WW News Service Digest #342
1) What kind of war is this?
by WW
2) Students, workers near ground zero at risk
by WW
3) World's worst outbreak of anthrax
by WW
4) Afghans resist foreign domination
by WW
5) Help get this paper into more hands
by WW
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WHAT KIND OF A WAR IS THIS?
A MURDER OF INNOCENTS AND PLUNDER OF RESOURCES
By Heather Cottin
The war in Afghanistan is creating "the most serious,
complex emergency in the world ever," according to United
Nations official Stephanie Bunker.
Considering the many horrible tragedies that the world has
seen in recent years, this is a calamitous warning.
"As many as 100,000 more children will die in Afghanistan
this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient
quantities in the next six weeks," Eric Laroche, UNICEF
spokesperson, said in an interview with the Times of India
on Oct. 29.
But the heavy U.S. bombing of Afghan cities and supply
routes, as well as the deliberate targeting of food supplies
like the Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, has choked off relief
efforts.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world.
The infant mortality rate is 165 per 1,000 births. Life
expectancy is 46. UNICEF statistics show the problem of
stunting affects over 50 percent of all children.
"If you are a child born in Afghanistan today, you are 25
times more likely to die before the age of five than an
American or a French or a Saudi Arabian child," Laroche
said. More than half the children in Afghanistan were
already malnourished and 300,000 children died each year
from preventable causes inside the country.
PILOTS RUN OUT OF 'MILITARY' TARGETS
The British tabloid The Mirror is usually supportive of
British and U.S. policy. But on Oct. 29 former Mirror editor
John Pilger wrote a scathing critique of the war. "One of
the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorized by
the most powerful--to the point where American pilots have
run out of dubious 'military' targets and are now destroying
mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries
carrying refugees," Pilger wrote.
While the U.S. media remain largely silent, readers in other
countries can get some of the details of these deliberate
war crimes.
The London Observer on Oct. 28 reported that U.S. warplanes
hit a residential area in the Afghan capital of Kabul,
killing at least 13 civilians and virtually wiping out one
family.
Stephanie Bunker in Islamabad confirmed on Oct. 29 that a
hospital had been hit in the Afghan city of Herat in an air
raid carried out by U.S. military aircraft. Taliban
Ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Sallam Zaeef stated
there had been around 100 victims--doctors, nurses, and
patients--when the hospital received a direct hit.
Every time the Afghanis claim there are civilian casualties,
the U.S. government rejects the reports. Yet, according to
UN officials, up to 70 percent of the populations of the
towns of Herat and Kandahar have now fled from bombing
raids.
According to Yusuf Hassan, speaking for the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, the number of refugees will climb
to 300,000 within weeks, and may reach 1.5 million in the
longer term.
When the snows begin and temperatures plummet to below zero,
the situation for those who remain in their homes, as well
as the refugees now starving and homeless, will be horrific.
Already, conditions in the villages, where poor peasants and
workers live far from Taliban positions, have become
nightmarish.
SMALL VILLAGES BEING BOMBED
"Not long after 7 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 21, the bombs began
to fall over the outskirts of Torai village. Mauroof saw a
massive fireball rising from the ground," wrote the Times of
London on Oct. 25 about one man who lost many family
members. "Bombs had fallen over the little cluster of houses
a mile away where his sister and his other relatives were
living.
"The roll call of the dead read like an invitation list to a
family wedding: his mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, three
brothers-in-law, and four of his sister's five young
children, two girls and two boys, all under the age of
eight."
The agony of Afghanistan is intensified by the use of
weapons known as cluster bombs. The Times of London writes
that Prime Minister Tony Blair "constantly parades his
humanitarianism." This must extend to the choice of bombs.
Of choice in the U.S./British bombing raids "is a CBU-87/B,
containing bright yellow submunitions for attacking soft
target areas (including human beings) with detonating
bomblets."
Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They kill people
without destroying property. They also serve as land mines
and detonate later, even years later, when they are
unearthed.
