WW News Service Digest #254
1) Baltimore Community Goup Protests: "No Shutoff"
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2) Palestine: No "Honest Broker" in Washington
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) Buffalo Boycott Against Racist Businesses
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4) Bold Action Against Racial Profiling
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) Pentagon Provokes Clash with China
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 12, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BALTIMORE UTILITY RATES UP: COMMUNITY GROUP
PROTESTS, DEMANDS NO SHUTOFF
By Steven Ceci
At a rousing March 31 rally in front of the Baltimore Gas &
Electric Co.'s down town offices, over 250 protesters
proclaimed their resolve to stop gas company shutoffs and
roll back utility rates.
The BG&E supplies gas and electric service to Baltimore and
the surrounding areas. Recently, it has doubled and tripled
rates. On March 31 a mandated moratorium on winter shutoffs
ended, allowing the company to shut off service to anyone
who cannot pay the bill.
Despite resolutions from the Baltimore City Council, BG&E
and the Public Service Commission have refused to extend the
moratorium.
The Committee to Stop High Gas & Electric Bills of the All
People's Congress says this will affect thousands of
Baltimore and Maryland residents who are unable to keep up
with rising bills. The committee has charged the power
companies and gas monopolies with greed and price fixing.
Walter Williams, a retiree and member of the committee,
said: "The pipes have been in the ground for over 200 years.
There is no excuse for this kind of price gouging. It is
illegal and we intend to fight it. It is not that people
don't want to pay their bills--they can't."
Jeff Bigelow, representing union workers, explained how this
is a "fight for unions." He said: "Christian Poindexter, the
president and CEO of Constellation Energy Group, the parent
company of Baltimore Gas & Electric, makes over a million
dollars a year. His salary alone could probably pay for the
bills for all of you gathered here today. These imposed
price increases are about capitalist greed."
Towson State University student Robin Bridges and youth
committee volunteer Tony Weeks spoke about the problems of
young workers trying to start lives of their own. Bridges
proclaimed, "People's needs must come before profits."
Bridges has a small apartment and received a turn-off notice
for a bill of $1,000.
The protesters lit candles to demonstrate what many people
will be forced to do when their utilities are shut off. They
are demanding that the governor intervene under the
Emergency Powers Act: roll back rates and stop utility
turnoffs because of the health and safety concerns and
financial ruin facing workers and poor people throughout the
state.
On March 30, reporters visited the home of Elnora Watson for
a news conference. Watson's bill was over $2,300.
Watson and her grandchild have severe asthma. She pointed to
a nebulizer machine that is powered by electricity, saying,
"Without it I will be forced to go to the emergency room, or
worse--my grandbaby may die before we can get help."
Watson is scheduled to have her electricity turned off.
Protest organizers also called out the names of the children
and families who have died in house fires as a result of gas
and electric shutoffs. The crowd vowed to dedicate their
efforts to all the children of Baltimore and Maryland to
prevent these kinds of disasters.
The protest ended with Sharon Ceci, who chaired the rally,
burning a pink turn-off notice she had received on March 30.
She likened her notice to the pink slips that workers are
receiving from Mayor Martin O'Malley and many businesses
across the country.
Ceci said: "We are not ashamed of these slips, because
together we can fight back and win. We will take this fight
from Baltimore to Annapolis to the White House!" The
protesters roared in approval, vowing to continue the fight
and chanting, "We're fired up, can't take it no more."
The All People's Congress has set a committee meeting for
April 9 at 6 p.m. at the downtown library, Poe Room, 2nd
floor. APC organizers invite those interested in petitions
and other activities to call (410) 235-7040.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 12, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
NO "HONEST BROKER" IN WASHINGTON: BUSH WANTS
PALESTINIANS TO STOP RESISTING ISRAELI TERROR
By Richard Becker
Since the new Intifada (Uprising) began on Sept. 29, 2000,
more than 400 Palestinians and 71 Israelis have been killed.
Of the 12,000 people seriously wounded, more than 95 percent
have been Palestinian.
Nearly all the fighting and dying has gone on inside the
less than 5 percent of historic Palestine that is today
under the tenuous control of the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian living standards have plummeted, and Palestinian
per capita income is today one-tenth that of Israelis.
