The following is a message to be sent to the President of the United States of America. Although we may not be able to do a great deal from where we are, but for the people of America just knowing we care and feel their sadness will help. Please put your name on the following list and send it to all you know and who care. If you are the 100th name and every 100th there on could you please also forward this email back to myself on the below address, so "Our Sympathy Email" can be sent. If you do not wish to sign please send this email back to the originator. Thank you for caring Anita Fowler Purchasing/Travel Officer Financial Services Division Phone: 8946 6258 Fax: 8927 0379 Email: anita.fowler@ntu.edu.au 1. Natalie Sonenko, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 2. Anita Fowler, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 3. Dee Te Aho, Darwin, AUSTRALIA (Kia Kaha - Be Strong) 4. Kerry Davis, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 5. Jolene Couzens, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 6. Lissa Todd, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 7. Chris Todd, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 8. Simon Hill, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 9. Helen Couzens, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 10. Stephanie Sinclair, Queensland, AUSTRALIA 11. Frances McCann, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 12. Fleur O'Connor, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 13. Faith Woodford, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 14. Jenni Blackadder, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 15. Bonnie Edwards, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 16. Linda Menzies, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA 17. Michelle Lewis, Sydney, AUSTRALIA 18.Jodie Heaton, Sydney, AUSTRALIA 19. ANGELA WRIGHT, DUBLIN, IRELAND (AUSTRALIAN) 20. Kirsten Kemmery, Dublin (Australian) 21. Jenny Byrne, Dublin, IRELAND 22. Olivia Brophy, Dublin, IRELAND 23. Audrey Cuttle, Dublin, Ireland. 24.Caitriona O'Grady, Dublin,Ireland 25.Michaela Halm, Dublin, Ireland 26.Donna Weldon, Dublin, Ireland 27.Jacky Dunne, Dublin, Ireland 28. Treasa McGrath, Dublin, Ireland 29. Jennifer Delaney, Dublin, Ireland 30. Catherine Ellison, Dublin, Ireland 31. Alva Clarke, Dublin, Ireland 32. Daragh Malone, Dublin, Ireland 33. Robert mulvaney,Co.Meath,Ireland 34. Sean Lynch, Meath, Ireland 35. Julieann Boland, Meath, Ireland. 36. Pamela McGann, Meath Ireland 37. Denise McDonnell, Mayo Ireland 38. Alan Barry, Waterford, Ireland 39. Eimear O'Halloran, Cork, Ireland 40. Ann Marie Lynch, Cork, Ireland 41. Michael Ruane, Cork, Ireland 42. Rob O'Hea, Cork, Ireland 43. Steven Kelly, Cork Ireland 44. Noreen Coakley, Cork Ireland 45. Vivienne Harris, Cork Ireland 46. Ger War, Cork Ireland 47. Mairead O'Brien, Cork, Ireland 48. Robert Copperwhite, Cork, Ireland. 49. Brian Quinlivan, Dublin, Ireland. 50. Stig Kullberg, Lovisa, Finland 51. Sanne Kullberg, Lovisa, Finland 52. Nils Kullberg, Turku, Finland 53. Marika Kullberg, Turku, Finland 54. Toni Ruottu, Porvoo, Finland 55. Tomi Jylhä-Ollila, Porvoo, Finland --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
A UNANIMOUS TRIUMPH
FOR MASTERS OF WAR
By Norman Solomon
On Sept. 14, the Senate voted 98-0 for a war resolution. It says:
"The president is authorized to use all
necessary and appropriate force against those nations,
organizations, or persons he determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such
organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of
international terrorism against the United
States by such nations, organizations or persons."
This resolution, written as a blank check, is payable with vast
quantities of human corpses.
* * * * *
The black-and-white TV footage is grainy and faded, but it still
jumps off the screen -- a portentous clash
between a prominent reporter and a maverick politician. On the
CBS program "Face the Nation," journalist Peter
Lisagor argued with a senator who stood almost alone on Capitol
Hill, strongly opposing the war in Vietnam from
the outset.
"Senator, the Constitution gives to the president of the United
States the sole responsibility for the conduct
of foreign policy," Lisagor said.
"Couldn't be more wrong," Wayne Morse broke in. "You
couldn't
make a more unsound legal statement than the one
you have just made. This is the promulgation of an old fallacy
that foreign policy belongs to the president of
the United States. That's nonsense."
Lisagor: "To whom does it belong then, senator?"
