March, 14, 2013,
Issue #189
HUDSON VALLEY
ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
jacdon@earthlink.net,
P.O. Box 662, New Paltz, NY 12561
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CONTENTS:
1. RALLY FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS
2. BUILD THE WOMEN’S
FIGHT BACK MOVEMENT
3. 10 YEARS SINCE BUSH
BOMBARDED BAGHDAD
4. AS BAGHDAD BURNS
5. AN UNJUST,
ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL WAR
6. U.S. CORPORATIONS: BIG PROFITS, LOW TAXES
7. SARTRE BRIGADE TO
STRIKE IN AFGHANISTAN
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HUDSON VALLEY READERS — SAVE THE DATE Saturday, April 13, for our “U.S. DRONES OUT OF MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA, & EVERYWHERE” protest in New Paltz, coinciding with nationwide demonstrations. Join our picket line with signs visible to busy traffic at 10:30 a.m. in front of the Elting Library (Main St. across from Starbucks). At 12 noon we will march with signs and leaflets through the business district (about a half hour to an hour). Organized by the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Information, jacdon@earthlink.net. There are two nearby public parking lots on Plattekill Ave., including at Village Hall.
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1. RALLY FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS
By the Activist
Newsletter
There was a snowstorm that made driving a big problem at
night, but, 225 people — mostly students — attended a March 7 Rally to Defend
Women’s Rights in the auditorium of the State University of New York in New
Paltz.
The event was organized by the Hudson Valley Activist
Newsletter in response to a nationwide call from Women
Organized to Resist and Defend (WORD) to commemorate International Women’s Day
by protesting violence against women and the increasing right wing attacks on
women’s rights. All told, 11 cities and towns responded to the call in
Albuquerque, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Haven, New Paltz, New York City,
Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Syracuse, and Washington, D.C.
Some 55 organizations endorsed the New Paltz event, from the
New York Civil Liberties Union and many women’s, student, community and
activist groups, to the Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation.
According to Donna Goodman, a union delegate (United
University Professions, AFL-CIO, SUNY New Paltz chapter), and an editor of the
Activist Newsletter, the snowstorm cut anticipated attendance by over half “but it turned out to be a great evening.”
She told the crowd that “We are in the process of organizing a WORD chapter in
New Paltz to serve the Mid-Hudson region.”
Speakers at the rally, in this order, included: Carling Devin,
founder/facilitator, New Paltz Survivors Support Group. Gwen Wright, Executive
Director of the
NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. Donna
Goodman, the main rally organizer. Mira Liane Bowin, poet. Rickie Solinger, historian
and writer. Kerbie Joseph,
activist, Women Organized to Resist
and Defend. The Sexy Pitches, SUNY NP a cappella group. Beth Soto, Executive Director of the Hudson
Valley Area Labor Federation.
Abigail Robin, retired professor. Barbara Upton, Women
In Black, New Paltz.
Gwen
Wright’s Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence is the nation’s
only executive-level agency solely dedicated to improving the state’s response
to and prevention of domestic violence of
its kind in the U.S. This, in a country where a women reports a rape every 6.2
minutes, but very many assaults are not reported, so there could be one rape
every three minutes, or even worse. Over a million women are reported raped
and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year. In 2010, more
than one in three women in the United States have experienced rape, physical
violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
Wright noted that young women 20-24 are at greatest
risk from intimate partner violence, but all women and girls are at risk. In
terms of the huge number of women who report violence and rape, she said, much
of the violence remains woefully underreported. She urged audience members to
ask a friend “are you all right” if there are signs of possibly concealed
domestic abuse. To the left of the podium as she spoke were the life-size
silhouettes of over a dozen women murdered by their partners in Ulster County.
In her speech Goodman said: “Social, economic and political
conditions in the United States today suggest it is time for a revival of the
mass movement to defend and extend women’s rights. The beginnings are visible;
the causes are obvious. At issue is whether these beginnings will burgeon into
a powerful, independent movement to beat back the conservative attack and push
forward the agenda for women’s rights beyond the great advances by our sisters
some decades ago.
