Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

U.S./South Korean Maneuvers A Threat to China As Well
Defend North Korea Against U.S. War Threats and Sanctions
On July 20, the United States and South Korea announced they would shortly hold provocative military maneuvers in the Sea of Japan, to the east of North Korea, to be followed by additional meneuvers in the Yellow Sea to the west. These “war games” and sanctions are a blatant attempt by U.S. imperialism to blackmail the isolated Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, and also pose a threat to China. Trotskyists defend the North Korean and Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers states against imperialism, including North Korea’s right to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the aggressive U.S. and Japanese imperialists. The current wave of North Korea-bashing was triggered by the sinking of the South Korean Navy ship Cheonan on March 26. South Korea and the U.S. have accused North Korea of torpedoing the ship, but their supposed “proof” is highly suspect. North Korea categorically denies the charge, suggesting an accident. There is a long history of imperialists staging provocations or seizing on unrelated events to justify a war. The right-wing South Korean government and the Democratic administration in Washington have been escalating threats against North Korea for some time. It is the duty of all opponents of imperialism to strongly oppose them. Defend North Korea Against U.S. War Threats and Sanctions (21 July 2010)

Hands off WikiLeaks!
Defend PFC Bradley Manning!
On July 6, the U.S. military announced that charges have been filed against Private First Class Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking classified material – in particular providing the “Collateral Murder” video to the investigative website WikiLeaks. The video shows U.S. helicopter gunships cold-bloodedly gunning down reporters and other civilians, first aid responders and children in Baghdad in 2007. If Bradley Manning did indeed help to uncover evidence of U.S. imperialism’s war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, these were justified acts evidencing rare moral courage. In addition, government officials have said that they were seeking Julian Assange, an Australian who is the main figure of WikiLeaks. Class-conscious workers and all defenders of democratic rights should defend Manning and Assange. Exposing U.S. imperialism’s crimes and tearing the curtain of secrecy from its plots can save the lives of innocent people by helping to put an end the Pentagon’s reign of terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. What’s behind all this is that U.S. imperialism is bogged down in losing wars. That’s why the administration of liberal Democrat Barack Obama is pursuing “whistle blowers” with a vengeance. Defend PFC Bradley Manning! (8 July 2010)

No to Imperialist Occupation – U.S./U.N. Forces Out!
Haiti Earthquake: Capitalism, Occupation and Revolution
The earthquake that wrecked the capital of Haiti and surrounding areas on January 12 produced human tragedy of almost unfathomable proportions. It has been termed “the most destructive natural disaster in modern times.” Five months later, Haiti is no longer in the headlines or on the nightly TV news, but for the hard-hit Haitian population the scene has hardly changed. Now a new disaster is in the making as the hurricane season begins. This was a calamity made by capitalism: the earthquake was predictable and was predicted; the inferior construction methods are the result of Haiti’s poverty, and the swollen slums were the result of U.S. policies that have destroyed Haitian agriculture, forcing peasants off the land. On top of everything, Haiti is under imperialist occupation: Washington makes sure it has ultimate control of the strategically placed island, as it has throughout the Cold War and since. Haiti's devastation is not the result of “natural” causes or even “neo-liberal” policies – it is the product of the oppression of this semi-colonial country by the imperial masters ever since black slaves rose up to abolish slavery and throw out the colonialists two centuries ago. No new “economic model” can resolve this: what’s required is a new Haitian Revolution, a workers revolution overthrowing capitalism throughout the Caribbean and extending into the heart of imperialism. Haiti Earthquake: Capitalism, Occupation and Revolution (2 July 2010)

Capitalist “Reconstruction” of Haiti (June 2010)

After Occupying Ten Campuses for Two Months
First-Round Student Victory in University of Puerto Rico Strike
On June 21, several thousand students jubilantly ratified the agreements marking their initial victory in the strike of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). After holding firm for 62 days during which they occupied ten out of the eleven UPR campuses (the other was closed by a campus workers’ strike), the students successfully beat back a concerted attack by the right-wing colonial government and its servile university administration. Everyone understands that the fight is not over. The students won agreement to overturn the cancellation of tuition waivers and there will be no privatization of UPR campuses. There would also be no special fee imposed this August and no summary sanctions against strikers. The showdown over the fees was postponed until January and there will likely be a battle over disciplinary reprisals. However, this gives the students several valuable months to reinforce their organization, and they do so from a position of strength, having won the first round of the battle. The task now is to turn widespread working-class sympathy with the strike into concrete labor action. First-Round Victory for Students in University of Puerto Rico Strike (22 June 2010)

“Shock Force” Riot Police Assault Students and Workers
Puerto Rico: Beatings at the Sheraton
On the evening of May 20, the notorious Shock Force of the Puerto Rican Police brutally attacked a demonstration of hundreds of students and workers protesting against Governor Luis Fortuño. Puerto Rico: Beatings at the Sheraton (20 May 2010)

