People Before Profit blog

Civilizations cradle destroyed by war

Fri, 18 Apr 2003 01:43:00 +0000

In seizing control of Iraq, the Bush administration has brought devastation to this ancient land, closing its eyes to the human toll and destruction in this “cradle of human civilization.”

This week, artifacts dating back 7,000 years were destroyed when Iraq’s renowned National Museum of Antiquities was ransacked and the National Library was burned, while American military commanders declined to protect them. Hundreds of thousands of priceless ancient objects and documents were destroyed. International experts had begged Pentagon officials to protect Iraq’s antiquities, which are considered treasures of world culture.

“The U.S. is an occupying military power and under the Geneva Convention it is obligated to safeguard Iraq’s cultural heritage,” said Roger Normand, executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR). But instead, Normand told the World, the U.S. has violated this heritage “in one of the worst ways in human history. Whether it’s criminal neglect or deliberate is not the issue; the entire world has suffered as a result.”

While U.S. troops are guarding Iraq’s oil wells, witnesses say the military command has ignored and even encouraged looting and destruction of precious public property and essential services. The looters represent “a small minority encouraged by the breakdown in public order,” Normand charged.

Irene Khan, secretary-general of Amnesty International, told reporters, “Much planning and resources seem to have been devoted to securing Iraqi oilfields. However, there is scarce evidence of similar levels of planning and allocation of resources for securing public and other institutions essential for the survival and well-being of the population,” Khan said. “The response to disorder has been shockingly inadequate. Before the conflict broke out, we repeatedly pointed out that with the fall of the regime, law and order would break down, and insecurity could endanger lives and property. Protecting people should be a primary responsibility of any power that expects to enter a country and justifies its intervention on the basis of liberating the people or protecting their rights.”

International humanitarian law defines very clearly the obligations of occupation. “Occupying powers have a duty to plan for the breakdown of law and order in the areas where they establish military control,” Khan said.

Some 2,000 civilian deaths resulting directly from U.S.-British military action have been reported by news media so far. In addition, photos and reports of maimed and injured civilians, including many children, continue to shock the world. Congress passed a measure April 12 calling on the Bush administration to identify and provide “appropriate assistance” to Iraqi civilians who suffered war losses. But the Pentagon said it has “no plans” to do so.

The U.S. is attempting to promote “leaders” like Ahmed Chalabi, who has not lived in Iraq for decades and was sentenced by Jordan to 22 years of hard labor for embezzlement and fraud in 1989. Because of wide opposition to Chalabi in Iraq, he was forced to decline to participate in a recent meeting of Iraqi groups convened by the U.S.

Normand, of the CESC, said, “Under the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. now assumes two primary legal obligations: first, to end the occupation as soon as possible without installing either U.S. military rule or a U.S. puppet over the country; and second, to allow independent humanitarian relief agencies unimpeded access (not subject to Pentagon command) to address the grave humanitarian crisis caused by war and sanctions.”

Dan Smith, a retired U.S. army colonel and senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, called the Pentagon’s distribution of relief supplies a shambles.

“Only the UN, as flawed as it may be, can lay claim to neutrality and global legitimacy … [I]t is time to secure full UN participation in meeting post-war Iraq’s humanitarian, reconstruction, and political needs. In particular, a new UN Security Council resolution providing for a UN leadership role in Iraq would help heal the breech created in the international community in the period leading to active hostilities,” Smith said.

In a statement issued from Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraqi Communist Party rejected U.S. occupation and military rule, saying the Iraqi people must decide their own destiny, choosing the form of their future government “without foreign interference or patronage from any quarter.”

The Iraqi Communists called for the convening of an International Conference on Iraq, under UN auspices, with participation of Iraqi democratic and patriotic forces, “to ensure genuine democratic change in our country.”

The Party said the conference would establish a broadly based transitional government that would ensure democratic freedoms and prepare for free elections under UN supervision, “as an essential step along the path of building a constitutional, democratic Iraq.”

The Iraqi Communist Party was the largest Communist Party in the Middle East, with wide influence and a broad popular base until 1963, when the Baath Party came to power and slaughtered thousands of CP members, forcing many others into exile.

The author can be reached at suewebb@pww.org

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U.S. corporations set to profit off Iraq

Fri, 18 Apr 2003 01:35:00 +0000

The Bush administration’s attempt to fashion for itself the sole role of ruler and victor in post-war Iraq is meeting growing domestic and international opposition.

In an April 8 letter to Comptroller General David Walker, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) demanded an explanation of the manner in which the Agency for International Development (AID) has awarded contracts for rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure. In their letter the congressmen said little is known about the agency’s authority to award no-bid contracts to six companies, among them Bechtel Corp.; Stevedoring Services of America; and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. The letter took note of news reports that the six made combined political contributions of nearly $3 billion between 1999 and 2002, with some 70 percent going to GOP candidates.

The same reports point to the fact that the Bush administration was making plans allowing U.S. corporations to skim the cream from contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure even before the first U.S. bombs fell on Baghdad on March 19.

With a price tag estimated to exceed $100 billion, reconstruction and repair of Iraq’s water systems, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and extinguishing any oil well fires will be the largest reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan.

In their letter Waxman and Dingell noted that the six companies on the preferred list have been invited to participate in bidding for contracts that will eventually total $900 million and that all of them have deep political ties in Washington, beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton.

Other members of the military/construction industry complex include George Shultz, Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, now on the board of Bechtel, and Philip Carroll, former CEO of Fluor Corporation.

Carroll is considered by many to be Donald Rumsfeld’s choice to run Iraq’s oil industry. Bechtel has contracts for more than 950 projects in 67 countries and won new contracts totaling more than $9.3 billion in 2002. Fluor, ranked 186 on the Fortune 500 list, has 50,000 employees and maintains offices in 25 countries.

The letter also expressed concern that AID’s decision to limit contracts to U.S. companies will sideline the United Nations development agencies and other multinational organizations.

These concerns were also reflected in the United States Senate where Maine’s GOP Senator Susan Collins joined Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in introducing legislation on April 10 requiring government agencies to justify how companies are selected to bid on reconstruction contracts. The decision to introduce the legislation came after attempts to attach a similar provision to Bush’s $80 billion-plus supplemental war budget failed. Collins is one of three GOP senators who had earlier voted to limit the Bush tax cut to half the president’s request.

As might be expected, the Associated General Contractors of America (GCA) expressed its support for the methods used by the Agency for International Development in awarding contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. GCA said these methods included ensuring that U.S. firms get a preference in all contracts and that “private property and payment rights enjoyed in the United States be protected in post-war Iraq.”

