----------
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)







Reply via email to