WW News Service Digest #332
1) Outcry Against War Grows Louder
by wwnews
2) A War for Domination
by wwnews
3) How Food Became a Lethal Weapon
by wwnews
4) The View from Pakistan
by wwnews
5) Nationwide Anti-War Actions Oct. 27
by wwnews
6) NY Labor Against War
by wwnews
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 11. lokakuu 2001 05:20
Subject: [WW] Outcry Against War Grows Louder
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
A YOUTHFUL MOVEMENT: OUTCRY AGAINST WAR GROWS
LOUDER
By Gery Armsby
As the news came that U.S. bombs were falling on
Afghanistan, people all over the world who oppose a new war
made their way to the streets and main squares of countless
cities, towns and school campuses.
In the United States, a tidal wave of pro-war and national-
chauvinistic propaganda from the corporate media failed to
stop many thousands, who came out in emergency protests
against the bombing of Afghan cities and the massive police
repression at home that has led to the detention of over 600
Arab people.
Marches, vigils, rallies, walk-outs, sit-ins and student
strikes across the country urged an end to bombings,
condemned the racist attacks and incidences of profiling,
and expressed solidarity with the millions of besieged
Afghan people.
In New York, just three miles from the "ground zero" of the
Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, thousands
gathered in Union Square on Oct. 7 within hours of the
announcement of strikes against Afghanistan. A local
coalition, "New York Not in Our Name," had already been
planning a Sunday afternoon memorial prayer service and
peace march.
This became a gathering point for New Yorkers who wanted to
show opposition to U.S. retaliation. Speakers addressed the
crowd demanding that no more innocent people be killed in
the name of New Yorkers who suffered the brunt of the
terrorist attack.
After a rally, the crowd of thousands poured into the
streets and marched up Sixth Avenue to Times Square.
Manhattan traffic was snarled for hours as anti-war, pro-
peace messages echoed through the air in chants ranging from
"Salaam, shalom, peace" to "U.S. hands off Afghanistan!"
On Monday, Oct. 8, about 700 people assembled in Times
Square and marched to NBC's Rockefeller Plaza headquarters.
Signs and banners proclaimed, "Stop bombing Afghanistan" and
"No more war--no more racist attacks." The demonstration was
organized on one day's notice by the International ANSWER
(Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) coalition, which had
issued a call for emergency protests on the day after the
first U.S.-led strike.
In Washington, D.C., protesters met in front of the White
House on Oct. 7 and again on Oct. 8, growing to about 100.
They were mostly high school and university students from
School Without Walls, George Washington University, American
University and other D.C. area schools.
The very multinational crowd of youths formed a picket line,
waved signs and chanted, "George Bush, we want peace; U.S.
out of the Middle East," "We remember Vietnam, U.S. hands
off Afghanistan," and "No more tanks, no more bombs, no more
unjust Vietnams."Ten were arrested Monday by D.C. cops for
standing while they sang anti-war songs in front of the
White House. Their crime? Police claim they violated a
federal regulation that requires protesters to remain in
motion on the sidewalk.
Two days of protests in Boston brought hundreds into
Government Center plaza against war on Oct. 7 and 8. Fifty
people assembled on Sunday, including students from
Massachusetts College of Art, Lesbian Avengers, MIT, Emerson
College, and Harvard University. Several hundred made it out
on Monday. Protesters and rally speakers included Amer
Jubran of the Al-Awda Palestine Right of Return Coalition,
Harvard's Living Wage Campaign, the Boston Campus Anti-war
Coalition and the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP). Mass
Art students made banners and protest props.
ACROSS U.S.: DOZENS OF PROTESTS
Chanting "One world, no war," some 75 Princeton University
students, staff members and Princeton, N.J., town residents
marched together. "We're asking for the bombing to stop,"
said Zia Mian, a representative of the Princeton Peace
Network that organized the protest.
One hundred or more protesters loosely organized by a pro-
peace working group of the Vassar College Student Activist
Union assembled at the college chapel in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.,
and marched two-by-two through surrounding neighborhoods
voicing opposition to U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan.
They encouraged community members to join them along the
way.
