Egypt: Dead-end Reform Goal Doomed Militant Fighters

In actions that inspired the world’s working class, millions of Egyptian workers and students filled the streets of Cairo and other major cities in January demanding the head of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator who ruled Egypt since 1981. Workers’ strikes in key industries, such as oil, textile, transport and on the Suez Canal were crucial in persuading the military to abandon Mubarak, forcing him out.

Sadly, nine months later the workers’ and students’ hopes have been dashed. The absence of communist ideas and leadership and the consequent reliance on the dead-end capitalist notion of reform as the key to ending workers’ oppression doomed the movement from the beginning. Consider:

• One of the most widespread demands was raising the minimum wage, which has remained at $6.30 A MONTH since 1984. In the last ten years, national output (GDP) per person has doubled from $250 a month to $500, but the increased income has all gone to those in the top 10%. The new military government has steadfastly refused to raise the minimum wage. Nor has it raised pensions: in its last year, the Mubarak government raised the minimum pension (what most retirees get) from $9 a month to $24.

• Another key demand was the right to organize independent unions, student groups and political associations. The military government did allow the formation of new political parties if focused only on the upcoming elections. But meanwhile, it has viciously repressed protests. Rather than abolishing the hated military tribunals and the fascist “emergency law” (in place since 1981), the military government has used them more than ever. About 12,000 civilian protestors have been brought before military tribunals, with over 99.9% given long prison sentences — ten times the pace under Mubarak. Workers protesting unsafe working conditions and low wages have been especially singled out for attack.

• The January protests demanded a government more accountable to the people. The great “accomplishment” of that Papyrus Revolution (as it was called) replaced an 82-year-old Air Force general (Mubarak) with a 78-year-old Army general (Mohamed Hussein Tantawi), the head of the new military government!  And these honchos have carefully designed election rules to ensure that the same old elite is re-elected to Parliament. Dissolution of the old ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), mattered little. In the old system the local bosses in each city and town would buy their election, often as “independents” who, after winning, simply rejoined the NDP. The new system will produce the same result; in fact, probably most of the old Parliament members will remain.

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Communist Ideas the Right Rx Hospital Workers Beat Back Racist Attacks

PHILADELPHIA, September 15 — “Racism? You’ll never stop it, never!” declared a retired hospital worker, echoing a pessimism many workers feel. But the promise of communist revolution is that the overthrow of capitalism removes the reasons racism exists. The lower wages paid to black, Latino, and immigrant workers generate billions in extra profits that the bosses can’t do without. Racism also allows the bosses to divide the working class. Communist revolution against the class- and profit-driven system of capitalism is the first step in building the world without racism that most of us want.

At a meeting between the nursing bosses and the nurses, a black nurse with long years of service at a large teaching hospital spoke up against laying off the nursing assistants. Shortly afterwards, she was fired. Hospital workers were shocked and outraged.

The fight against the firing of this veteran black nurse shows how we can’t back down from fighting racism and that the bosses will increasingly use fascist terror. As in other cities, the bosses at this hospital are increasing their attacks on patient care and the hospital workers. On at least one hospital floor, the bosses terminated all the nursing assistants.

PLP members have a long history at this hospital and immediately organized against the firing. We described the firing as racist and an example of fascist terror to scare the workers, especially nurses. We tied this racist firing to the recent police murder of the son of another black co-worker and described both as examples of fascism on and off the job.

Some workers, however, thought we shouldn’t mention that the nurse is black or that the firing is racist. This opinion was expressed by both black and white, mainly nurses. Their main concern was that mentioning that the nurse is black and bringing up racism might alienate the doctors who also wanted to fight the firing. Working-class union members, on the other hand, saw the firing as clearly racist and agreed with our response. And interestingly, the nurses who

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Hart-Rudman 9/11 Plan Fell Short U.S. Rulers Still Need Greater Fascism, More War

Obama’s Ground Zero remembrance left out two names tied intimately to the 9/11 atrocity and its deadlier aftermath: Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Just two years before the attack on the World Trade Center, the two ex-senators had co-chaired a top-echelon ruling-class panel that envisioned terrorist attacks “galvanizing” the U.S. for imperialist war abroad and fascist measures at home. Launched by President Bill Clinton in 1998, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) studied ways to ensure U.S. global dominance through the following 25 years.

Democrat Hart and Republican Rudman, along with other high-ranking politicians, generals and admirals, proposed a sweeping militarization of government and of society at large. At the time, the rulers’ media kept Hart-Rudman largely under wraps. CHALLENGE, however, repeatedly exposed its deadly schemes well before 9/11. Ten years on, Hart-Rudman’s shortcomings and successes for the bosses are worth assessing. They help us gauge our class enemies’ need and their ability to conduct mass slaughter.

