> WW News Service Digest #109
>
> 1) Censors Shut Down FARC-EP Webstie
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) U.S. Navy Out of Vieques
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) U.S. "Missile Shield" Plan Alarms World
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 4) Legal Lynchings Under Fire
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 5) Houston: Activists Arrested At Graham Protest
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 6) Continuing Key Martin's Revolutionary Legacy
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 7) When Will Elian & his Family Get to go Home?
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>CENSORS SHUT DOWN FARC-EP WEBSITE
>
>By Andy McInerney
>
>"We are proud to host the BURN! Web site, an online
>activist collective of UCSD students that hosts web pages
>for various political organizations and projects." That is
>the opening sentence of the description of the BURN! Web
>site on the University of California at San Diego
>Department of Communications Web site.
>
>Sounds great. Except that on May 31, Department of
>Communications Chair Carol Padden shut the Web site down.
>
>BURN! hosted Web pages for a wide range of political
>organizations, including the support groups for the
>Zapatistas in Mexico and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
>Movement (MRTA) in Peru. But the page that seemed to bring
>down the wrath of the university administration was the
>home page of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-
>People's Army (FARC-EP).
>
>According to a BURN! statement issued during the first
>week of June: "About two weeks ago, the Colombian right
>began an organized campaign to get the UCSD Communications
>Department to shut us down. They have succeeded for now, as
>the chair of the department, Carol Padden, has ordered our
>machine disconnected."
>
>In 1997, rightists managed to shut down the home page of
>the Basque liberation organization ETA. That attempt had a
>number of markings of government support. After an
>outpouring of support, the group's service provider agreed
>to restore the page.
>
>Universities are supposedly havens of free speech.
>Thousands of students and activists have a great interest
>in what the FARC-EP are saying, as they are leading a
>liberation movement in Colombia.
>
>BURN! is asking for supporters to contact Carol Padden at
>(858) 534-2843 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] to encourage the
>UCSD Department of Communications to restore all the web
>pages on the BURN! site.
>
>In the meantime, the FARC-EP has a mirror site at
>http://members.tripod.com/~farcep.
>
> - 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, 8 Jun 2000 00:06:50 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable
>Subject: [WW] U.S. Navy Out of Vieques
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
> WWP MESSAGE: `U.S. NAVY OUT OF VIEQUES'
>
>On June 11, thousands of Puerto Rican people from the Big
>Island, from Vieques, and from states in the Northeast will
>converge on New York City in what has been dubbed the
>biggest rally ever against the U.S. Navy presence in
>Vieques. This year's Puerto Rican Day Parade has been
>dedicated to Puerto Rican Nationalist hero Albizu Campos
>and to Vieques.
>
>Workers World Party joins in the celebration of one full
>year in which the bombings of Vieques were suspended, and
>offers unconditional solidarity to the people of Puerto
>Rico in their courageous quest to oust the U.S. Navy from
>the tiny island.
>
>We condemn Clinton's Presidential Directive aimed at
>renewing U.S. military exercises in Vieques against the
>wishes of its people. This act of utmost imperialist
>arrogance goes against every international law on self-
>determination. It is designed to be an action hostile to
>the people of Vieques, to Puerto Rico and to all the
>peoples of the world who stand for peace and self-
>determination against imperialism.
>
>The United States has waged war against every poor country
>in the world, either directly with live ammunition through
>the Pentagon or indirectly with blockades, sanctions and
>Wall Street's economic strangulation.
>
>It has also declared a war against the poor and the
>oppressed at home. Even as the U.S. economy has soared,
>aided by trade pacts that secure the penetration of foreign
>markets to the detriment of those countries, the gap
>between rich and poor here has grown ever wider.
>
>The wealth created and accumulated by the ruling class
>over centuries, first by slavery and the theft of land and
>then by the exploitation of workers in the industrial era,
>has not reached the majority of the population. In a
>country where the richest 10 percent of the people own 73
>percent of all the wealth, according to AFL-CIO figures,
>many children survive thanks to soup kitchens. A whole
>industry has been created to maintain 2 million people
>behind bars, mostly African Americans, Latinos and Native
>people, overwhelmingly the poor.
