to stop service and pay cuts and a fare increase.

In appearance the union leadership called the job action because MUNI management refused to follow the contract in a grievance appeal for two cable car operators. But in essence the real cause of this action was general frustration and tremendous anger after nine months of continuous threats to cut wages and transit service, and raise MUNI fares. Drivers have constantly demanded a real plan for action from the union leadership. Frustration intensified when the transit bosses adopted a budget on Feb. 28 that cut $13.5 million in services, demanding labor "efficiencies" and $13 million in fare increases — but absolutely no increased revenue from downtown Big Business.

The Cable Car action came after a rumored "sick-out," and although unorganized, some workers stayed off at two work-sites. Management flipped at the very whiff of a MUNI "sick-out" and prepared contingency plans and counter-attacks. The Downtown TWU leadership attacked the rumored MUNI action as "unauthorized." Then they called the Cable Car action a few days later.

Management, City politicians and the media had poured gas on this potential fire for months. When the union leadership lit the match, the cable car drivers did the rest, pulling all cable cars into the garage and struggling for solidarity, to overcome individual concerns over losing pay.

We drivers have an unsolvable, antagonistic relationship to MUNI management and the Downtown Corporate Businesses that run SF. Their attacks on us stem from capitalism which dictates a widening war for Mid-East oil and tax cuts for the rich. This won’t go away by changing General Managers. Negotiations usually amount to lowering the wages and benefits of the newest and future workers, often our children, to pay for any improvement for more senior workers.

In discussions following these actions, communists in PLP have tried to encourage more workers to become leaders of our class. The lessons learned will last longer than any material gains.

True to form, the top union leadership didn’t spread the action or organize riders to join us, while refusing to challenge the right of Big Business to profit from our labors. Unions now function to negotiate the terms of our exploitation and contain our struggle. A work stoppage can change the power equation somewhat but the bosses will regroup to hit us again.

Management and the union leadership will exploit a divided workforce (along lines of "race," nationality, age, new hires vs. senior workers, different garages, etc.). We need an integrated PLP-led group that advances communist ideas, such as raising the class consciousness and unity of all workers — viewing transit as a service that’s vital to the working class; uniting with passengers, other city workers and all drivers.

We need organization, not spontaneity, to confront such a powerful enemy. Media-driven actions don’t work. In a war, we need a general staff to plan and evaluate the battles. Historically, communist parties have played this role.

Communists fight for the working class to take over so our class runs society and shares the fruits of our labors. Transit workers in a communist society would collectively decide, along with passengers and other workers, how to best meet everyone’s transit needs. Communism is the only alternative to the profit system.

Class Consciousness Wins One:

Boeing Union Resolution Supports Lockheed Strikers

SEATTLE — The union leadership tried to adjourn the last membership meeting early, but were shouted down, in a voice vote, by shop stewards and rank-and-filers determined to discuss unity with Lockheed Martin strikers. Twenty of us prepared a resolution supporting these workers who’ve taken the lead this contract season. The union mis-leaders feared going on record opposing solidarity, so they and their hangers-on abstained and the resolution passed unanimously. There’s still a deep yearning for class unity that can be tapped when we lead boldly or even when workers spontaneously fight back.

These 2,800 Marietta, Ga. workers struck mainly over a provision denying retiree health care benefits to newly-hired workers. "How can we ask someone to join the union and then slap them in the face!" said one Machinist, during the contract vote at which over 70% rejected the deal recommended by the IAM Local 709 leadership. Since the average age in the plant is 54, these workers struck for a workforce that largely has not even been hired yet. The strikers hit the bricks March 8 for the second time in three years.

Breaking the Pattern; Taking the Lead

These Marietta strikers broke the pattern set by the IAM and UAW in aerospace. Lockheed IAM Locals in Palmdale and Sunnyvale, CA as well as three UAW Boeing Locals already accepted similar contracts with the same provision dividing older from newer workers. "It’s very rare that you see the local of a union break from a pattern that’s been established in bargaining," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. (Fort Worth Star Telegram, 3/9)

The International sees the danger to their plans to guarantee production, particularly war production. "This could be the crack that will eventually blow apart the whole plan for a sellout," said a past union officer in Seattle, referring to the strike and our support resolution. Upcoming contracts at Boeing on September 1 and next year at the Forth Worth, TX. Lockheed plant hang in the balance.

The International has quickly moved to settle, while offering only lukewarm support for the strikers. "The majority has spoken at Local 709 and the international will support them," said John Crowdis, national IAM negotiator, "I’m disappointed we weren’t able to reach an agreement… They believe they’re fighting for what’s right." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/8) The union had already scheduled new talks for March 12.

Georgia U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson and Representative Phil Gingrey, both Republicans, have come to the aid of the International, warning that the timing of the strike was "unfortunate." (Columbus, Ga. Ledger-Enquirer, 3/9) They implied that production might be shifted to Lockheed’s Fort Worth plant by a Pentagon that wants cheaper weapons to run its "stunningly expensive war in Iraq" and other imperialist adventures. "It’s [Lockheed’s Marietta plant] an old facility in which the workforce is difficult to deal with," said Loren Thompson, a war analyst at the Lexington Institute. "I’m sure Fort Worth and St. Louis [Boeing subcontractor] are wondering what this strike means for them."

Conscious of Our Class’s Revolutionary Role

The broader implications of this strike-support resolution didn’t escape the rank and file at the meeting or those on the shop floor. After it passed, many stewards took copies back to their shops. A lower-level union functionary noted that the top union leadership was opposed to the strike. "This is really messed up," he complained.

"I hope there is no attempt to do anything like this with retiree medical care in our contract and I don’t care how you try to disguise it," said another retired member, who made a special trip to attend this meeting.

All agreed that the local leadership didn’t want to publicize this strike because it might upset their plans for the next contract, hence the attempt to adjourn the meeting before it arose. "This dishonesty pissed me off more than anything," said an assembler at lunch the next day. We vowed to write our own reports on this strike, not trusting the leadership to implement the reporting provisions of the resolution.

Class consciousness carried the day at this meeting. Given the bosses’ determination to steal our retirement, both private and public, to finance their imperialist wars, our class also needs to be conscious of our historical role. We industrial workers can help lead the way to revolution, where imperialist war and the need to steal from workers to finance these bloodbaths will be nothing but history. Then the only weapons we produce will be destined to support the working class.

FLASH — As expected, the IAM agreed to a new deal to shut down this pattern-breaking strike. Details were not released but the company is on record saying it would not reward Marietta strikers for rejecting the offers that others have accepted. Lockheed Local 709 members were under extreme pressure from the company, the government, the union hierarchy and the media, which claims there are larger numbers of scabs this time around than last time.

On March 15th, a tentative agreement was reached but the workers will remain on strike until the result of the vote is known.

General Strike Hits France to Keep 35-Hour Work-week

A massive general strike shook France on March 10, with mass marches across the country. Capitalism worldwide is trying to make workers pay for their crisis. One 32-year-old auto striker, Moussa, showed the anger and frustration which led to the strike:

"I’ve been working for the past two and a half years for Citroën, I make 1,200 euros [$1,600] a month. Management wants to force us to accept workless days paid at 60%, but I can’t accept that.…Management is offering to let us make up the workless days next year, but I don’t want to. The work conditions are too hard. We would have to work on Saturdays, in other words, six-day weeks, when we’re already really tired after four days! It’s hard on the assembly line. You have to be fast, patient, resilient, and the bosses keep us under pressure all the time…"

Philadelphia City Hall Scandal: ALL Politicians Are Crooks

PHILADELPHIA, March 12 — The scandal that has hit this city is just one more example of the kind of corruption found among all capitalist politicians, from mayors to governors to senators to presidents. We live under a system controlled completely by rich bosses. Mayor John Street answers to these people, not to the workers of Philadelphia.

Prior to the November, 2003 mayoral election, a listening device was found in the Mayor’s office, eventually revealing that the FBI was investigating the wide-spread "pay-to-play" scandal in the Street administration. "Pay-to-Play" means "if you want favorable action from City Hall, you’ll have to pay for it."

FBI involvement in such routine corruption doesn’t mean it has become a crime-fighting organization. The FBI is just as corrupt as the politicians. Street and his cronies have funneled hundreds of millions to themselves while claiming the city is "broke." This "investigation’s" purpose is to send a clear message to small-fry politicos that such sloppy selfishness won’t be allowed by the big capitalists who rule Philadelphia.

The fact is: (1) ALL politicians are crooks, no matter what their skin color; and (2) Counting on a black mayor to "do the right thing" is no different than letting a fox "guard" the chicken coop. When workers need higher wages or better mass transit, Street cries "poverty." But when the bosses want a downtown, no-tax, "enterprise zone" or a cut in their taxes, Street always claims it "benefits" the city. These anti-worker schemes create bosses’ benefits on workers’ backs.

Black politicians claim that because they’re black they’re "better." But black politicians are just as corrupt, anti-worker and pro-boss as white politicians. Many people voted for Street thinking he was "better" than Republican Sam Katz. But BOTH are hucksters. Only the color of their skin and the particular business people who back them are different. Neither has ever fought for workers’ interests.

The FBI just released a tape of a telephone conversation between Street and one of his cronies, Philadelphia lawyer Ronald White. White was up to his ears in the pay-to-play scandal but died last November before his trial began. Street and White were caught on tape discussing how they were "now forced to play the race card." These two-bit crooks want people to think they’re being attacked "just because we’re black." What hypocrisy! All mayors and city officials have enforced the real effects of racism: cops gunning down black teenagers at will as well as black people suffering from higher unemployment and lower wages. These guys couldn’t care less about the sufferings of any workers. Once again, nationalism gets you nowhere. Elections under capitalism are designed to maintain the capitalist system. They only give workers a choice of who will oppress them. Workers need internationalism and a communist system to smash all bosses and their politician servants.

Palestinian and Israeli Workers Must Unite to Tear Down Apartheid Wall

I was part of a 12-person U.S, medical delegation, including 10 Jews, wh ich recently returned from 11 days in the West Bank, occupied by Israel for 40 years. This was the latest of several trips to provide medical assistance and gather information, in partnership with Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. We found that Israel has created conditions for the Palestinians resembling the oppression Jews themselves have suffered in the past.

The most startling aspect of the Occupied Territories (OT), which include the West Bank and Gaza, is the overwhelming presence of the Israeli military and the Wall. There are over 700 checkpoints in an area the size of New Jersey. One cannot travel over 30 minutes without being stopped. Access to every city is controlled by concrete barriers and barbed wire, where people and vehicles must line up to be scrutinized by teenage Israeli soldiers with machine guns. No Palestinian can pass a checkpoint or leave his/her town without a permit. In 2003, only 56,000 permits were issued for a population of 2,300,000.

Israel plans to surround the entire OT with a 2-story-high wall, now over 1/3 complete. Although the OT border was decided in 1967 and labeled the "Green Line," Israel is building 85% of the wall inside this border, thereby seizing 11.5% of territory supposedly in the West Bank. This is partly to surround Israeli settlements illegally built throughout the Palestinian territory, and partly to capture the land on the western border containing the greatest underground water supply. Israelis and Palestinians have separate road systems, with the former able to whiz from the settlements to Israel on modern highways while the latter drive on indirect rutted roads.

The inability of people to move freely has a tremendous impact on health. Even pregnant women about to deliver must stop at checkpoints and may not be allowed to pass. Fifty-six births have occurred at these barriers, causing several deaths. Fearful of this, fewer women are getting pregnant; 30% of new-borns are delivered at home. Although several sophisticated tertiary care hospitals exist in the West Bank, patient access is virtually impossible.

A new medical school in East Jerusalem has an impressive faculty and student body, but days are lost as faculty and students try to travel from clinical settings to the school for lectures and exams. The medical library has no journals later than 2001; obtaining replacement parts for CT scanners can take over a month. Patients with chronic conditions like diabetes or kidney disease cannot get regular access to medications, specialists or dialysis, even if only a short distance from these centers. Up to 70% of children’s inoculations may be ineffective because the long delays in transit render the vaccines useless.

Israel has seized control of 90% of the water, so farmers’ crops wither while Israeli settlers enjoy swimming pools and gardens. Barriers block many farmers from their fields. Palestinians can’t work in Israel, which now imports "guest workers," creating an unemployment rate of over 50% in most Palestinian cities and villages. Two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line. Mental health and family relations suffer as children witness their parents being humiliated daily by soldiers and attacked by settlers.

The ostensible reason for this apartheid is to "protect Israel from terrorist attack," but terrorists do not cross checkpoints, and an agile person could easily skirt the barriers. Instead, the system degrades, impoverishes and humiliates all 3.5 million Palestinians and reinforces virulent racism among Israelis. Lack of contact between the two groups encourages nationalism and makes unified resistance very difficult.

