WW News Service Digest #334
1) Cuba marks anniversary of terrorist bombing of plane
by WW
2) Is Iraq on the Pentagon hit list?
by WW
3) U.S. protects Haitian terrorist leader
by WW
4) No blood for oil profits
by WW
5) Causes of turmoil in Jamaica, part 3
by WW
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 17. lokakuu 2001 05:02
Subject: [WW] Cuba marks anniversary of terrorist bombing of plane
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BONMBER ALIVE AND WELL IN MIAMI:
CUBA MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF TERRORIST BOMBING OF PLANE
By Leslie Feinberg
More than a million Cubans rallied at Havana's Plaza of the
Revolution on Oct. 6, many arriving at dawn. They gathered
to commemorate the 25th anniversary of an act of U.S.-
sponsored terror against Cuba and to demonstrate their
solidarity with the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks in the
United States.
Twenty-five years ago, on Oct. 6, 1976, a bomb exploded on a
Cubana airliner flying near Barbados. Seventy-three people
lost their lives, including 57 Cubans--many of them teenage
members of the national fencing team--11 Guyanese and five
north Koreans.
Two right-wing Cuban-Americans were found guilty of the
attack and jailed in Venezuela: Luis Posada Carriles and
Orlando Bosch.
Posada--a notorious anti-communist terrorist--was part of
the defeated CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion. He was
involved in the so-called Iran-contra affair organized by
Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. The CIA trained him for acts
of sabotage at Ft. Benning, home of the School of the
Americas. He also organized a right-wing terrorist training
camp in Florida for the CIA. Posada admits to engineering
the 1997 hotel bombings in Havana that resulted in the death
of an Italian tourist and millions of dollars in property
damage.
He managed to escape from prison in Venezuela, which at that
time was run by parties subservient to the U.S. and the
Rockefeller oil interests.
Bosch--also an avowed counter-revolutionary terrorist--
formed an organization in the U.S. called CORU the same year
as the bombing of the Cubana airliner. Its activities
included several dozen bombings, mass murder and attempted
assassinations. In 1989, Bosch was ordered deported by the
U.S. Justice Department for his role in numerous bombings
originating from the U.S., including the 1976 Cubana
explosion. But the order was never carried out. One year
later, the Justice Department cancelled his deportation.
Today Bosch lives free in Miami.
'STOP U.S. TERROR AGAINST CUBA!'
Loved ones and friends of those who lost their lives in 1976
were among the million Cubans who rallied on Oct. 6. On such
a small island, the loss of scores of lives is felt deeply
by the population.
At the rally Fidel Castro said, "This massive demonstration
against terrorism has been called to pay homage and tribute
to the memory of our brothers and sisters who died off the
coasts of Barbados 25 years ago, and also to express our
solidarity with the thousands of innocent people who died in
New York and Washington." While condemning the Sept. 11
attacks, the revolutionary leader criticized U.S. war
preparations against Afghanistan.
He also reminded those gathered that after the 1976 terror
bombing of the Cubana airliner, "there was no upheaval
around the world, no acute political crises, no United
Nations meetings, nor the imminent threat of war."
And he pointed out that, since the 1959 Revolution, U.S.
authorities "have not sanctioned a single one of the
hundreds of individuals who have hijacked and diverted
dozens of Cuban aircraft to that country, not even those
that have committed murder in the course of the hijacking."
Yet the U.S. tries to justify its illegal economic blockade
of the island nation by listing Cuba as a state that
allegedly sponsors terrorism. "Never has one American been
killed or injured, nor has one installation--large or small
in that immense and rich country--suffered the slightest
damage due to an action from Cuba," Fidel Castro emphasized.
The leader of the Cuban Revolution demanded an end to the
U.S. blockade of the island nation. "Cuba has the full moral
authority and the right to demand the end of terrorism
against Cuba," he concluded. "Economic warfare, itself a
genocidal and brutal act to which our people have been
subjected for more than 40 years, must also end."
- END -
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 17. lokakuu 2001 05:03
Subject: [WW] Is Iraq on the Pentagon hit list?
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
IS IRAQ ON THE PENTAGON HIT LIST?
By John Catalinotto
As the Pentagon begins a massive bombing of Afghanistan and
all eyes turn to Kabul, it would be wise to also keep
Washington's plans for Iraq in view.
