thanks to Violetta for translation. Italian originals appear at:
Part 1 & 2
Part 3 & 4

The natural reaction of fear in the face of the slaughter of human beings carried out in the United States under the gaze of televisions throughout the world, must give way to a reasoned debate. In order not to give ammunition to those who seek to use this universal disgust at what occurred to manipulate minds and impose their own interests. Among the many things written and heard in the last few days we have chosen some which seem to be of use in reaching a deeper understanding and deciding what to do.

The distinction between war and terrorism ended some time ago

“Terrorism” is the indiscriminate killing of civilians in order to create “terror” and to achieve pre-determined political and military objectives. The dropping of the atomic bomb by the Americans on the populations of Hiroshima (224,000 dead) and Nagasaki (75,000 dead) marked the ending of the distinction between terrorism and war once and for all. Massacring masses of unarmed civilians became a legitimate means of defeating the enemy for the Western powers. Since then the use of “terrorism” as a means of conducting war has become a widespread practice throughout the world. Used by groups and States of all kinds.

Grade A and grade B horror

The horror everyone felt in the face of the “minute-by-minute” TV coverage of the slaughter is false if it is not accompanied by a similar level of horror at all massacres of humans perpetrated far away from the centres of Western metropoli and the obsessive eyes of the TV cameras. In particular, the American Government has no moral legitimacy in expressing emotion and condemnation for these victims when for fifty years, through armed intervention, organized state crime and the imposition of criminal economic policies, it has been spreading death throughout the world on an incalculable scale.

Today alone 35,615 children will have died of hunger:
Place:	poor countries of the world.
Special TV news bulletins:	none.
Articles in the newspapers:	none.
Messages from the President:	none.
Demonstrations in solidarity:	none.
Minutes of silence:	none.
Mobilization of armies:	none.
Hypotheses about who is responsible:	no one…
G. Federico Much

The roots of hatred

The massacre in the USA has nothing to do with the class struggle which seeks to bring about radical change to the criminal world disorder which capitalism has imposed. The desperation caused by the horrendous living conditions experienced by the vast majority of the world population, with no prospects for the future, undoubtedly constitutes a context in which a climate of hatred can develop and spread. This does not justify what happened but it makes us realize that if we do not start discussing this state of affairs, the denial of life to millions of human beings will inevitably lead to even more desperate and crazy acts of rebellion. To exploit what happened, in the way that is being done, in order to make us take sides and support military intervention in the name of the “values of democracy and freedom of Western civilization” is a shameful and criminal lie which will only lead to a worsening of existing social conditions and increase the climate of hatred that these generate.

The economic crisis

After ten years of uninterrupted growth, over the last eight months the USA and the whole capitalist economy have been entering a downturn in the economic cycle. After a phase of expansion, a sharp drop linked to overproduction was being forecast. The experts were by now certain: the New York stock market was physiologically collapsing. The falls on the US stock market were causing hundreds of thousands of job losses and a relentless drop in consumption and, therefore, in production. And a classic whirlpool of recession. But capital cannot tolerate “zero growth”, never mind recession. With the excuse of the attack on the USA, over a period of just three days following 11 September, the Fed (USA) and the CEB (Europe) wasted a million billion lire in public funds in trying to break the fall on the stock markets: not to relaunch production but to protect the speculative trading that had for years allowed frightening amounts to pass into the hands of institutional investors and the big multinationals.

The war economy

For the United States the military-industrial complex is the flagship of its economy. The Gulf War had helped to set in train ten years of “fatted cows” for the American market. The space shield [“Star Wars”] which had been promised by Bush to the military lobby which had supported his electoral campaign, was the instrument by which it was to be relaunched. However, many objections were raised at an international level about the insane cost of it all. Today, after the attack, these will not only disappear but the economic policy of the whole Western world will be underscored by a general race to rearm and boost military expenditure. The “long war” that was forecast has been brought about by obtaining long-term political effects on the world order.

