WW News Service Digest #282
1) Experts bare covert U.S. role in African wars
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Daewoo workers take on General Motors
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) South Korean leader visiting U.S.
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) Israel has no right to accuse the Palestinians of violence
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 14, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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McKINNEY HOLDS CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS:
EXPERTS BARE COVERT U.S. ROLE IN AFRICAN WARS
By Monica Moorehead
Even as international attention has been focused on the
devastating, genocidal impact of the AIDS crisis on the
African continent--and rightly so--the issue of covert U.S.
intervention on the continent is being aired in surprising
places, but with little media attention.
It has been estimated that at least 36 million African
people are suffering from AIDS. The widespread AIDS epidemic
did not occur within an isolated vacuum. It is a direct
outgrowth of centuries-old colonialism, neo-colonialism and
present-day imperialism. That is what caused Africa, the
richest continent in terms of mineral wealth, to become the
most underdeveloped, super-exploited and poverty-stricken in
the world.
Africa was brutally carved up by the European capitalist
countries several centuries ago because of its abundance of
ivory, diamonds, gold, silver and other valuable resources.
This full-scale plunder, coupled with the African slave
trade, helped build up capitalism in Europe at a rapid pace
and enriched the slave owners in the U.S.
At the same time, this theft has left the overwhelming
majority of the African continent with a lack of economic
infrastructure to produce an adequate number of goods and
services for what now numbers 600 million human beings.
CYNTHIA MCKINNEY SPONSORS HEARING
In April an important hearing took place on covert action in
Africa by the most powerful imperialist countries,
especially the U.S., in the post-colonial period. This
meeting, which received hardly any media coverage, was
sponsored by U.S. Congressmember Cynthia McKinney from
Georgia, who is African American.
A number of experts in African affairs offered testimony
substantiating not only that Western imperialism is
responsible for the dire situation in Africa today but that
the U.S. is in the midst of a fierce, predatory struggle
with its European junior partners for economic and political
hegemony in Africa, all to control profitable markets.
Referring to the speakers' information, McKinney stated in
part, "Their investigations into the activities of Western
governments and Western businessmen in post-colonial Africa
provide clear evidence of the West's long-standing
propensity for cruelty, avarice and treachery.... The West
has, for decades, plundered Africa's wealth and permitted,
and even assisted in slaughtering Africa's people. The West
has been able to do this while still shrewdly cultivating
the myth that much of Africa's problems today are African
made.
"We have all heard the usual Western defenses that Africa's
problems are the fault of corrupt African administrations,
the fault of centuries-old tribal hatreds, the fault of
unsophisticated peoples rapidly entering a modern, high-
technology world. But we know that those statements are all
a lie."
DEBEERS, SOUTH AFRICA AND THE U.S.
Janine Farrell Roberts, author of the book "Blood Stained
Diamonds," spoke on how the diamond industry has heavily
influenced U.S. policy in Africa. She focused on the
powerful DeBeers diamond corporation, which has dominated
the economy in southern Africa, and one of its main
representatives, Maurice Tempelsman.
Tempelsman is a long-time diamond merchant who has been
romantically linked to both Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and
former Secretary of State Made leine Albright. DeBeers
employed Tempelsman as a negotiator to broker deals with the
U.S. As a result, Tempelsman sold millions of diamonds, a
majority of them from Congo, to this country.
When the first democratically elected prime minister of
Congo, Patrice Lumumba, talked of using Congo's mineral
wealth to benefit the people, the Central Intelligence
Agency plotted to assassinate him. Following Lumumba's
assassination, the U.S. government installed its stooge,
Joseph Mobutu, as president of Congo.
Tempelsman then became a "technical advisor and mediator" on
behalf of DeBeers and other U.S. corporate interests, not
only in Congo but also in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Angola.
A number of speakers focused on the destabilization process
that has taken place in central Africa--Congo, Rwanda,
Burundi and Uganda--on the part of the European powers and
especially the U.S. This process has outwardly taken on a
military aspect, but underneath lies the insatiable goal of
economic greed and plunder of Africa's resources.
For instance, private military contractors have direct
connections to the U.S. Department of Defense as well as
some of the largest mining and oil corporations that exploit
Africa. PMCs are in reality mercenary outfits that do the
dirty work for big business in Africa.