The unilateralism of the United States in attempting to impose its model of a new Iraq was challenged by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who said recently he expects the UN to play an important role in any post-conflict Iraq. “Above all, the UN involvement does bring a legitimacy which is necessary for the country, the region and for the peoples of the world,” he said before meeting with the Security Council on April 7.

Many observers saw Annan’s meeting with the council, which was deliberately timed to coincide with the meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as an effort to stake out a major role for the UN in post-war Iraq.

Annan also used the occasion to announce the appointment of Rafeeuddin Ahmed, a former UN assistant secretary general and Pakistani diplomat, as his special advisor on Iraq.

Although Ahmed’s appointment was welcomed by all Security Council members, the council remains bitterly divided on the UN role in post-war Iraq, with the European Union, backed by Great Britain, pushing for greater UN involvement than the as yet undefined “vital role” promised by Bush.

These divisions, essentially the same as those that existed prior to the U.S. invasion, were underscored by U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte who told the council he was “sure” there would be a role for the UN but that the matter would require further discussion. He warned that people “shouldn’t be surprised” if the U.S., with Britain relegated to the role of junior partner, takes the lead in reconstructing – and setting the political parameters – of a post-war Iraq.

During Security Council debate on the future of Iraq the French government reiterated its position that the UN should have a major role, while Russia made clear that any resolution dealing with post-conflict involvement should not be construed as putting a UN stamp of approval on the war.

A tip of the hat to Jen Barnett, whose internet skills contributed greatly to this article. The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com

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Debt bondage Debt bondage

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 08:52:00 +0000

The burden of unpayable debt is rising rapidly worldwide. In the U.S., household debt leaped from 65 percent of income in 1975 to more than 100 percent in 2001. Bankruptcies, individual and corporate, are near records.

Seeking security for their bankrupt system, billionaire lenders are trying to deepen debt bondage. A “bankruptcy reform” bill they are now pushing through Congress would leave “people ... in economic slavery for five years,” warns Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.). Under this bill, families’ top priority will be debt service, not food, shelter or education.

“The Pennsylvania Act of 1785 allowed the flogging of convicted bankrupts who were nailed to the pillory by the ear, and afterwards the ear was cut off,” the Cato Institute recalled recently. Cato is not advocating clipping ears, but it does not challenge the sanctity of debt.

Hundreds of thousands of indebted immigrants in the U.S. – a high proportion undocumented and women – labor today in conditions of indentured servitude. Youth face another form of indenture: bankruptcy laws already exclude forgiving student loans, while millions of young workers are condemned to unemployment or poor-paying jobs.

What does the future under capitalism have to offer? “Workers in Bondage.” That’s how Business Week headlined the life of hundreds of thousands of indebted immigrant workers in Western Europe. Conditions ranged from imprisonment in industrial sweatshops to outright sex slavery. And that was in 2000, when capitalism was ostensibly booming.

“We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” UN official Pino Arlacchi told Business Week. “It’s the fastest-growing criminal market in the world.” Arlacchi is the author of Slaves: The New Traffic in Human Beings. Children of indebted parents, some as young as 11, are forced to work as much as 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

The business journal Fortune recently drew a horrifying picture of debt bondage in Asia. “For the privilege of working 12-hour shifts seven days a week in a [Taiwan] factory where she makes plastic casings for Motorola cellphones,” Fortune reported, “Mary, 30, will be in debt for years to come. Mary already owes every penny she earns. In the circular, crazy logic of the global labor economy, she owes the money precisely because she has a job. And she is bound to her job as a result of her debt. Once it would have been called indentured servitude. Today, in some parts of the world, it’s called standard hiring practice.”

The article documents widespread debt bondage in factories in Taiwan and S. Korea. The factories draw on desperate workers from the Philippines, Thailand, even Vietnam. “With so many independent monitors now assessing labor rights and working conditions in manufacturing plants, it’s hard to believe that [Motorola, Nike, Ericsson and other imperialist contractors] would be completely ignorant of debt bondage in their supplier companies,” Fortune writes.

Debt represents the terrible weight of the past, of a failing capitalist system, bearing down on the present and the future. Japan, and now the U.S., are rapidly headed into a Brazilian’ situation, where debt service stands in the way of every human need. Already, state and local governments in the U.S. are starving education, even homeless shelters, to service massive debts.

Because of capitalism’s instability, most third world debts currently owed a few multibillionaires will never be repaid. As Brazil and others have learned, postponing repayment – a so-called debt moratorium – only sets the stage for greater problems.

The real alternative is whether these debts will be repaid on the terms of the capitalists or the workers. Millions around the world already know that the capitalists’ terms only lead to bondage, looted pensions, misery.

On the workers’ terms, all debts to the billionaires and their agents will be canceled. But debts owed to workers, small businesses, the self-employed – such as back wages and pensions – will be honored. The struggle to cancel debts on workers’ terms points to the day when humanity, rather than being crushed by the past, thrives on its accomplishments.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

International notes

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 08:10:00 +0000

May Day: Unions around the world demand ‘respect’

Unions from all five continents are planning actions around the common theme of respect for workers’ rights, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions said this week. The 158-million-member ICFTU and its partners in the Global Unions Group, representing trade union organizatons from every sector, will call for “Respect” in events uniting workers throughout the world.

The ICFTU said activities ranging from mass demonstrations to sports events and conferences are being planned by unions on issues including workers’ rights, quality public services, workers’ health and safety, overcoming poverty, and rights and opportunities for young workers.

“By uniting under one global theme, unions will send out a strong message,” said ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder. “Respect for workers’ rights is a major part of the agenda we are putting forward, particularly as we gear up for the next World Trade Organization Trade Ministerial meeting in Cancun in September of this year.”

China/Vietnam: Parties pledge new cooperation

“Friendly neighborliness, comprehensive cooperation, durable stability and future-oriented thinking” were the watchwords as leaders of the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist Parties met last week in Beijing. Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Chinese CP and president of China, and Nong Duc Manh, general secretary of the Vietnamese CP, discussed stepping up their economic, scientific, cultural and educational cooperation, specifically agreeing to work together on the Sinh Quyen copper and Cao Ngan thermal power plant projects. Hu announced that China would write off Vietnam’s debt.

The two leaders said they want to make their common border a symbol of everlasting peace and friendship.

Referring to the U.S.-led war on Iraq, the two stated that all countries must respect the UN Charter and international law and agreed that disputes must be solved peacefully through negotiation, not with violence or the threat of violence.

