4) Jailed for defending Cuba: Free the Miami 5
by WW
5) The silencer
by WW
6) Anthrax double standard
by WW
7) Seattle protest defends immigrant rights
by WW
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: tiistai 20. marraskuu 2001 03:32
Subject: [WW] Jailed for defending Cuba: Free the Miami 5
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
JAILED FOR DEFENDING CUBA: FREE THE MIAMI 5
By Deirdre Griswold
New York
Everyone who opposes the U.S. government's predatory foreign
policy knows that these days you're supposed to keep your
head down for fear of being labeled a sympathizer with
terrorism.
But that didn't keep a lively crowd from attending a meeting
here Nov. 10 supporting five Cubans who have been jailed by
the United States because they defended their homeland from
terrorists in Miami.
Jennifer Wager of IFCO/Pastors for Peace and the New York
City Free the Five Committee explained to the crowd at St.
Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem that the five Cubans, who
were arrested in 1998 by the FBI, had done nothing more than
monitor the actions of right-wing groups in Miami that have
caused death and destruction in Cuba.
Maggie Becker, companion of Antonio Guerrero, one of the
five, reinforced that view, as did Luis Miranda of Casa de
las Americas, who himself bears the scars of a terrorist
attack on progressive Cubans.
The program included a rough cut of a forthcoming video of
interviews with family members of the five, taped by award-
winning videographer Gloria La Riva in Havana.
The event was chaired by Teresa Gutierrez of the
International Action Center and the Free the Five Committee.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: tiistai 20. marraskuu 2001 03:32
Subject: [WW] The silencer
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
THE SILENCER
The Pentagon has admitted that it silenced the Arab
television service Al-Jazeera by blowing up its Kabul office
with a missile on Nov. 12. Just minutes before the bomb hit,
Tasir Alouni, Kabul correspondent of what the Associated
Press describes as "the Arab world's most respected
television channel," was abducted and beaten by unknown
assailants. Could there possibly be a more blatant act of
suppression of the press? Yet this is exactly what the U.S.
did in the last war, when it destroyed Belgrade television
with a direct bomb hit. Now the Bush administration is
spared the embarrassment of people around the world seeing
the real pictures of the war: dead bodies of women, children
and men, casualties of its terror bombing campaign.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: tiistai 20. marraskuu 2001 03:32
Subject: [WW] Anthrax double standard
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ANTHRAX DOUBLE STANDARD:
JUDGE REJECTS WORKERS' PLEA, KEEPS POSTAL BUILDING OPEN
By G. Dunkel
New York
On Nov. 9, in response to a suit by the postal union, a
federal judge refused to order that Morgan Station postal
facility in midtown Manhattan be closed, even though anthrax
spores had been found on equipment there. Workers at Morgan
Station process 12.5 million pieces of mail a day.
The judge ruled that the New York Metro Postal Union failed
to show a "likelihood of irreparable harm" to its members.
The judge did order Postal Service management to test the
main post office on Eighth Avenue across from Penn Station,
known as the Farley Building.
"Testing at Farley is nice but it's not what we needed,"
said William Smith, president of the New York Metro Area
Postal Union. "That place [Morgan] should be closed, simply
that."
When traces of anthrax were found in a Senate office
building in Washington, the offices shut down. They remain
closed.
Local authorities closed post offices in Colorado and
Maryland to test the buildings and the people who work in
them. A number of post offices in New Jersey have been shut
down for decontamination and reopened. A few remain closed,
pending test results.
HEALTH CARE, NOT HEALTH SCARE
The medical crisis appears to be subsiding. No new cases of
anthrax and no new contaminated letters have been reported
in recent days.
But political developments around the anthrax crisis are not
subsiding.
On Nov. 10 the FBI released a "profile" indicating that the
anthrax attacks are not linked to Osama bin Laden or Iraq
but to a male loner in this country who hates media figures.
This virtual admission that the anthrax attack is most
likely from a homegrown terrorist came too late to influence
the debate and voting on the repressive anti-terrorist bill,
which is aimed especially at immigrants.
The Centers for Disease Control--the division of the
department of Health and Human Services charged with
managing the U.S. public-health system--was unprepared for
even this small outbreak of anthrax. Its technicians and
doctors who track the spread of disease have reportedly been
working 18 hours a day, seven days a week since early
October, often sleeping in their labs.
It is yet another indication that the public health system
has been downgraded by a political structure dominated by
the vast for-profit medical industry. Little attention was
paid when diseases of the poor, like tuberculosis, began
reemerging a few years ago.
Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who directed the smallpox
eradication program in the 1970s, has just been hired to
create and direct a new Office of Public Health Preparedness
in the CDC.
In an Oct. 13 interview with The Ottawa Citizen, after
anthrax was identified in Florida, Henderson acknowledged,
"We have a public-health structure which is really very weak
and it'll have to be a lot stronger, if not for
bioterrorism, for looking at all of the new and emerging
infections."
He continued, "We do not have in this country the surge
capacity for a hospital to take in many acute patients."
Rebuilding a public-health system that has been under-funded
and understaffed for years would obviously take considerable
resources and effort. But giving billions of dollars to big
pharmaceutical giants, beefing up police agencies and
spending billions more on war and racism and repression will
just make the problem more acute.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: tiistai 20. marraskuu 2001 03:33
Subject: [WW] Seattle protest defends immigrant rights
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS GOV'T SWOOPS DOWN:
PROTEST DEFENDS IMMIGRANT RIGHTS
By Deirdre Griswold
The U.S. government ratcheted up its terror campaign against
immigrants on Nov. 7 with countrywide raids against
businesses it claimed had financial connections to Osama bin
Laden. Using this flimsy excuse, and without a shred of due
process, agents abruptly shut down stores where immigrants
from Africa and the Middle East shop and send home money to
their families.
In Seattle, a raid by the Treasury Department, U.S. Customs,
FBI, and Immigration and Naturalization Services on a
building in the heart of the Black community that houses
four small Somali stores sparked an immediate protest
demonstration. Somalia, a country on the Horn of Africa, has
been reduced to abject poverty by U.S. military intervention
and sanctions. Many of its people survive on checks sent
home by relatives who have emigrated.
People from Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party,
who have an office nearby, quickly set up a picket line
demanding respect for civil liberties and immigrant rights.
They were joined by neighborhood residents, Somalis who had
seen the protest on television, and activists from other
groups, including Workers World Party.
One woman's sign read: "My father is 90 years old. I will
keep sending him $100. This has nothing to do with
terrorism."
The picket lasted six hours as the FBI took photos of the
demonstrators and stopped and questioned Somalis passing by.
Inside, the government agents stripped the Maka Market of
its wares, cereal box by cereal box. The owner was detained
but then released.
Anne Slater of Seattle Radical Women said, "The aim of this
disgusting witchhunt is not to stop terrorism but to create
an 'enemy' at home to justify weakening civil liberties for
everyone, and to intimidate critics of the U.S. slaughter in
Afghanistan. We don't intend to buy into the scapegoating,
and we won't be scared off."
- END -
(Copyright 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)