AMERICAN MINERAL FIELDS AND BARRICK GOLD
One of the big corporations benefiting from these hired
killers is American Minerals Fields, Inc., based in Hope,
Ark. The major stockholders of AMF included several close
associates of Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas.
This mining conglomerate was instrumental in promoting
Laurent-Desire Kabila to power in Congo as the head of a
coalition backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops. The U.S.
thought it could use Kabila to further the interests of big
business as opposed to the Congolese people.
However, Kabila did not accept the role of puppet and was
assassinated early this year on Jan. 16, the anniversary of
the murder of Lumumba.
Barrick Gold, Inc., based in Canada, is another major player
in central Africa. Its international advisory board includes
former U.S. president and CIA director George Bush. Barrick
Gold and other mining industries are backing the partition
of Congo into four zones by military means.
Not only are these bandits in three-piece suits, based in
Rwanda and Uganda, stealing the diamonds and gold from
eastern Congo, but they are concentrating on pillaging
valuable black sand called "col-tan" that is a vital
material used in making computer chips.
RESPONSIBILITY FOR MASSACRES
These same big business interests are linked to the shooting
down on April 6, 1994, of an airplane that carried the
presidents of two Central African countries--Rwandan
President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President
Cyprien Ntaryamira. Both were Hutus, and their deaths
unleashed a genocidal war that cost the lives of 1.5 million
Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Congo.
James R. Lyons, a retired FBI specialist on terrorism,
testified that he had been sent to Africa by the State
Department to be an investigator with the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. When his team assembled
evidence showing that the shooting down of the plane had
been carried out by the Rwandan Patriotic Front--which at
the time of the crash was carrying out a war against the
Rwandan government with covert U.S. support and is now in
power--the investigation was shut down.
Wayne Madsen, an investigative journa list who authored
"Genocide and Covert Activities in Africa 1993-1999,"
confirmed that at the time of the downing of the plane the
U.S. was secretly backing the RPF. The RPF leader, Paul
Kagame, received military training at the U.S. Army Command
and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The
U.S. Defense Department has admitted that it provided
training to the RPF in January 1994, three months before the
April 6 incident.
In his conclusion, Madsen stated, "Certain interests in the
United States had reason to see Habyarimana and other pro-
French leaders in central Africa out of the way. As recently
written by Gilbert Ngijol, a former Assistant to the Special
Representative of the Secretary General of the United
Nations to Rwanda in 1994, the United States benefited
economically from the loss of influence of French and
Belgian mining interests in the central Africa and Great
Lakes regions."
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 14, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
FIGHTING FOR BASIC UNION RIGHTS:
DAEWOO WORKERS TAKE ON GENERAL MOTORS
By Jeff Bigelow
The General Motors Corp. is preparing to take over the
Daewoo auto company in South Korea and eliminate the jobs of
thousands of workers there. This move has direct
repercussions on the auto industry in the U.S. So Daewoo
workers are appealing directly to workers here for
solidarity in their struggle.
On June 2, 10,000 workers marched through the capital of
South Korea protesting corporate "restructuring"--the code
word for massive layoffs that force still-employed workers
to do two and three jobs, often for less pay.
Demands included a 40-hour, five-day workweek, maternity
rights and an end to violent police repression. A detachment
of 1,000 workers also demonstrated at General Motor's Korean
offices to protest GM's proposed takeover of Daewoo auto.
These simple and just demands were met with police terror.
After the demonstration a leader of the KCTU--the Korean
Confederation of Trade Unions--was notified that police were
planning to arrest him just for organizing the protest.
Police had beaten him and dozens of others unionists last
June during a hotel workers' strike.
Police violence against Korean unionists is worsening. On
May 28, police beat workers holding a sit-in at a nylon
plant to protest layoffs. Some 130 workers were injured,
many seriously.
In April, as 400 Daewoo autoworkers marched to their own
union hall--with a court order in hand saying that they had
a right to do so--police attacked. Dozens of workers were
very seriously wounded.
The incident, caught on videotape, ignited widespread anger.
The president of South Korea was forced to apologize.
LAYOFFS IN KOREA MADE IN U.S.A.
The March 15 Wall Street Journal reported that Arthur
Anderson--a huge U.S. consulting firm--designed a plan for
Daewoo last December that called for massive layoffs, plant
closings and faster production.