There are fight-backs on both sides, sometimes uniting Israelis and Palestinians. Together, hundreds have gathered to harvest olives in barricaded groves or blocked or torn down sections of the fence and wall. Hundreds of Israeli students have refused to serve in the occupation; many have gone to prison. However, the so-called militant factions in Palestine, such as Hamas or the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, seem to fluctuate between cooperating with the Fatah party of Arafat and Abbas or launching terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. This is the nature of "national liberation" politics, followed by many OT activists.

The Israeli peace movement still believes Jewish persecution is "special" in the world, and that a Jewish state is needed to protect worldwide Jewry from present and future persecution. They don’t grasp the universal nature of racism and nationalism as bosses’ tools to oppress and divide workers and induce them to fight wars against each other. Many on both sides see Bush and Sharon as "special cases" of warmongers and fail to understand that U.S. imperialism’s need to control Mid-East oil will insure ongoing war and support for a militaristic Israel, no matter who’s in office.

In the 1970s, Israeli and Arab communists, friends of PLP, were building a revolutionary movement uniting workers in Israel and Palestine to fight for a united society without capitalism and racism. The politics of this small group was powerful enough for the Golda Meir regime to jail them for ten years. This movement must be rebuilt, based on the communist politics of fighting for multi-ethnic and international unity of all workers and youth. That’s the road out of the hell of endless wars and terror affecting the Middle East and the world.

600 Protest Racist LAPD Murder of Teenager;Boo Ex-Police Chief

LOS ANGELES, Feb 26 — Over 600 people marched to protest the LAPD police murder of Devin Brown. While politicians leading the march chanted "Stop the Killing," most marchers added, "LAPD, Stop the Killing!"

At the post-march rally, politicians tried to turn this outpouring of anger into a campaign opportunity for the Mayoral election. When mayoral candidate and ex-police chief Bernard Parks tried to co-opt this outrage, speaking about the "supposed excessive force" the police used against Devin Brown, many audience members booed and loudly expressed their anger at the word "supposed" in his speech. He barely stayed on stage for ten minutes.

Many bought CHALLENGE, agreeing that the bosses are increasing their terror because they fear the revolutionary potential of angry black and Latino youth in the military and in the factories.

Since this killing, the police killed 23-year-old Tony Diaz, shooting over 100 times into a moving vehicle. They claim he shot at them first, a story his friends refuted.

On May Day, PLP will march against racist police terror and the imperialist war in Iraq, calling for an alliance of workers, soldiers and students to fight for communist revolution to end these capitalist evils for good.

a name="Everyone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics">">"veryone Can Learn Math — And Communist Politics

"The Myth of Ability," by John Mighton. Walker & Company, New York 2003.

Mighton is a University of Toronto math professor who demonstrates in this short book that all children are equally capable of learning mathematics — a principle — as will be seen — that can be applied to political development as well. Mighton disproves the almost universal belief that children differ in ability based on their genetic make-up.

He has developed a written program called JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) for teaching teachers how to teach — demonstrating that every child can be a prodigy, if taught correctly.

Mighton says the main aspect of correct teaching lies partly in the breaking down of mathematical ideas into the most basic elements, but mainly in convincing every child that she or he is capable of learning math at the same high level as the fastest students in the class. A student’s initial speed is generally a culmination of a series of events in early childhood, often not discoverable since it is interwoven in their daily lives. Nevertheless Mighton found that proper training can overcome these initial differences.

The main obstacle to learning math is discouragement after not succeeding immediately, stemming from teachers and parents falling for the myth that math ability is an innate genetic quality. Consequently, teachers and parents only reinforce the child’s discouragement when the latter doesn’t succeed immediately, crating a vicious circle in which success breeds success and failure breeds failure.

Mighton has written a JUMP program and taught it to hundreds of teachers and volunteers who are not necessarily mathematically trained themselves. The volunteers help teachers in Canada’s overcrowded classes, enabling entire classes of children — without exception — to succeed in math.

Mighton’s says no class should proceed until every child has grasped the current step. His methods include holding the interest of children who grasp a concept more quickly, and this changes from one step to the next.

Mighton has discovered that children’s intellectual development happens in discontinuous leaps and bounds. JUMP convinces teachers who initially believe that a particular child is incapable of learning that they were wrong. The implications of this approach go far beyond teaching children math. The principles apply to political work as well.

Part of the working class’s ability to win a revolution depends on its revolutionary Party becoming convinced that every worker is capable of learning to think as a dialectical materialist and to act as a communist. That every worker is capable of adopting a class outlook and understanding that capitalism is the source of almost all our problems. That every worker is capable of learning that only a revolution led by a revolutionary communist party, the PLP, can end the almost universal misery and horror of imperialism, racism, sexism, endless war and genocide.

PLP has adopted and developed this principle of universal political ability. However, capitalist propaganda about inherent ability and the dominance of one’s individual genetic makeup over her/his life partly undermines the conviction of many of us. Most professionals buy into that myth and lie. While PLP’s success in organizing workers, students and soldiers is a much greater antidote to this fatal capitalist concept, Mighton’s book is a partial antidote and can reinforce our resolve.

The ruling class — through research grants from its foundations, through think tanks, publishing houses and publicity in its mass media — fosters the belief that ability is innate and genetic. It serves the rulers’ interests for the working class and its children to believe they’re incapable of doing higher math or any kind of serious conceptual thinking, whether about science, literature or politics.

A recent U.S. governor’s conference bemoaned the fact that most high school students are ill-trained to cope with the technological world. They realize that they suffer from a shortage of scientists who can help develop increasingly sophisticated weaponry for the ruling class’s imperialist designs of control over the world’s oil supply and other resources, as well as over markets and labor supplies. The high school drop-out rate is also cutting into the ruling class’s ability to train workers to run the industrial machine. So they are looking for ways to train more, but not most, of the working class because generally they want to keep workers in the dark about their own abilities.

The book is particularly useful for PLP teachers and parents. It should help in struggles to improve the quality of teaching in the schools, a reform that is possible only to a very limited extent under capitalism, but can help organize working-class students for capitalism’s demise.

Concentration Camps: Second Nature to Capitalism (Conclusion of a five-part series.)

May 5 marks the 60th anniversary of the raising of the Red Flag over the Reichstag, the Nazi parliament in Berlin. Previous articles detailed OSS (predecessor of the CIA) recruitment of war criminals like SS Major Von Braun and other top Nazi scientists. They later became top honchos in NASA. Auschwitz and other concentration camps were used not only for the Nazi "final solution" but also to make super-profits for German industrialists. But the Nazis did not invent concentration camps; they are part and parcel of modern capitalism-imperialism.

The Southern slave plantations and Indian reservations in the U.S. preceded Auschwitz, murdering untold black and Native peoples. The Southern plantations resembled the Nazi labor camps, extracting huge profits from slave labor.

At the end of the 19th century, the British interned many thousands in concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer Wars. Actually many capitalist countries have used concentration camps at one time or another. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans were interned in camps in California and the Western U.S.

Today, U.S. bosses have their own concentration camps in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan, and even send prisoners to be tortured in other countries. Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has written a book entitled, "Guantánamo: What the World Should Know," comparing the U.S. interrogation camps in that naval base to the WWII Nazi camps. Ratner states that the 1949 Geneva Convention specifically bans such camps to mistreat "enemy combatants," that they should be treated as POWs. That Geneva agreement was meant to prevent Nazi-type atrocities.

The U.S. government refuses to recognize prisoners in Guantánamo and other camps in Iraq and Afghanistan as POWs, instead labeling them "enemy combatants": "There is no legal justification for what they do, it matters little what they call the prisoners," adds Ratner. "The U.S. interrogators don’t use the regular questioning methods demanded by the Geneva Convention. They harass prisoners from morning to evening, torturing them, using cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, violating international treaties."

Ratner recalls that the U.S. military in Afghanistan put hundreds of people arrested by the Northern Alliance (U.S. allies) in containers so densely packed that the prisoners literally lay on top of one another. The heat was unbearable. Then soldiers shot the containers full of holes, slaughtering several hundred prisoners inside.

To whose who know the history of capitalism, how it was born in blood worldwide — as Marx said in "The Genesis of Capital" — none of this is surprising. But many still believe the U.S. is fighting "for democracy" in the Muslim world, and that torture is committed by "bad regimes" (like Saddam’s). But concentration camps, torture and mass terror are universal aspects of capitalism. The cruelty and murder may vary according to particular situations, but whether it’s Auschwitz or Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo, terror and capitalism go hand-in-hand.

Bosses Desperate to Win Latin Youth for Its Imperialist Wars

In the U.S. Army’s latest TV commercial, a Latino youth is talking to his mother. "You taught me right from wrong; how to have confidence in myself. You want me to go to college," he says, trying to convince her of something. Soon the scene fades to blank with a big "Go Army" symbol and a phone number to call the recruiter.

The bosses are desperate for young Latino soldiers and for low-wage labor to work in their war-retooled industries. They’re campaigning to win Latin youth to believe the illusion that their future lies with U.S. imperialism. One of the bosses’ tricks is promoting new "American" heroes for us to die for.

In February, the City of San Antonio and corporate sponsors like Doritos organized a massive Martin Luther King Day march. Despite San Antonio being a racist city with a small black population, its MLK march of 60,000 was the country’s largest. In late March, San Antonio will sponsor a Caesar Chavez March.

To some, this seems like progress: the U.S. has recognized past racism and has become "more democratic." Many workers and students may march again to pay homage to these past struggles. But these marches are actually tools to fool workers into thinking freedom can be achieved through patriotic U.S. politics.

As head of the United Farm Workers (UFW), Chavez represented the powerful and connected, not the working class. During the Vietnam War, he argued that farm workers should rely on their class enemies, the federal government and the war-making Democratic Party, to win their rights. While militant farm workers organized to stop scabs, Chavez insisted upon pacifism, organizing boycotts that took workers far from the workplace — the site of their real power. Rank-and-file Mexican and Filipino workers tried to build unity, but Chavez promoted divisions. Most importantly, Chavez attacked undocumented workers.

The UFW organized vigilante squads to attack immigrants trying to cross the border, and required that workers wanting to join the union produce legal immigration papers. Chavez argued that U.S. workers would be better off if undocumented immigrants were barred from the U.S.

This divide-and-conquer line promoted U.S. nationalism — the idea that Chicanos were "better" than undocumented immigrants because they were born in the U.S. Yet ultimately farm workers were just as exploited as before. No wonder U.S. bosses are interested in promoting nationalists like Chavez to the working class. Facing declining Army enlistments, they hope to shovel large numbers of Latin youth into their army to fight and kill other workers in imperialist wars.

In Iraq, U.S. imperialists are fighting to keep oil away from their rivals. To justify this war, they claim they’re spreading "democracy" worldwide. Elevating union sellouts like Chavez as U.S. heroes is part of their effort to win workers to support U.S. imperialism. Workers and students must demand "U.S. out of Iraq!" and work to smash all imperialist wars and all nationalism with revolutionary communist internationalism. We should attend these marches with our friends to spread those ideas. We must challenge the bosses’ efforts to offer us heroes and holidays.

We should bring friends we meet at these bosses’ events to May Day — the working class’s real holiday. We celebrate the millions of working-class heroes who have stood for uncompromising unity against the racist and imperialist bosses.

LETTERS

Staying in for the Long Haul

My Senior Officers decided not to send me before the Captain for missing a day due to inclement weather. Their decision was based on what they perceive to be a change in my attitude towards the brass. They’re wrong; tactics may change, not the outlook.

A group of us had been struggling against a tyrannical Officer, managing to slow his attacks. However, the chain of command began to closely monitor my buddies and me. Usually, when you can’t report back on time for duty, you may be assigned extra duty. However, in my case, they took me before a Disciplinary Review Board.

At the hearing, the NCO (highest enlisted person) accused me of "skipping duty," having a "superiority complex" towards the Chain of Command and treating white superiors different from black superiors (even though some of my buddies who I’ve been struggling with are white). After the draconian hearing (essentially attempting to discipline an insubordinate worker), I decided on my own to either consciously disobey orders or leave the base. I left the base and met with a comrade.

He talked some sense to me — stay in it for the long haul, accept whatever discipline they hand out, momentarily hold back on directly attacking the brass, focus on building the base but don’t get too far ahead of them.

When I returned, several of my buddies (one white, one black) chastised me for leaving the base. They said I should have stayed and continued to struggle instead of running off. Both were right. Another buddy agreed with them. I felt my individualism had let down both my base and the collective by taking matters into my own hands instead of relying on my buddies and the Party for guidance.

Since the incident, while reducing direct attacks on the brass, I’ve continued to carefully distribute CHALLENGE and base-build. As a result, four buddies joined me at a local meeting about police brutality and some have committed to attend May Day.

I’ve learned that right now there are limits to our struggle, a practical feature of living under a bosses’ dictatorship. This has also taught me to have some patience and a stronger faith in the people I’m working with — to look to one’s base. I will continue to take a longer-term approach, knowing that we must stay in this struggle for the long haul in order to build a workers’ state. All Power to the Workers!

