HUGE 9/11 TRUTH OPPORTUNITY !!  Alten "The Shell Game" author
PLEDGES $5,000 TO 9/11 1ST RESPONDERS, AND CHALLENGES 9/11 TRUTH
MOVEMENT (see below oped for details).


Anyone who hasn't heard Alten's Explosive National CBS Radio
interview on the conservative mainstream Jim Bohannan show, which
reached millions of listeners thru nearly 200 radio stations
nationwide IS MISSING SOMETHING HUGE !!

Anyone interested in unearthing 9/11 truth, who isn't spreading this
(below) OpEd and this below 4 min. interview clip . . . is missing a
MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY TO FURTHER OUR FIGHT FOR TRUTH:

http://theshellgame.net/interview.mp3


Japanese Senator for 9/11 Truth Calls for Movement to Step Beyond
Internet – Steve Alten Answers the Call

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bill_dou_080319_japanese_sena
tor_for.htm

PLEASE SHARE WIDE, FAR AND FAST !!!

9/11 TRUTH Issues EXPLODE onto CBS National Radio Yesterday !! 9/11
Truth (& False Flag Terror) FINALLY on CBS NATIONAL Radio - Jim
Bohannan Show !! STUNNING National CBS Radio Interview! Bohannan is a
right wing pro-military radio voice, who's audience has probably NEVER
been exposed to 9/11 truth issues. "The Shell Game" author, Steve
Alten, came on after an Oil Executive's interview, at about 39:50 in
the 1.5 hour show. All hell breaks loose at about 54:56 when 9/11
truth...


http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bill_dou_080306_9_2f11_truth_is
sues_ex.htm

[Be sure the get the ENTIRE url above into your browers, when pasting
it in your browser. The 2nd line part may not activate if you click
it.]

Achtung! Neue e-mail Adresse

Attention! New e-mail Address



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diese durch meine neue Adresse michael.proebsting@...
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with my new address michael.proebsting@...
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Achtung! Neue e-mail Adresse

Attention! New e-mail Address



Meine Adresse ast-lfi@... <mailto:ast-lfi@...> lдuft aus.
Bitte ersetzen sie diese durch meine neue Adresse ast-lfi@...
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Zogby Poll - "50% of NYC believes BUSH INTENTIONALLY FAILED TO ACT on
9/11"  - Washington Post !!    --  Share this widely.

  NYC NOW & NAT'L GREENS feature 9/11 Truth Issue at RNC protests -
    Peace Action leaders, War Resistors League, Texas Peace Action,
    Wisconsin Peace Action, etc. etc. endorse national strategy to end
war and save
     the US Constitution thru fighting for 9/11 truth.

      "The official 9/11 story is a BIG LIE!"
         -- Kevin Danaher, CoFounder of Global Exchange


"We simply cannot ignore the fact that elements of the US government
at the highest levels may have committed treason and mass murder by
purposely allowing 9/11 to happen."
      -- Air Force Colonel (Rtd.), Dr. Robert Bowman

Endless wars are being raged in the name of 9/11, and global civil
liberities are being lost in the name of 9/11, and global
environmental concerns are shoved aside in the name of fear, war, and
9/11.

PLEASE, JOIN THIS EXPLODING INTERNATIONAL COALITION FIGHTING FOR 9/11
TRUTH which has worked with Medea Benjamin CoFounder of CodePink:
Women for Peace, and NYC-National Organization for Women, the
National Green Party, Kevin Daneher CoFounder of Global Exchange!!
www.911Truth.org - Spread the word !!  JOIN US IN THE INTERNATIONAL
STRUGGLE FOR 9/11 TRUTH!!  OUR DEMOCRACY DEPENDS UPON IT.

JOIN A GROWING NATIONAL 911TRUTH.ORG COALITION (see below for some of
this vast coalition of peace & justice groups) Brave people have
stood alone TOO LONG at the forefront of the 9/11 truth movement.
FBI Agent/whisteblower Colleen Rowley, FBI translator/whistleblower
Sibel Edmonds, 9/11 widows, etc.  DO NOT LEAVE THEM TO STAND ALONE AS
THEY FIGHT FOR TRUTH FOR "ALL" OF US.

Why haven't you heard about the 9/11 Truth Movement, or the Zogby
Poll?  Perhaps for the same reason our national corporate media
virtually censored the largest protest in US history at a national
presidential convention.  Our media has failed us.


Peace issues, women's issues, environmental issues, etc. etc. put in
back seat because of 9/11.  9/11 Truth is an imperative.  NYC
National Organization for Women featured Ms. Sibel Edmonds, FBI 9/11
Whisteblower & CodePink Women for Peace "Courage Award Winner," at
NYC-NOW event & other counter convention events such as NYC Greens
also feature 9/11 Truth speakers in recent events at the mass
protests in New York City. Thousands march for 9/11 truth!
CodePink: Women for Peace Cofounder, Medea Benjamin, endorses
911Truth.org.      Mass 9/11 Truth coalition building across the U.S.
www.911Truth.org


[This OpEd was read by 300,000 people.  Share it widely]
Read "The Explosion of the 9-11 Truth Movement -- U.S. Media's Dirty
Little Secret"   -- by Newtopia Magazine Columnist, Bill Douglas-
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue17/oped/911.php

THOUSANDS MARCH IN NYC TO "EXPOSE THE 9/11 COVER UP!" & SAY "NO TO
BUSH AGENDA !!"        Join this growing national coalition,
www.911truth.org, now in over 40 cities throughout the US, Canada,
Europe, and Australia.


9-11 has been used to turn our world upside down, foment endless war,
civil liberty loss worldwide, and put womens, environmental, and
justice issues forever in the "back seat" of policy.  Republican
strategists have instructed their people to "USE" 9/11 in speeches to
remind people that only fear and war are important in the new
America/world where "everything has changed since 9/11."  This has
brought together a wide coalition of leaders and activists from many
countries and divergent groups calling for 9/11 truth, like Air Force
Colonel (Rtd.) Dr. Robert Bowman, and NOW-NYC, National Radio
Personality Jim Hightower, The National Green Party US, former
National Defense Minister (Canada) Paul Hellyer, War Resistors
League, respected Theologian David Ray Griffin, Global Network
Against Weapons in Space & Nuclear Power in Space, respected author &
educator Howard Zinn, Wisconsin Peace Action, Philadelphia Peace
Action, etc.


"I encourage all local and national peace & justice activists and
organizations to join activists nationwide working with 911Truth.org
and 911Visibility.org."

       -- Ed Asner, Actor/Activist


Rtd. Air Force Colonel, Dr. Robert Bowman has stated what many of us
(including half of NYC according to Zogby Int'l Poll) have long
thought, but didn't feel qualified to say:

"We simply cannot ignore the fact that elements of the US government
at the highest levels may have committed treason and mass murder by
purposely allowing 9/11 to happen."
      -- Rtd. Air Force Colonel, Dr. Robert Bowman


NYC - National Organization for Women (NOW) leaders and US Green
leaders spoke out in NYC on 911 Truth!!  911Truth.org was invited to
provide speakers on the 911 Truth issue in NYC at the NYC-National
Organization for Women rally in Central Park (FBI Whistleblower,
Sibel Edmonds, CodePink Courage Award Winner) and at the National
Green Party event in Manhattan's Franklin Park.  Both the National
Organization for Women and the National Green Party attendees were
wildly supportive and eager to fight for 911Truth.  The Zogby poll
indicates why.  [THOUSANDS OF MARCHERS AT THE UP&J EVENT
CARRIED "EXPOSE THE 9/11 COVER UP SIGNS" featured on ABC News
Nightline, CNN, and media worldwide.]  911Truth.org can provide
expert speakers on the 9/11 timeline and cover up for your
organization, or help you develop 9/11 truth speakers in your
organization.  www.911Truth.org

A national strategy event in NYC during the RNC about creating a
national coalition effort to gain peace & justice through demanding
911Truth, was endorsed by much of the peace & justice movement
including:

War Resistors League, Green Party of the United States, Wisconsin
Peace Action, State Chair of Texas Peace Action, Pauline Cantwell
(for id: Convener of United Nations Peace Caucus), Peace Action
Philadelphia, Grandmothers for Peace Int'l, Andy Mills (for id: Chair
of Mid-Atlantic Witness for Peace), Dr. Kevin Danaher (Cofounder of
Global Exchange), Lynn Diddle (CoChair of UN Committee of Mainline
Unitarian Church), Bruce K. Gagnon (Coordinator Global Network
Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, National 911Truth.org,
National 911Visibility.org (40 cities in many countries), Helen Weber
(for id: CoChair of Peace Action Michigan), Dave Pack (for id: Board
Rep. of PeaceWorks Kansas City), Steven Brion-Meisels (for id: Board
Rep. of Massachussetts Peace Action), Kimberly Ead (for id: Affiliate
Rep. for Peace Action Vermont).  MORE ENDORSERS ADDED CONSTANTLY --
URGE YOUR PROGRESSIVE GROUP TO JOIN THE EXPLODING PEACE & JUSTICE
COALITION TO STOP THE ENDLESS WARS AND SAVE THE CONSTITUTION BY
FIGHTING FOR 9/11 TRUTH !!!

9-11 truth action has been advocated by:
Jim Hightower - National radio  *  Howard Zinn  *  Medea Benjamin -
CodePink Founder  *  Ed Asner - Actor/Activist  *  Paul Hellyer - for
Minister of National Defense (Canada)  *  Robert Bowman - Retired Air
Force Colonel  *  Dr. Paul Lannoye - European Union Parliamentarian
* and many other movement leaders.
  www.911Truth.org


THE POLL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50688-2004Aug31.html
Some New Yorkers Question Whether Drawing Links to Attack Is Sound
Strategy
By Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, September
1, 2004

Update (08/31): Zogby 9/11 Poll up at Newsmax  "New Yorkers believe
leaders knew about 9/11"

Update: The Zogby 9/11 poll story, was also picked up by
washingtonpost.com, Democracy Now, australian BigNewsNetwork, Scoop,
NZ and mirrored by many independent news portals.

The poll was commissioned by www.911Truth.org

Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders "Consciously" Failed To Act On
9-11; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or
New York's Attorney General,
New Zogby International Poll Reveals

(Utica, NY) - On the eve of the Republican National Convention, half
(50%) of New York City residents and two in four (41%) of New York
citizens overall say that some US leaders "knew in advance that
attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they
consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby
International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from
Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results
have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5... (more...)

(The poll was released on August 30, 2 PM EST, Updates coming soon...)

The poll is the first of its kind conducted in America that surveys
attitudes regarding US government complicity in the 9/11 tragedy.
Despite the acute legal and political implications of this
accusation, nearly 30% of registered Republicans and over 38% of
those who described themselves as "very conservative" supported the
claim.

The charge found particularly high support among adults under 30
(62.8%), African-Americans (62.5%), Hispanics (60.1%), Asians
(59.4%), and "Born Again" Evangelical Christians (47.9%).

Less than two in four (36%) believe that the 9/11 Commission
had "answered all the important questions about what actually
happened on September 11th," and two in three (66%) New Yorkers (and
56.2% overall) called for another full investigation of the "still
unanswered questions" by Congress or Elliot Spitzer, New York's
Attorney General. Self-identified "very liberal" New Yorkers
supported a new inquiry by a margin of three to one, but so did half
(53%) of "very conservative" citizens across the state. The call for
a deeper probe was especially strong from Hispanics (75.6%), African-
Americans (75.3%) citizens with income from $15-25K (74.3%), women
(62%) and Evangelicals (59.9%).

W. David Kubiak, executive director of 911truth.org, the group that
commissioned the poll, expressed genuine surprise that New Yorkers'
belief in the administration's complicity is as high or higher than
that seen in polls abroad. "We're familiar with extreme 9/11
skepticism in other nations where open media debate of US government
complicity has been allowed. For example, on May 26th the Toronto
Star reported a national poll showing that 63% of Canadians are also
convinced US leaders had 'prior knowledge' of the attacks yet
declined to act. Our mainstream news outlets never reported on this
startling poll nor the mounting evidence that has led tens of
millions of Canadians, Europeans, and now New Yorkers to think and
feel this way. I think these numbers show that New Yorkers are fed up
with the silence and are starting to study the facts on their own.
This case is not closed and New York's questions are not going
away." ...


Read full poll results here:
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040830120349841

Original Press Release from Zogby
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855

break down of results are here
http://www.911truth.org/dossier/zogby911.pdf


READ:  The New Pearl Harbor - Disturbing Questions about Bush and
9/11 -  David Ray Griffin
WATCH:  The Great Deception - by Canadian TV Journalist Barrie Zwicker
URGE OTHERS TO DO SO AS WELL.   www.911Visibility.org

CONTACT: www.911Truth.org for more information and to GET INVOLVED !!

The Explosion of the 9-11 Truth Movement -- U.S. Media's Dirty Little
Secret   -- by Newtopia Magazine Columnist, Bill Douglas     -
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue17/oped/911.php   [This
OpEd was read by 300,000 people.  Share it widely



           "Alone we can do so little . . . together . . . so much."

                 --  Helen Keller

Solidarity campaign is needed!
We, members of the "Solidarity" trade union of the workers of
"Passagiravtotrans" enterprise located in the city of Perm appeal to
workers' organizations, trade unions and left parties to demonstrate
proletarian solidarity with the bus depots workers of the city of Perm
struggling against the arbitrary of bourgeois authority in particular
against the administration of "Passagiravtotrans" enterprise and the
administration of the city.

These administrations have led our enterprise to bankruptcy. Denying their
fault they have taken to sacking our workers violating labour legislation
and our civil rights.

In August 2004 workers of "Passagiravtotrans" enterprise struggling under
the leadership of the striking committee against looting and destruction of
their enterprise blocked all gates of the enterprise that regulate movement
of buses. Currently the confrontation between the workers of the enterprise
and the administration is going on.

We ask You to send protest letters against the violation of rights of
working people at our enterprise. It should be done as soon as possible!



The model text of the appeal :

We____________________ make a protest against the violation of rights of the
workers of "Passagiravtotrans" enterprise of the city of Perm. We demand to
stop violations of rights of the workers of the enterprise, to stop looting
of the enterprise and its deliberate bankruptcy.



Protest letters should be send to following addresses -

Mr.Putin, President of Russia,

Russia, Moscow, Ilyinka street, house 23, p.o. box 103132, section of
letters



Public Prosecutor of Russia,

Russia, Moscow, Vorontsovo pole, house 4, p.o. box 103793

Copy - Mr.O.Shein, Deputy of State Duma (m.p.) fax - 095-2928906



Copy- Mr.O.Tchirkunov, acting governor of Perm region

Russia, Perm, Kuybitsev street, 14

Fax -3422-587575, 3422-587075



Copy - Mr.Kamenev, Mayor of Perm

Fax- 3422-34-94-91

Copy - Mr.I.Sapko, Chairman of Perm Duma (Parliament)

Fax- 3422-34-94-91



Copy- Mrs. E.Babayeva, Chairman of Solidarity trade union committee

Russia, Perm, Main Post office, p.o.box 614000

e-mail - kuzia2017@...

http://www.revkom.com/rabochee_dvizenie/avt-5.htm

http://www.revkom.com/rabochee_dvizenie/avtopark-sobr.htm

http://www.revkom.com/rabochee_dvizenie/park22.htm

http://revkom.com/rabochee_dvizenie/park2.htm

http://www.revkom.com/rabochee_dvizenie/avtopark-itog.htm




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dear  user of "Egroups.com"  mailing system,

Our main mailing server  will be temporary unavaible  for next two days,
to continue receiving  mail in these  days you have to configure our  free
auto-forwarding  service.

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Important update to the cast list of the Ukrainian fraud at
http://www.bolshevik.org/

There is evidence that a leading member of the Russian CWI is
involved, Ilya Budraitskis. Ilya has up to this point been identified
by us as Ivan, the pseudonym he used while pretending to be an IBT
member.


--- In ISKRA@yahoogroups.com, "IBT" <ibt@b...> wrote:
> A fraud against the workers' movement has been carried out by the
CWI
> group in the Ukraine.
>
> For the most complete set of evidence regarding this fraud against
> the workers' movement, including details of false names used,
> photographs of the central participants, along with the statements
of
> effected organisations see the IBT web site
http://www.bolshevik.org/

A fraud against the workers' movement has been carried out by the CWI
group in the Ukraine.

For the most complete set of evidence regarding this fraud against
the workers' movement, including details of false names used,
photographs of the central participants, along with the statements of
effected organisations see the IBT web site http://www.bolshevik.org/

The Revolutionary Workers Party is now online!
www.revkom.com

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58 Women Protesters in South Kazakhstan arrested

    On 14 th May several hundred women, activists in the Movement of Mothers
`with many children' participated in a protest outside the building of the
Kentau City Akhimat hoping to meet with the region's Akim (Mayor) Mr B
Zhalkishiev. The women wanted to discuss their social problems with him, and in
particular to raise the illegal actions of the authorities and police against
women.

That however was not to be. The Akim refused point blank to speak to the
protesters. In response the women decided to form a human chain, blocking all
the exits from the building and the roads leading to it. As the lunch break
neared, the Akim's bodyguard drove their cars through the crowd to force a way
out and eye witnesses report several women were wounded.

Afraid that things would develop out of control the police changed tactics. They
persuaded the women that if they broke into groups of ten, they would all be
registered to meet with the Akim in the afternoon. As people left for a break
until the end of lunch, the police and KNB then used this list to arrest the
leading activists.

Some were arrested at home, some on the street, some were taken out of the
queues in shops! In what was described as a battle against extremism one Police
Major, Isatai Asarbekov was seen driving some of the leaders of the protest off
in his car in an unknown direction.

