May Day: Fight Bosses’ Wars and Racist Terror

Workers of the World, Unite

On this May Day, International Workers’ Day, the international working class is under sharpening fascist attack while the drums of global war beat louder and slaughter millions. World capitalism pushes its economic crisis onto workers’ backs with mass racist unemployment, wage-cuts, soaring food prices and resulting starvation. Yet masses of workers are fighting back, with general strikes and food rebellions from Greece to Egypt to Haiti to Russian Ford and Romanian Renault auto workers to Detroit’s Axle strikers.

This May Day we must stand as one class, with one interest: to destroy the capitalist murderers with communist revolution and build a communist world based on production to fulfill the needs of our class. On this May Day, international workers’ solidarity must meet the bosses’ assault head-on, especially as they use the attacks on the world’s 200 million immigrants to attack ALL workers.

Capitalism has spawned this migration across all borders. We say smash all boss-created borders. We are one class, internationally.

Capitalism created the working class, a class with nothing but its labor power to sell in order to survive. Early on, the capitalists moved millions of Africans as slaves from that continent to wherever they could produce the most profit. With capitalism’s global expansion, immigration is now a worldwide phenomenon.

Capitalism’s unrelenting drive for maximum profits uproots hundreds of millions of workers, forcing them into the squalor of sprawling mega slums, from Brazil to Nigeria to China, where 80 million Chinese-born migrant workers are branded as illegal. Many die crossing deserts and oceans from Africa to Latin America trying to reach jobs in the U.S. and Europe, as well as from starvation, malnutrition and curable diseases. Ten thousand died trying to cross into Spain from Africa in the last five years.

Those migrating to the more industrialized countries are not only super-exploited but are used as scapegoats, blamed for capitalism-created problems, and paid slave wages to lower the wages of all workers.

In the past, immigrant workers were on the front lines of class struggle. With global capitalism, the bosses — by forcing this mass migration — have internationalized the working class even more, providing the opportunity for a communist-led working class to forge the unity necessary for communist revolution. Immigrant workers are now positioned geographically and socially to help lead this fight worldwide.

Their role will become even more crucial as the imperialists’ rivalry for world domination intensifies, particularly in the U.S., a declining power fighting desperately to hold its position as top imperialist while it gears up for wider Middle Eastern wars and eventually world war versus the rising powers in China, Russia and the European Union.

The U.S. rulers’ fight over immigration reform concerns the tactics and strategies on how and when to wage these wars. One sector thinks these wars can be waged cheaply with a small, technologically superior military. These bosses opposing immigration reform just want to terrorize immigrant workers with deportations to continue super-exploiting them.

The liberal imperialist sector, however, needs an immigration reform that builds patriotism among immigrants through a 12-year-long path to citizenship. This is in exchange for recruiting millions of soldiers as cannon fodder in their imperialist wars and to maintain a workforce of millions of super-exploited workers for their war industries.

That’s why their liberal politicians attack Homeland Security’s “scattershot workplace raids” as bad economic policy. And their newspapers like the LA Times and NY Times criticize Congress and the Bush administration for endangering the ability of the bosses to achieve these aims.

These liberal rulers also use their state power to rein in their opponents like California’s Orange County Sheriff Carona — indicted for some of his many crimes in the county where the racist Minutemen were born — and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County, Arizona, who terrorizes day laborers.

But the vitriolic anti-immigrant stance of their opponents also serves the liberal bosses, creating the terror and despair that drives immigrant workers into the arms of their liberal politicians — and their leaders in the pro-immigrant organizations, churches, unions and community groups — with their pacifism and dead-end electoral politics. The main organizing slogan of the pro-immigrant organizations is, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote!”

Their leaflet announcing the Los Angeles May 1st March praises the bosses’ immigration reform and DREAM Act, aimed at forcing undocumented youth into the military under the farce of “helping them go to college,” which they can’t afford. This “Green Card army” will eventually become the army of all, via the draft or some militaristic “national service” scheme. The slave-like conditions and low wages of indentured immigrant workers will be extended to all workers.

