> WW News Service Digest #29
>
> 1) Delegates Challenge Iraq Sanctions with Medicine
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) Protests Grow to Free Elian
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) 50,000 Take Streets Against Racist Flag
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 4) Rodham Clinton on Gay Marriage
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 5) Taking Stock of the Stock Market
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 21:55:20 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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>Subject: [WW] Delegates Challenge Iraq Sanctions with Medicine
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Jan. 27, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>SOLIDARITY DELEGATES IN BAGHDAD: DEFY SANCTIONS TO
>BRING MEDICINE TO IRAQ
>
>By Sarah Sloan
>Baghdad, Iraq
>
>A delegation of 60 people led by former U.S. Attorney
>General Ramsey Clark arrived in Iraq Jan. 15. They came to
>this beleaguered country nine years after the start of the
>1991 Gulf war to show solidarity with the Iraqi people
>against U.S.-led sanctions and bombing.
>
>The group, known as the Iraq Sanctions Challenge, brought
>$2 million worth of medicine, mostly antibiotics to treat
>tuberculosis. But their solidarity went beyond charity. They
>also joined in a march with thousands of energetic and
>militant protesters in downtown Baghdad on Jan. 17.
>
>These protesters, many of whom have seen their children
>dying from illnesses caused by sanctions or had relatives
>killed in the bombing, chanted "Down, down, USA," burned
>U.S. flags, and carried a coffin draped in U.S., British and
>Israeli flags. Protesters also chanted, "Clinton, Bush,
>Albright, you can't hide, sanctions equal genocide."
>
>The demonstration included many students from around the
>Middle East and Africa, including Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan
>and Somalia. These young people study in Iraq at no cost.
>Also in the protest were 120 people from Spain's Campaign to
>Lift the Embargo on Iraq.
>
>Clark told the media at the protest, "The sanctions are
>genocide. They weaken and permanently debilitate the
>strongest of a society and kill the weakest and most
>vulnerable."
>
>United Nations reports say U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq
>have caused the death of some 1.5 million people, mostly
>children and the elderly, since 1990.
>
>STRUGGLE OVER INSPECTIONS
>
>Even as the ISC delegation was visiting Iraq, Washington
>was running into diplomatic hurdles at the United Nations
>Security Council when it tried to impose its choice of
>leader on a new United Nations inspection team supposed to
>monitor Iraq's weapons.
>
>The French, Russian and Chinese representatives said no
>
>
>to U.S. favorite Rolf Ekeus. Only Britain, among the
>permanent Security Council members, backs Washington on this
>issue.
>
>Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told ISC delegates in
>Baghdad on Jan. 18 that he considered the nomination of
>Swedish Ambassador Ekeus "suggestive and provocative." Ekeus
>was in charge of the UNSCOM inspections of Iraq from 1991 to
>1997. It was under his watch that U.S. Marine Scott Ritter
>used these inspections to spy on Iraq for U.S. intelligence.
>
>Sara Flounders, co-director of the ISC said on Jan. 18,
>"The Ekeus appointment indicates Washington's desire to
>escalate pressure on Iraq, and, by proposing an obviously
>objectionable candidate, to continue a regime of sanctions,
>bombing and repression."
>
>IRAQ SANCTIONS CHALLENGE
>
>Participating in the Iraq Sanctions Challenge are students
>from seven U.S. colleges, members of Plowshares, the
>International Action Center, New Hampshire Peace Action,
>American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, and Save the
>Children as well as delegates from Italy, Japan, England and
>Canada.
>
>The challenge is a direct and deliberate violation of both
>U.S. law and the UN sanctions, which have prevented the
>importation of any meaningful amount of medicine, food,
>equipment or commercial goods since August 1990.
>
>The Challenge team brought with it medicine, including
>over a million doses of tuberculosis medication, 273,000
>doses of Penicillin VK, 900 bottles of children's
>amoxicillin suspension, and thousands of doses of
>acetaminophen, aspirin, cough syrup and other basic
>medicines that are unavailable in Iraq because of the
>U.S./UN sanctions. This shipment fills a tiny portion of
>Iraq's need for basic medical supplies. Before the
>sanctions, Iraq had a modern health system seen as a model
>in the Middle East.
