James
van Luik
Publisher
& Editor & Compiler
Index
2 Signature:
http://www.geocities.com/channujames/index2.htm
[By
clicking on this signature one has access to all articles of the
JvL Bi-Weekly.]
[Also,
I can be most easily reached through the following email address:
Please
forward the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested
Sunday,
July 31st, 2005
Volume
4, No. 14
8 Articles, 12
Pages
(Editor's note: The
US considers Israel to be one of its surrogate military outposts
surrounding the Arab world. Turkey and Pakistan being the other
two non-Arab countries serving the same purpose. The primary
responsibility of Israel is to be policeman over the Arabs to
protect American Middle East oil interests.
It is American foreign policy assumption
that Middle East oil, (or oil world wide,) is American property.
Why is this so? Ownership and thereby control of Middle East oil
is necessary for two reasons. One is that the US takes a
percentage of this oil for its own use, but more importantly,
that control of the oil serves hegemonic purposes. Plainly,
Western Europe, for one example, uses huge amounts of this oil.
Therefore controlling it allows the US blatant imperial hegemony
over Europe—and concomitantly over any other country
needing Middle East oil. Obviously, then, the greater US control
of world oil the greater US world wide hegemony.
Returning to Israel: In order to keep Israel
as its surrogate military outpost guarding "US oil," it
is necessary for Israel to be dependent upon the US, which indeed
it is. The best way for the US to continue this dependency is by
preventing a Middle East peace treaty between Israel and the Arab
states on its three sides, i.e. to maintain instability in the
region.)
1. The Pentagon Is Building A Massive Database To Track, Target, And Recruit Young People...
3.
Recruiters Out of Our Schools
4.
A Note About The Wall Street Journal
5.
Castro's Medical Missionaries Blanket Honduras
6.
They're Protesting Against Free Health Services!
7.
Meeting of: Peoples Global Action
1. THE PENTAGON IS BUILDING A MASSIVE DATA BASE TO TRACK, TARGET, AND RECRUIT YOUNG PEOPLE…
BY
UNKNOWN AUTHORS FROM BeNoW INC.
Put valuable
counter-recruiting tools into the hands of 10,000 activists this
fall
The New Pentagon
Database
Facing dwindling numbers of new recruits, the Pentagon has
announced that it is creating a massive new database to track and
target youth.
The new database will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield,
Mass., a private database marketing firm, and will include the
following information for each student: name, date of birth,
gender, address, Social Security number, e-mail address,
ethnicity, telephone number, grade point average, education
level, name of college attending, and any relevant information
about expressions of interest in enlisting in the military.
The database will contain information about: all high school
students, ages 16-18; all college students; and anyone who has
registered with the Selective Service System.
By using a private contractor to gather this information, the
Pentagon plans to dodge Privacy Act, which restricts what kind of
information the government can gather and how it can be
used. Through BeNow Inc., the Pentagon will gather
information from state motor vehicle departments, the Selective
Service System, as well as commercial marketing companies.
This information can also be shared with other government
agencies, including immigration, law enforcement, and the
Selective Service System. Among other uses, this will
provide a massive pre-registration of all young people if and
when the draft returns.
The need for this database is driven by the continued decline in
recruiting numbers. Despite increases in enlistment
bonuses, massive advertising budgets, and increasingly deceptive
and coercive tactics, the military is unable to meet its quotas.
Counter-recruiting activists across the country are already
making a difference--now is the time to turn up the heat.
We Won't Go! Help Shutdown Military Recruiting and Resist the
Draft
Across the US,
parents, youth, and activists are realizing that if we can stop
the flow of troops, we can stop the war. The movement against
military recruiting is having an impact far beyond what is
reported by the corporate media. Recruiters are being driven off
campus or challenged by activists who present opposing
information. Groups of parents, educators, youth, and activists
are meeting across the country to discuss strategies to defend
our young people against the predators in uniform.
No Draft No Way
launched its website in June of last year -http://www.
NoDraftNoWay.org. This site includes updated information about
the draft and military recruiting, strategies and tactics for
challenging the militarization of our schools, and downloadable
leaflets, petitions and fact sheets.
