This statement should be widely distributed. For what these wars and militarism is costing the American people we could have a world-class public healthcare system.
The World is in Crisis with Dark Clouds Ahead
Written by Alfred L. Marder, President, US Peace Council
Remarks of Al Marder, President, US Peace Council, to the World Peace Council Secretariat meeting at Katmandu, Nepal.
Comrades and Friends:
I wish to thank the Nepal Peace and Solidarity Council for providing the opportunity to come together to exchange ideas and proposals at this critical period for united action against the continuing and accelerated drive of imperialism that threatens world peace. We must seize this occasion to fulfill our historic responsibility to seek to unite the global peace movement in common struggle for peace. We recognize that our brothers and sisters in countries throughout the world, in many forms and many organizations, are struggling for national independence, for sovereignty, for the right to determine their own destiny, for peace. The World Peace Council, founded in the cauldron of anti-imperialism and internationalism, must reach out as never before, to seek common ground with all those forces, to forge a “superpower,” a global people’s movement for peace and justice.
In the last few days, further ominous steps have been taken by the Obama Administration intensifying the dangers to peace. The Polish Government announced the agreement to station a US Missile base 60 kilometers from the Russian border of Kaliningrad in the city of Modrag, Poland, stationing 100 US soldiers. The Polish Defense Minister boasted that this site would be combat-ready! The newspapers reported that a leading Russian General questioned the justification that the northern flank of NATO had to be strengthened. He said, “NATO has manifold superiority over Russian conventional arms, as it is.”
That issue, dear friends, is stalling an agreement on the START talks between the US and Russia on the reduction of nuclear weapons. Putin and Medvedev have stated that the negotiations must include missile bases before Russia will seriously negotiate on the reduction of nuclear weapons, let alone on their abolition.
Further, Rumania has announced an agreement with the US to station a missile base. Together, with a base already in Bulgaria, new military bases will be erected, costing $110 million dollars. They will house 4, 000 US troops.
We celebrated the heroic actions of the Czech people against stationing bases in their country. The Obama Administration has now announced they will arm all US warships in the Mediterranean and Middle East waters with these missiles.
Washington has increased the drone attacks in Pakistan and now there are calls for drone attacks on Yemen against the so-called terrorists. The recent attack on a vehicle in Pakistan revealed American soldiers in Pakistan dress from head to toe. The press reported that they dress the American soldiers this way in order to hide the fact from the Pakistan people that American troops are actually in Pakistan. The wars of invasion for imperialist domination have expanded: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US has moved into Haiti again, using the horrible natural catastrophe as the excuse. French, Cuban, Venezuelan planes, bringing humanitarian supplies and assistance, were forbidden to land in the Porto-Prince airport. The French Minister of Defense has said it bluntly; the aim is to assist not occupy.
The Obama administration signed an agreement with Colombia for ten years for seven new bases. Colombia receives billions in US aid, third, after Israel and Egypt. 1,400 US troops will be dispatched to Colombia to man the new bases in Colombia. Why the need for bases and soldiers in Colombia?
These steps are clearly a threat to the independence movement in Latin America. The overthrow of the Zeyala administration in Honduras is a clear warning that US Imperialism is not ignoring the historic struggle of the peoples of Latin and Central America to rid themselves of the US yoke that has been choking them for centuries. Activities, including killings, in opposition to the new people’s governments, are taking place daily with the support of US embassies. The oligarchs and the murderous paramilitary mercenaries of Latin America are actively supported by the CIA and other US agencies.
The African Command has announced increased activities on the coast of Africa beyond the counterinsurgency operations in Somalia, Uganda, Mali, and Djibouti. Who is active in the Congo and other African countries for their rich resources? The US now gets 17% of its oil from Africa. By the year of 2015, the US will get 25% of its oil from Africa. There is now a Drone base in the Seychelles.
The World Peace Council is a member of the International Network Against Foreign Bases. The struggle against foreign bases is a struggle against imperialism at the national level, capable of mobilizing the people in the name of national sovereignty and independence. The WPC must play a leading role commensurate with its mission. It must encourage all of our members to become active in this movement.
While all of the above is very serious and dangerous, the most ominous of decisions is the decision to sell $6.5 billion dollars of weapons to Taiwan. In the mix will be 200 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles. China has rightfully denounced this dangerous situation, as direct intervention in their internal affairs. The US moves deliberately to surround China and Russia.