Red Soldier

Banning Unions Before They Start

When is a custodian not a custodian? Apparently, when he or she is not a member of a union. By labeling them "clean-up crews," public school districts have been able to keep some of the most essential workers without union protection, and in some cases without contracts. According to a number of school representatives, workers who are not already in a union are not to be labeled custodians.

In the local school system I attended, the custodians, teachers’ aides and typists had gone three years without a contract, despite mass support from both faculty and staff. This increasingly common practice is forcing thousands of workers into low-paying jobs without benefits or decent working conditions.

A friend who is a part-time custodian at an upstate New York school told me about some of his experiences. First, it’s stated up front that no employees shall join or form a union. Secondly, part-time workers are sometimes forced to stay until 10:00 P.M. (well beyond their normal shift, thus extending beyond legal part-time hours) but are denied contracts. Raises were promised every six months depending on job performance evaluation; however, no evaluation was ever made — therefore, no raise.

My friend told me about a worker who was the model employee: he stayed late when needed, never called in sick or took personal days, always worked to the best of his abilities and never complained. The only time he missed work was to look after his sick child. Apparently, under his contract as a full-time custodian, he had exhausted his sick days (which he had been forced to use not for himself, but for his child) and was fired on the spot.

Abuses like this against workers happen all the time, many of whom are unaware of their rights as workers. Upon hearing this, I gave my friend pamphlets on workers’ rights and offered him some copies of CHALLENGE to distribute amongst his fellow workers. He was more than happy to take them and told me that the others would be very excited to read them. I’m awaiting a report on the situation and remain ready and willing to do whatever it takes to help them in their cause.

A new comrade

a name="A ‘Life-Changing’ Experience"></">A "Life-Changing’ Experience

On February 26th, my family and I went to a CHALLENGE/May Day Dinner at a friend’s house. I was the only high school student among many adults and children. Little did I know my eyes would be opened to all the hardships we must endure, everyday things we take for granted. Amid all the eating and hanging out, suddenly a conversation began about the things happening in our world, ranging from the war in Iraq to personal issues. I discovered many problems we don’t know about but need to be researched.

The people at the dinner are very involved in workers’ struggles, in spreading the truth and their ideas on what’s going on. Newspapers only give some of the facts. Who better to hear the truth from than those who actually live it?

We heard that CHALLENGE is written by the working class and has information we can’t get from a regular newspaper. It also teaches workers and students how to fight back.

Amid my amazement, the new May Day DVD was played. I marched on May Day four years ago but didn’t know much about why we were marching. This discussion revealed the importance of the march. I noticed people of all ages participating. I was inspired by all those people standing together, fighting for one cause, particularly by all the youth my age. It made me question what I’m learning in school. The video made me think, "Why shouldn’t I be able to stand up against the cruelty of racism and sexism in the work-place, my school and in my daily life? Why can’t I stand up against police brutality? WHY?" The dinner answered my question: "Why not?"

In the video a woman said she attended May Day as a "present" from her best friend. When she continued "…and it’s the best present I could ever get," it struck me that the ability to stand up to what others might fear is life-changing.

One person at the dinner said cops had approached her son after he greeted his friends and accused him of purchasing drugs. So many emotions ran inside me hearing that. Her son is my age. Now I want to let people know my opinions on people’s struggles and about my own. We made plans to organize a CHALLENGE student study group and involve my friends.

We’re off to a good start. Thirteen May Day DVDs and many CHALLENGES were distributed. I’m happy knowing that I too can contribute to the objectives of CHALLENGE and its supporters.

Bronx high school student

a name="Youth’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference">">"outh’s Vital Role At Anti-War Conference

Some friends and I helped lead a workshop at the Educators to Stop the War Conference. I really enjoyed it. It was good to learn things about topics I never would have otherwise. I also was able to present a speech about my feelings as a youth growing up in New York, about my experience at a college fair, and what I face in the future if this society remains the same.

I liked the reaction to my speech. Many people asked a lot of questions and were interested in what I had to say, including my view that capitalism offers no future to youth, that we need a communist revolution.

I think it’s important for more youth to become active in the type of work my friends and I have been exposed to. We’re taken more seriously as young adults who matter, who have important things to say. The conference was very beneficial for others to see three young panelists who care enough to take action; and for us to see adults who care about the youth.

High School Red

a name="Women ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’"></">Wo"en ‘Hold Up Half The Sky’

Solidarity greetings on International Women’s Day (IWD) from political prisoners in Peru.

Women along with our male brothers must carry forward the struggle for common interests, not reducing them to gender, and fight for a better material and spiritual life. United we must break the chains that bind us. And as women suffering double oppression, we clearly see the need to break them.

In primitive communities life was not ruled by economic or social pressures. Those pressures came with slave societies (Greece, Rome, Ancient Egypt) where a state apparatus was formed. This led to women’s first major defeat, the end of matriarchal society, turning men against us. Women entered domestic servitude, beholden to their husbands, even though both belonged to the same social class. The state, religion and the family structure were used to keep women down.

We’re never told that women discovered agriculture because their daily duties led them to see how seeds sown into earth developed and flourished. Just this fact exposes how the role of women in history’s social and economic development is always ignored.

The church continued this oppression. "St." Thomas de Aquinas labeled women the "embodiment of the devil, perverse," helping keep women oppressed and ignorant. Feudalism maintained women in domestic chores, without the right to learn reading and writing In many societies women had to walk behind men.

The 20th century saw women joining the struggle for social emancipation of all. The great revolutions of the last century helped spur the fight against oppression of women. Their participation in production as workers and the great social upheavals helped women not only to fight for many rights which they deserved but also for the need to share everything with their fellow male workers. The idea that women hold half the sky helped shatter the narrow concept that it was just a gender fight, but rather one for total liberation from class oppression.

We are always fighting to break the isolation and rules our jailers have imposed on us here. Our comrade Myriam suffers very inhuman total isolation from the rest of us, even after 10 years of imprisonment.

These are our brief comments on IWD. We hope you succeed in your goals, and would appreciate any help in ending our isolation.

Revolutionary prisoners, Chorrillos, Lima, Peru

CHALLENGE COMMENT: The struggle for the liberation of women and all workers is linked to the struggle to defeat capitalism in all its forms: free market, state capitalist, Christian or Islamic fundamentalist. The defeat of the international revolutionary movement has been very costly for all workers in Peru and worldwide. But the struggle will continue, this time for a communist society where men and women will finally be freed from all forms of oppression.

a name="‘Million Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature"></">‘M"llion Dollar Baby’: Capitalist View of Human Nature

The letters in CHALLENGE (3/16) regarding the review of "Million Dollar Baby" (3/2) were unnecessarily negative. The comrade from the "Frozen North" deserves a great deal of credit for analyzing a bit of capitalist culture, especially since such critiques are rare in CHALLENGE.

Resources are in short supply I’m sure; and, true, the review could have been longer and more explanatory. However, the letter writers’ missed the comrade’s correct point: capitalism chooses what to portray and how to express the portrayal. In this case Eastwood created a film in the genre of hopelessness, a sub-species of the main genre: collective struggle is impossible. Daytime TV specializes in this field, particularly the "innocent victim" variety.

Capitalist culture is intended to manipulate the audience to accept a particular view of "human nature": greedy, helpless, mired in religious superstition, pointlessly brutal and rescued only by a "hero." Clearly the letter writers were profoundly affected by this manipulation.

In the absence of Communist culture, PLP should be destructively critical of the capitalist view of "human nature" in all its media forms. Instead of being "gut wrenchingly" moved, workers might become angry at such insidious manipulation.

A long-time reader

a name="Eastwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled">">"astwood’s Fascist Attack on Disabled

My friends and I think the movie "Million Dollar Baby" is fascist because it promotes euthanasia or murder of disabled people. The working class is under attack, and our disabled, ill and elderly are the most vulnerable. Politicians discuss taking apart Social Security and Medicare; Medicaid and in-home support services are slashed; millions have no access to health care whatsoever; and the bosses’ wars disable more people daily. So what does Hollywood offer us? Death in the form of an unlikely injury with suicide as the only reasonable resolution.

Director and millionaire Clint Eastwood is no friend of the disabled. Angered by a lawsuit against a hotel he owns where restrooms were inaccessible, he testified before Congress against the Americans with Disabilities Act, calling it "a form of extortion." He’s made a movie in which no one on the hospital staff offers support, counseling or medication to someone struggling with depression from a new and devastating injury. Eastwood’s message is clear: life with disability is without value and better ended. This was a position implemented by the Nazis in the 1930’s and extended to the elderly and other "undesirables."

In the article, "Why Disability Studies Matter," Leonard J. Davis points out, "It’s a lot easier to make a movie in which we weep for the personal defeat of a person who loses a leg or two, or cry with joy for the triumph of an individual with disabilities, than it is to change the whole way we as a society envision, think about, and deal with people who are disabled." As workers and organizers, we need to learn to look beyond individual problems to societal causes. Disability is a part of life that sooner or later touches us all. How can we raise these issues with our friends, neighbors, and co-workers? How would a communist society deal with and integrate those with illness and limitations?

a name="Reviewer’s Response">">"eviewer’s Response

I don’t think my review of "Million Dollar Baby" (CHALLENGE, 3/2) deserved such nasty, uncomradely attacks as printed in CHALLENGE (3/16). One writer says the Morgan Freeman character was anything but an uncle tom: "He could have been any color." That’s true, and Freeman is a good actor, but he was chosen for the role, I contend, for the same reason a black actor was chosen to play the betraying Judas in "Jesus Christ, Superstar." In whose interest was making the bad guy in that movie black? Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice do their fascist jobs very well, regardless of their color, but anyone who doubts that the rulers use them for other motives is sadly naïve. Would it be wrong to call them uncle toms?

My examining the two vicious black fighters and comparing them to Freeman’s character suggested his was not the best way a black character might have acted. He accepts with an ironic smile an incredibly racist, though naïve, remark from one fighter. Couldn’t he have explained to the guy that he was a victim of racist propaganda, but should watch his mouth in the future? Apparently Eastwood felt this would have been wrong. (Freeman was right in beating up a black fighter who had been sadistically pounding on the same man who called Freeman the "n" word. But from a structural point of view, what did this imply?)

A comrade once told me a southern guy he worked with said to a terrific black co- worker, "If I ever use a word that offends you, please forgive me. That’s how I was raised." The black worker replied: "Sure, and if I wind up punching you out, please understand that’s how I was raised." Which irony do you prefer?

Also, I don’t see that Eastwood’s previous openness as a fascist figure has been modified, either by this movie or "The Unforgiven," A friend suggested I see "Unforgiven." When I told a friend I thought Eastwood’s a fascist, the friend said, "He was a fascist, but here he’s apologizing for it." After seeing it I told him, "Unforgiven’s more fascistic." In the last scene when Eastwood’s riding out of town, one of the bad has a perfect shot at Eastwood’s retreating back but doesn’t fire. This simply implies he’s a Nazi "superman." Many people watch movies and think they’re just looking in someone’s window. No! Writers and directors are using a general over-riding metaphor — called by fascist poet T.S. Eliot "the objective correlative."

I don’t think the movie is an "indictment of boxing," or that it’s a "great film," though my review said it was generally well-made and well-acted. Which makes it even worse, having more power to suck us in. "The Godfather" was a great movie, but I have no illusions about its not being racist, anti-Semitic, pro-business and ultimately fascist. It was wonderfully written, made and acted, and its power is what I have against it. More so than this movie, which — except for what happens to Maggie — is a fairly trite story, and not at all anti-boxing. (If the film had continued the rise of Maggie’s character, there essentially wouldn’t have been a movie.)

Why didn’t anyone attack my point about the disgusting anti-white working-class message of the film? Doesn’t that matter? My charge of racism against black people was denied, not answered.

The tone of the letters is the way to shut people up. It takes more thought and political arguing than is shown by saying, "I liked it." So what? I somewhat liked it too, until after some thought I separated what it says from how it says it. Hollywood, and especially Eastwood, with his pro-vicious cop, anti-people persona he carries around like a third arm, poisons and deludes good people. I think the two fans fall into this category. Cleaning up at the Oscars further proves my point.

Perhaps I’m way off in my analysis, but don’t question my motives: prove me wrong. If you only want people to repeat what they "feel," you’re not going to have any dialogue at all. You can’t learn without struggle.

North Country Red

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Excerpts from mainstream newspapers exposing a bit of the true nature of the system

Poll makes Marx a Founding Father

Most adults haven’t read the Constitution since grade school….

