Asia: Coming Battleground in U.S.-China Rulers’ Dogfight

“The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action,” writes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine. In the article, “America’s Pacific Century,” she announces a major change in U.S. foreign policy, a “pivot to new global realities,” that sets its sights among the three giants of the Asia-Pacific: China, India and the U.S.

Crucial in this strategic turn to maintain U.S hegemony is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a vast trade network spread across the Asia-Pacific rim promoted by Obama at the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum in November. Currently being negotiated by nine countries, the TPP is essentially a U.S. thrust to exploit the markets, cheap labor and raw materials of the world’s fastest growing region and is also a move to contain China, the main threat to U.S imperialist aims.

In 1997, then Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin likened a similar strategy to having China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and string.” But China is no sleeping giant. The Chinese Global Times warned that, “any country which chooses to be a pawn in the U.S. chess game will lose the opportunity to benefit from China’s economy.”

Obama urged the nine Beijing neighbors to join this “landmark 21st-century trade deal,” noting China’s trade barriers, high tariffs and taxes on foreign investors. Chinese Premier Wen countered that the region’s countries share interests as developing nations with dynamic economies, unlike the West which, “lacks momentum,” and is “plagued by serious financial and debt crises.”

But these threats and promises of economic gains and losses veil serious intentions to control the region’s economy, militarily if necessary.

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10th Anniversary of Haitian Union Group: PLP Points to Road to Revolution

PORT-AU-PRINCE, December 10 — Ten years of struggle by the unions in a progressive federation here have mostly meant heartbreaking frustration for the workers involved. They are still organizing, although their strikes, marches, mass meetings, forums, legal fights, petitions and press conferences have yielded so little. Yet they fight on. Many hundreds have been fired, in several different industries, for union activism. In fact almost every delegate at the dinner was currently jobless for that reason! In two unions they are still battling after three years or more for back pay and reinstatement after mass illegal layoffs of unionists. The workers in one case were rounded up and physically kicked out of their workplace by police swat teams. 

So how do we win? Among the ideas considered by this group of committed men and women workers was the road to revolution, the need for a communist party, and the importance of an international revolutionary movement. These ideas were raised by a union leader from the old communist movement and developed by PLP speakers from two countries. They put it in the context of inter-imperialist rivalry and war, and what this turmoil in global capitalism means for Haitian workers.

They spoke of the bitterness of this period for workers under fascist and imperialist attack like those in Haiti, but also even in the U.S., where workers face frozen wages in union contracts and over 20% unemployment. They showed how Haitian unemployment and labor migration (1 million in North America) are an important tool in the bosses’ plan to drive down wages and divide the working class in this whole region. 

Unemployment in Haiti is between 70% and 90%, which makes any union struggle difficult as bosses use unemployed workers as weapons against those with jobs. Workers here respond to the bosses’ use of the “reserve army of the unemployed” by helping one another day to day, making every job feed many of the jobless. Some progressive unions also seek to cross the divide by including the unemployed in their ranks. In one union there are 400 employed and 400 unemployed members. Those employed have actually taken the jobs of those fired en masse for unionizing. But despite the initial feeling against scabs, they are now accepted as brothers and sisters by those who were kicked out. This union sings a song at the end of its delegate assembly that leads off: “Unions stand up! Strike for liberty!”

Critically and self-critically, one major weakness of the event was the absence of the hospital workers recently on strike — the sharpest struggle of the moment. Inevitably, four of their leaders were fired during the strike. Party members should certainly have made sure these workers were not only present but cheered and supported by the meeting. The anniversary dinner could and should have become a moment of organizing by the federation of more active and militant support of these members under attack.

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Occupiers Blockade West Coast Ports

OAKLAND, CA., December 13 — Thousands of Occupiers, confronted by police in riot gear, shut or disrupted ports from Anchorage, Alaska, to Southern Ca., highlighting economic inequality and high unemployment.

Thousands of pickets chanting “Whose ports? Our Ports!” forced the closing of four shipping terminals here. Hundreds shut two of Portland’s four main terminals. Seattle cops used “flash-bang” percussion grenades against protestors blocking the port entrance, arresting 11.

Pickets in Longview, Wash., demonstrated in solidarity with longshoremen fighting EGT Investment over the latter’s takeover of their jobs. They were also protesting Goldman-Sachs which owns a stake in the largest cargo terminal operator, SSA Marine. Other demonstrations occurred as far south as Long Beach, CA. and as far north as Vancouver, Canada and Anchorage, Alaska.

Although the longshore union refused to support the actions, an Oakland docker said “the rank and file have spoken today by not crossing the lines.”

Reuters reported (12/13) that in Oakland, “Two longshoremen outside the gate said they would refuse to cross the picket lines to get to their jobs and assumed others would follow suit” (Sacramento Bee 12/13).

Doug Seaman, a 35-year-old unemployed construction worker, told the San Francisco Chronicle (12/12), “We need to make the public aware that Wall Street’s tentacles have infiltrated every facet of our lives.”

Obama’s ‘Populist’ Fascism

“Infusing his speech with the type of populist language that has emerged in the Occupy protests around the nation, Mr. Obama warned that growing income inequality meant that the United States was undermining its middle class” (NY Times, 12/6/11).

