>blatant disregard for humanity. Also, as with Agent Orange,
>mass outrage and protest can prevent the U.S. military from
>creating another environmental disaster as it did in
>Vietnam.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <005a01bf6818$7d4d8780$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Blowing the whistle on Pentagon's chemical weapons disposal
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:14:57 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Jan. 27, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BLOWING THE WHISTLE:
>PENTAGON FLUBS CHEMICAL WEAPONS DISPOSAL
>
>By Gery Armsby
>
>On Jan. 11 at the National Press Club in Washington, Gary
>Harris exposed unsafe chemical weapons incineration carried
>out at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah
>between 1996 and 1998.
>
>Harris is a former employee of EG&G Defense Systems, Inc.,
>the company that owns the Tooele plant and operates it under
>Army contract. He told reporters that Army and plant
>officials responsible for safely disposing of sarin nerve
>gas deliberately falsified tests and documentation of the
>plant's ability to handle disposal of the lethal material.
>
>Sarin nerve gas is a deadly chemical weapon that the U.S.
>military used during the Vietnam War--in particular in
>carrying out atrocities against the Laotian and Vietnamese
>people. There is evidence that the Pentagon also used sarin
>against U.S. GIs who had resisted fighting, such as in
>"Operation Tailwind" in 1970.
>
>According to Harris, the problems at the plant create
>public-safety and environmental hazards that have
>implications in Utah and beyond. "The incineration pro cess
>itself should not be going on," Harris said, because "it is
>inherently dangerous--it does not destroy the [sarin nerve]
>agent."
>
>Harris also reported that metal parts tainted with sarin
>gas residue were sent to a Denver scrap business over a
>three-year period. He said procedures at the plant, only 50
>miles from Salt Lake City, were such that the sarin
>substance could have easily escaped into the environment.
>
>Harris faced threats of being fired for speaking out.
>Before he disclosed his report, four other former workers
>from the Tooele incinerator had reported environmental and
>safety problems in the past.
>
>The Tooele plant was built in 1994. It has been in
>operation since 1996. It is the only plant in the United
>States designed to incinerate deadly nerve agents and other
>chemical weapons stockpiled in U.S. military bases, some
>since World War II.
>
>Harris voiced his concerns in a period where the state
>apparatus and media have exaggerated supposed threats of
>terrorism against U.S. targets. In particular, these
>"threats" concern the use of biological and chemical warfare
>by foreign-born people. The authorities have made multiple
>arrests in the last few months on this racist, anti-
>immigrant basis.
>
>On Jan. 13, Pentagon officials revealed that $58 million
>will be spent in the next few months to create 17 National
>Guard teams trained to respond to chemical, biological or
>nuclear attacks against the U.S. by "terrorists."
>
>The Pentagon is the biggest purchaser of chemical,
>biological and nuclear weaponry. It has used them more than
>any other military against combatants, civilians and its own
>soldiers. Who are the real terrorists?
>
>Millions of pounds of lethal and volatile weapons fester
>in military bunkers all over this country and at U.S.
>installations around the world. The Pentagon can't figure
>out how to safely destroy these aging weapons--even spending
>$600 million dollars on the Tooele plant seems to have been
>a bust. But it can drum up enough fear of the chemical and
>other weapons capacity of hypothetical terrorists to justify
>and expend billions of dollars more.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <006001bf6818$926bb7e0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Globalization, militarism & the U.S./NATO war against Yugoslavia
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:15:33 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Jan. 27, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>GLOBALIZATION, MILITARISM & THE U.S./NATO WAR AGAINST
>YUGOSLAVIA
>
>By Richard Becker
>International Action Center
>San Francisco
>
>[Excerpts from a speech at the No to WTO/People's Assembly,
>Seattle Nov. 28, 1999]
>
>The world's attention this week is on Seattle, the World
>Trade Organization, and the struggle against what has become
>one of the buzzwords of the 1990s, "globalization." But what
>is "globalization"? Is it a new phenomenon? I'd like to read
>a few words from a pamphlet written more than 150 years ago.