In 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor turned mass U.S. opposition to “foreign wars” into mass support for U.S. entry into World War II. On September 11, 2001, terrorists struck New York and the Pentagon after the FBI and CIA apparently failed to connect the dots from existing intelligence. Ten years later, there is no shortage of theories to challenge the official narrative: Did U.S. rulers deliberately ignore warnings of the 9/11 strikes? Were they actively complicit in planning the attacks? We may never know the true story, but it’s clear that the bosses saw the usefulness of a 9/11-type incident to rally U.S. workers behind a drive for war and fascism:

[T]he United States should assume that it will be a target of terrorist attacks against its homeland....Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers....If the stakes rise in such a fashion, one thing is likely to become vividly clear: The American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so, if they believe that fundamental interests are imperiled (Hart-Rudman report, 1999).

The hijackers, who cloaked al Qaeda’s oil-profit motive in religion, represented only a few thousand sworn U.S. enemies. They hardly matched the 1941 menace of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan and Italy, an Axis of millions that waged world war across Europe and Asia. Within the U.S., this global assault spurred huge voluntary enlistments and acceptance of a military draft, resulting in an armed force of 14 million in a U.S. population just one-third of today’s total. By comparison, the flurry of post-9/11 flag-waving accomplished relatively little: the fascist Patriot Act, plus a series of racist attacks against Arab and South Asian immigrants. U.S. rulers continue to rely on an economic draft for their war machine, with unemployment impelling youth to enlist for the lack of jobs.

Recalling the fleeting wave of 9/11 patriotism, the rulers’ New York Times mouthpiece echoed Hart-Rudman in lamenting, “People wanted to be enlarged, to be called on to do more for country and community than ordinary life usually requires....to be absorbed in some greater good....But America has not been enlarged in the years that have passed” (9/10/11). In sum, the attack failed to generate the popular response that Hart-Rudman had anticipated.

Anti-Government Bosses’ Tea Partiers Hinder Obama’s Fascist Effort….

Opposition to new or restored taxes, hardened by the New Depression, has dashed the Hart-Rudman vision of capitalists gladly parting with their “treasure.” This reflects the battle between two factions within the U.S. ruling class: the Rockefeller-led wing that maps long-range strategy to keep U.S. imperialism on top through wars for the oil interests it represents; and its current adversary, domestic capitalists like the Koch brothers, who organized and funded the Tea Party and are driving the Republican Party away from any bipartisan strategy.

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Pickets Expose Racist Columbia University’s Bogus Jobs

NEW YORK CITY, August 23 — Chanting “Jobs center is a phony, all their talk is baloney,” comrades and friends joined once again with community forces to picket Columbia University’s (CU) bogus Employment Information Center.  The struggle against Columbia’s racist takeover of the surrounding Harlem community sharpened both in militancy and political understanding with demands that the University immediately hire 2,000 Harlem residents to replace the jobs destroyed by expansion.

Other demands include not building the planned Level 3 biohazard lab right under 125th St. and maintaining affordable neighborhood housing. PLP’s base has grown enough to start new chants that expand the politics of this struggle: “ExxonMobil, Columbia U, took Iraq and Harlem too,” and “Racist Bollinger you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” (Bollinger is Columbia’s president.)

In conversations and at meetings since May Day, we have been struggling against liberal ideas within the community coalition that has fought CU for years.  After betrayals by the local politicians and the courts, many now see that building a movement from the bottom up is what is needed. Party members are also emphasizing that CU is run by a board composed of 75% ruling-class bankers whose wars for oil and gas are murdering thousands worldwide and lead to the racist cuts and unemployment here that hasten sickness and death for our sisters and brothers in Harlem.

We are planning to step up the attack on CU on September 24 by marching from the Employment Center, through the neighboring housing project, to the campus and to Bollinger’s mansion, which cost $23 million to renovate. We will end with a picnic in Morningside Park to commemorate the victory of students, workers and community residents against Columbia’s plan to build a gym there in 1968.

Making CHALLENGE sales a central part of expanding this struggle will help us win workers and students to the vital strategic goal of communist revolution.

The ‘Mystery’ Contract LA Transit Workers Shout Down Hacks, Reject Sellout

At 11:30 PM on Friday, September 9, I received a call from a fellow transit worker informing me that, after more than two years without a contract, United Transportation Union (UTU) drivers at LA Metro were to vote on a new contract Sunday at 1 P.M. None of the drivers had any idea if it was a “good” or “bad” contract. The UTU leadership told them absolutely nothing except, “Show up Sunday and vote!”

By Sunday morning we’d been able to rally a small crew of friends and comrades to meet at the hotel where the vote was to take place. We brought leaflets (calling for a NO vote on the mystery contract) and the latest copy of CHALLENGE. We met drivers in the multi-level parking lot and by the time they entered the meeting room every driver had a flier, a CHALLENGE, or both.