The Times noted that the U.S. lobbied at a landmine
conference some years ago against classifying cluster bombs
as landmines. But they serve this secondary and murderous
purpose: "35,000 unexploded bomblets in Kosovo still kill
one person a week," the paper noted. They are still killing
people in Laos, 30 years after the war there ended.
The Times added, "Unexploded cluster bombs are a horror,
[since] the bright yellow coloring of the canisters makes
them horribly appealing to children." As reported in The
Times, these weapons are "a killing field in a canister,
designed to massacre anything within 100 feet."
Such a massacre took place in the village of Shakar Qala.
The UN confirmed that eight people had been killed
immediately when the village was attacked. A ninth person
died after picking up the parachutes attached to the cluster
bombs.
"He went to look at the object, touched it and it blew up,"
Stephanie Bunker said. Fourteen others were injured and 20
of the village's 45 houses were destroyed or badly damaged.
BOMBLETS LOOK LIKE FOOD PACKETS
There is an even more insidious side to cluster bombs.
As hunger grows in Afghanistan, the U.S. has dropped
approximately 1 million packages of food as a "humanitarian
gesture." But these food packets are also wrapped in yellow
packaging. Unsuspecting, starving refugees have grabbed
yellow cluster bombs, thinking they were food. The result
has been death and dismemberment.
Now the Pentagon tells us it is dropping pamphlets
explaining the difference between the bomb canisters and the
food packets. But most Afghanis are illiterate. Do the
bombers really expect them to understand the written
instructions, which begin, "Attention, noble Afghan people,"
and conclude with the statement, "Do not confuse the
cylinder-shaped bomb with the rectangular food bag"?
To make the situation more ghastly, U.S planes are dropping
the food packets into the largest minefield in the world, a
leftover from the mining done during the 10 years of war the
U.S. funded against the Marxist government of Afghanistan.
REFUGEES, OLD FOLKS' HOME ARE ATTACKED
The Russian newspaper Pravda, which generally supports the
war, reported that "refugees arriving in the Pakistani city
of Qetta yesterday claimed that a column of refugees trying
to escape the bombing after their houses had been destroyed
was strafed, also by American aircraft, and that 20 members
of the column, including nine children, had been killed. The
incident took place at Tarine Khot, near Kandahar. One
refugee who witnessed the event stated that there were no
Taliban bases within a radius of three kilometers from where
the homes were destroyed."
Eyewitnesses stated that a 1,000-pound bomb had been dropped
on Oct. 23 in a field near an old people's home near
Kandahar. The British Ministry of Defense admitted there had
been military activity against Taliban camps in the area on
that day. The Pentagon has admitted bombing an old people's
home in Herat, but claimed a "targeting error."
Although Pravda calls reports by the Taliban suspect,
labeling the Taliban "pathological and compulsive liars,"
the paper admitted, "reports of collateral damage are true."
The weapons the U.S. is using in Afghanistan are already
causing injuries consistent with those caused by depleted
uranium and other weapons used in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Pravda noted, "Deputy public health minister, Sher Mohammad
Abbas Stanikzai, said the government did not have testing
facilities," and urged outside observers to view the
injuries from the bombing attacks.
Steven Gutkin, Associated Press writer, reported Thursday,
Oct. 25 from Korak Dana, Afghanistan of a U.S. attack on
Kandahar which hit a bus at the city gates Thursday, killing
at least 10 civilians in a fiery explosion.
There have been repeated attacks on a food warehouse run by
the Red Cross. The Associated Press reported on Oct. 26, "In
separate raids late Thursday and early Friday, F/A-18 jets
dropped two one-ton bombs on the Red Cross warehouse
complex." The Defense Department, which admitted the
bombing, claimed it was an error, but it took place in broad
daylight and a Red Cross was clearly painted on the roof of
this building.
