WW News Service Digest #211
1) Pentagon radar project threatens all of Latin America
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Colombia: Signs of military escalation grow
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Zapatistas take Indigenous rights struggle to congress
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) Workers around the world: 01/11/01
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5) Clinton leaves with a bang
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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VIEQUES, PUERTO RICO:
PENTAGON RADAR PROJECT THREATENS ALL OF LATIN AMERICA
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
One of the less-known facts about the struggle to oust the
U.S. Navy from Vieques is opposition to the military radar
called ROTHR--Relocation Over The Horizon Radar.
In mid-December, Ismael Guada lupe--Viequense ex-political
prisoner and member of Hostosiano Congress--spoke in forums
in New York and Phila delphia about this particular issue.
Both meetings exposed U.S. plans for intervention against
the leftist insurgency in Colombia--"Plan Colombia"--and
raised Vieques within the Latin American anti-imperialist
struggle.
The following are excerpts from his talk about the dangers
of the military radar project:
"In 1994, one year after the formation of our Committee for
the Rescue and Development of Vieques, we found out that the
U.S. Department of Defense had plans to build a radar in the
western part of Vieques. They proclaimed that it was an
effort in the U.S. war on drugs.
"We immediately realized that it was a U.S. Navy military
project and started debating against it. It was strange that
overnight the Defense Department and the Navy were to engage
in an issue more proper for the DEA.
"Within these debates the scientific community started to
say that it was proven that the electromagnetic waves that
would radiate from this radar were hazardous for the health
and that it would not do anything against drug trafficking.
"Even the U.S. GAO and the Office of the Budget have said
that this radar is not effective against drugs, the drug
trafficking increased after the construction of the radar in
Virginia.
"This radar consists of a transmitter in the western part of
Vieques and 372 pairs of receptor antennas in the southern
coast of the big island, Puerto Rico. The transmitter in
Vieques is located in the area that according to President
Clinton's directive of January 2000, is to be returned to
that municipality as of Dec. 31, 2000. However, the 100
'cuerdas' (hectares) where the radar was built are not
included in this plan.
"In addition, the Navy will restrict the use of an
additional 850 cuerdas to prevent any obstruction to the
reception. This means that the surrounding land cannot be
used for planting or tending animals that exceed one meter,
cannot have electric wiring, air traffic, houses nor road
traffic.
"The radar in Vieques is now fully operating and it is
connected with two similar ones in Virginia and Texas.
Through the network of these three radars, the U.S. controls
all Central America, the Caribbean and northern South
America. When we look at the scope of these radars, they
cover different areas, two of them overlapping in some
parts. However, there is one part where the coverage of the
three radars converge, and that is in Colombia!"
"In 1962 the U.S. invaded Cuba, in 1965 Santo Domingo, in
1983 Granada against the New Jewel government of Maurice
Bishop. All these invasions have been practiced in Vieques.
Our land has been used to violate the sovereignty of other
countries and we have no doubt that this radar is going to
be used for the same purpose.
"We have to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques now, not only
for our benefit, but for the benefit of all the people in
Latin America, the Caribbean and the world. We cannot forget
that 80 percent of the U.S. planes that participated in the
war against Yugoslavia trained in Vieques too."
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
COLOMBIA: SIGNS OF MILITARY ESCALATION GROW
By Andy McInerney
A series of new warning signs warn of a new escalation of
warfare in Colombia. These signs come on the eve of the
official implementation of the so-called "Plan Colombia,"
the Pentagon-inspired program of increased U.S. military
intervention in the Colombian government's counterinsurgency
war.
The first new sign came on Dec. 29, when the president of
the Colombian congress's peace commission, along with his
wife and five others, were shot on the road to the southern
village of Puerto Rico. Diego Turbay was a member of the
opposition Liberal Party.
The government of President Andres Pastrana was quick to
blame the killings on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP). "This was an attack by the
FARC," said Alfredo Salgado, deputy commander of the
National Police, the day of the attack.
No evidence of the FARC-EP's involvement was offered, other
than the fact that the attack took place near the zone that
Colombia's military evacuated to make way for talks with the
FARC-EP.
Calls to end the talks with the FARC-EP came quickly. "The
government must rethink the way it is conducting the peace
process," said Mario Uribe, president of Colombia's
congress.
"If it is proven that the FARC was responsible," warned
President Pastrana on Dec. 30, "logically that puts the
peace process in danger."
A HISTORY OF PROVOCATIONS
The latest attempts to call off the talks come against a
background of efforts to derail the talks.
