the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 5, 2001
The apparent aimlessness of the war against Afghanistan can be explained by one simple fact: the U.S. needs to put a new force in power in Afghanistan, in order to prevent the situation there from spilling over into neighboring countries. But, as of today, that “new” force doesn’t exist.
U.S. operatives have been attempting to paste together a new regime composed of the warlords who make up the Northern Alliance and a part of the Taliban. What would this new regime mean for the Afghan population, if it were to be put together? It would be as reactionary toward women as the Taliban is today–or as the Northern Alliance is today. It would be as repressive toward the whole civilian population as the Taliban has shown itself to be. It would be as corrupt and violent as the warlords of the Northern Alliance have proved themselves to be.
In any case, so far the efforts to cobble together this new regime have borne no fruit.
And so the bombing goes on, with civilian casualties mounting. That bombing–like all terrorist actions–attacks the civilian population in order to bring pressure on part of the Taliban to shift sides.
U.S. officials may make the same lying claims they made during the bombing of Iraq–that no civilians are being targeted. Civilian casualties are only–to use the phrase that Timothy McVeigh picked up when he was a soldier in the U.S. war against Iraq–collateral damage.
But the “collateral damage” in Iraq proved to be very high: almost 100,000 civilians killed in just six weeks of bombing, and almost a million more civilians killed in the after effects of the bombing and the 11-year embargo on Iraq. The majority of those killed in Iraq were children.
In Afghanistan, too, the “collateral damage,” the civilian casualties, will turn out to be much higher than today admitted.
As can be discovered by searching through the Internet, television broadcasts in other countries already show the catastrophic nature of this bombing for Afghani civilians. In this country, TV presents us a much more censored version of the war. Nonetheless, even here, we get hints. Bush may claim that every report made by the Taliban of civilian casualties is a lie. But it’s harder for him to claim that the Red Cross is lying when it shows its food storehouse has, after successive bombing raids, been completely destroyed. Nor can government press agents easily deny U.N. reports that its relief agency buildings were bombed. Nor can they brush under the rug the films taken in Northern Alliance territory of two villages destroyed by U.S. bombs. Then, there is the steady stream of refugees trying to get into Pakistan; occasionally they are allowed to speak on American TV about the U.S. bombing, so long as they also denounce the Taliban.
We can discern, in these hints, what the real situation is–if we care to look.
This Afghani population, which has already suffered so much both under the Taliban and under the previous government led by forces in the Northern Alliance, is now made to suffer not only this bombing, but the starvation and attendant disease which will be brought in its wake.
The working people of the United States, in whose name this war is being carried out, have nothing to gain from it, and everything to lose.
Not only do we pay a price because our tax money goes to war, rather than social and public needs in this country; not only do we pay a price because sooner or later our bodies are ground up as cannon fodder in wars that mushroom out of control, just as Viet Nam did. The worst price of all is the one we pay if we line up behind the people who lead this war, who are the same people who lead attacks on working people in this country. If we allow the U.S. government to speak in our name as it rains down destruction and terror on other peoples around the world, we seem no different than the butchers who are terrorizing them. We help sow a ditch of blood between them and us.
This is NOT our war.
Nov 5, 2001
The U.S. Justice Department says 1,147 people were arrested between September 11 and November 2. Almost all of them are Arabs or Muslims. The Attorney General John Ashcroft bragged about the number arrested, saying he was, “taking suspected terrorists in violation of the law off the streets.”
The names of those arrested have not been publicly posted, nor have charges been brought against them. But the government is using a lot of petty charges to hold people, like warrants for unpaid traffic tickets and the small immigration violations common in every immigrant community. But there is no move to bring these people to trial so they can have a chance to clear themselves. In fact, many of those arrested have still not been able to contact lawyers, and even when family members of those arrested have retained a lawyer, the lawyer can’t get in touch with the person arrested.
The Justice Department says that two dozen of those arrested had important information about the terrorists. Even if that is true–and we would be foolish to believe what this government says–that leaves over 1,100 who are NOT in this situation. But up to November 2, not one person has been charged with a crime related to September 11.
Some of those arrested lived in the same building as the terrorists or worked at the same place. But that is not at all a proof that they were involved in the attacks, because obviously the terrorists didn’t talk openly about their activity and tried to keep a low profile. But that hasn’t stopped the Justice Department from keeping people under arrest.
