ILC International Newsletter
Number 7
December 27th, 2002
Special issue:
Emergency ANTIWAR Conference
Weekly information dossier published by the
International Liaison Committee -ILC,
Please contact :
International Liaison Committee -ILC, c/o Parti des travailleurs - 87,
rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis,
7510 Paris France
phon : (33 1) 48 01 88 28 fax : (33 1) 48 01 88 36
e-mai l - eit.ilc@wanadoo.fr
*****
Contents:
1. Introduction: No to war: Support this Emergency Conference
2. International Emergency Conference Appeal
3. Manifesto against war and exploitation (Barcelona, 1991)
*****
No to war ! No to exploitation !
This bulletin is a special issue.
We have decided to publish it a few days in advance of our regular
schedule to inform about the proposal of the National Bureau of the
Workers Party, in charge of the co-ordination of the International
Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples, to organise in Paris an
international emergency conference of the ILC against war and
exploitation, on January 23-24, 2003.
Fighting against war and exploitation is a tradition of the
international labour movement.
We call upon you to circulate this appeal widely, to send your answer,
to participate in the conference [see registration coupon below], to
inform us of any initiative against war in your city or country , to
send messages/greetings for the conference, to ask for the support of
organisations of all tendencies and to send for this event all
proposals you consider useful.
Organising this conference requires for new expenses which were not in
our budget, but still we thought it necessary to take such an initiative.
This is why we urge you to participate and/or to send a financial
contribution to help ensure the success of this event.
We are convinced that all those who agree with the actions of the ILC
and who wish to maintain the traditions of the international labour
movement by raising high the banner of struggle against war will answer
positively to this proposal.
-- The Editors
**********
APPEAL
January 23 - 24, 2003 (Paris)
International emergency conference
Let us stop war !
Let us prevent the bloodshed which has been planned !
January 23rd and 24th, 2003
Emergency International Conference
No to war!
No to the massacre which is under preparation!
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
In the name of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers'
International (ILC), I wish to invite you to participate in an
International Emergency Conference which will take place in Paris,
France, on January 23-24, 2003, to say:
- No to the imminent war, no to the terror and slaughter against the
Iraqi people.
- No to the continuation and the worsening of a policy which, for the
past 12 years by means of an embargo, has produced the death of more
than 500,000 Iraqi children, according to an official 1996 UNICEF
report. Since then, how many more children have died?
- No to a war which the spokepersons of the U.S. Administration, as well
as the French and British leaders of the European Union, state openly
may be dreadful and bloody. The United Nations is already discussing
contingency "plans" for 900,000 Iraqi refugees and four
million to six million people who won't be able to find the food
necessary for their survival! The carving up of the country could lead
to the compulsory displacement of anywhere between 4.5 million and 9
million persons, out of a total of 22 million inhabitants. There is no
doubt that the horror of this war will exceed even these dramatic
predictions.
- No to a war for which the major capitalist powers, headed by the
United States, have already mobilized 250,000 soldiers. These troops
will be ordered to march into Baghdad and impose the partition of Iraq
into three or seven pieces, all of them under the yoke of a military
occupation and governed by foreign powers.
- No to a war for oil. Iraq is a high-priority target because it has
giant untapped oil deposits and because the cost of exploiting Iraq's
vast oil reserves is five times less than in Latin America and eight
times less than in the United States. Iraq is one of the few
oil-producing countries in which the American oil companies have been
totally absent since the 1970s. Already American multinationals, as well
as European ones, have been allocated the parts of the Iraqi sub-soil
they will have the right to plunder whilst the population will be placed
in conditions of total destitution.
- No to the march toward the war the U.S. Administration wants to impose
upon the whole world -- from Iraq to Palestine, from Korea and
Afghanistan to Latin America, to the Balkans and to Africa, taking along
with it all the governments of the capitalist countries and all the
international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, European Union,
etc.).
- No to the war of terror against the peoples of the whole world.
- Yes to peace and to the fraternal unity of the peoples of the
world.
The International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International was
formed at an international workers' conference in Barcelona, Spain, 12
years ago on the eve of the first war against Iraq. A Manifesto Against
"War and Exploitation" was adopted.
Today, when the imminent threat of a new war against Iraq is looming,
the ILC assumes its responsibility for calling this Emergency
International Conference: Everything must be done to prevent this unjust
and terrible war, the consequences of which can't even be evaluated at
this time. Those who say that the military intervention will take place
in the name of "international law" lie. It is an outright lie!
It is already being stated that the 12,000 pages of the report handed
out to the United Nations by the Iraqi government contains major "omissions."
It is also said that some harmless products could be used to develop
dangerous weapons. These are sheer lies!
Let's not forget that 12 ago, when the first war was launched against
Iraq. George Bush Sr., who was then President, justified the war on two
essential grounds:
(1) American satellites had spotted the presence of 265,000 Iraqi
soldiers in the desert near Saudi Arabia's borders -- soldiers, it was
stated, who were poised to invade that country,
(2) Testimonies were reported in the media about newly born Kuwaiti
babies who were killed by being pulled from their incubators and thrown
onto the floor by the Iraqi army.
Those two "facts" were eventually exposed as total lies.
Declassified satellite photographs taken by the military intelligence
services in 1991 show that there was no Iraqi soldier in the Saudi
desert on the eve of the American onslaught. The young Kuwaiti woman who
had made a "confession" about the killing of babies admitted
later that she had lied.
