Feb. 13, 2003 Vol. 45, No. 6

ESTADOS UNIDOSSindicatos se resisten aendosar guerra de Bush 12

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WORKERS WORLDNEWSPAPER55 W. 17 St. NY, NY 10011

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

JUSTICE DENIEDThe lynching of Emmett Till 3

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM100,000 call for ‘another world’ 9

EYEWITNESS VENEZUELAWorkers foil bosses’ lockout 8

YUGOSLAVIAU.S. history of

‘regime change’11

PALESTINEStruggle gains growing

support10

BELGIUMSame-sex marriage

victory11

By Deirdre Griswold

It doesn’t take much digging to provethat the much-hyped indictment of Iraqthat U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powelllaid before the UN Security Council onFeb. 5 was a brazen rehash of discredit-ed charges.

What is amazing is that the Bush ad-ministration obviously doesn’t care that itsarguments can easily be disproven. It isrelying on the power of the U.S.-dominat-ed mass media to sell these trumped-upexcuses for a war to a misinformed public.

And it is playing the diplomatic gameonly to gain time as it deploys a night-marish armada for mass destructionaround Iraq and its rich oil fields.

Take the charge that Iraq gassed thou-sands of Kurds at the town of Halabja in1988, and that this proves Iraq’s “mon-strous human rights record.” Just daysbefore Powell’s appearance at the UN, thisallegation was disproven in an opinionpiece in the New York Times of Jan. 31 byStephen C. Pelletiere. He wrote that “all weknow for certain is that Kurds were bom-

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I n t e r n a t i o n a l A . N . S . W. E . R . c o a l i t i o n

Before Pentagon blitzkrieg

U.S.WAR OF LIES‘Only the people can stop war’The charade of UN diplomacy, ofhypocritical, peaceful-sounding weapons inspectors 6

Rising up around the worldBiggest threat to Bush's war plans: burgeoning resistance 4 -7

Two wars at once?If that's what the Pentagon is planning, the movement has to beprepared to fight on two fronts, as well. 2

w w w . i n t e r n a t i o n a l A N S W E R . o r g

Continued on page 10

Page 2 Feb. 13, 2003 www.workers.org

WW CALENDAR

Workers World55 West 17 StreetNew York, N.Y. 10011Phone: (212) 627-2994 • Fax: (212) 675-7869E-mail: editor@workers.org Web: http://www.workers.org/Vol. 45, No. 6 • Feb. 13, 2003Closing date: Feb. 5, 2003

Editor: Deirdre Griswold; Technical Editor: Lal Roohk; Managing Editors: Greg Butterfield, JohnCatalinotto, Leslie Feinberg, Monica Moorehead,Gary Wilson; West Coast Editors: Richard Becker, Gloria La Riva;Contributing Editors: Joyce Chediac, Pat Chin,Naomi Cohen, Shelley Ettinger, Teresa Gutierrez;Technical Staff: Rebecca Finkel, Elena J. Peckham,Hank Sambach; Mundo Obrero: Carl Glenn, Carlos Vargas; Internet: Janet Mayes

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NATIONWIDE.

Feb. 13-21Week of anti-war resistance.Teach-ins, rallies, pickets.Coast to coast coordinatedrallies on Feb. 15. For info on the Web

internationalANSWER.org orphone (212) 633-6646 or(202) 544-3389 or (415)821-6545 or (213) 487-2368or (617) 522-6626.

�� NationalU.S. war of lies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Having to fight two wars at the same time . . . . . . . . 2Reopen the case of Emmett Till . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Disney: Another racist snub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Budget cuts put education in crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

People rise up to stop the war . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

NYC: Make Feb. 15 Anti-war Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Brooklyn builds for Feb. 15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

U.S. lines up gov'ts but not people . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Who put the wraps on Guernica? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

�� Internat ionalSea of red flags in Caldutta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Anti-war tour in Germany. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Kurds tell Pentagon: ‘Hands off Iraq’ . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Anti-war voices rise in Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chávez visit brings Venezuela front and center . . . . . 8

Eyewitness Venezuela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

World Social Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Palestinian cause gains support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Yugoslavia and Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Belgium same-sex marriage win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

�� Editor ia lThe war budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Lessons of the space shuttle disaster . . . . . . . . . . . 10

�� Notic ias En EspañolSindicatos se resisten a endosar guerra de Bush . . . 12

Semana de Resistencia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

By Deirdre Griswold

If the Bush administration andthe Pentagon are planning to be ableto fight two wars at the same time,shouldn’t the anti-war movement bepreparing to oppose two wars at thesame time?

This is not an academic question.At this moment, the U.S. govern-ment says it is ready to hold talkswith the Democratic People’sRepublic of Korea. But at the sametime, it is sending planes and war-ships to the area to supplement theforce of 37,000 troops it has sta-tioned in South Korea for over 50years, aimed at the north.

The North Koreans take thisthreat very seriously. They havegood reason to. The DPRK is not alarge country—with 25 million peo-ple, it has only slightly more thanhalf the population of the south. Butit lost an estimated 3 million peopleduring the 1950-53 Korean War.U.S. planes bombed every buildingover one story. The Pentagon sent1.3 million troops to Korea; over50,000 were killed in that bitter war.But among Koreans, virtually everyfamily lost loved ones in the war.

Whatever discussions are heldbetween the DPRK and the U.S., thethreat of another war is very real.Indeed, there are many voices in thecorporate media arguing that Koreais a bigger “threat” to the UnitedStates than Iraq, because there’s noevidence that Iraq has a nuclear pro-gram any more, while the DPRK hassaid openly that it is resuming workon a nuclear reactor it had shutdown in 1994 in a negotiatedarrangement with the Clintonadministration.

However, that “Agreed Frame-work” deal was torpedoed byPresident George W. Bush last yearwhen he included North Korea in hisinfamous “Axis of Evil” speech. Thischaracterization of the DPRK wastantamount to a declaration of war,and the Koreans let Washingtonknow very plainly that they consid-ered it as such.

Why are the Bush administrationand most of the corporate media soworried about the DPRK? Is itbecause it is building a nuclearpower plant that one day could pro-duce fissionable material that mightbe used for a couple of bombs? Butthis is no real threat to the UnitedStates. The U.S. has built 70,000

Can movement meet the challenge?

Having to fight twowars at same time

nuclear warheads since 1945, andstill deploys about 7,000 of them. Itencircles Korea with sophisticatedships, planes and submarines.

Or are the imperialist strategistsreally worried about the growingsentiment in South Korea againstU.S. military occupation?

For the last several years, the twohalves of Korea have been dis-cussing how to reduce tensions onthe peninsula and initiate joint cul-tural and economic projects. Thiscomes after the rise of a strong andmilitant movement in the south forreunification and the withdrawal ofU.S. troops.

If the U.S. were to leave Koreaalone, there is no doubt that rela-tions between the north and southwould improve. This is what washappening—until Bush intervenedwith his threats against the north.Even now, many plans are beingimplemented for joint north-southprojects—like a railway that wouldlink South Korea to China andRussia by way of the north.

The Bush administration is doingall it can to prevent the two halves ofKorea from cooperating. After all,what excuse would there be for thecontinued U.S. occupation of SouthKorea if the process of normaliza-tion were to proceed?

At the same time, the demoniza-tion of the leadership in North Koreareaches new lows every day. Nevermind that the DPRK continues toseek a dialogue with the U.S. gov-ernment on securing peace on theKorean peninsula, or that it has suc-cessfully reached out to the south.Its leaders are still branded as“xenophobic” and the country a“hermit nation.”

Bush accuses the Korean leadersof “starving their own people,” butit has been U.S. pressure that pre-vented the DPRK from getting theenergy needed for its economy. Noone believes the “compassionateconservatives” any more when

they express concern for the chil-dren of Iraq, who have died by thehundreds of thousands from U.S.sanctions. Why should they believethe same lies about Korea, espe-cially when they are being used torally the population here behindnew war moves?

The U.S. has never agreed tonegotiate a peace treaty to officiallyend the Korean War. That is anoth-er way of telling the Koreans that itcould attack them at any time. Inresponse, North Korea has built astrong defense establishment. Itproduces missiles and has sold themto other countries.

The military-industrial complexhere is horrified at this. It tries toforce countries around the world tobuy U.S. military equipment. Foryears, Washington has made SouthKorea buy U.S. fighter planes andother big-ticket items at a cost of bil-lions of dollars, even when theycould get them cheaper from othersuppliers.

U.S. arrogance on this question isso great that in December the U.S.got the Spanish Navy to actuallyboard a ship in the Arabian Seabelieved to be carrying Korean mis-siles destined for Yemen. Imagine ifsome country decided it shouldboard ships carrying U.S. weaponsaround the world. That would be a24/7 job.

Korea has a long history of resist-ing colonialism and foreign domi-nation. In the first half of the lastcentury, its struggle was againstJapanese imperialism, which car-ried out ferocious repression of theKorean people in its attempts toannex the peninsula.

The anti-war movement hereneeds to become familiar withKorean history in order to under-stand why today the Korean people’sstruggle for self-determination isdirected against domination by theworld’s lone superpower, the UnitedStates. ��

Demonstrationagainst U.S.troops in Seoul, South Korea

www.workers.org Feb. 13, 2003 Page 3

By Monica Moorehead

NAACP President Kwesi Mfume sent aletter to Mississippi Attorney GeneralMichael Moore on Jan. 31, urging that thecase of Emmett Till be reopened.

In 1955, Emmet Till, a 14-year-oldAfrican American, was kid-napped, tortured and mur-dered by three rabid whitesegregationists in Money,Miss. Two of the murderers,Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam,were acquitted by an all-whitejury after just five days of tes-timony.

Four months after the trial,Bryant and Milam admittedin a Look magazine articlethat they indeed murderedTill. They provided all the gorydetails, knowing that legallythey could not be retried.

Mfume stressed in his Jan-uary letter: “With the recentpassing of Mamie TillMobley, who fought tireless-ly to see justice done in thekilling of her son, it is now time to addresswhat remains an ugly mark on the histo-ry of Mississippi and the United States.Her extraordinary acts of courage mustnot be in vain.”

In January the Public BroadcastingService aired a one-hour documentarytitled “The Murder of Emmett Till.”Interviews with Ms. Mobley just beforeher death and also more than 48 years agoare part of this film. The documentary wona special prize for its Black director,Stanley Nelson, at the recent SundanceFilm Festival.

What led to lynching of teenager?

The Till documentary helped introducea whole new generation not only to whathappened to this youth, but also to theobjective factors that led to this horrificlynching.

Emmett Till was born and raised inChicago to parents who had migratedNorth, as did millions of Black people, toescape the oppressive South. He traveledto the heart of the Mississippi Delta to visitan uncle in late August 1955.

Upon his departure, his mother warnedhim that the attitudes of whites in Moneytoward Black people were “different” fromwhites in Chicago, even though both citieswere ruled by segregation.

As in many Southern towns during thatera, Black people faced physical and ver-bal assault just for walking on the sameside of the street as whites. White menviewed Black men as “threats” to whitewomen. Therefore, Black men werestrongly “encouraged” to bow their headsand not utter a word to any white womanthey approached.

Right before Till went to Money, twoBlack activists trying to carrying out

voter registration were lynched.These were examples of the political

and social climate that governed the eco-nomic conditions of semi-slavery in theSouth. This was the Southern plantationatmosphere, foreign to Till and otheryoung, first-born generation Northern

Black people.Roy Bryant owned a store

frequented by Black share-croppers. Till and somefriends bought some candythere. As Till was leaving thestore, Bryant’s wife allegedthat the teenager, who suf-fered from a speech imped-iment, whistled at her.

Several days later, in themiddle of the night, Bryant,Milam and another whiteman kidnapped the teenag-er at gunpoint from hisuncle’s house.

Willie Reed, a sharecrop-per who worked for Milam,stated that he heard Tillbeing beaten by the threemen in a tool shed. He heard

the teenager screaming. A blood- soakedTill was then driven to the banks of theTallahatchie River where he was shotpoint-blank in the head.