Another recent survey found that two out of three Americans believe that Karl Marx’s blueprint for communism — "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" — is part of this nation’s defining document. (L.A. Times)

Iraq shows limits of US power

A low-tech enemy force estimated at about 10,000 fighters has stymied the mightiest military establishment the world has ever seen. To be sure, the adversary cannot defeat us militarily. But neither can we defeat it…

The actual limits of American power now lay exposed for all to see…. (LA Times, 2/23)

Vets left uninsured and homeless

But when a vet does return to home and hearth you might suppose that at the very least he would be well cared for. Forget it. The president has reduced the income threshold for entitlement to health care. Now if you earn more than $25,000 from all sources, you’re medically on your own. Consequently whole regiments of vets have no health insurance at all, while damage to their lungs, brains and nervous systems is not considered "service-connected." Nor are there any longer housing programs, so traumatized vets are homeless far beyond their ratio in the community. (Liberal Opinion Week, 3/2)

Over $500 billion yearly for army

To fund the war machine needed to push foreign policy objectives in the Middle East and to guarantee military dominance in the world….[yearly] spending will rise to $419.3 billion, not including the $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, and billions more for the military hidden in other agency budgets.

U.S. military spending is now larger than the rest of the world’s combined. The second largest is by China, at $51 billion….

Double death rate for black men

Middle-aged black men are dying at nearly twice the rate of white men of a similar age, reflecting lower incomes and poorer access to health care, a study has found….

The death rate for black men ages 45 to 54 was 1,060 per 100,000 in 2000, compared with a rate of 503 for white men. (NYT, 2/10)

Inter-imperialist rivalry heating up

Adm. William Fallon,…to become commander, U.S. Pacific Command said…the United States must closely watch China’s "unprecedented" growth in military spending and maintain a "credible" deterrence against North Korea to facilitate six-party nuclear talks.

"Although the economic relationship between the United States and China is expanding, we must gain greater insight into China’s growth in military spending, its intentions toward Taiwan, and its regional strategy in Asia and the Pacific," Fallon said….

…Fallon said the planned U.S. military global realignment will not affect the capabilities to defend South Korea and Japan and to deal with a possible crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

As for the stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, Fallon said, "The U.S. Pacific Command’s job is to facilitate ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at addressing the threat, while maintaining a credible deterrent posture." (Navy Times, 2/28)

Afghans’ abusers set up Abu Ghraib

Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public….

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said….

…The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there. (NYT, 3/12)

‘Democracy’ serves Big Business

Watching the 109th Congress, one would be forgiven for thinking our Constitution was the blueprint for a government of Big Business, by Big Business and for Big Business….

Here’s the agenda….First, limit people’s power to right wrongs done to them by corporations. Next force people to repay usurious loans to credit card companies that make gazillions off the fine print. Then, for coup de grace, hand over [U.S.] history’s most successful public safety net [Social Security] to Wall Street.

Of course,…."Tort reform," "eliminating abuse of bankruptcy" and "keeping Social Security solvent" are the preferred Beltway phrasings for messing with the little guy. (LA Times, 2/23)

1. Fallout Among Imperialist Thieves:
   Bush Trips Over Europe's Bosses' Flirtation with China
2. The $4.6 Trillion Swindle: War Budget Is Killing Social Security
3. Bush Energy Czar Serves Big Oil
4. U.S. Rulers' Nuclear Arms Deadly for GI's, Iraqi Civilians
5. Rally Against Fascist Frame-Up of Lynne Stewart
6. Boeing Boss's Nationalist BS Falls Flat
7. Jailing of Boeing Swindler Won't Help Workers
8. Fight Airport Bosses' Racist Attack on Immigrant Workers
9. Roxbury Students, Faculty Back Vets Opposing Iraq War
10. Stroger Hospital Workers Fight for Anti-Racist Contract
11. Sailor Brings History of U.S. Racism to Navy Buddies
12. LA Elections: Democrats Line Up Behind Racist Warmakers
13. Racism Over Cop Murder of LA Youth Mirrors U.S. Slaveowners
14. Liberal Democrats Grease Path for Slimeball Negroponte
15. Building PLP in El Salvador
16. Iraqi Oil Workers Oppose Occupation's Anti-Union Attacks
17. Robots Won't Solve U.S. Bosses' `Vietnam Syndrome'
18. Nazi Concentration Camps:
    Model For Capitalist Factories
19. LETTERS
    1. Condemn Killings of Iraqi Unionists
    2. Nazis Bolstered Argentine Fascism
    3. Workers Agree: Rebellions Looming
    4. FIght Stewart Verdict As `Legal' Fascism
    5. Building Worker-GI-Student Alliance
    6. Anti-Communists Spread Lies About Stalin
    7. CHALLENGE's Jab At `Million Dollar Baby' Missed Target
    8. More Million Dollar Baby
20. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Violence vs. recruiters grow in US
    2. `Democracy' blocks workers' will
    3. Chinese die of fever cured by Reds
    4. One reason TV is replacing reading
    5. Making a joke of the next war
    6. How to save Medicare: Die Sooner
    7. New East Europe: Profits, poverty
    8. Money talks in danger-drug vote
    9. `Liberated' by US, Afghans suffer

---

Fallout Among Imperialist Thieves:
Bush Trips Over Europe's Bosses' Flirtation with China

Europe's disputes with the U.S. over China and Iran point to the future shape of grand alliances, as competition among the world's imperialists sharpens. Bush's trip to Europe highlighted two quarrels. Despite U.S. objections, the European Union (EU) will lift its ban on selling arms to China. And the EU will offer diplomatic bribes and business deals to a nuke-bent Iran, while the U.S. threatens armed force. It appears that China, Europe (essentially France and Germany) and Iran envision a long-term strategic partnership directly opposed to the U.S. The other major players are Russia and India. Bush's talks with Putin failed to dampen Russia's nuclear aid to Iran or its plans to keep Europe beholden to a nationalized Russian oil and gas industry. Energy-hungry India will side with the power that can guarantee it decades of supplies, most likely the Russia-Iran camp.

Oil and gas lie at the heart of the imperialists' struggle. But the stakes go beyond energy. What's looming is a re-division of the world like the one Lenin described in "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism," on the eve of World War I. China desperately needs fuel for its rapidly growing economy. Last year it signed a $100-billion 25-year deal with Iran for liquefied natural gas. And for China to control the sea lanes that supply it, "intelligence projections [indicate] that the size of the Chinese fleet could surpass that of the United States Navy within a decade." (New York Times, (2/18)

For European rulers, ending the arms ban represents far more than a business deal. The CIA fears, "A China armed with weapons technologies from Europe facing American forces in the South China Sea could forever change the post-cold war geopolitical order. Growing links with China could eventually shift EU allegiance away from the 60-year-old transatlantic status quo: An EU-China alliance, though still unlikely, is no longer unthinkable." (London Financial Times, 2/10) A nuclear Iran, friendly to the EU and China, would further weaken U.S. rulers' grip on Saudi Arabia and Iraq. U.S. rulers have proved willing to spill barrels of workers' blood to retain these treasures.

The imperialists slaughtered hundreds of millions of workers in the 20th Century, carving up the globe into spheres of influence. This murder for profit will continue until a mass, international PLP leads a communist revolution. For now, the capitalists have the upper hand, and aligning their forces for inter-imperialist battle is the order of the day.

Irwin Seltzer of the Hudson Institute warns, "We are witnessing nothing less than the geo-politicalization of the world's oil and gas industry. Governments rather than traditional commercial enterprises are taking control. And those governments have interests hostile to America's. China is forging closer economic and political ties in the Middle East, and not only because it needs more oil. Its rapidly increasing trade with Iran is not the ordinary buying and selling of profit-driven companies....A new supply of oil and a chance to thumb its nose at the American embargo are an irresistible combination for this emerging superpower."

The Hudson Institute speaks mainly for Wall Street investors worried about dwindling U.S influence in Europe. Seltzer continues, "Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been developing a new policy instrument to reassert Russian power, Russian gas and oil-exporting companies that already all but dominate Europe's energy. According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020 natural gas will account for 62% of Europe's energy consumption, and Russia will supply two-thirds of that gas. This has more than commercial consequences. When Gerhard Schroder told a television audience that Putin was a `dyed-in-the-wool democrat,' the German chancellor was indicating he was not prepared to bite the hand that controlled the valves of the pipelines that warmed his country. Germany already gets 35% of its oil and 40% of its gas from Russia, figures that will increase as it pursues its policy of winding down its nuclear power industry." (London Sunday Times, 1/30)

India, predicted to soon surpass China in population, has long been allied politically with Russia. Energy requirements are leading India, like China, into direct competition with the U.S. for cheap Middle East oil. Chevron Texaco's CEO David O'Reilly said in a February 15 speech in Houston, "We're seeing the beginning of alliances between Asian entities and Middle East entities for the long term. It's very important that our government recognize that." By "government" O'Reilly means Bush, the Pentagon, and the entire U.S. war machine.

The working class also has its marching orders: build a mass international revolutionary party -- the communist PLP. Then workers, soldiers and students worldwide can marshal their forces to turn the endless wars leading to another imperialist world war and the plague of capitalism into a revolutionary war for communism. It's a long hard road, but every step we take helps. Marching on May Day and increasing CHALLENGE circulation will shorten that road.

The $4.6 Trillion Swindle: War Budget Is Killing Social Security

The debate over Social Security masks a trillion-dollar swindle that's been pulled off for nearly four decades by every Democratic and Republican president who has occupied the White House. The crisis is not of Social Security, but of U.S. capitalism, mired in a multi-trillion dollar debt resulting from 40 years of military spending for imperialist wars in Vietnam, Grenada, Central America, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq and more, that has stolen at least $2 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund. The forecast is that it will steal another $2.6 trillion over the next ten years.

In 1968, the Johnson Administration's spending on the U.S. invasion of Vietnam was spinning the Federal budget into bottomless debt. The Social Security Trust Fund's income from payroll taxes was exceeding the amount paid out to retirees. So the Johnson gang figured out a way to "balance the budget" by "folding" what was then a few billion dollars in Social Security surplus into what would now be called the Unified Federal Budget, even though it was illegal to take money from the Trust Fund and spend it for purposes other than Social Security.

By this sleight of hand, Johnson was able to announce a "surplus," masking the federal deficit generated by the enormous expenses of the Vietnam War. To avoid the appearance of stealing the Trust Fund's surplus, the government gave the Fund Treasury notes equal to what it "borrowed," and promised to pay it back with interest. This scheme laid the basis for what is now a $2 trillion debt owed to Social Security.

By the early 1980's, Reagan's military budget was running wild and the federal deficit was soaring. The Unified Federal Budget meant that any surplus from Social Security could be used "to pay for everything from jet fighters to thumb tacks." (NY Times, 1/21/90)

Reagan set up a commission, headed by current Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which proposed -- and the Democratic-controlled Congress passed -- an increase in Social Security taxes to 12.4% (6.2% of wages combined with 6.2% of the payroll contributed by employers) so the Baby Boomer generation would be able to collect Social Security when it started retiring. The share paid by employers is actually the workers' money since our labor produced it.

The Greenspan Commission pulled off a neat trick. The Reagan Administration was cutting the income tax rates for the rich -- down from 70% to 28%. While corporate income taxes fell by 23%, Social Security taxes rose 23%. "The burden of taxation was shifted from the income tax to the Social Security tax...[75%] of all Americans now pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in income taxes. [Therefore]...the expenses of government are financed more by a tax on the poor and the middle class and less by a tax on the wealthy." (NY Times, 1/21/90)

The Social Security surplus grew sharply and is now running at $200 billion a year. These surpluses, as part of the "Unified" Federal Budget, help pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and make the federal deficit appear smaller than it really is.

"Since 1983, American workers havebeen paying more into Social Security than it has paid out in benefits, $1.8 trillion more...So what has happened to that $1.8 trillion? The...payments have all been spent." (NY Times, 2/20/04) Another $200 billion of surplus was gobbled up in 2004. According to Bush's 2004 Social Security "reform" proposal, "Surpluses in the Social Security Trust Funds will total $2.6 trillion over the next ten years."(A Blue print For New Beginnings,

whitehouse.gov/news/usbudget/blueprint/bud04)

That means by 2015 the Federal government will owe the Trust Fund $4.6 trillion in accumulated surpluses.

Now Bush & Co. want to push Social Security further into the hole by setting up private accounts, swelling the coffers of the Wall Street investment houses who'll handle these accounts. This will require either an older retirement age, benefit cuts for future retirees or both, to make up for the shortages this "reform" will create. Bush even had the gall to tell black community and religious leaders they should support his "reform" because black people have a shorter life span than whites, and therefore many never even collect Social Security. These "leaders" didn't even protest Bush's use of U.S. capitalism's racism -- the cause of these shortened lives -- as a "positive" aspect of his "reform" proposal. (See CHALLENGE, 2/16.)

The Democrats are crying "foul," but it was Johnson, Carter and Clinton, just as much as Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, who spent trillions of Social Security surpluses on wars and corporate welfare instead of preserving them for future retirees who paid for their retirement with the tax increases passed 20 years ago.

Capitalism will always try to solve its crises on the backs of the workers, who produce all value in society. This will continue until the working class, led by its revolutionary communist party, destroys the bosses' state power and establishes a communist society here retired workers will be provided for by the social value produced by our entire class. Profits and imperialist wars will not be part of that picture.