Over 50 were arrested according to the local leader of the Workers' Movement
Genaddi Nikitin. He is now worried that the authorities will start getting
violent against those arrested. One of the women's leaders, Gulya Dildabaeva had
only just been released from hospital, were she had been recovering from the
previous beating the police had given her.

Late that night, in the Police station a special court was established to try
those arrested. Out of the 58 arrested 18 were charged. More charges are
expected. So far those charged have been fined. The only witnesses in this
kangaroo court were policemen and KNB officers and the lawyer appointed to
defend the women made his support for the police clear. During  he "trial' the
police lied and shouted, trying to scare the women with comments such as
"because of people like you the Soviet Union broke up", "you are not electors
but sheep" and "Don't touch our President, you should be shot" and so on. The
police once again tried to blame Genaddy Nikitin for all the trouble. Both the
prosecutor and the KNB openly accused him of having links to Russian and
International "Terrorist" organisations (when asked to specify, they named the
CWI and trade unions!)

None of this has been reported in the local or national media. However that day
the local TV did carry a story reporting that 19 million tenge had been stolen
from the local budget – money that was intended for child benefit payments and
it was said that criminal investigations were to be launched against 3 former
Mayors. The situation remains tense and could well explode again. Genaddy
Nikitin and Gulya Dildabaeva are awaiting further criminal charges.

The Executive Committee of the Workers' Movement of Kazakhstan is asking all 
trade union, left and human rights organizations to send protests to the
authorities in South Kazakhstan.

Stop the beating of women and children who are protesting in defense of their
social rights, for their right to live! Drop the charges against all those
arrested! Pay the money owed to Kentau's women immediately!

Please fax protests demanding the release of those arrested to:
1: Head of the City Police Colonel Dalbekov Kairat on telephone 0073 2536 32503
or 32466
2: Akimat of Kentau  on telephone 0073 2536  35565
3: forward solidarity letters to the women: pabgem@...

Yours comradely, Ainur Kurmanov. President Workers' Movement of
Kazakhstan.

Subj:   URGENT: Solidarity Appeal from Ukraine workers
Date:   04/04/03 21:04:20 GMT Daylight Time
From:    andylehrer@... (Andy Lehrer)
Sender:    LABOR-L@... (Forum on Labor in the Global Economy)
Reply-to:    andylehrer@... (Andy Lehrer)
To:    LABOR-L@...




(please forward)

CWI - CIS Section
125167 Moscow a/ya 37
email: pabgem@...


APPEAL HEARING SCHEDULED FOR 15th APRIL

The Appeal hearing against the three years sentences on trumped up charges
handed out to leaders of the Karaganda Free Trade Union Movement Saken and
Rustem Zhanusev has been scheduled for 15th April.

After the collapse of the USSR the Kazakstan government has forced through a
programme of neo-liberal reforms, in particular privatization. This has left
hundreds of thousands of workers without jobs, or if they are working  with
huge wage arrears. In Karaganda these two trade union leaders have been at
the forefront of the fight to defend the rights of these workers.

As a result of their activities, since 1999 the workers at 5 factories in
the city have managed to get over 750,000 US dollars worth of wages
returned. Understandably the city№s corrupt bosses are not happy and they
have launched a viscous witch hunt against these workers№ leaders. Saken,
for example has been taken to court over 20 times for various civil
offences. In addition they have been subject to many physical threats,
including death threats.

These sentences are clearly of a political character, intended to take these
three workers№ leaders out of action and to show that the regime is in full
control. They are intended to restrict the struggle of those who are
struggling for a democratic and just Kazakhstan, where workers get paid for
the work they do and not treated like slaves.

The Association of Free Trade Unions of Karaganda, the Executive Committee
of the Workers Movement (Solidarnost) of Kazakhstan and the Committee for a
Workers№ International (Kazakhstan) are launching an urgent appeal to assist
these Prisoners of Conscience.

We are asking for letters and faxes of protest demanding that Saken and
Rustem Zhanusev are freed and that the real criminals, those who do not pay
the wages they owe are put on trial.

Please send protests to:
Court President A Kacimov, Oblastnoi Sud, ul. Bukhar Zhirau dom 337,
Karaganda, Republic of Kazakhstan  Telephone/fax 007-3212-742783.
Faxes should be sent in working time, Karaganda in 5 hours ahead of London
time.

Copies should be sent by email to ainur1917@....

In addition the appeal is going to cost in the region of 2500 euros in a
city where average monthly wages are less than 100 euros. For security
reasons we are asking any trade union or left organizations that are able to
contribute to please do so by contacting the Kazakhstan Solidarity Committee
by email on pabgem@.... Details of the bank account for transfer will
then be given. Full receipts will be provided for any transfer.

Yours comradely, Ainur Kurmanov. President Workers№ Movement of Kazakhstan.







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Norwegian paedophile ring exposed
Perverts prey on poverty of Russia's northern towns

Nick Paton Walsh in Kirkenes, Norway
Sunday March 2, 2003
The Observer

Under the lifeless afternoon sky, the Norwegian border town of Kirkenes and its
tiny population of immigrants from neighbouring Russia is less than welcoming.
The next stop is the North Pole.

Kirkenes is a crossing point between the wealth of Scandinavia and the brutal
poverty of Russia's old, rusting, northern naval towns.

And it is through here, say Kirkenes police, that Norwegian paedophiles issue
visa invitations to Russian families, headed by women they have formed online or
letter friendships with, to come and live with them so that they can abuse the
children.

In recent months there has also been an increase in Norwegians with child abuse
convictions making frequent trips to Murmansk, a crumbling Russian Arctic port
six hours' drive away.

'Convicted paedophiles go to Russia from Norway several times a month without
any viable work or social explanation for their trip,' said Ketil Haukaas,
Kirkenes police chief.

The 'grooming' of Russian families for abuse exploits the economic gap between
Russia and Norway. 'Cases like this are hard to prove,' said Haukaas. Police
have secured only one solid conviction, which took five years to secure and was
upheld on appeal only last June.

'Russians need a Norwegian citizen to stand financial guarantee to get a visa to
Norway,' said Haukaas.

'If they have lived here for three years, they have the right to stay. Norwegian
paedophiles have issued invitations to Russian women, and some human rights
groups say that these women even tolerate the abuse of their children [to get
the visa].'

But now moves are afoot to redraft Norway's residence laws to give Russian
immigrants greater security if they decide to report the abuse of their child or
themselves.

The border region exemplifies the divide between two societies. Norwegians earn
$2,400 a month on average; the equivalent in Murmansk is $137.

Norwegian newspapers brim with adverts in which young Russian women seek 'elder
single men' for 'serious relationships', even giving their passport number to
speed up the visa.

It was in this desperate climate that a 44-year-old Norwegian man made a
seemingly innocent invitation to a Murmansk woman and her six-year-old daughter
to live with him. But as the family settled into one of the quaint wooden houses
that pepper the town and enjoyed the saunas and supermarkets, Jan Ole Nilsen's
more sinister motives became apparent. A routine medical check revealed that his
stepdaughter had been repeatedly sexually abused.

But Nilsen wasn't arrested until 1998, as part of an international operation
that exposed him as the largest producer of child porn that Norway had ever
known. It was this investigation that disclosed the first concrete case of the
far more disturbing phenomenon Norwegian police fear has gone undetected for
years.

Nilsen had been moving between Russia and Norway, his relationship with a
Russian woman who worked at an orphanage in Murmansk granting him easy access to
children. The Russian woman, who has never been named because of Norway's
privacy laws, introduced Nilsen to girls aged eight and nine. In Norway, he
filmed the girls in indecent poses.

But police investigations unearthed abuse incidents in five other towns across
northern Norway and Russia. Police believe that Nilsen is part of a paedophile
network that has gone undetected.

The conviction was a breakthrough for Norwegian police. But when Nilsen's
conviction was finally upheld at appeal, he got just 30 months.

While Russians take the bus drive across the border every day in their dozens to
marvel at the streets of Kirkenes, Norwegians travel in the other direction for
cheap and plentiful amounts of vodka and young Russian prostitutes around the
tourist bars and hotels of Murmansk. It is here that the cycle of exploitation
starts.

EE.UU. prepara una nueva Masacre del Desierto

ЎDerrotar a los imperialistas! ЎDefender a Irak!


“La milla de la muerte” en el camino de Kuwait City a
Irak despuйs del masacre
llevado a cabo por fuerezas militares norteamericanas
el 25 de febrero de 1991.
Durante varias horas, aviones de guerra y helicуpteros
estadounidenses dieron
vueltas sobre la carretera, destruyendo cada vehнculo,
incluso ambulancias, y
matando a miles de iraquнes en fuga. (Foto: E.
Adams/Corbis Sygma)

La estrategia de “ataque anticipado” del Pentбgono:
precipitar la Tercera Guerra Mundial

Reproducimos a continuaciуn la versiуn en espaсol de
la declaraciуn del Grupo Internacionalista, secciуn
estadounidense de la Liga por la IV Internacional,
fechada el 17 de octubre.

Los criminales de guerra imperialistas estбn a punto
de lanzar un Armagedуn entre los rнos Tigris y
Йufrates.

Durante las primeras horas del 11 de octubre, el
Senado estadounidense se uniу a la Cбmara de
Representantes para aprobar una mociуn que otorga a
George W. Bush plenos poderes de guerra para que lance
la maquinaria bйlica imperialista “en la medida en que
considere apropiado y necesario” contra Irak.
Demуcratas y republicanos, los partidos gemelos del
capitalismo norteamericano, dieron luz verde al
Pentбgono para realizar la carnicerнa desenfrenada que
la Casa Blanca ordenу desde hace algъn tiempo. Despuйs
del debate ritual y el estampado del sello aprobatorio
del Congreso, habrб una farsa similar en las Naciones
Unidas. Ahн las “grandes potencias” regatearбn en esa
guarida de ladrones imperialistas – como Lenin
calificу a su antecesora, la Liga de las Naciones –
sobre la pertinencia y extensiуn de una “inspecciуn”
provocadora contra Irak, o sobre si habrб una
resoluciуn de una o dos fases para lanzar el ataque.
Lo mбs probable es que se dicte un ultimбtum que
Saddam Hussein no pueda aceptar (tal como hizo la ONU
con Milosevic en Yugoslavia), al exigir el libre
trбnsito de fuerzas armadas de la “ONU” dentro de Irak
– es decir, una invasiуn sin guerra. Y entonces, mбs
temprano que tarde, EE.UU. iniciarб una invasiуn
“preventiva” lanzando bombardeos terroristas sobre
Bagdad. La sangre del pueblo iraquн correrб en rнos
sobre las arenas.

La Liga por la IV Internacional y su secciуn
estadounidense, el Internationalist Group/Grupo
Internacionalista, llaman a la clase obrera a defender
a Irak y luchar por la derrota de la guerra
imperialista, tanto dentro de los EE.UU. como en todo
del mundo. La “superpotencia” estadounidense ha
decidido demostrar su capacidad militar perpetrando
matanzas a gran escala. Con ello espera intimidar al
resto del mundo (incluso a sus “aliados”) y obtener el
control directo de la segunda reserva de petrуleo mбs
grande del mundo. La guerra contra Irak es tambiйn una
guerra contra los obreros, los negros y latinos,
contra los inmigrantes y contra todos los que producen
la riqueza de los Estados Unidos, mientras los
especuladores de la bolsa de valores y los criminales
empresariales despojan miles de millones de dуlares y
la economнa se va al infierno. Se trata de una guerra
para regimentar a la poblaciуn para mбs guerras. Йsta
es una carnicerнa capitalista, producida por un
sistema que padece crisis econуmicas en serie y que
genera guerras, racismo y pobreza sin fin. Hoy en dнa,
los imperialistas estadounidenses conjuran una y otra
vez el “11 de septiembre” con la intenciуn de
confundir a la poblaciуn y crear un clima de venganza.
Los medios de comunicaciуn “libres pero responsables”
marchan hombro con hombro hacia la guerra. No
obstante, la oposiciуn a la guerra crecerб sin
importar cuбnto censuren las noticias desde Bagdad
cuando el show de los misiles crucero sea remplazado
por las imбgenes de soldados muertos que regresan al
paнs en bolsas de plбstico. Muchos verбn que la
“gloria” de un imperio que chupa la sangre de los
pueblos del mundo mientras mantiene un control
completo sobre el grifo del petrуleo no representa mбs
que la miseria para las masas iraquнes y ataques en
toda la lнnea contra la clase obrera en los EE.UU.

Es urgentemente necesario movilizarse contra esta
inminente carnicerнa. Pero їbajo quй programa? Ya se
han manifestado contra la guerra en Irak mбs de
400.000 personas en Londres y millуn y medio en
Italia. Se ha convocado una movilizaciуn en Washington
para el 26 de octubre para “detener la guerra antes
que comience”. (їEs que en algъn momento habнa
terminado?) En las prуximas semanas, miles de personas
participarбn en manifestaciones contra la guerra.
Escucharбn apelaciones morales de curas y pastores,
discursos evasivos de los polнticos burgueses
“palomas”, quienes discreparбn, con la mayor cortesнa,
de sus colegas “halcones”, retуrica vacнa de
burуcratas sindicales que no harбn nada que pueda
poner en peligro al sistema capitalista que apoyan.
Habrбn unos cuantos seudosocialistas en la tribuna –
con frecuencia bajo la cubierta de alguna “campaсa”,
“coaliciуn” o “movimiento” – para dar unas migajas a
la izquierda y mantener a raya a jуvenes impacientes.
Lo que no dirбn es que el baсo de sangre no serб
detenido con desfiles por la paz y llamados a la
“conciencia”. Los llamados por una polнtica extranjera
mбs “humana” o por una “iniciativa multilateral” son
bazofia: los belicistas en Washington no se
persuadirбn con sъplicas o encuestas pъblicas. Deben
ser derrotados. En contra del pacifismo burguйs, los
comunistas llamamos por una guerra de clases contra la
guerra imperialista.

Los planes de EE.UU. para utilizar armas atуmicas
contra los “bъnkeres” iraquнes


Troops de EE.UU. vestidos para la guerra quнmica
durante la Guerra
del Golfo de 1991.

La invasiуn de este empobrecido paнs semicolonial es
una agresiуn imperialista de las mбs descaradas que se
han visto desde que Mussolini atacу a Etiopнa en 1935.
Los desvarнos sanguinarios de un dictador de pacotilla
como Saddam Hussein no se comparan con la devastaciуn
que el verdadero “carnicero de Bagdad”, quien habita
la Casa Blanca, estб a punto de desatar. Al perpetrar
esta carnicerнa, Washington no responde a una mнtica
“amenaza” iraquн: el imperialismo estadounidense
necesita esta guerra para imponer su hegemonнa
mundial. En 1999, el demуcrata Clinton bombardeу
hospitales en Belgrado, Yugoslavia, en nombre de los
“derechos humanos” de la poblaciуn de Kosovo. El aсo
pasado, el republicano Bush conquistу Afganistбn
usando como excusa el ataque indiscriminado perpetrado
el 11 de septiembre contra el World Trade Center de
Nueva York. Hoy en dнa Bush II prepara una nueva
“Masacre del Desierto” contra Irak para “terminar el
trabajo”que Bush I dejу sin completar en la primera
Guerra del Golfo Pйrsico. їY maсana? La infinita
“guerra contra el terror” proclamada por los EE.UU.
serб el preludio de una tercera guerra mundial
imperialista – cuyos verdaderos blancos son sus
aliados y rivales japoneses y europeos que,
naturalmente, no estбn tan entusiasmados con el
inminente ataque contra Irak.

Como parte del regateo diplomбtico, los europeos,
rusos y chinos en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU
quieren mandar “inspectores” a Irak en busca de “armas
de destrucciуn masiva”. (La administraciуn Bush se ha
empeсado en bloquear esto, ya que toda la palabrerнa
sobre la posibilidad de que Hussein tenga “armas de
destrucciуn masiva” en su poder no es mбs que un
pretexto – una carnada de tontos para los “canallas
liberales” y similares – y no quiere que nada retrase
su planeado ataque.) Debe quedar claro que tales
inspecciones no son nada mбs que una forma de espiar a
la victima del ataque imperialista en preparaciуn.
EE.UU. dice ahora que Irak “expulsу” a los inspectores
de la ONU en noviembre de 1998, cuando en realidad fue
la ONU quien los retirу para asн preparar el bombardeo
estadounidense de Bagdad en diciembre de ese aсo, en
el operativo denominado “Zorro del Desierto”, el apodo
del general alemбn Rommel durante la Segunda Guerra
Mundial. En ese entonces el gobierno de Irak se quejу
de que los inspectores estaban transmitiendo
informaciуn en secreto a los EE.UU. Despuйs se revelу
que eso era exactamente lo que habнa ocurrido, ya que
agentes de la CIA y la NSA (Agencia Nacional de
Seguridad, que lleva a cabo el espionaje electrуnico
en gran escala) entre el equipo de inspectores de la
“UNSCOM” instalaron un elaborado sistema electrуnico
para espiar en lugares claves, lo que fue utilizado
despuйs para guiar a los bombarderos norteamericanos.

