wwnews Digest #99

[heikki sipilä]

>
>        WW News Service Digest #99
>
> 1) Trade with China: What Workers Need
>    by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) Longshore Union to Send Delegation to China
>    by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) U.S. Fans War Flames in Colombia
>    by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 4) Feel Pride Through Vieques Struggle
>    by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 5) Two Great Contributions of Malcom X
>    by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 6) Resistance Liberates Southern Lebanon
>    by [EMAIL PROTECTED]

>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the June 1, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>CHINA & NORMALIZED TRADE: WHERE TO WORKERS'
>INTERESTS LIE?
>
>By Fred Goldstein
>
>Confusion, deception, and reaction reign in the public
>debate over the vote in the U.S. Congress to grant
>Permanent Normal Trade Relations to the People's Republic
>of China.
>
>It is difficult for any worker or progressive person to
>find an independent class orientation. Both sides of the
>debate consider the Chinese government as an opponent. They
>differ only on whether China has to be punished by
>withholding PNTR, or be politically and economically
>transformed through forced concessions granted to
>imperialism in return for PNTR.
>
>It is the height of chauvinism that nowhere in the debate
>is the sovereignty of the government of China even
>considered. It represents one fifth of the human race,
>liberated from centuries of oppression, invasion, and
>occupation only 50 years ago by a socialist revolution.
>
>Whatever happened to the right of self-determination for
>1.2 billion people trying to overcome poverty and
>underdevelopment? China's onerous legacy comes from the
>very colonial interventionist powers--Europe, the United
>States and Japan--who rule the World Trade Organization.
>
>WHY BILLIONAIRES PUSH FOR PNTR
>
>The corporate CEOs and the billionaires they work for
>support PNTR because they don't want their European and
>Japanese corporate rivals to gain any advantage in a
>developing market that has twice the population of the U.S.
>and Europe combined. They are palpitating over the prospect
>of sales, particularly as the rest of the world's markets
>grow more and more saturated with overproduction and the
>capitalist expansion is perpetually in danger.
>
>President Bill Clinton and all the politicians promoting
>PNTR and pushing for China to enter the WTO in return for
>economic concessions say this is the way to strengthen
>"economic reform" and "human rights" in China. The
>translation of these catch words is that they want to
>strengthen and deepen capitalist penetration of China,
>subvert the political rule of the Chinese Communist Party,
>and ultimately re-colonize China.
>
>All the more shameful is it that the leadership of the
>AFL-CIO has spent over a million dollars of the workers'
>money on a deeply chauvinist campaign of "no blank check
>for China." It has frightened the workers into fighting
>China as a way of protecting their jobs. But the
>capitalists are forever taking away high-paying jobs for
>low-paying jobs as well as eliminating jobs altogether.
>This is the nature of capital.
>
>The way to protect jobs and wages in the present situation
>is for the unions to fight against layoffs and plant
>closings at home. The class struggle must be waged here.
>The bosses have no right to lay off workers. If they want
>to open up a plant in China, Indonesia, or Haiti, they
>still have no right to lay off the workers who made them
>rich and who built up the capital that created the plant in
>the first place. The fighting slogan of "a job is a right"
>should be made as fundamental as the slogan for a living
>wage in the labor movement.
>
>AFL-CIO SHOULD ESTABLISH RELATIONS WITH CHINA'S
>UNIONS
>
>But equally important, the unions should begin by
>establishing relations with the 103-million-member All-
>China Federation of Trade Unions, and discuss the situation
>in the spirit of class solidarity. So far the Sweeney
>leadership has not even publicly considered such a course,
>even though it was suggested by the general secretary of
>the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
>
>In this regard it is very important to note that the
>International Longshore and Warehouse Union on the West
>Coast recently shone a ray of light in the labor movement
>by passing an important resolution at its convention in
>Portland, Ore., at the beginning of May. While expressing
>opposition to PNTR and so-called "human rights" violations
>in China, the emphasis of the resolution was to combat the
>campaign of China-bashing. The resolution denounced
>"racially tinged pronouncements" spoken at labor rallies as
>" and causing "distress among all people of Chinese
>descent."
>
>The resolution concluded "that the ILWU will prioritize
>and prepare for a delegation of rank and file members to
>travel to China to make contact with trade unionists from
>China, including government-sanctioned unions as well as
>opposition leaders, and report to the ILWU on
>recommendations for enhancing worker conditions and human
>rights in our two nations.
