1. Workers Die for Bosses' Profits
   Oil Real Reason for War Against Iraq
2. Liberals' Plan : Whack Iraq and Pacify Russian and French Oil Moguls
3. Workers' Jobs, Pensions Lost While Big Bosses Swallow Upstart Rivals
   1. `Shut up and delete this E-mail!'
4. `Trained to Kill' Afghan Women, Fort Bragg Wives
5. Pilots On Speed = `Friendly' Fire
6. `War on Terror' Comes Home, Hits West Coast Dockers
7. Boeing-Union Partnership Aids War Drive, Dumps 30,000 Workers
8. Nigerian Women Take on Big Oil
9. Pope Trips Past Pedophile Scandal:
   Religion Still `Opiate of the Masses'
10. Racism Is Alive and Well at Advocate Health Corporation
11. Profit Drive Trapped Quecreek Miners
12. A Poem by Bertolt Brecht
13. Sweeney Banks on Very Capitalism that robbed
    workers blind
14. Nazi Medicine Award for Peru's Sterilization of 200,000 Indian Women
15. LETTERS
    WORKERS OF THE WORLD, WRITE!
    1. Sexism, Imperialist War Led To Ft. Bragg Murders
    2. 1930's Great Depression Hits Argentina
16. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Churchill said it's O.K. for Brits to gas Kurds
    2. Threats of jail won't cure capitalist thievery
    3. Mao turning in grave?
    4. Mexico factories killed by cheap Asian labor
    5. Religious schools are just as segregated
    6. Welfare law may create `no-parent' households

---

Workers Die for Bosses' Profits
Oil Real Reason for War Against Iraq

The likelihood of another U.S. imperialist oil war in Iraq increases daily. The control of energy supplies remains crucial to U.S. bosses' plans for decades of world domination. Only Saudi Arabia has greater oil reserves than Iraq. The potential capture of the Iraqi prize by a rival imperialist would seriously threaten U.S. supremacy. Our Party is preparing for this war by winning workers and soldiers to fight for the long-range goal of communist revolution. Nothing less can smash imperialist slaughters for maximum profits.

We shouldn't be fooled by the bosses' debate over the timing and tactics of the oil war. Basically, it reflects the squabbles developing since 9/11 between the liberals and the Bush White House. The liberals represent the Eastern Establishment of old line, Rockefeller-dominated energy giants (Exxon Mobil, Chevron, et al.) and financial houses (J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, et al.). Dissatisfied with the Bush gang's performance on every front, they're trying to seize control of "homeland security" -- their name for a police state (see CHALLENGE, 7/3). They're also cleaning house on the economic front (see page 2).

Now the same liberal rulers are moving to take over foreign policy and the next phase of U.S. imperialism's permanent oil war. Invading Iraq may require a minimum of 250,000 troops and possibly heavy casualties. If Saddam Hussein is ousted, U.S. troops will likely have to dig in for a long, expensive and probably violent occupation. The liberals want to avoid a repetition of the rebellions within the military and the anti-war uprisings that occurred in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. To do this, they must win public opinion, especially among workers, soldiers and youth, to support this invasion. "There may be a compelling case to be made for war with Iraq," editorializes the New York Times (8/3), [but] the administration has not yet made it."

Two leading scholars at the Brookings Institution, a key think-tank of the liberal imperialists, urge "a much tougher inspections regime with immediate demands on Hussein to reveal his illicit weapons so we can destroy them and a clear, multilateral promise to go to war if he thwarts us even one time." [Emphasis ours -- Ed.] ("Give It One More Try Before War," Philip H. Gordon, Michael O'Hanlon, Los Angeles Times, 8/1).

In other words, find or plant a "smoking gun" anywhere in Iraq and use it as a cover to invade. The main difference between Bush and his liberal critics boils down to a choice between Big Lies.

Over the last few weeks, the Times and the Washington Post released government "leaks" about possible invasion plans. The purpose is to underscore the liberals' displeasure with Bush & Co. and to create the illusion of serious debate about the war, as well as take the power over war out of Bush's hands. Another pair of Brookings intellectuals warns Bush about acting "democratically": "Congress...has a somber constitutional responsibility not merely to debate [war with Iraq] but to go on record -- with a vote explicitly authorizing the use of force." ("No Presidential War," Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay, Washington Post, 7/31)

Liberals' Plan : Whack Iraq and Pacify Russian and French Oil Moguls

The liberals agree that Hussein "poses a major threat to American interests" and must go. But they also see a need to pacify Russian and French interests whose oil companies have multi-billion dollar contracts pending with Iraq. They wouldn't object to throwing their competitors some crumbs. Rockefeller's Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Michael Mandelbaum says: "...The promise that their own oil companies will have the opportunity to participate in developing Iraq's reserves will increase French and Russian enthusiasm for removing Hussein." ("U.S. Must Plan post-Hussein Iraq," Newsday, 8/1)

Whether the liberals or the Bush gang win out, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, workers and children will die. Street-to-street fighting, with many U.S. casualties may well be in the cards. Saudi Arabia -- filled with mass protests and assassination attempts unreported in the U.S. media -- could fall into civil war. The contradictions will sharpen between U.S. imperialism and all its rivals. The Chinese have a vital stake in building their own Persian Gulf oil empire. The Russians' present love-fest with Washington is purely a marriage of temporary convenience. Imperialist wars always lead to consequences the imperialists can't foresee or prevent.

The most important of these consequences should be the sustained growth of our Party internationally. Bosses' war has always given the working class an opportunity to build its own revolutionary forces. The next oil war will do the same. Exposing the deadly role of the liberals is decisive. By sharpening the class struggle, we can win workers away from them.

Workers' Jobs, Pensions Lost While Big Bosses Swallow Upstart Rivals

The liberal dominant wing of U.S. rulers is punishing the upstarts within its own class. Behind the scandal-ridden executives being carted off to prison in handcuffs, a major consolidation of wealth and assets is occurring, confirming Karl Marx's analysis that such a development is inevitable under capitalism.

The latest to benefit is billionaire investor Warren Buffet, whose Berkshire Hathaway company has tight ties to the Rockefeller interests.

A Berkshire Hathaway unit, Midway Energy Holdings, has announced plans to buy the Northern Gas Company, a 16,000-mile natural gas pipeline that once belonged to Enron. When Enron went belly-up, destroying the life savings of thousands of workers, the pipeline went originally to Dynegy for $1.5 billion. But Dynegy had its own problems and Establishment moguls like Buffett are feasting on the spoils. Buffet is paying Dynegy nearly $600 million less than Dynegy's purchase price for the pipeline.

As CHALLENGE reported (8/7), the Enron and telecom scandals are giving the biggest bosses an excuse to "aggressively seek undervalued assets owned by troubled...companies" (New York Times, 7/30). This tightens the Eastern Establishment's grip on key assets (including the banks that financed the Enrons), helps maximize profits, and consolidates the liberals' hold on economic policy.

Buffet has significant investments in Coca-Cola and the Washington Post, two of the first companies to come clean on reporting executives' stock options as an expense. Stock options have been a major aspect of the recent scandals.

Buffett also joined the Rockefellers in demanding that Bush not repeal the estate tax. This tax confiscates upstarts' wealth while giving the Establishment the incentive to funnel tax-deductible money into foundations they control which significantly influence economic and foreign policy to serve their interests.

These shenanigans are an exercise of state power, which always serves the interests of the dominant capitalists. Buffet's power play clearly demonstrates that government can never be neutral or above the class struggle. The biggest billionaires make out like bandits, the weaker ones see their loot confiscated while workers' hard-earned pensions go up in smoke.

`Shut up and delete this E-mail!'

Not only did the Enron and WorldCom bosses run away with hundreds of millions while defrauding their workers' pension funds, but these two companies' largest creditors -- CitiGroup and JPMorgan/Chase -- dumped this debt on other pension funds, with full knowledge that the stock was about to nosedive.

Senate hearings revealed that these two huge banks packaged the Enron debt as something called "credit derivatives" and sold them on to other pension funds like the California Teachers pension and the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. Thus, Enron's crash wouldn't take these banks down or even damage their profits. Meanwhile these other workers' pension funds lost hundreds of millions in taking on these "credit derivatives" with the belief their pension funds would prosper based on the then "sky-high" value of Enron stock.

Citi and Chase helped devise the "prepays" (loans disguised as trades) and other devices which concealed the shape Enron and WorldCom were in. When one astonished Chase executive sent an E-mail with the message, "5 bn [billion] in prepays!!!!!!!" the answer came back, "Shut up and delete this E-mail."

So these big banks become the winners in this swindle, still another reason to dump a system that exists based on screwing workers.

[All information from Counterpunch, 8/5]

`Trained to Kill' Afghan Women, Fort Bragg Wives

Four members of the Army's elite Special Forces and Delta units -- all sergeants --murdered their wives in the space of six weeks at their home base at Fort Bragg, N.C. Three of the four were recently returned from Afghanistan where U.S. "Special" Forces were "liberating" Afghan women by killing more than 50 guests at a wedding celebration on July 1, shooting women and children as they fled the attack by helicopter gunships.

(According to the Times of London (7/29) a draft United Nations report charges that the air strike by helicopter gunships was completely unprovoked and that the U.S. has been trying to cover it up. Initially, the U.S. Command claimed its aircraft had drawn "enemy" artillery fire. But the UN "investigators found no weapons, `no corroboration' on the ground that the U.S. had been fired on." The Times report says U.S. forces "arrived on the scene very quickly after the air strikes and `cleaned the area,' removing evidence of `shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood.' Women on the scene had their hands tied behind their backs.")

A spokesman for the Army Special Forces Command said, "It would be stretching matters to link the ...killings [of the 4 wives] to service in Afghanistan." (New York Times, 7/27) But these "elite" forces are trained to an extreme degree to kill in the service of U.S. imperialism. Last June, Army Private Matt Gluckenheimer told the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal that in "Operation Anaconda," "We were told there were no friendly forces. If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically, that if there were women and children to kill them."

These soldiers are entrenched "in a military life of obeying orders, masking emotion and being trained to kill....Two wives were shot in the head, one was stabbed 50 times and another strangled....[In the military] divorce rates and domestic violence are twice the national average," (New York Post, 8/4)

To say that being ordered to indiscriminately kill thousands of Afghan civilians -- and "specifically women and children" -- has no relation to murdering their wives is the real "stretch." Truly, the U.S. "war on terror" is in itself the height of savage, fascist terrorism.

Pilots On Speed = `Friendly' Fire

U.S. pilots who have been indiscriminately killing civilians (and even their own forces -- killing four Canadian infantrymen with a 500-pound laser-guided bomb) -- regularly take drugs (Dexedrine) to stay awake during their murderous missions, according to the London Independent (8/3). Commenting on the pilot who killed the Canadians, John Pike, director of a defense think-tank, said, "Better bombing through chemistry....the guy had eaten too much speed and was paranoid." Pilots who refuse the drug are banned from missions.

`War on Terror' Comes Home, Hits West Coast Dockers

The U.S. rulers "war on terror" has come home. The bosses' government is threatening to use the military to break a possible West Coast dockworkers' strike if they don't knuckle under to the shipowners' demands and were to walk out for job security and against automation-induced layoffs. This is "Homeland INsecurity" with a vengeance.

The Administration has threatened to invoke a Taft-Hartley injunction to halt a strike for 80 days. "Other options include running the ports with US Navy personnel, moving to break up the union's coastwide bargaining unit or backing legislation that would restrict the union's ability to call a strike." (LA Times, 8/5) Union officials admit they've never seen such a hardball stance before.

A Bush "Labor Department official confirmed that the options were...in the context of a job action occurring during wartime" (Our emphasis, Ed.).

"We have been very candid," the official said. "We have told them if they act in a manner that is disruptive, we will use any means necessary to make sure our troops in the field get what they need." (LA Times, 8/5). That "field" may soon become the slaughter of masses of workers in Iraq.

West coast dockworkers have been working without a contract since July 1. "We offered him [the owners' negotiator] everything he asked for," said Steve Stallone, a spokesman for the International Longshoremen's and Warehousmen's Union (ILWU), which represents 10,500 dockworkers up and down the West Coast. "He gave us nothing. Zero. Zip, zilch." (Oakland Free Press, 7/22) In fact, the union's offer was the most extensive job concession package since the 1962 agreement, which let containerization in the door.

Liberal Senators say the Bush Administration should let the parties "bargain in good faith." Bush wants to disregard the unions; the liberals want to use them to win the workers to fascism and war. But both agree on breaking any strike with the military.

Some union organizers emphasize that the shipping companies are all "foreign-owned" -- claiming that's why they're attacking the workers. But U.S. bosses attack workers here and worldwide just as hard, including strike-breaking.

The main fight is over automation, jobs and jurisdiction. The union offered proposals which would boost productivity and reduce longshore clerk jobs 30%, eliminating 600 of the 2,100 total -- all rejected by the shippers, who want to bar the door to jobs for younger and future workers with a "promise" of no layoffs for current workers.

This resembles the deal the once militant, left-led ILWU accepted many years ago when it agreed to job-cutting technology (containerization) as long as the then-working longshoremen weren't laid off. This followed years of militant dock strikes -- including the 1934 Bay Area General Strike which first established the ILWU. Longshoremen had always fought both for their own jobs and in solidarity with workers around the world (they refused to load arms to attack the then-socialist Soviet Union in 1919).

Ports from San Diego to Seattle move about $300 billion worth of goods annually, about 7% of the GDP, and support 1.4 million jobs. (LA Times, 8/5) The Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex is a cornerstone of Southern California's largest industry, international trade, involving 450,000 jobs.

"With Pacific Rim trade projected to double in the next decade, shipping lines complain that West Coast ports won't be able to keep up unless they catch up with their more automated Asian peers." (LA Times, 8/06) The bosses want to lower conditions here, not raise them in Asia. Workers need international solidarity to answer the bosses' attacks worldwide, not the pitting of workers in Asia and here against each other.

PLP urges workers and students to back the dockers' fight for jobs in defiance of the bosses' war plans. We urge sailors and soldiers not to scab. The capitalist profit system uses technology to cut jobs and lower wages. The minor tactical differences between the Bush Administration and the liberal Democrats amount to disagreements about how to shove the bosses' demands down the workers throats -- the liberals want a smile and "worker inclusion" along with a billy club. But both gangs agree profits are in the national interest -- and to hell with workers' jobs. This patriotic "national interest" is the bosses' interest!

In the current period of increasing fascism and preparations for more oil war, workers must break with the bosses' politicians, their patriotism and their laws which attack our class. Now and in the future, workers need a communist party that fights for the interests of the working class. Under communism -- without bosses and profits -- automation will make all workers' lives better.

Boeing-Union Partnership Aids War Drive, Dumps 30,000 Workers

On July 21, at the Farnborough Air Show in Britain, Boeing commercial airplane unit CEO Alan Mulally publicly said the International Association of Machinists (IAM) was "absolutely aligned and attuned" with the bosses' plan never to rehire the 30,000 workers laid off in the last 10 months. "[We have] got to help Boeing be more competitive going forward," said Mulally.

Caught with their pants down, the union howled in denial. You could expect this protest from union headquarters since "job security" was supposed to be our number one contract demand. Ironically, the union supposed "answer" was worse than Mulally's original claim. "We're looking at being partners in creating value -- or adversaries who will be fighting over an ever-shrinking pie," warned IAM strategic-resources director Steve Sleigh (Business Week, 8/08). Read: build bosses' profits.

Always a loser, collaboration with the bosses is just ridiculous during the present crisis of overproduction in commercial aerospace. Airlines have parked nearly 2,000 unneeded planes in the deserts of California and Arizona during the last year. Since producing aircraft is not profitable in this climate, the company has spent $10 billion -- of the capital we workers produced -- since 1997 buying back its own shares, in what appears to be a futile effort to inflate stock prices.

These periodic capitalist crises stem from production for profit. The only way off this treadmill is production based on the needs of the working class. But this requires a radical, permanent change in the system; it requires a communist revolution.

"A lot of people who never in their lives even considered socialism or communism will be talking about it now," predicted a friend in the company cafeteria. The Party's prime job, especially during this contract battle with its potential for heightened class struggle, is to make our friend's prediction come true. Circulating this article can help.

Workers Make The Best

Political Scientists

What caused this worker, who has only the thinnest contact with the Party, to make this prediction? Capitalism's contradictions are not concepts reserved for study by political scientists. They express themselves in concrete attacks on our class: in this case, the wholesale purging of a generation from the workplace.

Honest political scientists will tell you the need for the U.S. ruling class to maintain its worldwide dominance -- in the face of potential imperialist rivals -- is what's driving world events. The bosses' strategy to maintain this dominance is constant pre-emptive war against these rivals, and building fascist oppression to counter the inevitable resistance at home. The union's call for partnership with the bosses to preserve "American jobs" fits nicely into this bosses' strategy.

Maintaining the U.S. empire requires attacking workers here and aboard. The Pentagon recently commissioned a new Defense Science Board task force on maintaining the U.S. arms industry's competitiveness. "Competitive outsourcing could be the answer," concluded chair Philip Odeen (Aerospace Daily, 2/3/2001). So our supposed "partners" are planning to eliminate our jobs to maintain their economic and political dominance.

Communists know capitalism must make it worse for us. We must then lay the groundwork for revolutionary understanding and solutions. Aggressively building these ideas and forces while fighting worsening layoffs and massive unemployment will expose the union leaders' "partnership" hoax and offer us the alternative to the system's war and fascism: communist production for working-class need.

Nigerian Women Take on Big Oil

NIGERIA -- Last month masses of protesters, mainly women, demonstrated against Chevron Texaco demanding jobs and an end to the company's ecological destruction of the area. Chevron makes millions from the 500,000 barrels of oil it produces here daily. Not only do residents of the region get nothing in return but the company's pollution of the Niger River delta has killed all its fish.

The last few years have seen fierce battles against the oil company. Several times youth from the Ijow ethnic group have seized oil installations and kidnapped oil executives, while demanding jobs. Then, on July 9, hundreds of women from the Itsekeri ethnic group surrounded all the company gates at Escravos site (meaning slaves in Portuguese), barring anyone from entering or leaving. On July 17, Ijow women of all ages, up to 80-year-old grandmas, joined together to protest at, and then occupy, four Chevron facilities for three weeks. Chevron finally agreed to provide jobs and build hospitals and schools.

For years there have been many boss-provoked clashes between the Ijow and Itsekeri groups, but now they've united against their common enemy for the common goal of jobs and better conditions for the local population.

Other oil companies in the region, like Royal Dutch Shell, have a similar rotten record to Chevron's. For 30 years Shell refused to share its electricity with a local village of 100 people, saying it was the Nigerian government's responsibility. Shell separated its electric plant from the locals with a fence. The Nigerian rulers, mostly corrupt politicians and generals, did nothing.

Recently, a U.S. State Department delegation met with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to discuss raising Nigeria's oil production. Nigeria, the world's 7th largest oil producer, supplies 15% of U.S. oil imports. If an invasion of Iraq disrupted imports from the Persian Gulf, U.S. rulers want to guarantee plenty of oil from other sources.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, representing the pro-European Vatican, has denounced the U.S. oil company pillaging. The Catholic bishops of West and Central Africa met in Equatorial Guinea to denounce the disparity between oil company profits and the misery of the people. The bishops charged such profits have financed the arming of local militias in several countries, fueling civil wars.

As world imperialism gears up for more wars to control the flow and profits of oil, workers and their allies must also prepare to not only fight for jobs and against pollution but also to fight to destroy the capitalist system that produces such vultures.