Since the launch of
the site, thousands have signed the online petition against the
draft and the No Draft No Way network has grown to include
hundreds of activists all across the country. It is vitally
important that we provide these local organizers with information
and tools.
In order to meet
this urgent need, the Youth and the Military Education Project is
publishing We Won't go – A guide to Counter-Recruiting
and Draft Resistance alternatives; how to organize an opt-out
campaign to keep students' personal information out of the hands
of recruiters; and how to organize a local protest, including
publicity, legal issues, making placards, and working with the
media. This small, easy-to-read book, written by
counter-recruiting activists, current and former members of the
military, and youth, will be available in bulk at discounted
prices for community and youth organizations, classrooms, and
libraries. It will be sent to clergy, educators, parent
associations, and community leaders across the country.
We are rushing to
get We Won't Go – A guide to Counter Recruiting and Draft
Resistance to publication so that thousands of activists can
use this material as part of a national campaign to educate and
mobilize youth against militarism and the war.
BY
A REVIEW OF THE
ROBERT PAPE'S BOOK
Who carried out the London massacre, we do not know. But, as
to why they did it, we are already quarreling.
President Bush says that the terrorists are attacking our
civilization. At Fort Bragg, N.C., he explained again why we are
fighting in Iraq, two years after we overthrew Saddam Hussein.
"Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war," he said,
in "a global war on terror."
"Many terrorists who kill … on the streets of
Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took
the lives of citizens in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them
abroad before they attack us at home."
Bush was echoed by Sen. John McCain. Those terrorists in Iraq,
McCain told Larry King, "are the same guys who would be in
New York if we don't win." We fight the terrorists over
there so we do not have to fight them over here.
Few Americans have given more thought to the motivation of
suicide bombers than Robert Pape, author of Dying
to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. His
book is drawn from an immense database on every suicide-bomb
attack from 1980 to early 2004. Conclusion: The claim that 9/11
and the suicide bombings in Iraq are done to advance some jihad
by "Islamofascists" against the West is not only
unsubstantiated, it is hollow.
"Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with
suicide terrorism as many people think," Pape tells The
American Conservative in its July 18 issue. Indeed, the
world's leader in suicide terror was the Tamil Tigers of Sri
Lanka. This secular Marxist group "invented the famous
suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in
May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the vest from the
Tamil Tigers."
But if the aim of suicide bombers is not to advance Islamism
in a war of civilizations, what is its purpose? Pape's
conclusion:
"[S]uicide-terrorist attacks are not so much driven by
religion as by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern
democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that
the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka
to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide
terrorist campaign – over 95 percent of all incidents –
has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to
withdraw."
The 9/11 terrorists were over here because we were over there.
They are not trying to convert us. They are killing us to drive
us out of their countries.
Before the U.S. invasion, says Pape,
"Iraq never had a suicide attack in its history. Since
our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly, with
20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004 and over 50 in just the first five
months of 2005. Every year since the U.S. invasion, suicide
terrorism has doubled. … Far from making us safer against
terrorism, the operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide
terrorists and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on
life."
Pape is saying that President Bush has got it backward: The
Iraq war is not eradicating terrorism, it is creating terrorists.
The good news? "The history of the last 20 years"
shows that once the troops of the occupying democracies
"withdraw from the homeland of the terrorists, they often
stop – and stop on a dime."
Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide-bomb attacks on
U.S., French, and Israeli targets in Lebanon. When U.S. and
French troops withdrew and Israel pulled back to a six-mile
buffer zone, suicide bombings virtually ceased. When the Israelis
left Lebanon, the Lebanese suicide bombers did not follow them to
Tel Aviv.
"Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign
occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism," says Pape,
"the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim
societies … is only likely to increase the number of suicide
terrorists coming at us."
What Pape is saying is that the neocons' "World War
IV" – our invading Islamic countries to overthrow
regimes and convert them into democracies – is suicidal,
like stomping on an anthill so as not to be bitten by ants. It is
the presence of U.S. troops in Islamic lands that is the
progenitor of suicide terrorism.
Bush's cure for terrorism is a cause of the epidemic. The
doctor is spreading the disease. The longer we stay in Iraq, the
greater the number of suicide attacks we can expect. The sooner
we get our troops out, the sooner terrorism over there and over
here will end. So Pape says the data proves. This is the precise
opposite of what George Bush argues and believes.