>
>After arriving in Jordan Jan. 15 and speaking to the
>media, the delegation had to travel overland by bus from
>Amman to Baghdad, a 14-hour trip, because of the U.S.- and
>British-imposed no-fly zone. The no-fly zone not only
>prohibits military flights over northern Iraq, but has
>grounded Iraqi airlines and stopped all flights into and out
>of the country.
>
>The delegation is to spend five days in Iraq. Delegates
>visited the remains of the Amariyah bomb shelter, where
>hundreds of Iraqi civilians were incinerated by U.S.
>missiles, and met with Iraqi political leaders. They are
>also visiting hospitals, grade schools and universities, a
>water-treatment plant, and the city of Mosul in northern
>Iraq.
>
>MEETINGS WITH HEALTH OFFICIALS
>
>The ISC delegation delivered its shipment of $2 million
>worth of medicines to Iraq's Ministry of Health and visited
>a children's hospital.
>
>Dr. Abdul Razzak Al-Hashimi of the Association of
>Friendship, Peace and Solidarity hosted the ISC delegation.
>He told delegates that of the $18 billion in oil that Iraq
>has been allowed to sell since 1996 under the "Oil for Food"
>program, the UN has only approved the spending of $5.9
>billion for humanitarian supplies. The UN must approve every
>contract Iraq makes to import goods, and, under U.S.
>pressure, it has held up many of them.
>
>Minister of Health Dr. Omeed Medhet told delegates that
>"patients suffer and die in hospitals because there are no
>spare parts to repair damaged equipment, including such
>basic things as air conditioning."
>
>The UN committee poses a serious hurdle for Iraqi doctors'
>efforts to obtain basic medical supplies, according to Dr.
>Medhet. He said the committee had approved anaesthetia drugs
>for surgery but would not allow in the post-operative drugs
>needed to revive surgical patients.
>
>The ISC delegation witnessed these effects first-hand at
>the Saddam Center for Children. In a leukemia ward, Dr.
>Mazin Shimari told delegates that because of the sanctions
>Iraq has a zero percent cure rate for leukemia, a fatal but
>curable type of cancer. The cure rate in the United States
>is 70 percent.
>
>The ward was filled with children who have no chance for
>survival because of the lack of medical supplies. Shimari
>said, "They will all be dead within a few weeks." An entire
>generation of Iraqi children is growing up underweight and
>short in stature because of malnutrition and the lack of
>adequate medical care. The hospital was filled with these
>too-small, too-short children.
>
>Ramsey Clark, speaking for the delegation, told the press
>that "The Oil for Food deal is simply a slower means of
>strangulation over a longer period of time. Any extension of
>the sanctions is unacceptable."
>
>The ISC will return to New York's JFK airport on Jan. 21.
>
>Readers wanting more information on the ISC and the UN
>sanctions are invited to visit the Web site of the
>International Action Center--the organizer of the ISC--at
>www.iacenter.org.
>
> - END -
>
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>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 21:56:52 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable
>Subject: [WW] Protests Grow to Free Elian
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Jan. 27, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>STOP THE KIDNAPPING: PROTESTS GROW TO FREE ELIAN
>
>By Leslie Feinberg
>
>>From Havana to Chicago the demand is angry and clear:
>"Free Eli=A0n." And now U.S. activists have said that they
>will bring that struggle to the streets of Miami on Jan. 29.
>
>More than 100,000 Cuban women roared their message to the
>U.S. government: "Bring back our son!" Their huge "March of
>the Combative Mothers" demanding the return of Eli=A0n
>Gonzalez moved slowly up the Malec=A2n coastal boulevard on
>Jan. 14 toward the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
>
>Leading the marchers were Eli=A0n's stepmother Neisy
>Gonzalez, pushing his half-brother in a stroller, both of
>Eli=A0n's grandmothers, and Vilma Esp=A1n, head of the Cuban
>Federation of Women. Esp=A1n's husband is Ra=A3l Castro, the
>brother of President Fidel Castro.
