WW News Service Digest #268
1) Kerrey and Vietnam
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Kerrey and McVeigh
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Turkey political prisoners give their lives to expose state repression
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) Turkey political prisoners give their lives to expose state repression
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5) Top tune for wealthy elite: 'Fly me to the moon'
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 10, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
KERREY AND VIETNAM:
VETERANS MUST TELL THE STORY IN ALL ITS TRUTHFUL BRUTALITY
By Stan Goff
I don't know whether former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey of
Nebraska ordered the execution of 15 Vietnamese women and
children in 1969. I suspect he is dissembling with the story
that they were caught in the crossfire.
My own military experience tells me that 15 people don't get
killed outright in the crossfire of a single, short, small-
scale firefight. The odds against it are astronomical. Most
times when everyone on the losing side dies in a combat
engagement--combat veterans who are honest will tell you--
executions likely took place after the outcome of that
combat was already resolved.
On April 23, 1971, as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War, future Massachussets Senator John Kerry, whose name
and background are so similar to Kerrey's that it had me
confused for a day about the Kerrey story, testified to the
U.S. Senate that U.S. troops he knew "had personally raped,
cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable
telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut
off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians,
razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot
cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally
ravaged the countryside" and that "[t]hese were not isolated
incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with
the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
(It helps to be there, for it to be tactile, visceral.
Kerry's repugnace for violence against civilians was swept
away by--what? Democratic Party loyalty?--when he supported
the bombing of Yugoslav civilian targets during the NATO
aggression in the Balkans. Life on the inside of bourgeois
politics is a slippery slope for a conscience. Pragmatism
and opportunism become unfocused and indistinct.)
So I don't know whether Bob Kerrey is telling the truth
today, but I can assure you that John Kerry told the truth
on April 23, 1971. I was a machine gunner with the 173rd
Airborne Brigade in a mountain range we called the Suikai on
that day. All that he was describing to the comfortable
white men of the U.S. Senate was still taking place in
Vietnam at the very moment of his description.
Bob Kerrey says he is ashamed. I have to believe that, too.
But I don't think our shame is enough. Military people,
especially that minority who have actually been the
combatants, who take that first baby step of comprehending
the poisonous lies of the American military fetish, have a
duty to go beyond mere shame. We must witness. And we must
interpret. Kerrey's foray into the Mekong, and the My Lai
massacre, and No Gun Ri in Korea, and the current lethal
sanctions against Iraqi civilians, and the violation of
Yugoslav sovereignty, and the financing and advisement of
the bloodthirsty Colombian Army and their drug-trafficking
paramilitary allies.... These are "not isolated incidents
but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full
awareness of officers [and political officials] at all
levels of command."
The truth has ever been the same. The cover stories have
ever been the same. The job of penitent veterans must be to
assault the denial that these cover stories market to the
public consciousness and conscience.
Even as many of our own people go without, we have
acquiesced before a government in the thrall of corporate
money and power that has appropriated $300 billion for what
is euphemistically referred to as "defense." The U.S.
military establishment is a monstrous thing, put to
monstrous purposes, and we who were the instruments of that
establishment--if we are to reclaim our own humanity--must
come forward and help Americans understand what is done in
their name.
We must be the blasphemers, because that gives others
permission to confront the orthodoxy of reverence before
"warriors." Your children who go, as I did, into the armed
services, are being made tools--or worse--for an
organization whose sole purpose is to employ violence
against those who threaten the dominance of those who are
dominant, and against those who would tell the submissive
that they need not submit.
We often worry about sending our children to die, but we
should also worry about sending our children to kill.
I hope Bob Kerrey can find it within himself to explain
this. I hope he can come to terms with it.
The women and children who died in the Mekong on February
25, 1969, do not have the living luxury of shame and
reassessment. The most any of us can do for them now is tell
their story, in all its truthful brutality, and tear down
the walls of denial that stand between a people and their
consciousness.