Morse: "It belongs to the American people.... And I am pleading
that the American people be given the facts
about foreign policy."
Lisagor: "You know, senator, that the American people cannot
formulate and execute foreign policy."
Morse: "Why do you say that? ... I have complete faith in the
ability of the American people to follow the facts
if you'll give them. And my charge against my government is --
we're not giving the American people the facts."
In early August 1964, Morse was one of only two senators to vote
against the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which
served as a green light for the Vietnam War. While reviled by
much of the press in his home state of Oregon as
well as nationwide, he persisted with fierce oratory for peace.
It would have been much easier to acquiesce to
the media's war fever. But Morse was not the silent type,
especially in matters of conscience.
On Feb. 27, 1968, I sat in a small room at the Capitol to watch a
hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Six members of the panel were seated around a long
table. Most of all, I remember Morse's voice,
raspy and urgent.
"My views are no longer lonely," he noted at one point, adding:
"You have millions of people who are not going
to support this tyranny that American boys are being killed in
South Vietnam to maintain in power."
Morse summed up his position on negotiations between the U.S.
government and its Vietnamese adversaries: "Who
are we to say there have to be two Vietnams? They are not going
to do it and they shouldn't do it. There isn't
any reason in the world why the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong
should ever come to a negotiating table on the
basis that there must be two Vietnams."
Moments before the hearing adjourned, Morse said that he did not
"intend to put the blood of this war on my
hands."
At the time, Oregon's senior senator was remarkable because he
challenged the morality -- not just the
"winability" -- of the war. He passionately asserted that the
United States had no right to impose its will on
the world. In the process, he made enemies of many fellow
Democrats, including President Lyndon Johnson.
Like most heretics, Morse suffered consequences. After 24 years
in the Senate, he lost a race for re-election in
November 1968. The winner was a slick politician named Robert
Packwood, who denounced Morse's antiwar fervor.
In his lifetime, Morse became a media pariah. In the
quarter-century since his death, political reporters have
rarely mentioned his name.
"I don't know why we think, just because we're mighty, that
we
have the right to try to substitute might for
right," Morse said on national television in 1964. "And
that's
the American policy in Southeast Asia -- just as
unsound when we do it as when Russia does it."
Three years later, he declared: "We're going to become guilty,
in
my judgment, of being the greatest threat to
the peace of the world. It's an ugly reality, and we Americans
don't like to face up to it. I hate to think of
the chapter of American history that's going to be written in the
future in connection with our outlawry in
Southeast Asia."
Such heresy infuriated many powerful politicians -- and
journalists -- while Wayne Morse did all he could to
block a war train speeding to catastrophe.
* * * * *
Now, in the autumn of 2001, there's no one stepping forward from
the Senate to help block the war train. We'll
need to do it ourselves.
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FOLKS OUT THERE HAVE A "DISTASTE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND CULTURAL
VALUES"
Edward S. Herman
One of the most durable features of the U.S. culture is the
inability or refusal to recognize U.S. crimes. The
media have long been calling for the Japanese and Germans to
admit guilt, apologize, and pay reparations. But
the idea that this country has committed huge crimes, and that
current events such as the World Trade Center and
Pentagon attacks may be rooted in responses to those crimes, is
close to inadmissible. Editorializing on the
recent attacks ("The National Defense," Sept. 12), the New York
Times does give a bit of weight to the end of
the Cold War and consequent "resurgent of ethnic hatreds," but
that the United States and other NATO powers
contributed to that resurgence by their own actions (e.g.,
helping dismantle the Soviet Union and pressing
Russian "reform"; positively encouraging Slovenian and Croatian
exit from Yugoslavia and the breakup of that
state, and without dealing with the problem of stranded
minorities, etc.) is completely unrecognized.
The Times then goes on to blame terrorism on "religious
fanaticism...the anger among those left behind by
globalization," and the "distaste of Western civilization and
cultural values" among the global dispossessed.
The blinders and self-deception in such a statement are truly
mind-boggling. As if corporate globalization,
pushed by the U.S. government and its closest allies, with the
help of the World Trade Organization, World Bank
and IMF, had not unleashed a tremendous immiseration process on
the Third World, with budget cuts and import
devastation of artisans and small farmers. Many of these hundreds
of millions of losers are quite aware of the
role of the United States in this process. It is the U.S. public
who by and large have been kept in the dark.
