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OVERTIME--February 2003 issue
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Dedicated to reflecting the collective wisdom of enlightened workers.
Linda Featheringill
4651 West 41st Street, Down
Cleveland, OH 44109
(216) 661-0794
lfeatheringill@hotmail.com
February 2003
Volume 3, Number 8
Greetings!
Alas, the threat of war is still with us.
Arming Iraq
If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, where did it get them from? The following corporations were listed in Iraq’s recent declaration of weapons programs as being suppliers of various components.
Nuclear weapons
US: TI Coating, Unisys, Tektronix, Leybold Vacuum Systems, Finnegan-MAT-US, Hewlett-Packard, Dupont, Consarc, Cerberus, International Computer Systems, Canberra Industries, and Axel Electronics.
France: Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique, Sciaky, Thomson CSF, Cerbag, Thales Group, and Soiete General pour les Techniques Nouvelles.
UK: Euromac, C. Plath-Nuclear, Endshire Export Marketing, International Computer Systems, MEED International, International Computer Limited, Matrix Churchill, Ali Ashour Daghir, Inwako, and XYY
Options
Japan: Fanuc, Hammamatsu Photonics II, NEC, Osaka, and Waida.
Belguim: Boehler Edelstahl, and Sebatra.
Spain: Zayer
Sweden: ABB.
Biological weapons
US: American Type Culture Collection.
Chemical weapons
US: Alcolac International
France: Protec SA
UK: MEED International
Netherlands: Melchemie BV and KBS Holland BV.
Belguim: NU Kraft Mercantile Corporation and Phillips Petroleum.
Spain: Treblam
Rockets
US: Honeywell, Semetrex, Sperry Corp, Tetronix, Hewlett-Packark, Eastman Kodak, Electronic Associates, International Computer Systems, and EZ Logic Data Systems.
France: Aerospatiale & Matra Espace.
UK: International Computer Systems, Walter Somers Ltd, International Military Services (a corporation that is part of the UK Ministry of Defence), Sheffield Forgemasters, Technology Development Group, International Signal & Control, and Terex Corporation.
Belguim: Poudries Reunies Beige SA and Space Research Corp.
Spain: Donabat.
Sweden: Saab-Scania.
Conventional weapons, military logistics, supplies, and building of military plants
US: Honeywell, Spectra Physics, TI Coating, Unisys, Sperry Corp, Rockwell, Hewlett-Packard, Carl Zeiss-US, International Computer Systems, and Bechtel.
France: Thomson CSF
UK: International Computer Systems, International Computer Limited, and TMG Engineering
Netherlands: Delft Instruments NV.
Belgium: OIP Instrubel
The original report was published in a German newspaper (Die Tageszeitung) and then translated and printed in an Australian newspaper. You will note that there are no Australian or German companies on these lists.
The report did say, however, that there are “50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US.”
[From: Margo Kingston, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), January 22, 2003. Information taken from Die Tageszeitung (Germany), December 19, 2002.]
The State Department and White House say they know Iraq’s weapons declaration is incomplete in detailing elements of biological and chemical weapons.
They should know, considering it was 24 US corporations that helped supply those components to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The US Commerce Department licensed 70 biological exports to Iraq between 1985 and 1989, including 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax.
These companies are named by Iraq, along with European companies that made similar sales, in its declaration. But this section was among the parts excised from the edited version of the report that has gone to all but the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
This attempt to consign this piece of damning history to the memory hole has been reported by a German paper. Will the courageous media of this country likewise step up and reveal to the American people the profit-motivated lies and hypocrisy of its rulers?
[J.M., Minnesota, USA.]
Empire
The present Middle East crisis is about the access and control of a valuable resource - OIL. Anyone with only half a brain knows that, but another dimension now being discussed here [UK] arises from a leaked (deliberate?) document from the Pentagon. It seems that the US gets most of its oil from the Americas and that only about 20% plus comes from the Gulf. Why then is the US so concerned about the instability in that region?
