----- Original Message ----- From: John Clancy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2000 8:00 PM Subject: [Cuba SI] WW:Vieques-Korea. Mumia-Cuba Justice. Marxism 2 from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subject: WW: Vieques-Korea. Mumia-Cuba. Marxism 2 Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List-Archive: <http://wwpublish.com:8080/Lists/wwnews/List.html> Sender: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) Precedence: list X-Original-Message-ID: <001901c00188$df313d20$0a00a8c0@home> From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [WW] Vieques, south Korean fighters meet at Maehyang-ri Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 18:34:52 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 10, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- 'Let's chase away U.S. military' VIEQUES, SOUTH KOREAN FIGHTERS MEET AT MAEHYANG-RI By Berta Joubert-Ceci -Maehyang-ri, south Korea It was the morning of Wednesday, July 19, in the village of Maehyang-ri and we were sitting outside on a terrace, our legs crossed in the Korean manner. We were listening to Ismael Guadalupe, leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques in Puerto Rico, and to Chun Man Kyu, leader of the Maehyang-ri Task Force for Closing the U.S. Bombing Range, exchange stories about their respective struggles. Suddenly their voices were drowned out by the roar of an approaching U.S. F-18 fighter plane. As the noise grew nearer, the plane suddenly appeared right above our heads. With a series of deafening blasts, it strafed its target about half a mile away. This writer cannot describe with words the raw emotions of those few seconds. After my muscles thawed, I was able to see the impact on the tight faces of the rest of the delegation. Suffice it to say that the intense hatred for the U.S. military that surged in all of us could have brought down that plane with sheer will. Our delegation was visiting Korea as part of the International Investigative Commission on Civilian Massacres recently formed to look into and expose the killing of Korean people by U.S. forces during the Korean War. Other delegates from the U.S. were Karen Talbot, co-editor of Covert Action Quarterly; Sharon Black-Ceci from the Baltimore International Action Center; Jeff Bigelow, a union representative from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Korean War veteran Walter Black; Korean-American student Paekyon Yim, and this writer. Admiral Elmar Schmaeling, a former NATO general from Germany who opposes the NATO/U.S. nuclear policy, joined us in Seoul. The military exercises extended throughout the day. Since 1951 the Pentagon has been using small islands off the coast of this village to practice bombing. Maehyang-ri is located on the west coast of south Korea, very close to the border with the north. The planes practice there because it simulates an attack on north Korea; they would have to fly an equal distance from their base. The bombing range is now the property of Lockheed-Martin, which manages the base for the U.S. military. They bomb five days a week, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. At night, they frequently use flares, disrupt- ing the residents' sleep with both intense noise and light. The planes fly so low, close to the treetops, that the villagers have taken to flying kites to disorient the pilots. The impact on people's lives has been devastating. Besides many physical illnesses, including an increase in cancer, the villagers have experienced an increased number of suicides and violent outbursts. Chun told us that, as a result of the noise, his own father had committed suicide. At one point, Chun lifted his shirt to show a thick, reddened scar that extended five to six inches below his navel. "I also tried to kill myself. I stabbed myself seven times in my stomach with a kitchen knife and then cut my wrists so I could bleed more and die," he said. "But I survived, and after these experiences I have no fear anymore. I might be killed or go to jail, but I have to struggle against this for the future of my children. "I have concluded that the loud noise of the bombing practices is even more harmful mentally than physically," Chun said. "The bombing noise is the unseen weapon." At a nearby junior high school, 80 percent of the children with violent behavioral problems come from the village of Maehyang-ri. Guadalupe and Chun compared the situations in Vieques and in Maehyang-ri. After hearing the first shooting of the day, Guadalupe said, "I can't believe this. In Vieques you can hear the detonations from afar, but not as intense as this. And you definitely cannot see the bombing because there are at least eight miles between the bombing range and the civilian area." He added that in Puerto Rico, the planes don't fly over the civilian area. Later on that day Guadalupe was very moved by hundreds of students who came to a rally to demand the closing of the military base. The police had blocked the road to prevent the young people's buses from getting into Maehyang-ri. But that did not stop them. The students got out of the buses and marched the long trek, walking up and down mountain roads in very hot and humid weather. They reached the rally site in front of the base's gate marching vigorously, chanting and carrying huge flags with slogans calling for the ousting of U.S. troops from Korea. The police presence was immense. Busloads of these repressive forces kept pouring into the area by the hundreds. Different types of police forces, all Korean, surrounded the building of the Maehyang- ri Task Force where we were staying. As in Puerto Rico, the local police are a shield for the U.S. military. Contrary to Puerto Rico, however, many of the Korean police are young conscripts who have to serve in either the military or the police force. The spirited rally took place in the afternoon as the thunder of planes rolled through the skies over Maehyang-ri. Every time a plane flew overhead, speakers referred to it in apparently "strong" Korean words and gestures that triggered almost equally thunderous applause from the crowd. >From 6-year-olds to former political prisoners now in their seventies, everyone knew the "U.S. Troops Out of Korea" song. It was the passionate thread that linked all of us in one voice. The first part of the song translates as: "The Japanese were chased away, then the U.S. came