Vast numbers have also suffered from U.S. policies of supporting
rightwing rule and state terrorism, in the
interest of combating "nationalistic regimes maintained in large
part by appeals to the masses" and threatening
to respond to "an increasing popular demand for immediate
improvement in the low living standards of the
masses," as fearfully expressed in a 1954 National Security
Council report, whose contents were never found to
be "news fit to print." In connection with such policies, in
the
U.S. sphere of influence a dozen National
Security States came into existence in the 1960s and 1970s, and
as Noam Chomsky and I reported back in 1979, of
35 countries using torture on an administrative basis in the late
1970s, 26 were clients of the United States.
The idea that many of those torture victims and their families,
and the families of the thousands of
"disappeared" in Latin America in the 1960s through the 1980s,
may have harbored some ill-feelings toward the
United States remains unthinkable to U.S. commentators.
During the Vietnam war the United States used its enormous
military power to try to install in South Vietnam a
minority government of U.S. choice, with its military operations
based on the knowledge that the people there
were the enemy. This country killed millions and left Vietnam
(and the rest of Indochina) devastated. A Wall
Street Journal report in 1997 estimated that perhaps 500,000
children in Vietnam suffer from serious birth
defects resulting from the U.S. use of chemical weapons there.
Here again there could be a great many people
with well-grounded hostile feelings toward the United States.
The same is true of millions in southern Africa, where the United
States supported Savimbi in Angola and carried
out a policy of "constructive engagement" with apartheid South
Africa as it carried out a huge cross-border
terroristic operation against the frontline states in the 1970s
and 1980s, with enormous casualties. U.S.
support of "our kind of guy" Suharto as he killed and stole at
home and in East Timor, and its long warm
relation with Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, also may have
generated a great deal of hostility toward
this country among the numerous victims.
Iranians may remember that the United States installed the Shah
as an amenable dictator in 1953, trained his
secret services in "methods of interrogation," and lauded him
as
he ran his regime of torture; and they surely
remember that the United States supported Saddam Hussein all
through the 1980s as he carried out his war with
them, and turned a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons
against the enemy state. Their civilian airliner 655
that was destroyed in 1988, killing 290 people, was downed by a
U.S. warship engaged in helping Saddam Hussein
fight his war with Iran. Many Iranians may know that the
commander of that ship was given a Legion of Merit
award in 1990 for his "outstanding service" (but readers of the
New York Times would not know this as the paper
has never mentioned this high level commendation).
The unbending U.S. backing for Israel as that country has carried
out a long-term policy of expropriating
Palestinian land in a major ethnic cleansing process, has
produced two intifadas-- uprisings reflecting the
desperation of an oppressed people. But these uprisings and this
fight for elementary rights have had no
constructive consequences because the United States gives the
ethnic cleanser arms, diplomatic protection, and
carte blanche as regards policy.
All of these victims may well have a distaste for "Western
civilization and cultural values," but that is
because they recognize that these include the ruthless imposition
of a neoliberal regime that serves Western
transnational corporate interests, along with a willingness to
use unlimited force to achieve Western ends. This
is genuine imperialism, sometimes using economic coercion alone,
sometimes supplementing it with violence, but
with many millions--perhaps even billions--of people "unworthy
victims." The Times editors do not recognize
this, or at least do not admit it, because they are spokespersons
for an imperialism that is riding high and
whose principals are unprepared to change its policies. This
bodes ill for the future. But it is of great
importance right now to stress the fact that imperial terrorism
inevitably produces retail terrorist responses;
that the urgent need is the curbing of the causal force, which is
the rampaging empire.
--- >8 ----
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War Against the Planet
Vijay Prashad
President George W. Bush of the United States appeared on
television sets across the world on the 11th of
September and declared war against the planet. Not only will
those who committed the dreadful crimes of the
morning be brought to justice, he declared, but so too will those
who once harbored and now continue to harbor
them.
Supply ships have started their way to Diego Garcia in the Indian
Ocean, and toward Spain. A large part of the
$40 billion designated by the US Congress will go toward the
preparations that have already begun within the US
military establishment, in close contact with its allies.
The Taliban, in Afghanistan, quickly pleaded that the suffering
of its poor should not be increased with the
wrath of the cruise missiles. So did Libya's Gaddafi.
Others, such as Pakistan, hastily declared their fealty to the US
strike back, and pledged to allow planes to
fly over its territory. India was not far behind, eager to allow
its land for what may be the largest assault
since the bombardment of Cambodia and Iraq.
