Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

By Steven Argue

In a July 14, 2008 New York Times Op Ed, Barack Obama says:

"As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces."

In other words, he does not plan to get all of the troops out of Iraq and he will only get most of the troops out in two years. And what does he explain he will do with these troops? Redeploy them. Redeployed where? His rhetoric has been clear: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Obama goes on to call for a surge in Afghanistan as well as war in Pakistan:

"Ending the war [in Iraq] is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan [...] As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters [...]"

U.S. intervention has also been very bad for the people of Pakistan. It is US intervention that has kept a long series of dictators in power there. The US has no right to intervene against those fighting that dictatorship that it labels "terrorists". Likewise, it is US intervention in support of a long series of Pakistani dictators that is the cause of Bhutto's death, brutal repression against the majority, exploitation, and poverty, all of which has resulted in rebellion against the Pakistani government. The US has already harmed the Pakistani people enough with massive aid to dictators and would do more harm by sending in troops.

NO TO OBAMA’S PROPOSED MILITARY INTERVENTION IN PAKISTAN!

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama is proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO OBAMA”S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

In addition, at AIPAC, Obama’s speech laid the groundwork for war with Iran:

“The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. [...] The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”

A war on a major oil producing nation under the imperialist excuse of weapons of mass destruction. Sound familiar? Bush would have a good case for a charge of plagiarism against Obama.

And what will the Iranians think of more imperialist intervention?

In 1953 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and put the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in power. Mossadegh had plans to nationalize the Iranian oil fields, a plan that would have taken a good chunk of the oil profits out of the private control of major international oil companies. Such nationalizations have greatly helped people in other countries, such as Venezuela, where oil wealth is used to better the conditions of the poor and provide needed programs like healthcare.

The CIA sponsored overthrow of the Mossadegh government paved the way for 26 years of dictatorship under the U.S. backed Shah. Freedom of speech did not exist under the Shah, and the CIA participated in the torture of political opponents to the Shah. Meanwhile, U.S. oil corporations made massive profits from Iranian oil while the vast majority of the Iranian people lived in extreme poverty and did not benefit from the oil wealth.

The Iranian people rightly saw the Shah as a puppet of U.S. imperialism, and finally overthrew his dictatorship in 1979. Unfortunately, repression was so bad under the Shah that the only place that people could organize opposition was in the Mosques. This gave the Mullahs a tremendous advantage in taking control of the revolution. The Islamic nature of the revolution led to a deterioration of women's rights and socialists, many of whom had naively supported the Islamic Revolution, were executed by the clerical fascist state.

Despite the brutal nature of the new Iranian government, in that respect the same as the old regime the U.S. had supported, the U.S. was not satisfied. The new regime nationalized the Iranian oil fields under government control. In addition, the new government was full of anti-imperialist rhetoric and took American hostages; a natural result of 26 years of U.S. imposed dictatorship and exploitation. The U.S. government hated the Iranian revolution most for nationalizing the oil, and they feared that the Iranian Revolution may become an influence for similar anti-imperialist revolutions in the region.

As a result, the U.S. encouraged then ally, Saddam Hussein, to send Iraqi troops to invade Iran. During the war, the U.S. armed both sides, but most armed Iraq and provided Iraq with military intelligence. The Iraqi invasion of Iran began on September 22, 1980 and the war continued until 1988. As a result of the war, between half million and a million and a half people died. This U.S. support to Iraq also helped enable Iraq to murder between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign of 1988. At the time, the U.S. corporate media was silent about this crime, and only exposed it later when U.S. alliances changed.

So U.S. intervention against Iran imposed decades of dictatorship, repression, war, exploitation, poverty, and, just in the Iran-Iraq war alone, the deaths of around a million Iranian people. Like Iraq, U.S. troops on the ground in Iran will not be treated as liberators.

The Iranian working class has many scores to settle with their Iranian rulers, but as bad as the current regime in Iran is, Iranians need only look across the border into Iraq to see that U.S. occupation will be much worse. War, a puppet capitalist regime, a million dead, torture, millions of refugees, and an occupier mainly interested in privatization to loot resources. As Iraq shows, there is no liberation at the hands of U.S. occupation. And as the CIA’s Shah showed; there is no liberation under a U.S. imposed puppet. Only anti-imperialist socialist revolution can begin to solve the problems faced by women, ethnic minorities, and the working class of Iran.

NO TO OBAMA’S THREATS AGAINST IRAN!

U.S. HANDS OFF IRAN!

On Iraq, Obama has never promised to fully withdraw. In a debate in September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal.

In addition, Obama has directly supported the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq by voting in the Senate to fund it. If it were not for the Democrat votes in congress, the recent $162 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would have never passed.

This most recent New York Times Op Ed from Obama continues on with a pro-war position. Obama is clear. He wants a gradual redeployment of the majority of troops to fight other wars while calling for continuing to keep some troops fighting in Iraq.

On Blackwater mercenaries fighting in Iraq, Obama also refuses to support a ban, and promised to continue to use Blackwater when he becomes president (Democracy Now!, June 2, 2008).

The US government has no right to be in Iraq murdering, torturing, and humiliating their people while making massive profits for the military industry and other contractors. The U.S. is attempting to privatize Iraqi oil to eliminate Iraqi control over this most important resource and give U.S. and British oil companies control over the oil. The puppet government the US has set up is a death squad government that should not be protected by U.S. troops. Continued occupation of Iraq is a continued attempt to subvert the national will of the Iraqi people and it must end immediately, yet Obama's plan is to only leave, partially, after a couple years, and this, assuredly, only after the oil law has been passed and oil ownership handed over to the multi-nationals. This, as Obama's own use of the term "redeployment" indicates, will free U.S. troops up for other oil wars.

NO TO OBAMA’S “PHASED REDEPLOYMENT”!

U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!

U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD!

Another major cause for war in the Middle East is U.S. military support to the racist regime in Israel. Obama promises to continue this practice. At AIPAC Obama promised:

“Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As president, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade — investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation. First, we must approve the foreign aid request for 2009. Going forward, we can enhance our cooperation on missile defense. We should export military equipment to our ally Israel under the same guidelines as NATO.”

This despite Israel’s recent war of aggression against Lebanon, a war that, if it were not for the heroic resistance of Hezbollah fighters, would have ended in another Israeli occupation like Israel’s brutal occupation of Lebanon that took place in the 1980’s. That occupation included crimes against humanity committed by Israeli and allied Christian Phalangists when they massacred thousands of Palestinians in cold-blood at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

In addition, Obama’s speech made no reference to the suffering faced by the Palestinian people as a result of the creation and continuation of the Jewish state. Israel is a state that created a homeland for one people, through force and violence, by denying the homeland of Palestine’s original inhabitants. Also missing from Obama’s speech was the brutal blockade currently being carried out against Palestinians in Gaza. Obama expressed zero sympathy for the Palestinians and other Arabs, only promises to supply Israel with the weapons to kill more Arabs.

Massive U.S. military aid helps keep the repressive governments of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia in power. Instead of promising more U.S. military aid, that aid should be cut off to better allow the people of the Middle East to decide their own future.

NO TO OBAMA’S PROMISE OF BILLIONS TO ISRAEL!

Another indicator of where Obama stands on imperialist war is how he sees the past wars of the United States. Of H. W. Bush and his war on Iraq Obama recently stated, "I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don't have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm." (Barack Obama, from David Brooks article, "Obama Admires Bush, NY Times, May 16, 2008)

Leading up to that war, Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi Ramaila oil fields. Iraq saw this as theft. In addition, the Kuwaiti monarchy went against OPEC quotas and increased oil production by 40%, bringing down the price of oil on the world market, something Saddam Hussein called economic warfare.

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was, at that time an ally of the United States in the wars against Iran and the Kurds. He had received massive U.S. military backing in those wars. When he assembled troops on the Kuwaiti border, US ambassador April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein and told him, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

Saddam Hussein saw this as a green light from his powerful U.S. ally to invade Kuwait. Soon after, he did.

But Saddam Hussein was set up by the United States because the U.S. wanted a war. The reason for this was to prop up the profits of the military industrial complex. The Soviet Union had just fallen, and the military industries needed an excuse to keep spending billions of dollars of our tax dollars on the military.

Saddam Hussein was the perfect boogie-man to meet their needs. The U.S. corporate media pointed out that he had murdered tens of thousands of Kurds, never mentioning why they were silent when the operations were taking place with weapons supplied by the United States.