>
>Jan. 14 was the date that had been set by the Immigration
>and Naturalization Service to repatriate the six-year-old
>Cuban child. But two days before the deadline, Attorney
>General Janet Reno lifted it.
>
>She upheld the INS ruling that recognized the custody
>rights of Eli=A0n's only surviving parent. But Reno did not
>set a new date for the child's return. She said that was in
>order to allow Eli=A0n's distant relatives in Miami to file a
>federal challenge to keep him in the U.S.
>
>The outrage felt by Cubans over the kidnapping of the six-
>year-old boy found shipwrecked in international waters is
>galvanizing anti-U.S. imperialist sentiments in the island
>population. This struggle has pulled millions into the
>streets of Cuba, forging the largest demonstrations since
>the triumph of the revolution 41 years ago.
>
>Protests demanding that the U.S. return the child to Cuba
>are rising in the U.S. and around the world, as well.
>
>In the United States, the week of Jan. 14 was marked by
>civil disobedience, press conferences and other forms of
>pressure on the U.S. government to send the child home in
>San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago,
>Detroit, Denver, Pittsburgh, Albuquerque, Kingston, N.Y.,
>and northern New Jersey.
>
>Organizers are vowing to continue and widen this protest
>campaign across the United States.
>
>The National Committee for the Return of Eli=A0n to His
>Father in Cuba has called a demonstration in Miami on Jan.
>29.
>
>Around the world, the governments of Russia and the
>People's Republic of China have both said the child must be
>released. So has the League of Women of the African National
>Congress in South Africa, Bolivia's Assembly of Human Rights
>and many human rights groups from Hungary to Nicaragua.
>
>Demonstrations are already planned in coming weeks in 10
>cities across Europe.
>
>Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque is currently
>touring Europe to build additional international pressure on
>the U.S. government. His itinerary will include Italy, San
>Marino, France, Denmark and Russia. He also scheduled
>meetings with officials of Spain and the Vatican.
>
>COLD WAR WARRIORS
>
>On his first European stop, Perez Roque spoke to the media
>after his meetings with Italian Prime Minister Massimo
>D'Alema and Pope John Paul II. Perez Roque denounced the
>U.S. kidnapping of the Cuban child.
>
>He assailed U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms for trying to strip
>Eli=A0n of his Cuban citizenship. Helms and House Rep. Dan
>Burton have tried to block the child's return to Cuba by the
>INS. These and other Republican lawmakers are reportedly
>drafting legislation imposing U.S. citizenship on Eli=A0n as
>soon as Congress reconvenes later in January.
>
>And Burton served a subpoena on the six-year-old that
>supposedly requires the child to testify before a House
>committee on Feb. 10. But a Congressional subpoena doesn't
>legally bar anyone from leaving the country.
>
>In fact, attempts by Burton and Helms to obstruct Eli=A0n's
>return are meant to assuage the anger of the anti-communist
>Cuban Americans following the Jan. 6 ruling by the INS that
>the child would be returned home by Jan. 14. Reactionary
>street demonstrations in Miami immediately halted after the
>moves by Burton and Helms at a federal level.
>
>Helms and Burton are political pillars for the Cuban
>American right wing. The two legislators authored the 1996
>Helms-Burton Act that tightened the illegal economic
>blockade against Cuba that is aimed at strangling the
>economy of the workers' state.
>
>Perez Roque also told reporters that Eli=A0n's plight was
>the result of U.S. immigration policy. "If the boy was from
>Haiti, he would have been sent back immediately. If he was
>Mexican, they would have thrown him over the wall between
>the United States and Mexico," he stated emphatically. "If
>it were any other country, this would not be happening."
