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 No. 17, October-November 2003 Table of
Contents Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue. |
Drive the Imperialists Out of Iraq, Afghanistan!
Drive the Zionists Out of the West Bank, Gaza!
Sink U.S. Imperialism in the Quicksands of the Near East!
The imperialist occupiers of Iraq are taking a pounding lately, and that is a very good thing for the vast mass of humanity. Every blow struck by the Iraqi people against their bloody U.S. colonial masters and the occupation armies is a blow on behalf of the exploited and oppressed of the world. In all their voluminous contingency plans, the Pentagon war planners didn’t prepare for guerrilla insurgency with mass popular support. That is what they now have on their blood-soaked hands in Iraq. The widespread opposition has greatly demoralized the occupation troops, and as U.S. casualties mount (400 dead and several thousand wounded so far), so does discontent on the “home front.” Of course, there is no mention in the media of the more than 15,000 Iraqis slaughtered during the U.S./British invasion and the thousands killed since then. The imperialist war on Iraq and Afghanistan is at the same time a capitalist war on working people and the oppressed in the imperialist countries. Impotent anti-war marches pushing for a more liberal foreign policy will not put an end to this “war without end.” What’s needed is international socialist revolution to sweep away the imperialist system of war, poverty and racism. Sink U.S. Imperialism in Near East Quicksands (5 November 2003)
140 Dead – President Flees as Miners Pour Into La Paz
Vice President Takes Over Due to Union Tops’ Sellout
Bolivia: Workers Uprising Knifed,
Workers Still on Battle Footing
After weeks of huge and increasingly combative mobilizations, on October 17 Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada fled the country, leaving his vice president Carlos Mesa in power. In order to please his masters in Washington, the murderous president drenched the country in blood, with a toll of 140 dead and some 500 injured, according to the figures of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB – Bolivian Labor Federation). It was the miners who were decisive in forcing the flight of Sánchez de Lozada. Yet by granting an “intermission” to “Goni’s” successor, the leaders of the COB, together with those of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and the Indian movement, betrayed the workers who fought so heroically against the puppet regime in the “gas war.” Many fake leftists are hailing the “victory,” but toppling the hated president and replacing him with his anointed successor is hardly a victory. The League for the Fourth International, in contrast, stresses that the key demand continues to be: Workers to power! The urgent task is still the construction of the nucleus of a genuinely Trotskyist Bolshevik party.
(English) Bolivian Workers Uprising Knifed (26 October 2003)
(Spanish) Bolivia: levantamiento obrero apuñalado (26 de octubre de 2003)
Massacre Outside La Paz – Discontent Among Troops – Workers on Battle Footing
Bolivia Aflame: “Gas War” on the Altiplano
Workers to Power!
For the last month, Bolivia has been shaken by massive mobilizations against the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his plans to export gas to an imperialist consortium. In Bolivia’s “gas war,” anger is rising as workers’ and peasants’ blood flows on the altiplano (high plateau). In this hard fight against a powerful enemy, what’s needed is unity with the Chilean, Peruvian and North American working people. Bolivian workers have once again demonstrated the heroism that has characterized so many moments of their history. But despite their enormous militancy, the key element is still missing: a revolutionary internationalist leadership with the class program and determination needed not only to overthrow the hated “Goni” (Sánchez de Lozada) but to sweep away the entire bourgeoisie and its repressive apparatus, through socialist revolution that spreads internationally.
(English) Bolivia Aflame - Workers to Power (14 October 2003)
(Spanish) Arde Bolivia: ¡Obreros al poder! (14 de octubre de 2003)
Filipino Workers:
For Class Protest Against Visit of Imperialist Chief!
Defeat U.S.-Arroyo-AFP War on Moro Peoples!
Defeat the Colonial Occupiers of Iraq!
The recent visit of U.S. imperialist president George W. Bush to the Philippines was met with demonstrations by virtually the entire Filipino left. While thousands came into the streets to protest the warmonger, the marches were dominated by popular-front politics, seeking an alliance with the corrupt bourgeois opposition. In contrast, the Revolutionary Communist Group (RGK) called in a leaflet for Filipino workers to mobilize their class power against the imperial visit, the colonial occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing intervention of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and in South East Asia. The RGK also called to defend North Korea, China, Vietnam and Cuba against imperialist threats.
(English) Filipino workers: For class protest against visit of imperialist chief (13 October 2003)
(Pilipino) Manggagawang Pilipino: Para sa mga Maka-Uring Protesta Laban sa Pagbisita ng Imperyalistang Pinuno! (13 October 2003)
Soap Opera “Coup Attempt” in the Philippines
(English) Perplexities of the July 27 Incident (20 September 2003)
Perplexities of the July 27 Incident
On July 27, some 200 officers and soldiers of the Philippine armed forces took over a luxury hotel in downtown Manila. The bourgeois press treated this as a coup attempt and mutiny, although the mutineers made no attempt to move on the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Because they wore armbands with the symbol of the bourgeois revolutionaries who fought against the U.S. colonial invaders in 1898, much of the left came out in support of the mutiny. Yet the nationalist-posturing officers were complaining that the corruption of the army tops was undercutting the war on leftist and Muslim insurgents. The Revolutionary Communist Group in the Philippines warns that the “mutineers” are first and foremost anti-Communist and anti-Moro. The Stalinists and social democrats are so wedded to popular-front class collaboration that they even ally with such bonapartist military hardliners. The RGK insists that the road to victory of the working class is through the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution – the program of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.
