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1. Continuing the Line of Bush Senior and Clinton
   Dubya Bush Bombs Iraq and Makes Plans for Oil War
   1. U.S. Policy Is A Flop
   2. Daddy Bush's New World Order Didn't Last Long
   3. U.S. Bosses' Plans For Land War: Easier Said Than Done
2. Arrest of FBI Spy Shows Renewed U.S.-Russia Rivalry
3. IT'S THE BOSSES' CRISIS--MAKE THEM PAY!
4. Take a Stand
   OPPOSE RACIST KKK RALLY
5. NYTimes `Advice' to Workers:
   `This won't hurt a bit . . .'
   1. Layoffs Aren't Too Bad -- They Just Kill....
6. Strikers Forced Back to Work
   Red Politics Brewing Among Bavaria Beer Workers
7. `Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel....'
8. KILLED FOR A PACKAGE OF MEAT
9. Fascist Welfare Cutoff Looms for Over 200,000
10. RACIST MURDERING COP ACQUITTED
    FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY GROWS
11. Suspended Red Teacher Should Be:
    `Commended, Not Condemned'
12. Students Attack Racist LA Schools
13. Bosses' Rivalry Heats Up Over `Zapatour'
14. ORGANIZE AGAINST `RACIAL PROFILING' OF INFANTS
    1. LIFE (AND DEATH) AT CCH
15. Daewoo Autoworkers Fight Cops Attacking Occupation of Plant
16. Letters
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. A Streetcar Named Communism
    2. Jewish-Palestinian Unity Indicts Israeli Fascists
    3. ESL Students Meet The CHALLENGE
    4. `Let the red fire in our bellies burn hot . . . `
    5. `War On Drugs' is War On Workers
17. CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
    War Crimes of U.S. Imperialism
    `Death is our business, and business is good...'
18. Icelanders Resist Gene Pirates' Looting 0f Health Records

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Editorial

Continuing the Line of Bush Senior and Clinton
Dubya Bush Bombs Iraq and Makes Plans for Oil War

Bush's increased bombing raids over Iraq show U.S. rulers will stop at nothing to restore their dwindling influence over the Persian Gulf and its oil.

These air raids are nothing new. U.S. and British warplanes have been terrorizing Iraqi civilians for years. But Bush's latest round represents an enlargement in both frequency and intensity. It coincides with growing U.S. isolation in the face of tactical victories by Saddam Hussein and U.S. oil rivals Russia and France.

U.S. Policy Is A Flop

The U.S. policy of using sanctions to force Hussein from power is a flop. The sanctions' only "success" has been the wholesale murder of Iraqi workers and children. U.S. pals and foes alike violate the sanctions every day. Iraqi oil has returned to the market. Exxon Mobil, the power behind the bombings, ironically, is its biggest customer, because Iraqi oil is the region's cheapest, and controlling the cheapest oil is crucial to market domination.

Another irony leaves U.S. bosses with egg on their faces. According to the London Times (2/21), Iraq's oil barons are smuggling their cheap oil in tankers into Turkey, tankers which the U.S. could easily bomb because they're breaking the sanctions. But since the U.S. is using the Turkish air base at Incirlik as a launching pad for U.S. and British war planes patrolling the northern no-fly zone over Iraq, they're allowing Turkish rulers to break the sanctions in exchange for use of that base. Thus Iraq is reaping oil profits growing out of the very bombing campaign that's aimed at weakening Saddam Hussein. Profits drive all capitalists, whether U.S., Iraqi or Turkish.

Bush's bombing occurs in a setting that reveals significant gains by Saddam Hussein. Despite U.S. threats, contact between Iraq and the outside world is increasing. Technicians and businessmen fly into Baghdad regularly from Western Europe and Russia, thumbing their noses at U.S. policy. Their visits aim at launching the multi-billion dollar deals for Iraqi oil and gas that await only the formal lifting of sanctions. Only days after Bush had taken office, Iraqi rulers signed free trade pacts with Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Daddy Bush's New World Order Didn't Last Long

This situation is a far cry from the so-called "New World Order," of which Bush's father boasted after slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers in the 1991 Desert Storm. In that war, U.S. imperialism had managed to arm-twist and/or bribe the Europeans, Arabs and Russians into a supposed "coalition" which, even if it did very little fighting, at least didn't stand in Washington's way. But current Russian rulers are regrouping around a long-range plan to challenge the U.S. for world domination.

In 1991, French oil bosses came on board, however reluctantly. Now, with dreams of using Iraqi oil as leverage in the race against Exxon Mobil for maximum profit, they have a huge stake in opposing U.S. policy. And the Iraqi trade deals with former Arab enemies could spell further big trouble for the U.S., which so far has also failed to impose a "peace" deal between Israeli and Palestinian bosses on the crucial western flank of the Middle East.

So the stakes are climbing. Arab rulers will have to choose between the U.S. and Iraq. As usual, oil lies at the heart of the struggle. The big Persian Gulf producers, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, face a profit squeeze related to the current worldwide economic slump, a regular feature of the capitalist system. Growing amounts of Iraqi oil on a depressed market will lower prices. If Bush can convince these bosses that military force and sanctions against Iraq can stabilize the price of oil, then U.S. influence in the Persian Gulf may make a comeback. That was undoubtedly a key goal of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent Mid-East jaunt.

However, relying on the profit greed of wobbly oil princes isn't a recipe for long-term stability, peace or unchallenged U.S. supremacy. Nor is a failed policy of unenforceable sanctions or a military strategy that relies on bombing to resolve a situation that can be settled only on the ground.

Although U.S. imperialism continues to sit on the horns of a dilemma, we must not make the deadly error of believing that because launching war for Iraqi oil is difficult, the rulers won't do it. This is the isolation of a caged, untamed tiger. They must try everything to control and profit from the oil. Sooner or later this competition will lead to ever-widening armed struggle. We can't predict the timetable, but we must prepare our Party and our class for this inevitability. Imperialism and war are inseparable. Our job now and for the future remains mustering the determination and skill to build our revolutionary movement under all conditions.

U.S. Bosses' Plans For Land War: Easier Said Than Done

Everyone, from the Bush administration to U.S. foes, knows that control of Iraqi oil can be determined, as the London Times (2/21) puts it, "by the only means possible, a land war." However, U.S. rulers are unprepared both internally and externally for ground war in Iraq.

Internally, as CHALLENGE has often pointed out, the rulers have little confidence in the political will of the working-class soldiers and sailors in their military machine. Ground war means many casualties. Since Vietnam, no U.S. government has managed to convince workers to die in droves for the profits and power of the U.S. ruling class. This situation is unlikely to change.

Externally, the sanctions and bombing raids against Iraq generate sharper international contradictions with every passing day. Bush blamed and threatened the Chinese for giving Saddam Hussein improved radar defenses. In Russia, the February 16 raids--with no prior U.S. notification--will strengthen the rulers who "argue that the only way for Russia to avoid being ignored, marginalized and eventually dismembered is to win respect through strength." (Stratfor Global Intelligence Update, 02/21.)

Arrest of FBI Spy Shows Renewed U.S.-Russia Rivalry

The recent arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on spying charges reflects increasing hostility between U.S. and Russian capitalists. As long as Gorbachev and Yeltsin welcomed Western investment and U.S. rulers dreamed of exploiting the former Soviet empire's cheap labor and resources, catching spies did not seem to be a priority as before. But now the party's over. The rise of the Putin faction clearly shows that U.S. and Russian strategic interests fundamentally conflict rather than coincide. Hanssen's plight is one signal of the end of the deal-making.

As analysts at Stratfor point out (2/21), "For the past decade, Russia has been led by a cadre of Western-oriented politicians, who, to various degrees, have been willing to sacrifice Russian strategic interests for economic and political integration with Europe and the West. They have been challenged by a much larger faction in the government, the military and the populace that argues Russia must re-establish itself as a superpower to avoid complete dominance by the United States." While they have a long way to go, Putin & Co. have done all they can, from Iraq to the Caspian to the Balkans, to build Russian political, military and economic influence at Washington's expense.

U.S. rulers, however, are planning to take drastic measures at home and abroad to ensure their survival as the "world's sole superpower." CHALLENGE has reported on the efforts of the Hart-Rudman commission to restructure the government into a police state in liberal clothing. One Hart-Rudman provision is to rein in the FBI by restricting its ability to block presidential appointments. The ruling class has a problem with the FBI. Since its inception led by J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau has largely recruited conservative Catholics, who don't necessarily share the liberal ideology of the ruling class's main wing. These super-obedient followers of rules are useful for enforcing the bosses' laws but not reliable in setting overall policy. Hanssen's purging can be seen as a tightening of the chain of command.

Hanssen belongs to Opus Dei, an overtly fascist Catholic sect. Louis Freeh used to belong but had to quit before he became FBI director (London Telegraph, 6/17/96). Hanssen once gave a talk at the bureau in which he equated "communism" as it was practiced in the last days of the Soviet Union with his own ultra-right religion (Boston Globe, 2/24). He was right; both are basically anti-communist attacks on workers. Thus, he justified his and the U.S. rulers' open door policy to Moscow at that time. But bosses on both sides have slammed the door. Furthermore, the main wing of U.S. rulers is not betting on religious conservatism as the primary means for rallying the masses, or its own cadre, for war. Exit Hanssen.

The bosses' media are using the Hanssen drama to pump up anti-Russian patriotism. We can use it to discuss what genuine communism is.

IT'S THE BOSSES' CRISIS--MAKE THEM PAY!

GARY, IN, February 22 -- "I think you're going to see it getting much worse. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel." That's how United Steel Workers (USWA) District 7 Director Jack Parton described the future facing steelworkers in Indiana and Illinois.

Parton's right, the only light at the end of the tunnel, is the headlights of Usinor, the giant French steel manufacturer, which just merged with Arbed of Luxembourg and Aceralia Corporación Siderúrgica of Spain, to create the world's largest steel maker.

The new European steel giant will produce 46 million metric tons of steel a year, almost double the biggest Asian steel makers -- Nippon Steel of Japan and Pohang Iron and Steel of South Korea -- which combined produce about 52 million metric tons annually. Usinor will control 30% of European steel production and over 5% percent worldwide. It will make half of Europe's flat steel, used in autos and appliances.

The steel industry must consolidate to destroy excess capacity and combat falling prices. Klaus Soer, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said, "The process of consolidation is in full steam in the steel sector." Usinor recently acquired Cockerill Sambre S.A. of Belgium, for $1.1 billion in 1999. Thyssen Krupp, Germany's biggest steel maker and Nazi war criminal, was formed by a merger the same year. Corus, created by merging British Steel and Royal Hoogovens of the Netherlands in 1999, just announced it will cut its work-force by 20%, or 6,050 jobs, to keep pace with the competition.

To make a profit, the U.S. steel industry must run at 85% to 90% of capacity. Most have been running under 80%. The industry as a whole fell to 65% in the final week of 2000.

During the crises of the 1980s, the USWA leadership gave up 350,000 jobs and billions of dollars in wage and benefit concessions, so the bosses could compete and profit. Despite the massive cutbacks, the steel bosses are facing a new crisis of low prices, high energy costs and the ever-sharpening battle with European and Asian steel bosses, with a lot less room to maneuver.

The union leaders are again rushing to the aid of the bosses. After the super-nationalist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign, District Director Parton now says he would suspend the job security clause of the current contract if the bosses eliminate overtime, lay off all contract workers and "prove the cuts will help."

In fact, the union leaders support their billionaire masters' war plans. Parton wants Bush to tour the steel mills accompanied by Pentagon officials. "Having a good steel industry is vital to our national defense," he said.

The life-and-death struggle among the bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor will inevitably lead to war. That's the nature of imperialism. Steel workers have no stake in bailing out the bosses, competing with our brothers and sisters around the world or following our worse-than-useless union leaders to war. While we fight for every job, we must build an international PLP to destroy the war-makers and lead the international working class to power.

Take a Stand
OPPOSE RACIST KKK RALLY

WHERE: GILROY STADIUM (32ND AND HARRISON)
IN GARY, INDIANA
WHEN: MARCH 10 AT 12 Noon
FOR MORE INFO, CALL: 1 800 330 9953

NYTimes `Advice' to Workers:
`This won't hurt a bit . . .'

Last month, companies announced plans to wipe out 140,000 jobs. DaimlerChrysler--26,000; Lucent--16,000; Nortel--10,000; Goodyear--7,200. Montgomery-Ward will close, eliminating 37,000 jobs. JC Penny will shut 47 stores and slash 5,000 jobs. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Gateway computers will cut 6,000 jobs. The list goes on and on with new cuts announced daily.

But in an article entitled "Behind Layoffs, Reality is Often Less Severe in US"(New York Times, 2/19), we're told things aren't as bad as they seem. "More than half of the 7,000 cuts planned at Sara Lee...will occur in other countries." "...The 12,000 hourly Chrysler workers subject to layoff in the United States will continue to receive 95 percent of their pay..." "At least a third of the 16,000 jobs to be eliminated at Lucent will still exist--as parts of other companies."

The Times speaks for the bosses, not workers. Reality is less severe when the stock market is soaring and record profits result from increased productivity. "As the economy's growth has slowed, investors...cheer the announcement of major cost cuts and layoffs." True. "A single corporate layoff of a few thousand workers, likely to be spread over a few weeks or many months, has a minimal effect..."

You get a much different perspective from the streets of Detroit or Gary, Indiana, not to mention Ciudad Juarez or Bupyong, South Korea. In the U.S. during the 1980's, over 500,000 jobs were lost in auto, 350,000 in steel. More than 1.5 million industrial jobs vanished. The massive cuts were accompanied by a wave of strike-breaking and union-busting that continues to this day.

This may have had "a minimal effect" on the Times editors, but it took a terrible toll on the lives of the workers. About 75% of the displaced workers ended up working for two-thirds of their previous pay. Some turned to drugs, alcohol or petty crime. Many ended up homeless, in jail or dead. From western Pennsylvania to Logan, West Virginia, from East Chicago, IN to Flint, MI, whole communities were destroyed and never recovered.

Today, one-third of the auto industry and two-thirds of the coalmines are non-union. Auto production is at an all-time high, with 500,000 fewer workers. Thousands of young workers in Gary and Detroit are working in gambling casinos instead of the factories and mills. Health and safety standards and work rules have been gutted, reflected in the series of explosions at Rouge and Bethlehem Steel.

LTV, the third largest U.S. steel maker, has declared bankruptcy. American Steel is closing, moving the work to Monroe, NC, cutting wages in half. One difference between this crisis and the last is that welfare has been wiped out, along with many other health and welfare programs. Contrary to what the Times says, for many workers this wave of cuts will be more severe. And with the widespread use of multi-tiered wage systems and wage progressions, getting hired can be as severe as being laid off.

Layoffs Aren't Too Bad -- They Just Kill....

A Congressional Joint Economic Committee study published in 1976 attempted to "estimate the cost in human suffering of people being out of work." (New York Times, 10/31/76) That report concluded that when unemployment rose 1.4% in 1970 (from 3.5% to 4.9%) it led directly to the death of over 30,000 workers in the following five years-- from stress-related ailments, suicide and homicide. Of these, 26,440 were linked to strokes, heart and kidney ailments, 1,540 to suicide, 1,740 to homicide and 870 to cirrhosis of the liver.

Dr. Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins University told the Committee that, "The national rate of suicide in the United States can be viewed as an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths. How conveniently the Times "forgets"....

Strikers Forced Back to Work
Red Politics Brewing Among Bavaria Beer Workers

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Feb. 27--The two-month strike by 6,500 Bavaria brewery workers ended when the union accepted the Minister of Labor's decision to send it to binding arbitration. Angelino Garzón, a former union leader and member of the Communist Party, is the Minister of Labor. Now it should be renamed "Minister for the Bosses."

PLP forces have emerged stronger from this struggle. We have made many new friends and recruited several. Workers from various Bavaria plants around the country who didn't know our Party and our paper CHALLENGE do now. Bavaria strikers also learned what PLP means by "one working class, one flag, one international communist party."

Workers feel betrayed by the local and national union leaders. They had told workers the strike would continue until the demands were won. This is exactly what PLP had warned about: union hacks are not on the workers' side; they serve the bosses one way or another.

Despite the hacks, thousands of workers showed solidarity with the Bavaria strikers. PLP members in the U.S. and other countries also built support. Bavaria workers will long remember this moral and monetary backing fellow workers gave them during the struggle. This international solidarity showed in practice the validity of the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!"

But although we've been forced to return to work, the struggle will continue. We will be vigilant against any threatened firing of rank-and-file strike leaders. We will also continue to fight for the strike demands, to stop the company from taking away what we have fought for and won in recent decades. Mainly, we will continue to fight to win workers to PLP's communist politics. The strike became a school for communism for those many workers who became conscious of the need to fight for a new society, without bosses, without death squads and drug cartels. Communism has gained a foothold among these workers.

`Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel....'

In my first semester at the State University of N.Y. (SUNY) I've been more active than I envisioned. I joined a Ralph Nader organization involved in causes such as homelessness, the environment, voting and sweatshops. I chose the sweatshops committee because I thought it would produce the most activity.

A demonstration was planned to protest several stores that used sweatshop labor, especially the sneaker manufacturer NIKE. Nike uses slave-like conditions and wages in countries like Indonesia to super-exploit workers .

Five busloads carrying 120 students and two older leaders converged on a small town outside NYC. Two lawyers were present just in case people were "carried away." We were told repeatedly there would be no civil disobedience.

We marched to a large Nike store, chanting: "Down with sweatshops, shame on Nike!"; "No justice, no peace." It was a beautiful sight, a mass of young adults fighting for a cause. Hundreds of shoppers stood still, mouths open, while we marched and chanted.

As soon as we hit the Nike shop, security ordered us out. Although I wanted to stay, our strict leaders said to leave as soon as we were told, peacefully. We left chanting, "We'll be back."

Later, we went to a Mall, the biggest in the state. Divided into groups, each with a "tour guide," some dressed in Dresden shorts, long socks, straw hats and Hawaiian shirts, we were to walk through the mall pretending to be tourists. We followed our tour leaders from store to store, saying these clothes were made in sweatshops and describing the slave-like conditions those workers faced.

Mall shoppers, employers and employees watched. Some even followed us, laughing. They appeared not to know what to think. The five groups met in the center of the mall chanting our slogans. Security finally "escorted" us out.

I was excited and felt powerful but "accepted." I didn't believe the people watching us felt threatened as I think they sometimes do. The two lawyers present gave me a (false) sense of security. That's the danger of joining other groups -- one can get lost in that group and their fight.

On the bus returning to school the person next to me said he was a socialist. I felt this was a good opportunity to become friends. When I said I was in PLP, he said he used to buy CHALLENGE at his local grocery store. Some people overheard our conversation and declared they were communists, socialists and Marxists also. It was amazing. We started discussing politics and why we considered ourselves communist, socialists and Marxists.

Before I went to college I felt I would be isolated at school because I would be the only Party member at my university. I realized the importance of being in a mass organization, about the potential in every worker to become a member of PLP.

However, there's a contradiction: in mass organizations, you're fighting for reforms that maintain capitalism instead of abolishing it. These groups have good people who want a better world and we need to win them. Like CHALLENGE says, capitalism has really got to go. So, how do you tell your friends you're a communist, how do you introduce CHALLENGE, how do you explain all that complicated stuff about communism? And what will your friends think?

All too often we sell our communist ideas short. Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel. Many workers and students will grasp some aspect of that. When my fellow students first discovered I was a communist, their main reaction was a very friendly curiosity.

I remember struggling repeatedly with some young comrades about distributing CHALLENGE to their friends and relatives. One was a newly-arrived cousin from Africa. I was told he wouldn't be interested in politics or communism. One day, I asked him what he thought about communism. Without hesitation he said, "I think it's the greatest thing in the world." I'll never forget that.

As the semester progresses, many students on my campus may want a communist explanation of various events. When I participate in reform activities, they know I'm for more than some small change in the system. For me, there's nothing better than being known as a communist by friend and foe alike. It makes life worthwhile.

Workers and students want to understand the world. They want the truth. CHALLENGE and communism are what they're looking for. We're responsible to get it out there.

KILLED FOR A PACKAGE OF MEAT

DETROIT, MI, Feb. 21 -- On February 8, security guards at a Kroger supermarket killed 38-year old Travis Shelton. He was headed for the door with two packages of meat under his coat. Shelton's wife Jennifer said, "Nobody should have to feel this way. People should know, next time it could be your loved one."

Travis was 5'6" and weighed 260 pounds. He had asthma, high blood pressure and diabetes. A history of drug abuse had damaged his enlarged heart. But for all his ailments, it was racism that killed him. Racism where ten more dollars in Kroger's cash register is worth more than a man's life.

Security guards confronted Shelton. Within minutes he was face down on the floor gasping, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe," as 260 pound guard Jason Clover sat on his back. When the police arrived, they handcuffed Shelton and rolled him over only to find they had handcuffed a dead man.

An off-duty firefighter tried to assist the guards and held Shelton's arm. "I can't help but feel responsible," he said. "If I hadn't helped the guards, [he] would have had an arm free and still be alive."

On February 14, the Medical Examiner who preformed the autopsy ruled the death a homicide. The police response was, "Not every homicide is murder."

Shelton was the second black man in eight months to be killed by store security guards. Last June, Lord & Taylor security guards killed Frederick Finley when his barely teenage daughter was suspected of shoplifting a $10 bracelet.

Whether its police murders on the street, mass expulsions from school, strip searches at airports, or just driving in your car, racist terror infects all of society. The bosses have turned every black and Latin person into a suspect. With one in four young black men in the criminal justice system, and more than a million in prison, whole sections of the population are already living under full-blown fascism.

But more to the point is the question raised by the firefighter. Yes, he is responsible. We are all responsible for each other to fight the bosses' dictatorship. We can't be "Good Nazis" and claim, "We didn't know about the concentration camps." Building a fighting PLP that serves the working class can help develop a sense of responsibility for our class. This is a requirement for becoming a more serious force for revolution.

Fascist Welfare Cutoff Looms for Over 200,000

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 26 -- Over 200,000 people on welfare in this state face the cutoff of their cash benefits by the end of this year (New York Times, 2/10). At that time, each of them will have reached the arbitrary five-year federal limit enacted in the 1996 Clinton/Gingrich so-called welfare reform. Some 180,000 people in the U.S. have already lost benefits as some states, like Florida and Wisconsin, imposed shorter time limits under waivers granted by the Clinton Administration. Hundreds of thousands of men and women have been forced into slave labor Workfare programs.

The racist ideology of the Democratic/Republican Clinton/Gingrich gang insists that people on welfare "don't want to work." However, among the adults facing cutoff, nearly 28% are wage earners who work an average of 30 hours per week. Another 15% have disabilities that prevent them from working. Welfare bosses point to decreased welfare rolls as "proof" that the so-called reform is working. Soup kitchens and homeless shelters however report overwhelming increases in people seeking help. Welfare advocates report that large numbers of eligible applicants for welfare, food stamps and medicaid benefits either are wrongfully turned away or discouraged from applying in the first place.

NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has plans for six-month jobs for those reaching their five-year limits, followed by slave labor Workfare for those unable to make ends meet. As "payment" for this slave labor, families will receive a greatly-reduced cash benefit and vouchers to be used towards food and rent. The absolute terror of starvation of men, women and children will be a club used to lower the wages of, and divide, the entire working class, a clear indication of increasing fascism in the U.S.! We will continue and intensify our campaign opposing Workfare, both on the job and in the unions.

RACIST MURDERING COP ACQUITTED
FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY GROWS

Upper Marlboro, MD, February 23 -- Today a murdering racist cop was acquitted in Prince George's County, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), to the surprise of no one but angering everyone.

