4) U.S.-British Aggression Under Attack
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) Palestinian View of Sharon-Barak
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
6) Wall St. Cheers, World Protests Iraq Bombing
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
IN THE STREETS AND EVEN HALLS OF GOVERNMENT: U.S.-
BRITISH AGGRESSION UNDER ATTACK
By John Catalinotto
on Center took place in many U.S. cities protesting the raid.
The French imperialist government questioned the purpose of the
attack. Even Turkey, a NATO member and U.S. client state, noted
that no U.S. planes had left from bases in Turkey and complained
it hadn't been consulted. NATO members Germany, Spain and
Italy made critical statements.
Russia, China, Cuba and many Arab nations denounced the
attack. The Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee on
Feb. 19 advised President Vladimir Putin to unilaterally lift
sanctions on Iraq.
Egypt, which had backed the U.S.-led "coalition" in the 1991 war
on Iraq, denounced the attack.
the air embargo on Iraq to send a planeload of medical and other
humanitarian goods to Baghdad.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Baghdad itself in the days
following the raid, chanting, "Yes to Jihad," or holy war, "no to
submission." There were also mass demonstrations in Palestine
and in Egypt.
The Russian Center for Cooperation with Iraq in Moscow issued a
statement condemning "the superpower's desire to demolish the
whole fabric of Iraqi society, to destroy its ancient monuments and
thus its culture, to murder its people in the greatest numbers and
to send the nation in disarray."
raq. The demonstrators burnt an effigy of George Bush in front of
the American Center as a mark of their protest.
In Britain many Labor Party members of parliament spoke out
against the Labor government's role in the attack. A 24-hour, all-
week vigil is set to begin Feb. 22 in London.
IN THE UNITED STATES
al Action Center would mobilize there as it has every time in the
past.
o come."
The next morning, demonstrators stood before the Westwood
Federal Building in Los Angeles, holding signs and banners, and
chanting "No bombing! No sanctions! No blood for oil!"
Anti-war and anti-capitalist activists held a protest the morning after
the bombing in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., opposite the Army
Recruiting Station. Despite a temperature of 15deg. F and high
winds, they held a banner demanding "No more blood for big oil
profits."
m, not the Iraqi people."
Metro Detroit Against Sanctions called out over 100 people on Feb. 19 to
protest the bombing. A spirited picket line carried signs and chanted at the
busy Woodward Avenue/Warren Avenue intersection, bringing their message to
rush-hour commuters driving by.
ttention, with CNN reporting it every half hour. The IAC national office was
inundated with media calls the following day.
Center/ IAC, among others, protested the bombing. There were
similar protests in Philadelphia and a dozen other cities by Feb.
20, according to IAC spokesperson Sara Flounders.
[IAC organizers in Washington, New York, Buffalo, N.Y., Detroit,
San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Richmond, Va., contributed to
this report.]
- END -
g. Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 22. helmikuu 2001 10:58
Subject: [WW] Palestinian View of Sharon-Barak
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH MAJED NASSAR: A PALESTINIAN VIEW OF
SHARON-BARAK
[The following is excerpted from a translation of an
interview in French with Dr. Majed Nassar a week before the
Israeli election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It appeared
in the Belgian newspaper Solidaire.]
"Why should Sharon be worse than Barak? The latter was
already a disaster!" Palestinian doctor Majed Nassar doesn't
mince words.
"The Intifada will last if there are not just peace
proposals." Nassar thinks that the Palestinians should
continue their resistance because "we have right on our
side."
Dr. Majed Nassar lives in Beit Sahour, a village near
Bethlehem on the West Bank of the river Jordan. He is
director of the Palestinian "Union of Health Work
Committees"--10 medical centers in Gaza and on the West
Bank.
As a surgeon, he has treated scores of victims of shootings
by the Israeli army and settlers in the past months. And he
is the father of two teenaged sons.
"The second Intifada that is raging through the occupied
territories is very strong among the youngsters," he said.