>
>"The need of a constantly expanding market for its
>products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of
>the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
>establish connections everywhere _ . The bourgeoisie,
>through its exploitation of the world market, gives a
>cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
>every country. _
>
>It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt a
>bourgeois mode of production. It compels them to introduce
>what it calls civilization into their midst, in other words
>to become bourgeois themselves . . . In a word, it creates a
>world after its own image."
>
>Those words are from the most popular and widely
>translated work ever written, "The Communist Manifesto." It
>shows that globalization is not new.
>
>Our definition of imperialist globalization is the process
>of breaking down all barriers to the free movement of
>capital and its right to freely exploit the resources and
>labor of all countries.
>
>Some in the left have misunderstood this to mean that
>capital has become denationalized. There was a theory in the
>early 1990s of "global mobile capital," that capital had
>become detached from its national roots. This is like an old
>theory called ultra-imperialism. It's a false theory that
>conveniently--and not coincidentally--relieves its
>proponents of the need to fight against their own ruling
>class.
>
> It allows some on the right, and the social-democratic
>left as well, to argue that the U.S. capitalists have become
>unpatriotic--as if at some point they were patriotic to
>anything besides profits.
>
>U.S. CAPITAL IN DRIVER'S SEAT
>
>The Pentagon, the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines
>do not exist to defend capital in the abstract or in the
>general sense. They exist to protect and serve U.S. capital-
>-not only to extend and maintain its domination in what used
>to be called the Third World, the oppressed countries, but
>also vis-a-vis its imperialist allies and rivals. The
>domination of U.S. capital is the overall strategic
>objective of U.S. policy.
>
>Maximization of profit is, of course, what drives the
>system. But maintaining U.S. hegemony is the guiding
>principle of U. S. strategic doctrine. Globalization yes,
>but globalization with U.S. capital in the driver's seat.
>
>How does all this relate to the U.S./ NATO war against
>Yugoslavia? What is the relation ship between globalization
>and militarism?
>
>Ten years ago, neither Yugoslavia nor Iraq would have
>seemed likely targets of U.S. military attack. Both are key
>countries in key strategic regions.
>
>While the United States had been fiercely hostile to both
>of them after their respective revolutions--Yugoslavia in
>1945, and Iraq in 1958--it seemed to change over the years.
>Ten years ago the U.S. policy toward both countries was
>officially friendly.
>
>In 1990 and 1991 however, all this friendliness suddenly
>evaporated. The benign mask dropped away, revealing the true
>face of U.S. policy. The U.S. rulers proceeded to first
>demonize and then to devastate both countries--tearing one
>to pieces, and inflicting on the other a human-made famine
>and deadly epidemics.
>
>Both the Yugoslav and Iraqi people have suffered immense
>human, productive and cultural losses. Both were subjected
>to nearly a decade of war, blockade and subversion. Today
>the U.S. government's official policy toward both countries
>is called "regime change." The imperialists are continuing
>their aggression against both countries.
>
>What happened to bring about such a cataclysmic change?
>Was there a dramatic change in the government of either
>country? No, those governments are basically the same today.
>Did they change their basic orientation? No, not at all. Did
>either one of them menace the United States? No, neither is
>in a position to do so.
>
>The real change that took place was inside neither Iraq
>nor Yugoslavia.
>
>What happened was a sharp change in the balance of forces
>in the world brought about by the disintegration and then
>collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in
>Europe in the period of 1989 to 91. Imperialism's
>friendliness toward Iraq and Yugoslavia lasted exactly as
>long as the existence of the socialist camp.
>
>First the governments in the newly reunified Germany and
>subsequently Britain, France, Italy and above all the United
>States set out to carve up the Yugoslav Federation, fanning
>the flames of chauvinism while arming the most reactionary
>nationalist elements within that country.
>
>U.S./NATO ROLE DESTROYING YUGOSLAVIA
>
>The destruction of Yugoslavia with its extremely diverse
>and intermingled population required a bloody civil war. The
>imperialists were only too glad to do everything they could
>to make the civil war as atrocious and brutal as possible.
>The United States and the other NATO powers used an
>integrated, economic, military and diplomatic strategy to
>destroy the former Yugoslavia.
>
>The economic austerity plan implemented by the
>International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the 1980s
>played a major role in heightening the tensions between the
>different republics and provinces of Yugoslavia that had
>different standards of living, within the federal state.
