The U.S. is facing a crisis--and possible defeat--of historic proportions in Iraq. Sharp debate is raging over how to proceed, with Bush himself preparing to announce reshaped plans in a major address after New Years.

Two things stand out in all this.

First, government officials, media pundits, etc. are trying to enlist people in supporting their particular plan--and the war. “What should ‘we’ do in Iraq?” is how the debate is framed, as if “we” are all in it together. In fact, all the plans being debated represent efforts to maintain the domination of the Middle East by the U.S. imperialists. All would likely mean ongoing war, more intolerable suffering for Iraqis, and an intensification of the current horrific dynamic created by the clash between reactionary imperialism on the one side and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism on the other. These plans, as we’ll see, have nothing to do with the interests of the great majority of people, either in Iraq, the Middle East more broadly, or the U.S. itself.

Second, the war will continue--and may very well escalate--unless there’s a “surge” of something sorely missing now: mass opposition to the entire war that is not bound by the terms of the current debate within the government and bourgeois media. Without that, nothing good will come of the current struggle within the ruling class.

As we go to press, the world received the sudden news of the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Carefully covered over or minimized in the obituaries is Hussein’s history of cooperation with the United States before he ran afoul of them with the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In particular, the U.S. encouraged and backed Hussein in his war against Iran in 1980--a war which took nearly a million lives, and which was pursued to maintain and reinforce U.S. strategic domination of the Persian Gulf region.

Hussein’s execution raises more questions than it settles. Why the rush? And who decided? The liberal imperialist New York Times made a point of quoting one of Hussein’s lawyers shortly before the execution that he was “expressing the views of many” when he said that “No one knows when it’s going to happen except God and President Bush.” True? And if so, why?

I want to move on now—everything that’s been spoken to so far forms, in one aspect, a kind of a background for this—to speak more directly and fully to the question: What is the new synthesis ?

The first point that needs to be made is that this is something that is dealing with real world contradictions—it’s not some idealist imaginings of what it would be nice to have a society be like. When we talk about a world we want to live in, it is not a utopian notion of inventing a society out of whole cloth and then trying to reimpose that on the world once again. But it is dealing with real-world contradictions , summing up the end of a stage (the first stage of socialist revolutions)1 and what can be learned out of that stage, attempting to draw the lessons from that and dealing with real-world contradictions in aspects, important aspects, that are new. It is a synthesis that involves taking what was positive from previous experience, working through and discarding what was negative, recasting some of what was positive and bringing it forward in a new framework. So, again, it’s dealing with real-world contradictions—but in a new way.

Leading scientists and academics recently came together for an important conference, “Beyond Belief--Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.” The event was sponsored by the Science Network and held at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California Nov 5-7. The conference website (http://beyondbelief2006.org/) described the impetus for the gathering this way:

“Just 40 years after a famous TIME magazine cover asked ‘Is God Dead?’ the answer appears to be a resounding "No!"…. Religions are increasingly a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. Fundamentalist movements--some violent in the extreme--are growing. Science and religion are at odds in the classrooms and courtrooms. And a return to religious values is widely touted as an antidote to the alleged decline in public morality. After two centuries, could this be twilight for the Enlightenment project and the beginning of a new age of unreason? Will faith and dogma trump rational inquiry, or will it be possible to reconcile religious and scientific worldviews? Can evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience help us to better understand how we construct beliefs, and experience empathy, fear and awe? Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we treat religion as a natural phenomenon? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?

“This is a critical moment in the human situation.”

[This report is being printed in Revolution, #075. The second report is also available now on Revolution Online]

We have recently returned from an investigative reporting trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. We were able to participate in one of the human rights delegations investigating and documenting the repression going on in this southern Mexican state, and had the opportunity to meet and talk with many different kinds of people. The following report was written while we were in Oaxaca--and there will be more to come!

First, a little background: In the pre-dawn hours of June 14, 2006, over 2,000 police brutally attacked an encampment of striking teachers, their families (including children), and supporters, while they were sleeping in the zócalo, the town square, of Oaxaca City. The encampment had been in the zócalo since May as part of the teachers’ strike to demand improvements in education, assistance for poor students in the rural areas, and a pay raise. The teachers usually go on strike in May, but it had never been met with such repression. Hundreds of people were injured. The teachers were dispersed temporarily but then fought their way back into the zócalo.

[Part 2 of this interview is printed in Revolution #075. The entire interview is available on Revolution Online]

Among the deep problems for the U.S. imperialists in Iraq is the broad and growing dissension and even outright opposition to the war and occupation within the U.S. armed forces. The Pentagon itself estimates that 8,000 soldiers have gone AWOL since the 2004 invasion of Iraq. There have been some high-profile cases of GI resistance to the war. The Army recently announced it was court-martialing Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq.

