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 No. 24, Summer 2006 Table of Contents
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Defend the Palestinian People and Lebanese Shiites!
Israel Launches Regional War on the Road to World War III
Drive the Zionists Out of the Occupied Territories!
Drive the U.S. Imperialists Out of Iraq and All the Near East!
On July 14, Israel began a full-scale assault on Lebanon, bombing targets, military and civilian, throughout the country. Particularly hard-hit in the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon have been the Shiite Muslim communities where the Islamic organization Hezbollah is strong. There, the Israeli air force is massacring the civilian population, including many children, killing whole families in their homes, bombing refugee columns. Whatever the pretext used by Israel to justify its aggression, the international workers movement must stand squarely for defense of the Palestinian people and Lebanese Shiite population under attack, and for the defeat of the Israeli assault. The current invasion of Lebanon is part of an overall plan by the Zionist expansionists to unilaterally redraw the borders of the Near East and could easily engulf the entire region in the flames of war. Trotskyists defend the Palestinian people and Shiite population and stand with those resisting the Zionist occupiers, while calling for an Arab/Hebrew workers state in a socialist federation of the Near East. Israel Launches Regional War on the Road to World War III (21 July 2006)
The Great Swindle: Fraud in the Electoral Farce
Form Workers Defense Committees!
Mexico: Bourgeois Elections and Workers Blood
Down with the PAN, PRI and PRD!
Break with the AMLO Popular Front!
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
When Mexican voters went to the polls on July 2, the election campaign had only reached the half-way point. Under the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran the country as a state party for seven decades, election fraud became an art, if not a science. Fraud in Mexico is not an aberration but an integral part of the electoral process. The Grupo Internacionalista called for “No vote for any of the bosses’ parties! Break with the popular front around López Obrador! Forge a revolutionary workers party!” Particularly in such a close and hard-fought election, with plenty of potentially suspicious aspects, the GI supported the demand for a recount. But while most of the left jumped aboard the AMLO bandwagon, the GI warned that the huge “anti-fraud” marches called by López Obrador were in fact political rallies on behalf of his bourgeois coalition. It added that if the struggle went beyond the electoral terrain, if the capitalist state sought to impose the candidate of the incumbent regime through a repressive crackdown pointing to a police-military dictatorship, proletarian revolutionaries would call for a working-class mobilization against the bonapartist threat. In the present context, the GI called for class-conscious workers to fight to break the ties binding the “independent” unions to the popular front around López Obrador, and to form workers defense committees independent of all bourgeois politicians and parties. Mexico: Bourgeois Elections and Workers Blood (6 August 2006)
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Protest Against NYC Provocation by “Minutemen” Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes
On July 26, some 150 supporters of immigrant rights, labor and left groups staged a noisy protest at Ground Zero, the former World Trade Center, in New York City against a “press conference” by the racist vigilantes of the “Minuteman Project.” Demonstrators chanted “Minuteman vigilantes – out of New York!” and “Minuteman, Ku Klux Klan, racist killers go hand in hand.” The banner of the Internationalist Group proclaimed: “Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Drive Out Racist ‘Minuteman’ Vigilantes! Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!” For the immigrant-bashers to stage a race-hate rally in New York, where over 40 percent of the population consists of immigrant families, is a blatant provocation, part of a strategy to provoke a police crackdown. The IG called for the workers movement to mobilize its power to defend the immigrant population against the nativist fascists. Protest Against NYC Provocation by “Minutemen” Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes (27 July 2006)
After Massacres at Sicartsa Steel Mill and Atenco
Mexico: Oaxaca Teachers Repel Bloody Cop Assault
With two weeks to go before Mexico’s presidential elections, in a blatant provocation the government of Oaxaca ordered the violent police eviction of striking teachers who for the past three weeks have been occupying the center of the state capital. This is how the Mexican bourgeoisie prepares its electoral farce drenched with workers’ blood. But they only succeeded in shooting themselves in the foot, and the eviction failed miserably. After three hours of pitched battle, the 40,000 strikers managed to break through police lines and throw out the repressive forces. Coming after the massacres of steel workers in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán and of peasants in San Salvador Atenco, it is urgent to launch a national strike against the murderous government. Above all, what is required is a political response to the bourgeois class offensive. The Grupo Internacionalista calls for no vote for the PAN, PRI, PRD or any other bosses’ party, to break with the popular front around PRD candidate López Obrador, and to forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers party. Mexico: Oaxaca Teachers Repel Bloody Cop Assault (16 June 2006)
Liberal Racism = Education for War
New York Regents Exam Pushes Apologies for Imperialism
The New York State Regents exam on global history and geography given last January asked students to read blatant apologies for colonial rule and then “state two ways British imperialism would benefit Africans.” This racist filth has rightly enraged black students and educators. In an essay on imperialism, students were told not to cite any example from U.S. history. This is part of an international trend, reflecting the current political climate in the United States and elsewhere, in which justifications for empire have become fashionable. It is education in the service of imperialist war, which must be fought tooth and nail along with mobilizing to drive military recruiters out of the schools and resolutely opposing the capitalist masters of “public” education. NY Regents Exam Pushes Apologies for Imperialism (17 May 2006)
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