The U.S. corporate media also claimed that premature babies in Kuwait had been taken out of incubators and left to die so that the incubators could be shipped back to Baghdad. The whole story was a complete fabrication, and the corporate media even admitted it after the war, but the lie served its purpose in swaying many people who otherwise questioned going to war for the repressive Kuwaiti monarchy.

In addition, President H.W. Bush claimed as reason for war, "Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression." This was based on supposed Pentagon satellite photos. Yet, from commercial satellite photos acquired by the St. Petersburg Times, this was proven to be a lie, the desert Bush senior and the Pentagon referred to was nothing but empty desert.

While playing up false stories of baby killers and the new Hitler that was going to march across the Middle East, the U.S. corporate media ignored Kuwait’s theft of Iraqi oil as well the historic claim of Iraq to Kuwait, with Kuwait being a construct of British imperialism to divide the territory and limit Iraqi access to the sea.

In addition, the U.S. corporate media completely ignored the repressive nature of the Kuwaiti monarchy that U.S. troops were sent to fight and die for. The vast majority of those living in Kuwait were denied the right to vote and other more basic rights. This included women and people labeled foreigners, many of whom had been in Kuwait for generations. Some who had ancestors in Kuwait prior to 1920 were even denied Kuwaiti citizenship. Palestinian workers built modern Kuwait, but they were kept in second class status. This situation was so bad that many Palestinians aided the Iraqi troops and saw them as a liberation army. After the U.S. re-installed the monarchy, most Kuwaiti Palestinians were driven out of Kuwait.

For women in Kuwait the Iraqi invasion also brought hope. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Under Saddam Hussein, over 50% of Iraqi doctors were women. Iraqi women were allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They were allowed to drive. Iraqi women could even freely criticize men. In addition, Iraqi women had the right to work and control their own funds. This was in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive monarchy of Kuwait where women had / have no rights what-so-ever.

In carrying out the war to defend the Kuwaiti monarchy the U.S. used depleted uranium (DU) weapons that have contaminated Iraqi water, soil, and food with radiation. This radiation has caused large numbers of birth defects and other diseases for the Iraqi people. In addition, U.S. soldiers were not given protection and, as a result, became ill in massive numbers with the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Like Agent Orange poisoning in Vietnam, the military brass pretended they had no clue to the cause of this illness that became dubbed “Persian Gulf War Syndrome”. Yet this was later exposed as a lie when reports were made public warning the military brass of the health risks of DU weapons before the war.

Government demographer Beth Osborn Duponte lost her job when she estimated the civilian loss of life in Iraq to be around 83,000, 13,000 directly from U.S. bombing and another 70,000 civilians dead as a result of U.S. targeting of civilian necessities such as water treatment facilities, medical facilities and supplies, and the electric power grid.

In addition, Duponte estimated deaths of Iraqi troops to be around 40,000. Many of the Iraqi troops killed were buried alive. In defense of U.S. actions Col. Lon Maggart said, "People somehow have the notion that burying guys alive is nastier than blowing them up with hand grenades or sticking them in gut with bayonets, well it's not."

So Obama has no problems with Bush targeting civilians, irradiating U.S. troops and the Iraqi people, burying people alive, lying to the American people, and re-installing a repressive monarchy in Kuwait. In addition, Obama wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan, send troops into Pakistan, is already threatening Iran with war, will never fully pull out of Iraq and only promises to pull out most troops in two years after an extended gradual re-deployment of troops to other wars, will continue to use murderous Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, and promises billions in military aid to Israel. Enough said.

Obama will be nominated the presidential candidate of the Democrat Party on August 24-28 at the Democrat Party National Convention (DNC). In opposition to the DNC convention, protests are being organized, with organizers stating:

"On August 24-28, the ruling elite and their defenders will converge in Denver Colorado, in an attempt to recuperate the gains of global social movements and produce another myth of progress. Lip service to global warming, the economic crisis and the war will endow them with the magic to spread amnesia across the hearts and minds of North America... Outside those doors, however, so many will exclaim, smash and sing a harmonious ‘no.’...”

In addition, there will be protests at the equally pro-war Republican National convention being held September 1-4 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Although virtually ignored by the corporate press, there are other presidential candidates who are running in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans who are for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. These include Cynthia McKinney running on the Green Party ticket, Brian Moore of the Socialist Party, Gloria La Riva on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket, and Róger Calero on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. Corporate controlled elections and media assure that these authentic anti-war candidates will not get elected, but these candidacies do help expose people to positions of politicians not controlled by corporate interests and the pro-war Democrat Party machine. In addition, through some of these campaigns, more people become exposed to socialist ideas and the ideas of class struggle methods to bring about change.

A vote for Obama or McCain is a vote for war! So that's what, in active terms, you're really voting for when you vote Democrat or Republican. Those of us voting for third parties, or refusing to vote, will not change the country directly through the elections either, but at least we won’t be dumb enough to vote for own oppressors and exploiters that are waging imperialist war. Instead, we will have the sense to be working for something different.

And those of us in unions should be angry that our hard earned union dues are being squandered on the Democrat Party when that money should instead be put into stronger strike funds to strengthen our ability to fight for better contracts, for socialized medicine, and for bigger strikes against the wars.

Build the Anti-War Movement! For More Strikes for Immediate Withdrawal Like the May 1st ILWU Anti-War Strike That Shut Down 29 Ports! Support Soldiers Refusing to Fight Including the 10,000 U.S. Soldiers Who Have Gone AWOL! Build the Socialist and Anti-Imperialist Movements! U.S. Hands off Iran! U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan Now!



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John McCain Says He Hates “Gooks”

(Photo: Nine-year-old Kim Phuc burning from US dropped napalm)

John McCain Says He Hates “Gooks”

By STEVEN ARGUE

When asked in 2000 John McCain said, “"I hate the gooks, I will hate them as long as I live" ("McCain Criticized for Slur" SF Gate 2/18/2000).

The US War of Aggression against the people of Vietnam murdered three million people. Many of those people were murdered by the massive aerial bombing done by the United States. McCain was on his twenty third bombing raid when he was finally shot down by the Vietnamese near Hanoi. Timothy McVeigh was put to death for less, but the Vietnamese released McCain after only five years. How many people McCain murdered is impossible to know, but what is for certain, McCain is a war criminal who murdered thousands directly in Vietnam.

McCain's crimes against humanity have continued since his release, with McCain voting for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and voting for military appropriations to fund those wars. The US occupation of Iraq has now cost the lives of over one million people. The true purpose of that war is now even more obvious with US attempts to get the Oil Law passed in Iraq, a law that would turn Iraqi oil over to Exxon Mobile, British Petroleum, and other oil monopolies. Meanwhile, racist war criminal John McCain has vowed to continue the occupation.

Similarly, Obama has voted to fund the occupation of Iraq, has spoken of waging war in Pakistan and Iran, and would not commit to withdrawing troops from Iraq by 2013, opposes socialized medicine, and is not putting forward real solutions on global warming.

In a debate in September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out." Similarly Hillary Clinton Said, “I agree with Barack” ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

Not only do Obama and Clinton make no promise to get out of Iraq, both have voted for war appropriations. This puts them both in the position of having directly supported the war.

In addition, Clinton voted to invade Iraq. Obama was not yet in the Senate, so he didn’t vote on that resolution. Yet on the verge of the U.S. war of Aggression against Iraq, Barack Obama repeated Bush’s lies at an anti-war rally stating, “He [Saddam Hussein] has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity” (Obama, 10/2002 Speech, Federal Plaza).

In trying to let themselves off the hook, many Democrats claim that Bush "did not fairly represent intelligence". Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren't their fault because they were lied to by Bush, when the truth that Bush was lying was readily available, not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead of war, we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for the Democrats and Republicans, Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder and occupation in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish, by force, a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to pretend to distance themselves from the same Bush policies that they actually support.

Similarly, with Pakistan, it is US intervention that has kept in power a long series of dictators and fragile civilian governments who are overthrown by the military at the drop of a hat. While Obama says he wants to send US troops into Pakistan, the US has no right to intervene against those fighting against a US backed puppet government, labeling those who fought against the Musharraf dictatorship "terrorists". It is US intervention in support of Pakistani dictators, including Musharraf, that was the cause of Bhutto's death. The US has already harmed the Pakistani people enough and should get out now! NO TO OBAMA’S PROPOSED MILITARY INTERVENTION IN PAKISTAN!