In Buffalo, N.Y., 50 people came out in Bidwell Park in the
middle of driving wind and freezing sleet. A large banner
stood out in street lights: "War is not the answer."
Protesters from the Northeast Ohio Radical Action Network at
Public Square rallied in downtown Cleveland on Oct. 8
against the bombing. "One, two, three, four, our grief is
not a cry for war," they shouted while carrying signs
indicating that U.S. military action is not the answer. The
group plans to continue speaking out against war until the
military action stops.
Fifty protesters gathered in front of the University of
Michigan library in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Oct. 8 armed with
leaflets, petitions and information to share with each other
about what the big media is leaving out. The protest and
information session was organized by Students for a Peaceful
Alternative.
On Oct. 7, 80-100 protesters in Atlanta held an emergency
rally and vigil in Woodruff Park as bombs began to drop in
Afghanistan. The event was coordinated by Georgians For
Peace.
The Houston chapter of the International ANSWER coalition
rallied against the U.S. attack on Central Asia. The group
picketed in front of the Mickey Leland Federal Building on
Monday afternoon.
Wesleyan University students in Middleton, Conn., walked out
of their morning classes Monday, Oct. 8. Protesters showed
solidarity with the people of Afghanistan and opposition to
U.S. military retaliation.
Over 150 people marched against war in Denver Oct. 7, after
President Bush announced "Operation Enduring Freedom." A
vigil of almost as many people was held in nearby Boulder,
Colo.
WEST COAST ACTIONS VS. U.S. WAR
Some 5,000 people assembled at Powell and Market streets in
San Francisco Oct. 7 to denounce the U.S. bombs that began
raining on Afghanistan that day. The gathering spot has
become known as a site where demonstrations take place in
response to U.S. aggression, going back to the U.S. bombing
of Iraq in 1991.
The demonstration was organized by International ANSWER. The
crowd marched behind a huge banner that read, "Stop bombing
Afghanistan," and was carried by Afghan women and African
American youths. Many students and youths attended from UC
Berkeley, San Francisco State and San Jose State, including
members of Berkeley's Students for Justice in Palestine and
San Jose's Students for Justice, and the American Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee.
A diverse collection of photos posted to San Francisco's
independent media center Web site show people reacting to
the protesters as they marched by stores and residential
areas. People came to their doors and windows and cheered
for the anti-war message, most making the peace sign.
A final rally was held at the Mission High School, where an
anti-war teach-in was being held.
The demonstration filled the surrounding streets and spilled
into nearby Dolores Park, where it concluded with messages
of determination to continue building an anti-war struggle
and solidarity for the people of Afghanistan.
Significant demonstrations of several hundred to over a
thousand were also held in Berkeley, Oakland and in Palo
Alto. In the Westwood area of Los Angeles, 200-300
protesters picketed at the Federal Building during an
emergency demonstration called jointly by CISPES, the Office
of the Americas and the International Action Center.
Protests were held in other California cities and towns such
as Fairfax, Huntington Beach, Irvine, San Diego, Sebastopol,
Ukiah and Willits.
More small and large actions, protests, vigils, walk-outs,
strikes and rallies were held in: Chicago; Detroit;
Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Seattle; Albuquerque, N.M.;
Amherst, Andover and Northampton, Mass.; Dearborn and
Marquette, Mich.; Roch ester, N.Y.; Charlotte, N.C.;
Colorado Springs, Colo.; Concord, Dover, Plymouth and Salem,
N.H.; Des Moines, Iowa; Duluth, Minneapolis and St. Paul,
Minn.; Gainesville, Pensacola and Tampa, Fla.; Greensboro,
N.C.; Hartford, Conn.; Jersey City, N.J.; Lewisburg and
Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; Milwaukee, Wi.; Norfolk and Richmond,
Va.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Portland, Ore.; St. Louis, Mo.;
Tucson, Ariz.; and Yellow Springs, Ohio.
A listing of recent and upcoming
anti-war protests is updated daily at
www.internationalanswer.org .
