Who’s the Real Terrorist?

At Beslan the media as usual almost completely ignored the underlying issues and went straight for the jugular of the hostage takers. In doing do they missed the biggest terrorist –Putin and his Russian mafia hell bent on restoring a Great Russian imperialism.

Even before the siege was over Bush and co were busy trying to draw an al-Qaeda link. This was to be expected as was the total lack of journalistic integrity which followed this outrageous statement which was completely unsubstantiated. We were crying out for a journalist to have the courage to ask “Is this information based on the same intelligence that there were weapons on mass destruction in Iraq?”

Let us be clear that there is no justification for the targeting of civilian Russian children and using them as pawns in a power game. But as soon as we say this we have to say their deaths are the result of a much more systematic and destructive state terrorism of the big powers. The actions of the hostage takers in Beslan show that the leaders of oppressed nations, exploiting the anger and hatred of the freedom fighters against their oppressors, are prepared to use any methods to try to do deals with the big powers to broker the valuable resources of their countries.

While the Chechen warlord Bassiev has apparently claimed responsibility for this terrorist act there are still doubts that Chechnya was involved. Putin is quite capable of staging a fake attack to justify a further assault on Chechnya, and a stepping up of counter-terrorist actions and anti-terrorist legislation. But if it was a Chechen attack how can we explain it?

Nothing happens in a vacuum.

The events in Beslan are a result of the Russian policies and atrocities carried out in Chechnya not just in recent times but over the last couple of centuries. Russia has in two recent wars invaded and decimated Chechnya as it tries to prevent its secession and the grabbing of its resources by Russia’s EU and US rivals. In this situation we are on the side of Chechen self-determination and in the same trench as the Chechen freedom fighters against Russian oppression.

While we unconditionally side with Chechnya against Russia we criticise the barbaric and self-defeating methods used by the Chechen nationalist leaders against Russian oppression such as the acts of terrorism we saw in Beslan. They are prepared to sacrifice the heroic youth and women as pawns in their desire to force the Russians do a deal and allow these nationalist bosses to get rich from acting as the agents of Russian, EU and US corporations.

Commenting on the Spiked Online site, Brendan O’Neill says: “taking hostage an entire school on the first day of term, surrounding teachers, parents and kids with land mines and high explosives, makes little sense as a nationalist strike against a military aggressor or as a tactic for weakening Russian rule in the Caucasus. Instead, like the Moscow theatre siege of 2002, the school siege looked more like a murderous stunt, an al-Qaeda-esque assault, designed to provoke fear and outrage rather than to realise any discernible political aim.”

The commentator goes on to add that the speed with which authorities tried to point the finger of blame at International Terrorism is alarming.

“For obvious reasons, Russia is keen to situate Beslan within the international 'war on terror', effectively claiming that the siege was the work of al-Qaeda. Putin's al-Qaeda talk is clearly opportunist; his aim is to distract from his repressive policies in Chechnya since a second war was launched there in 1999 (the first war having taken place under Boris Yeltsin from 1994 to 1996).”

What appears to the Spiked commentator to be a senseless and self-destructive act of terror at Beslan is in reality a consequence of the military weakness of these nationalist movements, and the fact that oppression of the US, EU and Russia has created a generation of freedom fighters around the world prepared to sacrifice their lives. As one Algerian freedom fighter said many years ago, “you give us your airplanes and we will give you our homemade bombs”.

Root Causes

What are the root causes of what happened in Beslan? Brendan O’Neill has a go at answering this.

“The missing link in the debates about terrorism, about the shift from the more politically-oriented violence of the past to the blindly ruthless attacks of today, is the West's foreign interventions of the 1990s. It is by examining these that we can start to make sense of today's seemingly senseless terror. Such interventions, particularly in the Balkans, did much to create the conditions for the rise of the new stateless groups that are so different from old-style nationalist movements.”

And further,

“Western officials wring their hands over the atrocity in Beslan, carried out by a terror group that seems irrational and, as Aldwyn Wight says, without restraint. Yet such terror networks are the product of the West's undermining of its own postwar international framework during the humanitarian era. The old national liberation and nationalist movements reflected a world organised around the principles of sovereign equality and state authority; today's terror networks hold a mirror to the West's self-destructive assault on state sovereignty and the integrity of borders in the post-Cold War world. Where the old world order, for all its vast faults, gave rise to movements that sought to create their own states, the new world order has encouraged the emergence of distinctly stateless groups, not tied to any specific community or political goal.”

What this commentator fails to realise is that this apparent “murderous stunt” has been forced on nationalist movements not by a breakdown in ‘humanism’ or even recent invasions, but by centuries of Western imperialist and Great Russian terror. Individual or group terror such as that at Beslan has to be seen as the effect of this long history of imperialist class and national terror. Moreover the death toll at Beslan was not the result of the methods used by the ‘insurgents’ but the direct result of the attack by the special forces which stormed the school. 45,000 children killed in Chechnya in the last 20 years, now several hundred killed at Beslan and both at the hands of the Russian military.

O’Neill also comments on the now much known fact that the west was once keen to support movements such as the Mujhadeen in their activities in Afghanistan but now cannot contain what these movements have morphed into.

An article in a recent Guardian Weekly also seeks to shed light on what took place:

               “Today's hostage-taking, though, from Iraq to Ossetia, is more savage, born of the spread of asymmetrical warfare that pits small, weak and irregular forces against powerful military machines. No insurgent lives long if he fights such overwhelming force directly. His tactical success has always been in surprise and in picking his target. If insurgent bullets cannot penetrate military armour, it makes little sense to shoot in that direction. Soft targets - the unprotected, the innocent, the uninvolved - become targets because they are available. If the hostage-takers in Beslan knew they were likely to die, they also knew they would die with the world's attention upon them. Had they died in a regular fire fight with Russian forces, we would neither have known nor cared.”

               This commentator doesn’t seem to realise that ‘asymmetrical warfare’ is not the origin of ‘savage’ methods of warfare. Imperialism has long used ‘Ghurkhas’, i.e. the native troops of the countries they occupy, to do their fighting for them. There is nothing more ‘savage’ than to use these ‘loyal’ troops to fight imperialism’s wars. It was the British who pioneered search and destroy methods against ‘soft’ targets in their colonies 200 years before the modern guerrilla insurgents‘re-invented’ them. It was the British who took the poison gas technology from the battlefields of France to Iraq in the 1920s before Saddam was born.

               And of course who can be surprised that we know virtually nothing of what is actually going on in Chechnya.  Media coverage is almost non-existent, or managed by tame or embedded agencies that push the official line of the oppressor state.  There are acts of inhumanity being carried out by the Russians in Chechnya all the time.  We just don’t hear about them.  It is out of sheer desperation (the same sort of desperation that makes a 14 year old Palestinian by strap explosives to himself) that such acts as the Beslan hostage taking occur.  Again, this is not to condone the action, rather to gain some sort of understanding.  For it is only through understanding that we can find an answer.

“Peace and Security”

               The Guardian tries to draw out the links that exist in Putin’s war in Chechnya with other similar ‘adventures’, but in doing so it remains trapped in its liberal view that these were ‘failures’ because they did not realise their objectives of ‘peace and security’:

               “As the drama of Beslan was entering its final hours, George Bush was bidding for re-election on the promise of security to the American people, a security premised on the willingness to use overwhelming military force. It was the same promise that Putin gave to the Russians and Ariel Sharon to the people of Israel. All three have used violence freely in pursuit of electoral reward: Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount that triggered the second intifada, Putin's reckless adventurism in re-launching the Chechen war in 1999, and the Bush invasion of Iraq. None has produced the peace or security that was their justification; all have widened the circle of killing far beyond the formal engagement of armed men on both sides. Now the most likely victims are the poor and the helpless, as collateral damage, bombing casualties or hostages.”

               Where both the Guardian Weekly and Spiked Online fall far short in their analysis is their inability (or perhaps unwillingness in the case of the ex-Trotskyists of Spiked Online) to recognise that events in Beslan cannot be separated from the ever-increasing demands of international capitalism to control and subjugate anything they see as threatening their global domination.  Their liberalism does not allow them to see that these events are the necessary result of resistance to an escalating, recolonising, military drive by the imperialist powers to re-conquer and re-divide the world to grab the scarce, valuable resources they need to survive and expand.

Marxists tell the truth

               The duty of Marxists is to tell the truth.  We need to call for workers to recognise the real enemy and to also recognise that so-called senseless acts of violence cannot end worker’s oppression. They merely give ammunition to the Capitalists and their boot lickers in the media.

               There is an international campaign of terror and it is waged every day by the capitalists and their agents such as Bush and Putin.  It is the oppression and misery this campaign causes which gives rise to Nationalist struggles.  These struggles in turn say much about the weakness of the left and its inability to mobilise workers in a struggle to overthrow capitalism.  In this vacuum, nationalist leaders of all colours have risen to lead the struggles of the masses in the hope they can use them to negotiate profitable terms with imperialism. Rather they have been re-routed to the only game in town which in many cases is a nationalist struggle.