One commentator on the US television networks lamented that the
US lost its virginity at 845am on 9/11 when the
first plane struck the World Trade Center.
But the war did not begin at that time. This was not Pearl
Harbor. The war has been ongoing for quite some time
now, at least for five decades.
Indeed, five decades ago the United States assumed charge of that
band of nations that stretches from Libya to
Afghanistan, most of whom are oil rich and therefore immensely
important for global capitalism. The
civilizational mandate held by France and Britain came to a close
when World War II devastated Europe, and it
fell to the US to adopt the white man's burden. It did so with
glee, indeed on behalf, for the most part, of the
Seven Sisters, the largest oil conglomerates in the world (most
of them US-based transnational corporations).
Alliances forged with right-wing forces in these regions found
fellowship from the US, just as the Left
fashioned relations with the USSR. The United States participated
in the decimation of the Left in north Africa
and west Asia, from the destruction of the Egyptian Communist
Party, the largest in the region, to the rise of
people like Saddam Hussein to take out the vibrant Iraqi
Communist Party, and of the Saudi financier Osama bin
Laden to take down the Communist Afghan regime.
We hear that 9/11 was the "worst terrorist attack in history,"
but this ignores the vast history of bombardment,
in general, tracked by Sven Lindquist in his new book (for the
New Press), and it certainly ignores the many
terrorist massacres conducted in the name of the United States,
for instance, such as at Hallabja in Iraq or
else in South America by Operation Condor. These are just a few
examples. But what is that history before 845am
on 9/11, and will it show us that "retaliation" misses out the
fact that the US has been at war for many decades
already?
I. The Afghan Concession.
In 1930, a US State Department "expert" on Afghanistan offered
an
assessment which forms the backbone of US
social attitudes and state policy towards the region:
"Afghanistan is doubtless the most fanatic hostile country
in the world today." Given this, the US saw Afghanistan simply as
a tool in foreign policy terms and as a mine
in economic terms. When the Taliban (lit. "religious students")
entered Kabul on 27 September 1996, the US state
welcomed the development with the hope that the new rulers might
bring stability to the region despite the fact
that they are notoriously illiberal in social terms. The US media
offered a muted and clichéd sense of horror at
the social decay of the Taliban, but without any sense of the US
hand in the manufacture of such theocratic
fascists for its own hegemonic ends. In thirty years, Afghanistan
has been reduced to a "concession" in which
corporations and states vie for control over commodities and
markets without concern for the dignity and destiny
of the people of the region. Oil, guns, landmines and heroin are
the coordinates for policy-makers, not the
shadowy bodies that hang from the scaffolds like paper-flags of a
nation without sovereignty.
Shortly after the Taliban took power in Kabul, the US State
Department offered the following assessment:
"Taliban leaders have announced that Afghans can return to Kabul
without fear, and that Afghanistan is the
common home of all Afghans," announced spokesperson Glyn Davies.
The US felt that the Taliban's assertion in
Kabul would allow "an opportunity for a process of reconciliation
to begin." Reconciliation was a distant dream
as the troops led by the Tajik warlord, Ahmed Shah Masood and the
troops led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum and
the Hazara-dominated Hezb-e-Wahdat party disturbed the vales of
Afghanistan with warfare. Citizens of the
advanced industrial states mouthed clichés about "timeless ethnic
warfare" and "tribal blood-feuds" without any
appreciation of the history of Afghanistan that produced these
political conflicts (in much the same way as the
media speaks of the Tutsi-Hutu turmoil without a sense of
colonial Belgium's role in the production of these
politico-ethnic conflicts).
In 1964, King Zahir Shah responded to popular pressure from his
subjects with a constitution and initiated a
process known as "New Democracy." Three main forces grew after
this phase: (1) the communists (who split into
two factions in 1967, Khalq [the masses] and Parcham [the flag]);
(2) the Islamic populists, among whom
Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-i-Islami from 1973 was the main
organization (whose youth leader was the
engineering student, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar); (3) constitutional
reformers (such as Muhammad Daoud, cousin of Zahir
Shah, whose coup of July 1973 abolished the monarchy). Daoud's
consequent repression against the theocratic
elements pushed them into exile from where they began, along with
the Pakistani Jamaat-I-Islami and the Saudi
Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami, to plot against the secular regime in
Afghanistan. In 1975, for instance, the
theocratic elements, led by Hikmatyar in Paktia, attempted an
uprising with Pakistani assistance, but the
"Panjsher Valley incident" was promptly squashed. The first
split
amongst the theocratic elements occurred in
the aftermath of this incident. Instability in Afghanistan led to
the communist coup in 1978 and the eventual
Soviet military presence in the region from 1979. The valiant
attempts to create a democratic state failed as a
result of the inability of hegemonic states to allow the nation
to come into its own.