Yet the impression created by the U.S. corporate media is
just the opposite. ABC, CNN, the New York Times, etc.,
taking their lead from the State Department, convey a
picture of Israel as the victim, and the Palestinians as the
aggressors.
Completely lost in the highly distorted coverage is the
reality that the Palestinians are fighting to end the
illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by the U.S.-
supplied Israeli military and 200,000 armed settlers. The
Palestinians have international law and scores of UN
resolutions--not to mention elementary justice--on their
side.
But while the U.S. leaders and their media frequently invoke
international legality when it suits their purposes, they
seem to develop total amnesia on the subject when it comes
to the Palestinians.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION POLICY
The Bush administration's first veto at the UN Security
Council was cast against the Palestinians' request that
unarmed UN observers be sent to the occupied West Bank and
Gaza. Israel was adamantly opposed to the observers be sent
into these areas. Anyone who has traveled to the occupied
territories will understand why: the on-going repression,
brutality and deprivation enforced by the occupation is all-
too apparent.
The UN Security Council, in many resolutions including
numbers 242 and 338, has called for Israel to withdraw from
the West Bank and Gaza, which Israeli conquered the 1967 war
against Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Instead of withdrawing,
however, Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and a large part
of the West Bank, and settled hundreds of thousands of
Israelis in other parts of the West Bank and Gaza.
The UN has repeatedly condemned these actions as blatant
violations of international law.
Despite violating as many as 70 UN resolutions, Israel has
never suffered sanctions, much less any military action.
Israel is protected by the United States, which in turn
exercises decisive control over the UN.
The contrast between Israel's privileged and protected
status, and the genocidal punishment administered by bombs
and blockade against Iraq, is the cause of deep anger
throughout the Middle East.
Labeling the very mild resolution on observers as
"unbalanced," the U.S. blocked its passage. The vote was
nine in favor, one opposed and five abstaining, but since
the U.S. has veto power in the Security Council, the
resolution was defeated.
The Security Council vote was part of a more openly pro-
Israeli stance adopted by the new Bush administration. The
administration emphasized its orientation by inviting the
newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon--a
notorious war criminal--to Washington, while issuing no such
invitation to Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat.
Then on March 29, Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell
demanded that the Palestinians "stop the violence," while
simply urging the Israelis to "show restraint."
WHAT "STOP THE VIOLENCE" MEANS
In recent days, the media has focused almost unlimited
attention on the death of a 10-month-old Israeli child,
reportedly hit by a Palestinian bullet in Hebron, West Bank.
Hebron is home to more than 120,000 Palestinians and 500
Israeli settlers. The settlers' zone is 20 percent of the
city, despite their small numbers.
The Hebron settlers are infamous for their extreme anti-Arab
racism and fascist violence against the Palestinians. Armed
with government-supplied automatic weapons, they frequently
rampage through the streets, killing and wounding unarmed
Palestinians, burning their shops and houses, and carrying
out other atrocities, always under protection of the Israeli
army.
It was in Hebron that a U.S.-born settler, Baruch Goldstein,
burst into the Mosque of Ibrahim several years ago,
massacring 29 Palestinian worshippers. Goldstein is regarded
as a hero by many of the Hebron settlers, who demand that
all Palestinians must leave all of Palestine.
The U.S. media covered the story of the Israeli child killed
in Hebron for several days, focusing on the grief of parents
and other settlers in a manner never accorded to grieving
Palestinian families, although there are many more of the
latter.
An unidentified reporter for the Palestine Monitor, visiting
Hebron during the same time period, described this
discrepancy:
"The situation that I witnessed yesterday was fueled by the
expansion of settlements, the confiscation of Palestinian
land and resources and the continued brutal occupation of
millions of Palestinians. Palestinian children have been
shot and killed by Israeli snipers and settlers as well, but
the international media covers their deaths as simple
casualties of war.
"Palestinian children like 12-month-old Sara Abdel Azeem
Hazan, shot and killed by settlers in Nablus, 12 year-old
Samer Tabanja killed by a helicopter gunship as he stood on
his roof, 9-year-old Obei Darraj, shot by an Israeli sniper
while he played in his bedroom, 2-month-old Hind Nadal Jamil
Abu Qwedar suffocated by teargas thrown by Israeli soldiers,
14 year-old Ahmad 'Ali Hasan Al- Qawasmi, shot to death in
an alley by an Israeli soldier in Hebron, and of course
Muhammad Al Durra 12, gunned down by Israeli soldiers."