THE 'GREAT GAME'
The genocidal bombing and heartless devastation of the
Afghani people is part of the "Great Game" of the
imperialist powers and has nothing to do with "fighting
terrorism." As Pilger points out, "The 'war on terrorism' is
a cover for this: a means of achieving American strategic
aims that lie behind the flag-waving facade of great power."
In his book "The Grand Chessboard," Zbigniew Brzezinski
urged a major role for the U.S. in Central Asia and the
Middle East. Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter's national security
advisor and instigated the CIA's arming and training of the
Mujahadeen in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was his policy
that helped to create a fundamentalist guerrilla army,
including the Taliban, that was organized to overthrow
Afghanistan's Marxist government and draw the USSR into a
terrible quagmire. This policy played a part in fomenting
the destruction of socialism in the USSR.
After the Cold War, Brzezinski wrote, "for America, the
chief prize is Eurasia." Why? Because it contains the
"Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin, known to
contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of
Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea."
Brzezinski warned against "a grand coalition of China,
Russia, and perhaps Iran" as "the most dangerous scenario."
What country stands in the middle of those three nations?
Afghanistan.
Brzezinski was a leading architect for the expansion of
NATO. He wrote, "A comprehensive U.S. policy for Eurasia as
a whole will not be possible if the effort to widen NATO,
having been launched by the United States, stalls."
The war in Afghanistan is a continuation of the wars on
Yugoslavia and the expansion of NATO eastward. Brzezinski
even called Central Asia the "Eurasian Balkans," and noted
that they are "infinitely more important as a potential
economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and
oil reserves located in the region, in addition to important
minerals, including gold."
John Pilger in the Mirror wrote, "The overwhelming majority
of the Islamic peoples of the Middle East and south Asia
have been victims of the West's exploitation of precious
natural resources in or near their countries."
The war is one month old and a peace movement is burgeoning
in over 20 countries. There is a growing anti-imperialist
understanding that this war is about the profits of U.S. and
British oil companies.
It is clear to all who look: the Great Game is based on
murder of innocents and plunder of resources.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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TOXIC GASES RISE FROM FIRES:
STUDENTS, WORKERS NEAR GROUND ZERO AT RISK
Special to Workers World
New York
The fires that started in the World Trade Center area Sept.
11 are still burning, and will probably continue until
nearly all the debris is removed, a task that will take
months.
The smoke, according to an Environmental Protection Agency
report, contains dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead, copper and
chromium--all chemicals considered extremely dangerous at
levels far lower than the EPA has recorded. Soils in the
area have also been contaminated. The few times run-off into
the Hudson River was tested, it also showed extreme
contamination.
While the jet fuel was burned off shortly after the initial
explosions, the resulting fire reached an estimated
temperature of 2,300 degrees, melting the building's steel
supports. The collapses left smoldering crevasses and hot
spots that cannot be reached by firefighters until the
overlying debris is cleared. Clearing debris exposes the hot
spots to oxygen, causing flare-ups where plastics, wood,
paper, and even office machinery start to burn and release
the noxious chemicals identified by the EPA. (Newsday, Oct.
25)
The Environmental Law & Justice Project (ELJP), whose
freedom of information request got the EPA report released,
paid for its own analysis of the dust blowing around ground
zero. It found unhealthy amounts of fiberglass, asbestos,
PCBs and dioxins. Fiberglass is generally coated with a thin
layer of resin containing formaldehyde. This is probably the
source of the eye and throat irritation reported by many of
the 250,000 people who work and live in the area.
There are two major schools in the area--the academically
elite Stuyvesant High School and Borough of Manhattan
Community College. The students at BMCC are overwhelmingly
African American and Latino. These schools are basically
across the street from each other.
Both were used as staging areas by the authorities in the
early rescue efforts. Stuyvesant was returned to the school
authorities fairly early, but it took a lot of political
pressure to get the rescue workers out of BMCC so classes
could resume. Cleanup took an additional week.
Teachers at both institutions told Workers World that they
and their students cough a lot and suffer from eye, throat
and respiratory irritation. By the end of the day, they are
unusually fatigued.
