Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 02:24:02 +1100 (EST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?anthony=20hayes?= <antyphayes-AT-yahoo.com.au>
Subject: AUT: Re: SABOTAGE THE WAR EFFORT!


thanks harald & monty for the comments on the leaflet.
a revised version is reproduced below. i have used
some of the formulations from 'respect your enmemies'
i hope appropriately.

a few comments on the comments:

to harald: 

> That the pub is "just as much a part of the war
machine
> as the recruiting office, barracks or ADFA ..."  not
many -- 
> and for good reasons -- are going to take seriously.
And
> that is an understatement.  The pub might however at
> times serve as a good breeding ground for anti-war
> ideas and actions.

whereas the pub has performed admirable service as a
site of much revolutionary philosophising as well as
general revelry, singing, dancing and falling over and
in and out of love, I would still argue that the
availability of alcohol as a *legal* soporific is a
boon and problem for the capital relation – hmmm,
methinks one of those devilish contradictions… I
suppose I could start with the rise of alcoholic abuse
and drunkenness with the origins of sedentary
agricultural societies, skip forward to the english
ruling class’ “concern” over gin and its
disintegrative effects in regards to the ability of
the lesser classes to reproduce themselves as
productive commodities and end we a relatively
mindless riot against cops and traffic lights by some
“motoring enthusiasts” in Canberra in the early 90s
(though I would argue that mindless and mindfulness
are not that far apart and there is nothing wrong with
the altered states of consciousness brought on by
alcohol – except unless in some instances you don’t
mind risking death by misadventure or utter
self-destructive alcoholism, a discipline of its own
to be sure)… anyways, I agree with your “correction”
re: pubs as 1. I don’t want the leaflet to turn into a
dissertation on alcohol & class society and 2. I am
known to retire to drinking establishments before,
during and after demonstrations and other “serious”
activity :)

> The conclusion of the following passage is to put
mildly,
> doubtful. Not many for good reasons ever was aware
> that  the end of the Vietnam war "brought ...  the
world to
> the brink of revolution." This kind of historical
phantasy
> will will only undermine the main message.

yeah, I was trying to tie too much together here.
teasing out france in 68, Italy from 69 and Portugal
in 74/75 as both identity and difference re: the
processes of global recomposition and decomposition of
labour was not done any justice by my ham fisted
attempt to roll abstractions into one sentence. 

> I also sort of wonder about the last two words in
the
> following: "A life of loneliness, suicide and senile
> dementia." Why you put loneliness, suicide in there
is
> very clear. "Senile dementia"  -- that is old age
> dementia -- is however far more problematic, though
it
> has some relation to loneliness and some times
> causes suicide. 

yes and, er, no. I’m not sure to what extent senile
dementia is both a “natural” and “social” problem,
particularly in regards to workers that live long
enough being removed from direct participation in the
work process and forced into a type of neutered
existence vis the rest of the working class (as
opposed to the neutering process of work). how does
this contribute to not only isolation and despair, but
also physiological processes like dementia.? other
thoughts – the prevalence of aluminium in packaging,
cooking utensils, containers etc. and its association
with alzheimers.

>         I like old westerns, but something weird
happens
> when you know longer recognize the difference
between
> a "peacemaker" and yes *weapons of mass
destruction*.
> mobilized against the Iraqi people and here, there
and
> everywhere. In a strange way the Bush administration
> are one of the most obvious victims of the modern
> spectacular society, while the after all far more
rational
> Blair is being caught in his own game, by his own
> performance, wanting to play Churchill without
overplaying
> it only to discover that some takes his act more
seriously
> than he does himself. Clinton was his perfect
playmate..

have you seen sergio leone’s ‘once upon a time in the
west’? other than the scene where frank shoots one of
his minions for letting the harmonica man follow him
back to him whilst wryly humiliating him for wearing a
belt and suspenders, I love the bit where the crippled
capitalist lectures the thuggish gun slinging frank on
the real power of money (social power in ya pocket…
draw!) whilst waving a wad of cash in front of frank’s
drawn gun. mind you, frank still executes the orders
of his boss… of course…

as to blair, when I saw him lose-it in parliament the
other day, exclaiming that after iraq they were coming
after north korea, I was wondering if his eyes would
pop. hardly the dignified churchillian moment, if such
a moment exists.

anthony
------------------------------------------------

SABOTAGE THE WAR EFFORT!