>
>It is to be hoped that this break with the official policy
>of total hostility to China will reverberate through the
>progressive ranks of the labor movement and the leadership
>will be forced to pull back from Cold War style anti-China
>and anti-communist baiting.
>
>In fact, the "human rights" argument being mouthed by the
>Sweeney leadership was originated by the bosses and their
>propaganda machine as a way of trying to undermine the
>socialist camp. The unions and the workers must know that
>"human rights" is a vague slogan concealing class aims.
>
>The capitalist class understands the "human rights" of
>pro-imperialist intellectuals and religious leaders who
>want to overthrow socialism in China, but they have a hard
>time understanding the "human rights" of striking workers
>here on picket lines who fight cops, scabs, and attempts by
>employers to starve them into submission. They seem
>unconcerned about the "human rights" of the two million
>people, mainly Black and Latino, suffering from
>incarceration in the U.S. prison-industrial complex.
>
>In fact, the bosses, although they are inconvenienced by
>having to spend a lot of money and energy getting PNTR
>passed over the objections of the AFL-CIO leadership,
>really do not mind one bit seeing the minds of the workers
>poisoned against socialist China. In fact, both sides are
>condemning China in the same way. The difference is that
>the bosses want the business and the profits.
>
>It is false for the labor leadership to compare the
>struggle over PNTR for China with the NAFTA struggle. The
>struggle over NAFTA was about deepening the exploitation of
>a long-standing neocolony of the U.S. corporations-Mexico.
>The struggle over PNTR for China is over the right of China
>to enter the WTO, a right it should enjoy without having to
>give any concessions whatsoever to the transnational
>exploiters.
>
>DANGEROUS CONCESSIONS
>
>China's policy of concessions to U.S. and European
>monopolies is complicating the entire question. Ever since
>the ascension of Deng Xiaoping to leadership in 1976, the
>government of the PRC has thoroughly retreated from its
>earlier revolutionary road. The pragmatic use of the market
>has now given rise to widespread unemployment, growing
>discontent among the workers and peasants, and a dangerous
>new layer of capitalists and bourgeois intellectuals, with
>all the corruption and subversion that they purvey. The
>dangers to socialism are all too apparent and are of the
>deepest concern to all partisans of the Chinese Revolution.
>
>To make matters worse, the giant U.S. transnational
>corporations, which have worked overtime to get Congress to
>pass PNTR, have extracted concessions that, on paper,
>further weaken the grip of the Chinese government over its
>economy.
>
>Indeed, the agreement crafted by Premier Zhu Rongji in
>April of 1999 and renegotiated in November seems to come
>dangerously close to crossing the line that has been
>followed up to now. From mutual concessions made by both
>sides, in which China has gained much in national
>development, the new agreement appears to have moved
>heavily to one-sided concessions by China, in accord with
>Zhu's line of "integration" into the world capitalist
>economy. Such "integration" will surely end in disaster
>when the world capitalist expansion inevitably ends in
>collapse.
>
>Specific concessions in the new agreement include, among
>others, giving up the demand that foreign auto companies
>turn over blueprints of plant construction; allowing
>corporations to bypass state distribution networks and set
>up their own; letting imperialist banks make consumer loans
>in Chinese currency; and a phase-in period of opening up to
>U.S. agribusinss.
>
>Of course, this is all still on paper. China has a
>powerful apparatus capable of finding ways to protect its
>interests within the framework of any agreement. Only the
>actual struggle will show what the real effects of the
>agreement will be, should it be implemented.
>
>SOCIALIST FOUNDATIONS STILL STAND
>
>All this does not change the fact that China is still a
>socialist country. The state still owns the commanding
>heights of industry, although in diminishing proportions.
>It still owns transportation, communications, finance, and
>the land. All this was established by the revolutionary
>transformation flowing out of the 1949 socialist
>revolution, when the bosses, landlords, and imperialists
>were expropriated and the masses took over under the
>leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's
>Liberation Army.
>
>The pillars of socialism--state ownership, the planned
>economy, and the monopoly on foreign trade--have been
>considerably eroded. But the Chinese Communist Party, which
>has presided over this situation, is nevertheless the
>inheritor of the socialist foundations and is trying to
>hold on to them, while at the same time promoting economic
>market reforms that seem to further undermine them.
>
>This contradiction must sooner or later be resolved.
