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 19, 2001
Unemployment rose sharply in October, with companies cutting 439,000 private sector jobs. This was the largest monthly job decline in over a quarter of a century.
The politicians and political commentators blamed most of these job losses on the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Of course, this is sheer nonsense. Whatever limited impact that attack had, it did not at change the overall direction of the economy. For over a year, the biggest companies have been announcing mass job cuts. For over a year, the unemployment rate has been rising. Officials now estimate that a new recession began last March, that is six months before September.
When they ask us to blame September 11, they are trying to divert us from seeing the situation as it is.
Take unemployment benefits. The U.S. Labor Department says that 23 state trust funds earmarked for paying out unemployment benefits are in danger of going broke within a year. Three states–Texas, New York and North Dakota–say they may even run out of money within a few short months. And Texas is the worst–no surprise!
These funds are not going broke at the end of a period of high unemployment, such as in the early 1980s. No, this is only the beginning of a period of rising unemployment–with unemployment expected to go much higher.
If these funds are in danger it is because state governments had already been cutting the corporate taxes earmarked for unemployment benefits. State officials admit it. Larry Jones, a spokesman for the Texas Workforce Commission, recently told the Houston Chronicle that the state purposely kept its unemployment fund barely solvent in order to cut corporate taxes.
Governments at all level–federal, state and local–have been steadily cutting all the rest of the social safety net earmarked for the working class and the unemployed as well.
Welfare used to be the last resort for all those who either couldn’t qualify for unemployment benefits, or exhausted their unemployment benefits. But no more. Not only has the government made it almost impossible for the newly unemployed to get onto welfare, it is kicking more and more people off of the welfare rolls–even as unemployment has risen. At the same time, government programs for job training and low income housing, Medicaid and food stamps have all been scaled back drastically. Workers compensation and disability have also been restricted so that many fewer are covered.
State and local governments slashed these programs during the supposed good times, when governments bragged about running large surpluses, and cut business taxes right and left. Now state after state, city after city have suddenly discovered that they are running deficits. Thus, they say, that we have to sacrifice.
This is why the politicians, with the media backing them up, today call on us to come together to sacrifice in the “national interest.” But all the flag-waving and patriotic rhetoric is nothing more than a blind to cover up the fact that WE are being asked to sacrifice so the capitalists can go on accumulating wealth.
Let the politicians wave all the flags they want. We should not join in solidarity with the very people who are leading a war on us here at home. Our concern should be us: not the big oil companies, for whom wars in the Middle East are always fought; not the insurance companies, whose money has been funding the stock market speculation which today threatens the economy; not the airlines, which have been going into debt for years to buy up other companies.
Our concern should be us. Our sacrifices should be made in fights we carry out to improve our lives and the lives of all working people in this country. Our solidarity should lie with our class, the working people of this country who make everything run.
Nov 19, 2001
On November 13, President George Bush signed a military order to give himself the authority to order any non-U.S. citizens to undergo a trial in a military court, so long as Bush has “reason to believe” that these individuals are involved in “international terrorism.” He didn’t even bother to go to Congress or the Supreme Court for authorization–even though these bodies have given him every authority he asked for since September 11.
Under his unilaterally declared Order, Bush can have the Pentagon haul someone he alleges to be a terrorist before a secret military tribunal. He need give no reason for his allegations. He need not offer even one shred of proof to take them to this secret court system. His Secretary of Defense can then make up the rules he wants about how the so-called trial will be carried out. He can designate where the trial will take place, “outside or within the United States.” He sets all the rules for the trial, including what proof is required. Almost any evidence can be introduced, including hearsay or a confession acquired by torture. At the same time, the Pentagon can legally conceal any evidence which might exonerate the person by citing national security.
The verdict will be rendered by a tribunal of three military officers. And even here, a unanimous verdict is not necessary. That person can be executed, without any right to appeal–not to any other court, or even to public opinion, since all the proceedings can be carried out in complete secrecy.