>
>ORPHANS OF THE U.S. BLOCKADE
>
>The U.S. government is between a rock and a hard place
>when it comes to this case. The pretense that the U.S. is
>the bastion of freedom and due process is being shredded by
>its foot-dragging on returning this young child to his
>homeland. Growing outrage and censure within this country
>and around the world has created a diplomatic and political
>crisis for the U.S. government.
>
>U.S. polls all show that the majority of people in this
>country think the child should be returned home to his
>family.
>
>And the struggle has infused much of the Cuban population
>with a renewed and deeper hatred of U.S. imperialism.
>
>On the other hand, the demand to bar the repatriation of
>Eli=A0n is coming from a reactionary grouping that is
>Washington's own Frankenstein creation. The U.S. government
>created and nurtured the Cuban American right wing to use as
>a commando force to overturn the 1959 Revolution.
>
>The Yankee bankers and industrialists have long tried to
>foment a counter-revolution in Cuba in order to sink their
>financial talons back into the island's economy.
>
>But the reactionary exile band--which represents the
>greedy aspirations of the pre-Revolutionary Cuban ruling
>class to return to their former preeminence--was just one of
>the weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
>
>Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro's life, biological
>warfare against agriculture, bombings, and many other
>attacks on Cuba, organized by the U.S. over the last four
>decades, are a matter of public record now.
>
>But the most day-to-day, punishing assault on Cubans has
>been the economic blockade of the island. The blockade's
>effect has been even more severe since Cuba's loss of trade
>after workers' states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
>were overturned.
>
>The blockade makes it difficult to get even an aspirin
>through to Cuba. As a result, shortages of daily necessities
>of life, from potable water to medicine, machine parts to
>heating oil--even pencils for schoolchildren--make life much
>more difficult for Cubans.
>
>All the while the U.S. is creating this economic burden on
>the island population, it sings a siren song to lure Cubans
>to this country.
>
>Technically, the 1995 U.S.-Cuba Migratory Agreement was
>supposed to discourage illegal immigration by allowing
>thousands of Cubans to enter the U.S. legally each year.
>
>But in reality, the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 does just
>the opposite. It grants immediate permanent residency to
>Cubans on arrival, no matter how they get here. This policy
>does not apply to immigrants from any other country.
>
>`WET FEET, DRY FEET'
>
>And it is this longstanding loophole--euphemistically
>referred to as "wet feet, dry feet"--that entices
>unscrupulous smugglers to bring Cubans like Eli=A0n's mother
>to the United States on flimsy rafts.
>
>Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark stressed that it is
>the criminal blockade of Cuba that has made Eli=A0n an orphan.
>He lashed out at the U.S.-imposed embargo at a news
>conference before a civil disobedience action in New York on
>Jan. 11.
>
>Clark pointed out that the blockade against Cuba was the
>reason Eli=A0n's mother fled the country and ultimately died.
>"No more orphans to the embargo," he demanded.
>
>ONE GOAL, MANY TACTICS
>
>More than 40 years after the Cuban Revolution, neither the
>terror carried out by the right-wing forces nor the blockade
>have accomplished the goal of U.S. rulers to overturn the
>building of socialism on the Caribbean island. Still
>committed to their original goal, the U.S. imperialists now
>seek new tactics.
>
>A segment of the U.S. ruling class itself wants to lift
>the U.S. blockade in order to line its own pockets. Speaking
>in Havana, former U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block told
>reporters on Jan. 12, "I believe we should be trading with
>Cuba."
>
>Block, who held his post during the Reagan administration,
>led a delegation to the island-nation of executives from
>major U.S. agribusiness and equipment companies. These
>corporate giants included Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto, Archer
>Daniels Midland, and Premium Standard Farms--which forms
>part of the ContiGroup, formerly Continental Grain Co.
>
>Reporting on this trip, Reuters observed on Jan. 12, "The
>visit was the most recent by representatives of U.S. farm
>businesses and organizations, which have increasingly sent
>fact-finding teams to Cuba to explore sales opportunities
>
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