WORKERS VOTE TO STRIKE FIGHT:

WARMAKER BOEING’S ATTACK ON ALL WORKERS

Puget Sound, WA,  August 30 —“Strike, Strike” reverberated down the Auburn plant aisles. Thousands or Boeing Workers marched outside negotiations near the airport chanting, “Out the Gate, in ’08.” Seven thousand emptied the Everett complex for three days running taunting the company to  “Paint the Lines,” a reference to the green lines security traditionally paints around the factories to mark where picketers shouldn’t cross. These marches followed a month of Rolling Thunder: workers banging their tools making a deafening sound like thunder rolling through the plants, every hour on the hour. Boeing workers have taken matters into their own hands, forcing the union mis-leadership to recommend a strike Sept. 4.

This militancy did not arise spontaneously. For years, PLP helped lead mass rebellions in Boeing plants building Rolling Thunder, organizing mass marches and protest rallies as part of class struggle against the bosses and their imperialist plans for the aerospace industry. The union misleaders have tried to appropriate the tactics, but it got away from them. As IAM District President Tom Wroblewski lamented,  “Once you get these guys up the mountain, it hard to get them back down again.”

Workers should harbor no illusions that this militant activity alone can reverse the sharpening attacks on our class. Millions must be guided by communist, class-conscious ideas, organized by the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), in order to truly change society.

Global capitalist competition causes the general trend to attack industrial workers, particularly younger, newer workers. The rising industrial and military prowess of Russia and China, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist competitors, gives new urgency to the U.S. bosses’ need to retool and cut costs. In addition, the racist super-exploitation of subcontract workers, those working in a rapidly growing number of non-union, low-wage sweatshops, is changing the face of the aerospace industry.

Reject the “Kick Your Kids to the Kurb (KKK)” Contract! Strike!

Boeing is flush with cash at the moment, having made more that $13 billion in profit in recent years. The bosses, however, feel pressed to hold every penny as they look to the sharpening fight against their imperialist rivals. The union misleaders, meanwhile, are bickering over how much of this cash they can get to bribe older union workers to sell out the next generation.

Between 2006 and 2008, average Boeing wages have dropped $6/hour because of lower rates for new hires agreed to in prior contracts. This contract will lock in the trend of increasing exploitation, as nearly 50% of the Boeing workforce, those currently earning the highest wages, will retire in the next few years.

The tactics may differ, but in the end, aerospace workers will suffer the same fate as their class brothers and sisters in auto and other industries. More work will be subcontracted to the non-union shops; union workers will face lay-offs or lower pay in the current plants. We must not accept this contract. Workers must strike!

Workers Debate Dismal Future Under Capitalism

Progressive Labor Party called for a “United Aerospace Strike” in our well-received flyer at the airport demonstration. We included solidarity statements from Mississippi shipyard workers, Long Beach Boeing workers and L.A. subcontractor workers. Every statement warned of “losing higher-paid jobs to lower paid, non-union employees at an alarming rate.”

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Boeing workers is as sharp as the sound of Rolling Thunder. The pro-capitalist union leaders offer ideas that will not challenge the bosses’ system. They blame the bad contract offer and the loss of union jobs on “this blatant example of corporate greed.” That’s why they tried, and failed, to start the chant “Boeing’s offer is unfair, all we want is our fair share.”

Workers debated the unions’ ideas for hours on the shop floor, with many rejecting the misleaders’ analysis. We built this factory with our labor, and our class, the working class, should control it!

As the bosses fled Rolling Thunder, we organized meetings of CHALLENGE readers in the plants. Riffing on the debates initiated during the Party’s July Summer Project, we discussed how bad ideas undermined the Chinese Revolution. We learned how Chinese revisionists –– misleaders who revised revolutionary ideas to take power back from the working class –– defeated the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, and consolidated capitalism’s hold on China. They busted up the communal farms, sending the equivalent of the U.S. population into the new Chinese factories at dirt-cheap wages. The imperialist rivalry has never been the same.

Kick Capitalism To The Curb

We also discussed how capitalism reinforces racism, sexism and imperialism. We discussed how the dog-eat-dog capitalist economic base makes it impossible to mitigate, let alone eliminate, these divisions in the working class. “How can communism succeed when we are so divided against each other?” asked our friend.

We examined the different economic base in a communist system, based on the collective strength of the international working class and the slogan “from each according to their commitment, to each according to their need.”  We debated whether a movement guided by communist politics that smashed the ruling class and revolutionized the economic base could indeed change how workers interact with each other. The road to workers’ power is built on  fighting these evils of capitalism right now in this contract battle. But many agreed that the final defeat of racism, sexism and imperialism requires a communist revolution.

Everybody agreed this was a long, hard fight, made doubly difficult by the defeat of the old communist movement. One friend said, “A light bulb turned on” when PLP members explained how concessions to the wage system made by the old movement doomed it from the start.

In the end, the choice was made clear: we could kick our kids to the curb or kick capitalism to the curb. We left these discussions resolving to sell more CHALLENGES, distribute PLP basic documents Road to Revolution III and IV, organize two PLP study groups and build our revolutionary forces. As we go to print it looks like we’ll strike on Sept. 4. Either way, the future is ours if we build these revolutionary communist forces in our industry and throughout the working class.

Pakistan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks

After only five months, Pakistan’s new coalition government has sunk into a seemingly unstoppable political and economic crisis: rapidly-rising inflation, increasing challenges from Islamic extremists and U.S.-India condemnation of Pakistan as a very serious threat to capitalist world security.

