50C!: No. 796 ~X-523 31 January 2003 ,,' Fight U.S. Imperialism Through Class Struggle· at Homel Break'''Wlth "'" -- \ . B,lld a wor/(Btl PltlIl!' JANUARY 28-The January 18 protests in Washington, San Francisco and other Fig'" l1li Sociallsl , __on! U.S. cities were the largest antiwar dem­ / onstrations in this country since the Viet­ _rtaClsI nam War. Within the population at large, ~ L8.- ~ .- support for an invasion of Iraq is at best lukewarm, and polls indicate a growing majority oppose a unilateral U.S. attack. In Europe, hundreds of thousands have marched in protest against the evident intent of U.S. imperialism and its British auxiliaries to launch 'an all-out attack on Iraq, a country which has had its social fabric and never-considerable military strength eviscerated by more than a decade of United Nations sanctions. Even as chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix claims that "Iraq appears not to have come to genuine acceptance ... ofthe disarmament which was demanded of it," he concedes that his team of imperialist spies has found no evidence of "weap­ ons of mass destruction." Meanwhile, in . m~~ Washington the drums of war are beating Our banner at January 18 antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. stood out sharply against pro-Democratic Party ever louder. U.S. Secretary of State Colin liberal pacifism of protest organizers. Powell intoned that the "burden is upon Iraq" to prove that it has no weapons. support an immediate war against Iraq, paring for' the possible use of nuclear an American war against Iraq, the French "The onus is on us to prove we don't have it provoked a frenzied response by the weapons against Iraq." According to the government has sent warships to the Gulf. any," replied an Iraqi official. "How can Bush administration. Pentagon chief article, the decision to use nukes rests in What is needed is to mount class­ you prove a negative?" Donald Rumsfeld contemptuously dis­ the hands of STRATCOM, a "tightly con­ struggle opposition against this imperial­ Bush's recent promise to hold Iraq's oil missed France and Germany as "old trolled, secret organization" under Rums­ ist war. This in turn requires a policy of resources "in trust" for the Iraqi people is Europe." The right-wing tabloid New York feld. The article noted "the contradictions uncompromising proletarian class inde­ simply a promissory note to the oil barons Post (24 January) ran a front-page head- inherent in contt:mplating the use of pendence. Yet the European pseudo­ nuclear weapons for the purpose of elim­ socialist left kowtows to the various labor inating weapons of 1I¥lss destruction." and social-democratic parties, historic It is no wonder thaiihe nuclear cow­ "left" enemies of proletarian revolution. boys in Washington are today seen In so doing, the fake left acts in the by much of the world's population as service of the more "humane" pretensions "the greatest threat to world peace," as of their own rulers, whose appetites are reported in the Toronto Sun (26 January). currently restrained by the military ascen­ That was the opinion of more than 83 per­ dancy of U.S. imperialism. Last fall, a cent of Europeans polled by Time maga­ whole raft of European leftists including zine's European edition, with Iraq com­ the Italian Rifondazione Comunista, the ing a, distant second at 8.9 percent. French Ligue Communiste Revolution­ This is the shape of the "new world naire and the British Socialist Workers order" emerging from the restoration of Party and Workers Power issued a "call capitalism in the Soviet Union. Without on all the European heads of state to pub­ Soviet military might to stay its hand, licly stand against this war, whether it has U.S. imperialism has been riding rough­ UN backing or not, and to demand that shod over and expanding its military pres­ George Bush abandon his war plans." Far ence on every continent. Interimperialist from advancing a struggle for "peace," AP rivalriys that were usually subordinated to these putative leftists who appeal to their U.S. troops in Kuwait prepare for new desert slaughter in Iraq. the common cause of destroying the own bourgeoisies against U.S. imperial­ Soviet Union have now corrie to the fore. ism promote the resurgent chauvinism of ExxonMobil and BP. It is just such line denouncing Chirac and Schroder as At the same time, the complaints of the that paves the way for a future interim­ moves that offend America's imperialist the "Axis of Weasel." European governments about American perialist war. Thus, for example, Rifon­ rivals, most notably France and Germany, But it is dot only the question of Near "unilateralism" are merely the squeals of dazione Comunista's Liberazione (23 who threatened not to vote for Bush's war Eastern oil. As the Berlin Tagesspiegel less powerful states who