               To transform these national struggles from dead ends that will lead to the defeat of the masses, into the struggle for socialism, Marxists have a duty to unconditionally support them against their oppressors. But while we side with these national struggles against imperialism or national oppression, we give no support to the nationalist leaders. Rather we try to mobilise the masses to arm themselves, and to break free of their nationalist leaders and from imperialism by fighting for socialism. In doing this we can show that socialism alone can liberate workers and peasants from the trap of imperialism and reactionary national capitalism.

Defend Chechnya!

For the right of Chechnyan self-determination!

Down with Great Russian Chauvinism!

For Workers and Peasants states in the former Soviet Union!

Winding up the mob

“What about the victims,” was the outcry. “How come they don’t get any compensation,” everyone said. Holmes played a particularly despicable interview with the mother of a girl murdered by one of the inmates who is to receive compensation. The reporter managed to exploit this poor women’s grief to maximum effect for prurient public gratification with stock questions like “how did you feel when you heard that the murderer of your daughter was to get compensation.”

There are a couple of points that have been largely and conveniently overlooked by the politicians and the media. The first is that just because someone is in prison does not mean they cannot be a victim. The inmates were part of the now thoroughly discredited “behavior modification” programme. The second point overlooked is that it doesn’t have to be an ‘either-or’ situation. The cry of “why should these people receive compensation when their victims haven’t got any” could easily be replaced by the question “why shouldn’t the original victims get compensation in the first place.”

Speaking on Kim Hill’s Face to Face programme on 6 October lawyer Tony Ellis (who represented the inmates in court) made this very point, the only time it has been made. He challenged Phil Goff, Minister of Justice who was also on the programme to set up a Victim Compensation Board for ALL victims of crime.

Tony Ellis said:

“If the state is concerned about paying victims then it should set up a criminal victims’ compensation board to pay all victims. Why has it suddenly become concerned? The only reason it’s become concerned is because some prisoners have got some compensation because the state has treated them in an appalling and inhumane manner.”

Rather than front up and admit that our prisons are failing to achieve anything other than lock people up (in many cases over and over again) Goff just kept bleating on and on about the original victims of these inmates not getting any compensation. Amazingly, he also seemed to imply that these inmates are paying no penalty at all for what they have done. Tony Ellis quite rightly pointed out that they are serving long sentences, in some cases life, as their punishment.

Most of the people committing criminal acts against people and property have no money. They are at the bottom of the socio-economic heap so they are hardly in a position to pay compensation, with one exception which we will come to shortly.

The fact that Goff and the other political opportunists in this country have no intention of setting up a Victims Compensation Board is no accident. They aren’t prepared to take victims seriously. They would rather use them as a political football in their populist campaign to demonize inmates.

White Collar Crime

On the same day this television debate took place another event occurred which though reported will probably be forgotten very quickly. This was the release of this year’s report from the Serious Fraud Office head David Bradshaw. In this report he spoke of his frustration at the light sentences that white collar criminals get in this country compared to other convicted inmates, most of who come from the bottom of the heap.

In his report he said:

“The outrage at offending should be no less simply because the offender is clean shaven, lives in a ‘good’ neighborhood and supports worthwhile charities. If anything, we should be more outraged at the double standards of the white collar offender”

It will be a cold day in hell when Goff and most other politicians take white collar crims seriously. How often do we hear calls for reparations from these offenders, hardly ever. Even if there are attempts made to get money from them, it is often a fruitless exercise since their money is tied up in trusts so it can’t be touched. . Greg Newbold, a Christchurch academic calculated that white collar crime costs the country 40 times in dollars terms what street crime costs.

Many white collar criminals emerge from prison to return to their nice house and car and manage to get on with their lives pretty well. Famous fraudster Allan Hawkins of Equitycorp served 2.5 years of a 6 year sentence – a good investment at about $35 million a year. The same can’t be said of the vast majority of offenders who emerge from prison with little or nothing and end up on the dole.

Then there are the ‘insider trading’ allegations that David Richwhite, of the famous merchant bank partnership, Fay Richwhite who made millions from the sale of state assets in the 1980s, also made many more millions by selling his Tranzrail shares just before they crashed in value. This sort of fraud is the most profitable of all and few get charged let alone convicted.

The disparity in sentencing is no mystery though. The working class are never going to be treated the same as middle and upper class people in our system. Judges are from the ruling class and it is no surprise they look after their own when sentencing. The message is this, to bash one person is more serious than to rip off many people. It’s almost as if the state is saying in a free market if people get defrauded by a member of the ruling class then it’s more of an accident than anything else. Indeed, some radical capitalists believe that in a true free market, it would be tough luck and your own stupidity if you got defrauded. They are really only taking capitalism to its natural conclusion.

Ruling class law

It has been said that the ruling class maintain their rule by a combination of fear and fraud and therefore when someone of that class strays they are treated more like an errant schoolboy than a criminal. Whereas when working class kids transgress, they get labelled, arrested, slammed up and abused, and then denied compensation. After all, if these young workers won’t work then we’ll make them an example to keep the other workers in line!

In conclusion, compensation should be paid to the victims of our corrupt jail system just as it should be paid to the victims of crime. However we also need to realize that this will not solve the underlying issues that we can’t make the system “fair.”

The way that our so-called justice system treats different kinds of offenders brings us back to a realization that nothing will ever change for victims of crime until we change the system that gives rise to all forms of oppression in the first place.

Mercenary Activities Act

On October the 22^nd 2004, New Zealand under the Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Act 2004, will become a signatory to the 1989 UN Convention banning recruitment, training, financing and use of mercenaries in armed conflict. Significantly, the original bill introduced into Parliament by Labour Foreign Minister Phil Goff in October 2003, came several months after the departure of Foreign Affairs adviser and humanitarian aid worker David Shearer. In 2001, after attending an international forum in the US called “The Politicisation of Humanitarian Action and Staff Security”, an essay written by Shearer and entitled “Privatising Security”, advocated the use of private armies.

New Zealand’s decision to support the Convention is a significant departure from the guns for hire attitude of NZ’s traditional allies principally the US, Britain and France. For decades, these imperialist powers have tried to distance themselves from the SOF (soldiers of fortune) label, especially in regards to the British Ghurkha Regiment and the French Foreign Legion. But this has been mostly for PR and cosmetic reasons. Their non ratification of the UN Convention is an admission of the integral role played by mercenaries or PMC’s (Private Military Companies) as they prefer to be called, in their modern global strategy. In the case of the US, the non recognition of the International Criminal Court is a continuation of this scenario.

The UN Convention itself with its very limited scope, dubious definitions and inability to be enforced, maintains a hypocrisy that turns a blind eye to the vast profits accumulated by the multi-billion dollar arms industry and states who act on its behalf. Never mind the plight of the poor victims. As an agent of Imperialism, the UN cannot be expected to act otherwise. Its effect is largely illusionary. Companies producing the F18’s, Apache helicopter gunships and M1 tanks don’t even warrant scrutiny. Its pretence to represent some kind of moral high ground by trying to differentiate one form of blood money from another exposes yet again the irrelevance of the UN as an instrument for progressive change. To add to the inability of the UN to define “mercenary”, PMC’s and PSC’s (Private Security Companies) have had their legal teams working overtime redefining company job descriptions as a safeguard. For NZ, the new law becomes like its “clean-green” image of itself; symbolism without substance.

SAS supplies Mercs

Regular military ties between NZ and its Anglo Commonwealth partners Australia and Britain, ensure a steady stream of inter-operability, particularly among Special Forces such as the SAS. So close in fact is this relationship that it makes a mockery of the periodic claims made by politicians that New Zealander’s are not operating in theatres of war that they are not supposed to be in. Within military circles, it has been long held common knowledge that where ever British or Australian SAS are operating, New Zealander’s are included among their number either full-time or on inter-service exchange. This also follows to a lesser extent with the US. Indeed NZSAS troopers are so highly thought of and sort after, that they command top dollar by overseas PMC’s and PSC’s when their “official” military service has ended and “Merc Work” begins. For many, going overseas is the way of getting around small problems like the new law introduced by the NZ Government.

In March 2000, former SAS soldiers belonging to PSC Onix International, which had an association with then Waipareira Trust Chairman John Tamihere, conducted a mission in Indonesia to rescue Chinese Indonesian tycoon Johnson Cornelius Lo. According to ex-SAS sources, the mission passed through war zone East Timor. Foreign Minister Phil Goff’s response at the time was low keyed and unconcerned. Embedded local media never really pushed the story and like the demise of Onix International at the end of the same year, saved the Government from some tricky questions about mercenaries operating directly out of NZ.

Algeria

At a UN special forum on the rights of people to self-determination held in New York on Oct 31 2001, a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on mercenaries Enrique Bernalles Ballesteros stated that mercenaries were often present during terrorist attacks and were often used in battles against those seeking self-determination.

This fits into many of the accounts corroborated by eye witnesses who escaped the massacres perpetrated in Algeria after the 1992 coup which saw the moderate Islamic FIS victory stolen by a western backed criminal government. The more militant Islamic GIA, whose entire leadership was wiped out after the coup, was implicated in many killings in absentia by the government to give the impression that the GIA were still operational and responsible for many future terrorist attacks.