“History has demonstrated that women have made their maximum
gains only through struggle…. While we must continue and accelerate the fight
to stop violence against women, to defend reproductive justice, and demand full
equality for women workers, there are other issues as well that command our
attention in this conservative era. Why shouldn’t a new women’s upsurge fight
for substantial social programs, fight for poor women, fight for peace,
environmental sanity, and union rights? These, too, are women’s issues….”
Rickie Solinger has written many books including four
well-known to advocates of reproductive jusrice:
“Pregnancy and Power,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Abortion Wars,“ and “The
Abortionist.” She argued that reproductive freedom includes recognizing such
factors as class, race, social, economic, and political factors. Not all women, she implied, enjoy a
“choice” in the matter of abortion because of such factors.
Unionist Beth Soto emphasized that “the AFL-CIO union
movement champions workplace issues that affect women and all working
Americans, such as equal pay, child and elder care benefits, job security, safe
workplaces, affordable health care, contraceptive equity, protection from
sexual harassment and violence at work. Many of these points are now being
addressed in the New York Women’s Equality Act.” The union movement strongly supports the
10-point act.
Reminding the audience that equal pay has been the law since
1963, Soto pointed out that women are paid 77 cents for every dollar earned by
men. “This gap is more
pronounced for women of color, with black women earning 61cents and
Hispanic women earning 52 cents for every dollar paid to a white male.”
WORD activist Kirbie Joseph declared: “Tonight I would like to talk about a form of
violence against women that often goes unrecognized as violence. This form of
violence against women is woven into every aspect of our lives through our
economic and political system. What isn’t violent about making inferior wages
to men? What isn’t violent about lacking access to healthcare and education?
What isn’t violent about budget cuts to social programs? What isn’t violent
about living in poverty?… Some 17 million women live in poverty in the
United States. One of the reasons a woman may remain in an abusive relationship
is because she lacks the ability to be economically independent.”
Barbara Upton, a staunch peace advocate who founded a weekly
vigil that has met on a local street corner since soon after the 911 attacks,
spoke about women and war:
“Two photographs from the early days of the Afghanistan War
are seared into my soul. In one, an old man with a white beard and turban is
carrying a young girl. She could be his granddaughter. She has on a crocheted,
violet shawl with fringe hanging down, her eyes are closed and both of her feet
had just been blown off. In another, a young boy of five or six is screaming in
pain. There is very little skin left on the front of his body. These are the
true pictures of war. The sanitized, glorified version our media feeds us bears
little resemblance to the horrors that war inflicts and it is women and
children who suffer the most. So it is just and makes perfect sense that it is
women who are the leading force in the peace movement in the world today….
“We need a strong women’s movement to protect our rights in
this country, but we also need one to have the backs of women… around the world
who are putting their lives on the line for peace and justice every day.
Together we are an unshakable force! Please sign up to be a part of a local
chapter of WORD. We need each other and we will prevail.”
——————————
— WORD IS A NEW
grassroots, feminist organization that is dedicated to building the struggle
for women’s rights and equality for all. It was formed because of the shocking
number of attacks in recent years on the rights of women, through anti-abortion
legislation, slashing of social services and new heights of misogyny in the
rhetoric of the right wing. The group says: “Now more than ever, a new,
fighting women’s movement is needed. We believe in organizing and taking to the
streets, independent of the politicians of either major party. Throughout
history, the gains that women have made have been won through militant
struggle. We want to revive this kind of struggle by uniting all women to
defend our rights.”
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— IF YOU ARE
INTERESTED in the New Paltz chapter of WORD that is in formation, contact
donna0726@earthlink.net.
—WORD produced a
three minute video that was shown at the rally. It’s at
— WORD has published accounts of all 11demonstrations last week.