With Democrats Obama and Clinton, and Republican McCain, supporting their comprehensive immigration reform bill and the DREAM Act, the liberal bosses will win no matter who becomes president. But their needs are forcing them to bring together two of the most oppressed, potentially militant and rebellious sectors of the working class: black workers and youth, crucial in industry and the military — possessing a rich history of fighting the U.S. bosses’ racism — and immigrant workers with a long history of fighting U.S. imperialism.

With PLP building international unity and a base for rebellion and revolutionary communism among industrial workers, soldiers, and students —  black, Latino, white, Asian and Arab, immigrant and citizen, men and women — we can fight the bosses’ racism, nationalism and patriotism, and unite the world’s workers to destroy the scourge of capitalism forever.

The fire of May Day burns brightly in a vibrant and growing internationalist PLP! Workers of the World Unite! Fight to end racism and wars for profit. Smash all bosses’ borders! Spread CHALLENGE, the internationalist, revolutionary communist newspaper! Fight for communism! Join us!

BHUTTO MURDER UNDERMINES U.S. EMPIRE

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and subsequent chaos in nuclear-armed Pakistan seriously set back U.S. plans for continuing control of the strategic region, especially of oil’s grand prize, Saudi Arabia. U.S. rulers had hoped that Harvard-educated Bhutto could heal the ruling-class split between her land-holding family’s faction and that of Musharraf’s military and initiate more vigorous attacks on Pakistan-based al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Those who murdered Bhutto — and simultaneously scores of workers — dashed that dream and strengthened the forces of Osama bin Laden, who’s almost certainly hiding in Pakistan. Bin Laden represents the non-royal sector of Saudi capitalists who are using unconventional violence to seize the oil bonanza the princes deny them.

Bhutto’s killers’ uncertain identity further underscores U.S. shakiness in its “ally” Pakistan. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are prime suspects but many blame Pakistan’s pro-Islamist Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and fault Musharraf himself for not adequately protecting Bhutto. In any event, the killing reflects U.S. imperialism’s tendency to create one crisis by trying to solve another.

All the possible culprits sport a “Made-in-the-U.S.A.” label. Al Qaeda and the Taliban grew out of the U.S-led campaign to arm Islamists against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The ISI became powerful by helping run this operation. And the U.S. has built up Musharraf’s military with gifts totaling $10 billion meant to “combat terror” but diverted to the power-hungry generals’ own purposes.

Fight For Oil Sharpens

The grim Pakistan situation represents but one of the many major challenges U.S. rulers will face in the new year. Iraq remains an unprofitable hellhole, despite claims of the surge’s “success.” With the oil majors still afraid to risk capital and personnel there, Iraqi crude production hovers around 2.4 million barrels a day (mbd), far short of U.S. bosses’ goals. Actually, just before the 2003 invasion, the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and James A. Baker Institute had issued a report foreseeing a six mbd windfall for Exxon Mobil and the rest.

Now Turkey’s bosses, pursuing their own security needs, are making things even worse for their U.S. “allies”: “Crude futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange soared past $96 per barrel…after Turkish warplanes hit alleged Kurdish rebel sites in northern Iraq….[T]raders fear that the rebels may respond by attacking oil pipelines in northern Iraq. (Energy Intelligence, 12/27/07) U.S. troops won’t leave Iraq anytime soon, as Congressional Democrats keep writing the Pentagon blank checks.

Meanwhile, U.S. rivals are stepping up their military influence in the region. Iran almost simultaneously announced delivery of nuclear fuel from Russia and its purchase of a Russian air defense system. Furthermore, “Iran and Russia are in negotiations to expand military cooperation beyond air defenses, including attack helicopters and jet engines for a fleet of indigenous Iranian fighters. There have also been reports that Iran intends to purchase Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighters.” (Washington Post, 12/27/07)
China, whose thirst for oil puts it on a collision course with the U.S., is building a naval port for its new oil tanker-shepherding “blue water” navy at Gwadar, Pakistan. Gwadar commands the crucial Strait of Hormuz chokepoint through which virtually all seaborne crude from the Persian Gulf to East Asia must pass.