- END -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 11. lokakuu 2001 05:20
Subject: [WW] A War for Domination
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
A WAR FOR DOMINATION
By Fred Goldstein
After weeks of military build-up and three days of
relentless bombing of Afghanistan, it is becoming clear that
the Bush administration is using the horrific attacks of
Sept. 11 as a pretext to assert and expand U.S. imperialist
military domination in the entire region of the Middle East
and Central Asia.
The enormous display of military striking power directed
against an impoverished country that had already been mostly
destroyed by two decades of war can only be understood by
the world as a blatant act of intimidation directed against
all governments and movements that Washington regards with
hostility--and as preparation for a much wider war.
To carry out the massive bombing raids and to prepare for
putting ground troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has sent
four aircraft carrier-led battle groups into the region: the
Enterprise, the Carl Vinson, the Theodore Roosevelt and the
Kitty Hawk, which is on its way from Japan. Each battle
group has a dozen or so warships, including submarines and
destroyers. The Enterprise group alone carries 7,500 troops
along with F-14 and F-18 fighter planes and E6-Bs for
electronic warfare.
In addition, the Pentagon has shown its murderous global
reach by mobilizing B-1 and B-2 bombers on non-stop 6,000-
mile bombing runs from as far away as Missouri as well as B-
52s from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, almost 3,000
miles south of Afghanistan. The British junior partners of
Washington have also participated in the bombings.
Together these two imperialist powers have close to 80,000
troops in the area. Such massive forces are clearly meant to
attack existing states.
Under the banner of "fighting terrorism," the Pentagon has
pushed its way into the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan
and has gotten permission to use Tajikistan as a staging
area. A crucial part of the plan to bring oil out of the
region is to build a pipeline running through Afghanistan.
This mobilization, among other things, has served to provide
the U.S. military with inroads into the oil-rich area of
Central Asia, which the oil companies would like to secure
for their empire along with their domination of the oil-rich
Arabian/Persian Gulf.
WASHINGTON WANTS NO RESTRAINTS FROM ITS ALLIES
The aggressive mood in Washington is such that it wants
absolutely no restraint upon its military ambitions, even
from its imperialist allies. According to the New York Times
of Oct. 7, Robert Oakley, former head of the State
Department's "counter-terrorism" office and former
ambassador to Pakistan, said that "coalition is a bad word
because it makes people think of alliances."
"A senior administration official put it more bluntly: 'The
fewer people you have to rely on, the fewer permissions you
have to get.'"
Not only did Washington immediately reject UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan's suggestion that the Security Council
approve military action. The Pentagon was at first,
continued the Times, "even unwilling to have NATO invoke the
alliance's mutual defense clause requiring members to defend
one another against an armed attack, senior administration
and European officials said. 'The allies were desperately
trying to give us political cover and the Pentagon was
resisting it... It was insane. Eventually Rumsfeld
understood it was a plus, not a minus and was able to accept
it.'"
NO COUNTRY IS SAFE
The U.S. does not want to have to ask anyone's permission
precisely because it has plans to use the current situation
to expand its world domination. Washington is telling the
world directly that it plans to widen the war. In Bush's
speech of Oct. 7 announcing the beginning of the bombing
attacks, he said, "Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the
battle is much broader." He declared that no country could
be neutral.
At the United Nations the next day, according to the New
York Times of Oct. 9, "the American representative, John
Negroponte, submitted a letter to the Security Council
saying the United States may find it necessary to carry its
military campaign into other nations, without specifying
which ones."
"We may find that our self-defense requires further actions
with respect to other organizations and other states," said
the letter. The Times interpretation was that this was
laying the groundwork for attacks on Iraq, Lebanon, Syria
"and other countries identified as harboring terrorists."
On the same day Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "warned
the nation to prepare for not months, but years, of battle,"
according to the Times. And he "insisted that the attacks in
Afghanistan should be viewed as 'part of a much larger
effort against world-wide terrorism, one that will be
sustained and which is wide-ranging.'"
To dub this attempt to terrorize the world with military
power as a "war on terrorism" is cynical in the extreme.
The destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by the
Pentagon will not put an end to terrorism. The U.S.
government has just announced that the Taliban is an
oppressive regime that persecutes women, among other crimes.
