PLP’s Ideas Are Answer to Misleaders’ Give-Backs

TRENTON, NJ, February 25 — “Workers have dignity; the rich have our wealth!” This poster expressed the outrage of 4,000 New Jersey workers rallying in solidarity with Wisconsin state workers. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, along with other governors — including NJ’s Chris Christie — is spearheading a bogus nationwide campaign, to destroy the largest remaining group of organized workers in the country: the public employee unions.

This campaign is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers through their Americans for Prosperity front group. After voting massive tax cuts for the wealthy for two decades — starving state governments of revenues and creating a false “budget crisis” — these same businessmen and their lackey politicians are now blaming public workers for their multi-billion-dollar state budget “deficits.” 

Workers at the rally weren’t buying this line, however, with some holding up posters that said, “Union-busters are the new terrorists!” PLP members from NJ state colleges organized on their local campuses to get fellow American Federation of Teachers (AFT) members and Communication Workers of America (CWA) staff to attend. One teacher, who canceled classes and urged students to attend, got five emails from students after the rally asking how it went. Another recent graduate, now a social worker who will soon be in the CWA, attends a Party study group and looks forward to helping build a worker-student alliance in New Jersey.

Forming a sea of red rain ponchos and hats in front of the State House, the 4,000 New Jersey workers — both private and public sector employees — didn’t match the turnout of the 70,000 Wisconsin workers who occupied their capital building a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, the protest was one of the largest in New Jersey and signals an upsurge in working-class solidarity.

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Red Leadership Needed STRIKES SWEEP FRANCE; SAILORS BATTLE COPS

PARIS, March 10 — Strikes have erupted across France as workers continue their long tradition of downing tools and battling to resist the bosses’ cops.

Marseilles Port Shut

The SNCM ferry company workers, on strike for 40 days, and having blocked the north and south channels of Marseilles’ port, were attacked by up to 700 cops — six companies of riot police, plus members of the national police force and maritime gendarmes. They swung riot sticks and used tear gas, arresting 14 strikers.

But the sailors fought back, throwing bottles and turning hoses on the cops from one of the ferries the strikers have occupied. “They’re the ones who want a clash,” declared one sailor. “We’re going to defend ourselves.”

Now all the maritime unions have called for sailors to launch a national strike on March 17 against deregulation, a policy the shipowners have been using to push through layoff after layoff “in the name of free and unfettered competition.”

Solidarity

The police assault brought an immediate and massive reaction as all port workers in every trade and occupation struck in support of the SNCM sailors. The port workers said they would not return to work until “all police forces have left the port area.”

On March 9, dock workers refused to allow two ferries originally bound for the then-blocked port of Marseilles to dock in the port of Toulon. “We refuse to be a back-up and we don’t want to be considered as scabs by our fellow workers in Marseilles,” said union leader Kadda Zerga. The dockers only allowed passengers to disembark from the ferries.

The sailors are striking against company plans to reduce the number of ferry voyages between mainland France and Corsica, fearing this will lead to layoffs. Further strikes include:

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Earthquake & Aftermath in Japan Reveals Capitalism’s Failures

On March 11^th, 2011, a massive 8.9-magnitude quake hit Northeast Japan on Friday, causing thousands of deaths, hundreds of fires, and a 10-meter (33-ft) tsunami along parts of the country's coastline, predominantly in the Northeastern (Touhoku) region.  The destruction left in the wake of the earthquake is extensive, including the vanishing of entire villages, ports, and even schools that were used for evacuation sites by local residents that had been situated on the coasts.  Miyagi and Iwate prefectures were hit the hardest by the tsunami and have the highest death tolls, which in total could reach over 10,000 in total.  Aftershocks as a result of the magnitude of the quake are frequent, including a 6.0 quake that hit Shizuoka and extending the entire Kantou (Eastern) region the morning of 3/15.  Additionally, the quake disabled the cooling mechanisms of one of the main nuclear plants in the Northeast region in Fukushima prefecture (Fukushima Dai-ichi), the oldest nuclear power plant in Japan, sparking a meltdown that has forced the evacuation of thousands surrounding the area and causing widespread fear that is being spread by the mainstream media on an almost 24-hour basis.