Bush Energy Czar Serves Big Oil

Samuel Bodman, Bush's new energy secretary, has loyally served the Eastern Establishment wing of U.S. imperialism all his adult life. Fresh out of MIT in 1965, Bodman joined American Research & Development as technical director. ARD channeled Boston bosses' venture capital into high-tech start-ups making products with military applications. ARD launched computer pioneer Digital.

At ARD, Bodman trained under General Georges Doriot. Starting in 1940, Doriot helped plan U.S. industrial mobilization for World War II as deputy director of R&D for the War Department. Bodman later became president of Boston's blueblood Fidelity, the world's largest mutual fund. Mutual funds concentrate scattered wealth into the hands of a few finance capitalists, who in turn, put it to uses -- like imperialist war -- that serve the capitalist class as a whole. After Fidelity, Bodman took the helm of the Cabot Corporation, a chemical and energy company owned by a family synonymous with U.S. imperialism. The first famous Henry Cabot Lodge championed the U.S. invasion of Spanish territories in 1898. The next one helped the U.S. carry out genocide in Vietnam.

Bodman will put the war needs of imperialist giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco ahead of the interests of the U.S. coal companies and small oil drillers that his predecessor Spencer Abraham tried to serve. Chevron boss David O'Reilly was speaking directly to Bodman when he said, "we need alignment of energy policy with other policies central to our national interest -- environmental, economic, trade, and national security." (Houston speech, 2/15)

U.S. Rulers' Nuclear Arms Deadly for GI's, Iraqi Civilians

There's a nuclear war raging, and it's in Iraq. Considering the tons of depleted uranium (DU) used by the U.S. military, "The Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war." (S.F. Bay View, 2/2/05).

"The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence," according to Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law. "Of the 580,000 soldiers who served in...the first Gulf War,...11,000 are now dead! By...2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability," reports Bernklau. "This astounding number of `Disabled Vets' means that a decade later, 56% of these soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!" Disability rates in 20th century wars were 5%. In Vietnam it was 10%.

Marion Fulk, a nuclear chemist who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and worked on the Manhattan Project that constructed the first atomic bomb, says the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers in the current Iraq war is "spectacular." Bernklau reports that, "This malady [Gulf War Syndrome] from uranium munitions, that thousands...have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness." (Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169)

A special report published by scientist Leuren Moret ("Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets. A death sentence here and abroad") named DU as the definitive cause of the Gulf War Syndrome.

Of course, these figures of DU-caused deaths of U.S. soldiers in the first Gulf War, the bombing of Iraq throughout the 1990's and the current Iraq war -- put in "harm's way" by the administrations of Bush, Sr., Clinton and Bush, Jr. -- does not include hundreds of thousands of deaths of Iraqi civilians. They will be affected for decades by the DU embedded in the ground from bombs rained down on the country.

When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for "destroying things and people,"Fulk was specific: "I would say it's the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!"

Rally Against Fascist Frame-Up of Lynne Stewart

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 17 -- Tonight about 500 people attended a rally in a community church here as part of a "national day of outrage" protesting the conviction of defense attorney Lynne Stewart. PLP members sold over 100 CHALLENGEs. The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and the National Lawyers Guild organized the event. Following a panel of speakers, there was a speak-out from the audience.

Several speakers, including Stewart, said this case marks a leap forward in fascist moves by the ruling class. The whole post-9/11 atmosphere was used in the trial to "persuade" the jury to railroad Stewart. Prosecutors charged that Stewart's act of issuing a press release on behalf of her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, made her and one of her co-defendants guilty of "supporting terrorism." No violence resulted from the release of this statement. Stewart was really convicted because the prosecution highlighted her anti-U.S. government politics. This verdict is an attack on anyone and everyone who militantly opposes imperialism, racism, and other attacks on the working class.

However, the political outlook of the meeting's organizers is a defensive strategy for fighting back. Although developments in the U.S. were compared to those in Nazi Germany, there was no real attempt to show the historical role of the working class, particularly under communist leadership, in defeating fascism. And growing U.S. fascism was not placed in the context of the worldwide conflicts that give rise to it. So, without such an alternative approach, we're left with liberal outrage and demands for the return of stolen civil liberties.

At least two speakers did point out the connection between this case and U.S. rulers' imperialist war plans. One said the Hart-Rudman report, written before 9/11, devised the concept of "homeland security." He said the bosses need a national security police state in order to mobilize the population to support Mid-East oil wars. Stewart's conviction reflects how the capitalists' control of state power is being used to further these goals. The only real alternative to the police state and endless wars of capitalism is to build a mass communist-led movement to fight for a system without any bosses: communism.

The Stewart case provides a great opportunity -- and responsibility --for PLP'ers to point out to our friends the role of the state under capitalism, and other communist ideas. We should raise this case in all the organizations we belong to and activate many workers and students to participate in the fight back. We can organize Party forums to discuss the case, and all political questions linked to it. We should also try to bring out as many people as possible to a rally outside the U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan on the day of Stewart's sentencing this September.

Boeing Boss's Nationalist BS Falls Flat

"Don't you want to be number one?" asked the big boss at a general meeting of hundreds of Boeing workers, pleading with us to shout back our approval. He had just finished detailing how Europe's Airbus was "beating" Boeing. We've never had a presentation like this before, but the biggest shock was our answer: dead silence, a silence that spoke volumes.

"We need a little more enthusiasm!" he prodded. Now we were getting angry so he dropped the whole subject and sent us back to work.

This presentation was slick, professional and computerized, indicating it was prepared at the corporate level. No doubt all Boeing workers are being subjected to this nationalist "pep-talk."

Workers Ponder Propaganda Change

The next day a group of us pondered what all this meant. "This has nothing to do with us," said one Machinist, "It's all about Boeing and Airbus corporate [biggest bosses]."

"I was going to say something about those figures," said another, referring to how Airbus reinvests twice as much as Boeing in airplane manufacture.

"Yeah, but maybe that silence was the best answer!" offered a third, to laughs all around.

Usually, the bosses' propaganda focuses on production metrics, promising that our security lies in meeting production goals. This was the most overt attempt ever to whip us up against a foreign rival.

This nationalist appeal fell flat with this group. But have no illusions; the bosses and their labor lieutenants haven't given up. In fact, as reported in the last CHALLENGE, the union leadership plans a big nationalist campaign during the contract fight.

We must increase the circulation of our paper to answer this company/union propaganda. We plan to rebuild our CHALLENGE networks during the contract fight, the summer project and over the next year -- equaling the level we had preceding the recent layoffs. We have our own metrics: CHALLENGE sales indicate internationalist, communist politics are being considered as an alternative.

(Next issue: "How the fight against racism dovetails with the fight against nationalism," and "War reorganization marches on with the sale of the huge Wichita plant.")

Jailing of Boeing Swindler Won't Help Workers

Michael Sears, former Boeing Co. chief financial officer, was sentenced to four months in prison February 18 for illegally hiring an Air Force official, who was simultaneously awarding the company an aerial tankers contract worth billions. The scandal-ridden deal has since been withdrawn.

"Four months at the country club," was the cynical response of workers at our plant. Even if just four months in the worst dungeon, we should have no illusions that this sentence was motivated by the desire to seek justice.

The bosses have embroiled us in a "stunningly expensive war in Iraq." They've tried to substitute high-tech weapons for larger numbers of committed troops, which, apparently, the bosses don't have and can't recruit any time soon. The ruling class intends to pay for these weapons by mainly attacking the working class, but they're also disciplining their own.

As Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney in Alexandria and leading member of the Procurement Fraud Working Group, sees it, "the government has been pouring enormous sums of money into contracting [for war]." (Washington Post, 2/19)

"Mr. Sears had a clear choice," McNulty said. "Instead of respecting the integrity of the government's procurement system, he chose the financial interests of his company over the best interest of America." (Our emphasis -- Ed.)

We workers can't fall for this "national interest" garbage. The "national interest" is the interest of the biggest bosses. Sears ran afoul of the needs of imperialism. Good riddance to bad rubbish, but let's have no illusions that this represents anything other than more trouble for the working class.

Fight Airport Bosses' Racist Attack on Immigrant Workers

The class struggle has sharpened at the airport where we work. We had a spirited union meeting at work organized by the workers and their shop steward who is a PLP member. Workers distributed fliers inviting their co-workers. We're trying to fight management's racist attacks on immigrant workers, both part-timers and full-timers. During the meeting, one manager tried walking by but quickly left the area after the workers spotted him.

In the short term, we need multi-racial unity and internationalism. In the long run we need all this plus communist revolution. This struggle has produced three more CHALLENGE readers.

During the meeting we drafted a letter for the union to give to the bosses accusing them of institutional racism by deliberately hiring Latin workers for full-time positions and Africans and Asians for part-time work. This color-coding of job categories divides the workers and allows the bosses to reap racist super-profits.

Also, full-time Latin immigrant workers are having their immigration status questioned. Some are being fired, even though they received letters from the Immigration Service giving them a grace period until September to put their papers in order. The bosses want to replace them with more part-timers, to pay lower wages without benefits, which is an attack on all workers.

We want an apology from the company to workers who had their immigration status questioned, and we want all workers who were fired for this to be rehired. One woman was not only fired over her immigration status but was also sexually harassed by her supervisor. We want an end to color-coding of jobs and more full-time jobs. If nothing changes, we'll broaden the struggle and invite others to look at the company's racist hiring and promotion practices.

Airport Red

Roxbury Students, Faculty Back Vets Opposing Iraq War

BOSTON, MA, Feb. 4 -- "You are not a murderer. You're one of the heroes of our generation."

So commented a member of an audience of over 50 students and faculty at Roxbury Community College (RCC) to Michael Hoffman, Iraq War veteran and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Michael explained that he joined the Marines because his friends joined, that his brainwashed mindset was to stay alive and get back home, and that he felt remorseful for having participated in Operation Shock and Awe, the initial invasion of Baghdad.

As soon as he finished, someone in the audience called him a murderer, setting off an intense discussion about the choices soldiers face and the role they play. Michael responded by accepting his guilt but also condemning the guilt of the U.S. ruling class that sent him and other young working-class men and women to kill and maim innocent Iraqis and be killed and maimed for oil.

Owning up to his participation in a genocidal war was the first step toward dedicating his life to building the anti-war movement. A psychology professor further defended Michael, explaining that soldiers must be normal to be accepted into the military, but then the military brutalizes them, making them psychologically abnormal.

Two RCC students who helped organize the event presented a class analysis of the war. One student exposed the real reason for the war as not just for oil for use and profit, but also the strategic power it gives the U.S. ruling class over its imperialist rivals. He said the recent elections in Iraq were a farce, which the U.S. orchestrated to legitimize a layer of Iraqi elite, "a lot of little Saddams," with whom they can wheel and deal.

Another student urged the audience to take a stand against the war by confronting military recruiters who go after "people who look like me." He spoke persuasively for a new kind of anti-war movement that does more than organize marches, but also aims to damage the war machine. He announced a plan to oppose military recruitment and many students signed on.

An RCC faculty member recalled the tens of thousands of soldiers in Vietnam who resisted and rebelled against racism and imperialism, hastening the U.S. defeat and the end of the war. Back then, students were targeting their own colleges' active support of the war, striking, shutting down ROTC programs, chasing military recruiters off campuses. She pointed out that today military recruiters are walking around freely right here at RCC.

The growth of the anti-war movement among soldiers and vets is a big step forward in the fight against U.S. imperialism. PLP is playing an important role in bringing anti-imperialist war consciousness to RCC; its influence is growing modestly here.

A group of students who know from their own life experience that capitalism is a fatally flawed system is now gaining an historical perspective. They're being exposed to a real alternative -- communist revolution. As budding student organizers, they're sharpening the struggle among many other students to see working-class politics as the key to liberation.

Stroger Hospital Workers Fight for Anti-Racist Contract

CHICAGO, IL, Feb. 22 -- About a dozen Stroger Hospital (formerly called Cook County Hospital) workers attended the monthly meeting of SEIU Local 20 tonight to call for a demonstration to mobilize workers around our contract fight and demand an end to racist firings. While the local leadership was able to sidestep the resolution for these demands this time, still Stroger workers are getting valuable experience in the class struggle, and a new fighting anti-racist leadership is emerging throughout the hospital.

Dozens of workers have been fired since the new "reform" union leadership took office two years ago, with three times as many firings as the rest of the County Health System combined! Racist Food Service boss Anjad Ali has fired one-third of these. Just as the union has no plan to answer the County's rejection of almost every contract proposal, it also has had no response to the racist firings except to file grievances. Stroger workers proposed that re-hiring all fired and suspended workers should be a principal contract demand, instead of fighting each individual case one at a time. We should strike to end this reign of racist terror against workers and patients.

In December, Stroger workers led the fight to defeat Local 20's "New Vision" dues increase. Hundreds signed petitions asking to delay the vote until after the new contract is resolved. Instead, the SEIU leadership tried to gift-wrap the dues hike as a "strike fund," even though they aren't fighting anybody! They held special meetings and had their staffers working overtime, distributing expensive, glossy literature pushing the dues hike. They organized rides to the polling places for "Yes" votes, while 40 Stroger workers stood in the lobby waiting for a ride that never came. But the workers had another "vision," and the leadership was defeated.

