Mali: Imperialist Invaders Seek Uranium, Oil, Gold

The U.S.-backed French invasion of Mali with its 15 million people is geared to strip this country of its vast natural resources while hiding behind the Bush “war-on-terror” label. They use this label in the hope that it will generate unquestioning support for whatever the imperialists do in its name. This racist attack on innocent workers is occurring in the eighth nation in four years alone in which Western regimes are killing Muslims.
French bosses have a long history of colonization in Mali, having also established military bases in neighboring Niger, Chad and Burkina. So far they have sent in 4,000 troops equipped with armored vehicles, helicopter gunships and 40 airplanes which bombed Northern Mali. They hope for 5,800 more forces from other African capitalist countries.

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Hagel Is No Peacemaker; Obama’s New Pick for ‘Defense’ Means Wider War

By choosing Chuck Hagel as his Secretary of War to head the U.S. killing machine, Barack Obama is intensifying a dogfight among bosses over war policy. The same struggle recently did in Obama’s beloved General David Petraeus and was an underlying issue in last November’s election. Neoconservatives are seeking to make war “on the cheap” (reliance on drones and special forces instead of heavy troop deployment).  They are fixated on Iran’s threat to Israel. Obama’s camp, by contrast, is focused on longer-haul preparation for a broader global conflict. The neocons’ latest volley is a phony charge of anti-Semitism against Hagel, who has questioned whether the U.S. ruling class is best served by giving Israel a political blank check in its war of occupation against the Palestinians.

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South Africa’s Apartheid Hangs On: Armed Farm Workers Battle Cops, Close Highways

WESTERN CAPE PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA, January 12 — Thousands of farm workers toiling in this area’s vineyards and on grape and fruit farms have been wildcatting since October 30, demanding doubling of their starvation wages. The region is of huge financial importance to both wine production and tourism, but the farm workers still feel the brunt of Apartheid abuses, which is netting huge profits for the vineyard owners, in a $3.3 billion industry.
The strikers have clashed with bosses, scabs, private security goons and the police who have fired rubber bullets at the workers and called in helicopters for reinforcements. But the workers have answered back.

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School Bus Strike — Drive Back the Bosses’ Attack

NEW YORK CITY, January 16 — The worldwide capitalist system is facing an economic crisis that the bosses are trying to solve on the backs of workers. Here, this means high unemployment, hospital and school closings and attacks against many of the few remaining good-paying jobs. Therefore, it’s significant that 8,800 school bus drivers and matrons are striking against cutbacks by New York’s ruling class.
Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott pretend to care about students, but their lies shine through, given that they’ve slashed the budget for public schools. Furthermore, Bloomberg has overseen attacks on city workers, higher transit fares and less funding for hospitals — all of which means that the entire working class will suffer. Meanwhile the city spared no expense in getting Wall Street back up and running after hurricane Sandy. In this context, it’s a great thing that bus drivers and matrons are standing strong.

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Rebellion Forces Cop Retreat After Racist Murder

CHICAGO, January 3 — Racist police terror is a tool of the bosses to keep workers under control. Cops only serve and protect the capitalist class. On December 15, the Chicago kkkops shot and murdered 23-year-old Jamaal Moore. After crashing Jamaal’s car, the cops shot the young man twice in the back — all while the entire community watched in horror.
CPD (Chicago Police Department) claims he was involved with an armed robbery. Yet Jamaal was unarmed. His “gun” turned out to be a flashlight.

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Algeria: ‘We’re fed up!’ Workers’ Wildcat Shuts Postal System

ALGIERS, January 11 — Ninety-five percent of Algeria’s postal workers are defying the government and continuing their illegal wildcat strike for the twelfth straight day. They’re demanding the firing of both the general director of Algérie Poste and the general secretary of the official trade union, an affiliate of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA).
The strikers are demanding payment of a 30% wage hike due since January 1, 2008; payment of overtime hours worked in 2011; respect for all the demands won in their June 2011 strike; payment of the 2011 bonus; a wage raise and an investigation of Mohamed Laid Mahloul’s mismanagement, particularly of the promotions granted since he became general director. Eighty percent of the 30,000 postal workers say they’ve not received promotions due them.

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Haiti: Mass Protests for Workers’ Demands Defy Police Attacks

PORT-AU-PRINCE, December 12 — Students, teachers, and other members of the working class here continue their struggles against violence, injustice, insecurity, unemployment, cholera, occupation, and the outrageous wasting of government funds. They are organizing sit-ins, press conferences and marches to wrest a response from the rulers. The teachers continue to mobilize for better working conditions and a salary that meets their basic needs. Sometimes all these forces meet together — an idea of how it will be when workers everywhere are united under a single flag for revolution.

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Rx at Downstate: Strike to Stop Hospital Closing

BROOKLYN, NY, January 6 — Last year was one of struggle for workers at the State-run Downstate Medical Center, and 2013 will be another. We need to win thousands of workers, patients and working-class residents of our communities to fight back against the bosses’ plans to close hospitals and schools and save money on our backs. New York´s Governor Cuomo has already claimed that there’s “no money.”  That’s why they plan to shut down or privatize this hospital, which serves a mainly black and Latino working-class community and provides more than 8,000 jobs.

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Undocumented Hunger Strikers Fight for Papers

LILLE, FRANCE, January 12 — Today some 200 supporters rallied to back the 71-day hunger strike by 41 undocumented workers who represent the demands of 161 of their sisters and brothers for work papers for all. The action of these immigrant workers has exposed the utter disregard of the working class by the racist, “lesser-evil” Socialist government which has refused to issue these papers. More support has come from other undocumented workers who occupied the royal cathedral in Saint Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, on January 9. The strikers initially occupied the Fives-Lille Protestant church but were evicted. Since then, about 40 have lived in a tent in front of Saint Maurice’s church in downtown Lille.

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Aim Weekly Actions At Israeli Cops’ Fascist Terror

Jerusalem, Palestine, January 4 — Working-class activists from all over Israel-Palestine, both Jewish and Arab, have visited the East Jerusalem village-neighborhood of Issawiyye to show solidarity with the locals in the face of prolonged police terrorism against the villagers. Today, fifty activists of the Tarabut broad-left movement came to demonstrate against this police brutality. Three PLers, as well as an activist from Tarabut came to show solidarity as well and visited the homes of several villagers whose sons and daughter have been brutalized by the racist Israeli cops.
Before the 1967 war, Issawiyye was an agricultural village on what was then the border between Israel and Jordan, on the Jordanian side. In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem (as well as the entire West Bank and Gaza) and soon annexed the villages in East Jerusalem to its territory. The villagers have blue Israeli IDs and can vote in the municipal elections, but cannot vote in the national elections. Many of the villagers’ lands were confiscated, forcing them to abandon agriculture and become low-paid workers for Israeli bosses in West Jerusalem.

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