(Pilipino) Ang mga Kalituhan sa Insidente ng Hulyo 27 (20 Setyembre 2003)
The Class War In Southeast Asia
Oppressed Peoples, Deformed Workers States
Under the Imperialist Gun
After the destruction of Iraq by the number one terrorist in the whole world, United States imperialism, and the eventual carving up of the country by companies that are close to the gangster Bush and his cronies, the U.S. is now focusing its attention on Southeast and East Asia. From Aceh and Irian Jaya (West Papua) in Indonesia, to Mindanao in the Philippines, to North Korea and China, the working class and the different peoples in this region are facing a long and bloody war of aggression. The the Revolutionary Communist Group (RGK) of the Philippines the League for the Fourth International unconditionally defends China, North Korea and all the remaining deformed workers states from imperialist strangulation, as well as defending the numerous oppressed peoples and nationalities from attacks by the local bourgeois states in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and the Philippines. This document of the RGK analyzes the national question and the strategy for proletarian revolution in the region. The Class War in Southeast Asia (September 2003)
No Vote for Any of the Capitalist Candidates for Governor – Democrats, Republicans or Greens!
California Recall Follies and the
Bankruptcy of U.S. Bourgeois Politics
Reformist SWP and SEP Are No Answer – Fight in the Unions, Ghettos and Barrios to Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
In recent weeks, California has been roiled by a recall referendum on removing Democratic governor Gray Davis, and a simultaneous vote on a successor if he is defeated. The Internationalist Group stands for proletarian opposition to all capitalist candidates and parties. We call for abstention on the recall and no vote for any of the candidates running to replace Davis. The leading Republican candidate, power-hungry chauvinist Schwarzenegger is clearly an enemy of the workers, immigrants, blacks, Latinos and Asians. But so is “Governor Cutback” Davis. Two self-proclaimed socialists are on the ballot running on barely distinguishable reformist platforms. One of them, Joel Britton of the Socialist Workers Party is given “critical support” by the Spartacist League, which calls to vote for the SWP candidate on the grounds that he calls for “withdrawal of U.S. forces” from Iraq and elsewhere. The SL similarly calls for “U.S. Troops Out of Iraq!” In the absence of a call for the defeat of the imperialist occupiers, which the SL now refuses to raise, the “troops out” policy of the SL and SWP is a social-patriotic line, fundamentally the same as calling to “bring the GIs home.” California Recall Follies (7 October 2003)
Social Democrats No Answer to Capitalist Austerity
Dutch Imperialist Robbers Join Plunder of Iraq
For Revolutionary Class Struggle – For a Workers Republic!
The program of massive cutbacks planned by the conservative Balkenende government in the Netherlands is a massive assault on the working class and oppressed. This capitalist offensive runs parallel with the participation of Dutch Marines in the colonialist occupation of Iraq and the continuing racist anti-immigrant campaign. This is the face of imperialist war “at home.” The popular-front September 20 “Turn the Tide” demonstration, promoted by the union tops, social democrats, Greens and assorted left groups, aims at removing the present cabinet, which can only mean bringing back the Labor Party (perhaps with some bourgeois liberal allies) to carry out more capitalist austerity under a different color. The so-called “far left” failed to mobilize against Dutch participation in the imperialist occupation of Iraq, and panders to the anti-immigrant campaign, while some offer what has become the reformists’ maximum program, a one-day “general strike.” This article from De Internationalist No. 3 calls to fight for the defeat of the Dutch “jackal imperialists” in Iraq, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants and a workers republic. Dutch Imperialist Robbers Join Plunder of Iraq (18 September 2003)
Longshore Union Official, Antiwar Protesters
Face Jail After Oakland Cops Fire on Port Protest
Defend Jack Heyman and the Oakland 25!
On November 7, twenty-four antiwar protesters and Jack Heyman, business agent of Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), come up for trial in Oakland, California. The Oakland 25 were arrested during the brutal police riot against an antiwar demonstration at the East Bay docks April 7, when a force of 90 cops fired on a crowd of demonstrators and longshoremen using wooden slugs and exploding “stinger” grenades. Now they want to send their victims to jail. Bay Area labor must mobilize to demand that all charges against them be dropped! The premeditated cop assault, coming at the height of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was “imperialist war on the home front.” It was prepared in secret meetings with the shipping companies and local police “red squads,” instigated by the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC), set up by Democratic governor Gray Davis. It was not the spectre of “terrorism” that the rulers and bosses feared, but the very real prospect of a shutdown of the shipment of war cargo. The Internationalist Group has called for transport workers to “hot cargo” war materiel and for workers strikes against the war and colonial occupation. Defend the Oakland 25! (3 November 2003)
LFI and Others Were Targeted
A Band of Political Impostors and Swindlers in Ukraine
A bizarre case of political and financial fraud has been uncovered in Ukraine, in which a band of a dozen or so con artists simultaneously posed as sections of ten or more different international tendencies, including the League for the Fourth International (LFI). Given the unambiguous nature of the accumulated evidence, the LFI has declared the fusion with the Ukrainian “RKO” null and void. Whether this operation was motivated by cynical nationalism, by motives of purely personal gain or was part of a police provocation (or some combination of these), such elements must be ruthlessly exposed and driven out of the workers movement. The appearance of such shady characters is particularly frequent after a defeat of the proletariat, when the workers movement is in a phase of decomposition. The strange case of the Ukrainian “RS” / “YRM” / “RKO” / “RWO” / “RV” / “UTO” / “UWG” / “RKU,” etc. is a by-product of the destruction of the Soviet Union. Revolutionary organizations have often been beset by adventurers, swindlers, police agents, quick-change artists and charlatans of all kinds. The Marxist response has always been to shine the light of revolutionary politics on the dark recesses where such figures ply their wares. A Band of Political Impostors and Swindlers in Ukraine (27 August 2003)
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