World War Due to Syria?

If there is one thing that the civil war in Syria has shown the world is that when the bosses have a disagreement, it is the workers who do the dying. For a quick rundown of who is fighting whom in Syria, click on this link.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Syria have been murdered by the bosses’ bombs, due to their rotten ideology, their sectarian divisions manufactured by their borders, and the millions of bullets that they have made billions in selling. PLP has pointed out that this civil war in Syria has been a proxy war between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) nations in order to loosen Russia’s natural gas grip over Europe, control the natural gas mega field in the Eastern Mediterranean, and block Iran’s influence in the area. The millions of refugees created by this imperialist adventure are now being used as a political lever by Turkey as Erdogan does his best Gollum impersonation over his precious neo-Ottoman empire expansion into Syria using hoards and hoards of Islamist, mostly Al Qaeda aligned, rebel groups. He is tired of his nation being the ottoman of Europe.

 

Over 60% of Europe’s natural gas market is dominated by Russia, and the US is desperate to break this stranglehold that keeps them from absolute economic sanctions against Russia. This civil war is a classic example of category of dialectical imperialism known as appearance and essence. It appears to be, and is manipulated to look like by the bosses’ media, a civil war between a tin pot dictator and rebels trying to overthrow him, but it is really an imperialist proxy war between different major nations that is now spinning out of control.

 

Basically, the US supported Kurdish and Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are now getting Russian Close Air Support (CAS) to fight the CIA vetted and armed moderate opposition that are also tactically aligned with both Al Qaeda and Turkey after the Assad Regime seized territory in northern Syria to cut off the supply lines that the CIA and Turkey were using to pump weapons and jihadis into the conflict. Turkey played a dangerous game and is now in the process of losing it. The worst moment in the history of France was when Germany formed out of the Germanic tribes that Europe had enjoyed using mercenaries in their militaries since the Roman Empire. When Germany rose, it was an existential threat to the social order where England and France’s military might vied to be the preeminent power in Northern Europe.

 

As Germany rose, it challenged the already divided world and its ambitions led to the conflagration that was supposed to be the Great War to end all wars, but is now just reduced to World War I. Turkey is now staring down that historical moment. An autonomous Kurdish zone, colloquially known as “Rojava”, has formed just south of Turkey’s border as the leftist People’s Protection Units (YPG), the group that is the heart of the SDF, whipped the snot out of the Daesh (Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL) fascists who were hoping to massacre them. Though there are progressive aspects of the YPG that PLP does support such as fighting against patriarchy, they are not Communist and will not be able to sustain a revolution that will transform social relationships through the transformation of the economic relationships. The YPG illustrates the contradiction that unless there is a proper political line fighting directly for Communism, they will eventually end up back in the pit of capitalist ideology and relationships. Just as the PLP did not unreservedly support the brave workers who fought imperialism in Vietnam, we will not uncritically support the YPG and their Rojava project. We will point out that their struggle is just as doomed to the quagmire of capitalism as Vietnam’s left-led struggle National Liberation.

 

As Kurdish Rojava rises to their southern border, Turkey sees them as more of a threat than the Daesh’s genocidal death cult and has actually embedded their special forces in with the Jihadi groups now infiltrating into Northern Syria as they are just wantonly firing artillery into the Kurdish controlled areas as the Kurds are fighting the “moderate” CIA vetted rebels that have no problem wiping out whole villages of Shia and Al Awari that don’t worship their deity the way that they want to in the name of their Sunni sectarianism.

 

We are at a historical moment now where the imperialists can either take their losses and leave Syria to a Russian victory – a Russian victory that is going to allow them to take on the mantle of being the army that has defeated Jihadi forces in the Middle East, that has helped to shove a massive thorn into the side of Turkey, and that will allow for them to keep an expanding military presence in an area of the world that is strategically vital to the US’s empire. Turkey and SA have threatened to invade Syria to ostensibly fight Daesh, but this excuse will be a military excursion in order to keep Rojava from uniting across the entirety of Turkey’s border. The US has been arming and funding the YPG in their fight against the Daesh death cult, now Russia is providing CAS, and the regime’s forces are not engaging them as they have worked out some type of de facto non-aggression pact.

 

When the “Arab Spring” happened, PLP pointed out that none of the groups fighting against their own tin pot dictators had the correct political line of fighting directly for communism and that the struggle would be hijacked. Well, once again we were right as the struggle in Syria led to the rebels making tactical alliances with Islamicists that have now rendered any secular struggle within the Western-backed rebels impotent. Since the rebellion in Syria did not have the correct goals at the outset, it’s now fully apparent that they have betrayed the working class in Syria and now Turkey is trying to stave off the endgame of them being crushed. They have been complaining about being abandoned by their Western backers like the US, but they have also aligned themselves with groups like Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda in Syria.