Last spring, we fought and saved the jobs of 10 black respiratory therapists threatened with mass racist firing. The union's initial response then was that they had no choice but to honor a bad agreement made by the previous leadership. If we have learned nothing else from these struggles, it's that our political understanding and organizational strength determine our ability to fight back.

The bosses are trying to terrorize us so they can force us to pay even more for their imperialist war in Iraq and fascist Homeland Security police state. Bush's new federal budget gives more than $750 billion to the Pentagon and Homeland Security while cutting everything from food stamps to day-care to literacy programs. County President Stroger and the County Commissioners, almost all Democrats, just voted unanimously to cut tens of millions from the new budget.

We will have to fight like hell to hold on to what we can, and to get our fired brothers and sisters back. But the long-term victory is in building a mass PLP and winning many Stroger workers to participate in May Day! That's what we fight for, today and every day.

Sailor Brings History of U.S. Racism to Navy Buddies

I invited several of my Navy buddies to attend our local Amnesty International group meeting at a local university. Four came, three from my shop and one from boot camp on another ship. Our senior comrade brought a goodly college contingent.

The topic was Racial Profiling/Police Brutality. I was asked to make the presentation as an African American. I reviewed police brutality against African Americans back to the kidnapping and sale of indigenous Africans into chattel slavery as a criminal act and extreme form of brutality. I covered the Underground Railroad, the catching of runaway slaves, mob violence, the Ku Klux Klan instilling fear and perpetuating racism on behalf of the ruling class, and the complicity of the capitalist state in this brutality. (In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson showed Birth of A Nation at the White House; it portrayed the Klan as heroes, not terrorists.)

I also touched on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's and all the violent police brutality against protestors in Alabama -- the terror bombing of homes, unleashing vicious dogs on defenseless Civil Rights workers and the Alabama National Guard's attack on 600 protestors on Selma, Alabama's "Bloody Sunday." And I included recent cases, from the killings of Amadou Diallo and Archie Elliott to the rebellions both in Los Angeles and Cincinnati.

My friends enjoyed the discussion. My white buddy from boot camp said he was profiled for entering black neighborhoods and attending parties with friends there. A black friend stressed the need to actively organize. While posing liberal solutions -- voting and lobbying politicians -- it's good he wants to get involved. Through this process, we hope to sharpen the contradictions, demonstrating the uselessness of reform and the ultimate need for working-class revolution.

My buddies are looking forward to the next meeting. We're working to involve more sailors.

My most important points were: police brutality is an extension of ruling-class violence against our class, the workers, in order to discipline us to serve in the rulers' wars and profit machines; that racism is economic super-exploitation of black and Latino workers, plus the ideology to justify it. Police brutality ultimately is used against all workers, especially those who fight racism and class exploitation. No constitutional amendments, no civil rights laws and no liberal politician can change this. Only a mass movement establishing a dictatorship over the bosses will end police violence against workers.

I hope my buddies will one day (after much struggle) join the Party and devote their lives to our class.

Navy Red

LA Elections: Democrats Line Up Behind Racist Warmakers

LOS ANGELES, March 1 -- The relentless march towards militarization, war, cuts in wages and benefits, and racist police repression is reflected in U.S. cities. Los Angeles is no exception. The country's second largest city is a Democratic Party stronghold. Multi-million dollar fund-raisers hosted by limousine liberals from the entertainment and real estate industries help fund national Democratic candidates.

City government here is almost entirely run by local Democratic Party politicians. Mayor James Hahn is a Democrat, as is nearly every City Council member. Los Angeles is a "blue city."

The Democrats are just as much servants of the ruling class (big-time bosses) as Bush: more cops and jails, tax breaks for the rich, regressive taxes on the working class, cutbacks in health care and other public programs, wage and benefit cuts for public employees and police attacks on black and Latino youth. In recent months:

* The LA City Council passed an enormous tax cut for local businesses, costing the city over $100,000,000. Its rationale: give the entertainment industry a boost.
* The City Council gave tax breaks, also worth over $100,000,000, to a billionaire, Phillip Anschutz, to build a downtown hotel / luxury condominium complex.
* To offset this loss of income and long-term budget reductions due to Federal and State government siphoning of funds for imperialist war, many City Council members want a half-cent sales tax increase to hire more cops. In addition, they're regularly piling on increased fees for basic municipal services, such as garbage collection and water.
* They have also stuck it to most City employees. With union leaders' tacit approval, the Mayor and Council have denied City workers a cost-of-living adjustment this year, while the cost of their benefits, like health insurance, creep up every year. Hirings and promotions have been frozen for most of the past 15 years.

Even when pressed, none of these Democrats ever link the cutbacks in local government (which they implemented) to the Iraq war or the mammoth budgets of the Pentagon and the spy agencies to fight the "War on Terror."

The best example is Antonio Villaraigosa, a former teachers' union organizer, Speaker of the California State Assembly, current Council member, and Mayor Hahn's strongest opponent in the election. Villaraigosa is the liberal charmer favored by local "progressives" who remember his union days, but not what he's saying currently. Now he's championing tax cuts for business and more racist cops, paid for by workers, as well as pseudo-progressive talk of "reviving local communities" through powerless community councils. These councils are part of a hidden agenda to build support for community policing and patriotism to support U.S. rulers' military plans.

Villaraigosa's approach, almost word-for-word, comes straight from the liberal ruling class think-tank, the Brookings Institute, in its book "United We Stand." It advances strategies for reviving a military draft that relies heavily on Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam. His book "Bowling Alone" calls for neighborhood councils to revive a sense of community. They want to persuade local communities in large multi-ethnic cities like LA to believe they have a stake in the system and will accept cutbacks and military service as part of their "civic duty."

This electoral process is a dangerous trap perpetuating the bosses' capitalist system while spreading the illusion we can "reform" it. We shouldn't fall for this or other lies advanced by politicians like Villaraigosa, Parks and Hahn. Their pretense to defend our interests is only a smokescreen to more efficiently implement the bosses' plans for war and fascism. We must win our class to fight for workers' power by injecting our communist analysis into struggles against the bosses, large and small.

Racism Over Cop Murder of LA Youth Mirrors U.S. Slaveowners

I'm very angry about the media depiction of Devin Brown, the 13-year-old who was shot dead by the LAPD. (See CHALLENGE, 3/2) They're smearing him as a supposed "gang member" or a "kid who went bad" -- as if that would somehow justify what the cops did.

One of my friends has a niece who attends Audubon Middle School, where Devin went. She says teachers there remember him as a respectful and well-behaved student, even though he cut classes a lot. These teachers got mad at the reporters swarming all over the school trying to dig up some dirt on Devin after he died. When the reporters tried to talk to students without their parents' permission, some teachers tried to chase them away. Also, teachers and students took up a collection for Devin's mother to show their sympathy and help out a little.

The media are pointing fingers everywhere except at the problem. Besides demonizing Devin, they're blaming his mother, the school and his whole community. The truth is Devin's mom (who lost her husband not long ago) works two jobs trying to keep her family together. She's the kind of mom who's always at the school, checking on her kids. People at the school were talking to Devin and trying to help him get to his classes and deal with the loss of his dad.

Fingers should be pointed at the cops who shot this little boy. The papers are getting more upset about a tiger on the loose that was killed in the Valley this week than they ever were about Devin.

They say that in this black working-class community there's not enough "supervision" so kids "run wild." To me this sounds like an excuse to turn even more cops loose to terrorize black youths. It sounds like former slave-owners saying free black people "needed to be enslaved" to "keep them from running wild."

There's an after-school program at Audubon that's also district-wide. A military officer runs it and has the kids saluting, doing push-ups and all that stuff. They're trying to get the students used to the idea of being in the Army. Remember the Super Bowl commercial with the soldiers marching by and people clapping? "Be a hero, join the military." Every other billboard in the neighborhood has the same thing. Maybe they let the cops get away with killing and terrorizing kids here to try to make sure these future soldiers won't step out of line.

I really liked the CHALLENGE article about Devin's case. I'm making copies for some friends.

LA Reader

Liberal Democrats Grease Path for Slimeball Negroponte

In appointing John Negroponte to be the first National Intelligence Director -- overseeing a $100 billion spy operation with a secret budget -- Bush picked a veteran CIA operative responsible for some of the worst crimes of murder and torture in Central America. And the liberal Democrats just love him.

While Negroponte has the Republicans in his hip pocket, the Democrats gushed all over him at Senate hearings approving his present post as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and therefore the real chief of the U.S. occupation there. This, after compiling the following record:

* As U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte played a key role in organizing the military repression in that country, and deliberately falsified State Department "Human Rights" reports, covering up death squad horrors.
* The New York Times credited Negroponte with "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua," despite being banned by Congress; this included the trading of guns for drugs on CIA aircraft (which used a special airfield operation in Arkansas set up by Clinton when he was that state's governor in the 1980's).
* According to the Maryknoll Order of Catholic nuns, Negroponte oversaw the notorious CIA-trained Honduran death squads of the so-called Battalion 3-16 who murdered many U.S. church missionaries and religious activists in the early 1980's.

Yet at the Senate hearings on his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee asked not one question about his role in promoting death squads and covering up murderous abuses. Delaware's Joseph Biden slobbered all over him and Connecticut's Christopher Dodd said, "I happen to feel he's a very fine Foreign Service officer and has done a tremendous job in many places."

Off of their support for his ambassadorship, liberal Democrats like West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, Indiana's Evan Bayh and California's Diane Feinstein will no doubt be rubber-stamping him as National Intelligence Director. Both parties will be endorsing him as the point man to spread his death-squad specialty around the world in support of U.S. imperialism's wars for control of oil.

Building PLP in El Salvador

EL SALVADOR -- Last December, CHALLENGE readers and PLP members met to discuss the struggle to organize workers here into the revolutionary, international communist Progressive Labor Party and the measures that the government of Tony Saca has implemented against the working class. Forming clubs, as well as political, ideological schools are part of this work. We made a plan to march on May Day and committed ourselves to recruit new workers to study groups where we read CHALLENGE.

A comrade asked if the FMLN could become the government just by having street marches. The response was that even if the government is changed, the capitalist bosses will never hand over power to the workers through elections. Workers' power can only be achieved by organizing a mass base for PLP to smash the bosses who exploit us and destroy capitalism with communist revolution.

A comrade from another part of the country participated and helped strengthen this fight. Another comrade said we can't keep putting up with unemployment, price increases for goods, electricity and telephones, or with threats to workers who denounce the atrocities the bosses commit.

They continue their crimes -- like the war in Iraq, bombing workers and their families -- all a product of capitalism's drive for profits. We should support the brave soldiers who've resisted and refused to follow the orders of their officers, lackeys of the murderers who run the wars, the U.S. Pentagon.

With capitalism in power in El Salvador, children lack medicine, food, and education, like those worldwide. Under communism the working class will produce and distribute according to need so that we can all live decent lives.

Iraqi Oil Workers Oppose Occupation's Anti-Union Attacks

Iraq's industrial workers have been relatively absent -- temporarily -- from the struggle against the U.S./UK occupation. The situation calls for building a revolutionary communist leadership among these workers. In the fight against British colonialism and the King in the first half of the 20th century, oil workers, led by the old Communist Party, were crucial to ousting both.

After World War 2, many industrial workers who had had jobs supplying the British Army fighting the Nazis were laid off. Protest strikes erupted. The CP had an industrial working-class leadership and led many unions, on the railroads, the docks and in the oil fields. In April 1946, workers struck the Iraqi Oil Petroleum Co. (owned by BP, Shell and French interests) combining demands for 25% to 40% wage hikes with political demands against the monarchy and British colonialism. Concentrating on picketing the K3 pumping station around the clock, 3,000 well-organized strikers halted oil production completely. One strike leader declared, "The dictatorship of the proletariat was established at K3."

When the bosses cut off the water and food supply to the station, located in the middle of the desert, the workers marched over 150 miles before being stopped and suffering many arrests. This militant action inspired many more struggles among all workers, peasants and students.

In 1948 a massive urban uprising broke out, uniting students and workers, and forcing the fall of the minister who had leased air bases to the British Royal Air Force. Many were killed, and communists were executed, but the struggle continued until the fall of the monarchy and the end of British control a few years later.

Today, oil workers are beginning to play an active role against the imperialists, but they need more than just militant trade union leaders. A revolutionary leadership is necessary, not only to fight the occupation forces and their stooges but also to take control of the insurgency away from former Saddam soldiers, Baathist Arab nationalists, assorted jihadists and religious fundamentalists.

Eleven days after the fall of Baghdad, workers in Iraq's southern oil fields formed the Southern Oil Company Union, which today has 23,000 members in ten oil and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya and up to Anbar province. They organized in the face of the U.S. military's maintenance of Saddam Hussein's repressive 1987 ban on basic union rights and the right to strike.