But the U.S. knew this from day one because the Taliban was
one of many reactionary forces that received part of the $8
billion the CIA spent on years of counter-revolutionary
warfare to destroy the progressive socialist government of
Afghanistan.
Washington knew that this government gave rights to women
and to the long-suppressed progressive forces of Afghanistan
society. The Soviet Union spent blood unsuccessfully trying
to defend this regime from the counter-revolutionary terror
campaign conducted under the aegis of the CIA.
TALIBAN, NORTHERN ALLIANCE AND U.S.
The U.S. is now trying to hold up the Northern Alliance as
the liberators of Afghanistan from the reactionary Taliban.
The Northern Alliance forces were also a significant part of
the CIA's anti-communist army of counter-revolutionary
terrorists.
Even the pro-imperialist Human Rights Watch issued a report,
covering the period of the 1990s after the defeat of the
USSR and the socialist forces in Afghanistan, which declared
that all the victorious contra forces, including the
Northern Alliance, "engaged in rape, summary executions,
arbitrary arrests, torture and 'disappearances.'" (New York
Times, Oct. 7) In 1997 in Mazari-I-Sharif the Northern
Alliance executed 3,000 Taliban soldiers and in 1998 the
Alliance sent rockets into the market place in Kabul,
killing 76 civilians.
So the difference between the Northern Alliance and the
Taliban is that the former, having been defeated by the
Taliban, is willing to reenter the service of Washington in
this new phase of the war against Afghanistan.
To be sure, the Taliban is internally an extremely
reactionary formation. It deserves to be destroyed--but only
by the masses of people, and only in order to put in its
place a progressive government that will fight imperialism
and serve the interests of the people. It will be of no help
to replace it with a regime imposed on Kabul simply to
further the war aims and economic interests of the U.S.
military and corporations that are trying to get a
stranglehold on the region.
If the U.S. government is able to accomplish this goal, it
will only set the stage for a wider war in which untold
thousands of people in the Middle East and Central Asia, as
well as soldiers from the U.S., will die.
As for the war against Osama bin Laden, the people in the
U.S. must see beyond the Sept. 11 catastrophe. They must
understand that this U.S. mobilization and the bombing of
Afghanistan are another chapter in a long and bloody history
of Western colonialist and imperialist intervention in the
region.
The mobilization is seen by hundreds of millions in the area
as continuing the colonial wars the French and British began
in Afghanistan early in the 19th century. The people of the
Middle East remember the more recent killing of 20,000
innocent civilians in Lebanon in 1982 by a U.S.-equipped
Israeli invasion that destroyed Beirut. They still have
nightmares over the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 1991 that killed
200,000 people, and the deaths of a million more over the
next decade from U.S.-imposed sanctions.
This attack on Afghanistan must also be seen along with the
expulsion of the Palestinian people and the bloody 53-year
occupation of their homeland by the Israeli settler regime.
The people of Central Asia and the Middle East have suffered
so much at the hands of Western colonialism and military
intervention that they inevitably regard this latest
incursion by U.S. and British forces as another move to hold
them down. They will resist and have a right to resist.
The workers in this country must not be drawn into a war in
which they have to kill or be killed to defend U.S. military
and corporate expansionism.
It is ludicrous to think that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration in
Washington are making all these military moves in order to
protect the people in the U.S. They are using the horrible
destruction of thousands of innocent people on Sept. 11 as
an excuse to carry out long-held expansionist designs.
BUSH HASN'T CHANGED
No one should forget that this is the same George Bush who
came to power through a racist miscount of the votes in
Florida and presided over more executions than any other
governor. This is the Bush who appointed the racist, sexist
John Ashcroft to be attorney general. He's the one who gave
the rich a trillion-dollar tax break at the expense of the
workers, the poor and the lower middle class. It is the same
George Bush who is raiding Social Security and endangering
the retirement funds of millions of workers.
George Bush has not changed in his undying loyalty to the
oil companies and big business. That's what caused him to
push through a plan for oil drilling in the Arctic
wilderness and to pull out of the Kyoto Agreement,
threatening the entire planet with pollution and global
warming so his corporate buddies can be saved the cost of
anti-pollution measures. When this administration sends
military forces abroad, it is only to fight for profit in
the same greedy way that they fought for it at home before
Sept. 11.
