Rod for Oil!

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Veterans contingent leads Oct. 20 demonstration in San Francisco, Calif. United Bay Area Veterans Againa OF THE UNITED filled the aisles, and lined the walls. More waited outside for space to open up.

The speakers, Joe Stork of MERIP reports, and Rashid Khalidi, professor of history at the University of Chicago, spoke for just over an hour, detailing background and particulars of the crisis which the U.S. bigbusiness media have so far successfully ignored. Columbia's Professor Edward Said, a well-known writer on Palestine, chaired the meeting.

The liveliest part of the meeting was the question and answer period. Two Zionist students got up, one to falsely attribute to the Arab masses every position the P.L.O. has taken, the second to berate the speakers for standing up for the aspirations of the Palestinian masses. Said calmly rebutted the two, with Stork and Khalidi also intervening.

The teach-in was organized by the Columbia Coalition Against U.S. Intervention in the Middle East. The coalition's next event will be held Nov. 8 and will more energy from renewables—wind, solar, water, and wood— than from oil, gas, coal, and uranium combined. Wood alone now delivers twice as much energy as the entire nuclear power program.

The technology exists today, on the shelf, not in some exotic laboratory, which can make homes so heat tight that they will stay comfortable all year in any climate with little or no energy input. We can also make comfortable cars that get over 80 miles per gallon, triple the efficiency of our industrial motors, and build urban mass transit for a fraction of the cost of building highways.

And the future potential of energy efficiency is vast. If we had pursued a simple policy of consistently weatherizing buildings and replacing gas guzzlers with efficient cars since the first oil shock in 1973, we could today be importing no oil at all.

The truth is that even a simple set of actions on energy could go a long way towards making the perilous concentration of oil in the Persian Gulf irrelevant to human affairs. If we passed out caulking guns and subway tokens to the people, instead of M-16s to the soldiers, we remove oil as a source of conflict from the international stage.

The billions that are being spent in the Persian Gulf would be far better spent on a new program of national security-of real energy security.

holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities (if there are none, so state: None.

9. For completion by nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at special rates (Section 423.12 DMM only): Does not apply.

10. Extent and nature of circulation. Average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months. A. Total no. copies printed (net press run): 3000. B. Paid and/or requested circulation (1) Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales: 1584. (2) Mail subscriptions (Paid and/or requested: 930. C. Total paid and/or requested circulation (sum of 10B1 and 10B2): 2514. D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means, samples, complimentary, and other free copies: 34. E. total distribution (Sum of C and D): 2548. F. Copies not distributed (1) Office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing: 416. (2) Retum from news agents: 36. G. Total (Sum of E, Fl, and 2should oqual net press run shown in A): 3000.

a the Middle East feature Pakistani journalist Eqbal Ahmed along with several other speakers.

Kent State CLEVELAND—Chanting "Money for Tuition, Not Ammunition," an estimated 600 Kent State University students held the first major Northeast Ohio campus protest against U.S. military involvement in the Middle East on Oct. 16.

When a few right-wing students started heckling, they were invited to remain afterward to discuss their objections. Over 100 students, including many passersby, stayed an hour after the demonstration and engaged rally organizers in a lively question and answer session.

Demonstrators gathered in front of the U.S. headquarters of BP America in Cleveland on Saturday, Oct. 20. Following a brief march through downtown streets, some 250 people participated in a rally on Public Square. Delegations came from several Northeast Ohio campuses, including Hiram College, Kent State University, and Oberlin College.

Speakers included Jerry Gordon, coordinator of the sponsoring organization, the Committee Against U.S. War in the Persian Gulf; Grace Jones, coordinator of the Cleveland Free South Africa Movement; and Cleveland Board of Education President Stanley E. Tolliver.

Although some speakers such as lone Biggs, president of Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice/WILPF, urged that the United Nations be given "a chance to do its job," others such as Dan Kiss of the Oberlin Student Coalition Against Apartheid pointed to the UN's role in supporting U.S. aggression. Kiss also criticized the Soviet Union's complicity with U.S. imperialism in South Africa, Central America, and the Middle East. [See interview with Dan Kiss in this issue.] Pointing to the BP America building in the background, Kiss stated, "That's what the U.S. government is all about-protecting corporate interests. That's why they arrested the students at Cleveland State-because these students were threatening corporate interests when they demonstrated inside Tower City [a shopping complex of highpriced specialty stores]. That's why they arrested us in Oberlin: because we were challenging corporate control of the college."

