Summer 2009 No. 29 The $2 2 Internationalist For Workers Revolution Against the Dictatorship! Upheaval in Iran Getty Images ppp. 10-29 No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime! U.S. Imperialism Hands Off! Dossier: Workers’ Struggles in Mexico . 46-67 Honduras: Obama Administration’s First Coup. 80, 40 Australia $2, Brazil R$3, Britain £1.50, Britain: Labourites and the Police. 30 Canada $2, Europe 2, India Rs. 50, Japan ¥200, Mexico $10, Philippines 50 p, War On Abortion Rights Escalates. 7 S. Africa R10, S. Korea 2,000 won 2 The Internationalist Summer 2009 In this issue... How the “Anti-War” Movement Paved Order Now! the Way for Obama's War .................. 4 Assassination of Courageous Doctor This 56-page bulletin documents the fight of the in Wichita: War on Abortion Rights Internationalist Group to Escalates............................................. 7 defeat the imperialist war Mass Protests Rock Iran: No to All with working-class Wings of the Mullah Regime!.......... 10 action, and the struggle of the West Coast Election Fraud? Undoubtedly, longshore union against But Media Ignored Ahmadinejad government strike- Support ............................................. 15 breaking and racist attacks. Iran’s Islamic Republic in Turmoil – What Program for Struggle? ........... 20 US$2 Her Majesty’s Social Democrats in Bed with the Police ..................... 30 Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Brazilian Trotskyists Fought to Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. Drive Police Out of the Unions ....... 38 Honduras: Coup d’État in the Maquiladora Republic ..................... 40 Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Two Years of the Cananea Strike: Internationalist Group on the Internet Mobilize to Defend Striking http://www.internationalist.org Mexican Mine Workers! ................... 46 Now available on our site: Mexican Miners Strike for Safety, Founding Statement of the Internationalist Group Against Anti-Worker Attacks ........... 47 Declaration of the League for the Cananea: A Century of Fourth International Articles from The Internationalist Internationalist Class Struggle ....... 52 Articles from Vanguarda Operária Mexico: The Plundering of Pemex .... 60 Articles from El Internacionalista Articles and documents in German, Flim Flam from the GEM on French and Russian Workers Control ............................... 67 The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal Marxist readings Bring Out Workers Power to Stop Migra Raids and Deportations! ....... 68 Visita la página del Grupo Internacionalista en Internet At Stella D’oro, the Visite a página da Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil Struggle Continues........................... 69 Matérias de Vanguarda Operária A luta para libertar Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilize New York Unions’ Power to Documentos marxistas sobre a luta pela libertação do negro e da mulher Win the Stella D’oro Strike! ............. 71 Where Were You, David North? ......... 77 Honduras: The First Coup of the The Internationalist Obama Administration .................... 80 A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the Reforging of the Fourth International Publication of the Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, Cover photo: Demonstrators set burning Marjorie Salzburg. barricades in streets during June 20 The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by march protesting election fraud in Iran. 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. 29 C-701 Summer 2009 Summer 2009 The Internationalist 3 Defeat U.S. Imperialist Occupation – Upheaval in Iran For Workers Strikes Against the War! How the “Anti-War” Movement Paved the Way for Obama’s War pp. 10-29 ...........................4 Mass Protests Rock Iran – No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime............10 Dossier: Workers’ Election Fraud? Undoubtedly, But Media Struggles in Mexico Ignored Ahmadinejad Support...............15 Iran’s Islamic Republic in Turmoil – pp. 46-67 What Program for Struggle?.........20 Two Years of the Where Were You, David North...................77 Cananea Strike: Mobilize to Defend Striking Mexican “Bolshevik Bobbies” ? Mine Workers!.........46 Her Majesty’s Mexican Miners Strike for Safety, Against Social Demo- Anti-Worker Attacks crats in Bed with ..................................47 the Police ......... Cananea: A Century of Internationalist Class ...................... 30 Struggle ............................................................... 52 Mexico: The Plundering of Pemex ....................... 60 Brazilian Trotskyists Fought to Drive Flim Flam from the GEM on Workers Control ....... 67 Police Out of the Unions ............... 38 Putsch in Honduras Assassination of Coup d’État in the Courageous Doctor in Maquiladora Wichita Republic ......... 