Concessions Are Not Solutions
• Delphi Using Bankruptcy to Wreck Living Standards
• GM and Its Offspring Delphi Declare War on U.S. Autoworkers: Industrial Workers Face New Reality Where Old Class Battles Have To Be Fought All Over Again
• Delphi’s Demand: Take $9 An Hour • Delphi Proposal: Statement by United Auto Workers
• Northwest Airlines Continues Chapter 11 Onslaught: Illusions Are Crumbling as U.S. Industrial Workers Gain Direct Experience With Bankruptcy Protection
Defend Peoples' Right to Think and Be
• Bush Speech Shows Terror of Ruling Circles: Dangerous Effort to Block Thinking and Target “Insurgency and Subversives”
• National Endowment for Democracy, 0ctober 6, 2005: Excerpts from Bush Speech
The death of the American dream is a reality confronting workers across the country. In Buffalo, New York, for example, thousands of families faced foreclosure on their homes by the City. Buffalo, like cites across the country, has been brutally hit for the past several years with mass layoffs and the decimation of public schools and healthcare. It is now governed by an appointed Control Board that insisted on the mass foreclosures, in the name of “balancing the budget.”
Government attacks on people’s homes, many of them belonging to retired workers and working families, perhaps most sharply illustrates the death of the American dream. After all, owning a home is the heart of the dream. Now everyone is being told that you have no legitimate claims on the public treasury — a treasury that was created by the workers. The claims to social services like garbage and water, to education and healthcare, to housing, all are being denied. Indeed, even your claim to your own home is not respected by government.
Right alongside this brutal attack on the people, especially our most vulnerable families, there is the demand that public sector workers take 20 percent wage cuts and that industrial workers like those at Delphi take 65 percent cuts and more. Poverty-level wages are being demanded across the board.
Industrial workers, like those at Delphi, are a reflection of the standard of living achieved by the workers through their struggle for their rights. It reflects the affirmation of their just claims on the wealth they produced. When the monopolies insist that these standards be abolished and replaced by impoverishment, they are revealing their own inability to keep the dream alive. In fact, they are openly sounding its death knell, demanding that the dream be forever buried.
But in burying the dream, the rulers are exposing their system as one that cannot meet even the most basic needs. They are revealing a long-standing truth that the dream has hidden — monopoly capitalism cannot move society forward for the majority. And at this stage, it is taking everyone backward.
Within this situation, a dream handed down by the rulers, and a dead one at that, cannot be our guide to action. When various political and union officials, for example, say what is needed is to continue the struggle to fulfill the American dream, they are clinging to old, outdated thinking. Such thinking will only tie the workers to the failed system and its failed government.
What is needed is stepping up resistance on the basis of defending the rights of the workers and the rights of all. It is the claims of the people on society that must be met. It is the dream of a socialized humanity, of societies organized to guarantee the rights of all and governments organized for this purpose that must become the reality.
Affirming our rights in the course of building resistance to the brutality and reaction the U.S. is unleashing inside the country and abroad is what is needed. Uniting as a collective political force and organizing to ourselves be the government is what is needed. Let us bury today’s rulers and their dreams, right alongside the founding fathers. Let us fight with our own thinking and vision of the future.
[TOP]
Delphi Using Bankruptcy to Wreck Living Standards
Workers across the country are responding with outrage to the latest demands of auto-parts maker Delphi. Delphi, having declared bankruptcy, is now demanding wage cuts to poverty-level wages, a freeze in the pension plan that will stop accrual of benefits for current workers and likely end the pension plan altogether for new workers. Cuts to healthcare benefits will require minimum payments by workers of $5,000 a year for families, up from the current $500. The proposal also eliminates existing restrictions on contracting out and on closing or selling plants.
The bankruptcy court has already approved a $2 billion financing plan for Delphi and is allowing the monopoly to shift funds from its U.S. plants to those in 40 other countries. The court is not supplying any funding or guarantees for the workers jobs, pensions and wages.