[Stan Goff is a Vietnam veteran living in Raleigh, N.C. He
served for 24 years in the military, largely in the Special
Operations field. He worked in Vietnam, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Grenada,
Somalia and Haiti. He is the author of "Hideous Dream: A
Soldier's Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000)].
- 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:
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From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: keskiviikko 9. toukokuu 2001 09:44
Subject: [WW] Kerrey and McVeigh
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 10, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
EDITORIAL: KERREY AND MCVEIGH
Two mass murderers who learned their killing techniques from
the Pentagon have been in the news: ex-Senator, ex-Navy Seal
and confessed killer of Vietnamese civilians Robert Kerrey
and convicted and confessed Oklahoma City mass murderer
Timothy McVeigh.
The two probably don't think of themselves as having much in
common. Kerrey considers himself a law-abiding citizen who
served his country. McVeigh likes to posture as a lone
fighter against an oppressive tyranny in Washington. Yet
they both became tools of a racist system of oppression and
exploitation.
Kerrey was a Navy Seal. That is, he was a trained killer, a
shark with brains. Given the description of his group's
duties, he was part of Operation Phoenix, a plan to
assassinate civilian political leaders of the National
Liberation Front of Vietnam. It meant killing the equivalent
of town and village mayors who were suspected of
sympathizing with what the U.S. occupying forces and their
puppets called the "Vietcong."
It also meant killing any civilians--politically active or
not, grandparents and children--who had the misfortune of
being in a position to compromise the military operation the
Seals were carrying out. Or those who might testify against
the murderers afterward. Kerrey said it was hard to carry
out these killings. It's like that moment of decision when
you are drowning kittens, he once explained to a college
class after his role in the war was over.
In February 1969, when he led his unit in a massacre, Kerrey
was a 25-year-old officer. Older than most U.S. youths
drafted to fight in Vietnam. Not as old as the cynical
politicians, generals, CIA officials and other executives of
the Johnson and Nixon administrations who dreamt up
Operation Phoenix, carpet bombing, napalm and Agent Orange
for a war against an entire population. Those who
orchestrated this war of imperialist aggression knew exactly
what they were doing: keeping the world safe for the profits
of the multinational corporations. All of these master
criminals, like Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger, have
gone unpunished for their war crimes. It looks like Kerrey
will also go unpunished for being their tool.
McVeigh, on the other hand, never quite made the grade. He
hoped for an Army career, won a Bronze Star in the brutal
U.S.-led war against Iraq, boasted of killing some Iraqis
and being on security for General Norman Schwarzkopf. He was
a low-level tool for another master war criminal. When he
tried to raise his level by becoming a Green Beret--an Army
version of the Navy Seals--he failed to make the grade.
Dumped from the Army, McVeigh had no officially sanctioned
imperialist outlet for his backward and murderous
sentiments. He joined the Ku Klux Klan. He hung around ultra-
right militias. And he turned against the government that--
under slightly different circumstances--might have gone on
paying him to kill in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Colombia, or
wherever. But he kept the same racist sentiments that made
him useful in Iraq. He just bombed the "wrong" target.
McVeigh showed how close he was to the official military
when he explained his limited remorse for killing 25
children. "That's a large amount of collateral damage," he
told his biographer. He used the euphemism for war crimes
that will forever be attached to Jamie Shea, a British
official who spoke for NATO during the bombing of Yugoslavia
but was coached by Clinton, Albright and Co.
McVeigh may pretend to be a rebel, but he's just a racist
tool who was discarded by his masters. Now they hope that by
executing him they can completely cut loose from the
responsibility they have for creating him in the first
place.
In Kerrey's day, the term "collateral damage" was not yet in
use. Plus the murders were close up--not by guided missile
from a ship in the Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf. Kerrey
claims to feel remorse for what he did in Vietnam.
Before people get caught up in the media spin on this story
and start feeling sorry for Kerrey, they should consider
that there were other choices. There were U.S. youths
ordered into the military who refused the draft. There were
troops ordered to Vietnam who refused to go. There were
troops whose experience in Vietnam taught them they must
refuse to fight, or that they should fight instead against
the officers who ordered them into battle. A few went over
to the side of the Vietnamese liberation fighters.