NEXT PRESIDENT’S MAIN JOB:
MOBILIZE FOR ALL-OUT OIL WAR

Both before and after 9/11, CHALLENGE constantly said that the U.S. would launch a war for control of the greater Middle East and its oil. Before 9/11, reporting on the Hart-Rudman commission that foresaw a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, we specifically said such an attack would precede a U.S. invasion of the Mid-East beginning in Iraq. Now U.S. rulers themselves admit as much. Richard Haass, president of the rulers’ CFR — when asked about the next U.S. president’s main task — said, “The greater Middle East represents the greatest collection of challenges that continue to face the U.S.” (Nikkei News, 12/13/07) Haass charged the next president with militarizing the nation for deadlier wars. “[W]e have to expand the size of the U.S. military….[I]t is quite possible that a lot of uses of military will be manpower-intensive….And it now looks more [like] the current Iraq war is going to be the model of future wars.”

Making Bhutto a martyr for wider conflict, White House hopeful Barack Obama called her “a respected…advocate for the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people.” Hillary Clinton also glorified Bhutto, “The world is once again reminded of the dangers facing those who pursue democracy.”

But Bhutto was, in fact, no angel. She, like her U.S. backers, stood for nothing more than capitalism’s utterly unprincipled, relentless pursuit of profit (See box below). In the ranks of departed foreign standard-bearers for U.S. imperialism, she joins Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran and countless Latin American dictators, from Pinochet to Somoza to Trujillo to Battista.
Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the liberals praising Bhutto are selling political poison. Far better than following them down the road to imperialist world war would be to join and build the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. We have the ultimate goal of eradicating the profit system and its endless wars and establishing workers’ rule in their place.

Bhutto Was Workers’ Deadly Enemy

Benazir Bhutto was no friend of the working class. She belonged to the aristocracy of the Pakistani ruling class in particular and to the worldwide capitalist ruling class in general. Under her premiership the Pakistani state apparatus, one of the world’s most repressive, continued its brutal practices of torturing, killing and “disappearing” workers and those who opposed her rule.

Even her younger brother Murtaza was mowed down by the police, which many (including her niece Fatima) believe Bhutto either engineered or tacitly approved. A member of parliament, he was a vocal critic of his sister’s politics and her corrupt government.

She, her husband, mother and other family members became obscenely rich from laundering money, getting kickbacks, customs inspection fees and outright stealing funds from social programs. Her husband and she accumulated a $1.5 billion fortune while over 80 million Pakistani workers and peasants live on less than $2 a day.

AIDS Day Hears Revolutionary Message on Epidemic

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 1 – Several PLPers joined over 200 activists who rallied at the White House on Friday, November 30th for World AIDS Day, an annual rally to demand aggressive action against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Our message to demonstrators — it will take revolution to defeat the racist neglect of AIDS! At the rally, we distributed Challenges and flyers that urged our friends to join a PLP study-action group. Four of them attended the first meeting two weeks later. Activists need to stop trying to elect politicians or just promoting new HIV testing and educational programs. We need to figure out how to unite black, white, and immigrant workers for communism and the PLP so the working class can take power and reorganize society to meet the needs of our class.

The World AIDS rally demanded that the D.C. Board of Education approve comprehensive sex education for all students including safe sex, abstinence, and respect for gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. Since the rally, the Board has agreed in principle to require this. Demonstrators also demanded that the U.S. government end ridiculous restrictions on the $15 billion it provides to countries struggling with HIV that force them to use 1/3 of the prevention funds for abstinence-only programs and to limit outreach to women forced into prostitution.

Forty people carried out civil disobedience around these demands, refusing to move from the White House sidewalk. Others maintained a steady stream of chants.