A cotton gin fan was tied around hisneck with wire. His body was tossed in theriver, where it was found days later. AfterReed was forced to wash Till’s blood fromthe back of the truck, he disappeared.

The murder of Emmett Till madenational and international headlines. Fiftythousand Black people turned out for hisfuneral in Chicago.

His mother demanded that his coffin beopened so that the whole world could bearwitness that her son’s face was mutilatedbeyond recognition due to the savagebeating he received with the butt of a .45-caliber pistol.

Sham of a trial

The so-called trial of Bryant and Milamtook place in Sumner, Miss., in a hostile,racist atmosphere. U.S. Rep. CharlesDiggs of Detroit, an African American,attended the trial where Black and whitepeople were segregated in the courtroom.

After Reed reappeared to bravely testi-fy about what he had seen and heard onthe night of Till’s abduction, he was smug-gled out of town. Later he was hospitalizedwith a nervous breakdown.

Mose Wright, Till’s uncle, also came for-ward to testify that Bryant and Milamwere the abductors of his nephew. He, too,was forced to leave town. He neverreturned to Money.

The jurors could be heard laughingduring their “deliberations.” One jurorstated publicly that they would havereturned with the not-guilty verdict soon-er but stalled to try to give the appearanceof fairness.

After the verdict was announced, thesharecroppers in Money shut downBryant’s store with a powerful boycott.

Mamie Till spoke all over the country.She told outraged audiences of thousandsin the North, predominantly Black, aboutthe sham of a trial her son’s killersreceived and how she would not rest untilhe received real justice.

She sent telegrams to President DwightEisenhower and FBI Director J. EdgarHoover, requesting that the federal gov-ernment intervene in her son’s case.

Not only didn’t the U.S. governmentintervene, Eisenhower did not evenrespond to her telegram.

This is another blatant example of thecomplicity between the local and federalgovernments in covering up countlessmurders including not only Till’s butthose of civil-rights activists like MedgarEvers, Andrew Goodman, MichaelSchwerner and James Chaney.

The persistence of civil-rights activists—

along with powerful documentaries likethose focusing on Till or the 1963Birmingham church bombing in SpikeLee’s moving documentary “Four LittleGirls”—has helped to finally reopen thesecases decades after the murders.

Another example of justice denied wasreported in a front-page article in the Jan.26 New York Times. The Times reportedon efforts to bring to trial a Klansman who,together with two other Klan members,kidnapped Black farmhand Ben ChesterWhite in 1966 and riddled him with bul-lets. White was chosen at random by theKKK. The Klan used the murder as a ployto lure Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. toMississippi in a plot to assassinate thecivil-rights leader.

Till murder spurs civil rightsmovement

Emmett Till was lynched one year afterthe U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brownvs. Board of Education that outlawed seg-regation in public schools.

One hundred days after the Till lynch-ing Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress,refused to give up her seat to a white manin Montgomery, Ala. Her arrest sparkedthe successful Montgomery bus boycottwhich in turn helped launch the massivecivil-rights struggle.

Mamie Till Mobley never stopped fight-ing for justice. She died on Jan. 6 at the ageof 81. Shortly after her death, Illinois Gov.George Ryan paid tribute to her in his his-toric speech in which he explained why hewas shutting down Illinois’ death row toshow his opposition to the death penalty.

In response to the Jan. 31 Mfume letter,Mississippi Attorney General Moore pub-licly stated that because much of the evi-dence from the original trial has been“lost,” and both Bryant and Milam havedied, he sees no point in reopening the case.

What about the detailed confession byBryant and Milam in Look magazine? Isthat not proof enough of who is responsi-ble for this senseless, cold-blooded killingof a 14-year-old boy?

Moore has the authority to designate an“Emmett Till Day” to not only honor Till,his mother and all the civil-rights activistswho gave their lives in the struggle forsocial justice—but to honor a struggle thatis far from over. ��

NO JUSTICE? NO PEACE!

Reopen the case of Emmett Till

�� Racism, national oppression & the right to self-determinationLarry Holmes

�� Black labor from chattel slavery to wage slavery Sam Marcy

�� Reparations & Black Liberation Monica Moorehead

�� Harriet Tubman: woman warrior Mumia Abu-Jamal (Guest Commentary)

�� Black labor & the fight for reparations Bill Cecil

�� Alabama’s Black Belt: Legacy of slavery, sharecropping and segregationBy Consuela Lee (Guest commentary)

�� Black farmers demand justiceMonica Moorehead

�� Greetings from Mumia Abu-Jamal to the 3rd UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,Xenophobia & Related Intolerance

�� Nigerian women take over Chevron Texaco Monica Moorehead

�� Nigerian women’s takeover ends in victory Monica Moorehead

�� Causes of turmoil in Jamaica Pat Chin PART I PART II PART III

�� The driving force behind the land seizures Monica Moorehead

Coming soon to Leftbooks.comEdited by Monica Moorehead

DiSNEy:another racist snubThe Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated

the Oakland Raiders in the most recentSuper Bowl by unleashing a ferociousdefense. Dexter Jackson, an AfricanAmerican defensive back, made two ofthe Bucs’ five interceptions againstRaiders quarterback Rich Gannon.

Jackson was picked as the “MVP”—most valuable player. Traditionally,Super Bowl MVPs do a television spotfor the Walt Disney Corp. in which theyare asked what they are going to do afterwinning the award. “Go to DisneyWorld,” is the usual reply.

But Brad Johnson, the Bucs’ whitequarterback, was given that “honor” thisyear instead.

This is not the first time the Disneybosses’ racism has been on display afterthe most prestigious professional sportsevent. Disney also passed over formerMVPs Ray Lewis and Jerry Rice—whomany consider the best football player ofall time—in favor of white quarterbacks.

Along with Disney’s appalling anti-union stance, racism is another goodreason not to go to Disney World.

—Monica Moorehead

AVOICE fromHARPER’SFERRY1859By Osborne P. Anderson, a Black revolutionary who was there. With an essay on ‘The UnfinishedRevolution’ by Vince Copeland & new prefaces by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Monica Moorehead. 128 pp, photographs. WORLD VIEW FORUM,55 W. 17th St., 5th Fl., N.Y., N.Y. 10011$18 (15% discount at wwwwww.l.l efef tt bbooooks.cks.coomm)

Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Page 4 Feb. 13, 2003 www.workers.org

Unions say 'Money for schools, not war'

Budget cuts puteducation in crisis

By Greg Butterfield

The biggest threat to the Bush admin-istration’s plan for war and domination inIraq is the culture of anti-war resistanceblossoming in the United States andthroughout the world.

Mass demonstrations on Jan. 18 inWashington, D.C., and San Francisco–ini-tiated by the International ANSWER (ActNow to Stop War and End Racism) coali-tion—and in cities worldwide broughthundreds of thousands of people into thestreets to demand, “No war against Iraq.”

For tens of thousands of labor unionistsand other workers, college and high schoolstudents, and community members, it wastheir very first anti-war protest.

This kind of massive mobilization isvital. It contains the seeds of more militantmass resistance to war, racist repression,and the state-sponsored terrorism of theBush White House, Big Oil and Wall Street.

More big street protests are planned forFeb. 15 and 16—global days of anti-waraction initiated by European groups.Demonstrations are planned in at least sixdozen cities worldwide.

In the United States, protests are sched-uled in New York City and Chicago Feb. 15and in San Francisco Feb. 16. ANSWER,Not In Our Name, United for Peace &Justice, and other anti-war groups arebuilding for the actions.

Even as the Masters of War prepare for“A-Day”–the plan of air strikes to bom-bard Baghdad’s civilian population with3,000 to 4,000 bombs and missiles in asingle day, according to the New YorkTimes–they can’t ignore the momentumgenerated by mass anti-war actions.

A climate of open resistance is being feltin every part of the globe. It is taking manycreative forms.

57 municipalities say ‘no war’

City and county councils in at least 20states have passed anti-war measures inrecent weeks. They include big cities likeChicago, Philadelphia and Detroit. In thelast week of January, resolutions inCleveland; Tacoma, Wash.; Nederland,Colo.; Amherst, Mass.; and Topanga,Calif., brought the number of municipali-ties to 57, representing 13 million people.

The Institute for Policy Studies inWashington reports that 70 more citiesand counties, as well as Maine’s state leg-islature, are considering resolutions. Thisresistance to the war drive reflects the eco-nomic crisis that is creating record unem-ployment, homelessness and cutbackswhile the Pentagon basks in burgeoningbillions of dollars.

Former South African president andanti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandelaagain spoke out forcefully against GeorgeW. Bush’s war plans on Jan. 30. “It is atragedy what is happening, what Bush isdoing in Iraq,” Mandela declared. “WhatI am condemning is that one power, witha president who has no foresight, who can-not think properly, is now wanting toplunge the world into a holocaust.”

Mandela charged Bush and BritishPrime Minister Tony Blair with manipu-lating the United Nations in a racist fash-ion. He also thanked the U.S. anti-warmovement for its strong showing andurged South Africans to follow suit. Dem-onstrations are planned in South Africa’surban centers for Feb. 15 and Feb. 19.

Peace blockade & human shields

For six days in late January members ofthe environmental group Greenpeace car-

ried out a “peace blockade” at Britain’sMarchwood military port in South-ampton. The group’s flagship, the Rain-bow Warrior, dropped anchor directly infront of the port, where a military supplyvessel was loading tanks, jeeps and heli-copters bound for the war against Iraq.

The British high court upheld Green-peace’s right to carry out the protest,which effectively cut off military suppliesfor six days. But the British military brassflagrantly defied the court order on thenight of Feb. 1.

“The Rainbow Warrior was surround-ed by six Ministry of Defense and policeboats and up to 20 police boarded the shipjust after 10 p.m. Saturday night,” Green-peace reported. “By 3 a.m. they had cut theanchor chain and towed the ship out of theway.”

Teams of anti-war activists fromEurope, the United States and other coun-tries continue to converge on Iraq to actas “human shields” against a U.S.-led war.

On Feb. 2 Kyodo News reported on ameeting of a group of 40 Japanese acti-vists who plan to fly to Iraq Feb. 16 to actas human shields. They will attend a youthconference and visit schools and hospitals.

Some 60 activists from the TruthJustice Peace Human Shield action groupleft London en route to Baghdad Jan. 27,according to The Star, a South Africannewspaper.

And the Lebanon Daily Star reports that140 Palestinians and Lebanese flew fromBeirut to Baghdad on Jan. 30 “to expresstheir solidarity with the Iraqi people.”

“We’re going to Baghdad to give psy-chological support to the people there,”said Palestinian engineer Hisham Zaatari.“It’s the least we can do as Arabs, after see-ing that many people from Europe and theUnited States have already flocked therein masses.”

Nayef Sharqieh, a construction worker,said many Palestinian refugees were goingon the trip. “We feel that we can’t do any-thing for Palestine, we can’t go there, butwe can do something for Iraq, so we’reready to do anything to try to prevent thewar or to act as human shields,” he said.

Poets, bishops & vets

Laura Bush canceled a White Housepoetry symposium scheduled for Feb. 12after learning that some poets were plan-ning to bring poems against the war andturn the party into a protest.

When poet Sam Hamill from PortTownsend, Wash., received an invitationto the event, he was “overcome by a kindof nausea.” On Jan. 26, he sent an emailto 50 friends asking them to compose anti-war poems. He planned to bind them andpresent them to Bush.

He decided to reconstitute a “PoetsAgainst the War Movement.” By Jan.29–just three days later–Hamill hadreceived more than 1,500 submissions.Poems came from some of the country’smost prominent poets and writers,including W.S. Merwin, Ursula Le Guin,Galway Kinnell, Marilyn Hacker andAdrienne Rich.