On August 18, the latest in a long line of U.S.-backed military strong men, President Pervez Musharraf, stepped down rather than face impeachment. While commentators predict his resignation heralds a new era, the chaos continues: a suicide bombing kills 30; another leaves 70 dead; one coalition partner resigns from government; thousands flee their homes during the biggest battle of the “war on terror” between the Pakistani army and the Taliban; president-to-be Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), declares, “The world is losing the war on terror.”

Meanwhile, working-class anger at the rising cost of living — wheat flour, a staple, increased 26% in one month and transportation 14%, following last year’s jump in consumer prices of almost 20% — government corruption and general insecurity led to nation-wide protests. In Karachi, Pakistan’s Telecommunication Company workers struck in May, taking over the company’s headquarters until July 28 when they won higher wages.

On-the-job actions erupt in textile factories, the cement industry, among teachers, hospital and other government departments as more workers demand wage increases to offset increased living costs. Critically affecting the government’s military plans, 3,000 Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (Defense Ministry) workers, paid on a daily basis, are demanding pay increases and permanent jobs, now given to relatives and friends of army officials.

The PPP-led government blames Musharraf’s nine-year dictatorship for worsening conditions, claiming he left a “mutilated” economy with a large trade deficit and a government budget deficit up 75%. But their “poor people’s budget” follows Musharraf’s policies that blatantly benefit Pakistan’s ruling class and the U.S., which is insisting on the deregulation of Pakistan’s economy. More privatization of public resources is planned, tax breaks on stock-market profits are extended two years and large tracts of land are reserved for foreign investors to develop agribusiness. Subsides for food, fuel oil, electricity and fertilizer are slashed over 25%.

With a nod to the painful poverty of its 168 million people — 70% exist on less than $2/day, 60 million are “food insecure” (according to a UN report) — the government trumpets its $507 million program to provide $15 per month, medical insurance and job training for 3.3 million desperately-poor families. This contrasts starkly with a military budget of $4.7 billion.

Since 2002 the army has also received $10 billion from the U.S. to fund Pakistan’s military participation in the “war on terror” against the Taliban in the tribal belt along the Afghan/Pakistani border. But despite these billions, the insurgency has grown and the U.S. believes that the funding — paid in cash — is going elsewhere. In Pakistan it’s no secret that it lines the pockets of top military officials, who use the war as a cash cow and want to keep it alive.

The root of Pakistan’s current problems is U.S. bosses’ need to use it as part of their goal of world domination. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, (now an Obama foreign policy advisor) devised the “Bear Trap,” a plot to defeat the U.S.’s main imperialist rival, the then Soviet Union, by drawing it into a war between the Afghan pro-Moscow government in Kabul and the wealthy landowners and religious zealots opposing it. The plan (in Brzezinski’s words, “to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam”), involved the creation, funding and training of an Afghan mujahaddin army in Pakistan.

This led to a 12-year jihad that became the U.S.’s largest covert action, (estimated cost, $40 billion (The Nation, 2/15/99) the bulk coming from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia). It inflicted religious intolerance on the secular societies of Pakistan and Afghanistan, perpetrated some of the most brutal acts of terrorism and became the breeding ground for the Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist networks now operating in 80 countries.

Today the U.S. claims factions in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence are aiding the Taliban’s resurgence. But the latter’s strength is also growing because the Pakistani army is weakening. Soldiers see the officers’ corruption and plunder and are demoralized. Desertions are rising. Many rank-and-file soldiers are reluctant to fight in a war overwhelmingly targeting civilians. Bloody confrontations, like the recent one killing many civilians and making 300,000 homeless, strengthen the Taliban’s position.

“Why is our government bombing us from the air,” shouted one refugee. U.S. air strikes from over the border in Afghanistan or from secret CIA bases in Pakistan that kill more villagers than terrorists intensify the anger.

Caught between the army and the insurgents, people in the tribal areas are either coerced or voluntarily join with the Taliban. They do have an alternative: join with other workers in building PLP which is fighting the cause of all this misery, capitalism. J

(Next, Part II: India, the U.S. and inter-imperialist rivalry over Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan and the projected “balkanization” of Pakistan.)

Afghanistan: Tables Turning on U.S. Aggressors

The “victory” claims of U.S. rulers when they invaded Afghanistan in 2001 have turned around. Not only is Osama bin Laden still at large, but the Taliban and its allies are now launching coordinated assaults on U.S. Army bases and an attack that killed ten elite French paratroopers. No wonder Obama and McCain are advocating troop increases in Afghanistan. At stake is a proposed oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.

The seven-year occupation has devastated Afghans. Thousands of civilians have died from U.S./NATO air attacks, bombs, missiles and police fire, intensifying hatred of the imperialists. Poppy cultivation and corruption have soared. Poverty, homelessness, skyrocketing food prices, 75% illiteracy — this and worse is the lot of the average Afghan, the result of U.S. “liberation.” With over 80% of women affected by domestic violence, Afghanistan has become the most dangerous place in the world for women.
All this has become fertile ground for Taliban and al Qaeda recruitment.

In the face of this devastation, Afghans have protested. Hundreds demonstrated against rising food prices; at a teachers’ rally for wage hikes, students set 45 vehicles ablaze and attacked the cops. Angry street demonstrations protested the U.S.-puppet agreement to maintain permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan.
All this is linked to the instability in bordering Pakistan, a Taliban base.