It was designed to make Daewoo a more lucrative acquisition
for GM. Many of the layoffs would take place before the GM
takeover.
GM was, of course, all for Arthur Anderson's plan.
GM is the world's largest car company. It owns Buick, Chevy,
Cadillac, Olds, Opel, Saab, Saturn, 20 percent of Fiat, 20
percent of Subaru, 49 percent of Isuzu, 20 percent of Suzuki
and dozens of other companies. It has operations in over 50
countries.
Financial institutions own over half of GM. And the top 10
banks--including Morgan, State Street, Mellon, Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter--own over 26 percent. These financial
behemoths have been the architects of massive cutbacks and
layoffs in the U.S. as well.
THE ROLE OF REPRESSION
Koreans work six days a week. They average 50 hours and make
$4.33 an hour. With overtime and special bonuses, they get
about $307 a week, according to official South Korean Labor
Ministry figures.
Many workers earn far less while being forced to continually
produce more. Over half of all Korean workers are now
"temporary" workers with less rights and pay.
Bad enough? No, the bosses want to push the workers back
even further. In 1996 and 1997 they demanded "reforms" of
the labor laws. These included no restrictions on layoffs
and up to 56 hours work without overtime pay. They made it
illegal for communities to support strikes; banned
unofficial strikes, picketing to stop scabs and teachers'
unions; and allowed more scab labor.
The unions fought these measures with massive
demonstrations.
The government then called in legislators to pass these laws
in secret at 6 a.m. on a holiday. The process reportedly
took seven minutes.
The workers protested with a series of massive strikes.
Workers have also resisted International Monetary Fund
pressure to privatize and sell off South Korea businesses
and banks at fire sale prices to big transnational
corporations--largely U.S. corporations.
Workers in energy corporations, telephone companies, banks,
railroads and subways have valiantly resisted. They know it
is not just the police who back up these new owners, but the
U.S. military that occupies South Korea.
Uprisings by workers and students in 1979 and 1980 were
crushed by hundreds of thousands of troops, which the
Pentagon oversees. In 1980, thousands of protesters were
killed.
And ultimately nothing happens militarily in South Korea
without Pentagon approval.
A representative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spoke in
Seoul on May 25. He said "first and foremost" action must be
taken to end the "belligerent labor unrest" and that labor
is asking for too much.
He also said that the Korean government needed to make it
easier for U.S. companies to take home more profits more
easily. If not, he added, "There are other markets that are
more attractive."
He was echoing a 1998 statement by the president of the
American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, Michael Brown, who
said that the U.S. was very interested in the passage of the
repressive labor "reforms."
DAEWOO WORKERS REMEMBER GM BOSSES
GM owned Daewoo from 1978 to 1992.
During that period the number of employees at GM's Baltimore
plant dropped from 7,000 to 4,000. Injuries from speed-ups
increased and forced a 26-day strike there in 1991.
At the end, GM agreed to hire more workers in the Baltimore
plant. While GM was demanding concessions from workers in
the U.S.--threatening to ship jobs overseas--it was
exploiting Korean Daewoo workers.
In Korea in 1991, auto plant employees worked an average of
73 hours a week. On average six workers were killed and 443
injured each day.
In Korea, all union organizing was illegal at the time.
Despite that, in 1985, 2,000 Daewoo workers went on strike
and sat-in at one of the plants against the unsafe
conditions.
In response, GM called on the police; 8,000 police
surrounded the plant. The workers threatened to burn the
computer center if they were attacked. Many ended up in
prison.
At that time one-quarter of all political prisoners in South
Korea were in jail for union activity--violating repressive
labor laws.
GM and Daewoo went their separate ways in 1992. Daewoo
owners quickly focused on world expansion. In less than 10
years they became a competitor to GM in a number of markets.
By 1997 Daewoo sold more cars in Europe than GM's Saab. They
became real competitors in the areas of the world with the
highest growth rates in car sales.
So GM moved to crush the competition. GM is after Daewoo and
the control or destruction of its international network--
including factories in nine other countries. Labor's strong
stand in South Korea is the only thing that has stopped the
GM takeover.