In May 2000, armed men put a necklace-bomb around the neck
of a woman in northern Colombia, killing her in a gruesome,
televised spectacle. The government, police and press
immediately blamed the FARC-EP. That attack came days before
an international conference where the FARC-EP and peasant
representatives were to present their proposals to fight
drugs.
The conference was postponed after the necklace bomb attack.
Days later, the government admitted that the FARC-EP had
nothing to do with the attack.
In October 2000, five oil engineers were seized in
neighboring Ecuador. The kidnapping took place just as Latin
American defense ministers were scheduled to meet in Manaus,
Brazil. The U.S. passionately pled for support for Plan
Colombia against the "regional threat" posed by the
Colombian conflict. It was again blamed on the FARC-EP--a
perfect example of the danger posed by the Colombian
revolutionaries to neighboring countries.
The U.S. failed to win over many Latin American states. The
day after the conference ended, on Oct. 20, the U.S. and
Ecuadoran governments admitted that the FARC-EP had nothing
to do with the kidnapping.
And since September, the Colombian government has blocked
progress at the talks with demands to return Arnobio Ramos,
a FARC-EP militant who escaped the clutches of Colombian
prisons to freedom in the government evacuated zone.
TALKS REPRESENT REVOLUTION'S ADVANCE
Why is there such opposition within the Colombian ruling
class to the talks with the FARC-EP?
Unlike in several recent experiences where liberation forces
engage U.S.-backed capitalist governments, the talks between
the FARC-EP and the Colombian government are being carried
out from a position of strength on the part of the
revolutionary forces. This is a qualitative advance for the
revolutionary forces in Colombia.
Much to the dismay of reactionaries in Bogota and
Washington, the FARC-EP have made no fundamental concessions
in this process of talks. The talks have been carried out
without a cease-fire. In fact, the FARC-EP refuse to
consider disarming under any circumstances.
Instead of leading to concessions, the talks have provided
the Colombian revolutionaries with a forum to reach out to
wider and wider layers of Colombian workers, peasants,
students and others. The series of public audiences carried
out in 2000 gave over 20,000 Colombians the chance to travel
to the evacuated zone to give their views of a "New
Colombia."
The FARC-EP have stated from the outset that they view the
talks as a way to address the social roots of the 50-year
conflict that has defined Colombian politics. In it's New
Year's greetings, the FARC-EP's International Commission
promised that "the year 2001 will be a year of great
struggles for the Colombian people for the conquest of
political power, to change the structures of the state and
government leading to the building of the New Colombia--
pluralistic, patriotic and democratic."
The talks between the FARC-EP and the Colombian government
have been frozen since November. FARC-EP representatives
refuse to continue the talks until the government addresses
escalating death-squad terror orchestrated by the Colombian
military.
NEW U.S. THREATS
The main obstacle to the advance of the revolutionary
process in Colombia is Plan Colombia. The centerpiece of
this plan is the $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to the
Colombian government, disguised under the cover of a "war on
drugs." That package, engineered by the Clinton
administration, had broad bipartisan support.
The new Republican administration in Washington is already
planning further escalations. While the growing U.S.
intervention in Colombia was barely mentioned by either
candidate during the presidential campaign--reflecting broad
support within the U.S. ruling class--reports are now
surfacing about the Bush administration's orientation.
The Associated Press and the London Guardian reported on
Dec. 27 and 28 that Robert Zoellick, a top Bush foreign
policy adviser, released copies of a talk he gave in October
to the influential Council on Foreign Relations. No press
were invited to the original address.
"We cannot continue to make a false distinction between
counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics efforts," Zoellick
argued. He urged "forces of democracy" to combat "new
threats to security" and in particular "halt the momentum of
the guerrillas." These statements echo earlier calls from
the most extreme proponents of war in Colombia, like Rep.
Ben Gilman, in the U.S. Congress.
The military component of Plan Colombia is officially
scheduled to begin in January. Key aspects have already
begun. A new counterinsurgency battalion trained by U.S.
Special Forces was inaugurated in December. The Colombian
military has already begun paramilitary attacks on the
civilian population of Putumayo, the province that is the
first target of Plan Colombia's "push to the south."
The combined message of the new provocations against the
talks and Washington's new, more openly counterrevolutionary
interventionism makes the need for vigilance on the part of
U.S. anti-war activists all the more urgent--especially as
the Jan. 31 deadline for the Colombian government to extend
the evacuation zone grows near.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MEXICO:
ZAPATISTAS TAKE INDIGENOUS RIGHTS STRUGGLE TO CONGRESS
By Bill Hackwell
It has been seven years now since the heroic armed rebellion
by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) took
place in Mexico's poorest state to demand an end to the
repression against Indigenous peoples living there. When
these freedom fighters took over the city of San Cristobal
de las Casas on Jan.1, 1994, it was a shot heard around the
world for the rights of all Indigenous people everywhere.