Russia-U.S. Rivalry Sharpens War Threat, Intensifies Fascism

Russia’s onslaught into Georgia, a major strategic setback for U.S. rulers, shifts the imperialist rivalry into a new, more dangerous phase. The U.S. war machine no longer holds a monopoly on invasion and must now contend with the restored might of Moscow’s 1,200,000-strong nuclear-armed forces. For example, Pentagon planners targeting Iran will have to raise their estimates of needed troops and figure out how to get them.

Eight years ago, the top-level, Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman commission formulated far-reaching plans for maintaining U.S. global supremacy into the 21st Century, including militarization under a domestic police state. Its foreign policy chapter stated, “It is a critical national interest of the United States that no hostile… [predominant power] arise in any of the globe’s major regions, nor a hostile global peer rival or a hostile coalition comparable to a peer rival.”  On Russia, Hart-Rudman warned against political developments that Putin in fact later led, “A form of Russian national socialism [fascism — Ed.], emboldened by a revived form of pan-Slavism, could do enormous harm over all of Eurasia and beyond” [“harm” to U.S. ruling-class interests ––Ed].

PUTIN INSTITUTES WARTIME FASCISM

Former KGB agent Putin’s success in reorganizing Russia into an imperialist power contrasts sharply with Bush’s failure to carry out Hart-Rudman’s recommendations. Putin has mercilessly disciplined pro-U.S. political dissenters and businessmen. Alexander Litvinenko, a KGB turncoat who criticized the Kremlin from London, died horribly in 2006 from a Russian-sourced radioactive poison. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-chief of the former oil giant Yukos — which he tried to sell to Exxon Mobil — rots in a Siberian jail, his latest parole bid summarily denied. Putin ended regional elections and effectively nationalized major industry, especially energy, which Russia wields as a weapon.

The soaring price of oil, partly due to the U.S.’s Iraq fiasco — which has been far from meeting predicted oil production goals — has helped immensely to strengthen oil-exporting Russia. But mostly, Putin & Co. have stirred up a nationalist fervor for resurrecting the old Russian empire. The Russians have a big head start in moving to an imperialist wartime footing, stemming from both good and bad periods of their past.

From World War II, they retain the collective memory of the red-led mass mobilization against their Nazi enemies — the greatest single undertaking in history. In the late 1980s, the now state-capitalist Soviet rulers opted for open capitalism, crushing all workers’ past gains, and the old Soviet Union imploded. U.S. capitalism chose this as an opportunity to install a “new world order” with only one superpower — the U.S.

This worked for a while, but the U.S./NATO war against Russian ally Serbia became the turning point for Russia’s bosses. The latter needed justification to get back at the U.S. and the recent U.S./NATO-inspired independence for Kosovo — taking it away from Serbia — fit the bill. Following Georgia’s invasion of its two northern pro-Russian autonomous provinces, Moscow turned around and recognized their independence.
Russia’s bosses have used nationalistic patriotism to influence workers to accept worsening living conditions and tight government social control. Pensions are down, the former communist-led healthcare system is in shambles, wages go unpaid for months, and prostitution and Mafia-type crime are rife.
Bosses’ nationalist and profit drives, whether from Moscow or Washington, run counter to the interests of the international working class, including Russia’s workers.

U.S. BOSSES HOPE OBAMA-BIDEN CAN SPUR WAR EFFORT

U.S. rulers, on the other hand, thought they could counter Russian influence in the old Soviet bloc without committing U.S. ground troops. They banked on bribes instead, through election-fixing “revolutions” in Georgia and the Ukraine among others, financed by Rockefeller ally and billionaire George Soros, and massive arms shipments to two-bit pro-U.S. leaders like Georgia’s Saakashvili.

While the Bush gang tortures and murders “detainees” in its worldwide prison camps and terrorizes immigrants at home, it has failed to enact the society-transforming fascistic measures outlined in Hart-Rudman and other strategic proposals. These include a thorough revamping of education “in the national interest,” a top-to-bottom centralization of law enforcement agencies, and a systematic indoctrination of elected officials to support the rulers’ military priorities.

To their dismay, only the Homeland Security Department proposal has been established, and that is pretty disorganized although able to carry out terroristic anti-immigrant raids. (See page 3) In addition, instead of ruling-class-imposed discipline, economic chaos reigns domestically. Bankers, bent on doing whatever they please, got rid of their nemesis Eliot Spitzer, the rulers’ supposed Sheriff of Wall Street. Financial crises mount. U.S. rulers are counting on “Change” candidate Barack Obama to initiate the mobilization they need. Their new situation regarding Russia explains why Obama chose arch-imperialist draft supporter Joe Biden as his running mate. [See adjoining box and article on Conventions, page 2]

Russia’s newfound militarism is already damages U.S. influence far beyond Georgia, Agence France Presse reported (8/17/08). “President Hugo Chavez said…that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela.” And Russia is increasing its arms sales to U.S. foe Syria. We don’t say that World War III will start tomorrow. We do, however, recognize that chances for a global flare-up have risen qualitatively, without counting either China’s inevitably destabilizing role or Europe’s ambiguous loyalties. The rulers’ power grabs constantly increase the risk of deadlier wars.

All this U.S. capitalist economic anarchy and faltering trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come down hard on the U.S. working class while killing millions of workers abroad. Wages are down, prices and unemployment are up, racist policy brutality and Nazi-like immigration raids are intensifying. The only road to reverse such assaults — in both the U.S. and Russia, as well as worldwide — it to build a mass international Progressive Labor Party that aims to establish a profit-free communist society without exploitation, unemployment, racism, sexism and capitalist borders.

