No-War Fever

opinion by Ruth Wilson, the Free Press

“Stop the War. Feed the Poor.” That’s what people were chanting inLondon’s Trafalger Square on October 13. The police estimated that20,000 people came to the peace rally, while organizers put the numberat 50,000. The next day in Italy 200,000 people marched, saying “Wewant peace, not war,” and “Stop the terrorism against Afghanistan.” In San Francisco, more than 5,000 people rallied for peace on October20, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. TheChronicle quoted a teacher from the Bronx who said, "Weshouldn't be bombing innocent civilians because of what happened onSeptember 11. It isn't going to help people in New York feel anybetter." The Seattle Times version of the story consisted of aphoto of a counter-protestor against a blurry background.

Some people seem preoccupied with trying to come up with a solution toterrorism. There may be no simple solution. Those who oppose policebrutality do not feel compelled to come up with the ultimate answer tocrime. Perhaps they can think about this while they’re working on theproblem of altering police methods. You can look at it from severalperspectives. There are the individual criminals and their variouspsychological and moral histories. If you step back, you may observesocietal factors, such as inequalities of wealth. Countries that havehigh levels of income inequality tend to have high crime rates.Similarly, gross global inequities and injustices may tend to produceterrorists. There is no excuse for local or international crimes ofviolence, but we can learn about and try to understand factors whichmay increase the chance of occurrence.

Officials Cry Wolf on Anthrax

US leaders have been interested in scaring the public withpropaganda about anthrax, not in protecting people. If they wereserious, they would have produced enough vaccine to treat everyoneyears ago. The thing they were serious about was finding new excusesto continue the sanctions against Iraq. Iraq’s absence ornear-absence from the oil market has proved profitable for a number ofAmerican corporations, due to transfer of oil profits to Saudi Arabia. News stories about biological weapons mushroomed after theannouncement by chief UN inspector Rolf Ekeus in 1994 that Iraq’snuclear weapons program had been destroyed. It’s lucky that anthrax isrelatively difficult to contract and hard to disperse efficiently.

The Saudi Prince in New York

The check for $10 million that Prince Alwaleed sent to New Yorkwas publicly rejected by Mayor Guiliani, after the prince issued astatement suggesting that the US treat Israel and the Palestinians ina more balanced way. The whole event may have been bit of politicaltheatre designed to play to the Saudi audience. Prince Alwaleed madeit look like the Saudi ruling family cares about Palestinians, andMayor Guiliani made it look like New York has no connection to Saudioil money. In fact, many banks and corporations with headquarters inNew York or other American cities depend on Saudi petrodollars. Prince Alwaleed is famous for bailing out needy corporations. In1991, he bailed out Citibank with an $800 million investment, at atime when it was feared the bank might fail (Business Week,Sept 25, 1995). He has also helped out Disney, Planet Hollywood,Netscape and many others. The Saudis spent tens of billions buyingarms in the past decade, mostly from the US and Britain, to thebenefit of Boeing, Lockheed and others. The situation for the Saudiruling family is precarious. It depends on US support to stay inpower, but is squandering much of the country's oil wealth to fuel theAmerican economy. This situation is producing unrest among the Saudipeople. As many as 12 of the suicide hijackers were SaudiArabians.

Oops!

My apologies to Senator Maria Cantwell for accusing her ofcomplicity in the soccer field bombing in Iraq [in the Sept/Oct 2001issue of the Free Press]. I was unaware at the time that thesoccer field was actually hit be an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile, whichhappened to be US-made.