A war waged upon the people in Iraq is a war waged
upon all of humanity. A war against Iraqis is directly
opposed to the interests of the majority of the
world’s population: the working multitude. War will
kill, maim, and make refugees of thousands of Iraqi
working people - dreams and life brought to a brutal
end. As well as the millions of Iraqi workers
immediately affected the war is also an attack on the
entire global working class. We will all suffer. 

Bush has stated that the so-called “war on terrorism”
could last for 50 years. Tony Blair has foreshadowed
the continuation of this permanent war in North Korea.
Military spending is up. Border’s are being tightened
and brutally enforced. Internal surveillance and
curtailment of civil liberties is manifest - Howard
and the Attorney-General Daryl Williams push for a
further escalation of ASIO’s powers - and the
increased official harassment of people of Arab and
Islamic cultural backgrounds. For the global rulers
fear is the key. A world of mistrust and loathing to
distract us from the commonality of our chains - that
the global working class will be made to pay for this
world through more work, increasing state repression,
and continuing cuts to public services such as the
freeze on Medicare, the closing of public hospitals
and the continuing decrease to funding of education.

Capitalism is falling back on mass slaughter as a way
out of its intensifying & deepening crisis. Crisis is
the indispensable condition of capitalism. The
irreconcilable contradiction between the needs of
people for life opposed to the needs of capital to
hoard and accumulate things and profits, results in a
world of constant upheaval and permanent crisis. War
is the ultimate destructive expression of this
contradiction. 

September 11 2001 opened a space for the global ruling
class. That day has become the reason par excellence
for everything that they have tried to enforce upon us
since then. On television the Australian government
blares out its justification for joining all of us to
the U.S. war: “the way of life we all value so highly
must go on.” But what is this way of life that our
rulers are prepared to wage war for? A life of more
work, more stress and less pay. A life of labyrinthine
borders and detention camps. A life of fast food, junk
food – anorexia and obesity. A life of loneliness,
suicide and despair. A life of emotional impotence and
patented cures. A life of credit cards, lifelong
mortgages and internet porn. A life spent in front of
a box. This is the rapidly escalating and intensifying
world of things and their prices. For capital the
value of values is found in harnessing our time for
the production of a world of things. The capitalist
world needs us to reproduce our own chains. And our
time is the one thing that once sold can never be
bought back.

The last decade has seen some impressive working class
revolts against this world of pointless and monotonous
work. The ongoing Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas,
Mexico; The country wide strikes in France in 1995;
The growth of the anti-summit “movement of movements”;
Suharto and Milosevic chased out of office by mass
strikes, demonstrations and riots; General strikes in
Nigeria, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. In
December 2001 four successive Argentine presidents
were toppled by open mass rebellion against the
government in a movement that continues to this day.

On the capitalist side the crisis expresses itself in
anti-human terms: a crisis of money flows, capital
flows, budget deficits and the need to tighten fiscal
“responsibility” - the usual mantra of leaders and
other little men and women. From the bailout of the
Mexican economy in 1994, the Asian financial crisis of
1997-98, the Russian financial crisis of 1999, the
bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000 and the Enron
collapse in 2001, capitalism has staggered from crisis
to crisis with things likely to get worse. As part of
capital’s response to the current crisis the U.S.
state has cobbled together a small coalition of mostly
reluctant allies to seize Iraq’s oilfields with the
hope that a new cycle of accumulation can be launched
based on energy. “Rather than the now-uncertain
computer- and bio-technology sectors, the more
traditional oil-driven sectors [of the global economy]
will be given primacy in re-launching profitability…
The combination of the restoration of oil-driven
accumulation with the imposition of the Bush
doctrine[1]  on global industrial development ensures
that the "suburban-petroleum" mode of life we are
living in the U.S. (and increasingly in Western
Europe) will lead to endless war.”[2]

Capitalism is faced with the interrelated problems of
economic crisis and explosions of struggle and
resistance. Their solution is war. For those opposed
to capitalism stopping the war should be the highest
priority. 

