The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Issue no. 925 — October 15 - 29, 2012

EDITORIAL
Two Different Roads, Both Lead to Hell!

Oct 15, 2012

The Republican Party is so evil it could make you puke!

It’s not enough that it would condemn women to death because they are trying to appeal to the right wing fanatics who oppose abortion.

Not enough that they brag about their readiness to go to war.

Not enough that they try to foment anti-immigrant attitudes.

Not enough that they use barely coded words to make it clear they would condemn the black population to a second-class status.

Not enough that they oppose unions, workers’ rights to organize and strike.

The Republicans also make clear that they stand 100% with the wealthy class that owns the productive forces of this society and the banks that control the very life blood of the economy.

What workers, thinking about their own class interests, could imagine voting for them?

The only problem is, who to vote for?

The Democrats present themselves as the defender of women’s rights, of immigrants, of the black population–and the workers’ friend.

But in four years in office, Obama extended and expanded the policies Bush had started–including following Bush’s timetable for the Iraq war and actually expanding Bush’s war in Afghanistan, which has become one more military disaster–for us, for those who served in the armed forces, for the people of those countries.

He sent through, once again, the Medicaid prohibition on abortion that condemns poor women to back alley abortions or to unwanted pregnancies and births. He presided over the expulsion of more immigrants than Bush ever did. He has pushed through policies aimed at weakening teachers’ organization, policies which condemn inner city children to an ever worsening education. He didn’t send through one single measure to address the special problems produced by racism.

But he certainly did side with the capitalist class. Look what he did for the banks, for the big auto companies, for the big agricultural combines. He gave them everything Bush gave them, then he doubled up on it–at the expense of workers and ordinary farmers.

So how do you choose?

The unions and other popular organizations tell us we must choose, even if it means choosing the “lesser evil.”

Why? Choosing between two evils is just like choosing a more pleasant or less pleasant road leading to hell.

Either way you go, you end up damned.

We should face the real significance of this election, which is that neither party represents the interests of the working class. Neither party is a defender of all those especially attacked by capitalist society: black people, immigrants, women, poor people.

We should draw the obvious conclusion, which is that, no matter which party wins, we are going to have to fight to defend ourselves. Don’t let both parties drag us down to hell!

Pages 2-3

Tainted Drug Kills, All for Profit

Oct 15, 2012

As of the writing of this article, 14 people have died and another 185 people are sick in a nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis caused by tainted steroid injections. Worse still, the CDC says that 14,000 people may have been exposed to the tainted steroid injections. This is potentially deadly because this type of meningitis can take three, four or even more months to develop and show symptoms.

Meningitis is an inflammation of the protective membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord. It is typically caused by a bacteria which can be treated with antibiotics or a virus for which there is no treatment. But in this case it was caused by a fungus. There is no known easy or clear way to treat fungal meningitis. Right now doctors are treating patients with several months of two types of intravenous antifungal drugs which can lead to kidney and liver damage. In other words the treatment itself can lead to death.

The steroid injections manufactured by NECC (New England Compounding Center) were produced without preservatives like benzyl alcohol, which help sterilize steroids against fungal growth. Thus, fungal contamination.

The tainted steroid injections were manufactured by NECC in Massachusetts. Until recently, compounding pharmacies only mixed drugs to order on an individual basis. For example, if a person is allergic to an inactive ingredient in a drug, a compounding pharmacist can remix the product to make it safe for that one individual.

But that is not what New England Compound Center was doing. Nor hundreds of other compound pharmacies today. They are mass-producing drugs for sale to clinics and doctors’ offices across state lines. But since compounding pharmacies don’t come under the FDA’s supervision even if the FDA had enough inspectors. There is no safety control.

These compounding pharmacies found a loophole to avoid even the inadequate, inefficient regulation of the FDA in order to make a lot of money. Regard for human life? Forget it–not when there is profit to be made.

Chicago:
A New Attack on Public Education—Debt Downgrade

Oct 15, 2012

For the second time this year, Moody’s, the bond rating agency, downgraded the credit rating of the Chicago Public Schools. Fitch, another agency, soon followed suit.