No to the Democrats Republicans, the twin parties of war, global warming, and corporate exploitation!

In the long run, it is important for people to understand that we (the non-millionaire majority) are not represented in any way by the Democrat and Republican Parties and that we are much better off relying on our own power through mass protests, strikes, alternative media, and in building or supporting political parties to the left of those in power.

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Iraqi Oil Workers Tell Chevron "Hands Off Iraq"

In a letter to Chevron executives and shareholders (and to ExxonMobil, who meet the same day), Iraqi Oil Workers Unions call on Chevron to end the occupation and stop pushing for the Iraq Oil [Theft] Law. This message will be delivered by antiwar, environmenta, and labor organizers as a protest converges on Chevrons annual shareholder meeting. Their message is below. This event will be on Wednesday May 28, at 7am at Chevrons Corporate headquarters in San Ramon. For more information, see: bayareadirectaction.wordpress.com/2...n/


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To: The Shareholders of ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporations and All Peace Loving People of the World

From: Hassan Juma’a Awad, President, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)

We call upon the governments, corporations and other institutions behind the ongoing occupation of Iraq to respond to our demands for real democracy, true sovereignty and self-determination, free of all foreign interference.

Five years of invasion, war and occupation have brought nothing but death, destruction, misery and suffering to our people. In the name of our “liberation,” more than a million of our citizens have been killed or wounded, our nation’s schools, hospitals and other infrastructure have been destroyed, our neighbourhoods have been bombed, our homes have been broken into, our children have been traumatized, many of our family members and neighbours have been assaulted and arrested, our national treasures have been looted, and nearly twenty percent of our people have been turned into refugees.

The continued occupation fuels the violence in Iraq rather than alleviating it. The occupation has helped to foment and then exploit sectarian divisions and terror attacks where there had been none.

The Ba’athist legislation of 1987, which banned trade unions in the public sector and public enterprises (80% of all workers), is still in effect and continues to be enforced against us. Our union offices have been raided. Union property has been seized and destroyed. Our bank accounts have been frozen. Our leaders have been beaten, arrested, abducted and assassinated. Our rights as workers are routinely violated. This is an attack on our rights and the basic precepts of a democratic society. It is a grim reminder of the shadow of dictatorship still stalking our country.

We call upon you and all the world’s peace-loving peoples to help us to end the nightmare of occupation and restore our sovereignty and national independence so that we can chart our own course to the future.

1) We demand an immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from our country, and utterly reject the agreement being negotiated with the USA for long-term bases and a military presence. Iraq must be returned to full sovereignty.

2) We demand the passage of a labour law promised by our Constitution, that adheres to ILO principles to protect the rights of workers to organize, bargain and strike, independent of state control and interference and on which Iraqi trade unionists have been fully consulted.

3) We demand an end to meddling in our sovereign economic affairs by the International Monetary Fund, the USA and UK, and multinational energy corporations, and recognition that no major economic decisions concerning our services and resources can be made while foreign troops occupy our country.

4) We demand that the US government, oil companies and others immediately cease lobbying for the oil law which would fracture the country and hand control over our oil to multinational companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron. We demand that all oil companies be prevented from entering into any long-term agreement concerning oil while Iraq remains occupied. The Iraqi government must tear up the current draft of the oil law, and begin to develop a legitimate oil policy based on full and genuine consultation with the Iraqi people. Only after all occupation forces are gone should a long term plan for the development of our oil resources be adopted.

We seek your support and solidarity to help us end the military and economic occupation of our country.

We look forward to the day when we have a world based on co-operation and solidarity.

We look forward to a world free from war, sectarianism, competition and exploitation.

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Also See:

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry
www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8501994.php

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8478172.php

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Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry

Global Warming, the Biggest Threat to Humanity and Other Living Things

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry

By STEVEN ARGUE

In Myanmar the death toll from a cyclone is, according to the Red Cross, between 69,000 and 128,000 people, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation. Adding to the ferocity of the storm’s impact has been the fact that much of the mangrove habitat that had protected the Myanmar coast has been cleared. In addition, with strong parallels to Bush’s refusal to accept thousands of well trained and well equipped aid workers who would have saved lives in New Orleans, the repressive capitalist government of Myanmar has hindered the ability of international aid workers to do what needs to be done to save lives in Myanmar.

Last year, China had their worst cyclone in over 50 years. Around the world, warmer oceans are increasing the frequency and severity of hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. This is happening because the world’s warmer oceans feed more moisture into these tropical storms. As a result, computer models of global warming also project hurricanes in places that haven’t had them in known human history. One of these projections was that hurricanes would form in the South Atlantic. Fitting predictions, the first ever known South Atlantic hurricane made landfall on southern Brazil in 2004.

Last year Tokyo had a warm winter, with no snow cover for the first time in recorded history.

California is having the driest spring in 150 years, with regular water shortages in the long-term projections as a result of global warming. Already, on May 22, a wildfire started in the Santa Cruz Mountains, burning thousands of acres and destroying homes. That fire has yet to be contained. With wildfires starting this early, there is reason to fear this upcoming fire season in California.

The Santa Cruz area has a Mediterranean climate. These climates are characterized by winter rainy seasons and dry summers. Places with Mediterranean climates around the world are facing dryer weather with more wildfires. This is also happening in Greece and Australia. Forests and chaparral are burning up as habitats are changing and adjacent deserts are expanding.

The ice sheets in the arctic are disappearing at an ever increasing rate, and some of the latest predictions now project the potential of northern summer ice sheets completely disappearing within six years, bringing on the extinction of the polar bear and other species. As the white ice and snow disappears, dark ocean absorbs more of the sun’s heat, and escalates the rate of global warming even further.

In 2005 the Amazon River basin faced a drought never seen in recorded history. For the first time in recorded history a stretch of the Amazon River went completely dry in 2005, with causes attributed to a combination of less rainfall, smaller glaciers in the Andes (as a result of melting), and deforestation. Computer models predict that the rains that are necessary for the continued flow of the Amazon River will dry up due to the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean, causing moisture to fall directly as rain into the Atlantic rather than being blown inland. In addition to these projections saying that the Amazon River will dry up as a result of global warming, they also say that the Amazon rainforest will begin a regression first to grassland ending with the massive desertification of the Amazon Basin within the next one-hundred years. This, and other processes of desertification around the world, will, like rising oceans, cause starvation, massive refugee crisis’s, and also cause mass extinction of plant and animal species. Presently, the trees of the Amazon Forest remove greenhouse carbon from the atmosphere, but as climate changes and the forest disappears, this process will reverse itself, and the region will be adding carbon to the atmosphere.

Today, every national academy of science of the industrialized world recognizes human caused global warming as a fact. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who explicitly use the word "consensus" on the issue.

Yet there are a few voices who claim that human caused global warming is a myth. Among these is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a foundation funded by ExxonMobile. Under pressure, ExxonMobile declared they would no longer fund such groups. Yet, a study of ExxonMobiles tax returns showed they were lying and that they were still funding 14 other similar groups. Among these is the organization “Frontiers for Freedom” who recently issued a report that was dedicated to attacking Al Gore and global warming science.

The problem of global warming is one that will, and is, devastating the planet’s environment, causing mass extinction of species while also destroying agricultural and habitable land through rising oceans, more severe hurricanes, droughts, more unpredictable weather, increases in tropical diseases, the slowing of ocean currents causing year round freezing weather with a potential ice age in the northern hemisphere combined with higher temperatures closer to the equator, and the potential of runaway global warming with the melting of the ocean’s methane hydride that could actually cause the extinction of the human species as well as most other species on the planet.

The United States is still the biggest contributor to global warming in the world. Per capita, China has much lower carbon emissions than the United States. Likewise, historically their output is also much less than the United States. No country outdoes the extreme per-capita output of US consumerism, nor do they outdo the historic US output, output which stays in the atmosphere for a long time and continues to contribute to global warming today.

China needs to deal with their pollution too, but their carbon footprint per person is much, much lower than the United States. In addition, the growing output in China is, to a large extent, being done by US corporations who have moved to China, so once again, US capitalists are largely to blame, even for Chinese carbon output. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party’s abandonment of socialism, and lack of true workers democracy under one party Stalinist rule, is also part of the problem.

Despite the severity of this problem and the key role the United States has played in creating it, the U.S. government and corporate leaders do worse than nothing, and have blocked and sabotaged all potential solutions for the past fifty years up until the present.