BMCC has had to erect temporary classrooms because one of
its classroom buildings was severely damaged in the
collapses. They get a lot of the dust and noise from the
steel beams and other debris that are loaded onto barges
just yards away across West Street. This dust is also sucked
into the air-intake ducts for BMCC's main building. The
Teachers' local representing BMCC's teachers and staff has
demanded the loading site be moved, but the administration
has not responded.
The college has lost a lot of income and expects a big
falloff in attendance next semester. Adjuncts--part-time
teachers who carry much of the load--know that a major drop
in attendance will cost them their jobs.
It does not appear that those who run the city of New York
are really concerned about what is happening. The city is
facing a financial crisis whose roots predate the World
Trade Center disaster. The politicians want to clear the way
for real estate developers to begin work as quickly as
possible.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WORLD'S WORST OUTBREAK OF ANTHRAX: WAS IT GERM WARFARE?
By Elijah Crane
As the anthrax scare continues to dominate the news in the
U.S., there is a glaring omission in the media discussion of
this disease. No mention is being made of the worst epidemic
of anthrax ever documented.
It occurred in what was then white-ruled Rhodesia, toward
the end of the struggle of the Black majority for
independence. It is very likely that the outbreak was the
result of germ warfare.
Meryl Nass, M.D., one of the foremost experts on anthrax in
the United States, analyzed the outbreak in an article in
the Winter 1992-93 issue of CovertAction magazine.
More recently, allegations concerning the role of South
Africa's apartheid regime in providing Rhodesia with anthrax
were investigated by the ANC government's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.
The revolution for the independence of the country, now
called Zimbabwe, ended in February 1980. From 1978 to
December 1980, the anthrax epizootic--an epidemic that
involves more than one species--raged in the African-owned
Tribal Trust Lands. Some 10,738 Black people were reported
infected with the disease. Of these, 182 died. The loss of
thousands of cattle created a critical food shortage for the
survivors.
The white population of Rhodesia remained unscathed.
Many more cattle than humans were infected in Zimbabwe
during that period, yet it was almost entirely African-owned
cattle that got sick. Just four small outbreaks, affecting
only 11 animals, touched the white-owned commercial farms.
In the 29 years prior to this outbreak, Zimbabwe had a low
incidence of anthrax: a total of only 334 cases of human
anthrax had been reported in that country. And until that
time, "about 7,000 cases [were] reported in the world
annually," according to "Mandell's Principles and Practice
of Infectious Disease," published in 1979.
Anthrax is not passed directly from person to person or
animal to animal--aside from the consumption of infected
meat. Epizootics are generally limited, both geographically
and in time. They usually occur in areas previously infected
where spores have remained in the soil. But that didn't
happen in Zimbabwe. The fact that the anthrax epizootic
raged across six of the eight provinces of Zimbabwe is one
indication of possible biological warfare against the Black
population.
RHODESIA HAD THE CAPABILITY
Nass explained that the Rhodesian government, and its
partner, apartheid South Africa, were capable of such an
act. "There is evidence that obtaining or producing spores
was within the means of those countries which wanted them.
Production of spores is not technically difficult. Japan,
the U.K., and the U.S. produced them as long as 50 years
ago.
"The U.S. is known to have created and stored such weapons
until they were destroyed following Nixon's 1969 ban." But,
she added, "A number of biological weapons was found in a
CIA freezer after all U.S. biological weapons were reported
to have been destroyed, ostensibly stored by a CIA employee
without higher approval.
"Given the scope of foreign involvement with Rhodesia, the
white government may have received the weapons from a
country which had a secret program. It is also possible that
Rhodesia was able to produce such materials domestically.
"Many delivery systems for anthrax spores are relatively
simple to produce or procure. They could have allowed for
the careful demarcation between affected and unaffected
areas which was exhibited by the Zimbabwe epizootic. The
simplest method of dissemination would have been by air, but
other methods for contaminating the soil were also
possible."
