James van Luik
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& Compiler
Of
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Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested
Tuesday, October 31st,
2006
Volume 5, No. 18
6 Articles, 13 Pages
(Editor's note:
"When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend
ourselves – that is only half the truth. As regards our
security and life we defend ourselves. … But the fighting is
only one aspect of the conflict which is in its essence a
political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they
defend themselves." Ben-Gurion, 1938)
2. The
Elections: What They Do – And Do Not Mean
3. Fighting
the Imperial Internet
4. Peace Not
Apartheid – Jimmy Carter's Roadmap
6. Teens
Frustrate Military Recruiter's ASVAB Scam
BY HELEN CALDICOTT |
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I
believe that women have the fate of the Earth in the palm
of their hands. Some 53 per cent of us are women and we
really are pretty wimpish. We don't step up to the plate
- and it's time we took over. I think men have had their
turn and we're in a profound mess. I believe that money is the root
of all evil. When people start believing that materialism
will produce ultimate, lasting happiness, it is a sure
sign that they will be intensely unhappy. One third of
Americans are on anti-depressants. Instead, what they
should be doing is lifting their souls, not their faces. I believe in the sanctity of
nature. I believe we can save the planet. We are smart
enough to do that, but we must act with a sense of dire
emergency. I believe that the media are
controlling and determining the face of the Earth. As
Thomas Jefferson said, an informed democracy will behave
in a responsible fashion. I believe in the beauty of
classical music. I must have it; it feeds my soul. I believe in the goodness in
every person's soul even though it's sometimes hard to
see. I treat a lot of patients where either their
children are dying or they are dying. Even though
sometimes it's heavily obscured, in extremes this
goodness will emerge. I don't believe in a god. I have
helped many people to die and believe that it's ashes to
ashes and dust to dust. I believe that heaven and hell
are present every day. I believe that life is an
absolute gift to be treasured accordingly. We are very
privileged to even have been conceived. I believe that we are here to
serve. We are not here to make ourselves happy, to be
self-indulgent or to be hedonistic. The happiest state
that I achieve is when I work in my clinic helping my
children with cystic fibrosis to face death and help to
treat them and look after their siblings. I'm utterly
exhausted at the end of the day, but deeply, deeply
fulfilled. I believe in the beauty of my
garden. I've got two and a half acres and I'm never more
in touch with the power of the universe than when I'm in
my garden on a warm, sunny day tending to my flowers and
my trees, with the pelicans circling overhead. I believe that there are far too
many people on the planet. In the year 1900 there were
one billion of us in the world. Now there are 6.5 billion
and the predictions are that within a few decades there
will be 14 billion. I believe that the greatest
terror in the world is not a few terrorists hitting the
World Trade Center. It's the fact that half the world's
people still live in dire poverty and 30,000 to 40,000
children die every day from malnutrition and starvation,
while the rich nations continue to get richer and richer. I believe that the most
important job in the world is parenting. Women need to be
financially supported for it. Their job is far more
important than that of chief executive officers at the
head of huge corporations. I believe the secret of
happiness is a) serving our fellow human beings and
loving and caring for everyone. I don't mean crappy
Californian love; I mean really deep caring for each
other; b) to understand our own psychology in a profound
way, so we can be a more constructive human being; and c)
to care for this incredible planet of ours. 2. THE ELECTIONS: WHAT THEY DO – AND DO NOT MEAN BY BOB AVAKIAN Last Tuesday’s mid-term
elections marked a significant turn of events. For the
first time in 12 years, Republicans in the House of
Representatives and Senate were voted out, and Democrats
were returned to power. As soon as the results were in,
the much-hated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was
forced to resign. Yet the question of the day
remains: what is actual significance of these elections?