Bush and Clinton before him have issued repeated calls to
"stop the violence" since the Intifada began. They are not
referring to the on-going, day-to-day violence of the
occupation: the shooting of demonstrators, the systematic
torture and abuse of Palestinian political prisoners, the
demolition of Palestinian homes and olive groves. Nor are
they talking about the hundreds of helicopter missile
attacks and tank shellings of Palestinian residential areas.
What "stop the violence" really means in the mouths of U.S.
and Israeli political leaders is "stop resisting." Both Bush
and Sharon have demanded that the Palestinians must end the
Intifada before any negotiations can be resumed. But the
Palestinians believe, as one activist put it, that "to stop
the Intifada now is to lose everything."
In fact, the Intifada is a product of the failure of the
"peace process." In its extremely distorted depiction of
reality, the capitalist media here has assigned blame for
this failure to the Palestinian side's "intransigence." But
any objective assessment presents a very different picture.
The U.S./Israeli side has said "No" to the Palestinians on
all the major issues: "No" to a real state, with contiguous
territory and control over its own borders; "No" to East
Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state; "No" the
removal of the illegal Israeli settlements inside the West
Bank and Gaza; and "No" to the right to return for the 5
million Palestinians and their descendants driven out of
Palestine in 1948 and since to make way for the Israeli
state.
The U.S., contrary to the image promoted here, has never
been an "honest broker" in the "peace process." How could it
be, when it has given one side, Israel, hundreds of billions
of dollars, all kinds of modern weaponry including nuclear
weapons, and the political and diplomatic protection of the
U.S. imperial state? For the other side, the Palestinians,
the U.S. rulers have had nothing to offer but extreme
hostility.
The unmatched support the U.S. gives to Israel -- more than
a quarter of all U.S. foreign aid to a country of only 6-7
million people--is not a result of sympathy. Neither is it
primarily due to the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby.
Instead, the U.S. arming and funding of Israel -- without
which it could not be the power it is today--is due to U.S.
economic and geo-political interests.
For several decades, Washington has viewed Israel as an
invaluable asset in a key strategic region. The Middle East
holds two-thirds of the world's petroleum supply, and
control of the area has meant unimaginable profits to U.S.
banks, oil companies, military contractors and other
corporate sectors. In addition, control of the world's oil
is viewed as critical to U.S. imperialism's global
domination.
For the past six decades, since the time of World War II,
domination of the Middle East's oil has been a fixed and
central objective of U.S. foreign policy. Israel, sometimes
referred to by U.S. officials like former Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger as "an unsinkable aircraft
carrier," is seen as a crucial extension of Pentagon
military power in the heart of the region. That is why
Washington has lavished such massive assistance on Israel,
and turned this tiny state into the world's fourth-ranked
military machine.
The role of Israel in the U.S. empire is inherently opposed
to the interests of the Palestinian people and all the
peoples of the Middle East. At the same time, its assigned
role as a garrison state--a perpetual warfare state--in
imperialism's system, means that Israel can never be the
solution or salvation for Jewish people that its supporters
proclaim it to be.
Real peace in the Middle East will only be possible when
there is real justice for the Palestinian people. Justice
for the Palestinians means, minimally, a truly independent
state with contiguous territory and control of its own
borders, Jerusalem as its capital, and the right to return
for all the Palestinian people.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 12, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BUFFALO CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS CALL CHEEKTOWAGA
BUSINESS BOYCOTT
By Leslie Feinberg
"Boycott!" Buffalo civil rights leaders held an April 3 news
conference to call on residents of all nationalities to
boycott every business in nearby Cheektowaga in which Black
shoppers have experienced racist treatment.
Rev. Darius Pridgen said that his group, the Coalition
Against Racial Injustice, was calling for mass informational
picket lines outside Walden Galleria mall in Cheektowaga
beginning April 7. Pridgen is pastor of True Bethel Baptist
Church and a member of the Buffalo School Board. The Rev.