While there has been some criticism of the warning systems that gave residents little time to evacuate, most mainstream media sources in the US and elsewhere emphasized Japan’s preparedness for such disasters and have praised the rapidity to which rescues, evacuations, and recovery efforts have taken place.  As one of the largest economies in the world, Japan has taken significant steps to safeguard its vulnerability against such disasters through the fortification in infrastructure, the training, beginning in kindergarten, on how to react to earthquakes and other disasters, which workers in all areas also practice on a weekly basis through drills.

The protection and preparedness against such disasters, however, is more evident in the capitalist centers like Tokyo or Sendai (the largest city in the Northeastern region, which suffered significant damage), but become lax as it moves to the outer regions where the damage and loss of life was the most substantial.  This is due to the fact that most of the residents of these areas, like the small village of Saito in Miyagi prefecture which was totally obliterated, are predominantly working-class families, such as factory workers, farmers, and fishermen/women, and the elderly who built homes in areas which are the most vulnerable to such catastrophic events.  This is what connects the loss of life in the recent disaster in Japan to the earthquake in Haiti, or to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed hundreds of thousands of local residents on the coastal regions of Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, among other areas, who are forced to live in conditions that are both unprotected by disasters.

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PL’ers Bring Red Ideas: Wisconsin Workers in Class War vs. Bosses’ Attacks

MADISON, WISCONSIN, February 25 — Tens of thousands of workers flooded and encircled the State Capitol building here in a continuing protest against Governor Walker’s wage- and benefit-cutting proposals hitting State workers which would deny them collective bargaining rights and effectively bust their unions. The bill has already passed the State Assembly.

The exhilarating demonstrations included teachers, students, plumbers, postal and iron workers, firefighters, state workers and their supporters — black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American, women and men, young and old, able-bodied and in wheelchairs. The multi-racial crowds were joined by workers from Chicago, Iowa, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota and Texas. Entire families participated along with sign-wearing dogs with “Tax the Rich!” posters. Over half the signs were hand-made, reflecting the rank-and-file nature of the protestors.

The militant workers slept overnight in the State House, packing the 4-story structure solid, hanging banners over the upper floors while thousands more rallied outside. The crowd of 10,000 protestors on February 14 grew to 70,000 within four days.

The demonstrators’ militancy has inspired workers worldwide. They cheered the picture of a worker from Egypt holding a sign in Cairo’s Tahrir Square proclaiming, “Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers!”

This attack on government workers is a part of the assault on workers internationally as the world’s capitalists try to “solve” their general crisis on the backs of the working class, with racist unemployment mounting into the tens of millions; wage-cutting; pension reductions; slashing health care; and home foreclosures throwing even more workers into homelessness.

This onslaught falls especially heavy on black, Latino and Asian workers who, because of the system’s racism, suffer double rates of unemployment, home foreclosures and healthcare cuts, but inevitably affects the rest of the working class. Racism splits and weakens our entire class in our efforts to fight the bosses.

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N. Africa to Mid East to Asia: Capitalism’s Survival Undercuts Workers’ Revolt; Wider Wars Loom

Tens of thousands of workers and youth are waging a political battle to overthrow U.S.-backed corrupt fascist dictators, cutting a wide swath throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Many have taken up arms and risked their lives fighting brutal attacks by the rulers’ cops and armies, whose tanks, guns and tear gas are marked “Made in USA.”

The rebels are also going on strike against the ravages of capitalism — skyrocketing food prices and massive unemployment — demanding jobs.

Unfortunately these courageous workers and youth will wind up with the same capitalist system that has produced this mass poverty and fascist conditions. What leadership that does exist is not fighting for workers’ power — communism — which would destroy the profit system and its ruling bosses. This only highlights the necessity to build the Progressive Labor Party to develop the kind of leadership that would make a fundamental change, a real revolution that tossing out the old ruling class and put the working class in power.

However, the U.S. is trying to play both sides. While the rebellions oppose dictators backed by the U.S., their replacements might be U.S.-backed also. Some student rebels have been trained by CIA front groups (see CHALLENGE article [2/19/11] at a 2008 organizing conference at Columbia University in NYC) as well as a union movement trained by the AFL-CIA.