Brian Catlett is the first cop ever tried for killing someone in this county. He murdered a 19 year old unarmed black man, Gary Hopkins, Jr., in November 1999 during a fracas after a dance. The evidence of the cop's guilt was so overwhelming that Jack Johnson, the County's chief prosecutor, felt compelled to indict the cop for "involuntary" manslaughter and reckless endangerment. He was under pressure to make this gesture, given that 17 people have been shot -- some fatally -- by the County's cops in the last 18 months. (Howard University student Prince Jones was the latest fatality of the PG cops' rampage; see CHALLENGE over the last six months).

The trial was rigged from the start. The judge was a veteran conservative. The cop rejected a jury trial, choosing to be tried by the judge. Gary's mother described the judge-cop connection as part of an "old boy" network. Moreover, the prosecution was so inept that, for such a high profile case, can only be described as deliberate incompetence. For instance, the prosecution raised in an improper manner the fact that the cop and Hopkins had had previous run-ins, which was critical history behind the murder in November 1999; so this evidence was ruled inadmissible. Had a young black man killed a cop, no gross prosecution mistakes like this would have been made!

The anti-police brutality movement has really advanced. The Prince George's County People's Coalition for Police Accountability organized a prayer vigil of 150 people on the eve of the trial to back the family. The family's supporters packed the courtroom all week (along with the fascist cops and their "union" leader Rodney Bartlett). Dozens rallied outside the courthouse calling for the conviction of cop Catlett. Demonstrators included many county residents and Howard University workers. Speakers attacked the prosecution's malpractice and called for a broader movement against police brutality and racial profiling. One speaker called for a determined fight against the capitalist system and all its politicians, since capitalism spawns police brutality as a bosses' tool to better control and intimidate the working class, especially black workers.

During this campaign many important political issues have arisen. Who are our friends and who are our enemies? A cadre of black politicians have emerged over the last 15 years and, to a great extent, lead Prince George's County. They include County Executive Wayne Curry, State's Attorney Jack Johnson and local congressman Al Wynn. Yet these politicians have said virtually nothing about the fascist police force, merely suggesting a few minor reforms in police procedures (mounting video cameras on police cars, modest changes in the Law Enforcement Officer's Bill of Rights).

Nevertheless, some Coalition members believe the best political strategy for fighting police brutality is to work through the electoral system -- "which politicians are on our side." Other members, including PLP'ers, declare that, since the cause of the problem is capitalism, a mass revolutionary movement against capitalism is needed, which relies on the masses of workers and students to join the fight. The PLP identifies the media, politicians and legislative initiatives as all part of the enemy's apparatus, and will at best lead us to waste our time and energy and wind up demoralized.

Nevertheless, the Coalition has gotten several bills introduced in the state legislature to reduce the cops' protection against investigation and prosecution. Meanwhile, a major mass conference is being planned for mid-March at St. Paul's Baptist Church where the struggle over political direction will continue.

The PLP continues to urge the Coalition to fight racist police brutality and the system which generates it and to rely on the workers and students in the struggle. More will then see that reliance on the media, the politicians and the official political process does not produce the desired change.

The fact that hundreds of PLP leaflets about this case have been distributed in the County and at Howard University, and that most Coalition members have read CHALLENGE occasionally, makes this more possible. The PLP will continue to bring more workers and students into this movement, bolstering its mass character and its potential for militant action. They can be won to joining the revolutionary struggle and PLP.

Suspended Red Teacher Should Be:
`Commended, Not Condemned'

CHICAGO, IL February 21 -- "You can pay me back the money I lost, but you can never compensate the students for the education they lost. You say you care about the students, but everything you've done in this case indicates the opposite." This was the charge made by suspended communist math teacher Carol Caref against the Chicago Board of Education at their monthly meeting.

Carol was suspended without pay over a year ago for taking a student to an anti-KKK rally. In December, a hearing officer ruled that Carol should be sent back to work and "commended, not condemned." The Board can overrule the hearing officer, and that decision was supposed to have been made at the Board's last meeting. However, her case wasn't even on the agenda. They said they would poll the Board within two weeks and then issue a decision.

In the meantime, Carol's students at Chicago Vocational School (CVS) have been without a math teacher since the end of January. After Carol was removed from school last year, they were denied a teacher for several weeks. At a recent Local School Council meeting, the principal said Carol would be coming back, but that the Board will build another case against her. They're "out to get her."

About 75 supporters attended a victory party last month celebrating the hearing officer's favorable ruling. They are fighters against the repressive, anti-student regime of Schools boss Paul Vallas. Each one will be asked to be a May Day organizer and CHALLENGE distributor. The Caref-Bernal Defense Committee also plans to visit CVS parents and students. Fighting to carry out this struggle with each and every person in this way will help give communist political leadership to the fights against racist " intervention," high stakes tests, teacher layoffs (at a time of shortages!), and fascist "zero tolerance" policies.

The Board serves its capitalist masters, running the schools like factories designed to produce patriotic, individualistic, pro-capitalist soldiers and workers. Our Party fights for just the opposite. PLP serves the working class. We believe that all students are capable of learning, and becoming organizers and leaders of the revolutionary communist movement. Build a fighting Party in the schools! March on May Day!

Students Attack Racist LA Schools

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 27 -- Over 70 black and Latino high school students organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice attended a citywide high school conference. They condemned the rotten conditions in their schools and the racist education they're receiving: broken bathrooms and a lack of toilet tissue, overcrowded classrooms, teachers not teaching, constant harassment by school officials and police, and the lack of books and computers. The discussion revealed that overcrowded classrooms lead not only to a high teacher-student ratio but also assignment of one counselor to hundreds of students.

The "Stanford 9" standardized test, was attacked as racist, culturally biased and anti-working class. An Academic Performance Index (API) is based on the test's results. Each school is awarded money for improved API scores. Most of it has gone to the wealthier schools while the poorer ones get poorer. In addition, the curriculum is being geared to passing the test at the expense of critical educational development.

A group of students and teachers distributed a PLP leaflet attacking the U.S. bombing of Iraq. They told conference participants that the same rulers responsible for racist education are bombing Iraqi workers for oil profits. They said we need to build an international struggle against them.

These students want to fight back against racist education and conditions. We need to win them to understand that U.S. rulers are in trouble. They must defend their empire against imperialist rivals worldwide. They must change the schools to serve this goal. This includes building a national curriculum that justifies U.S. imperialism; pushes cultural nationalism and restricts students to learning only English; and obscures inter-imperialist rivalry leading to war. They want to build patriotism and win youth ideologically to fight and die for U.S. imperialism. Such tests as the Stanford 9 reflects this (see box).

All students can learn the real nature of the world and how to change it. Our fight is against capitalism because capitalism will never serve the educational interests of working-class students. The bosses' schools exist to reproduce their racist system. Only by destroying capitalism with a communist revolution will education ever meet the needs of the entire working class.

We need to deepen this fight and help prepare students today for the future by fighting to learn and learning to fight. A crucial part of this process is winning many of these angry students to march on May Day. This got a good push when one of the conference-goers called PLP applauding the leaflet and wanting to get together.

Sample questions reveal how the Stanford 9 exam obscures class relations and justifies U.S. imperialism in the attempt to win youth to defend and die for it:

What factor most strongly binds people together in a culture
a. Having simiilar economic problems
b. Living in similar neighborhoods
c. Sharing a common language
d. Joining the same political party
Their answer--c. Real answer--Which class one belongs to.

Events in Bosnia-Herzogovina both in 1914 and in the 1990's indicate the continuing influence of
a. international organizations
b. economic interdependence
c. economic self-interest
d. ethnic rivalries
Their answer--d. Real answer--Inter-imperialist rivalry.

The U.S. had numerous commitments around the world during the 1960's because it was
a. the richest country in the world at that time
b. the only superpower in the world at that time
c. leading the struggle against communist aggression
d. attempting to acquire a global empire
Their answer--c. Real answer--d.

Bosses' Rivalry Heats Up Over `Zapatour'

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 27 -- The march of the Zapatistas--the so-called Zapatour--led by Subcomandante Marcos from the jungles of Chiapas, has turned the eyes of the world toward Mexico. The academics say Marcos will revive the Mexican left. But behind all this is a fierce battle of rival bosses--from Mexico the U.S., and the European Union (EU). They view the Zapatistas home state, Chiapas, as a cash paradise, with its oil and mineral resources.

One example is the group PULSAR, a huge transnational company led by Alfonso Romo, which sells genetically engineered seeds. It wants to plant thousands of acres of eucalyptus trees to produce cellulose in the forests of Chimalapas and Lancondona. Then there's the ambitious project to build the super trans-isthmus Tehuantepec highway to connect the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean.

Today the bourgeois intellectuals want to solve the Chiapas situation by accepting some of the demands of the rebellious indigenous. They figure this can counter the influence of European non governmental organizations (NGO's) who have been organizing sympathy with the Zapatista movement by implementing assistance programs. The Fox regime must settle the Chiapas conflict in order to start constructing the trans-isthmus superhighway. It aims to negotiate directly with the rebels, offering them trinkets while continuing their poverty. The U.S. media and its NGO's are even "supporting" the Zapatistas to counter EU influence. This is all part of the U.S. bosses' strategic plan for control of all resources from the Texas border south to Panama. All the bosses use the people's needs as fodder for their own class interests.

Many progressive people see Zapatismo as a solution to at least the immediate evils of capitalism. But the fight for tiny reforms only changes the mask of the exploiters. Amending the Constitution will not change people's lives. The Constitution is an arm of the bosses who use their laws to maintain their class oppression. We need to get rid of it, not reform it. Getting the indigenous people to vote still leaves power in the bosses' hands. We have to fight for power for the working people.

That's why today more than ever we must fight for communist revolution, for a society where our class will reap the full value of all we produce.

The indigenous people have valuable experiences to draw on in building a communist society.

They still practice features of primitive communism -- mutual aid, collectivity, preserving the earth as the source of needed resources, not as a component of capitalist production, serving the people without receiving any wages for it. Their tradition doesn't conceive of imposing control on another group. They make their important decisions in general assemblies of the collective, not in back door meetings.

Workers and students shouldn't follow the U.S. or the EU imperialists. Our class can gain tremendously by the integration of more indigenous workers in the fight for communist revolution!

ORGANIZE AGAINST `RACIAL PROFILING' OF INFANTS

AT COOK COUNTY HOSPITAL

CHICAGO, Feb. 25 -- The viciously racist incident in the ER (see box) was the last straw. It moved a group of black and white doctors to meet and struggle to come up with a plan to oppose the "racial profiling" in the Cook County Hospital (CCH) newborn nursery. They want to fight the drug testing of newborns without the mother's knowledge or consent. This practice, long-standing at CCH, would not be tolerated for a second by private patients at a predominantly white suburban hospital. The doctors decided they must stand up for the working-class families using CCH. Most were emphatic that treating their patients as "suspects" is not why they became doctors.

This issue is complicated. Some feel mothers "cannot be trusted" because they may conceal their drug addiction and harm their infants. But reporting her addiction risks losing custody of her baby.

Are we serving the people or the police? How "concerned" could the bosses be about helping people with drug problems when they fail to provide enough rehab facilities for low-income patients? Why did they cut the number of social workers in the newborn unit from three to one?

Once a woman is reported for drug use in pregnancy -- especially if she is black -- her infant may be taken away. No wonder women are tempted to conceal their problem! Many experiences in the life of a black or Latin working class woman would lead her to mistrust healthcare providers. Secretly testing a baby's urine for drugs will not likely restore any trust. And it makes the doctors and nurses into cops.

As fascism develops, there is a struggle for the hearts and minds of hospital workers and professionals. The bosses want us to side with them, against our working-class patients and become auxiliary police, not healthcare providers. Despite ever-increasing numbers of armed police and threats of job loss, hospital workers must resist. Our interests and those of our patients are the same.

At a recent meeting, the new chairman of pediatrics, recently arrived from one of the country's most elite historically black medical schools, delivered the bad news: while as of January, only 591 of the hospital's 1,200 beds remained open, by next July, it will fall to 464. Unity of all CCH workers and professionals is essential to fight these layoffs.

Some feel the administration has intentionally created the atmosphere of intimidation over recent years, to ward off expected resistance to worsening conditions. However, staff members have protested each new regulation, like the lock-down of the stairwells, the requirement of multiple pass checks or the strict limits on family members allowed to visit. As the countdown proceeds, the situation deteriorates.

The rulers and their police and CIA are responsible for the drug epidemics in the large cities. Clinton's buddies get pardons, while low-level dealers and users are locked up. Oppression breeds resistance, so the rulers ratchet up the police state. Part of that process is winning workers and professionals ideologically to the side of the police, and against the workers, especially black and Latin workers. Resisting this tendency is more than being a "nice person" or a good healthcare professional. It's being an anti-fascist and an ally of the working class.

Many come to work at CCH because they believe in providing care with concern, regardless of ability to pay. The main way to serve the people is to fight to win them to become revolutionary communist organizers and members of PLP. We value and respect black working-class infants and their mothers for what they are: future fighters and leaders of the working class. As this fight unfolds, we can build a contingent of CCH patients, workers and professionals to march on May Day. Now that's the best thing we can do with our lives.

LIFE (AND DEATH) AT CCH

The baby was dead on arrival. The small lifeless form of the four-month-old was brought into the pediatric emergency room. It was soon clear that efforts to revive him would not succeed. Still the doctors and nurses continued to pump on the little chest and inject medications for forty minutes. The mother did not arrive for nearly two hours, reportedly because there was a warrant for her arrest. Indeed, she arrived in shackles. She was given some privacy to see her dead child. But while the mother sat holding her cold, gray infant, a police officer stood behind her, silently mouthing the words "piece of shit." Another cop told one of the doctors in the room, "The baby is in a better place -- he shouldn't be raised in this environment." Capitalism couldn't offer this young family a life, only hopelessness and harassment, injury and racist insults.

Daewoo Autoworkers Fight Cops Attacking Occupation of Plant

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA -- Daewoo auto worker preparing to hurl a Molotov cocktail at some of the 4,000 armed cops who stormed the Daewoo plant near here after several hundred striking workers occupied it. The strikers are protesting the layoff of over 5,000 workers, victims of capitalism's worldwide auto overproduction. "Workers of the World, Unite!" must become the battle cry of autoworkers facing similar attacks on five continents.

Letters
Workers of the World, Write!

A Streetcar Named Communism

Last month I traveled to San Francisco from another state on a trip with two co-workers. We got on the famous cable car to go to Fisherman's Wharf. I asked the conductor/brakeman, an older white worker, how many years he had to drive a bus before being eligible to work the cable car. "Ten years," he replied. He described how physically difficult the front brakeman's job was.

Then he explained how the Muni workers had finally elected an honest shop steward, John Murray, who was kicking out the sellout union misleaders. He told the group of passengers around him that Murray was a communist who really fought for better conditions for the workers. He said he hadn't understood the importance of communists before but now he has gone to the communist bookstore to buy a book about the history of his union. Then he told everyone listening how he explained to the union's young workers that kicking the crooks out of union leadership took a long time. It couldn't be done overnight and John Murray had stuck with it over the long haul.

I said, "Well, I hope you keep John Murray honest." He told all of us that wouldn't be a problem. If we had stayed on for one more stop, there might have been a group discussion of workers' revolution right on the cable car.

San Francisco visitor

Jewish-Palestinian Unity Indicts Israeli Fascists

The renewed outbreak of fighting in Israel-Palestine over the last five months has inspired a growth in numbers and activity of anti-nationalist Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere, primarily among young people, but including many others. Several PLP'ers have been involved in these actions.

A number of new organizations have emerged here, opposing the actions of the Israeli ruling class. The most militant is Jews Against The Occupation (JATO). It is composed mostly of young people, many of whom took part in the anti-police brutality demonstrations around the Diallo murder in which the group Jews For Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) participated.

JATO's program calls for complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from all territory occupied after the 1967 Israeli-Arab war and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to areas from which they've been expelled since 1948, in both Israel and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. This is a specifically anti-nationalist demand; carrying it out would dramatically change the demographics of the entire Israel-Palestine region.

JATO has organized or participated in actions against the Israeli ruling class, including picketing the Israeli Consulate; demonstrating against an Israeli Cabinet member appearing at a New York YM-YWHA; entering, and demonstrating against the Israel Discount Bank in New York (where "blood money" was tossed inside the bank); and participating in an informational picket line at Zabars, a large UpperWest Side delicatessen patronized by many Jewish people.

In some of these actions JATO worked together with Not In Our Name, another youth organization, and with Jews For Peace Through Justice, primarily older women who are also members of JFREJ. JATO has also linked up with a group of young people of predominantly Palestinian ethnicity called Al-Awda.

The anti-nationalist, anti-occupation movement is growing in other areas as well. A group named Jews Against the Occupation is active in England. In Montreal, The Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation and a Palestinian and Jewish Unity group hold demonstrations every Friday at noon outside the Israeli Consulate there.

Many people in this growing movement hold anti-imperialist views and recognize and oppose the role of the U.S. ruling class in developing Israel as an anchor for its push to control Middle East oil. They should be given CHALLENGE and urged to march on May Day. They need to be won to the view that there will be no permanent peace in the region until a united Arab-Jewish working class carries out a communist revolution and workers power is in control.

New York comrade

ESL Students Meet The CHALLENGE

Our PLP workers' club has a class in dialectical materialism. Recently we began studying the first law of dialectics, the unity and conflict of opposites. Out of that we discussed the contradictions holding us back from distributing more CHALLENGES. Then we read a CHALLENGE article describing healthcare cutbacks at a Brooklyn hospital. We looked for the contradictions between the workers and bosses in that story.

I said I'd been holding back from distributing more CHALLENGES in my ESL (English as a Second Language) class. One of those students, also in the dialectics class, noticed that. She offered to help distribute more papers there.

My union-sponsored ESL class is for home attendants. I've been selecting articles in each issue while my student distributes the paper. We discuss them, like the story in the last issue about the LA garment workers who stood up to the bosses to stop the layoff of a co-worker. It was inspiring. Most of my students had been factory workers until their plants closed or moved. They then became home attendants.

I also picked out the story from Ecuador and the one about Boeing workers supporting strikers in Colombia. My students eagerly marked down the pages of these stories. I plan to use the article on the drugging of children in the last issue in a class project called Problem-Based Learning. The class is small, but so far almost all the students have begun reading CHALLENGE.

In March I'm having a May Day dinner for my students. Usually many march with their families. Reading the paper will show the meaning of May Day and help motivate them.

What are other comrades' experiences with CHALLENGE? Do we realize what a good paper we have, how much it means to workers and how it can help change their perspectives and lives? How did LA garment workers receive the excellent article about their struggle? I bet it would enable us to introduce CHALLENGE to many more garment workers, janitors, their families and others as well as to their children who go to schools where our comrade teachers work.

A PLP member

`Let the red fire in our bellies burn hot . . . `

I have been enjoying CHALLENGE for a year or so and pass them on to others when I've finished them.

The Johnstown, PA police department's racism is overtly and shamelessly displayed by its fascist enforcers. According to the local media, three cops are being investigated for allegedly accosting a black tourist, Sherman Fauntleroy, two weeks ago as he pulled into a Wendy's restaurant on Broad Street for lunch. The cops stopped him without cause, searched his car and "reviewed" his driver's license, registration and other information without charging him. He then drove back to the Holiday Inn where he was staying with his wife, Diane (a National Drug Intelligence Center employee who was in the city on business at the agency's Johnstown offices).

Shortly thereafter, another cop confronted Mr. Fauntleroy as he walked from the Holiday Inn to a nearby store. According to Johnstown NAACP president Clea Hollis, all stops made by the police are to be documented and the "race" of the person(s) stopped recorded. This policy was adopted because of racial profiling occurring for more than a year in the area. Hollis contends that Police Chief Huntly should also be held accountable for his officers' behavior.

City councilman Ron Stevens said, "(The officers) know what the policy is. It's their problem. Not the chief's...not the city's." No, it's everyone's problem as long as capitalism continues to foster ignorance and racism.

Recently the Moxham section of Johnstown was leafleted with racist Klan literature. Shortly afterwards a letter appeared from a Lisa Penrod defending the leaflet as "free speech." Penrod is a local Klan sympathizer living in nearby Somerset County. A year ago she offered her farm for the Klan to hold a cross-burning.

Especially troubling is the fact that both black and white youth in this area are turning to drugs and violence. Since our children are our future, I don't like what I see in the crystal ball for Johnstown, this country or the world.

But I do hope and dream. I dream of a society where people are not stopped by the police for Driving While Black. I dream of a large bonfire using white sheets for fuel, (topped with a confederate flag for good measure). And I dream of a society where our children understand and practice communist principles.

As people become more oppressed, harassed and poorer, the opportunity to educate them about communism grows. Let the fire in our bellies burn hot and let our actions reflect what is true and honorable.

Red Hot

`War On Drugs' is War On Workers

The CHALLENGE article (2/28) on U.S. bosses' heavy involvement in drug trafficking -- in one way or another -- for several decades is very useful. The "war on drugs" is a racist and imperialist war on workers overseas and in the U.S. In one week in New York City's mostly black and Latin West Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods, three separate incidents show the real nature of this war.

First, several city, state and federal agencies (including the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the NYPD and the National Guard) raided several bodegas (grocery stores) in Washington Heights, "looking for drugs." The bodegas apparently were being used by local drug dealers. In the past, there have been many raids in that community, but I don't remember such an onslaught of agencies. It seems like a preview of the proposals by the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission to impose a wider police state in the U.S. (see CHALLENGE editorial, Feb. 28).

Then, a few days after that raid, Mayor Giuliani and all his top aides held a "town meeting" in a local West Harlem school. Many neighborhood people who attended demanded more action against the local drug dealers, refuting the cops' and Mayor's claims that they've "cleaned the streets" of these vermin. Unfortunately, many honest people see more cops and more arrests as the only solution to this problem. There are already two million in jail in the U.S., two-thirds of them for non-violent crimes (usually involving drugs). Drugs are big business. A new UN report stated that the use of new drugs like ecstasy and old ones like marihuana are growing, particularly among U.S. youth (the highest consumers of these drugs worldwide). Some people at the meeting did demand better and increased treatment for drug users as the solution.

Finally, that same week a racist leaflet appeared in English in certain sections of Washington Heights -- where the population is more affluent and white -- labeling all Dominican residents of the area as drug-dealers. This leaflet reflects the racist nature of the war on drugs. Indeed, while there are many young Dominican workers who sell drugs there, 99.99% of all Dominican residents of Washington Heights are hard-working people trying to make ends meets.

When I grew up in the Dominican Republic in the '50s and early '60s, drugs were unknown (alcohol has always been the big problem there, particularly among males). When I arrived in New York City in 1962, drugs were still unknown among my generation of Dominican immigrants. But in 1965 U.S. bosses invaded the Dominican Republic, intervening to back a right-wing junta deposed by a popular rebellion. They sent as many troops there (38,000) as there were in Vietnam at that time. It was only then that drugs became popular in the inner cities all over the country. Why? Because during that period millions were protesting the war in Vietnam and racism in the U.S. Rebellions were erupting against racist cops in all major cities.

That was why the CHALLENGE article on drugs was on the mark in explaining that the bosses and their cops, CIA, etc. began dumping drugs into the inner cities to dull the drive for rebellion. Knowledge is indeed subversive if it is used to fight the real drug dealers.

Red Immigrant

CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
War Crimes of U.S. Imperialism
`Death is our business, and business is good...'

Progressive Labor Party has often described the lords of the U.S. ruling class -- both in and out of official government positions -- as war criminals "worse than Hitler." Perhaps some think this is simply exaggeration and rhetoric. But they may actually be underestimations.

