Hezbollah Boss A Compromise Choice As: Imperialists Scheme to Oppress Lebanon’s Workers

BEIRUT, LEBANON, February 15 — Most of the bourgeois parties representing various religious sects and nationalities here now agree to establishing a Hezbollah-led government that would cause a substantial change in the inter-imperialist relations and balance of power in the region. The pro-U.S. factions in the Lebanese ruling class are weakening, partially because of Hezbollah’s armed guerilla defeat of Israel in the 2006 war.

Hezbollah’s reconstruction project in Lebanon after that war made it popular among wide sections of the working class, mostly Shiites. The workers view this project as a “pro-people” initiative, contrary to the previous government’s policy of cuts, privatizations and rising prices for basic goods.

After the 2006 war, Hezbollah staged mass street demonstrations but refrained from taking power because it was not organized well enough to do so. Playing the “Hard-Line Opposition” role served it better politically. It’s likely that Hezbollah’s leaders were influenced by their bosses in Iran and Syria, and their rising imperialist masters in Beijing and Moscow, not to upset the inter-imperialist balance of power in the region, but rather to preserve the geo-political status quo.

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Haiti: Hunger Strike Teaches Mass Protest Is Way to Go

PORT-AU-PRINCE, February 26 — Five student militants from GREPS (Group for Reflection on Social Problems) went on a hunger strike for ten days after administrators at the Faculty of Ethnology of the State University of Haiti continued to ignore their demands for a functioning campus with a full program of courses, a library, and a cafeteria. The administration still made no response to these basic demands.  The hunger strikers were hospitalized for observation, and two are still there. “I have to tell you that so far nothing has been done. For more than a year there have effectively been no courses...It seems there is no future for Haitian youth any more,” wrote a GREPS leader.

But the students, who are also demanding the return of expelled  militant comrades, are holding firm.  They are organizing a general popular assembly of students, teachers, and workers on March 10, and marches and other protests after that date. They drew this lesson from the non-response to their hunger strike: “It has clearly shown how these vampires care not a whit for human life but rather only for capital and power.”

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Shades of Hitler: The Third Reich Rises Again

In an address to members of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) on October 17th, 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the German “experiment” in multiculturalism had “utterly failed.” She went on to state that non-Germans, particularly Arabs and Muslims, were incapable of “living side by side” with the German people.¹ This came only two months after the release of German central banker Thilo Sarrazin’s racist book Germany Abolishes Itself, in which Sarrazin argues that immigrants are lowering German IQs.²

That Merkel and Sarrazin would so openly parrot the views of the Nazi regime is indicative of a growing trend in Germany. A study released days before Merkel’s speech showed that 13% of Germans would welcome a “fuehrer” to run the country with a “firm hand.” Over a third felt the country is “overrun by foreigners”; 60% would “restrict the practice of Islam”; and 17% think Jews have too much influence.³ This anti-Semitism was repeated by Sarrazin who stated that all Jews share a unique genetic heritage and therefore represent a single “race” separate from European whites.⁴

The popular pseudo-leftist hipster philosopher Slavoj Zizek chalked up this open fascism in Germany to an “excess of anti-capitalism” in Europe, but his primitive analysis could not be further from the truth.⁵

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Egypt’s Workers Expose ‘Non-Violent’ Lies with: MASSIVE STRIKE WAVE! Needs Mass Communist Leadership

What the rulers portrayed as a non-violent “revolution” in Egypt was far from the truth.

“It’s happening people….It’s happening….The working class has entered the arena with full force today.”

That’s how one blogger described the strike of Cairo’s transit workers as they shut six garages: Nasr Station, Fateh Station, Ter’a Station, Amiriya Station, Mezzalat Station, Sawwah Station, just days before Mubarak’s fall. That was the end of public bus service in Cairo under the hated torturer’s regime.

The strike-wave that eventually sent Mubarak packing did not fall from the sky. Since 2004, more than 2,000,000 Egyptian workers have gone on strike and protested for higher pay, especially to fight privatization.