What changes are—and aren’t—likely to
result? What will—and won’t—they mean for
the overall Bush agenda and the Iraq war? And what
challenges and responsibilities confront those who oppose
everything Bush and his regime stand for, and understand
the need to reverse the whole direction they’ve been
taking the world? What do you think of the
Democratic victory? is on everyone’s lips, and this
post-election discussion and debate is what everyone
should plug into. The War—Their
Agenda and Ours: Many people see the vote as a
popular referendum repudiating Bush, his administration,
and the Iraq war. Millions of those who voted did so out
of anger and disgust with the war. But in reality the war
was not up for a vote—at least not in the way people
may think. The elections marked the
crescendo of months of dire warnings and criticisms—including
from within the U.S. military and other major voices in
the foreign policy establishment—concerning the
deteriorating situation in Iraq. The Bush team had thought they’d
quickly be able to turn Iraq into a pro-U.S. client
state, a platform for further aggression in the region,
and a signal to the world that U.S. power was
unchallengeable. Instead, U.S. forces have been unable to
either quell the growing insurgency or cobble together a
new Iraqi ruling class with the power, cohesion and
legitimacy to stabilize the situation. All this has
turned Iraq into a center of anti-U.S. hatred and
instability, further strengthened Iran, destabilized the
region, weakened the U.S. military, and opened the door
for rival powers. In short, exactly the opposite of what
Bush and company set out to accomplish. This caused forces within the
ruling class to maneuver to force Bush to adjust his
strategy. These forces want to prevent a strategic
debacle and to salvage what is possible from Iraq—in
order to maintain U.S. military, political, and
economic domination over the Middle East. They are not
aiming for an immediate end to the war but instead for a
shift in tactics within Iraq and, perhaps, in regard to
other forces in the region. They are not questioning the
morality or justness of the war, merely its execution.
For these forces, the elections became one means of both
criticizing the Bush team and forcing (and creating
political cover for) a serious reassessment of the war’s
conduct and adjustment in strategy. The Democrats’ calls for a
“new direction” and “competent”
leadership in Iraq and their criticisms of Bush’s
“failed policy” served these objectives. The
Democratic denunciations of the war were vague. Few
candidates spelled out specifically what they would do,
and fewer still called for immediate withdrawal. Some
called the war a “mistake,” but none called it
what it actually is: criminal, and immoral. This vagueness had two major
virtues for the ruling class. First, it enabled the
Democrats—who have consistently voted for and
supported the Iraq war and continue to support its broad
objectives—to divert the broad anti-war anger into a
framework that doesn’t question the whole nature of
the war. Second, it gives the Democrats the flexibility
to join into a “bipartisan consensus” to “adjust,”
rather than end, the war. Indeed, the “neocon”
fascist William Kristol said on FOX News that the
Republican defeat could actually give Bush the political
cover to put more pressure on the Iraqi government and to
call for some sort of regional conference (both
Democratic demands), while also increasing the number of
troops (which Kristol and other Republican forces like
McCain favor). The Fall of Rumsfeld and
the Rise—and Further Taming—of Nancy Pelosi: The fall of Donald Rumsfeld has
to be seen in this light. Rumsfeld is most associated
with his insistence in attempting to conquer and occupy
Iraq with the minimum number of forces necessary. His
exit is at least in large part a signal that this
strategy is open for “re-evaluation.” Knocking
down someone so high up is meant to show that Bush
recognizes that all is not well, that they face serious
problems and significant dangers, that some significant
adjustments are necessary, and that he is going to have
to forge a broader consensus among the ruling class to
deal with all this. The pledges of the Democratic
leaders like Nancy Pelosi for “civility and
cooperation” must also be seen in this light. She is
pledging to hold tight, to not do anything that could
possibly endanger the stability of the whole thing, and
to keep “her base”—those who do look to
the Democratic Party as an agent of change—firmly in
check. The people may have been voting to end the war and
even to reverse the ugly direction of this regime—but
Pelosi and the rest are already reinterpreting things and
using their power to put a stamp on what people did—to
fit it into and make it serve a whole other set of
objectives than most people intended through their votes. The elections, therefore, by
themselves, will not signal a fundamental reversal of
course on Iraq, still less a repudiation of the logic
that led to the invasion. Instead—absent a massive
movement in determined opposition—they will end up
as a vehicle to adjust, sustain and rehabilitate this
hated war. The Democrats and the
Bush Agenda: But Iraq is only one part of the
Bush package. What about the other Bush horrors? Where was the Democrat, for
instance, who came out against the legalized torture and
gutting of habeas corpus that was passed in September?