>
>But the challenge to this system is growing. High
>technology has also created a new layer of workers--more
>oppressed nationalities, more women--who survive on very
>low wages, sometimes with no benefits. These are people who
>have "nothing to lose but their chains." Their
>revolutionary potential holds out the promise of a better
>world, a socialist society that will bring peace and
>economic justice.
>
>The struggle of Vieques is not only the struggle of the
>Puerto Rican people. As Albizu Campos said in 1926: "Our
>painful situation under U.S. imperialism is the situation
>that the U.S. is trying to impose on all the other sister
>nations in the continent. Our cause is a continental
>cause."
>
>It is no accident that this parade, an act of national
>pride and a challenge to the U.S. military, happens in New
>York City. More than a century ago revolutionaries from
>Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly from Cuba and
>Puerto Rico, lived and struggled together in this city for
>the liberation of their countries.
>
>In a letter dated May 18, 1895, Cuban hero Jos=82 Mart=A1
>wrote: "It is my duty--inasmuch as I realize it and have
>the spirit to fulfill it--to prevent, by the independence
>of Cuba, the United States from spreading over the West
>Indies and falling, with that added weight, upon other
>lands of our America. All I have done up to now, and shall
>do hereafter, is to that end. I have lived inside the
>monster and know its entrails--and my weapon is only the
>slingshot of David."
>
>U.S. Navy out of Vieques now! Pentagon out of Puerto Rico!
>Viva Puerto Rico libre!
>
> - 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, 8 Jun 2000 00:06:50 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] U.S. "Missile Shield" Plan Alarms World
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the June 15, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>FROM ASIA TO EUROPE: U.S. "MISSILE SHIELD" PLAN ALARMS
>WORLD
>
>By Fred Goldstein
>
>President Bill Clinton's latest tour of Western Europe,
>Russia and the Ukraine has ended in a fiasco. He was there
>as a sales rep for the Pentagon and the military-industrial
>complex to peddle the so-called "missile shield." But no
>one was buying.
>
>Not that he was actually going to sell the system to
>Europe or Russia. On the contrary. The U.S. wants the
>exclusive right to deploy a complex, high-tech, anti-
>missile system that would increase Washington's military
>dominance over both its European imperialist rivals and the
>Russian counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie--while raising a
>significant threat to the People's Republic of China.
>
>Such is the arrogance of U.S. imperialism that it is
>trying to strong-arm its adversaries into giving
>"permission" for its military domination over the world.
>
>At issue is the deployment of a misnamed National Missile
>Defense (NMD) system. This system would be composed of
>ground-based, advanced radar stations, satellite-based
>sensors and a battery of anywhere from 100 to 250 missile
>interceptors. The interceptors would be placed in Alaska
>and the radar stations would be dispersed all over, from
>Greenland to Asia.
>
>According to the Congressional Office of the Budget, the
>system would cost $60 billion by the time it is scheduled
>to be deployed-the first 25 interceptors in the year 2005
>and up to 100 by the year 2007. This is not counting cost
>overruns.
>
>NOT `DEFENSE' BUT FIRST STRIKE
>
>This system is deliberately misnamed as a "defense" system
>to conceal its aggressive nature. A functional anti-missile
>system is fundamentally a first-strike weapon. It frees up
>the U.S. to make an attack on a country, nuclear or
>conventional, and without fear of retaliation.
>
>The Pentagon, the State Department and the White House
>have tried to sell the system based on creating a hysteria
>against so-called "rogue states," principally the
>Democratic People's Republic of Korea and also Iraq and
>Iran. They base much of this hysteria on the fact that the
>DPRK launched a missile over Japan in 1998 to send up a
>satellite.
>
>"Rogue state" is an inflammatory label invented by the U.S.
>government that really applies to themselves. If there is
>any "rogue state," a state that sets itself apart by its
>unmitigated viciousness and isolationist disregard for the
>rest of the 180-plus states in the world, it is the U.S.
>government. This is the government that unleashed on the
>world the horror of nuclear arms. It is the only government
>in the world that ever used nuclear weapons. And it is the
>one government that makes nuclear terror the fundamental
>basis of its military strategy. Most recently, it is
>drenched in the blood of the Yugoslav and Iraqi people. Its
>crimes are too numerous to list. It is truly a "rogue
>state" that has pitted itself against the entire world.