3. RECRUITERS OUT
OF OUR SCHOOLS!
BY
MEMBERS OF ACTION
CENTER
Across the country, parents, teachers, and activists are
taking action to protect students from the lies, manipulation,
and abusive tactics of military recruiters.
In School Board meetings, Parent Teacher Associations, Student
Governments, and other meetings across the U.S., parents and
students are taking action--concerned parents have become such an
obstacle that recruiters have identified them as the biggest
obstacle to meeting their quotas. We need to continue to build on
our success and drive military recruiters out of our schools.
Recruiters have no place in public schools--they are predators,
who lie to young people and manipulate their economic situation
in order to drag them away to fight wars of occupation. We have a
right and an obligation to demand that they not be allowed to use
schools to recruit cannon fodder for their illegal wars.
San Francisco - "College Not Combat!"
In San Francisco, parents and antiwar activists submitted a local
ballot measure on Monday, July 11, that will, if passed, put the
city on record opposing the presence of military recruiters in
public high schools and colleges.
Organizers are working to gather enough signatures to place the
initiative, called "College Not Combat," on the
November ballot. It would encourage school officials to deny
access to recruiters, even if that means the loss of Federal
money. The initiative also encourages the creation of
scholarships and training programs to challenge the military's
appeal to disadvantaged youth.
One of the organizers, Regina Johnson said, "We do not see
George Bush's daughters signing up. It is poor and working-class
people who need a job and education at the same time billions are
being spent on this war."
Seattle - "School is no place for recruiters!"
The Parent Teacher Student Association of Garfield High School
took a decisive step in May, voting 25 to 5 to adopt a resolution
that says "public schools are not a place for military
recruiters."
"The mission of the PTA is to protect and defend kids,"
said Amy Hagopian, a mother of three whose son is a Garfield
senior. "It's not just limited to education issues - which
explains why the PTA takes positions on kids' health, violence,
and other serious issues."
She added, ""They're spending $4 billion a month in
Iraq, but we have to cut our race relations class, which costs
$12,500. That's an important class for our kids."
Steve Ludwig, whose son is a senior at Garfield, made a point
shared by many in the PTSA: Garfield does not allow organizations
that promote illegal activities to recruit students to perform
those activities, nor does it allow organizations that
discriminate on the basis of race, gender, national origin, or
sexual orientation to recruit on campus.
Ludwig told the Christian Science Monitor, "Planned
Parenthood, as far as I know, does not advocate or perform
illegal acts. The US military does. He said he would not object
if Army representatives came to Garfield to debate their ideas on
torture or aggressive war. "What I object to is their coming
here to recruit students to perform those acts," he said.
"It's not about free speech."
Help Remove Military Recruiters from your schools!
The Army Recruiting Handbook for High Schools (available on the No Draft, No
Way website) says that their goal is "school
ownership." Our goal is to deny them that ownership. The
schools belong to the people, not to the Pentagon.
Join the national movement against military recruiting. No Draft
No Way is calling on parents, students, and local activists to
work with your PTA, union, school board, city council, or student
government to pass a resolution barring recruiters from your
local schools. We are currently compiling a list of all
such local initiatives -- if you are organizing a local
initiative, you can list it here.
Or contact us for information and help to
organize a local campaign.
Help Equip Local Counter-Recruiting Activists!
Activists across the country are joining the struggle to shut
down military recruiting. No Draft No Way now has hundreds
of local activists in all 50 states mobilizing to challenge
recruiters and organize against the draft. It is imperative
that we provide information and tools to these local organizers.
We Won’t Go - A Guide to Counter-Recruiting and Draft
Resistance will be an important contribution to this
effort. This pocket-sized, 120-page book will be full of
useful information and organizing tools for local activists.
This book will include chapters on:
Military Recruiters' Lies - the truth behind the promises
of easy college money and high-tech job training.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - the No Child Left Behind
Act, JROTC, and the new Pentagon Database
Challenging Recruiters on Campus - including a section on
students rights on campus, leaflets, petitions
Opting Out - how to organize a Opt Out campaign in your
school so that students' personal information is not released to
military recruiters
Information about organizing a local resolution opposing
military recruiting.
and much more
The book will be released with an accompanying CD which will
contain:
Recruiters Lies - leaflets and posters exposing the
recruiting sales pitch point by point with space for local
contact information.