 

The Western backed rebels aren’t the first group of rebels trying to overthrow a tyrant that became tyrants as they made opportunist errors based on their incorrect political line. They made a deal with the devil, and now they are paying the price as they have basically not only lost the rebellion, but, even more importantly for a rebellion, they have lost the support of the people. Masses of workers are now meeting their former tyrant’s forces that are aligned with that despot Putin in Russia as well as the oppressive fascists in Iran with massive celebrations in the street. They are full of joy at being liberated from the liberators by their former exploiters!

 

PLP will continue to maintain a principled left position and will not be opportunist. We recognize the historical moment that is now occurring within Syria. We see the balance of forces moving in the direction opposed to the dominant US Empire and allies. We know that the US needs to create a Sunni state to block Iran’s influence and to eject Russia’s growing military might out of the area.

 

Turkey wants to expand, and as it expands, since it is a member of NATO, US power is also expanded. The issue now occurring is that Turkey has now overplayed its hand. It is now firing artillery into SDF controlled Syria, has tens of thousands of troops along the Syrian border ready to invade, and does not want the US armed and backed SDF to wipe out the US armed and backed rebels and Daesh that now control its southern border. The US is caught as two of the sides that they have supported in Syria are now at war, so they may be able to pull out some kind of diplomatic victory, but Turkey has gone all in on toppling Assad’s regime. If Turkey is unable to topple Assad, that’s bad, but if they not only don’t topple Assad, but are then stuck with a Kurdish autonomous zone along their southern border while they continue to fight a war with the secessionist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in their south then it can be easy to foresee a time when Syria facilitates the Kurds in their armed struggle against Turkey.  This would be a catastrophe for Turkey and entail a major rollback of NATO, and by association, US power in the geostrategic region.

 

Turkey is now trying to get the US to say that the YPG is a terrorist organization just like the PKK is. It would not have been prudent, to say the least, if the US had admitted to arming, funding, and providing CAS to a terrorist organization, so they have officially said that the YPG are not a terrorist organization – much to the chagrin of their NATO ally. Turkey considers the revisionist YPG to be more of a danger than Daesh’s genocidal death cult!

 

It is historical moments like this where seemingly small wars can turn into massive world wars as imperialist rivals have the choice of either throwing in their hands and letting their rivals take all of the chips or doubling down and entering the fray themselves. Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and, most importantly, Russia have said that if Turkey or SA were to invade it would be a violation of Syria’s sovereignty and they would be going home in body bags. This is not an empty threat. Turkey shot down a Russian plane that was bombing its Islamist proxy forces in northern Syria, and Russia has not forgotten. It will, in all probability, attack any columns of troops entering into Syria. Turkey may not be able to invoke the NATO defensive pact since it would be an offensive operation. SA would use an army made up of many of its allies including Pakistan and Indonesia, who, ironically, have both said that they don’t want to invade, but may be obligated to due to signed defense pacts. If Russia were to vaporize the Turkish troops that invaded, this could be quite the spark.

 

The bosses are seeing the weakness the US has right now, a weakness where they don’t have the mass army that they need to confront their current world rivals, don’t have the patriotism necessary to induce their army to fight, and, most importantly, don’t have their own ruling class unity won to the necessary economic sacrifices necessary for such a massive war.

 

Aspirant warmongers like Bernie Sanders would prove to be quite the boon to the US ruling class as he already is saying that he wants the rich to pay more taxes. He or Hillary would be just what the dominant liberal wing of the US ruling class needs to convince its working class to wage a really big war. So, whichever Repubulocrat or Demopublican, Trump or Sanders, that wins the US presidential election will have to carry out the needs of a US empire in decline. PLP knows that imperialist bloodbaths have lead to Communist revolution in the past and knows that, as we continue to build in over 25 countries on 5 continents, we have a world to win and nothing to lose but our chains. The bosses will attempt to destroy this world, but workers built it, run it, and can build it again even better. We know that this capitalist system will not last forever. The bosses can keep conspiring again and again, but only a Communist revolution led by PLP can end these wars once and for all.

 

A Letter From a Reader on Racism

The following is a letter that we received and wanted to share with our readers.  Anybody that reads this blog is encouraged to contact us at desafio.challenge@gmail.com

 

During the rudimentary years of my life, I never knew much about racism. I understood that people were different colors, but that wasn’t a problem. But when I began living with my step-father, I was surrounded by racist slang. He would always call Black people the N-word while he would always call me and my “people” “sp*cs”. I didn’t really understand the racism behind these remarks, because I just learned to accept that these were the titles of each race. I never truly learned the cruelty of these words until I was about eight years old.