Pope Trips Past Pedophile Scandal:
Religion Still `Opiate of the Masses'

The Pope's trip to Canada, Guatemala and Mexico had two main goals: one to counter the growing attacks against the Vatican because of the pedophile priests scandal, and the other to offset the influence of pro-U.S. born-again groups in Central America and Mexico.

The Pope addressed hundreds of thousands of youth in Toronto, mumbling something to the effect that it's bad to screw children physically and mentally. As CHALLENGE readers know, liberal groups in the U.S., Boston College (BC) and the New York Times-owned Boston Globe are leading the attack on pedophile priests. The man who launched the anti-Vatican push at BC was the head of the college's Board of Trustees, Geoffrey Boisi, VP of JP Morgan Chase, which is Exxon-Mobil's leading stockholder and a major force in the Eastern Establishment. This campaign is really aimed at getting the U.S. Catholic Church solidly behind the U.S. imperialist rulers' plan for endless oil wars and undermining the Vatican's pro-European imperialist tilt.

Millions turned out to see the Pope in Guatemala and Mexico, where pro-U.S. born-again Protestant groups are growing. Guatemalan President Portillo is a member of the Efrain Montt Party, led by the military strong man turned born again preacher General Montt. He ruled Guatemala in the '80s, backed by Reagan and Papa Bush. His paramilitary death squads massacred thousands of Indians. Of course, when it comes to killing Indians the Catholic Church is up there with the best of them. Millions were killed beginning with the landing of Columbus colonizers in the "New World."

The Pope sainted a Guatemalan man. Then in Mexico he made the mythical Indian religious man Juan Diego a saint. But Juan Diego never existed, as even the Jesuits have written. This demonstrates that the Church will openly lie, contradicting its own researchers, to keep Indian people accepting their exploitation and praying "for a better life to come."

The Pope beatified the two so-called Oaxaca martyrs. They were hung in the year 1700 for being stoolpigeons, telling the Catholic Inquisition that pagan activities were occurring among Zapotec Indians in Oaxaca.

"...Older Zapotecs, consider the Church's declaring these men `blessed' an offense against native peoples whom the Spanish empire stripped of their land and culture, leaving them in poverty that persists today. Members of this camp believe the true martyrs were the 15 people killed by colonial forces as punishment...Spanish soldiers beheaded the victims and placed heir heads along a road leading to San Francisco Cojonos as a warning to others. The punishment... is still a deep-seated wound for many of Oaxaca's Zapotec Indians." (TheNewsMexico.com, 8/2).

As the European and U.S. imperialist camps use religion to defend and kill for their interests, workers and youth must remember Karl Marx's maxim, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."

Racism Is Alive and Well at Advocate Health Corporation

A PCA (patient care associate) with eleven years seniority has recently been fired at Advocate Health Corporation. She is the sixth minority worker to be fired in less then a year by this same racist manager. A day after she was given an extra heavy assignment, including caring for severely ill patients in the respiratory unit, she was accused of "giving a rough bath" and summarily fired. Over eleven years of unselfish caring to her patients, her work has always been commendable, her record spotless.

Everything of value, including health care, is produced by workers' sweat and blood. The bosses need racism to keep workers under control through divide and conquer. Minority workers are paid less and discriminated against in order to make extra profits, and keep workers divided.

Why are the bosses increasing their attacks on workers? The economic underpinnings of capitalism are deteriorating. The U.S. ruling class, in a struggle against its competitors, is about to invade Iraq for control of the world's oil supply. The biggest bosses are tightening their grip by eliminating any opposition to their plans for war and fascism (police state). All pretexts of "rights" are being replaced by the rule of force and intimidation. Our job is to organize for communist revolution and end this oppressive system.

We have no union here so we must depend on each other to fight firings and injustices. When we oppose such firings, we're fighting for our class interests against our class enemy, the ruling class and its junior partners at Advocate. A united working class is a necessary step toward building a communist society.

Profit Drive Trapped Quecreek Miners

SOMERSET COUNTY, PA., August 6 -- The freeing of nine trapped miners from the flooded Quecreek mine here was cause for rejoicing by millions of workers and others. The solidarity, sharing and communal effort of both the rescue workers above-ground and the miners themselves below-ground, neither driven by the competitive profit motive, won the day. It is a microcosm of what communist ideas could accomplish for workers everywhere in a society free of bosses and profits and led by the working class.

The bosses' media and Bush hypocritically turned this event into a "feel good" saga of "what makes America strong," ready to transform that sentiment straight into backing the rulers' plan for its oil war in Iraq. But Bush, his bosses and their media avoided the actual cause of the "accident," a direct result of the Quecreek mine owners seeking maximum profits through primitive and unsafe practices.

The bosses didn't conduct either of two standard procedures that would have detected the underground water that flooded the shafts and trapped the nine miners. Either a two-dimensional seismographic study of the area or drilling probing holds would have alerted the miners that they were working only four feet from the flooded abandoned mine. And the Pennsylvania department for mine "safety" didn't require either procedure in approving the company's request to operate so close to abandoned mines. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Moreover, the company-supplied maps of the area were 50 years old! No wonder several of the freed miners vow never to return to the mines.

All this resulted from a 20-year mine-owner offensive, backed by the government, to close or break union mines and open non-union scab mines. This was their reaction to the miners defying Democratic President Jimmy Carter's Taft-Hartley injunction in the 1978 national miners' strike. In 1979, there were 6,237 working miners in Somerset County. By 1998, there were only 803. Wages fell by 25%. The proportion of young children living in poverty reached 20%.

Once the smaller, non-union mines replaced the larger, unionized ones, pockets of coal were targeted that the larger mine owners found unprofitable. These were called "dog holes" by the miners because they were among the most dangerous. Quecreek is one such mine.

The United Mine Workers (UMW) became a "trusted partner" in this bosses' offensive, agreeing to wage-cuts, mass layoffs and work-rules changes jeopardizing miners' safety to help the operators become "competitive in the new global market." Quecreek is one result of this partnership.

This class collaboration reached its height in the UMW's deal with Consolidated Coal, a top-ten mining company. The UMW "allowed" Consol to open non-union mines if it gave some jobs to union miners. In exchange, the company deducted union dues from the miners' paychecks, even though they were no longer covered by a union contract! Well, under capitalism business is business, whether for mine boss or union boss.

The example of cooperation, sharing and solidarity that the Quecreek miners and their rescuers set in this event is the kind to follow in fighting for a communist society that puts the class interests of workers first and puts the bosses six feet under.

A Poem by Bertolt Brecht

To the students of the workers'and peasants'
faculty

So there you sit. And how much blood was shed

That you might sit there. Do such

stories bore you?

Well, don't forget that others sat before you who later sat on people.

Keep your head!

Your science will be valueless, you'll find

And learning will be sterile, if inviting

Unless you pledge your intellect to

fighting

Against all enemies of all mankind.

Never forget that men like you got hurt

That you might sit here, not the other lot.

And now don't shut your eyes, and don't desert

But learn to learn, and try to learn for what.

--Bertolt Brecht

Sweeney Banks on Very Capitalism that robbed
workers blind

NEW YORK CITY, Jul 30 -- The AFL-CIO launched a "campaign" against the Enrons and WorldComs for robbing workers of their pensions and causing mass layoffs. Speaking to a demonstration on Wall Street today, chief honcho John Sweeney said he will meet with the heads of the New York Stock Exchange and investment bankers in New York and Boston, to "Align the interests of executives more closely with those of...workers." (New York Times, 7/30) Now he even canceled the demonstration at Boston's Fidelity Investments because they've "agreed to meet" with him.

In reality, Sweeney is speaking for the very bankers and brokers he appears to be condemning. As a member of Rockefeller's Council on Foreign Relations, Sweeny has been the loyal servant of the main wing of U.S. imperialism. They are using the current economic crisis to discipline their competitors and consolidate their control of the economy. Enron, WorldCom and the others are easy targets that are being used to make ExxonMobil and Citicorp look good, so we'll support their plans for war in Iraq and fascism at home, and accept mass layoffs, racism, give-backs and strike-breaking.

The AFL-CIO leadership is on the bosses' side. They defend capitalism while promising "reforms." Sweeney says he wants corporate "standards of decency." (Wall Street Journal, 7/30) But workers' and bosses' interests can never be "aligned." Bosses can never be "decent" towards workers. Our interests are diametrically opposed. The bosses steal most of the value we produce. A corporation's existence is based on squeezing as much labor out of workers as possible at the least possible cost. The tighter the squeeze, the higher the bosses' profits. The bosses who squeeze the most drive their less efficient competitors out of business.

Sweeney would disarm us with his "class alignment" and "decency" strategy, leading workers to support the rulers' oil wars against the interests of the international working class. Sweeney's campaign is "No More Business As Usual." We say, "No More Business," period.

Nazi Medicine Award for Peru's Sterilization of 200,000 Indian Women

Nazi doctor Mengele would have been proud of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, the "humanitarian" U.S. Agency for International Development, the Nippon Foundation, the Army and the doctors and nurses who forcibly sterilized 200,000 people between 1996 and 2000. In those years, the now-deposed Fujimori regime engineered this criminal plan in several mountain areas. Fujimori and his sidekick, former CIA agent Vladimiro Montesino (now in jail for drug trafficking and other assorted crimes) firmly believed in the fascist idea that too many poor people are bad for capitalism, and ordered his "Health" Ministry to do this dirty work.

According to recent revelations, the plan -- called Voluntary Contraceptive Surgery -- had little to do with volunteering. For Vicentina Usca, 37, in the town of San Martín, the nightmare began when government officials knocked on her door. "I was forced to tie my tubes," she said, "under threat of not getting the birth certificate of my 6-year-old daughter. The nurse said my husband had signed the approval [later proven to be a lie]..."(El Mundo, Madrid, 8/4).

When she demanded to see her husband, the nurse yelled at her, saying the procedure had to be done immediately; otherwise Vicentina "would be screwed."

Vasectomies were also performed on men, but the main victims have been Indian women. The forced sterilization has left many of them in bad shape. Odilio Jiménez, a worker now living in one of the shantytowns surrounding Lima, Peru's capital city, said his wife "is almost crippled and cannot engage in any strenuous physical activity." She hemorrhaged soon after leaving the hospital where she was sterilized. "Before I had a healthy companion that used to help me out with my job," said the husband. "Now she must stay in bed most of the time."

Meanwhile, President Toledo, Peru's current ruler, is trying to use this scandal to distract attention from his own failure to alleviate the misery, unemployment and other ills suffered by Peru's masses. Recently tens of thousands in Arequipa and other towns rose up to protest Toledo's plan to privatize the utility companies. People are tired of this privatization that just helps imperialist bosses and local politicians become richer, while service goes from bad to worse.

Capitalism, be it led by Fujimori, Toledo or any other anti-working class politician, is deadly for workers in the cities and mountains of Peru. The only solution is to fight for a racist-free society: communism.

LETTERS
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, WRITE!

Sexism, Imperialist War Led To Ft. Bragg Murders

An aspect of the four soldiers murdering their wives at Fort Bragg, N.C. is the tremendous sexism in the military. It's an abnormal world where there are many more men than women. The soldiers' youth and the lack of a model for healthy relationships combined with lifers soliciting female recruits for sex make it extremely hard to develop good relations between men and women.

Every base in the U.S. and worldwide is surrounded by whorehouses, with the tacit and sometimes explicit support of the brass. Young wives are left alone for months at a time. The military is a concentration of all the most sexist aspects of capitalist society.

The invasion of Afghanistan has added the bloodlust of imperialism to this mix. Imperialist wars destroy the minds of soldiers. Many cannot go over there," commit mass murder and return unaffected. The Army basically says anything you do is justified because all that matters is your life. Liberal movies like "Band of Brothers" and "Black Hawk Down" have reinforced this attitude.

The Army can't deal with this situation because their biggest concern is turning young men into killers who won't ask what they're killing for. It's no coincidence that these soldiers were in the most elite units, the Special Forces and Delta Team who the media celebrate as conquering heroes. They're the most gung ho, most racist units, brag about being the biggest killers and now four of their wives have joined the list of their victims.

Former Soldier

1930's Great Depression Hits Argentina

[A friend in Argentina sent the following to a friend in the U.S.]

The crisis here is like a river of volcanic lava that devastates everything. Poverty worsens daily, reaching intolerable levels for the working class. The official unemployment rate is now 24%. In the company where I work, 100 of the 260 employees will be laid off. There will be (maybe including me) more jobless, with no possibility of finding work elsewhere. Some compare the situation to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Now neighboring Uruguay and Brazil are on the same path. Doctor friends of mine in public hospitals tell me almost unbelievable stories -- a lack medicine and bandages; operating rooms that can't handle many patients; people sick with hard-to-cure infections from a lack of sterilization in the hospitals.

The politicians who rule here (whether Peronist, Conservatives, etc.) are only interested in winning elections, and will shit all over anyone to win. Meanwhile, millions are bartering to survive -- trading something they have for what they need. Since this doesn't generate resources or jobs, the crisis deepens.

Progressive and non-traditional candidates rate high in the polls, but have no chance of getting anywhere since the political establishment answers to multi-national corporations. The ruling class is sinking the country even more, caring nothing for workers and other oppressed people. That is the situation here in the Southern Cone. Now I see on a smaller scale in North America, you're getting your own taste of this crooked and corrupt system.

Greetings to my old friends back in the U.S. with whom I shared so many good times during my stay up North some years ago.

A friend in Buenos Aires

P.S.: The New York Times has now exposed how former President Menem (who privatized everything thing and was buddy-buddy with Clinton and Miami's Cuban right-wing exiles) took millions from the Iranian government to cover up the terrorist bombing of a Hebrew agency here in Buenos Aires several years back. He responded to this exposé by saying he was "broke," and was being supported by his wife (a former Miss Universe). Menem is one of the world's most evil people.

In reality, since 1810 Argentina has been ruled by one crook after another. Only its natural resources have kept the country afloat.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

RED EYE reprints clippings from the New York Times, British Manchester Guardian Weekly, and many other well-known capitalist publications. From their own papers we collect material which communists find useful in exposing capitalist manuevers and weaknesses. Especially useful for students and others who want an "official source for important facts. Abbreviations: MG= Manchester Guardian; NYT= New York Times; MM=Multinational Monitor; LOW=Liberal Opinion Weekly; FT=Financial Times

Churchill said it's O.K. for Brits to gas Kurds

Saddam Hussein may not have been the first to resort to chemical weapons in Iraq. Poison gas is said by historians to have been used by British troops to quell a 1920 tribal uprising in the northern Kurdish town of Kirkuk. "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly if favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes," Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister, is said to have remarked... [FT, 7/10]

Threats of jail won't cure capitalist thievery

In the last 10 years, the Securities and Exchange Commission...turned 609 of its most offensive offenders over to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution....Only 87 went to jail....In ten years. And most white-collar criminals land in one of those ritzy country club prisons, where inmates play tennis and make collect calls to their brokers all day.

What's more, the average sentence for even the biggest white-collar crooks is less than 36 months....

So despite the PR value of pumping up maximum sentences for corporate crimes, it's not going to make much of a dent in boardroom thievery.... [LOW, 7/29]

Rich U.S. trails other lands in maternity leave

To the Editor:

Re "Study Links Working Mothers to Slower Learning (news article, July 17):

This latest study is a clarion call to the United States to join the rest of the world in making it possible for women to spend more time with their babies without sacrificing their economic security. The United States is one of only five countries that do not have paid maternity leave...

As a result, American mothers, particularly poor mothers, have to go back to work much sooner after childbirth than mothers in other countries, leaving...American infants in nonparental care.... [NYT, 7/20]

Mao turning in grave?

Beijing has given its support to Nepal's struggle against Maoist guerrillas, labeling them terrorists.... [FT, 7/12]

Mexico factories killed by cheap Asian labor

All along the Mexican border with the United States, once-busy factories are closing. Since the end of 2000, tearful farewell parties have been held for 250,000 factory workers in Mexico. Some of the same jobs that left North Carolina textile plants and Ohio auto-parts assembly lines for Mexico in the 1980s are now moving to Asia. The reason is the same: cheaper labor....Many of the plant closings are just the globalized economy at work.... [MG, 7/17]

Religious schools are just as segregated

Religious schools are just as segregated and by some measures even more segregated than public schools.

In a study released last month, researchers at Harvard University's Civil Rights Project found that the average white student in religious schools attends schools that are about 90% white, with two-thirds of them going to classes that are between 90 to 100% white.

Conversely, the average African-American or Latino enrolled at a Catholic school attends classes that are at least two-thirds children of color... [Boston Globe, 7/15]

Welfare law may create `no-parent' households

A rising share of children, particularly black children in cities, are turning up in no-parent households, left with relatives, friends or foster families without either their mother or father.

Researchers say they cannot pinpoint the forces driving parents and children apart. But among them, they said, may be the stresses of the new welfare world -- loss of benefits, low-wage jobs at irregular hours....

Some lawmakers are pushing to make the welfare law's work requirements even stricter....

Children who do not live with their parents do significantly worse on average than those in single-parent homes, child welfare experts say, with higher rates of school failure, mental health problems and delinquency. [NYT, 7/29]

 

Workers Don’t Need a System that Destroy Jobs and Pensions

Big Bosses Use Crisis to Consolidate Power: Communist Revolution: Only Crisis Capitalism Cannot Survive

Telecommunications: Eye Of The Storm

Biggest Sharks See Market Value Rise

Capitalism Can Survive Any Crisis, Except Revolution!

Telecom Bust Follows Classic Capitalist Pattern

Clock Ticking on Gulf War II As U.S. Bosses Try to Seize Iraqi Oil Fields

PLP Brings Fight vs. Oil War To AFT Convention

Red Ideas Spur Hospital Workers To Veto Union-Boss Give-backs

Boeing Contract Battle Needs Break With ‘Partner’ Fraud

Mexico’s Farmers Clash With Attacking Cops

Workers in Iran Reject Fundamentalist Rulers

Fascism in the Mills

Inglewood: Cops, U.S. Bosses Are Biggest Terrorists

Protest Nazi Resurgence

Liberals’ Anti-Pedophile Crusade Targets Pro-Europe Pope

Imperialist Rivalry Intensifies Latin America’s Poverty

People Nix Russia’s Free-Market Capitalism

---

Workers Don’t Need a System that Destroy Jobs and Pensions

Millions of workers are losing their jobs and their pensions while the liberals wring their hands over Enron, WorldCom, Bush and Cheney’s business practices. This brutal robbery of millions of workers demands a massive fight-back. Our battle cry must be "a system that destroys jobs, pensions and needs war and racist terror to survive must be smashed."

In order to confuse and pacify the working class, the Democrats and their union hack friends have taken hypocrisy to new heights. They’re just as guilty, if not more so, of destroying our jobs and pensions. Just weeks ago, Democrat presidential wannabees Lieberman and Daschle defended the accounting "principles" that permit the present deceptive treatment of stock options.

The roots of the current crisis go back at least as far as the "Clinton boom." Between 1994 and 1999, corporations borrowed $1.22 trillion from banks. Of that, just 15.3% was used for capital expenditures; 57% ($697.4 billion) was used to buy back stock, drive up company stock prices and inflate the value of executives’ stock options. Sure these criminals belong in jail. But under this rotten system, the ones sending them there are worse than the ones (that might be) carted off.

Between 1990 and1999, the average CEO’s annual pay at 362 of the largest corporations increased more than six times, to $12.4 million. This is 475 times larger than the average pay of a factory worker. Meanwhile, about two million industrial jobs were wiped out between April 1998 and last December.