For International Workers Solidarity Action to Defend the Palestinians
Oakland Picket Blocks Israeli Ship!
On June 20, mass pickets blocked the unloading of an Israeli ZIM Lines ship at the Port of Oakland (California) to protest the May 31 Israeli massacre of activists aboard a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. More than 800 demonstrators showed up before dawn for the day shift picket, and hundreds returned to block an evening shift, which was called off. So the picketers succeeded in blocking the unloading of the Zim Lines freighter for 24 hours – the first time an Israeli ship has been blocked in a U.S. port. The picket was called by labor and community groups and built by the San Francisco and Alameda County Labor Councils, who condemned the Israeli attack and sent out notices urging Bay Area unionists to join the lines. A message from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions said that the Oakland dock action was “something we have longed for and expected,” recalling the 1984 boycott of a South African ship on the Oakland docks which spurred international solidarity with the struggle against apartheid. The June picket must be a spur to further workers solidarity action against the murderous Zionist regime. Oakland Picket Blocks Israeli Ship! (21 June 2010)

For International Workers Solidarity Action –
Defeat Israeli/U.S. War on Palestinians!
Israel’s Gaza Flotilla Massacre: Bloody War Provocation
Israel’s seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian aid to Gaza on May 31 and the Zionist commandos’ cold-blooded executions of at least nine activists aboard one of the ships provoked outrage around the world. This was state terrorism. While European governments made mild criticisms of Israel and its four-year-old blockade of Gaza, the main concern of the Obama administration in Washington was to prevent a U.N. resolution blaming Israel. Many protesters are calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, harking back to the campaign against apartheid South Africa. But impotent consumer boycotts of Israeli products, calling on businesses not to invest in Israel and for imperialist sanctions will not stop the Zionist mass murderers, nor did they stop the South African apartheid regime. Rather than looking to the capitalists and imperialists, Trotskyists call today on the workers movement to boycott cargo, ships and planes to and from Israel. Boycotts have been called by South African, Swedish and Norwegian dock workers unions and a picket is planned in the port of Oakland, California. Israel’s Gaza Flotilla Massacre: Bloody War Provocation (17 June 2010)

The Blockade of Gaza and Zionist Plans for “Transfer” (June 2010)

Zionists Gearing Up for War on Iran (June 2010)

For an Arab-Hebrew Palestinian Workers State in a Socialist Federation of the Near East (June 2010)

Egypt: Mubarak Regime Tottering (June 2010)

After Racist Arizona Law, Obama’s Border Patrol Kills Mexicans
Blood on the Border
Down with Democrats and Republicans, Capitalist Parties of War and Repression!
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Today in the United States, under the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, xenophobic and racist violence is escalating. The criminal agents of the Border Patrol have reached the point of killing in cold blood, before the eyes of hundreds of witnesses. On May 28, construction worker Anastasio Hernández Rojas was beaten to death by some 20 agents of the U.S. Border Patrol. Then on June 7 in Ciudad Juárez, across the river from El Paso, Border Patrol agents fired into a group of youths on the Mexican side of of the border, murdering 14-year-old Adrián Hernández with a shot to the head. These crimes are part of a policy of racist repression looking for scapegoats, typified by the legalization of xenophobia and police use of racial profiling in Arizona’s SB 1070 law. But while Obama criticized the law and demonstrators chanted, “Obama, listen, we are in the struggle,” his thugs are killing on the border. It is an illusion to think that the commander in chief of U.S. imperialism, or his counterpart and semi-colonial underling, Mexican president Felipe Calderón, will defend the workers. It is necessary to mobilize the power of the working class to defend immigrants. Blood on the Border (10 June 2010)

Repentant Social Imperialists
Open Letter from the Internationalist Group
to the Spartacist League and ICL
The Spartacist League/U.S. and the International Communist League it leads are in deep political trouble. On April 27, the International Executive Committee of the ICL issued a statement “Repudiating Our Position on Haiti Earthquake,” headlined “A Capitulation to U.S. Imperialism.” After three months of “zealous apologies for the U.S. imperialist military intervention” in the name of humanitarian aid, the ICL suddenly declared that this was a fundamental “betrayal” and the Internationalist Group had been right all along in demanding U.S./U.N. troops out. While agreeing with the IG’s characterization of the ICL’s policy as “social-imperialist” and calling for a “savage indictment” of its own line, the ICL’s explanation for this betrayal – failure to have a formal discussion – doesn’t answer how an entire organization which proclaims itself revolutionary Marxist and Trotskyist could swallow this support for imperialism for months. Its origins can be found in years of capitulation to U.S. imperialism, notably by abandoning the call for its defeat in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Open Letter by the Internationalist Group urges those in the ICL who do not wish to continue gyrating in centrist confusion to examine the real record of their organization’s adaptations and capitulations to “its own” bourgeoisie over the past years. Open Letter from the IG/LFI to the SL/ICL (8 May 2010)

Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Mobilize Workers Against Racist
Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law!
Democrats’ “Concept” of Immigration “Reform”: A Police State
The passage of a spectacularly racist immigration law by the Arizona state senate on April 19, and its signing into law by the governor four days later, has provoked a wave of justified outrage. The new law (SB1070) authorizes police to stop people on the street to demand that they produce documents to prove their immigration status. This means blatant “racial profiling” by the cops: in Arizona, anyone who “looks Mexican” is now subject to arrest. Comparisons are made to the racial laws of Nazi Germany, South African apartheid pass laws and the fugitive slave acts in pre-Civil War United States. Many are calling on the federal government to annul the racist law. Yet the federal government under Barack Obama is the biggest jailer of immigrants. Under the present administration the number of deportations has sharply escalated. The Democrats’ talk of immigration reform is a cruel hoax. The centerpiece of the “conceptual framework on immigration” drawn up by New York senator Schumer is increased militarization of the border, more migra cops and a national ID card with biometric data: in short, a police state for all. The Internationalist Group calls on workers to mobilize against Arizona’s racist immigration law and for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Mobilize Workers Against Racist Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law (1 May 2010)

Video of Internationalist contingent in May Day march in New York City (1 May 2010)

Revolution
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)

Revolution No. 7
(April 2010)
click above or on image to right
for full list of articles

Class Struggle Against Budget Cuts, Layoffs, Tuition Hikes
Democrats Spearhead Capitalist Attacks on Public Education
Even before the current economic crisis, public education faced a sustained attack from the capitalist ruling class. Spearheaded by the Democrats, from the Obama White House on down, this bipartisan assault is being felt around the country: in California a whopping 33 percent increase in tuition, which amounts to a program to kick students from poor and working families out of school; at the City University of New York, annual tuition hikes, budget cuts, TAP cuts, adjunct layoffs; wholesale closures of schools in black and Latino communities of NYC, to be replaced by privately run “charter” schools. Students need to mobilize massively to defend our right to education. But we cannot do it alone. We need to link up with the power of the working class, which keeps everything going in this society and can bring it all to a stop. On March 4, there were significant protests against the attack on public education. Yet the organizers did their best not to attack the Democrats, and in fact allied with them. This means tying protesters to the capitalist party that is running the government and attacking our right to education. Democrats Spearhead Capitalist Attacks on Public Education (28 April 2010)

Greetings from CUNY Internationalist Clubs
Victory to University of Puerto Rico Student Strike!
Beginning on April 21, the University of Puerto Rico has been shut down by a student strike beginning on the main campus at Río Piedras and quickly spreading to other campuses. The students are striking against drastic budget cuts, the elimination of tuition waivers and the threat of privatization. Since the beginning of the strike and occupation, they have faced the threat of heavy repression with the colonial riot police stationed outside the campus. Now university authorities are seeking arrest warrants against strike leaders. The Internationalist Clubs of the City University of New York sent greetings to the student strikers urging workers unions to join the struggle. Victory to University of Puerto Rico Student Strike! (26 April 2010)

Defeat Imperialist War/Occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq!
Hey Obama, Whadya Say,
How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?
Since last summer, dozens of civilians have been massacred by U.S. and NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan, including numerous students and children. Recently, the web site WikiLeaks put up a now-infamous video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two journalists and then those who rushed to their aid. During the Vietnam War, antiwar demonstrators used to chant about Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson, “Hey, hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” Now they should be chanting the same about another Democratic president, Barack Obama. But they aren’t. In fact, there have been hardly any sizeable antiwar demos since Obama became the candidate. Why not? Because the “antiwar” forces either openly or tacitly supported Obama. Iraq was called “Bush’s war,” even though the Democrats voted hundreds of billions of dollars for the war budget, year after year. We in the Internationalist Clubs don’t call for a “new, improved” U.S. foreign policy, we’re for the defeat of the U.S. imperialist war, and we seek to bring down the whole imperialist system through international socialist revolution. Hey Obama, Whadya Say, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? (28 April 2010)

No to the Imperialist Occupation – U.S./U.N. Forces Out!
U.S. Puts Haiti into Receivership
(Under Gouverneur Bill Clinton)
The Obama administration saw the Haiti earthquake as a golden opportunity to repair the U.S.’ image, badly tarnished by the imperialist war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democrats in power in Washington would pose as leaders of a people-friendly empire, in contrast to the Darth Vader-like Republican regime of George Bush II. But behind all the talk of “helping” Haiti, what they actually did was what Yankee imperialists always do: send paratroops to occupy the Haitian capital and “secure” the country against unrest. From its control of air traffic at the Port-au-Prince airport the U.S. military actively blocked aid from reaching the Haitian people, likely resulting in thousands of deaths. Longer term, the U.S. wants to tighten imperialist control of the strategically located country, occupied since 2004 at Washington’s behest by a United Nations mercenary force. At a March 31 “donors conference” at the U.N. , a Haiti Interim Reconstruction Committee (HIRC) was set up to be in charge of rebuilding the country, displacing the Haitian government. Former U.S. president William Jefferson Clinton will be the neocolonial gouverneur of Haiti on behalf of Washington and Wall Street. U.S. Puts Haiti into Receivership (11 April 2010)

