Defend
the Palestinian People –
Defeat
Israel’s Genocidal Blitzkrieg!
Drive
Zionist
Army/Settlers Out of the Occupied Territories! For
Arab/Hebrew Workers Revolution!
Defend
Afghanistan,
Iraq Against Imperialist Attack! U.S./NATO
Out of the Near East and Central/South Asia!
The Israeli government has launched a genocidal war against
the Palestinians. Its purpose is to “decapitate” the Palestinian
Authority,
kill thousands of those who oppose Israel’s brutal rule, and
“ethnically
cleanse” key areas of the West Bank and Gaza by driving out tens of
thousands
of Palestinians. The Zionist leadership has received a green light from
the United States government to carry out this terrorist war. The U.S.
and its NATO allies meanwhile are keeping Afghanistan under the iron
heel
of occupation as they prepare a new war against Iraq. The League for
the
Fourth International issues an urgent call to defend the Palestinian
people
against the Zionist “final solution”! Drive the Zionist occupiers out
of
the West Bank and Gaza – Bring down the Zionist state through
Arab/Hebrew
workers revolution, in a socialist federation of the Near East! Defend
Afghanistan and Iraq against imperialist occupation and attack! Defeat
imperialism through international socialist revolution! Defeat
Israel's genocidal Blitzkrieg! (30 March 2002)
India-Pakistan
For
Workers Revolution Against the Chauvinist Warmongers!
As the U.S. and NATO terror-bomb Afghanistan in the name of fighting
“terrorism,” the two regional capitalist powers (India and Pakistan)
which
signed onto the imperialist war drive are at each other’s throats. More
than one million Indian and Pakistani troops have been mobilized to the
frontier. The immediate object of the dispute is the predominantly
Muslim
land of Kashmir, which has been divided since the 1947 partition of the
Indian subcontinent by the departing British colonialists. Today a
fourth
India-Pakistan war could escalate to a nuclear conflagration killing
millions.
We print here an article by Revolutionary Fourth International, a small
group of Indian Trotskyists in Calcutta that sympathizes with the
League
for the Fourth International. The RFI calls for revolutionary defeatism
on both sides in this new India-Pakistan conflict, while defending the
right of self-determination for Kashmir and all the oppressed peoples
of
the region and fighting for a socialist federation of South Asia.
For
Workers Revolution Against the Warmongers (March 2002)
Build
Working-Class Defense Guards to Fight Against Communalist/Fascist
Barbarism!
Since the end of February there has been a wave of communalist attacks
beginning in the north Indian state of Gujarat which have killed more
than
1,000 people, mainly Muslims. These are not just the Hindu-Muslim riots
of the past but full-fledged pogroms organized by fascistic Hindu
communalists
and outright fascist terror squads like the RSS. While opportunists
call
on the capitalist government to protect the victims, the fact is that
police
have stood by and even participated in the slaughter. The Revolutinary
Fourth International calls for workers defense guards based on the
working
class and laboring masses in various religious communities to combat
the
pogromists. Workers
Defense Guards Against Communalist Terror (March 2002)
Fascists,
Conservatives and Reformists Vote for Police-State Laws
National
Front At Forefront of Capitalist Drive Toward “Strong State” in France
Break
with the Popular Front! Build a Trotskyist Party to Lead the Struggle
for
International Workers Revolution!
The presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Führer of the National
Front (FN), in the run-off round of the French presidential elections
stunned
France and sent shock waves around Europe. The reformists, from
the
Socialist and Communist parties to the “far left,” channeled outrage
against
the fascists into support for the corrupt conservative president
Jacques
Chirac. Some call for outlawing the FN under laws that will be (and
already
have been) used to ban leftist and anti-colonialist parties. Others,
including
Lutte Ouvrière and the International Communist League pretend
that
the FN is merely an “electoral party.” This classic social-democratic
conception
sows deadly illusions. The National Front has a veritable private army,
at the core of which are paramilitary units notorious for their racist
attacks. In the 1995 FN campaign two immigrant youth were murdered by
FN
thugs. FN operatives run agencies supplying strikebreakers to French
companies
and mercenaries for French interests in Africa. The fight against the
the
drive toward a bonapartist “strong state” requires revolutionary
mobilization
of the working class to crush the fascists and break with the popular
front
of war and racism. National
Front at forefront of capitalist drive toward “strong state” in France (8
June 2002)
Fascism,
bonapartism and police terror in Italy (June 2002)
In
Centrist Drift Toward Lutte Ouvrière
How
ICL Turns French Fascists Into Ballot-Box Rightists
For decades the Spartacist tendency/International Communist League
(ICL) held that France’s National Front (FN) was fascist. But over the
last three years, the ICL has decided that Haider’s FPÖ in
Austria,
Fini’s AN in Italy and Le Pen’s FN in France are not fascist but
“electoral
parties. ” This is the policy of the bourgeoisie, which refers only to
“ex-” and “post-”fascists. It is also the position of Lutte
Ouvrière
(LO), which has long claimed that the FN was just another right-wing
party.