The release of the book La Sale Guerre (The Dirty War) in 2001 lifted the lid on the true nature of the war of “Eradication” being waged by the pro-western Algerian junta or “Pouvoir (Mafia Generals)” as they are locally known. Written by a former military officer Habib Souaida who now lives in exile in France, it gives a vivid and detailed eye witness account of the slaughter perpetrated by the military and its hired secret cadres for the purpose of blaming Islamist organisations.

Examination of the bodies of terrorists involved in the massacres who were themselves killed by local resistance, showed no sign of circumcision; proof of being Moslem. The most incredible aspect of these crimes is the fact that they were committed in staunchly Islamic areas close to military bases and not the places frequented by Westerners such as the clubs and commercial heart of Algiers.

It is absolutely inconceivable that Moslems would turn on their own in the fashion described by reactionary embedded media. According to Islamic tradition, Gods wrath and retribution would be most terrible. But then again, it is not for the consumption of Moslems the fiction being perpetrated. That target belongs to the popular opinion existing in the Imperialist heartland of the US and its allies.

France and its secret services (remember the Rainbow Warrior) have been pivotal in directing much of the dirty war.

Its memory of the colonially directed inter-communal violence that took place during the “Algerian War of Independence 1954-62” was used as the template for the cycle of violence that it helped unleashed after 1992. The post-coup mass privatisation of lands once owned by communities slaughtered by the regime, have fulfilled the requirements of the US dominated multi-nationals. It is known that large oil reserves exist in many of these areas, hence the presence of nearby military bases.

In NZ, political prisoner and former Algerian FIS politician, Ahmed Zaoui, is a victim of the crimes of his country’s government who have also labelled the FIS a terrorist organisation. The criminal attitude of the NZ government doesn’t want to upset its US masters, so is willing to play along with the charade.

Soldier of Fortune Heaven

Soldier of Fortune heaven is the best way to describe Iraq. Mercenaries, far out number the 20,000 British soldiers serving there, making them the second biggest force behind the US. Of the estimated US $ 80 billion being spent on rebuilding Iraq, more than US $ 50 billion will go to private security companies. With the totally privatised Iraqi infrastructure in American hands, that sum will increase substantially more. The bulk of the most highly paid mercenaries in Iraq are former SAS (British, Aussie, and NZ) and US Special Forces who can command upwards from more than US $ 1,000 per day. It’s the biggest racket in town; with no shortage of volunteers. Mercenaries are already implicated in killings and abuses from privately run prisons and torture cells in Afghanistan to the now exposed prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

NZ based security firm, Red Key Security, recently ceased advertising positions in Iraq because it was claimed that it was too dangerous. The more likely reason was the anticipated new anti-mercenary law.

British based Global Risk Strategies, in typically colonial racist fashion, underpays its Fijian and Nepali mercenaries. They get US $ 1,000 per month, even though their military skill level is the equivalent of their British counterparts having served in that country’s army. Last December, its Fijian mercenaries were involved in a massacre of civilians in the city of Samara, killing at least 10 and wounding many more.

The spate of kidnappings and murders of foreign workers with their gruesome decapitations shown on the internet, have led many to believe that they are not the work of Islamic extremists, but the work of US and CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) hired mercenaries. This ties in with the anti-Islamic blame strategy as practiced in Algeria. The covert nature and skills of many of its practitioners conclude that this is definitely the case. Its shock value is designed to alienate and create an abhorrence of anything Arab or Islamic and therefore sympathy and support for the US and its allies.

The US and Britain are finding themselves increasingly isolated as a result of their crime of the century. As an added cost cutting exercise, the use of private security to take over the tasks normally reserved for conventional military forces, is an attempt to placate and soften the impact for a home audience becoming increasingly weary of the quagmire that has become Iraq. Mercenary casualties and body counts are never officially recorded, but neither are the Iraqi victims.

The recent kidnapping by US supporters of charity worker Margaret Hassan who has Irish, British and Iraqi citizenship, shows the level to which the stooges of the US are willing to sink in order to continue the fiction of Islamic involvement. As a highly public figure in Iraq, she has condemned the UN/US imposed sanctions and the US/British occupation. The move north by British forces to help beef up the US, should not be seen as a coincidence, but a cynical attempt calculated to shore up support back home by placing a symbol of humanitarianism at centre stage.

An un-named source within one of the British based security companies agrees that there are elements within the private armies who are in Iraq specifically for the purpose of discrediting the insurgents (Iraqi Resistance) by committing brutal murders against innocent civilians. Many come from political organisations associated with the US, principally right-wing death squads. He says, “It’s about selling the bullshit to a home audience; that’s all that matters. My politics isn’t your politics, but then time will tell.”

Socialist Internationalism

In recent days at the UN, Phil Goff was quoted as saying that the new legislation would “not prohibit those motivated to join up to fight for a cause, which they believed in.” This part of the Ministers statement, rings rather hollow when seen in the light of the Conventions protocols. Already unilaterally and outside of the UN, the US is targeting political organisations involved in activity not to its liking. All of these organisations satisfy the conditions as prescribed in the Convention, particularly left-wing ones where funding, training, financing and ultimately use are part of the precondition for their existence. It only comes unstuck when trying to apply the term mercenary. It must be expected and history teaches us that reactionaries like Goff and his cohorts would put all kinds of obstacles in the way of any attempt to internationalise workers struggle.

The fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s clearly showed us what was possible when workers from all corners of the world came together to defend the Spanish Republic. Stalinist treachery aside, leftists of all shades, made up the bulk of the International Brigade, including New Zealander’s who would be the back-bone of the NZ Labour Party of old. The question to be posed is; would New Labour defend such a scenario today? Its record of kowtowing to Blairite reaction suggests the obvious answer is no. The collapse of the degenerated Soviet Union, has given license to the US to dictate all terms of reference as to who is friend or foe.

So, what of the UN Convention and the new NZ anti-mercenary Law? Both of these play into the hands of the US agenda and serve only as smoke screens to create the impression that the UN is playing a moderating role against the excesses of those who step out of line with the forces of pro-capitalism.

For workers, the hard yards continue and its business as usual. We must overcome the shenanigans and intrigues that are thrown our way by political legislators whose only interest is to prevent our emancipation and liberation. Whatever labels they choose to put on us, our fight to extend workers struggle beyond our national borders, must remain paramount. In the present climate of US hegemony, the meaning and importance of Socialist Internationalism in terms of leadership, is even greater and more necessary than ever.

Sabah was born in Baghdad in 1932. He joined the communist party during his years as a student (1949-1954). He was drafted into the Iraqi army to take part in the war against the Kurdish armed factions that was ongoing in 1956. Sabah was stationed in the Saadiya camp, where he was involved in a mutiny against the racist war on Kurdistan which failed.

Sabah and 15 comrades were sentenced to 15 months in prison. By the time they were released, the war was over. Sabah travelled to East Germany, only for the July Revolution to overthrow the monarchy. Sabah returned to Iraq and earned full membership in the party. He was sent again to East Germany where he gained a PhD in economics.

During his stay in East Germany (1959-1965) the Baathist coup of 1963 succeeded in its primary aim of defeating the communist party. Thousands of fighters and workers were liquidated. Once this main aim was achieved, the Baathist violence became unnecessary and they were pushed out of power once more. Sabah returned in 1965 to an Iraq unlike the one he had left, and he was quickly imprisoned once more.

In 1969 Sabah was released, and travelled to Hungary, where he played a role in the secretariat of the International Youth Union, an organ of the USSR.

In 1972 he was sent back to Iraq to participate in the Baghdad council of the popular front government. The Communist party had made a recovery since the defeat of 1963. Moscow had pushed the line of participating in this government with the Baathists and other forces. Sabah was arrested in 1979 (on the 2 of August) and interrogated:

Interrogator: “What is your opinion of the Communist Party, in light of their continued refusal to cooperate in an honest way in the Popular Front government?” (Here they are giving Sabah the opportunity to renounce Communism and denounce the party.)

Sabah: “The general direction of the communist party is to work within the Popular Front to oppose imperialism and to complete the national revolution. Any acts that deviate from this are mistakes that are to be criticised.”

Here there is a statement apparently prepared by the interrogator, to the effect that Sabah would be leaving the party and would participate in the “national project”. This line is struck out and Sabah’s signature appears underneath it.

Sabah was released two weeks later, and over the next period he was arrested and released a number of times, finally on the 2/2/1980. After that he was never heard of again.

There is a contradiction between Sabah who lived and fought for the cause of the socialist revolution, and Sabah who was a leading member of the Communist Party responsible for betraying the Iraqi working class into the hands of Saddam.

One the one hand, Sabah lived as a heroic fighter for the workers of Iraq and the whole world. He risked his life many times, and ultimately paid the ultimate price in circumstances that one can only imagine as being extremely difficult.

He was a victim of a compromise where the Soviet Union disarmed people like Sabah and placed them in front of monsters like Saddam Hussein as part of a cynical global game. In exchange, the Soviet Union was assured of an “anti-imperialist” government in Iraq.