Significantly these struggles are raging in and near the heart of U.S. rulers’ energy-based global empire, raising big questions: Will pro- or anti-U.S. bosses gain long-term advantage from the conflicts? And now that many Arab lands are, or could be, under shaky new management, how can Exxon Mobil and its Big Oil buddies hang on to critical oil fields and shipping routes?

Iran’s ayatollahs made their opportunistic aims clear by sending a pair of warships through embroiled Egypt’s Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, long controlled by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Meanwhile, Obama & Co.’s response involves expanding the scope of liberal President Jimmy Carter’s oil “Doctrine”:

“An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. (Carter’s 1980 State of the Union Address)

Today’s revolts could spread to Carter’s obvious focus, Saudi Arabia, U.S. imperialism’s most vital energy interest. So Obama’s actual and possible combat theater protecting U.S. bosses’ “vital interests” now stretches from the mountains of Pakistan across the Gulf to the North African coast. And now the U.S. military has admitted its Afghan strategy is failing, and is withdrawing from strategic areas in that country. (NY Times, 2/25)

Liberal Bosses Want 20,000 Troops for Libyan Bloodbath

Libya, where dictator Qaddafi’s thugs have killed hundreds, and Exxon and U.S. ally BP have had to suspend drilling for crude oil, is especially worrisome to U.S. rulers. The NY Times (2/27) summed up these risks: “The worst-case scenario, should the rebellion topple him,...is...a failed state where Al Qaeda or other radical groups could exploit the chaos and operate with impunity.”

Michael O’Hanlon, military expert at the liberal Brookings Institution, urged the Pentagon to prepare a ground force, contrasting Libya with U.S. inaction in the 1994 crisis in Rwanda: “It would have taken closer to 20,000 troops, or more, to do the job right. There could well be a similar requirement here.” (Brookings website, 2/25) Obama booster O’Hanlon even provides the outlines of a body count: “We could lose one of our soldiers or Marines for every 10 enemy fighters we had to take down. If Qadhafi loyalists numbered in the thousands...we could lose hundreds of U.S. troops.” O’Hanlon would no doubt recommend the same treatment for al Qaeda sympathizers in Libya.

But Saudi Arabia, as the world’s greatest petroleum source and ExxonMobil’s biggest supplier, poses far graver concerns for U.S. bosses — so grave, in fact, that they resort to code to speak about it publicly. Michael Levi, a fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), funded by Rockefeller, Exxon and J.P. Morgan Chase, wrote: “If unrest actually migrated to the desert kingdom...Riyadh [Saudi’s capital] would probably impress on the world that it needed support if they didn’t want to see prices get out of control. That would be a credible threat, and could result in a very concrete set of responses”(CFR website, 2/25/11).

“Concrete response” means “invasion.” Two main groups seek to benefit from Saudi regime change: swelling ranks of unemployed youth and those capitalists not part of Saudi’s royal family, shut out of the fabulously lucrative oil racket. Osama bin Laden, a member of the latter, has united elements of both into the anti-U.S. al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Saudi’s ruling king, fearing an uprising, and to calm oil interests, just allotted $36 billion for reforms in his kingdom. But rather than “calming” the situation, those oil interests see his concerns as evidence of a further threat to the region and can very well provoke even more oil price hikes.

Top U.S. Warlord Visits Big Oil States and U.S. Bases

To hammer home the U.S. invasion vow, Admiral Mike Mullen, the U.S.’s top military chief, recently visited Kuwait on the pretense of commemorating the 20th anniversary of Desert Storm. In 1991, a U.S.-led coalition of 750,000 soldiers ousted Iraqi invaders from Kuwait. But the display of U.S. and allied firepower demonstrates Obama’s promise of a repeat performance to defend Saudi Arabia.

Covering the February 26 celebration, Stars and Stripes, the U.S. brass’s mouthpiece for GIs gushed:

“Tanks, troops, armored vehicles, helicopters and barrel-rolling [combat maneuver to elude adversaries] fighter jets...passed in formation before Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and other dignitaries including Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1991, and Spain’s King Juan Carlos. It was a spectacle rarely seen in the world today. Saudi, Kuwaiti, French, British, and other troops joined the relatively small contingent of roughly 175 Americans thundering down the road.”

Saudi Arabia’s participation indicated it maybe next in line for potential U.S. invasion.