From 1979, Afghanistan became home to violence and heroin
production. Money from the most unlikely sources
poured into the band of mujahidin forces located in Pakistan: the
US, the Saudis (notably their general
intelligence service, al-Istakhbara al-'Ama), the Kuwaitis, the
Iraqis, the Libyans and the Iranians paid the
theocratic elements over $1 billion per year during the 1980s.
The US-Saudi dominance in funding enabled them to
choose amongst the various exiled forces -- they, along with the
Pakistanis, chose seven parties in 1981 that
leaned more towards theocratic fascism than toward secular
nationalism. One of the main financiers was the Saudi
businessman, Osama bin Laden. Five years later, these seven
parties joined the Union of Mujahidin of
Afghanistan. Its monopoly over access to the US-Saudi link
emboldened it to assassinate Professor Sayd Bahauddin
Majrooh in Peshawar in 1988 when he reported that 70% of the
Afghan refugees wanted a return to the monarchism
of Zahir Shah (who waited in a Roman suburb playing chess).
Further, the Interim Islamic Government of
Afghanistan called a shura (council) in 1989; the seven parties
nominated all the representatives to the body.
All liberal and left wing elements came under systematic attack
from the shura and its armed representatives.
The US-Saudi axis anointed the theocratic fascists as the heirs
to Afghanistan.
With over $1 billion per year, the mujahidin and its Army of
Sacrifice (Lashkar-i Isar) led by Hikmatyar (who
was considered the main "factor of stability" until 1988) built
up ferocious arsenals. In 1986, they received
shoulder-fired Stinger missiles that they began to fire
indiscriminately into civilian areas of Afghanistan.
Asia Watch, in 1991, reported that Hikmatyar paid his commanders
for each rocket fired into Kabul. Claymore
mines and other US-made anti-personnel directional fragmentation
mines became a staple of the countryside.
Today, about 10 million mines still litter the vales of
Afghanistan (placed there by the Soviets and by the
US-Saudi backed mujahidin). In 1993, the US State Department
noted that landmines "may be the most toxic and
widespread pollution facing mankind." Nevertheless, the US
continues to sell mines at $3/mine (mines cost about
$300-$1000/mine to detect and dismantle). Motorola manufactures
many of the plastic components inside the mines,
which makes the device undetectable by metal-detectors.
The CIA learnt to extend its resources during the Southeast Asian
campaigns in the 1970s by sale of heroin from
the Golden Triangle. In Afghanistan, the Inter-Service
Intelligence (ISI) [Pakistan's CIA], the Pakistani
military and civilian authorities (notably Governor Fazle Huq)
and the mujahidin became active cultivators,
processors and sellers of heroin (a commodity which made its
Southern Asian appearance in large numbers only
after 1975, and whose devastation can be gleaned in Mohsin
Hamid's wonderful novel, Moth Smoke). The opium
harvest at the Pakistan-Afghan border doubled between 1982 and
1983 (575 tons), but by the end of the decade it
would grow to 800 tons. On 18 June 1986, the New York Times
reported that the mujahidin "have been involved in
narcotics activities as a matter of policy to finance their
operations." The opium warlords worked under cover
of the US-Saudi-Pakistani axis that funded their arms sales and
aided the conveyance of the drugs into the
European and North American markets where they account for 50% of
heroin sales.
Heroin is not the only commodity flogged by the mujahidin. They
are the front-line troops of an ensemble that
wants "commercial freedom" in Afghanistan so that the Afghan
people and land can be utilized for "peaceful"
exploitation. The California-based oil company Unocal (76), then
busy killing the Karens and other ethnic groups
in alliance with the Burmese junta and with the French oil
company Total, had its eyes on a pipeline from
Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, through Afghanistan. Only with
an end to hostilities, at any cost, will the
international corporations be able to benefit from the minerals
and cheap labor of the Afghans. So far, the
corporations have reaped a profit from sales of arms to the
Afghans; now they want to use the arms of the
Afghans for sweatshops and mines.