Petitions against ROTC and JROTC
Opt Out forms with an explanation of the No Child Left
Behind Act
4.
A NOTE ABOUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
(Commentary Posted Below)
BY
WALTER
LIPPMAN
This is an unusual report on Cuba and its program of providing
medical care and education internationally. And this one is
actually highly informative.
Note the complaint the author makes about the high salaries
she says are paid to doctors by the Honduran government, but
further note she says that they only work six hours a day for the
government and otherwise in the "private sector".
Medical care has been priced out of the lives of the most humble
people in Honduras, a fact against which even this hostile Wall
Street Journal commentator is compelled to admit. I
suppose some doctors are making a bundle, but I'd bet it's more
likely corporations and insurance firms are making the biggest
killing of all, financially
Ignore the remark about Cuba's expansionist agenda if you can
take a moment and show us where all of Cuba's soldiers of
conquest and occupation are currently deployed. We can easily
locate the soldiers from the United States, but where are the
Cubans? There aren't any Cuban soldiers, except for the medics
who provide some of the care which capitalist medicine has shown
itself unwilling or incapable of providing.
The timing of this article about Honduras is notable as we're
in the run-up to Washington's annual struggle to get some kind of
resolution adopted at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights
Commission in Geneva. Washington will attempt to divert the
world's eyes from the torture, rape and murder it has conducted
in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and its plans to build a permanent
prison camp at the US base in Guantanamo, while calling Cuba a
human rights violator.
It would also be
good to have this Wall Street Journal article reprinted widely in
the US media, where nothing of a sympathetic nature can be
published, but this one is one which just might be. It could then
be followed up with letters to the editor.
5. CASTRO'S
MEDICAL MISSIONARIES BLANKET HONDURAS
BY
MARY
ANASTASIA O'GRADY
TEGUCIGALPA,
Honduras -- Maybe Fidel Castro, mastermind behind four and a half
decades of preposterous Cuban economics, really does understand
the market after all. That would explain how the Cuban dictator
has managed to maintain some 350 Cuban doctors in this country
since 1998, despite President Ricardo Maduro's disapproval of
Cuba's human rights record.
The Cuban doctors
seem to have already had the effect of polishing Cuba's image as
a kinder, gentler dictatorship, and making it more politically
costly for Mr. Maduro to support Cuba's dissident movement. More
troubling is the potential for soft indoctrination, a kind of
tilling the soil in the poor countryside so that it is ready when
political opportunity presents itself as it has in Venezuela of
late.
The Cuban doctor
program was introduced into Honduras when Hurricane Mitch
devastated the country in November 1998. With over 50% of the
Honduran population living in rural areas and 1.5 million
Hondurans with no access to health care, according to a national
health official, there was a market for Fidel's foot soldiers of
medicine even before the ravages of the hurricane.
But the storm
brought about a sense of urgency and then-President Carlos Flores
signed a bilateral agreement to let in the doctors.
A little later,
after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999,
Castro began a similar effort in that country and today,
reportedly 14,000 doctors, 3,000 dentists and 1,500 eye-care
specialists can be found in poor Venezuelan barrios. There are
reports of Venezuelan doctors denouncing the competence of these
Cuban imports but for the poor who have little access to health
care, the quality of the medical service may be less important
than the fact that a doctor has appeared to hold a dying hand.
So why stop with
Venezuela? The "Revolution," after all, promises
"socialism or death" to all the world. Now Fidel's
medicos have fanned out all over the region wherever a dearth of
doctors makes them welcome.
Honduras is one such
market. Its annual per capita gross domestic product of $711 in
2002 puts it among the poorest countries in Latin America. Yet in
the mid-1990s the Honduran congress set the minimum wage for
public-sector general practitioners at an unmanageable $1,500 per
month. Specialists earn almost $2,500 per month. In the late
1990s, those doctors' salaries were indexed to the minimum wage,
putting further upward pressure on the price the government had
to pay a physician in its national health system. Most only work
six hours per day because they also practice medicine in the
private sector.