The Enron debacle and stock collapses at WorldCom and elsewhere destroyed the retirement savings of many workers. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll says that more than one-third of adults have no retirement money saved. Many have no access to a job-related pension or retirement plan. Millions can’t afford to contribute to a 401(k) plan.

"The average…household has virtually no chance to reach an adequate retirement savings in the next 50 years," according to a retirement specialist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). An EPI study found that over 40% of retired workers won’t be able to match even half of their former job income, and 20% will live below the poverty line. And these are "Clinton boom" figures, between 1989 and 1998! Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center, said it’s "inevitable…that many more millions of retirees will be without enough money to make ends meet."

While workers pay with their jobs and pensions, the big bosses take advantage of this crisis to consolidate their monopolies and get rid of the smaller bosses (see adjacent editorial). A passive working class that accepts these economic attacks, racist police terror and mass round-ups and deportations of immigrants, is ripe for the picking as the rulers build fascism and mobilize for war. Self-critically, we in PLP have not done enough to answer the bell. While the masses may not be storming the barricades, the bosses’ onslaught is not winning their allegiance. We must be "tribunes of the people" in the unions, churches and mass organizations. We can do much better in building a fighting PLP. In this very difficult period, fighting is winning!

Big Bosses Use Crisis to Consolidate Power:

Communist Revolution: Only Crisis Capitalism Cannot Survive

The present stock market nosedive provides a lesson in the political economy of the profit system. A long boom has ended in the explosion of a huge speculative bubble. A vast economic consolidation is taking place. Millions of workers are suffering the loss of jobs, pension values and benefits.

Within their own class, the old-line, liberal rulers of the Eastern Establishment are using the current Wall Street scandals to tighten their economic and political hold on all of society. They are swatting down newly-rich competitor upstarts, disciplining incompetents and furthering their murderous agenda, especially oil wars abroad and a police state at home.

Telecommunications: Eye Of The Storm

During the 1990s, greedy lenders and investors poured billions into fiber-optic and cable networks. According to the New York Times (7/22), "A glut of capacity in communications networks, a result of overzealous investment during the telecommunication boom in the late 1990’s, is a big factor in the industry’s current slump."

The telecom boom "provided too much money to too many companies to build too many competing networks" (Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, 5/2). In some sectors, over-capacity was running as high as 98%. Less than 10% of fiber-optic wire is being used. So the telecom bosses cut prices and offered special deals to win "market share." Many had barely enough money left to pay operating expenses, much less service the enormous debt they’d incurred to finance their expansion. Then they tried to disguise their troubles with accounting and financial tricks, now being exposed by the liberal media.

Even companies like AT&T had eyes bigger than their stomachs. In the Fall of 2000, Wall Street saw that new telecom loans were being used to service debt (get new loans to pay off old ones), rather than to increase actual production. They decided to turn off the financing switch and stop this Ponzi scheme. At that moment today’s market collapse became inevitable.

This has cost workers dearly and is a painful reminder that capitalism can never provide the working class with economic security. It also whacked a number of "new money" companies and executives (WorldCom, Tyco, Qwest, PSINet, XO, Teligent, et al.) And it is having a ripple effect. "Nearly every telecommunications company…is owed money by WorldCom and will have difficulty collecting these debts…" (NYT, 7/22)) Verizon and SBC are owed $200 million each by WorldCom, who has been paying them $100 million every month to connect to their networks. BellSouth in Atlanta usually collected $80 million a month from WorldCom.

Biggest Sharks See Market Value Rise

But the biggest Eastern banks are about to make a killing. The Times reports (7/17) that the market’s collapse "may prove to be an opportunity for private firms to acquire companies and business divisions at fire-sale prices." Chief among the vultures is the Blackstone Group, which recently launched the largest private investment fund ever assembled ($6.45 billion). Blackstone is using this war chest to gobble up "distressed companies" like the debt-ridden telecom firm Qwest. Blackstone’s CEO, Steven Schwartzman gloats: "This should be a good cycle for people who have money."

WorldCom’s bankruptcy debt is about to be financed by Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and GE Capital, all pillars of the Eastern Establishment. The spoils are going into major Eastern banks.

According to the Times (7/21), by July 18 Exxon Mobil’s share of the market’s total value had increased by 52% since March 2000. The Establishment camp’s Citigroup share was up 73% increase since 2000. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s share dropped 18% in that period.

This economic consolidation has an important political aspect. The Eastern Establishment not only wants to profit from the current disarray, they want to tighten their grip on the economy of the future. Taking matters into their own hands, they’ve set up a "Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise" to ensure that corporations are run the way they want. Co-chairing the commission is Peter G. Peterson, chair of the Blackstone Group. Other members include the present or former heads of the pension fund giant TIAA-CREF; Intel; the Vanguard Group; the Securities and Exchange Commission (Arthur Levitt); Johnson & Johnson; and Harvard Business School Professor Lynne Paine.

Also on this commission are Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve System and longtime Rockefeller agent, and former Senator Warren Rudman, who co-chaired the Hart-Rudman commission that laid the groundwork for the big bosses’ current drive toward a police state. Consolidating the economy, squashing upstart capitalists, and disciplining disobedient or incompetent insiders are key aspects of this plan. If the bumbling Bush White House proves unable to meet the Eastern Establishment’s expectations, they will be headed for the golf course in 2004. Liberal Republicans are already distancing themselves from their moronic commander-in-chief (See N.Y. Times, "GOP Lawmakers Bolt Bush’s Herd, " (7/20).

Capitalism Can Survive Any Crisis, Except Revolution!

At the moment, the biggest rulers are having their way, albeit with some problems. Many people are outraged when their life-savings go up in smoke. The stock market’s decline has caused great cynicism among large numbers of workers and others. While the rulers would prefer to exploit "happy" victims, for the time being they’ll settle for passive outrage and cynicism. Capitalism can survive any economic or political crisis. It will never topple itself.

A mass, international, revolutionary PLP, prepared to challenge for —and win — state power in the course of protracted armed struggle, is the only crisis from which the ruling class cannot recover. Without that, the boom-bust-imperialist war cycle can go on indefinitely. As we work toward this goal, no matter how long it takes, one of our highest priorities must remain winning workers and others away from "lesser-evil" illusions about liberal capitalists and politicians.

Telecom Bust Follows Classic Capitalist Pattern

Speculative booms and spectacular collapses have been the hallmark of the profit system since its earliest days. The railroad boom of the 1880s provides a curious mirror. Instead of fiber-optic cables, the hardware was iron railroad tracks. Investors flooded the market with so much capital to build parallel tracks when only one was needed, or so many tracks to locations that couldn’t support profitable service, that the entire industry went bankrupt. Like today’s consolidation, J.P. Morgan, the most powerful U.S. capitalist at the time, wolfed down the spoils.

Liberals Portray Their Fascist Military As A Model Of ‘Corporate Governance’

Hitler depicted himself as the "enemy of big capital," while he served the biggest German capitalists, who needed fascism to mobilize the population for World War II. He targeted those German bosses who had played a role similar to that of the crooks now vilified in the liberal press. The liberal rulers hypocritically denounce the "corporate greed" of a "few bad apples," while the biggest banks and oil companies make huge profits and war plans. The July 20 New York Times op-ed page contains an article by Robert Hemsley, a member of the Western Pulp and Paper Workers Union. Normally, the Times doesn’t run statements by union rank-and-filers. But Hemsley has a line that echoes the liberal police state/war gospel: "Contrast [the 1:592 ratio of pay between Hemsley and his boss — Ed.] with the Marine Corps, which is structured so that enlisted personnel and officers work together for a common purpose. The Marine Corps commandant…is paid…just 13 times more than…a new private in boot camp."

Clock Ticking on Gulf War II As U.S. Bosses Try to Seize Iraqi Oil Fields

Iraq, which holds the largest supply of cheap, accessible crude outside Saudi Arabia, remains the most likely target for another U.S. oil war. U.S. imperialism intends to rule the world for the foreseeable future by retaining its chokehold on the most profitable sources of oil. Exxon Mobil and other U.S. oil giants won’t allow Iraqi crude to be controlled by imperialist rivals. Saddam’s potential deals with European, Chinese, and Russian oil barons — not his ruthlessness — have made him "worse than Hitler" in the eyes of U.S. rulers.

But the U.S. has run into a few stumbling blocks on the road to Baghdad. These include Bush’s failure to put a lid on the explosive situation in the Middle East, his general ineptitude in imposing fascism in the "war against terror," foreign policy and, most recently, the economic crisis/scandals.

Despite these obstacles, the clock is ticking on the next oil war. "Military experts estimate that there are already about 200,000 U.S. soldiers in the Gulf" ("Prophesying War," London Financial Times, 7/18). The build-up is therefore in an advanced stage.

Further preparations for wars beyond Iraq are also well under way. The "largest military experiment in U.S. history" was due to begin the week of July 22, in southern California, with 13,500 troops from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines, who will use "the latest in military hardware in simulation of what planners believe the battlefield could look like in five years" (Associated Press, 7/18). Scenarios include "simulated weapons of mass destruction, urban warfare, the United Nations, and humanitarian relief."

Given the bosses’ plans for war without end abroad and a police state at home, "urban warfare" could well include simultaneous fighting in Baghdad and Los Angeles or New York. All this murder and mayhem will be disguised as an effort to protect "human rights" and "democracy." The PLP will never cease mobilizing workers to fight against this Big Lie and its deadly consequences.

PLP Brings Fight vs. Oil War To AFT Convention

LAS VEGAS, July 18 — "I read that already! Where’s today’s leaflet?" is how many among the 5,000 delegates greeted us on the third day of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention ending today. This was the first time in years that PLP members participated actively in the convention. It won’t be the last.

The AFT is one of the largest unions in the country with over one million members, including teachers in New York City, Chicago and many other large cities. PLP members met with delegates from their hometowns, participated in committee and caucus meetings, helped organize against the leadership’s pro-war, pro-fascist resolution supporting the "war on terror" and extending it to Iraq, and held a small but excellent Party forum. We distributed over 300 CHALLENGES, more than 800 copies of our new education pamphlet, three leaflets totaling 3,800 copies and 1,000 buttons with the slogan "A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."

The button was everywhere. Delegates wore it constantly. It was seen on the huge TV screens as delegates spoke at the microphones. AFT Pres. Sandra Feldman is a member of Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations, which develops foreign policy for the main wing of the ruling class. Still, the best majority the leadership could muster to cut off debate on their pro-war resolution was 60-40. Even in a controlled convention, they must rely on maneuvering and stopping debate to stifle the rank and file.

Another highlight was the unfurling of our banner in the convention hall during the debate, including one opposing the AFT top honchos’ support of imperialist war as an attack against all workers and their children. Most delegates saw it when entering the hall as comrades and friends held it up in the lobby. A group of teachers, young workers and students from the L.A. Summer Project were part of that activity and met many delegates as well. Their presence and seriousness impressed many.

We were also active in discussions on high-stakes testing, privatization and vouchers and racist budget cutbacks. Our main reason for attending the convention was to meet more delegates who want to organize around these issues. We will not accept a police state and racist terror. We will fight the bosses’ and union leadership’s plans to turn our students into cannon fodder for their endless wars. Over the next two years we will work to involve our friends in more struggles in our schools and locals, and bring more communist delegates to the next convention in Washington, D.C.

The following is a speech that was to be given from the floor by a PLP delegate at the AFT convention. For many reasons, including the fact that the issue came up so late, the speech was not given.

"Sisters and brothers, the issue we are now discussing is probably the most important issue facing this convention. It is a matter of life and death. Furthermore – in all likelihood – it will profoundly affect every other issue we care about, both at home and abroad.

Resolution 49 does not mention Iraq, but the unspoken reality is that an upcoming war against Iraq is the central and undeniable context of this resolution.

The magazine I am holding up is the July 8^th edition of Fortune. In this featured article about war with Iraq, the subtitle says, "IT’S NOT IF BUT WHEN"! Make no mistake. The U.S. government is preparing to launch a major war against Iraq!

Resolution 49 is long. It discusses a number of different things related to the attack on 9/11 and events since then. Some parts of the resolution are quite true. Most importantly, however, it says "We have no doubt that military action will be required more than once in the coming years and that the costs may be great." And it also says, "We support the use of the wide range of powers at the country’s disposal . . ."

I am not speaking as a pacifist. Some wars are necessary. Slavery in the United States, for example, could not have been defeated without the Civil War. As a communist, as a member of Progressive Labor Party, I am firmly convinced that the Enrons, Worldcoms, and Exxon/Mobils are the vicious exploiters of today. Like their kindred spirits – the slavemasters of old – they will not give up their power or privileges willingly. Nothing short of a revolution will allow working people to take power and create a world of true equality, sisterhood, and brotherhood.

Finally, on the question of justifiable violence, it would be perfectly fine with me – if indeed Osama bin laden is guilty – that he pay with his life for the deaths of three thousand working class sisters and brothers who died horrifically and tragically on 9/11.

But violence and war are not always the right thing. Let’s be clear. What are the real reasons propelling a U.S. attack on Iraq?

First, it’s not about terrorism. In fact, for months after 9/11, the U.S. government searched desperately for any possible way to put some of the blame on Iraq. Try as they might, there was no connection to be found.

Second, it’s not about weapons of mass destruction. Quite a few countries have more weaponry than Iraq. In fact, most such nations – like England, Pakistan, India, Israel, France, Russia, and the United States – have engaged in military operations outside their own borders to pursue economic and political domination. In this regard, Iraq is not unique, and Iraq is certainly not the worst offender.

Third, plans for war against Iraq are not based on needing oil for use here in the United States. Only a small percentage of the oil used here comes from the Middle East.

In other words, the upcoming war against Iraq is not based on terrorism, not based on weapons of mass destruction, and not based on U.S. energy needs. The real reason for the war is something else: Exxon/Mobil’s deadly quest to dominate Mid-East oil.

Whichever capitalists win the struggle to control Mideast oil achieve two things as a result: 1) Billions of dollars in profit, 2) A degree of control over their European and Asian rivals who depend on that oil. That’s what this war is all about.

Since World War II, U.S. oil companies have exercised control over Saudi Arabian oil, the world’s largest reserves. Iraq is the country with the second-largest reserves, but U.S. oil companies – in recent years – have been unable to control Iraqi oil because the Iraqi ruling class has been more favorable to deals with companies from France, China and Russia.

All of this reflects a more fundamental and powerful contradiction – the deadly rivalry between major imperialist powers for domination of all the world’s labor and natural resources, not oil alone.

In an effort to line up support for war against Iraq, the U.S. government has fostered increasing anti-Arab racism. We are now expected to accept racial profiling – if the victims are Middle Eastern – and we are expected, in an upcoming war, to accept the loss of many many civilian lives, as long as they’re not American. This is dead wrong! We must never tolerate racism of any kind!

There are three additional reasons that necessitate our strong opposition to a war against Iraq:

Resources that go into this war will significantly take away from resources available for education. Let’s not forget that the large-scale military buildup during the Carter/Reagan years took military spending from less than ¼ to more than 1/3 of the federal budget. As an inevitable consequence, we witnessed deep slashes in funding for social programs like education. A new war in the Middle East will do this again, perhaps worse.

Students whom we have just recently taught – young people we care about deeply – will be sent to kill and die.

The students and working people of Iraq – our working class sisters and brothers – may die in horrible ways and in horrendously large numbers.

Delegates, we must choose sides! Do we support Exxon/Mobil and their bloody war for profit? Or do we support students and working people here and in Iraq?

The rich and powerful are beating the drums of war for their own deadly purposes! We must follow the drumbeat of a more righteous rhythm, the rhythm of sisterhood, brotherhood, and international working class solidarity!

I urge you to vote against resolution 49!"

Red Ideas Spur Hospital Workers To Veto Union-Boss Give-backs

"I told those union leaders that I’m sick of the ‘haves’ always making the ‘have-nots’ pay the price!"

"Bill, who’s the communist here, me or you?"

That brief exchange occurred as an angry rank and file defeated the union leadership’s attempt at a major hospital to cheat workers out of four months worth of wage increases. It illustrates how PLP’s close ties with workers and participation in the class struggle enables us to raise communist ideas as the answer to the daily problems caused by capitalism.

We’re in the third year of our contract, which scheduled a 3% raise on July 1. Last spring the hospital bosses told the non-union workers that their raises would be pushed back to November. Many non-union workers then wished they were unionized.

In the last week of June, the union began calling for a membership vote on July 2 to push our raise back to November as well. They warned of mass layoffs if we didn’t give in. But a number of union delegates challenged them calling for, "No Give-backs! No Layoffs! No more cuts in patient care!"

PLP members explained how the nature of capitalism and the needs of the bosses’ oil war made it impossible for them to promise "No Layoffs." Posters with these slogans quickly covered locker-room walls. Floor captains were recruited from the rank and file to mobilize the members.

A PLP flyer urged union members to vote against giving up four months of the raise. It traced the main cause of the cuts in healthcare to the billions now being used for the bosses’ oil war and "Homeland Security" police state. Workers carried the flyer throughout the hospital. Someone posted it on a heavily used time clock. Usually workers are quick to tear down flyers they disagree with. But the PLP flyer is still hanging in some locker-rooms, an indication of mass support for our ideas.

The scared hospital and union bosses hastily called an all-day series of union meetings on July 1, at the hospital! The union business agent and the head of human resources co-chaired the meetings, and got their fill of workers’ anger.

Distrustful workers demanded that the rebellious delegates be allowed to watch the voting and ballot count to prevent any tampering. The union leaders had to agree, but this didn’t stop the union’s Executive VP from arguing with workers to "vote yes," right at the ballot box. She was challenged by one of the rebellious delegates, and workers called her a "shill" for the bosses.

The leadership’s give-back proposal was resoundingly defeated, 450 to 35. The union leaders are furious, and the bosses are meeting to figure out how they were beaten so badly.

This battle re-charged the Party’s ties with both union and non-union workers. The demands of the bosses’ oil war and their "Homeland Security" police state will mean more attacks. Building a mass communist base and leading the workers in battle will re-build a new communist movement.

Boeing Contract Battle Needs Break With ‘Partner’ Fraud

"Man, this crowd is old!" observed an International Association of Machinists (IAM) member at the July 9th strike vote against the Boeing Company on July 9. The whole crowd was considerably smaller than at past votes, with fewer black and Latino workers participating.

Some have said the company has "cut the heart" out of the union, laying off nearly half the membership during the past nine months. These layoffs have been particularly racist as many blacks and Latinos are the last hired and first fired. Fewer than 24,000 IAM members remain as the September 2 contract deadline approaches for workers in Seattle, WA, Wichita, KS, and Portland, OR. We must "put the heart back" into this contract battle, bringing laid off and retired workers back into this fight, emphasizing that the profit system is the source of the layoffs and cutbacks. That can help create the ability and desire to raise the level of class struggle to one of fighting for communism.

Accepting Capitalism Assures Defeat

Commercial aerospace is suffering form a capitalist crisis of overproduction. In 1990, Boeing delivered 285 airplanes with 43,400 IAM members. Last year, they delivered 450 airplanes with only 27,123 members. Companies throughout the world are slashing jobs as the market for the increased production has collapsed. Communist production, where all value provides for the needs of the international working class, is the only way out of these endless crises.

To maintain credibility, the union leadership is calling Contract 2002, "the fight for job security." But they began their expensive strike sanction brochure saying, "Job security does not mean the employer can never eliminate a job." Since the misleaders accept capitalism and its rules as a given, they are forced to define this issue in such a way as to assure defeat for the workers.