Workers from many unions, including the United Auto Workers (UAW), United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and the International Union of Electrical Workers (UE) negotiating with Delphi, as well as airline and public sector workers, are closely watching developments with Delphi and preparing for resistance. Steelworkers and airline workers are assessing their own experience with the use of Chapter 11 bankruptcy to decimate the workers, their unions, and whole communities. Public sector workers are also paying attention, as they can see that the claims of “bankruptcy” by cities and states, alongside government intervention with Control Boards and similar arrangements, are being used to eliminate unions and drive living standards down to the lowest level.
Workers are also looking into the thinking that has often guided the top union leadership, which says the job of the union is to help the monopolies be profitable and support whatever bankruptcy restructuring plan is proposed. With this kind of thinking, steelworkers and airline workers have already seen massive concessions imposed, and always more demanded, as well as many jobs and pensions lost and communities destroyed.
Broad experience has shown that what is needed is defense of the workers rights and rejection of the notion that the role of the union and workers is to ensure the profits of Delphi, or GM, or Northwest and submit to Chapter 11 restructuring plans. Workers are not to blame for the failures of the monopoly system. They have a just claim on the wealth they produce and it is by defending their rights that a way forward can be found.
As Delphi increases its demands and blackmail, claiming that “there is no alternative,” concern is growing that the UAW will refuse to organize resistance to defend the rights of the workers. This concern among the workers deepened with the news that the UAW top leadership is calling on GM workers to accept more than $1 billion in healthcare cuts, in the name of “keeping GM alive.” The UAW went so far as to file a suit to block its own union retirees from challenging the cuts. Ford is now demanding the same deal. It is high time the UAW leadership to reject this old thinking that concessions will solve the current problems.
Not a few in Buffalo are also following the struggle by Stelco workers and USW Local 1005 in Canada against Canada’s version of Chapter 11, known as Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). Local 1005 has refused to be a part of any restructuring plans and is organizing under the banners: Fight for the Dignity of Labor, Concessions Are Not Solutions, Hands Off Our Pensions and CCAA is Legalized Theft. They have also reached the conclusion that in order to be more effective, the workers as a collective must be political and oppose government intervention and laws that serve monopoly right and go against the well-being of the public. (To follow the struggle at Stelco go to www.cpcml.ca )
[TOP]
GM and Its Offspring Delphi Declare War on U.S. Autoworkers
Industrial Workers Face New Reality Where Old Class Battles Have To Be Fought All Over Again
The tsar of U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy infamy, Steve Miller, launched the opening salvo October 8 in the GM/Delphi war on autoworkers. Miller announced Delphi would make full use of the anti-worker provisions of the bankruptcy law demanding elimination of defined-benefit pension guarantees for all Delphi workers, a reduction of hourly wage rates to $10-12 an hour, higher employee fees for healthcare insurance, unilateral changes in work rules regarding intensity of work, length of the working day, overtime, temporary layoffs, increased use of outsourcing, and closure of many plants and reduced production at others.
Miller is infamous for his negative role in directing Chapter 11 attacks on industrial workers in the steel and auto sectors. He was the hired gun for the most powerful owners of capital at Bethlehem Steel to lead the Chapter 11 assault on the claims of steelworkers and consolidate capital in the hands of a few, which resulted in the sale of Bethlehem to Wilbur Ross’ ISG and a quick flip to Mittal Steel. Now GM/Delphi has hired Miller and his gang to fashion a similar fate in the auto sector beginning with Delphi, which is part of the preparations for the final attack on GM autoworkers.
Professional Bankruptcy “Hit-Men”
Steve Miller is a member of a well-paid professional business elite that is hired by owners of capital to organize a “hit” on workers of a particular enterprise using Chapter 11. Since coming to Delphi this year, Miller has fashioned a team of Chapter 11 experts that include restructuring and accounting firms schooled in anti-labor Chapter 11 tactics.
GM 1999 Restructuring
In 1999 GM reorganized its production of auto parts to facilitate more outsourcing and eventually drive down the claims of U.S. autoworkers and destroy their security of livelihoods, pensions and healthcare benefits. Delphi was created by carving away much of GM’s parts production, around 30 plants in the U.S. and many more abroad. It resulted in about 185,000 Delphi autoworkers worldwide with 50,000 in the U.S.