And who are the "terrorists," according to Washington? Iran,
Iraq, Syria, Libya, the Sudan, the People's Democratic
Republic of Korea, Cuba, the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the
Colombian liberation fighters, among others, are all on the
list.
What do these governments and movements all have in common?
They are either trying to hold on to their national
independence or are fighting for their liberation. Many in
Washington are talking about the post-Sept. 11 era as
comparable to the Cold War, in which world imperialism
finally brought about the collapse of the USSR and the
eastern-bloc countries that constituted the material
stronghold of the socialist camp.
This is truly the context in which they see the present
struggle. The 75-year war against socialism and the USSR was
not just a Cold War but a class war, a war of big business
to defend private property and profit. It was a war against
the workers and oppressed who want to use the world's
economic resources for people and not for profit.
Bush and the ruling class would like to continue this class
war against the oppressed of the world by using the cover of
fighting terrorism to overturn every government and movement
that resists the will of the big multinational corporations,
the banks, the IMF, the World Bank and the Pentagon.
This is a dangerous pipedream. It cannot succeed because the
mass of the people will ultimately stop them. But the time
to resist this new surge toward expanded domination is now.
The first demand is to stop the war and get the U.S. forces
out of the Middle East and Central Asia.
That is the only way to secure the peace and security of the
people of that region and the people at home.
- END -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 11. lokakuu 2001 05:20
Subject: [WW] How Food Became a Lethal Weapon
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
HOW FOOD BECAME A LETHAL WEAPON
By Deirdre Griswold
It's the opposite of beating swords into plowshares. It's
taking food and using it as a lethal weapon.
That's what the Bush administration is doing as it airdrops
37,500 packaged meals on Afghanistan, a token gesture in a
land where millions face severe hunger and even starvation
as they are uprooted by war. But now the generals can get in
front of the cameras and talk of hey, hey, how many meals
they dropped today.
Even the French organization Doctors Without Borders, which
usually works in tandem with Western military forces,
condemned the action, saying it "isn't in any way a
humanitarian aid operation, but more a military propaganda
operation, destined to make international opinion accept the
U.S.-led military operation. What sense is there in shooting
with one hand, and giving medicine with the other?"
This operation may bamboozle some in the U.S. who only know
what the corporate media tells them, but it will only deepen
the disgust and hatred of those in the Middle East who
understand the full cynicism behind the photo ops.
This is not the first time that the U.S. rulers have used
food as a cover for intervention in a Muslim country. In
1993 U.S. Marines were sent to Somalia in the middle of a
civil war there, supposedly for the purpose of delivering
food to the people.
Their real goal was to eliminate the forces of Mohamed
Farrah Aidid, who someone in Washington had dubbed "the bad
guy" in the internal struggle. Once the U.S. troops were
entrenched in a base near the airport of the capital city,
Mogadishu, they began making forays into the city to "take
out" leaders from Aidid's grouping.
Imagine if, during the U.S. Civil War, Britain had been
powerful enough to send teams to Washington to assassinate
Lincoln and his cabinet. That's how the Somalis looked at
the U.S. intrusion.
The whole operation blew up on Oct. 3, 1993. As Black Hawk
helicopters circled above and Humvees topped with heavy-
gauge machine guns brought in backup squads, teams of
Rangers and Delta Force elite troops encircled a building in
the middle of the city, near the teeming Bakara Market,
where a meeting of Aidid supporters was supposedly taking
place.
The book "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden is by no means
written from a progressive outlook. But it describes in
vivid detail what happened. These helicopters, whose rotors
created such a powerful downdraft that they actually would
rip the clothes off of women on the street below and lift
the tin roofs off dwellings, had been invulnerable death
machines of the occupation. But when the Somalis saw them
hovering over the downtown area and realized they were
carrying out a military operation right in their capital
city, they ran in by the thousands, mostly unarmed, to
resist.