Their proposed contract provisions have never saved any jobs. They talk about creating work through the High Performance Work Organization (HPWO), which would force us to speed up, and even fire, our co-workers. Then the entire Washington State congressional delegation (11 U.S. senators and representatives) signed a letter to the strike sanction rally which said, "the core of the Boeing Co.’s success [is] its skilled work force." Did these "representatives" back our vote to sanction a strike? Of course not! "Nobody wants a strike," they assured us.

Two days later, leaders of the IAM and the engineers union traveled to Wall Street to convince stock market analysts that preserving our jobs was best for capitalism. The analysts’ reaction "appeared largely noncommittal." With friends like Wall Street analysts and bought-and-paid-for politicians, who needs enemies?

Ultimately, the IAM leadership calls for a "real partnership" between Boeing and the workers are ridiculous: what benefits the bosses — speed-up, layoffs, depressed wages, off-loading and reduced health care and pension coverage — can never benefit the workers. The dangerous ideology used to justify these "partnerships," racism and nationalism, spell death for the working class.

Worse Than Ridiculous

The union leadership wrapped itself in the flag, talking about "when America came together after 9/11" and criticizing Boeing for having "no loyalty to the flag." But patriotism and nationalism only dull our ability to wage the sharp struggle these hard times demand. Where is the union’s loyalty to the international working class? Where was their support for the 2,000 Airbus wildcatters in England or the 8,000 IAM wildcatters in Canada last April? The misleaders’ loyalty is to capitalism and themselves.

The political crisis we face is even more important than the economic crisis. A decade of racism and nationalism — and the piles of propaganda about national unity since 9/11 — has decimated our ranks. Calls for partnerships with the bosses, especially in these times of current and future wars, amounts to becoming social fascists, siding with the bosses of one country to slaughter workers of other countries. The bosses are all too willing to "partner" with us to help defeat their international competition. They’re all too willing to sacrifice our youth on the altar of their imperial profits. The only war workers should be fighting is the class war, to free our class from wage slavery and the oppression of capitalism.

PLP has often paraphrased the communist writer Bertolt Brecht’s famous phrase, "When the bosses talk peace, better get your helmet." In the same way, when the IAM talks partnership with Boeing, prepare for cuts and oppression.

Uniting with the capitalists provides as much job security as a pig has at a hungry BBQ. Some Boeing workers are emphasizing the need to bring laid-off and retired workers into the contract battle. The Party supports these efforts, as class struggle contains the potential to learn how to finally put an end to this job-killing system. Make no mistake about it; the only security for our class is a revolutionary movement strong enough to smash capitalism.

Mexico’s Farmers Clash With Attacking Cops

MEXICO, July 17 — More than 300 small farmers armed with machetes clashed with police while protesting the proposed construction of the new Mexico City airport on their communal lands.

The farmers said police shot at them first and about 25 officers beat one protester to death. The demonstrators then seized at least nine hostages and demanded that state officials release all 15 arrested. The hostages included five cops, three Texcoco officials and a Texcoco District Attorney. Over 400 state agents and federal police were sent to Atenco, home to many commuting industrial workers . All highways leading to the town were closed, causing miles-long traffic jams.

The farmers, from San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico, were heading toward a meeting that included Gov. Arturo Montiel when they encountered a police blockade. A fight broke out and hundreds of farmers threw rocks at the cops and burned cars. At least 12 were injured and 15 arrested.

Early last month, Atenco farmers took six topographers hostage for taking illegal land surveys. They were released at the steps of the Supreme Court building unharmed.

Last October the federal government chose Texcoco for the area’s new international airport. Since then farmers have staged frequent machete-wielding protests around Mexico City, claiming the money the Fox government is offering for their land is well below market value. Auto and other industrial workers fighting layoffs have joined some of these protests. The bosses are using the law and repression to eliminate the jobs of agricultural workers in the area, handing their land to the big bosses.

Behind this struggle lies a capitalist dogfight for profits; for the next Presidential election; and for the governorship of the state of Mexico, involving different sets of politicians. Gov. Montiel is a member of the Atlacomulco investors’ group, which wants to build the airport and collect huge profits from the multi-billion dollar business. Angry people ran the mayor of Anteco, a PRI member, out of town some time ago.

If the mass militant protests temporarily stop the airport, it will benefit the group of investors who want it built in Hidalgo. The Mexico City government and others have filed constitutional challenges against the project. Workers and their allies must not support any side in this dogfight. They’re all our class enemies.

The "ejidos" (community-owned land) to be destroyed by the new airport were formed as part of mass struggle by small peasants in the last century. But ejidos have not solved the basic problems of poverty and oppression suffered for centuries by these small farmers and farm workers. Only social ownership of all production will allow workers in the countryside and cities to have a decent life. We must build a mass revolutionary communist movement to serve their class needs.

Workers in Iran Reject Fundamentalist Rulers

The Islamic Fundamentalists try to present themselves as an alternative to U.S.-British imperialist plundering of the Middle East/Persian Gulf and to the corrupt local rulers serving Exxon-Mobil, Shell and BP. But in the last 20 years the workers and youth of Iran have learned that the Islamic holy rollers are as rotten as the fascist pro-U.S. Shah regime they replaced in 1979.

On July 16, tens of thousands of workers gathered in front of the Labor Ministry in Tehran to protest unemployment, lack of social security, unpaid wages and plans to make the already weak labor laws even more pro-boss. Banners of workers from different industries called for the right to strike and other demands. When the Islamic Council and Workers’ House sellouts were unable to control the angry workers as they pushed their way into the ministry building, uniformed and plain-clothed cops attacked them. Workers fought back against the cops’ tear gas, clubs and plastic bullets. Several workers were injured and many were arrested. This action was the latest, and most militant, of angry protests against the rulers by workers and youth throughout Iran.

Meanwhile, the different ayatollahs and other Islamic ruling-class forces are fighting each other over who will be top dog. Some want to "reform" the regime with some small changes, knowing they can no longer fool the masses.

Revolutionary-minded workers and youth must learn the lesson of history. Oil workers and revolutionary youth led the 1979 overthrow of the hated pro-U.S. Shah regime. The Islamic fundamentalists co-opted it, helped by fake leftists who tailed it, saying workers were "not ready" for a communist-led system. After the fundamentalists seized and consolidated their power, they turned against the workers and leftists, arresting and murdering hundreds of thousands in June 1981.

As the U.S. and British imperialists prepare for a Gulf War II to capture Iraq’s rich oil fields, the many contradictions facing the region are exploding. The militant workers and youth of the Persian Gulf must build a mass communist movement to smash the imperialist warmakers and all capitalist forces.

Fascism in the Mills

EAST CHICAGO, IN — "It’s a new day, a new industry. All this sucks but what can we really do? We can fight to make some small changes, but the old days are over." That’s how a former LTV worker with 29 years seniority described life as a new hire at International Steel Group’s Indiana Harbor Works (ISG). And he’s right.

Last December LTV Steel went out of business, wiping out thousands of jobs. Pensions and health care were cut or eliminated for over 50,000 retirees, while the top corporate jackals walked away with millions in bonuses. The union’s response was to wrap themselves in the bosses’ flag and demand steel tariffs. The union told us our best hope was that someone would take over LTV’s assets. And now it’s happened.

W. R. Ross, a corporate vulture that specializes in picking up failed or failing companies on the cheap, bought the stinking carcass of LTV Steel for peanuts and is now operating the LTV plants in Cleveland and here, where they’ve re-called about 850 former high seniority LTV workers, all as unprotected ISG new hires.

What’s it like? A worker came in ten minutes late on his second day of work — fired. Somebody missed a day after his brother’s wedding — fired. If you fail to report off — fired. Park your car in the wrong spot — fired. Millwrights at the Hot Strip finished a job, and went to the shanty for an hour — fired. A ladle cover was dropped. The bosses couldn’t figure out whom to blame, so they gave the whole crew a day off.

Conditions are vastly different from those under LTV. ISG is operating the integrated mill like a mini-mill, significantly cutting labor costs. The workforce is smaller and more "flexible," meaning workers perform many different jobs and work company-determined shifts and hours. Some are working three 12-hour shifts with four days off, followed by four 12-hour shifts and five days off. And these are not kids!

"You can’t say yes or no," said one ISG worker, who feared he’d be fired if identified. "You can’t talk back and you can’t give your opinion." "People are fed up," said another. "It’s a sweatshop. The company knows it can do whatever it wants to do and that’s so hurtful."

Some workers have become more vocal and others have talked about organizing a walkout. The union hasn’t put out one leaflet, let alone led any sort of fight-back against these new attacks. According to the Hammond Times (7/18), a Local 1011 official said the workers "are spoiled," and that any walkout would be considered an unauthorized wildcat strike. Currently, they’re negotiating a permanent contract with fewer job classifications, more company control of work rules and cuts in man-hour cost per ton of steel produced.

People are angry. Some are working and have health insurance for the first time in six months. Others who are not coming back have nothing. A millwright’s wife cannot get cancer treatments. A worker with leukemia has to skip pain medicine and treatments.

This is how profiteer Ross makes his millions. This is how the rulers and their agents who run the unions are bringing fascism to the workplace as they mobilize for war. Every steel worker in the world is feeling the blows. We can’t become cynical or demoralized by this "new fascist day." We’re in this for the long haul and will use every attack to build a mass PLP among all steel workers and the entire working class, across all borders.

Inglewood: Cops, U.S. Bosses Are Biggest Terrorists

LOS ANGELES, July 12—Chanting "No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police," hundreds of demonstrators marched here today to denounce the racist beating of Donovan Jackson-Chavis and the jailing of Mitchell Crooks, who videotaped the beating. Without Crooks’ video, the world would never have seen the racist treatment cop Jeremy Morse has dished out to Inglewood residents for years. As payback, the Sheriffs arrested Crooks on a 3-year-old warrant.

While U.S. Representative Maxine Waters called for civilian review boards and investigations, neither will stop police terror or the system requiring it. Others carried signs saying "Inglewood, LA, U.S. cops, U.S. rulers, The #1 Terrorists in the World." Liberal politicians like Waters try to calm angry workers with the promise that the system can be fixed to end racist police terror.

Some say Morse is just a "rogue cop" (suspended WITH PAY!). But a group of cops attacked Donovan. Nationwide, thousands of cops carry out daily racist terror against black and Latino youth and workers. Over 2,000,000 people are imprisoned in the U.S., 70% black and Latino, mostly for non-violent "crimes." Many are forced to work for pennies in prison slave labor. Rather than being the work of "rogue cops," this is the systematic racist terror of U.S. capitalism.

The LA County Board of Supervisors has just voted to close 11 clinics in LA County, forcing many of LA’s poorest residents into long and deadly waits in over-crowded emergency rooms. (See CHALLENGE, 7/24) The rulers use their racist cops to terrorize us into accepting these cuts while the rulers spend over $400 billion on the "War on Terror" and Homeland Security.

U.S. rulers are pretending to fight terrorism in Afghanistan. But they’re the biggest terrorists of all. Attorney-General Ashcroft, head of the "INjustice Dept.," is "investigating" the beating of Donovan. What’s to investigate? He and the bosses’ government just want to look like our "friends" so they can trick black and Latin youth into joining the army to fight, kill and die for the control of the rulers’ oil profits and pipelines.

Less than two weeks after this racist beating, cops Morse and Darvish were indicted by a grand jury. Morse is charged with "assault under color of authority" and Darvish with "filing a false police report." While it remains doubtful they’ll be convicted, Waters applauded the indictments, saying they would "change the culture of the police department."

On the same day, former New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton applied to be LA Police Chief. The LA Police Commission fired Bernard Parks for not implementing community policing. This represents a very long struggle between the liberal Eastern Establishment and the old LA rulers over control of the city and it’s policing.

Bratton is an advocate of the "Fixing Broken Windows" strategy, involving a massive police presence and arrests for the most minor offenses. He graduated from the FBI’s National Executive Institute. As NY’s police chief he organized massive dragnets and arrests. His "community policing" tries to win local ministers, priests and other community leaders and groups to turn in all potential offenders. This is the liberal stoolpigeon program to counter Ashcroft’s "spy-on-your-neighbor" TIPS. The liberals fear TIPS is too crude, so the NY Times editorialized (7/22), "This [TIPS] ill-considered domestic spying program should be stopped before it starts."

The liberals pose as our "friends" but have a more advanced strategy to implement fascism. They are indeed the MAIN enemy. The PLP leaflet distributed at the demonstration said Morse and his racist buddies must be fired and jailed for the racist assault on Donovan and many other residents of Inglewood. To fight police terror, we should oppose the liberals’ plan to expand fascist community policing. The main job of cops is to protect and serve the racist rulers so in the long run to end police brutality we must fight for a society without bosses—communism.

Protest Nazi Resurgence

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 22 — Government workers overwhelmingly passed an Anti-Nazi resolution at our June union meeting. The resolution encouraged members to protest when the white supremacist National Alliance, a West Virginia-based group, rallies at the U.S. Capitol August 24. We’ll announce this at our next union meeting. Struggles are being waged to get workers to win their community groups and religious congregations to come out and oppose them.

Several workers discussed and collectively produced the union resolution and flyer. Many handed them out, urging their co-workers to attend the meeting and vote for it.

The Alliance has held four increasingly successful rallies here the past year at the German and Israeli embassies. A May rally drew 200 young racists and skinheads, outnumbering the counter-demonstrators and encouraging the fascists. On July 14, these neo-Nazis marched in Georgia attacking Latin immigrants.

These fascist terrorists can’t be ignored. Nazis and their followers use racism and anti-Semitism to win support and divide workers. Since the founding of the KKK, these agents of U.S. capitalism have mainly targeted black workers and anti-racists.

The U.S. "War on Terror" and "Homeland Security" are chilling echoes of Nazi Germany’s early days. U.S. rulers’ unending wars and plans for a fascist police state mean more budget cuts, police brutality, losses of pensions and jobs and the invasion of everyone’s privacy, including arrests. Rallies defending all immigrant students from racist harassment and deportations are good, but not nearly enough. We must challenge the fascists at every turn and build the movement to smash racism and fascism. That means joining and building a mass communist PLP.

We’ll mobilize workers and students to confront these racist terrorists at the Capitol and drive them out of town. We’ll spread the word at student groups, churches and with union resolutions, to stop these storm troopers because they’ll attack anyone opposing racism and attacks against all workers. We will reach many willing participants.

Liberals’ Anti-Pedophile Crusade Targets Pro-Europe Pope

Many U.S. Catholics are rightly enraged at pedophile priests and the higher-ups who shield them. But without a class-based outlook, that anger could become support for far more deadly "liberal" misleaders. The liberals championing church "reform" speak for the dominant wing of U.S. capital, which is slaughtering workers wholesale to ensure U.S. control of the world’s oil supplies and markets. U.S. forces in Afghanistan have already killed over 6,000 non-combatants, including the recent wedding massacre.

The liberals’ campaign against pedophile priests aims at separating the U.S. church from the Vatican, which serves the interests of European capitalists opposed to the U.S. bosses’ strategy. For example, French oil barons — like the Al Qaeda murderers — want to end the U.S.’s stranglehold on Saudi crude.

Cardinals Law and Egan, of Boston and New York, top the liberals’ hit list. Sure, they protected perverts. But, for U.S. rulers, their most grievous fault was preaching the pope’s pro-Europe, anti-U.S. line. When U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan shortly after Sept. 11, Law announced "military force...is always regrettable" and must "continue to be limited" (America magazine, 10/22/01). Egan said Catholics should "not harbor any thoughts of war, of any kind" (Catholic New York, 10/04/01). These words constitute heresy for the liberal U.S. establishment as it fine-tunes plans for invading Iraq. Targeting the church’s age-old dirty secret, liberal media like the Boston Globe and the New York Times are now running exposés demanding the bishops’ criminal prosecution. Boston College (BC), meanwhile, which is controlled directly by the Eastern Establishment, plays a large role in the intellectual side of the anti-Vatican movement, with help from Harvard.

On June 19, a Globe columnist proclaimed, "BC is leading the way on church reform" and continued, "For more than a decade, the Vatican has been trying to bring this country’s Catholic universities into line. Now one of those universities is starting an effort that could lead to a discussion of reform and change." The Globe didn’t say that "reform" entails backing U.S. oil wars in the short term and wider conflict later. The man who launched the anti-Vatican push at BC was Geoffrey Boisi, vice-chairman of JP Morgan Chase, Exxon Mobil’s leading stockholder. As head of BC’s board of trustees, he hand-picked William Leahy to be the school’s new president in 1996.

Leahy’s opposition to Rome matches Boisi’s loyalty to the Rockefeller banking and oil empire. As chief administrator of Marquette University, Leahy had for a decade battled the Vatican’s demands that it approve the teachings of professors in Catholic colleges. Boisi belongs to David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. Boisi and Exxon Mobil’s CEO Lee Raymond were the two men most responsible for JP Morgan’s takeover by Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan according to the Wall Street Journal (10/19/00). Boisi had earlier helped engineer Texaco’s buyout of upstart Getty.

Boisi founded and steers the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at BC. Holding frequent forums on liberalizing the church, the Center focuses on winning the faithful to U.S. rulers’ war plans despite the Vatican. The Center’s first post-9/11 newsletter featured Fr. Bryan Hehir of Harvard Divinity School jesuitically advocating "the just war tradition...that seeks to place war inside the moral order." In stark contrast to Law and Egan, Boisi Center director Alan Wolfe praised "Bush’s decision to take military action" as "remarkable." Wolfe later gloated that the sex abuse furor was helping the cause. "The gap between ordinary American Catholics and the Vatican... will only widen as a result of the scandals (New York Times, 4/30/02).

To make the object of the liberals’ religious activism perfectly clear, Gary Hart himself will speak at the Boisi Center in September. He is co-chairman of the Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman Commission. Long before 9/11, its reports laid out a blueprint for war and fascism. Hart-Rudman’s goal is to do whatever it takes, at whatever human cost, to maintain the U.S. as the world’s number one imperialist for the next quarter century. Hart & Co. call for "galvanizing society" by means of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, for a fascist police state, and for ever-widening military action, to the point where "the American people are ready to sacrifice blood and treasure" and wage global war. Liberal Hart cloaks profit-driven carnage in noble rhetoric. His topic at BC will be "religious freedom."

We must continue to expose the liberal "clean-up" campaign for what it really is: a sweeping fascist reorganization of society that brings ever more lethal wars.

Imperialist Rivalry Intensifies Latin America’s Poverty

The collapse of the old communist movement and triumph of "free market" capitalism has led to a new Dark Ages for the world’s workers. In Latin America, the imperialists and local bosses have impoverished hundreds of millions. Their thirst for profits has led to a capitalist crisis of overproduction.

Today the unemployment rate exceeds 50% in some countries, creating poverty and unheard of death rates from malnutrition and disease. Argentina, formerly having the highest standard of living in Latin America, now has 30% jobless and a gross domestic product dropping 15% by next year. Similar fates are befalling Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Mexico and Central America. Workers have staged mass demonstrations from Buenos Aires to Venezuela to Arequipa, Peru.

In the early ’90s, U.S. imperialists initiated the "new model" of globalization for its "emerging economies." Globalization, a euphemism for imperialist control of markets, labor and natural resources, includes strategies to stop rivals from joining the pillaging.