The union defied the attempt by Vice-President Dick Cheney's Halliburton,subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root's use of occupation troops to seize their workplaces. It forced the troops to leave and compelled the Kuwaiti subcontractor to hire 1,000 Iraqi workers, replacing the ones they brought with them.

Then they struck against U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer's edict establishing a $35 monthly minimum "wage" for public sector workers while paying up to $1,000 a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. The August 2003 three-day walkout shut down all oil production and forced a 217% increase in the workers' minimum wage.

The union is independent of all political parties and opposes all privatization as a neo-colonialist attempt to follow the military occupation with a permanent economic occupation.

In a Feb. 18 article in the British Guardian, the union's General Secretary, Hassam Juma'a Awad, says, "The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq." He declares that, "From the beginning, we were left with no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources....When the occupation troops...allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering." Iraq's unemployment rate is 70%.

Awad says that, "Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight." He charges that, "Our communities have been attacked with chemicals and cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes."

Awad also writes that, "The occupation has deliberately fomented a sectarian division of Sunni and Shia.... Before our families intermarried, we lived and worked together....Today we are resisting this brutal occupation together, from Falluja to Najef to Sadr City."

The union sees itself "as a necessary part of this resistance," fighting "using our industrial power, our collective strength as a union" to defeat both still-powerful Saddamist[s]...and the foreign occupation."

The union is calling for the withdrawal of all occupation forces and their military bases, and says any timetable "is a stalling tactic." The oil workers believe that "those who voted in [the] elections...are as hostile to the occupation as those who boycotted them.... Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer...are...speaking only for themselves and the minority...whose interests are dependent on the occupation."

CHALLENGE calls on all workers to support these Iraqi oil workers in their struggle against U.S. imperialism. We believe that the workers of Iraq must be won to organizing a true communist party, not one which allies with nationalist bosses -- nor the phony one now part of the U.S.-authorized Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. Its president is deputy leader of the U.S.-imposed Prime Minister Allawi's party. Iraq's workers can link their long history of struggle against all previous dictatorial regimes to communist ideas, to truly emancipate the working class from all domination by imperialists and local religious fundamentalists who want to wrest control of Iraq's oil and resources for their own class interests.

Robots Won't Solve U.S. Bosses' `Vietnam Syndrome'

Conceding the political problems of fielding an imperialist army, the U.S. military hopes to replace human soldiers with robots. The "advantages"? "They don't get hungry. They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot." (NY Times, Feb. 16).

Obviously the military is having all these problems and more with today's army. As one junior officer recently wrote to a right-wing web site, "The brass has become so fearful of casualties in Iraq that the military has stopped actively patrolling in many of the areas where the insurgents are strongest."

In another doomed attempt to solve a political problem with technology, the military plans to spend $127 billion on a project called Future Combat Systems of which robots are a crucial part.

Today, after many years of development, robots play a small role as bomb disposal tools. Assuming this massive expense doesn't go the way of the Patriot anti-missile system and Star War initiative as complete duds, the military's dream of a soldier that won't rebel ignores the primary lesson of Iraq, as well as Vietnam. While technology can be useful, in war politics trumps it every time.

The Vietnamese were able to beat the far superior U.S. military by winning the masses' commitment to anti-imperialism. In Iraq, a small -- and even somewhat isolated -- nationalist/fundamentalist insurgency has been able to gain some popular support and fight the U.S. to a standstill by exploiting the destruction wrought by the U.S. military over the last 15 years.

The U.S. military has a big problem: they are hated. This erodes their ability to rule Iraq, as well as the commitment of U.S. soldiers for the war. Sticking the stars and stripes on another killing machine won't make the U.S. more popular. Nor will it make U.S. soldiers feel better about what they're doing. The Nazis, and the U.S. in Vietnam, far out-killed their opponents. And in Italy, the saying went that Mussolini killed and killed the communists until there were two million of them.

History's greatest military victories were achieved by people exhibiting extraordinary heroism out of a vast political commitment. Robots never could have defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad, never could have driven the U.S. out of Southeast Asia, and robots will never defeat the working class's quest for a decent life.

Nazi Concentration Camps:
Model For Capitalist Factories

(Fourth of a series.)

On Jan. 27, 1945, the Red Army reached Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration/death camp. There were few survivors. Those who hadn't been murdered in the gas chambers were forced to walk to other Nazi camps. The holocaust ended only when the Red Army reached Berlin and raised the Red Flag over the Reichstag on May 5, 1945.

Auschwitz and many other Nazi concentration camps were not only death camps, but also were ideal capitalist operations from which hundreds of companies could use their slave labor to make super-profits. Since millions of German workers were being sent to fight a losing battle against the Red Army and the red-led partisan movement on the Eastern Front, German bosses demanded manpower from the Nazi government to maintain production. So some 12 million slave workers were sent from the Eastern Front to labor in the concentration camps for German -- and U.S. -- companies.

Friburg University history professor Ulrich Herbert says it wasn't the Nazi regime which forced those millions of workers into slave labor, but German companies like Blohm und Voss, Scheering, Deutsche Reichsbahn, Thyssen. Mannesmaann, etc. (Michael Marek writing for DW-World, web page of the German news agency Deutsche Welle, 1/25/05.)

Dietrich Eichholz, another German historian, said that German industrial wealth rose by 17 times from 1939 till 1945 due to the super-profits extracted from those slave workers. He adds that the Nazi regime lost the war, but German industry definitely came out winning. Their profits came from Jewish slave labor, who received no wages, Polish and Soviet prisoners of war who were paid very low wages, and prisoners of war from Western Europe who received the same wages as German workers whose wages were already severely cut when the Nazi regime took power in 1933.

Although the Allies broke up some of those German companies after the war, many still operate today, and very few are compensating the 1.5 million slave laborers or their relatives who are still alive. Any who are paying are doling out only a fraction of their war profits. (The German government itself is contributing to that indemnization fund).

As pointed out in previous articles, U.S. companies also benefited from the death camps. Soviet-era documents made public in the late 1990's showed that -- in addition to hundreds of German companies using Auschwitz inmates -- the Ford plant in Cologne was among 400 industrial enterprises exploiting this vast pool of slave labor the Nazis made available (www.jta.org/aug99/22-ford-htm). Ford officials deny this, saying the documents show only that vehicles produced by Ford were used at Auschwitz and that the company did not control its European operations in Nazi-occupied areas. But the fact remains that Ford did receive profits from Nazi Germany during the war through Swiss banks, as did GM's Opel company and IBM, whose keypunch system was used in the concentration camps. After all, Henry Ford and the Führer ran a mutual admiration society. Ford was the international distributor of the Protocols of Zion, a virulent anti-Semitic forgery created in the early 20th century by the Tsar's secret police.

Thus, Nazism was not just a creation of the evil minds of Hitler & Co. It grew directly from German capitalism, with the help of bosses worldwide who first saw Hitler as a tool to crush the Soviet Union, which had freed 1/6 of the world's surface from the profit system.

(Next: concentration camps did not begin, and have not ended, with the Nazi era.)

LETTERS

Condemn Killings of Iraqi Unionists

The following anti-imperialist letter of solidarity was sent to our brother and sister workers of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions upon hearing of the assassination of their International Secretary Hadi Salih. On January 4, he was bound hand and foot, tortured, strangled and shot at home, murdered in front of his family. In the past few months there have been a string of attacks on union activists in Iraq, including striking textile workers being shot, the transit workers union hall being shelled, and many arrests. These attacks have come from the U.S. military, the Iraqi government and the insurgents. Please reprint this for our CHALLENGE readers as PLP encourages internationalism, builds for May Day and fights for communism.

"We the members of [this union] send this letter of international solidarity to our brothers and sisters of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions over the brutal murder of your International Secretary Hadi Salih.

We understand that Salih, who opposed the fascist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, may have been assassinated by right-wing forces with connections to U.S. intelligence.

We understand that many nations like Iraq have U.S.-backed death squads that assassinate union activists and others so that workers can be better exploited by U.S. multi-national corporations. This explains the rash of political assassinations of many trade union activists in Iraq who oppose the U.S. invasion/occupation.

Our local union is integrated and has workers from many different nations. Many of these workers came to the U.S. seeking a better life only to be super-exploited by institutional racism. From here to Baghdad, we have the same enemy, same fight. You have our sympathy and support."

A Reader

Nazis Bolstered Argentine Fascism

The series on the Nazis and their post-World War II CIA connections has been very useful. But Nazi-like murderous activities did not stop with the end of the war. On Feb. 23, a press conference at a Medical College in Buenos Aires by the Commission of Former Workers and Relatives of the Mercedes-Benz Disappeared Ones presented the latest investigations of journalist Ms. Gaby Weber, a German-born writer living in South America, who wrote the book, "The German Connection -- Nazi Money Laundering in Argentina." The conference revealed that the former production manager of Mercedes-Benz (today DaimlerBenz) in Argentina, Juan Ronaldo Tasselkraut, has a son and two nephews he adopted illegally and who could be the children of people disappeared during the dirty war waged by military regime of the late 1970's.

Tasselkraut worked for Mercedes-Benz (MB) until recently. In 1977, he turned in Hector Ratto to the cops. Ratto worked at the MB Gonzalez Catan plant. He was taken to a concentration camp. There, in front of Ratto, Tasselkraut gave the cops the address of another worker, Diego Nuñez. That same night Nuñez was kidnapped by the cops.

It's presumed that Tasselkraut's son was the child of one of those workers murdered during the dictatorship. Tasselkraut later hired Ruben Lavallen as the MB plant security chief. Lavallen was a police officer at the Investigation Bureau, where he was involved in the kidnapping and torture of 15 militant MB workers. In May 1978, a couple was taken to Lavallen's police precinct, and they were never seen again. Lavallen adopted the couple's 22-month-old daughter.

The military dictatorship actually set up a maternity ward at a military hospital in Campo de Mayo base (the biggest military torture center). The babies were given to officers or to those very close to the dictatorship. MB even donated a neonatology device to the maternity center.

Some 30,000 people were murdered during the military dictatorship. Argentina's high-ranking military officers never hid their Nazi sympathies. They even flew swastika flags in their torture centers. Other auto companies, like Ford, helped the military dictatorship carry out its dirty war.

Ms. Weber revealed in her new book that MB and many other Nazi-tainted investments grew tremendously in Argentina beginning in the early 1950's. Adolf Eichmann, who along with Himmler led the holocaust, worked for many years at the Buenos Aires MB plant before being kidnapped by Israeli agents in the early '60s. Once a Nazi always a Nazi.

Red Anti-Nazi

Workers Agree: Rebellions Looming

Some conversations I've had at work reveal great potential in workers' reactions to increasing police terror, cutbacks, war and racism. To murder over 100,000 Iraqis and 1,500 U.S. soldiers, the ruling class must attack the working class and try to coerce us into accepting fascism and their plans for a greater war against their imperialist rivals. They will continue to cut social services and pensions. Simultaneously, they murder the child of a black worker in Los Angeles and tazer a 54-year-old Chicago worker to death. They intend this racist terror to keep workers passive and accept the thin gruel of reform and nationalism. LA police Chief Bratton says if the city doesn't increase the sales tax by a _-cent to pay for hiring more racist cops, "the city would go up in flames."

The LA Times reported that black workers say the police hate them. A study showed that 6 of 10 black workers disliked the LAPD. Bratton and other liberal politicians want to change the policy of shooting into vehicles, a complete turn-around since a year ago, when racist Bratton told parents to "restrain their children" after the cops murdered two Latino youth.

This led me to think about the possibility of another LA rebellion, and how to build PLP at work to prepare for such an uprising. My factory contains primarily Latino contract workers who work long hours with no union. Conversations with them are quite revealing. One worker, a black vet, said the war in Iraq was even worse than Vietnam, with all the deaths and the cutbacks here. He said an uprising was coming. After the murder of Devin Brown, another worker reminded him that even Bratton warned of a possible uprising.

Later a Mexican immigrant worker said Mexico is rife with corruption. An immigrant from India said it wasn't just Mexico -- there's corruption everywhere. Another worker said it's here in the U.S. too. A fourth said the "free market system" guarantees that only a select few have wealth and everyone else is left out. He said the decline of the dollar means worse conditions for us. The vet said, "People are so tired of this, the cutbacks and the war and racism. I think there's going to be a revolution."

The police shooting of Devin Brown and the court decision letting other racist killer cops go free are signs of the times. This terror, the bogus "reform" of the cops and the move for more cops are directed at a whole generation of black and Latin youth who the bosses plan to grind up in their military and industrial machine. These angry young workers represent great revolutionary potential. Our job is to arm them with an internationalist, communist outlook. Then no amount of terror and patriotic reforms will stop them from fighting for power for the working class.

Factory Comrade

FIght Stewart Verdict As `Legal' Fascism

The conviction of defense lawyer Lynne Stewart drew reactions among my friends in the large urban church to which I belong, ranging from shock to recognition of the "legal" fascism we've so often discussed in the three years since Patriot Acts I and II. To paraphrase an old saying, "First they came for the Muslims, then the South Asians, then the immigrants, then the protestors, now the lawyers."

