The Rouge Forum No Blood for Oil web page is updated.
The site includes important analytical offerings from Robert Fisk, Stratfor, West Point Grads Against the War, Historians Against War, and many others.
The dvd of “Sir! No Sir”, the story of the GI anti-war movement that paralyzed the military in Vietnam, is on sale now, great for classroom use.
This week we would like to say some things we hear no one else saying.
The current world wide debacle of perpetual war is the result the logical and necessary processes of capitalism which pit those few who own against the many who must sell our labor, work, to live. The few will not rule the many forever. Things change.
What is happening, at many levels, is an international war of the rich on the poor. This includes attacks on all kinds of worker organizations and the rise of racist inequality, everywhere. The term that best describes this is class war.
As a sub-set of class war, we witness intense inter-imperialist rivalry, for example in Iraq but also proxy war, as is a significant part of the case with Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah-Syria.
In this mix, as people’s lives become ever more desperate and hard to understand, religious irrationalism steps in to fill the void. Religion can offer us an ethic for the future, but It is not possible to resolve truly religious disputes, as all sides invariably test for truth within their own minds, rather in the material, real world. Religion, always married to intellectual and practical exploitation, is a mid-wife of racism and war.
Very few disputes, however, are solely religious disputes. Usually, somebody is coveting someone else’s nickel.
Class struggle goes on wherever people must work. In Lebanon, about 20 percent of the people are out of work, around 2/3 of the remainder work in service industries (tourism, etc., as banking was demolished in the earlier wars) about 20 % work in industry, and around 10% in agriculture. Every one of those workers is exploited by a series of bosses. Despite support for the Party of God, or the Christians, or others, this class struggle is the key underlying fact of life in Lebanon.
In Israel, about 10% of the people are unemployed. 21% of the people live beneath the poverty line, despite the US subsidized militarization of the Israeli economy. 20% of the workforce is in industry, another 30% in services, and the remainder work in transport, communication, etc. All those Israeli workers, despite what is initially mass support for the Zionist government, are exploited by a series of bosses as well.
The Israel/Lebanon wars today are, in part, also about oil. So is the growing sentiment about US action in Cuba, and Iran. Oil is key to every military in the world, which makes oil a pivotal resource for every imperialist nation which must have oil for home-capitalists to survive.
There is no easy way out of this, no peaceful way either. The only way out is to transcend capitalism. Of course, to only see the transformation of capitalism, or to only see the rise of religious fanaticism, would be to look down the barrel of a gun and only see one sight. Big transformations are built by small reforms, and the close personal ties, trust and wisdom, that struggles create. However, there is no disconnecting short term goals from long term necessity.
The key thing that determines likeness and difference in the world is social class. Every school worker in the US has more in common with school workers in Israel and Lebanon that any of us have in common with our own national leaders.
Organization, education, and action must address these connected realities of capitalism, imperialism, war, and the various forms of irrationalism that capitalism requires: racism, sexism, mysticism. It is past time for action.
We need to begin to discuss, at the very least, conducting the educational work that can fill the jails with direct action protests. Direct action can overcome apathy and fear. In schools, action can address the racist Big Tests (walk out), imperialist military recruiters, nationalist Homeland Security ICE cops, and regular cops as well (throw them out), class size (wildcats backed up by freedom schooling).
Most of us are educators, school workers, though there are quite a few military personnel on the RF list now, and many others. Our task is to connect reason with power, and act. And we need the audacity to say, “This is all wrong.” Someone must go first.
There is no litmus test on all the issues above for participation in the Rouge Forum. But the issues need to be discussed.
We are in the process of establishing regional and state coordinators for the Rouge Forum. Interested?
Sources: Israel and Lebanon: CIA World Fact Book
Oil , Lebanon and Iraq: Michel Chossudovsky The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil
Review of Sir! No Sir
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