The answer is the that the US wants to discourage the advanced industrial nations from challenging its leadership, while maintaining a military dominance capable of deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role. If the US does not stabilize the Middle East, then Europe, Japan and China will move to protect their national interests, as they are dependent on Gulf oil. Although any such intervention would not bother the US in the long term, the intervening nations (if successful) would grow in powers that would challenge US authority worldwide.
This is the key to understanding why the Pentagon wants military power greater than all the forces of possible competitors put together and explains why some of us believe that the US is set on a course leading to world domination, either through military of economic means or through satellites like Britain, now that Russia is in terminal decline.
The US has made its aims pretty obvious by refusing to continue abiding by previous international commitments, such as controls over its own nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, harmful emissions into the atmosphere, etc.
The claim is made that the US is a benign power. You would not endorse that if you lived in one of the 20 countries that have felt the weight of US Bombs! The war against terrorism is an absurdity, since the US is the greatest terrorist of all.
State terrorism is being widely employed to bring about subservience to US world ambitions. It is a sad thought that the enormous tragedies worldwide brought about by capitalism are opposed by a mere handful of convinced socialists. A major, major catastrophe might be necessary to prepare humanity for the next stage in social evolution - and by that time, most of us will be dead.
[Colin Green, Norfolk, England, UK.]
Anti-War Movement
The anti-war movement in the US is growing and is now attracting younger people. The protesters against the war in Vietnam were mainly in their 20s, while protesters against the proposed war with Iraq have been 50 years old or older. But that is changing. Today’s protests seem to be made up of folks in their 50s, those who are about 30 years old, and younger people who are about 20 years old.
These younger people don’t seem to be as loud as we were and admit that they’re not as anti-authoritarian as we were (and some of us still are). They are quite willing, however, to adopt some of the older protest techniques. They enthusiastically participate in the “Hey, hey, ho, ho” chants, and well they might since those are a lot of fun. They wear Army-surplus camouflage pants and sometimes other “uniforms.”
The young protesters are more willing to enter coalitions than the previous groups were. Earlier protest movements were hampered by “either/or” thinking - “You’re either with us all the way or you’re against us.” Today’s protesters seem to be comfortable with a “both/and” philosophy - “We can both have different agendas and still cooperate enough to try to cure our mutual problems.” As an example, consider the environmentalist-union labor protests against globalization.
Armed with these old and new skills, the movement is growing.
[L.F., Ohio, USA.]
Human shields
Many people around the world are ashamed and outraged by the prospect of war with Iraq. Large rallies for peace have been held in cities around the globe. Along with a few hundred people, I will be going to Iraq to act as a human shield in the interest of protecting human life. We will joint our fellow citizens of the world in Iraq to bear witness for peace and justice. We will run the risk of being maimed or killed - but it is simply the same risk that innocent Iraqis will themselves face. I would rather die in defense of justice and peace than “prosper” in complicity with mass murder and war.
This action is not about supporting Saddam Hussein, as our governments did in the past. It is about saving the lives of those in our human family. We will be expressing to the Iraqi people the reality that most people in the West do not support his criminal war.
For me, this is also an act of personal penance. In 1989, at the age of 19, I committed the most stupid act of my life: I joined the US Marine Corps. In 1991, I went beyond ignorance into criminal participation in a war against the Iraqi people, which ultimately included the use of depleted uranium against the civilian population.
My reward as an “American hero” was to be used by Bush Sr. as a human guinea pig, along with several hundred thousand other heroes. We still have not been told the full story about Gulf War Syndrome or how many fellow soldiers died as a result, but we do know the value our own leaders put on our lives. When a nation’s leaders do not even respect the lives of their nation’s sons and daughters, the enemy will never enter into any realm of consideration. The human costs of another war in Iraq barely seem to register with our political leaders.
[Condensed from American Free Press, January 6 & 13. Contributed by A.J. of Alabama, USA. For more information, see the website www.uksociety.org or write to Mr. Drs P.B.Ph.M Bogaers, Attn: Ken Nichols O’Keefe, Schakelstede 1-3 3431 HB, Nieuwegein, Nederlands.]