In the morning of a late summer day, my older brother and I walked out of our two-room apartment. We climbed up the wooden stairs to the main level and as we peered around our complex, we saw a group of Black teens sitting on the steps. There were four boys there that all dressed as stereotypical “Black teenagers”: white shirts, basketball shorts and shoes, with some wearing hats turned around, as well as some with various chains around their necks. My brother and I decided to walk over to them to introduce ourselves.

As we approached them, they seemed friendly. After including us in the conversation and getting to know us, we began to talk more and more. After talking to them and analyzing their apparel, only one thing popped in my mind, something that had only been there through the constant racial remarks against Black people. I approached who I thought was the leader of the group and said, “What’s your name?”

“Tyler,” he replied in a curious tone.

“Well I don’t want to call you Tyler, I’m going to call you n*****.”

As soon as the words fell out of my mouth, Tyler’s half smile and eased eyes turned into a solemn frown and wide eyes. I knew immediately what I had done. As I ran, my shoe fell off, and I was eventually taken down by the shoe Tyler threw at my head. Before he hurt me in any other way, his friends pushed him away telling him, “He doesn’t know any better.”

At this point I knew that it was time I knew better. The pain suffered that day was not from the impact of that shoe, but from my degradation of another race. For hundreds of years that word had been used to dehumanize Black people to three-fifths of a human, and I thought that it was but a common word. I’m one in seven billion people who have the opportunity to rise against this type of racism, and from then on out, I’ve been doing so. I won’t let my society get the better of me and poison me with prejudices. I am determined to help myself and others work together to help build a better community. A community with no races no nationalities, no titles. A community in which people are simply people, and these people would be treated accordingly.

Male Genital Mutilation is Profitable

Circumcision is essentially male genital mutilation as it forcibly removes the healthy foreskin attached to a baby boy’s penis often via blunt probe and without anesthesia. A physician who performed a fatal, botched circumcision on baby Ryan Heydari in 2013 was in a recent tribunal in Ontario.   The Ontario College of Physician and Surgeons upheld a mere advisory to the physician who performed the fatal botched circumcision.

Heydari’s parents would have preferred keeping him whole and intact. However, shortly after his birth, and with the physicians insistence, the couple took him in for the procedure. Hours later, they returned him to the hospital with a bloody diaper. The infant died a week later, having lost over 30% of his blood from the operation. While circumcision killed baby Ryan, capitalism directed the instruments.

The bosses’ “medical experts” – including the World Health Organization, funded by the Exxon-Mobil funding Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – have boosted routine infant circumcision as a way to keep males hygienic, prevent penile cancer, and even lower a man’s risk of getting HIV! That is like saying cutting off your toes reduces your chances of getting asthma. Hygiene of the male penis comes from proper washing, removing part of the penis to prevent cancer is like removing an infant’s nipples to prevent breast cancer, too young, too soon, and too absurd. As far as lowering a man’s risk of HIV, the fact that the HIV may hide in the foreskin and slowly creep in long after the sex act hit absurd and then started digging.

This profit system is the reason why. Since the 1980s, hospitals in the U.S. have sold cut foreskins to bio-medical and cosmetic companies for skin-grafts, insulin production, and anti-aging skin-creams. Foreskins feature fibroblasts. These are connective tissues made of amino acids, proteins, and collagens that can quickly grow new cells. One foreskin can produce $100,000 worth of fibroblasts. So, it is less important to the capitalists that anything is prevented, but more like millions of dollars in skin is attached to the head of a baby’s penis.

Circumcision brings in $1.75 billion annually for the U.S. This is the net profit after procedure costs, repair costs, and physician reimbursements. Physicians can pocket $167 per operation when adjusted for medical inflation to 2010, meaning if they perform five a week, they can generate an additional $3,340 monthly, further proving a profit incentive to cut. (Van Howe, 2004) and cut they do, as often as they can to as many infant males as they can.

Companies that profit from the mutilation of infant boys include Intercyx, which receives funding from the imperialist U.S. Department of Defense; SkinMedica, which cashes checks from both the Perseus Soros BioPharmaecutical Fund, a venture capital company managed by working-class misleader George Soros; and Apax Partners Inc. Alan Patricof, who founded Apex, and who regularly donates to campaigns for racist Democratic shills Bill and Hilary Clinton.

Fear mongering and false consciousness supported by the bosses’ favorite opiate, religion, also play a critical role in the procedure’s popularity. The three largest Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – circumcise their male babies because they believe that a promise was made during a conversation between Abraham and his deity. He was ordered to circumcise himself and his sons, along with every male descendant eight days old. These parents are continuing to cut their children because an alleged sky being told a 99-year-old man to do so to himself – this is another example of religion’s nonsensical edicts.

