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Internationalist Asian Tsunami Disaster - Capitalist Tidal Wave of Death January-February 2005 No. 20 _$2 !2 "" " Internationalist Asian Tsunami Disaster - Capitalist Tidal Wave of Death Tsunam! refugees in Calang, Aceh, in northern Sumatra Island. Indonesian government is using disaster to tighte~ military control of rebellious province. 2 The Internationalist January-February 2005 In this issue... The Rape of Falluja: With the intensification of U.S. War Crime .................. ~ ...................... 3 repressive legislation and Marxism increasing police-state Vs. Boycott Colonial Occupation measures, an Bonapartisrn "Election" in Iraq ...................................... 4 examination of the Marxist analysis of and Imperial Coronation in D.C ........................... 8 policy toward bonapartism is vital. Asian Tsunami Disaster Readings include articles by Marx and Capitalist Tidal Wave of Death ................... 1 O Trotsky, as well as selections from the Lisbon Earthquake, 1755: From the present-day Enlightenmenttothe French Revolution .. 12 Trotskyist press. A "Natural Disaster" Foretold .................... 14 Indonesian Military Butchers US$1.50 Out of Aceh! ............................................ 16 Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Don't Beg for Charity, Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. Fight for Workers Revolution ................. 21 Marxism vs. Islamic Fundamentalism ....... 24 Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Beware of Not-so-Non-Governmental Organizations ......................................... 24 Internationalist Group on the Internet Mexico, 1985: From the Earthquake http://www.internationalist.org to the Popular Front ................................ 26 Now available on our site: Rosa Luxemburg, Martinique .................... 28 • Founding Statement of the Internationalist Group Attention Wal-Mart Workers: • Declaration of the League for Union Victory in Quebec ......................... 29 the Fourth International • Articles from The Internationalist • Articles from Vanguarda Operaria U.S.-Sponsored Coup d'Etat • Articles from El lnternacionalista in Ukraine ............................................... 33 • Articles· and documents in German, French and Russian The Mexican Working Class Is • The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal Fighting Back .......................................... 40 • Marxist readings Brazil: We Don't Need a New Social-Demo­ cratic Party of Disillusioned Lu/istas ..... 49 Drive Brazilian Troops Out of Haiti! ............ 54 "Million-Worker March": Back-Door Support for Capitalist Democrats .......... 56 Revolution pages .................................. 58-64 Internationalist A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism 1 "Fatherland Security" Hits CUNY ............... 58 for the Reforging of the Fourth International Publication of the Internationalist Group, NYC City Council Hearings: section of the League for the Fourth International Police Repression at CUNY .................... 62 EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, Drive Military/Cop Recruiters Off Campus .. 63 Marjorie Salzburg, Socorro Valero. The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: Subscription blank graphic based on a [email protected] Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. poster by V.A. Rodchenko, Books (1925). No.20 +~ C-701 January-February 2005 January-February 2005 The Internationalist 3 '"O ~ (')" ~ IJJ ll> !:::!. )> co Cl> ::i (") ' ,,Cl> ill :J (") Cl> -b co (/) (/) Cl> Marines ride down main street in Falluja on November 14, after a week of bombardment and wholesale destruction of the city by U.S. troops. DECEMBER 4-After the American "terror war elections" came "The hospital was selected as an early target because the the post-election U.S, terror attack in Iraq. George Bush fig­ American military believed that it was thy source of rumors ured he would celebrate his reelection with a bang: send the about heavy casualties," when the U.S. attacked Falluja in Marines into the Iraqi rebel stronghold of Falluja and flush out April, wrote the New York Times (8 November). "It's a center of - the varmints. That would show the world that he means busi­ propaganda," a senior American officer said. Rumors? Propa­ ness. At mid-day on Wednesday, November 3, Democrat John ganda? Iraq Body Count, whose tallies of Iraqi dead since the Kerry conceded the election in a phone call to the White House. invasion have been extremely conservative, has done a de­ By Saturday, November 6, the assault o~ Falluja began. U.S. tailed analysis of all available figures, concluding that out of rockets took out their first target: the Hai Nazal Hospital, a new 800-plus persons killed during the U.S. ' April attack (336 bur­ facility that was just about ready to open its doors. A spokes­ ied in Falluja's soccer stadium), some 600 were civilians, half of man for the First Marines Expeditionary Force said, "A hospi­ them women and children. 