The term "U.S. ruling class" is a broad term referring to the biggest capitalists who own the main industries and banks, plus their servants in government, like presidents, generals, leading underlings and the governors and mayors of the larger states and cities. Over the past 35 years, one of the leading lights of this class has been Henry Kissinger, the Rockefellers' chief foreign policy advisor and an appointee/advisor of numerous presidents. If anyone deserves to be strung up by the international working class for crimes against our class, it is Henry the Monster.

Kissinger has been a designer and director of policies that have directly killed millions of people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, the Middle East, South Africa, Angola and Central America. He was also the protector of the murderous Shah of Iran. While destruction of this entire ruling class by communist revolution is a necessary goal, many individuals must be held most accountable for the oppression and deaths of tens of millions of workers. Few can top Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger's Hitlerian crimes against the working class speak volumes. This article is drawn mainly from "The Case Against Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens in the February 2001 HARPER'S magazine. Here we will deal only with his genocidal actions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Kissinger's "career" took off during the 1968 Paris negotiations to end the war in Vietnam. This war involved five U.S. presidents -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. After the Viet Minh's People's War defeated the French colonialists, U.S. rulers decided to "save Vietnam from communism" (more accurately, for imperialist exploitation). They, too, were run aground by the organized might of the workers and peasants. Unfortunately the Vietnamese leadership was abandoning the goal of a workers' dictatorship over the bosses and began negotiating with the losing U.S. invaders. This has led to the welcoming of U.S. corporations and presidents back to Vietnam, ushering in capitalism in the name of "socialism."

In the fall of 1968, the Johnson Administration was about to end the massive bombing of north Vietnam and sign a peace deal with the Vietnamese. This -- given the ever-growing opposition to the war in the U.S. -- would have probably won the '68 election for Humphrey and the Democrats. Kissinger (a trusted "advisor" of that Administration) leaked this information to the Nixon-for-President campaign. Nixon then told the south Vietnamese, puppets of the U.S. (and necessary participants in a deal), that if they pulled out of the negotiations they would get a better deal from the Republicans, assuming that he (Nixon) would then win the Presidency.

On October 31st, Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing. Two days later the south Vietnamese fascists fulfilled Kissinger's double-cross and pulled out of the peace talks, virtually ending them. The result? Nixon beat Humphrey -- barely. His first appointee was none other than Kissinger as National Security Advisor. (Had Humphrey won, Kissinger was a certainty for a high position in his Administration as well since he had written in the Rockefeller House organ Foreign Affairs that he fully agreed with the Johnson Administration Vietnam policy.)

But the larger result was that the war was to continue for another four years, killing 600,000 more Vietnamese soldiers, at least two to three million more Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian civilians and 20,000 more U.S. GI's. This didn't include the effects of the massive sprayings of defoliants and pesticides, effects which continue to this day. Moreover, the 1973 settlement was virtually the same as the one agreed upon in 1968.

Kissinger was the architect of these barbarous four years, all of which promoted him from a "mediocre academic to an international potentate." In just those "extra" four years of war, there was such massive "carpet bombing" of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- more than twice the tonnage dropped during the ENTIRE World War II -- that Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton exclaimed, "We seem to be proceeding on the assumption that the way to eradicate the Vietcong is to destroy all the village structures, defoliate all the jungles and cover the entire surface of South Vietnam with asphalt."

Kissinger's first operation, "Speedy Express," designed under Johnson/Humphrey and carried forward under Nixon, was the "pacification" of the province of Kien Hoa in the Mekong Delta, to take political control away from the National Liberation Front. Knowing full well that there were no north Vietnamese troops in the area, 8,000 infantrymen and 3,381 tactical air strikes murdered 11,000 civilians in pursuit of "pacification."

Newsweek Saigon bureau chief Kevin Buckley was told by a U.S. official (June 19, 1972) that, "The...inflicting [of] civilian casualties...was worse than My Lai....sanctioned by the command's insistence on high body-counts...."

"There were 5,000 people in our village before 1969, but there were none in 1970. The Americans destroyed every house with artillery, air strikes, or by burning them down with cigarette lighters....Many children [were] killed by concussion from the bombs which their small bodies could not withstand, even if they were hiding underground."

General Creighton Abrams announced Operation Speedy Express a huge success. Kissinger's memoirs reveal that he micromanaged the war in such detail that nothing like this could take place without his knowledge or permission. It is no wonder that the slogan painted on one helicopter's quarters read, "Death is our business and business is good."

Such were some of the results of Kissinger's four extra years of genocidal war.

Still another atrocity carried out under Kissinger's direction was the massive bombing and then invasion of Laos and Cambodia. The initial bombing was performed secretly, knowing the effect on civilians. The revolting code names were: "Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Dessert." From March 1969 to May 1970, 3,630 such raids were flown over Cambodia. The official death toll from bombing was 350,000 civilians in Laos and 600,000 in Cambodia (not the highest estimates). "In addition, the widespread use of toxic chemical defoliants created a massive health crisis that fell most heavily on children, nursing mothers, the aged and the already infirm. That crisis persists to this day." (HARPERS, 2/01)

Kissinger's reaction to this slaughter appeared in Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman's "Diaries" for March 17, 1969:

Historic day. K[issinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" a great success. He came beaming in with report, very productive.

(Then, on April 22, 1970, Haldeman reports that Nixon, following Kissinger to a National Security Council meeting on Cambodia) "Turned back to me with a big smile and said `K[issinger]'s really having fun today, he's playing Bismarck."

Kissinger's joy over the murder of at least a million innocent people recalls Adolph Hitler's dancing a jig in the streets of Paris after the fall of France in World War II. Kissinger was not just issuing general directives. According to Colonel Sitton, by late 1969 his office was regularly being overruled in target selection: "Not only was Henry carefully screening the raids, he was reading the raw intelligence" and fiddling with the mission patterns and bombing runs.

Kissinger's manipulation of the war and the increasing genocide is reflected in another conversation recounted by Haldeman that occurred on December 15, 1970. Nixon had told both of them that he had this big "peace plan" set for the following year. Haldeman reports Kissinger opposed it. "He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the '72 elections. He favors a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of '72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election." So the war went on as Kissinger planned.

These millions of deaths of workers and peasants could easily be defined by working-class historians as "Kissinger's Holocaust." While the five presidents, their underlings like McNamara, the heads of the CIA, the generals and admirals, and their real bosses -- the Rockefellers and their ilk -- are all as guilty of this mass murder as Kissinger, no capitalist court or "war crimes tribunal" will ever try them. Only a successful communist revolution will mete out working-class justice, like the communist-led Italian partisans "sentencing" of fascist dictator Mussolini -- death by immediate hanging.

Icelanders Resist Gene Pirates' Looting 0f Health Records

Human genes are now a commodity. The "rough draft" of the human genome was published this month, amid squabbles between the publicly-funded genome project and Celera, a private company. Behind these squabbles is big money. Some 100 biotech companies are competing for billions in investments toward the discovery of new drugs, based on gene information. Investors are moving from the generic information provided by "the" human genome to the genetics of human differences. A recent Iceland scandal gives us a glimpse of the future as genomes go on sale.

In December 1998, Iceland's Parliament passed a bill which gives a single, Delaware-based start-up company exclusive rights to Iceland's medical database and genetic profiles. Despite international outcry, at one point the bill was supposedly favored by a majority of adult Icelanders.

As people realized the scary implications, protest grew, led by the new organization Mannvernd ("Human Protection"). By now hundreds of Icelandic physicians are defying the new law and boycotting the registry, and over 10% of adults have opted out of the program. As the Icelandic model is being copied in other countries, notably Estonia, it bears close watching.

The database law was the brainchild of Kari Stefannson, Icelandic-born Harvard neurologist. Claiming that Iceland's genepool was a unique resource, Stefansson founded deCODE in 1996, with $12 million in venture capital, and began operating in Iceland. In 1998, deCODE signed a $200 million deal with Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant Hoffman La Roche.

The selling point was: common diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer and arthritis have both a genetic component and an environmental one. Knowing the genes involved helps drug companies design better, more profitable drugs. But it's difficult to discover disease-influencing genes in typical human populations. Alzheimers, for instance, is influenced by variants (alleles) of many different genes in different families.

According to deCODE, the small Icelandic population (270,000) is less genetically diverse than most. Iceland was settled in the ninth century by a small number of Viking pirates and remained relatively isolated until recently. It suffered population bottlenecks when many people died of epidemics, volcanic eruptions and famine. Surviving families would be expected to carry only a few kinds of Alzheimer's-influencing alleles, making these genes easier to hunt.

Other advantages for studying Icelanders were a national health care system and detailed genealogies (family records), some hundreds of years old. deCODE would establish a centralized database linking the entire country's medical records to individual genetic information, including tissue samples, and to family records. In exchange for paying $100 million for the database, deCODE gets a monopoly license to sell information to customers and other big biotech companies. Icelanders have been promised a few biotech jobs and free research-based drugs, if these ever materialize.

It's a sweetheart deal for deCODE, Roche and a few Icelandic bosses, but most Icelanders will gain nothing and have much to lose in privacy. Although identities are encoded, security experts say that it would be child's play to break the code in a small country where "born on April 8, 1970, has two great-uncles and four children" might be a unique ID. That would make everyone's medical records--complete with alcohol abuse, psychiatric history or genetic risk factors--open to snooping. "A nation of Trumans," wrote one critic, referring to the movie "The Truman Show," in which a man's life is watched by a TV audience of millions.

In contrast to the standard of "informed consent" to human research, deCODE has invented "presumed consent," meaning that a person's records are added to the database unless he or she opts out. Outrage grew with the scandalous revelation that Parliament members had received a hefty bribe from deCODE just before voting. Many Icelanders resent the racist claim that they are "pure-bred" or carry "superior" Nordic genes. Icelandic geneticists point out that Vikings brought Irish slaves with them from Ireland. Over half of Iceland's relatively diverse genepool is probably of Celtic origin.

deCODE had counted on Iceland's pro-science public to be swept off their feet by high-tech promises. Like Nazi "race hygiene," the new science of genomics offered unprecedented social power to professionals. This is what 21st century fascism will look like--slick, high-tech and benevolent. Now it has encountered unexpected roadblocks, doctors and patients who inspiringly refuse to cooperate.

As one Icelander wrote, "On the eve of World War II, Adolf Hitler's emissary in Iceland, Werner Gerlach, [was]...sorely disappointed at not finding the Fuhrer's master race in our country, where the Nazis imagined it had been preserved in isolation for centuries. No such luck. What he encountered was a tribe of tall, gray-eyed, auburn-haired and red-bearded storytellers, insolently lacking in respect for Teutonic self-delusions of grandeur."

Opposing `Big Brother'
"Dear Sigmundur,
It is my pleasant duty to announce that I shall not send information about patients to the Health Sector Database operating according to Act nr. 139/1998, except with a written request of the patient....
Best regards, Haraldur Briem, Chief of Infectious Disease"

 

a href="#Red-Led Working Class Must Fight U.S.Rulers’ Blueprint for Fascism">"ed-Led Working Class Must Fight U.S.Rulers’ Blueprint for Fascism

• a href="#U.S. Rulers: Terror R’ Us">".S. Rulers: Terror R’Us
• Exxon Aims for Iraqi Oil

Ecuador: Uprising Against 500 Years of Racism

a href="#Bogotá and Boeing: ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialism Won’t Work">Bogot" and Boeing: ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialism Won’t Work

Boeing Workers Back Bavaria Strikers

a href="#Bethlehem, American, LTV… Steel Bosses’ Profit Squeeze Kills!">Be"hlehem, American, LTV… Steel Bosses’ Profit Squeeze Kills!

British Steelworker Rebellion Brewing Over Huge Job Cuts

Overproduction, Corruption Slams Korean Autoworkers

LA Garment Workers Defiance of Bosses: Good Omen For May Day

a href="#SUNY PLP’ers Build Campus Worker-Student Alliance">"UNY PLP’ers Build Campus Worker-Student Alliance

a href="#‘Free Trade’—‘Internationalism’ For the Bosses">‘Free Tr"de’—‘Internationalism’ For the Bosses

May Day and the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the International Working Class

a href="#The Real Drug ‘Traffic’-ers: The Bosses, Banks, & Gov’t">The "eal Drug ‘Traffic’-ers: The Bosses, Banks, & Gov’t

LETTERS

Black Woman Pilot Flies For May Day

Put Dialectics in the Classroom

a href="#Math—Is Being ‘Drilled’, Being ‘Screwed’?">Math—Is "eing ‘Drilled’, Being ‘Screwed’?

Nationalism Fuels Auto Wars

---

a name="Red-Led Working Class Must Fight U.S.Rulers’ Blueprint for Fascism">">"ed-Led Working Class Must Fight U.S.Rulers’ Blueprint for Fascism

CHALLENGE has referred frequently in recent months to a ruling-class blueprint for the fascist reorganization of U.S. society, devised by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (also called the Hart-Rudman Commission). The third and final phase of this plan was published on January 31. It contains long-range strategic recommendations for maintaining U.S. imperialism’s world supremacy. This Commission contains high-ranking Republicans and Democrats. All major figures among the big bosses support its findings.

The report anticipates mass bloodshed on U.S. soil from "terrorist" attacks and calls for ruthless measures to prevent or counter them. The Commission says the rulers must prepare to launch ever-widening wars against rivals. It makes a series of suggestions for centralizing the state apparatus under one command and for militarizing society as a whole.

Workers must make a balanced, accurate assessment of this ruling-class plan. On the one hand, our class enemy has great tactical advantages and strengths, as well as a proven willingness to spill enormous amounts of working-class blood in defense of its profit interests. The rulers can probably carry out many aspects of the Hart-Rudman proposals. On the other hand they have a crucial weakness—they can no longer rule in the old way but must move increasingly to fascism to enforce their power. The growth of PLP and the spread of mass communist consciousness among workers and others can turn all the rulers’ power into its opposite. Fascism and war are inevitable. U.S. imperialism’s ability to rule the world forever is not. The crucial question remains: what will PLP do to grow under any and all circumstances?

The Commission’s key recommendations:

•Creating a National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) to supervise all "homeland security" under one government umbrella;

•Transferring the Customs Service, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard to NHSA;

•Converting the National Guard into a European-style internal security force;

•Putting under one roof the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency;

•Pushing math and science education for military purposes and target historically black colleges and universities as sources of recruitment;

Militarizing the economy by making the Secretary of the Treasury a member of the National Security Council;

Having every member of Congress participate in war games at least once every two years;

Streamlining the nomination process for Cabinet and other high-ranking posts to prevent partisan bickering.

This is obviously a very broad design to force discipline within the ruling class and support for the Eastern Establishment agenda of maintaining U.S. world domination. It’s also a scheme for terrorizing workers on the home front and stifling the inevitable class struggles sure to erupt as workers eventually rebel against economic oppression, racism and the horrors of bosses’ profit wars (see CHALLENGE, 2/14). As such, both "liberals" and "conservatives" have applauded the Commission’s recommendations. Democrat Lee Hamilton of Indiana, a Commissioner, urged Congress to support it. A key Bush ally, Texas Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry, gushed: "I think every conclusion is exactly right, and I think every recommendation that they’ve made needs to happen" ("Defense News," 1/15).

Thornberry is a revealing case. In his support of Bush vs. Gore, he was as partisan as they come. But his deep loyalty lies with U.S. imperialism. In 1999, he attended a national security conference sponsored by the Tufts University Fletcher School. His classmates included Hart-Rudman Commission co-chair Republican Warren Rudman, Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, and liberal Republican William Cohen, Clinton’s last defense secretary.

The conference’s final report reflects the rulers’ desperate worry that the U.S. working class will not willingly die to keep U.S. imperialism in the driver’s seat: "The…conflicting requirements of U.S. global strategy and the persistence of a strategic culture that contains minimal tolerance for casualties will produce a growing dilemma for the United States as a twenty-first century super-power. It will therefore be especially important for policy-makers to muster broad public support for U.S. national security policy."

In other words, the "Vietnam Syndrome" continues to plague the rulers. In 1991, Bush, Sr. blinked at the prospect of taking mass casualties on the road to Baghdad and left Saddam Hussein in power rather than risk them. In 1993, Clinton left Somalia with his tail between his legs after a handful of U.S. troops had died there. In 1999, fear of the political reaction to ground casualties led Clinton to announce at the very beginning that the U.S./NATO slaughter for oil pipelines in the former Yugoslavia would be limited to an air war.

Mustering "broad public support" for the "sacrifice [of] blood and treasure" (as the Commission’s Phase I report puts it) that will be required to defend U.S. imperialism in the next 25 years is a very tall order. The bosses may well find a way to discipline their own ranks. Many of the Commission’s recommendations for reorganizing state power are likely to be adopted in one form or another. But winning the working class is another matter altogether.

As conditions sharpen, the gap between the rulers’ need for willing cannon-fodder and the workers’ desire for an alternative to war and fascism can only increase. Our Party’s main job, now and for the foreseeable future, is to widen that gap and build the PLP in the process. Millions of young workers remain open to communism. We must find the ways to lead them to it.

a name="U.S. Rulers: Terror R’ Us">">".S. Rulers: Terror R’ Us

All three phases of the Hart-Rudman Commission report predict large loss of human life on U.S. soil from various terrorist attacks. Aside from the hypocrisy involved, any time the biggest terrorists in world history point the finger at someone else’s atrocities, this particular warning almost looks like a prayer that such attacks will happen. The rulers openly worry that they need to motivate workers inside and outside the military. Phase I of Hart-Rudman longs for a "Pearl Harbor" type of event to unite the country. Don’t put it past the bosses to orchestrate such an attack themselves. They’ve done it before, in Vietnam (in lying that the north Vietnamese attacked a U.S. warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964) and in Cuba (the Hearst-orchestrated sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898). And the stage is being set to identify a villain. Leading candidates are Saddam Hussein, whom the U.S. press calls a threat to the entire world, and Osama bin Laden, who’s been portrayed as worse than Hitler and Saddam combined. If terrorist threats didn’t exist, the bosses would have to invent them. The crudeness with which they’re going about it reflects their deep strategic weakness.

Exxon Aims for Iraqi Oil

The Feb. 14th CHALLENGE described the failure of U.S. imperialism’s Iraq policy. The NEW YORK TIMES (2/11 editorial) admits this failure and orders the Bush Adminisration to reverse it: "Thwarting…Hussein’s ambition to rebuild his military forces must remain the central goal of American policy." But this order is more easily given than carried out. As we’ve often reported, U.S. bosses’ French and Russian rivals have huge contracts for Iraqi oil. Sanctions don’t work when they aren’t unanimously enforced. All they do is kill lots of workers and children. U.S. imperialism is doing this daily without winning its goals, which include preventing Iraqi oil from competing with Exxon-Mobil. So right now the best Bush and his Secy. of State Powell can do is tread water while continuing to murder Iraqi kids.

Ground war remains the only strategic option for controlling Iraqi energy reserves. This means taking a huge risk with a U.S. military showing no sign of wanting an all-out fight for Exxon’s oily wealth. However, it’s a risk the rulers will ultimately have to take. The leadership given by PLP in the coming period can greatly influence how this contradiction plays out when ground war for Persian Gulf oil actually starts.

Ecuador: Uprising Against 500 Years of Racism

QUITO, ECUADOR, Feb. 13 — This country is the most recent clear example that capitalism is a failure for the masses and that the only way out of this hell is to fight for communism.

A Century’s Loss of Social Gains in One Year

According to UNICEF (UN agency for children), in the last year Ecuador has fallen back a century in social progress. Over one million people have emigrated in the last few years, fleeing from the misery caused by the profit system and its crooked politicians (who have stolen the oil wealth produced by workers here). Inflation is the highest on the continent. Racism against the indigenous population is rampant. And now the city of Manta is the site of a U.S. air base used to help the fascist army of neighboring Colombia in its war against the guerrillas there.

But workers are fighting back. Under the slogan of, "We’ve had enough with 500 years of slavery and racism," tens of thousands of indigenous people marched from their communities to Quito. Thousands seized highways and other areas. For several weeks they confronted the cops and the army.

Several protesters were slain in the Napo region. Angry demonstrators retaliated by burning down the local airport control tower to prevent more soldiers from reaching the region. This militant mass reaction forced the soldiers to withdraw to their bases.

This new mass movement offer great lessons to all those wanting to fight capitalism. Firstly, the masses conpletely isolated the traditional union hacks, taking the movement out of their control. The hacks tried to cover their faces by calling for a general strike a week after the mass uprising began. But their past treacheries and accommodations with the local bosses and with the imperialists’ International Monetary Fund are not being forgotten by the most militant workers and their allies.

Secondly, the reformist leadership of the indigenous people has also exposed itself, though it still controls much of the movement. Rank-and-file workers and youth took militant actions in spite of the leadership’s pacifism. When the angry indigenous workers came to take over Quito, the traitorous leadership did its job by holding the demonstrators in the Salesian University, instead of sending them to the working-class neighborhoods. They feared a full-blown insurrection. Realizing this, the leaders and the government reached a deal, offering the angry masses some crumbs.

But this won’t solve any basic problems. The contradictions are bound to sharpen: "President Noboa signed an agreement …with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), ending a two-week national uprising by thousands of poor Indians…While Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said the Noboa government barely had averted a civil war, implementing necessary economic reforms in the country will prove more difficult." (Stratfor.com, 2/12)

PLP Spreads Its Communist Politics

The PLP members in Quito participated in this uprising, bringing our communist ideas with hundreds of flyers and DESAFIO-CHALLENGES. Workers applauded our activities raising food and medicine for the indigenous workers entering Quito. We also participated in militant confrontations of indigenous women fighting the tear-gassing cops. Our comrades steeled themselves in these struggles, inspiring us even more to build our movement. We’ve won new friends for our Party, particularly in the mass organizations we’ve joined.

This is the path to growing and overcoming our weaknesses and showing that a communist society, which will destroy all bosses and their racism, is the only solution for all workers and their allies.

Racism and the Indigenous Population

Racism and capitalism are birds of a feather worldwide. In Ecuador, nearly half the population is indigenous, living mostly in rural areas. They lack most basic services. Over 45% lack running water and 48% lack draining systems. The infant mortality rate is at 35% in some areas.

Until recently large landowners treated indigenous people like slaves. No wonder, these workers are so angry and militant and are leading the class struggle here.

The old communist movement played an important role in the past organizing among the indigenous people. The movement’s first militant mass leaders were communists. We in PLP will do our best to build on this tradition while trying to avoid past errors. The future of the entire working class depends on that.

a name="Bogotá and Boeing: ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialism Won’t Work"></a>B"gotá and Boeing: ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialism Won’t Work

SEATTLE, WA., Feb. 12—Boeing workers heard a tale of two cities at last week’s union meeting. The first was of Bogotá, Colombia and the striking Bavaria workers. Many sat transfixed as we described the death squad killings of union leaders. Plan Colombia—U.S. imperialism’s billion-dollar package in support of the Colombian military, the de facto protector of these very same death squads—was discussed for the first time at a Boeing union meeting.

The second city was Tukwila, Washington, the home of Boeing’s corporate headquarters. Effective January 21, Thomas R. Pickering, former U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs, joined the company’s Executive Council. We briefly described Pickering’s history: illegal gun-running to the Nicaraguan Contras; the cover-up of the killing of U.S. nuns by the fascist El Salvadoran regime; the murder of millions of Iraqis through sanctions; the off-loading of tooling work to cheaper Russian factories; his role as a chief architect of Plan Colombia. We concluded by asking our union brothers and sisters where we should stand: with our boss Pickering or with the Bavaria workers striking for a little job security?