GM autoworkers fought back and demanded that autoworkers’ defined-benefit pensions, healthcare and other claims for security of livelihood called “job-banks” be transferred to Delphi and guaranteed by the parent company. It is these GM guarantees that are under attack with this Chapter 11 filing and could be sabotaged by court order or other anti-labor maneuvering. Miller said bluntly that defined-benefit pensions, healthcare and layoff provisions would be cut from Delphi whether GM guarantees them according to the 1999 agreement or not.
New Reality
Autoworkers are outraged by the attack and are meeting to assess their tactics for the battle at hand. New auto manufacturing plants have been built in the U.S. during the last 10 years that are not organized by the United Auto Workers union and do not have the same defined-benefit pension and healthcare guarantees or wage rates. Auto parts manufacturing has been massively outsourced inside and outside the U.S., as the existence of Delphi inside and outside the U.S. shows.
The owners of capital of the new manufacturing and assembly plants within the U.S., and those from outside that ship their parts and assembled vehicles to the U.S., declare they have no responsibility to the defined-benefit pensions and healthcare benefits of auto parts and assembly workers that built the industry and which the new plants have now partially supplanted. They also refuse to recognize the rights and established standard of living of U.S. autoworkers.
Those U.S. industrial workers who formally created almost all of the added-value in the auto sector and claimed their pensions and health benefits from the entire sector are now being told that the added-value in the full sector is no longer available to them because of changes in ownership and dominance of the auto monopolies. Even though ownership changes are beyond the control of workers, they are being told that they no longer can claim added-value from the full sector because their particular monopoly now outsources much of its production, has been sold to other owners of capital or has been supplanted in the auto marketplace by other monopolies from Asia and Europe.
Both the “new” and “old” auto monopolists claim they are not responsible for the claims of the workers on the wealth they have and continue to produce. The new owners of auto monopoly capital — and they may not be new at all as international finance capital is linked in many ways — refuse to hand over added-value to meet the claims of the existing group of active and retired U.S. autoworkers. These owners insist that the existing workers and retirees are not their responsibility because their capital did not employ them in the past. They claim the recently added workers in their new facilities have “voluntarily” agreed to lower claims for wages, pensions and healthcare benefits. They consider themselves “new” auto capital without ties or responsibilities to the “old” auto capital much in the same way GM is now trying to squirm out of its responsibilities to its Delphi workers.
The owners of monopoly capital in the “old” supplanted auto producers, which now have less market share, declare they can no longer meet their responsibilities to retired workers and the claims of active workers because they have less added-value available. They are competing with new auto producers, which according to their self-serving logic have almost no retirees and pay wages that are much less than the old standard. In other words, autoworkers are faced with fighting the same battles all over again to re-establish their rights and U.S. standard of living. This battle requires a reawakening of the fighting spirit that invigorated the industrial trade union movement after the Second World War.
The trade unions cannot afford the habits and methods that became standard over the past 30 years. These methods do not measure up to the new reality. The requirements of today demand an aroused, thinking, and involved membership that can resist the intrigues of Chapter 11 with its state intervention and professional hit-men. They require a trade union independence of thought and organization that is fiercely partisan to its cause of defending the individual and collective rights of its members, social economy and the public good.
The monopolies, their professionals, condescending saviors and monopoly-owned mass media should be shunned and excluded from exercising any influence within the ranks of the industrial working class. The new reality requires a newly awakened working class spirit that depends on its own resources, leadership and thinking.
[TOP]
Delphi’s Demand: Take $9 An Hour
If Delphi Corp. has its way, workers for the nation’s largest auto parts supplier would be paid as little as $9 per hour under 65% wage cuts, and be hit with a tenfold increase in health-care costs, no dental and vision care and other sharp reductions in benefits, according to a proposal revealed on the Web site of a UAW local.
The document shows for the first time the severity of the cuts the bankrupt company has told the union it needs to survive. The cuts are even stiffer than the company’s final proposal to the union before it filed for Chapter 11 on Oct. 8, further infuriating workers already angered by the threats to their livelihood.