On the issue of transmission and infection, Nass explained:
"In Zimbabwe, where 'protected villages' existed in many
parts of the country (which entailed the creation of new
population centers by removal of Blacks from their rural
farms to regulated areas) and the movement of rural Blacks
was in some areas strictly controlled, it may have been
possible to accomplish airborne spraying and yet avoid
populated areas."
According to the Web site for PBS's Frontline, Zimbabwe's
current Minister of Health, Dr. Timothy Stamp, has ordered
an investigation into whether South Africa was involved in
Rhodesia's anthrax outbreak.
SECRET WAR BEGAN UNDER IAN SMITH
Back in 1965, then-Rhodesia had declared independence from
Britain in order to maintain white minority rule while other
British colonies in Africa were gaining independence. The
struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe began in the late 1950s
and continued through 1979.
As guerrilla forces gained strength in numbers and
experience, the racist white regime, headed by Ian Smith,
turned to a secret war in hopes of defeating the nationalist
movement. The CIA played an active role.
The white minority Rhodesian government created its own
intelligence agency--the Central Intelligence Organization.
The purpose of the CIO, headed by Ken Flower, was to break
up the African Nationalist struggle. They escalated their
secret war, employing psychological warfare and torture on
captured freedom fighters and infiltrating the two
liberation organizations, ZANU and ZAPU.
Modern-day paramilitary operations in Central and South
America are based on this model of warfare created by the
white apartheid regime of Rhodesia, with the backing of
apartheid South Africa. The paramilitary forces in Colombia
utilize these same techniques against the FARC-EP and the
ELN.
In the peasant villages, CIO forces, with the "help" of
captured guerillas, would pretend to be from either ZANU or
ZAPU. These agents would then abuse the villagers in the
name of the struggle, calling them "sellouts" and even
executing some of the revolution's most loyal supporters.
This created an atmosphere of distrust that hampered the
fight for liberation.
The white commercial farmers rationed out food to the
peasant workers, allowing them only one day's portion at a
time. This prevented them from being able to supply the
liberation fighters with sustenance.
They further disrupted life for the rural population by
contaminating their livestock, thus destroying their
livelihoods, destabilizing and limiting their food supplies.
The creation of an anthrax epizootic would have benefited
the white colonizers of Zimbabwe not only by demoralizing
the rural supporters of the liberation struggle, but also by
starving them out and impoverishing their communities.
One way to ensure contamination in specific areas would be
aerial spraying. The Rhodesian government began air raids on
Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) training
camps in Zimbabwe and Mozambique in October 1978. One month
later the anthrax epizootic began.
Nass wrote that clothing had been distributed to the people
which was poisoned with organophosphates--nerve gas--which
killed hundreds of Black guerrilla fighters as well as
civilians.
The anthrax epizootic of Zimbabwe has not been subjected to
a careful scientific analysis including necessary testing,
studies and evaluation. Part of the reason for this is that
there exists no "generally accepted methodology to serve as
a guide for the design of an investigation into the possible
use of biological weapons," according to Nass. By their very
nature, chemical and biological weaponry use is very hard to
prove. The spores of anthrax are invisible to the eye unless
in large quantity.
All the available evidence pointed to the Rhodesian
government as the culprit in spreading the anthrax epizootic
to Black rural areas as an attempt to crush the revolution
there. But the apartheid regime was unable to crush the
determination of the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle
for independence.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE, NOW U.S.:
AFGHANS RESIST FOREIGN DOMINATION
By Deirdre Griswold
It is now more than three weeks since the U.S. started
bombing Afghanistan--a high-tech assault on one of the
poorest countries in the world.
The excuse for raining death and destruction on villages,
hospitals, food warehouses and columns of refugees is that
Afghanistan "harbors terrorists." Since not one of the 19
people who the U.S. government claims hijacked the planes
that rammed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was from
Afghanistan, it is not at all surprising that the Afghan
people think it's the other way around--that the Pentagon is
the terrorist.