The United States needs an emergency program to dramatically lower carbon emissions. Without it we are doomed. Yet both ruling capitalist parties in the United States have been in the back pockets of big oil and coal, and have refused to do anything. A first step to save the planet and end imperialist wars, once the people gain power, will be the nationalization of the energy industries.

The first scientist to discuss global warming was Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius, a chemist who made many discoveries essential to modern chemistry, who in 1896 warned that a doubling of the world's atmospheric carbon dioxide would increase the world's temperatures by five to six degrees Celsius. With catastrophic implications, this is very close to current predictions. By 1957, scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California put out the first warnings about human caused global warming that were taken seriously by the scientific community. Yet, despite this information being readily available for fifty years, the U.S. government and U.S. corporations failed to act in a favorable way at that time, and presently they continue to be an obstacle to action on global warming.

The current lack of action is due to the massive profits that continue to be made by the big oil corporations, and the political strength they have in being able to buy the politicians in Washington. Nothing short of nationalizing the oil industry, a move that would take corporate profit out of continued greenhouse gas emissions, will break this country from its suicidal drive towards profits at the price of the destruction of the entire planet. Yet the nationalization of oil will not take place within the current power structure of a nation ruled by two capitalist parties that are only elected through the support of massive contributions from the extremely wealthy and the backing of the corporate media. Although there will be a hard struggle ahead, only a revolutionary democratic socialist movement that comes from below can achieve the transformations of the power structure needed to nationalize oil and save the planet.

Today, the full extent of the problem of human caused global warming is the focus of considerable scientific research. World temperatures have already increased significantly and are rising at an alarming rate. As global temperatures have risen, ice shelves and glaciers in the Arctic, Antarctic, and mountains have been rapidly melting. So much ice has melted and dropped in the Ocean that the maps of Antarctica have had to be redrawn. In Greenland, it has been found that the increased layer of melted water between glaciers and the ground below is in fact greatly increasing the speed in which glaciers slide into the ocean.

All of this increased water in the world’s oceans is causing sea levels to rise. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is projected to be the first island nation to be completely submerged by global warming. Rising saltwater has already destroyed crop land and is contaminating their ground water. As a result, Tuvaluans now only drink rainwater and have to import a much greater portion of their food than they did in the past. The nation of 9,300 has already begun a program of evacuating 75 people per year from their islands, with 3,000 Tuvaluans already living overseas. Not only is Tuvalu taking the question of global warming seriously enough to begin evacuation of their islands, their tiny poor nation has decided to spend the $1.5 million per year necessary to be members of the United Nations in order to advocate world action against global warming. While what is happening to Tuvaluans is alarming, the coming elimination of Tuvalu from the planet is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the human and environmental crisis that will be caused by rising seas. As the trend continues, much of low lying nations such as Bangladesh and Vietnam are projected to be swallowed by rising waters, creating millions upon millions of refugees, and destroying some of the most productive crop land in the world, bringing with it a massive humanitarian crisis of refugees and starvation as well as the extinction of many species. In addition, low lying areas of the United States, such as Manhattan and Florida, will be submerged as well.

One disturbing theory regarding global warming makes the seemingly contradictory projection that global warming will trigger a new ice-age. Yet a large and growing body of scientific evidence does back this prediction. It is based on the fact that ocean currents in the Atlantic, including the Gulf Stream, are expected to disappear as a result of large amounts of fresh water melting and disrupting ocean currents. These currents move cold water from the north Atlantic south as well as warmer water north, mitigating what would be the extremes between both northern and southern climates. Twenty thousand years ago, at the height of the last ice-age, a reduction of ocean currents by two thirds drastically decreased the temperatures of the northern hemisphere and plunged much of North America and Europe into year-round winter. Already, measurements of ocean currents off of Greenland indicate that ocean currents there have decreased by 20%. The transformation of most of North America and Europe into frozen wasteland will, like rising oceans and desertification, cause mass starvation, a massive refugee crisis, and also cause mass extinction of plant and animal species.

Much of global warming is proceeding at even faster rates than original dire predictions, due to what are called positive feedback loops. These are phenomena that are caused by global warming on the one hand, and are accelerating global warming on the other. Among positive feedback loops is the melting of ice and snow. As more ice melts, warmth from the sun that was reflected back out of the atmosphere by light colored snow and ice; is more readily absorbed by newly exposed darker colored ground and ocean water. This is why the arctic is currently heating up at a much faster rate than anywhere else.

Carbon sinks, things that take global warming causing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, are also being destroyed by global warming. Fossil fuels (when they aren’t burned) such as oil and coal are the ultimate carbon sinks, where prehistoric carbon was moved out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and buried in the ground. Unfortunately, as these fuel sources are burned, their carbon is now being released back into the atmosphere. Some other important carbon sinks are forests and peat bogs, where these plants take carbon dioxide out of the air and convert it into sugars, carbohydrates, and cellulose. While direct human destruction of forests and peat bogs for lumber, fuel, and cropland is destroying these important carbon sinks, so too do phenomena such as global warming caused desertification.

Another important carbon sink, caught in a global warming related positive feedback loop, are the activities of the ocean’s forams, tiny organisms that, in their massive numbers, use up vast amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide as it passes freely between the atmosphere and the oceans. When forams die, much of the carbon they’ve converted drops with their shells to the bottom of the ocean. Yet, this process is now being interrupted by the increased acidity of the oceans caused by the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans. Forams are unable to function properly under these conditions of higher acidity and are thus removing less carbon from the atmosphere.

So a number of causes have been identified where increased carbon dioxide and increased global warming cause even more atmospheric carbon dioxide and more global warming. In addition, the most dire predictions dealing with positive feedback mechanisms is the melting of methane hydride on the bottoms of the world’s oceans. As the oceans heat up, the melting of this material will release methane gas into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is even worse than carbon dioxide. A leading theory on the cause of the Permian extinction 251 million years ago, an extinction episode that killed off 95 percent of all species on earth, is that the extinction episode was first triggered by carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by Siberian volcanoes for an extended period of time that led to global warming that reached temperatures high enough to melt methane hydride on the bottom of the oceans.

The combination of high carbon dioxide and methane gas concentrations in the atmosphere then dramatically increased the temperatures of the oceans, causing them to become anoxic. The oceans became anoxic because as water gets warmer it holds less oxygen. In addition, warmer ocean waters circulate less, moving less oxygenated water from the ocean’s surface deeper into the ocean.

Anoxic waters no longer support most advanced plants and animals, but they do support a number of species of bacteria that are adapted to such conditions. These bacteria include species that produce hydrogen sulfide as a waste product of their metabolism. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to humans and other organisms dependent on oxygen. It is thought that large amounts of hydrogen sulfide from the world’s heated anoxic oceans entered the atmosphere and killed off almost all life on land during the Permian Extinction. Human caused global warming today, if it is not stopped, may well set in motion the same series of events, and wipe out most species on earth, including the human race.

As U.N. secretary-general Ban told delegates at the December 2007 U.N. climate conference in Bali, "We are at a crossroad, one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear." Yet despite a willingness on the part of a number of nations to take some action, and despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the United States, the worst polluter of gasses causing global warming in the world, refuses to sign on to international agreements limiting greenhouse gas emissions. While most environmentalists agree that these Kyoto protocols are not enough, the United States signing on to them would at least be a step in the right direction. If the United States continues to do nothing in regards to global warming except participate in denial while spewing the worst per-capita carbon emissions in the world, the human and environmental catastrophe of global warming will become much worse, and human extinction becomes more and more likely.

In advocating something be done, American environmentalists often point to many individual things people can do to slow one’s personal impact on global warming. These include driving less and generally using combustion engines less, recycling, becoming a vegetarian or vegan, consuming less, using solar or wind energy, planting trees, avoiding cutting down trees, and saving forests and peat bogs. All of these things are positive in reducing greenhouse gasses, and should be encouraged, but without the problem being tackled on a wider societal level, such individual actions amount to a mere drop in the bucket as petroleum and auto-industries sabotage wider solutions, and millionaires like Arnold Swartzenegger try to make up for what they apparently lack in their pants by driving around with his fleet of eight gas-guzzling hummers.

One wider societal solution would be converting the United States to electric cars, and making them more efficient with hybrid technology while also cleaning up the grid by converting more power sources to solar and wind generated power. This should be combined with providing much greater subsidies to mass transportation. Yet, the oil industry and other major corporations of the United States, along with their subservient politicians in both the Democrat and Republican Parties, have blocked every major step towards this kind of progress over the last 50 years.