Thus, a person can be secretly accused of being a terrorist, arrested, tried and executed, all within just a few hours–and all quite legally, just like under other military dictatorships over the ages, such as those that have plagued Chile, Argentina, Peru, Turkey, Greece, El Salvador, etc., when people have disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Even William Safire, the very conservative former Nixon speech writer and current New York Times columnist, condemned Bush’s military tribunals as being “military kangaroo courts.” And Amnesty International pointed out that Bush’s Military Order violates the 1949 Geneva Conventions, that were ratified by the USA in 1955, “that require that prisoners of war must be tried in courts which guarantee fundamental rights of fairness, including the right of appeal.”
We are told that we live in a democracy, where the rule of law is supreme. Of course, those laws are never a guarantee of anything, as the countless victims of U.S. repression have found out over and over again throughout U.S. history, including workers’ leaders of all major strikes. But even those laws can be undone, those institutions can be bypassed, not just by a vote of Congress or a formal decision by the Supreme Court–but simply by one stroke of a president’s pen.
It is not yet clear when Bush will make use of these secret military tribunals. It’s obvious that the government has already been using many of the methods associated with them in the round-ups of hundreds of people who have been accused of no crimes. Bush’s edict just “legalizes” what they were doing any way. But Bush’s edict shows that the democratic rights we assume we have can be taken away at a moment’s notice–with no legal recourse. And what happens in this case with “non-citizens” can happen as easily–by another stroke of a pen–to citizens.
No, the only rights that ordinary people have are those that we are ready to fight for and defend.
Nov 19, 2001
American Airlines flight 587 crashed into the Far Rockaway section of New York City November 12, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.
Within a few hours, according to the New York Times, a government official said, with relief, “...we do not have any evidence for the T-word,”–that is, terrorism.
No, it seems that this crash–and these deaths–were caused not by terrorism, but by the good old business way of doling out death.
After an ordinary plane crash, little information gets out in the early days when people are still thinking about the crash–protecting, of course, the aviation companies, whose designs are often faulty, and the airline companies, whose maintenance policies lead to the crashes.
This time, however, with that “T-word” lingering in the air, we got lots of information. And that information showed clearly the culpability of various and assorted companies and government agencies in this tragedy.
In the first place, the plane was not designed with real safety precautions in mind. It has two engines, not three–that is, no real back up in case of an engine failure, something which is more and more common these days. Of course, aviation “experts” tell us that planes like these can fly on one engine. And it’s true they can–when they’re 35,000 feet up in the air. The problem is on take-offs and landings–the very time when the plane is under most stress and when accidents are most likely to occur.
Beyond that, the plane’s engines–the famous engines that broke off–were already known to have been seriously defective. The Wall Street Journal reported last January that the industry feared that this particular model engine could disintegrate. The same engine on another American A300 plane caught fire in 1998 shortly after take off. Three times in the last year, engines on Continental’s A300 planes disintegrated shortly before actually lifting off.
One month ago, the FAA had issued an “advisory” suggesting that airlines take these planes out of service for a major overhaul of all engines.
Instead, American had taken the plane used for Flight 587 out of service and had given a major overhaul to only one engine. The other one was left alone, even though it was only 212 flight hours short of the 10,000 flight hour limit which requires a major overhaul. Then, on the day just before the accident, the plane had been out of service again–but only for “minor” servicing. What was serviced the day before the crash?–the engine that disintegrated just before it fell off.
Then, of course, there was the famous tail fin–which simply broke off in flight. Whatever is behind this structural “fault,” the fact is that planes cannot fly without tail fins.
All capitalist companies have as their major concern the maximization of profit, pushing costs as low as possible to do so. Every worker knows about the corners which are cut on their job, leading to potentially dangerous situations.