in. We thought it would be liberation but they were the same people. Let's chase them away, chase them away. Chase away the U.S. military. This is our land. Let's chase away the U.S. military." [Berta Joubert-Ceci is originally from Puerto Rico and has been active in Vieques support work in Philadelphia.] - 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) ------------------ This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ********** sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List-Archive: <http://wwpublish.com:8080/Lists/wwnews/List.html> Sender: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) Precedence: list X-Original-Message-ID: <001f01c00189$0c80f860$0a00a8c0@home> From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [WW] Mumia on Cuba's justice system Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 10, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row ON CUBA'S JUSTICE SYSTEM By Mumia Abu-Jamal "The common law of this country remains the same as it was before the Revolution." --Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth (1799), U.S. Supreme Court. United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Ellsworth, speaking just over 20 years after the American Revolution, gave voice to the inherent conservatism of the American judiciary, which sought to protect the interests of the established, by appealing to the laws (and legal precedents) of a nation that was just defeated in battle: England. This same conservative, and indeed repressive, spirit has led the courts into disasters throughout U.S. history, like the 1857 Dred Scott decision (saying slaves brought into free territory remained slaves, and that Blacks were not U.S. citizens), the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling (1896) (which upheld racial segregation as constitutional), and the 1883 Supreme Court holding that invalidated the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which gave Blacks equal rights in public accommodations and jury duty. In these, and literally hundreds of other cases over 200 years, the courts conserved a constricted, repressive status quo, not freedom. Indeed, the struggle for freedom from state repression is ongoing, for the courts have been, and in many ways continue to be, the enemies of freedom and liberty. Let's examine another example of law and revolution. Let's look at a nearby neighbor: Cuba. In October 1999, several leading Cuban jurists came to San Francisco as guests of the National Lawyers Guild national convention. At a public forum called "Crime and Justice in Cuba," hosted by the International Peace for Cuba Appeal, Dr. Ruben Remigio- Ferro, president of the Supreme Court of Cuba (the equivalent of the American Chief Justice) and Dr. Mayda Goite, former assistant attorney general of Santiago province (the island's second largest metropolitan area, located in Cuba's southeast region), held forth on their country's criminal justice system. Speaking just 40 years after Cuba's revolution, the two described a system that sounded far more humanistic than America's. And while Chief Justice Ellsworth noted the continuity of British common law despite the American Revolution, Cuba's president judge of the Supreme Court spoke of the clean break represented by the Cuban Revolution. Dr. Remigio spoke of important structural differences: "There are profound differences between the justice system of Cuba and the judicial system of the United States. In the first place, the origins of each are historically distinct. But the most important differences are based on the perception of how things should be organized in the judicial system. In revolutionary Cuba, justice is administered by the people. This is not just a slogan. "In Cuba, the idea of an impersonal judge doesn't exist. All the courts are composed of professional judges and lay judges. Lay judges are peasants, workers, professionals, housewives, university students, who form the judicial panels along with the professional judges. They have the same rights to make decisions on the cases that are submitted to the courts. "Lay judges are elected by neighbors, trade unions, and other mass organizations. They serve for 30-day terms. Their presence on the court assures that justice is not just administered technically, but that it reflects popular will and sentiment." (Drs. Remigio & Goite, "The Cuban Criminal Law System and the Social Role of Cuban Prisons," Guild Practitioner [57:1] Winter 2000, p. 32) Dr. Remigio was himself elected to the Supreme Court by a national constituent assembly. As an Afro-Cuban, the son of peasants from a "humble background," the president judge leads a court that he could not even address before the revolution. When Pope John Paul II recently visited Cuba, President Fidel Castro remarked on his years in law school, before the revolution, when he wondered why there were no Black faces there. In Cuba, the revolution didn't mean continuity, but profound transformation. Dr. Goite spoke on both sexism and racism in pre- revolutionary Cuba, where women were regarded as little more than objects of male pleasure. A free and independent Cuba has led to a state where women now constitute over 60 percent of the labor force in the fields of education, science, health, technology and culture. Dr. Goite explains: "Cuban women have had a substantial impact on society. This has been achieved only because they have had the opportunity to study and develop themselves. ... Cuban women have become indispensable to society. For example, in the law school of the University of Havana, there are currently 1,225 students who are studying law and 1,005 of them are women." (Guild Practitioner, p. 34) If Dr. Goite's figures are right, that means over 82 percent of the present class in the nation's largest law school are women! It is doubtful that any comparable U.S. law school can make that claim. (Further, Cuba, which views education as a human right, provides it for free!) This is not to portray Cuba as some sort of paradise, for after 40 years of a crippling embargo by the U.S., and a decade after the collapse and betrayal of the former Soviet Union, it is clearly in the grip of serious economic problems, which they have called the Special Period. Yet, even so pressured, this remarkable society is serving human needs, creating more doctors per capita than any nation on earth, and expanding the realm of