Both socialist countries have been hard hit recently with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and have intensified their efforts to fight the disease and bring it under control. Newspapers in the region and officials from World Health Organization praised Vietnam’s efforts to prevent SARS.

Similarly in China, government agencies and medical experts are working hard to bring SARS under control and cure patients with the disease throughout the country. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at an emergency national conference that immediate treatment to ensure people’s health should be guaranteed.

President Hu Jintao pledged full support to Hong Kong in its fight with SARS.

Physicians in South China’s Guangdong province recently found evidence of the coronavirus in the specimen samples of SARS patients. “It marks a breakthrough,” said a Guangdong Disease Prevention and Control Centre spokesperson. The coronavirus, named for its crown-like appearance in electron microscope imagery, is widely believed to be the possible cause of SARS.

Chile: Copper miners strike

Negotiations continued this week in a two-week-old strike of workers at the Candelaria copper mine, majority-owned by the U.S.-based transnational Phelps Dodge Mining Services, Inc. Candelaria has been operating on a skeleton staff after 550 workers walked off the job March 31 when talks on wages and productivity bonuses broke down. Seven workers have also been on a hunger strike.

The British news agency Reuters said workers had demanded a 6 percent real wage increase, but the company’s initial offer was 1.4 percent. Also in dispute are the criteria for calculating productivity-related bonuses for workers.

Candelaria is about 480 miles north of Chile’s capital, Santiago. Facilities include an open-pit copper mine, a concentrator plant and a port facility. Copper in concentrate is mostly shipped to Japan and the U.S.

Indonesia: Shangri-La Hotel dispute settled

After more than two years, 80 workers have reached agreement with the Shangri-La Hotel chain.

When wage talks with the 580 workers at the five-star Shangri-La Hotel in Jakarta broke down in December 2000, management fired the union leader and all the workers struck to support him. The hotel then locked out all the workers, closed the hotel for two months, and reopened with a new workforce. Most workers accepted a buy-out but 80 continued to struggle for their jobs – picketing, battling in the courts and gaining the solidarity of unions around the globe.

Last month the hotel said it would give each of the 80 workers the equivalent of about four years wages, and agreed to drop a $2 million claim for damages against the union. Even though they didn’t get their jobs back, the workers said they were satisfied with the settlement.

Czech Republic: Educators may strike

The Czech Republic’s educators have gone for five years without an overall pay raise, despite a 1998 government pledge to pay them at the level of educators in European Union countries.

The latest development, reported in The Prague Post, is a letter signed by some 500 university faculty members, threatening a strike during university entrance examinations in June.

The Education Ministry claims teachers are paid an average of about $700 a month, but teachers say this figure includes bonuses and grants not all of them receive.

The letter asks for “clear steps” showing that the long-standing problem “will be fixed quickly.” Many educators are urging that 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product should be devoted to education – a move that would put the Czech Republic on a par with European Union countries. Now, about 4 percent of GDP goes to education.

International notes are compiled by Communist

Party USA International Secretary Marilyn Bechtel,

who can be reached at cpusainternat@mindspring.com

U.S. military attempts to silence journalists

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 07:03:00 +0000

While the White House claims the war in Iraq is for democracy and liberation, U.S. forces have been accused of intentionally attacking a major pillar of democracy – the press.

U.S. military forces launched what witnesses called a deliberate attack on independent journalists covering the war, killing three and injuring four on April 8.

A U.S. tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, where most “non-embedded” international reporters in Baghdad are based. Journalists who witnessed the attack rejected Pentagon claims that the tank had been fired on from the hotel. “I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel,” David Chater of British Sky TV told Reuters. Footage shot by French TV recorded quiet in the area immediately before the attack.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. launched separate but near-simultaneous attacks on the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, two Arabic-language news networks. Both outlets had informed the Pentagon of their exact locations, according to a statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). As with the hotel attack, Pentagon officials claimed that U.S. forces had come under fire from the press offices, charges that were rejected by the targeted reporters.

The airstrike against Al Jazeera killed Tareq Ayoub, one of the channel’s main correspondents in Iraq, and injured another journalist, prompting Al Jazeera to try to pull its remaining reporters out of Baghdad. Personnel at Abu Dhabi TV escaped injury from an attack with small-arms fire.

Al Jazeera, which the Bush administration has criticized for airing footage of American POWs, has been attacked several times by U.S. and British forces during the war. Its offices in Basra were shelled on April 2 and its camera crew in that city fired on by British tanks on March 29. A car clearly marked as belonging to Al Jazeera was shot at by U.S. soldiers on April 7. Al Jazeera has also been targeted prior to the Iraq War. During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Al Jazeera’s Kabul offices were destroyed by a U.S. missile.

Marines raided the Palestine Hotel, on April 15, saying intelligence reports said it wasn’t “100 percent safe.” Footage from Associated Press Television News showed Marines kicking down doors, rousting journalists from their beds and pointing M-16s in their faces.

International journalists and press freedom groups condemned the U.S. attacks on the press corps in Baghdad. “We can only conclude that the U.S. [forces] deliberately and without warning targeted journalists,” Reporters Without Borders declared. “We believe these attacks violate the Geneva Conventions,” wrote CPJ in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The International Federation of Journalists is calling for an independent international inquiry. “There is no doubt at all that these attacks could be targeting journalists. If so, they are grave and serious violations of international law,” said Aidan White, General Secretary of the IFJ. “The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy.”

With the death of Argentine camerawoman Veronica Cabrera on April 14, the first female journalist to die while covering the war in Iraq, the total number of journalists killed in this conflict had reached 13 by mid-April.

In related developments, Reporters Without Borders voiced its concern that a CNN crew’s security escort returned fire with an automatic weapon when the crew came under fire near Tikrit. CNN has been using a private security firm to protect some its crews. The use of firearms is a practice contrary to all the rules of the profession, the organization said.

“Such a practice sets a dangerous precedent that could jeopardize all other journalists covering this war as well as others in the future,” Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. “There is a real risk that combatants will henceforth assume that all press vehicles are armed,” he warned.

“Journalists can and must try to protect themselves” by wearing bulletproof vests, etc., “but employing private security firms that do not hesitate to use their firearms just increases the confusion between reporters and combatants,” Ménard added.

Whats really behind the trials in Cuba

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 06:56:00 +0000

At an April 9 press conference in Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque presented a detailed discussion of the recent trials of Cubans charged with acting in the interest of a foreign state to harm Cuba’s independence or integrity, and spreading information in support of the blockade and the economic war against Cuba. The press conference also featured details of the U.S. Interests Section’s work to support the so-called dissident movements. The complete transcript of the press conference is available online, at www.granma.cu/ingles/abril03/sat12/ roque.html.