Following September 11, American Airlines laid off many hundreds of mechanics, as well as all kinds of workers in different supporting jobs like the repair of equipment. The airlines continue to cut back in all kinds of little ways to save money, and this inevitably extends to matters of safety and the extra inspections that cost more but can save lives.
Bosses everywhere gamble that accidents won’t happen this year–and let next year take care of itself.
But “accidents” do happen, just as one happened in Far Rockaway, November 12, because someone cut the safety corner too tight. And, as usual, it was not the top management of American or Airbus who suffered the consequences of the gamble they took. Nor was it officials in the FAA, whose lackadaisical attitudes about safety allow airlines to run planes that are overdue for service.
It was the flight crews, the passengers and the people on the ground who paid the price with their lives.
Bush talks a lot about the “evils of terrorism.” Let’s just for once hear about the evils of a capitalist system which, in systematically putting profits before safety, takes many more lives every year than the terrorists took.
Nov 19, 2001
A speaker for the Green Party USA was stopped at an airport in Maine and prevented from getting on an American Airlines flight to Chicago. She said that "an official told me that my name had been flagged in the computer."
This woman was not a terrorist, didn’t even fit their profile for suspects. She carried no weapon, was not accused of hiding criminal activity.
So why was she stopped? She and the Green Party have been outspoken in their opposition to the U.S. war against Afghanistan. There was no other reason.
The U.S. thought police are on patrol.
Nov 19, 2001
Charles Condon, the Attorney General of South Carolina, accused five South Carolina longshoremen of “terrorism” after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Condon had previously had the men arrested and charged with felony counts as the result of a clash in January of 2000.
Because of a clash between 150 picketing longshoremen and 600 armed police, five union activists were kept under house arrest for months after their working hours.
In the last two weeks the state of South Carolina gave way to widespread protests in this country and abroad and dropped the charges to a misdemeanor to which they pled no contest and paid a $100 fine.
But Condon’s wild charges about terrorism show exactly the direction the government is going as it passes laws against “terrorism.” They are laws against the population.
Nov 19, 2001
Kenneth Kies, a top corporate lobbyist, recently gave his very own “spin” on what he does when he lobbies Congress for his clients. He said, “I wouldn’t be doing the job–not necessarily for my clients–but for my country, if I wasn’t being helpful in terms of offering ideas that can be helpful in stimulating the economy.”
What ideas? To reduce taxes on big corporations, of course–corporations like GE and IBM which he represents. In fact, it would be “irresponsible” and even “unpatriotic” not to get Congress to reduce their taxes–so says Mr. Kies!
This is exactly what the bosses and those who serve them mean when they wave the flag: more money from the workers’ pockets straight into the capitalists’ pockets.
Nov 19, 2001
The government is in the middle of questioning 5,000 men between the ages of 18 and 33, mostly of Middle Eastern origins, here on legal student, tourist or work visas. This questioning is based on secret criteria and the denial of rights of those investigated. The list of 5,000 names has on it those who “fit the criteria of persons who might have knowledge of foreign-based terrorists.” What is that criteria? Those who come from countries where al Qaeda is supposed to have an activity, which, according to U.S. sources totals 60 countries. But the government did not reveal the list of countries–it’s a secret, like in a police state. In Los Angeles, the government said those who fit the profile include those who have attended flight schools or... attend a community college! Community college?
The men will be questioned at their homes–by a team of “investigators” who will show up unexpectedly.
Cooperation with the questioning is supposed to be “voluntary”. We can imagine what will happen to those who say they don’t want to talk to “investigators” who come barging through their door.
The purpose of this questioning is to intimidate those who came here as tourists, to go to school, or to work in a particular field. Whatever “information” is gleaned out of this will be far overshadowed by false statements given to please the inquisitors–or just to get free of them.
This is not a way to stop terrorism.