Historically mutinies, strikes and revolution have
contributed to the ending and cessation of wars.
Revolutionary mutinies in the Russian and German
armies ended World War 1. In the 1991 Gulf War Iraqi
troops deserted en masse in the face of overwhelming
U.S. firepower and went home to turn their guns on
Saddam’s state. In the Vietnam war the dogged
resistance of the Vietnamese people and the massive
global anti-war and anti-capitalist insurgencies,
wildcat strikes and urban rebellion, as well as the
growing mutinous mood in the U.S. army in Vietnam
brought the U.S. war to an end. Recently Serbia’s
surrender in the Kosovo war was caused by the mass
desertion of reserve units. 

We are faced with the problem that modern military
forces, such as those of the U.S. and Australia, are
professional operations that rely largely on a small
number of Special Forces troops and Airforce
personnel. The direct participation of a large
proportion of national populations in a war machine,
like in the Second World War, seems to be no longer
required. To successfully prosecute its war, ruling
classes across the world need us to stay passive in
our daily lives far from the battlefields.

To stop war in these times means sabotaging the smooth
running of the basis of the war machine at home. The
well functioning shopping mall, factory, office and
school are just as much a part of the war machine as
the recruiting office, barracks or ADFA. We must go
beyond the spectacle of rallies and demonstrations -
they are a good beginning but a poor end. Howard and
Bush count on opposition to the war to otherwise not
affect their ability to wage war. This is risky for
their side as it depends upon the anti-war movement
not growing into rebellion against the world of work
and war. 

As capitalism is everywhere, and this war is an
expression of the current capitalist crisis, then our
opposition and subversion of the war must find a home
everywhere. Strikes & occupations of workplaces,
schools & universities; The widest possible
dissemination of anti-war & anti-capitalist
propaganda; Graffiti where ever a hand can reach;
Disruption & occupations of military recruitment
centres & other military facilities. These and other
direct actions are the only way to bring this war to
an end.

Already recruitment centres have been destroyed in
Bristol in the U.K., and Indianapolis and San Jose in
the U.S. Air bases have been invaded in Ireland and
England. Train drivers in Scotland recently refused to
transport war materiel. At the January demo in San
Fransisco where 100,000 marched against the war, 2000
people broke away and went on a rampage against the
symbols of a world order that has most to benefit from
this war - Starbucks, McDonald’s, Nike, the British
Consulate and the Immigration and Naturalisation
Service were the targets of a fury that won’t stop at
bringing just this war to an end, but the entire
system of degradation, humiliation and exploitation of
the human spirit. 

THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM IS A WAR AGAINST HUMANITY

canberratreason-AT-yahoo.com.au

Notes
1.
  “The Bush administration has put forward a doctrine
with respect to Iraq that, if generalized, would look
something like this:
“(1) Almost any advanced technological production
process can be used to create "weapons of mass
destruction."
“(2) Any such production process not directly
controlled by a multinational corporation (MNC)
headquartered in the US (or Japan or Western Europe)
can be used by a government to create weapons of mass
destruction. 
“(3) No government outside a list agreed upon by the
US government ought to have the capacity to build
weapons of mass destruction. 
“Therefore, no government (whether democratically
elected or not) outside of the agreed list can be
allowed to exist unless its advanced technology is
controlled by an acceptable MNC. 
“This argument means that the US government has taken
on the role of overseeing and vetoing all forms of
industrial development throughout the world in
perpetuum. Autonomous industrial development not
controlled by an approved MNC by any government is out
of order. Hence this "war on terrorism" doctrine
becomes a basis for the military control of the
economic development policies of any government on the
planet.” from ‘Respect Your Enemies--The First Rule of
Peace: An Essay Addressed to the U. S. Anti-war
Movement’ by Midnight Notes at
http://www.commoner.org.uk/02-7groundzero.htm

2.
   from ‘Respect Your Enemies--The First Rule of
Peace: An Essay Addressed to the U. S. Anti-war
Movement’ by Midnight Notes at
http://www.commoner.org.uk/02-7groundzero.htm


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