---------- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 03:31:33 -0400 To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) Subject: wwnews Digest #330 WW News Service Digest #330 1) War spending eats at economy like cancer by WW 2) Judge frees Cincinnati killer cop by WW 3) Feet of clay by WW From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW) Date: maanantai 8. lokakuu 2001 07:48 Subject: [WW] War spending eats at economy like cancer ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 11, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- A MILITARY BUDGET TO KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF: WAR SPENDING EATS AT ECONOMY LIKE CANCER By Gary Wilson Since Sept. 11, President George W. Bush has become an advocate of big government spending. Bush's budget proposal for fiscal year 2002 was $25 billion higher than what it had been before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with most of the new money going to the military-industrial complex. "Bush's military request was once controversial, but opposition melted after the Sept. 11 attacks," the Washington Post reported Oct. 2. "The $686 billion [budget proposal] reflects a 7 percent increase over current funding, nearly double what Bush originally proposed." The military-industrial complex moved quickly to exploit the Sept. 11 tragedy and maximize its profits. An agenda was quickly put forward to increase the Pentagon budget, concentrate more powers in the White House, reduce Congressional oversight of the military, and expand the U.S. military's sphere of operations to include domestic functions. An anti-terrorism bill proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft threatens to severely limit civil liberties and increase police powers. It originally included provisions that would allow the Attorney General to order the indefinite detention of any non-citizen. This ominous measure seems to have been scaled back to seven days' detention without charges after a struggle in the House Judiciary Committee, where Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan is the ranking Democrat. The Center for Security Policy--a Washington think tank for the military industries behind the so-called National Missile Defense program--says that it expects the Star Wars program will now get full funding, despite the fact that in attacks like those on Sept. 11 an expensive "missile shield" would be useless. But the Washington Post agrees that "in the past two weeks, opposition in Congress to missile defense has melted away." PENTAGON GOBBLES UP THE BUDGET According to the Center for Defense Information--a think tank established in 1972 by retired U.S. military officers to monitor the Pentagon and oppose the war in Vietnam-- Bush's proposed military increases will mean that the Pentagon will get more than half of the federal discretionary budget. The total federal budget for fiscal year 2002 is $1.9 trillion. Of that, about one third is discretionary spending, that is, funds that the president must request and Congress must act on each year. That's the $686 billion budget proposal. The other two-thirds of the federal budget is mandatory spending, that is, funds that the government spends automatically unless the president and Congress change the laws that mandate them. This includes Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and federal pensions--as well as debt payments to the banks. "Pentagon spending now accounts for over half (50.5 percent) of all discretionary spending," the CDI's Defense Monitor reports in its August 2001 issue. The Defense Monitor also reports, "As the world's lone superpower, it is not surprising that the United States spends more on its military than any other nation. What is surprising is just how large the U.S. share of world military spending actually is, and the fact that while defense budgets of most countries are shrinking, U.S. military spending continues to grow." The United States spends more on the military than the combined spending of the next 15 nations: Russia, Japan, China, Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Brazil, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Canada, and Iran. The advocates of military increases don't dwell on the big boost in profits that will go to the military industries, such as Boeing; they all talk of responding to the Sept. 11 attack. But many of the statements imply that the military increases will pull the economy out of the deepening recession. This view is particularly popular with Democratic Party liberals, who can't explain how making an already gigantic military budget any bigger would prevent attacks like those on Sept. 11 and who won't point to imperialist foreign policy as the greatest danger to the safety and security of the people of the United States. 'MILITARY KEYNESIANISM' Liberal and conservative economists have begun promoting a policy called "military Keynesianism." "Keynesianism" refers to the use of government deficit spending to stimulate the economy, a policy advocated by economist John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Keynes promoted increasing social spending programs such as public works projects. But the "military Keynesians" point out that the spending on social programs did not end the economic crisis; it was only the military buildup to World War II that seemed to pull the U.S. and world capitalism out of the global depression. The "military Keynesian" view was endorsed in Business Week the first week of October by the reactionary economist Robert Barro, who is now an advocate of big government spending--for the military. A liberal endorsement could be found in an article titled style Stimulus" on economy.com, written by Augustine Faucher. "Before the attacks, the economy was limping along. With the collapse in business investment, only consumer spending was keeping the economy moving. There was concern that increasing layoffs, highlighted by the jump last month in the unemployment rate, would cause consumers to cut back and finally tip the economy into recession," Faucher writes. "Policymakers had taken steps to address the weakness. The Federal Reserve has been cutting interest rates since the beginning of the year, and with the tax cut, in particular the rebate checks, Congress and the Bush administration provided additional resources to