Powell’s presence signaled the future use of his “overwhelming force Doctrine.”  The Spanish, French and British presence demonstrates that Obama, more like Bush, Sr. than Bush, Jr., understands the U.S. need for broad military coalitions.

Mullen landed in Kuwait after a five-day Gulf tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Djibouti and Bahrain. These seven states either produce vast amounts of oil or house major U.S. military bases that defend the U.S. strategic stranglehold on its distribution. A Mullen spokesman reassured Saudi king Abdullah that Obama intends to keep him on his throne:  “The aim of the 1991 Gulf War was not to democratize Kuwait.” (Agencie French Press, 2/25)

But where would U.S. rulers find the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of troops needed for a Saudi invasion that might very well draw in Iran? Restoring the draft in present circumstances remains unthinkable. Gary Hart, a leading imperialist strategist, thinks the solution for U.S. imperialists lies in tying the liberal bosses’ side of the fight over workers’ rights now centered in Wisconsin to a patriotic movement that would back U.S. rulers’ war plans. (see box page 2)

Hart was co-chairman of Clinton’s 1999 Hart-Rudman Commission that drew up blueprints for a centralized U.S. police state. However, this presents them with a contradiction: on the one hand, they fear the consequences of a terrorist attack, but also would hope, as Hart figures, to use it to galvanize mass U.S. support for a Saudi invasion, just as it did for the eventual invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter war is now the longest in U.S. history.

Opportunities to Build the PLP

The uprisings and U.S. rulers’ reactions to them offer many valuable political lessons, about which we will write in coming issues. But for now we point to the first and foremost: Don’t trust the liberal bosses.

Meanwhile, PLP members and friends must back solidarity with — participate in — any rising working-class struggles, to be in position to guide them towards the goal of workers’ power and away from the liberals’ dead-end war aims. Recent anti-government working-class resistance to ruling-class attacks, both in the U.S. and abroad, show that politics are increasingly motivating workers. This can be advanced to demonstrate the need for a communist party, the PLP to play a central role in the immediate period.J

Liberal Gary Hart Seeks to Turn Wisconsin Protests to U.S. War Aims

Writing about Tea Partiers whose policies are running counter to U.S. imperialist aims from Madison to Tripoli, imperialist strategist Hart says, “There are lessons to be learned meanwhile about the limits of ...American power. The struggle here is whether we will return to a pre-New Deal America with many fewer ladders of opportunity, safety nets for the poor and elderly, and regulatory protections for consumers, workers, and the environment.” (Hart’s weblog, 2/21) Hart wants a new New Deal, with even more ladders and nets. He understands U.S. rulers’ need to somehow recreate Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal whose purpose was to save the capitalist system. FDR ran an alphabet soup of social programs, from the militaristic CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to the job-creating (though slave wage) WPA (Works Progress Administration). It was these, along with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, that helped overcome Tea Party-style 1930s isolationism by luring workers into the arms of a war-making government.

Women, Kids Battle Racist Israeli Cops Serving U.S. Tycoon

Al-ARAKIB, ISRAEL February 14 — A massive police force, armed to the teeth and dressed for battle, savagely attacked the residents of the unrecognized Bedouin-Arab village of Al-Arakib. The villagers’ homes have been brutally demolished no less than 16 (!) times since July 2010. They have once again been stranded without shelter in the middle of the desert as their improvised shanties were demolished.

Many of the village’s men were detained, but the women and children kept fighting and tried to block the bulldozers’ way. The barbaric cops then assaulted them with tear-gas, batons and rubber bullets, wounding at least two women and one child. The police refused to allow the wounded kid to be evacuated for hours.

The goal of this fascist police brutality is to force the villagers to surrender their land to the Israeli state, despite the fact that it is the villagers’ ancestral land and that they hold title over it. As a first stage, the Zionist JNF (Jewish National Fund) intends to plant trees over the village’s ruins in order to prevent the villagers’ return to them. As a second stage, however, they plan to build a new town — called Hiran — over Al-Arakib’s ruins. Residence in Hiran would be restricted to well-off religious Jews only.

But there is more than just the fascist Israeli government and the ultra-nationalist JNF behind this racist land-grab. Ronald Lauder, a NYC-based billionaire, the heir to the Estee Lauder financial empire, and a major donor to the JNF, is the real-estate tycoon who intends to reap a fortune out of Hiran’s construction.

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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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