Trying to Justify Support for U.S. Invasion
SL Twists and Turns on Haiti
In the wake of the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital, as Washington sent thousands of U.S. combat troops and a naval armada to secure the country, the Spartacist League ostentatiously declared it was not calling for withdrawal of U.S. and U.N. military forces. The SL claimed they were essential to distributing aid when in fact the U.S. military was actively blocking relief flights and refusing to release aid. While peddling the Pentagon's cover story for U.S. reoccupation of the country, in four successive articles the SL hysterically denounced the Internationalist Group for demanding that the U.S./U.N. occupation forces get out of Haiti. After trying for weeks to depict the 82nd Airborne paratroopers as humanitarian aid workers, the SL now calls for U.S. troops out now -- but not then, when it was necessary to combat illusions in the imperialist occupiers. We systematically take apart the SL's amalgams, straw men, baits, non sequiturs and smokescreens. Its grotesque apology for U.S. imperialism reflects the politics of Max Shachtman, not Leon Trotsky. SL Twists and Turns on Haiti (9 April 2010)

Shut the Detention Camps – Free the Detainees!
Mobilize Workers, Immigrants to Stop the Deportations!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants
A “megamarch” for immigrants’ rights was held in Washington, D.C. on March 21 that brought out over 200,000 people, making it the largest immigrant demonstration since 2006. Pushing the theme “We March for America,” organizers handed out little American flags to participants. A parade of Democratic Congressmen spoke from the podium. Despite the flag-waving and hundreds of thousands demonstrators chanting (in English) Obama's campaign slogan “Yes we can,” the capitalist politicians are not going to do anything to legalize the more than 15 million undocumented immigrants in this mid-term election year. Even if they do eventually pass an immigration bill, it will only further victimize the super-exploited workers. The Internationalist Group put out a bi-lingual special issue of The Internationalist emphasizing that Democrats and Republicans are enemies of immigrants, and we need a revolutionary workers party. Mobilize Workers, Immigrants to Stop the Deportations! (21 March 2010)

Washington Exploits Earthquake to Reoccupy the Country
Haiti: Workers Solidarity, Yes!
Imperialist Occupation, No!
Stop Blocking Aid to Haitian People – U.S./U.N. Forces Get Out!
The January 12 earthquake in Haiti that devastated the capital city, leaving well over 100,000 dead and a million homeless, was one of the worst geological calamities of modern times. The earthquake was a natural disaster, but the horrendous death toll and monumental destruction were caused by capitalism and imperialism. Now the human suffering has been enormously compounded by to the militarization of the relief effort and reoccupation of Haiti by the United States. More than a dozen flights by aid groups, carrying rescue squads, tons of medical supplies and entire field hospitals, were refused permission to land at the Port-au-Prince airport by U.S. military air controllers who are now in charge. Food was already stocked in warehouses, but agencies refused to distribute it for fear of “riots.” The media blitz is a propaganda war to embellish the image of U.S. imperialism. This phony humanitarianism are being used to disguise a new U.S. occupation of Haiti. We demand an end to the imperialist occupation, U.S./U.N. forces get out of Haiti and stop blocking entry of Haitian refugees. Haiti: Workers Solidarity, Yes! Imperialist Occupation, No! (20 January 2010)

(Français) Haïti: Solidarité ouvrière, oui! Occupation impérialiste, non! (20 janvier 2010)
(Español) Haití: ¡Solidaridad obrera, sí! ¡Ocupación imperialista, no! (20 de enero de 2010)

Kick U.N., U.S. and Brazilian Occupation Troops Out of Haiti!
LQB Says: Workers Solidarity, Yes!
Military Occupation, No!
The Liga Quarta Internacionalista do Brasil, section of the League for the Fourth International, has published a special issue of its newspaper Vanguarda Operária devoted to Haiti and the LQB’s fight for the expulsion of the Brazilian expeditionary force commanding the U.N. troops occupying the Caribbean island nation on behalf of U.S. imperialism. In the introduction (translated here) to this collection of articles, the LQB notes that “left-wing” bourgeois Latin American governments headed by Lula in Brazil, Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador have been collaborating with imperialism as its flunkeys and “capitães de mato” (slave catchers), in repressing the combative Haitian population. LQB Says: Workers Solidarity, Yes! Military Occupation, No! (26 January 2010)

Spartacist League Backs U.S. Imperialist Invasion of Haiti
The latest issue of Workers Vanguard, newspaper of the Spartacist League, has a front-page story that supports the presence of United States and United Nations occupation troops in Haiti. WV buys the U.S. rulers’ cover story for their latest invasion as supposedly aiding the desperate Haitian masses left homeless, hungry and in dire need of medical attention in the wake of the devastating earthquake. The article ends with an apoplectic attack on the Internationalist Group for exposing the imperialist lies and demanding “U.S./U.N. Forces Get Out!” This is a deeply significant step for the SL, marking the point at which they have gone over from bending under pressure from the ruling class to outright apology for imperialism. Spartacist League Backs U.S. Imperialist Invasion of Haiti (30 January 2010)

