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THE RACIST PROFIT SYSTEM ATTACKS ALL WORKERS. IT HAS TO GO!

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has unmasked the racist and anti-working class nature of the U.S. bosses and capitalism and imperialism in general. As this is written, over 20,000 residents of New Orleans , the vast majority black, have taken shelter in the city's Superdome. The dome's roof has leaked and inside it is wet. The people there have little to no food or drinkable water. Since three levies broke, the water continues to rise. The people are desperate.

Clearly, when the evacuation order was given on Saturday in plenty of time for some, it meant, “Those who have cars and can afford to leave, leave now. Others fend for yourselves.” The rulers knew that the infrastructure of the area was in serious disrepair, that New Orleans is below sea level and that a disaster was about to occur. Money for repairing the infrastructure had been spent instead in waging imperialist war. The city could have used public buses to take those who didn't have their own transportation out of harm's way. But this is capitalism where workers' lives are expendable on the altar of racist profits!

War Budget + Katrina = Deadly

In Early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Army Corps of Engineers said was needed for repair work at Lake Pontchartrain , according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

In June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana , told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money [to work on the levees and dams] has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq …”

The news media whined about “looting” by people who have no other way to get the food and water they desperately need. With 150,000 troops in Iraq securing the US bosses' oil profits, there certainly weren't enough National Guard troops to help in this emergency. The National Guard of Louisiana had complained before the hurricane hit that many of its vehicles and equipment needed for rescue work were sent to Iraq .

Workers Need Food and Shelter, Not Martial Law

But now, while in the past help for victims of natural disasters was done through the Red Cross, the federal emergency agency (FEMA) is taking control. And Martial Law is being imposed in some areas. This is another sign of the militarization of civil society.

Progressive Labor Party calls on workers, students and allies to demand that the workers of New Orleans be evacuated and taken to safety. We support efforts to bring aid to the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi . But even so, hundreds have died and many more will be sick, injured and die. These victims should be added to the tens of thousands of dead and injured in the Iraq war for oil profits. The storm was a product of nature, but its disastrous affects are a product of capitalism. Let this human-made disaster cause many more to decide that a system that exists only for the profit of a few bloodthirsty bosses shouldn't exist. Sure, they'll cry crocodile tears and now, too late, try to bring in some relief to some of those affected. But no matter how much they try to lie and say “we're all in this together. We're all Americans,” they have just shown yet again that we are NOT all in this together! Racism and exploitation of the working class are built into this system. In times of crisis, they stand in stark relief for all to see. We're in a life and death battle against the bosses. It's their profits or our lives.

We should not risk our lives to defend their profits in Iraq or anywhere else. We should pledge to fight to destroy them and their system no matter how long it takes.

Hurricane Mitch left death, disease, and homelessness in its wake in Central America . Hurricane Katrina is doing the same in Louisiana and Mississippi . Capitalism is the biggest disaster for the workers of the world. The long term battle to destroy it with communist revolution for workers' power will not be a picnic. But capitalism is the worst disaster! Workers' revolution is the only way out of this capitalist hell!

Issued by Challenge, revolutionary communist newspaper of Progressive Labor Party www.plp.org

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U.S. Bosses View Iraq As A Military Base With A Very Large Oil Reserve:

The January 30th Iraq elections have been hailed as a "victory" for the U.S. war strategy. We're shown entire Iraqi families voting "to defy terrorism." Well, indeed, many Iraqis did vote — mainly Shiites ordered by their religious leaders and Kurds wishing some kind of autonomy and control of Kirkuk's oil fields on their territory (possibly provoking a Turkish incursion) . But the fact remains that capitalist elections are a farce in general. And in Iraq, they're even more of a farce, occurring amid an insurgency, occupation and daily U.S./UK air bombardments more devastating than those during Operation Shock and Awe.

U.S. bosses want these elections to justify their war and occupation of Iraq but, "Despite the exhilaration, the election may do little to win international support, assure a friendly government in Baghdad or prevent the spread of civil strife…." says the LA Times (1/31). "Even with international blessings, the balloting is unlikely to persuade balky European and Arab powers to do much more on the ground to support the U.S. effort, diplomats said…. On the eve of the vote, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin reiterated France's support for the removal of all foreign troops from Iraq, and two former British foreign ministers, Douglas Hurd and Robin Cook, urged withdrawals of U.S. and British forces. Last week, Sen. Edward Kennedy said U.S. troops should begin an immediate, phased withdrawal."

Many Shiites voted not only because of orders from Al-Sistani, their religious leader, but also for ending the occupation and the strife affecting their daily lives. The best interest of the Iraqi people is not what the U.S. bosses have in mind: "…the U.S. project in Iraq has never been about democracy. It's been about getting control of Iraq's vast, virtually untouched oil reserves, and extending Washington's military reach over the region. ‘Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath; you can't ask for better than that,' Wall Street oil analyst Fadel Gheit told" the Toronto Star's Linda McQuaig (1/30).