OBAMA’S VEEP PICK BIDEN HAS IMPERIALIST PEDIGREE

Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war and the fascist Patriot Act. He wants to send U.S. soldiers as “peacekeepers” to fight pro-China forces in Darfur. He now sponsors a bill that would send $15 billion in aid to Pakistan’s yet-to-be-named next dictator. Biden’s ruling-class mentor is Leslie Gelb, former NY Times editor and head of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations. Together they wrote a major policy paper on Iraq which proposed partitioning it into three autonomous regions, a plan that foundered on the inability to apportion its huge oil reserves.

In 2005, Biden told NBC News, “The United States will ‘have to face’ a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties result in persistent shortfalls in US army recruitment (Agence France Presse, 6/12/05). “It’s just a reality,” Biden said.

Olympic Flame Foretells Imperialist Inferno

U.S., RUSSIAN, CHINESE RULERS BATTLE IN BEIJING

Every four years the bosses get their chance to parade nationalism with the Olympics games. Gold medals for hypocrisy should go to the rulers of every country that sent athletes to Beijing, with the U.S., China, and Russia taking the lion’s share. This “peaceful gathering of nations” served as yet another battleground in an imperialist rivalry that has just escalated to a new level of armed conflict. Russia’s premier Putin actually took advantage of the opening ceremonies to tell Bush to his face “War has begun,” in Georgia. By the time the games closed, Russia’s emboldened military was threatening pro-U.S. Ukraine and Moldova with the Georgia treatment.

U.S. pundits used the event to accuse the Chinese of hosting “totalitarian games…a showcase for a dictatorship” (Boston Globe, 8/24/08) and made comparisons with Hitler’s Nazi extravaganza in 1936. But U.S. bosses’ gripe with China has nothing to do with “human rights” (as they claim) and everything to do with its support for anti-U.S. forces in Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. In Beijing, Bush muttered about China’s “repression,” while the U.S. war machine continued to commit crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can expect more carnage before the rivals reconvene for the London games in 2012. Not only are Russian bosses feeling their imperialist oats, but the Pentagon has elevated Africa to a theater of war, like the Middle East, by setting up its new Africa Command. And the U.S. Navy has re-established its Fourth Fleet, charged with patrolling Latin America, just as Russian warships plan to visit Venezuela. World rulers may well have to take a wartime Olympic break, as they did in 1916 (during World War 1), in 1940 and 1944 (during World War II).

PARADING ELITISM, OLYMPICS DESPISE WORKING CLASS

Another side of Olympic phoniness is elitism. The remarkable athletic feats witnessed at Beijing hardly reflect general physical fitness back home, especially in the U.S., with its sickening youth culture of junk food and video games. For every Michael Phelps, there are millions of U.S. children who never even learn how to swim. Competitive sports in the U.S. are open almost exclusively to affluent families that can afford to enroll in year-round leagues and hire private coaches. Parents dreaming of scholarships, endorsements or are selfishly living their lives through their children, push them to the brink and over. Olympians mainly represent a select few of these few, lucky survivors of this over-training, which causes participants, particularly girls, grave injuries like ligament tears and concussions at epidemic rates.

The Olympics were born of inter-imperialist rivalry. A French nobleman, Baron de Coubertin, started the modern Olympic movement to rouse French youth to fitness following his country’s humiliation in a war with Prussia in 1878. The Olympics were built as a playground for ruling classes to compete with each other, even implementing until the 1970s a no-professional rule that barred athletes who accepted pay for athletics. They used this rule to limit participation by working-class athletes. Anti-working class racism permeated the Olympics, especially during the reign of its pro-Nazi president, Avery Brundage (see box this page).

The amateur rule would be thrown out during the 1970s because many imperialist countries could not compete anymore with nations with state-sponsorship of athletes. The Soviet Union briefly ran a sports program that both served the majority of its youth and produced world-class athletes. But Soviet leaders went the all-elite route when they fully embraced capitalism in the post-Stalin era.

SPORTSMANSHIP GETS A CAPITALIST KICK IN THE FACE

Finally, there is the seldom practiced ideal of “fairness” and “sportsmanship.” Olympic organizers set the tone for cheating at the opening by hiding a talented seven-year-old singer backstage while a “prettier” girl lip-synched for the cameras. The U.S. media jumped all over this “outrage.” But how much different was it from Hollywood’s exploitive starlet system or the viciousness of “American Idol”?  Underage Chinese gymnasts and doped Ukrainian weightlifters were sure to follow. Kicking a biased referee square in the face, a Cuban takewondo competitor showed exactly how fair and sportsmanlike the games actually are. The prevailing ethic at Beijing wasn’t the fair play of friendly sport but the win-at-all-costs mentality of capitalist warmakers.

Sure there were some thrilling Olympic moments. But if they result only in patriotic chants for one country over another they are deadly for the international working class and lead straight into the plans of the rulers for wider wars and more capitalist exploitation. A better competition for workers to take sides in is Progressive Labor Party’s long-term struggle to eliminate the profit system, and the imperialist wars it generates, through communist revolution.

U.S.-RUSSIA FIGHT SHARPENS . . .OIL FUELS GEORGIA WAR

Russian and U.S.-backed Georgian forces have killed thousands of civilians as they battle for oil routes and political dominance in the republic of Georgia that was part of the southern region of the former Soviet Union. (Georgia broke away from Russia after 1991.) Fighting began on August 8 when Georgia launched an offensive to regain control of the South Ossetia region from pro-Russian separatists. Moscow responded by sending in troops and tanks and shelling cities.