On the other hand, Sabah never renounced the popular front and therefore has to take his share of the responsibility for the criminal policy of Stalinism. This policy led the workers into alliances with the national bourgeoisie resulting in the murder or exile of thousands of communists and the defeat and demoralisation of millions of workers.

The balance sheet of the Iraqi Communist Party must also include blame for the situation in Iraq today. The Communist Party is so corrupt that it is a member of the US stooge government of Iraq. And the breakaway Workers’ Communist Party is appealing to the UNO to remove the US invaders. A weakened working class has left a political vacuum into which the Islamic radicals have moved using nationalist and religious appeals to attract workers.

The personal tragedy of Sabah is a small part of the historic tragedy of the Iraqi working class misled and betrayed by the Communist Party. Today, this legacy can only be overcome by the rebuilding of an armed, independent working class movement. This is the only force capable of defeating the imperialist invaders and the treacherous factions of the national bourgeoisie and their allies in the labour movement, and opening the road to socialism!

For a World Party of Socialist Revolution!

Since the end of August, the UTO, in Bolivia, has been in the hands of a Committee for the Defence of the University comprised of students, parents, workers of the main union organisation (COD), miners of Huanuni and other workers’ organisations. Over 500 hundred students of the UTO occupied their university and demanded the resignation of their Rector. They have formed a joint student, teachers and workers ‘tri-government’ with a student majority to replace the administration and create a ‘new’ university.

On September 2, a student congress met and made a Manifesto. It states that their fight is the same as the masses fight. That the time has come to end the corrupt, exploitative university system, which is part of capitalism. It calls for support from all the exploited people of Bolivia to make this fight their fight. It demands a living minimum wage pegged to inflation; work for all by reducing the hours of work but not the wage; for social insurance financed by the employer’s state; for the self-determination of the Quechuas, Aymaras and Tupiguaranis; that control of the gas (Bolivia’s main resource) and all other means of production are taken over by a Workers’ state; in short, for a transition from capitalism to communism (social property, self-government of the masses without a state).

Political differences among the students and the local unions has led to a split between those who want to restore the Rector and work with him to gain some reforms in funding to reduce the costs of education, and those who want to continue the strong line of building support between the students, the rank and file of the miners and workers in the COD, and extend the struggle to other universities in Bolivia. CWG backs those who want to deepen and extend this fight rather than do deals with the administration and trade union bureaucrats to contain the struggle within the limit of Mesa’s parliamentary regime.

Now into their third month of occupation, the Oruro students, teachers, workers and poor farmers continue to be a flaming beacon showing the way for the Bolivian masses that have twice risen up in insurrections in 2003 and are the vanguard of the struggle against the policies of US imperialism in Latin America. They have sent out an urgent call to workers in Bolivia, Latin America and all over the world to support their struggle.

Pass a resolution of support for the occupation in your union, workplace, university or school!

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY with comrade Cesar Zelada, well-known Peruvian student activist, was arrested on Monday 13 September in La Paz (Bolivia) under the false accusation of terrorism. Cesar traveled to Bolivia taking the greeting of the Peruvian students to the students, workers and people of Oruro, who continue a heroic and exemplary occupation of their university. The accusation of terrorism, clearly false, is the fashionable pretext to repress the popular struggle. We know well as the Peruvian regime does it. We support Cesar. We salute the heroic fight of the students and people of Oruro. We demand of the Bolivian government the immediate and unconditional freedom of Cesar Zelada and we call for the widest unity in action until we have won his freedom.

Comité Organizador de una Liga Trotskista Internacionalista (COLTI) de Perú

For more information see peru.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/10912.php

__________________________________________

Message of Solidarity sent to UTO by CWGNZ

Comrades of the Occupation of University of Technology Oruro,

Dear Comrades of the Committee of Defence,

The Communist Workers Group of New Zealand is in strong solidarity with your occupation of the university and in your fight for student and worker control of education.

We agree with the program of demands that makes the university a base for the transformation to a communist society. We endorse your struggle to win the support of rank and file teachers, workers and poor farmers.

Bush exploits fear

The fact is that many workers are deluded into believing that the US is the great benefactor of the world, the defender of democracy and human rights. The bosses’ media has scared them into voting for Bush to defend their country from the threat of ‘terrorism’. The ‘alternative’ media that produces critical views of the Bush administration and its economic interests, like Fahrenheit 9-11, Outfoxed and The Corporation, still reach only a minority audience.

Many of these workers are the better paid ‘labour aristocracy’ who have benefited from decades of US domination of the world market. There are also lower paid migrant workers who put their hopes in a strong US to protect their jobs. The US economic crisis is cutting the wages and conditions of well paid as well as poorly paid workers to restore the bosses’ profits. The bosses’ shift the responsibility for the crisis by inciting workers to blame migrants or workers in other countries for stealing their jobs. This economic insecurity is manipulated by the bosses into support for aggressive US policies against other countries such as Iraq. In this way the ‘war in terror’ becomes a test of the patriotism of US workers in support of the US ruling class to dominate the world economy.

We say to these workers that Bush is not defending your interests. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Bush is making you pay for these wars with your jobs, your wages, your rights and the lives of your children, draft or no draft. The ‘terrorists’ in Iraq or Colombia are largely the poor and oppressed people of those countries invaded and plundered by US imperialism over generations who are now fighting back with whatever means available.

Bush is using the ‘war on terror’ to fight a never-ending terrorist war against the poor workers and peasants of this world to re-colonise their countries to ‘smash and grab’ the oil, gas, and other vital resources. Now he is making war against the poor inside the USA. Voting for Bush will bring more ‘terror’ at home not less. Bush’s ‘homeland security’ will take away all your union and civil rights, including your right to vote for anybody but Republican. Siding with Bush puts you offside with the vast majority of the poor workers and farmers of the world!

Bush lite

But will voting for Kerry make a difference? The democratic party presents itself as a more liberal bosses’ party. Yet it drew on racist southern democratic support for years. Under Clinton the Democrats introduced policies of workfare taking away the welfare rights of millions. It is supported by the main union organisation the AFL-CIO –the same organisation that supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq and of Haiti.

Kerry claims he does not endorse the extreme militarism of the New American Century faction of the US ruling class which calls for the US to invade any country where it has a vital interest. (http://www.newamericancentury.org/). But this policy was already the hallmark of US foreign policy in the 19^th century and continued in the 20^th century under Democrat leaders like Roosevelt and Kennedy. Kerry pretends that the US can continue to rule the world without ‘going it alone’ and splitting with the other major powers. He may not have invaded Iraq knowing that Saddam did not have WMDs or connections to al Queda. But like the last Democrat president, Clinton, he would have bombed Iraq and Kosovo to enforce UN resolutions.

Leftists for Kerry

Many prominent ‘left’ intellectuals are supporting a Kerry vote as the only way to get rid of Bush. Some, like Noam Chomsky, say that this is necessary in the ‘swing’ states were a few hundred votes may make the difference. Yet it seems that it will be the lawyers hired by the Democrats that make the difference, not the followers of Chomsky et al.

The leftists for Kerry use a ‘lesser evil’ argument that says that US imperialism can be more humane and democratic under Kerry. It is a view echoed by prominent ‘Eurocommunists’ like Tony Negri who says that Bush’s leadership is a retreat from a multilateral world Empire back to a unilateral US imperialism. Others, like former right-winger Chalmers Johnson in his book the ‘Sorrows of Empire’, say that the rise of US militarism is because the Pentagon now controls the state.

Return to ‘ultra imperialism’

All of these ‘lesser evil’ arguments promote the belief that the US can conduct itself without going to war to defend its leading role in the world economy. This is a return to Kautsky’s theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’ at the time of WW 1. Kautsky claimed that the big corporations and big banks no longer had an interest in fighting wars since their assets were now distributed across many countries and would be damaged by war. Today, with the rise of the global economy, the power of finance capital and trans-nationals spanning the world market, these Kautskyites claim that national rivalries are even more anachronistic.

What these apologists for the big corporations overlook is the fact that the current crisis of world capitalism does not allow the US and its imperialist rivals the luxury of collaborating peacefully. They are each driven to compete to win larger shares of trade and control of vital resources at each other’s expense. Whatever the minor policy differences between Bush and Kerry these will quickly disappear. Under the impact of the deepening economic crisis it is impossible for US imperialism to collaborate with its main rivals in the scramble for scarce resources such as oil and gas.

Therefore we say to all those who call for a vote for Kerry to get rid of Bush, that this is promoting the illusion that Kerry will be better for workers than Bush. We say that this election is a ‘show’ election where the victor will be whoever has the biggest budget, the dirtiest tricks, and the power to delude the masses that they can be secure from the threat of ‘terrorism’. Voting for Kerry will only contribute to these illusions and delusions, rather than challenging workers to organise against the interests of an imperialist ruling class that hides behind the ‘bread and circus’ elections. A good example of this is the AFL-CIO sabotage of the recent Million Man March as a ‘diversion’ from the Kerry election campaign.