Inspections: The White House Fallback Position
[Mr. Blix is the head of the UN arms inspection group in Iraq.]
Short take
If nothing shows in spyplane pics
And Blix finds nothing in the sticks,
That still won’t put us in a fix.
We’ll blame it on Iraqi tricks,
And say, So, Blix, jut hit the bricks.
It’s time that we got in our licks.
The Nation, December 16, 2002. Contributed by A.J., Alabama, USA.
Hardly substitutes
Television instead of weather, fear instead of wind. The reflection of moonlight replaced by tinfoil.
Blood for salt, dried tears instead of soil. Chairs for trees. Hard work instead of money. Truncated gestures
instead of speech. And from the little deaths we exchange for living,with walls for doors, bullet holes for windows,with ourselves instead of each other,
we struggle to go on.
[Scott King, Blue Collar Review, Autumn 2002.]
Pollution
In a review of two books about industrial pollution, Steve Weinberg said:
“It is clear to any student of environmental politics, however, that [Bush] administration officials are perpetuating policies that both books criticize as dangerous to public health and natural resource preservation. Occasionally, they and environmentalists reach agreement on new rules or making existing rules stricter. But the normal policy of this administration is that the market ought to rule. That is what capitalism is all about.”
Weinberg is quite correct. That is what capitalism is about, which is why so many people who are concerned about the environment want to get rid of the system.
[The books are Deceit and Denial, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner and When Smoke Ran Like Water, by Devra Davis. Review published in The Plain Dealer, January 19, 2003.]
Strange Weather
Namibian Winds.
Unprecedented, powerful winds ripped roofs from buildings and toppled power poles in Namibia’s city of Oshakati. The late afternoon storm also whipped up dust that left the area enveloped in a dark cloud that forced motorists to use their headlights. Evululuko community representative Metusalem Shigwedha said many homes in his district had been destroyed by the wind. “We have never seen it before in our location. It just took about 30 minutes, but it has caused so much damage.”
Winter’s Chill
The ongoing arctic chill across much of Europe and Asia has now claimed 1140 lives in the usually temperate regions of Nepal, India and Bangladesh. It has even crossed to North Africa, where 13 people died from exposure or flash floods related to the cold front in Algiers.
Portugal reported a record use of electricity as residents tried to warm their homes against some of the coldest weather in memory.
At least a third of northern Vietnam’s current rice crop has been ruined by the longest cold spell in 18 years.
Hot + Dry = Fires
At least 2000 firefighters battled blazes in Australia’s Victoria state as heat and wind hampered their efforts. At least 100 fires roared across the area, with 15 blazes said to be burning out of control. Fire authorities feared that hot weather and strong winds could cause the fires to jump the Murray River and merge with blazes burning out of control in the Snowy Mountains.
[Steve Newman, Earthweek: A diary of the planet, January 17, 2003.]
Note:
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, January 27, 2003, about 80 separate fires are still burning in the area between Sydney and Melbourne, and over 500 homes have been destroyed.
Oh Christmas!
This is a response or reaction to the way people celebrate, behave and excite themselves here because of Christmas.
X-mass is meant for those who want to escape from capitalism’s daily rat-race for a few days. Capitalism does not stop exploiting people just because it is x-mass. On x-mass day, there is still starvation, diseases, poverty, homelessness and unemployment. People will still die in conflicts on x-mass day.
The struggle goes on regardless of celebrating the birth of metamorphic baby Jesus.
I argue that the privilege of sitting under a tree, or some sort of church or whatever, and contemplating infinity is to be the order to day - once we have insured that every belly on this planet has had sufficient food and everyone goes to sleep on a full stomach.
People can be right for the wrong reason. Still to think wrongly is a right to freedom of thought. But as I am unable to influence these events, I must get on with what I know and what I can.
[Weijagye Justus, Kabale, Uganda.]