When the White House caught wind ofthe outpouring of anti-war sentiment, thesymposium was “indefinitely postponed.”Poets Against the War has now set Feb 12as a national “Day of Poetry Against theWar.” (www.poetsagainstthewar.org)

Also striking close to home forPresident George W. Bush is a new anti-war television ad featuring Bishop MelvinG. Talbert, a leader of the UnitedMethodist Church, which is the Bush fam-

Across U.S., around the world

People rise up

Special to Workers WorldNew York

Throughout the United States, fromcoast to coast, states and cities are strug-gling to manage full-blown budget crisesor ward off impending ones.

Revenue from sales and income taxeshas fallen sharply because of giveaways tothe rich and the downturn in the capital-ist economy. The federal government,which is spending more than ever on warand repression, has used its power to pushunfunded mandates onto the states, whichthen shift them to the cities.

Public education, usually a local respon-sibility that serves mostly children fromworking-class families, is an easy target.

Federal money has been drying up atthe same time that federal mandates—likeexpanded testing and the No Child LeftBehind Act of 2002—put more demandsand financial pressures on school systems.

The result is growing chaos in theschool systems.

California is facing a projected $26 bil-lion to $35 billion budget deficit. Gov.Gray Davis proposes cutting $5 billion outof spending for education, even thoughCalifornia has lagged behind other statesin this area.

What this means on a local level can beseen in Oceanside, near San Diego inSouthern California. Oceanside has to cut$4.4 million from its budget. The schoolboard is proposing to cut temporary teach-ers, program specialists, a district admin-istrator, secretaries, custodians and asecurity officer—in the middle of the year.It will decide how to make another $12million in cuts later in the spring. (SanDiego Union-Tribune, Jan. 28)

Some schools in Oregon, another statewith a big budget crisis, have shortenedthe school year.

In a proposal that is up for a final voteon Feb. 11, Minneapolis is planning to cut289 teaching jobs and more than 100administrative positions at the district levelfor the 2003-2004 school year. The districtsuperintendent also wants to increaseclass sizes, cut back on district supportservices, reduce allocation for buildingmaintenance and demand contract con-cessions. Most of the school districts inMinnesota have to cut millions of dollarsfrom their budgets to adjust to reductionsin state aid. (Star Tribune, Jan. 29)

Schools in Louisiana and Colorado havegone to a four-day week to stretch theirdollars.

In New York state, Gov. George Patakifaces a projected deficit of $11.3 billion forfiscal year 2003. In a budget address deliv-ered at the end of January, he called forslashing state aid to education—which has

run about $14 billion annually—by $1.2billion.

Money for schools, not war

Some education unions in the countryare demanding that the money plannedfor war in Iraq go instead for teaching andother social needs.

Here in New York City, under Pataki’sbudget the city school system—with 1 mil-lion children it is by far the biggest in theUnited States—would be cut by $450 mil-lion. It is also undergoing the biggest reor-ganization in the past 50 years after beingput under the direct control of billionaireMayor Michael Bloomberg.

The senior colleges of the CityUniversity of New York are funded by thestate, while its community colleges arecity-funded. Outside New York City thestate also funds a university system—SUNY—consisting of both senior andcommunity colleges.

Pataki’s budget contains an $82 mil-lion, 12-percent cut to CUNY and an $184million, 15-percent cut to SUNY operatingbudgets. The governor also demands thatboth hike tuition by $1,200 a year.

Shamsul Haque, a CUNY studenttrustee enrolled at Baruch College, says,“Students of the working class, minoritiesand immigrants cannot afford such a hightuition hike.”

Pataki’s budget was supposedly design-ed to avoid state tax increases. But accord-ing to New York State United TeachersPresident Thomas Hobart, the cuts in edu-cation funding would force a 30-percentreal-estate tax increase in some ruralcounties and 25 percent in Erie County.Without the added taxes, Hobart says,these school systems would shut down.

The United Federation of Teachers rep-resents the 80,000 teachers and staff inthe public elementary and high schools inNew York,

The UFT has taken a very conciliatoryattitude toward the reorganization plan.The union has invited the schools chan-cellor to speak to its delegate assembly andto have breakfast with the union’s execu-tive board.

The Professional Staff Congress repre-sents 20,000 faculty and staff in theCUNY system. The PSC has endorsed theFeb. 15 anti-war march and will ask the200,000 students in the CUNY systemto march behind a banner reading“CUNY says: Money for education, notfor war.” The PSC’s Delegate Assemblyhas also endorsed the call for day-afterpeaceful protests in the CUNY system orin the city if Bush does start the war.Beyond the February protests, it hasscheduled a day of teach-ins and speak-outs for March 26. ��

WW PHOTO: DEIRDRE GRISWOLDANSWER demonstration Jan. 18, Washington, D.C.

www.workers.org Feb. 13, 2003 Page 5

ily’s religious denomination. In the ad,Talbert says: “Iraq hasn’t wronged us. Warwill only create more terrorists and a moredangerous world for our children.”

Hundreds of military veterans haveissued a “Call to Conscience to Active Dutyand Reservists.” Their statement to U.S.troops says in part: “We are veterans of theU.S. armed forces. We stand with themajority of humanity, including millionsin our own country, in opposition to theUnited States’ all out war on Iraq. ...

“Our experiences in the military causedus to question much of what we weretaught. Now we see our REAL duty is toencourage you as members of the U.S.armed forces to find out what you arebeing sent to fight and die for and what theconsequences of your actions will be forhumanity.”

It continues: “In the last Gulf War, astroops, we were ordered to murder from asafe distance. We destroyed much of Iraqfrom the air, killing hundreds of thou-sands, including civilians. We rememberthe road to Basra—the Highway ofDeath—where we were ordered to kill flee-ing Iraqis. ...

“The use of depleted uranium weapons... pesticides, experimental drugs, burningchemical weapons depots and oil firescombined to create a toxic cocktail affect-ing both the Iraqi people and Gulf Warveterans today. One in four Gulf War vet-erans is disabled.”

For the full statement, see:www.calltoconscience.net.

Gov’t, corporate censorship grows

As the anti-war ranks continue to swell,pro-war governments and corporategiants are increasing censorship and, insome cases, trying to ban protest outright.

The cable monopoly Comcast, forexample, refused to show an anti-war adsponsored by the Peace Action EducationFund. The ad was to have aired on CNNthe evening of Bush’s State of the Unionspeech and on subsequent nights. TheRev. Robert Moore called it “an outra-geous infringement on our First Amend-ment rights.”

Protests sparked by Bush’s war speechcontinued on Feb. 1. Big demonstrationswere held in cities throughout Germanyand in Madison, Wis. In New Zealand,police attacked protesters, arresting 23who were trying to scale the fence aroundthe U.S. Embassy. The activists carriedmock metal detectors and said they want-ed to check the premises for “weapons ofmass destruction.”

“The WorldSays No toWar!” eventsto take placeon Feb. 15promise someimportant con-f r o n t a t i o n sb e t w e e nactivists andgovernmentsover the rightto protest war with Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’sgovernment has officially banned the Stopthe War Coalition and the MuslimAssociation of Britain from using HydePark, the traditional site of mass demon-strations in London, where hundreds ofthousands are expected to gather.

After a strong public campaign by anti-war groups to defend the right to protest,the Guardian of London reported Feb. 1that Blair may have to reverse the decisionor face the international embarrassmentof a half-million-strong demonstrationoutside Buckingham Palace instead.

In Hungary, the Citizens for PeaceInitiative is urging protests against theBudapest police for banning a plannedFeb. 15 march from Liszt Ferenc Square tothe Hungarian Parliament building.Hungary, formerly a part of the bloc ofEastern European countries with plannedeconomies, is now dominated by a U.S.-puppet capitalist regime.

The Bush administration has touted thesupport of Hungary and other counter-revolutionary governments as “proof” ofEuropean backing for war with Iraq, evenas the governments of imperialist rivalsGermany and France continue to dragtheir feet. Public sentiment in Europe isoverwhelmingly against war and againstBush.

New York police and city officials haveso far refused to grant permits to the coali-tion United for Peace & Justice for a marchand rally on Feb. 15. All the anti-war coali-tions building for the Feb. 15 protests saythey will fight to ensure the right to assem-ble and protest.

Readers in the New York area are askedto call Mayor Michael Bloomberg at (212)788-3040, Police Commissioner Ray-mond W. Kelly at (646) 610-8526 andGov. George Pataki at (518) 474-1071 todemand that permits be issued.

For more information on the global Feb. 15 protests and other upcoming actions, visit: www.internationalanswer.org. ��

BROOKLYN BUILDS FOR FEB.15.

‘Find creative ways to resist’

NEW YORK.

‘Make Feb. 15 Anti-War Day’By Teresa GutierrezNew York

New York ANSWER—Act Now to StopWar and End Racism—has sent a letterto the New York City Council asking it toput this city on the map by taking a boldstand against the Pentagon’s threatenedwar on Iraq.

The letter states in part: “OnSaturday, Feb. 15, this city will be thesite of the next major anti-war event. Weare contacting you to ask for your sup-port so that New York City can welcomethe anti-war movement by declaringFeb. 15, 2003, ‘Anti-War Day.’

“In addition, it is important to us thatall the people who want to express theirstance against the war be able to do so.As part of Anti-War Day, we are alsoasking the City Council to do what it canto offer free MTA [subway and bus] trav-el so that people can come from as faraway as the Bronx, Harlem and EastNew York to join the growing movementagainst the war.”

Twenty-six individuals signed the let-ter. They include former U.S. AttorneyGeneral Ramsey Clark, Nadia Marsh ofDoctors and Nurses Against the War, theRev. Herbert Daughtry of the House ofthe Lord church, National Youth &Student ANSWER Coordinator PetaLindsay, Daniel Vila of the HarlemTenants Council, Working PeoplesVoices, Michelle Quintus who is theLocal Council 5 representative of theFlight Attendants union, Jessie Heiwa ofQueers for Peace & Justice, Kadouri Al-Kaysi of the Committee in Support ofIraqi People, Jerry Dominguez of CasaMexico, and Asha Samad Matias ofMuslims Against Racism & ReligiousProfiling and the Human Rights Center.

Gutierrez, a co-director of theInternational Action Center, is also a signatory to the letter. ��

By Monica MooreheadBrooklyn, N.Y.

“Not only do we have the responsibili-ty to continue organizing against the waron Iraq but we must consider creative,effective ways of resisting if the U.S. war-mongers persist in attacking our Iraqisisters and brothers,” declared LarryHolmes Jan. 30. Holmes, a spokesper-son for the International ANSWER—ActNow to Stop War and End Racism—coalition, spoke to an overflow crowd atthe House of the Lord church here inBrooklyn.

The multinational crowd of 300responded enthusiastically to Holmes’remarks at the anti-war strategy meetingdesigned to build momentum for themajor anti-war march and rally set forFeb. 15 in New York City.

The meeting was hosted by thechurch’s pastor, the Rev. HerbertDaughtry. He is also the president of theMLK Jr. Peace Now Movement. Otherspeakers included AFSCME District

Council 1707 President Brenda Stokely,Dr. Karen Daughtry, Center forConstitutional Rights Executive DirectorRon Daniels, City Councilperson CharlesBarron from Brooklyn, and InternationalAction Center Co-Director TeresaGutierrez.

After the speeches, an open mike ses-sion allowed activists from different bor-oughs to share organizing ideas.

The activists who attended the meet-ing took handfuls of Feb. 15 leaflets pro-vided by ANSWER to get them out allover the city and help build the world-wide day of solidarity to stop the waragainst Iraq. ��

to stop the war

WW PHOTOS: PAT CHIN

Brooklyn, N.Y., Jan. 30.

New York,Jan.29

WW PHOTO: JOHN

CATALINOTTO

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry

Page 6 Feb. 13, 2003 www.workers.org

Fry noted, “Everyone was interested intrying to find ways to make it as difficultas possible for Bush to launch his war.”