By pricing services
too high, doctors delivered a double whammy to Honduras. Limits
to the government's health-care payroll meant that fewer doctors
could be hired and more Hondurans had to go without care. One
high-ranking official here estimates about half of able Honduran
doctors are unemployed.
Enter Cuba with its
oversupply of medics, its desperation for hard currency and its
expansionist political agenda. What better way to fill the
Honduran void for medical care than with low-priced Cuban
physicians? The bilateral agreement signed around the time of the
hurricane opened the door and set a monthly salary of $300. The
doctors have even more value-added because they are willing to
work in rural areas where Honduran doctors refuse to go.
Cuba also recognized
another market opportunity: training new doctors at rock bottom
prices. As part of the same agreement, some 600 Hondurans are now
in Cuba studying medicine. The Honduran government pays Cuba $300
to $400 per year, per student. This year the first crop of
graduates is set to return home.
A health official
here notes that some Honduran specialists who have worked with
Cuban specialists have complained that the Cubans are not up to
par and that they lack specific training that is required in
Honduras. Interestingly, the arriving Cubans do not have to take
certification exams to ensure that they meet Honduran standards.
Nevertheless, the same health official told me that the
populations where they work providing basic services seem pleased
with their presence and performance.
Fidel has already
earned a handsome return on his "goodwill." The proof
surfaced when Mr. Maduro sponsored a resolution in the U.N. Human
Rights Commission in 2004 calling on Cuba to open its doors to
human rights monitors.
Cuba's harsh
treatment of its peaceful dissidents, including solitary
confinement in horrific punishment cells, suggests that the
Maduro move was a routine expression of solidarity with the
oppressed by a civilized people. But it turned out to be an
enormous act of political courage by Mr. Maduro, who faced a
firestorm of opposition for it. As one official here told me, the
work that the Cuban doctors have done here "played a big
role" in the outcry against the president.
Respectability at
the UNHRC, more favorable treatment from the Organization of
American States, spreading the revolutionary dream, these are all
objectives of the doctors program. So the good the doctors do for
the poor must be balanced against those objectives of a
tyrannical regime.
Now see it the way
Hondurans might. In a bifurcating Latin America, where a good
number of states are giving in to populist demagoguery, Mr.
Maduro has spent a lot of political capital to repel atavistic
tendencies. He has cracked down on kidnapping rings, deregulated
the telecom industry, introduced an important property-titling
reform and entered into the Central American Free Trade
Agreement.
But Honduras is
paying a punishing price for helping the U.S. fight its war on
drugs. The U.S. is asking the government to face violence and
organized crime, the corruption of fragile institutions and the
use of its minimal resources to engage in an absurd struggle with
filthy rich narco-traffickers. Meanwhile, the kindly Fidel is
offering low-priced medical care. U.S. policy makers take note.
6.
THEY'RE PROTESTING AGAINST FREE HEALTH SERVICES!
BY
WALTER
LIPPMANN
These
private capitalist medical practitioners down in Venezuela are
just like their Honduran cousins whom the Wall Street Journal
freaked out about earlier in the year. We might call them turds
of a feather. They claim they favor "freedom" but all
they real favor is private profit and the ability to squeeze as
much as possible from the poor and the sick.. What they hate most
is the competition from doctors who only leave behind smiles, but
no medical bills. This story has all the earmarks (approximately
100%)of a CIA destabilization operation. (Editor's note: Read
below a Reuter's dispatch.)
Venezuela
Doctors Protest Against Cuban Intruders
Several
hundred Venezuelan doctors and hospital workers staged a protest
Friday against the presence of thousands of Cuban doctors
employed by the government whom they said were stealing their
jobs.
Wearing
white medical gowns and waving national flags, the protesters
accused President Hugo Chavez of using oil revenues to pay for
more than 20,000 doctors and dentists from Cuba who are providing
free health services for Venezuela's poor.
They
complained that many Venezuelan doctors could not find jobs and
that while Chavez's government equipped Cuban-staffed clinics
with medicines and modern machines, public hospitals lacked basic
medical equipment.
"The
so-called Cuban doctors earn more than Venezuelans. Out with the
intruders," read a banner carried by the demonstrators.
