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Table of Contents:
Re: Newspapers smear activists
"Lachlan Brown" <[email protected]>
New McCarthyism?
Molly Hankwitz <[email protected]>
WEF Message from Starhawk
Soenke Zehle <[email protected]>
Militairy capitalism
"H S" <[email protected]>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 13:52:50 -0500
From: "Lachlan Brown" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Newspapers smear activists
"There are some very serious bad guys out there," Timoney told the Post,
"and I am not talking about Osama bin Laden. We are talking about pretty
sophisticated bad guys."
Lol.
There are some pretty sophisticated
good guys out there too.
America has to have its post-Cold War
revolution. Let in the light on the
National Security State.
Lachlan Brown
- --
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 15:41:03 +1000
From: Molly Hankwitz <[email protected]>
Subject: New McCarthyism?
http://www.whitehouse.org/initiatives/patriot/index.asp
Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
US Attorney General John Ashcroft's
process of elimination of evil quiz.
What is this country coming to?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 09:53:39 +0100
From: Soenke Zehle <[email protected]>
Subject: WEF Message from Starhawk
Come to New York! World Economic Forum Protests 1/30-2/4
The World Economic Forum, the club of the representatives of the world�s
richest corporations meeting with the world�s most powerful politicians,
meets this weekend in New York City. Major protests are planned, in
particular a march organized by Another World is Possible (AWIP) on Saturday
February 2. You need to be here.
If you didn�t like the State of the Union speech, if you don�t like the war
on terrorism or the war on civil liberties, if you consider yourself
progressive, left, radical, or you just don�t like seeing more wealth and
power concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, you need to be here. Come. If
you�re in subway/train/bus/driving distance from New York, come. If you had
other plans for the weekend, if you�re too busy, if you have too many other
commitments, if you haven�t been to a march in years, if you�re burned out
and sick of marching, come. If it rains, if the kids have a soccer game, if
you�re tired, if you�re afraid, come anyway.
There are certain crucial moments when the tide of history turns one way or
another. This is one of them. It�s more than just one more protest against
one more alphabet soup global corporate institution. It�s an assertion of
our right to contest the current system at all. As the police mass their
forces, as they mount a campaign to discredit and intimidate us, it�s
becoming clear that this protest is vitally important. If we let them
succeed, the space for dissent in this country will close even further. The
right wing post-9-22 strategy of criminalizing dissent will be confirmed.
If we don�t let them succeed, we can reclaim a momentum and a political
space at a crucial moment, when Enron has challenged the credibility of the
system and Bush�s policies, when questions are beginning to surface about
what really happened on 9-11, when slowly the stories and seeping out about
the Afghani�s reduced to eating grass.
You might think this is the wrong time for a protest. You might not like the
politics or the style or the smell of your fellow activists. People might
take stands you don�t agree with or do things you wouldn�t approve of.
Come anyway. It�s happening, wisely or unwisely. There are times to be
cautious and careful. But there are other times when caution simply feeds
the power of the authorities, and only a leap of courage can keep us free.
The AWIP march is permitted, legal, and nonviolent. Everyone involved in the
organizing, from the pacifists to the militants, has agreed to respect those
parameters.
The police have shown every indication that they will not. That�s a strong
reason for you to come. The organizers are doing everything in their power
to assure a safe, creative, and inspiring event. Yet no one can guarantee
that the march will be safe. Come anyway. We need to act now, to overcome
fear, to take the risks that lie before us. If we don�t, if we let ourselves
be intimidated into silence, we will become far, far more unsafe.
What we�re contesting on the streets this weekend is, quite simply, the
course of the future. We cannot be safe in a world in which more and more
wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and where the consolidation
of power is backed by the police and military might of the state. The more
that hegemony goes uncontested, the more seamless it becomes. If we want to
maintain our freedom and assert our power to shape a different future, a
free and just and sustainable future, we need to be a strong presence now.
We need all of you.
If you can�t get to New York, support us. Demand fair news coverage, write
the letters, make the calls. But if you possibly can, come. Call your
friends, get them to come with you. Tell them it's important. Come to New
York.
Starhawk New York City January 31, 2002 www.starhawk.org
The AWIP march assembles on Saturday, Feb. 2 at noon at 59th St. and 5th
Ave. in Manhattan. At 11 AM, we will do a short Street Safety and Tactics
training. After the march, nonviolent direct action may take place through
Monday. Check the AWIP website www.anotherworldispossible.com for complete
information and late breaking updates on the many events throughout this
weekend.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 15:11:21 +0100
From: "H S" <[email protected]>
Subject: Militairy capitalism
Dear Nettime,
State of the Union and we immediately see the outline of the coming of =
militairy capitalism, described by:
*** ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS ***
By Tom Barry
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary,
available in its entirety at
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201onward.html .)
President Bush went to Capitol Hill to tell the American people and their
representatives that the U.S. is committed to protecting "the civilized
world against unprecedented dangers." These threats issue from "an axis of
evil" that spans the globe. Riding on his popularity as
commander-in-chief, Bush framed his State of the Union address as a new
vision for U.S. foreign policy.
Are U.S. policymakers ready to pursue world war against evil? Apparently
so. The applause for this aggressive new view of U.S. foreign and military
policy rose enthusiastically from both sides of the aisle during the State
of the Union address. Afterward, in his televised response to the
president, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt assured Americans that
Democrats stood "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the administration in its
global military campaign. Such support is not limited to political elites.
Opinions polls show significant support for taking military action against
countries like Iraq and Somalia.
A rapture of patriotism, triumphalism, and militarism has seized America.
But, as Bush delivered his call for more war, not everyone was clapping.