the consumers who have been keeping the economy going. However, before the attacks, one obstacle to further fiscal stimulus was the Social Security 'lockbox.' "The lockbox was a political consensus between the Republican and Democratic parties that the portion of the federal budget surplus attributable to Social Security be used only for debt reduction, not for additional tax cuts or spending increases. While the lockbox provided an important source of fiscal restraint, it also limited the government's ability to use tax and spending policy to address the sluggish economy. "Now, of course, the picture has changed completely. With the attacks, Congress has rightfully focused on the need to care for the injured, clear away the debris, prepare for the rebuilding of Manhattan and the Pentagon, and provide the military and intelligence agencies with the resources necessary to combat terrorism." The "resources necessary" means an increase in military spending, which, the article suggests, will pull the economy out of the recession. The "military Keynesian" solution ignores the many differences between the 1930s and now. At that time, there were millions of unemployed. Industry and commerce were stagnant, some at a virtual standstill. The United States did not have a standing army or navy. Globally, capitalism was in a deflationary cycle. Prices of most basic commodities had reached rock bottom. Today, the capitalist economy is not deflated, but rather is inflated. In addition, the war buildup being prepared is not a World War II-type conflict with its far-reaching draft that put millions of unemployed youths into the military and put factories to work to outfit the new recruits. Rather it is a high-tech, capital-intensive war that uses only elite forces. This will not stimulate the economy like the military spending leading up to World War II. Rather it will be more like the Gulf War of 1990-91, which deepened the debt to the banks and pushed the economy downward. The war-driven recession that followed was behind the defeat of George Bush in the 1992 elections. Workers cannot rely on the stimulus of military spending to save their jobs. It is a false "solution" that leads to disaster and mass destruction. It is the bosses' answer to a capitalist recession, geared as always to preserving their profits at the expense of the people. Organization, militancy and a program that puts workers and their jobs before profits is the only answer. - 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: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW) Date: maanantai 8. lokakuu 2001 07:49 Subject: [WW] Judge frees Cincinnati killer cop ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 11, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- AS MEDIA FOCUS ON NATIONAL CRISIS: JUDGE FREES CINCINNATI KILLER COP By Greg Butterfield On Sept. 26 Hamilton County Municipal Judge Ralph E. Winkler acquitted Cincinnati Police Officer Stephen Roach of all charges. Roach, who is white, shot Timothy Thomas in the back and killed him last April 7. Thomas, a 19-year-old Black man, was unarmed. Thomas's brutal killing grabbed headlines all over the world. It sparked a three-day rebellion in Cincinnati's African American community-the largest uprising there since 1968. Eight hundred people were arrested. Cincinnati, whose population is 43 percent Black, has been called one of the country's 10 most segregated cities. Thomas was the sixth Black man killed by a white Cincinnati cop in just over a year, and the 15th since 1995. Roach's acquittal sparked renewed protests. After some youths defiantly took to the streets, the mayor imposed another curfew. Yet outside Ohio, it barely made the papers. The corporate media's attention was focused on something else: drumming up support for the Bush administration's "war against terrorism" following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. JUDGE PUTS VICTIM ON TRIAL Roach was the first Cincinnati cop to ever face trial for killing someone. Some activists contend that if not for the rebellion, and the subsequent global attention, the cop would never even have been charged. At Roach's request, there was no jury. The verdict was left entirely in Judge Winkler's hands. This is a common ploy in police brutality cases. Cops know they stand a much better chance with a judge who is part of the same apparatus of repression-the police, courts and prisons-than they do before a jury. Roach made a safe choice. But what surprised many was the lengths the judge went to justify the killer cop's actions. In his decision, Judge Winkler emphasized that Thomas had "14 outstanding warrants." "Police Officer Roach's history was unblemished until this incident," he said. "Timothy Thomas's history was not unblemished." What Winkler failed to say was that 12 of the 14 warrants were for minor traffic violations like not wearing a seat belt. These are the kinds of warrants that typically result from racial profiling of motorists. The other two warrants were for fleeing police. Obviously, Thomas's fear of the police was warranted. Timothy Thomas's 14 misdemeanor warrants greatly moved Winkler. But the fact that Officer Roach changed his story about the incident three times was "not relevant" to this judge. After the verdict was read, Thomas's mother, Angela Leisure, asked: "Why is it that officers are not responsible for their acts when other citizens are?" Leisure vowed to carry on her struggle against police brutality. She said: "My son, I wanted him to be the last. But he won't be the last. Until serious changes are made in the police department, this will happen again." Outside, dozens of demonstrators chanted, "No justice, no peace!" Later 150 people packed a City Council hearing to denounce the verdict. The Rev. Damon Lynch III said, "It was a travesty. ... Black life has no value in Cincinnati." 