Million (50,000) Man March

According to Martin Schreader, editor of Appeal to Reason:: “On October 17, the Million Worker March was held in Washington, DC. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the main dockworkers’ union on the west coast, initiated the event, and organised it with the assistance of local unions and leftwing organisations across the country. The march put forward a series of concrete demands ranging from universal healthcare and abolition of restrictive anti-labour laws to democratic control of the media and the economy.

The immediate goal of the MWM, according to organisers, was to “gauge where workers are” - to see how many workers were open to a radical-democratic and socialist platform. The ultimate goal would have been to use the march as the basis for beginning to build a new political party of working people.” (Weekly Worker 549 Thursday October 21 2004).

But this rally was sabotaged by the AFL-CIO now so attached to the Democratic Party that not only did it refuse to allow its member unions to participate in a march against the administration in Washington, but it collaborated with the Homeland Security authorities to have busloads of workers stopped and questioned on the way to the rally. Many buses were turned around and only 50,000 rallied to the march. This open betrayal can only add fuel to the rallying call for independent unions and a mass Workers’ Party.

Nader is a left Democrat

Against the open collaboration of left intellectuals and the labour bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO with the Democrats, several small left reformist parties are putting up their own candidates. Do these parties offer an alternative for the workers’ vote? Nader, the Greens, the Socialist Workers Party, Workers World Party, among others, stand on platforms opposing both Republicans and Democrats.

Nader would replace the US ‘coalition’ troops in Iraq with UN troops. He demands more state spending on education, welfare etc. But his real position is to provoke the Democrats to offer a more left alternative to the Republicans. His agenda is a return to some ideal concept of a democratic, humane, welfarist, but still social-imperialist, USA. That is, his reforms for US workers would be paid out of the super-profits extracted by US imperialism in its colonies and semi-colonies. This is a left bosses’ program not very different from the Labour parties and Social Democrat parties in Europe, where sometimes revolutionaries give critical support to get these parties elected and exposed as anti-worker. Does Nader quality for critical support? No way!

The difference between Nader and social democracy is that Nader has no backing in the organised working class which sees in him a party that represents its interests. Therefore to call for a critical vote for Nader would be to sow illusions in the possibility of the Democrats reforming themselves into a social democratic alternative to the Republicans. For the same reasons that workers should not vote for Kerry, they should not vote for Nader or the Greens who also promote reformist illusions about ‘greening’ and ‘humanising’ capitalism. Nevertheless, this has not stopped many small so-called Trotskyist groups from endorsing Nader-Camejo, e.g. International Socialist Organisation (ex-Cliffite-or SWP (UK) and SWO (NZ); Socialist Alternative (CWI or Socialist Party (UK) Left Party/Solidarity etc.

Socialist alternatives?

A number of socialist groups today see the US under any fraction of the ruling class –left, right or center –as incapable of delivering real democracy. Martin Schreader of the Debs faction in the Socialist Party sees the victory of Bush in 2000 as marking the end of the 2^nd Republic (which began with the victory of the northern bourgeoisie against the southern slaveowners in the civil war of the 1860s). Similarly, a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain says that because the elections are rigged by those with wealth and power, the US needs a ‘third’ democratic revolution. The CPGB would join with Schreader in voting or the Socialist Party (US) candidates.

For all of these groups this proposed democratic revolution will require the mobilisation of the working masses to replace those with wealth and power with a genuinely democratic republic. Their programs are therefore limited to immediate and democratic demands for civil rights, union rights and economic welfare such as jobs, health, education, welfare rights, women’s and migrants rights, repeal of homeland security, opposition to the war on Iraq war etc.

Good as far as they go, but not nearly far enough! All of these demands are raised on the premise that workers can build an electoral majority and return a workers’ party to Congress and the White House to complete the national revolution.

But standing candidates on such reformist programs creates a trap for workers because it reinforces the illusion that a parliamentary majority can make capitalism democratic, when every historical example of such programs have been defeated by reactionary anti-democratic counter-revolutions, from Germany in 1919 to Chile in 1973. As we will see below the Bolsheviks avoided this trap only because they rejected the Menshevik theory that the workers led by progressive bourgeois intellectuals can force capitalism to deliver democratic demands and economic welfare.

Unlike most of the other US left parties which evolved out of Stalinism or social democracy, the Socialist Workers Party (US) is standing candidates on this Menshevik policy as a result of consciously rejecting the Leninist/Trotskyist ideological weapon used to destroy the argument of the Mensheviks in 1917 –the concept of ‘permanent revolution’.

Socialist Workers Party and Cuban ‘socialism’

The SWP candidates take a position very similar to others on the socialist left – calling for workers to complete the bourgeois revolution in the US. But their program is more credible to militant workers because of their past association with Trotsky. The SWP are the party strong influenced by Trotsky when he was in exile in Mexico in the 1930’s. Today, having broken with Trotskyism the SWP has the dubious distinction of holding up the Cuban revolution as a model of how the democratic revolution can be completed in the US.

Castro defeated the colonial power (US) and its landowning agents (Bastista etc) and put revolutionary nationalist intellectuals into power in 1959. This was a democratic national revolution in which the workers and peasants backed a left bourgeois leadership. It went beyond a national revolution only when the counter-revolution of the US and its local agents forced Castro to expropriate capitalist property. The SWP does not recognise that Castro is part of a Stalinist bureaucracy that controls the economy, which has to be removed by a ‘political revolution’ to open the road to socialism.

According to the SWP, the Cuban revolution proves that it is possible for petty bourgeois intellectuals to complete the stage of a national revolution, and then go on to make a socialist revolution. Instead of recognising that Cuba is a bureaucratic workers state where the Castroite leadership must be overthrown, the SWP elevates the Castroites to the role of the vanguard of the Menshevik two-stage transition to socialism.

Translated to the US election today, the SWP presidential candidates, like the other left reformist candidates, call for the first stage of this transition, the ‘democratic dictatorship’ of the workers and farmers i.e. a radical democratic bourgeois republic. The second, socialist, stage will only become possible when further conditions are present, in particular, mass support for the expropriation of capitalist property.

But to suggest that it will be possible for US workers to complete the bourgeois revolution short of socialism is to reject the revolutionary program of Lenin and Trotsky that made the Russian revolution possible. In taking this position the SWP rejects Trotsky’s program of Permanent Revolution and substitutes the Menshevik program of 1917 and of the Cuban revolution.

Permanent Revolution

Revolutionaries cannot call for workers to vote for any of the reformists left candidates because they delude workers into thinking that a mass workers movement can make capitalist democracy work. This was a theory rejected by Lenin in his April Theses of 1917. Until that time he and the rest of the Bolsheviks thought that Russia was not ripe for socialist revolution. Russia needed a bourgeois revolution to prepare the conditions for a socialist revolution. But the Russian bourgeoisie were too weak to overthrow the Tsar. It would be necessary for the workers and the peasantry to join forces to do what the bourgeoisie could not do. This was called the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’.

But it became increasingly obvious that to prevent the return of the Tsarist regime workers and peasants would have to take power from the bourgeoisie who would rather ally with Tsarism and imperialism than allow workers to take power. And once workers took power, what would be the point of limiting their program to the bourgeois constitution in defence of private property. After Lenin returned to Russia, he and Trotsky joined forces to win over the Bolsheviks to their position of ‘permanent’ or ‘uninterrupted’ revolution.

It proved to be the case that only the Bolsheviks could muster the workers, peasants and soldiers to defeat the Tsar, the Russian bourgeoisie and the imperialist forces. In doing this they created a workers state, expropriated capitalist property and defended the revolution from counter-revolution. In Germany, where a Bolshevik party did not exist, the revolution failed to break from the bourgeoisie and was disarmed by the reformists' promise of a ‘democratic’ republic. The new Weimar republic contained the revolutionary upturn of the masses and paved the way for the rise of fascism in Germany to smash the working class.

A Trotskyist program for the US election

Working class history written in blood reveals why revolutionaries do not give political support to any bourgeois parties but must call instead for the independent political organisation of the workers. The only program that revolutionaries can raise in the US elections is a revolutionary program. By definition such a program cannot be realised by completing the democratic revolution. On the contrary, the democratic revolution can only be completed as part of a socialist revolution.

Therefore an electoral program must be a transitional program that includes not only the most basic immediate and democratic demands but also socialist demands such as the formation of independent working class organisations like parties, councils and militias, capable of seizing power and creating a workers’ and small farmers’ state.

For the formation of a mass Workers’ or Labour Party!

For rank and file control of the unions independent of the state!

For a 30 hour working week on a living wage to combat unemployment!

For a program of public works, state-funded health, education and housing, all paid for by taxes on the rich!

For civil rights and citizenship rights for all minorities and migrants!

For the nationalisation of all capitalist property, including the banks, without compensation and under workers control!

A mass workers party based upon independent unions raising such demands will quickly come up against the reactionary state forces and propel workers to form soviets, militias, and national organs of workers power preparatory to the seizure of state power and the creation of a Workers and small farmers State as part of a federation of socialist republics of the Americas!