Make love, not war
A separatist tribal guerilla group in India’s revolt-racked northeast has stopped recruiting women because too many male rebels were falling in love with them and eloping. The national Liberation Front of Tripura, fighting for a separate homeland, signed up nearly 70 young women over the past year with the aim of creating an all-female force. But the drive backfired when male rebels started getting romantically entangled with the recruits, police said.
“The presence of young women in outfit resulted in relationships and indiscipline,” said Superintendent Jaideve Das in Agartala, capital of Tripura state. “A number of militants got involved with the women and eloped with them, deserting the outfit. Some surrendered to security forces and the rest went into hiding, fearing retaliation from the group.”
A former rebel hitman, 25-year-old Makai Debbarma, and his 20-year-old bride, Sharmila Debbarma, gave themselves up to police in Kumarghat, north of Agartala, last weekend.
“I was exhausted with life as a militant,” Mr. Debbarma said. “When I met Sharmila in a training camp, I fell in love and after a few months we fled and got married.”
[Reuters, November 30, 2002. Contributed by Gogglesworth, West Australia, Australia.]
Is anyone in charge?
Ask factory production workers who’s boss and they’ll say, “The foreman.” Give this person the same question and you’ll hear, “The plant manager.” That official will let you know that the person in charge is actually the divisional vice president.
If you can locate that executive and ask who the boss is, you’ll learn that it’s the corporation’s president who happens to be the COO, too. COO is the Corporate Operations Officer, and it means he hasn’t got the final say, either.
This individual will advise you that the boss is the Chairman of the Board who is also the CEO, or Corporate Executive Officer. That should mean he’s in charge.
You’ll soon learn, however, from this apparent top-gun that he has several bosses over him. That elite bunch is known collectively as the Corporation’s Board of Directors. Sure the CEO sits on the board and chairs it in fact. He (seldom is it a she) even gets some say in who sits on that lofty body. Is it any wonder, then, that it typically rubber-stamps the CEO’s proposals? In any case, the Chairman and the rest of that corporate group will let you know they’re not the top bosses but that the stockholders are.
Find, if you can, and pin down a stockholder and tell the capitalist that he’s in charge and you’ll hear, “I am? Gee, I didn’t know that. I’m a janitor at the city high school. No one’s ever asked me my opinion on anything, let alone on this corporation. Moreover, until you just told me, I didn’t realize my pension fund had invested in that firm. What’s more, now that I know I’m involved with that corporation, I’m no so sure it’s a good investment!”
The question might well be put forward: “Where does the corporate buck stop?” Just don’t expect a definitive explanation.
Part of the answer, though, goes a long way in explaining why executives’ salaries, bonuses, and stock options (not to mention the “golden parachutes” when those so-called leaders are put out to pasture early) have been unchecked and hence out of control.
Nobody is minding the store and only the foxes are guarding the henhouse. A designated person or group should watch those sly animals and protect everyone else connected with the corporation. At minimum, on human being, to be credited or blamed for what goes on, ought to be put in charge of the corporation.
[Jim Sullivan, Indiana, USA.]
The good citizens of Pennsylvania have done it again.
Back in 1776, they hosted at Liberty Hall in Philadelphia a gathering of people radicalized by the predations of the East India Company. The world's first multinational corporation then held a virtual stranglehold on commerce and politics in North America, and brazenly used British troops as its enforcers. On the first week of December, 1600, when she created the East India Company, Queen Elizabeth I became the first CEO monarch, and by 1776 King George II was following in her footsteps with his sizeable holdings in and open advocacy of corporate rule.
The American colonists were offended by the idea they should be vassals of a corporation and a kingdom that supported and profited from it. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly stated that humans were born into this world endowed by their Creator with certain rights, that governments were created by humans to insure only humans held those rights, and "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it"
Stating flatly that "it is their right, it is their duty," to alter their government and thus claim their unique human rights, 56 men defied the East India Company and the government whose army supported it by placing their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, saying, "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
Thus began America's first experiment with democracy.