U.S. rulers want to win people to sacrifice themselves in imperialist wars for "freedom," to endorse Homeland Security schemes to militarize U.S. society and to give up programs like Social Security and Medicare for the war effort. But if they can't win us, the Lynne Stewart case shows they will break all their "rules" to silence dissent and directly terrorize, oppress and brutalize the working class and others.

The church's leading congregational body passed a mild statement condemning aspects of Patriot Act I as "excesses" that tread on "our civil liberties and constitutional rights." The church's liberal leaders sermonize about "standing up" to George Bush and the Christian Right but even that mild statement is now being "examined" by church lawyers for possibly violating the church's tax status.

I've framed the struggle against the Patriot Act in terms of U.S. imperialism's strategy for the 21st century and fascism's role in this process. One can't say fascism's "a little bit bad," and that it's possible to defeat it by "legal" means, based on the illusion that the Constitution defends "us," rather than the capitalists who hold state power. The Lynne Stewart case spurs examination of the historical fight against fascism, the role of communists and the need to defeat fascism with revolution by destroying the capitalist system which spawns it.

I've issued the following statement and proposal in my name on the Lynne Stewart verdict to some congregants and to seven church higher-ups. Some friends agreed to help me.

Dear Congregants,
The decision against Lynne Stewart was based on lies, distortions, demagoguery, false patriotism and fear. Despite the actions of many in the U.S. to curb the Patriot Act's attack on civil liberties, Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales have gotten what they set out to get. This is another significant step down the road to open fascist repression against anyone who would resist, protest and/or defend his or her principles. Now is the time to stand up and speak out. Silence and fear are dangerous! They cannot be options. Proposals: Write a church-wide statement of support for Lynne Stewart; send such statement to local elected officials; organize an event at the church in which Lynne and/or her lawyers can speak to the congregation; prepare the congregation to go en masse to the sentencing on Sept. 23.

I introduced this statement to the church's social justice group to which I belong -- and made a strong political argument for it -- asking the group to endorse it and pass it on to other groups in the church. The majority wanted to "tone down the language," saying the goal should be to get a resolution passed. I said that on principle I had to "speak what I see" and that controversy, debate and exposing the church's institutional position are important parts of the process. The social justice group has re-written the statement, eliminating references to fascism.

I've also met with several other individuals about making Lynne Stewart's case a church-wide issue. Some will help. We plan an April event at which Stewart or her lawyers can explain the case to the congregation. There will be a lot of controversy. Top church leaders will attempt to limit debate, confine it to "patriotism," following the Democratic Party position, and "protect" the church's tax status.

PLP has some support here, including a few CHALLENGE readers. Most congregants support the Democratic Party; some are strongly anti-Bush. Ideological controversy will intensify between PLP's ideas and liberal Democratic ideas among our friends, and within the congregation between liberals and conservatives and between the congregation and the church leadership.

My friends and I have seized the opportunity to speak out and act boldly in the moment, while understanding that our goals to build the PLP and make communist revolution are long-range.

Red Churchgoer

Building Worker-GI-Student Alliance

Recently, I leafleted a nearby military base with a group of students from the organization I belong to at school. We all agreed it was a really good experience. It's led to many productive conversations with my friends about the kind of movement needed to fight imperialism and fascism.

Initially, when our group reported to the rest of the organization about our trip, some students reacted negatively. One argued, "What's the point in talking to these soldiers? They chose to go into the army. They know what they're doing." Another student explained that it's important to reach out to soldiers because most are working-class youth who joined after being promised a stable job or money for a college education, not because they're completely won to the ruling class's imperialist agenda. More importantly, they literally have the power to directly impact imperialism.

Then the first student slightly changed his position, saying, "Well, if we want to organize at the point of production, then we should focus on the workers who build the weapons for war."

The conversation continued, some agreeing that if we're serious about revolution, we need to build a movement based on an alliance among workers, students and soldiers. Other students still weren't convinced.

But the trip to the military base and the conversations about it prompted these students to help organize an anti-imperialist conference that criticizes the passivity of the current anti-war movement and focuses on reaching out to the military and to industrial workers. Soon we'll make another trip the military base.

From this experience, I've learned that students are open to organizing a revolutionary communist movement based on a worker-student-soldier alliance. Mainly we must take the initiative and provide the political leadership that's lacking.

Student Leafleter

Anti-Communists Spread Lies About Stalin

The London Financial Times ran an article (2/26) on Corin Redgrave that said:

"The audience then asked a few questions that allowed Redgrave to say Stalin had Mayakovsky put to death."

Evidently no one bothered to correct this statement. The utter contempt of anti-communists -- in this case, Trotskyists -- for the truth never ceases to amaze!

Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were, and probably still are, leaders of the Workers Revolutionary Party, a Trotskyist cult that imploded a few years ago. This group and its leaders made deals with Libya's Khaddafy and even Saddam in exchange for money., even when leftists were being shot in Iraq.

This lie is all the more amazing, since Mayakovsky is an extremely well-known and celebrated poet. He committed suicide in 1930. NOBODY suggests that Stalin had anything to do with his death. On the contrary: Stalin was a huge fan of Mayakovsky's. Here's a quotation:

"In November 1935 Lidia Brik [Mayakovsky's friend, who took charge of his papers after his suicide] wrote a letter to Stalin in which she brought to his attention the delays and hindrances in publishing Mayakovsky's works and in celebrating his memory. This letter served as the basis for the following note by Stalin to the secretary of the Central Committee: `Comrade Yezhov, I ask you sincerely to pay attention to Brik's letter. Mayakovsky was and remains the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Indifference to his memory and works is simply a crime. In my opinion, Brik's complaints are correct. Get in touch with her or invite her to Moscow. Please involve Tal' (head of publishing section of the Central Committee -- editors) and Mekhlis [editor of Pravda] and, please, do everything that we have neglected. If you need my help, I'm willing. Greetings, Stalin.'
"Thus did Stalin insert himself into Mayakovsky's fate. This is why one of the main squares of the Sadovoy ring [big circle in center of Moscow] and one of the most beautiful Metro stations carry Mayakovsky's name. On this square a memorial to the poet was published, his museum is set up on the Taganka, and his works began to be published, studied in literature departments, and taught in schools."
http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/mayakov.html

Anti-communist lies abound in discussions of Soviet-era culture. One constantly reads that "Stalin persecuted Mikhail Bulgakov" or "Stalin killed Osip Mandel'shtam." In reality, Stalin HELPED Bulgakov and got him a job at a prestigious theatre. When Boris Pasternak, noted Soviet but anti-communist writer, later author of "Doctor Zhivago," called Stalin about Mandel'shtam, Stalin told him he was not being loyal enough to his friend -- and then got Mandel'shtam a job.

Mayakovsky is better known than either of these figures. How can anybody say this kind of crap, have it printed, and then NOBODY points out the lie?

The moral of this sorry tale is: NEVER believe ANYTHING an anti-communist source says or writes about communism, Stalin, the USSR, etc., until you've checked it out yourself!

history buff

CHALLENGE's Jab At `Million Dollar Baby' Missed Target

The analysis (CHALLENGE, 3/2) of "Million Dollar Baby" as racist is ridiculous. Why is Morgan Freeman an "Uncle Tom?" The author gives no reason, just states it as fact. I didn't find him that way at all -- just an old tired boxer that took a lot of punches and never made it. He could have been any color. He was chosen because he's a fine actor. And the movie would have a "different message" if the German champ had been white and the other opponents black? What caricature does the German champ represent? It certainly is not one of color, just a nasty champion willing to do anything to maintain her championship. That's not a caricature, that's the way it is. 

This movie was an indictment of the world of organized boxing. Eastwood plays a trainer who cares about his boxers and probably over-protects them. That's why the black boxer he's training leaves him. Eastwood is over-protecting him and he wants the ring. Interesting that the reviewer ignores the fact that Eastwood protects the black boxer out of love for Morgan Freeman who lost an eye under his tutelage years before.

The characters in "Million Dollar Baby" could have been any color. I thought the film was remarkable and the tension, after Swank is hurt, emotionally gut-wrenching. Was this film revolutionary or anti-racist? No. Did it condemn our racist, capitalist society? No. But the reviewer was really grasping for straws in condemning it as a racist film. And the final paragraph also doesn't hold up anymore: the films called fascist were ones like "Dirty Harry," films that Eastwood starred in, not produced or directed. Many of his films, such as "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River" were not fascist at all, but rather anti-western and anti-detective movie statements respectively. Honestly, I don't think that review should have been printed.   

Big Red

More Million Dollar Baby

The review of Million Dollar Baby (see CHALLENGE 3/2) was superficial and incorrect. It gave little evidence to back up the claim that racist images or ideas are strongly portrayed in the movie. Additionally, the reviewer ignores examples of positive black figures (e.g., the first boxer or Freeman's character).

While this movie was not anti-capitalist or revolutionary, it was a great film. It's mainly about self-esteem, courage, forgiveness and love. Swank as Maggie, a poor working-class person, had such low self-esteem that she was willing to subject herself to the incredible brutality of boxing. Being a poor worker meant that she had little hope for her future beyond what she might accomplish as a boxer.

Maggie's struggle is an individualistic one, not one to improve the lives of other workers. This fits well into the "American dream" myth, which is why Hollywood liberals liked it. Additionally, its heart-wrenching portrayal of paralysis and disability will resonate with people whose sons and daughters are soldiers coming back from the war in Iraq paralyzed and injured.

Boston Reader

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Violence vs. recruiters grow in US

Since the beginning of 2003, there have...been more than a dozen...often violent incidents aimed at military recruiters or property throughout the country....

...On Jan. 20, the day of President Bush's inaugural, several hundred students at Seattle Central Community College surrounded two Army recruiters on campus, shouting insults and hurling water bottles until the recruiters were escorted away by campus security. The protest was covered by The Army Times, and several recruiters said that they feared such situations might become more common. (NYT, 2/21)

`Democracy' blocks workers' will

...A 2003 Pew poll asked people if they favored the government "guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means repealing most of the recent tax cuts".

Universal healthcare won, 67 percent to 26 percent.

...Nothing has happened...The profit-grubbing medical lobby of pharmaceuticals, insurance companies and the American Medical Association....continues to thwart the will of the American people. (Boston Globe, 2/7)

Chinese die of fever cured by Reds

...Nationally, nearly 900,000 people have the disease [Snail Fever] and an estimated 30 million are at risk....

What is most frustrating to people like Mr. Guo, whose wife has the disease, is that snail fever was largely eradicated in China during the 1950's as part of the national campaign ordered by Mao Zedong. Mr Guo, 56 recalled regular efforts to sweep the lake of the snails that serve as host bodies for the parasites....People were required to have check-ups and that those infected received free medical care, including drugs that can neutralize the disease.

But the constant attention needed to control the disease has waned, and it gradually returned... because of neglect of the rural health system. (NYT, 2/22)

One reason TV is replacing reading

...New York City...officials say 100 of the 650 elementary schools have certified librarians; 25 percent have no library... (NYT, 2/23)

Making a joke of the next war

...Mr. Bush met with European leaders at the headquarters of the European Union, and ...he did not rule out, as he has not in the past, military action.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," he said, then added, to some laughter in the room, "and having said that, all options are on the table." (NYT, 2/23)

How to save Medicare: Die Sooner

Though Social Security's fiscal direction has taken center stage in Washington of late, Medicare's future financing problems are likely to be much worse....

So, how can Medicare's ballooning cost be contained? One idea is to let people die earlier. (NYT 2/27)

New East Europe: Profits, poverty

...GDP in the former communist states fell between 20% and 30% in the decade after 1989....

Only Poland had managed to return to its 1989 level of output by the end of the 20th century. Hungary, considered by many the most "advanced" economy of the region, had to wait until 2002.

While a minority have seen real wages rise, for the vast majority in the countries in question the transition process has witnessed a spectacular fall in living standards....

Inequality has risen sharply...Unemployment is widespread, particularly among the young: in Poland, 39% of under-25s are without a job....

Reformers blame problems on the legacy of 40 years of communism. But could it be that the reform process itself is responsible?...Following the IMF-EU economic prescription has caused hardship for millions. (GW, 2/24)

Money talks in danger-drug vote

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx should not return to the market....

...Studies have shown that, taken as a whole, money does influence scientific judgments... (NYT, 2/25)

`Liberated' by US, Afghans suffer

Average life expectancy for Afghanistan's 28.5 million people is 44.5 years, at least 20 years lower than that of neighboring countries....

...And 20.4 percent of the rural population does not have enough to eat....

Most glaring are the inequalities that affect women and children, still some of the worst social indicators in the world today....

One-fifth of the children die before the age of 5, 80 percent of them from preventable diseases, one of the worst rates in the world. Only 25 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, and one in eight children die from lack of clean water.

Afghanistan now has the worst education system in the world the reported concluded... (NYT, 2/22)