These arrests are nothing but a means for the government to cover up after having been caught with its pants down: the attack of September 11 revealed the government’s long-standing ties with and funding of Osama bin Laden–a man who organized terrorist activities for the U.S. when he was the CIA’s man.
The state apparatus is doing today what it always does when it wants to make a crack down. Civil liberties are thrown away and all kinds of innocent people are detained and even deported.
The biggest crime is that of the government that harasses and detains so many people who have no connection to the real terrorist attacks.
Nov 5, 2001
On October 25, the U.S. Senate voted 98 to 1 to pass the so-called “anti-terrorism” law that the U.S. House had already approved 356 to 66. That is, both parties voted for this new law which authorized big attacks on civil liberties and could easily be used against a militant workers’ movement in the future.
The law defines a new crime of domestic terrorism as an act that is intended to intimidate or coerce civilians or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation and coercion. In U.S. history at various times, strikes were illegal and considered to be criminal–precisely because they were attempts to coerce the bosses to pay higher wages and better benefits.
This law could easily be used to make organizations that try to lead strikes once again guilty of a crime–this time, domestic terrorism. Protests against a war carried out by government or against Jim Crow laws imposed on a part of the population would fit this definition of terrorism. Anyone who provides lodging to a terrorist could be charged with a crime. In other words, someone who gave a striker a place to stay could be charged with harboring a terrorist.
This is exactly the kind of reasoning the government has used over and over again against the workers’ and other social movements.
The new law puts the CIA back in the business of spying on U.S. citizens–not just actual terrorists, but against anyone the authorities label a terrorist. Significantly, the five dock workers currently on trial in South Carolina for demonstrating against a company which was using scab labor have been equated by the state’s attorney general with the terrorists of September 11.
The law makes major changes in the way the police use search warrants. Under the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the government has to obtain a warrant and notify you that they are entering your property to carry out a search. Under the new law, the government can legally enter your house, apartment or office when you are away and not tell you about it–just like in any police state.
The government would have the authority to detain for seven days non-citizens who are not terrorists on the basis of vague allegations, even when they have never been convicted of a crime.
Today, of course, the protections supposedly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are often violated in reality. The proof is that they are today holding people indefinitely who have never been charged with a crime. And when government moves to legalize the previously illegal steps it was surreptitiously taking, it’s announcing its intentions to ratchet up repression. That’s what this new law is: not a law against terrorism, but a law giving more rights to the terrorist activities carried out by this government against the population.
Nov 5, 2001
This year is not the only time in U.S. history we have seen attacks carried out against immigrants. Following World War I, the U.S. government itself organized the deportation of thousands of people born abroad at a time when immigrants made up an important part of the working class.
There were two reasons for these attacks: the attention paid by American workers to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the increased militancy of millions of workers willing to fight and strike in this country to improve their miserable conditions. The year 1919 saw the biggest strike wave in U.S. labor history; including the Seattle general strike and the strike by 275,000 steel workers, many of them immigrants, who struck U.S. Steel to raise their starvation -level wages. A number of the leaders, including those of the U.S. Steel strike, were people with communist and socialist ideas, some born elsewhere, some born in the U.S.
The bosses’ mouthpiece, the National Association of Manufacturers, claimed the steel strike was “an un-American conspiracy” when workers demanded union recognition, higher wages, shorter hours.
Congress demanded that Attorney General, A.M. Palmer, rid the country of this threat of anarchy, sedition, defiance of the law, and supposed destruction of property–in other words, the readiness of the working class to fight to defend its own interests. Palmer complied with a series of raids which targetted the leaders of this vast struggle.
He used the fact that many of those in leadership roles among the workers were born elsewhere as an excuse to kick them out of the country.
The first round-up of aliens came on November 7, 1919 at the offices of the Union of Russian Workers. The more famous raid was December 21, in which 249 people were dragged from their homes, forcibly put on board a ship and deported. Other raids continued through January of 1920, during which thousands of people were rounded up, kept imprisoned without counsel, sometimes beaten, and later deported.
Palmer was assisted in his raids by an ambitious young man named J. Edgar Hoover, happy to hunt “reds,” for which he later became famous in the 1950s.
The state may have claimed to be removing “undesirable aliens”–in reality, it was removing real leaders of the working class movement.
Nov 5, 2001
On October 24, the House of Representatives passed a bill to revoke the 1986 alternative minimum tax law and give BACK taxes paid by some of the largest corporations in the country. The 1986 law was an attempt to get corporations which made profits to pay some tax–“an alternative minimum tax”–when they managed to avoid all taxes–thanks to all the tax loopholes written for them by their friends in Congress.