For corporations and for corporatized states (such as the US), an
unprincipled peace allows them to extract
their needs without the bother of political dissent. The Taliban
briefly offered the possibility of such a
peace. Formed in 1994 under the tutelage of the ISI and General
Naseerullah Khan (Pakistan's Interior Minister),
the Taliban comprises southern Pashtun tribes who are united by a
vision of a society under Wahhabism which
extols a form of Islam (Tariqa Muhammadiya) based on its
interpretation of the Quran without the benefit of the
centuries of elaboration of the complexities of the Islamic
tradition. In late September 1996, Radio Kabul
broadcast a statement from Mullah Agha Gulabi: "God says that
those committing adultery should be stoned to
death. Anybody who drinks and says that that is not against the
Koran, you have to kill him and hang his body
for three days until people say this is the body of the drinker
who did not obey the Koran and Allah's order."
The Taliban announced that women must be veiled and that
education would cease to be available for women.
Najmussahar Bangash, editor of Tole Pashtun, pointed out shortly
thereafter that there are 40, 000 war widows in
Kabul alone and their children will have a hard time with their
subsistence. Further, she wrote, "if girls are
not allowed to study, this will affect a whole generation." For
the US-Saudi-Unocal-Pakistan axis, geo-politics
and economics make the Taliban a worthy regime for Afghanistan.
Drugs, weapons and social brutalities will
continue, but Washington extended a warm hand towards Mullah
Mohammed Omar and the Taliban. US foreign policy is
driven by the dual modalities of containment (of rebellion
inspired by egalitarianism) and concession (of goods
which will bring profit to corporate entities). Constrained by
these parameters, the US government was able to
state, in 1996, "there's on the face of it nothing objectionable
at this stage."
Certainly, on 10 October 1996, the State Department revised its
analysis of the Taliban on the basis of
sustained pressure from Human Rights and women's groups in the
advanced industrial states as well as pressure
from the conferences held by Iran (at which numerous regional
nations, such as India participated). In conflict
with its earlier statement, the US declared "we do not see the
Taliban as the savior of Afghanistan. We never
really welcomed them." The main reason offered for this was the
Taliban's "uniquely discriminatory manner" with
women. The US state department would have done well to mention
the heroic attempt made by the communist regime
to tackle the "woman question." In late 1978, the regime of Nur
Mohammad Taraki, President of the Revolutionary
Council of Afghanistan, promulgated Decree no. 7 which aimed at a
transformation of the marriage institution by
attacking its monetary basis and which promoted equality between
men and women. Women took leadership positions
in the regime and fought social conservatives and theological
fascists on various issues. Anahita Ratebzad was a
major Marxist leader who sat on the Revolutionary Council; other
notable leaders included Sultana Umayd, Suraya,
Ruhafza Kamyar, Firouza, Dilara Mark, Professor R. S. Siddiqui,
Fawjiyah Shahsawari, Dr. Aziza, Shirin Afzal and
Alamat Tolqun. Ratebzad wrote the famous Kabul Times editorial
(28 May 1978) which declared that "Privileges
which women, by right, must have are equal education, job
security, health services, and free time to rear a
healthy generation for building the future of the
country....Educating and enlightening women is now the subject
of close government attention." The hope of 1978 is now lost and
the pessimism must not be laid at the feet of
the Taliban alone, but also of those who funded and supported the
Taliban-like theocratic fascists, states such
as the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The real reason for the US frustration with the Taliban was its
recalcitrance toward global capitalism (as an
example, the Unocal scheme fell apart). The Taliban, created by
many social forces, but funded by the Saudis
(such as bin Laden) and the CIA, was now in the saddle in the
center of Asia, and it soon became a haven for
disgruntled and alienated young men who wanted to take out their
wrath on the US rather than fight against the
contradictions of global capital. Bin Laden, the CIA asset,
became the fulcrum of many of their inchoate fears
and angers.
II. Oil, Guns and Saddam.
During the Gulf War of 1991, a decade ago, the US-Europe
discovered the Kurds for a few years. The Kurds and the
Kuwaitis provided the war aims for the Alliance, since we kept
hearing how Saddam Hussein's armies had exploited
both. Oil is not the reason, we were repeatedly told; we are only
concerned for the ordinary people of the
region oppressed by these madmen, such as Saddam Hussein, Hafez
al-Assad and the Ayatollahs. We heard little
about the recently closed Iran-Iraq war, about the various
contradictions in the region, indeed about the role
of the US-Europe for several decades in the fabrication of the
regimes that ruled here. As the cruise missiles
fell on Iraq, we did not then hear that the first major aerial
bombardment in modern times took place in
December 1923 when the Royal Air Force pummeled the rebellious
Kurds (they felt the wrath of the guns again in
March 1924, not being disciplined firmly enough by Headmaster
Britain).