Women and children shielded men with their bodies as the
men, some armed with World War I rifles, crawled out in the
street to fire on the 17 copters and their crews. Old men
rode in on horses and even cows to fight the invaders.
The heavy guns of the U.S. forces killed at least 500
Somalis in the 15-hour battle that followed, most of them
civilians. But with all their vastly superior weaponry, the
elite U.S. troops were eventually overwhelmed by the sheer
numbers and passion of the Somali resistance. Nearly 100
were surrounded and trapped by the crowds after two Black
Hawks were shot down.
This event, in which 18 U.S. elite troops were killed and
nearly 80 injured, led to the hasty withdrawal of the
Pentagon from Somalia. A military operation that had begun
under the cover of "humanitarian aid" ended in a shameful
rout after a bloody battle that still burns in the hearts of
the people of the Middle East.
- END -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 11. lokakuu 2001 05:20
Subject: [WW] The View from Pakistan
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
THE VIEW FROM PAKISTAN: ANTI-IMPERIALIST FORCES
MUST FIGHT THEIR OWN RULING CLASS
[The following is taken from an analysis of the situation in
Afghanistan by Taimur Rahman of the Communist Workers and
Peasants Party of Pakistan.]
Why is the U.S. interested in attacking Afghanistan now?
Only simpletons would believe that the real intentions are
"retribution" for New York City. No, the 2 million homeless
people are being created only to unite Afghan istan under
U.S. control to lay the foundation for an oil pipeline
[running from the former Soviet Union to the Indian Ocean
via Afghanistan].
The Taliban have proved to be too "rowdy." They have their
own ambitions of Saudi/Pakistani/Talibani global Islamic
expansionism. Their tribal brand of Islamic fundamentalism
has isolated them and attracts too much attention.
Therefore, the U.S. prefers to play ball with another group
of Mujahideen and monarchists: enter the Northern Alliance
and King Zahir Shah.
Some people believe that we should choose the "lesser of the
two evils." Others believe that we should support the
Taliban. We propose that both solutions are incorrect.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
It is clear that outside powers have meddled with
Afghanistan's affairs too long. Outside powers have brought
ruin to the country. Therefore, the Communist Workers and
Peasants Party of Pakistan feels that all communists must
work concertedly to destroy, first and foremost, the
influence on Afghanistan of the ruling classes of their own
respective countries. This must be a united strategy of all
communists in the world with respect to Afghanistan. Let us
look at the alliances.
Pakistan is supporting the Taliban. [This was written before
Pakistan, under enormous U.S. pressure, switched sides--WW.]
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and India are supporting the Northern
Alliance. The U.S. imperialists have supported all
fundamentalist groups at one time but feel that their
current interests are best served by supporting the Northern
Alliance and King Zahir Shah.
Therefore, it is the foremost (but by no means the sole)
duty of Pakistani communists to expose the role of the
Pakistani ruling class in relation to its support of the
Taliban. In a word, the Pakistani communists must cut the
hand that feeds the Taliban. We would become apologists of
the Pakistani ruling class if we did not oppose the Taliban.
However, we cannot let our opposition to the Taliban merge,
under any circumstances, with the rhetoric of the U.S.
imperialists or their stooges in Pakistan. Therefore, in the
current historical setting, we must play the tricky role of
opposing the U.S. imperialists and their stooges in
Pakistan, in such a manner that we simultaneously educate
people about the history of fundamentalism.
We have to show the connection between fundamentalism and
the ruling class of Pakistan. We must uphold that a genuine
anti-imperialist struggle has to be a struggle against the
ruling classes of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
At the same time, we feel that it is the duty of comrades in
India, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to expose the role that
their governments have played in backing fundamentalist
Mujahideen such as the Northern Alliance. They would become
apologists of their ruling classes if they did not do so, or
attempted to paint these fundamentalists in more "liberal"
colors. The tendency to paint the Northern Alliance in
"liberal" colors must be fought tooth and nail. This plays
into the hands of the imperialists at this point in time,
when they wish to create legitimacy for the Northern
Alliance and King Zahir Shah.