The meeting answered by authorizing rank-and-file workers to draft a union solidarity letter, to be sent to the Bavaria strikers.(See letter on right)

Castles Made Of Sand Slip Into The Sea…Eventually

Some in the leadership signaled for the local president to cut short this discussion, but the top leadership didn’t want to bring the issue to a head right now. Today even the AFL-CIO is looking for a way to put a humanitarian face on U.S. imperialism. In fact, it sponsored a trade unionist from Colombia recently at the local Labor Temple, speaking against Plan Colombia.

During the Cold War, U.S. bosses’ main worry in Latin America was USSR-backed guerrilla movements whose goal was national liberation. Today, the Social Democracy of the European Union (EU) represents the bigger threat. While the U.S. is spending more than a billion arming the fascist Colombian military and eradicating the crops of peasants, the EU is providing $800 million worth of roads, schools, infrastructure and agricultural aid. Exactly who do you suppose is winning the hearts and minds of workers in Colombia with programs like these? Of course, we should not be fooled: both U.S. and EU imperialism will ultimately prove deadly to millions of our co-workers.

Even winning U. S. workers—and especially largely black and Latin soldiers—to support U.S. imperialism is a problem for the bosses without a better humanitarian cover. U.S. rulers have the task of building a nationalist movement in support of U.S. imperialism that has the appearance of supporting workers around the world — a huge contradiction! Hence, the hesitancy of the union leadership at last week’s meeting, even though a junior partner of U.S. imperialism.

Strategically, the U.S. bosses and their labor lieutenants are in a weak position because of all the contradictions in building an imperialist movement that appears to have the interests of workers at heart. This opens up an opportunity for our Party to build a movement that really serves the working class. Job insecurity is caused by worldwide capitalism and its recurring crisis of overproduction. By exposing the labor lieutenants’ "Castles Made of Sand" and pointing the finger at the real enemy — capitalism —we can lay the groundwork for building a bigger revolutionary movement.

Boeing Workers Back Bavaria Strikers

We Boeing workers send you greetings of solidarity and support.

We remember your letter of international support for our strike against Boeing in 1995.

International solidarity among workers is even more important today. Our CEO, Phil Condit, recently told his capitalist buddies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he plans to pit worker against worker all around the world, to find the best way to exploit us. Thomas Pickering, the infamous architect of Plan Colombia at the U. S. State Department, has recently been appointed to Boeing’s Executive Council. Faced with enemies like this, we workers must forge strong international unity.

Our jobs are never secure under this system. Your demand to abolish short-term renewable contracts is aimed at this abuse. Here, too, Boeing threatens our jobs under a plan of "asset reduction."

All these huge conglomerates like Boeing and the Santo Domingo group offer workers are layoffs, racism, nationalism and war. Your strike offers us an opportunity to build the international solidarity the working class needs to answer these bosses. Your struggle is our struggle. Please let us know any way we can help.

In Struggle, Boeing Workers

[Editor’s note: Boeing workers are collecting donations on the shop floor to send to the Bavaria strikers.]

a name="Bethlehem, American, LTV… Steel Bosses’ Profit Squeeze Kills!"></">Be"hlehem, American, LTV… Steel Bosses’ Profit Squeeze Kills!

GARY, IN February 13 — Dan Kado and Mike Davis were killed in an explosion at the Bethlehem Steel Burns Harbor plant. Dan was a white worker with 32 years seniority, about to retire this spring. Mike was a black worker and the son of a Bethlehem worker. On February 2, a fireball engulfed the two workers and seriously injured Jose Claudio during repairs to a coke gas line at the 160-inch plate mill. It was the second explosion in two weeks. Maybe this is what steel union staff rep. Tom Conway meant when he said the current steel crisis "is going to be a bloodbath" for steelworkers.

Since January, LTV filed for bankruptcy, American Steel announced it’s closing, and Bethlehem incinerated two workers. Bethlehem president and CEO Duane Dunham says, "the worldwide oversupply of steel…[requires] bold actions…to compete." He’s "committed to…any and all…actions…for [the] stockholders" (HAMMOND TIMES, 2/6). Bethlehem lost over $300 million the last two years. Its stock dropped by two-thirds. To keep from going under, Bethlehem threw health and safety overboard, murdering Kado and Davis.

A hole used to be punched in the coke gas lines to purge them of dangerous gas before opening and cleaning them. None of this was done so the moment the line was opened, gas escaped forming an arc from the line to a nearby space heater. It ignited at the heater and the flame formed an arc back to the line and exploded.

The Burns Harbor "Safety Team" of 200 workers and 10 safety coordinators has been gutted over the past two years. Bethlehem made a decision to cut safety. The USWA decided to let them. The workers decided to not fight back. This leads to death. One surviving worker said, "We just let it slide. We tried to hide. I tried to hide. And this is what happens."

Meanwhile, American Steel will throw 250 workers on the street this spring. The bosses are closing the Harbor Works foundry and moving the work to Monroe, North Carolina, where workers make $9.00/hour (about half the East Chicago wage). LTV could close in six months, possibly more profitable than selling it because reducing capacity (forcing layoffs) means higher prices.

The bosses are making more steel than they can sell at a profit, causing a general crisis of overproduction Competing capitalists are in a life-and-death fight for cheap labor, resources, and markets. They then cut excess capacity. The industry must consolidate. Jobs must be destroyed.

Workers Of The World, Unite!

Our contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These union leaders then "Stand Up for Steel," not for the workers. Pushing very dangerous nationalism, they want us to stand up for the steel bosses and the lying slogan, "fight imports." Meanwhile, USX is shifting 25% of its production capacity to a giant mill in Slovakia, where workers make $2.00/hour!

Steelworkers in Latin America, Europe, Russia and Asia live on poverty wages and face mass unemployment. We should strike across all borders, build international solidarity and point the way forward for all workers. This will never happen with the pro-capitalist union leaders, who spread the bosses’ nationalism, acting as their lieutenants in the working class.

Today the crisis of overproduction destroys the mills. Eventually it will lead to war that destroys the workers. By fighting back, we can build a fighting, revolutionary PLP, expand the circulation of CHALLENGE and bring more steelworkers and their families to May Day. That’s how we can turn a bad thing into its opposite.

British Steelworker Rebellion Brewing Over Huge Job Cuts

GREAT BRITAIN, February 4 — "This is just the beginning," declared Tony McCarthy, a Corus hot mill worker at Llanwern, which is losing 1,340 jobs. "In two years time the remainder of the plant will be closed," he continued. "People feel very angry. There is a feeling of aggression at the plant, and aggression is very difficult to manage." McCarthy said workers feel betrayed because they’ve delivered huge productivity improvements. His son Craig, who’s worked at the mill for nine years, added, "I don’t know about violence, but if they press ahead there will be walkouts." (The OBSERVER, 2/4)

Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel giant, announced last week it would cut 6,050 jobs. Corus was formed in 1999 when British Steel merged with Dutch steelmaker Hoogovens.

Rising workers’ anger threatens to become open confrontation at plants across Britain. The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation leadership predicts cuts at plants in Wales and the North East will lead to further closures over the next two years. They’re working on a "rescue package" to cut wages (some "rescue"!) to keep plants open.

These cuts are occurring along with auto plant closings here, and steel cutbacks worldwide. Capitalism is a global monster, where more than one billion live on $1 a day and every worker faces a future of instability, terror and war. The best way to support Corus workers is to spread CHALLENGE in the mills, fight our bosses and build for a mass May Day march.

Overproduction, Corruption Slams Korean Autoworkers

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, Feb. 13 — The Daewoo automaker foiled a scheduled strike by 6,500 workers at its main plant at Bupyong, west of here, by permanently shutting some assembly lines. The workers were planning to strike against company plans to shed 5,500 jobs by February 16. Daewoo’s bosses need to improve terms of its possible sale to General Motors. GM is demanding 1,900 job cuts among Daewoo’s 12,844 employees. Yesterday Daewoo announced 127 job cuts at it West Sussex (England) technical center.

Daewoo’s plant closing here was not only directed against the planned strike but also reflects the overproduction problems facing automakers worldwide. As reported in CHALLENGE (Feb. 14), GM and DaimlerChrysler are also cutting production and laying off workers in Europe and the U.S. Daewoo annual sales declined from 945,000 in 1999 to 830,000 in 2000. January sales were 38,700 compared to 80,600 in January 2000.

Besides the crisis of overproduction blanketing the auto industry, Daewoo has been hit by corruption. A few weeks ago seven Daewoo CEOs were arrested for falsifying company books to exaggerate the net worth of Daewoo subsidiaries on order to obtain bank loans. Daewoo chief CEO Kin Woo-jopng has fled South Korea to avoid criminal punishment.

Daewoo workers have a long history of militancy, frequently striking against company attacks. Now they’ll face an even stronger and more oppressive enemy, GM, world’s biggest automaker. To fight such a warmaker during this capitalist crisis of overproduction, "Workers of the world, unite" must become the slogan guiding autoworkers from Seoul to Detroit to Sao Paulo. Joining the communist PLP is the best way to organize for this demand!

LA Garment Workers Defiance of Bosses: Good Omen For May Day

LOS ANGELES, CA. — In a garment factory, on a day like any other in the month of January, the following occurred. "What happened, Rosa? Why are you gathering your tools together?" asked Maria. "Because they fired me." "Why?" "Because some work came out wrong," answered Rosa, with tears in her eyes.

"We’re not going to let them fire you for something like that! Let’s talk to the manager" (the general supervisor), answered Maria.

When they confronted him, he said the decision was already made, her two checks were ready and she had to leave. "You’re not going to fire anybody," declared Maria. She explained to the rest of the workers that the reason Rosa was fired was NOT because of bad work but because the manager didn’t want to pay even the minimum wage to a worker who had been there for several years.

Other workers surrounded them, saying, "Don’t fire her." The owner arrived, exclaiming, "This is the manager’s decision; I won’t get involved."

"Clearly you’re involved," shot back Maria. "You’re the owner and you’re making this decision. But you’re not going to fire her," she declared. The owner yelled angrily, "Maybe you’re the owner of this factory."

Maria sensed the support of many workers around her. Her own class-consciousness told her an attack on one worker was an attack on all. She retorted, "We’re the ones who produce everything for a miserably tiny wage. And we say that this sister will not leave. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but she won’t leave."

When the bosses saw the unity and strength of these workers, they were forced to give in. Rosa kept her job. After this confrontation, Dolores, who had helped greatly in the struggle, told Maria, "I was so angry at the bosses, it almost made me cry, but I held back. I’m really happy we won!"

This action, and many others like it, create the basis to organize garment workers to fight the racism and exploitation we suffer. We have a Committee of Struggle in this factory. We’re taking modest steps to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE here and in other garment factories, to be able to understand the connection between our problems and those of all workers.

Some of these workers have read CHALLENGE for several years. We will encourage them to become organizers for the West Coast May Day March here. Meanwhile, there’s a struggle to bring some of these workers into a larger campaign to fight exploitation in the garment industry overall, possibly including a fight for unionization.

The class struggle and CHALLENGE can form the rock solid basis to win many garment workers to understand that this capitalist system only offers us exploitation, layoffs, war and fascism. Our alternative is to develop the revolutionary communist movement, to fight for a society where there are no managers or bosses but only workers producing for the needs of one international working class.

a name="SUNY PLP’ers Build Campus Worker-Student Alliance">">"UNY PLP’ers Build Campus Worker-Student Alliance

BINGHAMTON, NY, Feb. 10 — PLP members at the State University of NY have been raising communist ideas on campus here, especially in the activities of the Political Action Coalition (PAC). Though most PAC members have many anti-capitalist ideas, they’re still very reformist with no unified political ideology. They’re interested in such issues as police brutality, political prisoners, the arming of university police and ending the bombing of Vieques. PAC’s major issues now are private prisons and the unionization of the campus dining hall workers.

A speaker from the Prison Moratorium Project (PMP) gave a presentation to PAC, including useful information on private prisons but ignored the more profound significance of public prisons and prison labor in general. PMP is building a campaign on college campuses narrowly aimed at attacking Sodexho Marriot (a multi-national food supplier) and its investments in Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company. PAC has wholeheartedly embraced PMP’s campaign. PMP has convinced PAC that replacing Sodexho Marriot with another corporation is somehow a victory.

We’ve attempted to advance a class analysis of the entire prison system. The Democrats, Republicans and the bosses they serve have jailed two million workers, 70% black or Latin, and used many thousands as slave laborers. It’s no coincidence that, as their competitors like Germany and China grow stronger, U.S. capitalists must seek ever cheaper labor and more ways to control unemployed and alienated workers. Fighting Sodexho or any other particular company will not alter the course towards fascism. Through months of work in PAC, we’ve raised these points and will continue doing so.

Concerning the unionization of campus dining hall workers, students uniting with campus workers in such a campaign provides the opportunity to build class-consciousness and raise revolutionary communist politics. Within this struggle we recognized the contradiction between forming a union and creating a pro-working class movement.

Using a CHALLENGE article about Party work at Boeing, we led a discussion in PAC about the anti-working class leadership of unions. The PAC leadership’s reaction to our suggestion to invite the campus workers to our meetings to discuss politics exposed its anti-working class elitism and pro-union reformism. They attacked us for "presuming that workers would have any interest in discussing politics." This inverted logic sought to disguise their lack of confidence in workers caring about or grasping revolutionary ideas.

We’ll take an active role in both building the new union and winning the workers to understanding how capitalism works so that we may destroy it, even as we learn from the workers’ own experiences in class struggle. We have a tough task in winning PAC to understand that neither a union nor any reform will reconcile the opposing interests of the rulers and the working class.

a name="‘Free Trade’—‘Internationalism’ For the Bosses"></a>‘Fre" Trade’—‘Internationalism’ For the Bosses

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 13 — The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) would extend NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) to the whole hemisphere. U.S. bosses need FTAA to keep Latin America under U.S. domination, to fight the increasing penetration of European capital there. Now some of those pushing FTAA want to throw a bone to labor rights. Billionaire businessman George Soros told the world’s CEO’s at their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that the anti-globalization movement is "right" in demanding more "guarantees" about environmental and workers’ rights in these trade deals.

Students groups and others are planning anti-FTAA demonstrations in April at the U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian borders. They’re reaching out to student and worker groups in Mexico, stressing NAFTA as being bad for both U.S. and Mexico’s workers. Some call for defeating FTAA. Others like AFL-CIO President Sweeney want more rules about the environment and workers’ rights — a "new internationalism."

Workers’ internationalism declares that workers of the world have the same class interests — elimination of exploitation, racism and the profit system. The phony "internationalism" of Soros and Sweeney is just the opposite — helping U.S. imperialism to continue oppressing the world’s workers and to defeat their rival imperialists who are fighting to become the number one oppressor.

Many honest, angry students and workers from Mexico and the U.S. favor border demonstrations. Millions hate the border and the fascist terror it represents. Rather than strengthening it, it’s in their interest to see the border abolished.

Recently NAFTA ruled that Mexican truckers could enter the U.S. Some opposing this say that "unsafe Mexican trucks on U.S. roads" endangers Americans. This nationalism pits Mexican and U.S. truckers against each other. The problem isn’t just NAFTA, it’s the capitalist crisis of overproduction, sharpening competition and pitting workers against each other while the bosses compete for market share. Workers need unity as a class to fight to get rid of all bosses!

US bosses have two contradictory needs. One is the need to build nationalism here, to get U.S. workers and soldiers to blame bosses and workers in other countries for layoffs, rather than blaming U.S. bosses and capitalism. But the other need is to prevent European bosses from appearing as the "lesser evil" imperialists. Therefore, U.S. rulers must build a movement advocating "human rights," from Latin America to China. Meanwhile, they and all imperialists are attacking workers worldwide. However, their primary need is to build nationalism, to try to win U.S. workers to defend their bloody empire.

"Humanitarian" imperialism and nationalist "internationalism" are policies based on smoke and mirrors. They need activists to support this charade. But these contradictions create opportunities for our Party. Small gains today lead to bigger ones tomorrow. We have confidence that when workers and students understand the real cause of the current crisis, they will see that capitalism and imperialism have nothing humanitarian about them — that "smash all borders" is the road to follow, not "strengthen all borders." Our activity in this movement will build workers’ internationalism.

PLP’s May Day March calls on workers to unite to fight for our class, against our bosses, and to ally with workers throughout the world. May Day champions the workers’ fight to smash exploitation, fascism and war with communist revolution. That’s a long, hard but sure road, as opposed to "guaranteeing" workers’ rights by uniting with class enemies like Soros and Sweeney.

May Day and the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the International Working Class

May Day has always had two sides: the one that demands reforms and the other side that organizes for revolution to destroy capitalism. May Day commemorates a massive strike wave in the U.S. and the particular battle in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886. The leaders of this movement demanded an 8-hour day reform but also advocated the "abolition of the wage system."

Then and now the capitalists feared this revolutionary side to May Day. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the "Communist Manifesto," "A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism." By 1886, the rulers of Chicago saw this specter. "The newspapers and industrialists were increasingly declaring that May 1, 1886 was in reality the date for a Communist working class insurrection modeled on the Paris Commune. According to Melville E Stone, Head of the Chicago Daily News…a ‘repetition of the Paris Communal riots was freely predicted’ for May 1, 1886." (P. 90, Labor’s Untold Story, by Boyer and Morais)

In December 1886, San Francisco transit workers joined this strike wave. They were working up to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. They wanted a 3-hour daily reduction in hours and a daily pay increase from $2.25 to $2.50. "Strike-breakers were hired, and there was a great deal of violence. Cars were damaged, strike-breakers were beaten, and one person was killed." Newspapers blamed eight instances of the use of dynamite on the striking workers. No doubt feeling threatened by the union and the worldwide strength and militancy of May Day, the Governor signed a bill in March 1887 "limiting gripmen, drivers, and conductors to a 12-hour day." ("Transit In San Francisco," published by SF MUNI R.R. Communications Department.)

By the 1920’s the now pro-capitalist AFL union leadership, fearing the growth of communist ideas in the working class, reversed its support for May Day and the latter’s openly declared communist ideas. Since then the AFL has collaborated with the U.S. government to subvert May Day and the revolutionary trend of workers here and abroad. At the 1928 AFL Convention, the Executive Council supported a Congressional resolution to make May 1 Child Health day. "May 1 will no longer be known as either strike day or communist labor day."

The revolutionary side of May Day dominated when the communist movement was strong. During the peak of the communist organizing of the CIO unions, May Day was celebrated in the U.S. But business unionism and anti-communism soon triumphed after World War II, with organized labor only recognizing Labor Day in September.

From the Haymarket battle in 1886, revolutionary workers spread May Day around the globe. But history is written by the conquerors. Many workers born here know nothing of the contribution the U.S. working class made to the development of this revolutionary holiday. Today it is the official Labor Day in most countries, but the leadership of these marches demands only reforms, and stresses the common goals of labor and capital.

PLP has learned both from the triumphs of the communist movement in the USSR and China, and from their failure to fight directly for communism. We too advocate "Abolish the Wage System" as part of changing the relationship of workers and work in a new communist society.

The abolition of money, of production for sale or profit and of the wage system is absolutely necessary to establish communism. When, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the international working class wins and holds control over all economic, political and cultural institutions of society, it will unleash a creative power that will propel the human race to its highest accomplishments in all fields of endeavor. Only a mass revolutionary communist party advocating and leading such a struggle can achieve this. Only such a party can defeat the fascism that capitalism will use to oppose it.

Long live the 1st of May, the revolutionary international working-class holiday! Fight for communism!

a name="The Real Drug ‘Traffic’-ers: The Bosses, Banks, & Gov’t"></a>"he Real Drug ‘Traffic’-ers: The Bosses, Banks, & Gov’t

RICHMOND, CA. January 24 — The movie "Traffic" completely blocks out the U.S. Government role in promoting the worldwide deadly drug trade. The modern drug trade began with the British East India Company selling opium to China. They were later joined by U.S. businessmen. However, by the mid-19th century the British government, an arm of that country’s ruling class, fought two successful wars to force the Chinese to accept opium imports. The modern drug trade relies on imperialist armies.

By 1900 China had some 13.5 million addicts who smoked 39,000 tons of opium every year. Misery and death to the Chinese people: profits to British and U.S. businessmen.

From Legal To Banned

In the U.S. in the early 1900s, opium, heroin and cocaine were legal. In one month in New York City, a single "dope" doctor wrote prescriptions for over 62,000 grains of heroin, 54,000 grains of morphine, and 30,000 grains of cocaine! By 1931, behind a movement to ban opium production, the League of Nations limited production strictly to medical needs. World output dropped by nearly 90%. World trade in drugs grows or shrinks depending on the needs of imperialist governments.

Gangsters And Governments

After 1931, the world drug trade was taken over by gangsters, with government cooperation. In the U.S. that cooperation was greatly expanded during and after World War II.

After liberating Sicily from the Nazis in 1943, the U.S. government had the power in Italy to push control of the country either to the Italian Communist Party, leader of the anti-Nazi resistance movement or to the pro-fascist Mafia. Surprise! It chose the Mafia.

In 1946, NY Govenor Dewey commuted the 30-year sentence of mafia mobster Lucky Luciano and "deported" him to Italy conveniently at the very moment the CIA was organizing against the growing Italian Communist Party. Luciano rebuilt a drug empire there and shipped heroin from the Mid-East via Marseilles, France, to New York City. Drug addiction grew in the USA and worldwide with the help of the U.S.-created capitalist governments, especially in France and Italy. The internal weaknesses of those country’s previously powerful Communist Parties—having become part of the bosses’ electoral systems—combined with attacks on them by the U.S.-directed AFL-CIA and Luciano’s Mafia, negated any opposition to these capitalist drug-runners.

After the communist revolution in China (which, incidently, wiped out drugs there), some pro-U.S. generals from the Nationalist Chinese Army seized land in the Burmese highlands. Supplied with weapons from the U.S., they began producing heroin in a region later named the "Golden Triangle," the source then of most of the world’s illegal heroin.

By the 1960s heroin production in the Highlands of Laos began to rival the Golden Triangle. Laotian troops organized by General Vang Pao fought the communists in North Vietnam while the general made huge profits from the heroin trade.

In the 1980s a group called the Mujaheddin began to fight the pro-Russian government in Afghanistan. They financed their operation by growing and exporting heroin to the U.S. and Europe.

Simultaneously, the US backed Contras, fighting the anti-U.S. Sandinistas in Nicaragua, made huge profits running cocaine from Colombia to the U.S.

Governments Are The Kingpins

The Mafia in Sicily; Nationalist Chinese generals in Burma; generals with private armies in Laos; the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan and the Contras in Central America—these are the main forces supplying the world with illegal narcotics since World War II. This dirty trade wrecks lives, kills people and disrupts whole communities. Not one of the drug-trading armies could exist without the support of the U.S. Government, through its CIA. It supplies these armies with guns, money and even aircraft to transport the heroin or cocaine. And the governments U.S. bosses help "elect" or install insure the continuation of the drug trade. In exchange, the drug-runners attack communist and left-wing movements.

Who Are The Real Gangsters?

In a ten-day period last month, three black teenagers were shot to death in their neighborhoods, but you’d hardly know it from the tame response of the local rulers. A local paper says none of these youths were involved in drugs but reported that, "Police and gang ‘experts’ suggest rival gangs in the area may be to blame for the surge in violence." Drug dealing lies behind most gangs and turf wars lie behind most drive-by shootings. Their solution? Send the cops’ anti-narcotics team into the area.

Yet the Richmond police won’t investigate the REAL drug dealers, those bringing the drugs into the country and into these communities. That’s a very elite group—top Government officials, airlines, bankers and the news media play a role.