"Many of them are ready to take great risks and even risk
their lives in the struggle against Israeli occupation. It
is hard to keep them home."
Anger and frustration among the Palestinians is very
intense. "The territory around Bethlehem is closed from the
world outside. Tourism--traditionally the source of income
in this place of pilgrimage--has been stopped completely."
As a result, he explained, "40 to 50 percent of the working
population has no job.
"In the occupied territories a quarter of the population is
now under the level of poverty. Besides, you have the many
clashes with the Israeli guards who react at the throwing of
stones by shooting with the intention to kill and by bombing
villages like Beit Sahour and Beit Sala.
"Grenades and rockets hit less than 500 meters from my home.
Others were not that lucky."
Does Nassar believe that the wearisome negotiations between
the Palestinian authorities and the Israeli government have
any chance to succeed in these circumstances?
"Everything depends on which proposals are made. If it is
once again an Israeli-U.S. dictate that the Palestinians
have to swallow, then you can forget it, even if there is
enormous pressure on the Palestinian negotiators.
"Don't forget that Clinton threatened Yasser Arafat until
the last moment with a full-fledged war from Israel with
U.S. support. Barak was only negotiating to survive
politically.
"Some say that if Ariel Sharon is elected prime minister,
the situation will get worse. I wonder if this is so. Barak
was only elected as premier thanks to support from the Arab
Israelis. And yet he didn't bring any improvement to the
peace process in the past one-and-a-half years.
"The number of settlements and roads between the settlements
has increased rapidly. He threatened to start a war against
his neighbors and he made a mess of the Intifada. So you
cannot call him a statesman. For us the difference with
Sharon is very small."
A lot of observers fear that the second Intifada could still
last very long. Dr. Nassar explained: "You must not forget
that the Palestinians have right on their side to oppose
this bloody occupation. How long it will last depends on the
will of the people to go on with the resistance.
"And it is not a question of weapons, because Israel has a
lot more weapons. If we give in, we will lose still more
than we have lost already: the greatest part of our land,
and many good folks among our people. Then we will lose
ourselves.
"Don't forget that we already tried once to get peace
through the Oslo agreements. But we have seen nothing from
the peace dividend. Every day houses are blown up, fields
are occupied by settlers and orchards are cut down. Our land
is dying. The world should not let this happen."
- END -
(Copyright 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:
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 22. helmikuu 2001 10:58
Subject: [WW] Wall St. Cheers, World Protests Iraq Bombing
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BUSH BOMBS BAGHDAD/ WALL STREET LOVES IT; WORLD
PROTESTS
By Deirdre Griswold
On Feb. 16, using long-range, precision-guided missiles, 24
U.S. and British jets bombed Iraq's capital city of Baghdad.
The planes kept a safe distance, letting their deadly
weapons find the targets from miles away. Having wreaked
their destruction without even having to view the scene of
the crime, the pilots flew back to their bases and ate
dinner.
The planes that drop the bombs don't come roaring out of the
sky anymore. There is no advance warning--no rumble of jet
engines, no whistle or whine as deadly missiles seek their
targets. No time to seek shelter.
Suddenly, amid the normal sounds of a normal day, come the
deafening explosions. They are followed by screams, air raid
alarms and the shrill sirens of ambulances rushing the
wounded to hospitals.
If anything qualifies as a war crime, shouldn't it be such
cowardly attacks on a civilian population?
PENTAGON CALLS IT 'ROUTINE SELF DEFENSE'
The Pentagon couldn't even come up with an excuse for the
bombing raid, which left two people dead and 20 severely
wounded. So they called it "a routine mission of self
defense." Their twisted logic goes this way: Because the
U.S. and Britain have unilaterally declared two-thirds of
Iraq to be a "no-fly zone," meaning that only they can fly
there, and because the Iraqis respond to their constant over-
flights with anti-aircraft fire, these two imperialist
powers have the right to bomb the largest city in the
country.