From what’s known about the 19 terrorists who died in the September 11 attacks and about Osama bin Laden, the most important criteria for possible terrorists would be those who worked with foreign intelligence services or the CIA. These people are well known to the FBI and the CIA. If the government were interested in stopping terrorism, this is who they would be questioning–not 5,000 innocent men who are being intimidated just because of their ethnic background.
This is nothing but a show designed to make us think the government is doing something.
Nov 19, 2001
By the middle of November in Afghanistan, the sustained U.S. bombing and the advancing military factions of the Northern Alliance had appeared to score one military victory after another against the Taliban. First, the Taliban lost the key northern city Mazar-i-Sharif. It then fled the capital, Kabul. Within days, the Taliban was regrouping to make a last stand in Kandahar, its religious stronghold in the south of the country. It is unclear whether a part of the Taliban in conjunction with the Arab fighters in Osama Bin Laden’s Qaeda organization would eventually take to the mountains in order to launch a guerrilla war.
As the Taliban has left one city after another, the news media has made it seem like Afghanistan is being liberated, and that this represents the beginning of the end to a particularly barbaric chapter in the history of Afghanistan. They pretend that things will improve for the people in Afghanistan, that the constant state of warfare, despotism and misery that has taken such a toll for so long will finally end.
Of course, if that were the case, then all the forces that had oppressed the people of Afghanistan, fomented the wars, used the people of the country as their cannon fodder, would be driven out of the country and the region. But that is not what is happening at all. The Taliban may be on its way out. But this has only created a power vacuum that all the other Afghan warlords are vying with each other to fill. And behind these warlords are all the Western powers, starting with the U.S., along with the regional powers, including Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, etc. that support its so-called coalition.
To understand what kind of “liberation” that the U.S., along with the rest of its allies are getting ready to impose on the people of Afghanistan, one has only to look at how these very same powers have “liberated” the Afghan people over the past quarter of a century.
For the U.S., the initial involvement in Afghanistan came back in the late 1970s, after one of its key dictators in the region, the Shah of Iran, was overthrown. The growing unrest in the region was funneled into growing religious fundamentalist movements that threatened many other regimes, including in Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union, which shared a large border with that country, sent in troops to smash this unrest, the U.S. saw this as an opportunity to play both sides of the conflict. On the one hand, the U.S. was not displeased that the Soviet Union was squashing a social revolt that could also threaten other dictatorships that were linked to the U.S. On the other hand, the U.S. also saw this war as an opportunity to weaken its main rival, to bog the Soviet Union in a conflict, just like the U.S. had been bogged down in Viet Nam. This is why the U.S. never officially got involved in the war, while covertly the CIA supported people like Osama bin Laden, as well as sent money and arms to Afghanistan through the Pakistani secret service.
Over the next decade, Soviet losses in Afghanistan mounted. Finally, in 1989, it was forced out, leaving Afghanistan in ruins, with the roads and agricultural lands destroyed, and with more than five million refugees, the largest refugee population in the world. But for the U.S. government, the fate of the Afghan people was of little or no concern. Instead, they considered that the main priority of the war, that is the weakening of the Soviet Union, had been met in a long and bloody war. So the U.S. left the country to the same war lords with whom it had allied itself during the war.
This rule of the war lords marked the second tragic chapter for the people of Afghanistan. With so much of the country destroyed, most of these war lords’ income came from control over such criminal operations as smuggling and the cultivation of the most profitable cash crop, poppies, for the production of heroin and opium. These same war lords, smugglers and criminals fought each other for control of parts of the country, along with control over the increasingly profitable smuggling operations. The war lords also vied for support from the surrounding countries, such as Iran, Pakistan, Russia–as well as India, which were also looking to gain influence at the expense of each other. All of these elements fed a more and more destructive civil war that lasted for seven more years.