The United Nations’ "World Drug Report" estimated that illegal drugs are now a $500-billion-a-year business. Most of that money is deposited in banks without being seized! And the news media turns a blind eye. When local reporter Gary Webb exposed the CIA’s role in the crack-cocaine epidemic, major papers like the NEW YORK TIMES attacked his articles and he lost his job.

David And Goliath

It’s easy to feel hopeless about the powerful forces behind drug dealing. But history is full of stories about "Davids" taking on and beating "Goliaths."

What kind of system puts greed and profits over the lives of so many innocent people like Richmond’s three black teenagers? A capitalist, imperialist one hell-bent on weakening, disrupting and pacifying potentially rebellious workers and youth worldwide. The history of the modern drug trade is another powerful argument for why we need communist revolution.

(Sources: The Politics of Heroin—CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade—Alfred McCoy; "The CIA/narcotics connection", Oakland Tribune, 4/3/89; The West County Times, December, 2000.

Letters

Black Woman Pilot Flies For May Day

On a recent visit to the Wright Brothers Museum in Kitty Hawk, NC, I saw a plaque on the wall telling the story of Bessie Coleman, a young black woman and daughter of a Texas sharecropper who wanted to become a pilot. Racism barred her from pilot schools. She went to France and received her international pilot’s license.

Returning to the U.S., she performed daredevil stunts on the barnstorming circuit. While practicing for an airshow for a May Day celebration in Jacksonville, Florida, she crashed and died, on April 30, 1926. The Negro Welfare League sponsored the May Day event. I’ve been unable to find any information on the Negro Welfare League or the demands of that May Day. Any clues would be appreciated.

West Coast Old-timer

Put Dialectics in the Classroom

The CHALLENGE article (Jan. 3) about the Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting shows we’re engaged in important struggles around exploitation of academic labor, racism and pro-capitalist ideology. I’d like to suggest a complementary but largely neglected struggle: a fight for explicit dialectical materialism in all academic disciplines.

Dialectical materialism is the fundamental communist science/philosophy of matter and motion. It’s the set of laws and categories that generally reflect how the objective world (and the human mind) works. It’s the science underlying the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and the basic worldview of our Party. History, anthropology, linguistics, physical sciences, and math are all special sciences within the more general science of dialectics.

It’s troubling that the MLA article never mentions dialectical materialism except indirectly (by criticizing bosses’ ideas about nonexistent objective truth and fixed human differences). Shouldn’t we be making a conscious, explicit fight for incorporating dialectical materialism into all the humanities, social and natural sciences?

We need to think through how dialectics relates to a number of academic disciplines. We’re probably more familiar with introducing dialectics in history and social sciences, e.g., fundamental contradiction of classes, and revolution as the resolution of this contradiction.

What about language? What are the dialectical principles that underlie the development of language, historically and in early childhood? What about the dialectics underlying grammatical structure? What dialectical principles are involved in learning (and teaching) a foreign language? What is the primary and secondary contradiction in foreign language learning/teaching? How and where does quantitative learning turn into quality? How might negation of the negation reflect this process, etc.?

Literature? The dialectical category of particular and general—how broad social and philosophical currents are reflected in the lives and characters of a few individuals—is central to all literature and art. Clearly the category of form and content—particularly the interdependence of these two concepts—is important in any analysis of literature. How are the three laws of dialectics embodied in a given novel or play? Isn’t "tragedy" a reflection of contradiction, negation of negation and other dialectical ideas?

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive analysis. It’s simply a proposal that those of us involved in academia begin to make dialectical materialism an important part of our political activities. This means integrating dialectical principles in the classroom, perhaps introducing resolutions about dialectics in mass organizations. This would be something new for us. To neglect dialectical materialism in the academic arena is a grave mistake. I hope for comments on this proposal.

Reader

a name="Math—Is Being ‘Drilled’, Being ‘Screwed’?"></a>Math"Is Being ‘Drilled’, Being ‘Screwed’?

As a math teacher and a communist, I disagree strongly with the recent back-to-basics articles about a supposedly "communist" approach to math education. There is nothing communist about the approach, and the students won’t even learn much real mathematics from it. The author seems to think that learning math means acquiring mechanical skills, in particular, arithmetic and algebra. And he thinks the only way to get these skills is through lots of boring hard work.

I agree these skills are important. But the skills alone aren’t useful if the students don’t understand how they’re applied in practice. What’s the point of being able to add and multiply two numbers if you can’t figure out (in an actual situation) which numbers to combine, whether to add, multiply or divide, and what the result means in the context?

A simple example: suppose a truck driver travels 100 miles at 40 miles an hour, then 100 miles at 60 miles an hour. What was her average speed for the whole trip? Students can spend 18 hours a day memorizing arithmetic tables but it won’t help them see that adding 40 to 60 and dividing by 2 does not give the right answer!

Acquiring skills is not the same as learning mathematics. Students also need to be creative in finding solutions to problems, and to develop judgement (including intuition) in order to evaluate approaches and results. Furthermore, they need to be able to work in groups so they can share their creativity and their judgement, as well as their skills. In other words, math (in fact, all) education should be based on collective labor. As it was, for example, in the Soviet Union, when it was still communist.

Under capitalism, relatively few students manage to learn mathematics, and those who do are often self-taught. Apparently the bosses are worried that these few are now too few, and so once again they’re trying to "reform" math education. Nothing much will come of these reforms. The capitalist school system, organized like a giant factory, is incapable of treating most students as anything other than components on an assembly line.

For most students capitalist education will always be (in Marx’s words) "mere training to act as a machine." The back-to-basics author seems to accept this description as the defining principle of what mathematics education should be. Basically, he complains that the students are no longer being "machined" well enough, and that the answer is to "drill" them more thoroughly. He should remember that in the workshop, being drilled is usually preparation for being screwed!

E. Galois

Nationalism Fuels Auto Wars

Thanks for placing the two articles (2/14 issue) on auto cutbacks side by side. It made things very clear. Led by pro-capitalist union hacks, angry European workers protested cuts made by U.S. bosses (GM) while U.S. workers were being told by their union leaders to blame European bosses (Daimler) for the cutbacks here in the U.S.

Left unchallenged by a communist movement these union leaders will only build a dangerous nationalism ("U.S. jobs for U.S. workers"). Job cuts in the auto industry — whether GM cuts of European workers or Daimler-Chrysler cuts of U.S. workers—are attacks on auto workers internationally.

The cuts are not due to moves by individual U.S. or German capitalists, but by a worldwide crisis of overproduction. PLP has often written about this. Despite all the talk about a "new economy" solving its contradictions, overproduction still is inherent to capitalism. The bosses’ main way out of this crisis is to destroy the productive capacity of their rivals. Ultimately this always leads to war fueled by nationalism.

This does not mean war and depression will come tomorrow. It does mean communist leadership is desperately needed in the unions, not just to organize around internationalist slogans like "Workers of the World Unite," but to educate workers about the underlying nature of capitalism and the need to destroy it.

A comrade

1. BOSSES' WAR ON WORKERS
   `Boom' Boots 26,000 Jobs at Chrysler
2. `Vietnam Syndrome' Haunts Oil Bosses
3. U.S. Gestapo Sets Sights On Worker Rebellion
4. Bosses' Heats Up Over Arctic Oil
5. :Colombia Strikers Confront Bosses' Fascism
6. GM Workers in Europe Protest Massive Job Cuts
7. Slower U.S. demand To Idle Two GM plants in Mexico
8. Fight Bosses' Drugging of Children
9. LA Dinner Jump-Starts May Day, Linked to CHALLENGE Expansion
10. City Workers Take Up the CHALLENGE
11. Profit System Squeezes Steel;
    LTV Workers Must Choke Bosses' System
12. Postal Workers Plan to Stamp Out Speed Up
13. India Earthquake--Capitalism Is A Deadly Mass Murderer
14. Anarchy of `Free Market' Blows Fuse In California
    1. `Competition' Leads to Cartel Leads to Crisis
    2. THREE PROPOSALS REFLECT BOSSES' DOGFIGHT
    3. ENRON AND MAIN RULERS: UNITY AND
       CONFLICT WITHIN THE RULING CLASS
15. LETTERS
    1. India Earthquake: Rulers Fight
       While Workers Die
    2. Indigenous Oaxaca Youth Respond to PLP
    3. Mexico U.S.-Euro Rivalry Behind Peru's
       Electoral Circus
    4. Thou Shall March on May Day
    5. Biological Determinism: Workers' Enemy
    6. REVIEWER'S COMMENT

---

BOSSES' WAR ON WORKERS
`Boom' Boots 26,000 Jobs at Chrysler

DETROIT, MI, January 29 -- DaimlerChrysler will cut 26,000 jobs, about 20% of its North American workforce. Overall production capacity will be reduced by 15%. Three-quarters of the jobs will be eliminated by the end of the year. Six plants will close. Shifts will be eliminated at another six plants and two others will slow their lines to reduce production. Chrysler group president and chief executive Dieter Zetsche said, "These decisions are absolutely necessary to keep competitive and, in fact, to survive."

Less than two years ago, DaimlerChrysler and the United Auto Workers union (UAW) signed a contract that "banned" plant closings and "guaranteed" employment levels. The "plant-closing moratorium" says the company "will not close...sell, spin off...or otherwise dispose of ... any plant..." Unless of course, there are conditions "beyond the control of the corporation," such as, "act of God, catastrophic circumstances or significant economic decline."

This was considered a historic victory for the union. Chrysler was the only automaker to hire significant numbers of new workers in the 1990s, and is the single biggest private employer in Detroit. Sales of minivans, Ram pickups and Jeep sport-utility vehicles were surging. By signing a no-spinoff clause in the union contract and forcing this industry-wide pattern onto GM and Ford, Chrysler figured it could hurt the two bigger automakers, who were intending to spin off their Delphi and Visteon parts makers.

But the plan seems to have backfired (GM and Ford spun them off anyway). Daimler executives have replaced all the signers of that Chrysler contract. The company lost nearly $2 billion in the last six months of 2000. When Daimler-Benz "merged" with Chrysler in 1998, the latter had about 16% of the North American market. That has dropped to around 14% amid a declining U.S. auto market.

While union leaders denounce the cutbacks publicly, they have been discussing them with the bosses behind the scenes for weeks. According to the DETROIT FREE PRESS (1/29), "Privately they...understand." UAW President Steve Yokich is also a member of DaimlerChrysler's supervisory board. Less than a year after the hottest sales year in U.S. automotive history, UAW leaders will help Chrysler out of its current predicament. And GM and Ford will demand similar concessions, especially the plant-closing moratorium.

The bosses' "guarantees" aren't worth the paper they are written on. Despite their "booming" economy, the "world's only super-power" couldn't guarantee jobs for two years! About 20 years ago, Chrysler bought American Motors. They kept the profitable Jeep, and destroyed the rest. The same fate may await them at the hands of Daimler. The UAW and the media are trying to put the blame on "the Germans." If we fall for this, we'll soon be marching off to war for the rulers' profits. DaimlerChrysler workers from Cordoba, Argentina to Belvedere, Illinois, and from Stuttgard, Germany to Toluca Mexico, should strike across all borders against plant closings and layoffs. But more than that, we must build an international PLP, and fight for communism, where production will be based solely on the needs of the international working class.

`Vietnam Syndrome' Haunts Oil Bosses

Ten years after U.S. imperialism's murderous oil war against Iraqi workers, Saddam Hussein is starting to look like the real winner. He still holds power. Exxon rivals from Russia, France, and China are defying U.S. policy by flying regularly to Baghdad and discussing billion-dollar energy deals with him. Even Venezuela, a formerly secure U.S. vassal, is flirting with Iraqi oil executives.

The U.S. sanctions policy is a shambles. Iraqi oil is back on the market. Ironically, Exxon Mobil is its biggest customer. Hussein demanded and got authorization to be paid in euros rather than dollars, potentially threatening the dollar's supremacy as the currency of business in the Persian Gulf. A decade after Bush, Sr. launched the so-called "new world order" in torrents of Iraqi blood, his son has stolen the White House only to confront the "serious...crisis in the making" of Hussein's "burst out of isolation" (NEW YORK TIMES, 1/28).

U.S. imperialism, not the Iraqi ruler, is isolated. French, British, and Russian rulers openly defy its sanctions. Even the British bosses are sick of straining their military in daily air raids with the U.S. over Iraq. They are beginning to distance themselves from the mad bombers in Washington. The raids kill civilians and accomplish nothing else. In fact, U.S. imperialism's only real "achievement" in Iraq since 1991 has been the mounting death toll of workers and children. U.S. rulers continue to distinguish themselves in the art of mass butchery. But they know that their policy has failed and that they need a different strategy for controlling cheap Iraqi oil.

Their critical problem, according to a former CIA big-shot, is that "it is probably too late for the [new Bush] administration to effect genuine change at a price the United States is willing to pay" (NYT, 1/28). In other words, U.S. rulers know they can't install a pro-Exxon regime in Iraq without a large-scale ground invasion.

However, neither the workers in the U.S. military nor the U.S. working class as a whole want to die for Exxon's profits. The nightmare of "Vietnam Syndrome"--an army that won't fight--continues to haunt the imperialists. They face a basic contradiction. They can't win workers to pay the price for conquering Iraqi oil, and they can't allow anyone else to control it. At the moment, the Bush White House appears to want to punt. After an initial round of bluster and threats, Colin Powell, who helped Bush, Sr. kill 500,000 Iraqis in 1991, is now talking only about narrower sanctions restricted to military equipment. But this is a weak gimmick to buy time.

Sooner or later, U.S. rulers will have to launch another Middle Eastern oil war. Powell's tactic of targeting Iraqi military equipment appears to be a crude maneuver to set up a justification for it. We should anticipate a lot of hot air to come out of Washington in the coming period about Saddam Hussein's developing "weapons of mass destruction" as a threat to every country in the world and possibly even to life in outer space.

None of this lying by Powell, Bush or Cheney will improve the political morale of the U.S. military. This is a crucial weakness of which our Party can take growing advantage as conditions eventually sharpen. Whenever the next ground war for Persian Gulf starts, many U.S. soldiers and sailors will be more open to our Party's communist analysis and winnable to carry out its revolutionary tactics.

U.S. Gestapo Sets Sights On Worker Rebellion

A ruling class plan is on tap to deal with resistance from workers when the rulers step up their exploitation of the working class, intensify racism and launch wars to protect their profits, especially over oil. They also want more efficient means to discipline their own class when sections of it "get out of line."

The main contradiction in the world remains the inter-imperialist rivalry. Capitalists around the world are growing increasingly hostile to U.S. imperialism. The European Union is creating a joint military force separate from NATO and the US. Russia is no longer cooperating as it did under Yeltsin, and China is slowly but surely building a deepwater Navy to challenge the U.S. For the moment, no major imperialist poses an immediate direct threat to US imperialism, but the world has become much more unstable. The bombings of the World Trade Center and the Federal Building in Oklahoma City have prompted the bosses to look at the threats posed by what they call "rogue states" like Iraq, and "non-state players" (Osama bin Laden, drug cartels, etc.).

Over the past year, the CIA and the Hart-Rudman Commission have issued detailed reports calling for increasing the military/police repressive apparatus, and a "homeland defense": "While the likelihood of major conflict between powerful states will decrease [over the next 25 years], conflict itself will increase." (Hart-Rudman, "New World Coming," p.15).

According to the DEFENSE NEWS (1/15), the third Hart-Rudman report proposes a National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA). The report, due to be released soon, follows the "Gilmore Commission" (Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies 2000 report on homeland defense.

This extraordinarily dangerous proposal reflects the rulers' determination to both repress any working-class rebellion and discipline sections of their own class who put their own interests ahead of the dominant wing's long-range interests. It is a recipe for full-blown fascism. NHSA would combine the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, Customs, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with parts of the FBI and Commerce Department. It would place 75,000 men and women in uniform, under military discipline, with the power to arrest.

NHSA would be seven times the size of the FBI, and five times larger than the Migra (Immigration Service). It would be a police force--with a full military arsenal--larger than the NYC, LA, Detroit, Philadelphia and San Francisco police forces combined. They would be responsible for "protecting" critical infrastructure like the phone system and the Internet. This would allow them full access to both and the ability to use it. The NHSA would erase the distinction between the military and the police. Other military units could be assigned to work under it as needed. While the Coast Guard is already a military branch with arrest powers, it is assigned to highly specialized areas.

NHSA would be located in every major city to "respond to emergencies," like breaking strikes and putting down urban rebellions. Tens of thousands of these military police could be used in any city to enforce martial law. The NHSA proposal is unlikely to be accepted as is, partly because it may be "too much fascism too soon." But it would also dismantle many lucrative corruption and bureaucratic empires in existing agencies (the Migra and Customs are among the most corrupt).

Still, this kind of proposal from such a high-powered group shows the direction in which the main wing of the ruling class is headed.

Bosses' Heats Up Over Arctic Oil

The NEW YORK TIMES (1/30)--predictably--reports that Bush is using the California energy mess to promote his oil and gas agenda, particularly the commercial exploration of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The opposing bosses--led by the Rockefeller-owned Exxon Mobil, which wants to keep Alaskan oil ready to be primed but still in the ground in the event of "national emergency" (an oil war)--will surely fight back. Of course, new drilling there won't solve the problem of high electricity bills in California, but it could mean big profits for Halliburton, the world's largest oil services outfit--and V-P Cheney, that company's recent CEO, just happens to be the head of the new Bush energy task force.

So the vicious political infighting out of which Bush stole Florida makes sense here. This is one concrete demonstration of the way in which the presidency--control of the executive branch of state power--benefits the faction in charge. But when the bosses battle, it is never for the working class. Whoever wins this battle for energy billions, workers have no stake in backing either gang.

:Colombia Strikers Confront Bosses' Fascism

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, January 30 -- The strike against Bavaria Brewery is now in its seventh week, affecting 18 plants nationally. It has become the country's most important recent labor struggle. When the company refused even to discuss the workers' demands, the 6,500 strikers were forced to walk out to protect the few gains they still have. The Santo Domingo family owns Bavaria. It is one of Colombia's biggest conglomerates, controlling over 150 businesses, from the brewery to TV, telecommunications, finances to one of the country's largest cellular phone services. It also owns businesses in Spain, Ecuador and Central America.

The workers rejected Bavaria's "offer" attacking working conditions and job security. The bosses want short-term renewable contracts for certain workers, which would virtually destroy job security. They are trying to bust the union, founded in 1927 and led by communists who, during the 1930s and '40s, organized militant sit-down strikes. But in the 1950s, as Bavaria grew and was bought by the Santo Domingo family, the union became more right-wing, rejecting communist ideas.

As Bavaria became the Santo Domingo family's leading company, it used the union to control the workers, and helped it -become a national force. For half a century the union was led by open company agents. But workers never stopped fighting the company and the union hacks.

As conditions get more fascistic in Colombia, as part of the current civil war, the attacks against the entire working class have increased. Many militant trade unionists have been murdered by death squads. The Santo Domingo family is a big supporter of these paramilitary forces. Now the bosses want to eliminate the union altogether, since it no longer can control the workers.

So this is more than a strike for higher wages and job security. It's a political struggle against one of Colombia's most powerful capitalists and possibly represents a revival of militant working-class struggles. A Solidarity Support Commitee was formed when the strike began, winning the backing of many other workers nationally and internationally. Strikers and their supporters have broken the news blackout by the mass media, on whom the Santo Domingo capitalists also has much influence. This strike differs somewhat from the last one in 1993, which lasted 32 days.

Today, the major capitalist groups have united to attack the workers, imposing the union busting Law 50. The strike has been a good political school for workers. They have shown great militancy against a fascist capitalist system. After a 50-year absence communist ideas are appearing again.

The workers are learning the relationship between their strike and Plan Colombia (the U.S. imperialist billionaire "aid" plan to help the army/paramilitary groups to wage war against the guerrillas and workers here) and the need for international solidarity. The workers' anthem, The Internationale, is being sung at the strike camps outside the Bavaria plants. The strikers are discussing many different political ideas, including PLP's. Many are reading DESAFIO and considering the concept that strikes ultimately won't defeat the bosses' attacks, particularly a vicious fascist monopoly like the Bavaria owners. They have threatened the strikers and are trying to create a provocation to give the police an excuse to attack the strikers' tents outside the plants.

The strikers take these threats very seriously--in Colombia workers' lives are worth very little to the bosses and their death squads. International support for these strikers is important, particularly to show the company that these workers are not alone in the struggle against these murderous bosses.

GM Workers in Europe Protest Massive Job Cuts

FRANKFURT, GERMANY, January 26 -- Over 30,000 GM workers, more than a third of GM's 90,000-strong European workforce, protested company plans to cut 5,000 jobs in a major "restructuring" project. More protests could follow. The walkouts cut GM's daily European output of 8,500 vehicles by 12%.

More than 15,000 workers rallied outside four Opel factories. About 8,500 stayed away from four British Vauxhall Motors plants to protest the closing of Vauxhall's Luton plant and the elimination of 2,000 jobs. Several dozen GM workers staged a sympathy strike at company offices in Zaragoza, Spain. Another 6,000 protested outside a plant in Antwerp, Belgium.

The job cuts are aimed at cutting excess production capacity in Europe. Aside from the 2,000 jobs at Luton, GM expects to eliminate another 3,000 jobs, including about 1,700 at Opel, within the next 17 months. Ford is shutting its assembly plant in Dagenham, East London. Meanwhile, the anarchy of capitalist production has Honda building sports utility vehicles for export to the U.S. The international solidarity expressed in the above protests shows that workers' struggles have no borders. We should do all we can to spread news of these actions to auto plants across North America.

But as long as the bosses hold power and workers produce for their profits, we will always be wage slaves with an uncertain future. Relying on spontaneity or the pro-capitalist union leaders will get us nowhere. While protesting plant closings and job cuts worldwide, we must fight for the political leadership of the workers by building a mass PLP and a communist-led workers' movement based on the slogan, "Workers of the World, Unite!"

Slower U.S. demand To Idle Two GM plants in Mexico

MEXICO CITY -- General Motors plans to shut two plants in northern Mexico in the face of a weakening U.S. economy. An engine plant and the Aztek assembly plant, both located in Ramos Arizpe, will close for 22 days and 18 days respectively. GM is the most recent to announce production cutbacks here. Ford closed one of its three plants in Hermosillo for a week in early January.

The plant makes Escort and Focus models. DaimlerChrysler AG is also slowing production at one of its three Mexican plants because of falling U.S. demand for pick-up trucks and auto parts.

Fight Bosses' Drugging of Children

NEW YORK CITY, January 28 -- The movement against the over-drugging of children gained steam today as picketers gathered outside Columbia/Presbyterian Medical Center, distributing 1,500 leaflets.

They were warning the predominantly Latino community about two new drug studies just starting in Manhattan. One concerns the effects of Ritalin in 3-5 year olds. When a medical journal published a paper last year revealing that 1.4% of toddlers in the U.S. are on psychotropic medications, the drug companies began frantically funding "research" in this age group, hoping to create a vast new market for their wares.

The National Institute of Mental Health then jumped in, giving millions for four national research centers. The second study, at New York University and Columbia, involves using multiple medications in 6-17 year olds, specifically Ritalin plus anti-depressants. It's becoming increasingly common to prescribe multiple medications, even to children. The leaflets warned parents not to participate in these studies, exposing the gross overdiagnosis and treatment of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) with Ritalin.

These "researchers" say children "need" Ritalin because of "brain defects," a totally unproven idea. While not condemning all psychiatric diagnosis and medication, the leaflet pointed out that when 10-20% of children are said to be "mentally ill," it's to sell more drugs and make children easier to control.