Some went to jail, others went into exile, many paid dearly
for their courage in refusing to fight against a people's
war. But none of them has any reason to feel remorse. Kerrey
was honored as a hero, but these youths were the real U.S.
heroes of the Vietnam War and far too little praise is given
to their acts of courage.
Kerrey and McVeigh, on the other hand, are just imperialist
tools.
- 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)
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: keskiviikko 9. toukokuu 2001 09:44
Subject: [WW] Turkey political prisoners give their lives to expose state
repression
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 10, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
TURKEY "DEATH FAST":
POLITICAL PRISONERS GIVE THEIR LIVES TO EXPOSE STATE REPRESSION
By Andy McInerney
To any outside observer, the situation in Turkish jails is
nothing short of tragic. Every day for the past several
weeks, another political prisoner dies as part of a six-
month "death fast": a hunger strike to the death.
The tragedy of the situation, though, is dwarfed by the
revolutionary determination and courage of the over 2,000
prisoners who are engaged in this life-and-death struggle
against the U.S.-backed Turkish state. With every new
martyr, the prisoners inspire new resistance to the brutal
conditions in Turkey's political prisons.
Last Oct. 20, prisoners from the Revolutionary People's
Liberation Party--Front (DHKP-C), the Communist Party of
Turkey-Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML), and the Communist Workers
Party of Turkey (TKIP) announced that they would wage the
hunger strike to fight against attempts to open so-called "F-
style" prisons. In the F-style prisons, political prisoners
are kept in isolation and subjected to torture and
psychological warfare.
As of April 28, 59 prisoners and their supporters had died
in the struggle.
The call by the three organizations won wide support among
Turkey's over 10,000 political prisoners. By Nov. 19,
hundreds of hunger strikers committed themselves to a death
fast, including members of other leftist parties and Kur
dish national liberation fighters from the Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK). Family members and other solidarity activists
have also joined in the death fast.
Alarmed by the widening support for the death fast, the
Turkish government launched a brutal attack on the prisoners
in December. Twenty-eight revolutionaries were massacred in
that attack.
The central demands of the hunger strike have been an end to
the F-style prisons, the overturning of "anti-terrorist"
laws that outlaw political activity by the left, and the
punishment of those who have massacred prisoners.
The prisoners' struggle has won solidarity around the world.
On April 27, 500 people marched to the Turkish Embassy in
Athens, Greece, in support of the death fast.
The same day, members of the Committee for Struggle Against
Torture through Isolation (IKM) seized the office of Amnesty
International in London. The protesters charged that the
human rights group had not been forceful enough in
condemning the Turkish prison regime.
"So far, 28 people were killed by the security forces and 30
people died during the death fast," an IKM press release
stated. "We demand that Amnesty International launch a
campaign for this issue. People are dying: they should act
now!"
The determination of the prisoners has also caused a few
European governments to express some concern. On April 24,
the Council of Europe called the F-style prisons "not
acceptable" and said they should be "ended quickly." The
Irish government issued a statement on April 25 urging the
Turkish government to resolve the issue, saying that it
"deeply regretted the deaths resulting from hunger strikes."
The hunger strike undoubtedly has wide resonance among the
Irish people, who remember the heroic 1981 hunger strike
that led to the deaths of Bobby Sands and nine of his Irish
nationalist comrades fighting against the prisons of the
British occupiers.
The F-style prisons, never before implemented in Turkey, are
modeled on "super-max" prisons in the United States and
Europe. These advanced control units have been used for
decades in the imperialist countries to isolate and repress
political prisoners.
The stakes of the death fast are high. The revolutionaries
have put their lives on the line. At the same time, the
Turkish government needs to increase the level of repression
against the left as it imposes austerity measures on the
country's working class that are dictated by the
International Monetary Fund.
The Turkish government is trying to isolate the voices of
the political prisoners from the millions of workers who are
already pouring into the streets against the IMF. Its
greatest fear--and the greatest fear of its imperialist
masters in Washington and Berlin--is that the revolutionary
determination and heroism of the political prisoners will
fuse with the social power of Turkey's working class.