In the interest of building a "coalition" of client states
that support U.S. military actions in Central Asia, the Bush
administration may have put plans to attack Iraq on the back
burner. But it hasn't moved these plans off the stove.
John Negroponte, approved in September as U.S. ambassador to
the UN after objections to his infamous past in Central
America were muscled aside in the war frenzy, sent an
ominous letter to the Security Council on Oct. 8. Negroponte
said bombing Afghanistan may be just the beginning: "We may
find that our self-defense requires further actions with
respect to other organizations and other states."
Will U.S. and British forces simply continue their every-
other-day terror attacks on Iraq, along with the sanctions
that have killed 1.5 million Iraqis and continue to kill
thousands each month? Or will these attacks become an all-
out assault and war of conquest?
Iraqi officials announced at the end of September that U.S.-
British raids had killed 366 people and wounded 1,056 others
since December 1998. On Oct. 3 another two Iraqis were
killed in a U.S.-British air raid on Basra in southern Iraq.
The Bush administration now wants to give the appearance
that it is completely focused on a hunt for terrorists, with
the central target in Afghanistan. Still, a hidden debate
about future plans for Iraq occasionally breaks through to
the surface.
CNN reported that one of these arguments took place at the
House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on Oct.
5. An Iraq expert, Geoffrey Kemp, testified there was no
real evidence linking Iraq to the terrorist attacks on the
U.S.
Kemp warned the representatives that should they attack
without solid proof of an Iraqi role in the U.S. bombings,
it could lead to a vast backlash in the Muslim world against
U.S. interests. His warning seemed to blow by them.
"There's no other way to fully and finally end the threat
Iraq poses to our national security," subcommittee
chairperson Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) said. "While we are
striking at other terrorists, we should end the regime of a
master terrorist like Saddam."
Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio): "If we're serious about ending,
destroying, stopping international terrorism, we absolutely
have to target Saddam Hussein."
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) said the failure to overthrow
Hussein following the 1991 Gulf War was "one of the great
policy mistakes of the end of the 20th Century."
Like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Iraq possesses vast oil
reserves that are relatively easy and cheap to extract. This
makes it a tempting target for those who want to use the
cover of anti-terrorism to hide their real goal--conquest of
oil and control of oil profits. This is especially tempting
as the world faces a period of economic depression.
Perhaps these representatives--Democrats and Republicans--
are not so influential and their arguments could be
discounted. Someone with more influence, however, is
Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the top
administration official pushing openly for an assault on
Iraq.
Wolfowitz first threatened Iraq soon after the Sept. 11
attacks on U.S. territory, while threatening to "end states"
that allegedly harbor terrorists. More recently he has had
to hold back from publicly displaying this urge, but some
reports have him continuing to push this position in
private.
Another Reagan/Bush appointee, former Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger, joined the cries to grab Iraq. While
speaking on CNN's "Capital Gang" on Sept. 29, Weinberger
said, "Well, of course I think we should have taken out
Saddam Hussein a few years ago. That's the only disagreement
I had with the conduct of the Gulf War."
Then Weinberger laid out what seems a likely scenario: "I
think you do it sequentially. I think you take out the
terrorist networks in Afghanistan, and I think you have to
be ready to proceed against Saddam Hussein."
This scenario, and the "backlash" Kemp says it would
provoke, is not for a "war on terrorism." It's a plan for
direct imperialist conquest of Central Asia, the Caspian Sea
and the Persian/Arabian Gulf, starting with Iraq.
As more and more working people in this country become aware
that they are being asked to sacrifice and die for the
profits of Big Oil, the anti-war movement is sure to grow.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 17. lokakuu 2001 05:04
Subject: [WW] U.S. protects Haitian terrorist leader
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ALIVE AND WELL IN QUEENS, N.Y.:
U.S. PROTECTS HAITIAN TERRORIST LEADER
By G. Dunkel
New York
Some time after the U.S. Army sent troops to Haiti in 1994
on the pretext of restoring Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide to power, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant moved into a
comfortable, single-family home in Laurelton, Queens, a
suburb of New York City.
Although he was wanted in Haiti for mass murder and for
participating in the violent overthrow of a legally elected
Haitian government, he had no difficulty in obtaining
residency and even permission to work. Tens of thousands of
Haitians have been deported from the United States;
thousands more have been picked up on the high seas, had
their boats destroyed and been dumped in a Haitian port. But
Constant had no problems with immigration.