All the religious nonsense aside, even if the religious edicts were a cover to an actual necessary adaptive process to living in a desert environment with a lack of water, at this point, many of the justifications for male circumcision parallel Female Genital Mutilation. The hygiene argument may have held water in an environment that couldn’t support the necessary washing, but now circumcision also has an aspect that specifically concerns sexuality. Male circumcision became prevalent in America as a way to curb masturbation and it has been considered to be more appealing to women; female genital mutilation is rooted in the sexist ideas of chastity and increasing male sexual pleasure at the expense of the female herself. Capitalism is mutilating baby boys for financial gain. Only Communist revolution will put a permanent end to routine infant circumcision based on profit or the brain numbing false consciousness of religion.

Circumcision and the HIV Lies

The claim that circumcision reduces a man’s chances of getting HIV comes from three highly flawed WHO randomized clinical trials on uncircumcised and circumcised men in Africa. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22320006) As a result, African nations with high HIV rates boost adult male circumcision to combat the virus. They claim these men will have a 60% reduced chance of contracting HIV. Therefore, many adult men who have undergone the procedure in South Africa believe they are HIV-negative. According to a recent Voice of America article, these men are engaging in unprotected sex as a result, believing they are “too clean” to attract the disease. In 2013, local sex workers who spoke with a Zimbabwean publication revealed their circumcised clients were refusing to wear condoms for this reason. This creates further dangers for women forced into prostitution in these nations because of sexism. A Pub Med.gov study also found that in the RCT’s a Ugandan male-to-female trial resulted in a 61% HIV increase in female partners of HIV-positive, circumcised males. . U.S,. Bosses are, unsurprisingly spearheading Africa’s circumcision initiative. Between 2011 and 2013, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) helped cover 4.7 million circumcisions throughout the continent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGHT RACIST DEPORTATIONS

During the first week of January the Obama administration put into practice its promise to round up recent immigrants from Central America for deportation. ICE has arrested almost 500 immigrants, all subject to deportation, mostly in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and California, but also in New Jersey, New York and other states.

Members of the immigrant’s rights organization we PLP members are in, as well as the wider community, are understandably alarmed and afraid. The organization has begun workshops informing immigrants of their legal “rights” if they are confronted by ICE. There’s also talk of finding sanctuary in churches for immigrants at risk of deportation. We in PLP are supporting these measures. But the organization is downplaying this surge in deportations as “normal” ICE activity. They are relying on good lawyers to represent immigrants in deportation hearings and trying to get “local” laws passed to protect immigrants within particular cities. While PLP is never opposed to good lawyers, these approaches are at best illusory and at worst part of liberal policy to pacify the working class and allow racist divisions to grow.

So what does communist leadership within the mass organizations mean now? Communists are against panic; we aim to strengthen the working class. We must do a number of things:

• Develop workers’ understanding of how imperialist rivalry and constant war is related to attacks on immigrants world-wide,
• Relate deportations to the surge in racism in the US beginning with daily police killings of black workers and youth to anti-Muslim attacks to anti-immigrant attacks,
• Expose how the capitalist ruling class and their media seize on “fear of terrorism” to blame immigrants and Syrian refugees for the entry of terrorists into the US and Europe while obscuring the criminal, racist and fascist nature of cpaitalism,
• Denounce how capitalist governments from Europe to the US. are closing borders, leaving refugees from war, starvation and misery to die.

Workers ask us communists in PLP about what will happen in the future. We tell them that we can’t predict the future. Our answers depend on communist understanding of how capitalism works and our confidence in the international working class. Workers will continue to find ways to cross borders and will continue to be a source of cheap labor in the US. The US government will continue to welcome technology experts, scientists, researchers and others who can help US imperialism to project its power in the world and remain on top. It is likely that there will be a guest worker program to allow in immigrants for limited periods of time to work in agriculture, food packing and other industries, but without any of the so-called labor rights that workers in the US currently have. The focus will be on programs that will guarantee rights for youth who join the military as ground troops in imperialist wars.

In our mass organizations, we have strongly called for demands that can put the working class on the offensive: no deportations, immediate acceptance of hundreds of thousands of Syrian war refugees, open all borders for workers and amnesty now for all immigrants in the US, no restrictions. We want fightback that will include all workers, immigrant and citizen, black, Latin, Asian, white, same enemy, same fight. We will never accept any form of racism as “usual or normal.”

Racist KKKops Get Away With It

A new year looms, but it’s still the same old bullshit when it comes to capitalism. Yet another innocent young member of the working class, 12 years old this time, will not receive justice under this racist system. What was Tamir Rice’s crime? Playing on a playground? Well, the real crime is that capitalism is allowed to exist.