>
>In fact, the NMD system is an extreme danger to the DPRK.
>The idea that the DPRK would launch an unprovoked attack on
>the U.S. is too ludicrous to even contemplate. But it takes
>little imagination to envision the U.S. and its puppets in
>south Korea, with 37,000 U.S. troops on the ground and
>close to 1,000 nuclear weapons in the area, provoking a
>military conflict to overthrow the socialist government in
>Pyongyang.
>
>The NMD system is designed precisely to eliminate any
>potential nuclear deterrent, either by the DPRK or the
>People's Republic of China, to such an act of aggression by
>U.S. imperialism. The same military reasoning applies to
>Iraq or Iran, both of which have been attacked by the U.S.
>
>In fact, an anti-missile system has long been regarded as
>such a dangerous military development that such systems
>were strictly forbidden by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
>agreement between the U.S. and the USSR. But with the
>destruction of the USSR, and the advent of the decadent,
>counter-revolutionary regime in Russia, which has
>bankrupted the country and allowed its military
>establishment to deteriorate, the relationship of military
>force has changed drastically in favor of Washington. And
>now the Pentagon is pushing to tear up this form of
>restraint upon its aggressive designs.
>
>EUROPEAN RIVALS OPPOSED TO NMD
>
>Such dangerous developments have caused consternation
>among the European imperialist "allies." According to the
>New York Times of June 2, "German Chancellor Gerhard
>Schroeder warned President Clinton . that Europeans fear
>that plans for a U.S. missile defense system could set off
>a new arms race and provoke fresh instability in Russia."
>
>During a 90-minute meeting, originally supposed to last
>only 20 minutes, "the two leaders verbally dueled over the
>dangers and protections they foresee if the U.S. launches
>its reinvention of the 1980s `Star Wars,' " continued the
>Times article. " `We have to be very careful that any such
>project does not re-trigger the process of a renewed arms
>race,' Schroeder told journalists after the talks."
>
>Schroeder was expressing the dismay of the European ruling
>class with this new attempt by Washington to exert absolute
>world dominance. The European imperialists were recently
>humiliated by the exercise of U.S. military domination in
>NATO's war of aggression against Yugoslavia. They are just
>now trying to develop their own 60,000-troop rapid
>deployment force and the military capability behind it to
>exert some semblance of military independence from the
>Pentagon.
>
>Now they are confronted with the hopeless choice of
>falling further behind Washington or engaging in an
>expensive new technological arms race which the U.S. is
>bound to win.
>
>CLINTON IN MOSCOW
>
>Things did not go any better for Clinton in Moscow. The
>Putin regime was adamant. "The Cold War may be over," wrote
>the Dow Jones Newswire on June 5, "but there was a distinct
>chill in the summer air in Moscow Sunday when U.S.
>President Bill Clinton wound up a summit with Russian
>President Vladimir Putin with no major agreements, no use
>of first names and no smiles."
>
>Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot said that
>"President Putin made it absolutely clear to President
>Clinton that Russia continues to oppose changes in the ABM
>treaty that the United States has proposed since last
>September." He added, according to Dow Jones, that "Russia
>believes that NMD will undermine strategic stability,
>threaten Russia's strategic deterrent, and provoke a new
>arms race."
>
>Clinton tried to sell the missile interceptor system to
>Putin on the grounds that it could only shoot down a small
>number of missiles and therefore could "only" be directed
>against states with small numbers of missiles, such as the
>DPRK or China. But Putin did not buy the argument that
>Washington would limit itself. Nor do the Russian
>capitalists necessarily look forward to the U.S.
>establishing further dominance in Asia.
>
>Whether Putin was putting on a public display of hostility
>for the sake of political appearances to distance himself
>from Yeltsin's consistently humiliating policy of
>capitulation to the White House, the Pentagon and the IMF,
>only time will tell. Both sides tried to paper over the
>impasse with side agreements on the destruction of
>plutonium stockpiles and a joint early-warning monitoring
>system. But for the moment, Clinton hit a stone wall.