Who is Toto Constant? Why is he being protected by the U.S.
government?
Constant was the organizer of FRAPH, the paramilitary group
that terrorized the Haitian people and kept them in line on
behalf of the military during the time that Aristide was
deposed in a coup. From 1991 to 1994, FRAPH was responsible
for 3,000 to 5,000 murders.
The Haitian authorities can't be sure about the exact number
killed because, when the U.S. Army occupied Haiti in 1994,
one of its main items of business was to seize the FRAPH
archives and ship them to the United States. These archives
were known to contain "trophy" pictures, videotapes of
torture sessions and other documents relating to how the
FRAPH conducted its terror during the three years of the
coup. They also contained sensitive information on the
relationship between coup leaders and the United States.
Stan Goff, a Vietnam vet and Green Beret, was one of the
U.S. soldiers in the invasion force. His book, "Hideous
Dream-- Racism and the U.S. Army Invasion of Haiti," is an
expos� of the racism and hypocrisy that lurked behind the
occupation. Goff was arrested and expelled from the country
for resisting orders to treat FRAPH like a "legitimate
political opposition."
Part of the U.S. Army's treatment of FRAPH was to conceal
its atrocities and the fact that its leaders, particularly
Constant, were on the CIA's payroll. That's why the U.S.
kept the FRAPH documents for the past seven years and let
Constant live and work in Queens.
On Sept. 30 in Gona�ves, the city where Haiti's independence
was declared in 1804, President Aristide presided over a
ceremony marking the coup that had overthrown him 10 years
ago.
He pointed out that the people's misery is growing. Haiti is
at the mercy of the giant imperialist financial
institutions. For example, it has been forced to pay $8
million in interest on loans from the Inter-American
Development Bank, even though the loan money has not yet
been released to Haiti. The bank's excuse for holding back
the money is that the last election in Haiti was not
conducted fairly. Like the U.S. election, perhaps?
Talking about the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., Aristide
said, "The United States is a victim of terrorism. We too
are also victims of terrorism. All those who are hungry, who
are poor and suffer now because of the coup d'etat are
victims of the terrorism of the army."
He announced that the U.S. has finally returned the FRAPH
documents.
Speaking after Aristide, Haitian Sen. Gerald Gilles said,
"The United States wants bin Laden. We demand Emmanuel
'Toto' Constant."
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 17. lokakuu 2001 05:04
Subject: [WW] No blood for oil profits
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
EDITORIAL: NO BLOOD FOR OIL PROFITS
Many working people in this country, still reeling from the
Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, are deeply
questioning why the U.S. has arrayed all the king's horses
and all the king's men against such an impoverished and
isolated country as Afghanistan. Warnings from the Party of
War--a united front of Republicans and Democrats--that this
military attack may expand to a broad assault on much of the
Middle East leads many to wonder if this show of might is
about oil.
They are on the right track.
The media mouthpieces for Wall Street and the brass of
course put their own spin on this, implying that war is
necessary so people here can have the oil to heat their
homes and drive their cars to work. Whenever the oil
companies have tried to gouge even greater profits from
working people in the U.S., the media have collaborated by
deflecting mass anger against the Arab countries, claiming
they are "holding the West hostage" and want to deny them
oil.
But this is false. The exchange of goods on a world basis is
not dependent on domination, oppression and super-
exploitation. The countries of the Middle East are glad to
sell their oil, their main exportable resource, to countries
that need it. They don't have to be beaten up for that.
This is not a war simply about oil. It is about oil profits.
OPEC or no OPEC, from the pumping of the oil out of the
ground to its marketing at gas station pumps, the lucrative
profits have been controlled by a cartel that used to be
called the "Seven Sisters," or more accurately the Seven
Brothers--Exxon, Shell, Gulf, Texaco, Mobil, Chevron and
British Petroleum--before a number of mergers. Yes, the oil
produces great wealth, and a small part of it goes to
governments that collaborate with the imperialists, like
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the imperialist banks
ultimately control the petrodollars in their own vaults.
The Middle East, now so impoverished, was not always that
way. It was the cradle of Mediterranean civilization.
Ironically, its people have become poorer even as fabulous
wealth in the form of oil has fueled the development of
imperialism.
The poor of the Middle East are poor because U.S. and
British oil magnates and bankers are rolling in petrol-
profits.
Imperialism isn't just a policy of greedy belligerence, or
military aggression by big states against small ones.