And a group of active-duty GIs have launched a public campaign -- Appeal for Redress -- calling for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and an end to U.S. occupation. The Appeal states:

“As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.”

Revolution recently interviewed co-founders and organizers of the Appeal effort. Jonathan Hutto is a Seaman in the United States Navy, stationed at Norfolk, VA. Liam Madden is a Sgt in the United States Marine Corps stationed at Quantico, VA. He is an Iraq war veteran who was deployed in Haditha, Iraq.

The following excerpt is from: “Daring to Change Minds and Move Millions: The Case for Impeachment Now,” a speech given by Sunsara Taylor (World Can't Wait advisory board member and writer for Revolution newspaper) in NYC on December 10.

For five years we've gone through this dance where the Bush regime proposes--or gets caught doing something--outrageous. At first the Democrats make some noises of opposition, then they get reasonable, and eventually capitulate, and the world is made worse.

There's been Roberts, Alito, the Patriot Act I, the Patriot Act II, the Terri Schiavo theocratic lunacy, the NSA spying, the Military Commissions Act, it just goes on and on and on. And now, we're seeing the same thing happen--again--with the war on Iraq. The Democrats promised a “new direction,” but already they are accommodating to Bush, saying it’s too messy to pull out, and maybe best to send in tens of thousands MORE troops.

But there is another force in society. There are people. Millions and millions of people. People who are sick of this war.

Cheers to Sean Penn whose acceptance speech upon receiving The 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition, was a timely wake up call deeply challenging complicity and calling for impeachment of the Bush Administration. Penn expresses his sense of moral responsibility to speak out and act. With a wry sense of humor and outrage he exposes a lot of hypocrisy in the media and the current political atmosphere. There are some valuable insights, including on the case for impeachment. He poses to us “I've got a feeling about how we can begin to change this process and I want to pass it by you” and then goes on to demand that the Bush administration be held accountable

On December 19, open war broke out in the Horn of Africa. With U.S. backing and support, at least 15,000 troops of Ethiopia's battle-hardened armed forces invaded neighboring Somalia and quickly routed the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), an Islamic fundamentalist force that had only recently consolidated power over much of Somalia. Guided by U.S. intelligence and satellite information, the invading army drove the UIC back from the Ethiopian-Somali border and, after barely a week of fighting, poured into Somalia's coastal capital of Mogadishu, accompanied by some armed units of their allies, the so-called "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG) of Somalia.

The Holocaust took place in the period leading up to and during the second world war between imperialist powers, when Hitler's Nazi regime carried our horrific acts of mass murder in Germany and other countries. The Nazis started out with round-ups of communists and then targeted Jews, trade unionists, Roma people (often known as "Gypsies"), homosexuals, and others. As Hitler's troops invaded other lands, Poles, Slavs, Russians, and others fell victim to the Nazi death machine. By the end, six million Jews and millions of others had been killed in pogroms and massacres and in infamous extermination camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor.

Revolution received an unusual number of responses to the articles about the rampage of police murder in the last month and we are reprinting some below.

My condolences go out to Sean Bell’s family and also the other two gentlemen who barely escaped from it all. You know I refuse to keep sitting back listening, looking at what is going on in the world with our people… Who in their right mind would keep ignoring this and continue to let this go on. We had this issue before with the police, and it happened sadly to Sean Bell, like he wasn’t nothing. He was somebody’s son, he was a little girl's father, and almost someone’s husband. Bottom line he had family. Really… I’m now starting to think we are “their targets” especially our black males.

*****

I must say that this is yet another disturbing case of police brutality. It is not fair and it sends really bad messages to everyone. I wish that this system would stop trying to protect these officers. Emotions are so high that people are on edge. Case in point, I was harassed three different times by the NYPD. I am totally legal, very well educated and I have no prior record, the police are trying to intimidate people of color. I will not be intimidated. My father is an officer in Michigan and he doesn’t act like this. What is really going on? The thought is scary and the truth is even scarier.

Imagine: For one moment, step into the shoes of an immigrant. You are forced to come here in order to have any kind of future for yourself or your children--and because U.S. imperialism has made it impossible for this to happen in your own country. You go deeply into debt for the privilege of risking your life to cross the razor wire and death fields of the border, where more than 400 people die every year trying to cross. You finally get here, only to find yourself working in the sweaty, deadly hell of the slaughterhouse, where you can feel your life bleeding away bit by bit. And every day you live in fear--that you might never come home from work, or that a routine traffic stop might mean never seeing your children again. Which is exactly what happened last month to nearly 1,300 people.