Law on Drugs

Drug laws are a frequent sideshow in the parliamentary circus. In the last month we have had Jim Anderton introduce Joe Walsh in the “fight against ‘P’” and the Green party has re-released its policy. Anderton plays on people’s fears by saying he is fighting organized crime with his anti-drug policy. In the workplace, employers are trying to make drug testing mandatory and to justify this level of control of the working class.

US lapdog: Jim Anderton

The Associate Minister of Health in the Labour lead NZ government sounds off with the same fighting anti-drug talk, typical of US policy.

Joe Walsh was happy to come to NZ because he is a born again drug-free rocker, who found god with in some Maori spiritual experience. He was ready to weigh in against drugs. Jim Anderton was borrowing Joe Walsh as support for a war on drugs.

Anderton tours NZ to promote himself as a politician who is doing something to protect communities. His initiative is a spin for himself, without real solutions to the problems. His only solution is police control, and ambulances to pick up the pieces.

He now says lowering the drinking age was a mistake, (but good for the taxes). And that alcohol is the main drug problem in NZ. (I doubt that Alcohol will ever become illegal – the taxes on it are too good).

Restaurant & Hotel workers threatened

“Prevalent drug use” had prompted the Restaurant Association to launch a drug and alcohol education programme, said chief executive Neville Waldren. According to research by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), up to 40 per cent of the New Zealand workforce had tried illegal drugs at least once over the past 12 months. The employers group thinks that: drug abuse was the number one cause of workplace violence and workplace theft in the restaurant industry.

Mr Waldren said because of the social nature of the hospitality industry, combined with the relative youth of the workforce, the 40 per cent figure held true for the hospitality and food service sectors. The Restaurant Association/ESR has promoted employment agreements that allowed drug testing.

Was this an attempt of the part-privatised (now competitive – commercialized) former Department of Industrial and Scientific Research (DSIR) to gain some business? They are the testing agency in the NZ. Has the commercial pressure (capitalist profit motive) over-ridden the ethics of scientific practices?

"We see this as a crucial health and safety issue. Kitchens can be hazardous places to work ... and for front of house, it is essential our staff act in a professional manner ... A barman or waitress under the influence of drugs or alcohol does not live up to that image."

Union criticises bosses’ drug testing plan

The Service and Food Workers Union has condemned employers in the hospitality industry. Union spokesman Alistair Duncan said if the industry had the welfare of its customers and its workers at heart, it would put money into training, improving wages and, for the tiny proportion of staff that had drug problem, providing assistance.

Mr Duncan said that, "just because 40 per cent of workers may have tried illegal drugs once over the past 12 months doesn't mean all of that percentage has a problem that is affecting their work." A court case between Air New Zealand and the Engineers Union, earlier this year had showed judges thought that widespread drug testing was not appropriate. The Employment Court in Auckland decided Air New Zealand could drug test some of its employees in specific circumstances. The court found that the Health and Safety in Employment Act and general law imposed "absolute duties on employers to take all practicable steps to eliminate hazards to employees and others". Because of this, the court said, it was reasonable that employers should be able to take measures, including drug testing, in "safety-sensitive areas".

Fighting unions could claw back pay rates and overtime for working anti-social hours. Let’s fight in the unions for protection against unnecessary shift-work, and against long hours for youth.

Green Party

The Green Party had a re-release of their drug policy. Capitalist class makes drug policies that control the working class, and that make sure workers are fit and ready for work, the Green Party policy is no different. They do not go so far as to advocate the legalisation of cannabis. Rather the Greens just re-classify the drugs on a scale of bad to worse. Their scale is from illegal in some situations to illegal in all situations. This leaves workers vulnerable to police harassment using the excuse of suspected drug use or trafficking.

A Marxist explanation

Drug use has been an aspect of all cultures. Drug use in current society occurs for many reasons, at different levels. A Marxist explanation, which the capitalist class will not wish to acknowledge, is that some workers may use drugs to cope with the alienation of the working class from the means of production and the fruits of our labour. Or that the some of the working class use drugs to cope with the stress of their work, Or to try to have a social life as well as work.

Marxists see drug use on a social scale as a symptom of capitalist exploitation. The real solution is the overthrow of a capitalist system, the sharing out of work, and the creation of meaningful community that truly belongs to us all. This would take out the capitalist motor that drives many people to try drugs to escape harsh realities.

To counter the capitalist anti-drug policies Marxists argue for the legalisation of all drugs. Why legalise?

No excuse for as many police. The police are used as strike breakers in times of working class resistance, the less organized state forces that may act against workers, the better.
Less police raids. Legalisation of drugs would remove one excuse of the police for raiding workers in their homes and / or searching people in their cars or walking down the street.
Less unpredictable reactions. If drugs were made in standardized laboratories then they could come at a predictable strength and quality. Like, tobacco (nicotine) other drugs could be sold with warning labels on them. Unlike cigarettes currently – it is possible to measure the drug content (e.g. amount of nicotine) and print that ‘dose’ on the labels. This is beginning to occur with alcohol; “standard drinks”.
Crime would decrease. There would be easier access to drugs and the price would fall, so there would be less and less money to be made through drug trafficking. When the price fell drugs would be more affordable, and so theft (to fund drug use) would occur less. Would the market price of “P” be so high if it was a legal drug? No – 40 years ago amphetamines (speed or ‘P’) used to be available as a diet pills on a prescription and affordable to workers.

Fight in your unions

Resist drug testing in the workplace

Protection from harsh hours of work, especially for youth

Overtime rates for anti-social working hours

Legalise all drugs : Ditch the US / UN war on drugs policy

Workers control of the production and packaging for all drugs

Against police control of workers

This short documentary raises some serious issues about the quality of news in New Zealand media. Leading with the statement that NZ has the "most deregulated, commercialised media market in the world", it examines private ownership and the drive for profits with the implication they both have a profound effect on news content. But it sees the main culprit as foreign ownership.

Bill Rosenberg of the Campaign against Foreign Ownership sets out patterns of ownership in the press, radio and television. His argument is that not only do foreign owners dominate the media market, but they influence media content. The evidence he presents of the domination of NZ media by foreign owners is incontrovertible. But what about content?

Are foreign-owned media more business biased?

The commentary points to NZ having no restrictions on foreign ownership nor cross media ownership to prevent monopolies. But although the question of influence by these foreign owners is raised, the film gives only one example.

In 2001, as part of a campaign in the New Zealand Herald promoting NAFTA, the Herald owner Tony O'Reilly brought Brian Mulroney, a former Canadian Prime Minister, to NZ to advocate for international trade agreements. At the same time, the anti free-trade lobby brought Naomi Klein to speak. Thousands attended her public meetings. The Herald covered Mulroney extensively, while Klein was relegated to soft news on the features page.

Rosenberg suggests that Rupert Murdoch papers supported the war in Iraq but gives no evidence. The Guardian ran a story claiming that the Murdoch press editors world-wide followed their boss's pro-war line (Greenslade, 2003). Wellington’s Dominion was included.

Yet The Dominion also carried stories by Robert Fisk opposing the war and that the Labour Government had popular support for refusing to join President Bush's rush to war. Therefore the claim that their editorial line supported the US invasion of Iraq would seem to be unproven.

To test Rosenberg’s claim that foreign owners influence content, the documentary makers should have looked at the only remaining locally owned metropolitan daily in NZ, the Otago Daily Times, and compared its content with the other metropolitan dailies. The NZ press has always been a profit-making enterprise, and local capitalist owners must operate their papers in competition with their foreign-owned rivals. The bottom line means bottom feeders. So putting one’s faith in local media ownership is like asking Doug Myers to give the $500 million his family made from booze to NZ charities.

The sacking of Malcolm Evans

One section of the documentary looks at the dismissal of NZ Herald cartoonist, Malcolm Evans as a case of the censorship of political views. His cartoons on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drew complaints, Evans says, from Zionists. He was asked by the editor not to submit work on the subject. Evans says he was employed on the basis of editorial independence and refused this directive.

Should we defend Evan’s absolute right to freedom of speech? The cartoon at the centre of the controversy substituted a Star of David for the second 'a' in the word 'apartheid' on a wall in a Palestinian area. Evans quotes at length from Avraham Burg, an Israeli who objects to his Government's policy on Palestine, in support his own position. He equates his case with that of cartoonist Tony Auth whose cartoon in the Philadelphia Enquirer showed Arabs herded into jail-like sections of the Star of David. Lobby groups protested strongly but Auth's editor defended him publicly. See also the Bleibel cartoon above

It is true that the Star of David associates all Jewish Israelis with their Government's treatment of Palestinians, including those who actively oppose the occupation of Palestine. One could argue that Evans is playing into the hands of Zionists who claim that pro-Palestinian supporters are anti-Semitic. Nevertheless Evans has a right to freedom of expression and we do not support his sacking. We are for mass media owned and controlled by the workers in which all views including anti-Semitism can be expressed openly and debated freely.

Profits vs. public service on quality news?

The documentary presents convincing evidence for the claim that commercial pressures undermine the quality of news. Joe Atkinson cites the deterioration of state television news since the push for deregulation in the 80s when TVNZ was made a State Owned Enterprise. But the real question is ‘how much deterioration’?