Britain is small compared to India, but it controlled the
economy of the Indian subcontinent for two centuries.
Imperialism is the end result of capitalist development in
those few countries of the world where huge banks and
transnational corporations grew to dominate the economy at
home and abroad. It's a far-flung economic empire--that by
its own internal laws of development must continuously
expand or die. It's a social relationship between exploiters
and exploited that started with class exploitation at home
and grew into oppression of whole nations.
The Middle East is in the imperialist crosshairs because a
superabundance of profits can be derived from the oil that
lies beneath its surface.
To maintain an iron grip on those lucrative profits, U.S.
and British imperialism need force, violence and terror--
they need war. That's why the downtrodden billions around
the world, particularly throughout the Middle East, hate
these imperialist Goliaths. Neither imperialist diplomacy
nor the gunboats that back it up can assuage their righteous
fury.
What history requires now is not a Democrat in the Oval
office or a "kinder, gentler" imperialist policy but a
struggle to win a new economic and social system based on
justice for all the peoples of the world.
The resources of the planet are not limitless, but with
planning they can be shared equitably. The vast expenditures
on destruction, like the hundreds of billions now demanded
for war, can be redirected to solve humanity's most pressing
problems--health, food, housing, education, the environment.
All of humanity will profit from overturning the profit
system. Let's hurry the day.
- END -
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 17. lokakuu 2001 05:04
Subject: [WW] Causes of turmoil in Jamaica, part 3
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 18, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
PART 3: CAUSES OF TURMOIL IN JAMAICA
By Pat Chin
Part II covered Jamaica's early history under Spanish and
British colonialism, the rise of the slave trade and sugar
industry, and resistance to terror and exploitation.
Three short years after Sam Sharpe's Christmas Rebellion
shook Jamaica in 1831, slavery was formally abolished in all
British-held colonial possessions. The costs connected to
successive slave rebellions had become staggering, and sugar
production was becoming unprofitable. In addition, the needs
of the planter class in the colonies were fast becoming
secondary to those of the rising industrial bourgeoisie.
"From the standpoint of metropolitan politics," wrote Eric
Williams, former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, "the
abolition of the Caribbean slave system was, on the one
hand, a part of that general struggle of the industrial
bourgeoisie against the landed aristocracy which began in
France with the French Revolution of 1789, advanced in
England with the First Reform Bill of 1832, triumphed with
the repeal of the English Corn Laws in 1846, and culminated
in the victory of the North over the South in the Civil War
in the United States." ("From Columbus to Castro: the
History of the Caribbean")
Emancipation was formally declared on Aug. 1, 1834, but, in
typical colonial style, there was a cruel catch in the form
of a mandatory four-year period of apprenticeship before
full emancipation. This was calculated to convert chattel
slavery to wage labor--a cheaper production method at a time
when slavery had become unviable and there were no trade
unions or political rights for the Black colonial subjects.
The slave masters had also been paid huge sums as
compensation for the loss of their slaves.
During the post-emancipation period, the planters were faced
with a severe shortage of workers. The former slaves were
taxed at every turn by the colonial regime as a way of
ensuring a continuous flow of labor. This included levying
rents on homes and provisions and even taxing the burial
sites of their ancestors.
FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY TO WAGE SLAVERY
Many Black Jamaicans, however, resisted becoming wage
slaves. They responded by rushing to the hills, seizing
parcels of land and forming free villages. This gave rise to
the peasantry, but many of them were still forced to work
full- or part-time as wage earners on the big estates, in
addition to tending their crops. Faced with a shortfall of
cheap labor, 6,000 East Indians were imported by the
colonialists as indentured servants between 1834 and 1865,
along with people from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, China and
Africa.
According to estimates cited in Horace Campbell's book,
"Rasta and Resistance," 218,530 of the 317,000 African
slaves in Jamaica were freed in 1838. "By 1840 there were
approximately 3,000 who owned land of over 10 acres. About
20,000 owned plots of 2-10 acres, while the vast majority
were strugglers who operated as workers and small farmers.
It was this mass of struggling blacks who formed the embryo
of the Jamaican working class."
Sugar production continued its decline, and by 1860 half of
all plantations had gone bankrupt. The white British planter
class started allowing a new class of landowners made up of
"mixed-bloods" and Jewish merchants of Spanish and
Portuguese ancestry to buy bankrupt plantations.
