Revolutionary Worker #1128, November 25, 2001, posted at http://rwor.org
It’s November 2001 and every day is hard to live. The U.S. rains bombs from death machines down on some of the poorest people on the planet. You see the pictures of little babies killed by bombs laying in rows. You read the stories of people leaving their village in southern Afghanistan getting blown apart by bombs as they flee on a tractor. Of a woman pulled out of the rubble to find all her children have been killed. Of no food, no hospitals and no hope.
This madness connects to a history of madness—inflicted by the U.S. and the other rich nations on the poor. Bloody villagers in My Lai, Vietnam, lying in ditches. Mexican coffee farmers dying of thirst in the Arizona deserts because they had to leave their land to come to the U.S.—because they couldn’t feed their families with the drop in the price of coffee beans. Guatemalan peasants slain in the village of Rio Negro. Killed by the military. Led by an officer trained by the U.S. at the School of the Americas. Shot down because they wouldn’t leave so the World Bank could build a dam and flood their village. Tens of thousands dead in earthquakes in India where there is no rescue equipment, safe lodging, and little health care because the government is cutting services to generate every dollar of cash income to pay back loans to the IMF/World Bank.
And now, with Sept. 11, you’re supposed to shut up about it all. Stay in your home, watch TV and do what you’re told. Turn your sorrow at what happened in New York into anger at people who had nothing to do with the attack. Censor yourself. Live in fear. Put up a flag. Don’t protest while they tell you we’re fighting to “defend freedom.” Freedom. As they round up immigrants and hold them without contact for visa violations. As they spy on you, surveil you, rip away your civil rights, threaten you as a terrorist because you dare to oppose the system’s crimes.
You’re supposed to bow before the madness of a government that generates, arms and politically supports Islamic fundamentalists for 20 years, then “discovers” that they oppress women when they need to get rid of their creations—the Taliban and Mujahideen and Osama bin Laden, who the Afghani people call the “kids” of the U.S. government and CIA.
But you won’t do it. No matter how hard they try, they can’t stop us now.
*****
The Revolutionary Worker salutes the courageous people who dare to carry forward the struggle against capitalist globalization in Ottawa. From across North America and beyond, the people have mobilized to once again confront the IMF/ World Bank and their government sponsors—this time, the G20.
This is a most important demonstration at a most important time.
The U.S. and its British allies promise us a future of unending war against anyone they tell us is the enemy. They needn’t provide evidence or even logical argument. And if the people of the world don’t blindly submit—they are the enemy.
We know what this war isn’t about. It’s not about justice for people in New York and DC. How is adding more deaths of innocents in Afghanistan or Iraq, to the innocents’ deaths at the World Trade Center going to bring them justice or dignity?
What it is about: defending and expanding U.S. power; dominating the whole Middle East region and the world; gaining control of Central Asian oil. It’s about making profit and controlling the lifelines of the world economy—as sick as it is— run by oil.
This war is brought to us by the same sponsor that is behind everything we have been fighting from Seattle to Prague to Genoa and Quebec. The same system of U.S. imperialism, backed up by other imperialist countries.
Who is it that is pushing NAFTA and FTAA on the people of Mexico and South America? Who benefits from eliminating labor, safety, environmental and investment laws so their corporations can make huge profits and take over new sections of the economies of the poor nations? Whose multinationals devastate the land and life of the indigenous Ogoni people in Nigeria and the U’wa in Colombia? Who runs the IMF and the World Bank and for that matter the WTO? It is the same economic and political system of imperialism—dominated by the large capitalist countries, with the U.S. rulers at its head, its main beneficiary. And none of this is in the interests of the world’s people or the people in the U.S. itself.
The U.S. superpower runs a system of global exploitation. And they defend that system by any means. That includes devastating war—like the war in Afghanistan. These wars are unleashed by their military to pursue their imperialist interests—to build empires, to seize territory, to gain access to oil and other resources, to put down and smash movements of the people, to defeat rivals and threats from other imperialists or lesser powers.
Growing numbers of people around the world are aware there is no future as long as this system runs the planet. And many people are waking up, some for the first time—that there is something fundamentally wrong with the whole way things are organized, with a world where the U.S. with 5% of the world’s people can use 35% of the world’s resources. Where 2 billion people live on $2 a day while certain millionaires have as much money as the combined GNPs of whole countries. Where billions and billions are spent on laser-guided bombs, advanced fighters and bombers, cruise missiles and other weaponry, then unleashed on people who have nothing — not even enough food to eat. Then, if they survive, they are supposed to crawl over the bodies of their loved ones, evade land mines and reactionary militias to pick up yellow packages of food with the American flag embossed on them?
This movement against capitalist globalization and for a different kind of globalized world—where things are run in the interests of the world’s people by the world’s people—has been an important part of people waking up to these facts. And to mobilizing people to fight for that different future. This movement has accomplished a great deal, confronting these global oppressors wherever they show up. No matter what guise they organize their plunder through—IMF, World Bank, G8, G20, World Economic Forum, WTO, Summit of the Americas. It’s all the capitalist countries, the capitalist ruling classes getting together to plan their feast.
And everywhere they have gone since Seattle in ’99, they’ve been indicted and battled in the streets. We have been winning the hearts of the people all over the world. It is uplifting to people around the globe, that in the face of threats, jailing, even murder—and now increasing fascist style repression—despite all this the people in this movement are going forward. They can’t stop us if we keep the people in our heart and our dreams alive. We can unite more people to take up those dreams by our actions. We stand with the resisters in this fight.
Toward a Liberated Global World! Fight for the World, Fight for the People, Fight for a Brighter Future!
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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