Moody’s first downgrade came in July, after the Fact Finders report came out. That report stated that Chicago teachers needed to be paid for working Emanuel’s longer day.

Now that teachers have won raises with their strike, Moody’s is downgrading the debt once again.

The lower credit rating for CPS means it will pay more money in interest to borrow money–more to the banks, that is. And more money to the banks means less money to Chicago students’ education. Moody’s cited the strike–in other words, the fact that teachers fight back makes CPS a poor investment choice for Moody’s.

No doubt! The big banks, which control Moody’s and Fitch, have targeted the schools as their next big money-making scam. And the teachers’ strike, one of whose aims was to put more teachers in the schools, that is, increase public funding to the schools, interfered with that.

Bank Bailouts Go on Every Day

Oct 15, 2012

On October 12, two of the biggest banks in the country revealed their third-quarter profits. JPMorgan Chase profits zoomed 34%. Wells Fargo profits zoomed 22%. The banks aren’t suffering a depression like the rest of us!

And what fueled these rocketing profits? Mortgages! Yes, mortgage speculation is here again.

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase together fund over half of the mortgages in the country. JPMC wrote 47 billion dollars in new and refinanced mortgages; Wells Fargo funded a whopping 139 billion.

And why are banks jumping back into mortgages, after that same house of cards crashed in 2008?

First, because the federal government has made it easier to resell their mortgages, bundled as bonds, to investors. The government will guarantee investors against losses. What a deal!

Second, because the banks are borrowing from the Fed at near zero, so when the banks lend out that same money to consumers at 3.36%, their profits per mortgage are now actually greater than before the last mortgage crisis, four years ago!

And third, because the Fed has a new program to buy up and hold billions of dollars of these mortgage-backed bonds. This means the Fed will replenish the banks’ capital while also providing them profit.

The federal bailout of the banks has never ended. It goes on every day. This should not be a surprise to anyone who understands that the government does not run the banks; it’s actually the other way around.

Profit from Producing Pollution

Oct 15, 2012

The world’s carbon-credit system was supposed to provide incentives for business to reduce global-warming pollution. It is having a bizarre blowback.

Nineteen factories in the world are now in high gear to produce tons of refrigerant HCFC-22 and its by-product HFC-23. The refrigerant itself destroys the ozone layer, but the by-product, HFC-23, is far worse–11,700 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Therefore, a factory that produces and then destroys HFC-23 can sell credits for 11,700 times the credit for carbon dioxide.

And, since the credits can be sold for 100 times more than the cost of producing HFC-23, businesses are built around this profit model: producing as much HFC-23 as the credits will bear! Of course this means they have massively increased production of the ozone depleting pollutant HCFC-22, which they are not destroying.

The 19 factories in the world that earn such credits expect to rake in one billion dollars profit in the next eight years, after already making at least 20 million per plant per year since 2005.

Far from stopping a threat to global warming, the carbon credit system creates a greater threat.

It’s only an extreme example of the immense insanity of a wasteful capitalist economy. This economy generates more profit, the more that it creates products with a short useful life and a fast trip to the landfill.

Capitalism itself is the primary waste product that must be destroyed, to save the Earth.

Baltimore:
Murder by Police

Oct 15, 2012

Anthony Anderson was killed by three Baltimore plain clothes police who confronted him on September 21 as he left a bar, crossing into an empty lot. According to eye witnesses, they slammed him to the ground, in front of two of his grandchildren, his children, and his mother. The police claimed he was in a drug deal and choked trying to swallow pills.

And that’s where the situation would have stood, except that his family spoke out. They took part in demonstrations and press conferences. His sister said, “We have a problem with officers who think they’re above the law.”

Eventually, the state medical examiner declared Anthony Anderson’s death a homicide, listing as the cause “blunt force trauma,” which damaged his lungs and his spleen, broke eight ribs and caused internal bleeding. And he indicated he had not choked to death as police had claimed. In other words, the police murdered him, beating him to death.