The Cubans tried and sentenced earlier this month had the ability to defend themselves including legal representation, the right to call witnesses, to introduce evidence in their favor, and to appeal their sentences, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told a press conference in Havana, April 9.

Under the country’s Law on the Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba, the defendants received public trials in the country’s established court system.

Perez contrasted Cuba’s treatment of these defendants with the harsh isolation accorded the five Cubans now serving long terms in U.S. prisons for their efforts to expose anti-Cuban terror in Miami, which prevented them from working on their legal appeals.

The 75 defendants were tried “in just about every province of the country” between April 3 and 7, receiving jail sentences of between six and 28 years, Perez said. The law under which they were charged was passed by the Cuban legislature in response to the Helms-Burton Act.

(This act, passed by Congress in 1996, formalized more than four decades of U.S. embargo against the island nation, set forth U.S. policy to aid a counterrevolutionary government in Cuba and threatened legal action against anyone investing in Cuban businesses formerly owned by U.S. citizens or Cubans now living in the U.S. – M.B.)

After pointing to over 40 years of an ironclad economic blockade that has cost Cuba over $70 billion, incitements to subversion and illegal emigration, aggressions and terrorist acts including 600 attempts to kill Cuba’s president, Perez said, “Our people have to contend with the obsession of U.S. governments ... to foment the emergence or strengthening of groups responding to their interests, with an evidently annexationist vision” of defeating the Cuban revolution.

Perez pointed out that under the Bush administration, hostility toward Cuba has increased dramatically. In the last seven months, Perez said, seven hijacking incidents have occurred involving aircraft or ships, “and the terrorist hijackers involved in four of those cases remain at liberty with no reported legal actions against them.” Since last October, granting of U.S. visas for legal immigration have dropped dramatically below the 20,000 per year level set by the two countries in 1994 – a major factor, Perez said, in the spate of hijackings. At the same time, U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba have been greatly tightened.

Perez recounted the actions of U.S. Interests Section head James Cason, including an excerpt from Cason’s interview with Miami TV in December 2002. In it, Cason talks of his meetings with Cuban groups in Miami including the Cuban American National Foundation, aimed at unifying the anti-Castro opposition.

Perez noted that unlike his predecessors, Cason has even opened his office and home to opposition groups for their meetings, which became much more frequent last month. “Mr. Cason, implementing his government’s aggressive policy against Cuba, has compelled us to apply our law …” Perez said this was Cuba’s reaction when “no other option remained,” given the path of confrontation and provocation that the U.S. government has chosen to pursue.

Perez also presented many specific instances of U.S. funding for projects aimed at overturning Cuba’s government, including over $1.6 million from the International Republican Institute, nearly $27 million in the 2004 U.S. budget request earmarked to fund the 1,200 hours per week of anti government broadcasts by Radio Marti, and $22 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development since 1997 to implement the Helms-Burton Act.

“The Helms-Burton Act has paragraph 109 which directs the government to distribute money for subversion in Cuba through USAID and it has paragraph 115 which favors giving the money through secret channels, the special services’ channels,” he added.

“We do not blame the majority of Cubans who live in the United States,” Perez said. “[their] right to relations with their families and to visit Cuba we also respect and defend.” Nor does Cuba blame the majority of U.S. people who favor normalizing relations between the two countries, he said.

Marilyn Bechtel can be reached at cpusainternat@mindspring.com

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A year after failed coup: Venezuelas people gain new hope

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 02:52:00 +0000

One year ago, the Venezuelan people defeated a U.S.-supported right-wing coup against popularly-elected President Hugo Chavez Frias. As the anniversary of the coup attempt approaches, a very different picture is emerging for the country’s workers and farmers.

Last week Chavez turned over 400 land deeds to peasants in the border state of Apure. Calling the move part of his policy to depend less on imports and to create a different attitude toward the land, Chavez said he wants to turn over 1.5 million hectares of land and land deeds to peasants this year. The Venezuelan leader has also suggested that land could be turned over to military garrisons to grow food for soldiers, and has announced creation of food wholesale micro-businesses as a new economic sector in the government’s agricultural plan.

Late last month, a new labor federation was formed – the National Union of Workers (UNT) – to replace the now discredited Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) which worked arm-in-arm with the employers’ association Fedecameras to instigate last winter’s lockout of oil and other workers. The new federation describes itself as independent, class-oriented, democratic and revolutionary. Its organizers say it brings together more workers than had nominally been represented by the CTV. The new federation emerged following months of discussion among workers supportive of the Chavez government, the poor, and independent unions both within and outside of the CTV – notably the oil, steel, and subway workers.

Another result of the failed lockout was that workers – starting with the oil workers who successfully ran production after management and technicians walked out – increasingly talk about taking over and running their enterprises as cooperatives. In an April 2 article on ZNet, Mike Lebowitz noted that workers at the Sheraton Airport Hotel have already formed a cooperative, while the state -owned oil company PDVSA now includes two worker representatives in its management and an associated petrochemical firm is already being run as a cooperative.

But the far right and the U.S.-based transnational corporate sector have not given up their hopes of reversing the revolutionary changes that have brought new hope to Venezuela’s working people. In a February 2003 paper, the ultra-right Heritage Foundation urged continuing pressure on Venezuela to restructure its economy to promote private enterprise and investment, and called on international organizations supported by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to “continue to advise the full spectrum of Venezuela’s political parties, civic groups and unions.” Chavez’ “demagogic speeches resonate with growing numbers of poor in Latin America who have lost hope in the slow evolution of democracy and market economies,” the Heritage Foundation paper warned. “The turmoil he has inspired in Venezuela could further depress commerce in the hemisphere and destablize neighbors.”

The author can be reached at cpusainternat@mindspring.com

U.S. policies in Latin America protested

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 02:12:00 +0000

Thousands of activists are expected to converge on Washington, D.C., April 10-15 for the “Mobilization against military and economic intervention in Latin America and across the globe.” Participants will lobby members of Congress to close the infamous “School of the Americas” (SOA). Participants will also protest meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and rally in support of the “Justice for Janitors” campaign of Service Employees Union Local 82. Activists will also attend a two-day conference with many speakers and workshops spanning the scope of issues confronting Latin America.

Latin America Solidarity Committee (LASC), one of the prime sponsors of the six-day event, links the war in Iraq with the overall Bush administration policies of military and economic intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. LASC, an association of national and local U.S.-based grassroots Latin America and Caribbean solidarity groups, includes in its demands the closing of the military base in Vieques and an end to funding for “Plan Colombia,” and opposes the Free Trade Area of the Americas. LASC is seeking to “build a movement without borders.”