The old oligarchic system of government remained, however,
with the legislature being elected and controlled by a small
minority of rich propertied British males who upheld racism
and exploitation. "Below these planters were the Jews and an
energetic stratum of mulattoes, the product of white and
black miscegeny," explains Campbell. "By 1860 the Jews had
begun to dominate local parish politics, while the mulattoes
spurned agricultural work and sought to dominate the
professions, which serviced the plantation system."
Conditions for the Black majority continued to deteriorate
with the demise of the sugar industry and the flight of
profits. The planter-dominated legislature responded by
increasing taxes, which included a levy on imported foods
eaten by Black Jamaicans. After the imposition of high road
taxes and toll charges forced the former slaves to transport
their produce by sea, canoes were taxed in addition to the
existing tariff on donkeys. These outrageous levies led to
the toll gate rebellions of 1859 in the western parishes of
Trelawny and Westmoreland.
Coercive laws were also passed to restrict the movement of
Black people, including one that enabled the arrest of
anyone carrying agricultural produce without written
permission from the owner of the land on which it was grown.
Whites would often shoot the goats and pigs of poor Blacks.
Strikes broke out on several sugar estates between 1863 and
1864 as poverty and oppression deepened. But Black workers
had no cohesive organization through which to defend
themselves and the free villages became the centers of
protest where many forms of cultural resistance were
practiced. This included a revival of "obeah"--the ritual
casting out of evil spirits, and religious expressions of
resistance like Myalism, and Pocomania with its intense
drumming and shell blowing, which had been banned by the
colonialists.
1865: THE MORANT BAY REBELLION
Things came to a head in October 1865 in the eastern parish
of St. Thomas with an uprising known as the Morant Bay
Rebellion. It erupted within the context of wrenching
poverty, unjust taxation, the denial of political rights, as
well as widespread hunger caused by a drought and the
interruption of food imports due to the U.S. Civil War.
The parish had become a hotbed of cultural resistance, and
Paul Bogle was the spiritual leader of Stony Gut, a free
village community that was once a sugar estate. The
residents of Stony Gut had refused to pay rent, and when the
planters tried to use the legal system to have them evicted,
they resisted.
The armed uprising that followed was a milestone in Jamaican
history. Carefully planned under cover of numerous revival
meetings, it embodied the struggle for land and self-
determination and started as follows:
"Whilst a black man was being brought up for trial before
justice," states the colonial record, "a large number of the
peasantry armed with bludgeons and preceded by music came
into the court house-openly expressing the determination to
rescue the man about to be tried. One of their party having
created a considerable disturbance in the court was ordered
into custody, whereupon the mob rushed in and rescued the
prisoner and maltreated the policeman in attendance."
An arrest warrant was issued for scores of people including
Bogle. But the policemen sent to Stony Gut were captured
through force of arms. The next day Bogle and his men
marched on Morant Bay, shouting along the way, "Cleave to
the black, color for color." (Quoted in Campbell)
Campbell recounts the procession in vivid terms: "Blowing
the conch shell as a sign of war and beating the drums, the
soldiers of Bogle's army reached the courthouse, where the
planter Baron was trembling as he read the riot act. Before
he could finish ordering the police to shoot, Bogle and his
men surrounded the vestry (Parish Council). The Baron was
killed and his assistant was roasted in the fire which razed
the court house. The prisoners, mostly tax defaulters, were
set free."
Bogle's army captured several estates, where they freed the
oppressed workers. Whites who were known to be sympathetic
were spared. The rebel army took control of the parish for
three days in a 30-mile radius around Morant Bay. Bogle
tried to extend the armed struggle west but was outgunned in
the end. Vicious reprisals followed the defeat of his
revolutionary band.
Paul Bogle is today a Jamaican national hero. He took up
arms against the colonizers, lost the battle and was hanged
on Oct. 24, 1865. George William Gordon, a mulatto
legislator and sympathizer, also faced the gallows, even
though he was not present in Morant Bay when the rebellion
erupted. He too is a national hero. So shaken was the
planter class by the insurrection that they surrendered
their ancient constitution for the lesser Crown Colony form
of government.
Bogle was militarily defeated but his heroic action had far-
reaching effects that spanned the next hundred years, laying
as it did the groundwork for continued resistance.
[Next and last: From Garveyism to independence and
neocolonialism.]
- END -
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