Rulers’ Mideast Schemes: Oil and War

In serving the U.S. ruling class, two factors guide Barack Obama’s policies in the greater Middle East: controlling oil profits, and preparing for a future inter-imperialist war. This explains what Obama did in Libya — and what he hasn’t done in Egypt.
Unlike Libya, Egypt doesn’t have much oil. But it does have the Suez Canal, a vital waterway for the world’s main cheap oil reserves. The bulk of Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi and other Europe- and North America-bound oil exports travel through the canal. Most of it goes under the U.S. and allied British brands of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell. In addition, U.S. Navy warships depend mightily on the canal. The Pentagon’s World War III planning counts on it. If the canal were to be shut by anti-Western insurgents, oil exports would need to detour thousands of miles around the southern Horn of Africa to reach their destinations.
And it’s pertinent to note that Egypt’s armed forces keep the Suez Canal open.

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Trayvon Verdict Means: Fight Against Racism, For Communist Revolution

WASHINGTON, DC, July 21 — After the racist acquittal of George Zimmerman who murdered teenager Trayvon Martin, PLP’ers took to the streets here with many other outraged workers and students. Twelve hours after the verdict, PLP assembled over a dozen organizers to leaflet and mobilize workers in the Stoddert Terrace neighborhood in Ward 7 against the acquittal. This bullhorn rally moved through the community where PL’ers have been active for over two years, reaching scores of residents with flyers and speeches. Some young workers called for Zimmerman’s head! Many understood how serious the racist offensive in the U.S. is today.

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Chicago: Antiracist Trayvon Marchers Welcome PL’s Ideas

CHICAGO, July 14 — Supporters of Trayvon Martin gradually gathered at what first looked like a lonely intersection. News crews and photographers were first to arrive but slowly and steadily students and workers began arriving. The march organizers were college students who were outraged and emotionally affected by the verdict.

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Mexico’s Education Reforms Net Bosses Millions, Push Rulers’ Ideology

The rulers’ latest education reforms show how the state and the law serve capitalist interests against the working class. Privatizing education enables a handful of millionaires to turn the educational system into a commodity and get rich from the labor of hundreds of teachers and millions of students and parents.
Education is not just a business for the ruling class; it’s also an important way to control workers ideologically. Their education reforms will promote even more individualist, racist and fascist that ideology the bosses need.

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Robbing Detroit’s Workers Proves Capitalism’s Bankruptcy

DETROIT, July 26 — There are many lessons to be learned from the city of Detroit being forced into bankruptcy. The bosses and the media they own would have us believe that good wages, health care and pensions are the cause of every financial crisis. But the Detroit bankruptcy is an attempted “Smash and Grab” by the bosses to steal $3.5 billion in city workers’ pensions and $5.7 billion in retiree health care. The bankruptcy will enable a federal bankruptcy judge to impose further cuts to city services and to void union contracts.

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Find No Justice in Bosses’ Courts

Hammond, IN, July 20 — In front of the federal court house, over 100 angry workers protested the racist verdict from the trial of George Zimmerman, murderer of Trayvon Martin.  The demonstration was sponsored by the Rainbow/Push coalition, but much of the contingent were community residents and friends. The misleaders of the protest offered workers no real solutions to the callous and racist murder of black youth under capitalism.  

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Angry Black Youth Block Traffic, Trains, Smash Police Cars

LOS ANGELES, July 20 ­— For the last week thousands of workers from all over LA have protested the racist verdict allowing lynchman Zimmerman to go free. Multiracial protests, led in large part by militant black working-class youth, took to the streets, stopping traffic along both sides of Crenshaw Boulevard, stopping the train system along the way and taking over parts of the highway for a time. Some expressed their anger by attacking police cars and destroying fences and storefronts. The Party participated in all of these demonstrations, distributing CHALLENGE with lead articles connecting the Trayvon Martin case with the racist killer cops in New York. We led anti-racist, anti-capitalist chants and carried signs that said “Racist Murders Mean Fight Back!” and “Trayvon Means Fight Kourts, Kops, Kapitalism.”

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Racist Bosses Wrecking Hospitals; Workers’ Rx: Multiracial Unity

BROOKLYN, NY, July 28 — “They are trying to turn back the clock, but we are not going back to the cotton fields!” declared a nurse from Interfaith Hospital.
She was referring to the racist nature of the planned cuts in healthcare and jobs as bosses move forward with plans to close two major hospitals in Brooklyn. Workers continue to come out in the hundreds in rally after rally to fight these racist, sexist closings.  But as we go to press, Long Island College Hospital (LICH) is down to a handful of patients and workers have been put on “administrative leave” until the courts can sort out how to close the hospital and Interfaith bosses have submitted a closure plan to the Department of Health and Hospitals.

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Latest Bo$$es’ Bonanza: Privatizing Community Colleges

SAN FRANCISCO, July 9 — Fifteen hundred students, teachers, staff and community members marched without a permit from the downtown campus of San Francisco City College (CCSF) to rally at the Department of Education, protesting the threatened closing of the college. CHALLENGE was distributed to the marchers. PLP’s job is to give communist leadership in this struggle, steer the fighters to the left with our paper CHALLENGE and study groups, continue to build strong ties and recruit them to a communist outlook.
School and community organizers and a few politicians denounced the recent decision by the ACCJC (the publicly chartered but private accrediting agency) to cancel CCSF’s accreditation effective next year.

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Racist Verdict: Bosses’ Weapon for War

Florida vigilante George Zimmerman stalked and murdered unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Yet on July 13, a Florida jury found Zimmerman not guilty. Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury of six — and by capitalism. Hypocrite Barack Obama, after saying that Martin resembled his imaginary son, okayed the verdict: The law must be obeyed. Under capitalism, of course, laws are enacted to enforce the bosses’ profit system. Obama is the enforcer-in-chief who just recommended NY Police chief Ray Kelly for the Homeland Security post because he did an “Extraordinary Job”  
The racist triggerman didn’t act as a lone, self-appointed executioner. The admitted cop wannabe followed U.S. rulers’ official (if unstated) fascist rules for police: a) Assume that all black and Latino youth are criminals; and b) Shoot to kill.

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