Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: Walter Lippmann Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 10:03 AM Subject: [CubaNews] No to war frenzy! (Workers World) No to war frenzy! Workers World Party statement http://www.workers.org/ The massive and stunning attacks Sept. 11 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon pose tremendous challenges to the working class and the progressive movement in this country and around the world. The U.S. capitalist ruling class and its political establishment are now preparing a warlike response that can only lead to more suffering and deaths. In times of crisis like this, the workers individually mobilize with great selflessness and sacrifice to save lives, aid the wounded and distressed, and try to return life to normal. People of many nationalities work shoulder-to-shoulder in an admirable spirit of cooperation and caring, in the same way they respond to natural disasters. However, there is no politically independent, mass working-class movement in the United States at this moment that can make its own investigation and evaluation of what happened and why. Even the corporate press and media are being restricted more and more in where they can go and what they can say. The people are left totally dependent on the imperialist government for information, analysis and a course of action. Under these conditions, it would be irresponsible at this time to jump to conclusions as to what political forces were behind these attacks. Many, many times in the past, going back to the battleship Maine in this country and the Reichstag fire in Germany, bogus explanations have been fabricated by the authorities in order to line up the population behind a course of aggression. It should be remembered that the 1964 congressional resolution giving a blank check to the Johnson administration for the Vietnam War was passed 98-2 after a fabricated "attack" on U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf that was later exposed in the Pentagon Papers. On Sept. 12, a resolution passed the U.S. Senate 100-0 that gives the present administration the same kind of unrestrained authority to wage war and to finance the Pentagon with whatever funds it requests. In the context of the present capitalist economic downturn, everyone should understand that this means with Social Security funds--the trillions of dollars set aside from workers' earnings for their retirement--more than anything else. The pronouncements of U.S. leaders from President George W. Bush on down make it clear that the government's priority is to restore the image of unchallenged U.S. hegemony in the world by unleashing its powerful military somewhere. There can be no doubt that the targets will be peoples in oppressed countries where the mass sentiment is already one of anger at past U.S. aggression and extreme exploitation. If this happens, it could unleash a witch-hunt against anti-war forces in this country and against immigrants whose national origins are similar to the peoples under attack. The progressive movement must stand firm on its principles in these trying times. It must fight for the right to seek and tell the truth to the people and not be swept along in a torrent of chauvinism and war frenzy. The representatives of the military-banking-industrial establishment have no answers. They can only make the situation worse as the system they defend spreads poverty and instability around the world. The movement must seek to implement a program of class solidarity among workers of all nationalities, religions, genders and sexuality. It must continue to combat national oppression, racism and bigotry of all kinds. It must counter the reactionary vision of Fortress America, with its inane but dangerous "missile shield" and rapid militarization of society, with the struggle for a truly humane, democratic, just and equitable world run by the working people. http://www.workers.org/ - 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) Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT To unsubscribe from this CubaNews group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! 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