human liberty, rather than, as the U.S. has done, becoming the prison house of nations, with over 2 million people in American jails. - 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) ------------------ This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ************* sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List-Archive: <http://wwpublish.com:8080/Lists/wwnews/List.html> Sender: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>(WW News Service) Precedence: list X-Original-Message-ID: <002501c00189$6809e480$0a00a8c0@home> From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [WW] What is Marxism all about? Part 2 Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 10, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- WHAT IS MARXISM ALL ABOUT? Part 2 of a series By Deirdre Griswold Some things about modern life just can't be hidden. The rich are getting ever richer. Poor people overflow the jails. Racist cops terrorize communities of color. Public services wither while colossal sums are spent on the military and the police. Whole nations are pushed deeper into debt slavery by transnational super-banks. The assault on the environment threatens life on the planet--while little is done about it. Is it any wonder there's a growing anti-capitalist movement? This system is decaying, and people are struggling to survive as its poisons spread. But what's the alternative? Just being against something isn't enough. What can replace capitalism? Just asking the question leads to a discussion of socialism-- a society where production can be planned to meet human needs because it has been broken out of the stranglehold of private ownership. PLANNING FOR PROFIT OR FOR PEOPLE? Modern social life requires large-scale planning, communications and movement of goods. Without this complex social interaction involving millions of people, things would grind to a halt. The population of most U.S. cities, for example, would starve without food constantly being brought in from agricultural areas--often thousands of miles away. The problem today, however, is that economic planning is geared to the needs of profit-making, privately owned companies. They unilaterally make life-and-death decisions-- to hire and fire, to move plants and offices from one place to another, to produce what sells for a profit versus what people need. In a system where private capital is dominant, does it mean the state plays no role? No, even when all you hear from big business and the politicians is "privatization," the capitalist state still steps in to build roads, for example, or fund space exploration. No individual capitalist can make money in these areas but they all need highways, communications satellites, and so on to function. This kind of state intervention into the economy is okay with the capitalists. It's no threat to the profit system. In fact, they need it. They only want to privatize those areas where they can squeeze out profit. And often it's profitable only because the government is really subsidizing the operation--like the companies that exploit prison labor, for example. It takes tens of thousands of dollars a year to lock someone up--much more than to send them to college. Prison labor wouldn't be profitable at all except that tax dollars pay the bills while private companies reap the profits. A lot of people confuse capitalist nationalizations with socialism. But nationalizations like the ones carried out by labor party governments in Western Europe after World War II actually helped capitalism. That's not what the rulers fear and dread. What gives them nightmares is the fear that the workers who built the means of production will become organized, politically conscious, and powerful enough to pull this small class down from its pinnacles of power--as happened with socialist revolutions in Russia, then in China, and more recently in Cuba. For at least 150 years, workers have been fighting to pull the plug on capitalism and build a socialist society. The socialist movements started in Europe because that's where the industrial revolution began. By the 20th century, the growth of capitalism around the world--often forced on other countries by colonial domination--had spread Marxism to the Third World, where it was embraced by hundreds of millions of oppressed people. Revolutionaries in Asia, Africa and Latin America then added their own experiences and ideas to the doctrine of how to bring down capitalist rule and construct a better society. HOW MARXISM GOT STARTED Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were German socialists. They were also revolutionaries. During their lifetimes, being a Marxist meant being a revolutionary socialist. There had been socialists around for a long time, but they were mostly utopians. These were people who believed that if they could set up a model society somewhere, they would inspire others to join them. This new society of equals would grow, they thought, until it prevailed over the cruelties and injustices of class society. In the 19th century quite a few utopians came to the United States from Germany, England and other countries in Europe, got some land, and set up communities whose members shared what they produced. Some were religious, others were not. Although they remained separate from the rest of society, some of these utopian communities set a precedent that others followed later on. New Harmony in Indiana, for example, proved that kindergartens, free schools, and other services could free women to play a broader social role-- something that the conservatives of that time ridiculed and vigorously opposed. Eventually these progressive advances were adopted all over the United States. Marx and Engels were not utopians, but they studied these movements carefully and learned from both their achievements and their mistakes. They were especially interested in the work of Robert Owen, a textile manufacturer who set up a model community called New Lanarck. It managed to produce efficiently at the same time that it eliminated the worst features of the factory system. The long hours and hellish conditions that had driven so many workers elsewhere to exhaustion, alcoholism and crisis in their personal lives were eliminated, and the workers themselves--women and men-- decided how the community would be run. While they sympathized with these movements, Marx and Engels saw that they didn't