The crisis in Latin America is one more symptom of the sharpening worldwide crisis of overproduction leading to global depression. Brazil is the biggest economy with the largest debt on the continent. When Brazilian auto production was cut from 1.7 million to 1.3 million, it lowered imports from Argentina by 25%. Latin American markets are saturated and workers are suffering huge layoffs, cuts in public services and repression.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil says, "No more rescues, either for Argentina, Brazil or anyone else." However, the New York Times, speaking for the dominant wing of the US ruling class, editorialized support for IMF help to prop up Argentina’s economy and prevent the spread of economic and political turmoil throughout Latin America, which could open the doors to their European rivals. U.S. imperialism is not about to let GM, Citicorp, Caterpillar, Alcoa (O’Neil’s outfit) and gas and oil companies lose their investments without a fight, including using their military. Already, the U.S. has thousands of "advisers" and troops in the region.

Latin American rulers — with the support of the European imperialists — formed the Movement of National Salvation. On June 15, 1,000 of these bosses’ agents met in Argentina. Latin America’s workers must avoid the trap of these nationalist charlatans and not exchange one exploiter for another.

(A future article will discuss the role of anti-U.S. forces, including fake leftists, which are trying to turn workers and their allies away from building a mass revolutionary Party to fight for the only real solution: a communist society where production is according to need.)

People Nix Russia’s Free-Market Capitalism

To mark the 10th anniversary of all-out capitalism in Russia, the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Integrated Social Research summarized the results of sociological surveys conducted over that span. The results don’t say much for the profit system. Of those polled:

• Two-thirds see Russian-style democracy as mere window-dressing designed to conceal the authoritarian state beneath. ("Democratic processes are nothing but a sham. The country is in fact run by the rich and powerful.");

• The majority rated the results of "reform" as unsatisfactory;

• Eight-eight percent favor government ownership of the energy sector, 72% for machine-building plants and foundries, and 63% for housing;

• Over the 10-year period, support for private enterprise dropped 16%;

• Only 8% back the liberal economic model, having fallen from 12.5%.

The report says "social status, not age…[is] the leading factor in determining people’s attitudes." The "responses of 18-year-olds and 55-year-olds [were] nearly identical." Despite the din of media propaganda extolling free market capitalism, it seems experience has been the best teacher for the Russian people.

Biggest Crooks Whack Two-Bit Rivals: Capitalism Is A Big World Con

On Being Crooks, The Liberals Wrote The Book !

Liberal Nazi Scribbler Says Sweatshops Are Good

a href="#Civilian-Killing ‘Smart Bombs’ and Vietnam Syndrome">Ci"ilian-Killing ‘Smart Bombs’ and Vietnam Syndrome

a href="#9,000 at NEA Convention Hear PL’er Condemn Oil War">",000 at NEA Convention Hear PL’er Condemn Oil War

a href="#Organizing at AFT Convention Against Leadership’s Support of War Abroad, Fascism at Home">"rganizing at AFT Convention Against Leadership’s Support of War Abroad, Fascism at Home

IAM Hacks Hide Behind Flag to Screw Workers

• a href="#Capitalism Kills Jobs …And Our Children!">"apitalism Kills Jobs …And Our Children!

A Lifetime Of Work Teaches Our Brother To Think Of His Class First

Worker-Patient Unity Needed vs. LA Clinic Budget Cuts

a href="#Gov’t Uses 9/11 to Terrorize Immigrant Airport Workers">"ov’t Uses 9/11 to Terrorize Immigrant Airport Workers

Capitalism Running Rampant in China

LETTERS

Youth Write

On Contradiction

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Biggest Crooks Whack Two-Bit Rivals: Capitalism Is A Big World Con

In recent months, the liberal media have written a flood of exposés about greedy business executives making millions by dumping their companies’ stock and awarding themselves record pay packages as company profits fall. The stories aim to mobilize popular outrage into a demand for reforming corporations, their accounting practices and the conduct of their CEO’s. When the most powerful section of the ruling class initiates a "reform" movement, watch out.

The present "clean-up" act lays two traps for us. The first is the illusion that the profit system can ever give the working class a level playing field. That’s impossible. Profits are based on the bosses’ exploitation of our labor power. Workers never get paid the full value of what we produce. "Surplus value" — the part over and above wages and other production costs — is the dirty little secret of the profit system. The current cry over CEO mass thievery is for public benefit but has a different purpose.

For the working class to collectively decide on how to best use this surplus, we will require a communist revolution, the dictatorship of the working class, and political power led by a mass communist party.

The second trap is that the rulers need us to back their oil wars and police state. The present campaign against "bad" executives is in fact a tough disciplining within the ruling class and a general consolidation of the U.S. economy in the liberals’ hands. This is necessary if U.S. bosses’ hope to maintain mastery of the world for the foreseeable future.

The Rockefeller-Exxon Mobil interests want to crack down on upstarts whose narrow profit interests threaten this agenda. They won’t tolerate any newly wealthy two-bit billionaire buying a stable of politicians and influencing U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Workers have no stake in supporting any aspect of the Rockefeller program.

For example, new companies like Enron and WorldCom, which posed a threat to established energy and communications firms, are facing liquidation or complete takeover. Old-line businesses, like defense giant General Electric, receive a verbal scolding in the press and a slap on the wrist. The main wing doesn’t need a big fight over their chokehold on energy and communications. On the other hand, it vitally needs to keep its biggest war contractor healthy.

A brief look at the WorldCom scandal, the biggest yet, reveals part of the reality behind the appearance. WorldCom’s founder, Bernie Ebbers, initially a gym teacher, accumulated a small pile of capital and bought nine Best Western motels in Mississippi. With this stake, Ebbers used the deregulation promoted during the Reagan years to leverage his way into the telecommunication business. After starting WorldCom, he took further advantage of the 1990s speculative boom in high tech to grab MCI, providing a launching pad to compete with old-line communications companies like AT&T and its Baby Bell spin-offs.

But the technology boom went bust; the NASDAQ tanked; and WorldCom and its shareholders were left holding the bag for huge debt and dwindling profits while its CFO stole millions (see below).

Wall Street moved quickly and ruthlessly, forcing Ebbers out of WorldCom in April. Shortly afterwards came the revelations about WorldCom’s crooked accounting practices and the collapse of its share price. Ebbers went down with the ship, but WorldCom’s Chief Financial Officer, Scott Sullivan, made millions. Over several years, Sullivan was able to unload his shares at a high price, knowing all along that the bottom would eventually fall out.

The liberal, Rockefeller-wing rulers are the real ones making out like bandits in the wake of WorldCom’s downfall. First, they can blame Ebbers, Sullivan & Co., rather than the system, for laying off 17,000 WorldCom workers. Second, they eliminate an annoying rival and feast on the spoils. The Wall Street Journal (6/27) announced that an Eastern Establishment Baby Bell is likely to acquire WorldCom’s phone business.

Most of the recent scandals follow this pattern of consolidation by the Eastern Establishment. Before WorldCom there was Enron. Behind all the holier-than-thou liberal bombast about the Enron crooks lies the little-publicized tale about Enron’s one significant asset, the 17,000-mile Northern Gas Company pipelines that transport gas from Texas to the Midwest and West. During Enron’s demise, they were transferred to Dynegy, a small company in which the Eastern Establishment through ChevronTexaco and Boston’s Putnam, hold 35.8%. But the consolidation doesn’t stop there. Inter-imperialist rivalry plays a role as well.

French investment giant AXA holds 10.5% of Dynegy. Eastern Establishment oil bosses don’t want one of their biggest European competitors for Iraqi oil to control a base on the U.S. continent. So Dynegy has become the target of a federal probe into alleged sham trades and is seeking a joint venture partner for its pipelines. "Dynegy’s longtime chief executive, Chuck Watson, resigned in May, and it has announced a major restructuring" (Reuters, 6/28).

Sharpening competition with French bosses also plays a role in the WorldCom story. Alliance Capital, a subsidiary of the French AXA, holds the largest amount of WorldCom stock and was the hardest hit by the scandal. Furthermore, Alliance’s chief founder and stockholder, Claude Bébéar, is a major supporter of Opus Dei, the openly fascist Catholic organization that backs the Vatican and European rulers in their present struggle against U.S. imperialists for control of the Catholic Church. To top it all, Alliance also lost out as a major Enron shareholder and as the top shareholder in another scandal-ridden high-tech firm, Tyco, which just bit the dust.

The biggest gangsters are swatting down the little ones, ruling at home with an iron fist. Preparing for a long series of oil wars requires more internal discipline than U.S. bosses have achieved. These business scandals are economic parallels to the political fight for control of the "war against terror." Recent CHALLENGE editorials have exposed the liberals’ dissatisfaction with the Bush White House’s incompetence in building a police state. The screws will tighten for Bush if he fails to bring his business pals into line.

The liberals will stop at nothing to maintain U.S. dominance and maximize profits worldwide. The international working class will pay the heaviest price. The bosses will fight among themselves to the last drop of workers’ blood. There is no "lesser evil." Either we march off a liberal cliff or we choose to build our own revolutionary communist movement, and our own mass working-class international PLP.

On Being Crooks, The Liberals Wrote The Book !

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, John D. Rockefeller founded his Standard Oil empire by cornering markets, building monopolies, using "insider" knowledge and murdering rebellious workers. The Rockefeller interests ruthlessly attacked their chief competitors, the House of Morgan, to consolidate their stranglehold on power. In 1938, former New York Stock Exchange president Dick Whitney entered Sing Sing prison sporting a tie with the emblem of Harvard’s exclusive Porcellian club. His crime was bilking his brother George and other J.P. Morgan partners of millions in loans. Two years later, the disgraced Morgan partnership had to sell its shares on the market and the Rockefeller forces were among the biggest buyers at a bargain price.

Liberal Nazi Scribbler Says Sweatshops Are Good

One might think it difficult to find a supporter of sweatshops outside the Boardrooms of outfits like Nike. But liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff wrote an op-ed piece (6/25) entitled "Let Them Sweat" which extolled the virtues of 8-year-olds slaving away for maybe $2 a day!

Kristoff reports on "Ahmed Zia, a 14-year-old….who dropped out of school in the second grade [and] earns $2 a day hunched over the loom laboring over a rug." Then there’s shirt-maker "8-year-old Kainis Saboor, an Afghan refugee whose father is dead and who is the sole [!] breadwinner in his family." Finally there is Noroz Khan, who lives on a garbage dump and spends his days searching for metal that he can sell to recyclers….[for] $1.40 a day, and children earn just 30¢ a day for scrounging barefoot in filth." Kristoff laments the fact that these children could be "better off" if Nike were to build sweatshops in which they could "earn" $2 a day.

Kristoff says anti-sweatshop campaigns become "one more headache for companies considering operating in international hellholes where the only lure is wages so low that it would be embarrassing…asking questions about them."

Kristoff says without sweatshops these poor children would be unemployed! Listen to this degenerate Times writer: "The country [Afghanistan] is full of starving widows who can find no jobs. If Nike hired them at 10¢ an hour to fill all-female sweatshops, they and their country would be hugely better off."

So that’s how U.S. imperialists "liberate" the women of Afghanistan. First they spend $1 billion a month bombing the hell out of them — the latest being a slaughter of at least 40 at a wedding! — leave them starving widows and 8-year-old orphan refugees, and then Kristoff tells them that 10¢-an-hour Nike jobs will make them "hugely better off"!

But liberal Kristoff’s depravity knows no bounds. He reports that an exposé of a Nike sweatshop in Cambodia employing girls younger than 15 caused Nike bosses to close up shop. So 2,000 Cambodians, 90% young women, faced layoffs. Kristoff defends Nike by saying, "Some who lost their jobs probably were ensnared in Cambodia’s huge sex slave industry — which leaves many girls dead of AIDS by the end of their teenage years."

So this is the "choice" Kristoff’s capitalist system gives these children and young women: either sweatshops at 10¢ an hour (enabling Nike to reap billions in profits) or joblessness and murder by the sex slave industry. Either way a life of daily agony and death.

Capitalism’s drive for maximum profits creates U.S. imperialism’s oil wars; bombings of innocent workers; Nike sweatshops; and forces teenage girls into sex slavery. This rotten, mass murdering system must be permanently obliterated and replaced by a workers’ communist system. No bosses, no profits and no Kristoffs sitting in air-conditioned hotel rooms collecting 6-figure salaries and advocating the "benefits" of dirt, disease and death.

a name="Civilian-Killing ‘Smart Bombs’ and Vietnam Syndrome"></">Ci"ilian-Killing ‘Smart Bombs’ and Vietnam Syndrome

Forty-eight women, men and children became the latest casualties of the U.S. rulers’ "war against terror" at a wedding in Afghanistan. Several thousands civilians have died since Bush launched his war on Oct. 7 to topple the Taliban-Al Qaeda forces and secure oil and gas pipelines. Two days after this massacre, hundreds — including many women dressed in the traditional burqa (head-to-toe clothing) — held the first anti-U.S. march in Kabul protesting the rising toll of civilian casualties.

The Pentagon initially denied any responsibility for the massacre, claiming they were being fired on. In fact, the wedding guests were shooting in the air, an Afghan tradition. Finally, Bush and the Pentagon sort of, half-way partly admitted their bombs are only "smart" when killing civilians. Meanwhile, the warlords of the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance are back killing each other over drugs and the spoils of war.

The "humanitarian wars" U.S. bosses have been waging in the last few years rely on "smart bombs" dropped from high altitudes. Some U.S. rulers want to whack Iraq, to seize its rich oil supplies, using the "Afghanistan strategy," depending on the Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces to do the heavy fighting, while the U.S. planes bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age. Others realize this alone won’t work. Hussein might actually escape (like Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and most of the Taliban-AQ forces). Eventually U.S. ground troops must engage in actual combat and suffer many casualties. The Vietnam Syndrome still haunts the rulers, who fear workers and GIs won’t accept heavy U.S casualties and will protest and rebel, as in Vietnam . Then the U.S. fascist police state will be aimed not only at Moslem and other immigrant workers, but also at millions of black, Latino and white workers, exposing the profit system as the enemy of the entire working class.

a name="9,000 at NEA Convention Hear PL’er Condemn Oil War">">",000 at NEA Convention Hear PL’er Condemn Oil War

DALLAS, TEXAS, July 5 — "I’m so grateful to you for raising the question of oil war. That took a lot of guts! I want to give you the shirt off my back," said a delegate. With that, he gave a comrade a beautiful shirt.

This was only the first of many comments (although the only item of clothing) that greeted our comrade’s speech condemning the U.S. "war on terror" and its planned extension into Iraq, at the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly (RA). About 9,000 teachers heard a speech that deplored the tragedy of 9/11 and condemned using it as an excuse to send our kids to kill and die to secure the profits of the oil companies. Those who objected barely achieved the 2/3 vote required to block discussion of the war. Two to three thousand delegates shouted their vote in favor of discussion, but were defeated.

This was the climax of our Party’s work in the RA this year, the first such assembly since 9/11. The difficulties in 2002 reflect the changes that have occurred since last year. Then we worked with others and raised a new business item condemning the racist theories of "biologically-determined IQ." We called on the 10,000 delegates to reject the "culture of poverty" and related ideas, and to base their development programs on the idea that everyone can reach high levels of learning. Despite anti-communist attacks, we got tremendous support then, and the motion passed.

Our task this year was more difficult. The U.S. is engaged in the initial stages of what promises to be a long war. The invasion of Iraq is being planned. The ruling class needs to build support for war and for the fascist measures that war requires. The unions’ role is an important one for the bosses in building that support. In the wake of 9/11, the NEA published a statement proclaiming that its 2.7 million members "stand as one with the President and the Congressional leadership at this time of crisis." They said, "Those who love freedom and democracy are rallying to America’s flag and to the President’s leadership in this time of terrorism."

The union leaders unite behind the bosses. Communists unite with others to build as broad a movement as possible to oppose their war and fascism, which are inevitable under capitalism. We’re in this for the long haul to organize for communist revolution. Our work at the NEA convention this year was part of this fight. We knew more people this year, both from work in our local unions and from participating in the caucuses last year, and were able to get active support from our friends in developing and fighting for this issue among the delegates. The strengthening of these ties is perhaps the most important fruit of our work.

a name="Organizing at AFT Convention Against Leadership’s Support of War Abroad, Fascism at Home">">"rganizing at AFT Convention Against Leadership’s Support of War Abroad, Fascism at Home

NEW YORK CITY, July 8 — Next week members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) will attend the annual American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Convention in Las Vegas. PLP will join others there in battling the efforts of AFT honchos Sandra Feldman and Randi Weingarten and their underlings to build patriotism leading to fascism among the thousands of convention delegates and the millions of education workers they represent.

Feldman and all the union misleaders are using the 9/11 deaths to win teachers and other workers to support the U.S. ruling class’s war for control of Mid-East oil. They want us to accept and support the murderous actions of the U.S. government as legitimate "acts against terrorism."

Teachers are very important to the ruling class’s plans. They need teachers to indoctrinate children and youth in patriotism, to further their fascist aims. Social studies teachers are expected to teach the lies that the U.S has always fought against "evil" and "for the good of all," and, therefore, if people hate the U.S. government it’s because they’re "jealous of us."

All teachers are expected to participate in this indoctrination. In the battle over the Pledge of Allegiance, the ruling class may debate whether children should say "under god," but there’s no division over the importance of students’ and workers’ saying and believing the lie "with liberty and justice for all."

In the less overtly political subjects, such as mathematics and science, is where many students have their first difficulties with school. In wealthy schools with many resources and small classes, students receive help in overcoming these problems. But in poorer schools with large classes and fewer resources, students receive little help. Thus, these working-class students, especially black and Latin students, are told they must be "dumber" than students in wealthier schools. This has been and will continue to be the method of "teaching" as long as capitalism rules.

Under communism education will serve the needs of those who produce everything of value, the working class and their children. Every effort will be made to give a good all around education to all children.

At the convention, we must show teachers that the same politicians and bosses who steal our pensions and cut back school budgets want us to support their war for oil that is already killing children from Afghanistan to Iraq. The police state measures the government has taken will be used against us, like the jailing of striking teachers in Middletown, N.J. last Fall.

We must join with our working-class students and their parents to fight against budget cuts and against other attacks against our schools.

IAM Hacks Hide Behind Flag to Screw Workers

WASHINGTON, July 8 — A number of International Association of Machinist (IAM) members and volunteers were talking at the "Membership Appreciation Day" at the Monroe Fairgrounds. One woman noticed an attention-grabbing road sign that said, "This way is to the fairgrounds, Across the street to the reformatory." As CHALLENGE readers are aware, Monroe State Prison is notorious for producing Boeing parts with captive prison labor.

This scene mirrored the contradictions facing us as we approach the July 9 Boeing strike sanction vote. Thirty thousand jobs have been lost in the last nine months, while the company continues to offload work to Monroe Reformatory in one of the more blatant examples of fascist exploitation. The union leadership failed to expose the fascist nature of Boeing’s attacks, even as thousands of our members and their families gathered for a free day at the fair, within a stone’s throw of the slave labor site.

a name="Capitalism Kills Jobs …And Our Children!">">"apitalism Kills Jobs …And Our Children!

Alan Mulally, president of Boeing Commercial Airlines Group, has no intention of ever rehiring our laid-off brothers and sisters. "The United States has no divine right to our standard of living," Mulally said, defending Boeing’s worldwide search for the cheapest possible labor (Tacoma News Tribune, 7/3). "That’s what we believe in. That’s capitalism. That’s market forces." Apparently, this doesn’t include himself and his tens of millions in salary and bonuses.