But the doco makers say it is "too soon" to test whether the new TVNZ charter with its public service goals, has made any impact on news and news programmes. Or is it?

When Bill Ralston became TVNZ's first head of news and current affairs under the charter, he came with a reputation as a good investigative journalist. But Ralston declared he wanted no more boring stories. Mediawatch (2004) has tracked the shedding of experienced journalists and the demise of the weekly documentary programme Assignment leaving Sunday to cover current affairs with stories that lack depth and context. Colin Peacock's comments imply it takes a tabloid approach;

Most often...Sunday's stories simply aren't newsworthy enough. Take last weekend - the Maori Party was registered, ACT got a new leader - but Sunday chose to trail this

[trailer for a story on infidelity]"Are you being cheated on? Are you cheating? -It's our nature, women get away with affairs far more than guys do. Convinced it will never happen to you?" (Mediawatch, 2004).

Despite such alarming early signs, Whose News? concludes by suggesting public broadcasting is a solution and not part of the problem of inferior standards of news. This is a blind liberal act of faith. It needs to be put into the context of a state ‘hollowed-out’ by international capital with few resources to fund public service media, which is somehow going to pull off objective and balanced reporting? Pull the other one. Only a media owned and controlled by the workers can come anywhere near a ‘democracy of ideas’

On September 17^th five Venezuelan soldiers and one oil worker were killed near the town of Guasdualito, in a remote corner of Venezuela’s Apure province. The soldiers and workers had been searching for oil under the jungles and swamps of Apure. Two days later, the bodies of three oil workers were discovered near the scene of the first attack. The workers’ hands had been tied behind their backs. Three more bodies have since been discovered, strewn on a road near Guasdualito. They are thought to belong to the force that carried out the September 17^th attack

The same Western media which lavishes attention on the execution of hostages in Iraq has almost completely ignored the Guasdualito killings. The politicians who shed crocodile tears over the fate of Western oil workers in Iraq have studiously ignored the murder of Venezuelan oil workers. Yet the Guasdualito killings are only the latest in a series of terror attacks against the people of Venezuela.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew to Guasdualito and told locals that the killings were part of ‘Washington’s war agenda’ to divide his country and Colombia and ‘sell lots of arms’.

The Colombian government has denied any involvement in the killings, claiming that they could have been carried out by a ‘pro-Chavez armed group’ called the ‘Bolivarian Liberation Front’. But the ‘Bolivarian Liberation Front’ exists only in the propaganda of the Colombian government, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, and the Bush administration. The spectre of the Front has been invoked again and again to justify the creation of opposition paramilitaries inside Venezuela, and to excuse aggressive Colombian ‘border policing’.

It is no surprise that Colombia has been a launching pad for renewed attacks on Venezuela. Alvaro Uribe, the most pro-US leader in South America, is fighting his own war against two left-wing Colombian guerrilla groups. US ‘military advisers’ fight alongside Uribe’s army and US aircraft criss-cross Colombian skies. Uribe has accused Chavez of aiding Colombia’s leftists; Bush’s government has gone one step further and claimed that Al Qaeda terrorists are using Venezuela’s Margarita Island as well as its border with Colombia as training grounds.

In reality, of course, it has been Colombian terrorists who have been crossing the border into Venezuela, where they try to destabilise the Chavez government with actions like the Guasdualito massacre. Most of the terrorists seem to belong to right-wing paramilitary groups aligned with the Uribe government and Venezuela’s opposition, but the possibility of the direct involvement of Colombian and US soldiers cannot be discounted. Colombian paramilitaries have not only appeared in isolated rural regions: in May of this year one hundred and thirty of them were discovered on the outskirts of Caracas, where they had apparently gathered to prepare an attack on Chavez.

Background to the current situation

One or two commentators have suggested that the Guasdualito attacks represent the beginning of a Contra-style terror campaign against the Chavez government and its supporters. In reality, terrorist attacks by the Venezuelan opposition and Colombian paramilitaries have been occurring for years in the Venezuelan countryside. Dozens members of pro-Chavez peasants’ associations have already been assassinated.

But the ongoing terror campaign Venezuela’s countryside has been overshadowed by the coup attempts of 2002 and the employers’ lockout of 2002-2003 which posed much greater threats to Chavez regime.

Chavez was rescued from the coup attempt and the lockout by the mobilisation of workers who took to the streets and the oil fields on their own initiative. After each attempt to remove Chavez failed, the opposition were quick to arrive at a deal with him to prevent the workers from taking power while they regrouped their forces. Chavez ‘pardoned’ the opposition, guaranteed the US oil supply and told the workers to go home. After the lockout failed, the US backed the agreement between Chavez and its representative, Jimmy Carter, the Venezuela opposition, and members of the Organisation of American States.

In the aftermath of its heavy defeat in the recent Presidential recall referendum, Venezuela’s opposition and its Colombian allies may choose to intensify the campaign of terror. A faction of the opposition denounced the referendum result as fraudulent, and used Venezuela’s private media to appeal unsuccessfully for a military coup and a popular uprising. They shot nine anti-Chavez protesters on the outskirts of Caracas, in an apparent attempt to repeat the faked ‘Chavez massacre’ used to justify the April 2002 coup.

The US ruling class quickly recognised the reality of the opposition’s latest election defeat. Re-assured by Chavez’ call for ‘national unity’ and the uninterrupted supply of Venezuela oil, at a time when the US is bogged down in Iraq, Jimmy Carter and the New York Times urged respect for the referendum result, criticised opposition calls for violence, and demanded a US dialogue with Chavez’s government, while Wall St responded with a healthy movement in stock values.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration has continued to keep the pressure on Chavez. At the beginning of September it used trumped-up human trafficking charges to slap 250 million dollars’ worth of sanctions on Venezuela. Fifteen US black hawk helicopters recently flew from Colombia deep into Venezuela, in a show of naked aggression. Chavez was forced to abandon plans to address the UN’s recent annual leaders’ meeting, after the US government refused to provide him with security or guarantee his safety.

Chavez army ‘reforms’

Chavez has responded to the Guasdualito massacre by announcing a major reform of his armed forces. The new ‘National Defence Plan’ will be ‘humanitarian-based’, and will aim to increase the morale of soldiers by educating them politically and giving them greater contact with the civilian population. Quoting Mao Zedong, Chavez told the people of Guasdualito that ‘In the end it will not be the side with the most arms that wins the war, but the side with the most morale’.

It is likely that Chavez is intending to purge the army of pro-opposition elements by sacking or demoting them and replacing them with loyal members of left-wing and workers’ organisations. Chavez may attempt to set up some sort of popular militia, under the control of the army, as part of the effort to dilute the power of hostile officers. After the discovery of the paramilitary force in May he announced that he wanted to find ways for the civilian population to ‘massively participate in the defence of the nation’. The army will probably also be forced to work more closely with the ‘Missions’ already set up to bypass the old opposition-controlled state bureaucracy and implement Chavez’s social policies.

Chavez has faced major opposition within the armed forces since 2000, when two hundred military men resigned en masse from his Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement. Soldiers who had fought beside Chavez during his 1992 coup were unable to tolerate the leftward trajectory of his administration. Since the April 2002 coup that briefly overthrew him Chavez has sought to purge the armed forces of these opponents, and to promote younger, loyal officers.

Chavez’s ‘National Defence Plan’ symbolises the general political programme of his government. Chavez talks of anti-imperialist war and a people’s army, but proposes no fundamental reform of the armed forces. His radical rhetoric hides a determination to work within the limits of capitalism and the capitalist state.

Chavez ‘Bonapartist’ role

Chavez was thrust into power by the mass mobilisations of workers and peasants against the neo-liberal economic attacks of the 1980s and 1990s. He came to power determined to be a ‘Bonapartist’ strongman balancing the interests of workers and capitalists against US imperialism and its local lackeys. Chavez wanted to develop a ‘national capitalism’ in opposition to US imperialism and globalisation. But the hostility of the vast majority of the Venezuelan capitalist class, who are little more than the lackeys of US business, forced Chavez to rely more and more heavily on his loyal army officers, and his mass support, among the poor workers of the barrios and the peasantry.

Chavez has enacted a number of progressive reforms, and replaced enemies in the state apparatus with representatives of workers’, peasants’ and indigenous organisations. But he has resisted calls to change Venezuelan society fundamentally by nationalising the economy under workers’ and peasants’ control.

As the self-styled successor to Simon Bolivar who fought for Venezuela’s independence from Spain, Chavez has illusions in finishing the revolution started by Boliva and creating an independent capitalist Venezuela in which workers, peasants, capitalists and state officials can all participate and share equitably in the national wealth.

But what Chavez doesn’t see is that national independence cannot succeed in a semi-colony dominated by imperialism unless it is won by the revolutionary workers leading the peasants in the overthrow of the state itself. As the defender of ‘state capitalism’ Chavez finds himself inevitably the defender of the private property of US imperialism against the threat of a socialist revolution.

Breaking the Sidor strike

The class character of Chavez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ was shown up very clearly during the bitter strike that took place at the Sidor steelworks in Bolivar state in April and May of this year. The biggest steel mill in South America, Sidor was privatised in 1997, and since then the steady casualisation of the workforce has caused a stream of industrial accidents.