William Gillison, pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church, is
also a coalition leader.
Because of widespread evidence of the systematic targeting
of African American drivers in Cheektowaga, Pridgen
announced that picketers will meet in Buffalo and be bused
to the location.
Black civil rights leaders and organizations have
increasingly condemned mall officials, Cheektowaga
officials, cops and judges for racist profiling in recent
months. A bodacious anti-racist protest inside the mall on
March 31 helped lend momentum and solidarity to the call for
the boycott by the African American community.
Cheektowaga is virtually an apartheid town. It sits
alongside Buffalo, a city that is one-third African
American. Of the some 100,000 Cheektowaga residents, it's
estimated only five percent are people of color. The town
board, town supervisor, both judges and the police chief are
all white. So is the entire 133-member police department.
Buffalo lawyer Roland Cercone told the media that the
coalition had amassed enough data about racist
discrimination and harassment to warrant a class-action suit
against the town.
On Feb. 26, Black area residents packed a Cheektowaga Town
Board meeting. One woman described how she was arrested
while shopping for her mother, who is stricken with cancer.
She was arrested for trying to use her mother's credit card.
When she returned with cash, six security cops surrounded
her while she cradled her infant in her arms. She was later
banned from ever returning to the mall.
"It's not just you," Buffalo resident Billy Howard told the
Town Board. "It's Kenmore, Lancaster--all the outlying areas
me and my people fear going to."
The day of the Town Board meeting, the coalition set up two
phone lines for residents to lodge complaints about racist
abuse in Cheektowaga. By the next afternoon, more than 120
people had called with personal accounts--about half of
which occurred at Walden Galleria mall. Hundreds more people
have called since.
On Feb. 27, Black motorists--a 70-year-old woman worker and
a young college student--filed two suits against town police
charging racist harassment.
Cercone recounted some of these racist horror stories.
'JUSTICE FOR CYNTHIA WIGGINS!'
Pridgen called for public hearing to allow many others to
come forward about racist treatment at the hands of mall
security, town police and judges.
In December 1995, Cynthia Wiggins--a young Black mother--was
a passenger on a city bus coming from the African American
community in Buffalo that wasn't allowed to stop on mall
property. She was killed trying to cross seven lanes of
traffic on Walden Avenue to get to her job at the mall.
Lawyers for her estate argued that the bus was barred from
stopping at the mall to discourage inner-city residents from
shopping there. Mall owner Pyramid Corp. settled the suit
for $2.55 million in November 1999.
Yet last year more than half of those arrested at the
Galleria mall--54 percent--were African Americans (Buffalo
New, March 4)
"Now, years later, there has been absolutely no known move
to change the atmosphere nor the fear that inner-city
residents experience when shopping or driving through
Cheektowaga," Pridgen told the Buffalo News on Feb. 27.
Frank Mesiah, head of the Buffalo NAACP, said his group is
also investigating a Feb. 3 incident in which mall security
reportedly waded into a large crowd of youths, throwing out
Black teenagers while bypassing young whites.
The 20-member mall security force, dressed to look like
state troopers, is beefed up with Cheektowaga cops.
The Buffalo NAACP also filed a complaint against the town's
two judges last year with the state Commission on Judicial
Conduct. Mesiah said the complaint "documents the disparity
of treatment" between Black and white defendants by
Cheektowaga Town Justices Ronald Kmiotek and Thomas Kolbert.
"To us, this is blatant racism," Messiah told the
commission.
While the Cheektowaga Black community is numerically very
small, more than half those arrested for driving with a
suspended registration last year and about 85 percent of
those arrested for driving with a suspended or revoked
license were Black.
And Black motorists are not just getting stopped more
frequently. Rod Watson wrote in the March 8 Buffalo News,
"many say they're being hit with racial slurs or the classic
'What are you doing out here?'"
Put on the spot for a response about the disproportionate
traffic arrests, Erie County District Attorney Frank J.
Clark admitted, "There aren't that many Black people,
driving around in ... Cheektowaga any one time. It just
doesn't make sense, unless you are indiscriminately checking
plates of these people simply because they are Black."