Actual no. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date. A. Total no. copies printed (net press run): 5000. B. Paid and/or requested circulation (1) Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales: 2435. (2) Mail subscription (Paid and/or requested): 951. C. Total paid and/or requested circulation (Sum of 10B1 and 10B2): 3386. D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means, samples, complimentary, and other free copies: 565. E. To tal distribution (Sum of C and D) 3951. F. copies not distributed (1) Office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing: 1020. (2) Retur from news agents: 29. G. Total (Sum of E, Fl and 2 should equal net press run shown in A): 5000.

11. I certify that the statements made by correct and complete.

(signed)

Alan Benjamin Editor

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…..'Out Now!' vs. 'Negotiations' (continued from page 1: “Congress approves new budget: Higher taxes and fewer services”) of arms against the wishes and interests of the Arab people. The latter have every right to determine their future. The United States has none.

But what of Saddam Hussein? Has he not violated the right of self-determination of the Kuwaiti people. Is not the United States justified in its intervention because it is supporting the rights of the "oppressed" Kuwaitis?

The "nation" of Kuwait, however, is a creation of imperialism—not a reflection of the wishes of the Arab people. Kuwait was ruled by 18 families, comprising 2000 idle princes—who together own some $200 billion in wealth, which they invest abroad in U.S. and other capitalist enterprises. The Al Sabah monarchy is an imposed imperial creation.

The majority of the people in this Britishcreated entity are immigrant workers, nonKuwaitis. Less than 6 percent were allowed the vote-that is, before the monarchy abolished the fake parliament it had established.

U.S. troops have been sent to the Middle East to advance the military and economic interests of America's corporate clite who are the real architects of U.S. foreign policy.

The American ruling class has never shunned alliances with dictators, including Saddam Hussein, who they armed and financed for seven years in the course of the U.S.-sponsored war against Iran—a war which cost the lives of 1 million people.

A U.S.-imposed solution in the Middle East, like all past "solutions" would simply mean the replacement of Hussein with a more acceptable tyrant, a tyrant who would again place the resources of the region at the disposal of U.S. oil companies—not of the Arab workers and peasants.

Left to themselves (that is, free from U.S. intervention) the people of the Middle East would likely replace their misrulers, readjust their imperialist-imposed borders, and begin to build the same kind of world that the American people hope for—a world of peace, justice, and cooperation.

Advocates of a "negotiated settlement" mistakenly undermine the strength of the new antiwar movement by the de facto acceptance of a U.S. role in the Middle East which "negotiations" imply.

United Nations intervention?

The call for a United Nations' solution is equally flawed. The placing of a U.N. sticker on a U.S. helmet is hardly an advance for the Arab people.

The U.N. sanctions and threatened military action are in reality a product of the private agreements between Soviet President Gorbachev and his Stalinist associates and the Bush administration.

In return for economic aid to stabilize the weakened but still ruling Stalinist bureaucracy in the face of mass discontent, the United States has been given carte blanche to intervene in the Middle East under the cover of a U.N. mandate.

The U.S. war in Korea (1950-53) was waged under the banner of the United Nations. Similarly, the 1961 U.S. intervention in the Congo was conducted with U.N. troops who participated in the murder of the elected leader of that nation, Patrice Lumumba.

The U.S. intervened in Korea on behalf of the Sigman Rhee dictatorship. In the Congo, it imposed the Mobuto tyranny to prevent the people of this former Belgian colony OF iddle bst!

Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action from owning and controlling their own natural resources, especially the diamond mines-which even today are in the domain of the former colonial rulers.

At this moment, the bipartisan U.S. warmakers are contemplating their options in the Middle East. They are evaluating the merits and relative costs of arranging a deal with their former ally Saddam Hussein, a possibility which cannot be excluded.

If Hussein was the only adversary on the scene, however, the U.S. would not flinch before launching an all-out war.

But there are two other factors which have come into play, factors which may yet stay the hand of the U.S. warmakers.

The first is the almost total unanimity of the Arab masses against the U.S. invasion. A U.S. war in the region could well crystalize the pent-up hatred of the Arab people and result in the toppling of more than one of "our" much-praised allies.

Equally important, a shooting war in the Middle East, like the Vietnam War, may well result in a massive mobilization of the American people in demonstrations and other forms of protest.

The demand to "Bring the Troops Home Now," coupled with a fight for "Money for Human Needs, Not War," could trigger a social movement which extends beyond the limits of all previous struggles.

The Vietnam War took place against a backdrop of a still-expanding economy and relative prosperity. The notion that Americans could produce both "guns and butter" was commonly accepted.

But today, in the face of an economy teetering on recession—with a nation plagued with ever-increasing insecurity, growing inequality, layoffs, union-busting and finally, a senseless war for oil profits and military domination-the U.S. policymakers will carefully weigh the stakes before they proceed.

And, as in the past, they may misjudge the mood of the American people and inadvertently set off a radicalization which could change the course of history.

dictators installed by the United States