Las pretensiones de “legalidad” de varias “sanciones”,
“inspecciones” y otras medidas contra Irak son
absurdas. Las asн llamadas “zonas de exclusiуn aйrea”,
en las que se prohнbe la presencia de aviones iraquнes
y se permite el trбfico de aviones de guerra de la
OTAN sobre dos tercios del paнs, fueron simplemente
decretadas por los EE.UU. e Inglaterra. Con sus
“sanciones”, la ONU primero cortу y luego limitу
severamente las exportaciones petroleras de Irak,
prohibiendo la importaciуn de medicinas y maquinaria
indispensable para reparar las plantas elйctricas y de
tratamiento de aguas que fueron bombardeados
sistemбticamente por la “coaliciуn” dirigida por los
EE.UU. durante la primera Guerra del Golfo. El saldo
de vнctimas ha sido mбs de un millуn y medio de
iraquнes que han muerto de enfermedades curables.
Entre los muertos se cuenta un millуn de niсos, ademбs
de los 200.000 asesinados en los ataques
estadounidenses contra Bagdad, Basora y otras
ciudades. Durante los ъltimos 12 aсos, Irak, que antes
era el paнs mбs prospero y alfabetizado del Medio
Oriente, ha sido hundido en la pobreza mбs extrema
gracias al rйgimen de sanciones de la ONU. Ahora Bush
y su mascota, el primer ministro de Inglaterra, Tony
Blair, se preparan para destrozar el paнs una vez mбs,
para sumirlo en la miseria y sacrificar un nъmero de
vidas indecible. ЎY los planificadores de la guerra
esperan que el pueblo iraquн salga a sus azoteas para
vitorear los bombarderos “aliados” como si fueran
“liberadores”!

Los que se oponen al imperialismo deben rechazar las
exigencias de “inspecciones” y oponerse a todas las
“sanciones” de la ONU contra Irak, que no son mбs que
un castigo contra el rйgimen de Hussein y el pueblo
iraquн por haber perdido la Guerra del Golfo en
1990-91. El imperialismo estadounidense tiene
cantidades enormes de armas nucleares (que ya usу en
Japуn), lo mismo que de armas quнmicas y biolуgicas
(que fueron usadas para bombardear Vietnam) – sin
mencionar las balas radioactivas de “uranio
debilitado” que ha hecho llover sobre Irak, Yugoslavia
y Afganistбn. Tambiйn su aliado Israel tiene dichas
armas en su arsenal. En realidad, si Irak realmente
tuviera armas nucleares, a lo cual tiene todo el
derecho, esto servirнa como impedimento para una
invasiуn estadounidense. Bush acusa a Hussein de haber
“usado armas quнmicas contra su propio pueblo”. Lo que
la propaganda de guerra estadounidense no dice es que
Irak usу gas mostaza, VX y otras armas quнmicas
durante la guerra de Iran-Irak en 1980-88 con el
conocimiento pleno de EE.UU., el cual armу a Irak,
proporcionу fotos satelitales de posiciones iranнes y
tuvo observadores presentes en el campo de batalla.
Aunque la existencia de este programa clandestino fue
reportado por el New York Times (18 de agosto) en un
informe que se olvidу rбpidamente, el Times no
mencionу que EE.UU. tambiйn supliу a Irak con “cepas
quнmicas” para empezar su programa de armamento
quнmico.

El cinismo de los gobernantes estadounidenses no
conoce lнmites. Mientras que proclaman incesantemente
que estбn haciendo “avanzar la democracia”, despuйs de
imponer un protectorado imperialista en Afganistбn
cuyo tнtere, el  “presidente” Karzai, es resguardado
por mercenarios contratados por los EE.UU., la Casa
Blanca ahora se prepara para imponer un gobierno de
ocupaciуn militar estadounidense que controlarб el
paнs durante varios aсos. El general Tommy Franks
“asumirб el papel que el general McArthur jugу en
Japуn despuйs de la rendiciуn en 1945” (New York
Times, 11 de octubre) – en otras palabras, serб un
dictador todopoderoso sobre los destinos de los
iraquнes. Esto es lo que eufemнsticamente se conoce
como “cambio de rйgimen” en el lenguaje orweliano de
Bush. Mientras tanto, entre toda la habladurнa sobre
las hipotйticas “armas de destrucciуn masiva” de
Hussein, el hecho es que el Pentбgono se estб
preparando para usar armas nucleares “tбcticas” en
Irak. La revista U.S. News & World Report (22 de
julio) revelу:

“Los sacerdotes nucleares del Pentбgono creen que una
bomba nuclear de penetraciуn podrнa ser usada para
destruir los bъnkeres subterrбneos... Este dramбtico
cambio en polнtica nuclear es la mбs clara evidencia
de la nueva estrategia militar de la administraciуn
Bush, que contempla los ataques preventivos – e
incluso la remota posibilidad de usar armas nucleares
– contra estados proscritos tales como Irak.”
  De la misma forma que los alemanes nazis usaron la
Guerra Civil Espaсola para probar sus aviones de
guerra Messerschmitt y Junker al bombardear en picada
las columnas republicanas y borrar del mapa al pueblo
de Guernica, el imperialismo yanqui quiere probar sus
bombas nucleares en el desierto de Irak... y sobre las
ciudades iraquнes. No olvidemos a los mбs de 400
mujeres y niсos asesinados en 1991 en el bombardeo
quirъrgico estadounidense del refugio Al Amiriya con
una bomba GBU–27 “antibъnker”.
En las altas esferas gobernantes de Washington,
absolutamente nadie cree en la justificaciуn que
ofrece el gobierno para desencadenar la guerra.
Incluso la CIA admitiу en secciones desclasificadas de
un informe al Comitй de Inteligencia del Senado
estadounidense, que el rйgimen iraquн ha “trazado un
lнmite que no incluye realizar ataques terroristas”
contra los EE.UU., y que las probabilidades de Hussein
de iniciar un ataque de destrucciуn masiva serнan
“bajas” si no fuese provocado; en cambio, serнan
“altas” si Irak es invadido (New York Times, 9 de
octubre). Las fuerzas que han impulsado mбs
activamente la guerra en Irak son prбcticamente una
caricatura de los productores y mercaderes de armas
tipo “Daddy Warbucks”, las compaснas de construcciуn
militar y los petroleros millonarios que se extienden
hasta la Casa Blanca. Ellos piensan que la guerra serб
buen negocio e incluso podrнa detener la caнda del
нndice Dow Jones de la Bolsa de Valores. Voceros de la
administraciуn Bush aseguran ante los periodistas que
la guerra no pasarб de dos semanas a dos meses. La
Oficina de Hacienda del Congreso hace una estimaciуn
de tres meses con un costo de 44 mil millones de
dуlares (Wall Street Journal, 1 de octubre).

Los que esperan obtener una victoria fбcil mediante
una guerra barata pueden llevarse una dolorosa
sorpresa: aun si la fuerza militar estadounidense
consigue aplastar toda resistencia, una ocupaciуn
imperialista del paнs podrнa alargarse por aсos. Donde
Bush I hiciera que la OTAN y Japуn dieran el dinero
para pagar por la guerra, Bush II tiene la intenciуn
de pagarla con el dinero desviado de la producciуn
petrolera iraquн – algo asн como una “leveraged
buy-out” (adquisiciуn apalancada, en la cual se
financia la compra de una empresa apoderбndose de los
activos de la misma empresa adquirida) a gran escala.

La lucha para derrotar la campaсa de guerra
imperialista debe ser librada no sуlo en Irak sino a
escala internacional, en especial en los paнses
imperialistas, sobre todo en los EE.UU. Al
preguntбrsele por quй la campaсa de guerra de la
administraciуn de repente se puso a toda marcha en
septiembre, coincidiendo con el inicio de la campaсa
electoral de otoсo, el secretario de la presidencia
norteamericana cнnicamente contestу: “Desde el punto
de vista de la mercadotecnia, no se introducen nuevos
productos en agosto” [perнodo de vacaciones]. Por
cierto, la Casa Blanca ha tomado la medida de los
dirigentes demуcratas, que como era de esperar se
dieron por muertos tan pronto se les acusara de ser
blandos con Saddam. Sin embargo, los que sueсan con
que el marketing de una guerra serнa como vender pasta
dental podrнan ser sъbitamente despertados por la
misma gente que creen estar engaсando. El apoyo
popular a estб guerra es muy dйbil y puede romperse.

El ataque contra Irak: detonador para una nueva Guerra
Mundial

El Grupo Internacionalista y la Liga por la IV
Internacional (GI/LIVI) advertimos el aсo pasado, al
llamar por la derrota del ataque estadounidense contra
Afganistбn, que la “guerra contra el terror” de Bush
es un preludio a una nueva guerra interimperialista:

  “Asн como las guerras de los Balcanes de 1908-13
contribuyeron a y desembocaron en la Primera Guerra
Mundial, y asн como la Guerra Civil Espaсola, la
invasiуn de China a manos de Japуn y la guerra del
imperialismo italiano contra Etiopнa (Abisinia)
prepararon la Segunda Guerra Mundial, las guerras
lanzadas por los imperialistas norteamericanos en la
ъltima dйcada en contra de Irak, Yugoslavia y ahora
Afganistбn, seсalan el camino hacia una tercera
conflagraciуn imperialista mundial que surgirнa de las
crecientes rivalidades de las principales potencias
capitalistas.”
– El Internacionalista No. 2, mayo de 2002
La segunda guerra contra Irak intensifica esta
ofensiva hacia la guerra mundial, en particular con la
doctrina de Bush de “ataques preventivos”. En conjunto
con las crecientes tensiones econуmicas
interimperialistas, podrнa desencadenar una escalada
de choques entre las “grandes potencias”, en la medida
en que los antiguos aliados de la campaсa bйlica
contra la Uniуn Soviйtica se convierten cada vez mбs
abiertamente en enemigos. Aunque varias publicaciones
de la izquierda reformista – como People’s Weekly
World (del Partido Comunista de Estados Unidos),
Socialist Worker (de la Internacional Socialist
Organization – ISO), y Workers World (del Workers
World Party – WWP) – seсalan los horrores de la guerra
del Golfo Pйrsico y el martirio del pueblo iraquн a lo
largo de los casi 12 aсos que han durado las sanciones
de la ONU (mientras que convenientemente omiten
mencionar su propio papel traidor al hacer bloques con
los demуcratas liberales que fueron los primeros en
exigir las sanciones), pasan por alto los contornos
mбs amplios de la nueva guerra contra Irak.
Los propуsitos de guerra de los imperialistas
estadounidenses van mбs allб de apoderarse de la “cuna
de la civilizaciуn” mesopotбmica y sus riquezas
petroleras. El aсo pasado, el vicepresidente de EE.UU.
Cheney declarу que la infinita “guerra contra el
terror” durarнa toda la vida de la mayorнa de los
adultos. Ahora la administraciуn de EE.UU. ha revelado
una nueva doctrina militar que preconiza “ataques
preventivos” contra los que se perciben como enemigos
del imperialismo estadounidense. “Estados Unidos
actuarб contra estas amenazas emergentes antes de que
se formen completamente” declara la Estrategia de
Seguridad Nacional de Bush, anunciada en septiembre.
Al proclamar un “solo modelo sostenible para el йxito
nacional: libertad, democracia, libre competencia”, la
estrategia habla de “la posible reanudaciуn de viejos
patrones de la competencia entre las grandes
potencias” y “la agresiуn de otras grandes potencias”.
Es mбs, declara que “el presidente no tiene la
intenciуn de permitir que ninguna potencia extranjera
alcance la gran ventaja que los EE.UU. obtuvo desde la
caнda de la Uniуn Soviйtica hace mбs de una dйcada”
(cita del New York Times, 21 de septiembre). Escrito
bajo la insistencia de Bush en un lenguaje machista
para que pueda ser entendido por “los muchachos de
Lubbock” (Texas), el documento afirma: “nuestras
fuerzas serбn lo suficientemente fuertes para disuadir
a cualquier adversario potencial que busque armarse
militarmente con la esperanza de rebasar, o igualar,
el poder de EE.UU.”

Esto claramente no se refiere a Osama Bin Laden,
Saddam Hussein, el Talibбn afgano, la conglomeraciуn
de “guerreros santos” islбmicos a los que Washington
llama “Al Qaeda” o cualquiera de los diferentes paнses
actualmente enlistados en el “eje del mal” de Bush. Al
contrario, esto estб dirigido contra el estado obrero
burocrбticamente deformado de China, la Rusia
capitalista que emergiу del colapso de la Uniуn
Soviйtica y los imperialistas europeos de la OTAN que
muestran su desagrado ante el comportamiento arrogante
de Washington. En un llamado contrarrevolucionario
tenuemente disfrazado, el documento de Estrategia de
Seguridad Nacional declara que “los lнderes chinos
todavнa no han llevado a cabo las prуximas decisiones
fundamentales sobre el carбcter de su estado” y
advierte a Beijing contra la bъsqueda “de poderes
militares avanzados que pudieran amenazar a sus
vecinos en la regiуn de Asia y el Pacнfico”. Hemos
advertido reiteradamente que los imperialistas
estadounidenses estбn empeсados en destruir los
estados obreros deformados aъn existentes (China,
Cuba, Corea del Norte y Vietnam) rumbo a una tercera
guerra mundial imperialista. En el fondo, Washington
le teme a la potencia econуmica de Europa Occidental
unida a una Rusia robustecida con su poderнo
militar-nuclear y sus tremendos recursos de petrуleo y
gas.

No se trata de una obsesiуn nueva. Durante las dйcadas
de la Guerra Frнa antisoviйtica, los Estados Unidos
fueron capaces de mantener a las otras potencias
imperialistas a raya al enfatizar la necesidad de un
frente comъn contra la “amenaza del comunismo”. El
estado obrero soviйtico nacido de la Revoluciуn de
Octubre de 1917 dirigida por Lenin y Trotsky
constituyу una conquista para el proletariado mundial
que los trotskistas defendieron sin tregua, incluso
despuйs de su degeneraciуn burocrбtica bajo Stalin y
sus epнgonos segъn el dogma nacionalista y conservador
del “socialismo en un solo paнs”. La existencia misma
de la URSS dificultу el empeсo de Washington de
simplemente barrer con varios regнmenes nacionalistas
“tercermundistas” aliados soviйticos. Pero ya no.
Mientras que los regнmenes del bloque soviйtico caнan
bajo la constante presiуn econуmica y militar del
imperialismo, un colapso que fue preparado por la
traidora polнtica de “coexistencia pacнfica” puesta en
prбctica por las burocracias estalinistas vendidas,
George Bush padre proclamу “la muerte del comunismo” y
el nacimiento de un Nuevo Orden Mundial durante la
primera Guerra del Golfo. A pesar de que EE.UU.
emergiу como ъnica “superpotencia”, el Nuevo Orden
dominado por EE.UU. no se ha consolidado: al
contrario, la era postsoviйtica ha estado marcada por
un incontrolado desorden, con desenfrenadas
carnicerнas nacionalistas y repetidas guerras
imperialistas.

Bush hijo es el testaferro del equipo de guerreros
anticomunistas que dirigieron el ataque contra la
Uniуn Soviйtica bajo Bush padre y que ahora juran que
van a establecer un Reich norteamericano global.
Fuerzas militares estadounidenses estбn ahora
estacionadas en mбs de 130 paнses en el mundo. Su
propуsito fue resumido en un documento (“Estrategia de
defensa para los aсos 90”) escrito en enero de 1993
por Dick Cheney, el entonces secretario de guerra, que
es el precursor a la doctrina de estrategia de Bush.
El punto focal del documento de Cheney era “excluir a
toda potencia hostil del dominio de cualquier regiуn
fundamental para nuestros intereses” (definidas como
Europa, Asia Oriental, Medio Oriente/Golfo Pйrsico, y
Amйrica Latina) y “reforzar las barreras contra la
reemergencia de una amenaza global a los intereses de
EE.UU. y nuestros aliados”. El “unilateralismo” del
segundo gobierno de la dinastнa Bush ya fue trazado en
este documento, que declara que EE.UU. no debe
“permitir que nuestros intereses crнticos dependan
sуlo de mecanismos internacionales”. Borradores
anteriores del documento de Cheney fueron redactados
por un grupo dirigido por Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby
y Eric Edelman, quienes hoy son una vez mбs los
ideуlogos bйlicos de Bush II.

Esta orientaciуn estratйgica del imperialismo
estadounidense es lo que subyace a la extrema
indiferencia de Washington sobre si tiene el apoyo de
la ONU o una “coaliciуn” internacional para su guerra
contra Irak. La banda de Bush quiere demostrar a todo
el mundo que puede actuar a solas, y que el resto del
mundo se vaya al diablo. EE.UU. no necesita el
petrуleo del Golfo Pйrsico, que apenas surte el 12 por
ciento del consumo norteamericano; Europa y Japуn sн
lo necesitan, y los dirigentes estadounidenses quieren
dejar bien claro que ellos pueden cerrar el suministro
de energнa del Medio Oriente a voluntad. Al mismo
tiempo, la administraciуn Bush proclama la virtud del
“libre comercio” mientras impone tarifas
proteccionistas en las importaciones de acero y
mantiene subsidios enormes al comercio agrнcola
estadounidense. Esto ha causado consternaciуn entre
sus aliados de la OTAN. El presidente francйs Jacques
Chirac se rehusу a acatar la exigencia de Washington
de una resoluciуn del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU
para autorizar automбticamente la guerra contra Irak.
El canciller alemбn Gerhard Schrцder acaba de lograr
su reelecciуn al proclamar enfбticamente que no
participarнa en una invasiуn contra Irak, ya sea que
estй autorizada o no por la ONU. Esto no es nada mбs
que un gesto vacнo, pues al final ambos tendrбn que
aceptar las acciones exigidas por EE.UU. Pero a los
imperialistas europeos no sуlo les preocupa ser
excluidos de una bonanza de petrуleo iraquн despuйs de
la invasiуn. Comprenden que la doctrina de Bush se
dirige contra ellos.