In Mubarak’s final days, tens of thousands of workers from Cairo to Alexandria to the Suez Canal were on strike. More than 6,000 workers for the Suez Canal Authority staged a sit-down strike at the international waterway. Al Jazeera reported more than 20,000 factory workers on strike.

In Mahallah, 24,000 textile workers walked out demanding raises and in solidarity with the protesters in Tahrir Square. Striking telecommunication workers attended mass protests in Cairo’s Ramses Square. Workers struck some military equipment factories, owned by the army. Subway, postal and Egypt Airline workers walked out. Laid-off workers at the Alexandria Library demanded their jobs back. Hospital workers at the Al Azhar University hospitals walked out. Temporary and contract workers demanded permanent jobs.

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Obama, U.S. Rulers Push Pacifism to Derail Workers’ Rebellion

U.S. rulers are pushing two big lies about dictator Mubarak’s ouster and the mass protests that forced it. First, Obama and the bosses’ media try to mislead workers into thinking that large numbers of unarmed protesters demanding elections can produce a “revolution” against fascist oppression. But an election installing another group of pro-capitalist politicians is not a revolution, which only results from a fundamental change in class rule. It occurs when the oppressed working class overthrows the oppressor capitalist class and its state.

Secondly, elite analysts offer capitalist audiences groundless reassurances of Egyptian “stability.” The pundits say — while ignoring workers’ fight-backs — that continuing military control there means business as usual in the greater Middle East, the oil-rich cornerstone of U.S. imperialism. Both falsehoods hold grave consequences for workers.

Mass Murderer Obama, Rulers’ Media Praise Peaceful Protest, Steer Workers Down Political Dead-End

Just after Mubarak fled, hypocrite-in-chief Obama, dripping with the blood of workers from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan, compared protesters in Egypt to Ghandi’s and Martin Luther King’s movements. “In Egypt,” said Obama, “it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” News broadcasts depicted crowds in Tahir Square exulting in “newfound freedom” and then dutifully tidying up afterwards.

There was almost a total blackout on strikes and mass violence against the police and government (see top article). Many of these strikes are continuing.

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Auto Workers Act vs. Bosses’ Racist, Sexist Attack

Dozens of workers on all shifts of a major truck assembly plant in the South fought changes to the paid-time-off (PTO) policy the bosses suddenly imposed. The changes set up hundreds for possible firing for calling in sick too often. The most threatened workers were Latino single parents with children who need to use more sick time. This means the change is both racist and sexist and sets up all workers for attack.

Under the old policy, all write-ups for absences were cleared every 90 days, but if you had four write-ups you could be fired. Under the new policy only one write-up is cleared every 90 days.

The bosses need these changes because each country’s auto companies — Toyota, Ford, GM, in Korea, Europe, Russia and China — are desperate to squeeze high enough profits from their workers in order to survive against their competitors in their inter-imperialist rivalry. The stakes are high and will ultimately lead to larger wars.

When the new PTO policy was announced, word spread that the bosses were requiring all workers to sign a form acknowledging the changes. Workers were given no notice. The bosses demanded that workers sign the new policy without reading it.

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Employed and Unemployed: Unite to Fight Racist Healthcare Cuts

BROOKLYN, NY February 14 — Long Island College Hospital (LICH) is at risk of closing. LICH employs about 2,500 workers and serves the Red Hook Houses, the largest public housing project in Brooklyn, with over 10,000 black and Latino workers and youth. LICH is a 300-bed hospital that delivers more than 2,500 babies and sees more than 55,000 patients in its emergency room every year.

The State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center had been poised to take over LICH, which would have been bad enough, threatening the entire emergency services department. But last Wednesday, Democratic Governor Cuomo put that on hold when he announced a $2.84 billion cut in Medicaid, freezing the $62 million for the Downstate take-over and threatening to close LICH. As we go to press, a deal may be in the works to release some or all of the take-over money. Either way, there will be less health care for the workers and youth who need it.