http://www.defendwomensrights.org/news/international-womens-day-1.html
——————————
— THANK YOU TO OUR ENDORSERS: New York Civil Liberties Union,
Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation (AFL-CIO), Upper Hudson Central Labor
Council (AFL-CIO), SEIU Local 200 United, United University Professions
(AFL-CIO, SUNY NP chapter), Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW-AFL-CIO),
Onteora Teachers Assn., American Association of University Women (Kingston),
New Paltz Women in Black, Amnesty International (Mid-Hudson), Bard College
Student Labor Dialogue, Washbourne House (women and children's shelter), Orange
County Democratic Women, Ulster County Democratic Women, Sociology Dept. (SUNY
NP), Progressive Academic Network (SUNY NP), Environmental Task Force
(community/campus), NP Climate Action Coalition, NYPIRG and OXFAM (SUNY NP
chapters), Students for Justice in Palestine (SUNY NP), Move to Amend of Ulster
County, Peace and Social Progress Now, Mid-Hudson ANSWER, Haitian People’s
Support Project, Middle East Crisis Response, Women Organized to Resist and Defend (WORD), Hudson Valley
Progressives, Women Against War, WESPAC, Orange County Democratic Alliance,
MoveOn Council (Ulster County), Queer Action Coalition (SUNY NP), Real Majority
Project, Party for Socialism and Liberation, La Voz magazine (Bard), Occupy New
Paltz, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Program (SUNY NP), Orange County Peace
Coalition, Voice for Choice (SUNY NP),
Woodstock Women in Black, R.I.P.P.D., Beacon Sloop Club, Grassroots Alliance
for Alternative Politics (Vassar), Planned Parenthood (M-H Valley), Safe Homes
of Orange County, YWCA (Orange County), Rape Crisis, Dutchess Greens, Dutchess
Peace, End the New Jim Crow Action Committee, Take Back the Night SUNY (NP).
Hudson River Playback Theatre.
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2. BUILD THE WOMEN’S
FIGHT BACK MOVEMENT
Following is Donna Goodman’s speech at the March
7 rally.
Social, economic and
political conditions in the United States today suggest it is time for a
revival of the mass movement to defend and extend women’s rights. The
beginnings are visible; the reasons are obvious.
At issue is whether
these beginnings will burgeon into a powerful, independent movement to beat
back the conservative attack and push forward the agenda for women’s rights
beyond the great advances by our sisters some decades ago.
History has
demonstrated that women have made their maximum gains only through struggle. It
took a hundred years of struggle to obtain the right to vote. It took less time
but great energy, innovation and guts to build upon that victory to win the
reforms of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Today, women’s
rights are under fierce attack by the right wing. In the last three weeks eight
new restrictions on abortion rights passed in six states, including a ban after
12 weeks in Arkansas. All told, 135 anti-abortion provisions have become law in
a score of states in 2011-12. And despite the fact that 63% of Americans favor
keeping Roe v. Wade, the conservative Supreme Court has it in its gun sights.
Several speakers
tonight are discussing various problems in detail, such as the high level of
violence and rape against women in America, the status of women workers,
reproductive rights and other issues. I’m focusing on the obstacles in the way
of attaining some key goals of the modern women’s movement.
Conservatives are
not the only problem. There is much Washington could do to expand women’s
rights -- through social programs and reforms -- but it hasn’t done so. There
have hardly been any such programs since President Lyndon Johnson left office.
At that time the Democratic Party was positioned on the center left, but that
was 45 years ago. It’s a different party today. Liberalism is isolated.
At one time, for a
few decades after World War II, the U.S. led the world in many ways. But
compared to other wealthy capitalist countries America has fallen far behind —
from statistics on infant mortality to adult longevity, from health care to
education, from women’s rights to welfare,
from poverty to hunger and homelessness.
This isn’t because
America is poor. The corporations, banks and Wall St. rake in enormous profits.
To quote the BBC yesterday about the world’s richest nation: “Child poverty in the U.S. has reached record
levels, with almost 17 million children now affected. A growing number are also
going hungry on a daily basis.”
When low income kids are added to poor kids, that’s about half our
children.
We need more
government programs to help many millions of poor single mothers and their
children. That’s a feminist issue. What’s happening to them is a cruel shame.
Some 40% of single mother families are poor, although two thirds work outside
the home at some point during the year. Those who can handle full-time,
yearlong jobs do better, of course, but given the paucity of support from
government it’s impossible for many millions of women to hold such jobs and
raise a family without help.
As Katie Wright
wrote for the Center for American Progress: “Job quality is critical for single
mothers, who are especially likely to work in low-wage jobs. In fact, more than
80% of low-wage workers don’t have access to a single paid sick day. Without
paid sick days single mothers are forced to choose between losing their job and
caring for a sick child. A single mother with two children, working full time
at $10 per hour, would slip below the poverty line if one of her children got
sick, and she had to miss three days of work without pay. Inflexible work
schedules and unstable child care arrangements can be significant barriers to
work for single mothers in poverty.”