Energy supply routes

Guaranteeing security of access and control over energy supply routes (oil and gas pipelines) is a strategic problem for States which cannot be solved on the cheap. Hidden behind the war in Yugoslavia was the problem of control of the energy “corridors” in the Balkans. But current events in Macedonia (a key crossroads for determining these corridors) go to show that there are in fact major conflicts of interest between the imperialisms (US and European). Furthermore, in the other potential energy source, the Caspian Sea, where the USA was trying to impose strict guidelines designed to isolate Russia, the Blue Stream Project involving Gazprom (Russia), Eni (Italy) and Botas (Turkey), which marginalizes the US, is being confirmed instead. The energy source with which the USA can try to get its revenge just happens to be Afghanistan. To prevent its use by Russia, which has always considered it to be its natural outlet to warm seas, the USA financed and armed the Taliban guerrillas (including Bin Laden). The United States are extremely interested in Kabul because it could host a pipeline which goes around Russia, avoids Iran and takes gas and oil from the former Soviet republics to Pakistan or India and thus to the sea. Thereby freeing itself from supplies of raw materials from the untrustworthy Persian Gulf. The Bin Laden pretext offers the USA the opportunity to justify, with worldwide assent, a new American “presence” in an area (which, what is more, borders China) of enormous strategic interest. All the more so because the 37,000 US soldiers stationed in Okinawa do not have good prospects in a Japan which is taking an increasingly revanchist position and the 60,000 stationed in South Korea are up for discussion in the cohabitation process that is going on between the two Koreas.

US isolation

In recent times, the economic crisis affecting the USA has been well-received at an international level. The positions that the USA had been taking recently (in Kyoto, Durban…) were no longer being received uncritically as it had always relied upon in the past. Under the pressure of the economic downturn, the USA was becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the world with the inherent risk that it could lose its position as the sole dominant world power. What the USA is gaining in the world at the expense of thousands of victims in New York is there for all to see. Internally a crazy dangerous president who, having got there through electoral intrigue, now has the consent of 90% of the population. Externally, to the cry of “We are all Americans”, a strong planetary consensus in favour of the USA has been reactivated: this had been unthinkable up until 10 September.

Deep suspicion

All this data leads us to believe that the horrendous slaughter of 11 September is rather too convenient for the relaunch of the economic and political objectives of the United States: a cynic might say that it had “turned up at the right moment”. That there may have been hidden manoeuvring involving the secret services behind the slaughter is now accepted as fact by us Italians. Secret services which, to attain their aims, are also capable of using groups and organizations which delude themselves that they are acting autonomously. Elements, as yet to be confirmed, are already emerging in the case of the American slaughter that give rise to deep suspicions. There are rumours of unusual transactions having taken place on the stock markets in the days leading up to the event, there is talk of airline companies having blocked flights to the USA the day before and that some offices based in the Twin Towers told their own workers not to turn up for work that day. As it happens, we will probably never know the truth. But the fact that the USA is reaping significant political advantages is what, above all, can lead one to think that someone nevertheless decided to… allow it to happen. It is rather inconceivable that what was being planned could have escaped the notice of the NSA (National Security Agency) with its sophisticated secret control systems. That by political and strategic calculation someone cynically decided to “sacrifice the queen to leave the way clear for checkmate” should not at all be ruled out.

the war is the cynical use of the drama we watched unfurl to impose on the world the “terror” that capitalist imperialism needs

NO TO WAR GOVERNMENT

Our opposition to the war at a world level will also have to take into account the repercussions that taking such a position will have for us.

Anyone who has always condemned the hegemonic imperialism of US policy and the clash of interests with the other imperialisms as being a cause of world tensions will be publicly accused of being potential and cowardly parties to the slaughter.

Nato will from now on be presented as the indispensable bulwark of Western democracy: woe to anyone who dares criticise it!

Following the criminal repression in Genoa, the movement against globalization, which is still heterogeneous and contradictory, will be undermined at the roots.

In all Western countries, under the pretext of security, space for dissent and social conflict will be restricted, creating a climate of tight control and repression of civil rights. The population will be inculcated with the message that to have greater security they will have to resign themselves to having less freedom. The image of the wealthy American social classes barricaded in their homes, surrounded and defended like a bunker, will become the prototype held out for the whole of “Western civilization”.

The ones paying the price immediately will be the immigrants, especially Arabs, against whom the first level of assault will be unleashed with widespread assent.

But governments will above all use the climate of emergency to push through social restoration programs which they have had waiting behind the scenes by criminalizing anyone who tries to oppose them.

And the ones who will pay the price will be workers’ organizations who are not equipped to deal with it and opposition movements.

Here the campaign has already started with widespread raids at a national level, the closure of social centres and services and unjustified arrests: watched with indifference by the general public. The next step is being prepared.