On December 6, the 101st anniversary of arch-imperialist president Teddy Roosevelt’s (TR) famous speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, Barack Obama returned to the town in an attempt to steer the momentum of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) to serve U.S. capitalists’ war needs.

TR supposedly had come to Osawatomie to commemorate John Brown’s heroic 1856 anti-slavery battle there (see box). But in reality, like Obama and other politicians now trying to mislead OWS, Roosevelt sought to channel workers’ demands for equality into all-class unity to support imperialist wars. With U.S. rulers seeking to expand beyond their 1898 conquests of former Spanish territories (including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines), he called for a “New Nationalism,” the patriotic ideology that would help push the U.S. into World War I five years later. At the same time, he created a template for Italy’s Fascists and Germany’s Nazis: a highly centralized and regulatory capitalist government that can control all classes, and the propaganda that service to such a state is for the greatest good.

TR aimed to reform capitalism. He ran for president on the so-called Progressive Party” ticket, and became known as a “trustbuster” for wanting to discipline the ruling class and save the system from its own excesses. Meanwhile, he popularized his case for imperialist aggression with a famous saying: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

A century later, Obama is working overtime to revive TR’s deadly pronouncements. Here are some Rooseveltian sound bites that Obama has embraced:

Equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest [read “military”—ed.] service of which he is capable.

I believe in an efficient army and a navy large enough to secure for us abroad that respect which is the surest guaranty of peace.

[I] ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole.

By championing the “national interest,” Roosevelt was hiding the fact that the government’s job is to protect the interests of those who control society, namely the capitalist bosses, both in the U.S. and abroad. Throughout the world, local bosses in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have used nationalism to spur workers to oust imperialist powers and “liberate” former colonial countries. Then the local capitalists take their turn in exploiting workers for profit, a common thread in this year’s “Arab Spring.”

The Patriotic ‘Middle Class’

Obama is straining to preserve the concept of a patriotic “middle class,” which serves to deaden class conflict and as a buffer between rulers and most workers. In imperialist economies thriving off colonial mega-profits, bosses can  be forced to respond to class struggle by conceding a higher standard of living for the home country’s working class. The bosses then cite these workers as a new “middle” class (see box below).

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PL’ers Lead Hundreds to Defy Cops

LOS ANGELES, November 30 — Over 2,000 workers converged on LA’s City Hall on November 27, anticipating the police raid to remove the Occupy encampment. PLP mobilized a group of about 20 students and workers to show solidarity and help organize a defense of the camp. In the hours leading up to the midnight deadline, the PL group distributed 100 CHALLENGES and organized a picket line chanting, “The workers united will never be defeated” and “Whose streets? Our streets.”

As midnight neared, PL led the picket into the streets, defying the police who told the PL’er on the bullhorn leading the march to get back on the sidewalk. Eventually, what was a relatively small picket turned into several hundred protestors, taking over a street intersection next to the main Occupy encampment on the south lawn of City Hall.

Many expected a confrontation with the LAPD that night. However, it was not until the following night that the kkkops raided the camp, overwhelming the couple of hundred occupiers with a force of 1,400 cops. Under orders from the “progressive” LA Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, the cops utilized their best “community policing” techniques to avoid an all-out confrontation with the occupiers.

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Cops’ Attacks Can’t Stop Protest of Racist Tuition Hike

NEW YORK CITY, November 28 — Today the City University of New York (CUNY) trustees outdid themselves in fascist absurdity. They locked all Baruch College students, faculty, and other workers out of their own school so that they — bankers and ruling-class stooges appointed by the mayor and governor — could impose a racist 33% tuition hike on the mostly black and Latino and immigrant students.

The events of the previous Monday triggered the lock-down. On November 21, a militant group of 500 students arrived at the “public” meeting where the CEOs and other bosses that make up the Board of Trustees (BoT) supposedly listen to testimonies from the community. This is another capitalist lie. The decision had already been made.

Nevertheless, students and workers gathered, ready to make the BoT listen to them. CUNY responded with baton-wielding “public safety officers” and NYPD cops. Students were sitting in the lobby chanting, “Occupy the Lobby!” The cops attacked, swinging their batons wildly. In discussion during and after the event, PL’ers stressed that this was, and is always, the role of the kkkops: to terrorize workers, especially black, Latino and women workers, into submission.

We were not intimidated, and returned today for the BoT to officially vote on their racist plan. So angry were students and workers over last week’s cop-attack that CUNY bosses had to shut down the entire college to hold this meeting!  Like slave-owners whose greatest fear was the slave revolt, the bosses today acted out of fear for they could not trust anyone at Baruch. More than 15 students were arrested, including one student whom the cops sexually harassed.

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Brazil: Cops Occupy Workers’ ‘Favelas,’ Kill Youth

The working class in Brazil continues to pay a high price for having a  pseudo“leftist” government. These rulers work only to benefit the international capitalist class, spending the country’s international reserves to save Europe’s bosses from their financial crisis. Meanwhile, they continue to exploit Brazil’s workers.