But it was too late: the harm had been done. The war had taken place and
the embargo that would eventually kill 500,000 Iraqi children or more
was being implemented.
It is exactly the same thing which is being prepared today. We reject in
advance the notion that under the cover of one interpretation or another,
or of an omission in one section or in another, of a 12,000-page report,
a justification is given to launch a massacre of which the real motives
are basically to step up the plunder and terror against the peoples.
No, three times no to a war which serves only the interests of the
exploiters and oppressors!
No, three times no to a war which is a war against all the peoples of
the world, including the working classes of the United States, France,
Germany and Britain; a war against their organisations and against their
rights and gains, which are threatened by the same governments serving
the interests of the multinationals that threaten to destroy the Iraqi
people and all the peoples of the region.
No to a war which is already used as a pretext by all governments to
undermine democratic rights in all countries.
In this International Emergency Conference we will state: The workers
and the peoples bear no responsibility for wars, those who are
responsible are those who seat in governments.
The working class has always said "no" to wars. Once more --
whatever the different tendencies and points of view within the labour
movement, whatever the differences -- it is time to unite the struggle
of workers, of organisations and of democrats all over the world in a
common action to prevent the war and to save the Iraqi people.
It is time to unite all efforts to save the very bases of human
civilisation, threatened as they are by this imminent war. There is no
more urgent task today!
That is why we invite all of you to take part in the International
Emergency Conference Against War and Exploitation, scheduled to take
place in Paris on January 23-24, 2003. The Conference will conclude with
a mass public rally in which, by thousands, workers, activists and youth
will gather to state:
Stop the war! Stop the massacre!
In the name of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers'
International,
Daniel Gluckstein,
Coordinator, ILC
The Emergency International Conference Against War will begin Thursday
the 23rd. of January 2003 at 10 a.m. in Paris. It will end on Friday the
24th. in the afternoon. A rally where the conclusions of the Conference
will be reported will take place in the evening.
To register, to deal with all the organisational questions, please
contact the ILC.
International Liaison Committee
87, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. 75010 Paris - France
Tel. (33 1) 48 01 88 28 - E-mail eit.ilc wanadoo.fr
Cheques to order CMO
REGISTRATION TO THE INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY CONFERENCE - PARIS, JANUARY
23RD AND 24TH 2003
NAME.
Personal Capacity (org/title):
On behalf of my organisation:
Address
City
Country
Fax
E.mail
Language spoken:
Please, send quickly to ILC:
Contribution to general expenses (hall, material, translation): 100 e or
$100; cheques payable to CMO should be sent to EIT, 87 rue du Faubourg
St. Denis, 75010 Paris, France.
[Note: Please send a copy of this filled out registration form to <ilcinfo@earthlink.net>.]
********************
MANIFESTO AGAINST WAR AND EXPLOITATION
(ADOPTED AT FOUNDING CONFERENCE OF ILC IN 1991)
In a world in which all the evils resulting from the survival of an
economic system based upon exploitation and oppression are accumulating,
the new world order Bush and Gorbachev want to impose in defence of
profit and speculation, with the support of all the governments
represented in the United Nations, will lead to the increased oppression
of dominated peoples and the increased exploitation of the working class
on a world scale.
War and the successive slaughters, famines and epidemics it would breed
would represent a formidable step backward, and maybe a death blow for
human civilisation itself.
We, delegates from 53 countries meeting in Barcelona on January 4, 1991,
refuse those political, economic and social necessities of the
imperialist system which demand the repayment of a debt which is not the
peoples' debt and which jeopardise all the social gains of the working
class the world over.
We are against war. Workers and oppressed peoples throughout the world
are against war for they know that war would mean increasing
exploitation and oppression under the aegis of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the
Trilateral Commission. This would lead to increasing deregulation,
unemployment, destruction of education and culture, destruction of
factories, and the desertification of the countryside on all continents.
War would mean new steps to-ward the subordination of labour
organisations, and first of all the trade unions, to the State, thereby
threatening their very independence.
As peoples and workers who are struggling on all continents, we know
through our own experience that the governments of every political
colour which are at the service of imperialism will try to suppress all
our rights and social gains under the cover of war.
Conscious of the fact that every minute governments throughout the world
are wasting $2 million for military budgets, while, according to the
UNICEF itself, 150 million children in the dominated countries of Africa,
Latin America and Asia are going to die for lack of food and health-care
before the year 2000;
Conscious that the interests of peoples and workers in all countries
make it necessary to oppose war;
We decide to set up an International Committee Against War, against
Bush's new world order supported by Gorbachev and all the governments
represented in UN. This new order is nothing but a cover for the
imperialist system's drive to intensify oppression and exploitation.
We demand first and foremost the suppression of military budgets and the
allocation of these sums to peace objectives and the satisfaction of
basic human needs.
We demand the dismantling of all military bases throughout the world.
We are conscious that the future will not be easy. A whole world is
collapsing.
Considering that it is our duty to wage a struggle to help the peoples
and workers to save humanity from war by their own activity,
By setting up this International Committee Against War,
By asking you to join us,
We state our faith in the workers' capacity to free themselves from the
chains of exploitation and oppression the world over and to establish a
world where harmonious collaboration between nations and workers will
replace a barbarism which daily reaches new heights.
GOVERNMENTS, BEWARE OF THE PEOPLES' REVOLT
NO TO WAR!
Barcelona, January 1991
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