However Clark himself should be made to answer why in
neighboring Buffalo, where Black people make up one-third of
the population of the city, two-thirds of those arrested
last year were African Americans. (March 4 Buffalo News)
According to a report in the March 14 Buffalo News, Buffalo
has the country's 8th-highest segregation index for African
Americans.
Systematic discrimination and police brutality inside of
Buffalo act as a boot heel on the necks of the Black
community. Apartheid conditions in the suburbs are meant to
keep the outlying areas all white.
Clearly it is time for people of all nationalities--
especially white residents--to stand shoulder-to-shoulder
with the call from the Black leadership for an economic
boycott. And community control of the Buffalo and suburban
police is long overdue.
Jim Crow must go--
from Cheektowaga to Buffalo!
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 12, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BOLD ACTION AGAINST RACIAL PROFILING: "JIM CROW MUST
GO, FROM CHEEKTOWAGA TO BUFFALO
By Leslie Feinberg
Cheektowaga, N.Y.
"Jim Crow must go, from Cheektowaga to Buffalo!"
This demand, loudly chanted by a predominantly white group
of some two dozen protesters, reverberated throughout the
Walden Galleria mall in Cheektowaga, N.Y. March 31.
Walden Galleria is western New York's biggest shopping mall.
According to the owner, Pyramid Corp., 18 million people
visit the mall annually.
Charges of racism by Buffalo civil-rights leaders and area
Black residents are mounting against mall officials, town
police and judges. African Americans who shop, drive or
socialize in Cheektowaga are coming forward with accounts of
racist discrimination and police brutality.
"The Black community in Buffalo and outlying areas is
roiling with anger and organizing to stop this apartheid
system of segregation. That's what this institutionalized
racist profiling, discrimination and police brutality is
meant to maintain," local International Action Center
organizer Bev Hiestand told Workers World.
The direct action at the mall grew out of a recent
International Women's Day potluck supper organized by the
women's committee of the Buffalo IAC, Hiestand explained.
The supper drew organizers from the struggle for women's
reproductive freedom and activists from the lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender communities.
Monica Moorehead, a national Workers World Party leader,
urged people to consider doing something to mark the
anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
"There was a lot of interest that night about doing
something to extend solidarity to the African American
community as anti-racist allies," Hiestand said. "We met a
couple of nights later and that's when we gave birth to the
idea to take the struggle against racism into the mall."
On the morning of March 31, the group met in a nearby
parking lot and donned T-shirts emblazoned with the words
"Stop racist profiling." Once inside the mall, everyone took
off their coats so their shirts were visible.
They walked in teams four abreast, crisscrossing the mall so
that all the shoppers could clearly see their message.
As mall security, beefed up by Cheektowaga cops, radioed
reports of the protesters' presence to each other, the
activists headed for the huge food court. That's where Black
youths have reportedly been most harassed and expelled by
security officers.
Once there, two activists tied an 18-foot banner to the
railing facing the food court that read: "Pyramid
Corporation: Shopping while Black--No crime!"
Security officers--who expel people for leafleting--tried to
pass out fliers to the group informing them that they would
be arrested if they didn't leave. But the group, refusing to
take the leaflets, chanted even louder.
Some Black shoppers joined in the anti-Jim-Crow chant. Some
white shoppers nodded in agreement.
SOLIDARITY IN WORD AND DEED
As the Jim Crow busters headed slowly toward the mall exit,
chanting all the while, to meet with reporters gathered
outside, mall security forces targeted the only Black woman
visible in the group of about 20 still inside.
A mall security official began pushing and shoving Loretta
Renford, a longtime Buffalo activist against racism and
police brutality. One of the white activists--who is lesbian
and transgendered--immediately pushed him away and kept him
physically at bay from Renford.
The security official then ordered police to arrest the
white woman who defended Renford. But Renford put her arm
around the woman and proclaimed to the cops, "No you won't!"
Mall security cops brutally forced two local television
station camera operators to stop filming the incident.
Once outside, the entire group formed a circle around both
Renford and the white activist to ensure that neither would
be harassed or arrested by cops.
Several cops suddenly bolted into a run up to the parking
garage when they saw two other anti-racists drop a nine-foot-
wide banner over the side. It read "Stop racist profiling."