On Oct. 31, CNN correspondent Nic Robertson reported
directly from Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, on how
Afghanis feel about the war. He was asked repeatedly by the
CNN anchorperson whether the people were free to express
themselves. "Absolutely," said Robertson. "In every one of
the sites we visit, a huge crowd gathers around us. People
are ready to put forward their ideas and views."
The anchorperson, sitting in Atlanta, persisted: "Their
feelings over there could be the result of the control that
the Taliban has over what they have been allowed to see and
hear. What of the Taliban officials that have been guiding
you through this area? Do you get a sense that, because they
are trying to give you a good propaganda show by taking you
just to these civilian areas where there have been some
injuries, that there is a sense of some erosion of
confidence toward them?"
Robertson gave an emphatic "No," and added, "The general
sense that we have had here, as a group of 26 journalists,
is that people are speaking their minds, they are coming out
and speaking quite strongly. And when one person perhaps
comes and speaks out against the United States or President
Bush, there is a cheer through the crowds."
The idea that the bombing has weakened the Afghan will to
resist foreign domination is sheer Pentagon propaganda. On
the contrary, according to Robertson and other journalists
on the spot, it has rallied the Afghans behind the Taliban,
the ultra-conservative religious movement that now rules the
country after a vicious war, funded and organized by the
U.S., brought down the only truly progressive government in
Afghan history.
NO GROUND WAR YET
Let's not forget that, for all the boasting about the
formidable strength of the U.S. Special Forces, they have
gone only once into defended areas in Afghanistan. They made
two simulataneous raids on the night of Oct. 19-20, one at
what the Pentagon said was a command-and-control center
outside Kandahar, the other at an airfield somewhere in
southern Pakistan.
At first this venture was described in glowing terms. It
proved the U.S. could carry out a ground war. The "Vietnam
syndrome" had been broken. The Rangers had captured
important documents.
But, little by little, another picture has leaked out. The
U.S. troops didn't find anything of use in their quest for
Osama bin Laden. Two Rangers were killed when one of their
helicopters crashed--supposedly back in Pakistan, but the
Taliban soon showed reporters a piece of landing gear broken
off a helicopter.
And the Afghanis who defended these sites put up a fierce
fight, despite the overwhelming advantage the Rangers
enjoyed with their night-vision equipment, instant satellite
communications with Washington, Black Hawk helicopters,
heavy weapons and so on.
So while there had been talk that a ground war was imminent,
the war continues in the air--very high up in the air, in
fact, since anti-aircraft has come uncomfortably close to
U.S. planes in the north.
For all the flag-waving and attempts to brand anyone against
the war as a terrorist, the U.S. government knows that
opposition at home will grow enormously if U.S. ground
troops get bogged down in Afghanistan.
BRITISH COULDN'T COLONIZE AFGHANISTAN
The Pentagon planners, by this time, must know what happened
to Britain's attempts to colonize Afghanistan in the 19th
century.
A British army entered Kandahar in 1839 after Lord Auckland,
governor general of England's most prized possession, India,
had ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. They crowned a
puppet king and marched on Kabul by August of 1840.
The Encyclopedia Britannica itself tells the story: "The
Afghans, however, would tolerate neither a foreign
occupation nor a king imposed on them by a foreign power,
and insurrections broke out." The war continued for two
years.
After the British "political agent" Sir William Hay
Macnaghten was killed "during a parlay with the Afghans,"
some 4,500 British troops finally marched out of Kabul on
Jan. 6, 1842. But it wasn't over yet. "Bands of Afghans
swarmed around them, and the retreat ended in a blood bath."
This was the heyday of the British Empire. The lords in
London wanted to consolidate their control, from Egypt to
India. So back they went in 1878 for another two-year war.
They forced Afghanistan to agree to conduct its foreign
relations "in accordance 'with the wishes and advice' of the
British government. This British triumph, however, was short-
lived. On Sept. 3, 1879, the British envoy and his escort
were murdered in Kabul."