We also feel that communists in Europe and America must
mobilize domestic support against war in any country under
the guise of fighting terrorism. The biggest terrorist
machines on Earth, the imperialist armies, can create only
terror to put up oil pipelines. If European or U.S. parties
were to accept the notion that their governments could play
a "progressive role in Afghan-istan" today, they would be
guilty of the worst kind of social chauvinism. It would
reveal that they understand nothing about the Northern
Alliance or the history of involvement of imperialism in
Afghanistan.
We advocate that all communists, everywhere in the world,
must stand shoulder to shoulder and resist any attack on any
Third World country by any imperialist country. This does
not mean that we support the Taliban but that we support the
people of Afghan istan against an imperialist terrorist
machine a million times the size of the Taliban and 100
million times more vicious.
ANTI-IMPERIALIST MOVEMENT IN AFGHANISTAN AND
PAKISTAN
Many people with good intentions think that they should
support the lesser of two evils because there is no other
option. This is completely wrong.
In Afghanistan and in Pakistan there is a communist movement
working towards an anti-imperialist revolution. These
movements have been suppressed by the ruling classes and
fundamentalists backed by imperialists, but they have not
been eliminated. Because of these difficult circumstances,
the communist parties have been forced to take a low
profile.
Movements in other countries can help these anti-imperialist
forces by pulling back and destroying imperialist
intervention that shores up anti-communist fundamentalism.
They would NOT help the communists of Pakistan and
Afghanistan by passively allowing imperialist intervention
to strengthen one fundamentalist group over another.
Rest assured that even in war-ridden Afghanistan, there is a
third way. Lenin liked to say that proletarian movements in
oppressed countries must be supported even if they are in
their "embryonic form." How can we win, if we are not aiming
to? The genuine anti-imperialist and Marxist-Leninist forces
will become stronger in the measure that imperialism is
stopped from intervention in any Third World country.
We must also avoid the tendency to paint the Taliban and the
fundamentalist parties as "anti-imperialists." The
imperialist system does not only exist in the United States
alone; it is a global system of production. Therefore, anti-
U.S. sentiment is not necessarily anti-imperialism.
Imperialism is a system of monopoly capitalism. It has roots
in the class structure of Third World countries. In
Pakistan, for example, the ruling class is composed of the
civil military bureaucracy (the strongest component of the
ruling class), the feudals, and the 22 big capitalist
families that monopolize 60-70 percent of industrial
production.
In Afghanistan the ruling class does not exist in a national
stable sense, but consists of changing alliances between
feudals and tribals who have organized themselves as Islamic
fundamentalists. The ruling class in both these countries is
not a "revolutionary national bourgeoisie" that can play an
"anti-imperialist role," such as Lenin wrote about Sun Yat-
sen in China. This ruling class is part and parcel of the
imperialist system.
Therefore, an anti-imperialist movement, regardless of
whether it is Marxist-Leninist or democratic or Islamic, can
only be a movement that seeks to destroy the ruling class.
In other words, only a movement against the ruling class in
Pakistan and Afghanistan can be considered an anti-
imperialist movement.
Such is certainly not the nature of the Taliban or the
fundamentalists. They are merely paramilitary forces,
recruited mostly from the lower middle class (petty
bourgeois) of the civil military bureaucracy and feudal
mafia in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The current conflict is
not too different than the conflict between U.S.
imperialists and Noriega in Panama. Did Noriega represent an
anti-imperialist movement? The answer is self-evident.
Only the Afghan people can decide their own destiny.
Fundamentalism cannot be destroyed by imperialist
intervention. It can only be destroyed by a popular struggle
by Pakistani and Afghani people. Millions of people have
suffered because of them and are resisting.
If the anti-imperialist movement in the West is able to
destroy the intervention in Afghanistan, it will have
performed a great service to the anti-imperialist movement
in Pakistan and Afghanistan. All the bloody tentacles have
to be withdrawn from the body of Afghan society. Every
comrade in their respective country must work to destroy the
tentacle that feeds reaction from their own country.