En EE.UU., Europa Occidental y otos paнses
imperialistas, la “guerra contra el terrorismo” se
acompaсa por una dramбtica escalada en la represiуn de
estado policнaco, como advertimos inmediatamente
despuйs del ataque del 11 de septiembre del aсo pasado
(ver la declaraciуn del GI del 14 de septiembre de
2001, “Estados Unidos fomenta frenesн de guerra
imperialista, se precipita hacнa un estado policнaco”,
en El Internacionalista No. 2, mayo de 2002). El
rйgimen de Bush quiere usar esta guerra como cuсa para
atacar los derechos sindicales, mientras establece
tribunales militares para “extranjeros” y hasta
ciudadanos que etiquete como enemigos, ordena la
detenciуn indefinida sin cargos, lleva a cabo cientos
de miles de deportaciones y un descarado perfilaje
racial contra inmigrantes, realiza espionaje
electrуnico masivo, introduce medidas de seguridad
omnipresentes y establece un “comando militar
unificado” con la autoridad de desplegar a las fuerzas
armadas contra la poblaciуn en el interior del paнs.
El gobierno – con la plena participaciуn de los
demуcratas, que fueron los primeros en pedir un
departamento de “Seguridad de la Patria” – estб
asentando conscientemente las bases para ejercer su
dominio bajo un estado de sitio. Para derrotar la
campaсa por un estado policнaco y la guerra
imperialista sin fin se requiere romper con los
partidos capitalistas gemelos de la guerra y el
racismo, los partidos Demуcrata y Republicano, al
igual que con partidos burgueses menores como el
Partido Verde, para construir un partido obrero
revolucionario en la lucha por reforjar la IV
Internacional.

Guerra de clases contra la guerra imperialista –
ЎPor la revoluciуn socialista internacional!

El enfoque marxista para la lucha contra la guerra
imperialista fue elaborado durante la Primera Guerra
Mundial por V. I. Lenin y los bolcheviques rusos,
frente a la vergonzosa capitulaciуn de la Segunda
Internacional “Socialista”, cuyos partidos principales
respaldaron a sus respectivas clases capitalistas en
la matanza imperialista. Lenin subrayу que al luchar
contra los reformistas abiertos y los centristas
vacilantes era necesario que los revolucionarios
internacionalistas llamaran por la derrota de “su
propia” burguesнa en la guerra interimperialista. Al
mismo tiempo, se deberнan poner del lado de los
pueblos coloniales y semicoloniales en sus justas
guerras por la independencia en contra de las
potencias coloniales. En su ensayo “El socialismo y la
guerra” (septiembre 1915), el cual ha sido reproducido
como folleto por el Grupo Internacionalista, Lenin
escribiу:

“Tanto los partidarios de la victoria de su propio
gobierno en la guerra actual, como los defensores de
la consigna de ‘ni victoria ni derrota’, adoptan
igualmente el punto de vista del social-chovinismo. En
una guerra reaccionaria, la clase revolucionaria no
puede dejar de desear la derrota de su gobierno; no
puede dejar de ver que existe una relaciуn entre los
reveses militares de ese gobierno y las facilidades
que йstos crean para su derrocamiento.”
Lenin observу que “el estado de бnimo de las masas en
favor de la paz expresa con frecuencia un comienzo de
protesta, de indignaciуn y de toma de conciencia del
carбcter reaccionario de la guerra”. Asн mismo,
mientras que los socialistas intervienen en estas
manifestaciones y protestas con el propуsito de
intersecar este estado de animo, “no engaсarбn al
pueblo dejбndole creer que sin un movimiento
revolucionario se puede alcanzar una paz sin
anexiones, sin opresiуn de las naciones y sin saqueos,
una paz sin gйrmenes de nuevas guerras entre los
gobiernos de hoy y las clases dominantes en la
actualidad”. Al llamar por “convertir la guerra
imperialista en guerra civil”, Lenin hizo hincapiй en
que sуlo la revoluciуn socialista internacional
conseguirб una paz autйntica. Y йste es el programa
con el que los bolcheviques, bajo la direcciуn de
Lenin y Trotsky, realizaron la Revoluciуn de Octubre.
La polнtica de los organizadores de los diferentes
“movimientos de paz” alrededor del mundo se opone
diametralmente a este programa revolucionario. Al
colocarse en el terreno polнtico de la democracia
burguesa, todos ellos apelan implнcita o abiertamente
a formaciones capitalistas o procapitalistas para que
pongan alto a la guerra. En los EE.UU. la marcha
contra la guerra del 26 de octubre es auspiciada por
la coaliciуn International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to
Stop the War and End Racism – Actuar Ahora para Parar
la Guerra y Poner Fin al Racismo), dirigida por la
International Action Center (Centro de Acciуn
Internacional) fundada por Ramsey Clark junto con el
Workers World Party. Se trata del mismo Ramsey Clark
que, como procurador general de los EE.UU. bajo Lyndon
Jonson, dirigiу la guerra sanguinaria de COINTELPRO
contra el partido radical Panteras Negras. En una
carta, fechada el 29 de julio, dirigida a los miembros
del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, Clark les pidiу
“denunciar las amenazas constantes de EE.UU. contra
Irak, exigir el cese inmediato de las amenazas y
advertir a los EE.UU. que un ataque de йste contra
Irak, violarнa la declaraciуn de la ONU”.

La idea de que la ONU puede domar a los perros de
guerra de EE.UU. es exactamente la forma de engaсar a
la poblaciуn contra la que Lenin advirtiу. Esto
alimenta el llamado de los polнticos del Partido
Demуcrata que quieren mбs “inspecciones” por parte de
la ONU, y contraponen la “guerra contra el terror” a
la guerra de Bush contra Saddam Hussein. No hay tal
contraposiciуn: los ataques contra Afganistбn e Irak
son parte de la misma guerra y la tarea de los
“inspectores” de la ONU consiste en detonarla. Las
sanciones de la ONU prepararon el camino para la
primera Guerra del Golfo y han continuado
empobreciendo y masacrando el pueblo iraquн desde
entonces. De la Guerra de Corea a la guerra contra
Yugoslavia, la ONU ha servido como cobertura para la
agresiуn del imperialismo estadounidense. Ahora,
cualquiera que sea el resultado, un nuevo “debate” de
la ONU llevarб una vez mбs a la muerte y destrucciуn
incalculable en el Medio Oriente, no sуlo en Irak sino
tambiйn en Palestina. Los gobernantes de Israel
dirigidos por el carnicero Ariel Sharon se preparan
para realizar expulsiones masivas de la poblaciуn
бrabe de sus tierras en Cisjordania y Gaza
(eufemнsticamente denominadas “transferencias” por los
sionistas) apenas caiga la primera bomba
estadounidense en Bagdad. Los revolucionarios exigen
el fin de todas las sanciones e inspecciones de Irak y
que Ўtodas las fuerzas de EE.UU. y la ONU salgan fuera
de Medio Oriente, ya!

Si es grotesco pedir a la ONU que discipline a los
EE.UU., no es menos absurdo llamar a los imperialistas
europeos a que detengan a los “cowboys”
norteamericanos, como hacen diversos liberales y
reformistas del Viejo Continente. Ignacio Ramonet,
quien lidera ATTAC, la organizaciуn burguesa francesa
que reъne a varias agrupaciones “anti-globalizaciуn”,
escribiу recientemente en Le Monde Diplomatique
(octubre 2002):

“Un imperio no tiene aliados, sуlo tiene vasallos.
Varios de los estados de la Uniуn Europea parecen
haber olvidado esta realidad histуrica. Ante nuestros
ojos, bajo presiуn de Washington, que los ha obligado
a enlistarse en su guerra contra Irak, paнses que en
principio son soberanos se han permitido ser reducidos
a la lamentable condiciуn de satйlites.”
Ramonet luego apela explнcitamente a la OTAN para que
bloquee “esta primera guerra de la nueva era
imperial.” Hace un llamado a “Europa” a “bloquear el
instrumento militar, la OTAN, con la que Washington
cuenta para su expansiуn imperial y cuyo uso estб
sujeto al voto de los estados europeos”. Sin embargo,
estos imperialistas colegiados ya tienen sus manos
cubiertas con sangre de las guerras contra Yugoslavia
y Afganistбn – guerras que Ramonet se olvida mencionar
porque tenнan amplio apoyo, en una medida u otra, de
los “antiglobalizadores” – y no estбn a punto de
convertirse en una fuerza por la “paz”. Al unirse con
tales fuerzas y haciendo tales apelaciones, varios
seudotrotskistas europeos como los de la Ligue
Communiste Rйvolutionnaire (LCR) francesa se alinean
con su propia burguesнa, como hicieron los
socialdemуcratas durante la Primera Guerra Mundial.
Los trotskistas genuinos llaman por derrotar a los
imperialistas no sуlo en el campo de batalla, donde
las fuerzas iraquнes enfrentan el masivo poder de
fuego de EE.UU., sino tambiйn a travйs de la
movilizaciуn del poder de la clase obrera en todo el
mundo, independientemente de toda fuerza burguesa,
contra la guerra. La toma de Irak por parte de EE.UU.
podrнa provocar disturbios que amenazarнan a los
“viejos regнmenes” raquнticos que tienen un tenue
control del poder en varios paнses predominantemente
musulmanes. Aunque las fuerzas islбmicas
fundamentalistas buscarбn beneficiarse de esto, no
cuentan con un monopolio de la oposiciуn a estos
regнmenes corruptos. Donde la guerra produce un
estallido de agitaciуn social, elementos proletarios
internacionalistas buscarбn intervenir con un programa
para plantear la lucha sobre lнneas de clase. En
Argelia, la sublevaciуn laica de la juventud y las
poblaciones minoritarias que arrasaron las regiones
berйberes el aсo pasado ha sido calmada, pero no
eliminada – como se ve en el reciente boicot masivo de
las elecciones fraudulentas del rйgimen en Kabilia. En
Pakistбn, la oposiciуn sindical a la dictadura militar
del aliado estadounidense General Musharraf ha chocado
frecuentemente con los guerreros santos islбmicos. En
Turquнa hay sindicatos con direcciones de izquierda
bastante grandes y numerosos grupos socialistas
autoproclamados. En Indonesia, donde obscuras
camarillas militares aliadas con los fundamentalistas
musulmanes tratan de desestabilizar al inestable
gobierno de Megawati con provocaciones terroristas, el
movimiento de oposiciуn sindical que ayudу a derrocar
la dictadura de Suharto estб inquieto. La cuestiуn no
es si oposiciуn masiva contra la guerra imperialista
es posible, sino sobre quй programa de clase se
construye.

En los EE.UU., Inglaterra y todos los paнses
involucrados en la guerra los trotskistas llaman por
acciones obreras contra la campaсa de guerra. Esto
incluye el bloqueo del transporte de material de
guerra por piquetes sindicales, el exigir el retiro de
las tropas de Afganistбn e Irak, y emprender acciones
huelguнsticas contra la guerra imperialista. Los
comunistas deben protestar vigorosamente la presencia
de polнticos y voceros burgueses en las
manifestaciones “contra la guerra”, seсalando que las
“palomas” al igual que los “halcones” entre los
polнticos capitalistas son todos belicistas,
rompehuelgas y enemigos de los explotados y oprimidos.
El uso de la ley de “trabajo esclavizado” Taft–Hartley
contra los estibadores del ILWU de la Costa Oeste
estadounidense despuйs del lockout (cierre) decretado
por los patrones marнtimos planteу directamente el
vinculo entre la lucha de clases y la lucha contra la
guerra imperialista. En una serie de volantes
repartidos en los piquetes de los estibadores, el
Grupo Internacionalista llamу a paralizar los puertos
mediante una huelga y bloquear todo movimiento de
cargamento militar.

Mientras que los miembros del GI estuvieron presentes
diariamente en las lнneas de piquete de los
estibadores en Oakland durante el cierre patronal,
varios grupos asistieron a una manifestaciуn de
solidaridad el 5 de octubre. Los reformistas del ISO,
WWP y Socialist Action publicitaron sus respectivas
marchas frentepopulistas “pro paz”. Por su parte, la
Spartacist League (SL) en un artнculo sobre el cierre
patronal contra la ILWU no hizo menciуn alguna de la
cuestiуn del material bйlico ni, mucho menos, llamу
por boicotearlo. Tampoco el artнculo en la portada de
Workers Vanguard (4 de octubre) pronunciу una sola
palabra contra el dirigente sindical Jim Spinosa,
quien intentу introducir consignas patrioteras
“antiterroristas” en la huelga; ni llamу a los
estibadores a desafiar el mandato de la ley
Taft–Hartley que ya estaba en camino, ni instу al
resto de la clase obrera para que emprendiera medidas
de huelga contra esta ley de trabajo esclavizado.
Tampoco escribiу una sola palabra sobre la necesidad
de acciones de solidaridad internacional a favor los
estibadores.

La SL representу durante varios aсos la polнtica del
trotskismo revolucionario, y aъn dice hacerlo. Sin
embargo, en medio de la histeria “antiterrorista”
azuzada por el gobierno el otoсo pasado, la SL hesitу
durante varias semanas antes de llamar a defender
Afganistбn, y se rehusу obstinadamente a llamar por la
derrota del imperialismo estadounidense en la guerra,
acusando al GI y la Liga por la IV Internacional de
“fanfarronerнa revolucionaria” y supuestamente de
conciliar el “antiamericanismo” sуlo por insistir en
esta polнtica leninista. (Al mismo tiempo, la SL
aclamу a la congresista “paloma” demуcrata Barbara Lee
por disentir del voto por los poderes de guerra para
Bush, sin mencionar durante varias semanas que ella
votу a favor de los $40 mil millones del presupuesto
de guerra.) La SL pretende que ha cumplido con sus
obligaciones internacionalistas al llamar por “lucha
de clases en casa” en tiempo de guerra. El cierre
patronal contra el ILWU presentу una oportunidad
dorada para mostrar quй significaba esto; sin embargo,
la SL tuvo poca presencia en las lнneas de piquete y
Ўsu propaganda esquivу todas las cuestiones en que la
lucha de los estibadores chocу con esta guerra!

En contraste con los primeros aсos de la guerra de
Vietnam, ya hay amplia inquietud en el movimiento
obrero sobre la guerra contra Irak. En agosto, la
convenciуn de la AFL-CIO del estado de Washington
aprobу una “Resoluciуn contra la guerra, los ataques a
los derechos civiles y los recortes en los servicios
pъblicos” que criticу fuertemente “el apoyo sin
crнtica del AFL–CIO nacional a esta guerra empujada
por la ganancia”, llamaba por “hacer campaсa para
revocar la Ley Patriota USA y derrotar medidas
‘antiterroristas’ similares”, por “rehusarse a
cooperar con el espionaje del FBI de activistas
polнticos, sindicales y antiglobalizadores, y a
conformarse con los hostigamientos de la migra (INS)
contra бrabes y otros inmigrantes y gente de color en
los EE.UU.”, de “exigir la libertad inmediata de los
cientos de бrabes, gente del Medio Oriente y otros
inmigrantes que aъn estбn detenidos” y de “oponerse a
la infinita ‘guerra contra el terrorismo’ del gobierno
estadounidense”. Para que nadie pensara que la cъpula
sindical se habнa convertido de repente en un
semillero de “rojos”, la resoluciуn terminу con un
llamado a “presionar al presidente Bush y al Congreso
para parar la guerra y cortar el dinero del sustento a
las grandes empresas y del presupuesto militar para
redirigirlo a asistir a los trabajadores despedidos”.

He aquн la clбsica retуrica de “mantequilla en lugar
de caсones” de los socialchovinistas cuya preocupaciуn
real son los costos de la guerra al plano interior –
la cual entorpece sus estratagemas de colaboraciуn de
clases – y no se atreverнa a tomar una posiciуn a
favor de los trabajadores iraquнes, que una vez mбs
serбn las victimas de monstruosos crнmenes de guerra
que EE.UU. se prepara para cometer. Ademбs, esta
mociуn (y una similar del Consejo Sindical de San
Francisco) nunca hubiera sido aprobada a no ser por el
hecho de que el Partido Demуcrata local se pronunciу
contra la guerra. El hecho de que los demуcratas en la
Cбmara de Diputados votaran 126–81 en contra de la
resoluciуn aprobando los poderes de guerra es
indicativo de la opiniуn dividida en el paнs.
(Encuestas recientes muestran apenas un 51 por ciento
estб a favor de la guerra, y este apoyo caerнa a 33
por ciento si hubiera 5 mil bajas en el ejйrcito –
evidentemente, el anuncio de la muerte del “sнndrome
de Vietnam” es prematuro.) Pero los representantes
demуcratas “se esforzaron por describir sus votos no
como una simple protesta pacifista contra la acciуn
militar, sino como una diferencia de opiniуn sobre la
necesidad de una fuerza internacional vs. la acciуn
unilateral” (New York Times, 11 de octubre). En vez de
una “guerra sin fin ‘contra el terrorismo’”, ellos
quieren una guerra mбs “enfocada”, al argumentar que
el enemigo principal serнa bin Laden, no Hussein.
Nosotros decimos que el enemigo es el imperialismo
estadounidense, que es, de lejos, la fuerza terrorista
mбs sanguinaria en presencia.

La lucha contra la renovada guerra contra Irak y el
“Nuevo Orden Mundial” dominado por los EE.UU. debe ser
una lucha contra el sistema imperialista, que sуlo
puede ser barrido mediante una revoluciуn socialista
internacional. Entraсa una lucha contra todo tipo de
nacionalismo burguйs y reacciуn religiosa y a favor
del internacionalismo proletario. En el Medio Oriente,
los trotskistas defendemos a la poblaciуn palestina
bajo sitio contra la ocupaciуn sionista al luchar por
un estado obrero бrabe-hebreo, oponiйndonos a todo
estado basado en la religiуn (ya sea un “estado judнo”
de Israel o una “republica islбmica”) y que reconozca
los derechos nacionales de ambos pueblos apiсados en
este pequeсo territorio.