Faced with this worldwide attack on aerospace workers, the union leadership felt incumbent to show some resistance. They recently convened the World Aerospace Conference of the International Metalworker Federation (IMF). IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger heads the Aerospace Department. Our local union president reported that the issues around the world "are identical to ours." Union delegates condemned downsizing, subcontracting, companies taking advantage of 9/11, pitting workers from one country against another and the race to the bottom with no regard for human rights, safety, or environment.

"Did I forget to mention loyalty to the very workforce, communities, and families who built these aerospace companies?" our local president wrote, ending his litany of corporate evils. "Not at all." He concluded his report with, "Right now though, our top priority is [the upcoming] contract."

Fair enough. Then the International union’s chief negotiator, Dick Schneider, added, "The Company has no loyalty to the [U.S.] flag!" The union’s fancy pamphlets emphasize how the Company is harming "our defense capabilities" by off-loading jobs abroad. But the union leaders didn’t raise a finger to support the 2,000 wildcatters at the Airbus wing plant in Broughton, England, or the 8,000 IAM members that wildcatted against Bombardier, Canada, in April.

You can’t have it both ways. Either you unite with the world’s workers or you unite with the national bosses. No matter how many "international conferences" the union calls, its main job is to build nationalism.

U.S. bosses, like Mulally, will use all this flag-waving to destroy jobs and promote their endless wars. Children of workers here and worldwide will be sacrificed on the fiery altar of the bosses’ oil wars. Even now they’re preparing for another bloodbath for the massive Iraqi oil fields.

A Lifetime Of Work Teaches Our Brother To Think Of His Class First

"Of course, the union leaders are going to wrap themselves in the flag when they have no intention of fighting back," reported a veteran machinist about to retire.

Drawing on his lifetime in the factory he said, "We’re lost if the union leadership can get us to buy into their cynical view of the world. They use the fact that capitalism can’t provide job security to win us to ‘take-the-money-and-run,’ and ‘think-only-of-yourself.’ You need a class view if you’re going to fight for the jobs of the laid-off and future workers. All this talk about ‘stronger’ contract language against off loading is just a cover for not fighting for every job. What will happen when I retire? If the union had a class view, they wouldn’t worry about whether the law allows them to negotiate for past retirees. They’d just demand that our brothers and sisters —working or retired — get treated decently."

So there you have it! You can either succumb to nationalism and cynicism and bow down to capitalism’s anti-working class rules, or you can fight for every job and reject alliances with the bosses who plan to kill our jobs and our children in their endless wars.

Our Party advocates class struggle so our class can learn how to end Mulally’s capitalism. What makes him think he has the "divine right" to subjugate billions of our class brothers and sisters to his bloody profit system, anyway?!

Worker-Patient Unity Needed vs. LA Clinic Budget Cuts

LOS ANGELES, July 9 — The "war against terror" is becoming more and more a war against workers and youth at home. The latest case was the Rodney King-like beating of Donovan Jackson, a sixteen-year-old black youth by Inglewood cops. Police terror is also accompanied by massive budget cuts.

"Who needs Al Qaeda when we have the County Board of Supervisors?" That was the sign carried by one demonstrator protesting massive service cutbacks at several hospitals and the closing of 11 clinics, leading to thousands of layoffs. Those are the real-life results of a $688 million budget deficit.

LA County has more uninsured than any county in the U.S. These attacks will be felt the hardest by the poorest workers, who will face agony and deadly waits in Emergency rooms.

"The exercise we’re going through here is to try and balance a budget, not to meet all the health needs…in Los Angeles County," admitted Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, the county’s new health director. "That’s not what we’re trying to do [meeting health needs]. It’s not like we’re meeting those needs already." (LA Times, 6/18)

Cynical Garthwaite says the budget’s all about the bottom line, not the health needs of the poor and working people. These big shots say the U.S. is leading the fight against terrorism, but many agreed that these cuts are racist, "state sponsored terrorism."

Bush and Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put spending for war and "homeland security" first, nearly $400 BILLION a year. Their "war on terrorism" is for U.S. imperialism’s control of the oil in the Middle East and Caspian Sea region. Thus their plan to invade Iraq and seize its vast oilfields. Then they’ll control who gets how much and at what price to "allies" and rivals in Europe and Japan at a big profit. That’s how control of oil means world dominance. Their "Homeland Security" is aimed at stopping workers’ protests against such budget cuts and war plans.

Many angry County workers agree these cuts are terrorism. There have been united worker-patient work actions at some clinics. Strikes must be organized against the rulers’ plans. Begging the Board of Supervisors and Congress won’t stop these politicians, hell bent on war and building a police state. Massive unity is necessary for an effective fight-back. But indispensable is leading the resistance that will permanently end such oil companies’ wars.

This capitalist system, based on enriching the few and racist inequality producing super-profits, puts such profits — via war and a police state — as the top priority at the expense of workers’ jobs and lives. Workers create everything of value. Bosses send our children to kill and die to keep and control that value. When workers unite, they increase their power tremendously, but our goal is to direct that power towards making a revolution, eliminating the warmakers and running society for our own needs, not for the billionaires’ profits. In the coming fights against the cutbacks, we must start building that power, unity and direction.

a name="Gov’t Uses 9/11 to Terrorize Immigrant Airport Workers">">"ov’t Uses 9/11 to Terrorize Immigrant Airport Workers

At the airport where I work, the bosses, police and Federal government are fingerprinting all workers. This is fascism. They are using 9/11 to: (1) keep track of immigrant workers; (2) criminalize all workers by making us believe that terrorist suspects "may be among us"; and (3) develop a computer database with background checks of airport workers. These are marks of a police state. The FBI and Immigration agents have been terrorizing Latino workers at the airport, approaching them and demanding "papers." If they don’t have "proper documentation," they’re arrested on the spot.

Many of my Latin co-workers and friends, including some CHALLENGE readers, have quit rather than risk being arrested and deported. This is outrageous! The FBI and Migra thugs treat immigrant workers — documented and undocumented — like criminals and terrorists. Meanwhile, I’ve seen Nazi party members with swastikas on their shirts visiting the airport. Where are the FBI and airport police then?

A good friend and co-worker from El Salvador (who reads CHALLENGE) came here looking for work. He said many El Salvadorans emigrate to the U.S. to earn some money so their children don’t starve back there. U.S. imperialism impoverishes these workers in their home country and then tries to arrest them here for seeking a better life.

I discreetly distribute CHALLENGE to my co-workers. Some are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Africa. One day I overheard two bosses saying that the FBI has been interrogating people because they’re "concerned about airport security." The anti-immigrant, racist climate at the airport requires care in distributing the paper on the job.

The international working class needs a communist revolution now more than ever to smash the rising tide of U.S. fascism.

Airport Red

Capitalism Running Rampant in China

Super-exploitation at $2 a day, prostitution, unsafe mines killing thousands of miners are symptomatic of full-blown capitalism behind the label, "Made in China":

• Rebellion erupted at the 15,000-employee Nanxuan textile factory in the booming Pearl river delta near Hong Kong after company goons beat a worker for "jumping a meal line." Thousands fought cops during a 3-day strike. The area is called the "workshop of the world" as foreign corporations take advantage of the $2-a-day wages paid to mostly migrant workers, part of a surplus rural labor force of about 170 million, 30 million working here.

• When the exploited workers are laid off from the "backbreaking factory jobs, construction and restaurant work," they enter "an industry that has served as a financial backstop for millions of China’s rural migrants: the sex trade," (New York Times, 7/2) which had been eliminated in Red China. Prostitution rings employ teenage girls who have few rights in the southern boom towns of Guangzhou and Foshan in Guangdong province. "All of the hotels…are filled with prostitutes," said the sister of one caught in the sex trade. The latter now works "six days a week in a factory…where she assembles fashionable shoes for export." (NYT) The migrants’ "cheap labor is the fuel that powers Guangdong’s thriving economy, which accounts for half of China’s gross domestic product."

• The fatal ignition of explosives in a gold mine in Shanxi province killed dozens of miners, some of whom "had asked to leave the mine when a fire broke out…but had been instructed to keep working….Mine bosses spent a night using two trucks to haul away bodies." (NYT, 7/2) Many more fatalities were expected, part of an annual death toll of 5,000 to 10,000, "with 3,394 mining deaths officially reported" since January. "The more dangerous jobs are…filled by work gangs from distant impoverished areas, men desperate enough to work long hours in appalling conditions for $70 to $100 a month." (NYT)

These are just the latest victims of capitalism’s "free market" which is bringing untold suffering to hundreds of millions of China’s workers. Capitalism is deadly in all its forms, made deadlier by the defeat of the international communist movement, particularly in places like China and the USSR where workers had tasted a bit of communism and then reverted back to the profit system. No wonder workers in those two countries want to return to that sweatshop-free era. Now workers must learn from the mistakes and achievements of that movement to begin the fight for revolutionary communism, in which production serves the needs of the working class.

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

Youth Write

At our NYC high school a group of students has started organizing against Mayor Bloomburg’s proposed education budget cuts, proving once again that the working class has abundant talent which the rich rulers try to stifle. These students debated the issues, made posters for the rallies, and organized their friends to attend two rallies against the cuts.

At these rallies we were one of a few organized groups. Others had signs and there was a group of students under the communist banners of the Progressive Labor Party. Our signs held high not only attacked the cuts, but also the huge spending on the "war against terrorism" and on prisons. Our spirited chants included, "Hey, Hey, Ho Ho, Bush’s war has got to go."

Various Hip-Hop artists promoted the second rally on many radio stations, drawing many young people to it. When we arrived the situation was very intimidating. The crowd was huge, jammed into pens by the police. The sound system didn’t work everywhere. We couldn’t hear anything. Although somewhat discouraged (but not for long),. a few of our bolder youth started chanting. Things changed quickly and dramatically. Others began chanting. Some of us stood on a small bench holding our signs high for all to see. Several made impromptu speeches criticizing those coming just to see the artists. They addressed the seriousness of the issues and even tore up and stomped on flyers advertising the Hip-Hop artists.

Many people congratulated our spirited group and took our pictures. One prospective teacher mailed us some, writing, "Congratulations to you and your student activists. You are an example of the type of Social Studies teacher I would like to become; one that educates students not only in past history, but also in history that is ongoing and that they can become part of."

It was a great experience. However, the rulers want the exact opposite, to have teachers indoctrinate their students with patriotism, passivity and obedience. The working class can learn to fight for its liberation only by studying communist ideas and putting them into practice.

Two other student groups raised their signs at the rally and had a leadership impact. One young woman said she had spoken to a group of about 50 youth about the issues. Back at school we also learned that well over 100 people had gone to the rally on their own.

These young people and millions like them worldwide can really make communism a reality. Contrasted to scum like Bush, Cheney and Powell running the world now, there’s really no comparison. The world would be a great place led by these young people with such honesty and integrity. Such a vision should motivate all of us to keep fighting to build the Party and the fight for communism. (Some student responses to the rally follow.)

I attended "The Big School Rally" at City Hall in Manhattan. I was pleased with the turnout, but most people were there for the rap stars. The rally centered on halting education budget cuts, but the demonstration was little more than a photo-op. It was a case of quality versus quantity. Quantity won. The angry spirit of protest was sacrificed for large crowds.

Bothered in Brooklyn

Going to the rally to fight school budget cuts was gratifying but different than what I expected. If everyone had chanted together, the effect would have been incredible. But most were there to see the celebrities. I’m not mad at that because many uninformed people learned about the real issues and even chanted. I thought it was a great turnout. With about 20,000 people present, I learned that numbers are very important, even if some didn’t know the cause. I would do it again. I enjoyed making signs and preparing for the rally. I think my classmates and I made a difference, and being there and experiencing a rally was priceless, as well as seeing how teachers from various schools were proud and surprised and ecstatic at our devotion. I learned that one can make a small difference but thousands can make a deeper impact.

Learning in Brooklyn

Attending the June 4^th rally at City Hall against the NYC budget cuts wasn’t what I expected. Many were there not to protest but for the celebrities. Despite this, many students and teachers, young and old, were there to protest the biggest school cuts ever. I saw many active students with their signs, chanting. Everywhere you saw different groups joining each other in marches, chants and speeches. It was a great success!

Those who felt students could care less about the budget cuts and couldn’t have a forceful impact were wrong! We do care and we will not allow a capitalist war to rob us. Teachers aren’t getting paid enough and students have a very high dropout rate. Mayor Bloomburg wants to have total control of the schools and the first thing he does is cut the budget, expecting no protest. Well, we were heard! We will not allow Bloomberg to take our money to finance an imperialist war.

Young Brooklyn Red

On Contradiction

To better explain whether or not a contradiction is antagonistic or non-antagonistic we should start from some basic dialectical concepts and then assess the problem.

First, all processes are driven by internal contradictions. Second, the basis of change for any process is its internal contradictions. The resolution of these internal contradictions ends the process, as we know it. The resolution can propel the process to a higher stage (the negation of the negation) or cause it to recede to a lower stage. It never remains the same.

A contradiction is the unity and struggle of opposites. This is a life-and-death struggle, resolved when one opposite side (the secondary aspect of the contradiction) becomes primary and thereby vanquishes the opposing side that was primary. This doesn’t happen peacefully; it is a violent process. This is true in nature, in society and in the world of ideas. Therefore, all contradictions (the unity and struggle of opposites) are, by that very relationship, always a violent process in themselves; their resolution always involves even greater violence (death, no matter what dies, is the highest expression of violence). Therefore, all contradictions are antagonistic by their very nature; there are no such things as non-antagonistic contradictions.

The problem the honest forces in the international communist movement faced in dealing with this issue was that they were not separating the two things that can affect a process, namely, the internal and the external. In any process, the internal (its internal contradictions) is the basis for change and the external (the environment and other forces we might bring to bear on it) is the condition for change. The internal is always resolved violently. The external can be violent or non-violent but it has to strive to intensify the internal contradictions to speed up, or bring about, their violent resolution. The wrong concept of "non-antagonistic contradictions" arose from confusing the methods of intensification (the external forces), which can be violent or non-violent, with the internal process that always resolves itself violently. If the method of intensification that was used was violent, the contradiction was defined as antagonistic. If the method used was non-violent (criticism, self-criticism, etc.) the contradiction was defined (incorrectly) as "non-antagonistic."

A Reader

1. Liberal Rulers Push for a Faster Police State:
   Workers Need Red Leadership
2. Bushites, Liberals: Gangsters All
3. Israeli Seizure of West Bank Will Lead to Wider Mid-East War
4. Democrats Back Bush's Plan to Whack Iraq
5. Peru: Mass Rebellions Answer Rulers' Phony Promises
6. Angry Marchers Condemn U.S. Terror Against Arab, South Asian Workers
   1. AN ATTACK ON ONE IS
      AN ATTACK ON ALL
7. Chicago Cops Get License to Kill
8. Militant Youth Lead Protest vs. NJ School Cuts
9. Dollar, Profits, Consumer Confidence Fall:
   This Is A Recovery?
10. Bus Strikers Blast Billionaire Bloomberg
11. PLP'er Renews Ties At UAW Convention
12. UAW Definition of `Job Security': Layoffs
    1. NEW UAW HEAD: FORD'S MAN IN DRIVER'S SEAT
13. Bosses' Hunger for Profits Starves Millions
    1. So Much Food and Cattle and So Much Hunger
    2. Starvation in the Land of Maize
    3. Yes, U2 Bono!
14. Cuba: Can't Build Communism with Capitalism
15. LETTERS
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. Students Lead
       Teachers, Parents To
       Defy NYPD
    2. Liberals' Fascist Law Aimed at Reds
    3. In Memoriam:
       Haven Wilson
    4. `Free Market' Costly For E. Europe Workers
    5. Building PLP in
       Campus Labor Group
    6. May Day in
       El Salvador

---

Liberal Rulers Push for a Faster Police State:
Workers Need Red Leadership

The main, liberal wing of U.S. bosses is losing patience over the Bush presidency's half-assed efforts to create a police state on the home front. The 9/11 attacks gave the rulers the excuse they needed to launch the first phase of their new war for world domination and to begin militarizing U.S. society. When Bush signed the "Homeland Security Act," the Liberal Establishment praised him for heading in the right direction.

But now, more than nine months later, the same liberals are raking him over the coals for acting too slowly and ineptly. They're aiming to take over the "war against terror." None of this infighting among the bosses bodes well for the working class. For sure, Bush is a racist killer. But the liberals most probably will get their way, and their ruthlessness against our class will make him look like an amateur.

As usual, the New York Times supplies the loudest voice in the liberal chorus. For weeks the Times has been berating Bush, his "Homeland Security" czar Ridge, the FBI and the CIA. Now this main liberal mouthpiece has become even more aggressive. A June 13 op-ed piece by Former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman demand the immediate creation of a Homeland Security Agency. "Not since 1947 [i.e. the start of the Cold War -- Ed.] has a new agency been so needed."

Hart and Rudman don't speak purely for themselves. They have behind them the weight of the Liberal Establishment's key think-tank, the Brookings Institution. A new Brookings' book, Protecting the American Homeland: A Preliminary Analysis, was written by seven leading Brookings experts, including two -- Michael O'Hanlon and Ivo Daalder -- who've helped champion the drive to launch a new war for the conquest of Iraqi oil fields. The book lambastes the Bush administration's "homeland security" shortfalls and leaves no doubt about the liberals' goal of a police state. The main recommendations include:

*Increasing defenses along U.S. borders and in U.S. airspace (Brookings calls this "perimeter security);

*Tightening surveillance, information gathering and visa and immigration procedures;

*Adding 1,000 new FBI agents for "counter-terrorism" a year for five years;

*Securing U.S. nuclear power plants and toxic chemical plants.

Hart and Rudman aren't just two retired senators with nothing better to do. As CHALLENGE readers may remember, they chaired the Clinton-appointed Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, which predicted as early as 1999 that a 9/11-type event or worse was in the works. They scold Bush: "Creating a Department of Homeland Security is...a...step...that should have been taken well before Sept. 11."

For sure, the big bosses don't want a repeat of 9/11. On the other hand, they have to milk the terrorist threat for all it's worth in order to drum up popular support for their police state and war plans. But the Brookings Institution doesn't really expect that nuclear or biological terrorist attacks on a grand scale will materialize. A chart in their new book rates the probability of biological attack with a million casualties as "extremely low"; of an atomic bomb detonated in a major U.S. city as "very low"; and of a successful attack on a nuclear or toxic chemical plant also as "very low." It calls "modest" the estimated likelihood of a "suicide attack with explosives or firearms in a mall or crowded street." (Full text of the book is available at www.brook.edu.)

So even the rulers' main think tank believes that the most probable terror attacks in the future will resemble the tactics of suicide murder-bombings in the current Middle East fighting rather than the doomsday scenario of nuclear mayhem in big cities. The 5,000 additional FBI agents called for by Brookings aren't likely to be of much use against a teenaged suicide bomber. But these agents can certainly join a growing apparatus of political repression.

Just as they used 9/11 to drum up patriotic hysteria for their oil war, the big bosses are now trying to use Bush & Co.'s bungling as a pretext to create a groundswell of demand for more cops, FBI agents and surveillance, i.e., fascism with a liberal face. The scapegoat of the moment is Arab workers and students, but the real target is the working class as a whole, along with soldiers, students and anyone else who doesn't fall for the rulers' agenda and who may organize to do something about it.