>
>The threat of trade sanctions and other penalties was used
>to support the secessionist movements in Yugoslavia in 1991
>and 1992. Economic sanctions--a total blockade of the
>country that was based on the sanctions implemented two
>years earlier against Iraq--were brought to bear on
>Yugoslavia in 1992 and imposed until 1996.
>
>Both the U.S. and German regimes, but increasingly the
>U.S., armed, funded and trained the Croatian and Bosnian
>military. Washington insisted that NATO must carry out the
>bombing of Bosnia in the summer of 1995. Meanwhile the U.S.-
>retrained-and-led Croatian army ethnically cleansed half a
>million Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia where they
>had lived for many centuries.
>
>This was the integrated strategy. The combination of
>sanctions, blockade, economic and financial measures, NATO
>bombing and U.S. intervention forced the Yugoslav government
>to sign the Dayton Accords in 1995.
>
>And 1999 brought a new round of war--a massive 78-day
>bombing campaign by NATO, led by the Pentagon, and then new
>economic sanctions, which exist today. Washington justifies
>this policy by claiming it was standing up for human rights!
>
>U.S. capitalism grew wealthy largely through the
>exploitation of millions of people who were enslaved,
>carried out the greatest ethnic cleansing in history on this
>continent by clearing out the Native inhabitants, and put
>its nation together by war and conquest. What right do U.S.
>rulers have to speak to any people anywhere in the world
>about human rights? None.
>
>WASHINGTON'S GOALS IN BALKANS WAR
>
>Washington and NATO launched a war against Yugoslavia for
>the same reasons the U.S. army invaded Cuba, Puerto Rico and
>the Philippines in 1898. They want to subject Central and
>Eastern Europe to a new form of colonial domination. They
>don't care about the lives of any of the peoples of
>Yugoslavia any more than they cared about the rights of
>workers and farmers in Cuba or Puerto Rico or the
>Philippines a hundred years ago.
>
>Just since World War II, Washington has fought the Korean
>War; overthrown the elected governments of Guatemala, Iran,
>Chile, Indonesia; fought wars against the people of Central
>America; invaded Leban on; carried out a genocidal war in
>Indo china, in which millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians,
>Laotians and more than 50,000 U.S. troops died; and enforced
>an economic block ade against Iraq that has taken the lives
>of more than a million and a half people, half of them
>children under the age of 5.
>
>Given this horrific and bloody record, are we to believe
>President Clinton or Madeline Albright or Gen. Wesley Clark
>on certain days wake up in the morning and say, "Human
>rights are being threatened somewhere in the world--we must
>act!" No, of course not; it's ludicrous to think so.
>
>The real objective of the war on Yugoslavia is to re-
>balkanize the Balkans--to break up Yugoslavia into small,
>easily controllable and digestible pieces, in order to
>insure U.S./NATO, and especially U.S., domination of this
>key strategic region.
>
>While 10 years ago it had none, today the United States
>has military bases in Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia
>and Croatia. Washington and its NATO partners have cut up
>Kosovo into little pieces, occupation zones.
>
>I want to read a quote from Thomas Friedman, who writes
>for the New York Times--a thoroughly despicable individual
>who is now held up as the highest example of U.S.
>journalism. Friedman wrote approvingly on March 28, 1999:
>
>"For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act
>like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of
>the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's
>cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of
>the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for
>Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States
>Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
>
>NEW U.S. MILITARY BUILDUP
>
>A new military buildup is already under way, despite the
>fact that the United States today already spends more on its
>military that the rest of the UN Security Council combined.
>Having spent $19 trillion since 1940 on the military, the
>U.S. government proposes to spend an additional $1.2
>trillion in the next four years.
>
>The purpose of this military buildup is to provide
>security for corporate America's far-flung empire. It is
>part of the globalization strategy.
>
>It is also designed to assure that U.S. capital is pre-
>eminent over all others. This was laid out in a Pentagon
>"White Paper" publicized in March 1992, soon after the
>collapse of the Soviet Union, called the Defense Planning
>Guidance Document. It stated forthrightly that the top U.S.
>aim in the post-Soviet era should be to prevent any
>potential rival from even considering the possibility of
>trying to achieve competitive balance with the United
>States.