The U.S. came to view this growing chaos as a problem that could destabilize the entire region. So the U.S. supported efforts by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to produce a force that could finally end the fighting in Afghanistan. The solution that these powers cooked up turned out to be the Taliban. With U.S. and Saudi money, the Pakistani secret police recruited the Taliban from refugee camps, indoctrinated them in government-financed religious schools and sent them into Afghanistan. Fighting alongside them were not only the Pakistani secret police, but religious fanatics from the rest of the Arab world, who had been recruited by the likes of Osama Bin Laden, as well as the Saudi secret police. With this kind of force and U.S. money behind them, the Taliban managed to secure their rule over most of the country.
Once in power, the Taliban proved that they had learned the lessons taught by their masters very well. Their rule was harsh, filled with atrocities, based on the barbaric teachings and practices that harkened back hundreds of years.
Yet, once again, this rule of a new set of warlords was not a problem for the U.S. government–so long as the Taliban was cooperative and ready to do business with it. In fact, when the Taliban took power, the U.S. news media and officials often pictured it as liberators. And leaders of the Taliban often met with U.S. government and business leaders. Only when the Taliban, along with some of its allies, like Osama bin Laden who had helped put it in power, began to play their own game, sometimes against the dominant power in the region, their U.S. sponsors, did they suddenly become a problem for U.S. policy-makers.
Whatever role the terrorist attacks of September 11 may have played in precipitating the U.S. war on October 7, clearly the U.S. had been preparing a military intervention in that region for at least a couple of years. The fact that the U.S. was able to mount such a massive intervention so quickly only bears this out.
No matter what happens next–if the Taliban were able to hold out in the mountains or not–neither will improve the situation of the people of Afghanistan. If the U.S. declares some kind of victory in the war, this will be no victory for the people of Afghanistan. All they will have gained is more death and destruction of their country.
Certainly, the U.S. has made it clear that it considers the question of who will run the country too important to let the people of Afghanistan decide for themselves. The U.S. leaders will themselves decide who makes up the new government, they will select the leaders, they will put in place the new army and police force in collaboration with other outside governments. They have also made it clear that they will base this new government on the very same warlords who made up the Northern Alliance, as well as those that supported the Taliban. Finally, to impose this rule, the U.S. says that it will get the U.N. to send in an occupying force made up of troops from the other dictatorships from the region.
At the recent Bush-Putin summit at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, the former U.S. and Russian adversaries during the Afghan War of the 1980s, no doubt met to decide how to divide the spoils and responsibilities after this latest Afghan War.
No, the U.S. war in Afghanistan does not open up a new phase in that region’s history. On the contrary, it is merely a continuation of previous disasters, disasters that will be paid for by the population, who are among the poorest on earth. Their fate is, unfortunately, a clear illustration of what the continued domination of imperialism over the planet has brought to vast regions of the world.
Nov 19, 2001
On October 18, four men, convicted in the 1998 bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, received sentences of life in prison in New York federal court. The four–Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, Mohamed Sadiq Odeh, Mohamed Rashid Daoud al-Owhali, and Wadih El Hage–were convicted of planning the attacks as members of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The bombs killed 224 people, mostly Kenyans, as well as 12 U.S. citizens; some 4,000 people were injured.
The four were convicted in part on the testimony of Ali Mohamed, whose case had been heard separately and whose sentence was never prounounced in open court.
Egyptian born Mohamed was a sergeant in the U.S. army for most of the 1980s. He received one medal for “patriotism, valor, fidelity and professional excellence” while he served. But what was really interesting about Mohamed’s training is that he went through training for Special Forces officers at Fort Bragg–although later on, the newspapers refer to him only as a “supply sergeant” at Fort Bragg. In other words, the U.S. army trained Mohamed as a specialist in terrorism.
In 1984, according to information given in his trial, Mohamed approached the CIA to offer his services as a spy. Supposedly, the CIA declined. In any case, in1989, he entered bin Laden’s network. He provided military training to bin Laden’s personal security guards. He was supposed to have turned over training manuals he received in his Special Forces training. Some of the subjects are particularly interesting: how to plan terrorist operations; how to plant explosives in buildings; how to carry out assassinations using different techniques.