Haiti: Battle Over Starvation Wages and Neocolonial Occupation (November 2009)

From the Current Issue

The Internationalist No. 30
(November-December 2009)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Imperialist Chief Obama:
Deeper Into the Quagmire
Defeat U.S. War on Afghanistan and Iraq!
On December 1, President Barack Obama officially announced a massive escalation of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, tripling the number of American military personnel there since Obama took office. This move marks a decision by Washington to continue the colonial occupation of Afghanistan indefinitely, and with it the bloody slaughter of the Afghan people. Obama’s claim that he would “begin the transfer” of U.S. forces by mid-2011 was just sucker bait for gullible liberals. “Afghanistan Is Now Obama’s War,” proclaimed the media from New York to London to Mumbai. But Afghanistan has been the Democrats’ war since the moment it was launched, in September 2001, and together with the war on Iraq, it is a bipartisan imperialist war. No one in Washington thinks the Afghan puppet army will be able to handle the Taliban. The actual U.S. strategy is not to defeat the Taliban but to weaken it enough so that elements of the Islamists can be brought into a political deal. It is striking that in the United States, a majority of the population is turning against the war even though there hasn’t been a major national antiwar march in more than two years – ever since the start of the last presidential election campaign. At protests following Obama’s announcement of more troops to Afghanistan, organizers carefully avoided any signs mentioning the president by name. Our Internationalist contingent, in contrast, carried signs including, “Hey Obama, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? Defeat Imperialist Slaughter in Afghanistan, Iraq.” Defeat U.S. War on Afghanistan and Iraq! (13 December 2009)

Afghan Massacre Blows Apart German Occupiers’ Lies (20 December 2009)

Popular Front Diverts Workers into Legalistic Dead-End
Life and Death Struggle for Independent Unions in Mexico
The Mexican government of President Felipe Calderón has launched a war on labor that is likely to be the key battle for the existence of unions independent of government control. On October 10 police and army troops seized the generating plants and other installations of the state-owned Luz y Fuerza del Centro electrical power company. The president issued a decree liquidating the company and firing all 44,000 employees belonging to the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). Calderón wants to imitate Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the air traffic controllers strike in 1981 and Margaret Thatcher victory over the British coal miners union in 1985. By October 15, well over 300,000 poured into the streets and crowded into the Zócalo, the capital’s main plaza to defend the SME. The Grupo Internacionalista has called to prepare a general strike in central Mexico in defense of the SME. But while union leaders sometimes talk of strike action, they are following a dead-end strategy of appealing to the bourgeois courts and Congress. Now the cause of the electrical workers has been added to the popular front around Andrés Manuel López Obrador, ex-presidential candidate of the bourgeois nationalist PRD, who is looking to the 2012 elections. For electrical workers to win they must break with all the bourgeois parties and politicians. Key is to build a revolutionary workers party. Life and Death Struggle for Independent Unions in Mexico (21 December 2009)

Appeals to Obama’s Top Cop Eric Holder Spread Deadly Illusions
Mumia’s Life Is On the Line: Mobilize Labor/Black Power to Free Him Now!
The threat to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is increasingly ominous. His lead attorney, Robert Bryan, warns: “There is an escalated effort by the authorities to see him die at the hands of the executioner. This is the most dangerous time for Mumia since his 1981 arrest.” The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down Jamal’s two appeals. If it were to rule in favor of the prosecution’s appeal, this would open the way for Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell to issue a third warrant of execution, which he has vowed to do. Contrary to the misplaced expectations of many, the Obama administration is not about to save Mumia. Around the world, hundreds of thousands have marched for this courageous champion of oppressed. Trade unions representing millions of members have rallied to the defense of Mumia. It is urgent to expand this support into powerful labor/black action, appealing to the integrated union movement to join with the black, Latino and immigrant poor to demand that he be liberated. Mumia’s Life Is On the Line: Mobilize Labor/Black Power to Free Him Now! (25 November 2009)

Massacre in Maguindanao
Warlords, Clan Wars and Capitalist Rule in Philippines
On November 23, some 57 people including women and journalists were massacred in the province of Maguindanao on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, as a result of a feud between two rival political clans that run neighboring states. Both are supporters of Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The horrific massacre sent shock waves through the islands. It was the biggest election-related massacre in the history of the Philippines as well as the largest number of journalists (18) killed in a single event. Ascontroversy wouldn’t die down, on December 5 Arroyo placed the province under martial law. Soldiers discovered an arms cache with enough weapons for a military brigade. It was well-known that the military armed local clan militias to back up its brutal offensive against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The Philippine army is accompanied in the area by a 600-soldier U.S. counterinsurgency force. The League for the Fourth International calls on the workers movement to demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces and agents from the Philippines, to oppose the martial law imposed in Maguindanao province, to demand the withdrawal of the Philippine armed forces from the contested southern areas, and to defend the Bangsamoro people and their right to self-determination. Warlords, Clan Wars and Capitalist Rule in Philippines (21 December 2009)