"Venezuelan
doctors are underpaid and a lot are unemployed," trauma
specialist Pedro Carvallo said. The protesters said the Cubans
received hard currency salaries paid by Venezuela, which also
ships oil to communist-ruled Cuba.
The
Cubans work in Venezuela's poor city neighborhoods and rural
areas under a program agreed by left-winger Chavez with his ally
Cuban President Fidel Castro.
The
2-year-old health program, called Barrio Adentro which means
"Into the Neighborhood" in Spanish, is very popular
among poor supporters of Chavez and helped him win a national
referendum on his rule last year.
Local
health professionals grouped in the Venezuelan Medical Federation
say the Cuban doctors are not properly qualified and have been
brought in to preach Chavez and Castro's socialist message.
"These
Cubans are political agents who come to indoctrinate, not to work
as doctors," said Carvallo.
"The
Cubans can come, as long as they don't take our jobs," said
another protester, Ingrid Zurita, a biological analyst.
Chavez
says most Venezuelan health professionals refuse to work in the
poor, crime-ridden slums that surround Caracas and other cities.
The
government is setting up 600 new diagnosis and treatment centers
staffed by Cubans and equipped with modern imported machinery
this year.
"They're
equipping these centers and yet the big public hospitals don't
have surgical gloves, gauze or x-ray plates," said another
protester, radiologist Maria Falcon.
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs070.html
WRITTEN
BY PLANNING MEMBERS EXPLAINING WHY THEY ARE ARRANGING A MEETING
THIS FALL
(INSPIRED
BY THE ZAPISTA NETWORK)
Global capitalism is causing more
exploitation, oppression, destitution and war in our times than
ever before. The governments, multinational corporations and
financial interests that rule over the global economy continue
concentrating wealth and power. They fasten their control over
our lives and resources on multilateral institutions and
agreements, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and regional trade
agreements like the EU, FTAA, APEC, etc. These entities ensure
that injustice and destruction expand all over the world,
increasing the pain and despair of all oppressed and
discriminated people, such as peasants, indigenous peoples,
women, workers, the unemployed, slum dwellers, ethnic or
religious minorities, Dalits and other exploited castes, Hijras,
etc . The monstrous global inequalities have reached an absurd
level where almost 1 billion people suffer chronic hunger and
more than 1 billion lack access to safe drinking water, while the
3 richest men own more wealth than the poorest 48 countries, and
285 individuals possess as much as half of the humanity.
In addition to the daily economic violence engendered by
capitalism, imperialist countries are waging more and
increasingly destructive wars to steal resources from the poor.
This is why many anti-capitalist movements have actively
participated in anti-war protests as a natural extension of their
activity. The atrocious nature of those wars is one more
consequence of capital's expansion, just like the suicides of
thousands of indebted peasants in South Asia, the displacement of
indigenous peoples, the exploitation of workers and women, etc.
The world is full of such examples of the destructive and
insatiable greed of a social and economic system that most humans
reject and despise.
The people and institutions that rule over this system will
continue generating abuse, misery and death, and any attempt to
reform them are a waste of energy and time. For this reason,
grassroots movements are working in all continents to take back
collective and democratic control over our resources and forms of
life, to rebuild our autonomy and self-organisation. This is the
continuation of an ancient revolutionary tradition which
encompasses slave insurrections and anti-colonial liberation
struggles, indigenous and feminist uprisings, peasants' and
workers' revolutions, anti-capitalist direct action and
environmental activism, cultural and sexual self-affirmation,
grassroots antagonist education and independent media, just to
mention some examples.
Over the last decades, growing numbers of grassroots movements
have come to the common conclusion that we need to strengthen and
interconnect this revolutionary tradition. We are all fighting
against common problems and adversaries, and this struggle
requires the participation of all people who suffer the
consequences of discrimination or oppression of all kinds. Today
more than ever, the emancipation of any of us is connected to the
emancipation of all oppressed people in the world. This results
in an urgent need to learn from and about each other, in order to
be able to support each other as much as possible. To achieve
that, we also need to become aware of our own participation in
sexism, racism or other forms of inequality and exploitation, and
fight against them.