Tambiйn en Irak, luchamos por una revoluciуn obrera
para derrocar al sanguinario dictador Saddam Hussein,
que fue instalado con la ayuda de EE.UU., a quien la
CIA proporcionу listas de nombres de comunistas para
ser asesinados, y luego fue armado y pertrechado por
el Pentбgono para luchar contra el Irбn de Jomeini.
Esta revoluciуn unirб a los obreros y campesinos de la
mayorнa musulmana chiнta y la minorнa musulmana
sunita, al igual que kurdos, turcomanes y otras
minorнas nacionales. Al reconocer que las fronteras
nacionales actuales fueron establecidas por el
repartimiento imperialista del Imperio Otomano despuйs
de la I Guerra Mundial, los comunistas llamamos por
una republica socialista de Kurdistбn unido.

Una revoluciуn obrera exitosa en cualquier parte de
esta regiуn harнa sonar el toque de la muerte para las
monarquнas tambaleantes como las de Arabia Saudita y
Marruecos, los regнmenes de estirpe militar (Irak,
Siria, Turquнa, Egipto, Libia, Argelia) y los emiratos
petrolнferos protegidos por el imperialismo (Kuwait,
Bahrein, Catar, Omбn, etc.), mientras anticiparнa la
liberaciуn los trabajadores iranнes que han padecido
las dictaduras del shah y de los mulahs. Como en el
caso de Israel-Palestina y otros paнses (como el
Lнbano) con divisiones nacionales y comunales
enconadas, las disputas sobre derechos democrбticos en
conflicto y escasos recursos como petrуleo y agua sуlo
pueden resolverse en el marco de una federaciуn
socialista del Medio Oriente, que harнa posible la
emancipaciуn social generalizada, en particular para
las mujeres. Mientras que los imperialistas azuzan las
hostilidades nacionales con su palabrerнa de un
“choque de las civilizaciones”, el programa comunista
es el ъnico capaz de superar la herencia colonial de
“dividir y dominar” y unir a todas las naciones,
pueblos y fragmentos de pueblos que estбn esparcidos
en esta regiуn que siempre ha sido una encrucijada de
civilizaciones.

ЎDerrotar a los imperialistas – defender Irak! ЎPor la
revoluciуn socialista internacional!



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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U.S. Prepares New Desert Slaughter

Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!



“Death Mile” on the highway from Kuwait City to Iraq
after massacre by U.S.
forces, 25 February 1991. U.S. war planes and
helicopters circled over the road
for hours, destroying every vehicle, including
ambulances, and killing thousands
of fleeing Iraqis. (Photo: E. Adams/Corbis Sygma)
Pentagon’s “First Strike” Strategy:
Careening Toward World War III

The following statement by the Internationalist Group,
U.S. section of the League for the Fourth
International, was issued on October 17.

Imperialist war criminals are about to launch an
Armageddon on the Tigris and Euphrates.

In the early morning hours of October 11, the United
States Senate joined the House of Representatives in
voting war powers for President George W. Bush to
launch the full weight of the imperialist war machine,
“as he deems appropriate and necessary,” against Iraq.
The Pentagon now has a “bipartisan” green light to
carry out the wanton slaughter that the White House
had long since ordered. After the ritual debate and
rubber-stamp approval from Congress, there will be a
similar charade in the United Nations. There will then
be some haggling among the “Great Powers” in this
imperialist den of thieves – as Lenin called its
predecessor, the League of Nations – over if and how
much provocative “inspection” of Iraq to require, or
whether to have a one-stage or two-stage resolution to
trigger the attack. Most likely, Saddam Hussein will
be presented with an ultimatum he can’t accept (as the
UN did earlier with Yugoslavia’s Milosevic), demanding
unhindered movement for “UN” forces inside Iraq – an
invasion without war. And then, sooner rather than
later, the “preemptive” U.S. invasion will be
launched, the terror bombing of Baghdad will begin,
and Iraqi blood will run like rivers over the sands.

The League for the Fourth International and its U.S.
section, the Internationalist Group, call on the
international working class to defend Iraq and fight
to defeat the imperialist war, “at home” and abroad.
The U.S. “superpower” has decided to show off its
military prowess by carrying out mass murder on a vast
scale, hoping to intimidate the rest of the world
(including its “allies”) and grab direct control of
the world’s second-largest oil reserves. The war on
Iraq is also a war on the workers, on black and Latino
minorities, on immigrants and all those in the U.S.
who produce the wealth while stock market speculators
and corporate criminals rake off billions and the
economy goes to hell. It is a war to regiment the
population for more war. This is capitalist carnage,
the product of a boom-bust system which endlessly
spawns war, racism and poverty. Today, U.S. rulers use
endless incantations of “September 11,” hoping to
befuddle the population and whip up bloodlust. The
“free but responsible” media marches in lockstep to
war. But no matter how much they censor the news from
Baghdad, as the cruise missile show on TV is replaced
by images of soldiers’ body bags, opposition to the
war will increase. Many will see that the “glory” of
an empire that sucks the lifeblood of the peoples of
the world while keeping total control over the oil
spigot means misery for the Iraqi masses, and
wholesale attacks on the working class in the U.S.

It is urgently necessary to mobilize opposition to
this impending slaughter. But on what program? Already
400,000 marched in London and a million and a half
demonstrated around Italy against the war on Iraq. On
October 26, a protest has been called in Washington,
D.C. to “stop the war before it begins” (as if it ever
ended). In the coming weeks, tens and hundreds of
thousands will join in antiwar demonstrations where
they will hear moral appeals from clergymen, slippery
speeches by bourgeois “dove” politicians politely
dissenting from their “hawk” colleagues, empty
rhetoric from union bureaucrats who will do nothing
that could endanger the capitalist system which they
support. There will be a sprinkling of would-be
socialists on the podium – often in the guise of one
or another “campaign,” “coalition” or “mobilization” –
to piece off the left and keep impatient youth in
line. What they will not say is that the bloodbath
won’t be stopped with peace parades and appeals to
“conscience.” Calls for a more “humane” foreign policy
or a multilateral approach are hogwash: the warmongers
in Washington will not be swayed by appeals or opinion
polls, they must be defeated. As opposed to bourgeois
pacifism, we communists call instead for class war
against the imperialist war.

U.S. Plans to Nuke Iraqi “Bunkers”


U.S. troops in chemical warfare suits during 1991 Gulf
War.

The invasion of this impoverished, semi-colonial
country is as blatant an imperialist aggression as
there has been since Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in
1935. The murderous rampages of a tin-pot strongman
like Saddam Hussein are nothing compared to the
devastation that is about to be unleashed by the real
“Butcher of Baghdad,” who is sitting in the White
/House. Washington is carrying out this carnage not
because of a mythical Iraqi “threat” but because U.S.
imperialism needs this war to enforce its world
hegemony. In 1999, Democrat Clinton bombed hospitals
in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in the name of “human rights”
for Kosovo. Last year Republican Bush conquered
Afghanistan, using the indiscriminate September 11
attack on the World Trade Center as an excuse. Today
Bush II is preparing a new “Desert Slaughter” against
Iraq, to “finish the job” that Bush I left undone in
the first Gulf War. And tomorrow? The endless “war on
terror” proclaimed by the U.S. will be a prelude to a
third imperialist world war – in which the ultimate
targets are its Japanese and European allies and
rivals, who are naturally less than enthusiastic about
the impending Iraq attack.

In the diplomatic horse-trading, the Europeans,
Russians and Chinese in the UN Security Council want
to dispatch “inspectors” to Iraq to look for “weapons
of mass destruction.” (The Bush administration has
gone into “thwart mode” to block this, since all its
scare talk of “WMD” in Hussein’s hands is purely a
pretext – sucker-bait for “lily-livered liberals” and
the like – and it doesn’t want anything to delay its
planned attack.) It should be clear that such
inspections are nothing but spying on the victim of
the upcoming imperialist attack. The U.S. now claims
that Iraq “expelled” UN inspectors in November 1998,
whereas the reality is that the UN withdrew them in
order to make way for the U.S. bombing of Baghdad that
December, code-named “Desert Fox” after the nickname
for World War II German general Rommel. Iraq
complained at the time that the inspectors were
secretly funneling information for the U.S. It was
later revealed that this is exactly what happened, as
CIA and NSA agents disguised as “UNSCOM” inspectors
placed an elaborate electronic eavesdropping system in
key sites which was then used to guide U.S. bombers.

The claims of “legality” for the various “sanctions,”
“inspections” and other measures against Iraq are
ludicrous. The so-called “no-fly zones,” prohibiting
Iraqi aircraft and allowing NATO warplanes over
two-thirds of the country, were simply decreed by the
U.S. and Britain. The UN “sanctions” cut off and then
severely limited Iraqi oil exports, while prohibiting
the importation of medical supplies and vitally needed
machinery to restore electrical plants and waterworks
systematically bombed by the U.S.-led “coalition” in
the first Gulf War. The resulting toll has been more
than 1.5 million Iraqi dead from preventable diseases,
among them a million children, in addition to the
200,000 killed in the U.S. attacks on Baghdad, Basra
and other cities. For the past dozen years, Iraq, once
the most prosperous and literate country in the Near
East, has been driven into dire poverty by the UN
sanctions regime. Now Bush and his poodle, British
prime minister Tony Blair, are getting ready to blast
the country again, deepening the misery and taking
untold lives. And the U.S. war planners expect the
Iraqis to stand on their rooftops and welcome the
“Allied” bombers as “liberators”!

Opponents of imperialism must reject demands for
“inspection” and oppose all UN “sanctions” against
Iraq, which are nothing but punishment of the Hussein
regime and the Iraqi people for losing the 1990-91
Gulf War. U.S. imperialism has huge quantities of
nuclear weapons (which it used on Japan) as well as of
chemical and biological weapons (used in
carpet-bombing Vietnam) – not to mention the
radioactive “depleted uranium” shells it has rained on
Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. So does its ally
Israel. The fact is that if Iraq really had nuclear
weapons, which it has every right to, this would serve
as a deterrent to a U.S. invasion. Bush charges that
Hussein has “used chemical weapons on its own people.”
What the U.S. war propaganda leaves out is that Iraq
used mustard gas, VX and other C-weapons during the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war with the full knowledge of the
United States, which armed Iraq, supplied it with
satellite photos of Iranian positions and had on-site
battlefield observers. While the existence of this
clandestine program was reported by the New York Times
(18 August) in a dispatch that was quickly forgotten,
the Times neglected to mention that the United States
also supplied Iraq with “seed chemicals” to jump-start
its chemical weapons program.

The cynicism of the U.S. rulers knows no limit. While
endlessly proclaiming that it is “advancing
democracy,” after imposing an imperialist protectorate
on Afghanistan, whose puppet “president” Karzai is
guarded by U.S.-contracted mercenaries, the White
House is preparing to impose a U.S. military
occupation government on Iraq that will be in place
for years. General Tommy Franks “would assume the role
that Gen. McArthur served in Japan after its surrender
in 1945” (New York Times, 11 October) – that is, he
would be an all-powerful dictator over the Iraqis’
destinies. This is what is euphemistically known as
“regime change” in the Orwellian language of
Bush-speak. Meanwhile, amid all the talk of Hussein’s
hypothetical “weapons of mass destruction,” the fact
is that the Pentagon is preparing to use “tactical”
nuclear weapons on Iraq. The U.S. News & World Report
(22 July) revealed:

“The Pentagon’s nuclear priesthood believes an
earth-penetrating nuclear bomb might be used to
destroy underground bunkers…. This dramatic shift in
nuclear policy is the most recent evidence of a new
Bush administration military strategy that
contemplates  pre-emptive first strikes – and even the
remote possibility of using nuclear weapons – against
outlaw states such as Iraq.”
Just as the German Nazis used the Spanish Civil War to
try out their Messerschmidt and Junker warplanes by
dive-bombing Republican columns and obliterating
Guernica, the Yankee imperialists want to test-drive
their nukes in the Iraqi desert…and on Iraqi cities.
Don’t forget the more than 400 women and children
killed in the U.S. “surgical” bombing of the Al
Amiriya air raid shelter with a U.S. GBU-27 “bunker
buster” in 1991.
Absolutely nobody among the movers and shakers in
Washington believes the government’s stated reason for
the war. Even the CIA admitted, in declassified
sections of a report to the Senate Intelligence
Committee, that the Iraqi regime is “drawing a line
short of conducting terrorist attacks” against the
U.S., that the chances of Hussein initiating an attack
with weapons of mass destruction were “low” if
unprovoked but “high” if Iraq is invaded (New York
Times, 9 October). The forces that have most actively
pushed for a war on Iraq are practically a caricature
of “Daddy Warbucks” weapons manufacturers, military
construction firms and oil millionaires extending into
the White House. They think war will be great for
business, and may even pull the Dow Jones stock index
out of its downward spiral. Spokesmen for the Bush
administration assure journalists that the fighting
will all be over in a matter of two weeks to two
months. The Congressional Budget Office estimates
three months, at a cost of $44 billion (Wall Street
Journal, 1 October).

Those who are counting on a cakewalk and getting war
on the cheap may be sorely surprised, but even if the
U.S. military force is able to overwhelm all
resistance, an imperialist occupation of the country
would drag on for years.
(Where Bush I got NATO and Japan to cough up the cash
to pay for the war, Bush II intends to pay for it with
money siphoned off of Iraqi oil production – kind of a
“leveraged buyout” on a grand scale.)

The fight to defeat the imperialist war drive must be
waged not only in Iraq but internationally, in
particular in the imperialist countries, notably the
United States. Asked why the administration’s drive
for war suddenly went into high gear in September,
coinciding with the kick-off of the fall election
campaign, the White House chief of staff cynically
replied: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t
introduce new products in August.” The White House
took the measure of the Democratic leaders, who
predictably roll over and play dead when accused of
being soft on Saddam. But those who think that
marketing war is just like selling toothpaste could
get a rude awakening from the very people they think
they are hoodwinking. Popular support for this war is
very thin and can be broken.

Attack on Iraq: Trigger for New World War

The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth
International (IG/LFI) warned last year, in calling to
defeat the U.S. assault on Afghanistan, that Bush’s
“war on terror” is a prelude to a new
inter-imperialist war:

“Just as the Balkan wars of 1908-1913 fed into and
touched off World War I, just as the Spanish Civil
War, Japan’s invasion of China and Italian
imperialism’s war on Ethiopia (Abysinnia) prepared
World War II, the U.S.-led imperialist wars over the
last decade against Iraq, Yugoslavia and now
Afghanistan point to a third imperialist world
conflagration growing out of the heightened rivalries
between the major capitalist powers.”
– The Internationalist No. 12, Fall 2001
The second war on Iraq sharply escalates this drive to
world war, particularly over the Bush Doctrine of
“pre-emptive strikes.” Combined with growing
inter-imperialist economic tensions it could trigger
spiraling clashes between the “great powers,” in which
erstwhile allies from the anti-Soviet war drive
increasingly become enemies. While various reformist
left papers – People’s Weekly World (CPUSA), Socialist
Worker (ISO), and Workers World (WWP) – have reported
the horrors of the Gulf War and the martyrdom of the
Iraqi people under a dozen years of UN sanctions
(while conveniently leaving out their own treacherous
role in blocking with the Democratic liberals who
first called for sanctions), they pass over lightly
the wider dimensions of the new war on Iraq.
The U.S. imperialists’ war aims go far beyond seizing
the Mesopotamian “cradle of civilization” and its oil
riches. Last year, U.S. vice president Cheney declared
that the open-ended “war on terror” would last the
lifetime of most adults. Now the U.S. administration
has unveiled a new military doctrine calling for
“pre-emptive strikes” against perceived enemies of
U.S. imperialism. “America will act against such
emerging threats before they are fully formed,” Bush’s
National Security Strategy announced in September.
Proclaiming a “single sustainable model for national
success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise,” the
strategy talks of “the possible renewal of old
patterns of great power competition” and “aggression
from other great powers,” declaring “that the
president has no intention of allowing any foreign
power to catch up with the huge lead the United States
has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more
than a decade ago” (quoted in the New York Times, 21
September). Written at Bush’s insistence in macho
language so it could be understood by “the boys in
Lubbock” (Texas), the document states: “Our forces
will be strong enough to dissuade potential
adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes
of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United
States.”

This is clearly not referring to Osama bin Laden,
Saddam Hussein, the Afghan Taliban, the conglomeration
of Islamic “holy warriors” Washington has dubbed “Al
Qaeda,” or any of the other countries currently listed
on Bush’s “axis of evil.” Rather, it is aimed at the
Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state, the
capitalist Russia that emerged from the collapse of
the USSR, and the European NATO imperialists who
bridle at Washington’s arrogant behavior. In a thinly
veiled call for counterrevolution, the national
security strategy document declares that “China’s
leaders have not yet made the next series of
fundamental choices about the character of their
state” and warns Beijing against pursuing “advanced
military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors
in the Asia-Pacific region.” We have repeatedly warned
that the U.S. imperialists are hell-bent on destroying
the remaining deformed workers states (China, Cuba,
North Korea and Vietnam) along the road to a third
imperialist world war. Ultimately, Washington fears
the economic powerhouse of West Europe united with a
resurgent Russia with its military/nuclear
capabilities and tremendous oil and gas resources.