“War started today,” Russian premier Putin boasted to George Bush at the Beijing Olympics (Bloomberg, 8/08/08). Bush, leader of “the world’s sole superpower,” could only mutter feebly about “supporting Georgia’s territorial integrity.” A day later, 4,000 Russian troops landed in Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian province. Russia’s Black Sea fleet steamed to the Georgian coast threatening a blockade.

RUSSIA COULD GRAB MAJOR U.S.  PIPELINE

Putin’s moves in Georgia endanger the centerpiece of U.S. rulers’ efforts to counter Russia’s expanding energy-based imperialism. The new U.S.- and British-financed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, one of the world’s largest, runs through Georgia, skirting South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Opened in 2006, operated by British Petroleum, and owned partly by Chevron, it carries more than one million barrels of Caspian crude per day to Western Europe and the U.S. through the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterrean (see map).
Strategists in the Clinton administration chose the BTC route in order to bypass Russia and Iran. Its Ceyhan terminus sits conveniently close to the U.S. Air Force’s vast base at Incirlik, Turkey. But the U.S. has nevertheless proven supremely incapable of protecting its BTC lifeline. Russian troops reportedly fired on it in Georgia. And Kurdish rebels in Turkey had shut it down temporarily a week before by setting it on fire.

GEORGIA’S EMBATTLED PRESIDENT TOOL OF LIBERAL U.S. BOSSES

The fighting in Georgia is one for control of the world’s energy resources. U.S. rulers’ struggle to control Georgia is aimed at preventing their Russian rivals from replacing the U.S. as the world’s main energy controller. But oil and gas are only part — though a very big part — of an even larger conflict between U.S. and Russian rulers over political and military control of the former Soviet nations now outside Russia.
Expanding NATO throughout the former Soviet bloc and installing a shield of nuclear missiles there, aimed at Russia as well as at Iran, are vital U.S. goals. But ever since they boosted the anti-Soviet “Solidarity” movement in Poland in the 1980s, U.S. rulers, lacking a military home field advantage, have focused on buying elections in the region.

Billionaire swindler and Rockefeller ally George Soros has led the charge, bankrolling anti-Russian, pro-U.S. “color revolutions” in the old Soviet sphere. Its aim was to oust pro-Russian governments in Georgia (its banner was Rose) and in the Ukraine (Orange). Soros helped engineer Mikhail Saakashvili’s 2003 defeat of Georgian president and ex-Soviet Politburo member Eduard Shevardnadze. “It’s generally accepted public opinion here that Mr. Soros is the person who planned Shevardnadze’s overthrow,” the Toronto Globe and Mail said at the time (11/26/03). The Kremlin responded to these U.S. “victories” by curtailing gas supplies to Ukraine and Georgia, which hastened the present crisis.

The U.S. liberal establishment molded Saakashvili. He graduated from Columbia Law School and practiced at the prestigious Wall Street firm Patterson Belknap, which counts the Rockefeller Foundation as a top client. Soros personally presented Saakashvili with his Open Society Award. Consequently, Georgia under Saakashvili proved a staunch U.S. ally, until the Russian onslaught. Georgia just recalled 1,000 troops it had aiding the U.S. in Iraq back to its new home fronts.

NEXT PRESIDENT WILL HAVE TO RESTORE DRAFT

U.S. rulers understand that two-bit proxies like Georgia can’t ultimately prevail in global conflicts with rising powers like Russia (or China). And with the shortcomings of their present “volunteer” military — who enlisted mostly because of economic hardship — U.S. rulers won’t be able to intervene to protect their interests. Therefore, they will need a draft, which will likely begin in the form of a “National Service,” part of which will lead especially working-class youth into the military.

A May 5 report issued jointly by the liberal Brookings Institution and the Army War College concluded that the “impact of fighting long wars using an all-volunteer force needs to be looked at more closely.” Both Obama and McCain will restore a “National Service” draft because, if they don’t, they will be as powerless against emerging imperialist rivals as is Bush.

Desperate for wider wars, U.S. rulers bombard the youth they will soon draft with dead-end, pro-capitalist patriotism. Russian bosses use Nazi-like nationalism, while Georgian misleaders count on meaningless racism and“ethnicity.” It’s all a trap. The only way out of the profit system’s endless wars is a mass communist-led revolution of the working class. This is Progressive Labor Party’s goal.

PL Youths’ Red Ideas Greeted At International Festival

ATHENS, GREECE, July 30 — Seven PLP youth representing our international party participated in the  Resistance 2008 Festival, a worldwide gathering of thousands of young students and workers, hosted by the fake leftist Communist Organization of Greece (KOE). Our young comrades gained much experience in fighting for PL’s revolutionary communist politics internationally — helping develop new political leadership for PLP. We also fulfilled our aim of making many contacts among workers locally and from elsewhere, all seriously interested in our Party. These comrades come from different areas and work backgrounds. Some have been in PLP for a long time while others joined the Party within the last few years.

We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and several thousand special supplements, as well as hundreds of PLP’s document “Road to Revolution 4” and recent issues of the Communist Magazine. While there were many fake leftist groups present, most of the participants were young Greek students and workers. While unable to speak Greek, we managed to advance our ideas among many of them.

We hit the ground running to spread our ideas. Our tables displaying all our literature and banners was one of the most popular. We worked nonstop talking to new people and always had a group of people hanging out and chatting!