Here’s a current example of where those who rule America put their
priorities. You all know about the so called budget sequester — which was
foolishly agreed to by both ruling parties — and some of you are probably
worried about how it’s going to impact you and your family. The New York Times
reported the other day that “the sequestration cuts, contain billions of dollars in
mandatory budget reductions in programs that help low-income Americans,
including… a supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children
known as WIC, which provides food and baby formula for at-risk families [and
many other benefits]…. Up to 775,000 low-income women and their children might
lose access to or be denied that aid because of the mandatory cuts.”
According to the American Friends Service
Committee: “Just a few smart cuts from the bloated Pentagon budget could easily account
for the $1.5 trillion in cuts that the sequester mandates over the next 10
years. How? Take the F-35 program, the most expensive and least effective
weapons system in history. The total lifetime cost of the F-35 program is $1.5
trillion — making it equal to the entire 10 years of cuts mandated by the
sequester.”
And lets not forget:
Aggression in Iraq will end up costing four trillion dollars.
Dozens of countries
in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development provide far
superior humane services to single mothers and their families. What is wrong
with our political system? Try excess military spending on wars of choice. Try
the enormous inequality that exists between the small minority of the rich and
the rest of us. Try a decaying political system where elections and many office
holders are bought and sold by big money interests. And despite the fact that
millions of men support female equality, try male supremacist attitudes
remaining in American society, especially among those in power.
We need government
programs to take dramatic and widespread action to sharply reduce violence
against women — from attacks by intimate partners to the endless number of
vicious rapes, mainly of younger women, but all ages are victimized. It was good that Congress finally renewed the
Violence Against Women Act — but the vote should have been unanimous. 138 House
members and 22 Senators voted “no”! But
judging by current conditions, we need a great deal more than this legislation
and law enforcement to secure our safety.
I suspect that if
upper-class men were beaten, raped and killed at the rate we women suffer this
fate there would be swift draconian solutions from Washington!
For openers, why
can’t we begin educating our young boys in the early school grades about
treating girls and women with respect, and engaging with girls and women on the
basis of equality, cooperation and nonviolence? This could be a mandated part
of elementary and secondary education. And self defense classes for all girls
at the same time.
One important goal
for women and men is a family-friendly workplace, with flex time, days off for
family emergencies, sufficient time off with pay for new mothers, adequate paid
vacations, and sick days and other benefits.”
Feminist author
Stephanie Coontz wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed Feb. 16 that a big reason
gender equity has been stalled is that “progress in adopting family-friendly
work practices and social policies has proceeded at a glacial pace.” According
to Greg Kaufman writing in The Nation three months ago — the U.S. “lags far
behind other high-income countries in supporting the combination of ‘jobholding
and caregiving’” that are necessary in single mother families and families with
two parents who work.
Coontz also pointed
out, “Women are still paid less than men at every educational level and in
every job category. They are less likely than men to hold jobs that offer
flexibility or family-friendly benefits. When they become mothers, they face
more scrutiny and prejudice on the job than fathers do….”
In this connection, the ACLU — a staunch
advocate for women’s equality — noted this month that “It has been 35 years
since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 was enacted, yet pregnant women
are still being pushed out of the workplace by their employers. It has been
fifty years since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, yet the gender pay gap
still exists.”
As we continue and
accelerate the fight to stop violence against women, to defend reproductive
justice, and demand full equality for women workers, there are other issues
that also command our attention in this conservative era. Why shouldn’t a new
women’s upsurge fight for substantial social programs, fight for poor women,
fight to end discrimination against the LGBT community, fight for peace,
environmental sanity, and union rights? These, too, are women’s issues and
their attainment would change our world.
It seems to me the
women’s movement is reviving. The last time we organized a commemoration of
International Women’s Day in this very room was 17 years ago. The campus hasn't
seen a substantial IWD event since then.
We planned tonight’s
meeting just after our successful march and rally on Women’s Equality Day in
New Paltz last Aug. 26, when it became clear that women’s rights were returning
to the immediate agenda. The Activist Newsletter organized both events at the
call of Women Organized to Resist and Defend, or WORD.