'NATIONAL UNITY' A LIE Consider the words of Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. He represented the Southwest Michigan Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality and the Black Autonomy International at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. On Sept. 6, he gave a report there on police brutality in the U.S. "Although the U.S. government refuses to report on the exact number of persons killed by police use of deadly force each year," Ervin said, "we have been able to document 500-1,000 cases per annum ... through the work of local grassroots groups like ours, national activist groups like the October 22nd Coalition, and others. "The USA is an outlaw nation," he continued, "a white supremacy regime, hiding under the erstwhile cloak of democracy and human rights ... while it uses its law enforcement agents to practice terrorism against the Black population and those of other racial minorities." Timothy Thomas was a victim of this sort of terrorism-the state-sponsored terrorism of police brutality that plagues communities of color across the U.S. After the U.S. Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the presidency, he and Attorney General John Ashcroft promised to take steps to end racial profiling. Last April, Ashcroft even promised a thorough federal investigation and action in the case of Timothy Thomas. But what has happened? There were no outraged speeches from the White House after Roach was acquitted. Bush didn't denounce the terrorism of the Cincinnati police. No federal troops were ordered to Ohio to capture Roach and protect the African American community from further violence. At the same time, Bush and Ashcroft have authorized the biggest act of racial profiling in memory against Arabs and other Middle Eastern people. The FBI and local police agencies have illegally detained people of Arab descent without cause. The media frenzy since Sept. 11 has encouraged hundreds of acts of racist violence against immigrants. Bush is unwilling to protect young people of color and workers from police terrorism. But he is prepared to march them off to fight a war in the Middle East. Rank-and-file enlisted soldiers are overwhelmingly from working class and poor families. Many are people of color. They have far more in common with Timothy Thomas, and with the struggling people of the Middle East, than they do with Bush or those he represents: the Big Oil barons, Wall Street bankers and military contractors who are itching for a war. The Bush government's response to Roach's acquittal-or rather, the lack of one-shows that all the patriotic hype about "national unity" is a big, ugly lie. - 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: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW) Date: maanantai 8. lokakuu 2001 07:50 Subject: [WW] Feet of clay ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 11, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EDITORIAL: FEET OF CLAY As tens of thousands of U.S. troops are rushed to the Middle East in pursuit of what the U.S. government calls "justice" in a war against "terrorism," the festering sore that is the oppression and displacement of the Palestinian people from their land continues unabated. On Oct. 3 Palestinian commandos killed two Israeli settlers, and the world media were full of the details, interviewing everyone they could. But in the days before this attack, while Israel claimed to be pursuing a cease-fire, it killed 19 Palestinians and wounded 200 more. The international press took hardly any notice of that. We were not told the names of the Palestinian victims. It was not mentioned if they left behind a wife, a child, a grieving mother. Whether they knew or were related to the little stone-throwing boys who have been shot down by Israeli snipers. Whether they have lived in the overcrowded, squalid, half-starved refugee camps in Gaza and Lebanon. Whether their grandparents told them stories about fleeing from the terrorist bands in 1948 that drove thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Whether the houses and olive groves that sustained their families for generations had been bulldozed to the ground by the Israelis. Nothing is said about them that might explain their intense anger at the settlers who have moved onto their land. They have routinely been characterized as "terrorists" in the U.S. media, even though this is clearly a war, and one in which six times as many Palestinians die as Israelis. It is this double standard that has infuriated the whole Arab world, and indeed many millions around the globe who see the Palestinian people as the victims not just of Zionist expansionism but of U.S. ambitions to totally dominate the region. It has been U.S. influence and money, poured in by the billions of dollars, that have made Israel a regional military superpower and a nuclear threat to the Arab world. This is well understood by the masses throughout the Middle East. Israel has well served the interests of the giant U.S. and British oil monopolies. If such a fortress of Western imperialism did not exist in the Middle East, it would have to be created. In fact, that is exactly what happened. Washington, knowing that support for the Palestinians is 100 percent in the Arab world, now has to cover its tracks and pretend to have been even-handed all along. Lo and behold, we suddenly find out that President Bush was secretly a supporter of a Palestinian state! He was just waiting for the right time to say it. Now, of course, is not the time, but maybe, if everything goes alright with the war against Afghanistan ... Talk about a thinly disguised ploy. It is a sign of Washington's desperation as it embarks on this huge "crusade" to pound and pacify a region that is boiling with anger and despair. It must find someone to call an ally, but even usually pliant bourgeois regimes are afraid to join this war without having something to placate the masses. But the people of the region have no faith in Bush's clumsy hints and enticements. They've suffered at the hands of U.S. imperialism for half a century now. They detest British imperialism, Washington's main partner, even more for its brutal colonial past and its present arrogance. They will not be placated. It is a very encouraging sign that the new, diverse anti-war movement here and in most of the world has embraced the Palestinian cause. On this question, it is far ahead of most of the movement of the 1960s. While progressive and opposed to all forms of bigotry, including anti-Semitism, this movement recognizes the struggle of all oppressed peoples for self-determination and economic justice. It knows that the main enemy of the world's peoples is U.S. imperialism, which attempts to stand atop the globe like a Colossus, but has feet of clay. - 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)