The Zapatista attack was timed to coincide with the first
day of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a scheme by
U.S. corporations to penetrate deeper into the rich natural
resources of Chiapas and all of Mexico and to undermine the
local economies by the elimination of tariffs. What NAFTA
has meant for Mexico is billions of dollars in debt to the
IMF and World Bank and increasing poverty and misery for the
masses of Mexican workers and peasants.
This past July the national elections eliminated the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional, which had held state power for
over 70 years, from office. The new President Vicente Fox
comes from the rightist Partido Accion Nacional and is even
more pro-U.S. than the PRI.
The PRI also lost the governorships of many states including
Chiapas where Pablo Salazar, a liberal independent, won on
the platform of peace and a renewal of negotiations with the
EZLN. Salazar even went so far in his inauguration speech as
to call the Zapatistas "fighters for freedom and justice."
To stabilize conditions in Chiapas, Fox is maneuvering to
reopen negotiations. As soon as Fox took office on Dec. 1 he
ordered the dismantling of some of the military checkpoints
there.
Fox also reintroduced the San Andreas peace accords to the
Mexican Congress. Representatives of the Mexican government
and the Zapatistas had signed this agreement in February
1997 recognizing the rights of the Indigenous people of
Chiapas to determine the future of the land they had lived
on for hundreds of years.
In 1997 this agreement reached the desk of then-President
Ernesto Zedillo. He vetoed it, and a new escalation of
military attacks took place on the communities who had
declared themselves autonomous and aligned with the Za p a
tistas. These attacks included the Acteal massacre on Dec.
22, 1997, where paramilitary troops affiliated with the
Mexican army gunned down 45 unarmed Tzotzil Indians. The
army's officers had been trained in the U.S. at the School
of the Americas.
This Dec. 25, Fox withdrew 300 soldiers from the village of
Amador Hernandez that was just 20 kilometers from the EZLN
headquarters in the Lacandon jungle. On Jan. 1 Fox's
government began releasing Zapatista political prisoners
from the Cerro Hueco prison.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift came New Year's Eve when
over 700 indigenous supporters of the EZLN marched on the
military base that surrounds the important EZLN center at
Oventic demanding it be shut down. Within hours the soldiers
had packed up and withdrawn to their barracks in San
Cristobal 40 miles away.
While the Zapatistas and their supporters are hopeful that
real peace talks will begin again, they are steadfast in
their demands that six key army bases be closed, all
political prisoners be released, and the implementation of
the San Andreas peace accords be implemented.
They will take their fight to the Mexican Congress in Mexico
City in February when a delegation of 24 commandantes of the
EZLN leadership will press demands for all 56 ethnic Indian
groups in Mexico, not just the Indigenous of Chiapas.
The concessions that the new Mexican government seems to be
willing to grant are only happening because of the
resistance of the Indigenous communities and the persistence
of the Zapatistas. Their struggle is an obstacle for the
real plan of the Fox government, which is globalization of
the region.
This would include Maquiladoras to assemble the goods of
U.S. corporations at low wages. Vicente Fox, the former Coca-
Cola executive, represents their interests first. The
struggle in Chiapas is something he has to get around.
Until the grinding poverty that is the legacy of years of
capitalist and imperialist exploitation government is
eliminated, until the 70,000 Mexican troops are not just
pulled back but leave Chiapas, until the 20,000 displaced
Mayan people are returned to their land, and until the
paramilitary troops are disarmed and punished for their
crimes, the struggle will continue.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD
SOUTH KOREA: GOVERNMENT STRIKE BREAKING
The south Korean government sent riot police against
thousands of striking bank workers on Dec. 27. The next day,
the workers were forced to settle their strike against a
massive bank merger.
The strike began on Dec. 22 when bank workers at south
Korea's two major commercial banks, Kookmin and Housing &
Commercial Bank, walked off the job to protest the banks'
merger. The merger plans were fallout from the 1998 Asian
financial crisis, when companies across south Korea went
bankrupt.
The merger's biggest backers were the government of Kim Dae
Jung, the International Monetary Fund, and the banks'
largest shareholders--Goldman Sachs from the United States
and ING Insurance International BV of the Netherlands.
After the walkout on Dec. 22, some 15,000 workers occupied
the offices of a banking research center in Ilsan, four
miles from Seoul. Riot police and helicopters immediately
surrounded the sit-in, and the government issued orders for
the arrest of union leaders. The government threatened to
fire striking workers.
The workers held firm until the Dec. 27 attack. The
government launched the attack on the eve of a sympathy
strike threat by other banking workers.