When Sidor’s 11,000 workers went on strike demanding renationalisation Chavez's response was to side with their bosses and send in the National Guard, which opened fire on picketers on April the 29th. After 19 days the strike was broken, though none of the Sidor workers crossed the picket line.
The conflict at Sidor offers lessons for the Venezuelans menaced by cross-border raids and opposition assassination squads. An army which fires even rubber bullets and gas pellets on workers on behalf of a multinational company is not capable of protecting workers and peasants from imperialism.

Chavez cannot free the peasantry

Chavez’s own response to the Guasdualito massacre shows the gap between his Bolivarian politics and the interests of the Latin American people threatened by terrorism.

In his speech to the people of Guasdualito, Chavez claimed that Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries were not normally ‘enemies of our country, but if they are in our territory, from that moment on they become our enemies, because they violate the sovereignty of Venezuela’.

Yet right-wing paramilitaries and the government that backs them together kill thousands of Colombians every year. Colombia has the worst safety record for trade unionists in the world, with scores dying every year from bullets and bombs. How can Colombia’s paramilitaries cease to be the deadly enemies of workers and peasants, just because they cross an invisible border?

If Chavez were a real revolutionary, he would denounce the Colombian paramilitaries wherever they operate, and give assistance to the Colombians who fight the paramilitaries and the Uribe government. But Chavez’s fear of offending the Colombian and US governments trumps any commitment he might feel to the Colombian opponents of imperialism and terrorism.

Most of the victims of violence in the countryside have been peasants struggling for the redistribution of land held by Venezuela’s capitalist class and by foreign landlords. In November 2001 the Chavez government responded to peasant pressure by passing the Land Reform Law, which provided for the nationalisation of seventy-five million acres of idle land. Opposition governors and National Assembly members reacted furiously, and managed to tie the land reform process up in red tape. Militant peasants responded by seizing land promised to them by Chavez. In some places they divided the land into individual titles; in other places they have established huge collective farms. Between the end of 2001 and the end of last year over five million acres of land was redistributed.

Not surprisingly, leaders of peasant co-operative associations continue to be prime targets for Venezuela’s terrorists. Chavez has repeatedly urged peasants not to defend themselves with arms. He wants them to rely on the protection of the army that opened fire on the workers of Sidor.

For Workers and peasants councils and militias!

In the cities of Venezuela, the workers of the barrios are also threatened by terrorism. Urban paramilitary groups set up barricades to ‘defend’ wealthy neighbourhoods, and snipe at left-wing demonstrators from rooftops. During the National Lockout of 2002-2003, right-wing forces firebombed buses carrying workers to oil installations, and assassinated pro-government union leaders. Chavez allied himself with workers during the lockout when it was his own survival that was at stake, but at Sidor he showed that he will use Venezuela’s ‘official’ army on behalf of the class that funds Venezuela’s terrorists.

The workplace-based National Organisation of Workers (UNT) and the barrio-based Bolivarian Circles have been amongst the biggest supporters of Chavez. The UNT formed only in August 2003 is organisationally independent of Chavez’s state and his party, the Fifth Republic Movement. Chavez refused to attend the founding conference of the UNT, in protest at its call for the nationalisation of the economy under workers’ control and the establishment of a workers’ government.

In the aftermath of the Sidor strike, sections of the UNT are reconsidering their political support for Chavez. Ramon Machuca, a leader of the Sidor strike, is running for the governorship of Bolivar state independently of the Fifth Republic Movement. Machuca is positioning himself as the champion of workers dissatisfied with the limitations of Chavez’s political programme, but political independence counts for little if it does not become armed independence. A Machuca governorship will not protect the workers of Sidor. Workers’ militia need to be established to defend the factories and barrios of Venezuela’s cities. The UNT and the Bolivarian Circles must arm their members. They must go to the barracks and win over the rank and file of Chavez army and split them from the officer corps.

Workers’ and peasants’ militia will give teeth to a movement to turn the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ from being a trap to contain and defeat the workers, into a program for socialist revolution.

· Only the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of the media under workers’ and peasants’ control can stop the stream of lies and provocations which the Venezuelan opposition uses to foment a coup or a US invasion.

· Only the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of private businesses, banks and of cultivated as well as idle land can kill the power of the Venezuelan capitalists who send death squads after peasants.

· Only the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of the property of multinational companies can break US power in Venezuela and make a proletarian internationalist foreign policy possible.

· Only the splitting of the army of the bourgeois state replacement of the old army with workers’ and peasants’ militia can prevent a repeat of the tragedy of Sidor.

For a Revolutionary Party

The international socialist and workers’ movement must oppose all attempts by US imperialism and its auxiliaries to terrorise and destabilise Venezuela, without sowing any illusions in the Chavez government. Many leftists have opposed US interference in Venezuela, protesting the coup of 2002 and the lockout of 2002-2003, but very few have even noticed Chavez’s repression of the workers of Sidor.

Many of the socialist currents influenced by the Stalinist or Castroist views that the national bourgeoisie are ‘progressive’ support Chavez politically, and sow illusions in the masses that the Bolivarian ‘Revolution’ can defeat imperialism. For example, the ‘Hands Off Venezuela’ campaign initiated by the International Marxist Committee has attracted support from political parties and trade unions around the world, and helped to raise awareness of US aggression in Venezuela, but it has been marred by the very uncritical attitude its leading figures show to Chavez’s government.

The current campaign of its tendency in Venezuela, the Revolutionary Marxist Current, to occupy the giant paper mill VENEPAL in Moron, Carabodo state, under threat of closure by its US owner Smurfit, makes the basic mistake of calling on Chavez as a bourgeois President to arm the workers and occupy the plant, instead of calling on them to arm themselves, occupy the plant and break from Chavez.

To the left of reformist groups like the RMC, a number of self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups understand that Chavez cannot help but turn his guns on the workers. They are prepared to defend Chavez against the US, but say they will never support him politically.

Yet when it came to the test, they gave a critical vote of confidence to Chavez against the opposition in the recall referendum. CWG too called for a critical vote for Chavez as a military bloc against the opposition. A minority in CWG still holds this position. But a majority of CWG now accepts that the effect of critical support was a vote of confidence in Chavez helping him to contain the masses from organising and arming independently.

This thrust all of the currents that voted confidence in Chavez into the role of left-wing cheerleaders of the World Social Forum (WSF). The WSF supports the governments of Chavez, Lula, Kirchner and Castro as being capable of making a two-stage transition from capitalism to ‘market socialism’ without the masses playing an independent and leading role.

In Aotearoa, the Alliance Party is in the same camp. It advertised a recent reception for the Venezuelan ambassador to Australia under the headline ‘The Bolivarian Revolution Comes to Wellington’. The equation of the revolutionary potential of Venezuela’s workers and peasants with Chavez and his state is both wrong and dangerous.

In Aotearoa and across the world, socialists and the workers’ movement should turn opposition to US aggression in Venezuelan into support for the armed independence of the workers and peasants who can alone defeat imperialism.

In practice this requires the urgent creation of a revolutionary party able to lead the worker and peasant masses to socialism. The CWG is for the creation of a revolutionary Trotskyist party in the ranks of the UNT, the Bolivarian circles and the peasant organisations.

That party must have as its program the central demand that these organisations call for a national congress that raises the call to break with Chavez’ ‘national unity’, with the Bolivarian state machine, and to form organs of workers’ power as the basis for a workers’ revolution and a socialist republic of Venezuela as part of a United Socialist States of Latin America!

For a Socialist Republic of Venezuela!

Class Struggle #58 October-December 2004

Contents

The Lessons of Beslan

Compensation for Crims

Mercenaries in Iraq The Tragedy of Sabar

Students Occupy University in Boliva

US ‘Show’ Elections

Drugs war on workers

Review of Who’s News

Workers defense of Venezuela

War on Terrorism

The Lessons of Beslan

New Right Backlash

COMPENSATION FOR CRIMS?

Winding up the mob

White Collar Crime

Mercenary Activities Act

SAS supplies Mercs

Algeria

Soldier of Fortune Heaven

Socialist Internationalism

Bush exploits fear

Bush lite

Leftists for Kerry

Return to ‘ultra imperialism’

Million (50,000) Man March

Nader is a left Democrat

Socialist alternatives?

Socialist Workers Party and Cuban ‘socialism’

Permanent Revolution

Law on Drugs

An international drugs war on workers

Law on Drugs

US lapdog: Jim Anderton

Restaurant & Hotel workers threatened

Union criticises bosses’ drug testing plan

Green Party

A Marxist explanation

Fight in your unions

Resist drug testing in the workplace

Protection from harsh hours of work, especially for youth

Overtime rates for anti-social working hours

Legalise all drugs : Ditch the US / UN war on drugs policy

Workers control of the production and packaging for all drugs

Against police control of workers

Background to the current situation

Chavez army ‘reforms’

Chavez ‘Bonapartist’ role

Breaking the Sidor strike

Chavez cannot free the peasantry

For a Revolutionary Party