In 1932 the British put in place the puppet royal dynasty, the
al-Saud family to rule the Arabian Peninsula as
Saudi Arabia. This regime was to protect the "interests" of
global capitalism, particularly after oil was
discovered there in the early 1930s. The British put King Faisal
over the newly created Iraq, a Sunni leader
over a predominantly Shi'ite land. Workers movements in the
region came under attack from these regimes, many of
which violently crushed democratic dissent in the name of the
dollar. Henry Kissinger was later to create
political theory of a policy that had been long in the works:
that the US should lock arms with any political
leader who will resist the will of socialism, who will ensure
that international capitalism's dictates be
maintained and who can therefore be a "factor of stability."
The
rogue gallery of this policy includes a host of
CIA assets, such as the Noreiga, Marcos, Pinochet, Suharto, the
Shah of Iran, the various Gulf Sheikhs, and
latterly such fundamentalist friends as the BJP in India. Even
when some of these leaders flirted with the
Soviets (Saddam and al-Assad), their usefulness to US policy
prevented a break in their links to the CIA, mainly
to contain domestic left-wing dissent. The Ayatollah may have
been a natural asset, but his regime was stamped
by a radical and patriarchially egalitarian Shi'ism that
terrified the Oil Kingdoms, whose tenuous rule was now
bolstered even further by the armies of the imperial powers and
their proxy state at this time, Iraq. When the
Iran-Iraq war broke out, people spoke of it as a sectarian war
between Shias and Sunnis, but few pointed out
that Iraq has a large Shia population and that Iraq fought
primarily with the backing of the US and its alliance
to "contain" the Iranian revolution and the rule of the
Mullahs.
Saddam, then, was friend not foe.
During these years, no one mentioned the Kurds. For decades the
communist movement grew amongst the Kurds, both
in Turkey and in northern Iraq. But by the early 1970s, the CIA
entered the battlefield to cut down the left and
bolster the right. Between 1972 and 1975 the CIA paid $16 million
to the eccentric and untrustworthy Mullah
Mustafa Barzani as a "moral guarantee" of US support for this
activities. In 1959, Barzani had expelled the
communists from his mainly Iraqi party and he had sent Iranian
Kurds to their death in the camps of the Shah.
Barzani was an asset that the US cultivated, and is now a close
ally of Saddam Hussein, another US asset. In
1975, Marxist-Leninists within the Kurdish resistance formed the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which
pushed many Kurds to the Left, including those in the Iraqi
Kurdish Front formed in 1988. Saddam Hussein was
given the green light by Washington to take out the PUK, and he
conducted chemical bombing on them in 1983 (at
Arbil) and most spectacularly in 1988 (at Halabja, where five
thousand died, and many thousand continue to
suffer). The outrage of Halabja created a momentary stir in the
Left media, but nothing was done then because
Saddam was a US ally and asset - it returned to do ideological
work during the Gulf War. As many died at Halabja
as on 9/11, but their death does not factor in when NPR announces
that 9/11 was the "worst terrorist attack in
history." When terror is conducted in our name, then it is not
terror but "retaliation."
III. Revenge or Justice?
President Bush promises to get those who did the bombings in New
York and Washington, but he also promises that
those who harbor them will feel the wrath of the US. This is the
most dangerous statement so far. Not only does
it violate all manner of international laws, it ignores the fact
that the US has harbored these criminals for
years, mainly at the expense of the global Left. Saddam and bin
Laden are products of the US, even as they, like
Frankenstein's beast, turn against their master now. The lesson
is not to continue the madness, to go after the
symptom with $40 billion of firepower. The lesson, for all
democratic minded people, is to undermine the basis
of our global insecurity.
First those people who did the horrendous deed on 9/11 must be
found, arrested and brought to trial. The path of
justice should not be short-circuited by the emotions of the
moment.
Second, our fight in the US continues, as we continue to point
out that US foreign policy engenders these acts
of barbarism by its own desire to set-up strong-arm "factors of
stability" in those zones of raw materials and
markets that must be subservient to US corporate interests. Vast
areas of anger, zones of resentment will
continue to emerge - this is not the way forward. Another
indiscriminate bombardment will bring forth more body
bags for the innocent.