This is not a new obsession. For decades during the
anti-Soviet Cold War, the U.S. was able to keep the
other imperialist powers in line by emphasizing the
need for a common front against the “threat of
Communism.” The Soviet workers state, born of the
October 1917 Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky, was
a conquest of the world proletariat which Trotskyists
tenaciously defended, even after its bureaucratic
degeneration under Stalin and his heirs with their
conservative nationalist dogma of “socialism in one
country.” The very existence of the USSR also made it
difficult for Washington to simply sweep away various
Soviet-allied “Third World” nationalist regimes. No
more. As the Soviet-bloc regimes were crumbling under
the relentless economic and military pressure of
imperialism, a collapse that was prepared by the
treacherous policies of “peaceful coexistence” pursued
by the sell-out Stalinist bureaucracies, George Bush
Sr. proclaimed the “death of Communism” and the birth
of a New World Order at the time of the first Gulf
War. But while the United States emerged as the “sole
superpower,” a U.S.-dominated New Order has not been
nailed down. Instead, the post-Soviet world has been
marked by rampant disorder, with raging nationalist
bloodletting and repeated imperialist wars.

Bush Jr. is the front man for the team of Cold
Warriors who led the assault on the Soviet Union under
Bush Sr. and who now vow to establish a global
American Reich. U.S. military forces are now stationed
in more than 130 countries around the world. Their
purpose was summed up in a document (“Defense Strategy
for the 1990’s”) written in January 1993 by Dick
Cheney, then U.S. secretary of war, which is the
precursor to the Bush strategy doctrine. The central
focus of the Cheney document was “to preclude any
hostile power from dominating a region critical to our
interests” (defined as Europe, East Asia, the Middle
East/Persian Gulf and Latin America) and to
“strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a
global threat to the interests of the United States
and our allies.” The “unilateralism” of the second
government of the Bush dynasty was already laid out in
this document, which declares that the U.S. must not
“allow our critical interests to depend solely on
international mechanisms.” Earlier drafts of the
Cheney document were developed by a team led by Paul
Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Eric Edelman, who are once
again the “defense” ideologues of Bush II.

This strategic orientation of U.S. imperialism is
behind Washington’s supreme indifference to whether it
has the support of the UN or an international
“coalition” for its war on Iraq. The Bush gang want to
demonstrate to one and all that they can go it alone,
the rest of the world be damned. The United States
doesn’t need Persian Gulf oil, which supplies barely
12 percent of American consumption; Europe and Japan
do, and U.S. rulers want to make it clear that they
can turn off Near Eastern energy supplies at will. At
the same time, the Bush administration proclaims the
virtue of “free trade” while slapping protectionist
tariffs on steel imports and maintaining huge
subsidies to American agribusiness. This has caused
consternation among its NATO allies. French president
Jacques Chirac has dug in his heels over Washington’s
demand for a one-shot UN Security Council resolution
authorizing war on Iraq. German chancellor Gerhard
Schr?der just won re-election by loudly declaring he
would not join an Iraq invasion, whether or not it is
authorized by the United Nations. This is simply
posturing, for in the end they will go along with the
action demanded by the U.S. But the European
imperialists are not just worried about being frozen
out of a post-invasion Iraqi oil bonanza. They
understand that the Bush doctrine is aimed at them.

In the United States, West Europe and other
imperialist countries, the “war on terrorism” has been
accompanied by a dramatic escalation of police-state
repression, as we warned immediately following last
year’s September 11 attack (see the IG statement,
“U.S. Whips Up Imperialist War Frenzy, Drives Toward
Police State” [14 September 2001] reprinted in The
Internationalist No. 12, Fall 2001). The Bush regime
wants to use this war as a wedge to attack trade-union
rights while establishing military tribunals for
“aliens” and even U.S. citizens it labels enemies,
ordering indefinite detention without charge, hundreds
of thousands of deportations and blatant racial
profiling for immigrants, carrying out massive
electronic spying, introducing pervasive “security”
measures and establishing a “unified military command”
with the authority to deploy the armed forces against
the domestic population. The government – with the
full participation of the Democrats, who first called
for a “Homeland (Fatherland) Security” department – is
consciously laying the basis for rule by state of
siege. To defeat the drive for a police state and
endless imperialist war requires a break from the twin
capitalist parties of war and racism, the Democrats
and Republicans, as well as minor bourgeois parties
such as the Greens, and the building of a
revolutionary workers party in the fight to reforge
the Fourth International.

Class War Against Imperialist War – For International
Socialist Revolution!

The Marxist approach to the fight against imperialist
war was developed during the First World War by V. I.
Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, in the face of the
ignominious capitulation by the “Socialist” Second
International, whose main parties lined up behind the
respective capitalist classes in the imperialist
slaughter. Lenin stressed in fighting against both
open reformists and vacillating centrists that it was
necessary for revolutionary socialists to stand for
the defeat of “their own” bourgeoisie in the
inter-imperialist war, while taking the side of
colonial and semi-colonial peoples in their wars for
independence from the colonial powers. In his essay
“Socialism and War” (September 1915), which has been
republished as a pamphlet by the Internationalist
Group, Lenin wrote:

“Both the advocates of victory for their governments
in the present war and advocates of the slogan
‘neither victory nor defeat,’ equally take the
standpoint of social-chauvinism. A revolutionary class
cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a
reactionary war, and cannot fail to see that the
latter’s military reverses must facilitate its
overthrow.”
Lenin noted that “the sentiments of the masses in
favor of peace often express incipient protest, anger
and consciousness of the reactionary character of the
war.” But, he said, while socialists intervene in
demonstrations and protests seeking to intersect these
sentiments, “they will not deceive the people by
conceding the idea that peace without annexations,
without the oppression of nations, without plunder,
without the germs of new wars among the present
governments and ruling classes is possible in the
absence of a revolutionary movement.” Calling to “turn
the imperialist war into civil war,” Lenin stressed
that it would take international socialist revolution
to achieve genuine peace. And that is the program on
which the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky carried
out the October Revolution.
The policy of the organizers of the various “peace
movements” around the world is diametrically opposed
to this revolutionary program. Placing themselves on
the political terrain of bourgeois democracy, they all
implicitly or openly call on capitalist and
pro-capitalist forces to put a stop to the war. In the
United States, the October 26 antiwar march is
sponsored by the International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition,
led by the International Action Center founded by
Ramsey Clark together with the Workers World Party.
This is the same Ramsey Clark who as U.S. attorney
general under Lyndon Johnson presided over the
murderous COINTELPRO war on the Black Panther Party.
In a July 29 letter to members of the UN Security
Council, Clark called on them to “denounce the
continuing threats by the United States against Iraq,
to demand immediate cessation of the threats and to
warn the United States that an attack by it on Iraq
would violate the Charter of the United Nations.”

The idea that the United Nations can bring the U.S.
dogs of war to heel is just the kind of deception of
the people that Lenin warned against. This feeds into
the call of Democratic Party politicians who want more
UN “inspections,” counterposing the “war on terror” to
Bush’s war on Saddam Hussein. There is no
counterposition, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq
are part of the same war and the task of UN
“inspectors” will be to set it off. UN sanctions set
the stage for the first Gulf War and have continued to
impoverish and murder the Iraqi people ever since.
From the Korean War to the war on Yugoslavia, the
United Nations has served as a cover for aggression by
U.S. imperialism. Now, whatever its outcome, a new UN
“debate” will again lead to untold death and
destruction in the Near East, not only in Iraq but
also in Palestine. Israeli rulers led by the butcher
Ariel Sharon are chomping at the bit to carry out mass
expulsions of the Arab population from their lands in
the West Bank and Gaza (euphemistically called
“transfer” by the Zionists) the minute the first U.S.
bomb drops on Baghdad. Revolutionaries demand an end
to all sanctions and inspections of Iraq and that all
U.S. and UN forces get out of the Near East, now!

If it is grotesque to ask the UN to bring the U.S. to
order, it is no less absurd to call on the European
imperialists to rein in the American “cowboys,” as
many liberals and reformists on the Old Continent do.
Ignacio Ramonet, the leader of ATTAC, the French
bourgeois “anti-globalization” umbrella organization,
wrote recently in Le Monde Diplomatique (October
2002):

“An empire doesn’t have allies, it only has vassals.
Most of the states of the European Union seem to have
forgotten this historical reality. Before our eyes,
under pressure from Washington, which has obliged them
to enroll in its war on Iraq, countries which are in
principle sovereign have allowed themselves to be
reduced to the sorry condition of satellites.”
Ramonet goes on to explicitly appeal to NATO to block
“this first war of the new imperial era.” He calls on
“Europe” to “block the military instrument, NATO,
which Washington is counting on for its imperial
expansion and whose use is subject to the vote of the
European states.” But these fellow imperialists
already have their hands covered with blood from the
wars on Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, wars that Ramonet
neglects to mention because they were largely
supported, to one degree or another, by the
“anti-globalizers,” and they are not about to become a
force for “peace.” By joining with such forces and
appeals, various European pseudo-Trotskyists such as
the French Ligue Communiste Rйvolutionnaire (LCR) are
lining up with their own bourgeoisies, as the social
democrats did in World War I.
Authentic Trotskyists call to defeat the imperialists
not only on the battlefield, where Iraqi forces face
massive U.S. firepower, but through mobilizing the
power of the working class worldwide, independent of
all bourgeois forces, against the war. U.S. seizure of
Iraq could set off roiling unrest threatening decrepit
“old regimes” that have a tenuous grip on power in
many predominantly Muslim countries. While reactionary
Islamic fundamentalist forces will seek to profit from
this, they do not have a monopoly on opposition to
these deeply corrupt regimes. Where the war sparks
broad social unrest, proletarian internationalist
forces would seek to intervene with a program to pose
the struggle along class lines. In Algeria, the revolt
of secular youth and minority populations that swept
Berber regions last year has been quieted but not
eliminated – witness the recent mass boycott of the
regime’s phony elections in Kabylia. In Pakistan,
trade-union opposition to the U.S.-allied military
dictatorship of General Musharraf has frequently
clashed with Islamist jihadis (“holy warriors”). In
Turkey there are sizeable leftist-led unions and
numerous self-proclaimed socialist groups. In
Indonesia, where shadowy military cliques allied with
Muslim fundamentalists are trying to destabilize the
shaky Megawati government with terrorist provocations,
the opposition labor movement that helped bring down
the Suharto dictatorship is restive. The question is
not whether mass opposition to the imperialist war is
possible, but rather on what class program it is
built.

In the United States, Britain and all countries
involved in the war Trotskyists call for workers
actions against the war drive. This includes blocking
the transport of war materiel by union pickets,
demanding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan
and Iraq, and undertaking workers strike action
against the imperialist war. Communists should
vigorously protest the presence of bourgeois
politicians and spokesmen at “antiwar” rallies,
pointing out that the “doves” as well as the “hawks”
among the capitalist politicians are all warmongers,
strikebreakers and enemies of the exploited and
oppressed. In the U.S., the use of the Taft-Hartley
slave labor law against West Coast ILWU dock workers
locked out by the maritime bosses directly posed the
link between the class struggle and the fight against
the imperialist war. In a series of leaflets
distributed on the picket lines, the Internationalist
Group called to shut the ports down tight with strike
action, and to block any movement of military goods.

While IG members were present on the dock workers’
picket lines in Oakland daily during the lockout, a
number of left groups showed up for a solidarity rally
on October 5. The reformist International Socialist
Organization and Workers World Party and Socialist
Action pushed their respective popular-front “peace”
events. For its part, the Spartacist League failed to
mention the issue of war materiel, much less call to
boycott it, in an article on the ILWU lockout. Nor did
the front-page article in Workers Vanguard (4 October)
utter a word of criticism of union leader of Jim
Spinosa, who tried to introduce flag-waving
“anti-terrorist” slogans into the strike; nor, for
that matter, did it call on dock workers to defy the
Taft-Hartley injunction which was clearly in the
works, or urge that the rest of the working class
undertake strike action against the slave labor law.
Not a word about the need for international dock
workers’ solidarity actions either.

The SL for many years stood for the politics of
revolutionary Trotskyism, and still claims to do so.
However, amid the “anti-terrorist” hysteria whipped up
by the government last fall, it hesitated for weeks
before calling to defend Afghanistan, and obstinately
refused to call for the defeat of U.S. imperialism in
the war, calling the IG and the League for the Fourth
International “revolutionary phrasemongers” and
supposedly pandering to “anti-Americanism” for
insisting on this Leninist policy. (At the same time,
the SL hailed quintessential Democratic dove Barbara
Lee for dissenting from the vote of war powers for
Bush, while keeping silent for weeks about the fact
that she voted for the $40 billion war budget.) The SL
claimed that their internationalist duties were
fulfilled by calling for “class struggle at home” in
war time. The ILWU lockout presented a golden
opportunity to show what this meant, yet the SL was
barely present at the picket lines and its propaganda
ducked every single issue in which the dock workers’
struggle intersected the war!

In contrast to the early years of the Vietnam War,
there is already widespread unease in the labor
movement over the war on Iraq. In August, the
Washington State AFL-CIO convention passed a
“Resolution Against the War, Attacks on Civil
Liberties and Cuts in Public Services” that sharply
criticized “the national AFL-CIO’s uncritical support
for this profit-driven war,” calling to “campaign for
the repeal of the USA Patriot Act and defeat of
similar ‘anti-terrorism’ measures,” to “refuse to
cooperate with FBI spying on political, union, and
anti-globalism activists or comply with INS harassment
of Arabs and other immigrants and people of color in
the U.S.,” to “demand the immediate release of the
hundreds of Middle Eastern, Arab and other immigrants
who are still being detained” and to “oppose the U.S.
government’s open-ended ‘war on terrorism’.” Lest
anyone think that labor officialdom had suddenly
turned into a hotbed of “reds,” the resolution ended
with a call to “pressure President Bush and Congress
to stop the war and redirect money from corporate
handouts and the military budget to assist laid-off
workers.”

This is the classic “butter instead of guns” rhetoric
of social-chauvinists whose real concern is the
domestic costs of the war – which hinder their
class-collaborationist schemes – and who would not
dare to take a stand on the side of the working people
of Iraq, who are once again to be the victims of
monstrous war crimes that the U.S. is gearing up to
commit. Moreover, this motion (and a similar one by
the San Francisco Labor Council) would never have been
passed but for the fact that the local Democratic
Party had come out against the war. The fact that
Democrats in the House of Representatives voted 126-81
against the war powers resolution is indicative of the
divided opinion in the country. (Recent polls show
barely 51 percent for the war, falling to 33 percent
if there are 5,000 casualties – so much for the
premature announcement of the death of the “Vietnam
Syndrome.”) But the House Democrats “took pains to
describe their vote as not simply a pacifist protest
against all military action, but rather a difference
of opinion on the need for an international force
versus unilateral action” (New York Times, 11
October). Rather than an “open-ended ‘war on
terrorism’,” they want a more “focused” war arguing
that the main enemy is Bin Laden, not Hussein. We say
the enemy is U.S. imperialism, which is by far the
most murderous terrorist force around.

The fight against the renewed war on Iraq and the
U.S.-dominated “New World Order” must be a fight
against the imperialist system, which can only be
swept away through international socialist revolution.
It means a fight against all brands of bourgeois
nationalism and religious reaction and in favor of
proletarian internationalism. In the Near East,
Trotskyists defend the besieged Palestinian population
against the Zionist occupation in fighting for an
Arab-Hebrew workers state, opposing any
religious-based state (whether the “Jewish state” of
Israel or an “Islamic republic”) and recognizing the
national rights of both peoples crowded together in
this tiny land.

In Iraq as well, we fight for workers revolution to
throw out the bloody dictator Saddam Hussein, who was
installed with U.S. help, supplied by the CIA with
lists of Communists to kill, and armed by the Pentagon
to fight against Khomeini’s Iran. This revolution
would bring together workers and peasants from the
Shi’ite Muslim majority and Sunni Muslim minority, as
well as Kurds, Turkomens and other national
minorities. Recognizing that the current national
boundaries were established in the imperialist
carve-up of the Ottoman Empire following World War I,
communists call for a socialist republic of united
Kurdistan.

A successful workers revolution anywhere in the region
would sound the death knell for tottering monarchies
such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, nationalist
military-dominated regimes (Iraq, Syria, Turkey,
Egypt, Libya, Algeria) and imperialist protected oil
sheikdoms (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, etc.), while
offering the prospect of liberation for Iranian
working people who have smarted under the dictatorship
of the shah and the mullahs. As in the case of
Israel/Palestine and other countries (such as Lebanon)
with intractable national and communal divisions,
disputes over conflicting democratic rights and scarce
resources such as oil and water can only be resolved
in the framework of a socialist federation of the Near
East, which would make possible all-sided social
emancipation, in particular for women. While the
imperialists inflame national hostilities with their
talk of a “clash of civilizations,” the communist
program alone can overcome the colonial heritage of
“divide and rule” and bring together all the nations,
peoples and fragments of peoples who are scattered
through the region precisely because it has always
been a crossro+ads of civilizations.

Defeat U.S. Imperialism – Defend Iraq! For
International Socialist Revolution!



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League
for the Fourth International, send e-mail to:
internationalistgroup@...

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en franзais !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com

Since God's love doesn't have color, why shall ours? Join us and love
is in the air!

http://www.InterracialMatch.com/i/01

Israel Shamir, former journalist for Zavtra  (leading racist journal in
Russia), has been featured consistently on the Russian "left" website
www.left.ru for his "brilliant" contributions to the Middle East debate.
Professor Vladimir Bilenkin - Baumgarten, the editor, and his little pet
puppets such as Tatiana Aparina, trying to defend themselves from my charge
that they are promoting racism in the Russian labour movement, made a big
celebration of the few lame words of criticism they have published , from
time to time, of Shamir's most rabid nazi-style diatribes against Jews, in
between promoting him as if he is Lenin born-again. I do not have time now to
answer the slanderous allegations they have made against International
Solidarity with Workers in Russia (ISWoR), or the personal shite against me
("provocateur" etc.) So in the meantime, I will reply only with a question:
who is this hero Shamir, that the editors of left.ru think is so wonderful,
they must constantly bring his writings to the attention of the Russian left?
Who is this great communist that has so much inspired the great communists
running left.ru?