(Pilipino) Warlord, Clan Wars at Kapitalistang Paghahari sa Pilipinas (Disyembre 2009)

Philippine Government Launches New War on Muslim Groups (13 September 2008)
(Philipino) Panibagong Pakikidigma sa mga Grupong Muslim (Setyembre 2008)

Now It’s Official: U.S. Backs Coup Regime – A Threat to All Latin America
Honduras After the Phony “Election”:
More Repression and Resistance
On November 29, the authors of the civilian-military coup d’état who seized power in Honduras five months earlier held a plebiscite-style pseudo-election accompanied by massive repression designed to legitimize the dictatorship. In the poor barrios of the capital Tegucigalpa and major towns and in the countryside, the call “don’t vote” was widely followed and people massively stayed home. Since then there has been a wave of disappearances and murders of resistance activists. The death squads are back. Despite the bloody repression, the groups leading the resistance to the coup regime vowed to continue the struggle. However, even though it was based in the trade unions, peasant organizations, women’s and gay rights groups and organizations of indigenous peoples and the black Garífuna population, politically this movement was tied to Zelaya and other bourgeois politicians and parties. Although the Resistance Front declared this “chapter” of the struggle closed, it is wedded to popular-front bourgeois politics, such as its call for “participatory democracy” through a constituent assembly. The League for the Fourth International has called throughout for independent labor mobilization to defeat the gorila (reactionary militarist) coup, and for a revolutionary workers party to lead the fight for a workers and peasants government. Honduras After the Phony “Election”: More Repression and Resistance (21 December 2009)

Honduras: Sweep Away the Coup Plotters, Generals and Capitalists – Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government!
For Revolutionary Workers Struggle Against Coups in Central America
The civilian-military coup d’état of June 28 unleashed a nightmare for the Honduran masses, and not just for them. It threatens all of Latin America with a return to the times of the military dictatorships, of the dirty wars and the death squads of the 1970s and ’80s. Despite the denials by U.S. spokesmen, this coup was “made in U.S.A.” The question that is posed is how to eradicate this plague that has beset Latin America for decades. To suppose that the solution is to be found in merely reestablishing “constitutional order” by restoring President Zelaya, or even that it can be resolved in a bourgeois-democratic framework, is to ignore the class forces which produced the coup, as well as the web of complicity extending from Tegucigalpa to Washington, D.C. Historically, left-wing forces in Central America have been dominated by a nationalist vision and politics, but only through international socialist revolution is it possible to eradicate the threat of constant coups, which are inherent in Latin American capitalism under imperialist domination. For Revolutionary Workers Struggle Against Coups in Central America (October 2009)

The San José-Tegucigalpa Accord: No to the Imperialist Edict! (5 November 2009)
Urgent: Protest Bloody Repression in Honduras! (22 September 2009)

Speech by Esteban Volkov (Sieva)
on the 69th anniversary of the Assassination of Leon Trotsky

The Triumph of the Fourth International:
The Duty and Task That Is Still to be Fulfilled
In August we commemorated the 69th anniversary of the assassination of Lev Davidovitch (Leon) Trotsky, who together with Lenin led the October 1917 Revolution in Russia. Having founded the Red Army, which defended the first workers state in history, and fought against Stalin's betrayal of the Bolshevik Revolution, in the last years of his life Trotsky led the struggle for the Fourth International as the world party of socialist revolution. In the garden of Trotsky’s house (today a museum) in Coyacán, Mexico, his grandson, Esteban Volkov (Sieva), delivered a speech which we publish here. In it, he recalled the two attacks by Stalin’s agents against Trotsky, spoke of his grandfather's commitment to the struggle for socialism and quoted his final message, “I am sure of the triumph of the Fourth International. Forward!” As Volkov emphasized, “This is the duty and it is also the task to be carried out by the comrades who fight with the example and the ideas of the great revolutionary Leon Trotsky,” a task and duty which the League for the Fourth International assumes. The Triumph of the Fourth International: The Duty and Task That Is Still to be Fulfilled (August 2009)

From the Previous Issue

The Internationalist No. 29
(Summer 2009)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

For Workers Revolution Against the Islamic Dictatorship!
Mass Protests Rock Iran:
No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime!
U.S. Imperialism Hands Off!

For more than a week, Iran has been convulsed by mass demonstrations denouncing election fraud. Hundreds of thousands have repeatedly taken to the streets to denounce the government, which is now threatening, and beginning to carry out, a bloody crackdown. This time around, imperialist intervention is veiled: the White House feigns neutrality, the Western media go all out for the opposition, while in the background various agencies provide vital technical aid. In reality, all candidates in the presidential vote swear allegiance to the Islamic Republic, and the supposed moderate reformers are no less butchers and enemies of poor and working people than the conservative “populist” government. The situation cries out for revolutionary leadership independent of all factions of the theocracy, to wage a struggle for workers revolution against imperialism and clerical reaction. Mass Protests Rock Iran: No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime

For Workers Revolution Against Mullah Rule!
Iran’s Islamic Republic in Turmoil –
What Program for Struggle?
Free Jailed Protesters and Labor Activists!
U.S. Imperialists Hands Off!