 

The death of 12 year old Tamir Rice at the hands of the racist police is a crime that capitalism will let go unpunished. The Democrat Tim McGinty, the prosecutor, did a better job defending the police than most defense attorneys. It was clearly understood that McGinty “made no attempt to mask his belief that rookie officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback committed no crimes” when Rice was killed in a playground.

 

Nothing illustrates the need for Communist Revolution greater than the impunity that racist police gun down Black members of the working class. Now the all to familiar calls for calm are going out from the usual misleader sorts, but why should there be calm. There should be no peace until the terrible criminals who stole a life be given their due, yet the ruling class puppets push passivity on the working class. The police protect and serve the racist system, and so, when they murder us, they are just doing their job.

 

This holiday season, fueled by corporations and quasi religious mysticism, be mindful of the fact that there are many parents who won’t see their children due to the bullets of the racist police, the bombs of the imperialists, and the proxy wars fought to preserve geo-strategic resources. Let’s take the green and religion out of the holidays and leave only the red: the redder the better. We need to build a Communist revolution in order to sweep aside this racist, sexist, system of exploitation. No more racist police murders, no more racist cops, and no more capitalism! 

Smash Imperialism and Terrorism!

In a protest against racism, specifically anti-Muslim racism, members and friends of PLP marched in different areas of Brooklyn on 11/15/15, the day after the terrorist attacks in France.  This is a copy of the leaflet that was distributed to the working class there.  

(Click here for leaflet on Paris Terorist Attack)

Immediately following the Paris attacks, the mass media has ramped up anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism, using them as an excuse for intensified border control and calls for war. These racist responses to a horrendous attack on the working class of Paris are exactly what the ruling class wants (whether they are French, U.S. or Saudi bosses). What we really need is working class unity against all these bosses and their warmongering.

The best way to stand in solidarity with our Parisian sisters and brothers against this most recent carnage is to stand against imperialist war on our jobs, schools and universities. These recent attacks in Paris reflect the continued chaos created by the US and French led oil war in Iraq and Syria.

Same Enemy, Same Fight!

From Paris to Damascus, Baghdad to Brooklyn the workers of the world have no good side in this dogfight for oil profits in the Middle East. Only under the international communist red flag of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) can we turn these racist wars and fascist anti-immigrant policies into a class war and fight for communism: a world without borders, wars for profit, racism or sexism.

With all their rhetoric about creating an Islamic state, ISIS (which is composed primarily of former military of the old Saddam regime and funded by both oil profits sold on the black market and small-time Saudi bosses), has actual dreams of maintaining control of key oil and gas fields in direct competition to the US and French bosses.

Since September, 2015 the French bosses have deployed their only aircraft carrier, and just this past week have expanded their bombing campaign from Iraq into Syria, carrying out over 1,300 sorties and 271 airstrikes murdering thousands of workers “without mercy.”

Workers of the World Unite!

Workers need to unite internationally against all imperialists. Communist revolution is the only solution to the problems of capitalism but we need millions of committed workers to make that happen. Communism means no bosses’ borders creating fake divisions for our class. We will share all of the world’s resources for the benefit of our whole class!

Smash Anti-Muslim racism!

Join the international Progressive Labor Party in the fight for Communism!

The Bosses Bring War to Space

It is not enough that the bosses constantly threaten, murder, divide, butcher, and exploit their wealth from the working class. No, now they are beginning to fully militarize both space and the Arctic. Stratfor recently published an article where they discussed the strategic value that “space represents the ultimate high ground” just as “control of the skies added a new dimension to combat”.

During the Cold War when the space race was just getting underway, the technology to fully exploit the weapons capability of space did not exist yet. Therefore, the bosses had no problem signing treaties to keep from fully militarizing space. Now, with the US at the top of the heap and no powerful international communist movement to stop them, a weaponization of space is underway.

The ability to shoot satellites out of space has been demonstrated on several occasions by the Chinese bosses and this has alarmed The US bosses. Space represents a major weakness of the US military since any military assets in space are vulnerable and very difficult if impossible to defend.

As much as the United States leads the field, however, it is increasingly reliant on its space-based systems — of which a significant percentage are highly vulnerable and largely indefensible. This vulnerability has not escaped the notice of the United States’ biggest competitors. By finding a way to disable space-based systems, a potential antagonist could disconnect the multiple interlocking U.S. military systems, plunging it into information darkness and delivering a critical blow ahead of any physical strike — and to do so would not violate any existing space treaty.

Since the US heavily relies on technology to make up the bulk of its military advantage and intelligence assets, it stands to reason that the US is developing capabilities to also shoot down and destroy satellites. Each satellite that is destroyed will create debris in space that would be a hindrance to any future development of space.