As Alexandra Paul from Bay Watch stated in a PBS interview, “[…] power as in ‘the power structure’ is why we are still using gas in cars.” In the interview she described how GM decided not to re-lease her electric car, nor any other that they had leased out, and instead took all of these working cars back from their customers in 2002 and crushed them. Toyota also took similar actions destroying their electric vehicles in California at the same time. The only reason these companies ever produced and leased these cars was that they were forced to do so by a California law passed in the 1990’s. The law was inspired by the fact that cities like Los Angeles are over-polluted, largely due to combustion engines, and electric cars with energy coming from power plants produce fewer smog and greenhouse gas pollutants. Yet, when these companies were no longer legally forced to put out electric cars in order to do business in California, they stopped doing so and destroyed the ones they had already produced. When electric cars were on the market, they were available only for lease except a few that Toyota agreed to sell under public pressure. So, when the car manufacturers were no longer forced to have their popular electric cars out on the market, they not only stopped producing them, they took back the ones that were actively being leased and destroyed them.

The auto manufacturers claim that these cars were unpopular, and that is why they stopped producing them as soon as they could. Yet, when the cars were being leased there were waiting lists for the cars that were longer than what was available. The various manufacturers, in taking these vehicles off the road and destroying them, did so in order to destroy their very example as an alternative. This lets us in on a very important secret. Through their hostile actions against the electric car they have informed us that they are wed to the interests of the oil companies. This could be, in part, due to the fact that the planned obsolescence of cars with combustion engines is harder to engineer into electric cars. So these cars apparently didn’t break down enough to promote auto sales and auto parts sales. So the auto industry is involved in what amounts to, in terms of ethics, a criminal conspiracy to rip-off consumers and destroy the future of this planet in order to achieve short-term profits.

Just as capitalist ownership is blocking the production of electric cars, so to does capitalist energy ownership block the development and production of wide-scale wind and solar energy. As Monica Hill stated in the Freedom Socialist Newspaper:

“[...] it takes a great deal more labor and energy to harness wind and solar power, at present, than to extract oil. Oil men are clear on the subject. "Renewable energy," said former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond in the British newspaper Economist, is "a complete waste of money." When Raymond retired last December, Exxon Mobil reported profits of $36.1 billion — the largest in U.S. history. Raymond personally raked in $400 million that year. Clearly, when wind and solar power finally get developed, it won't be thanks to capitalist industry. There is no solution for skyrocketing consumer costs and plunging planetary health as long as control of the energy industry remains in the hands of the monster oil industry and its kindred financial and industrial monopolies.”

With the production of wind and solar, once again, capitalist ownership and capitalist profits are the barriers to the steps needed to save the planet.

Just as big oil profits from the destruction of the planet, they are also a major influence in the drive for war against countries that have eliminated private ownership of oil wealth. U.S. intervention against the popular democratic governments of Venezuela and Bolivia is increasing because these countries have nationalized their energy industries and are using oil profits for things such as education and healthcare, instead of that money going directly into the pockets of multi-national oil corporations. Similarly, oil was nationalized under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and oil revenues were used, in part, to benefit the Iraqi people. Now, under a U.S. imposed puppet government in Iraq, there have been attempts to privatize Iraqi oil fields, but resistance from Iraqi workers has so far prevented it. Once again, the drive for higher corporate oil profits is a destructive force for the world’s people and environment.

While the United States government has no right to intervene in other countries to tell them what to do with their own resources, especially when those countries are making better use of resources than would be done in the hands of U.S. and British oil companies, the U.S. also has no right to destroy the entire planet for the profits of a few oil companies. This, combined with the overwhelming corrupting power big oil has on U.S. politics leads one who is interested in the future of this planet to one inevitable conclusion. The oil industries of the United States need to be nationalized under the democratic control of the people.

While taking the profit out of war and environmental destruction through the nationalization of oil and other energy industries may sound logical to most people, inevitable questions naturally arise in people’s minds.

A common myth promoted by those who have profits to gain through private ownership is that private ownership is more efficient. Yet an honest look shows public ownership is always better. A good example is socialized medicine in Europe, which is much cheaper and better than American healthcare, resulting in giving countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom longer life expectancies and lower infant mortalities than the United States. Ending capitalist profit, a form of theft to line the pockets of the wealthy in the first place, is just plain more efficient.

Even public ownership of energy, on a small scale, isn’t without precedent in the United States. Electricity in Los Angeles is publicly owned. Because it is publicly owned, money isn’t being siphoned away in the form of profits going to shareholders and CEO’s. In addition, the bottom line is not the profits of shareholders and CEO’s. As a result, electricity is provided at rates much cheaper than in the rest of California, and it is done in a more environmentally friendly way. In fact, since electricity is publicly owned, people in LA were able to put an initiative on the ballot to shut down their nuclear power plants. The measure succeeded, and people in LA, while they are still forced to pay for the nuclear plants that were constructed and shut down, they still pay less for electricity due to the superior efficiency of ending corporate profit through public ownership.

In the United States, public ownership of the oil industry would not only take away profit incentives for war and environmental destruction, but money made from such enterprises could go towards human and environmental needs such as saving the environment, and towards healthcare and education, as nationalized oil money is used in Venezuela.

Yet Venezuela is also facing a crisis, both because the United States is hostile to what the revolutionary Chavez government is doing there with oil money, but also because there are still capitalists that control much of the Venezuelan economy. Through that control they are able to sabotage other sectors of the economy in their attempts to overthrow the Chavez government. Capitalist interference in food distribution has been one of the most recent acts of sabotage, where capitalists have had food stuffs that they were refusing to put on the shelves for sale. How Chavez deals with this, and other capitalist sabotage of the economy, will determine whether or not the Venezuelan Revolution survives.

Immediately after the Cuban Revolution, Castro and the rest of the Cuban revolutionary leadership was tested in a similar way. The first nationalizations by the Cuban revolutionary leadership were in agriculture. Before the revolution, under the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship, much of the Cuban land was owned by the American capitalist Rockefeller family through the United Fruit Company. Peasants worked for low wages on this land during the on season, and starved during the off-season. Immediately, upon taking power, the Castro government carried out their promise of land reform and United Fruit Company land was expropriated. Resources from sugar production were no longer used to only enrich the Rockefeller family, but instead used to bring food, education, and medicine to peasants and their children. Yet, the United States and American capitalists never forgave this intrusion on capitalist property, and American capitalists sabotaged production in other sectors of the economy, including by refusing to refine oil. In response, the Castro government nationalized the entire economy and announced the building of a socialist economy in Cuba.

This necessity of socialist revolutions to carry out sweeping nationalizations in order to stop capitalist sabotage of the economy was first recognized in 1905 by Leon Trotsky in his work “Results and Prospects” and later developed further in “The Permanent Revolution”.

It is through the Cuban nationalization of the entire economy that the Cuban revolution has not only been able to survive, but they have been able to implement socialist energy policies that are not based on profit, but are instead based on human and environmental needs. While Cuban socialized medicine has brought about a medical system that has produced a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the United States, Cuba’s planned economy has also benefited the environment. It is as result of those policies and priorities that the World Wildlife Fund has said that Cuba is the only country with passing environmental policies in the world. Yet, those policies on one tiny island nation will not be enough to save the planet. As Fidel Castro stated at the U.N. in Rio in 1992:

“An important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the fast and progressive destruction of its natural living conditions: mankind. We have now become aware of this problem when it is almost too late to stop it. It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the brutal destruction of the environment.”

Here, Castro is right, and Cuba does serve as a model. Yet, when we look at the Cuban model of socialism, we must pick and choose what aspects are healthy and which aspects should not be copied by other socialist revolutions.

While the Cuban socialism has achieved much, one key ingredient for a healthy society is missing. That ingredient is democracy. A similar observation was made of the Soviet Union in 1918 by German socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg. While being supportive of the Russian revolution, she was at the same time opposed to the dictatorial methods of the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky in the Soviet Union. Rosa Luxemburg instead advocated revolutionary democratic socialism.

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, were swept to power in a popular revolution that called for an end to the war with Germany, land reform, and socialism. Besides the betterment this revolution meant for the workers and peasants in general, including access to healthcare and education, giant strides forward were made for oppressed nationalities, Jews, women's rights, and gay rights. Before the revolution, under Czarist rule, Jews were routinely slaughtered in the thousands in government-sponsored pogroms. Peasants were the property of feudal landlords, and huge numbers of drafted young peasants were dying in the inter-imperialist war with Germany. This all ended with the Russian Revolution. In addition, gay rights and the right to abortion were legalized for the first time in any country with the birth of the Soviet Union and backward anti-woman practices such as bride-price and forced marriage were made illegal. Priorities were made of literacy and meeting the basic needs of the people. These were huge advances made by a revolution that had inherited a poor economically backward nation, soon to be further devastated by civil war and the invasion of many imperialist armies.