Henrik Voss, a member of the SOA Watch staff, told the World there have been some significant victories in Latin America that can inspire the movement for social justice here.

“After years of work, the grassroots people’s movement in Brazil effected an important change of government. We can learn a lot from these movements,” Voss said.

Much of the weekend’s activities will focus on linking the issues of military and economic intervention in Latin America to the anti-war movement. In its call to the mobilization, LASC says, “From Latin America to the Middle East, we will stand up against U.S. intervention.”

“U.S. imperialism didn’t start with the war in Iraq, so we have to make sure we keep the momentum on U.S. policy as a whole,” Voss said, pointing out that $105 million for Colombia was included in Bush’s supplemental Iraq war budget. Many analysts predict Latin America will see an increase of U.S. intervention, under the guise of “combating terrorism.”

The presence of U.S. soldiers and military advisors has increased, across Latin America and the Caribbean, most notably in Colombia.

Operation New Horizons, which aimed to bring some 400 U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic every month was suspended due to the war in Iraq. But a new phase of the operation is scheduled when special operation forces will be sent to train Paraguayan forces in “anti-terrorism” tactics.

“Eagle III,” the largest military exercise, is planned in Argentina with forces from the U.S., Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.

The U.S. has cited the war on terrorism as justification for stationing forces and intelligence personnel at bases in Ecuador, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Uruguay and the Triple Frontier countries of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

The U.S. Navy has announced it will cease operations on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico in May after thousands protested the killing of a civilian in 1999 and the long-term impact of maneuvers on the island and people. However, the many activists will keep an eye on that promise, noting it is not a “done deal” and nothing was put in writing.

Colombia, notorious for its human rights abuses and the number of trade unionists killed each year, will be the focal point of many conference participants. The Pentagon’s plans for Colombia include “privatization” of the security forces, turning some operations over to Military Professional Resources Incorporated and DynCorp., two private armies.

Argentine analyst Gabriel Tokatlian warned of “the dangerous possibility of privatizing armed conflicts. The commercialization of the region’s security matters could be the threshold of a new form of internationalized private war,” he said.

While weekend events have a special focus on Latin America and the Caribbean an April 13 march and rally to protest the World Bank/IMF will include several “tour of shame” stops like Taco Bell and the Inter American Development Bank.

There will also be an anti-war demonstration focusing on Iraq for April 12.

For more information on the mobilization go to www.lasolidarity.org

The author can be reached at talbano@pww.org

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Death and destruction haunt Iraqi landscape

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 01:46:00 +0000

As the U.S.-led assault stormed through Iraq this week, it left a trail of death, destruction and chaos – wrecked cities, villages and farms; water systems destroyed; families decimated. It also left a trail of bitterness among the Iraqi population.

While the U.S. military controls main thoroughfares and key points, the majority of the country’s population is not under U.S. or British control, Middle East expert Stephen Zunes told the World. Zunes, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, said he expects the U.S. will be facing “ongoing guerilla war for a long, long time.”

“This is a foreign policy disaster,” Zunes said. By placing itself as an occupying force in the heart of the Mid-East, he said, the U.S. has put itself in a “counter-insurgency situation,” and could end up alienating the majority of the population.

The number of civilians killed now tops 1,200, with thousands more horribly injured. The latest civilian deaths include several foreign journalists killed by U.S. fire. More than 100 U.S. soldiers have been reported killed, with others wounded and missing.

As the U.S. assault ravaged Baghdad, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported hundreds of civilian victims arriving at hospitals each day. Many are children.

Ali Ismail Abbas, 12, was asleep when a missile destroyed his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned, and with both arms blown off. “It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant,” the sweet-faced, traumatized boy told Reuters from his hospital bed.

Safa Karim, 11, was struck in the stomach by an American bomb fragment. Near death, bleeding internally, she writhed in pain with a massive bandage on her stomach, a tube down her nose and four scarves holding her wrists and ankles to the hospital bed. A relative said, “She has been given 10 bottles of drugs and she has vomited them all up.”

Baghdad hospitals are overwhelmed and running out of supplies, and face power and water outages. Basra, Iraq’s second largest city with a population of 1.5 million, has an acute shortage of drinkable water and signs of dysentery in children.

“This war has further degraded an already precarious situation,” said Nathaniel Raymond, a spokesperson for Oxfam, an international aid organization. Iraq was in crisis before the war due to 12 years of economic sanctions, he told the World. Now, because of the instability created by the U.S.-British invasion, Oxfam and other aid workers are sitting at border crossings in Syria and Jordan, unable to reach those in need. They are waiting for security to be reestablished under a United Nations presence that will enable them to carry out their humanitarian mission.

Ten members of Abid Hassan Hamoodi’s family were killed by two U.S. missiles that destroyed their house in Basra. Hamoodi, 72, told the Washington Post he lost his wife, a daughter, a son and seven grandchildren. He dug out three other family members from the collapsed brick with his bare hands.

“What was the purpose of the American invasion of Iraq?” he asked the U.S. reporter. “Was it to topple Saddam Hussein, or to kill innocent people? ... You came to save us, to protect us. That’s what you said. It’s now the contrary. Innocent people are killed.”

Hamoodi, a retired oil company manager and head of a prominent Shiite Muslim family, voiced an anger widely expressed by Iraqis. Though they welcome the end of the hated Saddam Hussein regime, many are enraged by the civilian casualties and humanitarian disaster caused by the U.S.-British invasion on top of years of punitive sanctions.

“I won’t shed any tears for Saddam Hussein,” Hazzim Yousif, an Iraqi-American from Michigan, told the World. “How come all of a sudden the U.S. government doesn’t like him? It’s the apex of hypocrisy. His party was put in power by the U.S.”

Progressives in Iraq oppose war and dictatorship, Yousif said. They wanted the world community to topple Saddam peacefully through the UN. “Now the U.S. has stepped into a swamp.”

“The Bush administration is already giving contracts to American companies [for Iraq] like they own the place,” Yousif said, “but they are going to find Iraq a very difficult country to rule and exploit. The Iraqi people have a great history of resisting foreign invaders. If the Americans think they can install a puppet government, the Iraqi people are going to reject it.”

Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin says the Iraq war “has the potential to be a mess on all fronts.” The war is part of a broader Bush administration foreign policy that Americans should be concerned about, he told the World. “It’s important to start talking about American imperialism.”