That eventually means, above all, our Party. It's no accident that Hart and Rudman compare the rulers' present challenges to the Cold War. The Cold War was an all-out crusade against communism, the deadliest threat the international profit system can contemplate or face. The rulers see a different immediate threat today. The old communist movement is dead. Capitalism didn't defeat it; it died from self-inflicted opportunist political weaknesses. Rival imperialists in China, Russia and Europe have a long-range need to knock the U.S. off its perch as Number One. U.S. bosses, on the other hand, intend to rule the world for the foreseeable future.

Inter-imperialist rivalry and warfare will cause the working class to pay an increasingly heavy price in blood and sweat. A revolutionary Party can grow, at first slowly, and then dramatically, in the crucible of this turmoil. The rulers know this. The "specter of communism" continues to haunt them. Their plans for a police state aim more than anything else to quench the fire of working class militancy once it starts to blaze and to prevent it from becoming red, under PLP's leadership.

The liberals will win out, in the short run. But their police state, and their ceaseless wars (Iraq and its energy wealth seem certain to be the next target, will open the eyes of tens of millions of workers worldwide to see that there must be an alternative to capitalism. It is up to communist revolutionaries to show that such an alternative won't fall from the sky. It can only be achieved by organizing a mass, red-led working-class movement.

Nothing can kill the hope of communism, and nothing can stop the great forward march of human society. Even though this capitalist nightmare seems infinite, every night must have its end. The answer to fascist terror and bosses' war remains: build a mass PLP.

Bushites, Liberals: Gangsters All

Internal self-discipline is an important secondary aspect of the liberals' plan to take over the "war against terror." They don't think the Bush White House has an adequate strategic view of the job at hand. Building a police state and making war to remain the top-dog imperialist call for tough-minded leaders with the ability to subordinate their immediate profit interest to the overall agenda of world domination. The liberals don't think Bush has the "right stuff." One example is the tax cut he passed in 2001. This was a crass, multi-billion-dollar giveaway to his business world pals. The liberals, led by New York Times columnist/economist Paul Krugman, have been lambasting Bush for frittering away money that they want used for the main agenda. Not surprisingly, the Brookings book calls for "freezing at least part of the tax cuts" to help pay the additional $10 billion the liberals want devoted to Homeland Security over and above the $38 billion allotted by Bush. Look for liberal Connecticut Senator Lieberman, who wants to be president, to echo the Brookings line. And don't be fooled by the liberals' hypocritical criticism of Bush's support for "special interests." This remains a tactical fight between merciless gangsters. We don't have a stake in backing either side.

Israeli Seizure of West Bank Will Lead to Wider Mid-East War

Israeli rulers, with backing from the Bush administration, moved to permanently occupy the West Bank and enforce a total fascist police state. An Israeli official told BBC News (6/19) that, "To fully reoccupy Palestinian towns, the army would have to call up reservists and take on responsibility for civil administration."

Sharon's murderous invasion, while drawing support from the U.S., creates problems for Bush's planned proposal for an "interim Palestinian state." This already has been criticized by government ministers in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon who declared there is no such thing as an "interim state." MSNBC News (6/19) reported that, "The support of Jordan and Egypt, which shares borders with Israel and a future Palestinian state, would be crucial to any White House proposal." Without that support, Bush's "plan" is doomed.

Complete seizure of the West Bank could spark widespread uprisings across the Middle East -- not to mention in Palestine itself -- causing big problems for the Pro-U.S. repressive governments throughout the region, playing right into the hands of those anti-U.S. capitalist forces represented by al Qaeda . It also could create more problems for the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The solution for Palestinian and Jewish workers lies not in allegiance to "their own" sets of bosses, whether Sharon or Arafat, but in uniting to fight all bosses and their profit system that exploits all workers. The only way out of this endless butchery is for workers throughout the Middle East to organize to smash all the local and imperialist warmakers.

Democrats Back Bush's Plan to Whack Iraq

When it comes to making war, the Democrats won't be outdone by the Republicans. Top Democratic Party politicians quickly backed a report leaked to the Washington Post saying Bush had signed a plan giving the CIA broader powers to try to whack Saddam Hussein and take control of the huge Iraqi oil fields, putting them in the hands of Exxon Mobil & Co.

"I think it is an appropriate action to take," said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) on ABC's "This Week" (6/16).

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) told "Fox News Sunday" (6/16), "We want to work with the administration and try to find the best way and the best time to do this,"

And Democratic Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a member of the Intelligence Committee, told CNN's "Late Edition" (6/16), "If the President were to authorize that kind of action, I would endorse it wholeheartedly. I don't think it's a question of whether we're going to have to deal with Saddam Hussein," continued Bayh, "I think it's a question of when. We need to get on with the planning, using military, economic, diplomatic -- every arrow in our quiver to deal with this man."

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the only problem he has with the plan is "if it doesn't work. If Saddam Hussein's around five years from now, we've failed," Biden said on CBS's "Face the Nation" (6/16).

Peru: Mass Rebellions Answer Rulers' Phony Promises

PERU, July 18 -- Massive rebellions have erupted in Southern Peru, protesting the privatization of the region's utility companies.

"Never believe a politician's promise" is something workers worldwide understand only too well. Alejandro Toledo, President of Perú and former World Bank official, promised the people of Arequipa that once elected he would maintain state ownership of these utility companies. Soon afterwards Toledo sold Egasa y Egesur, the region's two electric companies, to European multi-nationals.

The working class of Arequipa responded to these broken promises by taking to the streets and confronting the cops. After four days of rebellion, Toledo declared a state of emergency and sent in the Army. They killed two demonstrators. Then thousands rebelled in the city of Tacna, near the border with Chile, in solidarity with the workers of Arequipa. The protestors threw rocks at the cops and government offices and blocked roads. Now, "fearing the spread of protests, the government ordered tanks and troops into the streets of Lima," the country's capital. (New York Times, 6/18)

Workers have seen how privatization of state-owned companies has only eliminated jobs while making a few local and foreign bosses and crooked politicians even richer. Private utility companies will raise electric rates sky-high.

General strikes, rebellions, angry marches and other actions by urban and rural workers and their allies have erupted throughout the Southern Cone -- Perú, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. They are fed up with the bosses' growing attacks to make workers pay even more for their capitalist crisis. These actions are good. Still better would be a fight for a society free of all capitalism -- private or state-owned, where production serves the needs of the workers and their allies: communism.

Angry Marchers Condemn U.S. Terror Against Arab, South Asian Workers

NEW YORK CITY -- Scores of taxi drivers, restaurant and store workers defied the U.S. government's terror and overcame their own fears to join about 400 loud and angry protesters in a rally and march condemning the detention and deportations of Muslim Arabs and South Asians, and escalating wars. The demonstration proceeded through a predominantly South Asian working-class neighborhood. Many, including family members of those detained, overcame the intimidation generated by over 100 arrests by the FBI and the Immigration Service. The diverse demands of the rally included:

* Stopping the detentions and deportations;

* An end to U.S military support for Israel, Israeli occupation of Palestine and U.S.-provoked wars in Kashmir, the Philippines and Afghanistan; and,

* Allocating money for education and social services, not for the Pentagon.

These demands reflected the demonstrators' anger at the increasing repression and worsening conditions in the U.S. and wars abroad where thousands are being killed and millions are forced into living as refugees. This range of protest stemmed from the broad coalition of 50 groups that organized the event, including a large number of South Asian, Palestinian, Jewish, Labor, church and community organizations.

Despite the multi-racial diversity, there were few black and Latin protestors, reflecting the nationalism of some of the groups, content to organize among "their own people" and around a single issue. Many of the organizations sent only one or two representatives instead of organizing masses of their members.

Multi-racial unity and class solidarity signs were evident, like "An Injury to One is an Injury to All." Marchers enthusiastically chanted "Jews, Muslims, Black and White, Workers of the World Unite" when such chants were initiated. But nationalist/classless slogans like "Free, Free Palestine" and "Free, Free Kashmir" were chanted with as much gusto.

AN ATTACK ON ONE IS
AN ATTACK ON ALL

PLP'ers distributed hundreds of leaflets and many CHALLENGES, containing the Party's ideas that demands like "Free Palestine" and "Free Kashmir" will only deliver these workers into the hands of another set of (local) capitalists. It is incumbent on all of us. especially PLP members and friends, to realize that these South Asian workers are now in the front line facing the rulers' onslaught on the entire working class. Therefore, the order of the day is organizing our co-workers and classmates to support those under attack.

Speakers eloquently and passionately described the effects of the current crisis but without a class analysis to trace its causes. But a few speakers did identify capitalism as the root of the problem and U. S. imperialism's relentless need to control the world's economy as the cause of the escalating wars.

Generally the demonstration was a step forward for the anti-war movement, occurring as it did in a working-class neighborhood and joined by members of the community. Many youth marched, including a group from local high schools. It showed people are angry, will fight back and are receptive to multi-racial and class unity.

But such coalitions cannot build a movement to wipe out the problems of capitalism once and for all. That can only be done by uniting all workers internationally into a communist-led fight to destroy the profit system.

Chicago Cops Get License to Kill

CHICAGO, IL June 15- About 50 angry protestors marched today chanting, "Racist Cops, You Can't Hide! We Charge You With Genocide," and "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All Are Part of the Bosses' Plan." We were marching because racist Judge Clayton Crane found five Cook County sheriffs "not guilty" of firing 24 shots into an unarmed black couple's van. These pigs were off duty, in a personal car, and drunk when they chased the couple through the streets of several Chicago suburbs yelling, "Kill them! Kill them!" Fortunately the couple was not injured.

Jesse Jackson led the march and thought what we were saying was "dangerous." But the workers at the march and in the neighborhood disagreed with him. At first some of us were a little apprehensive about leading chants because of past negative experiences with Jackson's PUSH. But after some struggle, we decided we had to do something. We began by leading bold, militant chants expressing the workers' anger towards the cops and the system. As support grew we initiated more leftist political chants.

Jackson thought it was "safer" to simply shut down the march so he led everyone in a prayer and his famous "I Am Somebody" litany. Most of the protestors approached us requesting more chants, saying, "Keep it up." This was not the reaction most of us expected, but it was surely welcomed. We distributed 25 CHALLENGES and made some contacts.

We have tried working in and around this organization without always getting the best response. But we got a great response today. Now we'll focus on doing more with the group while bringing our communist politics to the workers in it. Many of us learned it's possible to do this and we're gaining more experience in doing it. We must expose Jackson and the other misleaders and organize our working-class sisters and brothers for communist revolution. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Militant Youth Lead Protest vs. NJ School Cuts

TRENTON, NJ, June 13 -- Hundreds of students, parents, teachers and other concerned people rallied today against state public school budget cuts. One of newly-elected Governor McGreevey's first acts was to freeze school funding. Since other costs -- payments for private contractors and collective bargaining increases -- are rising, money for things like teaching positions and after-school programs is being cut. After over 30 years of fighting for parity with wealthy areas, urban districts are losing funds which they can't afford to replace with property tax increases.

The energy of the protesters, especially the youth, was electrifying. After a rally at the Statehouse, where many youth spoke, we marched to the Supreme Court. The liberal Education Law Center, which was supposed to represent the best interests of urban children, approved McGreevey's cuts. Then the Supreme Court rubber-stamped the whole lousy deal. But working-class youth, many black and Latino, weren't buying it, As the marchers got louder, many youth took the bullhorn and began leading chants: "They say cut back, we say fight back"; "Ain't no love, for government thugs"; and "They cut our schools and build more jails, we'll fight back `til we prevail."

One speaker pointed out how the rulers' racist cuts and other policies are forcing more youth into prison and into the military to fight and die in a bosses' war for oil. Another said that, contrary to the government's lies, the biggest terrorists of all are those inside the U.S. who use their government positions to cut back education and health care for the working class. Several other speakers said this rally was only the beginning, and that we need to organize a bigger action here in the fall.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were very active in organizing the rally, representing a significant collective effort. Masses of students and some parents both responded to our leadership and took the lead themselves. One hundred and forty-five CHALLENGES were distributed, along with 350 PLP flyers about the cuts. This openness to PLP's analysis shows that the working class is not exactly convinced by the U.S. rulers' patriotic, pro-fascist campaign waged since September 11.

Parents, teachers and students will unite and fight back against budget cuts. We shouldn't rely on the bosses' legal system or their press. (The state-wide newspaper and other N.J. media completely ignored us, while giving front-page coverage to a doctors' rally protesting huge malpractice insurance increases, held the same day and place.) Whatever concessions we may get from McGreevey and the people he fronts for will only be won through sharp struggle.

Ultimately capitalism can never satisfy the aspirations of youth and others for equality and productive, meaningful lives. The bosses proclaim their belief in the growth of the individual and "opportunity for all." But in reality, their class system "tracks" many workers' children onto the unemployment line or into the hands of prison guards or military recruiters. PLP's growth and influence in the mass movement is the only alternative that can and will meet the needs of our class.

Dollar, Profits, Consumer Confidence Fall:
This Is A Recovery?

Suddenly the shortest recession in recent history seems to becoming longer and longer. Recently all the economic pundits were predicting the end of the recession. Now, they ain't so sure. "Weak stock market threatens to undo economic recovery. Slump could slow spending by consumers, businesses," reads a Wall Street Journal headline (6/17).

The London Financial Times' Tom Wolf, commenting (6/12) on the U.S. supposedly leading the capitalist world from recession into recovery, puts it even more bluntly: "This may turn out to be no more than a fairy story for frightened children. Recent falls in the stock market and the U.S. dollar suggest the children are unconvinced." Wolf suggests some hard changes in the U.S. economy, including what he calls the new economic bubble -- letting the dollar fall. But if the dollar falls (some estimate it to be overvalued by 15 to 30%), a worst-case scenario might mean oversea investors would pull out from U.S. stock markets and from investments in Treasury and corporate bonds. The consequent loss of trillions of dollars would really burst the U.S. bubble.

The problems of consumer confidence (worsened by the Enron/ImClone/Tyco-type thievery) and the fall of the dollar are aggravated by an even bigger headache: PROFITS! Capitalism is a profit system. Profits are crucial to its functioning. By the second quarter of 2000, U.S. corporate profits had peaked at $518 billion. By the fourth quarter of 2001, profits had sunk 44.4%. During the dream days of the dot.com "new economy," profitability was hidden by accounting tricks (a la Enron and its Andersen bookkeepers), which netted these CEOs a bundle.

Kevin Phillips' book, Wealth and Democracy, indicates that in 1981 the yearly income of the top ten U.S. CEOs averaged $3.5 million. But those greedy bosses were not happy with such a fortune. By 2000, the top 10 CEOs were averaging $154 million annually, 43 times what was "earned" in 1981! Meanwhile, most workers faced job- and pay-cuts. The "trickle-down" economy praised by the politicians and the bosses' pundits was a mirage. In fact, if the average worker earned, say, $25,000 a year, these 10 CEOs were raking in over 6,000 times that of the average worker! And considering that possibly one-fifth of the workers are below the poverty line ($15,000 for a family of three, $18,000 for a family of four), it's even worse than that. This inequality is growing by leaps and bounds.

Some U.S. rulers and their apologists realize this disparity could weaken workers' support for the system. Thus, a leading liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman denounced this inequality (6/14). Some CEOs are being used as scapegoats for this problem. Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is investigating Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, accusing him of stealing Tyco's money to buy artwork worth millions as well as an $18 million apartment.

Capitalism is based on inequality, so the main way the bosses try to get out of their crisis is through more exploitation, war and fascism. The U.S. ruling class needs to be the top dog in the imperialist world to keep its system afloat. That means war, war and more war (Iraq is the next target). It also means using the fascist laws under Homeland Security to terrorize workers here and abroad to accept this growing inequality of capitalism.

But capitalism will survive all its crises, until workers and students organize to fight for a society without profits and bosses. Join the PLP to accelerate the final bursting of the capitalist bubble.

Bus Strikers Blast Billionaire Bloomberg

QUEENS, NY, July 17 -- About 1,500 bus drivers, mechanics, dispatchers and cleaners struck three private bus lines for the third time this year -- having been without a contract since Jan. 1, 2001 -- but warned that this time they're "out for the long haul." While billionaire Mayor Bloomberg says, The city will not get involved," he was very ready to sign emergency powers to allow scab "dollar buses" to operate along these routes. Workers charged City Hall is involved because the bus lines operate on city subsidies and the mayor has to sign off on any new contract.

Employer contributions to workers' health care benefits appear to be the main issue. Strikers say city officials promised them the same formula as city workers, increased contributions of 19.8% over two years, but reneged on that, now offering only a measly 3.5%. One striker, John Schmahl, 35, said his 6-year-old son has Crohn's disease. "I need medicine and medical attention for him for the rest of his life. Without medical benefits I'm gonna go bankrupt trying to help my son. That's the whole reason we're out here." (Newsday, 6/18).

Many riders voiced support for the strikers, reported Newsday. "I feel sorry for the bus drivers," said one commuter. They should get "everything they ask for."

PLP'er Renews Ties At UAW Convention

"Barbara, how are you doing? It's been a while."

"Oh, it's quiet. I guess the girl is getting old."

"We may be getting old, but the quiet is bigger than both of us."

That's how two old friends got reacquainted at the UAW Constitutional Convention. This led to a brief discussion on how the working class is defenseless without a mass communist movement, in the face of growing fascism and war. Twenty years ago we had fought against the use of asbestos on the brake line at a Detroit-area auto plant. Addresses, phone numbers and CHALLENGE were exchanged, along with promises to stay in touch.

Other old friends greeted me with shock and surprise. "You're a delegate? How did that happen? Boy, have you changed!" With most of them I was able to discuss the dialectical category of Appearance and Essence. I explained how we were "marching into the enemy's camp" in order to build a mass communist movement. Again, addresses, phone numbers and CHALLENGE were exchanged.

For the most part, the Constitutional and Special Convention was one large perk, aimed at rewarding the loyal and corrupting new forces. The theme was, "America is a Union," and every session began with the national anthems of the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. Huge breakfasts, dinners and open bars were all part of the coronation of president Ron Gettelfinger and the new International Executive Board.

At the same time, many black, Latin and women delegates were in various leadership positions. Resolutions were unanimously passed against racial profiling, for affirmative action, for universal health care, against the racist round-up of Arab and Muslim citizens and immigrants, and more.

The president of the United Steel Workers, Leo Gerard, addressed the convention. This is the same guy who led the pro-boss Stand Up for Steel campaign and draped himself in the American flag (even though he is Canadian!). He gave a moving talk describing the conditions of steelworkers in other countries. Then he talked about the attacks on the health care and pensions of U.S. steelworkers. "The workers in other countries are not our enemy," he said. "The system that pits us against each other is our enemy!" Standing ovation.

After he finished, a black woman delegate from Detroit spoke from the floor. "I'm so proud of our union. I never thought I would see the day when we would bring to life the slogan, `Workers of the World, Unite!'" More applause.

But tucked away in the resolution on International Affairs and Labor Solidarity was the sentence, "The international consensus in the fight to eliminate terrorism must be maintained in addressing the dangers posed by Iraq." And there is the fingerprint of U.S. imperialism that they can't hide.

A pretty smart guy once asked, "What would you say about a union that was on strike for ten good demands on wages and health care, but demanded Hitler's birthday as a paid holiday?" That one demand would expose the essence of the strike and make the other demands meaningless. In the same sense, the union's support for an expanding oil war for U.S. imperialism shows what this is really all about.

Before the First World War, there was a socialist movement that also gave lip service to the international working class. But when the war broke out, Lenin described how they all "ran to the tents of their masters." The UAW leadership and the "left" of the labor movement is a poor imitation of that old movement. They are wedded to the ruling class and the profit system, and leading us to war.