Yet, Rosa Luxemburg, while praising the advances made by the Russian Revolution, did not excuse the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union. She saw the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in a completely different way than Lenin and Trotsky. She saw this simply as the toiling majority becoming the dictators over the capitalist minority that once held power. For that majority to actually be in charge, however, they would need democratic organs, universal suffrage, and democratic rights. For Lenin and Trotsky, the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" fit more into bourgeois models of individual dictatorship by those in power. As Rosa Luxemburg states in her 1918 work, the “Russian Revolution”:

“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only a bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders with inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule [...] a dictatorship, to be sure, but not dictatorship of the proletariat [...].”

A different position by Lenin and Trotsky, more in league with that of Rosa Luxemburg, could have produced a much better and more open society that would have made Stalin's type of rise to power through skullduggery, corruption, and terror within the ranks of the party much more difficult.

Rosa Luxemburg did not see this question as being counterpoised between bourgeois democracy (democracy for the rich as we have in the United States) on the one hand (defended by fake "socialists" who had betrayed socialism and become administrators of capitalist exploitation and war), and dictatorial communism on the other. Instead, she rejected both and fought for a socialist society with nationalized industries where the working class has democratic control. It is this essential banner of revolutionary democratic socialism that must be fully revived in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and in order for people to take our movements for environmental survival and socialism seriously and want any part in them.

It was a very unfortunate error of history that the first socialist revolution was carried out with the anti-democratic errors of Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin amplified those errors for his own personal gain. Due to the influence of the Russian Revolution, both morally and financially, the undemocratic errors of the Russian Revolution were copied by most socialist revolutions after, including the Cuban revolution. While recognizing the advantages of the Cuban socialist model over U.S. imposed dictatorship and a corporate controlled economy, it is important not to repeat their undemocratic errors.

Yet, there is nothing inherently democratic about a private economy. As was shown in the example of publicly owned power in LA, with the ability of the people to shut down unsafe nuclear power plants, public ownership is more democratic than private ownership. Private ownership allows a few extremely wealthy people to control not only industrial policies where public input and control is essential for a healthy environment, but their private control of vast financial resources also gives them control of the two established political parties in the United States. Public ownership on a wider scale, with a broadly socialized economy, tied to full democratic rights and universal suffrage, will allow the United States to become a much more democratic country than it is today, and will allow the people of this country to begin the measures needed to save the planet.

Yet, while all of this may seem reasonable, it does beg the question, “How do you propose to gain such a far reaching goal in a country that has an entrenched power structure that is more engaged in privatization than nationalization?” This is the hardest question. It will take the organization of a revolutionary party firmly committed to these goals that is not interested in compromise with the current power establishment. The goal of such a party must be for power, but history has also shown that such parties and movements can become powerful enough at times to scare the power structure into making some of the needed reforms. Even relatively small parties that stick to radical convictions that seem to be on the very fringes can, in times of discontent and sudden revolutionary turmoil, become the majority. As issues worsen in the United States around war, environmental destruction, lack of healthcare, and a possible coming economic collapse, the possibilities of a sea-change in the relatively passive U.S. population becomes more and more likely.

It is with these understandings that the first steps are being taken to establish the Cool Earth Party on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism, which includes the following demands:

1. Immediate action to save the planet by cutting greenhouse gas emissions!
2. Nationalize the Oil Industry, Other Energy Industries, and the Auto Industry!
3. U.S. Troops Out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Philippines!
4. End US Military Aid to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, and All Other Oppressive Governments in the World!
5. End US Imperialism!
6. For Socialized Medicine!
7. No to Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia!
8. For proportional democracy with guaranteed equal time for parties in the media, outlaw big campaign spending, and outlaw electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections).
9. For Class Struggle Methods to Achieve these Goals, Including Strikes, Mass Protests, Alternative Media, Acts of Conscience and Rebellion Within the US Military, and the Building of a Revolutionary Democratic Socialist Party.
10. Towards Revolutionary Democratic Socialism in the United States!

Such a party will necessarily start small. But, I think, time will tell that such an organization is not only essential for the survival of the planet, it is also an idea that can become popular quickly because it is an idea whose time has come.

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1950: 100,000 Executed by Imperialism's Korean Dictatorship

Painting: Picasso's 1951 "Massacre in Korea"

[The US war of aggression in Korea murdered 5 million Koreans. Part of that murder was the cold blooded executions of over 100,000 leftists and suspected leftists by the South Korean government in 1950. Over 54,000 U.S. soldiers died in the U.S. war to defend that murderous U.S. imposed regime. The following AP article exposes what many on the left have known about for decades, but has been hidden from the general public in the United States by the government and corporate media. -Steven Argue]


AP Probes 'Cold-Blooded Slaughter' in South Korea
www.editorandpublisher.com/eand...y.jsp

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press

Published: May 18, 2008 4:15 PM ET

DAEJEON Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions - intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners - were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were ``the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War,'' said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.

Hundreds of sets of remains have been uncovered so far, but researchers say they are only a tiny fraction of the deaths. The commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed, in a South Korean population of 20 million.

That estimate is based on projections from local surveys and is ``very conservative,'' said Kim. The true toll may be twice that or more, he told The Associated Press.

In addition, thousands of South Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the communist occupation were slain by southern forces later in 1950, and the invaders staged their own executions of rightists.

Through the postwar decades of South Korean right-wing dictatorships, victims' fearful families kept silent about that blood-soaked summer. American military reports of the South Korean slaughter were stamped ``secret'' and filed away in Washington. Communist accounts were dismissed as lies.

Only since the 1990s, and South Korea's democratization, has the truth begun to seep out.

In 2002, a typhoon's fury uncovered one mass grave. Another was found by a television news team that broke into a sealed mine. Further corroboration comes from a trickle of declassified U.S. military documents, including U.S. Army photographs of a mass killing outside this central South Korean city.

Now Kim's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has added government authority to the work of scattered researchers, family members and journalists trying to peel away the long-running cover-up. The commissioners have the help of a handful of remorseful old men.

``Even now, I feel guilty that I pulled the trigger,'' said Lee Joon-young, 83, one of the executioners in a secluded valley near Daejeon in early July 1950.

The retired prison guard told the AP he knew that many of those shot and buried en masse were ordinary convicts or illiterate peasants wrongly ensnared in roundups of supposed communist sympathizers. They didn't deserve to die, he said. They ``knew nothing about communism.''

The 17 investigators of the commission's subcommittee on ``mass civilian sacrifice,'' led by Kim, have been dealing with petitions from more than 7,000 South Koreans, involving some 1,200 alleged incidents - not just mass planned executions, but also 215 cases in which the U.S. military is accused of the indiscriminate killing of South Korean civilians in 1950-51, usually in air attacks.

The commission last year excavated sites at four of an estimated 150 mass graves around the country, recovering remains of more than 400 people. Working deliberately, matching documents to eyewitness and survivor testimony, it has officially confirmed two large-scale executions - at a warehouse in the central South Korean county of Cheongwon, and at Ulsan on the southeast coast.

In January, then-President Roh Moo-hyun, under whose liberal leadership the commission was established, formally apologized for the more than 870 deaths confirmed at Ulsan, calling them ``illegal acts the then-state authority committed.''

The commission, with no power to compel testimony or prosecute, faces daunting tasks both in verifying events and identifying victims, and in tracing a chain of responsibility. Under Roh's conservative successor, Lee Myung-bak, whose party is seen as democratic heir to the old autocratic right wing, the commission may find less budgetary and political support.

The roots of the summer 1950 bloodbath lie in the U.S.-Soviet division of Japan's former Korea colony in 1945, which precipitated north-south turmoil and eventual war.

In the late 1940s, President Syngman Rhee's U.S.-installed rightist regime crushed leftist political activity in South Korea, including a guerrilla uprising inspired by the communists ruling the north. By 1950, southern jails were packed with up to 30,000 political prisoners.