She added: “People were also very con-cerned about the way the U.S. governmentis trying to bully or bribe the governmentsof the rest of the world into supporting itswar. Italian activist Alfonso De Vitoreminded everyone that Italian PremierSilvio Berlusconi does not speak for thevast majority of Italians, who overwhelm-ingly oppose war.

“A million people took to the streets ofFlorence several months ago, and yetBerlusconi has chosen to go along withBush and the Pentagon.”

British activist Yvonne Ridley calledTony Blair the British movement’s “bestrecruiting officer.” She said that every timehe opens his mouth to defend Bush, hun-dreds more people join the movement.

Organizers considered the tour a suc-cess, Fry stated categorically. “There wasa high level of attendance at all of themeetings and participants were very excit-ed to hear about the growing internation-al anti-war movement, especially in theU.S. Most of them had heard aboutANSWER’s Jan. 18 demonstration in theGerman media and were relieved to knowthat people in the U.S. are rising up againstBush’s war.”

She said that the German organizersused the tour to mobilize people for theBerlin demonstration on Feb. 15. “I thinkthe meetings accomplished their goal ofmaking Germans aware that they are apart of a large, international movementand that it is important that they stand upwith the rest of the world on the 15th.People bought bus tickets for Berlin at themeetings.”

war movement to Germany to show soli-darity and to build links between theGerman movement and the global strug-gle to stop the war.” The delegation alsoincluded Yvonne Ridley, a representativeof the British Stop the War coalition, andAlfonso DeVito from No Global in Italy, anItalian anti-war organization.

Fry stressed that the main issue raisedby the tour was “how to build a united,international anti-war movement strongenough to stop U.S. aggression againstIraq. People were very interested in learn-ing about how we formed the ANSWERcoalition and how we were able to bringout so many people on Jan. 18.”

German activists are preparing majoractions against U.S. military operations intheir country. The movement in GreatBritain is expecting over a million peopleto turn out in London on Feb. 15.

By Fred Goldstein

Feb. 4— Government after governmenthas stated that if U.S. Secretary of StateColin Powell makes a compelling case forwar on Iraq in his Feb. 5 presentation tothe UN Security Council, then they cansign on for the war. But if not, then moretime is needed to prepare a convincingcase for the war.

Translation: U.S. imperialism is tryingto drag us into its unprovoked war ofaggression against a small nation withhuge petroleum reserves coveted by BigOil. But if we raise our hands to support

the war without being given sufficient“evidence” to hide behind, our own peo-ple could rebel and throw us out.

In the case of the French and Russianregimes, their added problem is that theyare basically being told to help thePentagon make a war that is not justagainst the Iraqi people, but is also againstthemselves. They have made agreementswith the present government of Iraq forhuge oil concessions. Should a U.S.-British invasion be successful, it will all fallinto the hands of a victorious U.S. militarygovernment and any puppet regime itinstalls.

Paris and Moscow are in the position of

having to choose between losing all oraccepting Washington’s terms. In addi-tion, the vast majority of their populationsare opposed to the war.

It is important to monitor the arm-twisting diplomacy of the Bush adminis-tration and the agonizing vacillation of theweaker governments subjected toWashington’s threats and bribes. The lesssuccess the U.S. government has in press-ing its case for war, the more isolated itbecomes, the better for the world.

But the obstructionist diplomacy ofregimes afraid of the war will never out-weigh the hundreds of aircraft, thousandsof tanks and huge naval armada beingassembled and positioned for all-out war.This military mobilization is the funda-mental factor in Washington’s drive towar. The ruling class in the U.S. has eitherpassively or actively given its consent tothe war, even if some would prefer a UNcover and others want more damning tes-timony from the inspectors.

Hope in Powell was an illusion

Many of the more cautious elements inthe ruling class here, as well as sections ofthe European ruling classes and all theregimes in the Middle East, were original-ly hoping that the forces behind ColinPowell would reroute the war drive intolong-term inspections and diplomaticnegotiation, ultimately avoiding the dis-astrous, destabilizing invasion that is nowlooming. This proved to be a hopeless illu-sion.

The truth is that the only thing thatstands between peace and war is the grow-ing worldwide anti-war movement, andparticularly the mushrooming movementin the United States. The charade of UNdiplomacy, of hypocritical, soft-spoken,peaceful-sounding weapons inspectors,must be completely discounted in the cal-culations of the movement. Only mobi-lization and resistance will stop the war.

If the UN Security Council were reallylooking for “smoking guns” leading toweapons of mass destruction, they wouldopen up the arsenals of the Pentagon, withits 7,000 nuclear warheads and manyweapons of chemical and biological war-fare.

If the Security Council were opposed toaggression and crimes against humanity,it would immediately investigate reportsthat Washington is planning to rain down3,000 or more missiles onto the Iraq peo-ple in the first 48 hours of the war in “aneffort intended to stagger and isolate theIraqi military and quickly pave the way fora ground attack to topple a government inshock.” (New York Times, Feb. 2)

This tactic is part of the “RapidDominance” strategy developed by HarlanUllman and James Wade in 1996 for thePentagon’s National Defense University.Their book was entitled “Shock and Awe.”These plans are in the spirit of the bomb-ing of Guernica in Spain by Hitler in 1937,when the Luftwaffe dropped 100,000pounds of bombs overnight on the smallvillage, killing a third of the population.

It is also in the spirit of the atom bomb-ing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. BothGuernica and the atom-bombing of Japanwere meant to sow terror into all adver-saries by demonstrating an utter disregardfor civilian lives on a monstrous scale.

U.S. threat to use nuclearweapons

If the Security Council wants to rein innuclear weapons, it should issue a “ceaseand desist” order to the Pentagon afterreading what the Los Angeles Times ofFeb. 3 revealed about a $1.26-billion U.S.program to develop tactical nuclearweapons called “bunker busters.”

“The Pentagon has launched a fast-track program to develop computers thatwould help decide when nuclear weaponsmight be used to destroy deep under-ground bunkers,” the newspaper wrote.While scaring the population here withtalk of Iraq’s fictitious nuclear program,the U.S. is rushing the planning to use itsnuclear arsenal, if necessary, againstIraq’s underground shelters.

The Security Council and the clientregimes around the world are repeatedlyreferred to as the “international commu-nity.” Washington should refrain from theinvasion, it is said, unless they approve asecond resolution for war. But this so-called “international community” is per-mitting Powell, now the chief salesman of

FEB. 15-16 Protests against the U.S.-led war drive are already scheduled for Feb. 15-16 in 75 cities in 52 countries.Antwerp, Brussels, BELGIUM • Sao Paulo, BRAZIL • Sofia, BULGARIA • Edmonton, Montreal, CANADA • Barcelona, CATALONIA • Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC • Havana, CUBA • CYPRUS • Copenhagen, DENMARKJakarta, INDONESIA • Belfast, Dublin, IRELAND • Rome, ITALY • Osaka, JAPAN •Vilnius, LITHUANIA •Luxembourg, LUXEMBOURG • Skopje, MACEDONIA • Valletta, MALTA • Amsterdam, NETHERLANDSREUNION ISLAND • Moscow, RUSSIA • Kigali, RWANDA • Glasgow, SCOTLAND • Llubljana, SLOVENIA • Cape Town, Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA • Seoul, SOUTH KOREA • Madrid, SPAIN •Stockholm,

Anti-war tour in Germany

ANSWER student activist helps build By John Catalinotto

Julie Fry is a 23-year-old law studentfrom New Jersey. She is an anti-waractivist who works with the InternationalANSWER—Act Now to Stop War & EndRacism—coalition. Fry just returned froma 10-day speaking tour of 10 universitiesacross Germany. Workers World talked toFry about her experiences there.

Fry explained: “The tour was organizedby an organization called ATTAC, a coali-tion of anti-globalization groups that orig-inally formed in France and now exists inother European countries, includingGermany. ATTAC has played a leadingrole in the German anti-war movementand is now mobilizing for a massivedemonstration on Feb. 15 in Berlin.”

She said the purpose of the tour was “tobring activists from the international anti-

“Massive.” That’s the word used todescribe the anti-war demonstration inCalcutta on Feb. 2.

The West Bengal State Committee of theSocialist Unity Center of India organized theprotest against the “war mongering of U.S.imperialism and its present arrogant warthreat on Iraq with British imperialism, itsvirtually lone lackey.”

Thousands from all walks of life made upthe sea of marchers waving red flags andgarlands.

SUCI reports that rally goers adopted aresolution denouncing Washington for itswar moves and attempts to carry out“regime change” in Iraq. The goal of U.S.imperialism and its corporate powers, itstressed, is to establish unchallenged con-

trol over Iraq’s vast oil reserve and torevamp its sagging militarized economy “byway of stock clearance of arms and ammu-nitions through warfare.”

The resolution demanded that PresidentGeorge W. Bush be put on trial as a warcriminal and denounced the White Housefor reportedly putting its stamp of approvalon the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq.

The resolution expressed solidarity withmushrooming anti-war—some anti-imperi-alist—movements around the world. It con-cluded by condemning the Indian govern-ment for “cozying up to the U.S. rulers andcalled upon the Indian people to be true totheir glorious tradition of anti-imperialiststruggle.”

—Leslie Feinberg

Sea of red flags in Calcutta

Dragging world to war

U.S. lines up gov'ts, but not the

www.workers.org Feb. 13, 2003 Page 7

These include: Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Foster, Geelong, Hobart, Lismore, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Rockhampton, Sydney, Wollongong, AUSTRALIA • Vienna, AUSTRIA• British Army Bases Dili, EAST TIMOR • Cairo, EGYPT • London, ENGLAND • Tallinn, ESTONIA • Helsinki, FINLAND • Paris, FRANCE • Athens, GREECE • Berlin, GERMANY • Budapest, HUNGARY • Reykjavik, ICELANDAuckland, NEW ZEALAND • Oslo, NORWAY •Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, PAKISTAN • Ramallah, PALESTINE •Manila, PHILIPPINES • Poznan, Warsaw, POLAND • Lisbon, PORTUGAL • San Juan, PUERTO RICOSWEDEN • Berne, SWITZERLAND • Bangkok, THAILAND • Istanbul, TURKEY • Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, U.S. • Kiev, UKRAINE • For more information, visit www.internationalANSWER.org.

solidarity

a war of undisguised aggression, to comeand monopolize 90 minutes of theCouncil’s time before a world audience toput forward a mass of concocted “evi-dence.”

If this group were really representativeof the international community, it wouldinstead have invited Nelson Mandela, oneof the legendary liberation fighters of the20th century. He truly represented theknowledge and sentiment of the peoplearound the world last week when he gavea stinging indictment of Washington, its“atrocities all over the world” and its driveto “push the world into a holocaust.”

The notion that the UN SecurityCouncil represents the “internationalcommunity” is as fraudulent as the claimmade by the Bush administration that ithas “Europe” behind it because it gotseven so-called “leaders” to sign a decla-ration of unity with the U.S.

This “unity” statement, published in thecapitalist press all over Europe and in theU.S., was probably familiar to Secretary ofDefense Donald Rumsfeld when hedenounced France and Germany as the“old Europe” and touted the “new Europe”in the east.

Among the signers was, of course, TonyBlair, Washington’s junior partner incrime who represents the dreams ofregaining a fragment of Britain’s oldempire by holding on to the coattails of thenew emperors in Wall Street andWashington.

Then there were the governments ofSpain and Portugal, of faded colonialgrandeur, bankrupt and dependent impe-rialists who are the weakest in Europe andmost subject to manipulation. There wasalso Silvio Berlusconi, president of Italy,another faded imperialist power, who is adespised right-wing media billionaire.There was Denmark, whose planes arenow bombing Afghanistan.

Finally, there were the governments ofPoland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia andHungary, the “new Europe,” meaning thenew colonies of U.S., German and Frenchimperialism who were taken over lock,stock and barrel by imperialism after the

PABLO PICASSO

How has the peace movement inGermany reacted to Chancellor GerhardSchroeder’s statements against the war?