Anthony Anderson is the thirteenth individual killed by Baltimore police so far this year. Two of the police who killed him had earlier been sued for misconduct and a jury had found one liable of excessive force.

Brutal police are never fully held accountable–but they face no limits on their brutality unless families and others make their anger known. The protest against this murder may have made Baltimore’s streets just a little safer from police violence.

Destroying Safe Drinking Water

Oct 15, 2012

According to a 2004 Harvard study: “In the early 20th Century ... life expectancy at birth rose from [age] 47 to 63.... Clean water technologies are likely the most important public health intervention of the 20th Century.

But clean water is precisely what politicians, big banks and consulting firms are ready to destroy. When Detroit’s mayor accepted the recommendation of “consultants” to eliminate 81% of water department workers, in order to hand over the water department to profit-sucking companies, he was jeopardizing not only workers’ jobs, but safe drinking water also.

With the aging, complicated and dangerous equipment in place at water department facilities, it is department workers who have kept drinking water safe so far.

Bringing in companies that don’t understand how to operate this antiquated system means quite simply that the system will not function.

In the words of another water department striker: “We went on strike today because ... we want DWSD under the control of the city. We are fighting for Detroit and all of its people.” They are fighting for the health of four million Michigan residents as well.

GE:
A Sharper Image

Oct 15, 2012

General Electric, like many companies, has forced its employees to pay more for health care. The company has 85,000 white collar workers in the U.S. and another 45,000 blue collar workers. To cut its health costs, it recently forced all workers to pay larger deductibles.

The results are in: GE employees are using far fewer tests, such as MRIs and CT scans.

But wait–who makes MRI and CT scan machines? It’s General Electric!

Thus we see the vicious circle–bosses so greedy for more profit that they destroy their own market!

Pages 4-5

Ballot Proposals:
No Good Choices

Oct 15, 2012

There’s been a noticeable trend this election year, in Michigan and several other states, toward more ballot proposals or constitutional amendments in the states. Working people and other activists, frustrated by the actions of elected representatives, have tried to protect their interests through the ballot box.

But it’s not the way workers can expect to defend their interests.

Usually, workers have no good choices in voting on a proposal, in voting either yes OR no. Case in point: Michigan’s Proposal 3, mandating that 25% of the state’s energy consumption come from renewable sources by 2025. Everyone would like to reduce pollution; but nothing in this proposal guarantees any significant pollution reductions any time soon. (Notice it says ‘renewable,’ not ‘clean.’) And there’s nothing in the proposal that truly prohibits rate increases. Workers face the choice of paying with their health or paying with their pocketbooks. Or maybe both.

And then there’s Proposal 6, mandating the approval by a majority of voters before an international bridge or tunnel gets built. This is nothing more than a squabble between two groups of capitalists: Matty Moroun, current owner of the Ambassador Bridge, who wants to maintain his monopoly on bridge crossings in Detroit, and the auto bosses, who want the state to build them a new bridge out of Moroun’s control. Either way, the people will pay.

Even when ordinary people push to get proposals on the ballot, they often learn that there’s no point. Large numbers worked to get Proposal 1 on the ballot: this proposal suspended an Emergency Manager law passed by the legislature and the governor in 2011, pending the vote in November. A No vote would overturn that law, which allows the governor to appoint an EM in any city, county or school district, with the power to suspend labor contracts and gut services.

Lots of workers have an interest in getting rid of this law. And lots of bosses have an interest in passing it, so they can get their hands on all that public money now being “wasted” on workers and public services. Not surprisingly, LOTS of money has been spent trying to convince people to vote for a bill that would be used to attack them.

And on top of that, the leaders of the legislature have openly said it doesn’t matter how people vote–if the Proposal gets turned down, they’ll pass it in another form anyway!

Clearly, this so-called “democracy” is not for us. Workers have a lot of potential power to impose democracy and defend their own interests–but it’s not in the ballot box.