The Obama new missile-shield project will be extended to all of Europe integrated with NATO and will extend to the Middle East and the Caucuses. All the warships plying the oceans in Europe and the Middle East will be have Standard Missiles 3 and a new land-based version. Plans are afoot to deploy missile interceptors on the soil of European nations
The Review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is to take place on May 4 again in New York at the United Nations. This is at a critical stage in the struggle against nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have been the excuse for the invasion of Iraq; the attacks against Iran and the maneuvers against North Korea. The issue of nuclear weapons has been with us since the days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It sparked the founding of the World Peace Council itself. While it is important to recall that it was the WPC that initiated the historic Stockholm Peace Pledge, it is now 60 years later. The World Peace Council is regaining its strength. We must become deeply involved in the global movement to rid the world of nuclear weapons, in collecting signatures on the global petition , in mobilizing national movements and particularly, participating in the International Conference in New York and the Demonstration on April 30, May 1, and May 2.
The duplicitous role of the former Secretaries of State and Defense, Kissinger, Schultz, Perry and Schlesinger in the United States right-wing hawks, pretending, by major articles in the world press, that they were calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, has been revealed. Honest anti-nuclear weapons proponents pointed to the apparent change in the thinking of the right-wing hawks in the United States calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. These imperialists have strong financial ties to the nuclear weapons industry. They were misleading the public, hoping, obviously, to lull the opposition to nuclear weapons. Today, prior to the NPT Review, they are calling for increased funding and manufacture of new and more deadly nuclear weapons. Obama’s budget obliges them.
The President of the United States, Barack Obama, made a forthright statement in Prague calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. He asserted that it was the moral duty of the United States, as the only nation to use nuclear weapons, to take the lead in their abolition. The global anti-nuclear weapons movement seized upon this statement to demand that the words are followed by concrete action. However, here again, an examination of the budget of the Obama administration shows that new money is being funneled into the major laboratories for new bombs, more deadly weapons, for a policy that will continue nuclear weapons as an essential party of military strategy. Manufacturers and laboratories devoted to these weapons of mass destruction are not going to give up their huge profits. President Obama’s words prove to be rhetoric not backed by deeds.
The Obama Administration is asking for almost $1 trillion dollars in military and war spending this year. This is double all the world together spends on killing machines.
All this is not a sign of strength of US imperialism. The US is a debtor nation, financed by China and Japan and other foreign investors; 28 million people are unemployed or under employed, African American and Hispanic workers are most affected: 17% to 10%; 50 million people have no health insurance; 8 million homes have been foreclosed by the banks; one out of 5 children go to bed hungry. Pensions have been either destroyed or seriously depleted. 38 million n people are now forced to get government stamps for food. Yet, the banks and corporations register huge profits as productivity per worker is up with fewer workers! The people had demanded a change. Obama talked of change. There is little change.
It was quite common to hear that war provides jobs; while it is true our sons and daughters die, the economy benefits. That is no longer the case. Our sons and daughters die and the people suffer. That is the reality.
The World Peace Council has a noble history, holding its anti-imperialist banner high during a very difficult period, resisting all attempts to change its anti-imperialist foundation. Yesterday, the world, seeking liberation from colonial rule and the horrors of fascism, looked to the World Peace Council for solidarity and internationalism.
Today 2 billion of our brothers and sisters are hungry; without clean drinking water; homeless or living in deplorable conditions. Disease is rampant. Internal conflict is encouraged by imperialism and their domestic agents so that the natural resources, their wealth, end up in foreign hands. Their countries are in deep debt, and their destiny is decided in foreign capitals.
We must find a way to reach out to these brothers and sisters, as we did before. Their struggle is our struggle. We need them in our ranks.
The world is in crisis with dark clouds ahead. The WPC is no stranger to crisis. There is a historic global peace movement today. We must assume our role in that movement. We must respond today as we have in the past. This meeting should propel us forward to meet our responsibilities.
Thank you.
February 18, 2010
Greetings sisters and brothers!
This March and rally are great. Thanks to the organizers for making this event such a huge success.
The music, the poetry, it’s all fantastic!
It is good to see so many people I have been working with who have traveled from many parts of northern Minnesota to be here today and to meet so many new people.
This is our chance to demonstrate our solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of people who are now marching through the streets of New York City in opposition to this administration that lied about this war and has lied to us about just about everything regarding the state of our nation.