Fry observed: “Most people are relievedthat Schroeder has, so far, refused to open-ly support the war. But anti-war activistspoint out that Schroeder recently orderedGerman soldiers to guard U.S. militarybases in Germany that will be used in thatwar. He has also said that the U.S. couldfly its warplanes going to attack Iraq overGerman airspace and U.S. military basesin Germany.”

Many see this as tacit support for thewar on Iraq and as a breach of Schroeder’scampaign promise to oppose the war, shesaid.

“The German movement is planningdemonstrations and acts of civil disobedi-ence at U.S. military bases all over theircountry. They want to show that

Schroeder is effectively supporting the warand that they need to get involved and takeactions to stop him and to stop the war.”

Fry continued: “I think the U.S. move-ment should know how important ourstruggle is to the peace movement aroundthe world. I think that, rightfully, they seethe growing movement in the U.S. as asign that Bush is weakening and that theanti-war movement has a real chance tosucceed.

“I also think that the idea of bringingtogether anti-war activists from manycountries is a very good one and that weshould try to do more of this in the U.S.,”she concluded. “It is a great way to buildsolidarity with the international move-ment. Also, it would be good to show peo-ple here that they are part of a movementof millions of people around the worldwho are fighting against the war.” ��

Who put the wraps on Guernica?By Leslie Feinberg

A woven tapestry reproduction of thefamous mural “Guernica” has hung on thewall outside the United Nations SecurityCouncil chamber since 1985. But on Jan.27, it was covered up with a drape. Why?

Screaming, shattering people and ani-mals: Guernica. The painting is charac-terized as modern art’s most powerfulanti-war statement.

Pablo Picasso painted the mural for theSpanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair.

Spain was rocked by civil war.Resistance fighters, joined by solidaritybrigades from the United States andaround the world, were battling hand-to-hand against Gen. Francisco Franco’s fas-cist forces.

On April 27, 1937, Franco gave the go-ahead for Hitler’s air force to use a littleBasque hamlet in northern Spain asbombing practice. For more than threehours, the village was pummeled fromthe sky with high explosives and incendi-ary bombs. When the smoke cleared,1,600 civilians were dead or wounded.

By May 1, word of the horror atGuernica reached Paris. More than a mil-lion enraged people poured into thestreets in the biggest May Day march thatcity had ever witnessed. The world wasstunned. The normally apolitical Picassowas moved to capture the massacre in hisnow-famous mural.

Apparently the realities of war—partic-ularly the terror, death and destruction atground zero of bombing raids—are not thebackdrop U.S. officials want for their

photo opportunities.Dignitaries have long been filmed, pho-

tographed and interviewed in front of thepainting. “So it was a surprise for many ofthe envoys to arrive at UN headquarters lastMonday for a Security Council briefing bychief weapons inspectors, only to find thesearing work covered with a baby-blue ban-ner and the U.S. logo,” reported the Feb.3 Washington Times.

The censoring curtain was draped on thedays the council discussed Iraq.

“A diplomat stated that it would not bean appropriate background if the ambas-sador of the United States at the UN, JohnNegroponte, or [Secretary of State Colin]Powell, talk about war surrounded withwomen, children and animals shouting withhorror and showing the suffering of thebombings.” (Washington Times, Feb. 3) ��

Kurds tell Pentagon:‘Hands off Iraq!’

Perhaps the most dramatic demonstra-tion against Pentagon war that took placearound the world in late January was aKurdish protest in Baghdad.

Kurds traveled to the Iraqi capital fromthe cities of Sulaymania, Arbil and Dahoukin northern Iraq. Hundreds demonstrat-ed outside the United Nations headquar-ters in Baghdad on Jan. 28. (Arabia.com)

They vowed to fight alongside theirIraqi sisters and brothers against U.S. mil-itary aggression. Their banners read,“Kurdish clans are human shield to pro-tect Iraq.”

The Kurdish people share a distinct lan-guage and culture. They live in Turkey,Iraq, Syria and Iran. During the first GulfWar, the CIA cynically tried to manipulatetheir struggle for self-determination byworking with some Kurdish groups as aweapon against the Iraqi government.

It was cynical because the bloodiest

repression against the Kurdish people hasbeen carried out by a staunch U.S. ally—Turkey, which has waged a merciless waragainst this nationally oppressed people’sright to self-determination.

The CIA later abandoned its alliesamong the Kurds in 1991 because Turkey,a NATO member and important militaryoutpost for the Pentagon, was viewed asmore vital.

Hushair Selim Bach, one of the Kurdishclan chiefs who journeyed to Baghdad onJan. 28, told Arab News, “We oppose anyU.S. presence in northern Iraq and vehe-mently condemn the practices of agents,who made out of this region a fertileground to [Israeli] Mossad and the CIA.”

Those demonstrating outside the UNoffice called on the international commu-nity to stand up with Iraq in its “legitimateself-defense.”

—L.F.

The warlords in Washington havebrought heavy pressure to bear on theirally, the Turkish government. The UnitedStates demands the right to station some80,000 Pentagon troops there—and to useTurkey as a land and air base from whichto attack Iraq.

But, from below, “The opposition to warhas been slowly building up in Turkey.There have been many demonstrationsand anti-war meetings across the coun-try,” wrote Behzad Yaghmaian in the Feb.1 CounterPunch.

Yaghmaian reported that war is beingwidely discussed in private and publicgatherings: “Students and academicians,journalists and publishers, artists andordinary people show their resentment ofthe war in different forms: petitions, pub-lic declarations, peace forums and anti-

war rallies.”He continued: “On Jan. 26, a large and

diverse crowd gathered outside IstanbulUniversity to demonstrate against thewar. They came in the thousands—mid-dle-class men and women in theirWestern outfit, and those from poorquarters of Istanbul; women under theIslamic headscarf; children on the shoul-ders of their parents; workers and union-ists, and students; and Arab women intheir traditional garbs.

“The message was clear,” he conclud-ed. “The U.S. was not to be welcomed inTurkey, not by its citizens.”

Yaghmaian authored “Social Change inIran: An Eyewitness Account ofDissent, Defiance and New Movementsfor Rights” (SUNY Press:2002).

—L.F.

Anti-war voices rise in Turkey

Continued on page 9

people

Page 8 Feb. 13, 2003 www.workers.org

people will prevail and that nobody willabolish our constitution.”

The FBT is a labor and political organi-zation embracing different union sectors.These pro-Chávez forces are attempting toconsolidate labor’s power away from theold union organization, which is really likea company union.

The leaders of the old group, theWorkers Confederation of Venezuela,have been colluding with the right-wingopposition forces responsible for the boss-es’ “strike” that has damaged the country’seconomy.

Right now, Torres said, the oil workersare waging the most difficult struggle. Theboss organization Fedecamaras, respon-sible for the abortive coup last April, triedmost viciously to sabotage the economy’svital oil sector.

When these entrepreneurs started alockout, which the right-wing mediacalled a “strike,” the managers left theirwork places and started sabotaging thesophisticated computer system thatcoordinates the different complex opera-tions of oil production and distribution,including the automatic filling of oiltanks. This slowed oil productiontremendously, jeopardizing not only theeconomy but the whole society byattacking energy production.

The functioning of schools and hospi-tals, even doing a simple task around thehouse, became extremely difficult andcould endanger people’s lives. Fires and

explosions were a constant threat, sincethe sabotaging managers broke valves andcaused leaks in some pipelines.

The bosses’ purpose was to totallychoke the country’s economy. Oil produc-tion decreased from almost 3 million bar-rels a day in November to 150,000 barrels.

Workers decide to take overproduction

Then, on Dec. 4, Torres said, the work-ers decided to secure the oil production.So they, together with the people, occu-pied the oil plants and evicted the right-wing managers.

“For the first time, the workers tookdirect control and responsibility for theproduction of our industry,” said Torres.“And little by little, in 15 days, Venezuelastarted to produce gasoline again.

“Heroic pages were written in thosedays by compañeros who stayed awake for96, even 120 hours, working to make surethat raw materials would get to the cen-ters of production and distribution andpreventing the coup agents from enteringthe plants,” continued Torres. “Today, wecan say without doubt that the workers,together with the national armed forcesand with the new management, havestarted to increase the oil production.When we arrived in Porto Alegre, produc-tion had already increased to 1.2 millionbarrels a day.”

Venezuelan speakers, the Venezuelanflag and placards calling for solidarity with

the Bolivarian movement were prevalentin gatherings and demonstrations in PortoAlegre. The Venezuelan ambassador toBrazil, plus several compatriot culturalworkers and intellectuals, were guests atthe House of Cuba here, where they spokeon the current situation.

But the highlight of the Venezuelanpresence in Porto Alegre was Hugo Chávezhimself. He was invited by the recentlyelected president of Brazil, Luis IgnacioLula da Silva.

Chávez spoke at the Porto AlegreLegislative Assembly building. Powerfulloudspeakers were placed on the balcony,allowing the thousands gathered outsideto listen to his stirring and militant words.

His 90-minute speech exuded confi-dence based on the backing of theVenezuelan people. Chávez assured hislisteners that the Bolivarian Revolutionwould not die.

This confidence had been demonstrat-ed several days earlier, on Jan. 23, whenpeople took to the streets in Venezuela insupport of their revolution and their pres-ident. With thousands wearing theBolivarians’ red beret, the massive dem-onstration was dubbed the “red tide.”

Speaking with a warm and friendlydelivery, Chávez declared his allegiance tothe people, particularly the poorest, andhis conviction that the people are the onesin power. His job, he said, is to guaranteethat the will of the people prevails. “Uh!Ah! Chávez no se va!” ��

began a process that the people call theBolivarian Revolution, which has galva-nized this second Venezuela. There are amillion examples of the ways this has hap-pened.

Since 1998, eight popular referendahave been held in Venezuela.

One referendum approved the new con-stitution—one of the most inclusive in theworld.

Laws have been passed protecting smallfishers from corporate fisheries, and loan-ing farm workers the seed money to starttheir own farms.

The Bank of the Women was created toprovide poor women with resources tostart cooperatives in their communities.

Cooperatives are being organized inpoor barrios throughout the urban areas,supported by resources from the govern-ment. These cooperatives provide jobsand education and a sense of ownershipof the process. In essence the process hasopened up a space for people to organizetheir communities, and has provided theresources to do it.

The other Venezuela is dead-set againstthis process continuing. The bankers,business owners and U.S.-owned corpo-rations, along with the press and wealthyoil union bureaucrats, see their wealth andpower threatened by the organization ofpoor and working people. In league withthe ruling class of the United States,which depends on Venezuelan oil andmarkets, they are trying to stop the

Bolivarian Revolution.Last April 11, these forces attempted a

coup. They failed because of the strengthand will of the people and of the militaryrank and file. Then, in December, theystarted a strike in an attempt to turn thepeople of Venezuela against Chávez andwrest control of the country from his sup-porters, the Chavistas.

We asked people on the streets ofCaracas and Maracaibo, the two biggestcities, “What is happening because of thestrike?” They answered, “No hay paro”—there is no strike.

This is evident merely walking throughthe streets of Caracas. The only shops thatare closed are U.S. corporations and largechains like McDonald’s and Nestlé.Otherwise, people are working and theshops are operating.

However, the Venezuelan economy hasbeen affected by the “strike” in someimportant ways. The banks have been,until recently, open only three hours a day.Oil production descended from 3 millionbarrels a day to 150,000 at its lowest.[Editor’s note: It has since risen to 1.3 mil-lion barrels.] And there has been a short-age of milk and wheat, important staples.

But the Chávez government quicklyconfronted these effects. PresidentChávez announced that milk and wheatimported from Colombia would be pro-vided at very low cost to those who need-ed it. The management of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which had

been locking out workers and sabotagingmachinery, was fired and replaced byChavistas. And at the end of January thebanks were forced open.

All these measures were accompaniedby a steady education campaign so effec-tive that the people of Venezuela can trulysay, “No hay paro,” and then explain why.