During the first five days of November, 1,800 workers went on strike against LG Electronics, the Korean multinational, demanding the rehiring of ten workers fired for fighting to improve their miserable working conditions. In the state of Ceará, university professors and students have been on strike since November 11 against budget cuts.

Meanwhile, as pseudo-leftist president Dilma Rousseff talks of “democracy,” police in Rio de Janeiro occupied the favelas (slum neighborhoods) of Rocinha (which alone has 70,000 residents), Vidigal and Chácara do Chapéu. The action was justified as part of the Police Pacification Unit (UPP). The occupation began on November 13, to continue indefinitely.

The UPP, initiated by Governor Sergio Cabral in 2008 in the Santa Marta favela, is supposedly designed to expel drug-trafficking gangs from the favelas while installing community security systems. According to Rio de Janeiro’s town council, 29 of the city’s 605 favelas are already controlled by the UPP. Most are in the southern part of the city, where is also home to some of the richest neighborhoods. A good example is Rochinha, sandwiched between such luxurious neighborhoods as São Conrado and Leblon. Unlike most big cities, where the poor population is isolated on the periphery of the city, Rio’s poor occupy the hills throughout the city. The social inequalities are more obvious and transparent here.

Does it fight drug trafficking?

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Purdue U: Actions Mount to Fire Racist Prof

HAMMOND, IN, November 27 — Demonstrations at Purdue U. Calumet (PUC) against racist Professor Maurice Eisenstein show no signs of dying down. Students have been campaigning without let-up to force the administration to fire Eisenstein.

The students’ actions include circulating petitions, urging victims of Eisenstein’s racist and sexist attacks to file formal complaints, and organizing public demonstrations and a campus-wide forum. Despite right-wing opposition and institutional apathy, students are demanding nothing less than immediate termination of Eisenstein’s professorship at PUC, and won’t back down until that goal is achieved.

Eisenstein has used his classes to disseminate his extreme Zionist and imperialist rhetoric — advocating extermination of Arabs, and the colonization of their lands by Israelis and Americans. He has stepped far beyond the usual pro-imperialist stance on current events, propagating into hateful dehumanization of Arabs, blacks, Latinos, migrant workers, and women. His extremism has culminated in direct personal attacks on students and faculty.

Despite much evidence to show his complete unsuitability as a professor, the university has been apathetic to the point of complacency for almost two decades. Only after the impassioned protests from a multi-racial coalition of angry students has the university begun to take the issue seriously. Meanwhile, both Eisenstein and a small group of his supporters are hiding behind a right-wing excuse of “free speech” while turning a blind eye to his abuse of power as a professor and the potential consequences of racist indoctrination.

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L.A. Times Praises Karl Marx! Capitalism’s Savage Disease: Mass Unemployment

“The real number of unemployed or underemployed people in the U.S. is a stunning 26.9 million,” (LAT, 11/30), although figures below indicate it’s closer to 35 million.

“The term ‘reserve army of labor’ is vintage Karl Marx” admits the LA Times. “But,” it continues, “let’s not hold that against it if it’s on the mark. These workers are on reserve; they are standing ready to work. And their sheer numbers make them an army.”

The ‘8.6%’ Scam

The bosses’ media spouts a “drop” in the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.6% (from the previous month’s 9%). Obama hails this as a sign of economic recovery. But this spurious figure results from the fact that 300,000+ workers who gave up looking for non-existent jobs are no longer included in the labor force and therefore are not counted as unemployed. According to such fraudulent figuring, if a few million more workers give up looking for these non-existent jobs, the jobless rate might “drop” to 6%!

Shadowstats.com reports that this “drop” in the jobless rate “actually signaled ongoing economic collapse…not the ongoing recovery heralded by the Administration and…Wall Street,” given the “swelling ranks of ‘discouraged’ workers.”

Not only does the government’s 8.6% jobless rate not include part-time workers who want but can’t find full-time jobs, nor “discouraged” workers who’ve given up looking for work after 26 weeks (which would raise the rate to 22.6% — Shadowstats.com), but it also excludes:

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Students’ Sit-in Breaks Rules, Blasts Racist Bosses

CHICAGO, November 23 — The Occupy Wall Street movement came to Chicago State University (CSU) today as the Independent Student Union (ISU) led 75 students and faculty to occupy the president’s office for two hours.

An ISU leader listed local campus issues and explained that Illinois owes CSU $15 million, including $3 million in state grants. During the following speak-out, many students, tired of being disrespected and given the run-around, detailed the university’s failure to facilitate registration; to properly process withdrawals from a class (leading to Fs on the transcript); to repair crumbling infrastructure; to treat students with respect; to raise funds; and to improve communications with students.

A married couple, both CSU students, brought their children, showing them by their example that we need to unite and fight back. The father told President Watson that his administration was damaging CSU’s reputation by not providing a student-friendly environment. A student brought her mother, a CSU alumnus, who remembered that students had the same complaints when she was attending.

Support from Purdue

A transfer student, about to graduate, was incensed over the lack of recognition for maintaining a 4.0 average. Students who came from Purdue U. Calumet to support the occupation described their campaign against a racist professor on their campus.

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