Iran is still wracked with turmoil a month and a half after the hotly disputed presidential elections. Aggressive attacks on demonstrators by repressive forces under the command of President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei have not been able to stop the demonstrations. So far protests have hewed to the political limits laid down by the theocratic regime, but if the struggle deepens against an increasingly militarized regime, that could be called into question. Most of the left internationally has fallen into line either behind the hard-line government or the Islamist “reformers” led by former prime minister Mousavi. Yet the contending camps are both committed to maintaining clerical capitalist rule. While fighting against the “electoral coup d’état,” Trotskyists say Iranian workers should seek not to install Mousavi in office but to raise democratic demands, including for a revolutionary secular constituent assembly, as part of a struggle to establish their own class rule, by bringing down the Islamic Republic and establishing a workers and peasants government that initiates socialist revolution. Iran’s Islamic Republic in Turmoil –What Program for Struggle?

Mobilize the Workers To Defeat the Putsch!
Honduras: Coup d’État in the Maquiladora Republic
Yankee Imperialism, Hands Off!
For a Federation of Workers Republics of Central America!
In the early morning of Sunday, June 28, some 200 soldiers of the Honduran army kidnapped the president of the republic, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, at gunpoint and expelled him from the country. This first coup of the presidency of Barack Obama awakened fears of a return to the “years of blood,” when Honduras served as a launching pad for Nicaraguan contras and Salvadoran death squads which sowed terror throughout Central America. The overthrow was opposed by virtually every international governmental organization, the U.S. secretary of stated claimed she condemned it, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez vowed to overthrow the usurpers, but the military mutineers are still in power. Revolutionary Marxists stress that to defeat the coup we can only count on mobilizing the working people, in Honduras as well as throughout Central America, in Mexico and the rest of the continent. Honduras: Coup d’État in the Maquiladora Republic

Sweep Away the Coup Plotters, Generals and Capitalists!
Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government!
Honduras: The First Coup of the Obama Administration
The ouster of President Manuel Zelaya by Honduran generals at the end of June sent shudders through Latin America. We warned the day after the military takeover that those fighting against it should beware of U.S. intervention (rather than appeal for it). Whether Republicans or Democrats are in power, U.S. imperialism is still the power behind the most reactionary forces in the hemisphere. The U.S. government as a whole, not just one putative faction, was preparing the ouster of Zelaya. For the past month, Honduran trade unions, peasant and indigenous groups have been insistently mobilizing in the streets against the civilian-military dictatorship. A real general strike that shut down the maquiladoras, banana and mining sectors, cutting off Honduran exports would have a considerable impact. But that represents a whole different political orientation, organizing on a program of internationalist class struggle rather than on the bourgeois-democratic and nationalist basis that has dominated so far. The important participation of the unions in the resistance should be used not to restore conditions to what they were on June 27, but to fight against all the capitalist politicians and their system that has condemned three-quarters of the Honduran population to a life of misery. Honduras: The First Coup of the Obama Administration

Obama/Democrats’ Conciliation Emboldens Reactionaries
Assassination of Courageous Doctor in Wichita:
War on Abortion Rights Escalates
Mobilize to Defend the Clinics!
Abolish All Restrictions – For Free Abortion on Demand!

The vile murder of the courageous abortion doctor George Tiller marks an escalation of the war on women’s right to abortion. The constitutional protection hangs by a thread – a single vote in the Supreme Court. The “god squads” are in a frenzy, harassing women patients and abortion providers at the clinics. The reaction of the bourgeois feminists has been to look to the Democratic Party and the government of Barack Obama in the White House. Yet the Democrats are not allies but enemies of women’s rights. Obama opposes the late-term abortions that Dr. Tiller provided while seeking “common ground” with the Bible-thumping bigots who harbor the abortion doctor killers. And the police, from local cops to the FBI, give a free pass to the assassins, whom they know well. Assassination in Wichita – War on Abortion Rights Escalates (11 June 2009

Police Takeover Fails – Miners Resist
Mexico: Cananea Must Not Stand Alone! For a Nationwide Miners Strike!
Down with the PRI, PAN and PRD, Parties of the Bourgeoisie!
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Once again the Mexican government of Felipe Calderón has run aground on the resistance of the battle-hardened miners of Cananea. On January 11, as the federal Labor Board declared their six-month-old strike “non-existent” and ordered miners back to work, an army of 1,000 state and federal police invaded the mining town in the northern state of Sonora. The miners did not surrender and instead put up a stubborn resistance. As a result, a federal court issued an injunction blocking the government back-to-work order. Despite a government vendetta against it, the leadership of the corporatist mineworkers organization has followed the dictates of Mexico’s corporatist labor legislation, copied from Mussolini’s fascist Italy. The Grupo Internacionalista has called for a nationwide miners strike in solidarity with the strikers, and for a national strike against the anti-worker policies of the Calderón government. In Oaxaca, Atenco, Lázaro Cárdenas in 2006, and now again in Cananea, the workers have put up a tenacious resistance against the deadly ruling-class attack. However, they are stuck in a cycle of endless resistance when there should be a struggle for power. For that, a revolutionary workers party is needed. Mexico: Cananea Must Not Stand Alone! (1 February 2008)