Within hours protests against this crass and brutal display
of "might makes right" began around the world. Washington
and London were condemned by demonstrators and governments
alike. Palestinians marched in Gaza in solidarity with Iraq.
In Baghdad thousands carried banners reading, "Aggression
will not scare us and sanctions will not harm us."
Protests erupted in Egypt, Lebanon, and other Arab
countries, but also in Europe, Asia and across the United
States.
The public in the U.S. and other imperialist countries are
fed a steady diet of scare propaganda associating Iraq with
"weapons of mass destruction" and "international terrorism."
This supposedly objective reporting turns reality upside
down. It is the Pentagon that threatens the world with its
awesome destructive power.
Even Scott Ritter, the main weapons inspector sent into Iraq
by the United Nations after the Gulf War, had to quit his
job in 1997 to go public with the information that Iraq has
no weapons of mass destruction. Ritter also confirmed that
many of the weapons inspectors were really spies for the
U.S., passing on information that could be used in future
air strikes--which is why the Iraqi government finally
banned them.
While a few newspapers reported briefly on Ritter's
revelations, the propaganda blitz against Iraq has continued
as before.
POLITICS, ECONOMICS OR BOTH?
What forces are pushing the Bush foreign policy team to
enrage the world's peoples while making even Washington's
allies have to distance themselves at the very beginning of
this new administration?
Some may see in this a confirmation of Bush's conservative
politics and a determination to show that he will be as
aggressive as his father's administration. All that is true,
but the many years of U.S. war against Iraq cannot be
explained solely on the basis of internal U.S. politics.
After all, the supposedly liberal Clinton administration has
maintained sanctions on Iraq that have cost an estimated 1.5
million lives, largely children under five. The military
encirclement and daily over-flights have been embraced by
Democrats as much as Republicans.
And what about the Labor Party government in Britain led by
Tony Blair? It is as hawkish on Iraq as the Bush
administration, even though its domestic social program
purports to be more popular.
What both governments have in common is their intimate
relation with the giant corporations and banks that depend
on super-profits from Middle East oil. When the reins of
political power pass from Democrat to Republican, or even
from Conservative to Labor in Britain, there is no break in
the continuity of capitalist class rule. The form, the
image, the rhetoric may change, but the essence of the state
remains the same. U.S. and British jets bomb Iraq to tell
the whole oil-rich region that no one should dare challenge
the status quo. And that status quo rests on the extraction
of tremendous wealth by the global imperialist corporations
and banks.
Clinton pretended that his pounding of Iraq was based on
moral grounds, that he was doing it for the Iraqi people, to
"help" them get rid of the big bad Saddam Hussein. Bush, on
the other hand, has disavowed a so-called "nation-building"
role for the U.S. military since even many conservatives are
weary and disillusioned with countless interventions that
only increase hatred of the U.S. abroad. So Bush doesn't
even try to hide his connection to the oil corporations,
arguing instead that what's good for Big Oil is in the
"vital interests" of this country.
It's like the Walrus and the Carpenter in Lewis Carroll's
poem. Both ate all the oysters they could get their hands
on. But one pretended to cry for his victims--so that he
could hide his gluttony behind a handkerchief.
Of course, defining the class character of the U.S.
government as a tool of monopoly capitalism only explains
the general outlines of Washington's foreign policy. It does
not address the particulars of why an attack now, at this
time, instead of next month or next year.
Often critics of this or that act of brazen imperialist
bullying will argue that it was done at the wrong time, in
the wrong place. Some of the pundits now appearing on
television are of this stripe. Frightened by the burning
anger against the U.S. erupting all over the world, they
argue that the tactics of the politicians and generals are
clumsy and will boomerang.
Few, if any, help educate the public by putting a spotlight
on the real problem. They dare not say that those who make
policy are merely doing the bidding of the super-rich ruling
class.