One of the children who took part in the event held up a
sign in the parking lot that read: "Booted out for not being
bigots."
The media, angered by the rough treatment they had received
at the hands of security, asked for a news conference. So
the group traveled to a nearby Post Office parking lot for
interviews.
Cheektowaga cops began driving into the parking lot to
further harass protesters. But when news cameras swung
around to film them, they quickly drove off.
Renford told the media about being targeted--the only Black
protester store security could see at that point--and
roughed up. "The cop that was shoving me, what came to my
mind is: You see how they put on their uniforms and get this
arrogance about them? When he put his hands on me he was
just wanting me to escalate. Do you see how quick they are
to be violent?"
Renford told a Workers World reporter: "I watched the faces
of some of the shoppers in the mall. Some of them with
children looked horrified like they wanted to shield their
faces and ears. I wonder if they stop to think about the
horror and trauma that is done to African American children
when their parents or loved ones are stopped and dehumanized
and called all sorts of names and beaten.
"When people say racism doesn't exist or that it is okay to
put people in their places--do they understand the real
trauma that is done to our children?"
Renford concluded, telling reporters, "Racism must be kicked
to the curb."
The anti-Jim-Crow action was the top news story in Buffalo
that day. It received coverage on television Channels 2 and
4, WBEN radio and in the Sunday Buffalo News.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 12, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
PENTAGON PROVOKES CLASH WITH CHINA/ SPY-PLANE
INCIDENT REVEALS U.S BELLIGERENCE
By Fred Goldstein
The Pentagon has been caught red-handed in a gross violation
of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the
People's Republic of China.
A Chinese pilot died after a collision April 1 with a U.S.
Navy spy plane. The U.S. plane was loaded with the latest
monitoring equipment aimed at improving the ability of the
U.S. government and its client state on Taiwan to wage war
against the PRC.
The plane, a four-engine EP-3E Aries II with a 24-person spy
crew, was damaged and had to land at an airfield on China's
Hainan Island after bumping a Chinese F-8 fighter plane. The
F-8 was flying an intercept mission to protest the U.S.
military incursion into Chinese airspace, between 60 and 70
nautical miles off the mainland of China.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin was quoted in a Foreign
Ministry dispatch as saying that "The responsibility fully
lies with the American side," according to the Wall Street
Journal of April 3. Jiang demanded that the U.S. cease
intelligence-gathering flights off the Chinese coastline.
THREATS INSTEAD OF APOLOGIES
The U.S. ambassador to China, Admiral Joseph Prueher,
blandly rejected China's protest and demand for an apology,
declaring the flight to be "a routine surveillance mission."
Prueher said he had "a problem with an apology" in the
incident, even though a Chinese national was killed as a
result of the U.S. intrusion.
This "routine surveillance" mission was flown provocatively
close to China's coast. The plane was monitoring telephone
conversations of Chinese military officials, observing
Chinese radar defenses and monitoring aircraft movements,
among other things (ABC.com, April 3). It was carrying out
these spy missions on the southeast coast in the region
across from Taiwan despite Chinese protests, at the same
time that the Bush administration is preparing to give new
weapons systems to Taiwan.
"In recent years, the surveillance flights have been a
source of growing tension," wrote the Wall Street Journal of
April 3. "China has lodged many complaints with visiting
senators and Department of Defense officials, said Kurt
Campbell, a Pentagon official in the Clinton
administration." Since the Bush administration took over and
signaled a new level of hostility toward the PRC, the
Chinese military has been trying to ward tory of the so-
called "pro-independence" Pentagon candidate, Chen Shu-bai
of the Democratic Progressive Party.
It was Clinton who gave a visa to Taiwan President Lee Teng-
hui in 1995 to come and preach anti-PRC "assertiveness" at
Cornell University. It was under Clinton that the Pentagon
first began confidential conversations with the Taipei high
command. And Clinton approved the National Missile Defense
and allowed study and planning for a Theater Missile Defense
system.
The Clinton administration was continually trying to balance
the aggressive designs of the Pentagon with the need for
trade and limiting tension with the PRC. But the current
political context in which the U.S. is carrying out these
spy flights, threatening to sell modern weapons systems to
Taiwan and engaging in abusive diplomacy towards the PRC
represents a sharp right turn towards the military. And this
turn is reportedly to be finalized by the Bush
administration shortly.
