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No. 12, Fall 2001 
internationalist no. 12
















Click on image above for pdf version of complete issue.
  • Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Afghanistan and Iraq!
  • U.S. Whips Up Imperialist War Frenzy, Drives Toward Police State
  • U.S. Sponsors the Enslavers of Afghan Women
  • The Left and the Imperialist War Drive
  • ICL Refuses to Call for Defeat of U.S. Imperialism
  • Declaration of Fusion Between the LFI and the Revolutionary Communist Organization of Ukraine
  • South Carolina Clay Miners Appeal for Solidarity
  • New York Greengrocer Union Drive at Crossroads
  • Class War Against the Imperialist War!
  • (with reports from Mexico, Brazil, Ukraine, Japan, South Kora, Germany and France)

 
For Class War Against the Imperialist War!
Defeat U.S. Imperialism!  Defend Afghanistan and Iraq!
American bombs are falling on Afghanistan, hitting hospitals, mosques, residential districts and food warehouses. The imperialist rulers who call their system of rapacious exploitation “democracy” are laying waste to what is already one of the poorest and most devastated countries on earth. Next on the hit list of this terrorist “war against terrorism” is Iraq. Meanwhile, capitalist governments around the world are using this war to launch an assault on democratic rights and workers’ gains. A regimented “strong state” at home is required to wage permanent war. The warmongers in Washington and London, their NATO allies, Zionist junior partners and neocolonial satraps won’t be stopped by a few parades calling to “give peace a chance,” or outbursts of Islamic fundamentalist frenzy. Neither pacifism nor “holy war”: what’s needed is class war, on the streets and in the factories, against the imperialist war on semi-colonial Asian countries and the working class at home.  Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Afghanistan and Iraq!  (5 November 2001)

From the Anti-Soviet War Drive to Today
U.S. Sponsors Enslavers of Afghan Women
No to the Veil – Women’s Liberation through 
International Socialist Revolution!
For the last quarter century, the status of women has been at the forefront of war in Afghanistan. Today, liberals and bourgeois feminists use the vicious oppression of Afghan woman by the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban as a justification for Bush’s terror-bombing of Kabul. Yet the Taliban took power in 1996 with the approval of the U.S. Washington's current allies of the “Northern Alliance” are the same Afghan warlords who during the second anti-Soviet Cold War II were financed, armed, trained and paid by the CIA to wage counterrevolutionary terror in the cause of anti-Communism, Islamic fundamentalism and maintaining the enslavement of women. Not only the feudalist patriarchs on both sides in Afghanistan but their imperialist sponsors who claim to be defending “civilization” are enemies of women. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International defend Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, stand today for defense of Afghanistan and defeat of the imperialist attack, and fight for the liberation of Afghan women through socialist revolution throughout Central and South Asia. U.S. sponsors the enslavers of Afghan women  (25 October 2001)

While WV Again Hails Democrat Barbara Lee
ICL Refuses to Call for Defeat of U.S. Imperialism, “Anti-American” Baits the IG 
The Spartacist League/International Communist League has made it official: it does not call for defeat of U.S. imperialism in the Afghanistan war. It continues to laud Democratic “dove” Barbara Lee, declaring that this capitalist politician’s vote  “reflected the lack of enthusiasm for this war from many black workers and youth.” And to top it off, the ICL adds a sinister new smear against the Internationalist Group, accusing the IG of “Playing the Counterfeit Card of Anti-Americanism” and being soft on Islamic fundamentalism. While the SL/ICL slanders Trotskyists and rejects the Leninist policy of revolutionary defeatism toward imperialist countries engaging in colonial wars, the IG and League for the Fourth International call on the workers of the world to fight to defeat the imperialist war and repression, and defend Afghanistan and Iraq.  ICL “Anti-American” baits the Internationalist Group  (5 November 2001)

SL/ICL Flinches on Afghanistan War
While the reformists set up competing popular-front “peace” coalitions, the now-centrist Spartacist League has made a significant right turn over the U.S. war on Afghanistan. For the first three weeks after the September 11 attacks, the SL did not defend Afghanistan, claiming it was not under attack. Like the reformists, the SL uncritically lauded Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee for refusing to vote for Bush’s “use of force” resolution (even as she voted for $40 billion in war credits).  Now that U.S. bombs are falling on Kabul, the SL belatedly defends the semi-colonial country under attack by the most dangerous state terrorists in the world. But the SL still refuses to call for defeat of U.S. imperialism in this war.  SL/ICL flinches on Afghanistan war  (25 October 2001)

K-T Clay Workers Fight for Union
South Carolina Clay Miners Appeal for Solidarity
For 20 months, workers at the Kentucky-Tennessee Clay Company have been waging a bitter fight to unionize the company’s mining and processing operations in Langley, South Carolina. Like the Charleston longshoremen’s fight against union-busting and racist repression, the K-T Clay workers’ struggle shows the need for an all-out labor offensive to organize the South, where bosses wield a virtual anti-union dictatorship under the banner of the “right to work” and the “open shop.” The Langley mine is part of the far-flung business empire of the Imerys corporation, one of the world’s most powerful mineral processing firms, with operations in France, Britain, Belgium, Italy and New Zealand. Black and white workers at the South Carolina mine are standing fast in their struggle to win a union contract and are appealing for international workers solidarity. K-T Clay Workers Fight for Union  (4 October 2001)

The Left and the Imperialist War Drive
Capitalism = War, Racism, Economic Crisis
For Workers Revolution!

The shock waves from the September 11 attacks spread throughout the world. Aircraft carriers steam toward the Indian Ocean, the killer elites of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions are on the move. A “Homeland Security Agency” has already been set up. Remarkably, the drumroll of jingoism has not succeeded intimidating opposition to the war drive. Anti-war teach-ins and demonstrations are spreading like wildfire. Yet the organizers of these “peace”groups buy into the war propaganda of Bush & Co., focusing on “anti-terrorist” rhetoric when by far the greatest threat to mankind is that represented by U.S. imperialism, the deadliest state terrorists of all. In contrast to those who seek to build yet another popular front “anti-war movement,” the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International underscore the need for workers action against the war, to defend the countries under U.S. attack, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and defeat the imperialist war drive.  The left and the war drive  (27 September 2001)

After Indiscriminate World Trade Center Attack
U.S. Whips Up Imperialist War Frenzy, 
Drives Toward Police State

Defeat U.S./NATO War Drive For International Socialist Revolution!
The capitalist rulers of the United States are beating the drums for imperialist aggression and domestic repression following coordinated attacks on the morning of September 11, in which airplane hijackers slammed passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. The bourgeois politicians and media are marching in lock-step demanding bloody reprisals against whoever is designated the target of choice as the American empire strikes back. In the name of “anti-terrorism,” the gang that carried out the 1990-91 “Desert Slaughter” against Iraq is preparing to obliterate semi-colonial countries as well as others where capitalist rule has been overthrown. The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, calls on the working class throughout the world to fight to defeat the imperialist drive for war and repression and defend the countries under imperialist attack.  U.S. whips up war frenzy, drives toward police state  (14 September 2001)

Declaration of Fusion
between the League for the Fourth International and the Revolutionary Communist Organization of Ukraine
Note: Following revelation of a bizarre financial and political fraud in Ukraine in August 2003, in which the same group of individuals presented itself as the Ukrainian section of ten or more international tendencies, including the League for the Fourth International, the LFI has declared the fusion with the “RKO” null and void. To read the LFI statement on this affiar go to A Band of Political Impostors and Swindlers in Ukraine. To read the original fusion declaration, go to Declaration of Fusion of LFI and RKO

 

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