Empire or Solidarity: Bolivarian Resistance - Bases Go!
Marceli Idels | 12.03.2004 03:49 | May Day 2004
Clinton started the war with Al Qaeda and Afghanistan when he bombed Sudan and Afghanistan with hundreds of cruise missiles, authorized assassinations, and refused to remove the Bush I (Sr.'s) troops from Saudi Arabia – oh and Clinton signed the Salvage Rider and thought-up the Plan Colombia toxic spray program that he knew would turn into another US intervention in a civil war.
Bush-Envy - DOn't let it spoil the March
March 20: Marching Against War – For Awareness and Solidarity?
By Marcel Idels,
ecosolidarity@yahoo.com; www.solidarityeconimics.blogspot.com
Will our footsteps drown out the Drums of War? Or interfere with our education?
As you go marching along in your new Nikes looking for the road to peace, try and stretch out your perspective. Try and stretch it to every location where there is war – especially US-sponsored war. This requires you to stretch around the world where you will find 10 million people marching outside the US. In London, Paris, Athens, Sao Paulo, Islamabad and Bogotá they will be marching against specific US crimes such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia and the FTAA/WTO. While you are marching in the US imagine what it means that peace groups outside the US protest in such greater numbers and for clearer reasons: they understand who to blame: the US and all the greedy capitalists.
Maybe this difference is because globalization and war threatens many more people outside the US. Maybe it is because they know better where war leads. Maybe they protest the US because only one country has ever killed large numbers of civilians with a weapon of mass destruction: 200,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo (100,000), Dresden (50-60,000) and Hamburg (40-50,000) (the latter two with US bombs and UK-Canadian help). Remember that only two countries have used chemical weapons outside their borders to devastating effect: the German Nazis (3 million) and the US in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Colombia (600,000 – 1 million dead from chemicals and many millions of people and rich biological resources injured or contaminated forever, in a war that killed 3-5 million since 1945 and resulted in millions more dying from hunger and disease).
And the deaths and birth defects continue year after year, generation to generation. [1]
Only one country has ever had such a great air force, army or navy – or so many foreign bases.
Only one country has ever locked up so many of its people. Ponder, if you please, that the US is the least sustainable country in the world and has one of the most questionable democracies. John Kennedy got us into Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; Johnson cruelly escalated the war; Carter was involved in the Indonesian massacres in East Timor, instigated the covert terrorist invasion of Nicaragua, and set the tone for US relations with Islamic regimes that Bush builds his war on; Clinton started the war with Al Qaeda and Afghanistan when he bombed Sudan and Afghanistan with hundreds of cruise missiles, authorized assassinations, and refused to remove the Bush I (Sr.'s) troops from Saudi Arabia – oh and Clinton signed the Salvage Rider and thought-up the Plan Colombia toxic spray program that he knew would turn into another US intervention in a civil war.
Now our – “choices” - are John Kerry ready to increase military spending and Hillary Clinton ready to re-institute the military draft!
The elite in nearly every country – that one percent or so that control most of the lands, factories and military (and its industrial complex) – they call the shots and control whoever is elected. There really can’t be democracy as long as there are rich people – as long as there is gross inequality of resources, education and incomes.
Only one country has ever polluted so much, built and maintained so many nuclear weapons or funded so many death squads.
The US is the only wealthy country of significance that refuses to sign on to the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty, The International Criminal Court, the Land Mine Treaty and many more international agreements.
Only one country has committed so many crimes with so little justification. If people in the US contributed as much in foreign aid as the people in Denmark, the Netherlands or Norway, then almost all of the world’s problems could be quickly solved [2]. One forth of the US defense budget could save 40 to 80 million lives who are lost each year to easily preventable causes. [3]
Hispanics in the US send almost twice as much foreign aid back to their relatives in Latin America as the US government spent on foreign aid for the whole world. [4] And most US foreign aid is to high income countries like Israel, for military assistance or what is called tied aid where the recipient country has to use the aid to buy US products. This kind of aid is not aid at all.
Don’t stop Marching. Start marching in sync and solidarity with a whole wounded world that wants much more than the absence of war – they want sustainability and greater equality. And they are watching our steps with anticipation and with some fear.