It hasn’t passed the Senate yet, but even if the version passed by the House were to be cut back, it would still provide gigantic corporate give-aways.
The House bill would now give corporations back all the taxes they paid during the last 15 years under this “alternative minimum tax.” This would come to 25 billion dollars rebated back to the corporations. Ford Motor would get a refund of 2.3 billion dollars; GM would get a refund of 832 million dollars; DaimlerChrysler would get 600 million dollars; IBM would get 1.4 billion dollars; General Electric would get 671 million dollars; Enron, the famous “energy” conglomerate, would get 254 million dollars; Chevron Oil would get 314 million dollars.
What a gift–a real “shot of adrenaline,” according to the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. The corporations have been quick to try to convince Congress the passage of this bill is necessary. September 11, it seems, harmed the economy.
No! They are simply using September 11 as a fig leaf behind which they try to hide their raid on the U.S. treasury.
Nov 5, 2001
Four people have been murdered by deadly anthrax and at least 12 others are suffering from various forms of the disease. It is not yet known who sent the letters which have caused several illnesses and death, but the coward or cowards who did it clearly have no respect for human life.
Scientists do have some information about the kind of anthrax which was used in these deaths, and this points a finger at the ones responsible. The chief of epidemiology for the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Steve Ostroff, said, “All of them have been basically indistinguishable from each other.” All the anthrax so far identified come from a strain called the Ames strain. It’s named after Ames, Iowa, where the U.S. military carries on a research program to produce biological weapons–including this particular strain of anthrax.
In addition, there is another characteristic which links all these cases: the anthrax was turned into a fine powder and mixed with silica to make the powder stay airborne without clumping up and falling to the ground. Silica has been used in this precise way only in the U.S. weapons program. Nowhere else has it been used.
The anthrax which has killed people through inhalation was not whipped up in someone’s kitchen from ingredients bought at Rite Aid. The terrorist who began this deadly process had to have access to the Ames strain of anthrax and to the kind of sophisticated laboratory facilities which exist at the U.S. biological weapons research facility at Ames. In addition, he had to use silica in the fashion it was used in the U.S. weapons program. Even if someone just copied what was done at Ames, the anthrax he produced was a byproduct of the U.S. military weapons program.
Whoever turns out to be the person who did this, the fact is that he could do what he did only because the U.S. government has long engaged itself to produce anthrax as a weapon.
Nov 5, 2001
A nationally syndicated columnist, Mona Charen, in her October 28 column, proposed that thousands of Arab students legally in the U.S. be kicked out. She also proposed that citizens of Middle Eastern origin receive extra scrutiny. And finally she says, “Every Middle-Eastern-looking truck driver should be pulled and questioned, wherever he may be.”
We wonder if Ms. Charen is ready to propose a similar solution for another terrorist situation that continues to occur in this country–the on-going attacks against medical clinics which provide abortion services. These clinics have not only received hundreds of letters supposedly carrying anthrax, some of which were serious threats; their personnel have been attacked and sometimes murdered, and clinics have been burnt out. These attacks have been carried out in great measure by people in the Christian fundamentalist milieu.
Nov 5, 2001
On October 15, as soon as the Senate office of Tom Daschle confirmed they had a letter containing anthrax, they closed their office. Upon hearing the news, the House of Representatives shut down the next day. The House did not even have a recorded incident of anthrax before they took the precautions. Then Congress closed all office buildings, arranging for testing of both buildings and their staff.
On October 16, the first two postal workers at the facility through which the letter was sorted, actually fell sick with symptoms which turned into anthrax. Two days later, the U.S. Postal Service tested the sorting machines, which did have traces of anthrax. But it still did not close the building. It was not until after a postal worker died on October 21 and another died the next day, that the Postal Service finally shut down that facility. Since then, tests have shown that postal facilities linked to the New Jersey and the Washington postal facilities have tested positive for anthrax. One was nearby, in a Maryland suburb of Washington but one was far away in Kansas City, Missouri, where everyone is waiting on anthrax tests administered on November 2.
The U.S. Congress is so concerned that it shuts down before anyone even gets sick, while the Postal Service is still running facilities while testing shows anthrax contamination and at least two workers have died.