Michigan Proposal 2:
Collective Bargaining Amendment

Oct 15, 2012

Proposal 2 in Michigan would change the state constitution to grant public and private employees the right to organize and bargain collectively through labor unions.

After the 2010 elections, Michigan’s state legislature started passing all sorts of laws attacking workers’ wages, pensions and benefits–especially those of public workers.

Unions pushed back, with a series of demonstrations. But then they turned to the electoral process. This was NOT the best way to go.

Michigan unions pushed to get this proposal on the ballot, to stop Michigan from becoming a “right-to-work” anti-union state. But what a stupid thing–to put on the statewide ballot a proposal asking all the population, all classes and income levels, permission for workers to unionize.

Workers didn’t wait for legal permission before they first started organizing; they broke laws and defied court injunctions and police in fighting to organize their unions. They forced the issue and forced companies and the government to recognize their unions.

Certainly, unionists and other workers who understand the advantages of unions will want to vote for a proposal that protects the right to unionization in Michigan. But other parts of the population have no interest in seeing workers unionized. And still others–many of those in the middle classes–have accepted the reactionary attacks against unions. Why should workers seek the permission of these parts of the population to organize and defend themselves?

If the proposal does not get passed, legislators will almost certainly take that defeat as a defeat for the right to unionize. Michigan will become a de-facto “right-to-work” state, encouraging the passage of the very anti-union laws the unions say they want to prevent. Governor Snyder has said that passage of Proposal 2 would be “devastating to the reinvention of Michigan,” which sure sounds like he wants to push through such laws.

With so much at stake now that the proposal is on the ballot, you’d think that the unions would be pulling out all the stops to make sure it passes. In fact, this hasn’t happened.

Some unions, such as the teachers unions, have been active in campaigning for the proposal. But the biggest unions, and especially the UAW, have done next to nothing to organize support for it. Workers in UAW workplaces have waited and waited for materials they could take to their family, friends and neighbors. No campaigns have been organized to mobilize UAW members to get the word out about the proposal. The UAW and other union structures have left the field wide open for lying right-wing campaigns against the proposal, funded by big donors like the Koch brothers. Not only that, but they’ve even pandered to that right-wing, pointing out the “selling point” of the proposal: that it specifically allows laws prohibiting public-sector workers from striking!

It would be tough for a proposal like this to win in the best of circumstances. But the lack of real mobilization by the union apparatuses deeply betrays the workers’ interests.

Certainly workers should want to vote Yes on Proposal 2. But we need to know we’ll have big fights waiting for us after the election, no matter how the vote turns out.

California Prop 32:
A Fight between the Two Bosses’ Parties

Oct 15, 2012

In California, Proposition 32, which its sponsors call the “Paycheck Protection” initiative, is a thinly-veiled attack on the ability of union officials to funnel money to politicians. Sure, the text of the proposition makes it sound like it would prohibit both labor unions and corporations from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. But since practically no corporations use payroll deductions for political contributions, the target of this ballot measure is clearly the unions–and also the Democratic Party, which almost always is the party trade union leaders support.

Not surprisingly, this proposition is supported by extremely wealthy donors, like the billionaire Koch brothers, who back Republicans, openly call for breaking unions and are the sworn enemies of working people everywhere.

And it’s not a surprise that union leaders and Democrats oppose it.

But what’s the workers’ interest in all this? In California, with the Democrats in control of all the key positions of the state government and most of the big municipal governments as well, officials have ceaselessly attacked public sector workers, along with public education, health care, public transportation and support for poor people. At the same time, just like the Republicans, they have handed over ever more money to big business.

So, what the union leaders propose is to vote against Prop 32 so the union officials can continue to use the workers’ money to support just another set of sworn enemies of working people, the ones with the Democratic Party label.

And that is no choice at all.

California Prop 30:
Trying to Extort More Taxes from Workers

Oct 15, 2012

In California, both Governor Jerry Brown and the heads of the big unions have been pushing Proposition 30 on the November ballot. Prop 30 increases the state sales tax from 6.25% to 6.50%. Brown is threatening that unless Prop 30 is passed, funding for public education and colleges will be slashed.