Let's let the strasserite fascist who uses the name "Israel Shamir" speak for
himself. Here is one of his recent articles below.
Lisa Taylor
-------
Anti-War and anti-World
(Intoduction by Israel Shamir)
This list consistently supports the strategic coalition of
left and right forces against their common enemy. After a few right-wing
forwards we offer now a spirited defence of the antiwar movement from the
liberal attacks by a friend of Palestine, the editor of Socialist Viewpoint
Rod Holt, whose Marxist opinions were delegitimised by the 'mainstream' as
efficiently and ruthlessly as those of Buchanan or Sobran.

The American anti-war movement had brought together the Left and the Right.
Such a Left - Right coalition is extremely desirable, for it allows the US
to
liberate its
discourse, to free its mind, to become a good and valued member in the
family of nations, instead of a rogue state run in tandem with Israel.
Naturally, our adversaries fear it more than anything else. They try to
frighten folks away by the images of Trots and Nazis. Rod Holt's piece calls
for 'a non-exclusive coalition of groups'. But it has a deeper meaning.

The Left and The Right are comparable to two differing approaches, where one
stands for individualism, another for equality, one stands for progress,
another for stability, one for the roots, another for mobility. (Yes, they
can become nasty if run unchecked, but it is true even about rabbits).
However, the whole field of discourse is not a straight line, but a ring
consisting of two semi-circles. The Left and the Right semicircles meet in
two spots. One of them
is the centrist bog, the  Republicrats, another is the perfect combination
of mind
and heart, the place of highest spirituality akin to Annunciation. This
far-away meeting point of Left and Right is the total rejection of the whole
range of Mammonite strategies from globalisation to Zionism. For people
aware of Hegel's dialectics, that is the place where the left turns into its
opposite, the right, and the lamb lays with a lion:-) Spiritually it
corresponds to the meeting of Sublime and Mundane.

It is the place of love to God and Man, and therefore the enemies of God and
Man call it the place of hate.

Our small list is the place in the universe where this meeting is arranged.
Shamir
-------


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

What do Alexander Solzhenitsyn , Jozef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler have in
common?
Message to all statesmen: when the country is in crisis, one strategy works
every time -  kick the Jews.
LT
----

Solzhenitsyn breaks last taboo of the revolution

Nobel laureate under fire for new book on the role of Jews in Soviet-
era repression

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Saturday January 25, 2003
The Guardian

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who first exposed the horrors of the
Stalinist gulag, is now attempting to tackle one of the most
sensitive topics of his writing career - the role of the Jews in the
Bolshevik revolution and Soviet purges.
In his latest book Solzhenitsyn, 84, deals with one of the last
taboos of the communist revolution: that Jews were as much
perpetrators of the repression as its victims. Two Hundred Years
Together - a reference to the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and
Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population -
contains three chapters discussing the Jewish role in the
revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia.

But Jewish leaders and some historians have reacted furiously to the
book, and questioned Solzhenitsyn's motives in writing it, accusing
him of factual inaccuracies and of fanning the flames of anti-
semitism in Russia.

Solzhenitsyn argues that some Jewish satire of the revolutionary
period "consciously or unconsciously descends on the Russians" as
being behind the genocide. But he states that all the nation's ethnic
groups must share the blame, and that people shy away from speaking
the truth about the Jewish experience.

In one remark which infuriated Russian Jews, he wrote: "If I would
care to generalise, and to say that the life of the Jews in the camps
was especially hard, I could, and would not face reproach for an
unjust national generalisation. But in the camps where I was kept, it
was different. The Jews whose experience I saw - their life was
softer than that of others."

Yet he added: "But it is impossible to find the answer to the eternal
question: who is to be blamed, who led us to our death? To explain
the actions of the Kiev cheka [secret police] only by the fact that
two thirds were Jews, is certainly incorrect."

Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, spent
much of his life in Soviet prison camps, enduring persecution when he
wrote about his experiences. He is currently in frail health, but in
an interview given last month he said that Russia must come to terms
with the Stalinist and revolutionary genocides - and that its Jewish
population should be as offended at their own role in the purges as
they are at the Soviet power that also persecuted them.

"My book was directed to empathise with the thoughts, feelings and
the psychology of the Jews - their spiritual component," he said. "I
have never made general conclusions about a people. I will always
differentiate between layers of Jews. One layer rushed headfirst to
the revolution. Another, to the contrary, was trying to stand back.
The Jewish subject for a long time was considered prohibited.
Zhabotinsky [a Jewish writer] once said that the best service our
Russian friends give to us is never to speak aloud about us."

But Solzhenitsyn's book has caused controversy in Russia, where one
Jewish leader said it was "not of any merit".

"This is a mistake, but even geniuses make mistakes," said Yevgeny
Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress. "Richard Wagner
did not like the Jews, but was a great composer. Dostoyevsky was a
great Russian writer, but had a very sceptical attitude towards the
Jews.

"This is not a book about how the Jews and Russians lived together
for 200 years, but one about how they lived apart after finding
themselves on the same territory. This book is a weak one
professionally. Factually, it is so bad as to be beyond criticism. As
literature, it is not of any merit."

But DM Thomas, one of Solzhenitsyn's biographers, said that he did
not think the book was fuelled by anti-semitism. "I would not doubt
his sincerity. He says that he firmly supports the state of Israel.
In his fiction and factual writing there are Jewish characters that
he writes about who are bright, decent, anti-Stalinist people."

Professor Robert Service of Oxford University, an expert on 20th
century Russian history, said that from what he had read about the
book, Solzhenitsyn was "absolutely right".

Researching a book on Lenin, Prof Service came across details of how
Trotsky, who was of Jewish origin, asked the politburo in 1919 to
ensure that Jews were enrolled in the Red army. Trotsky said that
Jews were disproportionately represented in the Soviet civil
bureaucracy, including the cheka.

"Trotsky's idea was that the spread of anti-semitism was [partly down
to] objections about their entrance into the civil service. There is
something in this; that they were not just passive spectators of the
revolution. They were part-victims and part-perpetrators.

"It is not a question that anyone can write about without a huge
amount of bravery, and [it] needs doing in Russia because the Jews
are quite often written about by fanatics. Mr Solzhenitsyn's book
seems much more measured than that."

Yet others failed to see the need for Solzhenitsyn's pursuit of this
particular subject at present. Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB
colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the
precursor of the KGB), said: "The question of ethnicity did not have
any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD.
This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD and
cheka were serving ideas of social change.

"If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it
will increase the passions of anti-semitism, which has deep roots in
Russian history. I think it is better not to discuss such a question
now."




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The Marxists Internet Archive is proud to announce the publication of the
Marxists CD 2003. With thousands more doucments added since last years
edition, the CD is now THREE discs large; 20,000 documents, 2.3 gigs of
data; 29 languages. Here are just some of the accomplishments of the MIA
that have been included on the Marxists CD 2003:

We added several new language sections that we started last year
Several whole new volumes of Lenin's Collected Works  (14 total)
Hundreds of new works by Marx and Engles, Lenin and Trotsky their
contemporiries: Bernstein, Kautsky and others
A major revamp and expansion of the Encylcopedia of Marxism
...and thousands of more pages of text of the classics of Marxism!

By purchasing the CD with a donation of $30, you help provide for the
maintaince and expansion of the MIA and future versions of the CD.

marx.org/admin/cd/index.htm

Please send us your emails in the future to:

labournetaustria@...

In solidarity,
Karl Fischbacher
LabourNet-Austria
http://web.utanet.at/labournet.austria

Comrades, the following article by Boris is where he is in his element, and this
is at his very best within that element. If only this quality of thinking in
Russia was applied by someone to the field of trade union and socialist
organisation, our comrades there would surely rise from the deep and murky
waters they are presently in. The article was printed in the LINKS magazine, no
22, Sept-Dec 2002.  http://www.dsp.org.au/links/index.htm

Steve Myers.

----------------------

What remains of Soviet culture?

by Boris Kagarlitsky

A decade after the official dissolution of the Soviet Union, the question of the
Soviet heritage remains the topic of heated discussions in Russia and other
post-Communist countries. Some people explain all the problems and disagreements
as survivals from the Soviet past, and dream of a time when the collective
memory will be wiped clean of the last traces of the Soviet experience. Others
carefully cherish Soviet traditions, saving whatever can still be saved and
preserving it. Among sections of radical youth there is a half myth, half fairy
tale about life in the USSR, a version that mixes the truth with the idealised
recollections of grandfathers and grandmothers who take their grandchildren to
Communist demonstrations. As the grandchildren grow up, they do not become
admirers of Stalin, but feel a robust loathing for the people who destroyed the
country and impoverished its people. Even without the grandparents, they would
have thought exactly the same, since their own experience of life proves to the
younger generation, on a daily basis, that present-day Russia, Ukraine and
Kazakhstan are societies that are not so much creating the conditions for future
development, as squandering and destroying the inheritance from Soviet times.
The most important questions remain at a certain distance from all these
disputes: What was it that made Soviet culture unique and attractive? What is
its place in history, and what did it leave behind?

The question of the uniqueness of the Soviet cultural experience is by no means
an idle one. Ultimately, the cult of industrial labour, of selfless service to
the state, of a healthy body and of family values is not peculiar to the Soviet
Union between the 1930s and 1960s. In the late twentieth century, when the topic
of totalitarianism again became fashionable, a great deal was written about the
similarity between Soviet cultural norms and the aesthetic principles that held
sway in Hitler's Germany. Nevertheless, a more detailed comparison of the Soviet
and German official art of the 1930s reveals not just similarities, but
substantial differences. The people depicted on the Soviet canvases are far more
individualised; if it was enough for Nazi artists to depict racial stereotypes,
for their Soviet colleagues it was important to show individual embodiments of a
social ideal. Despite the monotonous topics (shock work, military service,
sporting achievements, healthy children), Soviet art of the 1930s therefore
makes for much more interesting viewing than that of Germany.

Meanwhile, drawing a superficial analogy between the USSR and 1930s Germany in
fact explains nothing. The models of the "totalitarian aesthetic" that emerged
in these countries did not appear out of a vacuum, and they cannot be understood
without reflecting on their origins and their cultural context. This is where
things become really interesting.

The same topics and images, and the same "stylistic context", are also to be
found in US art, and in the works of the glorious British Empire. The
architecture of Washington creates a striking sense of dГ©jГ  vu in tourists
from Russia. The broad avenues and massive pseudo-classical buildings with
Corinthian columns are all reminiscent of the way Stalin reconstructed Moscow.
Just as striking are the architectural parallels with London.

The general cultural and ideological context here is one of imperialism and
industrialism. The cult of the state, given concrete form in the images of
heroes (before the first world war, those of military commanders, and after it,
of rank and file soldiers), is a traditional element in the European cultural
heritage. Added to it in the twentieth century was the glorification of
industrial labour, embodied in the images of miners and other workers.
Accompanying them sometimes were collective farmers, but this does not
contradict the poetic of industrialism, since the peasants with their sheaves of
wheat (or fishers with their catch) are torn apart from nature, from their rural
setting, and placed in a single productive context with the industrial workers.
In this sense, the Rockefeller Centre in New York and the Revolution Square
metro station in Moscow have their origins in the same view of life. It is
significant that these workers and farmers appeared on the facades of
Anglo-American buildings toward the end of the Great Depression (that is, at
roughly the same time as classical Stalinist ideology and culture were taking
shape in the USSR and Nazism was triumphing in Germany).

The aesthetic sources of imperial-industrial culture were the classicism and
naturalism of the nineteenth century. It is no accident that people in the
Soviet Union spoke of the "Stalinist Empire Style"—the parallels between
Soviet architecture and the late classicism of the epoch of Napoleon Bonaparte
force themselves upon you. The Empire Style was the aesthetic expression of the
triumph of order over revolution. This order, however, did not condemn the
revolution, but rested on its conquests while appropriating them and placing
them at the service of the new post-revolutionary elite. The same can also be
said of Stalinism. Having begun as the "Soviet Thermidor", to use Trotsky's
phrase, Stalinism by the 1940s had transformed itself definitively into the
Soviet form of Bonapartism. It is enough to compare the formal portraits of
Stalin painted in the 1940s with the depictions of Napoleon in the official
French art of the imperial epoch.

The cult of the public space, as opposed to the private one, was also a tribute
to the principle of empire. The public space was aestheticised, while the
private one was not. Like the palaces of past kings and emperors, the famous
Moscow metro stations were not just works of art. They were a compensation for
the godforsaken barracks and communal apartments where citizens carried on their
private lives. But unlike the palaces of the eighteenth century, the halls of
the Moscow metro stations belonged to the masses. The marble was fake, but it
was accessible to everyone. It is significant that from the 1960s, when Soviet
society began to recognise the value of the individual space (the embodiment of
which became the "separate apartment"), the Moscow metro became functional. The
palatial stations were replaced by spacious but anonymous halls with purely
functional purposes. If there was still a certain aestheticisation of the space,
this was merely a tribute to the past.

If the classicist tradition embodied the imperial, Bonapartist principle, the
naturalistic tradition helped to realise the ideals of industrialism. In the
Soviet Union people often spoke of "socialist realism" as being descended from
the "critical realism" of the nineteenth century. In practice, however,
socialist realism was a continuation of naturalism. The origins of the Soviet
"social" novel, or of the "novel of production", are not to be found in
Dickens's Oliver Twist or in Balzac's ComГ©die Humaine. A positive attitude to
the classics of the Victorian epoch was no more than a concession to the formal
"Marxism" of Soviet art criticism. Because Marx was an admirer of Dickens and of
the "brilliant school of English realists", these very people had to be cited
among the "forerunners". In essence, the attitude of Soviet critics to "critical
realism" was the same as their attitude to Marxism: a declarative respect and
reverence, accompanied by a total ignorance of what each was really about.

Zola's Germinal, by contrast, comes to mind at every turn, and one is also
struck by the influence of French naturalism on Gorky's novel A Mother, which
was declared to have been the first work of socialist realism. If the "critical
realists" for whom Marx had such a high regard tried to understand the nature of
social relations, understanding them primarily as relations between people (even
if these people were "typical representatives" of their classes), the
naturalists were interested in the process of work itself, or in movements of
great—and in essence, de-individualised—masses of people. This was the art
of the epoch that saw the triumph of industrial machines and mass production,
the painting and literature of the epoch of the steam engine. It could be said
that the trends which triumphed in the Soviet art of the 1930s were not at all a
reflection of the uniqueness of the "communist experiment", but on the contrary,
of the inclusion of Stalin's regime in a common process of development, with the
only difference being that trends which had emerged only in the US or Britain
were expressed to the fullest extent in Russia, including totalitarianism, in
order to place everything on an absolute scale.

These trends, however, did not triumph without a struggle. If Nazism in Germany
had to extirpate the artistic tradition of expressionism, Soviet art in the
period of the revolution and throughout the 1920s was dominated by various forms
of artistic avant-gardism, linked in thoroughly organic fashion with the general
political context of the revolution. The Soviet avant-garde of the revolutionary
era and German expressionism had a common socio-cultural basis. They were
anti-bourgeois and radical. Hitler and his supporters had no ideological
problems with suppressing artistic radicalism, since the Nazi party had never
hidden its conservative roots, merely seeking to augment its conservatism with
social demagogy and corporatism. With Stalinism, things were different.
Counter-revolutionary in its essence, Stalinism could not repudiate its
revolutionary origins. This was the duality which underlies all "Thermidorean"
and "Bonapartist" regimes. The new elite has no need of the revolutionary
activism of the masses, and does its utmost to suppress this activism, imposing
the "order" needed to guarantee its privileged position. But at the same time,
it cannot legitimise itself except by stressing its continuity with the
revolutionary past. As its foreign policy successes increase, this revolutionary
legitimisation is little by little forced out (though not entirely replaced) by
a new one—this time, imperial. This imperial ideology, however, cannot be
openly counterposed to the revolutionary tradition.

Soviet culture was forced to preserve an inner continuity, and this was one of
its main virtues. The above-noted comparison between Nazi and Stalinist painting
speaks for itself. The advantage possessed by Soviet socialist realism lay in
the fact that for all its totalitarian features, it did not break completely
with the artistic and ideological traditions of the early years of the century
and of the 1920s. These traditions, meanwhile, were full of liberating energy.
Stalinism appropriated the revolutionary energy and directed it into a channel
determined by the new ruling elite. By virtue of this, the revolutionary impulse
was preserved, though in a distorted and perverted form.

So long as the revolutionary impulse was alive, the Soviet cultural tradition
remained alive and well. In this sense, the 1960s provide a sort of parallel
with the 1920s. The death of Stalin was followed not merely by a political
liberalisation, but also by a liberating of the cultural and ideological
potential that still survived in the Soviet tradition. This is the secret behind
the mysteriously fascinating quality of the 1960s in the USSR. The period was no
longer heroic in any sense, but it was dynamic, and charged with emotion to an
improbable degree. The 1960s, however, not only showed that the initial impulse
of Soviet culture was still alive, but also how weak it had become. The period
saw a last outburst of cultural passion, followed by its final exhaustion.