“How in the hell do they expect anybody to live?” asked Andy Loughran, a 54-year-old Delphi worker from Dayton, Ohio. “You think you’re going to get a good quality product at $9 an hour?” Loughran, who has worked for General Motors Corp. or Delphi for 33 years, makes $28 an hour. He said if his wages are reduced under Delphi’s most recent proposal to $9.50 an hour, he will not work.
“I spent all my life in these wages,” Loughran said. “How do they expect me to live in my house?”
According to the proposal, Delphi wants new hires to accept wages as low as $9 an hour, compared with $14 an hour today. The company wants hourly workers making $25 to $27 an hour to accept wages between $9.50 and $10.50 an hour. Delphi also wants overtime to be accrued after working a full week, as opposed to a full day.
Moreover, Delphi wants to freeze its pension plan and said it does not want to accept new pension plan participants after Jan. 1.
Out-of-pocket costs for health care would increase to a maximum $5,000 a year for a family or $2,500 annually for an individual. That would compare to the $500 per family and $250 per person workers currently contribute to the company’s traditional health care plan.
Additionally, vision and dental benefits would be eliminated. The company said it also would discontinue “current health care options” but may offer other affordable plans in the future.
The new wages could put a strain on households dependent on a single breadwinner. At $9 per hour, some Delphi workers would make $18,720 a year under the new proposal. That’s more than $600 below the federal poverty line for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“These wages are among the lowest in the supplier community at the first, and in some cases, the second tier level,” said Robert Chiaravalli, head of Strategic Labor and Human Resources LLC of West Bloomfield, after reviewing Delphi’s proposed wage rate.
Michigan, which has 14,700 Delphi workers, has a median household income of $44,315, according to the most recent census data. Currently, 11% of the state’s residents are in poverty.
“Delphi recognizes the hardship that this proposal imposes on your members,” the proposal reads. “There is no alternative.”
Delphi filed for bankruptcy after losing $4.8 billion last year, and another $403 million in the first three months of this year. The Troy-based producer of everything from radiators to satellite radios intends to use the court’s broad powers to shed debt, close plants and dramatically reduce the pay and benefits for workers whose factories are spared.
That cost-cutting campaign is expected to inflict new hardships on almost every part of an already struggling Michigan economy. Delphi is the fourth-largest, publicly-traded company based in Michigan — behind only General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Dow Chemical Co. About 14,700 of its 185,000 employees work and live in the state.
Delphi and its three major unions — the UAW, the International Union of Electrical Workers and the United Steelworkers of America — must agree on revisions to labor agreements by Dec. 16 or Delphi will ask the bankruptcy judge for permission to reject the contracts, said Lindsey Williams, Delphi spokesman.
Delphi made its confidential proposal to the UAW, its largest union, on Friday. Details of that proposal were posted Tuesday on a Web site belonging to UAW Local 292 in Kokomo, Ind.
Many employees, like hourly worker Tom Stitt, said they were caught off guard. “Nine-fifty an hour, that takes me to right after I started,” Stitt, 47, said. “You’re talking 30 years ago. You’re wanting to take me back to a time where that was OK.”
“He is going to drive a lot of people back to poverty,” Stitt said, referring to Delphi Chief Executive Steve Miller. Delphi said in its proposal that because it cannot count on former parent company General Motors to offer support, it must pass demands on to the union. “Therefore, the modifications ... are more significant than previously discussed.”
The UAW has scheduled a meeting for Nov. 2 in Detroit to brief local union officials from across the nation about the contract proposal, the president of one UAW local said. The official wanted to remain anonymous because UAW leadership instructed local leaders not to comment on the cuts.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told the Free Press in a written statement Tuesday that Delphi’s proposal, if put into action, would have a devastating impact on UAW members.
“We don’t accept the notion that America is a country where a privileged few live well while the rest of us struggle to meet our daily expenses,” Gettelfinger said. “We’re going to fight for something better.”
That fight could come in different forms. UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker previously said his union has not ruled out striking.