The effects of the strike-lockout aresocial more than economic. It has polar-ized the Venezuelan population evenmore. The middle class is starting to splitpolitically, part in favor of Chávez and partagainst.

The failure of this economic sabotagehas made the opposition—the otherVenezuela and the U.S. ruling class—evenmore desperate. The lies being generatedby the media have become more and morefantastic.

At one pro-Chávez demonstration thatwe participated in, a television news crewstood right next to the demonstrators andreported it as an anti-Chávez demonstra-tion. When the Metropolitan police shotand killed two Chavista demonstrators,the press reported that they were from theopposition.

The Chavistas are responding by mobi-lizing to defend the Bolivarian Revolutiononce again. A Jan. 23 demonstration ofover 300,000 people in Caracas in sup-port of Chávez was just one of the manyexamples of the immense mobilization ofthe Venezuelan people. ��

BRAZIL.

Chávez visit brings Venezuela front and center

Eyewitness Venezuela

Workers take over oil production, foil bosses’ ‘strike’

By Berta Joubert-CeciPorto Alegre, Brazil

The World Social Forum held here Jan.23-28 had as its two main and urgent top-ics the U.S. war against Iraq and theprocess of neo-liberalism, exemplified inthe U.S. plan to set up the Free Trade Areaof the Americas .

But an unexpected visit by VenezuelanPresident Hugo Chávez showed how the100,000 people attending the WSF feltabout another present danger looming overthe Americas: the threat of a U.S.-support-ed coup against his elected government.

Thousands of voices chanting in unison,“Uh! Ah! Chávez no se va”—Chávez is notleaving—let the world know both theimmediate crisis and the determination ofthe people of Venezuela to defend theirBolivarian Revolution.

The people of Latin America and theCaribbean understand passionately that asetback in Venezuela would mean a set-back for all the Americas. It was quitemoving to see how Venezuelans and non-Venezuelans alike defended this revolu-tion with words and deeds.

The main participants in the revolu-tionary Bolivarian process have nothoughts of losing. Jacobo Torres, gener-al coordinator of the Bolivarian Force ofthe Workers (FBT) in Venezuela, toldWorkers World, “We are more convincedthan ever that we are going to further ourrevolutionary process, that the will of the

By Natalie AlsopCaracas, Venezuela

Alsop visited Venezuela in January with a delegation from theInternational Action Center.

It is difficult for people in the UnitedStates to find truthful information aboutwhat is happening in Venezuela. Thecorporate media, both in Venezuela andin the United States, scream that thecountry is splitting apart, that the econ-omy is in dire straits, that the people areturning against President Hugo Chávez.

What is really happening?People in Venezuela often say, “Hay dos

Venezuelas.” There are two Venezuelas.One Venezuela resembles middle-class

and wealthy neighborhoods in the UnitedStates. It has travel agencies, Citibanks,Wendy’s, Mailboxes Etc. and so on. Peoplelive in one-family homes and own a car, ormaybe two.

The second Venezuela is characterizedby a lack of running water, schools, jobs.Many city families live crammed intohigh-rise buildings known as urbaniza-tions.

Most country folk earn an existenceworking on someone else’s farm. Onewoman told us that this is a Venezuelawhere sometimes “there are more bulletsto eat than food.”

Almost 80 percent of the people live inthis Venezuela.

The 1998 election of Hugo Chávez

www.workers.org Feb. 13, 2003 Page 9

By Alicia Jrapko and Johnnie StevensPorto Alegre, Brazil

From Jan. 23 to Jan. 27 over 100,000people from 156 countries, representingover 5,000 organizations, gathered at thethird World Social Forum here under theslogan: “Another World Is Possible.”

With the Pentagon on the brink of anaggressive war against Iraq, and resis-tance to Washington and Wall Street’sdomination growing stronger throughoutLatin America, this Forum became a mag-net for popular struggle against U.S. impe-rialism. Tens of thousands demonstratedboth at the opening ceremonies and in aspecial action against the Free Trade Areaof the Americas. Both protests alsodemanded no U.S. war on Iraq.

The presence of the new Brazilian pres-ident, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, along withPresident Hugo Chávez of Venezuela,electrified the participants and causedtens of thousands to spill out of the mainmeeting hall of the event.

The WSF was born in 2001 as a reactionto the World Economic forum that gath-ered many of the world’s wealthiestbankers and billionaires in Davos,Switzerland. That center of corporatechieftains, of the World Bank, IMF andPentagon, had become a magnet, too, butof anti-globalization protest.

Porto Alegre, capital of the Brazilianstate of Rio Grande do Sul, also hosted thesecond WSF. But, according to veteranparticipants, this one took top prizes notonly by doubling the size but for mixing astronger feeling of struggle in with thewarmth of solidarity.

Last year, the World Economic Forummet in New York. While thousands of peo-ple from the United States went to PortoAlegre to participate in the WSF, otherthousands protested this meeting of therich in Manhattan.

1,700 sessions and workshops

Through the days the WSF met, anti-imperialist sentiment was noticeable inword and mood. There were approxi-mately 1,700 sessions and workshops.Topics ranged from corporate misconductto the Third World debt, the war on Iraq,the FTAA, the environment, women,HIV/AIDS, and the landless and repara-tion struggles.

The panelists were philosophers, intel-lectuals and well-known activists and per-sonalities like left-wing presidential can-didate Evo Morales from Bolivia, Nobel

Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivalfrom Argentina, the Rev. Daniel NtoniNzinga from Angola, Portuguese journal-ist and political commentator MiguelUrbano, linguistics expert Noam Chom-sky and actor Danny Glover from theUnited States, Olympic gold medalistboxer Teofilo Stevenson from Cuba, andactivist Ismael Guadalupe of Vieques,Puerto Rico.

The first day opened with a march andrally that brought together thousands forjustice, peace and socialism. Marcherssupported the Bolivarian process inVenezuela and the struggle of the Palestin-ian people. Hundreds of signs read “No towar,” “Down with the FTAA,” “Trade withjustice,” “Solidarity with Venezuela” and“Against the coup.” Also popular was“Cuba yes, Yankees no.” Chants againstthe war in Iraq in many different lan-guages could be heard.

A very impressive Cuban delegationmade up of representatives of all sectorsof Cuban society passed by, led by familymembers of the five Cuban heroes nowheld in U.S. prisons. Gloria La Riva andAlicia Jrapko, members of the Committeeto Free the Five from the United States,participated in a workshop about theCuban Five organized by the Braziliancommittee.

Lula speaks to WSF and WEF

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula daSilva spoke the second day to thousandsof people. The next day he left to attend theDavos Forum. He said he would go toDavos to tell people there that it is not pos-sible to continue with an economic systemwhere a few eat five times a day whilemany spend five days without eating onthe planet Earth.

It was Lula who invited Hugo Chávez tothe WSF. People lined up for hours to hearthe Venezuelan leader speak. Chávezattacked neo-liberal globalization byproposing a Latin America MonetaryFund opposed to the traditional IMF,World Bank and other imperialist finan-cial organizations. He also proposed set-ting up a continent-wide organization likeOPEC to defend the natural resources ofLatin America.

Thousands of copies of Chavez’s book,“The Fascist Coup Against Venezuela—The Life of the Homeland Is at StakeHere,” were passed out.

Gloria La Riva from the United Statesspoke at a workshop about terrorism,media and the war. Participants cheered

World Social Forum 2003

100,000 call for ‘another world’

when La Riva described the recent anti-war demonstrations, the biggest since thewar in Vietnam, organized by Inter-national ANSWER.

Berta Joubert-Ceci participated in apanel on Women’s Organizations Aroundthe World, and also in a workshop orga-nized by the Secretariat of WSF 2003 dis-cussing the Feb. 15 international day ofprotest against a war on Iraq called by theEuropean anti-war movement. Joubert-Ceci described the development of thenew U.S. anti-war movement led byANSWER.

Which way to the new world?

With the slogan “A better world is pos-sible,” the WSF begs the question: “Howdo we get there?” A minority of partici-pants, but still a good number, made itclear they believe that the answer to theproblems facing humanity is not to reformcapitalism or make it more humane.

Groups and individuals with a revolu-tionary perspective were more likely tohave been invited to speak at the parallelsessions, not those put together by theWSF organizers. For example, Hebe deBonafini, the president of the Mothers ofPlaza de Mayo of Argentina, was invitedby the Landless Committees of Brazil. She

complained that grassroots organizationshad little space at the forum. She said thatglobalization has to be destroyed, notreformed.

Last year anti-imperialists sharply crit-icized the WSF’s social democratic orga-nizers for refusing to invite groups waginglegitimate armed struggles of national lib-eration, like the FARC-EP of Colombia.These groups were also not invited thisyear. The ideological thrust of the WSForganizers denies the pressing need forworkers and oppressed peoples to strug-gle for power.

On the other hand, the WSF was still amagnet for tens of thousands wanting tostruggle against imperialism. Strong par-ticipation by the Communist Party ofBrazil gave clarity and fighting spirit to thedemonstrations and many of the sessions.

At the ending rally the InternationalAction Center delegation carried a bannerreading “Long Live the Resistance of theLatin American People,” a resistance thatcould be seen during the WSF.

Next year’s WSF is scheduled to takeplace in India.

Johnnie Stevens, Alicia Jrapko, GloriaLa Riva and Berta Joubert-Ceci madeup the International Action Center dele-gation to the WSF. ��

WW PHOTOS: BERTAJOUBERT-CECI

Banners read, ‘Solidarity with Venezuela’ and ‘No to paying foreign debt—for the socialist revolution.’

collapse of the Soviet Union. By gettingthese clients to sign up, Washingtonshowed the French and the Germans thateven countries supposedly within theirsphere of influence are under the politi-cal domination of the U.S. That was themeaning of Rumsfeld’s outburst aboutthe “new Europe.”

Governments don’t represent the people

But in truth, even if Bush had gotten allthe governments of Europe to sign on,they represent the Europe of a tiny minor-ity of bosses and bankers. The realEurope, the Europe of the people, hasbeen in the streets demonstrating againstthe war and is scheduled to do it again onFeb. 15 in a massive show of anti-waropposition.

The real representatives of the inter-national community, the community ofworkers and oppressed peoples and pro-gressives everywhere, in every walk oflife, is the mightily growing worldwideanti-war movement.

The Security Council is dominated byimperialists and capitalists who representthe exploiters and oppressors of theworld. To leave the question of peace orwar against an oppressed nation to theSecurity Council or any other group ofimperialists and their subordinates is tohand the decision over to the war makers.

Only the masses of people—those whowill have to kill and be killed, who will beforced to pay for the war, and whoserights will be denied in the interest of thewar—can consistently oppose the war andhave the strategic social position to put upthe kind of resistance necessary to stopthe war makers. ��

U.S. lines up gov’ts, but not the peopleContinued from page 7

Page 10 Feb. 13, 2003 www.workers.org

The war budgetGuns or butter? It is said that the

government can spend its taxrevenues on one or the other,

but not both. The fascist governments in Europe

claimed that they could do both backduring the great capitalist economicdepression in the 1930s.

In the current capitalist recession, theBush administration has offered a varia-tion on the fascists’ promises of the1930s. Bush thinks there’s no reason topromise “butter” to the workers. In fact,the Bush plan cuts social services andwill reduce benefits across the board foranyone making less than $100,000 ayear.

But the Bush plan does promise gunsand butter. Only the butter this time isfor the rich.

Never before in history has a U.S.president offered such a war budget asBush’s. The Bush budget calls for thebiggest increase ever for military spend-ing, and expands spending for repres-sive forces in the “homeland security”department. Yet it does not include onecent for a war on Iraq or even a pennyfor Afghanistan, either for its continuedmilitary occupation or for any other

kind of spending on Afghanistan.Ignoring the so-called balanced bud-

get law Congress passed not too longago, Bush’s budget promises to createthe biggest deficit in U.S. history.

Usually presidents who propose warbudgets and talk about the deficitscaused by war spending also talk aboutwhy they have to raise taxes. But notBush.