RUMSFELD PUSHES COLD WAR AGAINST CHINA
According to a report in the Washington Post of March 23,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had a 90-minute meeting
with President Bush "outlining major changes in U.S.
strategic thinking." The meeting was preparatory to drawing
up a new Pentagon budget. Bush "made clear that once
Rumsfeld's study is complete, the White House will support
as big an increase in the defense budget as seems
necessary."
The Post said it had learned that Rumsfeld and Andrew W.
Marshall, the Pentagon official running the strategic
review, informed Bush that the Pacific Ocean "is the most
likely theater of major U.S. military operations, as China
becomes more powerful and Russia less so. This would require
a reorientation of defense policy that has been geared since
the end of World War II to keeping the peace in Europe and
deterring the Soviet Union.
"Operating in the Pacific will require an additional
emphasis on 'long-range power projection,' which means
greater attention to airlift capacity and other ways of
sending troops and firepower across thousands of miles,"
continued the Post.
The British Guardian also reported on the Rumsfeld-Bush
private meeting, but was more blunt. More than 50 years
after the struggle against the Soviet Union in Europe became
the "centerpiece of U.S. military strategy," said the
Guardian, "the Rumsfeld review has concluded that the
Pacific Ocean should now become the focus of U.S. military
deployments, with China now perceived as the principal
threat to American global dominance."
Whether or not the Bush administration will fully implement
this all-out policy of aggression against the PRC remains to
be seen. The military adventureer may have bitten off more
than they can chew with this incident and could be forced to
pull back somewhat. But the immediate situation surrounding
the U.S. spy-plane intrusion is highly consistent with an
aggressive change in policy.
PENTAGON ARMS TAIWAN TO THE TEETH
The context of the present incident is a pending decision by
the Bush administration to modernize Taiwan's military
establishment. The U.S. government goes through the pretense
that it is considering "requests" from its clients in Taipei
for weapons. In fact, its stooges in Taiwan request what the
Pentagon wants them to request. Then Washington uses its
decision-making process on these "requests" to bring
military pressure to bear on the PRC.
The current decision involves sending a new line of
destroyers, among other weapons systems. The U.S. has been
holding over the head of the Chinese government the threat
to sell Taiwan four new Arleigh Burke destroyers, which can
be equipped with the Aegis battle and radar system. The
Aegis system is alleged to be capable of picking up 200
incoming missiles and planes at a time and directing missile
fire at them. But most importantly, once operative it can be
integrated into a Theatre Missile Defense system (TMD),
which the U.S. has on the drawing board, to cover the entire
region of the Pacific from Japan to south Korea to Taiwan.
Washington has depicted the TMD as a benign defensive system
designed to "protect" Taiwan. This system is anything but
defensive.
In the first place, U.S. imperialism has no business
"protecting" Taiwan from the Chinese government because
Taiwan is part of China and has been regarded as such since
as far back as the year 1600. The only reason that Taiwan is
not under the jurisdiction of the PRC is that it was
occupied by counter-revolutionary landlords, businessmen and
the remnants of their defeated army in 1949. They were
fleeing the workers' and peasants' socialist revolution that
liberated China, one fourth of the human race, from
imperialism and exploitation.
This counter-revolutionary capitalist formation would not
have lasted six months without the full protection of the
U.S. military, especially the Seventh Fleet. The Chiang Kai-
shek regime, with U.S. government support, subjugated the
population of Taiwan and became an oppressive ruling class
there. Washington prop ped up the regime militarily,
economically and politically for decades. In fact, for over
20 years the U.S. refused to recognize the PRC, forcing the
world to treat its puppets on Taiwan as "China."
Thus, when the U.S. leaders say they want to give weapons to
Taiwan to "protect" it against China, they are really saying
they are determined not to recognize China's sovereignty
over the territory they stole from it 50 years ago. They are
saying they will continue to maintain Taiwan as a base for
hostile operations. So this form of "protection" is actually
a form of aggression.
Furthermore, any missile defense that the U.S. installs in
the region is a potential first-strike system aimed at
denying the PRC any retaliatory capability should the U.S.
launch an attack.