Before I begin I would like to call to your attention that I have placed dozens of these blue books scattered around the Pavilion on numerous tables. These books are free, your tax dollars paid for them. They are “Legislative Manuals” that include the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of Minnesota legislators and other pertinent information much of which will be useful should you decide to run for public office. Please take a copy and make good use of it. Legislators tell me they appreciate hearing from you and they like hearing from you often.
Also, I hope everyone has a copy of this leaflet that speaks to the unemployment appeals case I will make reference to. Please take it home and share it with your family, relatives, neighbors, and fellow workers. You could find yourself in a similar situation… especially if we end up with four more years of Bush.
Mark Twain once observed that the first casualty when a nation goes to war is democracy.
Because of my outspoken views for peace and social justice I am now the target of the most vicious restraining order ever issued in Minnesota since the days of Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunts that robbed the working people of Minnesota of its strongest voices and best fighters for peace and social justice. This witch-hunt now involves Homeland Security Forces who not only viciously attacked me as they ran roughshod over my Constitutional Rights… but also attacked my dog and made my dog suffer.
I hope you will read this leaflet I am passing out here today. Minnesota’s unemployment compensation legislation is skewed and rigged against working people in favor of the corporations just like this two-party system is rigged to deny working people a voice in the Minnesota legislature and in the US congress.
What we need to understand is that poverty, joblessness, and war are universal features of this rotten capitalist system that puts profits before peoples’ needs. What we need is a system that puts people before profits. Take a look at reality… this dirty war is about oil company profits.
Floyd Olson, Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party governor once observed, “The capitalist system is failing as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.” This was a prophetic observation.
Floyd Olson was the most popular politician in Minnesota ever. Yet his name has been virtually erased from the history books.
How long will working people endure an economic system that breeds war and poverty?
What working people in Minnesota need is real living wages not these poverty wages.
We need to build affordable homes here… not bomb homes in Iraq. Isn’t it better to pay working people thirty dollars an hour to build homes right here in Minnesota than waste money bombing the homes of others? Think about this: the same people who say, ‘oh no, you can’t pay working people thirty dollars an hour for building homes’ are the very same people who think nothing of spending tens of thousands of dollars to drop one bomb on homes in Iraq! I hope you will think about that little fact. It’s about priorities.
Our children and grandchildren need quality educations… instead Bush and Rumsfeld bomb schools in Iraq.
It is rather ironic that the same oil companies out to steal the oil from Iraq are the same ones robbing us at the pump. They say gas prices have been hiked to catch up with inflation. Why don’t they have the same mode of thinking when it comes to our wages? Have you ever heard one single politician in the State of Minnesota say that the minimum wage should be raised to a level sufficient to compensate for inflation? Why not? Let the poverty wage paying employers cry like we do when we go to the gas station to fill our tanks… these poverty wage-paying employers won’t die from shedding a few tears.
Listen to what Mark Twain had to say over one-hundred years ago and see if it doesn’t ring true today as we discuss this war in Iraq:
The loud little handful--- as usual--- will shout for the war. The pulpit will--- warily and cautiously--- object--- at first; the great, big dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.
Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audience will thin out and lose popularity.
Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--- as earlier--- but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--- pulpit and all--- will take up the war cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
This is from, “The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain.
How true all this rings today… from Bush right down to that one lone warmonger waving his little American flag shouting obscenities at us as we marched through downtown Detroit Lakes.
Apparently there is no room for freedom of the press and freedom of expression alongside the “free market” system that puts profits and wars before people.
The price of democracy and justice, like that of healthcare, is beyond the reach of working people in Minnesota.
What is the price of war?
Every bomb dropped on a school in Iraq robs our children of an education here at home.
Every home Bush bombs in Iraq is a home we can’t build here.
The price we pay for this war means there is not enough money for Universal healthcare like they have in Canada. The Canadians aren’t stupid… their excellent healthcare system is paid for with peace. Their government didn’t go to war in Iraq.
American working people are paying dearly for Bush’s dirty war… it is working class youth fighting and dying and it is workers who foot the bill. Do you raise your sons and daughters to be cannon fodder in some oilman’s war?
The oil barons even profit from the body-bags our sons and daughters are brought home in--- sadly and ironically, these body-bags are made from an oil byproduct. Our sons and daughters fight and die… the oilmen profit, even from their deaths.