On the other hand, there are many people we can win and influence, some at this convention and many more on the shop floor. But we've got to be in it to win it. It's a very complicated process that demands our full attention. The stakes are too high for anything less.

Convention Delegate

UAW Definition of `Job Security': Layoffs

LAS VEGAS, June 18 -- The UAW Special Convention for the 2003 contract talks with Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler made "job security" its top priority. This has also been the case for the past 30 years. Since 1978, union membership has fallen from 1.5 million to around 700,000, and about 50% of the domestic auto industry is now non-union. Real wages have grown by only 1.3% while the bosses have seen their pay rise by 109% -- not counting the millions in bonuses and stocks options. According to newly anointed UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, the goal in 2003 is "to improve upon what we have already done." Make room at the unemployment office!

The next round of talks is sure to be a series of concessions demanded by the auto bosses. The "Big Three" are losing market share to their European and Asian rivals, even as the U.S. market remains relatively strong. When this contract expires, there will be a rash of plant closings as the shrinking "Big Three" cut capacity to match this smaller market share. As head of the union's Ford department, Gettelfinger sat by as the company announced plans to eliminate 35,000 jobs, or 10% of the workforce, and shut down at least five plants. Meanwhile, the union has been unable to organize even one European or Japanese assembly plant in the U.S., and new plants are being built from Tennessee to Alabama to Mississippi.

The bosses intend to demand health care cuts. Gettelfinger's response is to ask the bosses to push for national health care. "The current crisis cannot be solved at the bargaining table," he said.

And he's right. The current crisis facing autoworkers is a result of the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. This rivalry, and the bosses' goal of world domination, is leading to more wars and increased fascist terror. The growing war in the Middle East and Central Asia, including plans to invade and occupy the oil fields of Iraq with 200,000 troops, is about controlling the flow of cheap oil. No one, not even Exxon Mobil, needs cheap oil more than the auto bosses.

The answer to this crisis is building a mass, international communist movement from deep inside the factories and the boss-led UAW. The fact is things will get much worse before we are strong enough to make them better. But in this period of war and fascism, there is plenty of room to grow and influence thousands of autoworkers. Building unbreakable ties, based on class struggle and an expanding base for CHALLENGE, will lay the basis for bigger revolutionary victories in the future. This happened to a small degree at the convention. It can grow in the months ahead.

NEW UAW HEAD: FORD'S MAN IN DRIVER'S SEAT

New UAW president Ron Gettelfinger has already secured his place in history. Just as Doug Fraser will always be known for organizing 1,000 paid goons to break the Mack Ave. Sit-Down strike with baseball bats in 1973, Gettelfinger will forever be linked to the deadliest accident in the history of the U.S. auto industry.

On February 1, 1999, six workers were killed and 14 were injured when gas inside one of the boilers at Ford's River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, ignited, causing a massive explosion and fireball. Donald Harper was killed instantly. Warren Blow, Ron Moritz, Ken Anderson, Cody Boatwright and John Arseneau died from burns and other injuries over the next three weeks.

With emergency vehicles at the scene and bodies still being removed, Gettelfinger told a news conference, "It was a safe facility, there's no question about that." The following day, when asked if Ford's cost-cutting had led to unsafe conditions in the plant he said, "I don't think there has been an erosion of safety...When there is cost-cutting, Ford's concern has always been with the people impacted."

The blast was the direct result of Ford's cost-cutting, including the elimination of 9,000 jobs and $2.2 billion in spending the previous year alone. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health administration found that Ford was aware of the potential for disaster, but decided not to spend money on the 78-year-old power plant. The union ignored the safety grievances of powerhouse workers -- including three of the men killed in the explosion -- about the very boiler that exploded.

Bosses' Hunger for Profits Starves Millions

Every four seconds worldwide someone dies from hunger and malnutrition. Six years after the first World Summit on Hunger, which aimed to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, more people than ever are hungry, 815 million according to FAO (the UN Food and Agriculture Organization). Three hundred million are children, 12 million of whom die each year of hunger and preventable diseases before reaching the age of five. Hundreds of thousands of children go blind because they lack vitamin A. No wonder the second World Summit on Hunger, begun earlier in June, was being labeled a failure even before it began.

UN chief Koffi Annan and FAO head Jacques Diouf blamed it all on the lack of aid from the "industrialized" (imperialist) countries. Many NGOs (Non Government Organizations), which held their own separate summit, agreed. They complained that only Berlusconi (Italy) and Aznar (Spain) attended, representing these imperialists who are the main cause of the problem, along with the local rulers and exploiters of the poorer countries.

The UN is asking $24 billion more in aid annually from the imperialist countries to fight world hunger. But between 1990 and 2000 just the opposite occurred -- the aid from the imperialists and international agricultural loans to poorer countries was cut in half.

Anti-hunger activists say hunger would diminish if the U.S. contributed a fraction of what it spends for its "war on terror." But that's exactly the cause of world hunger: the capitalists' "war on terror" is another drive for maximum profits by making war to control the world's cheap labor and resources (especially oil).

So Much Food and Cattle and So Much Hunger

Argentina, one of the world's leading producers of wheat and cattle, typifies the problem. Since last year's economic collapse, millions have lost their jobs. For the first time in modern history, hunger is a problem here. Diario Río Negro reports (6/10) that, "One can see hunger and clear signs of empty stomachs in the high schools of the city of Neuquén. Students are fainting in the classrooms more frequently....With empty stomachs `no one can learn,'" said one high school principal. Four out of 10 H.S. students drop out."

Starvation in the Land of Maize

The Mayans "named Guatemala Iximulew -- land of maize -- for its fertile soil. Now it is a land of hunger."(London Financial Times, 6/11). Recently at least 126 children have died of hunger. Six thousand more are expected to die here. In the last two years hurricanes and drought have worsened the problem in Central America generally. Last August, drought destroyed 80% of the maize harvest. Farmworkers and poor peasants, working as coffee-pickers, have suffered through a drop in world coffee prices. Last year 300,000 such jobs were lost in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. This combines with capitalism's extreme poverty -- almost 60% of Guatemala's 11 million people "live" on less than $2 a day.

Since Central America's civil wars ended over the last decade, of the region's 28 million people the number of hungry people has risen from 5 million to 6.4 million (UN figures). That's why CHALLENGE called the "peace" deals between the U.S.-supported death-squad governments and various nationalist guerrilla groups the "peace of the cemetery."

Yes, U2 Bono!

Bono, lead singer of the U2 rock band, and Paul O'Neill, former Alcoa CEO and Bush's Treasury Secretary, toured Africa for 10 days recently. It was basically a benefit show for MTV and Rolling Stone Magazine, unrelated to the hunger and AIDS ravaging Africa. Despite spats over O'Neill's arrogance -- lecturing to African health care and public health workers on the "wonders of the free market" -- they actually complemented each other. Bono, now a lead singer for capitalism, agrees with the Bush administration that "free markets" will take care of everything. He only wants the U.S. and other rich countries to "give a little more aid."

Bono stood next to Bush at the UN Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico a few months ago. There Bush announced that the U.S. would help "eliminate world poverty" with a few crumbs in aid.

The main way U.S. bosses eliminate poverty is by killing millions of poor people with their oil wars (their "war on terror"). Iraq -- where the U.S. embargo has caused malnutrition and hunger, killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, particularly children -- now faces Bush's "solution" to the problem: a massive invasion to seize the huge Iraqi oil fields for the benefit of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Shell and other U.S. and British oil companies.

Can hunger be eliminated? Yes. The world produces enough to feed everyone. But production and distribution are not based on need but on gaining maximum profits for a few. Under communism, production will correspond to need, not profits. Everyone will be guaranteed their share of as much food that's produced by the worker-run revolutionary society. For the sake of our class's starving children, let's fight for communism.

Cuba: Can't Build Communism with Capitalism

Millions of people marched from one end of the island of Cuba to the other to say, "Yes to the constitutional reform proposed by representatives of civil society declaring the socialist system untouchable, and pronounced a loud `no' to the fascist methods outlined by George W. Bush under the cloak of the anti-terrorist crusade, a speech he made at West Point." (Granma, 6/15)

This largest mobilization ever in Cuba was followed by the collection of over 8,000,000 signatures backing the constitutional reform. Unfortunately, the desires of millions of Cubans for a society without the gross inequalities and suffering so common in the capitalist world are already being sabotaged by capitalism's presence in the Cuban economy.

Cuba, like the rest of the world, has been hard-hit by the worldwide economic recession and by 9/11. It's Cuba's worst situation since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the consequent loss of trade and subsidies, leaving Cuba without 85% of its markets and supplies. Its Gross Domestic Product dropped 31%. But prior to 9/11, the Cuban economy was slowly recovering, becoming one of the fastest growing in the hemisphere (7% a year). Then, by the end of 2001 its growth rate sank to 1% and now is down even more.

Sept. 11 has hit the Cuban tourist industry, and raised oil import costs. Venezuela used to ship oil to Cuba at a special reduced price. In exchange, Cuba provided Venezuela with doctors and other skilled labor. But since the attempted coup in Venezuela against Chavez, and because of the problems facing the mostly government-owned oil company, Venezuela doesn't ship any more oil to Cuba. Now it must pay $1 billion a year for oil (1/3 of the amount spent for all imports).

Sept. 11 has also reduced funds sent by Cubans in the U.S. and other countries to their relatives on the island. And the world economic recession has lowered the price of Cuban exports, mainly sugar and nickel. In May 2001 sugar sold for $200 a ton. Now it brings only $155. For the first time in modern Cuban history, the government has closed 71 of the country's 156 sugar mills, laying off 100,000 workers -- 2.5% of the labor force. Worse still, the government has had to raise prices of basic goods.

Essentially the problem facing Cuba is capitalism. Though the Cuban government claims "capitalism will never return" and has organized the masses for socialism, the fact is the profit system has already returned, and in force.

A significant question facing revolutionaries is: can a small country or region, particularly an island like Cuba, easily blockaded by the big imperialists, build a communist society? It's not an easy question, and is related to internationalism, building a worldwide revolutionary movement to fight capitalism on many fronts. But in Cuba's case, the Castro regime did not try to build that kind of society from the beginning. First, it attached itself economically and politically to the Soviet Union, which (by the 1960s) had abandoned workers' power and was already on the road to state capitalism. Socialism in Cuba was state capitalism from the beginning. Then, when the revolutionary Red Guard forces in China tried to build a communist society (the first mass attempt in modern history to move from socialism to communism), Castro shunned that possible momentous leap by allying with the Soviets who had completely broken with China.

As PLP's Communist magazine article "Cuba Smoke (Spring 1991), pointed out: "One thing is certain: complete free market capitalism is eventually bound to come to Cuba, as it did to the other Socialist countries....Even if the Cuban workers wish no more than to keep the radical reforms brought them by the revolution, even if they wish no more than to avoid the East German-type catastrophe of massive unemployment and destruction of the health care, housing, education and welfare programs they worked so hard to create, they have only one option: organize their own revolutionary communist Party...." Then, workers and their allies can fight for a self-sufficient communist Cuba, where production serves both its own workers and that of revolutionaries fighting worldwide for the same goals.

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!

Students Lead
Teachers, Parents To
Defy NYPD

On June 4, I attended a teachers union-organized rally at City Hall in NYC as part of the campaign for a new teachers contract. This action differed from all others because thousands of teenagers came and were the best part of it.

Some think the students participated only because a number of hip-hop and rap stars were appearing to support the union. But the students' support for the teachers was strong and touching, and it transformed the rally from another "stand-around-and-listen" one into a lesson in what we can do when we don't buy the bosses' "good behavior" line.

The NYPD had set up "cattle pens" on nearly every block of Broadway near City Hall, and forced people to walk as much as half a mile out of the way to get into one. They blocked off streets between the pens and wouldn't let anyone move from one to the next.

But when the pens became very tightly packed, the students demanded to be let through. The crowd of teachers, parents and students in my pen alternated contract chants with demands of "Let us through!" and kept moving slowly forward until the front of the pen was so crowded that it seemed about to burst.

Cops ran back and forth. Cops on horseback were called in. Soon block after block, they were forced to open the pens and let the crowd move. Many of the cops were clearly scared -- they are used to pushing docile crowds around for the bosses. Eventually, we were able to move all the way to the front of the rally at City Hall.

Does this sound like disorderly conduct? Not at all! Throughout the whole process, the crowd moved together--no one was shoved aside or trampled. Teenagers helped older people over obstacles, made sure that no one, young or old, fell or was pushed into danger. It was a moment when it was clear that we were there as workers and workers-to-be, brothers and sisters--not a collection of groups, but one class.

If we can preserve that kind of spirit in all our schools and neighborhoods, we can win much more than a strike or a contract -- we can win the world for our class.

A not-too-old guy in Brooklyn

Liberals' Fascist Law Aimed at Reds

Thanks for the sharp analysis of how liberal politicians are doing the bosses' work of promoting fascism. Often I hesitate to struggle with my friends who are active in liberal-led peace and justice activities. Reading CHALLENGE reminds me how critical this struggle is.

But I don't agree that all these liberals want to "criminalize any political activity that opposes the system, from the mildest protest to more militant, revolutionary organizing." Some of them expect a mass anti-war movement to develop, for example around Iraq, and are already preparing to take it over and limit its goals.

In California, Senate Bill 1680 would limit penalties for misdemeanors related to political demonstrations to a fine of no more than $100 and/or two days in jail. The Senate passed it 27-9. Liberal darling Jackie Goldberg introduced it in the Assembly, which approved it in committee. The full Assembly will vote on it soon.

This bill says, "Political free speech...makes the United States of America and California truly great." Paying homage to Thoreau, Margaret Sanger, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez, it encourages "peaceful non-violent civil disobedience" for the "worthy purposes of exposing injustice and seeking to improve society."

This bill aims to encourage mild (though seemingly militant) protest in order to prevent revolutionary organizing. It correctly identifies these as polar opposites. It warns that harsh sentences for peaceful protests "are counter-productive, and may create a dangerous apathy which could manifest itself in violence."

The bill specifically excludes any protest that "threatens to cause physical harm to property or bodily harm to persons" as well as any protest that actually causes harm. The judge will decide on any particular case. What will judges say about "Death to the fascists" or "Turn the guns around...shoot the bosses down"?

As the Neville Brothers put it in a song, "There's freedom of speech....as long as you don't say too much." SB 1680 is a fascist law disguised as "progressive."

While some backers of SB 1680 undoubtedly mean well, the effect of encouraging civil disobedience builds the idea that the bosses have the "right" to state power. They get to make and enforce laws and policies while we get to suffer the consequences of breaking them.

We need to join liberal groups and movements in order to struggle and win the good people in them -- and they are mostly good people! -- to see through this subterfuge. Workers and youth must smash the rulers' fascist strangle-hold and end their devastating wars by taking power into our own hands, not by peacefully submitting to the bosses' laws.

California Reader

In Memoriam:
Haven Wilson

Recently a good friend and dedicated comrade, Haven Wilson, died tragically in Sausalito, California. She was 56 and had been a past member of PLP.

Haven had been caring for her aged parents. Her father died from cancer and her mother was suffering from a stroke.

Haven was principled, caring and inspired. She battled capitalism and believed workers could build a better society based on communist ideas.

We worked together at the phone company where Haven was an active union steward who always put the workers first. Recently, she was an active member of PUEBLO (People United for a Better Oakland), and very much respected.

I'll always remember the message on her telephone answering machine:. "The revolution's not here yet and neither am I. Please leave a message."

Oakland Comrade

`Free Market' Costly For E. Europe Workers

A New York Times article (6/12) entitled, "As Poland Endures Hard Times, Capitalism Comes Under Attack" reports on 6,000 Szczecin shipyard workers who've been jobless and without pay since March. Sensing violent protests, the government ordered the first re-nationalization of a formerly state-owned company. These same workers were fooled by the reactionary. anti-communist "Solidarity" movement in the 1980s into fighting against what they thought was a "communist government." (In fact, state capitalism really ruled Poland and all of the former Soviet bloc).

The few who've benefited from capitalism are those now considered the middle class throughout Eastern Europe. But this comes at the expense of millions of workers. They are now super-exploited. They no longer have subsidies for housing, education, health care, vacations, unemployment insurance and retraining, family allowances, youth programs and other gains from the socialist past. All this means massively higher profits for the bosses. Some profits trickle down to the managerial class, and to those who provide services for the wealthy and the managers.

A friend related experiences with some of his college students from Eastern Europe. A Slovakian student said straight out that things were much better under "communism." A Polish student had the same impression. A Serbian student was horrified by the bombing of Yugoslavia, and knows things were much better before the break-up, in fact before the war.

I'm in regular contact with some Russians and read quite a bit of Russian stuff. There is tremendous anger at the catastrophic decline in living standards and life expectancy. There's also a great sense of defeatism, cynicism, nationalism and anti-communism, as well as turning towards religion -- and a rosy view of the Brezhnev years (far too rosy!).

The cynicism is hard to overcome, but it can and must be. Workers worldwide, not only in the former socialist countries, have suffered greatly because the bosses and their agents inside the working-class movement have been able to combine anti-communism and passivity to turn the clock back on the progress of humanity towards a society without capitalism. Those of us who fight for a communist future -- learning from the many errors and strengths of the old movement -- must do even more to fight to win workers and youth to see that the only answer to the hell of capitalism is to fight for communism.

Red Tovarich

Building PLP in
Campus Labor Group

Given the contemporary fascist political climate, our work within mass organizations is more important than ever. Yet our position within these organizations poses a problem. How does one incorporate revolutionary politics into reformist movements? My experiences as a student at a major eastern university illuminate this question.

I joined a labor action organization that draws its members primarily from the labor school at the university and especially future AFL-CIO union organizers. At one meeting I proposed that the theme for our May Day celebration be against the war on terrorism. At this point I got a negative response. Preferably the slogan should be for communist revolution, after all this is May Day. However, the club members prefer a vague and opportunist slogan for peace and freedom. I felt that I had compromised my position by just calling for an anti-war position, and even that wasn't conservative enough for them.

My proposal to hold a real position was not lost on the club members however. I argued against the war on terrorism further with a few members I knew well and sent them articles I found online about US military presence abroad. Furthermore I set the stage for a more advanced May Day slogan next year. Even within this struggle I won some ground, with the leader changing his position from, "why should we call for peace if these people [Hamas in Iran, Iraq and Syria] want to kill us" to acknowledging Bush's insidious plans for world domination.

This organization opposes revolutionary politics. However, I continue to have a long-term perspective and I plan to keep heightening the contradictions between their reformist goals and capitalism. Next year I will continue to expose US imperialism during the meetings and one on one with members of the group. I will recruit to PL those members who see the futility in this world system.

Young Comrade

May Day in
El Salvador

On May 1, thousands of workers and others marched in El Salvador, chanting "Long Live May 1st"; "Long live the Martyrs of Chicago for giving their lives to fight capitalism." The mass of marchers warmly received our newspaper DESAFIO-CHALLENGE. Even though President Paco Flores' cops took over the sidewalks to intimidate the marchers, we were able to pass out our literature.

The bosses' press here tried to insult the marchers, saying they were all "agitators." Yes, workers and students are agitated -- because of the failures of capitalism, and the lies of its media. But they are more than that. Many are organizing to change the situation.

We in PLP have the potential to grow even more, showing workers and youth that capitalism is a dead-end hell, from Afghanistan to San Salvador to Los Angeles, and that the only solution is to fight for a society without hunger (killing many in Central America), wars, fascist repression and unemployment. That society is communism.

El Salvador comrade