Wolfgang Panofsky, a student of China's military and an
adviser to presidents Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Carter on
nuclear weapons, pointed out in a column in the New York
Times of Aug. 8, 1999, that the PRC at that time had fewer
than 30 intercontinental ballistic missiles. "The president
of the United States," said Panofsky, "has at his disposal
about 10,000 nuclear weapons, about 6,000 of which could be
programmed to strike China." He also pointed out that China
has never used nuclear weapons in its diplomacy and has
never activated its nuclear force during a military crisis.
The PRC cannot but regard any missile defense in the region
that is part of a U.S. National Missile Defense system as
aimed at knocking out its small retaliatory capability. The
system will be workable only against a limited nuclear
force.
The Chinese government has repeatedly said that such a
deployment would destabilize the entire region and lead to a
new arms race. The Pentagon is reportedly going to recommend
to Bush that he not sell the Aegis to Taiwan right now. But
the mere fact that Washington entertains such an idea and
dangles it as a threat to the PRC shows Washington's
aggressive intentions.
DESTROYERS, SUBMARINES AND AIRCRAFT
Even if the U.S. government does not sell the Aegis to
Taiwan, it doesn't mean that Washington has actually curbed
its aggressive intentions. In fact, according to the New
York Times of April 1, an "assessment carried out by
officers from the United States Pacific Fleet" has concluded
that "Taiwan needs a significant infusion of new weapons,"
including the Aegis battle-command and radar system.
But the Aegis is not going to be ready until the year 2010.
So the Pacific Command is going to recommend that four Kidd
destroyers, equipped with the most advanced naval weapons
systems before the Aegis was developed, be sold to Taiwan as
a "compromise" until the Aegis is ready. Meanwhile, the U.S.
government can use the potential sale of the Aegis as a club
to consolidate the "independence" of Taiwan-that is, its
continued role as military base for the Pentagon and a
satellite of U.S. imperialism.
In addition, the Navy declared that Taiwan, meaning the
Pentagon, needs a new class of submarines and anti-submarine
aircraft.
The militaristic turn toward Cold War in Asia, if Bush and
the Pentagon are able to execute it, has all the earmarks of
the "full-court press" that the Reagan administration
inaugurated as part of its strategy to destroy the Soviet
Union. They want to bring the PRC down for the same reason
they spent 77 years and trillions of dollars undermining the
USSR: It is a socialist country.
To be sure, there has been a vast erosion of the socialist
foundation in China under the impact of the market reforms
and imperialist penetration. There is suffering and
alienation of the workers and peasants as the bourgeois
reformers make more and more inroads. But the core of the
socialist state is still intact and the imperialists are
still bent on full-scale counter-revolution and
recolonization of China.
The movement in this country must rouse itself to oppose
this new aggression by the Bush administration. It must see
this new phase of invigorated anti-China militarism as a
danger to the peoples of the world and to the masses right
here at home, who pay the bills for the Pentagon's schemes
and fight and die in its wars. As a start, it can demand
that Washington stop the spy flights, get the Seventh Fleet
out of Asia, and bring all U.S. troops home.
IAC STATEMENT ON THREATS AGAINST CHINA
The International Action Center issued a statement April 3
signed by IAC co-director Sara Flounders denouncing U.S. spy-
plane flights and threats against China as "acts of
aggression and blatant attacks on Chinese sovereignty."
It called on the anti-war movement to "be on the alert for
further dangerous U.S. moves against China and be prepared
to raise its voice in protest against them."
The IAC statement saw the incident as "no isolated event"
but "part of a chain of growing U.S. open hostility toward
China. It must be viewed in light of U.S. threats to arm the
Taiwan regime with a new generation of high-tech weapons, in
violation of past agreements with China.
"Another link in this chain was the attempt to make a
scapegoat of the Chinese-American scientist, Wen Ho Lee, for
alleged spying on behalf of People's China. Another was the
calculated U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. Another is the constant
maneuvers of the U.S. Seventh Fleet of aircraft carriers,
jet bombers and destroyers in the Straits of Taiwan."
The full text of the IAC statement can be found on its web
site, www.iacenter.org. The statement will be distributed to
the public April 6 in Detroit during an informational picket
there.