Judging by tonight’s
turnout, especially in threatening weather, it does seem a potential movement
is growing, and we must help it grow larger. Other demonstrations in response
to WORD’s initiative will be held Friday and Saturday in New York City, San
Diego, Sacramento, Syracuse, Albuquerque, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Haven, and
perhaps other places, too.
We have been
impressed by the breadth of community support for this meeting. As a union
woman I’m thrilled by the endorsements of the Hudson Valley Area Labor
Federation, Upper Hudson Central Labor Council, SEIU Local 200 United, United
University Professions, and Coalition of Labor Union Women. And by the support
of student movements and campus organizations, feminist groups, and various
peace, social justice, and political groups.
In conclusion I want
you to know we will be sponsoring more events and want you take part. Sign up
to find out more about our new WORD chapter. And remember: When women’s rights
are under attack, what do we did? Stand up, fight back!
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3. 10 YEARS SINCE BUSH
BOMBARDED BAGHDAD
By the Activist Newsletter
This March 19 marks
the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. illegal and unjust invasion and war against
the Iraqi government and its people. The Activist Newsletter has published
hundreds of articles about the war — before, during and after U.S. troops
finally withdraw at the end of 2011.
The Bush
Administration’s mission cost the United States several trillion dollars that
our grandchildren will be paying off with interest, killed up to a million
Iraqi civilians and created 4 million refugees. It was a historic defeat for
the Pentagon. The most powerful military juggernaut in history was forced into
a stalemate by some 25,000 urban guerrillas who finally were paid off to stop
fighting.
Millions of
American’s opposed the war before it started. Between October 2002 and March
2003 there were thousands of protests throughout America. The Answer Coalition
alone organized five mass demonstrations of over 100,000 people in Washington
during those six months, including one (Jan. 18, 2003) which drew 500,000. The
mass peace movement nearly collapsed after President Obama took over, although
the U.S. continued to wage war throughout his first term and now into his
second. (From October 2002 to March, 2010, the Activist Newsletter organized
over 20 antiwar protests in the Mid-Hudson region and 14 long distance bus
trips to protests in Washington and New York, all but a few organized by
ANSWER.)
The alleged
justification for the war was that the Iraq government possessed weapons of
mass destruction that were going to be used against the United States. There
was sufficient information for participants in this mass “preemptive antiwar
movement” to understand that the justification was a lie. But most of the
politicians chose to believe the lie because they agreed with its real goals,
and most Americans went along out of ignorance or jingoism. What were the Bush
Administration’s real goals?:
1. Regime change to
bring a government subordinate to Washington’s dictates in one of the most
oil-rich countries in the Middle East. 2. Compounding that victory in Iraq into
quick violent regime change in Iran and Syria — a move that would guarantee
total U.S. domination over a region that reposed upon the greatest reserves of
petroleum in the world.
We wrote and
circulated the following two articles the day after the “shock and awe
decapitation attack" bombing of Baghdad 10 years ago.
4. AS BAGHDAD BURNS
March 20, 2003: The
emotions storm as Baghdad burns on television -- damn their guns!
Damn the warmakers,
the war profiteers, the war stock exchanges, the war corporations, the war
CEOs, the war rich, the war White House,
the war Congress, the war politicians, the
war Pentagon, the war generals, the war planners, the war imperialists, the war
think-tanks, the war newspapers, the war TV networks, the war schools, the war
teachers, the war churches, and the war lovers in all their
configurations.
We must transform this
sorrow, this burning anger, into individual and organized action to oppose
George Bush's unjust war with all our strength.
Since our mighty international movement for peace could not stop the war
before it started, we must stop it after it starts. If we cannot stop the war after it starts, we
must stop the next war. This is a long process, and it goes to the very roots
of America's economic and political system.
There is sufficient
power in the people, the working people of our world, to stop this war. Let's
fight back for peace as never before. The stakes are exceptionally high. As Baghdad burns in our minds, long live the
protest, long live the defiance of unjust authority, damn their guns!