>
>The worst thing that could happen to the world working
>class and oppressed people, already impacted by the
>collapse of the USSR, would be the overthrow of socialism
>in China and its recolonization by imperialism. The
>complete subjugation of 1.2 billion people by world
>capitalism would have a truly devastating effect on the
>wages, working conditions, and all other aspects of life of
>all the workers, including the U.S. working class. Anyone
>here who disregards this fact and adopts slogans that help
>imperialism undermine the Chinese government is objectively
>aiding reaction.
>
>Although there are clearly forces both inside and outside
>the CCP that are moving in the direction of imperialism,
>the true sentiments of the masses were reflected after the
>U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during
>Washington's war of aggression against Yugoslavia. This
>sentiment will ultimately be reflected in the party. In
>fact, in spite of rightist elements, the CCP and the
>People's Liberation Army are the only real barriers to
>counter-revolution in China.
>
>Profound hatred of colonial and imperialist domination
>lies beneath the surface of Chinese society. But in the
>long run the only way to secure China from recolonization
>is to march firmly back onto the road of socialist planning
>and put the material security and morale of the workers and
>peasants back on the highest priority, along with national
>development. This is the surest antidote to capitalist
>subversion and the best way to fortify the revolution
>against imperialist hostility.
>
>                         - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 01:02:19 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW]  Longshore Union to Send Delegation to China
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the June 1, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>LONGSHORE UNION TO SEND DELEGATION TO CHINA
>
>By Mary Owen
>
>The International Longshore and Warehouse Union passed an
>important resolution on the issue of China and human rights
>at its 31st International Convention held May 1-5. In
>resolution #R-39, the ILWU condemned the racist slanders
>made against China in the course of the AFL-CIO effort to
>deny the country normal trade relations. The ILWU also made
>a strong call for the labor movement to keep its eye on the
>real enemy--corporate-led exploitation of workers
>worldwide.
>
>"The fight over fair trade with China should not
>overshadow or sidetrack the momentum built by the Seattle
>protest over globalization and the corporate-led
>exploitation of workers worldwide," said the resolution.
>"Racially-tinged pronouncements like `you've sold your last
>pair of chopsticks in any mall in America,' spoken at a
>labor rally, are indefensible and cause distress among all
>people of Chinese descent.
>
>"Historically, the ILWU has always made its own
>assessments of the human rights conditions around the
>world, and worked with individual workers, labor
>organizations, and human rights activists to make the world
>more just and peaceful," the resolution continued. "In the
>case of China, we need more independent knowledge to
>conclude that denying normal trade relations with that
>country is the best way to improve the conditions of
>workers in China and enhance worker-to-worker relations
>between our two nations.
>
>"The ILWU will continue its tradition of assisting workers
>throughout the world and reserving our right to take
>positions independent of the AFL-CIO on issues relating to
>foreign policy and trade," said the document.
>
>Finally, ILWU resolved to "prioritize and prepare for a
>delegation of rank-and-file members to travel to China" to
>meet with unionists there and "report to the ILWU on
>recommendations for enhancing worker conditions and human
>rights in our two nations."
>
>With this resolution, the ILWU has added its voice to that
>of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and other
>progressive unionists who have called for direct worker-to-
>worker meetings with unionists in China to independently
>assess the so-called human rights problems. To date there
>has been no response from the AFL-CIO leadership.
>
>                         - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 01:02:19 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable
>Subject: [WW]  U.S. Fans War Flames in Colombia
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the June 1, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>U.S. FANS WAR FLAMES IN COLOMBIA
>
>By Andy McInerney
>
>Recent events point to the danger of a massive escalation
>of right-wing violence in Colombia.
>
>Since January 1999, Colombian President Andres Pastrana
>has publicly committed his government to talks with the
>Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-
>EP). These talks are supposed to address the issues
>underlying Colombia's 50 years of civil conflict.
>
>Opponents of the talks are waging an all-out campaign to
>derail this effort. They advocate an intensified military
>campaign against the armed people's insurgencies--
>inevitably combined with an escalation of paramilitary
>death-squad violence.
>
>The latest attempts to jettison the talks come as more and
>more people--both in Colombia and around the world--are
>seeing the type of fundamental changes that the FARC-EP is
>proposing. They also come as the Clinton administration
>pushes a massive infusion of military aid to the death-
>squad-ridden Colombian Armed Forces and National Police.
>
>GOV'T CAMPAIGN TO DISCREDIT FARC
>
>On May 15, a group of armed men attacked the country


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