Another shared conclusion is the need to build locally controlled
and genuinely democratic and participatory social and economic
relations as alternatives to capitalism. We don't want to repeat
past mistakes and replace one form of exploitation and control by
another. We cannot make our freedom depend on the good will of
any revolutionary vanguard or political party. All revolutions of
the 20th century have confirmed that centralised power corrupts
and leads to disappointment and collapse Therefore if we want
emancipation to last, it should be built and maintained by the
equal participation of all people in struggle, by local autonomy
combined with international solidarity and globally coordinated
action.
For these reasons, grassroots movements all over the world have
built tools for non-hierarchical communication and coordination
on the basis of diversity, autonomy and decentralisation.
Peoples' Global Action (PGA) was created with this aim in
February 1998 by a wide range of grass roots movements from the
South and the North. It has served as tool to call for Global
Days of Action against Capitalism during summits of global bodies
(like the WTO, the G8, the IMF/WB, etc), and it inspired other
forms of action and solidarity (such as inter-continental
caravans, local actions, gender conferences, seminars and
exchanges, publications, etc). PGA is defined by a number of
features that distinguish it from other international networks,
expressed in its hallmarks, and organisational principles.
The 4th global PGA conference will take place in a very different
context than the previous one, which took place in September
2001. The September 11th 2001 attacks have been used by some
Western countries and economic interests to attempt regaining the
legitimacy of the global capitalist regime, after a period of
extraordinarily fast growth of anti-capitalist protests all over
the world (also in the North). The attacks were also presented as
a justification to invade and devastate Afghanistan and Iraq, and
to intensify control and repression and foster fear and racism
all over the world. This fear and racism is targeted especially
against Arabs and Muslims, who are used as scapegoats to divert
attention from the daily violence inflicted by capitalism over
millions of people all over the world.
Due to all these changes, from 2001 to 2005 the international
activity of many social movements was focused on reacting to the
aggressions and wars caused by imperialist countries and economic
interest. Many movements did so in the framework of large
coalitions and platforms, which were not necessarily
anti-capitalist or horizontal, and more often than not dominated,
by NGOs and political parties. We believe that it is time to
strengthen again the global self-organised coordination of grass
roots antagonist action, to take again the initiative and attack
the economic interests and entities in the driving seat of global
capitalism.
(Editor's note: The meeting will be
in October in India. I will post the information as I receive
it.)
BY
JIM HIGHTOWER
If you've
ever driven through the heart of West Virginia, you know how
breathtakingly beautiful its mountains are.
Even more breathtaking, however, is the push
by George W's environmental wranglers to rig both the Clean Water
Act and our nation's mining laws. Why? So giant coal companies [Warning:
Take a deep breath before you read this] literally can dynamite
off the tops of these mountains. The coal giants delicately call
this "mountaintop removal," and it's so dastardly, so
grotesque, so exasperatingly stupid as to leave anyone who sees
it whopper-jawed.
The story gets uglier. Having blasted off
the top third or so of a mountain—along with its forests and
animals—the coal companies then bulldoze the rubble (which
used to be the mountaintop) into the valleys and streams below,
burying them hundreds of feet deep with what the companies call
"spoil."
Why this barbarous assault? Because
"mountaintop massacre," as locals call it, is a
dirt-cheap way for greedheaded coal barons to get at the coal
down in the mountains. Luckily, we had developed regulations that
restricted such avaricious sledge hammering, but that was B.B.—Before
Bush. The industry had pumped a coal train full of cash into
Bush, and it even got its top lobbyist, Steven Griles, installed
as George W's boss of mining rules.
So Griles and others promptly rewrote the
Clean Water Act in 2002 to legalize the burying of streams, and
now they're proposing a change that will effectively eliminate
the only rule that still limits mountaintop removal. With a
straight face, they assert that they're merely trying to
"clarify " existing regulations and "reduce
regulatory uncertainty."
Yeah, if they get their way, it'll be a
certainty that 2,200 square miles of West Virginia's venerable
mountains and forests will be destroyed, and it'll be clear that
another 1,000 miles of mountain streams will be buried.
"In the state of West Virginia, we have
a need for level land." –Former senator Jennings
Randolph explaining the logic of shearing of mountaintops.