5. AN UNJUST, ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL WAR
March 20, 2003: The
bombing and invasion inflicted on Iraq and its people yesterday by the
government of the United States is unjust, illegal and immoral. The reasons for the attack put forward by
President Bush are distortions and lies. Here's why:
AN UNJUST WAR: The Bush administration's justifications for
this war are that Iraq possesses sufficient weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
to seriously endanger the United States, history's most powerful military
state; that Iraq is guilty of involvement with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on
the Pentagon and Twin Towers; that there is cooperation between the Baghdad
government and the Al Qaeda organization; and that Iraq is threatening to its
neighbors and to the United States. All
these allegations are without substantiation, and we believe they are intentionally false.
If Iraq still
possesses some weapons of mass destruction, the UN weapons inspectors would
have found them already or over the next few months, if they were allowed to
continue their work. The Baghdad
government is threatening no other country.
Iraq is extremely weak economically and militarily after the 1991 war
and 12 years of devastating economic and trade sanctions. The preemptive invasion of Iraq by the United States clearly
constitutes an act of aggression against the country's population, national
sovereignty and independence.
According to
international standards for a "just war," including those of such
religious bodies as the Roman Catholic Church, the attack launched against Iraq
is an unjust war. "Based on the facts that are
known to us," declared the U.S. Conference of (R.C.) Bishops last Nov. 15,
"we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against
Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack [by Iraq] of a
grave nature."
AN ILLEGAL WAR: A preemptive war against a country that is
neither threatening nor attacking another country is a violation of the UN
Charter. A war without specific
authorization by the UN Security Council is illegal in terms of international
law. A war, especially carried out
preemptively for economic and political gain, without even a declaration of war
from Congress is a violation of the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8,
Clause 11, which requires Congress to approve a military action outside the country's
borders. The congressional resolution
passed months ago merely provided Bush advance support for whatever he decided
to do. It was not a declaration of war
but an abdication of constitutional responsibility.
Article 2 of the
world's most important international law, the UN Charter, prohibits the
interference in the domestic jurisdiction of any state and the use of force
against a sovereign state where it has not committed aggression on other states
— and then only under a mandate form the Security Council. Article 33 states that the parties to any
dispute must seek a solution by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation
or other peaceful means of their choice.
Article 42 states that only the Security Council can authorize war
operations by air, sea, and land forces of UN members.
Washington claims
that Security Council resolution 1441 provides a legal rationale for war
because it states that Iraq will face "serious consequences" if it
refuses to disarm. This is wrong on two
counts: (a) Since when does the phrase "serious consequences"
necessarily mean invasion, murder and mayhem?
A specific UN approval for a specific war, which was not forthcoming, is
required to lend a degree of legality to Washington's aggressive behavior. (2) Iraq was disarming what little is left of
its weapons capacity, according to the UN inspectors. Clearly, President Bush's attack and
invasion of Iraq is manifestly illegal.
AN IMMORAL WAR: A
big and powerful country has just launched an unprovoked terror bombing campaign
against a small and weak country that was minding its own business. Combined
with a murderous ground assault, the invasion of Iraq will take many innocent
lives, destroy the country's civil infrastructure, and create extreme hardship
for the entire population. According to
virtually every secular and religious code of morality, President Bush's
invasion of Iraq -- with its consequent ruination and the death of
innocents -- is an immoral act.
Distortions
and lies: President Bush
maintains that the war is aimed at disarming Iraq of WMD as part of America's
"war on terrorism." This is
untrue. Stripped of its pretexts, Washington's new war is being waged to
control Iraq's abundant supply of oil,
and to exercise hegemony over the entire strategic and volatile Middle
East. If Iraq produced potatoes instead
of oil, and was situated elsewhere than between two other countries on
Washington's hit list (Iran and Syria), it would be ignored -- unless, of
course, the Bush administration was running short of potatoes and Iraq was next
to China.
The war has nothing
to do with "disarming Iraq" of its weapons of mass destruction or
waging an international war on terrorism.
If Iraq possesses significant stores of hidden weapons of mass
destruction, which has not been proven and which we strongly doubt, UN weapons
inspectors would have located them in a matter of months -- at a far, far
cheaper price than the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars the Bush
administration is investing in this war. We believe that one of the reasons for
attacking now, instead of allowing the inspections to continue for a few more
months, is to avoid the probability that extended probing would prove Iraq has
been free of WMD for years, therefore exposing the administration's deception,
and making invasion impossible to justify.