More activists are taking to the streets in D.C. to improve the health of all residents. Students from George Washington University continue to fight for drug treatment on demand and are helping the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association organize a spring conference on substance use, HIV, and mental health. Another student group militantly picketed a CVS drug store in a black neighborhood demanding it unlock its condoms, chanting, “1 in 20 with HIV — CVS, Set the Condoms FREE!”, and distributed free condoms to scores of people who stopped to talk to us.

The latest report from the D.C. Department of Health confirmed that 1 in 20 D.C. residents lives with HIV and 80 percent of people newly diagnosed are African American. HIV remains the leading cause of death for young black women and men nationwide. We urge other CHALLENGE readers to join the fight against HIV/AIDS and the capitalist system with its poverty, racism, homophobia and imperialist war that has made this disease into a global epidemic.

DC Red

Haiti’s Workers Battle Hanes’ Firings

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — Since last May, 500 fired garment workers have been fighting against a Hanes Brand (HBI) contractor, CD Apparel, in an industrial park here. CD Apparel, owned by Haitian boss Frantz Pilorge, blames the firings on problems with HBI’s two other local contractors. So in the fight among local and international bosses, workers pay with their jobs.

The contractor gave the fired workers some meager compensation, hardly more than the low wages they were already making. They’re demanding compensation comparable to the higher Hanes’ wage rates in other countries. The fired workers have been holding street protests and other actions for their demands. They’ve maintained their unity and received solidarity from other workers here and internationally.

Workers are learning, in the midst of class struggle, that a boss is a boss, whether they’re Haitian or an international corporation. Haitian workers and youth are tired of being super-exploited by capitalism and imperialism. After the U.S.-Canadian-French military invaded Haiti in 2004 and ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, they left U.N. “peacekeeping” forces here led by the Brazilian army. Lula, elected President of Brazil as a “militant labor leader” but who went on to serve local and international capitalism, continues to support the Brazilian-led invasion force. This U.N. occupation army, like the drug dealers here, has just become another oppressive gang.

These militant workers must learn that capitalism and imperialism will never serve workers. They need to become revolutionary communist leaders and join the international fight for a world without bosses.
Send messages of solidarity to the struggling garment workers at ouvrierscdapparel600haiti@yahoo.fr

Rout Marine Recruiters, Defend ‘Jena 6,’ Ally with Workers

Our college, which sits amid the remains of a major industrial center, where the wreckage of factories and railroads resembles a carpet-bombed city, has become a battleground for the political commitment of the students. Our main struggles involve the ‘Jena 6’ and Marine recruiters.

Campus mass organizations include an anti-war group and some “multi-cultural” clubs. We’ve aimed to raise political consciousness among students and campus workers by linking the racist attacks in New Orleans, Jena, Iraq and on immigrant workers to this college’s segregation and union-busting against immigrants here.

I distribute over 20 CHALLENGES, mostly to friends. I also slip papers under the doors where the immigrant workers who clean our dorms store their cleaning supplies.

Recently I saw several Marine recruiters distributing brochures. I made some calls and within 20 minutes we had an angry, multi-racial group of about 12 students ready for action, including some Middle Eastern students and CHALLENGE readers who knew me as a PL’er. Everyone else knew and respected me as a communist.

When we discussed the situation, I advocated a confrontational approach, explaining how these Nazis materially aid the mass slaughter in Iraq, and how they use racism/nationalism to divide workers instead of directing them against the real enemy, the profit system. Everyone agreed. We planned to form a disciplined row of people directly in front of the recruiters, with some of us ripping up their literature and verbally shouting them away. As we approached them, the Marines took off! We think a right-winger who had overheard us warned them. Everyone was fired up; spirits were high. One young woman yelled, “we’re finally doing something!”

The Marines book their space on campus carefully, so we’ve organized a rapid response plan to demonstrate when they return. We discovered an administrator is working with them. Since some fraternities host a “support-our-troops” week, we’re working out a little special something for that as well.

In another big struggle, one anti-war organization agreed to hold a series of events to protest the ‘Jena 6’ sentencing. I was asked to write a leaflet for that day. I suggested it be written collectively, but people said they had too much homework, so I revised the PL leaflet and made sure people distributing it were comfortable with it. Over 400 leaflets were gone in 90 minutes; the response was overwhelming! Many students asked for more for their friends, and some offered to help distribute even more elsewhere on campus.