Where were the “attack ads” that called out the
Republicans for supporting such outrages? Where was the Democrat who went
on the offensive against the mounting moves toward a
theocracy—the rule by Christian fundamentalist
fascists? Where were the attack ads that called out a
Republican for something like the “Terri Schiavo”
incident? Where was the Democrat who
sounded the alarm against the Bush regime plans to invade
Iran, or who criticized the support for the brutal
Israeli invasion of Lebanon over the summer? Or who stood
up for the rights of gay people to marry and dared to
uphold the morality of a woman’s right to an
abortion? Instead, the Democrats not only
tacitly—and in some cases openly—went along
with the Bush agenda on these and other questions, they
took great pains to claim the “war on terror”
as their own, even as that “war on terror”
forms the logical underpinning of a huge part of Bush’s
agenda. And despite widespread sentiment to hold Bush
accountable for his many and horrific crimes, Nancy
Pelosi denounced on 60 Minutes any idea of
impeaching Bush. That fact alone means that the crimes
and outrages of the Bush regime—from its doctrine of
pre-emptive war to its widespread use of torture and
illegal imprisonment, among others—are now
"legitimate" and “normal.” Many commentators have remarked
that the current election is unlike 1994, when the
Republicans took over Congress with a clear-cut program
for radical overhaul. This is because the forces behind
the Bush regime (and behind that 1994 takeover as well)
had developed a “package” that speaks to some
of the main underlying economic and political dynamics in
the world—and the Democrats didn't. This package
includes aggressive international projection of the
overwhelming military power of the U.S., a huge
intensification of repression domestically, a drastic cut
in government-funded social welfare programs, and the
increasing buildup of a Christian movement in the
politics and culture of society (with some of the key
forces in this mix pushing for an outright fascist
theocracy). The Democrats, try as some of
them might, have not come up with either the program or
the organized social and political forces to counter that—and
they are not willing and they are not able, at this
point, to oppose it with anything more than “pious
doubts and petty amendments.” The top Democratic
leaders make their main priority the preservation of this
system, no matter what horrors this preservation may
require—and at this point they are quite open about
that. For the past several years they have been intent on
keeping the outrage of the people suppressed and diverted
into channels that end up shoring up the system, and even
the Bush regime itself. This dynamic has not
been fundamentally changed through the election. Moreover, we should step back
here and look at the whole system that both Bush and the
Democrats maintain is the “greatest country on in
the world.” What, after all, is it that
U.S. military force defends in the over 100 countries in
which U.S. soldiers are based? Plainly, it is the “right”
of U.S. capital to go anywhere and do anything, no matter
how monstrous, in search of the highest possible profits;
to dominate and despoil whole countries and even regions,
sometimes if only to make sure that their rival
imperialists do not; to drive people off their land in
the blind pursuit of profit and then to use those same
people as cheap labor either within their home countries
or the imperialist countries themselves; to fortify
repressive social orders and customs so long as they
serve the needs of expansion; to crush whoever gets in
their way, even fellow reactionaries and gangsters; and
to violently and viciously suppress any revolutionary or
radical movements that arise when people dare to resist. The Bush Regime: Still
Intolerable, Still Must Be Driven Out: To return to the questions at
the beginning of this editorial, we must also ask all
those we work with and meet: what do you think
about the elections? The elections are now over, but
we still confront a criminal regime and the urgent need
to drive it from power and repudiate its program.
Everything it is doing is still intolerable! Now is not time for political
retreat or wait-and-see. The contradiction between the
burning desires of the millions who voted against Bush
and the war on one hand, and what Bush and the Democrats
will actually do on the other, could drive many
more into resolute opposition. But that depends on us.
Left to itself, that contradiction will only become a
source of despair and a force for further passivity and
paralysis. We have to find ways to recast the political
terms in this situation. We have to insist that what was
unacceptable yesterday remains unacceptable today—and
tomorrow. We have to work with World Can’t Wait to
rally others to the basic indictments, as well as the
political stand and the moral certitude expressed in its
very powerful Call to drive out the Bush regime.
Teach-ins, massive distribution of that call, getting out
the materials from the Bush Crimes Commission, joining in
and supporting resistance—all these are the order of
the day. The underlying dynamics of this
system—the misery and horror it means to billions of
people every day—have not changed. The ways in which
these dynamics have brought forward the perverse Bush
regime—and the ways in which that regime answers the
“needs” of that system, with whatever “course
corrections” are needed—have not changed. The
great dangers—and the potential openings—posed
by this whole course taken by imperialism have not
changed. The acute need for revolution continues.
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