Like Heracles channeling a river to clean the Augean stables
in Greek mythology, that fusion would threaten to wipe away
not only Turkey's repressive prison regime, but also the
imperialist domination that lies at the root of that
repression.
- 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)
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: keskiviikko 9. toukokuu 2001 09:44
Subject: [WW] Turkey political prisoners give their lives to expose state
repression
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 10, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
TURKEY "DEATH FAST":
POLITICAL PRISONERS GIVE THEIR LIVES TO EXPOSE STATE REPRESSION
By Andy McInerney
To any outside observer, the situation in Turkish jails is
nothing short of tragic. Every day for the past several
weeks, another political prisoner dies as part of a six-
month "death fast": a hunger strike to the death.
The tragedy of the situation, though, is dwarfed by the
revolutionary determination and courage of the over 2,000
prisoners who are engaged in this life-and-death struggle
against the U.S.-backed Turkish state. With every new
martyr, the prisoners inspire new resistance to the brutal
conditions in Turkey's political prisons.
Last Oct. 20, prisoners from the Revolutionary People's
Liberation Party--Front (DHKP-C), the Communist Party of
Turkey-Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML), and the Communist Workers
Party of Turkey (TKIP) announced that they would wage the
hunger strike to fight against attempts to open so-called "F-
style" prisons. In the F-style prisons, political prisoners
are kept in isolation and subjected to torture and
psychological warfare.
As of April 28, 59 prisoners and their supporters had died
in the struggle.
The call by the three organizations won wide support among
Turkey's over 10,000 political prisoners. By Nov. 19,
hundreds of hunger strikers committed themselves to a death
fast, including members of other leftist parties and Kur
dish national liberation fighters from the Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK). Family members and other solidarity activists
have also joined in the death fast.
Alarmed by the widening support for the death fast, the
Turkish government launched a brutal attack on the prisoners
in December. Twenty-eight revolutionaries were massacred in
that attack.
The central demands of the hunger strike have been an end to
the F-style prisons, the overturning of "anti-terrorist"
laws that outlaw political activity by the left, and the
punishment of those who have massacred prisoners.
The prisoners' struggle has won solidarity around the world.
On April 27, 500 people marched to the Turkish Embassy in
Athens, Greece, in support of the death fast.
The same day, members of the Committee for Struggle Against
Torture through Isolation (IKM) seized the office of Amnesty
International in London. The protesters charged that the
human rights group had not been forceful enough in
condemning the Turkish prison regime.
"So far, 28 people were killed by the security forces and 30
people died during the death fast," an IKM press release
stated. "We demand that Amnesty International launch a
campaign for this issue. People are dying: they should act
now!"
The determination of the prisoners has also caused a few
European governments to express some concern. On April 24,
the Council of Europe called the F-style prisons "not
acceptable" and said they should be "ended quickly." The
Irish government issued a statement on April 25 urging the
Turkish government to resolve the issue, saying that it
"deeply regretted the deaths resulting from hunger strikes."
The hunger strike undoubtedly has wide resonance among the
Irish people, who remember the heroic 1981 hunger strike
that led to the deaths of Bobby Sands and nine of his Irish
nationalist comrades fighting against the prisons of the
British occupiers.
The F-style prisons, never before implemented in Turkey, are
modeled on "super-max" prisons in the United States and
Europe. These advanced control units have been used for
decades in the imperialist countries to isolate and repress
political prisoners.
The stakes of the death fast are high. The revolutionaries
have put their lives on the line. At the same time, the
Turkish government needs to increase the level of repression
against the left as it imposes austerity measures on the
country's working class that are dictated by the
International Monetary Fund.
The Turkish government is trying to isolate the voices of
the political prisoners from the millions of workers who are
already pouring into the streets against the IMF. Its
greatest fear--and the greatest fear of its imperialist
masters in Washington and Berlin--is that the revolutionary
determination and heroism of the political prisoners will
fuse with the social power of Turkey's working class.