Over the decades, the sales tax has increased steadily. It was 3% in 1967. By 1991, it had doubled to 6%. In 2004, officials raised it again to 6.25%. And every time, we heard it was needed for the schools or public services.

But increasing the sales tax did not stop cuts. On the contrary, over the last three decades, education spending plunged from 4% to 3.2% of the state’s economy, according to the California Budget Project.

Instead, state officials used the extra money to cut the taxes of the biggest corporations by more than half. Today, giant companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum have poured millions of dollars into support of Prop 30. Obviously, just like in the past, they stand to benefit from any further increase in the sales tax.

Sure, Governor Brown and the union officials say that Prop 30 will also increase income taxes for the very wealthiest. But what they don’t say is that two decades ago, the politicians had slashed the income taxes of the wealthy, saving them a total of 100 billion dollars. Obviously, the small increases in state income taxes proposed under Prop 30 don’t come close to making up for what the wealthy didn’t pay before.

Only working people and the poor are burdened by an even higher sales tax, since it takes a significantly bigger bite out of their already low income.

No, all Prop 30 does is offer a choice between higher taxes or even more budget cuts for public education—which is no choice at all for working people and the poor.

The money is there to pay for public education. But working people are going to have to fight to make big business and the wealthy pay for it.

Maryland Ballot Question:
Dream Act—Dream On!

Oct 15, 2012

Another ballot question in Maryland would “establish that ... undocumented immigrants, are entitled to pay in-state tuition rates at community colleges in Maryland, provided the student meets certain conditions....” It’s obvious that if you have graduated from high school here, you should pay the same tuition as everyone else, period. After all, a very large majority of the students or their parents work here and pay taxes here.

But this ballot question doesn’t provide the same tuition for most immigrants in this situation. One of the conditions in this law is that you have shown the intent to apply for permanent residency. But undocumented immigrants are usually not eligible for permanent resident status. Who can meet that requirement?

Just like the federal “Dream Act,” this promises much but delivers little.

Maryland:
Gay Marriage:
Ballot Question #6

Oct 15, 2012

This election, there is a ballot proposal in Maryland to “establish that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license....” It is completely understandable and reasonable that gay partners want and should have the same rights as everyone else.

So why do people get married? Many want to make a commitment to each other. But there are serious financial and legal reasons that push people into marriage. In most states for example, inheritance is not automatically given to committed partners unless they are married. The same is true for pensions, Social Security, and survivor benefits. In this society, children are not considered legitimate unless a committed couple is married.

But the real problem can be addressed more simply without marriage and all the baggage it carries. Marriage is a religious ceremony and historically developed as the means of legalizing the property relations between men and women, sanctifying women’s legal and social inferiority to men.

We need what exists already in a number of industrialized countries–civil unions where couples can commit to each other and also have all the financial and legal benefits currently available only to married couples.

Maryland Ballot Question for the Expansion of Gambling

Oct 15, 2012

Ballot question 7, which has been advertised daily, would expand gambling in Maryland, “for the primary purpose of raising revenue for education.”

Really?

The Lottery was also supposed to do that. So was Keno. But no “extra” funding materialized. Maryland budgets a certain amount for education. Any amount that went over that didn’t go to increase what the schools got. Instead, it freed the tax money up to be used in other ways like giving tax cuts and subsidies to big business.

Schools do need more money to pay the salaries of more experienced teachers. And to make class size smaller. More money is also needed for updated text books and repairing school buildings.

But more money from gambling will not increase what Maryland schools get, as already seen from past experience. In fact, this ballot question will merely decide which big casino group, the old or the new, gets to collect the big money. Why should we choose either group?

Pages 6-7

Detroit Water Dept. Workers Pushed Back When Attacked!

Oct 15, 2012

On October 1st, a federal court judge ordered striking workers at the City of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to return to work immediately.

On the same day, the city let it be known it was firing 36 strikers, most of them the workers who first walked out, including three top officials of the local who stood with the strikers, John Riehl, Michael Mulholland and Sue Ryan.