The author can be reached at suewebb@pww.org

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International notes

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:29:00 +0000

Palestine: Demonstrators oppose Iraq war

Thousands of Jews and Arabs from all over Israel participated in the demonstration organized March 29 by the Communist Party and Young Communist League of Israel, together with the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash). Rallying under the slogans, “No to the Imperialist War on Oil” and “Bush, Blair & Sharon are the major terrorists,” demonstrators condemned the ongoing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories as well as the U.S. and British policy toward Iraq.

Russia: Communists lead in public support

A poll of public support for political parties conducted last month by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion showed that backing for the Communist Party has reached a record 31 percent, topping the governing Unified Russia party’s 21 percent. Commentators, including the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, are pointing out that the gap may be difficult to close before next December’s elections to the national legislature, the Duma.

On March 31, Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, said he favors an international boycott of U.S. products, to protest the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Zyuganov said that some 3 million Russians in 4,000 communities throughout the country participated in anti-war protests in late March. In the city of Perm alone, 10 public anti-war demonstrations have been held since the beginning of this year.

Nigeria: Public workers win 12.5 percent pay hike

A strike of public sector workers was narrowly averted in the early morning hours of April 8, when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the government reached agreement on a 12.5 percent pay increase. Their joint press stated that “Both sides agreed the proposed strike should be called off.”

The NLC, the country’s umbrella labor federation, had called the strike after an agreed pay increase for civil servants in January was not included in the 2003 budget – passed by parliament but not yet signed into law by President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The government had earlier threatened to use its armed forces to remove picket lines if the strike went forward. A strike could have further shut down the country’s oil industry, where production is already slowed because of protests by impoverished local residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta. Residents are demanding a share of jobs, as well as oil company support for human services.

Greece: More anti-war actions planned

Greek organizations including the “Action-Thessaloniki 2003” campaign, the Committee for International Peace and Detente, and several mass organizations, have called for mass demonstrations in Athens April 16. On that day, the official ceremonies for enlargement of the European Union will take place, with the presence of EU leaders who supported or tolerated the imperialist war on Iraq. Plans include a youth and students’ demonstration in the morning and a big popular demonstration in the early evening – both at Constitution Square.

The government, annoyed by the popular unrest and the anti war actions, says it will restrict the right to demonstrate, creating a “red zone” where access will not be allowed. But several organizations of the popular movement are calling for protests against the government’s authoritarian stance, and are declaring that the people’s right to demonstrate is not negotiable.

South Korea: Union leader released from jail

After 20 months in prison, Dan Byung-Ho, President of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, has been released. In a statement of support, Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), said, “We welcome this release and intend to pursue our international solidarity campaign in support of the continuing struggle by the Korean trade union movement to protect workers’ rights, which are too often flouted in that country.”

After assuming responsibility for the KCTU’s coordination of a general strike, Dan Byung-Ho was sentenced to two years imprisonment for “obstructing business,” a charge the Korean government often uses against striking workers. A large trade union delegation attended the trial to show their solidarity.

At last month’s meeting of the UN Committee on Human Rights in Geneva, the ICFTU again denounced serious trade union rights violations in South Korea, reminding the committee that dozens of trade unionists – including, at the time, Dan Byung-Ho – were still in jail.

Cubans respond to spree of hijackings

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 07:44:00 +0000

A rash of hijackings in the last month – two airliners in March and a ferry on April 2 –have aroused righteous anger in Cuba. The dramatic circumstances surrounding the kidnappings were highlighted in a live broadcast on Cuban TV last week, featuring passengers from the first hijacked plane together with Cuban President Fidel Castro.

As recounted by Granma International, the panel for the program included several of the passengers on the jetliner hijacked March 19, who were returned to Cuba last week after their involuntary journey to Florida. The kidnapping victims told of the fear they experienced during 14 hours of confinement at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport, during which the hijacker displayed no concern for the health and welfare of those on board, including children and sick adults. All efforts to talk the perpetrator out of his plan – by other passengers, by Cuban authorities and by the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana – were of no avail.

Some of the passengers also told of the heavy police deployment that awaited them when they arrived in the United States, and the violent treatment they received.

In his remarks, President Castro emphasized the role of the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act in encouraging such terrorist actions. The 1968 law virtually assures legal residency to any Cuban reaching the United States. “The only way to put an end to hijackings is to punish the hijackers,” he said.

Also participating in the program was one of the hostages from the Baragua ferry, who told of the foiled hijacking on April 2. Despite repeated pleas to abandon their plans because of danger to passengers from high waves and severe gusting winds, the hijackers took the vessel, built only for service in coastal waterways, into the open sea. Threats of death were constant.

Hours later, when the ferry, out of fuel and drifting, was towed into the Cuban port of Mariel by a tug, newspapers were sent on board containing a warning from the U.S. Interest Section that hijackers would be arraigned in U.S. courts. At the same time, Cuban forces were prepared to act if necessary.

The highjackers took two French tourists to the deck and threatened to throw them overboard unless fuel was provided. They dived over the edge instead. A Ministry of the Interior officer who was traveling on the ferry over-powered the hijackers’ ringleader, whose gun fell overboard in the melee.

Whats going to happen to Iraq?

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 07:12:00 +0000

“Before I left Baghdad on the day U.S. bombing began, I sat and cried with many of my Iraqi friends who asked me ‘What’s going to happen to us?’” Even after five years reporting from Iraq for Democracy Now!, the Nation and others, independent journalist Jeremy Scahill had no easy answer. In an interview with the World, Scahill touches on why this regime change will not liberate Iraq.

“The U.S. is overtly planning to impose military government over Iraq. There would be 22 ministries headed by a U.S. military official that would govern Iraq for a period of two to five years or more,” said Scahill. Though the U.S. is “seeking to work with [Iraqi] groups that are extraordinarily fundamentalist in the their orientation, those groups are rejecting the U.S. right now because they don’t want to be discredited by working with a government seen as an infidel.”

“The U.S. has been responsible for a dramatic de-secularization of Iraq society,” said Scahill, citing a decade of sanctions, bombings and now invasion. “Religious leaders, both Shiite and Suni, have become the most important players in Iraq. We are helping to raise a generation of fundamentalist Muslims who will grow up hating Americans, when Iraq was one of the most pro-American countries in the region just fifteen years ago.

“The bloodletting will not end when missiles stop hitting,” said Scahill, described the potential chaos in Iraq. Though it might appear as civil war, Scahill said, “remember that the U.S. created whatever situation results inside of Iraq.”

“The U.S. was not prepared for the consequences of invading,” said Scahill. Unlike in Afghanistan, he said, “the U.S. government doesn’t have a Hamid Karzai to put in place.” Scahill said, “Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress is completely discredited in Iraq with his constituency more along the Potomac than it is along the Tigris or Euphrates.