We fought for international working-class unity against nationalism, explaining that nationalism builds false loyalties to capitalists instead of being loyal to the working class across all borders. It is another tool, like racism, to divide the world’s workers. We were also the only group to advocate the dictatorship of the proletariat. This put us at odds with the festival, which supported the Maoists in Nepal and their leader “Prachanda” who is fighting for unity with local capitalists. Almost everyone we spoke with was interested in our ideas, even if they disagreed.

At our scheduled panel discussion on the final day, the seats were full; chairs were added three times for the overflow audience. After a KOE member spent 20 minutes criticizing our ideas on nationalism, a comrade drew applause with a powerful response  that used the history of what nationalism produced in Africa and elsewhere, saying Nepal is currently following that path. We also explained why we fight directly for communism since socialism retained too many remnants of capitalism (like the wage system) and led to the return of open capitalism in the former Soviet bloc and China.

We adapted to the fact that most people didn’t speak English and that parts of the festival were dedicated to non-political events like rock concerts. So each night we distributed our literature to the concert-goers. At one point, the hundreds gathered were all reading CHALLENGE, not even paying attention to the band!
We were also fortunate in meeting a young Greek airport worker moments after landing. She took a day off to accompany us to the festival, translated our literature and banners into Greek and helped explain our ideas to those Greeks who didn’t speak English. She is very supportive of the Party and is being struggled with to join us and help build PLP in Greece.

Racism was much more prevalent in Greece and Western Europe than we expected. Our nonwhite comrades were constantly ID’d while whites weren’t. One comrade was ID’d three times by three different cops within about three minutes, while they searched for “illegal” immigrants. On the trains the police challenged the comrade’s passport for “authenticity.”

In one southern Italian city, swastikas and Nazi propaganda were plastered all over the walls. In Paris, we encountered and supported a strike of immigrant workers who were demonstrating right across from the Champs-Elysees, the main tourist drag. We tried speaking for a while in our broken French and bought them all lunch.

Our trip has built confidence in ourselves and in each other, trusting the collective and carrying out decisions in a disciplined way (both personally and politically) as well for each comrade to make decisions consistent with our goals when they were on their own and under various pressures. We internationalized our perspective of the working class. Almost all of us made separate groups of friends with whom we plan to stay in touch and collectively recruit to the Party

While the U.S. ruling class is making long-term investments in Obama and building new weapons of war, we made a long-term investment in our movement, by solidifying young comrades and laying the groundwork for the growth of PLP.

Rulers’ Rivalry Hikes Gas Prices

The capitalist economic crisis is sharpening global competition for Persian Gulf oil and driving fuel prices sky-high. The working class is being dealt a triple body blow. In some parts of the U.S.  workers are shelling out up to one-fifth of their pay for gasoline. Soaring energy costs contribute to a job-destroying economic slowdown and are driving up food prices worldwide.

While many politicians and pundits rail at greedy speculators, who are indeed cashing in on, and boosting, the price spike, its root causes are geopolitical (and rose immediately from Federal Reserve efforts to protect U.S. banks — see box below). China’s and India’s burgeoning economies now thirst for Mid-East crude supplies that U.S. rulers once claimed as private property. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to counter U.S. economic weakness by strengthening its control over the oil all rivals needed. But despite murdering millions, the U.S. war machine has failed to secure oil-rich Iraq or tame al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan bent on seizing Mid-East oil sources. Oil’s grand prize, U.S. puppet Saudi Arabia, faces internal attacks. Meanwhile, Washington and its proxy Israel are trading escalating war threats with Iran’s holy-roller oil barons, who kicked out Exxon Mobil three decades ago. And beyond the Gulf, an upsurge in political violence has slashed Nigeria’s oil output.

BOTCHED BY BUSH, U.S. IRAQ GENOCIDE YIELDS RULERS LITTLE OIL

Unlike growth in China and India, the U.S. fiasco in Iraq — which is also central to the oil price-crunch — receives little blame from the rulers’ media. U.S. bosses invaded Iraq in 2003 hoping to create a new “swing producer,” in addition to its old one, Saudi Arabia, increasingly bedeviled by al Qaeda. A “swing producer” is one with sufficient spare capacity to steer world markets by raising or lowering output, according to its U.S. patron’s wishes. (One reason U.S. rulers toppled Saddam Hussein was his constant jerking around of oil production, making for an unstable price market which Big Oil couldn’t control.)

In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia helped the U.S. bring down the oil-exporting Soviet Union by pumping so much crude that its price fell to $5 a barrel, depriving the Kremlin of needed foreign income. Months after the Iraq war began, the liberal Brookings Institution gushed, “Many analysts believe that Iraq might be able to pump up its production to as much as 6 mbd [million barrels per day] by 2010 and 7-8 mbd by 2020.” (Brookings, May 2003)

But Bush didn’t put enough boots on the ground to secure Iraq’s oilfields, which now produce 2.5 mbd, even less than before the war. And with their own infrastructure in peril, Saudi princes can’t take up the slack. “Saudi Arabia has arrested 701 Islamists in the past six months on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil industry installations.” (AFP, 6/26/08 ) The Saudis just promised to hike output a meaningless 200,000 barrels a day.