That night two campus liberals sent me angry e-mails decrying the leaflet, arguing it was so inflammatory, no one would read it (contrary to our experiences that day). People sent e-mails with the standard anti-communist accusations, questioning who was “pulling the strings” behind our anti-war group, and demanding an apology for advocating “violence.”
One of the group’s liberals, a virulent anti-communist and self-described “democratic socialist,” visited me in my dorm, very disturbed by the leaflet. He said he represented “concerned friends” who wanted to know how I came to write the ‘Jena 6’ leaflet. He didn’t know about PLP.

Then a friend of mine who occasionally reads the paper walked in, unaware of what was happening, picked up a random DESAFIO, and jokingly exclaimed, “Why is there communist propaganda everywhere!?” The liberal grabbed it, glared at me, threw it down and left. (He didn’t understand much since he couldn’t speak Spanish.)

Until then I had no idea what was becoming of the several issues of DESAFIO I had been slipping into the campus workers’ cleaning closets. Now I was excited to know the workers had been reading them. When I figured out the workers’ schedule and met them, they told me they liked the paper, especially the articles about Latin America, and were open to meeting again.

Despite expecting an attack I was still dumbfounded at how quickly things were developing. That so-called socialist’s visit was a big surprise. I became defensive, which only invited even more attack. My friends, regular CHALLENGE readers, chided me for shrinking back and keeping my mouth shut. They argued, “Why aren’t you exposing these people for what they are? They’re just avoiding the issue and everyone knows it!” I realized they were right so we prepared for a confrontation at the next meeting.

There the liberals realized approval of the leaflet was very high. Except for a handful of meager comments, they received no support. Most people were thankful for the leaflet and wanted to know when we were planning something big. My initial reaction was to retreat but I was defended, and told to go on the offensive, both by CHALLENGE readers and non-readers. I learned about reliance on one’s base. I had lacked confidence in what I was doing; this struggle really changed my perspective.

As a result, many more people are friendly to the Party. Some are in a newly-formed study group. We’ll continue linking the Marine recruiters and the ‘Jena 6’ struggles to the racist segregation on campus and probe the connections between our school’s advanced research labs and U.S. imperialism. We’ve raised a campus worker-student alliance.
As we build CHALLENGE-DESAFIO networks out of these struggles, we’ll be on the road to eventually crushing these racist, sexist, warmongering parasites for good.

Workers, Students Slam Columbia U.’s Racism

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 10 — “Harlem: not for sale! Hunger strikers: not for sale! Our homes: not for sale! Our jobs: not for sale!” chanted a multi-racial crowd of 250 angry community residents, students and faculty marching today on Columbia University’s main campus and at President Lee Bollinger’s house.

Protesters gathered at the Low Library to hear speakers express their outrage — in English and Spanish — over Columbia’s racist expansion northward into Harlem, displacing 5,000 black, Latino and white working-class residents. Then everyone marched to Bollinger’s house, rhythmically accompanied by a radical marching band. He wasn’t home, but the crowd demanded community residents not be displaced or have a hazardous biological agent research facility near their homes. Student organizers and hunger strikers spoke of Columbia’s long history of supporting brutal U.S. imperialism and exploitation, responsible for genocide against millions of Native Americans. One explained it was the profit system that made Columbia not give a rat’s ass about workers and students.

PLP members and friends made several new contacts from Columbia, Hunter and City College. Black and Latino workers eagerly grabbed all 50 copies of CHALLENGE faster than we could keep up. One marcher exclaimed, “Hey, is that CHALLENGE? Give me a copy!” saying that he first encountered PL as a Columbia student participating in the big 1968 strike. We also helped distribute community leaflets exposing the utterly racist nature of Columbia’s actions and as an institution.