1 A hospital is a place where civilian tal was not on the target list." But there it is, reduced to a pile casualties could receive treatment. But according to the U.S. of rubble. Then on Sunday night the Special Forces st<?rmed military spokesmen, there were "no civilian casualties," so no the Falluja General Hospital. They rounded up all the doctors, hospital was needed. Likewise, a hospital is a place where pushed them face down on the floor and handcuffed them with injured Iraqi insurgents might be treated~ But the objective of plastic straps behind their backs. With the hospital occupied, the assault on Falluja was to kill the insurgents, every last one, those wounded by the U.S. aerial bombings headed to the so again, no hospital was needed. The Fourth Geneva Con­ Falluja Central Health Clinic. And so at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, ventic::m on Warfare declares in no uncertain terms, "Civilian November 9, U.S. warplanes bombed that clinic as well, killing hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the 35 patients, 15 medics, 4 nurses, 5 support staff and 4 doctors, infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the according to a doctor who survived (The Nation, 13 Decem­ object of attack but shall at all times be respected and pro- ber). U.S. fire also targeted an ambulance, killing five patients 1 See Ir~q Body Count, "No Longer Unknowable: Falluja's April Civil­ and the driver. ian Toll is 600" (26 October 2004) http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ 4 The Internationalist January-February 2005 ,-------------------------------------,• Boycott Colonial Occupation Election in Iraq!· Battered by a raging insurgency that has engulfed cen- it could backfire. They fear it could exacerbate tensions tral and northern Iraq, the U.S. imperi~lists are hoping that between Sunni Muslims and Shiite leaders thirsty for power a bogus "election" on January 30 can offer them a respite. after more than a century under the boot of the Ottomans, This is not in any sense a "democratic" vote, even seen the British, an imposed monarchy, and the brutal Baathist through the perverted prism of bourgeois electoralism in regime 0f Saddam Hussein - installed with U.S. aid in which capitalist money men cast the decisive votes. This order to slaughter Iraqi communists. rigged ballot is an attempt by the American butchers of No "election" under u~s. occupation can be anything Falluja and torturers of Abu Ghraib to legitimate their but a fraud. All the parties and candidates in the January 30 bloody occupation and destruction of Iraq. masquerade (induding the phony Communists) are pup- The Iraqi pseudo-election is a counterinsurgency tac- pets of the imperialists. Any ''transitional government" which tic that the U.S. military has repeatedly used, from the Phil- comes out of this hoax will be a front for the Pentagon just as ippines in the 1950s to Vietnam in the '60s, the Dominican the "Coalition Provisional Authority" and the "Iraqi Governing Republic following the U.S. invasion in 1965, and El Salva- Councir' that preceded it. If a sectarian/communal civil war dor in the 1980s, where it installed a government of the results, it will be the direct result of American policies. death squads. The January 30 farce should be actively What's needed instead is a united uprising of Iraqi boycotted by all opponents of colonial rule, in an effort to toilers to drive out the U.S.IUK imperialists and their. smash this "electoral" fat;ade for U.S. terrorist rule. stooges. For workers revolution to sweep away all the The Bush regime has pushed hard for this "election." theocratic, monarchical and military potentates of the Near Saner minds in Washington and in Baghdad's "Green East, along with the Zionist butchets who are a deadly Zone" where occupation authorities are holed up worry that menace to Arab and Hebrew working people! '---------------------------------~---~tected by the Parties to the conflict." That was written in 1949, through properly," and "you have to do that by beginning to not after World War IL The Geneva Conventions also outlaw prac­ back off of Falluja and other places." Neither the Democratic tices like torture· of prisoners. But according to the White House candidate nor any of the other liberal mouthpieces saict a word legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, 'no'Y promoted to Attorney against the recent criminal assault on Falluja, which they fully General of the United States, the strictures
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