It seems Mohamed was at least a double agent. He certainly is like people recruited by the CIA to use in other countries to carry out all the dirty tricks which we find out about later on–like blowing up buildings, killing hundreds of people. And, no matter who it turned out he owed his “loyalty” to, he learned all this at Fort Bragg, courtesy of the U.S. military.
Nov 19, 2001
A French newspaper, Le Figaro, published an article on October 30 reporting that Osama bin Laden had been treated for serious kidney problems at the American hospital in the United Arab Emirate this past July. Supposedly bin Laden was visited in the hospital by family members, by the then head of Saudi intelligence and by ... the local representative of the CIA.
The CIA denied the report. Still, it is known that the CIA chief in question was recalled to Washington the day after bin Laden left the hospital. The Saudi intelligence man resigned afterwards.
These details were reported in two British newspapers, the Times and the Guardian. The British articles claim the information comes from French intelligence sources, who appear quite happy to embarrass U.S. intelligence officials.
Did the CIA really visit bin Laden in the hospital? It’s entirely possible. It is also possible the report could have been made up or exaggerated by French intelligence. It would hardly be the first time intelligence sources planted false stories. The U.S. services do it all the time. Nor is the rivalry between intelligence services limited to the U.S. and France. After the terrorist attacks, it was quite clear that the FBI and the CIA apparently don’t share information.
But it does makes sense that a CIA operative would visit bin Laden. After all, he was their guy, their well-trained good buddy in Afghanistan until just a few years ago.
Nov 19, 2001
Afghanistan produces almost no oil. But this country is situated between Iran and Pakistan astride a mountain chain which separates the two regions with the world’s largest petroleum reserves: the Persian Gulf to the south and the Caspian Sea Basin in the north.
The Gulf is today the world’s biggest oil-producing region. Its oil reserves are relatively easy to ship to the rest of the world via short oil pipelines and a huge armada of petroleum tankers.
On the other hand, the countries bordering the Caspian Sea–including Azerbaijan, the southern part of Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan–which have more reserves than the Persian Gulf, produce only modest amounts of oil. The oil companies, especially the American and European ones, are contesting for the rights to exploit this oil.
But, today, there are few ways to get the oil from the region to the areas of the world which consume the most oil, that is, Europe, Japan and the U.S.
The area is cut off from easy access to the world’s oceans and there are few pipelines to get this oil into tankers. And the longstanding political instability in the region adds to the difficulties of getting the oil out of the Caspian Basin. Projects to create more modern pipelines collide with political risks and war.
The few pipelines which do exist are mostly old and inadequate. At the moment, the pipeline going north into the Russian Caucasus is the only one more or less still functioning at full capacity. But it does not get oil out to the Western oil tankers.
Today, there is a project to build a pipeline from Kazakhstan to China, but it would take oil only into China. The other possibilities are to go through Georgia, a politically unsettled region; Kurdistan, equally unsettled; or Iran or Afghanistan. But Iran has been on the U.S. blacklist ever since the Shah, the U.S.-backed dictator, was overthrown.
Thus, there remains only... a route through Afghanistan and a part of Pakistan.
The support the U.S. gave to the Taliban, from 1993 to 1996, allowing it to come to power and consolidate its control over the country was aimed at ending the instability of Afghanistan. This U.S. support carried more than a whiff of oil. The open connections of the American oil group Unocal with the Taliban testify to that.
Today the U.S. is searching to put a new regime in place. No matter which regime is cobbled together and held in power by U.S. military aid, one of its first projects will be to let Unocal finish the plans it started with the Taliban.
Nov 19, 2001
Over 200 women’s medical clinics and groups serving women, such as Planned Parenthood, Catholics for a Free Choice, Feminist Majority Foundation and the American Association of University Women, received letters containing a white powder and threats from a person or people calling themselves “the Army of God.” These current letters follow upon another 200 such letters sent out in October, also threatening clinics and organizations with anthrax.