“Only if the US is able to co-opt very senior Shiites from the current Iraq administration will they even begin to be able to consolidate power,” according to Scahill. But, he added, “even that is not likely because most of these people would be despised by large parts of the population for having collaborated with Saddam for all these years.

“The U.S. has a plan, not for democracy in Iraq, but for much of the same of what Iraqis have lived under since 1979, when Saddam Hussein came to power, only this time it will be headed by an imperialist force, namely the U.S.”

For Scahill, this begs the question, “What are they being liberated from? From a domestic tyrant to a foreign one? That’s not something most Iraqis are going to accept.”

Though Scahill sees no immediate prospect for progressive government in Iraq, he “would encourage people to research the Iraqi Communist Party. [They] have come under attack from all Iraqi governments over decades. Their analysis on the current situation is firmly anti-Saddam and anti-Bush. It’s very rare to have a secular group in Iraq taking this position.

“Many of these communists have had to flee Iraq because of repression, torture, imprisonment,” Scahill noted. “Though they live abroad, their analysis remains very interesting. They have very good contacts within the country and it’s incredible how accurate their information is at times.”

Scahill places the fate of Iraq in the context of what he sees as a U.S. strategy for “controlling oil production in the world, not just Iraq.” With exclusive control of Iraq’s oil, he says the U.S. “will no longer have dependence on Saudi oil.” And that means “the beginning stages of the erasing of borders in the Middle East into essentially an offshore American oilfield.”

“This is not only about Iraq anymore,” said Scahill. “We have to have a long term vision, because it’s about stopping this administration in Washington from carrying on with this merciless global agenda.”

The author can be reached at noelnoel@igc.org

Protests get Cuban 5 out of the hole

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 04:12:00 +0000

Statement by the Cuban National Assembly

As a result of numerous messages of protest, the U.S. government decided to put an end to the solitary confinement that it had imposed to Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González, and to place them again in the general penal population, although maintaining several completely discriminatory restrictions against them.

It has been demonstrated that during a month, the U.S. authorities violated the rights of the prisoners, of their lawyers and the norms of due process, seriously damaging the appeal process. Taking them now out of “the hole,” the U.S. government is proving that a “national security” justification never existed and that it was obliged retreat because of the denunciations and protests.

But the U.S. government has not finished yet with its arbitrary, discriminatory and illegal actions. It still maintains inadmissible prohibitions related to use of the phone, correspondence, consular access and family visits.

The U.S. action proved the strength of the international solidarity and its capacity to act with efficacy, even in very difficult circumstances, due to the fact that the information about this issue in the big media was virtually zero.

The United States has continued the methods and techniques that it used before to prevent a fair trial. That is precisely the principal question that the Atlanta Appeals Court should consider. That is the best proof to demonstrate that that Court should dismiss the Miami farce and order the release of the five prisoners.

It is necessary to multiply and intensify solidarity, now that we have this additional proof about the serious misconduct of the U.S. government.

The solidarity took them out of “the hole.” The solidarity will free them.

War in Iraq takes horrifying toll

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 02:43:00 +0000

As the war in Iraq entered its third week, reports of casualties show the mounting physical and psychological toll on the Iraqi people and on U.S. soldiers as well.

Some 725 civilian Iraqi deaths were reported as the United States dropped 8,000 bombs on Iraqi cities in 13 days of war. By April 2, the toll of U.S. casualties was 46 killed, 7 captured and 16 missing. Figures on Iraqi military casualties are not available.

The Pentagon claims that civilian casualties are “unavoidable.” Stephen Zunes, a Middle East expert at the University of San Francisco, called this claim “patently false,” saying, “Civilian casualties are unavoidable only if the war is unavoidable. This war was not unavoidable.”

U.S. missiles hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital and other civilian buildings in Baghdad, killing several people and wounding at least 25 residents and three Red Crescent staff, including a doctor. A patient was also hit, requiring his leg to be amputated. Burned-out and twisted cars lay in the road, their occupants burned to death inside.

Fifteen members of a family were killed when their pickup truck was blown up by a rocket from a U.S. helicopter near Hilla, a farming town south of Baghdad. The sole survivor said he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, three brothers and their wives. Sitting among the 15 coffins at the local hospital, he said the family was fleeing fighting further south when they were attacked.

Wounded children lay under blankets on the hospital floor due to a shortage of beds. Dozens of homes were destroyed in the bombing, and parts of cluster bombs were scattered over a large area.

Earlier, U.S. troops killed 11 Iraqis, mostly women and children, when the soldiers fired on a civilian vehicle at a military checkpoint near the southern city of Najaf. Fifteen Iraqis were packed inside the van with their possessions. Ten, including five small children, were killed on the spot when high-explosive rounds slammed into them. One died later from severe injuries. “You just f… killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!” a U.S. captain reportedly yelled at his troops.

“It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen, and I hope I never see it again,” a 26-year-old Army medic told a reporter. He said one of the wounded women sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. “She didn’t want to get out of the car,” he said.

Reporters described the soldiers as having been on edge since four American troops were blown up by a suicide bomber two days earlier at a similar checkpoint just 20 miles away.

U.S. peace activists visiting a town in Iraq’s western desert March 30 found its hospital destroyed by bombs.

“Why? Why?” a doctor demanded of them. “Why did you Americans bomb our children’s hospital?”

Thus far 65 to 100 civilian casualties have been reported in the southern city of Basra, where the U.S. air assault has included use of cluster bombs. A resident asked a reporter, “Why are they killing our children? We are innocent. The children are scared.”

Damage to the electric power grid shut Basra’s water-treatment plant immediately after the ground war started. Most of Basra’s 1.5 million people had no access to safe water for several days. After a week, only half the city had service restored. United Nations officials fear repeats of this crisis in Baghdad and other cities under attack. They warn of potential outbreaks of diarrhea, cholera and other potentially fatal diseases that will hit children and the elderly particularly hard.

Despite punishing U.S. and British artillery and aerial bombing, British troops have failed to capture Basra. Dismissing earlier British claims that citizens were rebelling against Saddam Hussein’s government, a resident told the Washington Post, “There’s been absolutely no uprising.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) assailed the U.S. use of cluster bombs and grenades. Cluster weapons have a very high failure rate that creates immediate and long-term dangers for civilians and soldiers, HRW said. When such munitions fail to explode on impact, they become like volatile, indiscriminate anti-personnel landmines, the group said.