The home healthcare industry in Minnesota is a racket in the fullest sense of the word. An examination of the way Provide Care, Incorporated has been feeding at the public trough like a pig and evading public scrutiny while trampling on the rights of its “customers” and employees alike as they fatten their corporate profits is no different than the way the merchants of death and destruction hawk their wares of bombs and bullets.
Then they have judges and the police in their hip pocket to silence workers with restraining orders like this, which have been placed upon me.
Think about this: If these judges can silence me for defending the right of one worker to unemployment benefits… do you think they can’t silence you for speaking out for peace and for social justice in the same way?
Al Capone would have been envious of such rackets!
A nation cannot squander its resources on wars unless it robs its own people of the right to decent livelihoods and the things they need like universal healthcare, housing, and education.
When a nation squanders it resources on wars it is like taking the wealth of the nation and throwing it into the ocean. Would you take money from your pocket and throw it into the waters of Detroit Lake?
Look at this… this is what your tax dollars are buying in Iraq! People like this little boy here, his arms and legs blown off while his entire family lay dead. Not even his mother left to try to comfort him through this agony. Is this the way to win friends and influence people? (picture displayed)
Is there any wonder the peoples of the world said no to this war before it started and continue to be opposed to it?
In my opinion this election shouldn’t even be a contest the way working people hate Bush and his bunch of corporate profiteers and warmongers.
Why then are so many people considering not even voting in this important election?
Because the Democrats, for the most part, have been docile and cowardly in standing up to these warmongers and the corporate thieves.
With Democrats like Collin Peterson who support this dirty war and those who have remained silent is it any wonder people are fed up with politics and don’t want to vote?
Look around you, how many DFL legislators do you see here today? Do you see your DFL Congressman?
Why should I remain silent about their absence if they are not here?
And it is not only on the issue of this war that they have remained docile. It is on minimum wage legislation, the right to organize, and universal healthcare… even the right to fair hearings.
Leaders of the Minnesota DFL in justifying either their support for this dirty war or their silence on the issue pointed out to me that the polls show that a significant number of people support this war. You know what I told them? Well, because it is Sunday and there is a clergyman or two here… I won’t tell you exactly what I told them, but I will tell you that I told them this: “Polls don’t die and suffer in wars… people do.”
It made me sick to see people, even union leaders, stand and applaud Collin Peterson here in Detroit Lakes at the 7th Congressional District DFL convention a few months back. It was just sickening. You know, I was the one and only DFL delegate that did not stand and clap after Collin Peterson got done with his speech supporting Bush’s dirty little war in Iraq.
In my opinion John Kerry’s one and only strong point is that he is an opportunist politician who sticks his finger in his mouth when he gets up in the morning to see from which direction the political winds are blowing. “Waffling” is his strong point because what this means to us as labor, peace, and social justice activists is that with a powerful and large movement demanding peace and universal healthcare we might be able to influence him. Provided we generate enough wind for him to feel on his wet finger when he pulls it out of his mouth.
I was a Kerry delegate… I am firmly convinced that the only way we can get rid of Bush is to elect Kerry. This is the reality of the present political moment.
Is there anyone amongst us today that believes we can influence George Bush? If you are a billionaire with pockets lined with cash… yes, you might be able to influence George Bush or Tim Pawlenty… I don’t know about you but I have had… p-a-w-l-e-n-t-y of Bush.
We must insist that John Kerry set a date for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq! Then vote for Kerry so we can get rid of Bush. Getting rid of Bush is the next step we need to take towards ending this dirty war.
I was glad to see John Kerry take a stand against predatory lenders. This is a serious problem in this state.
By the way… I am voting for Kerry, but no way will I vote for that warmonger Collin Peterson. I certainly won’t vote for his Republican opponent. I hope my non-vote sends a message to someone, someplace.
I think that as we go out to defeat Bush by electing John Kerry we need to begin a serious discussion of putting an end to this two-party fiasco. The moneyed interests in the DFL continue to resist Farmer-Labor voices in the Party. Maybe it is time to go back to what we had in Minnesota: A real farmer-labor party. The time has come to consider the option of rebuilding the old Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota on the legacies of Floyd Olson, Elmer Benson, and John Bernard. I don’t care what the Party is called. From the red-roots of the farmer-labor movement have grown many new green shoots that need to be nurtured to maturity.
Peace! Sisters and Brothers… Let this word peace ring out throughout every household, union hall, church, and community in Minnesota!
Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today on behalf of Minnesotans for Peace and Social Justice.