The Congress may have been looking out only for its own skin, yet they did what makes sense to do during an attack which has claimed innocent victims. They took precautions. Their actions should stand as an example of what should be done everywhere.
Postal workers want answers
While postal workers everywhere look for answers, reassurance, test results, while some even have started taking antibiotics as a precaution, they are expected to continue to work throughout the danger.
Anthrax spores were found in four sorting machines in New York City’s largest mail-distribution center. Were the postal workers told not to come to work until the place was de-contaminated, the way they are doing at some Congressional office buildings in Washington? No, they were expected to come into work.
The president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, William Smith, has been one of the few to say publicly that it is dangerous to go to work. His bosses disagree, but, as Mr. Smith puts it, “They have to close it up to clean it up.”
The Postal Service bosses are bosses like everywhere else–they only do something serious AFTER workers are victims. As of this writing, only the Brentwood facility in Washington D.C. from which two workers died, is closed. Thousands of other postal workers remain at risk.
Nov 5, 2001
After 40 years, the Pentagon finally admitted in September of 2001, that it had subjected U.S. sailors to testing of methods of biological warfare. These tests involved thousands of sailors from at least 1960 to 1970. At least a dozen ships were sprayed with chemicals by Marine bombers in order to check out what happened to the servicemen. The Pentagon–after questions by veterans and the publication of a book in 1999 which described the project–finally admitted that biological weapons and nerve agents like sarin were used against U.S. sailors.
The admission is supposedly part of a new policy by the Pentagon to prove its willingness to be open and submit to investigation. They even have appointed a “director of lessons learned.” Of course, they still claim there are no health problems linked to the testing–a problem the vets who were victimized say was never investigated. This is the same U.S. military which can’t find anything wrong with Gulf veterans in the 11 years after that war, and which pretended that Agent Orange couldn’t hurt U.S. soldiers–not to mention Vietnamese civilians–in Viet Nam.
So what “lessons” has the Pentagon “learned”? Apparently, any lie can be palmed off, if it’s big enough.
Nov 5, 2001
The recent anthrax incidents leave people fearful that terrorists have launched germ warfare on the U.S. population. In fact, germ warfare HAS been used systematically for nearly 11 years–but not in this country. The victims of this campaign of bioterrorism have been Iraqi civilians, particularly children.
Bush may try to cover it over, but this germ warfare cannot be denied. The Defense Department’s own website (www.gulflink.osd.mil) has posted declassified documents dating from 1991 which document and explain the policy.
The Gulf War supposedly carefully targeted not civilians but military and government structures for bombing raids. In fact, among the structures so targeted and hit were Iraqi water and electricity systems. Once the bombing knocked them out, the subsequent embargo kept them down.
The purpose of destroying these systems was explained quite openly in a Defense Intelligence Agency document titled “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” dated January 22, 1991–that is, the week after the war began there. It describes how Iraq will be prevented from supplying clean water to its citizens because the country will not be able to replace water treatment plant parts nor will it be able to obtain essential chemicals, particularly chlorine. As the document puts it, “Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.” The document goes on to explain that “unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis and typhoid could occur.” And, according to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, reports indicated that the chlorine supply was critically low because of the embargo on chlorine. Moreover, the U.S. military expected that food and medicine would also be affected: “Food processing, electronic and particularly pharmaceutical plants require extremely pure water that is free from biological contaminants.” A month later, another document, “Disease Outbreaks in Iraq,” predicts: “Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing.” This document lists the “most likely diseases during the next sixty-ninety days (descending order): diarrheal diseases (particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza); typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal (particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely).”
Did the U.S. government, which understood clearly how many diseases would ravage the population if the water was left untreated, offer the means to repair what its bombing had destroyed? Of course not. Just the opposite.
Almost 11 years after this war began, the U.S. government continues to block the importation of parts and chemicals which could allow Iraq to rebuild its water system. The result, according to U.N. estimates, is that 5,000 Iraqi children die every month from preventable diseases such as diarrhea, cholera and typhoid.
In fact, more than a million Iraqi people have lost their lives since the 1991 Gulf War, but Saddam Hussein, the very brutal dictator who supposedly was the aim of the U.S. war, is still in power. The U.S. government never brought down their supposed target. What it did do is use a simple form of germ warfare to kill the civilian population, particularly the most vulnerable–the children and the elderly.