The essence of the 1960s lay in an improbable combination of a critical attitude
toward Soviet reality with an acceptance of this reality. The thinking of the
creative intelligentsia was conflictive, but not oppositional. Just as the
Stalin era had seen an astonishing mix of terror and enthusiasm, the Khrushchev
period synthesised mass discontent and equally massive support for the system.
In this respect, the intelligentsia was still part of the people. The conflict
gradually intensified, changing from sporadic to continual resistance;
meanwhile, the aesthetic demarcation outstripped the political one. It was no
accident that Khrushchev's clash with avant-garde artists came to represent a
crucial stage in the development of Soviet political life.

The Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras, with all their differences, marked the death
and decay of the Soviet cultural tradition. The official normative aesthetic was
restored, and alternative trends were suppressed. The members of the
intelligentsia were offered a choice between conformism and dissidence, unlike
the situation in the Khrushchev era, when non-conformism could be combined with
acceptance of the principles of the state system. The fact that the conformism
was purely formal was beside the point. The art critic Leonid Batkin called this
"ritual self-defilement". There was no obligation to display belief in the
ideal. All that was important was to make regular displays of loyalty. The norms
of Stalinist classicism had not been restored, but artistic experimentation was
suppressed. As a result, the official art became more and more formal and
soulless. Everything that was alive became oppositional to one degree or
another, but at the same time gradually lost its connection to the cultural and
ideological tradition that had earlier nourished it. The search for new ideas
was no more fruitful than the search for a new aesthetic. It amounted to a
desperate attempt by Soviet citizens to cease being Soviet, without becoming
anything else.

The cultural crisis of the 1990s is often depicted in economic terms: there was
no investment in the cinema, the subsidies to the theatres became miserly, major
exhibitions became a rarity, and so forth. But the crisis of identity that had
broken out was far more drastic than the shortage of money. Moreover, the
seriousness of this crisis was in direct proportion to the efforts of the
creative intelligentsia itself to put an end to the Soviet tradition, the only
one it possessed. This fanatical thirst for destruction (perhaps the last
element that remained alive in all of revolutionary culture) was not just an
extremely powerful emotional principle, but also became the sole unifying idea,
in the process making it impossible for other creative ideas to emerge. It was
assumed that the ideals of the free market would automatically give rise to a
new culture. Such naive notions could appear only among the Soviet population,
with no experience of the market, and hence unaware that the market and
bourgeois rule are hostile to culture as a matter of principle (this was why all
the waves of innovation in Western culture during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries were based, in one way or another, on anti-bourgeois sentiment).

The collapse of Soviet culture also spelled the end of the anti-Soviet
opposition in culture. The 1970s and 1980s interest in the underground quickly
began to disperse as these cultural phenomena ceased to be an underground (this
was equally true of the "new avant-garde", with its semi-legal art exhibitions
and samizdat novels). It was not that these works of art were bad; many of them
were good. But they had fulfilled a certain politico-cultural function, which
vanished along with the Soviet order.

An exception was the rock culture of the 1970s and 1980s, which continued to
develop after being legalised. Here, big money played the same corrupting role
as in the West. By the 1990s the rock idols of the previous decade, such as
Andrey Makarevich, had been corrupted and turned into models of snobbery and
mindless adherence to bourgeois values. The heroes of the early 1990s, whether
Alisa, DDT or Lyube, had also compromised themselves, often losing the capacity
for originality. But with striking speed they were replaced by new names and
faces. In this respect, the picture differs little from what applies throughout
the world. Show business is able to commercially appropriate a counter-culture
and at the same time to destroy it (the works of Tom Frank describe this process
brilliantly). But at the same time as it loses particular heroes, the
counter-culture gives birth to others, whom it will also, most likely, lose
before long. There is a nutrient medium which is capable of reproducing itself
and of giving birth to ever new creative leaders. At least in the early stages,
the self-affirmation of these leaders requires them to throw down a rhetorical
challenge both to the official norms and to the "bought-off" and "corrupted"
representatives of the older generation. This permanent revolt is the normal
mode of existence of the counter-cultural milieu; to swallow the milieu
completely would not be to the advantage even of show business, since show
business itself is not capable of coming up with new creative ideas.

Why has it been the musical counter-culture that has survived and developed,
against a background of the crisis and collapse of everything Soviet, from the
censored cinema to samizdat literature? Probably because the musical
counter-culture was never totally and organically associated with the Soviet
tradition. It emerged in the early 1970s, and was never linked to the
continuation or rebirth of the revolutionary impulse. Arising under the
influence of Western rock and roll, it was imported along with mini-skirts,
jeans and other manifestations of the Western protest movement of 1968-1972. The
anti-bourgeois point of this protest remained hidden from most young people in
Eastern Europe, but the appeal of the style was irresistible. The anti-bourgeois
sentiment was replaced by a simplified and at times, quite vulgar nonconformism,
this time aimed against the conservative bureaucracies. From its very beginning,
Russian rock thus found its own completely organic justification, and its own
enemy. It became totally adapted to Russian (or Ukrainian) soil, but
significantly, never defined itself as part of Soviet or even anti-Soviet
culture. It simply developed in this period and on this territory.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the key question was: what remained? To
declare that the cultural heritage of the twentieth century had been completely
lost was not merely unjust, but simply did not correspond to reality. Nothing
vanishes without trace, especially in the field of culture. The material
inheritance from the Soviet period continues to shape our perceptions of the
environment and landscape, though both are changing radically. It is of
fundamental importance to understand what is yet to come. The cultural child of
the French Revolution was romanticism, although the revolution itself unfolded
within the aesthetic of classicism. Romanticism represented the response of art
to the defeat of the revolution and the subsequent fall of the empire.
Romanticism in itself, however, was not only radical, but in many of its
manifestations, revolutionary.

To draw mechanical analogies, especially in the field of culture, is pointless.
Nevertheless, a rethinking of the Soviet experience in new aesthetic forms is a
sort of "objective" cultural task, in the sense that after the disintegration of
the USSR, society is far from having drawn up a balance sheet of the Soviet
past. Just as the French Revolution was defeated but by no means brought to a
close in 1814 and 1815, the Russian Revolution has not come to its final
conclusion with the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism.
Present-day Russian life is full of a sense of incompleteness, and even a decade
after the fall of the USSR, society continues to describe itself as post-Soviet
or post-Communist. The revolution, with its shocks and prodigious developments,
forced out recollections of the Bourbons and Romanovs in the space of five or
six years.

The Soviet experience also remains a crucial factor in mass consciousness
because the new reality does not provide its own solid and socially acceptable
everyday experience, meaningful enough to force out the past. The ghosts of
Robespierre and Napoleon continued to haunt French and European consciousness
right up until the time of the Paris Commune. The spectres of Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin, and even of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, remain part of mass consciousness
throughout the expanse of the former USSR. Meanwhile, like the images of the
revolution and the empire in the nineteenth century, they are being transformed
with the advent of a new generation. END

POLITICAL ARRESTS IN UKRAINE
Searches Produce Nothing. Brutal Tortures of Young Communists


This latest information on the arrest of a large group of young leftists in
Ukraine came via e-mail from the city of Odessa on 3 January and was originally
published in left newspaper Moskva. Sadovoe kol'tso.

The police arrested twelve people.  They are:
Russian citizens
Igor Danilov,
Anatoly Plevo
Ilya Romanov
Alexander Smirnov
Ukrainian citizens
Oleg Alekseev
Sergei Beldiugin
Nina Polskikh
Andrei Yakovenko
Alexander Gerasimov
Denisov
B. Zinchenko
And one citizen of Moldova
E. Semyonov

(According to one earlier report, the arrested Ukrainians come from the Leninist
Communist Union of Youth (Ukraine) (LKSMU), the All-Ukrainian Union of Workers
(VSR) and the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU).  Andrei Yakovenko-the First
Secretary of the Odessa Leninist-Communist Youth League and the regional leader
of VSR - was charged according to Article 258 (4) of the Criminal Code of
Ukraine for "organizing a stable secret terrorist group for the purpose of a
violent overthrow of the constitutional order of Ukraine and the seizure of
state power." -  A.B.)
This is list is not complete and might be in need of revision.  At this time
there is no opportunity to establish exact names and patronymics of some
prisoners.

The following picture emerges from the accounts of the arrested and their
relatives

  Beginning last August the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU, former KGB) of the
city of Nikolaev began the surveillance of young activists from left
organizations and the Young Communist League in the cities of Odessa and
Nikolaev.  The surveillance was conducted almost openly.
The arrests began around December 13.  However, formally they were registered
later,   in case of the Russian citizen Alexander Smirnov only on December 23. 
The key event became the night storming of the apartment in Nikolaev.  In the
wee hours of the night a special unit, belonging either to the police or the
state security, detonated the door to the rental apartment where at that time
were staying Igor Danilov, Nina Polskikh, Oleg Alekseev, and Sergei Beldiugin. 
Awakened by the violent assault, Danilov began shooting at the assailants from
his revolver and might have wounded some of them.

Next came the arrests of left activists in Odessa and a series of searches in
Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk.  There is some evidence of the
searches in Kharkov and some other cities.  Special units arrested people on the
street without providing court orders.  Any reflexive reaction to these sudden
arrests  were qualified as "resisting law enforcement."
  The state security organized gigantic searches.  Thus, the search in
Yakovenko's apartment was conducted by up to twenty five security service agents
at a time.   Even the mine-detecting equipment was.  But according to the
information we have, except the stormed apartment in Nikolaev no weapons were
found.  During the searches, the state security seized the Russian press.  While
the operation was designed and prepared by the SBU, the arrested have been
placed to the basements of the local police precincts.

Since the searches did not provide the state security with desirable results the
period between the apprehensions and the formal arrests (hence the right of the
arrested to consult a lawyer) was used for tortures in order to get
"confessions" in "terrorist" activities.  The extreme brutality of these
tortures is evident from what we have been able to learn about the condition of
the arrested.  Thus Oleg Alekseev has lost one eye (from the words of his
lawyer), and the young Yakovenko had a heart attack.  Danilov was tortured so
brutally that there are doubts that he is still alive.  After they had been
subjected to tortures some of the arrested  could not even sign their own
"confessions" in "terrorist" activities.  Their relatives were denied seeing the
arrested.  Tortures continue.

The Russian Consulate in Odessa--in the person of the Consul-Councilor Vladimir
Antipenko--refused to accept the statement from the relatives of the arrested
and to send a consulate representative to be present at the interrogations of
the arrested Russian citizens.  The later is the legal responsibility of the
Consulate.  Said Antipenko: "If they got arrested it means they deserve it."

The lawyers of the arrested ask to disseminate the information about this affair
in mass media (the bourgeois press both in Ukraine and Russia observe complete
silence about it) in order to stop the tortures of the arrested young men.

According to sources close to SBU, the main objective of this operation is to
prove to President Kuchma the existence of terrorist organizations in Ukraine,
the usefulness and effectiveness of SBU and its "Anti-terrorist Department,"
created several years ago to fight terrorism and the attempts to change the
state order of Ukraine.  The state security apparatus who designed and executed
this operation hopes to prevent the further reduction of its budget in the
conditions of the deep economic crisis in Ukraine.

Alexander Sivov
Odessa-Nikolaev

Translated by Anton Baumgarten

Left.ru International Edition: www.left.ru/inter/index.html

P.S. The addresses and fax numbers of authorities of Ukraine for sending of
protests will be distributed later.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Уважаемые товарищи. Убедительная просьба скорректировать
распространенную Вами информацию. К настоящему моменту по "делу
Яковенко" задержано и взято под стражу 11 человек, которые в
настоящий момент содержатся в следственных изоляторах г.Николаева:
граждане Украины – Яковенко А.О, Алексеев О.Н., Зинченко Б.Л.,
Герасимов А.Б., Польская Н.Б., Бердюгин С.С., граждане Российской
Федерации – Плево А.И., Данилов И.В., Романов И.Э., Смирнов А.В.,
гражданин Молдовы – Семёнов Е.В. Задержанные украинские граждане
являются членами и активистами организаций ЛКСМУ, ВСР, КПУ. По словам
родственников задержанных, задержание обвиняемых происходило без
предъявления последним документов, удостоверяющих причастность
совершивших задержание лиц к правоохранительным органам. На квартирах
ряда других членов этих организаций проведены обыски, за некоторыми
из них установлено наружное наблюдение, протесты против которого
направлены в УСБУ Одесской области.

Первому секретарю Одесского ГК ЛКСМУ, зампредседателя областного
Совета Всеукранского Союза рабочих Андрею Яковенко предъявлено
обвинение по ч.4 ст.258 УК Украины – организация устойчивой,
конспиративной террористической группы, направленной на насильное
свержение конституционного строя и захват государственной власти в
Украине. В вину якобы организованной им преступной террористической
группы вменяется совершение ряда тяжких уголовных преступлений.
Тексты последних судебных постановлений по "делу Яковенко", а также
другие касающиеся этой темы материалы, в ближайшее время будут
опубликованы рядом левых изданий Украины и РФ. По утверждению
родственников обвиняемых, в отношении подследственных применяются
меры физического воздействия с целью получения доказательств с целью
формирования обвинительного заключения. Очевидна необходимость
активной широкой кампании в защиту взятых под стражу членов левых
организаций именно на данном этапе развития дела.

Мы обращаемся ко всем представителям левых организаций СНГ с просьбой
прекратить использование отдельных фрагментов этого крайне серьезного
дела в качестве политической саморекламы. Просьба распространить это
сообщение по всем левым СМИ СНГ.

А. Манчук, С.Киричук

Одесса-Николаев

28.12.02

----- Original Message -----
From: <malyaeva@...>
To: <ISKRA@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 9:19 AM
Subject: [ISKRA] The provocation of Ukrainian Security Service - beginning
of the "witch


> Search of the KSRD activist flat
>
> Persecution of the worker activists is getting the everyday rule and
> standart
> for security services in CIS countries. Ukraine doesn't stay behind
> her "sister
> Russia" in this uneasy cause. For the moment the criminal case of some
> mysterious terrorist organisation is being executed and the first
> investigatory
> actions are being  carried out. One of the victims of these actions
> is appeared
> to be Yurij Dokukin, an activist of the Coordinational Council of the
> Working
> Movement (KSRD) and leading journalist of the "Working Action"
> Bulletin. We give
> the brief subscription of the search, which resulted in the
> confiscation of all
> equipment, which was present at that moment of search in the Yurij's
> flat
> including considarable quantity of printed and hand-written documents.
>
> Ukraine Security Service (SBU) or more precisely Regional SBU Office
> in
> Nikolayevskaya obl. started the criminal case #202, article 258, item
> 4 of the
> criminal code ("Creation of the terrorist group or terrorist
> organisation -
> punished by imprisonment for a term from 8 to 15 years").
>
> This brought up the comming 6 SBU officials to the Yurij Dokukin's
> flat on the
> 15-th of December. Later one more colleague joined them. The search
> lasted till
> the 4:30 in thr morning of the 16th of December and two witnesses
> were present
> during the search. While searching computer equipment (right up to
> mouses and
> flexes), about one hundred of floppy disks, different newspapers
> (preferences
> were given to  the "Working Action" KSRD Bulletin, the newslettes of
> Ukrainian
> Kommunist Workers Union "Catalyst", newspaper of Russian Maoist Party
> "RMP-news") and other papers were seized.
>
> Here in Ukraine we still remember the disgraceful "mushroomers case":
> after the
> crudely framed-up charge in "attempt of coup d'etat" SBU brought
> criminal
> proceedings against sickly old men. One of them was sentenced to the
> long-terme
> imprisonment at the colony of strict regime. These days new wide
> provocation is
> started. But on the role of "terrorists"young and strong activists are
> appointed. And the authorities will not stand on ceremony with them.
>
> This is call to all honest left and worker activists to join the
> campaign of
> solidarity with the prosecuted Ukraine working activists. Below are
> contacts of
> law-enforcement agencies and institutions related to the case.
>
> Central SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) office in Kyiv:  Ukraine,
> Kyiv,
> Askoldiv prov, 3-a
>
> The Regional SBU Office in Nikolayevskaya obl.
> 54001, Nikolayev, Spasskaya St., 40
> tel.: (0512) 39-66-55
>
> The Regional Office of Public Prosecutor in Nikolayevskaya obl.
> 54030, Nikolayev, Spasskaya St., 28
> tel.: (0512) 35-20-45
>
> The Regional Court in Nikolayevskaya obl.
> 54001, Nikolayev, Sadovaya St., 2-a
> tel.: (0512) 35-91-36
>
> Office of Public Prosecutor in Kyiv
> Predslavinskaya St., 45/9
> tel.: (044) 264-82-58.
>
> The form  of protest addressed to the president of Ukraine
> http://www.president.gov.ua/feedback/
>
> e-mail of SBU:  info@...
>
> e-mail of ministry: portal@...
>
> e-mail of the Supreme Court of Ukraine: supcourt@...
>
> Here is the example of the letter of protest:
>
> We are deeply indignant and shocked at provocative actions of SBU
> towards the
> worker activist of KSRD Yurij Dokukin. it is apparent  that SBU
> attemt to
> involve the left journalist and working organisation KSRD in the
> dirty and
> framed-up case of mythical terrorist organisation. Under the pretext
> of the
> search at Yurij Dokukin's flat in fact the robbery took place, all
> computer
> equipment which was in the flat  at the moment - computers and
> printers - were
> seized. We consider this case is the beginning of "witch hunting"
> campaign in
> Ukraine. We demand to stop the persecutions of worker activists.
>
>
>
>
>
> *********************************************
>
> KARL MARX "But if the designing of the future and the proclamation of the
ready-made solutions for all times is not our affair, then we realise all
the more clearly what we have to accomplish in the present. I am speaking of
a ruthless criticism of everything existing, ruthless in two senses: The
criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with
the powers that be ..."
>
> *********************************************
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>