Bush is proposing to drastically cut alltaxes paid by the rich. So who is going tobe made to pay? You already know theanswer.

It’s not enough that a handful ofDemocrats have made some mild criti-cisms of Bush’s budget proposal.Something more decisive must be doneto avert this train wreck called Bush’sbudget. There are already some who arecalling for impeachment of the presi-dent. That, at least, could start to put the brakes on this coming disaster.

Raise your voice with a multitude ofothers in the week of protests from Feb.13-21 to demand money for jobs, educa-tion and health care, not warfare. Andcast your ballot in the people’s effort toimpeach the war monger in the WhiteHouse: www.votetoimpeach.org. ��

Palestinian causegains supportBy Leslie Feinberg

The indefatigable fight of thePalestinian people is inspiring resistancein Israel and around the world.

Two recent examples.Student groups at York University in

Toronto blocked the Jan. 28 lecture ofDaniel Pipes, director of the Middle EastForum think tank—which describes itselfas “promoting American interests in theMiddle East.” (The Globe & Mail, Jan. 24)

Pipes is the creator of the forum’s infa-mous Campus Watch web site, whichposted online “dossiers” on professors anduniversities that dared to criticize Israeland express pro-Palestinian sentiment.

Deep anger at Pipes’ visit sparked callsfor protest.

“Our concern is the racism towardMiddle Eastern students,” said AliHassan, president of York’s MiddleEastern Student Association.

York University officials recall whathappened last September at Montreal’sConcordia University when former IsraeliPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasinvited to speak.

Some 2,000 protesters—includingArabs and Jews—shut down the campusand took over the building where theIsraeli war criminal was scheduled to lec-ture. Police hit demonstrators withbatons, tear gas and pepper spray, butactivists fought back in pitched battleswith the cops and prevented Netanyahufrom speaking.

Israeli military officer tried

The Palestinian people’s determination

to throw off the yoke of occupation hascreated a rift in the ranks of the Israeli mil-itary.

Draftees are refusing induction.Reservists have rebuffed superior officersand laid down their arms.

And now, an Israeli military intelli-gence officer has been court-martialed forrefusing an order that he deemed illegal.

The officer, identified in court papersonly as Lieutenant A, was charged withdeliberately withholding military intelli-gence.

According to the Israeli newspaperMa’ariv, the officer was asked to provideinformation about a target that the airforce planned to attack in the West Bankcity of Nablus. He determined that themilitary intended “to cause random casu-alties, and he balked at the order.”

He argued at his court martial that theorder was illegal because it was primarilyaimed at killing Palestinian civilians.

The plea was rejected. So why wasLieutenant A merely drummed out of theintelligence branch and transferred tolow-level administrative work? Why did-n’t he find himself behind bars?

His actions reportedly created a split inthe military.

“This case is being widely talked aboutin the army now, and there’s a lot of peo-ple who think he was right to do what hedid,” one officer observed. “You do nothave to be the triggerman to be guilty of acrime.” (The Guardian, Feb. 3)

According to The Guardian, “The dis-sent by junior officers apparently prompt-ed a light sentence for an offense thatwould usually see a soldier jailed.” ��

Lessons of the space shuttle disaster

The space shuttle disaster has raisedmany questions.

Scientists have long questioned theneed to send people into space. It is dan-gerous and not necessary. Roboticdevices can do the same work, withoutthe danger to human life.

The moon missions by NASA weren’tperformed because of scientific need.They were part of the Cold War againstthe Soviet Union. This was always thecase, and it can be seen even more clearlywith the end of the Soviet Union. No onenow talks of the necessity to send peopleto the moon. It is far too dangerous andcostly, and for what purpose?

The space shuttle flights with peopleon board are similarly costly adventuresthat appear to be driven mostly by thepropaganda benefit showing U.S. techno-logical domination of space, not by scien-tific need. All the scientific experimentsperformed during the flight of the

Columbia could have been performed ona humanless flight.

There is no scientific gain made bycontinuing the shuttle missions as theyhave been. There is no reason to increasethe budget for these propaganda missions.

There is another aspect to the shuttledisaster that isn’t being talked about. Inthis time of military buildup, thePentagon claims that its new weaponsare so sophisticated and technologicallyadvanced, that they never make a mis-take. Yet the space shuttle is the mostsophisticated and advanced technologyever developed by the U.S. military-industrial complex. Obviously it is notmistake-proof.

There is no reason to believe that theU.S. military operations, which havemuch less sophisticated controls and donot have the kind of continuous groundsupport given the shuttles, are moreaccurate or free from error. ��

barded with poison gas that day atHalabja. We cannot say with any certain-ty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed theKurds.”

He goes on to explain that the incidenttook place during the Iran-Iraq war, andthat the Kurds were not deliberate targetsof the gas but were caught up in a battle.Furthermore, says Pelletiere, “the UnitedStates Defense Intelligence Agency inves-tigated and produced a classified report …that it was Iranian gas that killed theKurds, not Iraqi gas.” Iraq and Iran bothused gas in the battle, but only Iran pos-sessed nerve gas, the kind that killed the

Kurds, according to this report.And who is Pelletiere? The CIA’s

senior political analyst on Iraq duringthe Iran-Iraq war and a professor at theArmy War College from 1988 to 2000.He got to see much classified materialabout the region.

Like the story of babies being torn fromincubators by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait in1990, which was later proven to be total-ly invented, this gruesome charge aboutpoison gas was created for its media valuein softening up the population to accept awar of aggression by Washington.

That Powell used it again—even rightafter it had been publicly discredited bya CIA expert—shows that he had nothing

more convincing on which to pin hiscase.

The Iraqi government had a mountainof rebuttal ready as soon as Powell had fin-ished speaking, even though most gov-ernments take more time to frame aresponse to such serious charges.However, the Iraqi ambassador to the UNwas given only a few minutes to respondto Powell’s hour-and-a-half speech.

Most of Powell’s allegations about Iraqconcealing weapons were based onunnamed and unidentified “intelligencesources” or “defectors” and therefore can-not be independently verified.

Powell also showed slides purportedlytaken by U.S. reconnaissance planes thathe claimed showed Iraq’s intent to deceiveUN inspectors. In a press conference fromBaghdad, Iraqi scientific adviser Amer Al-Saadi pointed out that the UN has its own

sources for aerial imagery and has foundno such evidence.

The Iraqi pointed out that underResolution 1441, which Powell citedmany times as justification for the U.S.unilaterally moving toward war, mem-ber states of the UN are required to handover any information they might haveabout Iraqi weapons programs to theUN agencies in charge of inspections:UNMOVIC and the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency.

Not only isn’t Washington doing this,but it quickly removed all its so-called“evidence” from the Security Council assoon as Powell finished speaking, accord-ing to the Pacifica program “DemocracyNow.”

Washington is presenting as fact itsuncorroborated allegations. And the

Before Pentagon blitzkrieg: WAR OF LIESContinued from page 1

Continued on page 11Don’t forget to subscribe

Protest at Concordia University in Montreal last September successfully blockedformer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking.

www.workers.org Feb. 13, 2003 Page 11

force resistance to future propagandaoffensives.

Admits Milosevic no dictator

Four years ago, as the countdown forwar against Yugoslavia was on, the corpo-rate media in the United States andWestern Europe depicted Serbs as beastsand Milosevic as a Hitler. Now, theMonitor admits that far from being a bru-tal dictator, “Milosevic never resorted todictatorial repression of his politicalopponents at home.

“Indeed, opposition parties ran all thecountry’s major towns and cities aftermunicipal elections in December 1996;independent radio and TV stations man-aged to broadcast; opposition-leaningdailies and weeklies published.”

The Monitor doesn’t add a relevantpoint here. After a U.S.-backed coup over-threw Milosevic in October 2000, the so-called Democratic Opposition of Serbia,which took over, turned out to be not sodemocratic. It took over the media thathad been favorable toward the then-rul-ing Socialist Party of Serbia and its allies,while keeping control of all the non-gov-ernment media.

These had been described in the Westas an “alternative” media, but in realitywere funded by U.S. and WesternEuropean imperialism. The biggestsource of funds was billionaire GeorgeSoros’s Open Society Institute. This groupopened up shop in Belgrade in 1991, “andover the next nine years distributed morethan $100 million. … The money boughtnewsprint for independent papers, keptpublishing houses alive, and funded thegrowth of [anti-Milosevic radio station] B-92 as it set up local stations in towns con-trolled by the opposition.”

The U.S. Congress voted additionalfunds. U.S. agents pushed the 18 politicalparties in the DOS to unite for the election.As the Monitor put it, “U.S. diplomatsknocked their heads together until theyformed a cohesive and united coalition”that was a “credible alternative.” Theypicked Vojoslav Kostunica to run againstMilosevic because he was “reputed to behonest, and sufficiently nationalistic tobroaden the opposition’s appeal.”

It took nine years of subversion andeconomic sanctions—and three months ofbombing that targeted Yugoslavia’s eco-nomic infrastructure—before the U.S.succeeded in “regime change.” During thefirst six of those nine years WesternEuropean—especially German—and U.S.imperialism were undermining and tear-ing apart Yugoslavia by fostering the

By John Catalinotto

Iraq is not the first country whereWashington has demanded “regimechange.”

A collection of related articles in theJan. 27 Christian Science Monitor com-pared U.S. threats of “regime change” bywarfare in Iraq with its successful over-throws of governments in Guatemala,Chile, Panama, the Dominican Republicand Grenada, and some less successfulattempts, as in Cuba.

To accomplish its goals, Washingtonhas used economic sanctions, diplomaticpressure, trade embargoes and supportfor local forces trying to overthrow the tar-geted governments. It has also usedbombing and military invasion.

The Monitor articles mention anotherbrutal regime change the United Statescarried out, in Yugoslavia. What is signif-icant is that this establishment newspaperis now exposing some of the lies it andother media told about Yugoslavia from1991 to 2000 to demonize the Yugoslavgovernment and its president, SlobodanMilosevic.

In 1999, only a few tens of thousands ofpeople in this country, about half of themSerbian immigrants and their families,actively protested the Pentagon’s brutalbombing of the Balkans.

Today, protesters in the hundreds ofthousands in the United States, and mil-lions more across the world, are activelydemonstrating, signing petitions, writingletters and marching in the streets in anattempt to stop a murderous U.S. aggres-sion against Iraq before it begins.Probably few are sympathetic to or sup-porters of the Iraqi government. But theyknow that the Bush administration’s planto invade Iraq has nothing to do withimproving the Iraqi government andeverything to do with oil profits and geo-strategic power.

In 1999, however, the media-industrypropaganda machine managed to misleada large section of progressive public opin-ion into believing that the Clinton admin-istration’s war in the Balkans had to dowith ending dictatorship and stoppinggenocide against some of the non-Serbianpeoples of Yugoslavia. It was successful inhiding the real goal of the United Statesand Western European big powers:turn-ing all of Eastern Europe back into acolony of Western imperialism. At thattime, the European imperialists support-ed the U.S. war.

The Monitor articles give an opportu-nity to re-examine that period and to rein-

breakaway of Croatia, Slovenia andBosnia, leading to civil war.

The Monitor now admits that the over-throw of Milosevic in October 2000“brought to fruition a three-year cam-paign by the U.S. and other Western gov-ernments to dislodge the Yugoslav leaderby strangling his country’s economy withsanctions and rocking it with bombs dur-ing the Kosovo war.” This is an admissionthat the effort to bring down the Yugoslavgovernment began at the latest in 1997,before the struggle in Kosovo that wasallegedly the reason for U.S. intervention.

Since the overthrow, two-thirds ofYugoslavs have sunk below the povertylevel. The suicide rate among elderly peo-ple has reached new heights. Health carehas become unaffordable for most.

And so few people voted in Serbia’spresidential election that it was voidedtwice last fall. Kostunica became virtuallywithout power after outright Westernpuppets like Serbian Premier ZoranDjindjic took over.