help the vast majority of the workers, who barely had the means to put enough food on the table, let alone start a new society somewhere. The conditions in the new industrial centers of England, Germany and other European countries were horrendous. What these workers needed was a way to fight their bosses. Marxism became the doctrine of the class struggle. THINKERS AND FIGHTERS Marx and Engels were great thinkers, but they were also revolutionary fighters. In 1848, revolutions against feudal absolutism had swept Europe. In much of the fighting, it was detachments of workers who tipped the balance in favor of democracy versus absolutism. Marx and Engels, still in their twenties, were deeply involved in these revolutions. Yet even as they participated in them, they analyzed their shortcomings and explained that the class taking power from the feudal nobility and landlords was not the workers or peasants, but the bourgeoisie. While the slogans of these revolutions promised equality and democracy for everyone, it was the people with money and businesses who were on top after the dust settled. The masses fought and died in these democratic revolutions, but they lacked the organization and clarity of purpose to be able to take the reins of society once the feudal lords had been unseated. Marx and Engels put their ideas for revolution into the famous pamphlet "The Communist Manifesto."It was a brilliant and impassioned call for revolution against not just the moth-eaten aristocrats but the new moneymen. These merchants and manufacturers needed the support of the workers and the peasants to defeat the armies of the kings and feudal lords. But they took advantage of the democratic aspirations of the masses to promote their own class interests. Marx and Engels believed that this new ruling class could only be removed by the revolutionary action of the workers. They advocated building working class political parties whose aim would be to take the power and reorganize society. They didn't rule out participating in elections, which were still a very new thing, but they had no illusions that the bourgeoisie would just surrender power if the workers voted them out. After Marx and Engels died, the movement they had started gradually began to accommodate to the capitalist governments in Europe. Even as millions of workers were joining unions organized by Marxists, and were voting for social-democratic parties that had originated in the Marxist movement, these parties were losing their revolutionary orientation. Years of militant struggle by the workers had won some improvements in wages and working conditions. That sapped some of their earlier revolutionary vigor. But there was an even more important reason behind the softening of the socialist movement. The capitalists who had grown rich exploiting the workers at home were now investing more and more of their capital overseas, where labor and resources were even cheaper. The U.S. and most of the European countries were becoming openly imperialist, sending their armies to subdue uprisings in places like the Philippines, the Sudan, India and Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt in the United States was an example of the new breed of imperialist politician. He came off as a friend of the "common man" at home, posing as a trustbuster against the super-rich and calling his party the Progressive Party. But at the same time he rallied the population behind wars of aggression in the Philippines and the Caribbean that brought these same robber barons new markets and opportunities for super-profits. So the rich tolerated his rhetoric, even while they exchanged insults with this popular president. In Europe a section of the workers had become more privileged and conservative. In effect they were bribed with a small portion of the riches now pouring in from the colonies. They bought into the chauvinism of the rulers, who blamed all their problems on other countries. WAR AND REVOLUTION The biggest crisis for the socialist movement came at the outbreak of World War I. The Socialist International had held several conferences in the years before the war at which it adopted fervent resolutions denouncing the military preparations of the capitalist governments. It had warned the workers of all countries that any war would be for capitalist plunder; it would hold nothing but death and destruction for the workers. It had called on the workers to refuse to fight in such a war and todo everything in their power to stop it. But when the war actually started in 1914, the leaders of most of these parties, who still called themselves Marxists, succumbed to chauvinism and supported the capitalist governments in their respective countries. It was a monumental blow to the cause of international workers' solidarity. It paved the way for millions of workers to be slaughtered in the worst catastrophe the world had yet seen. The leaders of the German Social Democratic Party led the betrayal by voting in the parliament for war credits--taxes to support the war. Other parties then followed suit, supporting their own rulers. But there were notable exceptions. A small group of German socialists led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg broke with their leaders and denounced the war.In the United States,socialist leader and labor hero Eugene Victor Debs proudly went to jail for opposing the war. The firmest internationalists were Vladimir Lenin of Russia and his Bolshevik Party. They had split from the compromisers many years before, and were best prepared to organize the population against a war that was to prove utterly disastrous for the workers of all the countries involved. By the end of the capitalist war, 40 million people had died. But in Russia, the enraged masses had toppled two governments and set up a new state unlike any in existence-- based on councils, or soviets, of workers and peasants. Marxism, which had become so watered down in Western Europe, had been rescued by Lenin and the Bolsheviks as the doctrine of revolutionary struggle. (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 contactWorkers 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) ------------------ This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>" JC --------------------------------------------------------------------<e|- Free Worldwide Calling with Firetalk! 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