Illustrating that the bosses are not comfortable with solely destroying this planet, Stratfor continues to forecast that there will be an increase in competition over the Arctic and eventually the resources in the Solar System. The Arctic has at least two Russian military bases on it now. This militarization of the Arctic is a danger to all of humanity since the melting of the ice can trigger global catastrophe by initiating an ice age. There are also seedbeds within the Arctic that harbor non-bioengineered seeds that we may need at a later date since capitalist’s corporations like Monsanto are constantly manipulating crops. A last reason for the danger of militarizing the Arctic is the fact that it is freshwater ice that could potentially be contaminated.

The idea of the imperialist wars that are now developing on our planet creeping into space should be both nauseating and disturbing, but not terrifying. The bosses can be stopped with Communist Revolution. Though space represents the next step in human evolution and development, after we develop a scientific based society on the principles of “from each according to commitment and to each according to need”, we will have to not only rebuild this planet from the destruction of imperialist war, but we’ll have to also clean up the bosses’ mess in space.

Science will develop unhindered as the understanding of necessity becomes the hallmark of humanity. Only a Communist society based on meeting the needs of all by all can create the economy that will drive humanity to enter space in a non-parasitical manner that won’t create war. The Progressive Labor Party is building that Communist world each and every day in over 20 countries on multiple continents. A world that will not have war, abolish racism, all borders, all nations, and sexism. The capitalists, on the other hand, are building war war and more war in every corner of this world in order to protect their resources and maintain the enslavement of the working class. Capitalism gives us a new reason each day to smash it with Communist revolution.

LA Bosses Attack Homeless Workers

LOS ANGELES, September 26—A multiracial group of 50 women and men marched up the Venice Beach Boardwalk for the second time in two months to demand justice for homeless workers Brendon Glenn and Jason Davis, killed by LAPD cops—and for one of the latest local victims, Jascent-Jamal Lee “Shakespeare” Warren, slain on August 30 by a Cadillac Hotel security guard.
Shakespeare was killed when he went to the aid of homeless friends being harassed by the hotel owner, Sris Sinnathamby, who used a racial epithet as he ordered guard Francisco Guzman to shoot Shakespeare. Charged with murder, Sinnathamby has been released on $1 million bail. Guzman ran away but was captured six days later. He is charged with murder, attempted murder (he shot another man in the leg), and firearms possession.
As Google and other tech firms transform Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey and other Westside neighborhoods into “Silicon Beach,” they are accelerating these neighborhoods’ gentrification and pushing to rid the boardwalk of homeless workers. The racist Los Angeles City Council has declared a homeless state of emergency and pledged $100 million to address the problem, with no known source for the funding or a plan to spend it. Of a previous $100 million the city earmarked to combat homelessness, $87 million went to “law enforcement.” Currently, there are police-escorted sanitation sweeps every Friday morning to run homeless workers off the beach, but no plans to provide housing or even bathroom facilities. As L.A. continues to plan for a 2024 Olympic bid, these crackdowns will only increase. L.A. bosses are eliminating homeless people, not homelessness.
One speaker at the rally raised the issue of racism and recent efforts to integrate police forces throughout the U.S. He concluded that having Black, Latin, and Asian cops, whether rank and file or top brass, does nothing to change the racist, brutal essence of the job. Capitalist bosses in every country use the police to terrorize the working class, he explained, as can be seen with the 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, and the striking miners murdered in the Marikana Massacre in South Africa. The cops in those countries are the same color as the workers they slaughter, but they’re on the opposite side of the class war.
We are meeting new faces and groups who are cosponsoring these protests. The two Unitarian Universalist church contingents were larger this time. PLP distributed CHALLENGE to marchers and passersby. We identified capitalism as the root cause of the problems of homelessness, racism, and police brutality, and communist revolution as the solution. We are inspired by reading in CHALLENGE about the ongoing protests PLP has helped build in New York City around the murders of Kyam Livingston, Shantel Davis, and others. We will be marching in Venice again on Sunday, October 25.LA

Russia’s Move in Syria Raises the Stakes and Alters the Board

Just two weeks ago, we pointed out that Turkey was playing a dangerous game as inter-imperialist rivalry was intensifying in the Levant. We discussed the fact that Russia was now raising the stakes by placing their military assets in the Levant. Over the years, we have discussed the fact that Russia was not going to abandon its only warm water Mediterranean military base at Tartus.