Role of Milosevic

Some of the recent media attacks onWorkers World Party, centering on itsparticipation in the anti-war movement,charge WWP with being followers ofMilosevic. Yet any serious researchercould find WWP articles in the early 1990sthat raised criticisms of the Milosevicleadership in Yugoslavia from a socialistperspective.

Once U.S. imperialism and its NATOpartners—who are also rivals—targetedYugoslavia, and the Yugoslav leadershipresisted having their country turned intoa colony, WWP supported Yugoslavia

against NATO. WWP would defend anygovernment’s resistance to being colo-nized by the imperialists. This is in thebest internationalist traditions of the left,which supported the feudal emperor ofEthiopia, Haile Selassie, when he led theresistance to an invasion by the Italianimperialist government in the 1930s.

Since Milosevic was captured in 2001and kidnapped to The Hague to stand“trial” in a NATO court for alleged warcrimes, he has conducted a politicaldefense, with very little outside support,that has skillfully bared the intrigues ofthe imperialists to dismember his coun-try. Washington meant the farce in TheHague to be a show trial, but the formerYugoslav president has effectively turnedit into an exposure of U.S./NATO warcrimes against Yugoslavia.

That’s why it gets so little media cover-age here—and why Milosevic has earnedthe respect of working-class activistsworldwide.

The writer is co-editor of a bookabout the 1999 war on Yugoslavia entitled “Hidden Agenda: the U.S.-NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia,” pub-lished by the International ActionCenter in 2002. ��

U.S.-bombed train in Yugoslavia 1999. The U.S. hit civilian targets to force regime change

YUGOSLAVIA.

Washington's history of ‘regime change’

BELGIUM.

Same-sex marriagewin

Belgium is now the second countryin Europe to legalize same-sex mar-riage. The noteworthy Belgian legisla-tion was passed into law on Jan. 30and will take effect in four months.

Same-sex couples will finally beafforded many of the rights of hetero-sexual couples, including inheritancerights.

Not having these basic civil rightscreates a nightmare for same-sex cou-ples in the United States, whose rela-tionships enjoy no such legal protec-tions in this supposed bastion of capi-talist democracy.

However, the Belgian law shied awayfrom legal recognition of a very funda-mental right: the right to adopt chil-dren.

So the struggle continues—there, and here.

—Leslie Feinberg

media are playing along, saturating thepublic with this old wine in new bottles.

The stock markets fell after Powell’sspeech. At least one financial analyst saidit was because the markets are afraid thathe failed to convince the world to supporta U.S.-British war, and that therefore itwill be long and bloody. “This (war) is notgoing to be easy. It’s not going to be shortand it’s not going to be limited,” said HughJohnson, chief investment officer at FirstAlbany Corp.

What the world saw on Feb. 5 was aclassic case of “might makes right.” Theclear aggressor in this situation is U.S.imperialism, which is determined to go towar against Iraq even though that countryhas done nothing to provoke a confronta-tion. Yet most of the capitalist govern-ments in the world are demanding that

Iraq do more to prove it has no weaponsof mass destruction. Anyone familiar withlogic knows that proving a negative is vir-tually impossible.

Not one country is demanding that theUN look into U.S. weapons of massdestruction, investigate the Pentagon’sstockpiles of nuclear, chemical and bio-logical weapons, or reveal the secret dealsmade by the White House and StateDepartment in collusion with the big oilcompanies over who will get what in apost-war Iraq.

These are the issues on the minds ofmillions around the world. Every diplo-mat knows, however, that even to con-template such a question is to bring downthe wrath of the true terrorist govern-ment—the one run by George W. Bush,Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, ColinPowell, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice

and John Ashcroft. It is insisting on totalobedience from the countries in the UNor they will be made “irrelevant”—aeuphemism for their destruction.

Yet even as this shoddy scenario wasbeing played out in the organizationthat claims to be the guardian of worldpeace, yet has never even tried to stop aU.S. war, the anti-war forces around theworld were preparing for a new round ofdemonstrations. Some protesters cameout in the streets immediately.

In Europe and a number of citiesacross the U.S., the week of Feb. 15 willbe a time of mass mobilizations againstthe war that are expected to bring outmany millions of people. Powell’sspeech may convince many people thatit is up to them to stop this war, espe-cially if it becomes clear that no otherdeterrent will work. ��

Continued from Page 10

Tu nunca supieras juzgando por elguión del espectáculo llamado elEstado de la Unión reporte pres-

idencial al Congreso cautelosamenteredactado, lo que tuvo la intención dehacer pensar al mundo que Bush tieneapoyo cien por ciento sólido en losEstados Unidos por su programa deguerra y ataques contra los traba-jadores. Pero la oposición se estávolviendo más amplia y profunda día adía.

La evidencia más reciente de estoviene del movimiento sindical, lo cualen el pasado generalmente se haabstenido de tomar una posición encontra de las guerras agresivas.

Pero ahora, sin embargo, por lomenos siete sindicatos nacionales “se

han opuesto a la administración deBush y su avance impetuoso a la guerray la usurpación de los derechos civilesacá”, según el grupo sindical delInternet, el Portside.

Los siete son AFSCME, sindicato deempleados gubernamentales; el APWU,sindicato de trabajadores del correo;CWA, sindicato de la industria de tele-comunicaciones; el ILWU, sindicato detrabajadores portuarios; SEIU, sindica-to de la industria de servicios; UE;sindicato de electricistas; y el UFW, elsindicato de trabajadores agrícolas.

Se están redactando y discutiendoresoluciones en contra de la guerra ensindicatos a través del país, impulsadospor la fundación reciente del grupoMovimiento Laboral de los EE.UU. en

Contra de la Guerra, que tuvo contin-gentes grandes en las protestas del 18de enero. El contingente en Washingtonfue encabezado por miembros de lalocal 1199 SEIU trabajadores de la saludy los hospitales, que llevaron 20 auto-buses llenos a la protesta desde NuevaYork.

Una de esas resoluciones fue aproba-da unánimemente en la reunión de laFederación de Trabajo del condado deLos Ángeles el 27 de enero, el mismodía que Hans Blix estuvo presentandoun reporte ambiguo al Consejo deSeguridad a la ONU bajo presiónenorme de los EE.UU. La resolucióncategóricamente se opone a la guerra,sin calificación o hesitación alguna.Describe la campaña en pro de la guer-

EDITORIAL.

Sindicatos se resisten a endosar guerra de Bush

ra como “un pretexto por ataques con-tra los sindicatos, y los derechos civiles,humanos y de los inmigrantes”. Agregaque “la ofensiva pro guerra de la admin-istración de Bush sirve para encubrir ydistraer de la economía que está hundi-endo, de la corrupción corporativa y losdespidos”, y sigue diciendo que “los milmillones de dólares gastados parapreparar y ejecutar esta guerra se estánrobando de las escuelas, los hospitales,el Seguro Social y los servicios por lospobres en medio de la crisis económicamás grande de memoria reciente, a lamisma vez que la administración Bushplanifica simultáneamente sacar aúnmás del presupuesto para regalar a suspartidarios ricos”. Esta resolución, quetoma una posición firme de clase en tér-minos tan resonantes, tambiénresponde “al asalto renovado contra elmovimiento sindical que incluye el usode la ley Taft-Hartley [que prohíbehuelgas] en contra de los trabajadoresportuarios; excluye el derecho de orga-nizarse a 50.000 nuevos inspectores enlos aeropuertos; privatiza a casi200.000 empleos federales representa-dos actualmente por el sindicato deempleados estatales AFGE; y remuevelos derechos de la negociación colectivaa estos empleados”.

También condena a la Ley Patrióticay la Ley de Seguridad de la Patria porfuncionar “para socavar los derechossindicales de organizar y combatir con-tra ataques anti inmigrantes por laexpansión de la capacidad del gobiernode detener a los no ciudadanos, hacer lavigilancia secreta sobre las líneas tele-fónicas y del Internet, y conducir reg-istros secretos”.

Hace un año una denuncia de laagenda política corporativa aprobadapor las dos cámaras del Congreso conapoyo de los dos partidos capitalistastan clara y llena de la conciencia de laclase trabajadora, hubiera parecidoinconcebible. Pero desde entonces, lacrisis enfrentando los trabajadores a locual refiere esta resolución se ha vueltomucho más intensa. La arrogancia delos gobernantes ha alienado al mundoentero.

George W. Bush ha comenzado aacusar a los Demócratas de instigar“guerra de clase”, algo que por supuestono tienen la menor intención de hacer.Pero es él mismo, de hecho que halibrado una guerra doméstica en contrade los trabajadores al mismo momentoque él espera que los jóvenes de la clasetrabajadora vuelvan a la infantería parallevar a cabo sus ambiciones imperiales.Una vez que el genio salga de la lám-para no hay manera de retroceder. Unanueva marea progresista ya está comen-zando a recorrer al país, y esta vez, lostrabajadores, sindicalizados y no orga-nizados, trabajando y desempleados,inmigrante y nacido acá, gente de todasedades, géneros, y etnias, van a deter-minar la forma que asume. Ellos quehan sufrido más están en la vanguardiade la lucha. ��

SEMANA DE RESISTENCIA CONTRA LA GUERRA DEL

13 AL 21 DE FEBREROProsiguiendo con las movilizaciones para decir no a la guerra, las organizaciones que

integran el Movimiento contra la Guerra de EEUU se han sumado al llamado hecho por

Europa para movilizaciones del 15 de febrero. El llamado surgió en el Foro Social de

Florencia y se ha convocado a una Semana de Resistencia contra la Guerra [4] que se

celebrará del 13 al 21 de ese mes. La iniciativa incluye la convocatoria de otra gran mov-

ilización en Nueva York y en otras ciudades de EEUU el mismo 15 de febrero bajo el lema

“Parar la guerra. En apoyo a la autodeterminación de los pueblos del Medio Oriente”.

Calendario de actividades:13 DE FEBRERO: Aniversario del bombardeo al refugio de Amiriyya: [5] con-

memoración de la destrucción del refugio de Amiriyya (Bagdad) durante la Guerra del

Golfo de 1991, en la que un ataque estadounidense de dos misiles destruyó un refugio

antiaéreo civil asesinando por incineración a más de 400 personas en su mayoría mujeres y niños de Bagdad y los

alrededores que habían buscado refugio durante la campaña de terror y bombardeos de EEUU y de las tropas ali-

adas contra la ciudad y la población de Bagdad. Las conmemoraciones se centrarán en la organización de foros, con-

ferencias y charlas informativas en ámbitos estudiantiles y universitarios.

14 DE FEBRERO: Desde las 09:00 de la mañana hasta las 16:00 horas se celebrará en Nueva York un taller

bajo el título: Construyendo el movimiento en contra de la guerra conectando la lucha contra la guerra en Irak con

la lucha por la justicia social y económica, por los derechos civiles en EEUU y contra la globalización, la guerra el mil-

itarismo y el racismo. Por la tarde se celebrará una manifestación.

15 DE FEBRERO: respondiendo al llamado del movimiento europeo contra la guerra, la organización United

for Peace, ha convocado una gran manifestación respaldada por el movimiento contra la guerra estadounidense que,

a su vez está organizando otras manifestaciones en diferentes ciudades de EEUU para

el mismo día, en conexión con las promovidas en Europa y en mundo.

16 A 20 DE FEBRERO: Se han organizado marchas, charlas y colección de fir-

mas para el Referéndum Popular Contra la Guerra [6] en diversas ciudades.

21 DE FEBRERO: En conmemoración del aniversario del asesinato de Malcom

X -quien representa el espíritu de la lucha contra el militarismo y el racismo institu-

cionalizado-, numerosas asociaciones de estudiantes de institutos y universidades, así

como los activistas más jóvenes de ANSWER han organizado esta jornada para tomar

las calles con los lemas Contra la guerra y Contra el racismo.

en ingles www.internationalanswer.org

El refugio de Amiriyya