Now is the time for shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity--from
autoworkers in the U.S. fighting layoffs and speedups to the
GM workers battling their bosses in Brazil and Argentina.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
Support the Daewoo workers.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 14, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
SOUTH KOREAN LEADER VISITING U.S.
Kwang-Jun Yu, the director of policy of the Daewoo Motor
Workers Union in South Korea, is touring the U.S. in June.
He is helping to build solidarity in this country with the
struggle of Daewoo workers fighting a General Motors
takeover.
Kwang-Jun Yu began working for Daewoo in 1977. He was fired
in 1985 for union activity and reinstated in 1989. When the
banks demanded cuts in Daewoo this Feb. 16, he was one of
1,750 workers let go. Kwang-Jun Yu helped organize a wave of
strikes to try to save these jobs.
He will be traveling to:
*Columbia, S.C. June 9;
*New York June 10,11 & 12;
*Boston June 13 & 14;
*Baltimore June 15 & 16;
*San Francisco June 17, 18 & 19; *Los Angeles June 20 & 21.
--Jeff Bigelow
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 14, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ON ANNIVERSARY OF JUNE WAR:
ISRAEL HAS NO RIGHT TO ACCUSE THE PALESTINIANS OF VIOLENCE
By Richard Becker
To understand what is happening today in Israel and the
occupied Palestinian areas, it is essential to know the
history of the area.
June 5 marks the 34th anniversary of Israel's six-day war
against three bordering Arab states and the Palestinian
people. In the war, Israel's war machine, supplied by the
U.S. and France, destroyed much of the Egyptian, Syrian and
Jordanian military power in a matter of hours.
Following the example of the U.S. in Vietnam--which Israeli
army chief of staff Gen. Moshe Dayan had visited the
previous year--the Israelis made ample use of napalm,
cluster bombs and other anti-personnel weaponry on the Arab
civilian population.
To make absolutely clear to the Arab countries that it
intended to back Israel, the Pentagon sent the U.S. Sixth
Fleet to patrol the Mediterranean coast off Syria as the
Israeli assault raged. When a cease fire took effect on June
11, the dead numbered 35,000 on the Arab side, 600 on the
Israeli.
By the war's end, Israel had tripled the territory under its
control, conquering the remainder of historic Palestine--the
West Bank and Gaza, along with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and
Syria's Golan Heights. Hundreds of thousands more
Palestinians were driven into exile. For many it was the
second time. They had been driven from their homes inside
the 1948 borders of Israel less than two decades earlier.
Today, Israel still occupies all those areas except for the
Sinai, in violation of international law and countless
United Nations resolutions. Israel illegally annexed East
Jerusalem and the surrounding area immediately following the
1967 war, when it also started an aggressive settlement
campaign in the newly occupied territories. The idea was to
create "facts on the ground"--the de facto incorporation of
the West Bank, Gaza and Golan into an expanded Israeli
state.
The Palestinians who fiercely resisted the brutal occupation
regime were subjected to assassination, expulsion, torture
and imprisonment on a mass scale.
WHO ARE THE VICTIMS AND WHO ARE THE AGGRESSORS?
Yet for the past 34 years, the U.S. corporate media have
turned reality upside down, presenting the aggressors as the
victims in the Middle East, and vice-versa. The
Palestinians, whose heroic resistance against seemingly
impossible odds has never been crushed, are presented as
terrorists, while the Israeli terrorist state, relentlessly
described in the mass media here as "the only democracy in
the Middle East," is depicted as the innocent target.
Never mind that 484 Palestinians have been killed since the
new Intifada, or uprising, began last September compared to
108 Israelis, or that 14,000 Palestinians have been wounded
as compared to 700 on the Israeli side. Never mind that
nearly all the fighting and dying have taken place in the
tiny and disconnected pieces of territory--less than 5
percent of Palestine--that are now under Palestinian
Authority (PA) control, and that almost nightly U.S.-
supplied helicopters and, on occasion, F-16 fighter-bombers
fire missiles into residential areas.
While we are told the names and witness the funerals and
weeping survivors of Israelis who are killed, the vast
majority of Palestinian victims remain nameless in the big
business media.
What is most consistently "forgotten" in U.S coverage of the
Middle East conflict is this simple fact: the basic cause of
the conflict is the occupation itself. The Palestinians,
like all people living under foreign military occupation,
have the right to resist by any means at their disposal.