To control that oil, U.S. bosses are spilling tons of blood, including over 1400 U.S. soldiers' deaths, as well as thousands of Iraqis, many of them innocent civilians. Under pressure, BBC's Panorama program retracted a January 30th report that in the last six months more than 2,000 civilians were killed outright by the occupation forces and their Iraqi stooges, while the insurgents accounted for 1,200 deaths. The figures, collected from public hospitals, exclude deaths of insurgents.However, the real totals are far worse, as reported by the British medical society's magazine "Lancet"which estimated that since the beginning of the war civilian deaths could be as high as 100,000, considering the complete breakdown of Iraq's medical system and resulting spread of disease.

In a January 30 speech, New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh reported that the U.S. is "systematically bombing [Iraq]….There's no air defense. It's simply a turkey shoot…. To carry out an election…bombing is key…. Iraq is being turned into a "Free-Fire Zone…. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner….

"I called him…and he picked up the phone and he said, ‘Welcome to Stalingrad.'"

The hype by U.S. rulers and the embedded U.S. media about the elections being a "turning point" recalls the same stuff when Saddam's statue was toppled -- an event staged by the Army Psy-Op branch; when Bush landed on the Lincoln aircraft carrier, proclaiming in a banner "Mission Accomplished"; and when Saddam was captured. The war will continue, and may spread to Iran, if the Iranian rulers use their influence over Iraq's Shiites to become the real winners of the January 30th farce.

Sixty years ago Iraqi workers and youth were united in the fight against the king and British imperialism. The old Communist Party was one of the largest political forces in the ‘40s and ‘50s, including Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkomans, Muslims, Christians and Jews. On May Day 1959, one million people marched under the red flags of the Iraqi CP. But the old communist movement's error of uniting with seemingly "progressive bosses" (like the Baath Party) led to the defeat of the working class. Many in that generation were murdered by the U.S.-backed Saddam's forces. The rest were lost when the organization attacked fundamental principles of Lenin in 1971. Today, the ICP is part of the U.S.-led Provisional Government. Workers and their allies in Iraq need a new communist movement, to fight all the bosses, fundamentalist reactionaries and imperialism. PLP will be that movement.

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Progressive Labor Party says: Don’t Vote: Fight for Communism!

On Wall St., major financial houses are crumbling under the weight of billions of dollars in bad debt. The credit-mortgage crisis continues to wreak havoc as the strong bankers eat the weak in this unholy ritual of capitalist competition. But don’t look for millionaires jumping out of windows on Wall St. Instead, billionaire financiers will be gliding into retirement on multi-million dollar golden parachutes. These captains do not go down with the ship.

Meanwhile, workers’ houses crumble in Galveston, Texas from Hurricane Ike, and Houston, the fourth largest city in the US, is still without electricity more than a week after the storm. There will be no bailouts our "soft landings" for them or the millions of victims of recent hurricanes in Haiti, Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean.

The bosses’ government and the central banks have put together a bailout plan worth hundreds of billions of dollars to see them through this crisis. That money is our pensions, social security and so much more. Every dime is stolen from our labor. Yet for us, all they have is racist police terror, immigration raids, racist cutbacks, and poverty wages. More than 20 million are unemployed and almost 50 million have no health insurance.

With the presidential election circus in full swing, the prisons are full, the schools are collapsing and the bloodbath in Iraq is spreading to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama and McCain both approve of widening the war. They both preach patriotism and national service, and they both support every step taken by the racist rulers to navigate this financial crisis.

Workers should turn their backs on them and follow the lead of 27,000 Boeing workers who are on strike against the war making aerospace giant. Boeing made over $13 billion in profit during the last contract, a record $4.7 billion last year. Much of this blood money comes directly from the Pentagon. Last month Boeing landed a $659 million contract for 16 additional fighter jets, adding to their contract to supply the Navy with 460 Super Hornets through 2012. At the same time, Boeing is slashing wages through two-tier contracts and farming out work to poverty wage non-union factories, many of them in southern California.

This is the third strike against a war contractor in the last 18 months. In March ’07, over 7,000 black and white ship builders struck Northrop Grumman and the Navy for one month in Pascagoula, MS. Last winter, thousands of UAW members struck Navistar which produces armored vehicles for Iraq. The bosses produce the weapons for war by waging war on the workers at home. The difference at Boeing is the presence of an active PLP and the influence of revolutionary communist ideas on many of the strikers. Our communist politics can help build the revolutionary movement from Seattle to Los Angeles to Mississippi and beyond. That is the answer to the endless crises and wars of the racist profit system.

The bronze bull of Merrill Lynch may be on its back, feet in the air, but capitalism is far from finished. The bosses can survive any economic, political or military crisis, even defeat in war. What they can’t survive is communist revolution, when millions of workers, soldiers, marines, sailors and youth seize power through armed struggle, led by a mass PLP. The chaos of capitalism will only mean more foreclosures, layoffs, racist cutbacks, hunger and imperialist war, here and around the world, no matter who wins the White House. There is another road; the road to revolution for a society without any bosses or bankers: communism. It’s long and difficult, and takes a lifetime of commitment. But it’s the only road that leads to a bright future for the workers of the world.

Issued by Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and its communist Newspaper CHALLENGE. To contact us write to GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202; e-mail: Desafio.challenge@gmail.com       On the web at http://plp.org