The U.S.-Israeli standoff with Iran is another major factor in oil prices. “Speculators and others may be acting on the assumption that Washington and its Israeli ally will proceed to ‘take out’ Iranian nuclear facilities, because that is exactly what Bush and his allies are implying will happen if the Ahmadinejad regime does not comply with U.N. resolutions.” (Newsweek, 7/7/08 ) In turn, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, promised, “Iran will definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz” (Los Angeles Times, 6/29/2008 )  the world’s most important chokepoint. Through it 17 million barrels of oil pass every day. In such a case, $10-a-gallon gas would be cheap.

WITH CRUCIAL FUEL SOURCES AT RISK, RULERS FEEL A DRAFT

To ease their oil woes, U.S. rulers are planning a solution involving far more than reducing fuel consumption or regulating speculators. Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a group called Securing America’s Future Energy, headed by former Marine commandant P.X. Kelly, are staging a war-game program,“Oil ShockWave,” on campuses across the U.S. The New York Times (11/2/07) reported on one imminent scenario presented last year:

“Iran had drastically cut its oil production in response to Western economic sanctions imposed because of its nuclear weapons program. The Venezuelan leadership of Hugo Chavez followed suit, driving prices beyond $150 a barrel. The Iranian nuclear program touched off talk of war. The military advisers urged redeployment of the bulk of America’s naval and air power to the Persian Gulf in anticipation of war, and urged reinstatement of the draft for young men and women.”

Hang onto your hats. At press time oil hit the $143-per-barrel mark and talk of war with Iran has begun. “Oil ShockWave” deliberately targets college students, who, ever since Vietnam, have been reluctant to support the Pentagon’s murder machine. The program springs from the highest levels of the liberal Establishment. In addition to its Harvard pedigree, “Oil ShockWave” boasts Robert Rubin, Citigroup chief and

Clinton Treasury-Secretary, as a leading participant.

Like openly militaristic McCain, “Barracks” Obama favors the mobilization a broader Gulf war requires. He vows to add 92,000 troops immediately upon inauguration. But his threat to invade Pakistan “searching for Osama bin Laden” and the Taliban would require hundreds of thousands of troops and could kick off a war in a country possessing the A-Bomb. Some “anti-war” candidate!

Voting for either candidate would prove a serious political error. War is a result of capitalist crisis and inter-imperialist rivalry. A new president can change the appearance of the crisis, but not its essence. The solution is to work towards the ultimate elimination of the profit system that causes these endless oil wars. Our revolutionary communist Party has this goal.

U.S. BANK BAILOUT SPIKED OIL PRICES

While many politicians and pundits blame greedy speculators for skyrocketing oil prices, the immediate problem arose from the Federal Reserve’s efforts to protect U.S. banks. Under capitalism, money serves two functions: (1) it has a “use value,” enabling the buying and selling of commodities, from raw materials and labor power to finished goods; (2) its accumulation is a means of storing value for future investments and future payment. Capitalist hoards are claims on the future labor of workers and the surplus value they can create. (Workers are paid only part of the value they create. The rest is “surplus value” from which bosses’ profits are reaped.)

Since last August the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates and supplied billions of dollars to the banking system in an effort to limit the bank failures that began with the subprime mortgage crisis. This increase of money in circulation cheapened the value of the dollar. It now buys less in international markets.

As the value of the dollar fell 20% during the last year, so did the value of foreign investments in U.S. treasury bills and corporate debt. The decision to let the value of the dollar fall so quickly sharply reduced the value of hundreds of billions of treasury bills belonging to China and other rivals.

Looking for protection from such losses, investors (U.S. banks, pension funds, foreign governments) began buying gold and oil, commodities whose value could not be manipulated by the Federal Reserve. This increased buying forced up the price of both oil and gold, fueling new internal conflicts in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, immigrant workers, whose earnings are tied to the dollar, have staged strikes because the reduction in the value of their pay meant they can no longer feed their families back in India and Pakistan.

Faced with internal conflict, many Persian Gulf nations are again pressing to price oil in euros or yen, both worth far more than the dollar. (Iran already requires Japan to pay for oil in yen not dollars). This move has been limited only by the efforts of the Saudi royal family, the world’s largest oil producer and a major holder of U.S. investments (including in Citibank). If oil was not priced in dollars, the value of the dollar and these investments would fall even further as countries dumped the dollar for other currencies.

This falling dollar stoked the already heated inter-imperialist rivalries for oil, further exposing the U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Building for May Day Young and Old, Across All Borders

NEW JERSEY

We had a very international May Day dinner in New Jersey to raise funds for the Party’s big events to celebrate this working-class holiday. Twenty-six of us came — some immigrants from 11 different countries:  Jamaica, Peru, Italy, Hungary, Ecuador, the Philippines, Macedonia, Guatemala, Israel, Korea, Honduras and from Africa. There was fabulous Ethiopian and Guatemalan cooking, black-eyed pea fritters, with desserts of apple pie and brownies.
We heard stories of immigration, of untold expense and deadly injuries. Many undocumented immigrant pay smugglers (coyotes) $7,000 to $10,000 to come from Central America. There is no guarantee the immigrant will arrive safely to his/her destination and many have died either abandoned by the smugglers, crossing the desert, the river, or even asphyxiated piled up in cargo train cars, trucks, etc.

The Río Grande is cold and deep.  Many don’t survive the swim.  One man loaded his three children into an inflatable raft and swam with one arm, pushing the raft with the other.  Another woman spent one night with two other adults in the trunk of a car, almost dying of dehydration and suffocation.  Each had a story of having to leave individuals in the desert who could not walk or be carried.  Two people related how Mexican workers often carried other people, children or adults, to the border who would never have survived the journey without their help.