The City expected the strike would crumble.

Instead, workers stayed out. And even when some workers did go in, the rest of the strikers made it clear they wouldn’t go back so long as their fellow workers remained fired.

Three days later, the City blinked. It backed off from firing the workers–even though it kept a discipline on their record. Another piece of paper workers can tear up! The City also announced it would negotiate with the union over the concessions and layoffs it had already announced.

Of course, negotiations in the context of an ongoing onslaught on city workers means little. BUT it does mean the city blinked.

Since before the strike, city officials claimed that mere pieces of paper–called the Detroit Consent Agreement and the November 4, 2011 judge’s order–gave them unlimited dictatorial power.

These pieces of paper allowed them–they said–to ignore union contracts, city ordinances and the city charter. Above all, city officials claimed that these papers allowed them to dictate unilaterally whatever they wanted.

The workers showed that their determination could trump arrogant city officials with their little pieces of paper.

One small group of workers striking is not enough to “win” in the face of an orchestrated attack on all City of Detroit workers–and in fact on municipal workers everywhere.

But DWSD workers did something important. Threatened with losing their jobs, feeling they had nothing to lose by fighting, they decided to strike.

In fact, that’s true for all of us today. We have lost, we are losing, we will go on losing until we take the “risk” the Water Department workers took. It’s a bigger risk to do nothing.

And, if more workers fight, the first ones to go out, like the Water Department strikers, won’t stand alone.

Italy:
Fiat Imposes What It Wants and Commits to Nothing

Oct 15, 2012

At the end of September, Chrysler-Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne announced that he was junking promises Fiat made in 2010. Fiat had said then that it would invest at least 26 billion dollars in its Italian factories... but only IF the unions signed and the workers accepted huge concessions and gave up the right to strike.

In 2010, the press carried out a campaign backing the bosses’ demands. Fiat threatened to close down completely.

Facing an extortion campaign from Fiat, the government, the media and from two of the three main unions, workers at a Fiat factory in Naples and two in Turin voted to approve the agreements–but only by a small majority.

A “new company” was set up–(sounds just like the “new Chrysler” set up in 2009!). Fiat workers had to be hired by this company, specially created to not recognize previous labor agreements. Only the two unions that had backed the agreement were to be recognized in the plants.

Having extorted enormous concessions in 2010, Marchionne is now declaring in 2012 that there won’t be any 26 billion dollar investment.

That was already obvious. At the Naples factory, only 2,000 workers out of the 4,000 have been hired by the New Company and they were brought back only this September with reduced hours of work. One of the Turin plants is opened only a few days each month and most of its workers remain unemployed, still waiting to be rehired by the “new company.”

The only realistic response to the arrogance of Fiat’s bosses would be expropriation without compensation–so that funds would at least be available to pay the workers the company has dismissed. But only the workers could accomplish this expropriation.

iPhone 5 Dents:
Workers Strike over Work Conditions

Oct 15, 2012

Last week, thousands of factory workers at Foxconn’s Zhenghou plant went on strike to protest their work conditions on the iPhone 5’s production lines.

Foxconn is the largest electronics contract manufacturer in the world, manufacturing more than 40% of the gadgets pushed by Apple.

Apple’s new phone has a thin and lighter aluminum casing, which looks “very cool,” but is prone to dents and scratches during its production. Instead of solving this problem by redesigning its phone, “geniuses” at Apple pushed workers to perform under impossibly strict manufacturing tolerances. And, to meet the high demand for iPhone5, workers were forced to work longer hours, with no days off and no vacation.

The workers responded to such inhuman work conditions by stopping the work.

Apple’s gadgets may be very “cool” and “smart”.

Now, Foxconn workers demand that their work conditions should also be very cool and smart.

Page 8

Child Activist Shooting in Pakistan Draws Protests

Oct 15, 2012

Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old child and women’s rights activist, was shot in the head and neck by religious fundamentalists who claimed to be Taliban in Swat, Pakistan on October 9th, 2012. She was on her way home from school on the school bus. Two other children were also shot by these killers who violently oppose the educating of girl children.