A local group is having increasing success reaching parents, teachers and other concerned health providers with its message. Members have spoken to, and been well-received by, the welfare workers union. They've been invited to the teachers union delegate assembly and to the school board near the hospital. In April this group will sponsor a half-day conference at a local church, hopefully with well-known speakers to educate the community about the issue and undertake further actions. However, several friendly scientists have declined invitations because they fear that doctors known to oppose the Ritalin trend stand to lose their funding.

Activists have also been involved in the defense of a woman being threatened with losing her children because she objected to giving her son prescribed medications, an increasingly common racist attack against black and Latino families.

The task of PLP members in this movement is to connect the Ritalin question to the general upsurge of biodeterminism. Children who fail to "align" themselves to current educational standards and testing will easily be found to be "biologically deficient." The capitalist system that can't serve the needs of our children doesn't deserve to exist.

LA Dinner Jump-Starts May Day, Linked to CHALLENGE Expansion

LOS ANGELES, January 28 -- PLP's May Day organizing got off to a good start here last night when about 85 workers and students attended a CHALLENGE/ May Day dinner as part of the struggle to make the newspaper central to our organizing for the March. A great skit performed by a teacher, young worker and students effectively showed how the bosses use racism to divide, exploit and super-exploit workers.

The play depicted the important role of CHALLENGE, portraying workers as all part of the same class. It concluded with black, white and Latino workers united in fighting the racist boss. One speaker eloquently described the history and significance of May Day, emphasizing that this year's March in downtown LA is most important in the long-term fight to build a revolutionary communist movement.

We will march through part of the city's garment center as well as past Parker Center, the LAPD headquarters. Another speaker detailed how the mounting layoffs in auto and many other industries as well as the California energy crisis all stem from the bosses fight for maximum profits.

A third speaker emphasized the necessity and importance of CHALLENGE. He highlighted the crucial role played by the Bolshevik paper Iskra in advancing the revolutionary practice and communist ideas so vital to one of the greatest victories in the history of the international working class--the Russian Revolution. CHALLENGE has the same historical role today, used by workers in the Harlem Rebellion and the LA transit strike and by students in their walkouts against California's bosses racist propositions.

CHALLENGE must lead us in the struggles in the schools, in mass organizations, and in the fight for a communist world. Our paper not only offers an analysis of the actual economic and political situation but explains how to destroy dog-eat-dog capitalist system. It reports on workers and students fighting back around the world and building a communist revolutionary movement.

Thirty people either bought CHALLENGE subscriptions or said they wanted to receive it. Several wanted more copies to sell to friends and many agreed to help build for the May Day March.

Another workers' May Day dinner also pledged to increase CHALLENGE sales. Here also workers agreed to distribute more papers and help build the March among their co-workers and families. At that dinner, a worker recited a poem he wrote about farmworkers who harvest the food for our tables as being the very ones the bosses attack the hardest. The future of the world's workers depends on them and their fellow workers being won to fight for a communist future for all workers.

City Workers Take Up the CHALLENGE

NEW YORK CITY -- Our city workers PLP club has been discussing the need to increase our CHALLENGE sales. Now we distribute 100-150 per issue. We expressed our ideas about the paper, its strengths and weaknesses. how we could use it in class struggle, in strengthening our political base and in the recruitment of new members.

Those selling a very modest number made plans to approach additional co-workers and friends. Two members who have wider sales planned to ask readers to take additional copies. In addition, we want to win more workers who buy the paper occasionally at meetings to become regular readers. To start, one member approached two readers who each agreed to take additional papers to distribute.

In addition, this member approached four more co-workers about taking CHALLENGE. These plans created a modest increase in sales. In the next few months, we will be linking CHALLENGE sales to building a mass May Day march.

We agreed that convincing our co-workers and friends to become CHALLENGE sellers and organizers for May Day is crucial to building the PLP.

Profit System Squeezes Steel;
LTV Workers Must Choke Bosses' System

EAST CHICAGO, IN, January 29 -- A few weeks before declaring bankruptcy, the LTV Steel Board of Directors kicked out CEO Peter Kelley. Despite leading the company into bankruptcy for the second time in ten years, he was given a multi-million dollar pension. New CEO Thomas Bricker has threatened to cut insurance benefits for active workers and retirees. LTV and Chase Manhattan (which holds close to a billion dollars of LTV debt) will try to squeeze concessions from both active and retired steelworkers. This is another example of capitalist hypocrisy. Kelley gets millions a year for "destroying LTV."

Workers who put in 25 or 30 years and made billions for their bosses may well see pensions halved and insurance plans wiped out. Many workers think the problem is bad management. "If we got rid of these bums, and got people who knew how to run a steel mill, we wouldn't be in this mess."

But what does it mean to "run a steel mill" when competing capitalists are in a life-and-death fight for cheap labor, resources and markets? In this general crisis of overproduction, steel bosses have created the capacity to make more steel than they can sell at a profit.

From the bosses' point of view, excess capacity must be cut. The industry must consolidate and jobs must be slashed. The strong survive. The weak go under. Charles Bradford, president of Bradford Research, Inc. in New York, told the HAMMOND TIMES that closing LTV would be better for the industry than selling it, because reducing capacity could mean higher domestic prices. "I would like to see that happen," he said.

Workers are angry, in no mood to accept concessions. But there are serious obstacles to fighting back. First, Local 1011 and LTV/Chase have set up a Crisis Reaction Task Force, which is "committed to working together" to "stabilize the workforce," and improve productivity and quality.

Steel union staff rep Tim Conway said that by not protecting the industry from imports, Washington may be "starving the industry into consolidation." Paul Gibson, president of USWA Local 6787 at Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor said the bosses will have to make "unpopular decisions," and consolidation may be the key to survival.

He said LTV and Wheeling-Pittsburgh could be out of business in six months. Conway added, "Hopefully it's not that fast, but it's not unrealistic." So it's not "bad management" or imported steel. It's the laws of capitalism! The fight for markets, which today destroys the mills and jobs will eventually lead to war that destroys the workers. The union leaders can't fight all-out against these attacks because they're loyal to the profit system. The only answer to this endless cycle of crises, layoffs, job- and pension-cuts is to build the revolutionary communist movement that can turn a fight-back into a fight for workers' power. We don't need "good" bosses. We don't need any bosses, period!

Postal Workers Plan to Stamp Out Speed Up

CHICAGO, January 29 -- A group of postal workers met today to organize a fight against the latest round of attacks. Bosses are on a rampage--"DO MORE WITH LESS" is their battle cry. Many workers are angry but the union and management have worked hard and long to convince us there's nothing we can do. We made plans to bring our fight to the union hall and the shop floor.

Flat Sort machines are understaffed every day, and the Bar Code Sorting machines are often short one or two workers. But the bosses want production no matter what. In order to compete with UPS, FedEx, etc., they must force us to toe the line. A whole new set of rules to enforce their "attendance policy" amounts to gutting the old contract and past practice, to fire scores of workers and terrorize the rest.

Changes include: (1) Instead of being allowed three call-in absences every 90 days, we'll now be allowed only three per year; (2) Workers must call in every day during a sickness, instead of once for the entire time; (3) Three latenesses used to count as one absence. Now each lateness becomes an absence; (4) Computers will automatically generate discipline, instead of the supervisor. These changes mean many workers will be suspended and fired. So far, the union hasn't uttered a peep in opposition.

We're building a bigger network of CHALLENGE readers and sellers to give political leadership to this fight, and to link it to the overall fight for communist revolution. We are also building a postal May Day Committee to win our co-workers, friends and family to march on the White House.

India Earthquake--Capitalism Is A Deadly Mass Murderer

Officials are predicting that the death toll from the earthquake that devastated the state of Gujarat in western India will climb past 100,000. The deaths are mainly due to the crushing poverty and greed of capitalism. India's strict building codes for earthquake safety, in houses, apartments, hospitals, factories and schools were flaunted. Urgently needed water, medicine and equipment to find and free victims arrived days after the quake.

Gujarat is India's most industrialized state, producing steel, petrochemicals and autos. Foreign investment has streamed in over the last 20 years. GM and Mitsubishi have factories in the area near the quake. It's also the site of BP and Euron refineries as well as The Lions Refinery, owned by India's richest rising capitalists, who have designs on Middle Eastern oil. None of these large industries lost a single brick! Clearly these bosses know how to build for earthquake safety to guarantee their profits.

"Government officials have admitted they were slow to react to the quake when it struck just as the Republic Day ceremonies were beginning across the country." "Quite frankly, there is no plan and that is why the delay," said Poonam Mendiratta, a spokeswoman for the Priya volunteer agency (Reuters, New Delhi, 1/30).

In Ahmedabad, an important diamond polishing center in the commercial center of Gujarat, 55 workers died after being crushed in stampedes because the gates to the units were locked. Scores of diamond polishers are routinely locked in their workplaces "to prevent them from stealing." Sunil Patni, an 18-year-old diamond-polisher said, "When the lights went off after the tremors began, there was a mad stampede for the stairs and I tripped and fell." Between 40 and 50 people collapsed on top of him. "If the gate had not been locked, we would not have met this fate. Nobody would have died. None of the buildings were harmed," he said. (HINDUSTAN TIMES, 1/30)

Mahatma Ghandi Hospital had to be closed because of fear of imminent collapse. "During the earthquake, chunks of slabs began to fall all over the hospital," said a rescue worker. "Within minutes, the entire hospital was evacuated and no one dared to enter this two-story, 120-bed hospital." Patients and others injured in the earthquake had to be treated in tents or in the open. One floor collapsed at another hospital. A doctor blamed years of neglect and the refusal to build safe hospitals. (HINDUSTAN TIMES, 1/28)

Parents of 400 children who died trapped in a collapsed school building denounced the authorities. They said that this building and many others which tumbled were built mainly of sand, with little or no steel to fortify them in the face of an earthquake.

The town of Bhuj, 12 miles from the quake's epicenter, once a city of 200,000, is mainly rubble. Some residents said they heard faint cries of help from crumbled buildings on Saturday, but nothing on Sunday, with no government rescue effort. One man said, "Had the government been prompt and brought in equipment like cranes immediately, my nephew and nieces could have been saved." An official conceded, "We had no cranes, no excavators, no bulldozers. But they have now started to arrive. So we hope to clear up the debris in a few days."

This terrible disaster shows that capitalism brings death and destruction--whether in war or the deadly oppression and poverty that led to this disaster. The competing imperialists will certainly use aid efforts to push for advantage here. But they all share responsibility for the deaths! We urge our readers to raise money to help the survivors. Send it to PLP and we will make sure it goes to the workers in India, not to the fascist government. Capitalism cannot meet the needs of workers. It must be smashed so the working class can build a communist world where the lives of workers come first.

Anarchy of `Free Market' Blows Fuse In California

As the current California power crisis starkly shows, the profit system's "free" market creates anarchy, not order. Four years ago, the state's leading capitalists united to deregulate the energy industry. They saw an opportunity for a windfall. They promised pie in the sky. Utility companies would no longer hold a monopoly on electricity production. They would sell off or close many of their power plants and buy power instead from a host of competing suppliers.

The open market set-up would shower everyone with untold bounty, the bosses vowed. Competition would make the suppliers super-efficient. Freed from the expense of keeping up old plants, utilities would get power at a lower cost. Consumers would pay lower rates. California's lawmakers passed the deregulation bill unanimously.

`Competition' Leads to Cartel Leads to Crisis

But capitalism's inexorable drive for maximum profits short-circuited this fairy tale. A handful of suppliers quickly dominated the market. Led by energy generators like Texas-based Enron and energy speculators like Wall Street's Goldman Sachs, an informal cartel of suppliers jacked up the WHOLESALE price of megawatt-hours almost ten-fold.

For these companies, boosting the bottom line overrode any concern for California's economy and the fate of its workers. On the other hand, fearing for the profits of California's industries, the state's government prevented the utilities from raising their RETAIL rates accordingly. When the biggest utilities--SoCal Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)--could no longer pay the profiteering suppliers' bills, the suppliers pulled the plug. The utilities then resorted to rolling blackouts that have wrought economic havoc in the state.

Workers have been laid off by the thousands. With losses amounting to $12 billion, SoCal Edison and PG&E face possible bankruptcy. The power struggle in California has nationwide significance. The major U.S. bosses are using deregulation to consolidate industries of all kinds. They need "leaner and meaner," more tightly-controlled operations across the board for two reasons: to compete more effectively with their foreign economic rivals and, ultimately, to prepare for war.

CHALLENGE (see article page 2) has reported on the government's high-level Hart-Rudman commission, which is developing plans for a fascistic "integration" of the nation's infrastructure. The critical question for the ruling class becomes: "Who's in charge?" Until now, Enron has sat in the driver's seat in California. And it's no accident that Enron really began to flex its muscles there late last fall, when George Bush finally managed to steal the presidency. Enron's chairman, Kenneth Lay, was the largest single donor to Bush's campaign.

THREE PROPOSALS REFLECT BOSSES' DOGFIGHT

But the other major U.S. capitalists cannot afford to let the boss with the biggest checkbook in a given situation dictate economic policy. The various "solutions" being proposed in California reflect an attempt to unite the bosses in their common interest, but "under whom?" remains in dispute. State legislators presented a plan written by Crédit Suisse, a European financial house, for the state to float bonds to buy electricity.

However, European investors aren't likely to call the shots here. Governor Davis, advised by Goldman Sachs, wants the suppliers to offer long-term contracts directly to the state. A third proposal just coming to light would rescue the utilities by having the state acquire equity in them and by allowing them to raise rates.

This plan would safeguard the dominant Eastern Establishment's investment in the utilities. The largest shareholders in PG&E are banks in Boston and New York. Not surprisingly, the third plan is receiving favorable coverage in the Establishment press. The NEW YORK TIMES (1/27) just ran a glowing profile of S. David Freeman, one of this plan's main architects. A veteran of the Johnson and Carter administrations, he has headed the New York Power Authority and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Rockefeller-funded groups like the Urban League and National Wildlife Foundation have heaped awards on him.

Whoever wins this faction fight over the reorganization of California energy, workers will pay for the "solution." Any bailout of SoCal Edison and/or PG&E will involve a combination of bond issues and higher energy rates. And it will be the working class who will bear the brunt of these costs.

ENRON AND MAIN RULERS: UNITY AND
CONFLICT WITHIN THE RULING CLASS

But Enron's not about to go under. From the main wing's point of view, that company needs to be reined in, not rubbed out. Enron serves U.S. imperialism well on one front by competing with German and Russian gas barons in Europe. Enron's profiteering may have made things go haywire in California, but the anarchy resulting from its push for deregulation aids the big bosses' argument for streamlining and strengthening the nation's power grid. Until this process advances, Enron will obey the capitalist law of amassing maximum profit regardless of the consequences.

Ultimately, however, the Texas gas billionaires won't try to kill the goose that lays their golden eggs. They too are beginning to look kindly on a plan to give "the federal government more control over transmission lines" (NEW YORK TIMES, 6/30/00).

The current situation in California reflects the constant process of unity and conflict within the ruling class that CHALLENGE has described many times. We must never choose sides in these tactical fights among the rulers. They all oppress workers. Our job remains the same, regardless of the winner here. We must build our Party, sharpen the class struggle and keep our eye on the goal of communist revolution.

Picture Caption

Turmoil in Ecuador

Quito, Ecuador--Union and indigenous leaders are arrested over mass protests against government austerity squeeze. Mass communist PLP is crucial to turning these sparks into fire that would destroy capitalism.

LETTERS

India Earthquake: Rulers Fight
While Workers Die

Members of the RSS, an extremist Hindu theocratic outfit that spearheads India's fascist ruling party, and is hostile to other religions, has been trying to bar Christians from eaarthquake relief work in Ahmedabad, India. (WASHINGTON TIMES, 1/29) Incidentally, the Red Cross and all Western aid agencies happen to be Christian. But the Hindu fundamentalists want to hog the tragedy for electoral purposes.

Prime Minister Vajpeyi's visit aggravated the situation. The Bhuj District Administration got busy welcoming him, neglecting relief operations. World-wide aid is pouring in, but there's no coordinating mechanism yet in place. Defense Minister George Fernandes estimates the death toll at 100,000 (ITN/London, Jan. 30) but the Prime Minister cynically calls it Fernandes "personal view."

While the politicians jockey for position to make themselves look good, workers have taken the opposite stance. One hundred young Muslims in Ahmedabad donated blood repeatedly over three days to save the injured, mostly Hindu.

An Indian Immigrant

Indigenous Oaxaca Youth Respond to PLP

Racism against indigenous people in Mexico is widespread, causing incredible poverty. The caciques (landlords) and bosses use fascist groups to impose that racism. Therefore, a revolutionary communist movement must be based on fighting racism and building unity of all workers and peasants.

Towards that goal, PLP members organized a meeting on January 6 in the Mixe Sierra (Mountains) of Oaxaca. The young people who participated showed much interest in our communist politics. These youth, having formed an Indigenous group in Oaxaca, have heard about PLP and wanted to hear more. They thought their group needed a political focus. At the meeting we discussed the destructive role nationalism and regionalism plays under capitalism. We explained how these ideologies are used to divide us along national and cultural lines.

We also discussed many aspects of life among the different "etnias" (indigenous groups in the Oaxaca countryside) which are very positive, like "mano vuelta,"--a peasant grows or builds something for other people in the community with the understanding that the same favor will be returned. Another form is "tequio"--everyone contributes to building a school, health center, etc. However, while it is good to learn from these positive things, we shouldn't idealize them since there are also many social practices based on inequalities among men, women and children.

Also, many are so proud of being an indigenous person that it tends to limit how they look at the rest of the world. Many feel as a Mixe person they are superior to others. Our meeting helped clear up many doubts these young people had, although there is still much more to do to win them to PLP.

However, we've taken the first step. At the next meeting we hope to have more people. We are also planning a regular PLP study-action group to organize participation in the region's mass struggles.

Communists in the Mixe Mountains of Oaxaca,

Mexico U.S.-Euro Rivalry Behind Peru's
Electoral Circus

Now that ex-president/dictator Fujimori and his partner-in-crime, Vladimir Montesinos (long-time CIA operative here and drug-runner) have fled Peru, the interim ruler, Valentin Paniagua, is supposed to prepare an electoral spectacle to choose the new ruling capitalist lackey. To hide the fact that capitalism caused the corruption, repression and mass poverty suffered under ten years of Fujimori-Montensinos, the current rulers are putting on a big show "exposing" some very crooked politicians and generals from the old regime.

The U.S. State Department must be carefully organizing this sham, particularly since one of the leading candidates for President, Alejandro Toledo, is their man. First, it's no secret that Montesinos and Fujimori were dumped because they had outlived their usefulness to U.S. imperialism. Peru and Ecuador are key countries related to Plan Colombia, the war waged by the Colombia bosses and the U.S. against the Colombian guerrillas. The U.S. already has a huge air base in Manta, Ecuador to attack guerrillas in Colombia.

The U.S. also wants another base, in Peru's jungles, for that purpose. It is rumored that to justify U.S. intervention in the region, the CIA let Montesinos sell thousands of weapons (via Jordan) to the FARC (the main Colombian guerrilla group). Then they set up Montesinos, "exposing" his role in this sale. Why? Because the U.S. needed an excuse to expand its military operations in South America to counter plans by its European rivals to take over what the U.S. has always considered its "backyard."

But Montesinos and Fujimori were dumped also because Peru's bosses feared workers and others weren't about to take the misery imposed by these two much longer. Workers and students were becoming angrier, engaging in massive protests demanding the end of the Fujimori regime.

The union hacks and other sellouts are helping to cool these actions, hoping to get some posts in Congress. A leader of the labor federation (CGTP), who is also a leader of the fake leftist "Communist" Party, is actually one of the candidates for Vice-president (Peru has two VPs) for the National Unity Alliance, a right-wing party.

The two leading Presidential candidates are: * Former President Alan Garcia, another crook and murderer. As President in the 1980s, he ordered the massacre of 300 political prisoners, many from the Shining Path group, and the murder of peasants in the mountains. He's a social-democrat, linked mostly to German imperialism and to the national bourgesoisie which is losing out to competition from the big bosses and their multi-national corporate allies. * Alejandro Toledo, a former official of the World Bank, who returned from his job in Washington, D.C. to run. He is apparently the U.S. rulers' choice.

Meanwhile, the current crisis of world capitalism is hitting workers here. Many smaller bosses are going bankrupt because of the "unfair" competition from the big bosses and their import companies. This leaves thousands of workers jobless. The number of street vendors has risen sharply since it's the only job available for many. Some class-conscious workers are beginning to see that the April 8 elections won't solve their problems.

Our PLP group here is calling on workers to boycott the electoral farce and instead help us spread our communist politics, to raise the class consciousness of workers. Our aim is not to reform this rotten system but to destroy it and build a communist society where workers rule and produce for the needs of our class, not for a few parasites.

A comrade, Lima, Peru

Thou Shall March on May Day

The Sunday night before Martin Luther King Day I entertained our church soup kitchen volunteers at my family's annual hamburger soup-cheese grits feast (a tradition my mother and aunt started for winter Sundays decades ago back in Virginia). In addition to the volunteers, most of them black, unemployed and/or Workfare victims, I invited several white liberal anti-racists from a religious humanist congregation I used to lead.

As before, most of the "middle" class people congregated in the living room and most of the working-class people, in the dining room. Bad. But this time I was prepared! The "Village Voice," of all newspapers, had just published an article on the "leading struggles of 2000." I cut out the picture and descriptions of each struggle, taped each to a separate index card and numbered them so that different people could match the text and the picture, and then discuss how that class battle might inspire them to fight racism and imperialism in the coming year.

Most people participated and got into good, if brief discussions. Once we had become more of a community, we gathered around the piano and sang Civil Rights protest songs from the '50s and '60s. Most of these friends get CHALLENGE, at least occasionally. Many have marched at least once on May Day. A few don't know about the Party yet.

This evening set a good tone toward making May Day 2001 bigger and more spirited, and most of all provided a closer personal and political bonding experience among myself and some more friends. So the Party can grow! Loving those cheese grits,

Red Churchmouse

Biological Determinism: Workers' Enemy

A review of the movie "Billy Elliot" (CHALLENGE, 1/10) quoted uncritically one character's saying, "Well, how many potential Einsteins, in every kind of field, are never even discovered because they're living in the slums and never will get the opportunity to shine? There'll be a hundred, a million geniuses discovered after the revolution!--Jonas Salks, Charlie Chaplins, Orson Welleses, etc."

The reviewer makes a point here that's only partly correct. It's true that capitalism prevents people from developing their intellectual abilities. But it's false that "potential Einsteins" number only in the millions. In fact, ironically, the previous week CHALLENGE contained an article on math education directly contradicting that incorrect notion: "... math education in Japan assumes that ALL children can learn..." (Emphasis added)

There is a powerful need for us to purge all biological determinist notions from our thinking, such as limits on each individual's intellectual development. To suggest that only some, but not all, people--even if it's millions--are "potential Einsteins," is to advance the myth that Einsteins are "born" and not made, and that they achieve what they do as isolated individuals, rather than as part of a collective. This biological determinist notion misunderstands both what Einstein was and was not, which is equally true of all people.

To put it another way, Einstein was no "Einstein"--in the sense that "Einstein" embodies a far-reaching myth, one of superhuman heroes designed by the ruling class to convince the vast majority of the working class that they are in their current exploited condition because of some "lack of ability." Einstein achieved what he did in the field of physics because of, (1) early development of particular INTERESTS and the ongoing spread of those interests; (2) a lifetime of very HARD WORK AND STRUGGLE to understand physical aspects of the universe around us; (3) WORKING WITH hundreds of other physicists to develop these understandings; and (4) a time in history when CAPITALISM NEEDED development of this particular branch of science.