Listening closely, you could hear the hissing. Looking around, you could
see the dissension and disgust. No, not on Capitol Hill, but around the
world where Bush is counting on "our allies" to join America's expanded
crusade. His description of the U.S. commitment to use "freedom's power"
to bring peace and prosperity to the entire world may ring true for many
Americans. But for much of the rest of the world, any new assertion of
U.S. might and right is greeted with skepticism.
This week at the World Social Forum in Brazil, tens of thousands of
activists will be speaking for the world's disadvantaged and
disenfranchised. Bush's promise to spread freedom and prosperity in the
wake of his global war will be rejected, and rightly so, as imperial
drivel. In Porto Alegre, as elsewhere, there will be great sympathy for
the American victims of terror. But it will also be noted that U.S.-led
globalization strategies, such as those embraced by Argentina, are leading
to economic and social disintegration the world over--and widening a
global divide.
At the World Social Forum, questions will be raised about whether another
$48 billion in the U.S. military budget will increase global peace and
security--or whether this new U.S. military spending will, as it has it
the past, fan the flames of war between and within states. The world does
indeed face unprecedented dangers. But on the other side of the deepening
international divide between economic status and worldviews, terrorism is
just one of the many new threats to international peace, stability, and
development. For the most part, the other dangers are not ones that can be
met with U.S. firepower and weapons superiority. President Bush would have
gone a long way toward narrowing the global divide if he had moved beyond
the platitudes about America's commitment to freedom to assert a new U.S.
commitment to rein in corporate power, join the campaign to end world
hunger, build democratic means of global governance, and confront the
pressing challenge of climate change.
Like Gephardt, many Americans stand shoulder-to-shoulder as the nation
marches forward--intervening wherever it chooses, spending whatever it
takes, and blithely accepting the collateral damage. But the U.S.
government may soon find that its allies are few, that popular support for
the new jingoism is shallow, that victories will be few, and that evil
often dwells within. "History," said Bush, called America to action. But
if we embrace militarism, as the president advises, history will not judge
us kindly.
(Tom Barry <[email protected]> is codirector of Foreign Policy in Focus
(online at www.fpif.org).)
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- -
*** STATE OF THE UNION: POINT/COUNTERPOINT ***
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary,
available in its entirety at
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201sou.html .)
President George W. Bush's State of the Union address on January 29, 2002
was the first in many years to focus primarily on foreign policy. Despite
widespread accolades in the media and strong bipartisan support in
Congress, a careful examination of the language and assumptions in the
address raise disturbing questions about the direction of U.S. foreign
policy under the current administration. What follows are some excerpts
consisting of the majority of the speech addressing foreign policy issues
and interspersed with some critical commentary. This should not be
interpreted as in any way minimizing the very real danger from terrorism,
or the need for a decisive response, nor to imply that Bush administration
policy regarding terrorism and other foreign policy issues has been
totally negative. Yet the failure to recognize the misleading verbiage and
to recognize the dangerous implications of such words--however eloquent
and reassuring to a nation that has experienced such trauma in recent
months--will not only make us less safe from the threat of terrorism, but
will deprive Americans of our greatest defense and asset: our freedom to
question and challenge government policies that are not in the best
interests of our country and the world.
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of
evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
None of these states are among the most heavily armed countries in their
regions, let alone the world. Similarly, unlike such U.S. allies as
Morocco, Israel, and Turkey, none of these states currently occupies any
neighboring country. It is particularly disturbing that Iran, in its
significant if uneven steps toward greater political pluralism and
rapprochement with the West, is linked with the hostile totalitarian
regimes of Iraq and North Korea.
"By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and
growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them
the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt
to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of
indifference would be catastrophic.
The United States has consistently opposed calls for the creation of a
zone free of weapons of mass destruction for both East Asia and the Middle
East. The Bush administration is continuing the U.S. policy of nuclear
apartheid, where the United States may bring nuclear weapons into the
region on its planes and ships and U.S. allies like Israel, Pakistan, and
India are able to develop nuclear weapons, but other countries can not.
While all three of these countries singled out by President Bush have been
linked to terrorist groups in the past, none have ties to Al-Qaeda and
there has been no evidence to support the contention that they would pass
on weapons of mass destruction to individual terrorists.
"The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous
regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
A worthy goal, except that there is no evidence that these regimes have
such weapons to threaten us with or are anywhere close to procuring them.
There are far more real dangers to be concerned with facing America and
the world already, including AIDS, environmental destruction, growing
inequality, and other threats which were not even mentioned in the
president's address.
"America will lead by defending liberty and justice, because they are
right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns
these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention
of imposing our culture, but America will always stand firm for the
nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the
power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech,
equal justice, and religious tolerance.
This from an administration which provides large-scale military, economic,
and diplomatic support to the reactionary, misogynist, fundamentalist
regime in Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israeli occupation forces in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and Moroccan forces in occupied Western
Sahara. Indeed, according to Amnesty International, the majority of
recipients of arms transfers from the United States engage in a pattern of
gross and systematic human rights violations. Regarding the denial of
imposing culture, one only need look at U.S. pressure at the World Trade
Organization to eliminate safeguards protecting indigenous film industries
and other cultural institutions from U.S.-based multinational
corporations.
"Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and
murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand
for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We
affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life.
Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price;
we have shown freedom's power, and in this great conflict, my fellow
Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
It will be very difficult for freedom to triumph if America's closest
allies in the war include such regimes as the family dictatorship in Saudi
Arabia, the medieval sultanate in Oman, the crypto-Communist autocracy in
Uzbekistan, and the military dictatorship in Pakistan. Indeed, it has been
U.S. backing of such regimes which has been partly responsible for the
rise of anti-American extremism in those parts of the world.
(Stephen Zunes <[email protected]> is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy
In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and associate professor of Politics and
chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San
Francisco.)
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