Of course, we don’t need declassified documents on the Internet to know what the U.S. government has been doing to the people of Iraq. The U.S. has never even made any attempt to deny, or gloss over, this ongoing mass murder. When asked by a journalist if it’s worth it to kill so many Iraqi children, Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, bluntly answered, “Yes, it’s worth it.”
This was a conscious policy carried out by the U.S. government, maintained for the past 11 years. It was terrorism against a civilian population, and all the more terrible because it was carried out by the most powerful state force in the world.
Nov 5, 2001
In California, the state government arranged a huge bailout of Southern California Edison (SCE) that claimed to be on the verge of going bankrupt as a result of the entire deregulation crisis over the last year. This bailout was not voted on by the state legislation. Neither were its details debated publicly. On the contrary, the bailout was secretly negotiated by the state “Public Utility Commission.” The PUC signed off on the deal on October 4. Three days afterwards, a federal judge approved the bailout without even hearing arguments against it.
Of course, the few details that have come out show why the deal was kept such a secret. Under this agreement, SCE’s residential and small business customers will foot the bill for the debt that SCE claims to have accumulated during the electricity crisis. Consumer advocates estimate that this will add an average of $750 per year onto consumers’ bills for the next four years.
Of course, the whole idea that SCE is going broke and needed a huge bailout is bogus. In the last financial quarter that ended in September, SCE reported an increase of profits of 275% over the year before. At the same time, it was accumulating cash at record rates. As of last July, it had 1.7 billion dollars in cash. At the end of September, this pile had grown to nearly 2.5 billion dollars. SCE projects that its cash reserves will grow to 3.8 billion dollars by next February.
Nonetheless, SCE is to be “bailed out” and this “bail-out” will then serve as the pattern for the other two big privately held electric utility companies in the state, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SGD&E).
This is only the latest in a series of schemes with which the utilities here grabbed money right out of people’s pockets.
In the first four years of “deregulation,” the utility companies collected an extra 20 billion dollars beyond the basic rates they charged–so-called “stranded costs.” Instead of applying this money to their growing “debt,” the utilities handed it over in dividends to stockholders or used it to leverage investments in lucrative, unregulated markets around the country.
Then last year, after contriving a so-called “energy shortage,” complete with blackouts, the power companies boosted rates to utilities. The electric utility companies in turn claimed that they were being forced to sell electricity at a loss. (Never mind that much of the money that they owed was to themselves, since they retained most of their most profitable electric generating capacity.) This turned into demands for big rate increases.
In January, the state government began to buy up electricity at the wholesale level, which the electric utilities then resold to consumers at a profit! The high wholesale prices were absorbed by state taxpayers. Second, the state regulatory commission boosted electric rates by up to 50% in two steps. Third, when the wholesale price of electricity was at its highest, the state government went ahead and signed long-term contracts with power companies worth an estimated 43 billion dollars.
Not only are taxpayers and consumers stuck with the responsibility of paying off the debts of the electric utility companies, but the 13 billion dollars in debt that the state has built up by paying for electricity on the wholesale level, as well as the long-term contracts for electricity that the state is now committed to for up to 20 years.
Money which supposedly was slated to pay for such social services as education or health services, now is slated to go into the pockets of the big state utility companies, power companies, electricity middlemen, and the big financial interests.
This is what utility deregulation has wrought in California–and what it will do elsewhere: a bonanza for stockholders, executives and “entrepreneurs,” paid for by the children of the state.
Nov 5, 2001
A dozen New York City fire fighters were arrested at a protest on Thursday, November 1. The charges were quickly dropped.
What caused the protest was that on Wednesday City Hall had announced the number of fire fighters allowed into the World Trade Center site to search the rubble would be reduced from 64 to 25. Almost a thousand fire fighters showed up in front of City Hall, and when some began to push past the barricades set up to go in the direction of the World Trade Center, a fight broke out between some firemen and some policemen.
The crowd, co-workers of the 343 fire fighters lost on September 11, were outraged that their effort to find more remains of the dead was being cut back. They shouted, “Bring our brothers home.”
Some also shouted, “They took out the gold.” They referred to a large rescue operation from vaults located in the basement area underneath the collapsed towers, an area so large it has twice the space of the Empire State Building. Among other treasures down there was almost two MILLION pounds of gold and silver. When the latest vault full of gold was brought out, the “rescue” operation was scaled back almost to nothing.
Nothing more cynically illustrates what is really going on among those ruins in New York. The powers that be wanted to use the firemen for what? Only to be sure their gold and silver was transported to safety.