The message was stated throughout that an international Party, the PLP, is essential to get rid of borders forever.  With each horrific tale, it became more obvious that borders mean only separation of families, lowering wages, starvation and death for working people.  The clear communist solution has to include doing away with wage slavery, profits and the entire capitalist class of parasites who suck the blood from workers trapped by borders.  The working-class immigrants have already demonstrated the fortitude and courage necessary to win! J
NJ Red

NEW YORK CITY

A collective of young and veteran members of Progressive Labor Party is coordinating efforts for a large gathering to celebrate May Day in New York City. We’re developing both the program and our organizing around a central theme of increasing class struggle to build the Party.
Our program features young comrades, helping to develop their leadership abilities, which is already reflected in the struggle they’ve spearheaded against NYC’s Department of Education. (See CHALLENGE, 04/09/08.) The excitement generated around this struggle has increased CHALLENGE distribution and produced potential new recruits to PLP. The energy of students and teachers and their understanding of the class struggle sharpened during this fight, which should help make our celebration an exciting one.
We will also acknowledge the contributions of long-standing members as we build for the future. A veteran of many on-the-job struggles will stress the importance of communist organizing at the workplace, linking his experiences with a call for participation in a Summer Project at some of PLP’s industrial concentrations.
Finally, we plan to ask the audience four questions about communism that our friends frequently ask. We hope the May Day celebrators will participate via their answers.

May Day marks a review of the strength of our communist organizing. The efforts of comrades, young and old, will ensure it will be inspiring and successful.
NYC May Day Collective

Spain: PL’ers Defend Immigrant, Organize for May Day

SPAIN — We are celebrating May Day, the international working-class holiday, including distributing a leaflet outside Metro (subway) stations in a major city here. This occurs amid growing attacks by the regular and immigration cops.
A friend from Brazil was arrested at his job just for the “crime” of being an undocumented immigrant. From the U.S. to Spain, capitalism, to survive, needs repression and racism against workers by forcing immigrant workers to work for less and produce super-profits for the bosses.
A group of us went to the police station to support our fellow worker. He was lucky not to be beaten by the cops. We celebrated a small victory because he wasn’t deported, just given a letter of expulsion.
Communist ideas are being spread among workers in this and other struggles. Our May Day leaflet will bring these ideas to other workers who don’t know about PLP. Anarchist ideas are widespread here and there’s a fear about communism because anti-communist ideas are rampant. But now PLP’ers are working in many areas of the world with the aim of winning workers to understand what’s best for our class: communism. Long live May Day and the workers of the world! J
(For El Salvador PLP May Day Call, See PLP website –– www.plp.org)

PLP Growth in Pakistan New Hope for Working Class

PAKISTAN, April 15 — New elections have changed the face of the ruling class, now a coalition of landowning capitalists (PPP), industrialists and financiers (PMLN), nationalists (ANP and BNP), racists (MQM) and fundamentalists (JUIF). They claim to be forming a government of national consensus. Their one major goal in common: exploit the working class more effectively. The pioneer of this consensus is the husband of slain Benazir Bhutto, famous for his corruption, money laundering and kickbacks.

Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani has a landowner, spiritual background and uses God to justify exploiting workers. He spent five years in jail on corruption charges. After taking office, he announced a wage increase for laborers as a ploy to earn their support; restored the right to form unions; and made many other promises which cannot be realized under capitalism. They are attempts to ward off any potential unrest.

Asif ali Zardari (chairperson of the ruling coalition) claims they are “changing the system,” but his “change” would substitute a civil regime for the current military regime to better serve imperialism. The alliance of these various parties cannot last long — their internal rivalries will destabilize Pakistan.

PPP is helping President Musharaf by continuing his policies regarding the “war on terror” and relations with the U.S. Presently U.S. officials are actively seeking support from the new government for the war on terrorism, but workers know the CIA engineered this terrorism against Afghanistan’s workers and farmers in the name of the war against “communists.”

Back then U.S. imperialism protected the Muslims in a “sacred” war to make Afghanistan an Islamic country. They trained Muslim youth from throughout the world for terrorism, equipped them with the latest weapons, new cars and funds and provided them full protection for an illegitimate war against the Afghan people in order to counteract the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden was on the CIA payroll in the training sites established in northwest Pakistan.

The capitalists’ thirst for profit and resources to run their war machines drives this terrorism. It helps maintain the super-exploitation of the working class. Strategically northwest Pakistan is very important for carrying out imperialist wars, so the U.S. has created, or curries favor with, these fundamentalist factions to establish its influence.

Workers need communist leadership to fight the poverty and exploitation that are vital to capitalism. Poor workers here cannot afford their daily bread. Young children pick small pieces of food from garbage. They have little clothing, no shelter, no medication if they fall ill and no job opportunities. They are living to enrich the capitalists.

Fake leftists are playing imperialism’s game, using the word “socialism,” but PLP’s ideas give hope to the working class that this murderous system can be destroyed. PLP is growing despite our limited resources. We don’t advocate socialism, nationalism, “national democracy” or “people’s democracy.” We are true to the working class, trying to move workers towards communist revolution in exposing inter-capitalist rivalry.

Poverty, racism, inequality, unemployment and homelessness are all inevitable products of this murderous system. We must intensify the class struggle towards the goal of eliminating the cause of these evils. We in PLP have a rich history of fighting capitalism, equipped with revolutionary communist ideas. We must win workers to join us and wage an international struggle for communist revolution.