Obviously these are threats to take seriously. Clinics offering abortion services and organizations supporting the rights of women to choose, have not only been threatened but actually attacked in recent years. Personnel have been murdered, clinics and offices burnt down.
Here are religious fundamentalists who want to punish, even murder, men and women who oppose their beliefs and who want to reduce women’s rights to make their own choices about their own bodies. In Afghanistan, they go by the name of the Taliban. In the U.S. they go by name’s like “the army of God.”
We hear all about religious fundamentalists throughout Middle Eastern countries whose points of view go back hundreds of years to the Middle Ages. In this country there are people with such views–not Islamic but Christian. What they have in common are disgusting attitudes toward women–and a willingness to use terror and violence against them.
Nov 19, 2001
Baltimore City’s mayor was one of the first to testify before Congress that extra problems due to the September 11 attacks, especially police overtime, are breaking the city’s budget. He asked for federal funds to aid Baltimore.
The mayor and city budget officials expect a shortage of about 17 million dollars this year, which goes from July 1 through June 30. They have already demanded department heads plan four% cuts, except in the police department. A hiring freeze is in place and layoffs, beyond the jobs already cut, could begin in January. City unions have already agreed to no salary increases this year.
If the city budget is in deficit it’s because of loans and tax breaks. The mayor and city council already have given real estate and financial interests loans at one% or two%? No problem. Tax breaks for 10 years or 20 years? No problem.
Baltimore uses the PILOT system: so-called “payments in lieu of taxes.” By giving back some taxes to developers of downtown luxury apartment projects, the city guarantees the developers a return of between 14 and 20%!
What do city residents get out of it? Well, if they have an income over $96,000 they could buy one of the new apartments. But for the vast majority who make a whole lot less than that, city residents get ... a rise in city taxes this January 1.
September 11 did not create this problem. The readiness of city officials and politicians to serve the wealthy did.
Nov 19, 2001
On the same day that a Bush Administration official continued to speculate that the anthrax envelopes could be connected to the September 11 terrorists, the FBI announced just the opposite. At a press conference on November 11, the FBI provided a “psychological” profile of the kind of person it believes sent the letters, along with a number of details about handwriting, fluency with English, educational and scientific background–all of which lead in the same direction: the anthrax terrorist is “homegrown,” a person born in this country, with a high level of scientific knowledge and access to advanced laboratory materials.
The FBI issued its profile in order to appeal to the public for information about anyone who might seem to fit the profile. The FBI says that’s how it eventually discovered the “uni-bomber”–publishing such details which someone recognized.
The sketch the FBI issued could certainly have been issued a good two weeks earlier–since all the factual information on which the sketch was based was available on October 16, the day after the Daschle letter was discovered.
But during those three weeks, the Bush Administration had other goals than finding out who actually had sent the anthrax letters. It had to justify the bombing of the Afghan population as a “war against terrorism.” Of course, the big majority of the people being killed in Afghanistan had nothing to do with September 11.
In the face of that fact, anything and everything was fuel for the fires of Bush’s propaganda machine which has been running in high gear to convince the American population to support the killing of innocent people.
Thus it’s no surprise that even as late as the day the FBI made its announcement, other Bush Administration officials continued to raise the possibility of links between the anthrax letters and the September 11 terrorists. Finding the anthrax killer be damned–the Bush Administration has a dirty war to carry out!
Nov 19, 2001
For the past 12 years, thousands of workers who cleaned up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 have been suffering all kinds of health problems. The ailments include skin rashes, hair loss, hearing loss, breathing problems, nausea, severe headaches, joint pain, cataracts, damage to various inner organs and lung cancer.