Though Qatar did want to build a natural gas pipeline through Syria that would have ameliorated Turkey’s, and the rest of the EU’s, reliance on Russian gas, Syria said no and so began the need for regime change. The US, Jordan, Turkey, and the Gulf Cooperation States (GCC), especially Saudi Arabia, then turned what would have been a minor uprising at best into a full blown civil war along religious lines. Communists know that all religions are different types of false consciousness meant to make the working class submit to the ruling class and tolerate the horrors of modern day capitalism. The imperialists are now using religion as a divisive form of nationalism to get the working class to slaughter each other in a proxy war over borders and pipeline routes.

Turkey was trying to play a dangerous game, and it looks like it blew up in Ankara’s face. The delusions of the Ottoman past made theme think that they could be a regional player pushing a “no fly zone” in support of al Qaeda in Syria (who used to be the bad guys) and a “safe zone” in support of Islamic State and against the Kurds to the north. Well, as of now, it looks like that isn’t happening. As we discussed, Russia has offered Turkey one heck of a deal with the Turkish Stream pipeline and Russia continues to supply almost 60% of Turkey’s natural gas. Well, winter is coming and with it will be cold weather, the need for people to cook, and all of the other things the working class depends on for natural gas. Russia has shown through the example of Ukraine how it will shut off natural gas if it needs to for political leverage.

So, Turkey is caught on the horns of a dilemma: it can directly engage militarily with Russia in Syria, thus breaking international law and possibly inciting WWIII due to the currently existing status of forces agreement that would require China to intervene on Syria’s behalf as well as Iran and Russia or they can just continue to arm and fund al Qaeda and its allies in the region. On top of that, the US is basically ignoring Turkey’s calls that the Kurds are the real enemy and ISIS is just a useful enemy by arming the “from Iraq, to Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters who in recent months have pushed the Islamic State from a major portion of northern Syria along the Turkish border.” So, the place where Turkey wanted to put a no Kurd “safe zone” along the border will most likely now be part of a US backed Kurd offensive against ISIS.  In the face of its current impotence, Ankara is having a complete shit-fit.

The bosses’ press in the US is carefully leaving out the fact that the majority of the “rebels” are actually fascists. Even the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has bedded down with al Qaeda. These fascists, like all fascists before them, will murder workers who do not fit their narrow ideas as to what constitutes the right type of national or racial identity. Like the Nazis, al Qaeda groups like The Army of Islamic Conquest or Jabhat al Nusra will murder whole villages who are a different religion than them. Again, the ideology of religion has just as much of a material basis as race, nationality, and gender – all of which are socially constructed, generated, and reinforced because capitalism needs to divide the working class, get us to identity with a certain group of bosses, and fight amongst ourselves for their benefit.

It’s quite ironic and completely illustrates the tragedy of history and the horrible effects of the fall of the Old Communist Movement (OCM) that the US is having a temper tantrum as Russia bombs the snot out of its moderate jihadist fascists as the Taliban are in the process of overrunning Kunduz. The historical parallels of Afghanistan are now being echoed in Syria. In Afghanistan, it was the then fully revisionist and imperialist USSR being invited in by their allied government to fight the fascist mujahedeen who were armed to the teeth by the US and its allies. These “few stirred up Muslims” have been the cause of death for thousands and thousands of workers, many in the US, around the world. This pattern is now being illustrated as Russia is now sending in “advisors” and “trainers” as well as a wide array of mechanized forces and some pretty devastating air power. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces have not been fully eroded and the Iranian backed militias in Syria like Hezbollah and the National Defense Forces (NDF) still have enough man power to fight on the ground for now, so there is technically some truth to Russia’s assertion that they don’t want to put troops on the ground in Syria now, however, as change is the only constant, and should the SAA lose ground to the US/NATO/GCC backed “moderate” al Qaeda allied Islamist groups heretofore dubbed “the rebels” then Russia is more than willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for oil. China is waiting in the wings and has intimated that they are willing to send in troops to keep the “East Turkistan” Uighur movements from gestating fascist terrorists who have murdered hundreds in the Xinjiang Province.

It is the working class that will continue to suffer when they are given choices like which murderous fascist regime to support in Syria, the US backed terrorists or the Russian backed butcher. It is our children that will be sent to fight and die for oil pipelines, big money geopolitics, and Exxon/Mobil/BP/Shell/Lukoil et al’s profit margins. Workers in The US, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and China, just as workers all over the world, have the same enemy and the same fight against capitalism.