Exactly 226 years later, another small group in Pennsylvania also met in early December to sign a document that claimed the same right - their duty - to alter their government in a way that would restore the democracy the original Founders were willing to fight and die for. The democratically elected municipal officials of Porter Township put their signatures to an ordinance passed unanimously on December 9, 2002. It reads, in part:
"A corporation is a legal fiction created by the express permission of the people;
"Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by the Supreme Court justices to include corporations in the term 'persons' has long wrought havoc with our democratic processes by endowing corporations with constitutional privileges intended solely to protect the citizens of the United States or natural persons within its borders;
"This judicial bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations interferers with the administration of laws within Porter Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights exercised by the people of Porter Township;
"Buttressed by these constitutional rights, corporate wealth allows corporations to enjoy constitutional privileges to an extent beyond the reach of most citizens;
"Democracy means government by the people. Only citizens of Porter Township should be able to participate in the democratic process in Porter Township and enjoy a republican form of government therein;"
And then, with an audacity and willingness to take on overwhelming multinational corporate power similar to that displayed by the Founders, the elders of Porter Township said that "Corporations shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania within the Second Class Township of Porter, Clarion County, Pennsylvania."
It became the law of that land five days later.
The implications of this are staggering. For example:
Before 1886, it was a felony in most states for corporations to give money to politicians or otherwise try (through lobbying or advertising) to influence elections. Such activity was called "bribery and influencing," and the reason it was banned was simple: corporations can't vote, so what are they doing in politics? Their concern is making money, and they don't need clean air to breathe or fresh water to drink; leave them to making money and leave the administration of the commons to We, The People.
Before 1886, it was a crime in most states for corporations to own others of their own kind. The need to keep corporations from becoming so large that they could usurp democracy was so clear to the Founders that Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would have banned "monopolies in commerce," restricting each company to performing a single purpose, making it responsible to its local community, and barring it from owning other corporations. The amendment didn't pass because everybody at the time knew that the states already had such laws in place.
Before 1886, only humans had full First Amendment rights of free speech, including the right to influence legislation and the right to lie when not under oath. Now corporations have claimed that they have the free speech right to influence public opinion and legislation through deceit.
Before 1886, only humans had Fourth Amendment rights of privacy. Since then, however, corporations have claimed that EPA and OSHA surprise inspections are violations of their human right of privacy.
Before 1886, only humans had Fifth Amendment rights against double jeopardy and the right to refuse to speak if they'd committed a crime. Since 1886, corporations have asserted these human rights for themselves:
Before 1886, and following the Civil War, only humans had Fourteenth Amendment rights to protection from discrimination. Since then, corporations have claimed this human right and used it to stop local communities from passing laws to protect their small, local businesses and keep out predatory retailers or large corporations convicted of crimes elsewhere.
Porter Township has fired the first shot in the New American Revolution with this first binding law denying corporate personhood. It's a revolution that will be fought not with guns but in the courts, in the voting booths, and on the battlefield of public opinion.
[Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporation Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," a book containing a version of the above ordinance customized for each of the 50 states. www.unequalprotection.com.
[Contributed by D. D. (RUSS), Minnesota, USA.]
What are we fighting for?
Ancient Rome did to suddenly fall when the Visigoths sacked it. It declined for centuries before and decades after, so slowly that for those living at that time, it was hard to notice. The Visigoth army was not even especially violent. They came, they went, and life went on seemingly the same. But in hindsight this event marks the end of the Roman Empire because of its symbolic value: warlike enemies could come into the main city of a supposedly untouchable nation and do as they pleased.
The American Empire is over. Its machinery keeps mindlessly running but whatever was holding it up is gone.
If we say that the 9-11 attacks were planned by America-hating, we are reaching for the easy answer. These attacks are the natural result of a nation declining on the inside while abusing other nations on the outside. For decades, the American military and CIA have been invading other countries, toppling democratic governments, installing right wing dictators, training and funding death squads and torturers, and supplying weapons to violent and aggressive nations. The impulse to “punish” the USA has been growing.