While the morale of the Kookmin and Housing & Commercial
Bank workers remained high, the attack apparently had an
effect on the other banking workers. On Dec. 28, few of the
workers' sister and brother unionists backed the sympathy
strikes, and the workers voted to return to work.
"There should be no punishment, criminal or civil, toward
the union members," a Dec. 28 union statement warned. "If
this demand is not met, we will strike again early next
year."
The number of strikes increased in 2000 by 27 percent,
according to a Dec. 26 Asia Pulse report. The number of
workers taking part in strikes doubled, from 90,000 in 1999
to 180,000 in 2000.
ARGENTINA: PRISONERS' HUNGER STRIKE
Twelve Argentinian political prisoners began their 116th day
on a hunger strike Dec. 28 demanding their immediate
freedom. The 12 were part of a unit that attacked a military
base in La Tablada, near Buenos Aires, in 1989.
The hunger strike has broad support among popular
organizations in Argentina, including the renowned Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo. The Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights had petitioned Argentinian President Fernando de le
Rua to review the sentences, claiming that there were forced
disappearances, torture and summary executions in the
investigation leading to the sentencing.
The 1989 attack was staged by the Homeland for All Movement
to prevent a coup. In addition to the 13 prisoners, 32 of
the guerrillas were killed outright during the attack on La
Tablada.
On Dec. 29, de la Rua announced that he would reduce the
sentences for ten of the twelve. Enrique Gorriar en Merlo
and Ana Sivori, charged as the leaders of the Movement, were
not included in the sentence reduction.
Gorriar achieved fame for assassinating the brutal
Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
EDITORIAL: CLINTON LEAVES WITH A BANG
President Bill Clinton is leaving not with a whimper but
with a bang--a bang to the head of the poorest and most
oppressed in this country.
One of the Clinton bangs hit Jan. 1 when across the country
almost a million elderly and disabled people lost their HMO
medical coverage. These are people who are on Medicare, but
who need extra coverage because Medicare is inadequate. What
they lost are the so-called Medigap insurance policies.
The big insurance companies moved to cut the poorest and
most vulnerable out of the system, the New York Times
reported Dec. 31.
According to the New York Times report, the cuts in medical
coverage for the elderly and disabled were purposely
directed at those who are the poorest and in the worst
health. This is where the profits are the lowest, as if
making profits is more important than people's health.
Medicare does not cover the cost of prescription drugs,
which now average about $100 a month for seniors. According
to a report by Public Citizen, this is expected to increase
to about $400 a month in the next 10 years.
The yearly increases in drug costs are not covered by the
small yearly increases made in Social Security benefits.
Therefore, those who can afford it have been buying medical
insurance that includes coverage for drug costs. Now drug
monopolies, for-profit insurance firms and an uncaring
government plan a triple-bang to the elderly.
If that's not bad enough, then there was the final Clinton
budget, signed in mid-December. Clinton got on the radio
Dec. 16 to talk about it, calling it one of his great
achievements.
In his radio talk, Clinton started by praising himself for
his so-called welfare reform.
Clinton's welfare reform is really a de-form. It is a
punitive plan that eliminates an essential social safety-
net, a guarantee of food, housing and medical care for those
in desperate need.
Clinton's welfare cuts do not guarantee jobs at living wages
with medical and retirement benefits. No, in fact, the
Clinton plan forces anyone on welfare to accept "training
jobs" that pay below minimum wage and don't include
benefits. These are usually back-breaking jobs that require
little or no training and do not teach any kind of job
skills that will help someone advance to a good-paying job.
Of the 8 million people who had been cut off welfare since
Clinton's cuts started in 1996, only 1.2 million have jobs,
according to the White House. No mention is made of what
happened to the nearly 90 percent who aren't employed. At
least 2 million of those forced off welfare are single women
with children who do not now have jobs or any kind of
support.
After praising himself for the welfare cuts, Clinton went on
in his radio ad dress to praise the budget he had just
signed. This is a budget that cuts medical benefits to
children with disabilities and low-income seniors, while
adding $35 billion in payments to the big medical-care-
industry conglomerates.
The Republican radio response, given by Rep. J.C. Watts of
Oklahoma, was to say that Clinton was taking credit for
policies that were originally put forward by the
Republicans.
That's the story of eight years of the Clinton
administration, a Democratic administration that kept
putting through Republican plans over and over again.
Candidate Al Gore offered more of the same if he were
elected.
While the Republicans are openly the party of big business,
big business interests also dominate the Democrats. That's
why they never challenge the profit system but only talk
about reforms. In fact, though, the only way to make a real
change is to overturn the capitalist profit system and
replace it with a socialist system that puts people's needs
first.
