APPEAL TO THE YOUTH AROUND THE WORLD

NO TO WAR!


A new war is threatening Iraq. After being starved and smothered by eleven years of a murderous embargo that has decimated 1.6 million of its citizens, mostly children, the Iraqi people is today being threatened by a war of annihilation through Bush's warlike declarations.

Who today would dare to say that this is about anything other than a war aimed at pillaging Iraq's oil? Every day, the US press publishes more about the Pentagon's plans, which talk openly of dividing Iraq into three "ethnic" provinces and moving large groups of the population, in order to justify a long-term military occupation by the US. The stakes are clear: if they manage to get hold of Iraq's oil, the US multinationals will control 64 percent of the world's oil reserves.

We the undersigned, youth from all over the world, acting on the initiative of individual youth and youth organisations supporting the Revolutionary Youth International, therefore send our fraternal greetings to the tens of thousands of young Americans who from New York to San Francisco are demonstrating to say: "No blood for oil!", "Not in our name!", "We don't want to die for Texaco!"


NO BLOOD FOR OIL!

The youth of the whole world knows that a new war against Iraq would not only amount to a massacre of an entire people, it would also be a war against all the peoples. Every day, people in Palestine, young and old, women and children, are being killed with weapons stamped "Made in USA". Nothing seems to be stopping the onslaught by the butcher Sharon, who is engaged in a vicious circle of endless massacres.

We say: this massacre must stop! The Palestinian people, like all the peoples of the world, must have the right to live in peace on their own land, on all their own land! The discrimination and oppression must stop! The refugees must be allowed to go home!

A war against Iraq would be a clarion call for unleashing new wars, new acts of pillage. It would mean even more war in Africa, with the sole purpose of pillaging even more a continent that has already been bled dry, crushed by the foreign debt and the interference of the multinationals and big powers, as can be seen today in Ivory Coast, the Congo, and all over Africa, from the north to the south.

A war would risk setting off a hellish spiral in Asia, a war between India and Pakistan, both of them armed by the United States, threatening to drag into chaos peoples who's only aspiration is to live in peace with each other.

A war would be an extra burden for the nations and peoples of Latin America, who in their hundreds of thousands are shouting in the streets of Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Sao Paulo: "Enough of the debt and the IMF plans that are driving us into poverty!"


THAT IS THE MEANING OF BUSH'S «TOTAL WAR »

War against Iraq would be, as Bush has said, a "total" war, a war that would justify a real "internal war" against the youth and the working class in the United States themselves and throughout Europe. It would mean the overturning of democratic freedoms, repressive measures against the youth, a worsening of superexploitation, a speeding up of the privatisation of universities and public education systems.

We know that war will serve as a justification for every attack on our rights. To begin with, the military budget has devoured hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from social budgets, from the education budget. The US military budget stands at 383 billion dollars, at a time when 33 million Americans are living below the poverty line.

This is what Bush's "total" war really means!
This is what hundreds of thousands of youth are opposing by demonstrating in New York, San Francisco, in Madrid, in Paris, in London…and all over the world.

The youth of the whole world want peace. They want their rights, they want a future.
They do not want war and exploitation, they do not want the peoples to be pillaged.

With or without the UN, they do not want an embargo or a massacre of the Iraqi people, which has the right to live in peace, like every other people, like the Palestinian people.

On the initiative of supporters of the Revolutionary Youth International, we call on youth and youth organisations, on student unions in every country of the world to take appropriate action to mobilise the youth in initiatives so that, although expressed in different languages, a single cry can ring out around the world:

· NO TO WAR! NO BLOOD FOR OIL!
· STOP THE EMBARGO AGAINST THE IRAQI PEOPLE!
· MONEY FOR SCHOOL, FOR UNIVERSITY, FOR WORK, FOR HEALTH, NOT FOR WAR!
· DOWN WITH WAR! DOWN WITH EXPLOITATION!


I endorse this appeal.


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[ At the end of December 2000, 150 youth from 10 countries (Brazil, Mexico, United States, Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine) met in Sao Paulo, Brazil and decided to set up a Liaison Committee of Youth and Youth Organisations for a Revolutionary Youth International. ]