Why don't they remind everyone that the owners of the banks
and corporations bought the politicians with hundreds of
millions of dollars in campaign contributions, lobbying
perks and slush funds? Why don't they point out that this
class owns the generals and admirals, too, by guaranteeing
them lucrative positions in the corporate world when they
retire from their 20 years of "service" beating up on the
resource-rich countries of the Third World?
BOMBS FALL, WAR STOCKS GO UP
The timing of this event reflects not only Bush's political
needs but the bigger needs of the corporate ruling class.
The connection between militarism and the profit system has
never been clearer.
According to Michel Chossudovsky, a professor of economics
at the University of Ottawa who closely follows trends on
Wall Street, the only high-tech stocks that are not being
battered these days are those that are directly connected to
military production.
He describes in an article posted on emperors-clothes.com
how the bombing of Iraq buoyed a shaky stock market that had
been heading into a "near meltdown."
At one point on Feb. 16, stocks had dropped by 5 percent.
But then came the announcement that Baghdad had been bombed
and the market recovered. The London Sunday Mail sighed in
relief that "the American market didn't collapse. It didn't
plummet. Indeed, the fall was less than 1 percent. This was
a routine day--unless you happened to live in Baghdad."
Chossudovsky explained that all week investors had feared a
crash. But "In the last hours of trading on the 16th,
defense stocks spiraled; oil and energy stocks boomed
following news that Iraq's oil industry might be impaired.
The value of Exxon, Chevron and Texaco stocks shot up.
Harken Energy Corporation--in which George W. Bush served as
company director and corporate consultant before entering
politics--gained 5.4 percent by the end of trading. Harken
Energy happens to be a key player in Colombian oil (with a
multi-billion dollar U.S. military aid package under 'Plan
Colombia' on hand to protect its investments). Harken Energy
CEO Mikel Faulkner is a former business associate of George
W."
The bombing also "reassured" investors that Bush intends to
go ahead with a broad strategy of reinventing the U.S.
military machine, spending hundreds of billions on new
technologies like the so-called "missile defense shield"
that haven't even been developed yet.
The idea is to make U.S. troops invulnerable behind high-
tech weapons systems so that imperialism can dominate an
increasingly resistant world without having to fear a revolt
from within, as happened during the Vietnam War. But empires
have a way of crumbling, no matter how powerful their
militaries, when the ambitions of the rulers clash with the
needs of the people.
Right now, workers in the U.S. are being laid off and
trampled by the same corporations that order the deaths of
Iraqi children so coldly. Depriving them of social services
like welfare, social security, Medicare and good public
schools in order to beef up the military and cut taxes for
the rich is going to bring the global class war home.
Nevertheless, the military-industrial-banking complex can't
help being true to its nature. The corporations are already
lined up for the juicy contracts that a bigger Pentagon
budget will bring. Says Chossudovsky, "The new buzz phrase
on Wall Street is that--despite the slowdown of the U.S.
economy--defense stocks constitute 'a safe-haven shelter
from the dot-com implosion.' " Boeing, General Dynamics,
Lockheed Martin, Northrop- Grumman and Raytheon--the "Big
Five" defense contractors--are growing fatter as civilian
companies sink into bankruptcy.
The Bush team is attempting to hold off the capitalist
economic crisis already underway through a form of military
Keynesianism. After campaigning loudly about getting
government out of the economy, these lackeys for big
business want to use state intervention to stimulate growth
and avoid the inevitable downturn. But instead of financing
a program of civilian construction like that in the 1930s,
they want the government to step in and reorganize the
flagging high-tech sector under military guidance.
None of this will work. It is only setting the stage for a
much bigger battle over which class will control and shape
society. Will it continue to be the elite propertied group
whose insatiable hunger for profits drives them to greater
exploitation, oppression and war? Or will the vast majority,
the workers, who now must struggle every day just to keep
their heads above water, find a way to break free of the
political control of the big business parties and assert
their own class interests?
- END -
(Copyright 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)
