Our future depends on stopping an attack on Iran
November 18, 2011
The global Occupy Movement has come to life just in time.
War is the health of the corporate state. The 1% needs its endless cash flow to stay in power.
As the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan transform into something less visible, the 1% war machine must have a new
profit center. The pretext for this latest war is the spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran. It's a tawdry re-run of the lies
George W. Bush used to sell the 2003 attack on Iraq. It's no surprise those "Weapons of Mass Destruction" were never
found---or that Bush could later joke about it.
The hypocrisy of the 1% railing against bombs allegedly flowing from Iran's "Peaceful Atom" program comes in unholy
tandem with the corporate push for a "nuclear renaissance" peddling these same reactors all over the world. (It helps to
remember that the nuclear industry once tried to sell 36 "peaceful" reactors to the Shah).
STOPPING THE ATTACK ON IRAN IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO OUR HOPES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY. THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HOLDS
THE KEY.
The slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan has been horrific, but pales beside the bloodshed that could come next. Iran is a
far more advanced country, with 76 million people. It's powerful, diverse and sophisticated, with significant ties to
Russia, China, India and throughout the mideast. In the 1980s it fought a land war with Iraq that killed a million
people. Does the 1% expect us to embrace a re-run?
It's up to our newly energized grassroots movement to stop this madness before it happens.
Remember that peace movements have been critical in shaping the course of history. For example, Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to beat Southeast Asia into submission included the use of nuclear weapons. But he refrained, in part because of his well-justified fear of a national upheaval.
Global demonstrations failed to stop George W. Bush from attacking Iraq. Today the GOP wannabes are AGAIN howling for
war. There are certainly advisors within the Obama Administration arguing---as they did for Bush in 2003---that an
on-going war might be a ticket to re-election.
We must find non-violent ways to stop this war in Iran. Old tactics and new---time-tested strategies and ones not yet
imagined---will surface and resurface in the coming months. The de facto universities, debating societies, strategizing
collectives, and action groups that help define the Occupy Movement will give birth to a new generation's means of
making social change. If we work hard enough at it, one or more of them will hold the key to our future. Somewhere,
somehow, the means for stopping the next war must emerge.
The truly great news is that we are all now party to every organizer's dream: a spontaneous eruption of the global
dispossessed. It is a thoughtful, sophisticated, diverse, energized populace, ready to change the world---and compelled
to find the non-violent means for doing it.
Step one is to cut off the endless military spending that is the lifeblood of the 1%, and to begin starving out the
warfare state.
It's the only way to a world built on social justice and ecological survival.
So let's find that fork in the road...and take it!!! SEE YOU IN THE STREETS!
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Harvey Wasserman will speak at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square from noon to 1:30pm, Sunday. His SOLARTOPIA! OUR
GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE US.