Notes
[1]. (UK Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,923715,00.html )
[2]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,669450,00.html; and http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp#GovernmentsCuttingBackonPromisedResponsibilities; and http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/jul98/23_13_097.html
[3]. http://borgenproject.org/Issues.html
[4]. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031124-103208-4335r.htm
[5] Misc. trivia: US and Kissinger involvement in Argentine terror and torture activities in 1976-1983: http://www.foreignaidwatch.org
By Marcel Idels,
ecosolidarity@yahoo.com; www.solidarityeconimics.blogspot.com Will our footsteps drown out the Drums of War? Or interfere with our education?
As you go marching along in your new Nikes looking for the road to peace, try and stretch out your perspective. Try and stretch it to every location where there is war – especially US-sponsored war. This requires you to stretch around the world where you will find 10 million people marching outside the US. In London, Paris, Athens, Sao Paulo, Islamabad and Bogotá they will be marching against specific US crimes such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia and the FTAA/WTO. While you are marching in the US imagine what it means that peace groups outside the US protest in such greater numbers and for clearer reasons: they understand who to blame: the US and all the greedy capitalists.
Maybe this difference is because globalization and war threatens many more people outside the US. Maybe it is because they know better where war leads. Maybe they protest the US because only one country has ever killed large numbers of civilians with a weapon of mass destruction: 200,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo (100,000), Dresden (50-60,000) and Hamburg (40-50,000) (the latter two with US bombs and UK-Canadian help). Remember that only two countries have used chemical weapons outside their borders to devastating effect: the German Nazis (3 million) and the US in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Colombia (600,000 – 1 million dead from chemicals and many millions of people and rich biological resources injured or contaminated forever, in a war that killed 3-5 million since 1945 and resulted in millions more dying from hunger and disease).
And the deaths and birth defects continue year after year, generation to generation. [1]
Only one country has ever had such a great air force, army or navy – or so many foreign bases.
Only one country has ever locked up so many of its people. Ponder, if you please, that the US is the least sustainable country in the world and has one of the most questionable democracies. John Kennedy got us into Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; Johnson cruelly escalated the war; Carter was involved in the Indonesian massacres in East Timor, instigated the covert terrorist invasion of Nicaragua, and set the tone for US relations with Islamic regimes that Bush builds his war on; Clinton started the war with Al Qaeda and Afghanistan when he bombed Sudan and Afghanistan with hundreds of cruise missiles, authorized assassinations, and refused to remove the Bush I (Sr.'s) troops from Saudi Arabia – oh and Clinton signed the Salvage Rider and thought-up the Plan Colombia toxic spray program that he knew would turn into another US intervention in a civil war.
Now our – “choices” - are John Kerry ready to increase military spending and Hillary Clinton ready to re-institute the military draft!
The elite in nearly every country – that one percent or so that control most of the lands, factories and military (and its industrial complex) – they call the shots and control whoever is elected. There really can’t be democracy as long as there are rich people – as long as there is gross inequality of resources, education and incomes.
Only one country has ever polluted so much, built and maintained so many nuclear weapons or funded so many death squads.
The US is the only wealthy country of significance that refuses to sign on to the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty, The International Criminal Court, the Land Mine Treaty and many more international agreements.
Only one country has committed so many crimes with so little justification. If people in the US contributed as much in foreign aid as the people in Denmark, the Netherlands or Norway, then almost all of the world’s problems could be quickly solved [2]. One forth of the US defense budget could save 40 to 80 million lives who are lost each year to easily preventable causes. [3]
Hispanics in the US send almost twice as much foreign aid back to their relatives in Latin America as the US government spent on foreign aid for the whole world. [4] And most US foreign aid is to high income countries like Israel, for military assistance or what is called tied aid where the recipient country has to use the aid to buy US products. This kind of aid is not aid at all.
Don’t stop Marching. Start marching in sync and solidarity with a whole wounded world that wants much more than the absence of war – they want sustainability and greater equality. And they are watching our steps with anticipation and with some fear.
Notes
[1]. (UK Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,923715,00.html ) [2].
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,669450,00.html; and http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp#GovernmentsCuttingBackonPromisedResponsibilities; and http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/jul98/23_13_097.html [3].
http://borgenproject.org/Issues.html [4].
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031124-103208-4335r.htm [5] Misc. trivia: US and Kissinger involvement in Argentine terror and torture activities in 1976-1983:
http://www.foreignaidwatch.org
Marceli Idels
e-mail:
ecosolidarity@yahoo.com
Homepage:
http://www.solidarityeconomics.blogspot.com
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