This is by no means a surprise. Exxon provided hardly any protective gear to the 15,000 workers who took part in cleaning up the 11 million gallons of crude oil which spilled off the shore of Alaska. Even though the air was filled with oil mist containing toxic chemicals and highly hazardous fumes given off by the strong solvents used in the cleanup, respirators were often not available. Gloves often didn’t fit and were useless. Workers were issued rain suits which may keep water out, but not other chemicals. Sheds, in which workers were cleaning oil from birds and other animals, were poorly ventilated.
When workers complained about respiratory problems, Exxon told them they must have colds or the flu from living together in close quarters. The company dismissed the workers’ concerns saying that crude oil had very low toxicity once it was weathered.
As usual, government officials backed the company. Without examining any data, agents of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) said that there was no sign of a health threat to cleanup workers. Exxon and its cleanup contractor, VECO Inc., denied government investigators access to medical records which showed that a large number of workers visited clinics with breathing complaints. And the government made no effort to get the records. These came to light only years later in court hearings. And finally, when Exxon requested that the spill not be designated a hazardous waste cleanup, federal officials went along with the company and allowed workers to have only four hours of training before starting to clean.
When workers sued Exxon in frustration, they found only more deaf ears. Court authorities dismissed most of the lawsuits before even going to trial. The only case that came anywhere near a trial was settled by Exxon for two million dollars. The company’s strategy is to drag the cases for years without a conclusion in order to outlast the workers. So far, Exxon has paid only 900 million dollars—a small fraction of the company’s annual profits—in a settlement with the federal and state governments. Just about two weeks ago, an appeals court overturned a jury’s five-billion-dollar judgement in favor of thousands of fishermen, small businessmen and Alaska residents.
In the meantime, of course, the workers continue to suffer and to die. They pay the heavy price for Exxon to protect its astronomical profits with the complicity of government officials.
Nov 19, 2001
Only a few years ago Sudan was condemned by the world’s countries, considered a terrorist state, accused of harboring terrorists like Bin Laden, even suffering international sanctions since 1996. Nonetheless, this dictatorship, one of the bloodiest of East Africa, today has been transformed–or at least in the eyes of U.S. and French imperialism. The reason for this reversal: oil.
In a short period of time, the Sudanese military junta and the George Bush administration have become friendlier. The president-dictator, the Sudanese general Omar Hassan El Bechir, brought to power by a coup d’etat in 1989, today cooperates with the White House in the “struggle against terrorism,” inviting even the CIA and the FBI to come to Sudan to carry out investigations. With gestures like this, showing his good will, Sudan has been rewarded. The U.S. opens its armaments industry to it, while Europe has just resumed aid to the country, which was cut off at the beginning of the 1990s. And on September 28, international sanctions were lifted.
What does it matter to imperialism if Sudan is one of the worst dictatorships in East Africa, which has waged a merciless civil war against the Christian population of the south for 18 years. This civil war has led to two million deaths and has driven four to five million people from their homes. What does it matter if the Sudanese army has diverted and pillaged international aid, leaving the population to die of hunger as the result of war and drought? What does it matter if the soldiers forcibly draft children, rape women, burn villages and massacre peasant populations, so long as they leave a free field for the oil multinationals?
What really matters in this affair is that Sudan has become an important oil exporting country. Millions of dollars of oil are now at stake. The Greater Nile Oil Project, made up of a partnership of the oil companies, has opened its oil pipeline of 1,000 miles at a cost of a billion dollars. This pipeline has allowed six oil fields of the Abyei region to send oil up to the refinery and ships at the port of Beshair on the Red Sea. Today thirty oil companies are negotiating with the military junta to exploit oil. The reserves are estimated to be two billion barrels. This oil has a very low cost of production of only $4 a barrel.
This gift of oil essentially profits the oil companies, since the regime reinvests the profits from oil in military equipment which permits the army to perpetuate its murderous offensives to drive the civilian population from the oil zones.
It’s at this murderous price that the big oil companies make the oil flow. It’s called “red oil” due to the blood of the deported and massacred people.