History shows us that the US was not innocent on 9/11, even as
thousands of innocent people died. We should not
confuse these two things: the terrorists made no distinction
between those who conduct political and economic
terror over their lives, between a regime that they dislike,
corporate interests that they revile and innocent
people who live in the same spaces. The terror of the frustrated
works alongside the terror of the behemoth to
undermine the powerful and democratic urges of the people. Both
of those terrors must be condemned.
Vijay Prashad Associate Professor and Director, International
Studies Program 214 McCook, Trinity College,
Hartford, CT. 06106. 860-297-2518.
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Randolph Carter
2001-Sep-14 23:24 UTC
[vorbis] I understand that ranting is off topic but in the words of martin luther king
" History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period
of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but
the appalling silence of the good people. "
Martin Luther King,
Jr.
"It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is worth it."
Secretary of State Madelaine Albright talking about Iraqi children
starving and dying as a result of the US embargo of food and medicine
" The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed
by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing
about them."
George Orwell, English
writer, 1903-1950
www.thirdworldtraveler.com
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The following is a message to be sent to the President of the United States of America. Although we may not be able to do a great deal from where we are, but for the people of America just knowing we care and feel their sadness will help. Please put your name on the following list and send it to all you know and who care. If you are the 100th name and every 100th there on could you please also forward this email back to myself on the below address, so "Our Sympathy Email" can be sent. If you do not wish to sign please send this email back to the originator. Thank you for caring Anita Fowler Purchasing/Travel Officer Financial Services Division Phone: 8946 6258 Fax: 8927 0379 Email: anita.fowler@ntu.edu.au 1. Natalie Sonenko, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 2. Anita Fowler, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 3. Dee Te Aho, Darwin, AUSTRALIA (Kia Kaha - Be Strong) 4. Kerry Davis, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 5. Jolene Couzens, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 6. Lissa Todd, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 7. Chris Todd, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 8. Simon Hill, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 9. Helen Couzens, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 10. Stephanie Sinclair, Queensland, AUSTRALIA 11. Frances McCann, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 12. Fleur O'Connor, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 13. Faith Woodford, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 14. Jenni Blackadder, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 15. Bonnie Edwards, Darwin, AUSTRALIA 16. Linda Menzies, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA 17. Michelle Lewis, Sydney, AUSTRALIA 18.Jodie Heaton, Sydney, AUSTRALIA 19. ANGELA WRIGHT, DUBLIN, IRELAND (AUSTRALIAN) 20. Kirsten Kemmery, Dublin (Australian) 21. Jenny Byrne, Dublin, IRELAND 22. Olivia Brophy, Dublin, IRELAND 23. Audrey Cuttle, Dublin, Ireland. 24.Caitriona O'Grady, Dublin,Ireland 25.Michaela Halm, Dublin, Ireland 26.Donna Weldon, Dublin, Ireland 27.Jacky Dunne, Dublin, Ireland 28. Treasa McGrath, Dublin, Ireland 29. Jennifer Delaney, Dublin, Ireland 30. Catherine Ellison, Dublin, Ireland 31. Alva Clarke, Dublin, Ireland 32. Daragh Malone, Dublin, Ireland 33. Robert mulvaney,Co.Meath,Ireland 34. Sean Lynch, Meath, Ireland 35. Julieann Boland, Meath, Ireland. 36. Pamela McGann, Meath Ireland 37. Denise McDonnell, Mayo Ireland 38. Alan Barry, Waterford, Ireland 39. Eimear O'Halloran, Cork, Ireland 40. Ann Marie Lynch, Cork, Ireland 41. Michael Ruane, Cork, Ireland 42. Rob O'Hea, Cork, Ireland 43. Steven Kelly, Cork Ireland 44. Noreen Coakley, Cork Ireland 45. Vivienne Harris, Cork Ireland 46. Ger War, Cork Ireland 47. Mairead O'Brien, Cork, Ireland 48. Robert Copperwhite, Cork, Ireland. 49. Brian Quinlivan, Dublin, Ireland. 50. Stig Kullberg, Lovisa, Finland 51. Sanne Kullberg, Lovisa, Finland 52. Nils Kullberg, Turku, Finland 53. Marika Kullberg, Turku, Finland 54. Toni Ruottu, Porvoo, Finland 55. Tomi Jylhä-Ollila, Porvoo, Finland 56. Andy D. Smith, Mount Healthy, Ohio, USA --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.