En español: México: ¡Cananea no debe estar sola! (1° de febrero de 2008)

See also: New York Picket Protests Repression Against Mexican Miners (12 January 2008)

En español: Piquete en Nueva York repudia represión contra mineros mexicanos (12 de enero de 2008)

Strike in Cananea, Sombrerete, and Taxco in Fifth Month

Mexican Miners Strike for Safety, Against Anti-Worker Attacks

Copper miners in Cananea, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, have been on strike since the end of July over the deadly dangerous working conditions and anti-worker attacks by the management and government. Cananea, the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, has been owned by the billionaire Germán Larrea and his Grupo México since it was privatized in 1990. The criminally negligent safety conditions at the mine and smelter have been documented by an international commission of medical and industrial safety experts. The miners are facing the full force of Mexico's corporatist system of state control of labor, including the national miners’ “union” which in the past has repeatedly sided with the government and the bosses against its own members. The “independent” unions which politically support the opposition PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) have notably failed to back the striking miners. Class-conscious workers in Mexico must defend the striking miners, while fighting to break the corporatist stranglehold, build workers unions free of all ties to the bourgeois state and capitalist parties, and forge a revolutionary workers party. Mexican Miners Strike for Safety (15 December 2007)

En español: ¡Poner a Grupo México de rodillas con una huelga nacional! (15 de diciembre de 2007)

From the Great Miners’ Strike of 1906 to Today: Revolutionary Leadership Is Key

Cananea: A Century of Internationalist Class Struggle

June 1, 2006 marked the centenary of the copper mine strike at Cananea. The conglomerate that now operates the mines, Grupo México, tried to prevent the commemoration; the militant miners of of Latin America’s largest copper mine responded by going on strike. Now they have gone on strike again, as they have almost every year since 1999. This history of militancy goes back to the 1906 Cananea miners strike, one of the key events leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. Much has been written about the 1906 strike from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. But contrary to nationalist myths, that proletarian revolt was a joint effort by anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary minded Mexican and American workers, who carried red flags at the head of their marches. In the recent strikes as well as one hundred years ago, the key factor is the need for a class-struggle leadership, a revolutionary internationalist party. Cananea: A Century of Internationalist Class Struggle (December 2007)

En español: Cananea: un siglo de lucha de clases internacionalista (diciembre de 2007)

“Civic” Revolution or Workers Revolution?
Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants
and Indian Government
Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party!
For an Andean Federation of Workers Republics!
For the last two decades, Ecuador has found itself in an almost constant state of upheaval and revolt. Yet practically nothing has changed in the direction the country is headed: it is still subject to the dictates of Yankee imperialism, the dollarization of the economy, the U.S. Southern Command’s occupation of the Manta Air Base... By all accounts, Ecuador needs a revolution. But the question is posed, what kind of revolution? President Rafael Correa, a bourgeois populist, calls for a “civic revolution.” However, he ferociously opposes any class actions, particularly the struggle for a workers revolution to bring down the capitalist system. He called a Constituent Assembly in order to “refound” the couintry. Yet on the very day the Assembly was inaugurated, he unleashed a brutal repression against peasants of the Amazonian parish of Dayuma for shutting down production at an oil well. The Ecuadorian working masses need a struggle for a workers, peasants and Indian government, which launches international socialist revolution. Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants and Indian Government (25 December 2007)

En español: Ecuador necesita un gobierno obrero, campesino e indígena (25 de diciembre de 2007)

Craft Divisions Endanger Labor: Build a Single Media Union
Don’t Let Writers Stand Alone – All Media Workers Should Join the WGA on Strike!
As the strike by film and television writers nears its two-month mark, the 12,000 members of the affiliated East and West Coast Writers Guild of America have shown determination and kept up morale at picket lines and mass rallies in Los Angeles and New York. Late-night TV viewership is down, networks have to return millions of dollars to advertisers. Yet even as the WGA strike begins to bite economically, the media moguls are refusing to negotiate. The Hollywood bosses figure they can play one craft union off against another. By themselves, writers are at a great disadvantage. To win this important labor battle, it is necessary to extend the strike to include all media industry workers, particularly blue-collar workers without whom the studios would go dark. Ultimately there should be one union of all media workers. Instead of looking to millionaire Democrats like John Edwards, strikers can make a start by aggressively picketing scab talk show and “reality” TV programs. All Media Workers Should Join the WGA on Strike! (22 December 2007)

The World Socialist Web Site, a/k/a Socialist Equality Party, is trying to attract WGA writers. What the WSWS/SEP doesn’t mention is that they oppose unions, even telling auto workers to vote to keep unions out. Far from being some kind of ultra-leftists, these scab “socialists” are doing the bosses’ work.

SEP/WSWS: Scab “Socialists” (22 December 2007)