As we have been reminded by the media and the politicians, the fire fighters were among the heroes of that horrible day. And of course, it’s true, just as they often are every day.
But every politician from Bush on down, trying to win support for their rotten policies, rushed to New York to have their pictures taken at Ground Zero with these same heroes. Ready to use the fight fighters to promote their own revolting policies, it’s no surprise they were ready to use them to find their gold.
Nov 5, 2001
Another Ford has taken the reins of the Ford Motor Company. What does William Clay Ford, Jr., have going for him–other than his family name, family connections and family billions?
It seems, if we were to listen to the media, that Junior is a man concerned with the environment: after all, he proposed to plant gardens on the roofs of Ford’s new factories–never mind that those factories will continue to spew out enormous amounts of pollution into the workers’ neighborhoods which surround the factories.
He’s also depicted as an executive who shares the workers’ problems. Didn’t he run down to the Rouge as soon as the blast furnace blew up? Forget about the fact that his family’s company, with himself playing a leading role, had made the conscious decisions which directly led to the deaths of six workers.
So, what will be the first job of this modern-day knight in shining armor? Ford Motor Company is to be “restructured,” that is, its workforce reduced. Plants are to be closed, despite a union contract which forbids it. Jac “the Knife” Nasser, the man Ford replaced, apparently didn’t have the right personality to carry it out. If the union is to agree to this new round of concessions, Junior is the man to negotiate them–this too, according to the media, which in Ford Country belong to Ford!
Nov 5, 2001
On November 13, five Charleston, South Carolina longshoremen go on trial for charges of conspiracy and rioting punishable by up to five years in prison. The South Carolina Attorney General, Charles Condon, has compared the men to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center.
The charges resulted from a clash between the longshoremen and the police on January 20, 2000. One hundred fifty longshoremen had gone out to picket a ship owned by the Danish company Nordana, which said it would no longer be unloaded by union longshoremen, and instead brought in the non-union Winyah Stevedoring Inc. from Georgetown, SC. The unarmed union members were confronted by 600 cops dressed in riot gear with dogs, horses, armored vehicles, boats and helicopters. A longshore clerk had his head busted open, and one of the cops clubbed union president Kenneth Riley over the head. Other workers were also injured.
In fact, if there was terrorism at work in Charleston that day, it was carried out by heavily-armed riot police who outnumbered unarmed protestors four to one.
Longshore locals on all coasts have been rallying to support the five longshoremen.
Support can be sent to: Free the Charleston Five, ILA Local 1422, 910 Morrison Drive, Charleston, SC 29403.
Nov 5, 2001
At the end of October, U.S. and British officials established “Coalition Information Centers” in Washington, D.C., London, England and Islamabad, Pakistan. They say they want to explain what “really happened” every time the news media reports that U.S. bombs hit houses, hospitals and recently even Red Cross facilities in the city of Kabul. Bush assigned Charlotte Beers to head up this get-out-the-truth effort.
Who is Beers? Before her recent appointment as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, she was a leading Madison Avenue advertising executive. Her trade was to convince us to buy products–many worthless, defective or even dangerous ones–with truths, half-truths or sometimes outright lies. It didn’t matter so long a we bought the products.
By appointing this Madison Avenue slick-talker, Bush is giving us a pretty good idea of what he means by “getting the truth out” about the war.
Nov 5, 2001
A “problem” has turned up with the so-called “humanitarian daily rations” dropped from U.S. planes over Afghanistan. They are wrapped in yellow plastic, the same color that U.S. “anti-personnel” bomblets are painted. These “anti-personnel” bomblets, dropped by the thousands over Afghanistan, sometimes fail to explode when dropped. It appears this has led to some “confusion”–the “bomblets” can be mistaken for food, only to explode when picked up.
Someone who doesn’t trust the U.S. government might skeptically wonder if there was some method to this madness.
In any case, it’s certainly clear there’s nothing “humanitarian” about these so-called “humanitarian food drops.” Even the U.S. government admits that only about 20 to 40 tons of food are being dropped each day. Before the U.S. bombing began, about 500 tons of food was being shipped into Afghanistan each day. It fed about three and a half million refugees. The bombing cut off all this land shipment of food, while doubling the number of refugees to over 7 million.
Yellow, green or purple–it would make no difference. These food drops aren’t aimed at feeding a starving Afghani population. They are aimed at what the U.S. government hopes is a gullible U.S. population.