[TOP]
Statement by United Auto Workers
On Friday, October 21, the United Auto Workers (UAW) International office issued the following statement concerning Delphi’s latest proposals. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President Richard Shoemaker stated:
“The UAW received Delphi’s contract proposal today. In light of Delphi CEO Steve Miller’s recent public comments, we were not surprised that Delphi’s proposal displays a total lack of concern about the impact it would have on Delphi workers, their families, their communities and our nation. Delphi’s proposal is designed to hasten the dismantling of America’s middle class by importing Third World wages to the United States. In short, the proposal faithfully reflects a vision of an America in which an elite few live in luxury while everyone else struggles to make ends meet. Maybe some believe the American Dream is over; the UAW rejects that dismal idea and will continue the struggle to fulfill that dream.”
[TOP]
Northwest Airlines Continues Chapter 11 Onslaught
Illusions Are Crumbling as U.S. Industrial Workers Gain Direct Experience With Bankruptcy Protection
USA Today reports: “Northwest Airlines asked a bankruptcy court Wednesday for permission to reject labor contracts if workers don’t agree soon to $1.4 billion a year in concessions.... Northwest CEO Doug Steenland said in a statement that reaching agreements with the carrier’s unions remains Northwest’s goal. But with oil prices around $65 a barrel, and rising competition from fast-growing, low-cost airlines, time is running out if the carrier is to avoid liquidation. ‘We must quickly reduce our labor costs by $1.4 billion annually,’ he said. The USA’s No. 4 carrier, in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since Sept. 14, didn’t specify how quickly it needs agreements from the unions representing 32,000 of the company’s 35,000 workers. But if U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper approves the motion made Wednesday by Northwest, bankruptcy law would give the unions 51 days to reach agreement. After that, Northwest could reject the existing contracts and impose new terms, including lower wage rates, changed work rules and reduced benefits. Gropper also could reduce the timeframe for negotiating a consensual deal.... Northwest has operated with temporary replacements and maintenance contractors since Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association members walked out in August. There have been no negotiations since the strike began. Northwest also said in court filings that, as expected, its plan for altering workers’ compensation includes freezing the company’s defined-benefit pension plans upon emergence from bankruptcy, and launching a 5% defined-contribution pension plan similar to those offered by low-cost airlines to their workers.”
This is yet another flagrant example of how bankruptcy protection using Chapter 11 is rapidly becoming the anti-social, anti-labor weapon of choice for monopoly capital. Pioneered in its present form against U.S. steelworkers, Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection has become an effective method to force down the claims of active and retired industrial workers. Using Chapter 11, with its state intervention, the steel monopolies forced hundreds of thousands of steelworkers to accept concessions. Retirees were a main target, losing healthcare benefits and large portions of their pensions.
Organized workers in the U.S. have yet to come up with a suitable defense against this latest anti-labor offensive, as many trade union leaders hang on desperately to outdated thinking and practice and refuse to face up to the new reality. Some organized workers are now attempting new methods of resistance such as a section of Northwest Airlines workers who are courageously on strike, and Delphi autoworkers who are discussing taking direct action before Chapter 11 crushes them. Workers are also following the battle being waged by Canada’s Stelco workers and Local 1005, as they reject Canada’s version of Chapter 11, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). Workers from Local 1005 have rejected CCAA as organized theft and refused to participate in restructuring plans. They are standing firm in their demands, Hands Off Our Pensions! Concessions Are Not Solutions.
The U.S. standard of living for industrial workers, while active and in retirement, is rapidly being eroded as Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection sweeps through industry after industry. Companies and courts deride the claims of workers as “labor costs” for an enterprise, which must be forcefully reduced to save the rich and their capital from bankruptcy. In this way, industrial workers are unjustly blamed for economic difficulties and forced to accept a terrible burden of anti-labor concessions. The real causes of economic problems are kept hidden and never discussed, as talk in the monopoly media and courts loudly trumpets one restructuring plan after another that merely redistribute existing assets and attack workers.
Any serious discussion of the root causes of economic difficulties is drowned out by self-serving anti-labor characters who praise their restructuring plans as the answer to economic problems and the only alternative to an even worse conclusion. They concoct a scenario where active and retired workers in a distressed enterprise have no choice or alternative but getting behind the company’s restructuring plan and putting their faith in monopoly capital and not in their own unity and determination to defend their rights and common interests.