The students have four demands: administrative reform, ethnic studies, community involvement in Columbia’s expansion into Harlem and core curriculum. In the 1960s and ’70s, some colleges instituted such reforms after similar protests. While we support the anti-racist actions of the students, such demands won’t change the basic nature of Columbia or of U.S. college education, the essence of which is as racist and pro-war as ever.

There will be another mass protest on December 1. We’re working with other campus student organizers as well as raising these issues in the graduate schools. We’ll also struggle with our friends over the necessity of exposing Columbia and capitalist higher education (with or without ethnic studies) as essentially racist, anti-working class and pro-war.

We must fight for students to accept leadership from the multi-racial masses of workers in Harlem, who have been fighting Columbia’s racist expansion for decades. We in PLP organize for a worker-student alliance based on fighting racism, imperialist war and all other monsters created by capitalism. Our aim is to fight for a communist society based on need, not profits of a few bosses, like the owners of Columbia.

PL’ers At March Tie Profit System to AIDS Epidemic

Washington, DC. Nov. 3 — Over 150 residents, students, professionals, and HIV/AIDS activists took to the streets of Southeast D.C., where the rates of poverty and HIV/AIDS are soaring. 150 CHALLENGEs were taken from PLPers by marchers and people in the neighborhood during the event. PLPers argued for communist revolution to smash the capitalist system that has turned AIDS into a worldwide genocidal epidemic.

The chants and signs in today’s march attracted support from residents: “When people with AIDS are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” “Racism means, Fight back!” “Jobs yes, Prison no, HIV has got to go!” Many speakers talked about their experiences with drugs and HIV, calling on the group to end the silence. A PLP speaker identified capitalism as the source of the HIV/AIDS epidemic because it places profit over workers’ lives.

The march and meeting was organized by the Disparities Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) and by DC Fights Back. Some communist issues, like the battle for state power, the fight against racist police brutality, and the way that capitalist-induced poverty makes diseases ever more deadly for the working class have been discussed in previous Disparities Committee meetings. Other participants in today’s action included the national organizer for the Campaign to End Aids (C2EA) who helped lead the rally, RAP, Inc. (Regional Addition Prevention, Inc.), George Washington University students who led the “Save Lives, Free the Condoms” chant to protest CVS’s racist policy of locking up condoms in drugstores in black neighborhoods, and students from the Drug Treatment on Demand group who led the chant, “Treat it to Defeat It” referring to the need for universally available substance abuse treatment. Some members the Young Black Public Health Professional Network and other attendees at the national convention of American Public Health Association joined the march as well.

After the march, participants gathered at a library for a speak-out and food, where they discussed strategies to move the struggle to the next level, including fighting for more affordable housing and long term rehabilitation with jobs and housing.

PLP supports and participates in all these struggles showing that as long as there is capitalismo, the working class and its allies will continue to suffer epidemics, racism and mass poverty, particularly more now in this age of endless wars and economic crisis. In the long run, the best way to fight these evils is rooting out its cause: capitalism. Join the PLP to make sure this happens sooner than later!ng class oppression.

Imperialist Rivalry Over Oil Behind Myanmar Turmoil

An eerie calm has settled over Myanmar (Burma), the recent scene of massive demonstrations against its military junta, led by saffron-robed Buddhists who were squashed brutally by the army and armed goons. It is the calm before more storms ahead because Myanmar is a bone of contention in the intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry.

Two things have put it in the imperialists’ cross-hairs: its rich natural resources — abundant timber, minerals, hydropower, oil and gas — and its strategic location. Energy security and total control of the sea lanes across which this energy is transported is an imperative for the major imperialist powers bent on world domination.

As this struggle heats up, the capitalist/imperialists are mercilessly attacking the international working class. Myanmar is a vivid example: 90% of its 50 million members of working-class families earn under $300 a year, spending 70-80% of that on food alone. A 500% increase in oil prices triggered the latest unrest, hiking inflation 35%. Nothing short of communist revolution can eliminate this crushing poverty and capitalism’s oppressive rule.