At this time, it’s not clear whether factions within the US government merely ignored warnings of the attacks or also suppressed warnings and even collaborated. If they did, it suggests an evil power so much deeper than big business and the military, in that it was willing to sacrifice the World Trade Center and some of the Pentagon for goals that boggle the imagination.
Still, these goals are not hard to guess and they are the same, if the planner was Bin Laden or the New World Order or anyone we credit with intelligence: The attacks were calculated to spark World War III between the Western powers and the Islamic nations, possibly allied with China.
If the people of the world don’t stop this war, then tens of millions of us will die in a big distraction. The important war is the war over our freedom.
'
In the hours and days after the 9-11 attacks, when the alphas on TV were not screeching monkeys flinging shit at the enemy tribe, they were reasonable-sounding “experts” suggesting that American society - one of the most centralized and alienating systems in history, where a greater proportion of the people are in prison than in any society ever, where most people not in prison are in highly structured school and wage labor worlds, where surveillance cameras and walk-through detectors are everywhere, where everyone has memorized a 9-digit federal identity
number, where workplace stairwells are locked and doors require card keys, where school kids are arrested for squirt guns and suspended for critical expression - that this insanely restrictive and fear-worshipping society is actually unreasonably free and trusting, and that we need tighter security, stronger police and secret agents, more machines scrutinizing us, and men with guns telling us what to do.
These people are subtle fanatics, like the fanatics who hijacked the airliners, in that they dream of a perfectly controlled world, enforced by the threat of violence. And these fanatics are all effectively collaborating: Now, with secret military units inside the USA, it will be politically difficult to oppose frequent searches or face-recognition cameras or microchip implants, or to dissent from the dominant system.
Whether or not the USA gets broken from the outside by a vain ground war in Asia, it will continue to die and decay from the inside.
But from this decay will come new life. People who believe in “America” will ask themselves what America was supposed to mean to them and whether something else can no better hold that meaning. People who believe in freedom will top fighting for freedom within the dominant system and begin working to sustain freedom at the fringes of that system, underneath it, through its cracks as it seizes up and falls apart.
This transition may be painful or frightening but it will not be difficult. We fear a high-tech police state because we have been taught to romanticize technology. But the airline hijackers used an early Stone Age invention called the “knife” to turn the 20th Century’s proudest jetliners and office towers against themselves. We don’t have to agree with them to learn from them that people beat machines. Cameras and microchips are easier to fool than skilled people and people who rely on cameras and microchips are no longer skilled. As radiation guns disperse protesters, the police behind the guns get weaker, while the protesters get more resourceful.
It might not even come to that. If free counter-cultures have to survive as far-flung underground networks, risking death and prison to get necessities outside official channels, we will. But the center may not hold so strongly.
When Rome fell, urban people moved to self-sufficient rural communities that the remaining Empire just left alone. We could do that well or even better, with whole cities or Indian reservations declaring and sustaining independence, or even with huge regions reshaping themselves into something like the vision the framers of the Constitution got from the Iroquois Confederacy: A totally bottom-up society,
with no permanent military and no police above the local level, where “leaders” have no coercive power and “governments” only mediate disagreements, where full power and trust and responsibility are given to all people by all people.
As long as it takes, we’re going to do it, as sure as the grass cracks the pavement. As Leonard Cohen said: Democracy is coming to the USA.
[Abridged from a pamphlet written by Ran Prieur, PO Box 45564, Seattle, WA 98145.]
*****
Next month: We’d love to know what you think. These are our usual classifications:
-- Open - questions, comments, tirades, etc.
-- RSVP. React to previous statements.
-- The ecology.
-- Clippings from newspapers, etc.
Money. Overtime is free, but there are expenses and any help with these would be appreciated. Please make checks payable to Linda Featheringill and mail to me at 4651 West 41st Street, Down, Cleveland, OH 44109. Contributions will be acknowledged in the next issue, or you can remain anonymous if you wish.
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And, to Everyone, thank you, thank you, thank you. Linda Featheringill.