This discredited method adopted even by some trade union leaders in the U.S. gives rise to illusions, not resistance. It repeatedly has been proven a disaster, as workers of the same company are attacked not once but twice and occasionally three times by Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Sometimes the workers of a targeted monopoly are softened up and weakened with illusions the first time around when they are encouraged to get behind a company’s restructuring plan accepting the notion that they are “labor costs” and that certain finance capitalists have their best interests at heart and are not out to feather their own nest. Then the workers are really hammered the second time around.
The monopolies and courts distort the economic reality and turn truth on its head. They call the claims of workers on the added-value and revenue the workers create as “labor costs” demanding concessions for the good of the company. In economic science the monopoly and mass media notion of “labor costs” does not exist as a category. Such a notion is a wholly subjective one invented by monopoly capital to prettify its ugly assault on industrial workers who produce the wealth that is so coveted by the idle rich.
For the airline industry the present assault represents a third wave that has dramatically reduced wages, healthcare benefits and pensions, and significantly changed established work rules for the worse. With each successive wave, the lowest standard of living from the previous wave or any new “low-cost” enterprise in the sector at home or abroad becomes the lowest “competitive standard” to which the monopolies and courts demand all other workers must fall.
The worker’s own experience, including examples of resistance like that of Stelco workers, is smashing illusions about the restructuring plans of the rich. Rejecting concessions, workers are taking their stand to rely on their own unity and determination to defend their rights and common interests.
[TOP]
Bush Speech Shows Terror of Ruling Circles
Dangerous Effort to Block Thinking and Target “Insurgency and Subversives”
President George W. Bush, speaking recently at the National Endowment for Democracy, brazenly stated that the U.S. will “never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory,” in its war for empire. He made this statement in direct opposition to world public opinion, including that of Americans. The stand of Americans against war and empire was most recently seen in the mass demonstration September 24, as well as in continuing actions across the country and growing demands for Bush’s impeachment for lies and war crimes.
President Bush also reiterated that U.S. imperialism will continue its aggressive and destructive path, leaving no place for diplomacy and rule of law. Speaking as an imperialist gangster, he said there will be “no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement,” by the U.S. He also emphasized that “We’re determined to deny the militants control of any nation, which they would use as a home base and a launching pad for terror.” He added, “The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they’re equally as guilty of murder.”
In this manner he is extending the dictate of the U.S. to take preemptive action against “any nation” that the U.S. decides could be a “launching pad for terror.” Given that Bush specifically speaks to resistance movements in countries like the Philippines and Kashmir, it is clear that what he has in mind is the growing people’s movements that are striking -terror in the hearts of the imperialists.
This terror is further evidenced in the fear of defeat Bush expresses, after more than four years of the “war on terrorism,” including two on-going wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.”
The desperation of the imperialists can also be heard in this description Bush gives of the “militants,” but which the world’s people recognize as one of U.S. imperialism: “Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation, decline, and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.”
Attempt to Block Thinking
A main feature of this speech was the effort by Bush to block thinking and target the leadership of the peoples. Showing the fear of the imperialists with the growing resistance of the peoples here and worldwide, Bush attempts to brand all resistance as terrorism. He did this not by targeting acts of terrorism, but by attacking what he called “Islamic radicalism.” Then he repeatedly replaced “terrorists” with the words “radicals” and “militants.” And with a deft phrase, he equates terrorism with “subversion and insurgency.”
Bush said, speaking of “this evil Islamic radicalism,” that it is a clear and focused ideology that serves “a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”
Bush then attempted to use very old anti-communist tirades as a means to further eliminate the independent thinking and leadership of the people. He goes on for nearly a page about how “The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century.” Again giving what can readily be seen as a description not of communism, or of radicalism, but of U.S. imperialism, he said, “They have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves.”
Bush’s attempt to equate terrorism with “subversion and insurgency,” makes clear that the U.S. is setting the stage for far broader attacks on the peoples and other countries. He specifically demands that countries and “responsible Islamic leaders” join in denouncing this “radical ideology.” He says the “influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They have been sheltered by authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran.”