40 The First Coup of War on Abortion the Obama Rights Escalates Administration .... 80 ........................ 7 New York Labor Battle Bring Out Workers At Stella D’oro, the Power to Stop Struggle Continues ........................ 69 Migra Raids and Deportations! Mobilize New York Unions’ Power ...................... 68 to Win the Stella D’oro Strike!........ 71 4 The Internationalist Summer 2009 Defeat U.S. Imperialist Occupation – For Workers Strikes Against the War! How the “Anti-War” Movement Paved the Way for Obama’s War The following article is taken from a presentation by an Interna- tionalist Group spokesman for a June 10 Revolution Film Club fo- rum at Hunter College in New York. The United States has been of- ficially at war for over seven and a half years, starting in Afghanistan in September 2001, going on to Iraq a year later, now in both countries and with escalating attacks on Pa- kistan. And that’s only the declared war in the Middle East and South Asian theaters. There are also the ongoing counterinsurgencies in the Philippines and Colombia, both of which involve hundreds of U.S. sol- diers, special operations units, CIA teams and so on. Not to mention the tens of thousands of American troops stationed on the Korean pen- President Barack Obama addresses U.S. troops at “Camp Victory” in Iraq, insula, threatening to take military April 7. Under Obama, like Bush, tens of thousands of U.S. troops will continue action against North Korea. to occupy Iraq for the indefinite future propping up a puppet government. This is U.S. imperialism, the most extensive empire and now there is nothing. A few thousand at most, and that not powerful military force the world has ever known. The U.S. very often. Why is that? rains death down on countries on a mass scale. More than It’s not that the war is popular. The demonstrations at 600,000 dead in Iraq as of 2007, according to estimates by the the outset of the war were as big as any during the Vietnam British medical magazine Lancet. That’s on top of 3 million War. Five hundred thousand in Midtown Manhattan on 15 killed in Indochina during the 1970s, 2-3 million killed in Ko- February 2003 protesting against the impending invasion of rea before the 1953 ceasefire. Plus nuking Hiroshima and Iraq. There were even 300,000 marching in New York after Nagasaki in World War II, firebombing Tokyo, Dresden, and so the U.S. took Baghdad. But the protests have dwindled year on. U.S. rulers claim they are waging a war on terror. But ter- after year. One reason for that is that the casualty rates of rorist attacks like the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center are U.S. troops are not nearly as high as they were in Indochina. small potatoes compared to the industrial scale slaughter the Something over 6,000 between Iraq and Afghanistan, com- U.S. carries out, supposedly in retaliation but actually in order pared to more than 50,000 U.S. dead in Vietnam. Of course, to get the world to bow down to Washington’s diktat. there are large numbers of severely injured, maybe 30,000 or The Afghanistan-Iraq-Pakistan war is already the long- so. But overall the impact is a lot less. est war in U.S. history except for one: the Vietnam War. What Second, there is the fact that in Vietnam there was a draft was particularly significant about that imperialist war is that army, so that you had middle-class young men scrambling the U.S. lost it, for the first time ever, and while it was losing, for draft deferments, taking off for Canada, and so on. Whereas a big antiwar movement grew up in this country, which was a now you have a so-called “professional” army, and what factor in Washington’s decision to withdraw, but much less amounts to a poverty draft. They basically recruit poor youth, than the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese. blacks and Latinos from the urban ghettos and barrios, and What’s striking is that by this point in the Vietnam War, white youth from rural areas and economic backwaters like eight years on, there were hundreds of thousands marching Appalachia or disaster zones like Midwest industrial regions in the streets of New York and Washington opposing the war, where industry has shut down. Summer 2009 The Internationalist 5 But there is also a major political factor behind the dis- of the presidential campaign, and then when they finally had appearance of the “antiwar” movement, and that is the role one in Washington this past March there were maybe a couple of the leaders of this movement in tying protests to the Demo- thousand demonstrators at most, and they led them away from cratic Party. This is key. For years, protests were dominated the White House across the river into Virginia, not even to the by banners denouncing “Bush’s war.” That was false, it was a Pentagon but to war contractors in Arlington. They didn’t want deliberate lie for a very specific political purpose.