More troops rushed in and reoccupied Kabul. Ya'qub, the
leader who had signed the agreement with Britain, abdicated
and was given exile in India. But the resistance of the
people was so great that once again the British had to
withdraw in 1881.
After World War I, the anti-British movement in Afghanistan
seized power and launched the Third Anglo-Afghan War. By
this time, the Western imperialists were so frightened by
the Russian Revolution that Britain agreed to the Treaty of
Rawalpindi on Aug. 8, 1919, which "gained the Afghans the
conduct of their own foreign affairs."
However, "Before signing the final document with the
British, the Afghans concluded a treaty of friendship with
the new Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union; Afghanistan
thereby became one of the first nations to recognize the
Soviet government."
Britain was so burned by its attempts to subdue Afghanistan
that it became a topic of books and poems. Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's fictional Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes
mysteries often refers to the wounds he received fighting in
the Khyber Pass, the main route between Afghanistan and
today's Pakistan.
Does the Pentagon today similarly underestimate the human
element when it embarks so confidently on its high-tech
conquests?
The hatred of foreign colonizers burns very deeply in the
breasts of the Afghan people. And, just as anyone who
opposed colonialism had to sympathize with the Afghans
against the British invaders of the 19th century, regardless
of the class character of Afghanistan's leaders, so today
all around the world who know that imperialist rule brings
only oppression, poverty and humiliation of the masses want
the Afghans to succeed in their resistance to the U.S.-
British war.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
HELP GET THIS PAPER INTO MORE HANDS!
By Leslie Feinberg
Whether you flip through the channels on television or thumb
through the pages of newspapers chock full of advertising,
it's all-war, all the time. The big business of media, which
even in "normal" times is inextricably tied with a thousand
threads to the military-industrial complex, now marches in
lockstep to the line of the big brass, the White House and
Wall Street.
No wonder you boot up your computer to see if a new batch of
Workers World articles is waiting in your incoming e-mail,
or if the newest issue is up on our web site at
www.workers.org.
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chunk of the wealth that is collectively produced every day
by the vast laboring class. All the wants, as well as needs
of humanity, could be met with the immense productive
capabilities that human labor has already created. But like
the overturning of the slave-owners and feudal kings, it
will take a revolutionary upheaval to wrest the reins of
rule from the corporate and banking class.
Workers World can help steer the course forward toward that
liberation, because we aren't just a newspaper that reports
the news, we are part of that great effort.
In that context, the newspaper becomes a collective tool to
organize and orient new ranks into the growing movement.
And that's where you come in.
You have many co-workers, fellow students, neighbors,
friends and loved ones who are striving for the truth about
the political, military and economic crises they face.
We need to extend the reach of this revolutionary newspaper.
And you play a key role.
If you're not a subscriber already, don't wait any longer.
Fill in the coupon today and send it in with your check
today. If you already subscribe, think about giving $25 one-
year subscriptions as gifts to those who are likeminded--or
those you love to wrangle about politics with!
And think even bigger. Could you get a small--or not so
small--bundle of newspapers out every week at local
campuses, newsstands, neighborhood food co-ops and
independent bookstores? Would you order a handful of
subscription cards and sell them at local and regional
demonstrations? If so, write to us: Subscription Department,
Workers World, 55 West 17 Street, New York, N.Y. 10011. Or
call (212) 627-2994.
If you send out e-mail regularly, consider adding an
automatic signature at the bottom of your messages urging
your readers to subscribe to Workers World. Direct people to
our web site.
Do you have ideas about distributing the paper that you
think might inspire others? Drop them in the mail to us or e-
mail them to [EMAIL PROTECTED] And let us know if we can
quote you and/or use your name.
Let's build the circulation of this newspaper. Every new
subscriber is one more informed person who will be better
able to resist the war machine and the rightward turn that
Bush and Company are forcing on this country.