In the absence of this combination of elements, Einstein might have remained a postal clerk in Germany--at least until the Nazis would have murdered him. Consider that Einstein did not develop outstanding abilities in any other field--including, incidentally, math. The reason? This work takes time and focus. The biological structure of all human brains limits our ability to concentrate on several things at once, and, given a finite lifetime, this prevented him--as it would anyone--from excelling in more than a few areas.

Einstein's theoretical achievements stemmed not from what he was, but rather from what he did, and when and with whom he did it. There were hundreds of other major figures in the development of this area of science, but their names have not become household words, because if everyone is a hero, then no one is, and the bosses' myth falls apart. With the possible exception of a tiny percentage of people who have brain disorders, everyone, given the proper combination of circumstances, is capable of learning and working to develop theory, in any field, every bit as complex as Einstein's and then some.

In a communist society, it will be up to the former working class (i.e., the human race) to determine how many people are needed at any particular time to take part in the development of advancing science in any particular direction.

Of course, the ones to do that would rationally be collectively decided in part based on their interests, as they may have developed to that point. But we should never fall for or advance the bosses' myth that only some, and not all, people are capable of what is now considered to be extraordinary intellectual development. To do so is to prevent our liberating ourselves from the agonies of capitalism.

Red Doctor

REVIEWER'S COMMENT

I never disagreed that the theory of biological determinism is an invalid one and one that should be fought, but I don't think the review suggested that. However, the above letter refers to a previous article on the importance of math to revolutionary youth. I agree, based on my own experience concerning education without politics.

When I was a kid, I was terrible at math--until the seventh and eighth grades. My teacher was Miss McCann, a rigid, almost humorless person, but with one very special trait: she assumed we could and would all do our best. In those years my grades went from C's and D's to strong A's. Suddenly I was the best student in the class. Apart from Miss McCann's expectations, I had no idea why the transformation--until I read the recent article on the importance of math. (After those two years, I was never good at math again.)

The CHALLENGE article stated that young people with a communist ideology must understand that knowledge of math and science are necessary to the success of the revolution. As a kid in the 1950s, I had no Left-wing inclinations. I was more interested in fooling around, right to the point of being a delinquent. In fact I eventually was sent to a reform school. During the pre-Vietnam, Truman-McCarthy-Eisenhower era, we were encouraged to conform--until the Soviet Union sent "Sputnik," the first rocket, into orbit. Suddenly mathematicians and scientists were in demand. Had there been a communist understanding, as suggested in the recent mathematics article, and had I been influenced in the '50s as we all later were during the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war era, math and science would more clearly have been important to myself and others.

Many young people, then and now, drift into gangs and pointless rebellions (as in the '50s movie "Rebel Without a Cause") because they see no alternative to the phony grasping world of capitalism. In fact, they don't understand the class meaning of the system that oppresses them and the whole working class. It's up to us to teach the importance of intellectual growth, not for the benefit of the rich but for the working class.

Ex-Brooklynite

 

To Our Readers:

Starting with this issue CHALLENGE will be published biweekly. We want to make this a a temporary situation. But, we need the help of our readers to change it as soon as possible (for more details see article in this issue).

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a href="#WHETHER CLINTON OR BUSH—SAME AGENDA, RACISM AND WAR">"ditorial: Whether Clinton Or Bush—Same Agenda, Racism And War

• Hart-Rudman Plan: Open Blueprint For Fascism And War

Fired Red Teacher Wins Round One

a href="#It’s Time to ‘Clock’ the Klan">It’s"Time to ‘Clock’ the Klan

Criminal Injustice System in Overdrive vs. Morristown Anti-Racists

Begin Millennium Organizing For Red May Day

Class War The Cure for Electoral Disease

Hospital Bosses Cut Jobs, Workers Bleed

The Bi-Weekly CHALLENGE: Spread Revolutionary Ideas In the Working Class

• Challenge Overcomes Cynicism
• What Must Be Done?

The 'New Economy': WWW.GONEBROKE.COM

a href="#Boeing’s New Boss: An Ambassador Of Death">"oeing’s New Boss: An Ambassador Of Death

Capitalism Turns Quake into Disaster for Workers

From Boom to Bloodbath

Reform and Revolution at the MLA

LETTERS

Ecuador to Spain: Same Enemy, Same Fight

a href="#Small Victory Over ‘Big Mac’">Sm"ll Victory Over ‘Big Mac’

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EDITORIAL

a name="WHETHER CLINTON OR BUSH—SAME AGENDA, RACISM AND WAR">">"HETHER CLINTON OR BUSH—SAME AGENDA, RACISM AND WAR

Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing! Thousands of workers and others planning to protest at the Bush-Cheney inauguration would do well to heed this ancient warning. The new Republican White House is obviously racist, anti-worker and pro-business to the core. Not so obvious is that the liberals leading the protests are just as bad as Bush & Co. We shouldn’t be misled by capitalist politicians parading as "lesser evils." The entire profit system is the evil we must destroy. Workers should march on Washington, but not to follow Democrats, who serve the same ruling class as the Republicans. We should march on May Day under the banners of the Progressive Labor Party for the goal of communist revolution.

The recent election exposed the bosses’ voting process as a hypocritical fraud. Gore won the popular vote and Bush stole Florida by preventing black workers from voting or refusing to count their votes. But suppose Gore had won. Would a Gore-Lieberman presidency have offered workers a better deal? Facts are stubborn things. The Clinton-Gore record proves that the struggle to control the executive branch is little more than a partisan brawl to decide which faction of rulers will get to reap the spoils of state power as they rule over and oppress us. A brief summary of Clinton-Gore’s "achievements" since 1993 shows an unbroken pattern of racist terror, social service cuts, fascist use of state power, environmental degradation and preparation for imperialist oil war:

•The Clinton-Gore welfare" reform" law threw millions of workers and children off public assistance and into a form of slave labor.

• The prison population doubled. Seventy percent of inmates are black and Latino, mostly jailed for non-violent crimes or framed outright.

•The so-called "Clinton boom" went primarily into the pockets of the wealthiest 5 %. One-fifth of all children live in poor households. This figure will mushroom now that the economy is slowing and tens of thousands more workers face layoffs.

•Clinton-Gore hired 100,000 new cops to brutalize workers and then made sure the "Justice" Department would obtain as few federal indictments as possible against police brutality (only 3 % of all cases referred to it by the FBI).

•As a result of Clinton-Gore IRS policy, taxpayers earning $25,000 or less now stand a better chance of facing an audit than people earning more than $100,000.

•Clinton-Gore paraded as champions of the environment. But their record was even worse than the Republican Reagan-Bush gang’s. Clinton-Gore’s pet North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a program for mass environmental pollution in Mexico and the Southern Hemisphere. On the home front, Clinton-Gore gave a virtual blank check for development to mining companies, real estate developers, the food and chemical industries and the pharmaceutical giants

•War, or preparation for it, was a daily menu item of all eight Clinton-Gore years. U.S. sanctions murdered over a million Iraqis—mostly children—without bringing Iraqi oil back under Exxon’s control. Under Clinton, U.S. imperialism played nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea, bombed Iraq regularly (and still does), carried out "humanitarian" aerial terror over the former Yugoslavia for the control of energy pipelines, and made "peace" moves that have once again turned the Middle East into a powderkeg.

A Democratic Gore presidency would clearly have pursued the same agenda. The Bush White House will not act in a fundamentally different way. Sure, there will be some differences. Bush owes the domestic Oil Patch bosses a favor. So he backs the pumping of Alaskan oil for commercial purposes. The Democrats oppose it, but not for the environmental reasons stated. They simply want the oil at the ready for emergency use if war disrupts the flow from the Persian Gulf.

Otherwise there won’t be much difference. In fact, Bush could hardly attack the working class more than Clinton-Gore. If racist John Ashcroft becomes Attorney General, he could hardly move the anti-working class policies already in place much further to the right. However, more severe fascist attacks are in the works such as the Hart-Rudman plan (see box).The only difference is that Ashcroft doesn’t bother to camouflage his racism. Bush’s main cabinet appointments—in State, Treasury, and Defense—all come from the same Establishment-friendly club that has always carried out a pro-ruling class agenda regardless of minor tactical differences.

Gore would have squeezed us economically, imprisoned us, terrorized us and tried eventually to march us off to a war in the desert for oil super-profits. Bush & Co. will do exactly the same.

We must break the vicious circle the liberals constantly put before us to chase after a "lesser evil." Even the more radical-sounding politicians from the so-called "left," like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, are completely controlled by the bosses. Jackson is a former Rockefeller Brothers "man of the year," and both he and Sharpton (an admitted FBI informer) fully backed the Clinton-Gore program, especially its focus on making Iraq safe for Exxon, which means war.

Our Party rejects choosing between the workers’ enemies. The capitalist system can’t be reformed. The bosses will always use their state power to guarantee maximum profits for the big financiers and industrialists. Accepting this dirty "choice" keeps us in the bosses’ control. Our class interest lies not in picking our own hangman but rather in fighting to build a Party that can lead one day to the seizure of power. Break away from liberal rulers and their politicians! Smash the Democratic and Republican bosses! Join with the Progressive Labor Party and march on May Day for communist revolution!

Hart-Rudman Plan: Open Blueprint For Fascism And War

Workers shouldn’t be fooled by all the partisan wrangling over Bush’s cabinet appointments. Genuine tactical differences divide the main rulers on certain questions, and the brawling may continue, perhaps throughout the Bush-Cheney presidency. But U.S. imperialism also faces mounting challenges over the next 20 years from European, Chinese and Russian rivals. To meet these threats, it will need internal unity. The bosses need self-discipline within their own ranks as well as against workers both at home and abroad.

The political form of the drive toward this discipline is the Hart-Rudman"U.S. Commission on National Security in the Twenty-First Century." It includes both liberal Democrats like Andrew Young and "conservative" Republicans like Newt Gingrich. Its chief goal is U.S. rulers’ survival as a superpower. One aim is to confront the growing strength of Russia and China. Another is to guarantee an "uninterrupted supply of oil from the Persian Gulf." This means war, sooner or later. But the Hart-Rudman panel understands that, in light of the "Vietnam Syndrome," the bosses will need a major effort to mobilize the working class inside and outside the military.

Hart-Rudman’s solution is to use the threat of a "hostile attack on our homeland," an assault "in which Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." Then, the commission hopes, "the American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so."

This "National Security" panel also prescribes tightened control of the economy from the top down. Knowing that international economic rivalry eventually leads to armed conflict, Hart-Rudman wants an "integration of the Departments of State and Defense and the CIA with the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, Justice and Transportation."

Consolidating law enforcement plays a big role as well. The September 1999 installment of Hart-Rudman recommended "new organizational mechanisms to manage the increased blurring of lines among military, police, and legal jurisdictions, and among new forms of warfare." The Pentagon acted immediately by creating a joint task force to ensure military control of state and local police agencies in the event of an emergency.

The main implementation phase of the Hart-Rudman report will be published in February or March. This blueprint for fascism and war represents U.S. rulers’ plans for meeting their urgent class needs, regardless of the cost in workers’ lives. The Bush-Cheney White House will march to this tune. The Clinton-Gore team played the overture, and a Gore White House would have continued into the next act. The liberals are fully behind Hart-Rudman. Newly-elected New Jersey Democratic Senator John Corzine promised during his campaign to "hold off on any major new defense contracts…until the Hart Rudman Commission…finishes its report."

Our enemy is mobilizing to act as one class. We must do no less. Building the PLP as the working class’s general staff is the top strategic priority for workers. Nothing else can lead to victory.

Fired Red Teacher Wins Round One

CHICAGO, January 14 — Communist teacher Carol Caref is one step closer to winning her job back. On December 16, a hearing officer ruled that her firing was "without just or sufficient cause." The decision overwhelmingly favored Carol, rejecting every one of the Board’s arguments. The Board of Education can still overturn the finding at its February 27 meeting.

Carol was charged with "conduct unbecoming a teacher" because she encouraged students to attend an anti-KKK rally in 1997, and one of her students was arrested. In 1999, the Board, learning of this arrest, conducted a witchhunt "investigation" reminiscent of McCarthyism. Carol and another PLP teacher, Moises Bernal, were removed from their classrooms. Moises was later fired.

Students, parents and teachers supported PLP against racist schools’ CEO Paul Vallas. Many teachers contributed financial and moral support. Students and parents backed Carol at hearings, rallies and defense committee meetings. "Substance" newspaper—whose editor is himself a target of Mayor Daley’s School Board—published front-page accounts of Carol’s hearing and the recent decision.

Our forces presented a vigorous political defense against the Board’s attack with which the hearing officer agreed, stating, "Young people need to broaden their horizons by observing the world that they will soon be facing on their own. There is strong support for a white teacher who teaches in a primarily black school and protests racist activities. A teacher’s willingness to broaden their education by spending off-duty time is to be commended, not condemned."

However, to make this victory more meaningful, we must fight to win these supporters to become new members, CHALLENGE distributors and May Day organizers, and to advance our fight to serve the people.

The Board and Daley are committed to ideological control of the schools to serve the interests of their masters. They are still attacking all real and potential critics of their phony educational "miracle." This "miracle" has thrown thousands of students, mainly black and Latino, out of the high schools. It has used phony redesign plans to keep people in line and train a few for high-tech jobs in the military and their "new economy." The rest are tracked into prisons, cannon-fodder posts in the military and/or below-poverty wage jobs.

Communists fight to educate students, in and out of the classroom. Young people, in particular, need to learn as much about the world as possible, including math, science, history and language, so they can better lead the fight for communism. Our Party is committed to serving the needs of these working-class youth, in and out of school.

The Caref-Bernal Legal Defense Fund still needs contributions and donations to offset huge legal bills. Bernal’s case is being appealed. Send donations, and make checks or money orders payable, to the Caref-Bernal Legal Defense Fund, at 5431 South Harper, Chicago, IL 60615.

a name="It’s Time to ‘Clock’ the Klan"></a>"t’s Time to ‘Clock’ the Klan

GARY, IN, Jan. 17 — The racist Ku Klux Klan has announced plans to march in Gary. Mayor Scott King is putting on a publicity show about trying to "stop" them, but the racist system has been allowing this racist terror gang to spread its recruitment drive. Whatever may happen, we should organize thousands of people to oppose them and shut them down!

There can be no "free speech" for this murderous gang with a long history of brutalizing and killing thousands of black people. The same system that pretends to support "free speech" uses its cops to stop the free speech and "freedom of assembly" of young people in Gary and all over the U. S., harassing, beating, and jailing them often for the so-called crime of walking in public places. Workers on strike are ordered back to work. But when they want to protect the Klan, they chatter about "free speech."

Here in Northwest Indiana and throughout the U.S., the economy is starting to slide. The rich capitalists may pretend to oppose the violence of groups like the KKK, but they use these groups to try to get white working-class people to attack black workers, immigrants and anyone else who tries to unite the working class. It’s no accident that we are faced with more big layoffs in the steel industry and a decline in the economy while the capitalists simultaneously enable the KKK to try to create a war among black, Latino and white workers. Capitalism is killing millions of workers worldwide and the crisis is worsening. That’s why PLP fights for communism.

Anyone who thinks the KKK has the answers will have to answer to us! That means organizing on the job, in our unions, schools and communities to bring out thousands. The argument that, "They are only seeking attention and should be ignored." is dead wrong. They don’t want attention for the hell of it! They want to recruit to build a violently racist, anti-working class movement. That’s why we should shut them down and carry the anti-racist momentum into a broader, deeper effort to build a communist revolution to smash racist capitalism forever.

Criminal Injustice System in Overdrive vs. Morristown Anti-Racists

MORRISTOWN, NJ, January 12 — Recent developments in the cases of the eight anti-racists arrested here at an anti-fascist demonstration on July 4 show once again the importance of unity against a legal system where the cards are stacked against us. At a Jan. 10 court hearing, two judges, one for the adult case and one for the juvenile case, kicked the lawyer representing four of the adult defendants and one juvenile off the case completely. The judges completely disregarded the wishes of all five defendants and their so-called constitutional right to choose their own attorneys. They based their ruling on the elitist proposition that the legal system knows what is best for these defendants better than they do themselves!

Our legal defense committee fully expected that these judges would fire our lawyers. Our lawyer had been painstakingly fighting these cases, and had become a major thorn in the prosecutor’s side. The defendants have still not been charged by the grand jury, although that may change soon (see below). The prosecutor clearly wanted our lawyer off the case, and the judges were happy to cooperate. Far from demoralizing the anti-racists, however, this move has made them more determined to stick together and fight all the charges. Our defense team also has resolved to stay on the legal offensive against these attacks.

At the court hearing, the judge raised the spectre of the anti-racists facing up to five years in jail if convicted on more serious "third degree" riot charges. This was not part of the cops’ original charges. In his court papers, the prosecutor also raised the possibility of investigating a "conspiracy" among the defendants. In the latest development, the prosecutor is directly contacting witnesses for the anti-racists to persuade them to testify for the government. Grand jury subpoenas may follow soon. These threats show how seriously the local bosses take our July 4 actions. They also reflect the rapid growth of U.S. fascism.

From Seattle to Morristown, to the Republican and Democratic Conventions, the rulers’ police forces are increasingly being used to directly suppress mass demonstrations. A CNN report on the Washington, D.C. anti-Bush demonstration scheduled for this weekend’s inauguration reports that participants will go through TEN security check-points to reach the approved location. Clinton’s Hart-Rudman commission proposals will directly tie all federal government agencies to the military/national security apparatus (see page 2).

Communists do not underestimate the vicious lengths to which the ruling class will go to secure its power and profits. Imperialist war and fascism flow inevitably from the capitalist system. The entire legal system—laws, judges, prosecutors, grand juries, etc.—will be used to further these plans.

We in PLP must expose the latest Morristown developments. They are a "wake-up call" for the working class. They must lead to our building a large movement of workers and students to fight all the attacks on the anti-racists. In the long run, only a communist revolution can put an end to the bosses and their bought-and-paid-for legal system.

Fighting is Winning:

Begin Millennium Organizing For Red May Day

NEW YORK, January 16 — May Day is the most significant political activity of PLP. May Day 2001 will take place as inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies, amid a growing threat of war for control of Mid-East oil and increasingly fascist measures and layoffs as the bosses’ economy enters into another one of its periodic crisis. May Day will also take place as workers fight for their class interests, from strikes in Ecuador and Colombia to anti-racist protests in the U.S. and Southern Spain

Our Party continues the dogged fight for communism. We are digging deeper roots in the international working class and giving more leadership to the class struggle. There is every reason for revolutionary optimism, but no room for complacency. We can take nothing and no one for granted. Confidence is important. But we need more struggle, among our friends and against the enemy. Struggle among comrades and friends should be based on deep appreciation and respect for everyone’s potential to contribute to building the Party and serving the working class. Out of struggle grows real affection for and confidence in each other.

We must fight. Fight for mass numbers of May Day marchers. Fight to serve the working class. Fight for CHALLENGE distribution and fund-raising. Fight to organize May Day committees and activity, for recruitment to the Party, and the political development of our members and leaders. Fight to sharpen the class struggle. In short, fight to build a mass base for communist revolution and more quickly reverse the devastating impact of the defeat of the old communist movement. When we turn this around depends on many circumstances, both external and internal. But the goal is to wage this struggle.

We are in a continuous effort to increase the number of May Day marchers. But we understand that each new May Day marcher and organizer, each new CHALLENGE reader and distributor, every new committed sustainer, and each new member represents a qualitative change for that person and our Party clubs.

A long-time PLP member asked what could be done to re-gain his commitment for May Day organizing. A new leader concluded, "I think we need some kind of center where we can pursue our projects. We have an ESL class. We are beginning a new theater group for writing and performing political skits at various activities. Our factory workers project is a little slow at the moment, but we should re-vitalize it. And we’re more and more involved with parents and others in the struggle against racist studies and the use of drugs, like Ritalin, on our children."

Thinking about what we do, making plans and evaluations, are the nuts and bolts of our work. This is how we can understand and advance our political ideas. With a careful and planned struggle we can do better. We should review our plan for CHALLENGE distribution and fund-raising. Who do we know and what is the nature of our personal-political relationships? Who can we recruit to the Party? How can we improve Party education? What are our plans for work in the mass organizations, in mass struggles, for Party activities and for mass May Day organizing? In the fight to improve our work we welcome comradely criticism and self-criticism to overcome all obstacles.

Building May Day means being active in struggle on many fronts every day. Jump in. It is still true that the international working class has nothing to lose but its chains and a world to win.

Class War The Cure for Electoral Disease

NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 14 — The Local 1199 hospital workers union leadership in the Service Employees International Union is misleading health care and service workers in their struggles against the bosses. The union leaders, Andrew Stein and Dennis Rivera, concentrate on mobilizing the union to elect the bosses’ candidates who, at best, can give us a few crumbs.

One worker at a Brooklyn hospital told us, "I’ve been voting for the past 20 years. Hospital conditions for patient care have deteriorated. Before, I took care of six patients. Now I have 15. What have the politicians done for patient care?"

The union leaders say the class struggle is over, that electing Democrats ("our friends") and defeating Republicans ("our enemies") is the only future for health care and service workers. But another Brooklyn hospital worker told us, "Workers cannot depend on the bosses’ politicians to improve their living standards. Workers have always had to fight very hard to gain better conditions." Or keep what little benefits we have, we might add.

Both parties are funded by the bosses and push the same policies for workers—racist mayhem, slave labor Workfare, doubling the prison population (70% black and Latino, mostly non-violent offenders or framed outright) and a dramatic increase in police terror and anti-immigrant attacks. They want the working class passive, loyal and divided, supporting the bosses’ ideas—racism, war and fascism.

In the last election, the 1199 leadership mobilized thousands of workers to elect Democrats around the country, including voter registration, citizenship programs and going door-to-door to get out the vote. Millions in union funds were spent to elect politicians who serve the bosses’ interests. The union leaders are performing a valuable service for the rulers, misleading oppressed black, Latin and white workers to the polling booths instead of fighting back against the profit system.

Ironically the politicians are always criticizing the health care system in the media. Yet it is their capitalist system that’s responsible for the health care crisis, producing increased misery for both patients and health care workers. Currently there are 45 million workers nationwide without health insurance.

The N.Y. State Legislature "expanded" the Health Care Reform Act, but still left over 2,000,000 people without health insurance. The hospital bosses are still laying off workers (see box on Mt. Sinai) and closing their doors. Why? The nature of capitalism is cutthroat competition, which impels these cost-cutting, profit-making layoffs, closings, mergers and consolidations, and battles among hospitals, drug and insurance companies for profits.

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 cut $3 billion from Medicare for hospitals in NY State. The HMOs denied many hospital reimbursements, claiming services were "not medically necessary."

This is what we get from being misled into the polling booths. We must fight against a union leadership that defends the bosses’ system. Unite workers across all borders to wage war against capitalist exploitation.

Hospital Bosses Cut Jobs, Workers Bleed

NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 10 — Hundreds of Local 1199 members picketed Mt. Sinai Hospital today, protesting a cut of 70 housekeeping jobs, "to reduce costs." Many of these 70 have been working here for 10 years or more.

"They claim to have economic troubles, but we don’t believe them," said Maria Boutim, losing her job after 12 years, "They pay very high salaries to hospital officials who do nothing" The head of the hospital’s Board of Directors announced last month that the hospital just collected $10 million from donors. Workers should have such "economic troubles."

The hospital’s "promise" to find new jobs for those being cut is an empty one since they claim they haven’t found anywhere to place them. But a Mt. Sinai shop steward reported that the 16-floor medical school on Madison Avenue has "300 offices and 85 labs that will be cleaned by only 8 people working only 4 hours a day each. It is impossible to clean them adequately in such a short time and with so few staff."