The ICL’s sudden shift is one of a series of line changes on key
questions
as it has abandoned Trotskyism for centrist confusionism. Its offer of
conditional “critical support” to LO reflected a growing political
rapprochement.
Neither LO nor the ICL call to defeat the imperialist war, neither call
for independence for French and U.S. colonies, both justify a policy of
left-talking abstention from the class struggle by blaming the backward
consciousness of the workers. This perspective has led LO to play only
a marginal role in the major upheavals by the French working class,
notably
in 1968. This underscores the need to forge an authentic
Leninist-Trotskyist
party. How
ICL turns French fascists into ballot-box rightists (8 June
2002).
From
Hindenberg to Chirac...
French
Elections: Beware of Bourgeois “Saviors of the Nation”!
The main argument raised by the Stalinists and social-democrats to
convince their ranks to vote for the reactionary Chirac is the refrain
of “the Republic in danger.” In calling for a “Republican front” to
justify
voting for the candidate of the big bosses, they reproduce the
reasoning
of the German Social Democrats (SPD) who in 1932 called for a vote for
Field Marshall von Hindenburg against Hitler. Yet less than a year
after
von Hindenburg was re-elected president, he brought in the Nazi Führer
as prime minister. A landslide victory for Chirac, the deputy and
successor to General De Gaulle, will only feed his bonapartist
appetites.
Votes for bourgeois “democrats” are no barrier to the fascists, for
they
ultimately represent the same class interests. To stop Le Pen’s
National
Front and Hitler’s Nazis it is necessary to mobilize the power of
workers
to sweep the fascist vermin off the streets, opening the way to
proletarian
revolution. French
elections: beware of bourgeois ‘saviors of the nation’ (4 May
2002).
No
to Chirac – Le
Pen! Sweep
Away the Fascist Thugs
May
1! Boycott the Elections May 5!
France:
The Popular Front Opens the Door to Fascist Reaction
Fight
for Workers Revolution!
Build
a Real Leninist-Trotskyist Party!
After the results of the first round of the French presidential
elections
April 21, with the reactionary Chirac and the fascist Le Pen facing off
in a second round May 5, an explosion of anger has swept through the
country.
Le Pen and his cohorts are not a “current of opinion” but the political
front for racist shock troops of reaction who would annihilate
immigrants,
the left and labor. They must be crushed before it is too
late.
But all the parties of the popular front of the “plural left”
(Socialists,
Communists, Greens) and even the tame “far left” are calling directly
or
indirectly for a a vote for Chirac. The League for the Fourth
International
warns against this call for a “republican front” against the National
Front.
Chirac will implement much of the reactionary program of Le Pen. Voting
for any candidate of a bourgeois party or class-collaborationist
coalition
will not stop the fascist menace. It is necessary to mobilize the
power
of the working class to boycott the electoral circus of the bourgeoisie
and sweep away the fascist thugs of capital. Working people,
immigrants
and youth must say no to Chirac and Le Pen, and break with
the
reformist social-democrats and pseudo-communists who paved the way for
this lurch to the right. France:
Popular front paves the way for fascist reaction (26 April
2002)
Free
CCNY Student Reem Khalil!
Down
with
the Racist
Dragnet – Free All the Detainees Now!
Stop
the
Anti-Immigrant
“War Purge”!
Statement
by
the Internationalist Group and the Revolutionary Reconstruction Club
(Bronx
Community College)
A young woman student at City College, Reem Khalil, is one of the
latest
victims of the government’s anti-immigrant dragnet. At 6 a.m. on
February
27, twenty federal agents raided the Khalil home in Bay Ridge,
Brooklyn,
arresting six members of the family. When the FBI could find nothing
against
them, they were turned over to the INS for deportation. They are among
the more than 300,000 “foreign nationals” targeted in a migra
“crackdown.”
