Corridor of uncertainty: Pakistan bats for nationalist interest amid U.S.-China match

While Imran Khan, Pakistan’s next prime minister, is already leaning toward China, the regional power’s old bedfellow, U.S. imperialism, still has cards to play.
Since the collapse of workers’ states in Russia and China, the rivalry between the world’s leading imperialist powers continues to drive world events. Today, as a declining U.S. struggles to fend off a rising China, various smaller powers are jockeying for alliances with either one or both.

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Movie review of ‘Sorry to Bother You’—Anti-capitalist film plants seeds for class struggle

This review contains no major spoilers. Submit your own analysis of the film to CHALLENGE.
The pro-revolutionary rapper-turned-director/writer Raymond Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You captures the madness and absurdity workers are forced to live in every day under capitalism. This is a must-see anti-capitalist movie filled with revolutionary potential and optimism that centers a Black worker-led multiracial cast fighting for a greater truth.
This trippy genre-breaking film is about a Black working-class anti-hero Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) who moves up the corporate telemarketing ladder by “sticking to the script” and using his “white voice.” Riley combines workplace comedy and a messy existential, political drama with a sci-fi dystopia not far from our own reality. The conclusion is nightmarishly poetic and a true show of multiracial unity and fightback—all done through real working-class characters that resonate with the masses.

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BLACK Workers lead FIGHT against hospital bosses

CHICAGO, July 23—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined over 100 multiracial hospital workers downtown to protest racist and sexist working conditions promoted by the bosses’ healthcare industry. They led chants and blocked traffic, directly challenging the profit-hungry hospital bosses. This action planted seeds for future revolutionary communist struggle.

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Mexico: PLP advances revolutionary politics at youth conference

MEXICO CITY, August 8—A multiracial, multi-generational group of Progressive Labor Party comrades intensified the contradictions at a mass youth conference for the Summer Project here. We struggled with people to break away from venomous identity politics with the antidotes of internationalism and multi-racial unity.
The conference was advertised as anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and democratic.  PLP met young workers and students from across the world. Participants included delegations from Mexico, the U.S., El Salvador, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Turkey, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and more. Each day the conference featured a central panel discussion on various topics such as fascism, imperialism, democracy, women’s liberation, self-determination and education.

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Sham election of Imran Khan exposes rotten capitalist democracy

PAKISTAN, August 6—A wave of coercion from the judiciary, military, and inter-service intelligence agencies has rigged the general elections in favor of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its leader Imran Khan. The PTI has 174 seats in the parliament, effectively forming an absolute majority. The bosses’ infighting is played out on the backs of the working class here. Pakistan, a nuclear power and the world’s sixth most populous country, is positioned at the crosshairs of a U.S. and China rivalry (see editorial, page 2). The country’s outcome has ramifications for the international working class.
Progressive Labor Party is putting our revolutionary line of “don’t vote—revolt” before the masses. The working class needs organize under our red flag to get rid of this barbaric capitalist system by fighting for an international communist revolution.

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Five-year commemoration of Kyam Livingston: Families of police terror victims and antiracists unite

BROOKLYN, July 21—On a crowded hot Saturday, sixty antiracists took over the corner of Church and East 18th Street in commemoration of the five-year fightback for justice for Kyam Livingston.
In what was a powerful message against this racist system, three families of victims of police murder, along with antiracists, united to indict the New York Police Department. The working class needs more examples of Black women leadership like these. Progressive Labor Party fights for the ultimate justice for our class: communism.

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DC transit workers get strike-ready

WASHINGTON, DC, July 15—Two thousand DC Metro transit workers overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike today. Speech after speech, workers called for the end of privatization and the bosses’ strict disciplinary policies. Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) pointed out the racist nature of the bosses’ attacks. As the transit bosses attack the predominantly Black workers, they are attacking all workers, including the workers who ride the busses and trains. A strike authorization vote is symbolic and sharper fightback is necessary, such as job actions and a strike. We need to flex our working class muscles because eventually we need a revolution, the abolition of capitalism, and a communist world—workers’ power!

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Spectre of communism still haunts the bosses

The year is 2018. There is no red beacon of hope in either Russia or China. Hundreds of millions of workers are not debating and organizing for communism. Yet, capitalists today still fear communism!
They have good reason. Only communist revolution offers freedom from exploitation, oppression, poverty, fascism, and terror for the working class of the world.

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Splits in U.S. ruling class shake EU, intensify global volatility

By all appearances, U.S. President Donald Trump’s undisciplined approach to statecraft makes him seem like an incompetent rogue and possibly a tool of Russian interests. In essence, however, Trump’s wrecking-ball trip to London and Brussels, followed by his bombshell “summit” with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin represents something far more dangerous to the main-wing, imperialist finance capitalists of the U.S. ruling class.

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Chicago KKKOPS KILL hARITH WORKERS REBEL

Screams and chants filled the air—along with bottles and debris—as workers from the South Shore neighborhood rebelled after the Chicago Police Department’s racist killing of Harith “Snoop” Augustus, a 37-year-old barber and father of a five-year-old daughter.
Harith was stopped by police for “exhibiting characteristics of an armed person.”  CPD body cam footage shows Harith talking to a cop on the sidewalk. According to a witness interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times, they were arguing over whether Harith was selling loose cigarettes. As the dispute escalated, a swarm of cops descended upon Harith. One grabbed his wrist. When Harith pulled away, his holstered weapon was revealed. He began running into the street and stumbled as Chicago’s killer cops opened fire and shot him in the back.
It’s the same old capitalist story: Chicago police murdered Harith Augustus.

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