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People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo (Online Edition) Vol. 30 No. 15/ November, 2003 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 http://www.lrna.org ****************************************************************** 1. EDITORIAL: BILLIONS FOR WAR, WHILE POVERTY SPREADS Across the board, the Bush Administration is pouring billions into the reconstruction of Iraq, while unemployment, poverty and a spreading anxiety over the future decimates the quality of American life and destroys the fabric of American society. The intention of the Bush Administration is neither humanitarianism toward the Iraqi people nor heartlessness toward the American people. Feeling doesn't enter into it. Their purpose is cold, calculated maximization of profit. And if that means shifting billions of social wealth from US society into the hands of the capitalists so they can make billions more in Iraq while Americans and Iraqis fall deeper into poverty, homelessness and misery, so be it. Let's take the case of homelessness. The Bush Administration has allotted $100 million to build seven new housing communities in Iraq; 20,000 new homes are slated for construction. For the American people, the Bush Administration's current budget has provided money for only 5,000 new low-income housing units. Meanwhile, 75,000 poor families have been cut from Section 8 housing assistance since Bush has been in office and the Administration has recently announced a 30 percent cut in operating funds for public housing. It is true that $35 million has been allocated to end "chronic homelessness" in America (a meagre amount in itself), but the Bush Administration's limiting of the definition of homelessness to those with physical or mental disabilities is so narrow as to be almost useless. Certainly it's about time those suffering from substance abuse, serious mental illness, a developmental disability or chronic illness should be provided for, no matter how inadequate the funding, but this is not the totality of homelessness in America. The needs of the millions of homeless who are not disabled will be left unmet--families with children (who account for 36 percent of the homeless), men and women on their own, and the rapidly escalating number of youth on the streets, to name a few. The capitalists are thinking globally and in their class interests only. To compete in the global market, they must force the value of human labor lower and lower. To continue to maximize profit they must create the conditions which force people to accept the conditions dictated by global capitalism. The application of labor-replacing technology assists in this, and their political power achieves the rest. In the US, the capitalists are steadily and purposively destroying every vestige of social responsibility for the well-being of the American people. With nothing to fall back on, the American people are increasingly forced to accept life under the conditions most beneficial to the capitalists. Providing public housing or guaranteeing that every American has a home would only undermine the capitalists' efforts, and would contradict the capitalists' economic interests. In Iraq, the form is different but the intention is the same. The purpose of the war against Iraq, and of the so-called reconstruction efforts, has been to use Iraq as an entering wedge in opening the entire Middle East to global capital. To accomplish this, Iraqi society has to be "reconstructed" to make it more amenable to global investment and speculative interests, and in the process providing billions in contracts to an array of US and some European and favored Middle Eastern corporations. As a result, the entire legal and political structure is being dismantled and recreated in the image of free trade and neoliberalism. Education, health care and housing are all being privatized--in itself a goldmine for corporations. The Iraqi people are being told they will have to stand on their own two feet and not to expect anything from their government. It is true that there is a profound discrepancy between the billions being spent in Iraq and the paltry shameful amounts spent on the needs of the American people. But the real discrepancy is between the needs of the masses of the world and those of a handful of billionaires and trillionaires now running the world. The minority uses the wonders of technology to reconstruct a world that benefits only their own narrow interests while billions starve. The majority needs the wonders of technology to be used to reconstruct a world that provides for the needs of all. |