HRW said it is evident from television images and stories from reporters “embedded” with U.S. units that artillery projectiles and rockets containing large numbers of cluster munitions are being used. These weapons have failure rates close to one in five.

“The United States should not be using these weapons,” said Steve Goose, executive director of HRW’s arms division. “Iraqi civilians will be paying the price with their lives and limbs for many years.”

The author can be reached at suewebb@pww.org

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Irish leader tells of post-9/11 nightmare

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 09:05:00 +0000

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is a legendary figure in Irish and British politics. She is a hero of the jobless in Northern Ireland. McAliskey became a member of British Parliament at age 21, the youngest person ever elected to that post. Because of their work in opposing British rule she and her husband were shot by a death squad in their home in 1981.

The famed activist and Irish civil rights leader has traveled to America for the last 30 years and has been given the keys to the cities of San Francisco and New York.

Yet on Feb. 21, on her first trip to the U.S. since 9/11, 55-year-old McAliskey was barred from entering and forcibly deported from a country she had visited countless times before.

In a March 6 interview with The Blanket McAliskey said she was on her way to New York from Dublin, arriving in Chicago first. She was on holidays. When she arrived in Chicago, immigration officials informed her that a fax from Dublin indicated that she was “ineligible for entry” and should be “apprehended and returned.”

McAliskey told The Blanket, the officials “were very, very jumpy. They were clearly under the impression that I had evaded Immigration in some way, that I had fraudulently filled out a form in some way, and that I was a threat to the security of the United States of America.

“I attempted to explain to them that I was in fact eligible for entry, had not fraudulently filled out any forms and was not a threat to anybody’s security,” she said.

McAliskey continued to describe the awful reality of a post-9/11 U.S. “I was informed that I had no rights, that in fact nobody who is not a United States citizen any longer has any rights in America since Al-Qaeda, that what I had was a number of choices. My choice was to sit there quietly until they arranged a flight and put me back on it and to say nothing and to speak to nobody.”

Insisting she did have rights, McAliskey told the officials “No, I have rights here. I would like to contact somebody from the embassy. I would like to contact a lawyer. I have no intention of going back just because you tell me I have to go back.”

The officials then said that if she insisted she had rights she “would be handcuffed and imprisoned until such time as they arranged a flight back to Ireland,” McAliskey said.

One of the guys told her “Do not anger my boss. Please do not make him angry, do not speak about rights, you don’t have any. Don’t contradict him. Last week he fired a shot over the head of a Russian gentleman.”

McAliskey said, “Then I was told that I would be photographed, questioned and fingerprinted and I said ‘No I won’t.’ Again the guy said to me ‘Ma’am, when are you going to understand this? You do not have any rights, you have choices. Your choice is to voluntarily be fingerprinted and photographed, to be fingerprinted and photographed under duress or to be forcibly fingerprinted and photographed. Those are your choices. Then you will be going back to Ireland.’”

McAliskey was never allowed to look at the fax from Dublin.

“This wasn’t about me, this wasn’t about me being against the war in Iraq, this wasn’t about me and my history in Northern Ireland. They didn’t know who I was. Only at the very end, when I am sitting ten minutes off the flight, the guy came back to me and he said ‘I have got your whole profile. I can see why you are angry. There is nothing in your profile that says you are ineligible for the United States. You are quite clearly not a threat to the United States.’”

McAliskey insists the actions “had to do with how jumpy and scared and unnerved and irrational the Americans are at this time.”

McAliskey is pursuing the case through the Irish courts and filed a formal complaint with the U.S. consulate in Dublin. She suspects that the U.S. immigration and political control reaches part of Dublin. “I must have some right under the Irish Constitution to know who[sent the fax], why they did it and what remedy I have. So I will be writing to Department of Foreign Affairs, but my suspicion is that we have leased that portion to America and that we have no protection of our rights against American Immigration at Dublin Airport.”

The Blanket (lark.phoblact.net) is a journal of protest and dissent

Iraq war forces Indian workers home

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 09:00:00 +0000

TRIVANDRUM, India – Airports all over India are now overflowing with workers returning from the Middle East. Every day thousands of Indians are coming back, leaving their life-long earnings and their dreams of a better life behind with their jobs. India’s economy will be affected by the war on Iraq. India relies on Gulf states for the bulk of its oil supplies and nearly 3.5 million Indian expatriates are employed in the region. These workers pumped foreign currency into the Indian economy. Ninety percent of foreign money transactions had been done by Non-Resident Indians (NRI), who live and work in the Gulf region. The banking sector is struggling because of no revenue from their NRI customers.

Large and small-scale industries in India are also in trouble now. Goods transportation is showing negative signals due to the drastically hiking oil prices. People are forced to pay high prices for food and drinking water. Agricultural exports to the Gulf countries have come to a standstill.

Retail shops are also facing economic problems because the buying capacity of most people has been in distress since the gathering of war clouds over the Middle East.

The government of India is in a dilemma both politically and economically. Many state governments are also facing the same problem, even though special task forces are working overtime to tackle the problems.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has no specific plan about how to integrate the returnees into the economy. He has been “asked” by George W. Bush three times to “help” in the war. Demonstrations are taking place against the war and the Bush administration with a high degree of anger. The majority of people in India, like in many other nations, agree that this war is illegitimate, inhuman and totally unnecessary.

On March 22, thousands of people from many different backgrounds gathered in New Delhi and marched to the U.S embassy.

Political party leaders, members of parliament, activists, school children, film actors, workers and laborers from various sectors took part in the march. Police blocked them some 50 meters away from the main gate of embassy.

But a brave group of 22 protesters slipped away from the crowd and rushed to the embassy gate. They chained themselves to a fence near the main gate. The police had to call in for help from Delhi Corporation authorities to cut the chains using heavy equipment.

Participatants in the action included former Prime Minister of India I.K.Gujral, General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association Brinda Karat, Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Communist Party of India leader D. Raja.

Reknowned writer Arundhathi Roy said that the U.S. should be expelled from the United Nations for its blatant violation of international law. She appealed to people to impose ‘sanctions’ on America by boycotting American goods.

Three hundred thousand people marched through the streets of Kolkata on March 30 to register an emphatic and vociferous protest against the U.S. aggression on Iraq. The city, long known for its anti-imperialist, anti-war traditions, reverberated with slogans condemning the U.S. aggression and unequivocally called for a cessation of the war. Though the city saw protest rallies the day the U.S.-British aggression began, Sunday’s march was by far the biggest. The march was organized by the nine-party Left Front and several other parties.

A day earlier, on March 29, Left-led students’ organizations called a statewide students strike.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org