Health care is obviously run like any other capitalist business. The bottom line is profits. The lives of these 70 workers are of no concern to these bosses. Indeed, capitalist health care is dangerous to workers’ health.

The Bi-Weekly CHALLENGE:

Spread Revolutionary Ideas In the Working Class

With this issue, CHALLENGE- will be published every two weeks, primarily to use the extra week to enlarge the regular readership of the paper. As layoffs, racist terror and war loom even more in the future, and workers fight back, we can win new readers to become regular distributors of CHALLENGE. Through this process, we would hope to return to a weekly by next January, if not sooner, and retain the increased regular readership, as well as increase the financial base of our paper and Party.

Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, declared, "Without revolutionary theory there is no revolution." In other words, to overthrow capitalism and build communism, the working class must understand why capitalism is its mortal enemy and why communism is the only solution. Otherwise, no matter how bad things get, workers will be sucked into following misleaders who claim they can reform capitalism. Ultimately these reformers inevitably lead workers into nationalism and wars against the workers of other countries.

Lenin’s party, the Bolsheviks, succeeded because, among other reasons, they brought their theory to workers, soldiers and sailors through their newspapers. They fought hard for years even though being caught with a copy of a communist newspaper could result in imprisonment or death. Bolshevik Party clubs made and consistently carried out detailed plans to bring their newspapers to workers. Often a single copy was passed around a factory and read by dozens of workers.

Largely because of the reversals of the workers’ revolutions in Russia and China, we are in a difficult historical period for building the communist movement. Many workers, students, and others are cynical about the chances of replacing capitalism—no matter how brutal it gets—with something better. Many have bought into the anti-communism constantly peddled by the bosses and their intellectual servants.

CHALLENGE OVERCOMES CYNICISM

CHALLENGE is a big part of the answer to the cynicism and anti-communism that cripples our class. CHALLENGE links the horror we all experience to the profoundly rotten nature of capitalism and shows why the profit system can never meet the needs of the working class. Every issue of CHALLENGE shows how real workers, students and soldiers in a number of countries are building the Progressive Labor Party by leading class struggle and recruiting new members.

But the circulation of CHALLENGE is too low compared to the task before us. Given our forces, there is no way—yet—that we can compete in terms of numbers with the capitalist mass media. But, by applying ourselves, we could significantly increase the circulation of CHALLENGE between now and May Day, and continue to do so thereafter. This will make a difference! CHALLENGE is infinitely more powerful than the mass media, because it tells the truth about capitalism rather than covering up its crimes. Every additional reader of CHALLENGE is a nail in the coffin of the capitalist class.

What Must Be Done?

A CHALLENGE article (Jan. 3) from a Philadelphia PLP club shows the way. It analyzes why some members excel at getting the paper out to their friends, and how others could learn from them. The club made plans for everybody to increase their CHALLENGE circulation and how to get the paper "read" by workers who can’t or don’t read, including a fight for a union-sponsored literacy campaign.

Every PLP club should make detailed plans to distribute more copies of CHALLENGE. A critical element involves increasing the number of people who distribute the paper. As readers come to understand the paper’s importance to the working class, they should become distributors. Struggling with family members, friends and co-workers to read CHALLENGE is difficult. Experienced Party members must provide guidance and support on how to overcome cynicism, anti-communism and other obstacles. Otherwise, readers can draw the incorrect conclusion that others are not interested. But winning struggles to bring CHALLENGE to others builds confidence in PLP and its ideas, and is a crucial part of the recruitment process. People become communists by winning others to communism.

If you’re reading this but do not meet with a PLP club, you too can help. The Party and the working class need your help. Think about who could be enlightened, as you are, by reading CHALLENGE. Make a list. Ask the person who gives you the paper to give you extra copies, and take them to the people on your list. Explain to them why they should read it. Show them articles you think will interest them. Want help? Just ask your Party contact.

Finally, PLP clubs and other readers should send in articles and letters about their efforts to increase the circulation of the paper, similar to the Philadelphia article. CHALLENGE is the organizing tool of the communist revolution. Let’s use it to learn from each other how to make our newspaper a stronger weapon in the hands of the working class.

Help bring back a weekly CHALLENGE by:

• Buying and selling more subscriptions,

• Contributing monthly sustainers and asking friends for donations.

The 'New Economy': WWW.GONEBROKE.COM

During last year’s Super Bowl Sunday, scores of expensive commercials (the costliest spots on U.S. TV) advertised Dot Com companies. Most of them won’t be seen during this year’s Super Bowl. They’re gone. What happened?

A year ago all the pundits were praising the "New Economy." Supposedly there was no end in sight to all these Dot Coms and the millionaires they were creating. Never mind that they produced nothing of value and were actually money-losing ventures—their stocks were going up and up, throwing reality out the window.

Well, reality is stubborn. The high-tech companies are going down faster than the Vikings bowed to the Giants. Just last December, 10,000 Internet jobs were lost nation-wide, almost half in New York’s "Silicon Alley" and on Long Island. Even the powerful N.Y. TIMES began the new millennium by firing 75 workers in its digital division. Job growth in the giant of the high-tech world, California’s Silicon Valley, fell to 3% in 2000 (from 3.8% in 1999 and 3.9% in 1998).

The fact is the so-called Internet revolution wasn’t such a revolution after all, not even in terms of capitalist development. Sure, it is useful to send e-mail to a friend or relative thousands of miles away—if they have access to a computer—but in terms of its supporters’ claims, it was nothing compared to, "The technological changes between 1880 and 1940 [which] exceeded, in both scope and intensity, all that has happened since," editorialized the London Financial Times (1/13) "Those changes included new sources of energy (electricity and petroleum), new industries (motor vehicles and pharmaceuticals) and new products (cars, washing machines, telephones, radio, penicillin. These profoundly affected what was produced and how. They also transformed the way people lived."( Financial Times editorial, Jan. 13).

Better yet, these industries developed a proletariat, millions of workers who, with communist leadership, will become the gravediggers of capitalism. The mass production industries developed by capitalism forced workers to work collectively and feel first hand what capitalism is all about—exploiting workers to net maximum profits.

But the high-tech industries, with their myths of "new working relations," developed "associates" (not workers). Individualism was raised to an all-time high with the promise of "sharing the wealth." But only Bill Gates and the other moguls really "shared" the wealth—among themselves. Most workers, even the higher paid ones, can’t even afford to live near their jobs because of sky-high housing costs and the relative low pay of many. Reports the New York Times (1/15): "An increasing number of employees [in Silicon Valley] cannot afford to live near their jobs and must commute from more rural and less expensive communities that may be several hours away."

Even in job creation, high-tech has not shined. The Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed 4.1 million jobs created in the last decade in the U.S., and only one high-tech area was among the top 10 more important job-creating professions, only one belongs to high-tech (system analyst). High-tech lagged behind jobs in the traditional old economy (nursing, retail, office workers, etc.).

Worse yet, many countries and areas invested in helping attract high-tech companies at the expense of more important infrastructural investments in health care for the masses, education. running water, etc.

The more "progress" capitalism brings, the more workers and their allies suffer. The industrial advancement of the first half ot the 20th century sharpened the dogfight among the imperialists, producing World Wars I and II and helped create the Great Depression of the 1930s. The imperialism of that first World War also produced the Bolshevik revolution, which liberated one-sixth of the world’s surface from capitalist exploitation and then, in WW II, crushed the Nazi army, the mightiest military machine capitalism had produced.

Let’s make sure the new millennium brings about the best of the 20th century, communist revolution, and delete once and for all the virus of capitalism.

a name="Boeing’s New Boss: An Ambassador Of Death">">"oeing’s New Boss: An Ambassador Of Death

SEATTLE, January 14 — Boeing CEO Phil Condit recently announced the appointment of Thomas R Pickering, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs, to the newly-created position of Boeing Senior Vice- President of International Relations. Pickering’s job will be strengthening the company’s relations with foreign governments and well-placed "movers-and-shakers" worldwide. He’ll serve on Boeing’s Executive Council, with the company’s top bosses.

Pickering’s record? He’s the Ambassador of Death!

Pickering was Reagan’s Ambassador to El Salvador from 1983 to 1985, during the height of the civil war. His predecessor having been fired for speaking too often about human rights violations of the pro-U.S. El Salvadorian government, Pickering set about ensuring his office fully supported U.S. imperialism:

• He dutifully squashed evidence of the El Salvador military’s involvement with the 1980 abduction, rape and murder of three U.S. Roman Catholic nuns and a lay worker. Classified documents revealed that in 1985 El Salvador’s defense minister General Jose Garcia had told Pickering one of his high-ranking officers ordered the executions. Pickering covered this up, thereby preserving U.S. military aid to the government of El Salvador. ("Facts on File World News Digest," 6/24/98)

• Pickering arranged for a secret donation of $1 million in arms to the Nicaraguan Contras when the U.S. government was prohibited by law from aiding these reactionary butchers. Testifying before Congressional committees investigating the Iran-contra scandal, Pickering admitted he hand-carried this million-dollar wish list to Washington for delivery to the White House basement where Marine Lt.-Col. Oliver North ran his covert operation.

No Dirty Deed Goes Unrewarded

Pickering’s reward for being a merchant of death came when President Bush appointed him UN ambassador where he:

• Engineered the political fig leaf Bush needed to carry out the Persian Gulf War. Serving his Exxon Mobil bosses as a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, Old Money’s foreign policy think-tank, Pickering molded the UN coalition against Iraq, providing the political cover for U.S. bosses’ Desert Slaughter to defend their oil empire.

• Led the post-war call for sanctions which have killed nearly a million Iraqians, half of whom are children.

• Launched a national speaking tour last year to build support for continued sanctions, only to be booed off the stage in city after city. "How dare you kill the kids of Iraq?" an unidentified man shouted at Pickering during one such speech. "What kind of human being are you?" (Florida Time-Union 6/10/00) Apparently the kind that suits U.S. imperialism just fine.

Clinton appointed Pickering Ambassador to Russia, during the crucial Yeltsin years where he uncovered opportunities for U.S. exploitation of cheap, skilled Russian labor. Expanding Boeing’s tool subcontracting in Russian will doubtless be a priority under the company’s plan to shrink in-house tooling.

Pickering: Friend Of Psychotic Torturers

Last March, Peruvian intelligence agent Leonor La Rosa Bustamante switched sides and planned to testify against fellow agent and psychotic torturer Tomas Anderson Kohatsu and his penchant for electric shock, rape, and beatings. But Pickering intervened, stopping the prosecution in the U.S. and assuring Anderson safe passage home to Peru. Another "victory" for human rights! [The Nation, 5/8/00]

Similarly, when Panama refused asylum to Anderson’s Peruvian boss, Vladimiro Montesinos, another psychotic torturer with long ties to the CIA, Pickering applied pressure through his office and the Organization of American States. Panama quickly reversed course. (New York Times, 9/24/00)

Pickering’s latest project is Plan Colombia, Washington’s imperialist intervention there under the guise of anti-drug interdiction. Colombia’s military, one of the most fascist in Latin America, gets most of the billions in "aid." It has close ties to the right-wing militias, many of whom are deeply involved in the drug trade. Asked about concerns that the Colombian military was discredited, Pickering responded:

"First, you can take it that I don’t agree with [these] judgments about the Colombian military forces. Secondly, as we’ve explained many times, there is continued very strong support for the Colombian national police…" (State Department news Briefing Regarding Undersecretary Pickering’s Trip to Colombia, 11/27/00) Pickering never met a death squad or torturer he didn’t like!

Obviously abetting torture, mass murder and gunrunning to fascist criminals in serving U.S. imperialism rewards and qualifies one to be a top Boeing boss. With communist revolution, the working class will remember to give ambassadors of death like Pickering their just rewards!

Capitalism Turns Quake into Disaster for Workers

EL SALVADOR, Jan. 16 — Thousands of working-class people are dead or have disappeared. Dozens of towns and thousands of homes have been destroyed. This desolation caused by the recent earthquake follows another recent attack on the working class, the dollarization of the economy. It is also added to the 150,000 killed by the death squads run by U.S. imperialism and the Salvadoran bosses in the 1980’s.

Natural phenomena can’t be prevented, but capitalism turns it into a major human disaster. From El Salvador and Mexico to Turkey and Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, these catastrophes were worsened by the extreme exploitation and poverty created by the bosses’ drive for maximum profits.

A clear example of how these bloodsuckers put their profits before workers’ lives are the hundreds of dead and thousands of homeless in the Town of Las Colinas de Santa Tecla. "The city government tried to prevent the ‘Posada Magaña’ construction company from building mansions on the top of the mountain, above the Colonia Las Colinas," declared Jose Torres, a worker in the Santa Tecla city hall. ( LA Times, 1/15) "The construction company took us to court and won a suit for $4.3 million dollars and now this is the result." That is, the deforestation and evacuations caused by this construction led directly to the mudslides and consequent deaths of hundreds of residents of this town located below the mansions. That’s why Salvadoran President Francisco Flores was booed by many residents when he went to the disaster site.

The world’s capitalist governments, especially the imperialists, are swooping in like vultures, offering "aid" to the homeless workers. These are the same bosses who have exploited and massacred these workers for centuries. This "aid" is conditional on keeping the chains of exploitation in place, whether controlled by the U.S. imperialists or the Europeans. Furthermore, this "aid" stays in the hands of the fascist rulers and their allies. These local bosses are rubbing their hands thinking of the millions of dollars ending up in their bank accounts.

In these moments of urgent need, the international working class should support our brothers and sisters in El Salvador. Los Angeles garment workers are collecting money to send directly to the workers. All workers should follow this example of solidarity. Dedicating our lives to destroying capitalism—the worst disaster and the root cause of the millions of deaths of workers worldwide—is the best help we can give.

From Boom to Bloodbath

GARY, IN, January 16 — Eighteen months ago everything seemed to be coming up roses for the steel bosses. Profits were rolling in. There were plans to expand production and buy up smaller companies. But like a two-by-four in the face, the realities of this insane, vicious capitalist system hit them and hit them hard. In the last two months, the U. S. steel industry has run into a brick wall of collapsing markets, higher energy prices and higher imports.

According to the HAMMOND TIMES, "Regional stalwart LTV Corp. could be gone. Others may follow. In the meantime, jobs are likely to be lost, and the local economy could buckle." United Steelworkers representative Tom Conway says, "It’s going to be a bloodbath."

LTV, the third largest steel producer in the U.S., has filed for bankruptcy and laid off everyone with two years service or less. They sold their tin division to USX, wiping out some 500 jobs in Aliquippa. Wheeling-Pitt and five other steel companies have gone bankrupt. Weirton Steel laid off thousands. Bethlehem Steel and USX have also cut production.

While the steel bosses and union leaders whine about foreign steel imports, it’s bigger than that. Energy costs are rising and steel prices are in a tailspin, cutting into profits. Worse yet, as fuel prices rise there is a cutback in auto production, mainly in steel-intensive light trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Steelworkers are facing a capitalist crisis of overproduction. In their lust for profits the bosses have increased production ten-fold and wiped out thousands of jobs. Remember when everyone’s Daddy, uncle or brother-in-law worked in one or another of the mills? Not anymore. Remember when everyone was buying new cars every couple years? Not anymore. The bosses have increased production and wiped out jobs to the extent that there are not enough people with the means to buy the stuff WE produce in THEIR mills. And the workers of Russia, Brazil, Korea, Taiwan or Slovakia make even less. Capitalism is a global monster.

The steel bosses and union leaders are always draping themselves in red-white-and-blue to get us to "Stand Up for Steel" and "fight imports." But USX just bought one of the largest steel mills in Europe, in the Slovak Republic. This mill will account for 25% of their global capacity. The steelworkers in this mill make about $2.00/hour. In their search for cheap steel and huge profits, the steel bosses will go anywhere and stoop to any hypocrisy.

However, this slump in steel presents a contradiction to U.S. rulers: while production here is being squeezed they must insure there is at least enough domestic supplies for war production. They can’t risk dependence on overseas steel which could be cut off by rivals abroad.

When the steel contract was signed 18 months ago, many workers thought things would be OK. Just cruise on to retirement, work a little OT and build up that nest egg. Many of us thought, "Everything will be all right." With so many people retiring, we thought there was no way there’d be layoffs. But capitalism is always in crisis somewhere.

Our answer must be more CHALLENGE readers and distributors, more May Day organizers and more struggles against the steel bosses. We must fight for international solidarity of all steelworkers. No cuts and no more sacrifices for the bosses. From Slovakia to Gary, Smash the Steel Bosses! Build a mass PLP!

Reform and Revolution at the MLA

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Occasional calls for revolution could be heard above the din of reformist activity at last month’s convention here of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the professional organization of college- and university-level teachers of literature and language. Members and friends of PLP had both positive and negative experiences there.

On the plus side: the Radical Caucus (RC) has emerged as a respected, effective fighter for various reform demands. The RC meeting attracted 30 people, many committed to anti-capitalist class analysis through RC activities. The RC distributed 5,000 leaflets and worked with the Graduate Student Caucus (GSC) to win passage of all its initiatives in the Delegate Assembly (DA).

These included: (1) a call for the MLA to support unionization, from teaching assistants and adjuncts to professors; (2) a permanent MLA committee to consider incidents of campus bigotry, and undertake a critique of racism as systemic, not merely a matter of "prejudice"; (3) MLA support for open admissions and free tuition throughout public higher education; and (4) reduction of part-time super-exploited teachers earning $1,500-$3,000 per semester course, with no benefits and a corresponding increase in full timers; establishing a minimum wage; and noninterference of trustee boards in curriculum decisions, especially at the City University of New York where interference is routine.

Even such modest reform victories would have been inconceivable a few years ago, when there was a monumental struggle to get DA support for striking Yale teaching assistants. The above reflects increased pro-union militancy of graduate students and adjuncts throughout North America and occurred partly because the GSC elected left-of-center representatives to the DA. This year’s successes stemmed from several years of steady organizing by the RC and GSC.

There was also the positive reception given to attempts by PLP members and friends to shift discussions to the left. Our critiques of universities as capitalist ideology factories, helping to reproduce inequality and the division of mental from manual labor, were warmly received. Over 1,000 PLP leaflets—exposing capitalism’s inability to deliver true education to the working class, and calling for communism—were distributed, along with 60+ CHALLENGES. From our steady work in the RC, a few friends have come closer to the Party, now take CHALLENGE regularly and attend a Party study group.

However, the successes of reform activities may have buried some of the Party’s ideas and led to "tailing the masses."

Given the openness of many MLA’ers to the communist critique of universities as spreading ruling-class consciousness, too few of us spoke up boldly and consistently on this. During the DA meeting, we failed to link sexism and racism to capitalism and to reveal the dangers to unionization of a narrow, reformist approach. While RC’s "bottom line" has been anti-capitalism, Party members didn’t consistently focus on the critique of capitalism throughout the convention.

While the Party leaflet exposed capitalist higher education as perpetrating social inequality, and unionization’s role in accepting the capitalist wage system, the leaflet was weak in explaining how the RC and GSC reform program builds dangerous illusions—that barring trustees from decisions on curriculum will somehow produce "truth in education"; or that open admissions and free tuition—which advances the lucky few—represent a "way out" for the working class.

By concentrating on working in the DA we largely abandoned the ideological struggle over what it means to do literary study. Past papers have challenged how most college literature teaching reinforces racism, sexism and nationalism, and other capitalist ideology. Criticism of postmodernism’s attack on Marxism was also absent as well as the "red line" in literary history. We won’t win college teachers to the Party without contesting the way bourgeois ideology influences their work in the classroom. We need to examine how college teachers of language and literature can serve the working class.

Too much of the work in the RC was carried out by PLP members and friends. Being "the best reformists on the block" ultimately abandons revolution, an error of the old CPUSA. If not corrected, this tendency could lead us down the same slippery slope.

The hard work and immersion of PLP members and friends in the MLA has produced wide respect. We must now urgently build communist consciousness among literature and language teachers. This will help construct a society without divisions of mental and manual labor, in which culture promotes rather than inhibits the development of fully-realized human beings within the working class and its allies.

LETTERS

Ecuador to Spain: Same Enemy, Same Fight

The Jan. 17 CHALLENGE article on the death in Southern Spain of 12 immigrant workers from Ecuador reveals an important aspect of the class struggle nowadays—the "globalization" of the working class.

On January 9, 1,500 immigrant farmworkers from Ecuador, supported by other immigrant workers in Spain’s Murcia region, marched for 50 miles demanding the government legalize their status. The march lasted from Tuesday evening to mid-Wednesday. The workers were protesting both the murders of 12 fellow workers and the region’s bosses’ refusal to hire any workers because of the arrest of the subcontractor boss who had hired the 12 dead workers. That boss has a long history of violating labor laws and paying workers below the minimum wage.

This long march refuted the idea that these immigrant workers, particularly those from Ecuador, were "good workers" (who work hard and don’t complain about being super-exploited). The racist exploitation of these immigrant workers makes the year-round agribusiness in Southern Spain very profitable.

Following the march, 100 immigrant workers from Ecuador took over a church in the town of Lorca, demanding that the government legalize their status. These workers are afraid of the new immigration law to take effect in a few weeks, which could lead to the deportation of thousands of undocumented workers. The law requires these workers to return to Ecuador or their country of origin and then apply for legal papers in the Spanish consulates there.

While these workers were marching and protesting in Southern Spain, the police in several Ecuadorian cities were attacking students who were protesting against the latest round of price hikes and austerity measures taken by President Noboa. A general strike is now planned early in February to protest these attacks. Workers and youth are also protesting the growing use of Ecuador by the U.S. military for its Plan Colombia (war against the guerrillas in neighboring Colombia).

So the class struggle and the crisis of capitalism has united workers and youth internationally (several of the 12 dead workers were children, as were many of the Murcia demonstrators). The immigrant workers in Southern Spain and those in Ecuador are both victims of a capitalism trying to force workers to pay even more for the crisis of the bosses’ system.

This opens the door for a "globalization" the capitalists fear—an international working class movement. Join us in PLP and make that movement a reality.

A Comrade

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"Can I have a copy of that leaflet?" asked a woman who’d approached me while I was distributing CHALLENGE at the Martin Luther King parade here in L.A. "It says what I’ve been saying to my friends for a while now," she continued "and they’ve been telling me I’m crazy."

She was pleased with our leaflet explaining that Bush and Gore are equally bad for the working class. While this woman was especially outgoing and articulate, many people at the parade expressed similar sentiments. Black workers know this system is fundamentally racist even though the bosses work overtime to convince them that capitalism is good and communism is terrible. We distributed 50 papers, 50 Vietnam flyers and 500 leaflets at the march.

The day before the parade an incident occurred which demonstrated this system’s racism and the bosses’ fear of the potential of black-Latin-white unity. I had gone with two of my students, both black, to a McDonald’s near their homes because they’d applied for jobs there and hadn’t been hired. Although this McDonald’s is in an integrated neighborhood, the vast majority of its workers are Latino. My students told me they’d met a few other black people who’d applied to work there five times—unsuccessfully. We went in and confronted the manager. My students told him they didn’t understand why no black workers were employed there. The manager said some black people DID work there—on other shifts.

He was becoming increasingly nervous. Everyone in the whole place was listening. It was obvious his response was pretty lame. I chimed in by explaining how excellent these students’ social skills are and how quickly they learn. The manager suggested my students return the next day. Both were hired.

Whenever I’ve described this incident to my co-workers and students, I’ve explained that the bosses use these hiring practices to pit black and Latin workers against each other. Everyone’s agreed.

Even this very small victory shows that whenever workers take a step towards multi-racial unity, we come out ahead.

An L. A. Teacher