We feel that this is the correct Marxist-Leninist position
to take in the current historical epoch.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 11. lokakuu 2001 05:20
Subject: [WW] Nationwide Anti-War Actions Oct. 27
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS BOMBS START TO FALL: NATIONWIDE ANTI-WAR ACTIONS
SET FOR OCT. 27
By Sarah Sloan
Washington, D.C.
As word spread around the country on Oct. 7 that the U.S.
had begun to bomb Afghanistan, anti-war and anti-racist
activists immediately went into action. Many of them had
just one week before rallied in Washington, D.C., San
Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities in the first
national anti-war actions sponsored by the new International
ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) coalition.
The D.C. protests drew more than 20,000 people from as far
away as California, Minnesota and Florida.
To continue the momentum from the Sept. 29 actions and the
emergency response protests that have since taken place
around the country, the International ANSWER has designated
Saturday, Oct. 27, as an internationally coordinated day of
action against racism and war. Rallies, marches, teach-ins
and other actions will take place in cities around the U.S.
and the world.
Nancy Mitchell, an ANSWER youth organizer who traveled from
San Francisco to D.C. to help out in the last two weeks of
the mobilization, told WW: "In the days before the September
29 demonstrations, we met with activists who had driven as
long as 24 hours from Nebraska and Min nesota, who had flown
in from the West Coast, and who had organized large
contingents from the East Coast. They described the
tremendous response they had found to organizing in the last
weeks. In some cities, the recent organizing against racism
and war had produced the largest protests and meetings to
take place for literally decades."
Mitchell continued, "Activists traveled from around the
country to D.C. for September 29 because standing among so
many others gave them inspiration to continue to organize in
their cities around the country. This internationally
coordinated day of action on October 27 offers that same
opportunity. For every city where hundreds or thousands
march against the war, they can feel the strength of the
anti-war movement around the country and know that they
represent tens of thousands of people who are in motion
against this war."
In New York City, organizers are planning a march beginning
at the New York Times building. The march will be followed
by a teach-in. In Wash ing ton, D.C., a rally is plan ned at
the White House. In San Fran cisco there will be a major
teach-in. Organizers expect activities to take place in 50
to 100 cities around the country.
For more information, see InternationalANSWER.org, email
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
or call 202-543-2777,
202-544-9355
or 212-633-6646.
- END -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 11. lokakuu 2001 05:20
Subject: [WW] NY Labor Against War
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
NEW YORK LABOR AGAINST WAR
By Deirdre Griswold
New York
On Oct. 4 a newly formed group, New York City Labor Against
War, held a press conference at Union Square here to affirm
that there are many progressives in the labor movement who
will not go along with the Bush administration's assault on
Afghanistan.
The group issued a statement signed by nine local union
presidents and hundreds of other union members that called
for a just and effective response to Sept. 11 based on five
demands: no war; justice, not vengeance; opposition to
racism and defense of civil liberties; aid for the needy,
not the greedy; and no labor "austerity."
The statement was read by Michael Letwin of the Association
of Legal Aid Attorneys, one of the nine union presidents to
sign on. The other eight are Larry Adams of the Postal Mail
Handlers Local 300; Barbara Bowen of the Professional Staff
Congress; Arthur Cheliotes of Communications Workers Local
1180; Jill Levy of the American Federation of School
Administrators Local 1; Maida Rosenstein of the Autoworkers
Local 2110; Joel Schwartz of the Civil Services Employees
Local 446; Brenda Stokely of AFSCME Local 215; and Jonathan
Tasini of the National Writers Union Local 1981.
Taking note of the fact that 1,000 union members were among
those killed in New York on Sept. 11, and that an estimated
100,000 New Yorkers will lose their jobs, the statement went
on to say that "George Bush's war is not the answer. No one
should suffer what we experienced on Sept. 11. Yet war will
inevitably harm countless innocent civilians, strengthen
American alliances with brutal dictatorships and deepen
global poverty--just as the United States and its allies
have already inflicted widespread suffering on innocent
people in such places as Iraq, Sudan, Israel and the
Occupied Territories, the former Yugoslavia and Latin
America."
Other speakers at the press conference included Brenda
Stokely, Mike Gimbel and Ray Laforest of AFSCME, and Miguel
Maldonado of the Immigrant Workers Association.
