Money for War and Not the Poor.
The U.S. is blowing up the people's money to wage war at home and abroad.
Friday, May 16, 2003, New York police stormed a Harlem apartment on the
basis of an unsubstantiated tip, attacking the 57 female occupant with a
stun grenade and then handcuffing her to a chair while she complained of
chest pains. The woman was preparing to go to her job for the City of New
York where she had worked 30 years. In two hours she was dead of a heart
attack, a victim of the war on drugs. The police admitted they had invaded
the wrong apartment. (See Harlem
woman Dies After Botched Police Drug Raid.)
On the weekend, tens of thousands in Iraq protested the continuing
colonization of their country by the United States. The U.S. attacked
claiming it had to uncover secreted weapons of mass destruction. None have
been found.
On April 7th, Oakland police fired on a peaceful crowd of demonstrators,
injuring 3 newspeople, 9 longshore workers, and 50 community members.
Citizens were outraged. The mayor, Jerry Brown, backed the cops. (The
illustration uses the shot-filled bags, some of the ammo used by the
Oakland police.)
The U.S. military budget is approaching $400 billion. Sunday, 18 May, the
S.F. Chronicle reported that the Department of Defense cannot
account for $1 trillion (That $1,000,000,000,000 -- one million million
dollars) worth of monies spent. (See "Military waste under fire $1 trillion missing".) They've lost track of 56
airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. The U.S.
attacked Iraq for less.
Gregory Kutz, director of the General Accounting
Office's financial management division, one of the senior officials who
review the Pentagon's budget, said, "I've been to Wal-Mart. They were able
to tell me how many tubes of toothpaste were in Fairfax, VA., at that given
moment. And DOD (Department of Defense) can't find it's chem-bio suits."
Meanwhile our economy is going down the drain. (See "Economy near the edge -- of deflation".) The article says:
True deflation, in which a wide range of prices keep falling over a long
period of time, is one of the worst things that can happen to an economy.
Deflation hasn't been seen in the United States since the Great Depression,
but it has kept Japan in or near recession for most of the past decade.
"With deflation, it's very difficult for an economy to grow," said Joel
Popkin [a Washington consultant who ran the Labor Department's
inflation-monitoring program in the 1970s.]
Of course, prices aren't dropping for ordinary people. Services are going
up. Health care is going up. A good education is out of sight. Government
officials are dismissing teachers. Unemployment is going up. (See "What
Recovery?" in the Monthly Review, Vol. 54, No. 11, April 2003.)
Officially 2 million people are looking for work. Nearly 6 million want a
job and can't get one.
On the anniversary of the birthday of Malcolm X, people across the U.S.
gave the warmakers a lesson in People Power. Racism and class war mean our
resource go to make war, our brothers and sisters risk their lives so
corporations like Halliburton can make big bucks. (See the BBC article "Halliburton's Iraq
role expands".)
In Oakland, people staged a rally in front of the downtown Oakland Police
Administration Building. The rally was organized by Pueblo, Racial Justice
911, Freedom Uprising, Global Intifada, Oakland Peace Posse, and Direct
Action to Stop the War. (Contact warmakers2school@yahoo.com)
We Say NO. We say Racial Justice Now!