Their crime: they had applied for asylum and were turned down. We
demand
an immediate stop to the deportations, the release of Khalil and her
family
as well as the estimated 2,000 people of Arab and South Asian descent
arrested
since September 11 and now being held incommunicado, and full
citizenship
rights for all immigrants. Free
CCNY Student Reem Khalil (8 March 2002)
Women’s
Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
On International Women’s Day 2002, in the midst of the terrorist “war
against terrorism” launched by U.S. imperialism and its NATO allies,
women
around the world are under attack. U.S. war propagandists use the
hideous
oppression of women under the Islamic-fundamentalist Taliban regime to
justify the Pentagon’s indiscriminate bombing which has killed more
than
4,000 civilians in Afghanistan. Yet the Islamic-fundamentalist regime
installed
by Washington and led by the same bloody warlords who were the CIA’s
terrorist
“holy warriors” against the Soviet-backed Kabul government in the 1980s
continues to violently enforce the oppression of women. Women's
Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! (8 March
2002)
Nigerian
Woman Sentenced to Death for “Adultery”
Stop
the Execution of Safiya Hussain,
Free
Her Now!
Over the last several years, the discontent of the impoverished masses
of Nigeria, Africa’s largest country is being diverted into religious
and
ethnic strife, provoking riots that have left hundreds dead since last
September. In the midst of the communal bloodletting, last October a
35-year-old
nursing mother, Safiya Hussain, was sentenced by an Islamic court in
the
state of Sokoto to death by stoning for the supposed “crime” of
adultery.
The only proof against Safiya is that she is unmarried and pregnant. In
Nigeria the court which decreed the death of Safiya Hussain did so on
the
basis of the Sharia, the medieval Islamic legal code. In the U.S., the
racist death penalty in the U.S. is legal lynching, and is in fact a
product
of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Reactionary Islamic family codes
in
Africa and murderous attacks on abortion providers by Christian
fundamentalists
in the U.S. will only be abolished through international socialist
revolution. Stop
the Execution of Safiya Hussain! (8 March 2002)
From
Protest to the Struggle for Proletarian Power
Mass
Upheaval Rocks Argentina
Brazilian
Workers Movement Under Attack
Not
Populist
Appeals Against “Neo-Liberalism”
But
Workers Revolution
to Bring Down Capitalism!
After four years of wrenching economic crisis, hundreds of highway
blockades by thousands of unemployed workers and eight general strikes,
while starving people emptied supermarkets of food, in late December
the
fury of the devastated Argentine middle class boiled over. In the face
of a state of siege, with demonstrations of banging pots and pans (cacerolazos),
the population of Buenos Aires brought down four presidents in two
weeks.
The shock waves of the social convulsions in Argentina have spread to
Brazil
and throughout the world. The Argentine crisis has opened a potentially
revolutionary situation. The big factor missing is a revolutionary
leadership
capable of organizing and leading the struggles of the exploited and
oppressed
to the taking of power by the proletariat. Mass
upheaval rocks Argentina (January 2002)
U.S./NATO
Out of Afghanistan and Central Asia!
Imperialists’
Terror War Spreads
Next Up:
Philippines,
Iraq, Somalia…?
Revolutionary
Defeatism
on All Sides in
an India-Pakistan War!
For
International
Socialist Revolution!
Washington triumphantly proclaimed the victory of its “new war” after
its warllord allies of the Northern Alliance took Kabul in five weeks.
But the imperialists’ Blitzkrieg-like “victory” will only bring
further suffering to the Afghan peoples while setting the stage for
more
war around the globe. As U.S. forces direct “mopping-up” operations in
the countryside, and a British-led NATO “peacekeeping” force
patrols
Kabul, it’s clear that Western occupation forces won’t be exiting
Afghanistan
any time soon. One gang of Islamic fundamentalists has replaced
another,
and Afghan women are still imprisoned in the head-to-toe burqa. Class-conscious
workers throughout the world must fight to defeat the imperialists and
defend Afghanistan, Iraq and any other country targeted by the
U.S./NATO
war. Imperialists
terror war spreads (January 2002)
Federal
Judge Upholds Frame-Up Conviction,
Orders
New Hearing on Death Sentence
Battle
Escalates for Jamal’s Freedom
Mobilize
Workers Power to Free Mumia Now!
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and crusading
journalist, framed-up and sitting on Pennsylvania’s death row for the
past
20 years row sums up the racist essence of American bourgeois
“justice.”
On December 18 a federal judge for the first time declared that the
death
sentence against Jamal was the product of judicial misconduct. Yet his
narrow decision accepted only the most limited point raised in Jamal’s
appeal, while dismissing out of hand the other 28 issues raised, as
well
as endorsing Jamal's frame-up conviction and refusing to hear
dramatic
new evidence of his innocence . The Internationalist Group and
League
for the Fourth International warn: this ruling does not lift the
threat
of Mumia’s execution. It must spur efforts to mobilize the working
class and the oppressed to free this courageous fighter against
injustice
from the claws of the capitalist state that seeks to silence his
powerful
“voice of the voiceless” forever. Battle
escalates for Jamal's freedom (9 January 2002)
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