Her shooting has provoked outrage across the world, including in Pakistan, as well it should. Children and women have been at the forefront of demonstrations on her behalf in Karachi, Pakistan and other cities, organizing rallies and school closings.

At the age of eleven, Yousafzai spoke out against prohibitions against the education of girls by announcing her resolve to become a doctor.

She gained public attention in 2009 and in 2011 anonymously spoke out in blogs against the oppression of women and children.

In 2011 she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize and subsequently won Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. She has led delegations of child activists in appealing for educational rights for Pakistani children and specifically girls.

While government officials worldwide, the United Nations and the U.S. have roundly condemned the actions of the religious fundamentalist right-wing, the fact remains that many of these same powers created the framework for the violent attacks by fundamentalists to be carried out against women.

For decades, the Pakistani government has based itself on religious fundamentalism. Top officials in the military and the powerful secret service have cultivated ties with fundamentalists and terrorists, who have carried out attacks against women.

This same Pakistan government, with its military is one of the U.S.’s most important client states. The U.S. government funnels billions to the Pakistan military and secret police to safeguard the interests of U.S. imperialism in the region. At the same time, the U.S. has made use of and supported all kinds of extreme right wing fanatical groups and splinter groups. These shifting alliances, based on political maneuvering, have fragmented the country and left various reactionary warlord groups in a position to terrorize the population and carry out continuous war.

The U.S. government, along with its vassal regime in Pakistan is responsible for the horrendous conditions the population endures today. If the fight to end the violence against Pakistani women and children is to be successful, it must include a fight not just against the religious fundamentalists and terrorists, but the Pakistani military and secret police, and U.S. imperialism itself.

The Demonstrations against the Anti-Muslim Film

Oct 15, 2012

The attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi has entered the presidential campaign, with Republicans claiming the Obama administration should have known enough to prevent it, and the Administration saying they didn’t.

In fact, it’s not the issue–as both parties well know. The real question is why there has been such a large wave of demonstrations and attacks against the symbols of U.S. power since early September, starting with the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi up to today.

Provoking this wave was the scathing Islamaphobic film, presenting episodes in the life of an impoverished Mohammed as if he were bloodthirsty and sexually depraved. This short film, which is as stupid as it is provocative, was produced by a mysterious American-Egyptian Christian, convicted earlier of Internet fraud. And it was first circulated over the Internet by fundamentalist Christian groups in this country.

Since then, there have been revengeful declarations and calls for protest throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

So, why was there such a response to these calls? Why did thousands of demonstrators take to the streets burning effigies of Barack Obama and the American flag? Because there is plenty of resentment built up in all these countries. The populations are held in misery due to the plunder of their wealth by imperialist powers like the U.S. and by the local bourgeoisies who ally with them. Millions of people face violence in their everyday life with the wars, the misery and the famines. These countries have been utilized like reserves of wealth for the profits of Wall Street. This creates deep hatred and desperate reactions.

But the Islamic fundamentalists at the head of various countries are not calling on their populations to fight against that situation. Rather, the Islamic fundamentalists are focusing attention only on the film to avoid the real issue. The fundamentalists’ “defense of religion” is a way for them to increase their power. They impose medieval rules not only against women, but also against workers, against unemployed youth, against the millions of poor who are frustrated by the worsening of the social situation. Directing the anger of the population against the film is aimed at preventing them from turning their anger against their own exploiters. And the governing parties, including the Islamic parties, are the direct agents of these national exploiters, when they are not also the direct agents of the imperialist interest that they pretend to oppose.

The Christian fundamentalists who pushed the anti-Islamic film would act in exactly the same way if they were in positions of power in this country. Even as a small minority, they push the same reactionary ideas as the official Islamic fundamentalists, and they direct their threats just as much against women, trade unionists and workers’ rights to organize. And their reactionary campaigns serve to obscure for some workers in this country their own material interests.

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