Following the nationally-coordinated police evictions last month of Occupy Wall Street and encampments across the country, on December 12 the Occupiers struck back. Ports up and down the West Coast were blockaded, from Seattle to San Diego. Despite a barrage of hostile propaganda in the media, opposition from union bureaucrats and heavy police repression in some places, overall the blockade was successful -- this time.

From our correspondent in France

Today in the United States, under the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, xenophobic and racist violence is escalating. The criminal agents of the Border Patrol have reached the point of killing in cold blood, before the eyes of hundreds of witnesses. On May 28, construction worker Anastasio Hernández Rojas was beaten to death by some 20 agents of the U.S. Border Patrol. Then on June 7 in Ciudad Juárez, across the river from El Paso, Border Patrol agents fired into a group of youths on the Mexican side of of the border, murdering 14-year-old Adrián Hernández with a shot to the head. These crimes are part of a policy of racist repression looking for scapegoats, typified by the legalization of xeonophobia and police use of racial profiling in Arizona’s SB 1070 law. But while Obama criticize the law, “Obama, listen, we are in the struggle,” his thugs are killing on the border. It is an illusion to think that the commander in chief of U.S. imperialism, or his counterpart and semi-colonial underling, Mexican president Felipe Calderón, will defend the workers. It is necessary to mobilize the power of the working class to defend immigrants.

The earthquake that wrecked the capital of Haiti and surrounding areas on January 12 produced human tragedy of almost unfathomable proportions. It has been termed “the most destructive natural disaster in modern times.” Five months later, Haiti is no longer in the headlines or on the nightly TV news, but for the hard-hit Haitian population the scene has hardly changed. Now a new disaster is in the making as the hurricane season begins. This was a calamity made by capitalism: the earthquake was predictable and was predicted; the inferior construction methods are the result of Haiti’s poverty, and the swollen slums were the result of U.S. policies that have destroyed Haitian agriculture, forcing peasants off the land. On top of everything, Haiti is under imperialist occupation: Washington makes sure it has ultimate control of the strategically placed island, as it has throughout the Cold War and since. Haiti's devastation is not the result of “natural” causes or even “neo-liberal” policies – it is the product of the oppression of this semi-colonial country by the imperial masters ever since black slaves rose up to abolish slavery and throw out the colonialists two centuries ago. No new “economic model” can resolve this: what’s required is a new Haitian Revolution, a workers revolution overthrowing capitalism throughout the Caribbean and extending into the heart of imperialism.

On the evening of May 20, the notorious Shock Force of the Puerto Rican Police brutally attacked a demonstration of hundreds of students and workers protesting against Governor Luis Fortuño. The assault took place in the luxurious Sheraton Hotel, where the privatizing, anti-worker governor was presiding over a fancy fundraising dinner. As our reporter recounts, the police brutally beat demonstrators with riot clubs and pepper-sprayed everyone with tear gas and pepper gas. This was the response of the government to the workers strike two days ago in support of the student strike at the University of Puerto Rico, which has lasted almost a month. It is urgently necessary to translate the worker-student unity that was on display on May 18 into powerful strike actions that shut down key sectors of the economy of the U.S.' Caribbean island economy. We publish here the on-the-spot report from our correspondent who witnessed and participated in the protest.

On December 1, President Barack Obama officially announced a massive escalation of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, tripling the number of American military personnel there since Obama took office. This move marks a decision by Washington to continue the colonial occupation of Afghanistan indefinitely, and with it the bloody slaughter of the Afghan people. Obama’s claim that he would “begin the transfer” of U.S. forces by mid-2011 was just sucker bait for gullible liberals. “Afghanistan Is Now Obama’s War,” proclaimed the media from New York to London to Mumbai. But Afghanistan has been the Democrats’ war since the moment it was launched, in September 2001, and together with the war on Iraq, it is a bipartisan imperialist war. No one in Washington thinks the Afghan puppet army will be able to handle the Taliban. The actual U.S. strategy is not to defeat the Taliban but to weaken it enough so that elements of the Islamists can be brought into a political deal. It is striking that in the United States, a majority of the population is turning against the war even though there hasn’t been a major national antiwar march in more than two years – ever since the start of the last presidential election campaign. At protests following Obama’s announcement of more troops to Afghanistan, organizers carefully avoided any signs mentioning the president by name. Our Internationalist contingent, in contrast, carried signs including, “Hey Obama, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? Defeat Imperialist Slaughter in Afghanistan, Iraq.”

The threat to Mumia Abu-Jamal's life is increasingly ominous. His lead attorney, Robert Bryan, warns: "There is an escalated effort by the authorities to see him die at the hands of the executioner. This is the most dangerous time for Mumia since his 1981 arrest." The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down Jamal's two appeals. If it were to rule in favor of the prosecution's appeal, this would open the way for Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell to issue a third warrant of execution, which he has vowed to do. Contrary to the misplaced expectations of many, the Obama administration is not about to save Mumia. Around the world, hundreds of thousands have marched for this courageous champion of oppressed. Trade unions representing millions of members have rallied to the defense of Mumia. It is urgent to expand this support into powerful labor/black action, appealing to the integrated union movement to join with the black, Latino and immigrant poor to demand that he be liberated.

At midday on December 27, Israeli warplanes launched a massive bomb attack on the densely populated Gaza Strip. More than 270 Palestinians were killed as wave after wave of U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters dropped more than 100 bombs. The Israeli military said they were targeting Hamas installations, but numerous civilians were killed, including a number of children, as schools had just let out for lunch. The Zionists' attack on downtown areas was deliberate mass murder. The Israeli slaughter was carried out with the full knowledge and a green light from its imperialist patrons in Washington, as well as U.S. client regimes such as Egypt. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International condemn the Israeli mass murder in Gaza and call for action by the international working class in defense of Gaza and the Palestinian people, including efforts to break the siege.

On November 27, three leftist union leaders in the Venezuelan state of Aragua – Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernández and Carlos Requena – were gunned down by an assassin. The murder came hours after the unionists had led a workers occupation of a Colombian-owned milk plant which had been brutally broken up by state police. All three were leaders of the UNT (National Workers Union) and of the USI (Socialist Left Unity), a party which has opposed attempts by the government of Hugo Chávez to impose state control of labor, and has fought the rightist opposition backed by imperialism. They may have been murdered by assassins hired by the Colombian company, by elements connected to the police of outgoing state governor, a former Chávez ally, or by supporters of a current official of the governing United Socialist Party. In any case, despite Chávez’ socialist rhetoric, the reality of the bourgeois Bolivarian “revolution” in Venezuela today is that leftist unionists are murdered while the forces of capitalist state repression back up the bosses. While many leftists have called on the Chávez government to investigate, Trotskyists call for organizing workers defense guards and imposing workers control of production. Venezuela today is stuck at a crossroads. Building a Bolshevik-type workers party based on Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution is key.

Barack Obama dropped a bomb on his young enthusiasts at Columbia University on September 11. The heavily Democratic crowd booed McCain when he called for the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) to be brought back to campus (it was driven out in 1969 by protests against the Vietnam war). Liberal students expected a different answer from Columbia alum Obama, but the forum was a symphony of agreement as both candidates campaigned for expanding the military and pledged their enthusiastic support to U.S. imperialism. That should have been the tip-off for anyone who hadn't figured it out by then: Obama is no "peace candidate" but like McCain he is a certified imperialist war candidate.