While specifically targeting Syria and Iran, Bush also broadly targeted “any nation” that the U.S. claims is harboring “insurgents” or could become a “launching pad” for terrorism. He speaks of “terrorist plots” inside the U.S. He adds that “these radicals depend on front operations, such as corrupted charities, which direct money to terrorist activity.” He emphasized that there is a “global ideological struggle” and that everyone must submit to U.S. “beliefs that are right and true in every land and every culture,” or face the unbridled wrath of U.S. imperialism.
This is a dangerous effort to target resistance movements, and target the thinking that guides them. People are to be robbed of their own ideology, their own beliefs and convictions. Thinking itself is being made a target as is the leadership of the peoples embodied in the organized “subversion and insurgency,” inside the country and worldwide. This attack on thinking and resistance must be vigorously opposed as the people carry forward the struggle to defend humanity.
[TOP]
National Endowment for Democracy, 0ctober 6, 2005
Excerpts from Bush Speech
President George W. Bush spoke at the National Endowment for Democracy October 6, giving a speech billed as a “significant foreign policy” statement. In it he reiterated a “5-point strategy” for building U.S. empire. This included the threat that the U.S. will not stop its aggression until “complete victory” and further extending pre-emptive attacks to include any nation or “insurgency” the U.S. believes could become a “launching pad for terror.”
Bush also justified U.S. plans for militarily installing governments worldwide simply on the basis that they do, or might have “insurgents and subversives” inside the country. He specifically targeted Syria and Iran, as well as resistance movements in the Philippines, Pakistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Somalia and Algeria.
Perhaps most significantly, the speech targeted the “global ideological struggle,” making an effort to brand thinking that guides struggles against the U.S. as terrorist. As part of this he attempted to equate terrorism with communism.
The stage is being set to broadly target “radical ideology” and “insurgency” as the enemy, inside and outside the country. It is also clear that Bush is responding to the broad rejection of U.S.-style democracy and the increasing strength of the peoples’ forces advancing their fight on the basis of One Humanity, One Struggle. He speaks in the name of humanity and change, while actually describing the fears and character of U.S. imperialism as a dying and desperate force.
We reprint below key excerpts from his speech that speak to these issues.
Unbridled demand for victory of U.S. empire
“We’re facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers — and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder… Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory.”
Branding “radical ideology” and “insurgency” as the enemy
“The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses.
“Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.
“Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims… They have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves. Under their rule, they have banned books, and desecrated historical monuments, and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, and to control every aspect of life, and to rule the soul, itself. While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing for a future of oppression and misery.”
Bush 5-point strategy for world empire
1) Extend pre-emptive war:
“We’re determined to prevent the attacks of terrorist networks before they occur. We’re reorganizing our government to give this nation a broad and coordinated homeland defense.”
“We’re determined to deny the militants control of any nation, which they would use as a home base and a launching pad for terror.”
2) Maintain a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and continue to use lies about WMD as a justification for aggression:
“We’re determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes, and to their terrorist allies who would use them without hesitation.…we’re working urgently to keep weapons of mass destruction out of their [evil men’s] hands.”
3) Destabilize or attack all those opposing the U.S.:
“We’re determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes. State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists, and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror. The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they’re equally as guilty of murder.”
“Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. And the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.”
4) Install governments at will:
“We’re determined to deny the militants control of any nation, which they would use as a home base and a launching pad for terror.”
“Having removed a dictator who hated free peoples, we will not stand by as a new set of killers, dedicated to the destruction of our own country, seizes control of Iraq by violence.”
5) Organize to block progress
“Our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. This is a difficult and long-term project, yet there’s no alternative to it…If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end. By standing for the hope and freedom of others, we make our own freedom more secure.
Speaking in the name of humanity while fearing defeat
“We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire, or rest, until the war on terror is won.”
“The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.”
“These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity. We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields.”
“Their grim vision is defined by a warped image of the past — a declaration of war on the idea of progress, itself. And whatever lies ahead in the war against this ideology, the outcome is not in doubt: Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation, decline, and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.”
[TOP]