THE PROBLEMS AT BOTH THE WORLD AND NATIONAL LEVEL ARE BECOMING MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD AND BASIC

THEY CONSTITUTE THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS FOR BRINGING ABOUT THROUGH THE CLASS STRUGGLE

broad unity between all trade unionists and members of social organizations who believe that a different world to this one is not only possible but is now essential

Opposition to what is happening internationally must also be translated into enabling the workers in each country to resist the relaunch of neoliberal policies which governments throughout the world want. Using the drama of New York, they are counting on finding us less motivated and less able to resist them.

Let’s take a look at what manoeuvres the Government and Bosses are preparing

Spending

The Government has already announced that the newly-created situation “obliges” it to amend its budget. And the most obvious choice is to make changes in budget lines by transferring funds that were earmarked for social spending (health, services. . ) to military spending (army and intelligence). And also in the pipeline is a colossal sell-off of State-owned fixed assets (which are used as back-up security for the needs of the public purse) to their business cronies and speculators.

Pensions

Extending a contributions-based pension to all includes the proposal that this should be encouraged by allowing management to refrain from making contributions. This effectively means an end to public pensions once and for all. An operation which will force people to put their Tfr [staff leaving indemnity] into private pension funds. The only thing the unions are unhappy about is that they prefer closed funds (which they have interests in) and Berlusconi wants open funds (which he has interests in). Many people’s pension funds have been decimated by the recent stock market falls. But, as if nothing had happened, they are seeking to transform thousands of billions of the workers’ Tfr into new oxygen with which to finance risky stock market ventures. Just like in the United States, they intend to entrust workers’ old age pension to people who just want to speculate with it.

Dismissals

The dream the bosses have up their sleeves is the abolition of article 18 which requires reinstatement if someone has been unlawfully dismissed. In order not to make it too obvious, the route they are proposing to take (with widespread confederal consensus) is that of obligatory arbitration. An alternative to the law which will clandestinely introduce the possibility of paying the worker off. The bosses have said that if the possibility of dismissal is available to them, they are prepared to take everyone on for an unspecified period. Showing that they don’t have a problem about taking workers on as long as they are allowed to keep them under constant threat of dismissal. The aim of the right to dismiss is to make everyone totally subordinate to their boss. Subordination which becomes slavery in the case of immigrants who, under the new Bossi/Fini law, face repatriation if they are dismissed.

Flexibility

Flexible hiring is now complete: bosses can give any reason of an organizational or technical-productive nature for taking on staff for a fixed period. There are plans for the total liberalization of employment by handing it over completely to private agencies: meaning that people working on a temporary basis will be mediating between supply and demand. The Minister of Labour, Roberto Maroni, has announced the introduction of a new type of contract for individuals: the project contract. A contract based on the fulfillment of a specific objective, as agreed between the management and the worker and which sets “incentives and penalties according to whether the objective is met or not”. This will mean the gradual death of any kind of collective contract. Following the American model, a review of the social measures introduced to cushion the effects of unemployment, beginning with the development fund (cassa integrazione), is also in the pipeline.

They will try to get all this through while guaranteeing, for better or worse,“to safeguard existing rights”. Seeking to destroy the united workers’ front and abandoning new generations of workers to a future of oppression never known before.

Slai Cobas
v. le Liguria 49, Milan
telfax: 02.8392117
cobaslai@ats.it
http://userspace.ats.it/free/cobaslai/

And the war

With the bombing of cities the American attack on Central Asia to obtain oil from the Caspian Sea has begun. A population already weakened by a regime of religious fanatics, until yesterday armed servants of the Americans, is now facing bombardment. Anyone who believes that a different world is necessary must know that whenever cannibals have been in power, history has fed on flesh: the human flesh of the exploited, the bombed and those sent to butcher one another.

The bloody parade of weapons that is being exhibited is designed once again to make the whole world believe that it is not possible to evade domination by the powerful. Beyond all the excuses with which our brains have been fed for weeks, the unbearable material evidence of this war is that the most powerful and richest nations of the world are unleashing themselves on the poorest and most wretched areas of the planet.

Today the pretext of terrorism, born of the same violence that is used by imperialist globalisation, is being employed to hide the fact that it is the cannabilistic regime of capitalism which is generating and will always generate war.

On any pretext and in any part of the world.

Staying at home to listen to the vast array of lies being put out by the mass media is cowardly.

It is necessary to close ranks and mobilize, and not to lay down and accept what is happening.

We are against this and any other war.

Slai Cobas