I wasn’t sure if I’d be turned away when I tried to enter the voting “Ballroom” (I’m not a driver) but my fears were foolish. As soon as I entered, I realized that the union leadership had a lot more to worry about than me. They were faced with nearly a thousand angry, shouting, hooting drivers demanding facts about the new contract, which the drivers all assumed was going to be a sell-out. It went on and on. Security couldn’t do much. Even though the drivers were physically threatened, they refused to sit down, to shut up, or even to vote for the new contract.

At a coffee shop afterward, two bus operators said the union General Committee never got control of their meeting. A few hours after we got home, a driver called to say it was thumbs down on the contract: 365 to 206.

This experience reminded me that it is always a good idea to be ready to act — even on very short notice. The worker who called was glad to see that we had shown up to oppose the contract vote. The connection of the bus drivers’ no vote, the recent Verizon workers’ walkout, and the possible Southern California supermarket strike made it easy to approach drivers, sell CHALLENGE and urge a NO vote on the contract. On a minor note, all of us agreed it was a good way to spend 9/11.

Now comes the hard part — following up on the contacts we collected and working to be a communist presence in the ongoing transit struggle in L.A.

Shut Plants, Block Roads, Battle Cops Protests, Strike Wave Sweep Pakistan, Hit Bosses’ Cuts

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Pakistan have been engaging in mass strikes and protests, taking to the streets, shutting down factories and offices, blocking roads and burning vehicles. Their anger is directed against a government riddled with corruption and against Pakistan’s ruling class, who, like capitalists worldwide, are trying to make the working class pay the price of its economic crisis, slashing wages, laying off workers and attacking living standards. The working class is fighting back, undeterred by the brutal retaliation of the police, arrests and even killing of leaders:

• Earlier this month, over 100,000 textile workers in Faisalabad, Pakistan’s third-largest city, shut down 20,000 power looms and took over the city. Men, women and youths armed with stones fought police equipped with rifles and guns; these workers comprise 38% of the country’s industrial workers and produce half its exports.

• Ten thousand workers at the Karachi Electric Supply Co. occupied its headquarters a few weeks ago, forcing the bosses to reinstate 4,500 fired workers.

• Striking Pakistan International Airlines workers brought air traffic to a standstill, sitting in at airports in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar, disabling ground service vehicles, blocking flights and stopping passengers from checking in. They were protesting layoffs and proposed selloffs of routes to Turkish Airlines.

• Railway workers organized a demonstration in Lahore against the proposed downsizing of 20,000 jobs, defying thugs employed by Pakistan’s governing People’s Party to intimidate them.

• Public sector workers in the Post Office, the Telecommunications Company, the Water and Power Development Authority, steel mills and the Federal Revenue Office are fighting privatization and firings.

• Ship breakers in Baluchistan and young hospital doctors from Baluchistan to Punjab are mobilizing for better pay and conditions.

Following the Lead of 50,000 Militant Textile Workers

These struggles follow the actions of 50,000 textile power loom operators who struck in 2008, shutting down factories for four days. Four leaders were arrested, framed under anti-terrorist laws and jailed. The judiciary, serving the rulers’ dictates, declares workers’ strikes illegal, rejects bail for arrested workers and ignores violations of labor laws, while failing to enforce minimum-wage laws and legal remedies for those losing jobs.

The workers — many who make $61 a month (less than the minimum wage) — have no pension rights, work in inhuman conditions and suffer grinding poverty. Thousands of other workers who marched in solidarity with them were fired on, with nine injured seriously. However, the strength of the protest forced the owners — among the richest people in Pakistan — to agree to the strikers’ demand to be paid previously negotiated wage increases.

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Mexico : PLP’s Internationalism Antidote to Bosses’ Nationalism

MEXICO CITY, September 12 — Comrades from NY and LA who joined the Summer Project in Mexico showed Party members and friends here the international character of PLP. They contributed with their knowledge and experience in the class struggle, and we saw how similar workers’ struggles are worldwide. This helped show our friends the failure of the capitalist system, even in the U.S., which is supposed to be the most technologically advanced and has one of the highest concentrations of capital.

PLP fights to develop a non-electoral world party that defends the workers, organizes struggles to learn how to overthrow capitalism, and spreads the understanding of the need to build a communist society.

Internationalism creates great fraternity, trust, and love for the working class. This explains our comrades’ taking a leave from jobs and families to participate with us. In just a few hours there was great camaraderie amongst the summer project participants; we talked, shared, laughed, and planned the next day’s activities. It was especially motivating to know that we workers are capable of acting for our own class under capitalism. Under communism it will be that much greater, since we will smash the bosses’ ideas of racism, sexism and nationalism that divide us. 