The southern government, meanwhile, also created the National Guidance League, a ``re-education'' organization for recanting leftists and others suspected of communist leanings. Historians say officials met membership quotas by pressuring peasants into signing up with promises of rice rations or other benefits. By 1950, more than 300,000 people were on the league's rolls, organizers said.

North Korean invaders seized Seoul, the southern capital, in late June 1950 and freed thousands of prisoners, who rallied to the northern cause. Southern authorities, in full retreat with their U.S. military advisers, ordered National Guidance League members in areas they controlled to report to the police, who detained them. Soon after, commission researchers say, the organized mass executions of people regarded as potential collaborators began - ``bad security risks,'' as a police official described the detainees at the time.

The declassified record of U.S. documents shows an ambivalent American attitude toward the killings. American diplomats that summer urged restraint on southern officials - to no obvious effect - but a State Department cable that fall said overall commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur viewed the executions as a Korean ``internal matter,'' even though he controlled South Korea's military.

Ninety miles south of Seoul, here in the narrow, peaceful valley of Sannae, truckloads of prisoners were brought in from Daejeon Prison and elsewhere day after day in July 1950, as the North Koreans bore down on the city.

The American photos, taken by an Army major and kept classified for a half-century, show the macabre sequence of events.

White-clad detainees - bent, submissive, with hands bound - were thrown down prone, jammed side by side, on the edge of a long trench. South Korean military and national policemen then stepped up behind, pointed their rifles at the backs of their heads and fired. The bodies were tipped into the trench.

Trembling policemen - ``they hadn't shot anyone before'' - were sometimes off-target, leaving men wounded but alive, Lee said. He and others were ordered to check for wounded and finish them off.

Evidence indicates South Korean executioners killed between 3,000 and 7,000 here, said commissioner Kim. A half-dozen trenches, each up to 150 yards long and full of bodies, extended over an area almost a mile long, said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, chairman of a group of bereaved families campaigning for disclosure and compensation for the Daejeon killings. His father, accused but never convicted of militant leftist activity, was one victim.

Another was Yeo Tae-ku's father, whose wife and mother searched for him afterward.

``Bodies were just piled upon each other,'' said Yeo, 59, remembering his mother's description. ``Arms would come off when they turned them over.'' The desperate women never found him, and the mass graves were quickly covered over, as were others in isolated spots up and down this mountainous peninsula, to be officially ``forgotten.''

When British communist journalist Alan Winnington entered Daejeon that summer with North Korean troops and visited the site, writing of ``waxy dead hands and feet (that) stick through the soil,'' his reports in the Daily Worker were denounced as ``fabrication'' by the U.S. Embassy in London. American military accounts focused instead on North Korean reprisal killings that followed in Daejeon.

But CIA and U.S. military intelligence documents circulating even before the Winnington report, classified ``secret'' and since declassified, told of the executions by the South Koreans. Lt. Col. Bob Edwards, U.S. Embassy military attache in South Korea, wrote in conveying the Daejeon photos to Army intelligence in Washington that he believed nationwide ``thousands of political prisoners were executed within (a) few weeks'' by the South Koreans.

Another glimpse of the carnage appeared in an unofficial U.S. source, an obscure memoir self-published in 1981 by the late Donald Nichols, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, who told of witnessing ``the unforgettable massacre of approximately 1,800 at Suwon,'' 20 miles south of Seoul.

Such reports lend credibility to a captured North Korean document from Aug. 2, 1950, eventually declassified by Washington, which spoke of mass executions in 12 South Korean cities, including 1,000 killed in Suwon and 4,000 in Daejeon.

That early, incomplete North Korean report couldn't include those executed in territory still held by the southerners. Up to 10,000 were killed in the city of Busan alone, a South Korean lawmaker, Park Chan-hyun, estimated in 1960.

His investigation came during a 12-month democratic interlude between the overthrow of Rhee and a government takeover by Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee's authoritarian military, which quickly arrested many then probing for the hidden story of 1950.

Kim said his projection of at least 100,000 dead is based in part on extrapolating from a survey by non-governmental organizations in one province, Busan's South Gyeongsang, which estimated 25,000 killed there. And initial evidence suggests most of the National Guidance League's 300,000 members were killed, he said.

Commission investigators agree with the late Lt. Col. Edwards' note to Washington in 1950, that ``orders for execution undoubtedly came from the top,'' that is, President Rhee, who died in 1965.

But any documentary proof of that may have been destroyed, just as the facts of the mass killings themselves were buried. In 1953, after the war ended in stalemate, after the deaths of at least 2 million people, half or more of them civilians, a U.S. Army war crimes report attributed all summary executions here in Daejeon to the ``murderous barbarism'' of North Koreans.

Such myths survived a half-century, in part because those who knew the truth were cowed into silence.

``My mother destroyed all pictures of my father, for fear the family would get an image as leftists,'' said Koh Chung-ryol, 57, who is convinced her 29-year-old father was innocent of wrongdoing when picked up in a broad police sweep here, to die in Sannae valley.

``My mother tried hard to get rid of anything about her husband,'' she said. ``She suffered unspeakable pain.''

Even educated South Koreans remained ignorant of their country's past. As a young researcher in the late 1980s, Yonsei University's Park Myung-lim, today a leading Korean War historian, was deeply shaken as he sought out confidential accounts of those days from ordinary Koreans.

``I cried,'' he said. ``I felt, 'Oh, my goodness. Oh, Jesus. This was my country? It was true?'''

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission can recommend but not award compensation for lost and ruined lives, nor can it bring surviving perpetrators to justice. ``Our investigative power is so meager,'' commission President Ahn Byung-ook told the AP.

His immediate concern is resources. ``The current government isn't friendly toward us, and so we're concerned that the budget may be cut next year,'' he said.

South Korean conservatives complain the ``truth'' campaign will only reopen old wounds from a time when, even at the village level, leftists and rightists carried out bloody reprisals against each other.

The life of the commission - with a staff of 240 and annual budget of $19 million - is guaranteed by law until at least 2010, when it will issue a final, comprehensive report.

Later this spring and summer its teams will resume digging at mass grave sites. Thus far, it has verified 16 incidents of 1950-51 - not just large-scale detainee killings, but also such events as a South Korean battalion's cold-blooded killing of 187 men, women and children at Kochang village, supposed sympathizers with leftist guerrillas.

By exposing the truth of such episodes, ``we hope to heal the trauma and pain of the bereaved families,'' the commission says. It also wants to educate people, ``not just in Korea, but throughout the international community,'' to the reality of that long-ago conflict, to ``prevent such a tragic war from reoccurring in the future.''



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press



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On This Anniversary of the Kent State Massacre

(Photo: 1970 Kent State Massacre)

On This Anniversary of the Kent State Massacre

By STEVEN ARGUE

Thirty eight years ago today, on May 4, 1970, at Ohio’s Kent State University, the National Guard opened fire on students protesting the US war in Vietnam. The students were shot from distances of 275 to 400 feet, giving lie to claims that the students posed a threat to the Guardsmen. Four students were murdered and nine were injured. Nobody ever did time for those murders.

Before May 4, 1970, an anti-war movement had been building in the United States. The American people were increasingly impatient with the war, and an active anti-war movement helped build that kind of consciousness. People wanted an end to the war and Nixon kept promising a “light at the end of the tunnel.” On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. This was the opposite of what people wanted to hear. Protests erupted on campuses that had not had them in the past, like Kent State. For many, the cold blooded murder of students at Kent State and murders of students soon after at Jackson State, were the final straw.

Immediately after the Kent State shootings 8 million students went out on strike, and some Universities, such as Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. This brought an end to the war. The US government could not win the war because they were facing fierce battles from the Vietnamese and many US soldiers were actively resisting the war. Commanding officers were winding up dead as they tried to force soldiers to kill people in a foreign land for a war they did not believe in. Nixon could not win a war with drafted soldiers who refused to fight, and this was a factor that forced the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam.

Three million Vietnamese were murdered as a result of the US occupation of southern Vietnam and massive U.S. bombing of the north. Over 50,000 US soldiers died. It was resistance, both by the Vietnamese people, and the resistance of the anti-war movement in the United States that brought an end to the US occupation of Vietnam. Had the working class of the United States been ready to join that strike of 8 million students in May 1970, we would have potentially had a revolution in the United States, but at that time the working class was not ready.

Today, after the lessons of Vietnam, and after decades of bi-partisan union busting, outsourcing, privatization, and declining living standards for the US working class, the U.S. working class is now stepping out and taking the lead in the struggle against the criminal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. On May 1st, 2008 10,000 U.S. port workers of the ILWU went out on strike against the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, shutting down all 29 ports on the West Coast for eight hours. Within the union, Vietnam Vets were some of the strongest advocates of the strike.