SUICIDE BOMBERS AND F-16 BOMBERS
On June 1 a 22-year-old Palestinian, Said Hotari, detonated
a bomb wrapped around his body outside a Tel Aviv beach
disco. He and 19 Israelis--most of them draft-age youth--
were killed and more than 100 people wounded. The attack
evoked a violently anti-Palestinian response from the U.S.
media and denunciations of "terrorism" from U.S. officials,
including President George W. Bush.
Two weeks earlier, Israeli F-16 fighter-bombers had hit five
Palestinian cities. The casualties were similar to those in
the Tel Aviv bombing. But U.S. politicians and the press had
a very different response. The word "terrorism" is never
used to describe the actions of the Israeli military--nor
the U.S. military--no matter how murderous or
indiscriminate. Top administration officials confined
themselves to urging "restraint" on the Israeli leaders.
A few days after the unprecedented use of F-16s against
Palestinian civilian areas, the Israeli government of Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon declared a "cease fire" at U.S.
urging. The basis for the "cease fire" was the report of the
Mitchell Commission headed by former U.S. Senate majority
leader George Mitchell. The report is really a plan to
terminate the Palestinian Intifada.
The commission calls for the PA to "make a 100-percent
effort to prevent terrorism" and to "arrest all terrorists."
The Israeli occupation army should develop "non-lethal"
responses to unarmed demo nstrations. In other words, the
occupation is OK, repression is OK as long as it isn't
deadly, and the Palestinians should stop fighting.
The U.S. call to "stop the violence," the Mitchell
Commission makes crystal clear, is really a demand that the
Palestinians stop resisting.
PALESTINIANS REPLY TO "CEASE FIRE" DEMAND
Another key provision of the report calls for Israel to
freeze settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza. The
Sharon government, while saying that it was accepting the
Mitchell Commission report and implementing a "cease fire"
based upon it, flatly refused to stop expanding the
settlements, which now house more than 200,000 people.
The PA refused to accept this position and vowed to continue
the Intifada. But on June 3, following the disco bombing,
heavy international pressure caused PA President Yasir
Arafat to call for a "cease fire."
Some Palestinian groups have endorsed the cease fire. But on
June 4, 14 organizations--including Fatah, Hamas and the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--issued a
statement saying: "Our people have a right to defend
themselves against aggression, occupation, and settlements
and pursue the popular Intifada as a legitimate means
against the continuing occupation of our land and to achieve
our national rights."
At the same time, the Israel Army has tightened its
stranglehold on all Palestinian cities and villages, cutting
off all trade and movement. Hunger and shortages are
becoming severe in many areas.
The Israeli military is preparing for very heavy military
strikes on Palestinian areas if and when Sharon decides to
end the "cease fire." Surface-to-surface missiles were
reportedly being moved near Gaza in large quantities, and
Sharon stated that the targets of future attacks had already
been selected.
The Israeli government hopes that its "cease fire" tactic
will allow it to assign blame for the coming attacks on the
victims--the Palestinians--as they have done for decades.
MANDELA DENOUNCES U.S. ROLE
In attempting to carry out this strategy, the Israelis have
the helping hand of their protector, funder and supplier,
the U.S. The U.S. role was denounced this week by the
historic liberation fighter and former South African
President Nelson Mandela.
"It is completely wrong that the United States must be the
mediator in this conflict. Everybody knows the United States
is a friend of Israel." Speaking at a press conference in
Johannesburg after meeting the French prime minister,
Mandela continued: "What is being done to the Palestinians
is a matter of grave concern. We are friends of the
Palestinians. We support their struggle."
The comments of a Palestinian living in Beit Jala quoted in
the June 4 New York Times expressed a popular sentiment.
Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, has received near-daily fire from
Israeli tanks dug in across a rocky valley. Many homes have
been destroyed, many residents killed, wounded or forced to
flee.
Ramzi Ghawaneh described his response to the Tel Aviv disco
bombing. "What we saw made us feel great pity for them. But
we also thought, let them feel the fear that we are living
with every day, and then maybe this will stop."
Thirty-four years after the 1967 war it is clear that there
will be no peace in the Middle East until there is justice
for the Palestinian people.
- END -
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