No. 22, September-October 2005  Table of Contents Selected articles linked

 

New Orleans Police State “Ethnic Cleansing” American-style By now everyone knows that 100,000 people, overwhelmingly black and poor, were left to die in the New Orleans death trap. Why? Because the principal objective of the government at all levels was to occupy the devastated city and put the population under martial law. Today the Big Easy is a police-state encampment, occupied by an estimated 14,000 heavily armed troops and cops and private security companies. It is a first taste of long-standing plans by the U.S. bourgeoisie to “impose order” in America’s inner cities through preventive internal war against the exploited and oppressed. Bush cronies in companies like Halliburton, Bechtel and Fluor Corporation are cashing in, while the old-line families are working out plans for a new New Orleans that is “completely different ... demographically, geographically and politically.” In other words, a city  “cleansed” of poor black people. This racist attack, like the war on Iraq, has been unleashed by both capitalist parties. To defeat it, it is necessary to break with all the bourgeois politicians and fight to build a revolutionary workers party. New Orleans Police State  (20 September 2005)

Hurricane Shows Race and Class Decide Who Lives and Dies in Capitalist America New Orleans Death Trap: Thousands of Black Poor Left to Die We Need A Revolution! The destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is being called the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. But the devastation of New Orleans was not natural, nor just the result of callous, criminal neglect – it was mass murder by the racist rulers of capitalist America. The authorities knew exactly what would happen in a major storm, and did nothing to prevent catastrophic damage. They knew the floodwall was vulnerable precisely at the point it was breached. They knew that over 100,000 people would be stranded in the city, and they left them there to die. In the aftermath, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina have been held prisoner in the flooded city. The hue and cry over looting is a racist ploy: desparate flood survivors scavenge for good while the oil companies loot on a massive scale.  As has frequently happened through the ages, a natural phenomenon laid bare the fault lines between the classes in a rotting, decaying society. The real response to this outrage is not to call on criminals in power to improve preparations for the next disaster, but to fight for socialist revolution to bring down the system that perpetuates war, racism and poverty.   New Orleans Death Trap: Thousands of Black Poor Left to Die  (5 September 2005)

Racist New Orleans Cops Assault Black  School Teacher

FEMA and U.S. Plans for “War At Home”

Black Self-Defense Against “Ethnic Cleansing” Racist Hell in Tulsa, 1921

To Defeat Yankee Imperialism and Its Puppets, Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government to Begin International Socialist Revolution! Venezuela: Workers to Power! Defend Venezuela Against Yankee Imperialism!

U.S. Divide-and-Rule Politics Provoke Sectarian Conflict Colonial “Constitution” Farce in Iraq On October 15, Iraqis are being called to vote in a referendum on a “constitution” intended to serve as a façade to disguise U.S. colonial rule. Under the phony charter, Muslim women will be subjected to sharia (Islamic law), depriving them of rights won almost a half century ago and formalizing their subjugation. Following the classic imperialist formula of “divide and rule,” the U.S. has consciously sought to establish a Shiite ascendancy in Iraq. Now this could backfire, as Sunni Arabs see the system stacked against them and increase support for the tenacious insurgency. Even conservative Iraq war “hawks” worry that the constitution could “deal a death blow to Iraq,” creating an Iraqi Kurdistan in the north and a de facto “Shiastan” in the south. Sunni Arabs overwhelmingly boycotted the January colonial elections. This time around various Sunni bourgeois parties and religious figures are calling to vote “no” in the referendum. They are only angling for a better deal with the imperialist occupiers. Trotskyists, in contrast, are for active boycott of the colonial referendum and for driving the U.S. imperialists out of Iraq.  Colonial “Constitution” Farce in Iraq  (12 October  2005)

Guantánamo Hunger Strike Exposes U.S. Imperialism’s Torture Camp Horrors Resistance is spreading at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo, the military base stolen from Cuba, where prisoners are waging a hunger strike protesting their imprisonment without charges or trial. The U.S. has tried to keep news of this from getting out, but lawyers report that hundreds of prisoners are risking their lives to participate in a desperate hunger strike. The prisoners are subject to a catalog of abuses worthy of Hitler’s Nazis. But the U.S. imperialists don’t need Nazi inspiration. The U.S. used similar tactics in its brutal war against the Vietnamese a generation ago. Moreover, many of these abuses have been practiced for decades against the mounting, heavily black prison population within the U.S. of over 2 million behind bars. As Marxists we support efforts to gain legal protection for the victims of U.S. imperialism. But we warn that there is no justice for the oppressed in the capitalist injustice system. Even if the “detainees” had their “day in court,” this is no guarantee that they would get fair treatment. On the contrary, the courts have upheld the president’s right to arbitrarily declare individuals “enemy combatants” without any proof at all. The League for the Fourth International calls to shut down the U.S. torture chambers, free all the prisoners and return Guantánamo to Cuba.  U.S. Imperialism’s Torture Camp Horrors  (10 October  2005)

Left Party in the Dead End of Bourgeois Pressure Politics – Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! Germany: Grand Coalition Against the Workers

After Murders of Amazon Peasant Leaders, the Worst-Ever Massacre in Rio de Janeiro  Lula’s Brazil: Land of Massacres How the Opportunist Left Embraced the Capitalist Police

State Terrorism: Filiberto Ojeda Ríos Assassinated by FBI Death Squad On September 23, the FBI brazenly murdered Puerto Rican independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in his home. Ojeda’s killing was a cold-blooded assassination by a government death squad, and a deliberate provocation, coming on the anniversary of the 1868 Grito de Lares, when Puerto Ricans first rose up fighting for independence from Spain. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International denounce this act of naked state terrorism. We demand the immediate release of all Puerto Rican independence fighters and call for unconditional independence for Puerto Rico as part of a fight for socialist revolution throughout the Caribbean and in the imperialist citadel..  State Terrorism: Filiberto Ojeda Ríos Assassinated  (26 September  2005

Not Another EDSA "People's Power" Fraud, Fight for Workers Revolution! Presidential Crisis in the Philippines From the moment a government intelligence chief presented a tape containing dozens of calls from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to election officials during the count of the 2004 vote, the Philippines has been wracked by sometmes daily anti-government demonstrations. The left is mobilizing with talk of another “People Power” uprising, yet the driving force behind this upsurge has come from elements in the armed forces and Arroyo’s rivals among the bourgeois politicians, who are every bit as rotten as the current president. This is the third time in two decades that a Philippines president may be brought down amid popular mobilization, yet the bourgeoisie has landed on top, and it threatens to do so again. The left is supplying foot soldiers for the campaign whose figurehead leader is the widow of Arroyo’s main opponent in 2004. While the Stalinist and social-democratic reformists chain the workers to their class enemy through a nationalist “popular front”, the Trotskyists fight for international socialist revolution.  Presidential Crisis in the Philippines  (31 July 2005)  For a Revolutionary Workers Party! Arroyo Impeachment Dead, “People Power”, Pop Front Goes On Impeachment Dead, “People Power”, Pop Front Goes On (6 September 2005) United Working-Class Action Against Bourgeois Attack! Filipino Working-Class Fighter Murdered

Other articles in The Internationalist No. 20

Labor-Immigrant Squads to Run Off Minuteman Fascists For Militant Workers Defense of Immigrants

Vote Down the Giveback Contract and Prepare to Walk Out! What It Will Take to Win: An All-Out NYC Education Strike NYC Teachers: Protest Arrest of Muslim High School Students!