During the occupation, of course, U.S. troops will discover some WMD,
but we suspect the "evidence" will be planted.
As for the claim
that Bush's adventure in Iraq is advancing the "war on terrorism," even
the U.S. government acknowledges that the invasion will undoubtedly increase
acts of terrorism for many years. Osama Bin Laden himself could not have
planned a better way to attract new recruits. The Bush administration is not
unaware of this tradeoff with terror,
but clearly has calculated that the gain from converting Iraq into a
protectorate is far greater than the "loss" stemming from a few more
terrorist deeds. In any event, Bush has
been manipulating the public fear of terrorism to advance his ultra-right
agenda ever since Sept. 11, 2001. These
orange and red alerts serve more than one purpose.
President Bush
claims he is "liberating" Iraq.
This is absurd. The Bush administration plans to turn Iraq into a
satellite of the United States. Bush is
ravaging Iraq and its people, not freeing them.
U.S. troops will occupy Iraq for years, perhaps decades. Future governments of Iraq will be chosen by
the White House and installed and protected by the Pentagon. U.S. government officials will now determine
Iraq's domestic, foreign and military
policies. U.S. government and civilian
experts will control the country's economy.
U.S. oil corporations will be granted large oil concessions once the
country's petroleum industry is denationalized.
Many American corporations will profit enormously from contracts to
rebuild portions of Iraq and replace
equipment destroyed by the weapons produced by other American corporations.
THE COURSE OF
EMPIRE: The United States government has
finally selected the course it will pursue in the post-Cold War world, where it
now functions as the world's singular superpower, militarily capable of ruling
or destroying the world -- unilaterally or with a handful of sycophants known
as the "coalition of the willing."
By attacking an essentially defenseless Iraq against the wishes of many
of its closest allies, the great majority of nations in the UN, and a strong
and activist U.S. peace movement, Washington is now warning all and sundry that
it intends to pursue its right-wing geopolitical assumptions as it sees fit,
with no regard for the opinions or rights of other nations.
In the eyes of the
modern imperialists who guide George W. Bush through the haze of his intellect,
Iraq isn't a country with 22 million people who go to work or school, who have
children, and problems, and hopes. Iraq
to them is a pawn on a game-theory chessboard of world domination somewhere
down in the White House War Room, where notions of legality, morality, justness
and national sovereignty are as dispensable as the truth. The game-theory piece known as "Iraq" is about to
be captured for the good of the Empire.
What, we wonder, is the next move?
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6. U.S. CORPORATIONS: BIG PROFITS, LOW TAXES
By Too Much (IPS)
In America today, the New York
Times reported March 3, we’re living in “a golden age” — for corporate
profits. These earnings have been leaping at a 20% annual clip. In fact, to
find a year when corporations were grabbing as great a share of America’s
income as they’re grabbing now, you have to go back to 1950.
But corporate execs in 1950 had cause to mute their celebrating. Unlike
execs today, they paid heavy taxes on both their corporate and
individual earnings.
In 1950, by statute, major corporations faced a 42% tax rate on their profits, a rate that would
jump the next year to just over 50%. The share of profits corporations actually
paid in taxes, after exploiting loopholes, averaged about 40% throughout the
1950s.
The tax hit on top executive individual incomes would be even heftier. In
1950, General Motors chief Charley Wilson took home more pay than any other
U.S. chief executive. Wilson reported $586,100 in income that year (about $5.6
million in today’s dollars). He paid $430,350 of that income — 73% — in taxes.
Top corporate executives today operate in a totally different universe. The
corporations they run, for starters, face a much smaller tax bill. The top
corporate tax rate has dropped to 35%, and loopholes have proliferated.
In 2011, major U.S. corporations actually paid on average only
12.1% of their earnings in taxes. That same year, adds the Institute for
Policy Studies, 25 major American corporations paid their CEOs more than they
paid the federal government in corporate income taxes.
Corporate execs as individuals enjoy an even better deal these days than
the corporations they run, both before and after taxes.