>
>CHINA WARNS OF GLOBAL ARMS RACE
>
>What has received less publicity, but which is in the
>short run the most important consequence of the deployment,
>is its affect on the PRC. Early last month China's chief
>arms negotiator, Sha Zukang, had an interview with the New
>York Times declaring the missile shield to be "an
>unacceptable threat to China's security." (New York Times,
>May 11)
>
>The NMD "would leave China dangerously vulnerable to
>bullying or attack, said Mr. Sha, the Foreign Ministry's
>director general for arms control. If that appears likely,
>`We won't sit on our hands.' The American proposal, he
>said, would spark a new global arms race and possibly what
>he called a `nightmare scenario' of weapons proliferation."
>
>The Times article pointed out that "Since the 1960s
>[China] has avoided trying to match American and Soviet
>arsenals, instead keeping a small number of missiles as a
>minimal deterrent, able to retaliate in the event of an
>attack.
>
>" `To defeat your defenses we'll have to spend a lot of
>money, and we don't want to do this,' Mr. Sha said, adding
>that China's greater priority is economic development. `But
>otherwise, the United States will feel it can attack anyone
>at any time, and that isn't tolerable,' " reported the
>Times.
>
>Despite all the maneuvering and diplomatic dancing between
>Wall Street and the government of the PRC over trade, the
>fundamental hostility of U.S. imperialism towards the
>socialist government of China is expressed in this
>escalating military pressure. And it was exerted at the
>very moment that Congress was voting for Permanent Normal
>Trade Relations with China.
>
>`FULL COURT PRESS' AGAINST CHINA
>
>The PRC is no doubt aware of the Pentagon's Asia strategy,
>alluded to in an article in the Washington Post of May 26.
>"When Pentagon officials first sat down last year to update
>the core planning document of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
>they listed China as a potential future adversary, a
>momentous change from the Cold War," wrote the Post.
>
>"When the final version of the document, titled `Joint
>Vision 2020,' is released next week," continued the Post,
>"it will be far more discreet. Rather than explicitly
>pointing at China, it simply will warn of the possible rise
>of an unidentified `peer competitor.' "
>
>In fact, the new push for a missile system directed at
>China and the DPRK is a strategy directly taken from the
>Cold War. In addition to the military threat, it is an
>attempt to undermine socialist construction by diverting
>vast financial and intellectual resources to military
>spending.
>
>It was Reagan's $2-trillion "full court press" of military
>spending that did a great deal to undermine the morale of
>the USSR and bring to the fore the most reactionary
>elements, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, who wanted to make a
>complete accommodation with imperialism. This helped set
>the stage to go from accommodation to counter-revolution.
>The NMD is a full military, economic and political strategy
>of the most aggressive character.
>
>This U.S. offensive against Asia, Russia, Europe and the
>rest of the world must be opposed by the masses of workers
>and oppressed people at home. The consequences of the
>Pentagon's quest for world domination are intensified
>hardship at home. The tens of billions in new military
>appropriations will not come out of the vaults of the rich
>but from the pockets of the masses of people. This will be
>expressed in less spending on education, housing, medical
>care, childcare and all social services.
>
>It will result in another huge transfer of wealth from the
>working class to the military-industrial complex. Some $60
>billion has already been spent on research since Reagan
>first announced the plan, called the Strategic Defense
>Initiative at that time. Now the major players--Lockheed
>Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and TRW Inc., together with
>Northrup Grumman and thousands of subcontractors across the
>country--are waiting to gather in the contracts.
>
>HESITATIONS IN THE RULING CLASS
>
>There are hesitations in the ruling class over whether
>this system can really work. There are other hesitations
>over whether it is better to spend the money on other, more
>immediately desired means of aggression. There is
>vacillation in the ruling class over whether the whole
>endeavor is worth the risk of political destabilization.
>
>Clinton has said he will make a decision by November, but
>there is strong pressure in some sections of the ruling
>class to hold off on the decision for the moment. Such a
>momentous step inevitably produces conflict among the
>bosses.
>
>But the long-term prospect for stopping the development of
>this new phase of militarism on a truly progressive basis
>lies in the mass movement. All movement activists and
>organizations of the workers and the oppressed, from the
>unions to the community, need to get together in an anti-
>militarist front and say no to the Pentagon.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>
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