>
>U.S. military superiority is the key to U.S. imperialist
>global economic domination. The United States does not have
>superiority over its rivals just by virtue of its economic
>system and technology. But what it does have is this vast
>military apparatus to implement its will.
>
>There are many in the anti-war movement who were deluded
>into thinking that the demise of the Soviet Union and the
>end of the Warsaw Pact would usher in a new era of peace and
>demilitarization. Those who held this hope did not
>understand that imperialism is still imperialism. And the
>imperialist leaders, instead of thinking about peace, saw
>the changed relationship of forces in the world as a new
>opportunity to secure domination over key markets, labor and
>resources.
>
>Instead of becoming more peaceful, they became more
>aggressive.
>
>We do not live, unlike what so many in academia tell us
>now, in some post-modern era. We still live in the era of
>imperialism--of imperialist war and socialist revolution.
>Imperialist globalization, based on the maximizing of super-
>profits and the transnational banks and corporations, is
>laying waste to the world and to its people.
>
>At the same time, this process expands every day in every
>country the ranks of those who were described in that same
>pamphlet that I quoted earlier as the gravediggers of the
>system--the working class.
>
>Today imperialism appears to be riding high; the
>imperialists feel strong. But I want to quote another great
>revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, who once said, to
>paraphrase, that "every ruling class thinks itself
>invincible until history teaches it otherwise." Our job is
>to organize the movement that teaches them otherwise.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <006601bf6818$a6d146a0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Unita losing Angola war
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:16:07 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Jan. 27, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>NAMIBIA COOPERATES TO CLOSE BORDER:
>IMPERIALIST PUPPET UNITA LOSING ANGOLA WAR
>
>By G. Dunkel
>
>All signs point to the success of Angola's army (FAA) over
>UNITA's war machine.
>
>The FAA seized Jamba in late December. UNITA had controlled
>that city ever since apartheid South Africa invaded in 1975
>and turned over what it conquered to its ally UNITA.
>
>Even areas of Angola close to the Zambian border--which
>UNITA has controlled since the early 1970s when it was
>cooperating with the Portuguese colonial authorities--have
>fallen to the FAA.
>
>The Angolan and Namibian armies are cooperating in closing
>the southern border of Angola to UNITA, which had backed a
>secessionist movement on the Namibian side of the border. The
>Namibian armed forces have crossed their northern border into
>southern Angola in hot pursuit of suspected UNITA rebels
>operating on both sides of the border.
>
>Over the New Year weekend, the FAA seized 100 tons of UNITA
>arms hidden around Andulo, a city in central Angola, long held
>by UNITA. According to FAA Gen. Jorge Barros Ngutu, these were
>sophisticated weapons that would have allowed UNITA to conduct
>chemical warfare against the Angolan government. (Angop-
>Angolan Press Agency, Jan. 5)
>
>According to a report in The Post of Zambia (Dec. 30), UNITA
>is pleading "for peace talks with the ruling MPLA government."
>UNITA feels that "the talks should be serious and go further
>than all the stages reached in previous engagements."
>
>As Angola's military successes have become clearer, peace
>monitors, non-governmental aid agencies, United Nations
>committees, foreign-policy institutes in Washington and
>Johannesburg, and the media have started expressing concern
>about the war.
>
>These sources write of "the war weariness of the Angolan
>people," or "their longstanding suffering." They claim that
>"the idea of peace through a full military victory over UNITA
>is also illusory."
>
>These same sources said little or nothing two years ago when
>UNITA restarted the civil war because it had lost the
>election.
>
>Some analysts even go so far as claiming that the support
>Angola and Namibia give President Laurent Kabila in the Congo,
>along with their cooperation in crushing UNITA, is
>destabilizing southern Africa.
>
>However, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, in a Jan. 5
>meeting with a delegation of senior Angolan officials, said
>his government was going to cut any cooperation between South
>African politicians and businesses and UNITA. (Angop, Jan 11.)
>
>What has really been destabilizing and destructive in Angola
>for the past 30 years has been how first Portuguese and then
>U.S. imperialism used UNITA to thwart the aspirations of the
>Angolan people and destroy their livelihood. By destroying
>UNITA as a military force, the Angolan people will win major
>relief from imperialist intervention.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
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