U.S. rulers’ main strategy is control of Myanmar, to militarize the Strait of Malacca, thereby controlling the sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, over which 15 million barrels of oil travel daily. Through this narrow passage, between Malaysia and Indonesia, must pass 80% of China’s imported oil. With possible war with China looming on the horizon, U.S. rulers must militarize the strait in order to control China’s energy supplies.

Therefore, since 1989 their main political agenda in Myanmar has been “non-violent” regime change. Working through its humanitarian-sounding fronts, the U.S. State Department has been recruiting and training Myanmar’s opposition leaders. Its latest attempt, the “Saffron Revolution,” has failed thus far. According to Asian Times on-line (“The geopolitical stakes of ‘Saffron Revolution’,” 10/24/07), this effort was being directed from the U.S. Consulate General in bordering Thailand.

Russian and Chinese imperialists are fighting the U.S. over Myanmar, working together to maintain the current rulers, although for different reasons. Russia wants to control the gas and oil resources to further its goal of becoming the European Union’s (EU) main provider and distributor of energy, expanding its political and economic interest into the East. U.S. rulers are trying desperately to break Russia’s energy chokehold on the EU, to get the Europeans on board for present and future wars.

ARMS FOR OIL

In 2001, Russia sold Myanmar — reeling under U.S. sanctions — 15 Mig-29 Fulcrum aircraft. It has recently agreed to build Myanmar a nuclear research center and install an advanced air defense system. In exchange, Russia gets to bid on future oil and gas exploration and production concessions. Presently, Russian and Chinese oil companies are producing Myanmar’s off-shore oil deposits. Nevertheless, Russian military bases here will be aimed at countering both U.S. influence and eventually China’s growing power.

Aware of U.S. strategy, China is actively seeking to build oil and gas pipelines in Myanmar, one to transport gas from Myanmar and the other to carry Middle Eastern and African oil across Myanmar into China, by-passing the Straits of Malacca. China is also building other ports and bases in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan to project its naval power far into the strategic Indian Ocean.

China is using its clout as the junta’s biggest commercial partner and main arms provider to access Myanmar’s resources. Myanmar has signed on to supply China 6.5 trillion cubic feet of gas over the next 30 years. Big hydropower projects are also planned.

With other capitalists/imperialists — Australia, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, U. S. and Thailand — having their hands on Myanmar’s energy resources, the situation is bound to explode. Regional wars will give way to global war.

This scourge can only be eradicated by eliminating the profit system with communist revolution. Myanmar workers once opted for communism. The Communist Party of Burma, until it self-destructed in 1989, had tens of thousands under arms and millions of followers. Several times it nearly captured power. Its internal weaknesses, the same ones afflicting the old communist movement, caused its demise. But the working class of Myanmar and the world will opt for communist revolution again, this time for good.

‘Flush the system down the drain’

NEW YORK CITY, October 27 — “We don’t care about the rain! Flush this system down the drain!” chanted dozens of workers and youth led by Progressive Labor Party’s young members at the anti-war march here. It’s good thousands marched despite the rain, but while the rulers are preparing for wider wars (including attacking Iran), the anti-war marches are getting smaller and are still mainly older and white.

Although many speakers distanced themselves from the pro-war Democrats, the leadership of the anti-war movement won’t break with the Dems. As election time nears they will support whoever runs against the GOP (Hillary, Obama, Edwards or even Gore if he decides to jump into the circus). Our chant, “Bush/Democrats no solution! Fight for communist revolution!” and the CHALLENGE (10/31) front-page article exposing Democrat Gore’s war crimes pointed out the futility of these dreams. A thousand marchers took our papers.

The U.S. bosses’ oil war has already killed over a million in Iraq. Ending this genocidal system will save the lives of millions of workers worldwide who die every year from hunger, curable disease and imperialist war. Waiting for the Democrats or “marches for peace” won’t do that. We need to build an anti-imperialist, anti-racist communist-led movement to smash the war-makers. This is the message we must bring back to our workplaces and schools. This is the lesson we must learn from the Bolshevik revolution that turned World War I into a massive revolution 90 years ago.