Joining the strike in solidarity with the demand of immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq were the Iraqi port workers at Umm Qasr and Khor Alzubair. They joined U.S. workers in a deeply symbolic one hour strike to end the occupation.

In going out on strike, the union ranks of the ILWU defied the rulings of an arbitrator, who twice ordered them not to strike. They also defied the employers of the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) who declared the strike “illegal”. This is the kind of defiance the working class will need to emulate in other industries, both to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to start winning better contracts.

Today, over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. In addition, the U.S. has installed a religious death squad government where women's rights have eroded, the economy has deteriorated, the environment has been seriously devastated by the radiation of US DU weapons, millions of refugees have fled the country, people are often arrested without cause and tortured, the US bombs civilians from the sky, and basic infrastructure like water and electricity have been destroyed by the US and not rebuilt by the US occupiers.

It is also a war that has cost the U.S. thousands of lives, tens of thousands of casualties, and trillions of dollars in debt. Yet, for a few extremely wealthy Americans it has meant massive profits for military contractors and other businesses with contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, multinational companies like Exxon, BP and Shell are drooling as the U.S. government tries to force an oil law down the throats of the Iraqi people that would turn ownership of Iraqi oil over to these corporations.

Meanwhile, the pro-war Democrat Party voted for the war and keeps voting to fund it. Today, the Democrats are once again pushing for $178 billion in funding for the war. Neither Clinton nor Obama would promise to withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2013 ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07). In addition, the two of them have offered differing versions of expanding these wars into Iran and Pakistan.

Whoever wins the upcoming election, it will take increased action by the working class to end these wars. ILWU member Jack Heyman is correct in saying of the May 1st strike against the war, “There's precedent for this action. In the '50s, French dockworkers refused to load war materiel on ships headed for Indochina, and helped to bring that colonial war to an end.” The longshore workers’ May 1st strike does indeed show the way forward. More strikes, and bigger strikes, along with building a workers’ party independent of the Democrats and Republicans, can indeed end these wars.

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Food Wars, by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Food Wars
[col. writ. 4/21/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


Like a shadowy echo out of history, angry throngs massed at the Big House in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But this time, they were not clamoring for freedom.

Or, if they were, it was for freedom from hunger.

Their protests shook the government, and forced the Prime Minister, Jacques-Edourd Alexis, to step down.

Several years ago, we saw massive protests in Oaxaca, Mexico, against exorbitant hikes in corn prices, the grain which forms the basis, and is the staple of the national diet (tortillas and tacos).

In Egypt, bread prices are so high that the army has been called in to stifle dissent, and to distribute bread.

Wheat, corn and other such grains are becoming so expensive that millions of people around the world are seriously threatened by hunger.

The cause? In truth, there are many, but perhaps chief among them is speculation and anticipated demand for bio fuels, or the use of grains to produce fuel to run cars.

Many grains are held off the food markets, to await better prices for bio fuels. In other words, people are going hungry -- facing starvation - so that people can pump fuel into cars.

If ever there was an encapsulated image of the mercenary nature of capitalism, it can be seen in this one example: filling cars instead of feeding people.

This is also a window into what we have come to call globalism.

There are 5 major companies that control some 85% of the world's grain trade, and nearly half of the world's grain production. As huge multinationals, will they utilize this power to feed the people of the world, or to maximize profits?

The answer is obvious.

And even though kids in American schools aren't taught this truth, the fact of the matter is we all live closer to the age of gasoline than the age of the atom. For every item we purchase, from food to coats, from jewelry to DVD's, bears the cost of transportation in its price, and as the price of gas soars, that price is passed on to the consumer.

So fuel exacts a kind of double tax when it comes to grains. Through speculation and transfer to bio fuels, all such grain prices rise. To this is added the price of transport.

The logic of the market leads to mass starvation.

--(c) '08 maj

[Source: Esteva, Gustavo and Madhu Suri Prakash, "From Global to Local: Beyond Neo liberalism to the International of Hope," in The Globalization Reader, 3d ed. Frank J. Lechner & John Boli, eds., p.455]

***********************
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, for more on his case read:

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”
indybay.org/newsitems/20.../18436405.php

Also See:
Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear
by STEVEN ARGUE
www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8473855.php

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Vermont AFL-CIO endorses May 1 anti-war strike

(Photo: California, Grand Lake Theater Extolling ILWU Strike Against The War)

Labor's First Strike Against the War Gains Momentum

Vermont Union offers strong endorsement of West Coast longshoremen's action.

The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq.

Montpelier, VT -The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq. The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shutdown all west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on the day of May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow.

The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq "immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary", states that the vast majority of working Vermonters oppose the war, and contends that the war will only be brought to an end by "the direct actions of working people." Many other Vermont labor unions and organizations, including the Vermont Workers' Center, have also made official statements condemning the war.

The resolution also calls on working Vermonters to "discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008."

"Workers in Vermont and all across this nation are against this war. We have already demanded that the government end it, but they have consistently failed to heed our words. Therefore working people are beginning to take concrete steps to make our resistance known. If the war does not immediately end we, the unions and working people of Vermont, will also be compelled to take appropriate action," said David Van Deusen, a District Vice President of the Vermont AFL-CIO.

Traven Leyshon, President of the Washington, Lamoille & Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said, "Vermont labor has long called for an end to this war. The untold billions being spent on the war could instead be used to address our domestic needs. It is working people who pay the cost of the war - in some cases with our lives, but always with our sacrifices."

Full text of the resolution after the jump ...

Vermont AFL-CIO Resolution

In Solidarity With Longshoremen's West Coast Strike Against War

April, 2008

Whereas the war in Iraq is immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary,

Whereas this unjust war is opposed by the great majority of Americans & Vermonters, the bulk of organized labor, and by thousands of enlisted military personal,

Whereas this unjust war has already resulted in over 4000 American dead (including a disproportionate number of brave Vermonters), and tens of thousands of service men & woman being wounded,

Whereas this unjust war has further resulted in untold number of Iraqi deaths,

Whereas the Federal Government has not made any constructive moves towards the ending of this war and the full removal of US troops, and instead has taken the course of escalation and indefinite occupation,

Whereas the government of Vermont, and especially Governor Jim Douglas, have failed to find ways to bring Vermont National Guard troops home from Iraq,

Whereas this war will only be brought to an end by the direct actions of working people,

Therefore, Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO continues to stand in firm opposition to this war, and unequivocally supports the decision of the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) to shutdown the west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on May 1st, 2008, as a means of resistance.

Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO stands in full solidarity with the New York Metro National Association of Letter Carriers who have resolved to conduct two minute periods of silence on May 1st, 2008, at 1PM, 5PM & 9PM in protest of the war and in support of the Longshoremen.

Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO encourages all Vermont workers to stand in solidarity with the historic actions being taken by the Longshoremen & other labor unions to end this war.

Let It Be Further Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO calls for all Vermont workers to discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008 as a means of resistance against this unjust war.


Also see:

ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
tribes.tribe.net/nobloodfo...817def77c0

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Come to the May Day protest in San Francisco
WHEN: 10:30 a.m., May 1, followed by a rally at noon.
WHERE: Longshore Union Hall, corner of Mason and Beach (near Fisherman's Wharf).
WHAT: March to a rally at Justin Herman Plaza along the Embarcadero.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.ilwu.org/ and www.transportworkers.org/ or call (415) 776-8100.

Strike Against The War, All Out Mayday

For a larger version of the poster and event times and places see:
www.labornet.org/news/0000/nopaz.htm

********
Tuesday, April 8, 2008 (SF Chronicle)
Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast to protest war
by Jack Heyman
(Jack Heyman is a longshoreman who works on the Oakland docks.)


While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week's New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction - key concerns being the war and the economy - the war machine inexorably grinds on.

Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshoreand Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.

This decision came after an impassioned debate where the union's Vietnam veterans turned the tide of opinion in favor of the anti-war resolution. The motion called it an imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a "no peace, no work" holiday. Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks.

Last month, in response to the union's declaration, the Pacific Maritime Association, the West Coast employer association of shipowners, stevedore companies and terminal operators, declared its opposition to the union's protest. Thus, the stage is set for a conflict in the run up to the longshore contract negotiations.

The last set of contentious negotiations (in 2002) took place during the period between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq. Representatives of the Bush administr