Like Heracles channeling a river to clean the Augean stables
in Greek mythology, that fusion would threaten to wipe away
not only Turkey's repressive prison regime, but also the
imperialist domination that lies at the root of that
repression.
- 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)
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: keskiviikko 9. toukokuu 2001 09:45
Subject: [WW] Top tune for wealthy elite: 'Fly me to the moon'
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 10, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
TOP TUNE FOR WEALTHY ELITE: "FLY ME TO THE MOON"
By G. Dunkel
The founder and organizer of the Soviet space program--
Sergei Pavlovich Korolyov--had a dream while the Soviet
Union was still a society run in the general interests of
working people. One day, he dreamt, workers would fly to
space on a ticket they could get from their union.
Multimillionaire Los Angeles businessman Dennis Tito also
had a dream about flying in space. And he could spend $20
million to satisfy it.
The Russian space program is in desperate need of finances
since the Soviet workers' state lost the Cold War and most
of the country was turned into the impoverished capitalist
state called Russia. So it sold him an empty seat on the
Soyuz capsule that rocketed up to the space station on April
29.
Tito's estimated worth is $200 million, made from advising
pension funds. He will make the full payment to Russia only
if he returns safely. He took off with two cosmonauts from a
Russian rocket facility in Kazakhstan.
Before he became a financier, Tito worked as an engineer in
the U.S. space program. He has the distinction of being the
first tourist to fly in space. But if the Russian government
has anything to do with it, he won't be the last.
Yuri I. Grigoryev, deputy general designer of Energiya Corp.
that built Russia's space station modules, told the U.S.
press at the liftoff that the Russian space program intends
to court more customers.
"There are a lot of rich people around," he said. "Why
shouldn't they go flying, enjoy themselves and help the
station at the same time?"
TRIUMPH OF A WORKERS' STATE
The Soviet Union, a workers' state trying to build
socialism, was the first country to conquer space travel. It
launched the first human-made satellite, Sputnik, in October
1957.
The Soviet Union was only 40 years old, born out of an
impoverished, semi-feudal country with a numerically tiny
working class. From the earliest days of the 1917 Russian
Revolution the Soviet Union was invaded by imperialist
armies, its economy strangled by embargoes and its
industrial base decimated in WWII. Yet it survived and
became a space pioneer.
The contrast between the economic systems in the Soviet
Union and the U.S. is apparent in what type of people the
two space programs sent up.
The U.S. imperialist space program made astronauts out of
the sons of privilege, who then went on to become
multimillionaires or senators.
But the first person in space was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin,
who flew a Soviet craft on April 12, 1961.
Gagarin was the child of a carpenter on a collective farm
and graduated from a trade school as a foundry worker. While
working, he continued his studies at an industrial college
and took a course in flying. He graduated from the Soviet
Air Force cadet school in 1957.
The Soviet space program sent the first woman into space in
June 1963. She, too, had been an industrial worker.
Valentina Tereshkova was a textile mill worker who was
active in the Young Communist League. Her hobby was
parachuting. She had no experience as a test pilot.
Yet from June 16-19, 1963, she made 45 revolutions around
the earth, operating her spacecraft by manual controls.
The Soviet Union also trained and sent into space
representatives from oppressed and formerly oppressed
nations that had been kept technologically underdeveloped by
colonialism and imperialism.
These cosmonauts included Armando Tamayo Mendez from Cuba in
1980, Pham Tuan from Vietnam in 1980, Jugderdemidiyn
Gurragchi from Mongolia in 1981 and Abdol Ahad Mohmand from
Afghanistan in 1988.
The high point and culmination of the Soviet space program
was the Mir space station launched in February 1985.
Cosmonauts occupied it almost continuously for the next 15
years until it was brought down in March 2001.
After years of imperialist Cold War coupled with internal
erosion overturned the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the
Soviet space program collapsed. Now Russia's space program
is not much more than a low-budget appendage of the U.S.
program.
- END -