Whether LICH closes or not, capitalism can never meet the needs of the working class because it puts profits over healthcare. Goldman Sachs gave out executive bonuses totaling $15.3 billion in 2010 and Mayor Bloomberg’s personal fortune hit $18 billion, while 30 million are unemployed and over $1 trillion goes to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact that closing LICH is even being considered illustrates capitalism’s inherent racism.

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Pakistan’s Flood: Organize vs. Rulers’ Crimes Engulfing Workers, Farmers

The devastation from last year’s floods in Pakistan — 2,300 mostly poor, working-class farmers dead, 24 million displaced and 2.3 million houses and 4,655 villages destroyed — was blamed on unprecedented monsoon rains, but the real cause was the ruling class’s refusal to protect the working class.

Six months after the floods, large areas, especially in the South, are still underwater, and over 7,000,000 people lack adequate shelter. Millions of flood survivors with immune systems weakened by stress, lack of food and cold weather are at risk of pneumonia and other respiratory and water-borne diseases.

Friends of PLP have been playing a key role in organizing nation-wide protest demonstrations which began last year over the government’s failed flood relief. (Pakistan is a federation of four provinces, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh, and four federal territories, altogether totaling over 170 million people.)

Our friends pointed out that while the floods were a natural event, the homelessness of millions and the massive destruction were a disaster produced by Pakistan’s capitalist class and U.S. imperialism, placing profits before workers’ lives. As our friends join in grass-roots struggles to provide basic necessities for flood victims, communist ideas are being spread promoting a society based on the interests of the working class where careful planning would prevent such devastation.

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Pickets Unite Haiti’s Quake Victims with Egypt’s Masses

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 4 — “Haiti, Egypt, USA: Workers’ Power Will Win the Day!”  At the moment Haiti marked the anniversary of its earthquake with hardly anything yet “reconstructed” for ordinary people, the working class in Egypt — youth and women workers joined by students and professionals — were taking a stand against the fascist regime of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.  Fifty picketers at the Haitian consulate in Manhattan took note of this moment, both condemning the Haitian ruling class and its imperialist overlords for their neglect, and cheering the power and resolve shown by the Egyptian demonstrators. 

Among our pickets were high school students embroiled in the struggles against school closings, against racist preferential treatment for charter and special middle-class schools, and against administration harassment of militant teachers who organize together with their students.  They vowed to join their own struggles internationally with those of other young people:  “Haitian students are under attack: what do we do?  Stand up, fight back!” 

One Brooklyn student led a chant for various demands for workers in Haiti, teaching us how to respond to each one in Haitian Kreyòl “Mwen dakò!” (“I agree!”).  We also taught ourselves Kreyòl versions of the great chants “The workers, united, will never be defeated!” (“Ouvriye ini pa pral jamè venki!”) and “Workers’ struggles have no borders!” (“Lit ouvriye pa gen fwontyè!”).

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Egypt: Without Red Leadership, Capitalism Remains, Imperialism Wins

Mass uprisings are destabilizing Egypt, an essential ally of war-making U.S. imperialists. Capitalism itself, however, the root cause of imperialist war and of the rebelling workers’ miseries, remains unthreatened. Unfortunately, the protesters aim solely at ousting dictator Mubarak. Lacking class consciousness, they do not seek to overthrow the profit system. Most follow either secular nationalist or Islamist politicians. Thus, even if Mubarak is ousted, workers in Egypt will continue to suffer under a new regime of exploiters. Nevertheless, our revolutionary communist Party can learn much from the courageous, though misled, struggles in the streets of Cairo and elsewhere.

The uncertainty over whether Islamist or pro-U.S. bosses will rule Egypt has Obama & Co. worried sick. In 2006, open elections (which the protesters demand) gave anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Hamas control of the Palestinian Authority.

Today U.S. rulers fear that Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidates might win in Egypt. MB leader and al Qaeda supporter Mohammed Akef told CBS News (5/22/08), “MB would send fighters to fight the occupation in Iraq and Palestine.” Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, received anti-U.S. indoctrination as a member of MB in Egypt.

U.S. War Machine Armed Dictator Mubarak

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