want a bigger January) ran a headline, "Paris-Berlin, plans in the UN Security Council. The rift (24 January) opined: "'Iraq"has become cut of the take (including of a post­ United for Peace." between Europe and the U.S. is sharper the code word for everything:that divides Saddam Iraq) and would prefer to be This treacherous role is all the more today than it has been for decades. When Europe from America." The Bush ad­ treated less rudely. Even as they condemn continued on page 10 French president Jacques Chirac and' ministration's naked assertion of Wash­ German chancellor Gerhard Schroder ington's "right," without even a fig announced last week that they would not leaf of pretext or provocation, to "pre­ emptively" attack any country perceived 05 as challenging U.S. power and preroga­ tives has shocked and horrified people, and governments, around the world. While 150,000 American troops are being deployed to the Persian Gulf region, an article in the Los Angeles Times 7 25274 11 81030 7 (26 January) reports that the U.S. "is pre- While hundreds of United Nations "in­ .r:;~ spectors" storm into homes and factories a. around Iraq looking for alleged "weapons ~ of mass destruction," the man who exposed the deadliest arsenal of mass destruction in the Near East languishes in an Israeli dungeon. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a Left:Vanunu former technician at the Israeli nuclear at 1985 weapons faoility in Dimona, was kid­ demOnstration napped by the secret police, thrown into a for Palestinian desert prison in Ashkelon and sentenced rights at to 18 years by a secret military court for Beersheba's Ben-Gurion revealing to the London Times that Israel University. had amassed upwards of 200 nuclear war­ Right: 1996 NYC heads. At a parole hearing in November, rally demands the state claimed that Vanunu continued to freedom for pose a threat to Israeli "security." His law­ Vanunu. yer is pursuing an appeal, but his jailers have told his family that he won't be released until April 2004. A London Guardian (4 October 2002) and in very bad health, Klingberg was an in defeating the Nazi scourge. We honor dents and participated in protests for Pal­ article on Vanunu, headlined "Israel's internationally prominent scientist who Marcus Klingberg. estinian equality and against the 1982 Arms Inspector," quotes a defiant poem had published scores of works on epi­ As a Sephardic Jew whose family had Lebanon war. Some 2,000 Palestinians he wrote in defense of his action: "You demiology when he suddenly disappeared emigrated from Morocco, it was Vanunu's have been slaughtered since the begin­ are the secret agent of the people. You are in January 1983. Klingberg, too, had been own experience -of discrimination at the ning of the Zionist military onslaught in the eyes of the nation." For his coura­ kidnapped by the secret police and tried in hands of the European-derived Ashkenazi the Occupied Territories over two years geous act on behalf of all humanity, a secret military court. As assistant direc­ establishment'that led to his active alien­ ago, and tens of thousands more have Vanunu has already spent 16 years behind tor of the Nes Tsiona biological research ation from Zionism. He took up the cause been imprisoned. All opponents of Zion­ bars, including 12 years in solitary con­ center, Klingberg reported to Soviet intel­ of Palestinian rights as a student at Beer­ ist terror must demand: Free Mordechai finement in a six-by-nine fO"Ot cell. ligence about the more than 40 kinds of sheba's Ben-Gurion University, where he Vanunu! Free all Palestinian victims of For many years, another former Israeli weapons produced there, ranging from befriended Bedouin and Palestinian stu- Zionist repression!. weapons scientist, Marcus Klingberg, viruses to mushroom poisons. Klingberg was also imprisoned in a cell in Ashkelon. had fought with the Red Army during Klingberg was released recently from his World War II and recognized the debt he house arrest after completing a total of 20 owed to the Soviet Union for saving his years of imprisonment. Now 84 years old life and the lives of countless other Jews BAY AREA LOS ANGELES Alternate Saturdays, 2 p.m. ~I~~r ::::~:~~,iv~d,,;~:::: ..... /.' ,'~~~,~~ .>:". ~:::~:::i~V~~~~~:~::q~~>~1 Honor Communist Leaders Lenin, February 15: The Revolution Betrayed Lessons of the Vietnam and the Struggle of the Liebknecht and Luxemburg! Antiwar Movement Trotskyist Opposition The month of January marks the anniver­ Tuesday, February 11, 4 p.m. 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 sary of the deaths of revolutionary Marxist San Francisco State University (Vermont/Beverly Red Line station) leaders Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht Cesar Chavez Student Center, C-112 Information and readings: (213) 380-8239 and v.1.