The US’s nightmare scenario is playing out as the EU “will try to bring Russia and the United States together to resolve the Syrian situation in tandem. It looks like the Ukraine and Syria crises will be inexorably linked with broader negotiations, just as Russia had planned, whether the United States is ready to admit it or not.” So, as the US metaphorically continues to play checkers like a cowboy outside of a burned Native American village, confident of its superiority and ever-expanding empire, Russia continues to play chess and use simple moves to change the balance of power on the global board. The US has been constantly trying to lead and shape the world events in order to encircle and blunt Russia’s growing power, but, as of now, they are now in a reactive mode. They are not leading, but they are reacting and attempting to shape a narrative to the working class (in other words, lie lie and lie) in order to get us to support their support for the very same kind of fascist scum that blew up the Twin Towers, has butchered thousands in Nigeria, sells preteen girls into sex slavery in Iraq, and is currently in a major offensive in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Russia has taken the initiative, for now, in shaping world events and negotiations.

So, as Israel gets ready to send more troops and settlers to the Golan Heights simultaneously with al Qaeda taking more territory there, and Russia and the US bomb more and more cities so workers there continue to die as collateral damage, Communist revolution is more needed than ever. We need a real choice, not which fascist or imperialist to support, but an answer to the never-ending wars that capitalism requires due to imperialist expansion. The US empire will defend itself with our blood, just as Russia will. It is up to us to join and build the Progressive Labor Party in order to end this bloodshed once and for all.

Capitalism Creates Homelessness

Every moment that the working class can’t afford to live where they work or to raise their children in the safety of a stable home is another moment that the working class is open to communist ideas. Capitalism and imperialism need homelessness. By driving rents higher and higher, capitalists increase their profits and then blame the victims for the conditions that their system creates. Many of the workers who can’t afford their rent or want to eventually be able to have a place of their own end up joining the bosses’ military. There are more than enough resources to build structures for every worker to have a home already, yet many of the most massive buildings are used as office buildings to directly generate wealth for the capitalists while millions of workers are homeless.

Communism would focus solely on meeting the needs of the working class all over the world. Providing shelter for all workers would be the primary focus. We would not need to build office buildings in order to generate profit because wages, currency, and profit would all be abolished. We would use the resources of the world to meet the needs of the workers in the world. Since the capitalist ruling class rules the world, we won’t get our needs met. They care more about producing profit from rent than building housing for the working class.

Homelessness is also very sexist and racist. It is sexist because it directly contributes to millions of women staying in unsafe conditions and abusive relationships due to the fact that they can’t afford to move out and find a home for themselves and their children. It is racist because of the disproportionate number of Black workers who can not normally get the best mental health care or due to the wage discrepancy Black workers are paid far less than other workers and so have a much more difficult time making rent, let alone buying a home. Imperialism causes homelessness due to the bombs and wars actually destroying the structures that the workers live in causing them to become desperate refugees seeking solace and receiving racism at the hands of the bosses.

In India “If you travel through the suburbs of the Indian capital, Delhi, you will see miles and miles of built homes with nobody living in them.” because many of these homes have been built to house vast amounts of money that the rich try to hide. In New York City, one can walk by countless new luxury Condos being built that the working class just can’t afford. Outside of the buildings in the capital of world capital, there are homeless asking for money to just eat. There is no greater condemnation of capitalism than its refusal to provide housing for those who produce its wealth.

A vast amount of homelessness was created during the crisis of overproduction of homes that the bosses called “The subprime crisis” that started in 2007. Capitalism always has periodic crises when they produce more of a product than they can sell for an ever-increasing profit. A point was hit whereby the working class was unable to buy all of the homes that were built, and, though it devastated the home owning working class, it was used by many capitalists to increase their wealth – as the banks got bailed out, the working class got sold out. Instead of Obama just paying off all of the mortgages and allowing the working class to keep their homes, he bailed out the banks causing millions of white and Black workers to lose their homes.

The only reason that capitalists build anything is to generate profit. Housing is a means to profit for them. As China has more and more billionaires with money to hide from the anti-corruption witch hunt going on there, they are driving up the housing prices all over major US metropolises such as NYC and LA. This affect of empty apartments that can not be used by the workers, since they are owned by some rich boss burying his cash so he doesn’t have to pay taxes or so he can evade anti-corruption probes, illustrates the maxim that what affects the workers anywhere affects our class everywhere. Imperialism is the stage of capitalism where capital has hit the limit of maximum growth in the home country and so looks for other borders to invest in. The outflow of capital from the rich in China as they look for safe places to generate profit directly hurts the working class in the US. Well, how did these rich Chinese get their money in the first place – by directly exploiting their own workers! The ability for them to brutally exploit their own working class to generate surplus value allowed them to exploit workers elsewhere.

Homelessness will end with the destruction of the need for profit. We will organize society to provide for the working class. We will build a society based on communist economics according to “from each according to commitment to each according to need”. Instead of having miles and miles worth of empty housing while there are workers desperate for that housing or vast buildings used only to generate wealth, we will build the housing that the working class needs.