Internationalism Opposes Nationalism

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France : Union Misleaders Divert School Strike into Dead-end

PARIS, September 16 — A national teachers strike — backed by the biggest high school students union and the main federation of parents — is looming in both the public and private schools. The teachers’ unions are calling for a 24-hour walkout on September 27. They’re demanding “an end to job cuts, a different budgetary logic,” and “a democratic transformation of the educational system to ensure the success of all pupils.”

But one-day strikes are no threat to the bosses or the government. They’re a tactic the union misleaders use to keep control and divert workers’ militancy into a dead-end.

Over 52,000 jobs were cut in education in the past four years. Another 16,000 have been axed this school year, and still another 14,000 are slated to go in 2012. Meanwhile, the student population has risen by 60,000 this year.

All this leads to larger classes, difficulty finding substitutes for absent teachers, and the elimination of optional subjects and individual aid for pupils.

In budgetary terms, real teachers’ salaries have been frozen for 16 years. According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), “even if overtime and bonuses are included, the average salary of teachers [in France] remains below the OECD average.”

An opinion poll published yesterday showed that 64% think the schools “operate badly,” up from 40% in 2007; 60% say the school system does not ensure equal opportunity.

Indeed, 31% of the university students are the children of executives and highly-paid academics. On the other hand, 12% come from white collar families, and 10% are children of factory workers.

Capitalism, Class Bias and Racism Go Hand-in-Hand

It can’t be any different under capitalism. Education in capitalis

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But Can’t Do It Without Killing Capitalism: ‘Horrible Bosses’ Film Says, ‘No Options? Kill ’em!’

I just saw the hilarious new movie, “Horrible Bosses,” and want to recommend it to CHALLENGE readers. It is a full-fledged comedy about three buddies who decide, after realizing that they have no other options, to kill their bosses!

Each of the three has a different situation: Nick (Jason Bateman) is a dedicated white-collar worker whose deceitful, treacherous, and completely evil boss (Kevin Spacy) chastises him for being two minutes late for work, among other things. He fails to give him a promotion after leading him to think he’ll get one for months, just to trick him into working harder. Nick tells the boss he’s going to quit, but the boss threatens to blacklist him with all the other companies in the field.

Kurt (Saturday Night Live’s Jason Sudekis) is another hard-working office worker for a small family-owned industrial company, and shows genuine concern for his coworkers. When the druggie, immoral, hedonistic son (Colin Farrell) takes over as head of the company after his father’s death, he threatens to fire Kurt if he doesn’t fire two other workers.

The third main character is Dale (Charlie Day), an innocent, young, and engaged-to-be-married dental assistant who is sexually harassed by his female boss, a dentist played by Jennifer Aniston.

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‘Stalin sent 12-year-olds in flying saucer to U.S.’? Anti-Communist Trash: No Science, Pure Fiction

Annie Jacobsen and her new book “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” have been popular with NPR, the New York Times, the Daily Show and Democracy Now. Her book is a rehash of what goes on at the U.S. military testing base in the Nevada desert. However, what is grabbing headlines are the allegations made in the book’s final section.

Jacobsen alleges that the “Roswell Incident” –– in which a UFO supposedly crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947 –– was actually a failed Soviet propaganda campaign. She claims that the UFO in question was a Soviet spy plane designed by the Nazi Horten brothers and flown by 12-year-olds who had been genetically/surgically altered to look like aliens by the infamous Nazi Josef Mengele. The plane was crashed in the U.S. in order to cause a War of the Worlds panic (reference to H.G. Well’s novel that details the conflict between invading Martians and humans) that would serve as a cover for a Soviet invasion. The grand mastermind of this plan was, “naturally,” Joseph Stalin.

This theory is yet another method to equate two diametrically opposing forces: the Nazis and Soviets. Nazism is a variety of fascism (a form of capitalism in crisis) at its most brutal combining vicious racism with sexism and nationalism. While Nazism is inherently anti-working-class, the Soviets were fighting for a workers’ state. The Soviets vehemently fought the Nazis. Yet the U.S. continues to keep the workers in the dark through outright anti-communist lies.

Jacobsen’s anti-communist nonsense was spewed forth by a single anonymous source (most likely her over-active imagination) without any concern for facts or evidence. The media, owned by the ruling class, has been praising the book’s unscientific allegations. But facts are stubborn things, and they belie Jacobsen’s tale.

Immediate problems arose in Jacobsen’s story. Nazi Mengele did not disappear after the abandoning of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945, but rather fled the Soviet Red Army, an odd behavior for a supposed ally. He worked in concentration camps, including Gross Rosen, before taking a job as a medic for the Wehrmacht (armed forces of Nazi Germany).

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