Playing the game of 'Stop thief!'

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Everyone knows this old comedy routine: A thief has just robbed a bank. The cops chase him down the block, yelling "Stop thief!" Suddenly, the thief stops on his heels, points his finger, and also yells, "Stop thief!" The cops run right past the thief in the direction he is pointing. The thief then makes his escape.

The American capitalist class has developed this trick to an art. Not only have they stolen from us the product of our labor, but they have dumped industrial wastes in our air, water, and land, in their greed for ever larger profits.

But who gets the blame? The capitalists use their control over the media to place the blame on the ordinary people of this planet for ecological destruction. They say we use too much of the earth's resources in our "foolish" consumerist drive.

The destruction of the world's natural resources in the course of normal capitalist profiteering is threatening the very existence of humankind. The ozone layer which protects the earth's climate is being eroded, contributing to the "Greenhouse" warming.

The world's oceans have become garbage dumps in the service of the oil corporations and other giant business conglomerates. Our forests, which supply the earth with oxygen, are being depleted in order to keep the corporate boardrooms happy.

And to top it off, the energy corporations continue to dump nuclear wastes into the oceans, rivers, and the atmosphere itself in their blind quest to reduce costs and maximize profits.

The thieves are yelling, "Stop thief!" by pointing the finger at individuals instead of at those who are really responsible for poisoning our planet and its entire population.

War on drug victims The "big war on drugs" is one of the finest examples of the "stop thief" trick. Every newspaper conActioN Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER JOE RYAN Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

Business Manager: KATHY SANDS St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

U.S. dollars.)

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the These are expressed in editorials. trolled by the ruling class carries screaming headlines on the "drug crisis." The government's so called "war on drugs" is proving to be a war on the victims hooked by the bigtime international network of drug importers.

Meanwhile, the Contragate scandal has showed that the U.S. government itself secretly played footsie with drug dealers—which include Latin American and other "free-world" military dictatorships in their ranks.

Military "boot camps" are being proposed to incarcerate drug users— not dealers. Parents, whose teen-age children have been found using drugs, are arrested and charged with being "accessories."

Workers in all occupations are being tested for drug use. The fact is that rail owners have insistently pressured railworkers to violate safety regulations and are steadily reducing crew sizes in their unholy drive for bigger profits. But whenever a rail accident happens, the company blames the railworkers— usually by charging them with "safety violations." And even if there isn't a shred of evidence, they are almost invariably charged with drug abuse as well.

At the same time that the bosses and their government holler their heads off about the threat to society of drug addiction, victims who are hooked on drugs are denied help because the few drug treatment programs that do exist are overcrowded. (In San Francisco alone, there are over 4000 people who are waiting for an opening in a treatment center.)

Raising our taxes "Sin taxes" have become the rallying cry of the politicians.

EMPLOYEE DRUGTESTING MANAGEMENT THE ADDICT Instead of forcing the tobacco companies to pay for the costs to society of the poison they push, they keep raising taxes on the hooked victims.

Gasoline, alcohol, and cigarette taxes are increased to punish the consumer for pollution. Clean, efficient, mass transit which could qualitatively cut pollution is ruled out so as not to cut into the profits of oil, gas, and automobile companies.

KON PICKI 1996 MOCK/KOMOPACHI LANOR / CARTOONS Multimillion dollar tax-deductible advertising campaigns push the sales of autos, tobacco, wine, liquor, and beer. But their taxes are cut and ours are raised to pay for advertising campaigns primarily designed to hook people into smoking more, drinking more, and driving more.

Unfortunately, the government campaign has paid off. A large layer of workers and the middle class has fallen for the "blame-the-victim" message of the mass media and the capitalist class.

Human needs, not profits Karl Marx warned over a hundred years ago that humanity is faced with a choice between socialism or barbarism. The threat of capitalist barbarism has been underscored by the increasingly scary threat to the ecology of our planet, as well as by the unresolved danger of nuclear annihilation-despite the Soviet Union's demonstrated willingness to defuse this calamitous threat.

Workers and their allies must turn their fear and anger on the capitalist class—which puts profits above human needs. We really do live on the edge of "socialism or barbarism." We must take the profit motive out of the system and save our planet from destruction.

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