General Motors ranked as America’s mightiest corporation in 1950. Yet the
executive pay that Charley Wilson took in for running GM amounts to less than half the $12.1 million
average pay, after adjusting for inflation, that went to the CEOs at America’s
500 top publicly traded corporations in 2012.
Two years ago, the CEO of contemporary America’s mightiest corporation,
Apple computers, pocketed $378 million, or over 67 times what GM, after
inflation, paid Charley Wilson in 1950.
We don’t know how much Apple CEO Tim Cook is paying in federal income taxes
today. We do know, from IRS stats, that Americans who
made over $10 million in 2010 paid on average just under 24% of their incomes
in federal income tax, less than a third what Charley Wilson paid in 1950.
How much should we read into these huge contrasts between corporate
profits, pay, and taxes back over a half-century ago and today? What difference
does any of this make for the rest of us?
A huge difference. The outrageously rich rewards that top executives can
pocket in 21st century America — and the absence of any meaningful tax bite on
these rewards — give our top executives a powerful incentive to behave
outrageously, to relentlessly pump up profits by whatever means necessary.
Our modern top execs, as one analyst notes, have more of an
incentive “to loot” their companies than invest in their futures. The more they
“loot” — by downsizing and outsourcing, by squeezing consumers, by stiffing
Uncle Sam at tax time — the fatter the quarterly bottom lines, the greater
their personal pay.
The end result of this looting: an America where corporate profits are
setting records while typical workers, as former U.S. labor secretary Robert
Reich pointed out March 5, making less today, in real dollars, than they earned
a dozen years ago.
Corporate executives in Europe have been watching this U.S. corporate greed
grab with intense personal interest. Over recent years, they've done their best
to mimic U.S. corporate standard operating procedure, sky-high executive pay
included. But Europeans are pushing back against this “Americanization.”
In Switzerland, 68% of voters in a landmark March 3 referendum opted to ban
the most lucrative categories of executive pay bonuses. This overwhelming voter
support for executive pay limits, a leading Zurich newspaper opined last week,
reflects a deep-seated public sense “that company managers have been ransacking
the coffers at the expenses of society.”
The Swiss vote, Bloomberg reports, is “raising pressure” on German
chancellor Angela Merkel “to adopt her own tougher rules on executive pay,” and
European Union ministers have already agreed to limit banker bonuses to no more
than the equivalent of one year’s salary, down from the typical five to 10
times.
In France, meanwhile, the government elected last year will be limiting
total CEO pay at firms where French taxpayers have a controlling interest to no
more than 20 times the pay of the lowest-paid worker. [The AFL-CIO reports that
chief executives at some of the nation's largest companies earned an average of
$12.9 million in total pay last year — 380 times more than a typical American
worker.
All this activity has Corporate
America starting to get a little nervous. U.S. corporate consulting firms are sending out alerts on the new
Euro developments. The “reverberations from the Swiss vote,” notes Harvard analyst
Stephen Davis, “could put fresh momentum into shareholder rebellions in the
U.S.”
But Americans eager to counter corporate greed really don’t have to look to
Europe for inspiration. They need just remember America’s not-so-distant past.
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7. SARTRE BRIGADE TO
STRIKE IN AFGHANISTAN
By the Activist Newsletter
Kabul, March 11 —
Plans to intensify the struggle against the Taliban were advanced yesterday
when the U.S. led International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of
crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale
of the remaining terrorist zealots by proving the non-existence of God.
Elements from the
feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or 'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the
combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the
enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long
occupation of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a
number of sidewalk cafes at strategic points near the front lines.
There they will
drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's
lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of
heartbreakingly beautiful women who will propagate fear, uncertainty and doubt
by looking remote and unattainable.
Their leader,
Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of
their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, an intense and unshaven young man in
a black pullover, gesticulated as he argued, "The Taliban are caught in a
logical fallacy of the most ridiculous proportions. There is no God and I can
prove it."
Marc-Ange plans to
deliver an impassioned thesis on man's inescapable lack of freedom of action,
with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred
Hitchcock — thus finally overwhelming the terrorist forces with logic,
provoking confusion and surrender.
Commented the U.S.
commander in Afghanistan: “Ange and his
boys are the best we have left. It’s in the bag. ”
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