>
>Athens to Sydney, in 24 cities in 14 countries, there have
>been tribunal hearings."
>
>Readers wanting more information on these war crimes
>hearings can contact the International Action Center at
>(212) 633-6646, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] on the Web at
>www.iacenter.org.
>
>
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 22:52:48 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Alert! Stop Execution of Shaka Sankofa!
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ALERT: NATIONAL DAYS OF COORDINATED ACTIONS
>
>JUNE 16-19
>STOP THE EXECUTION OF SHAKA SANKOFA! (GARY GRAHAM)
>END THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
>Initiated by INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER
>For more information
>call (212) 633-6646
>www.iacenter.org
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 22:55:51 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] How U.S. Blocks Palestinian Homeland
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>EDITORIAL: HOW U.S. BLOCKS PALESTINIAN HOMELAND
>
>On May 15, the 52nd anniversary of the creation of the state
>of Israel, the still-occupied West Bank and Gaza exploded in
>anger and rebellion. Known as "al-Nakba," or "the
>catastrophe," May 15, 1948, symbolizes to the Palestinian
>people the loss of their homeland.
>
>In the weeks before and after that date, more than three-
>quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from their land
>in order to make way for the establishment of the Israeli
>settler state.
>
>Today, more than four million Palestinians--the expelled of
>1948 and their descendants--remain refugees, denied the right
>of return to their country. Denial of the right to return is
>one of the issues that triggered the latest round of militant
>struggle. The long years of "peace talks" have failed to
>achieve any progress on this point.
>
>Other key issues include the status of Jerusalem--
>universally seen by Palestinians as their capital city--the
>continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank,
>water rights, and the continued Israeli detention of nearly
>2,000 Palestinian political prisoners, who have suffered
>torture and abuse.
>
>In addition, the limited parts of Gaza and especially the
>West Bank that have been turned over to Palestinian
>administration are broken up by countless Israeli-held
>territories, roads and military checkpoints. A U.S.-based
>columnist recently noted that if on a map of the West Bank the
>Palestinian-administered areas were highlighted in red, it
>would look like the area had a "bad case of the measles."
>
>All of Jerusalem has been illegally annexed by Israel and
>expanded to nearly cut the West Bank in two. The Israeli
>state, whether directed by Labor Party or by Likud Party
>governments, has consistently sought to conclude the Oslo
>"peace process" by leaving the Palestinians with a powerless
>and dependent entity, a kind of "bantustan" like the phony
>states that apartheid South Africa once established.
>
>The Palestinians, on the other hand, have fought heroically
>and at great sacrifice for decades to achieve a truly
>independent state. The latest Palestinian "intifada" or
>"uprising" is another manifestation of this long struggle.
>
>What has to be taken into account, however, is that it's not
>just Israel vs. the Palestinians. The United States, the
>world's pre-eminent imperialist power, while pretending to be
>a "neutral broker" in the negotiations, is anything but. The
>U.S. has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel's
>economy over the past half-century without which the Israeli
>state could not have survived. No other country has received
>even a quarter of the aid that this small state has obtained.
>
>The Pentagon has made Israel into a major world military
>power, supplying it with nuclear, chemical, biological and all
>kinds of conventional weapons. The U.S. has supported Israel
>as it has run roughshod over the rights of the Palestinian and
>other Arab peoples, and has protected Israel from any and all
>international penalties for its repeated violations of
>international law.
>
>In this light, the U.S. and Israel must really be seen as
>being part of the same team. The incomparable U.S. support
>for Israel has nothing to do with sympathy for Jewish people.
>Imperialism does not operate on the basis of sentiment. While
>to the world Israel may appear to be a small country, from the
>Pentagon and finance capital's point of view it's a giant and
>irreplaceable military base strategically placed in the heart
>of a key region.
>
>Israel is seen as an indispensable component in the global
>U.S. imperial system. According to "common sense" the combined
>might of the U.S. and Israel should have long ago vanquished
>the Palestinians, who have no secure territory, no rear base,
>and no longer any dependable supplier of aid.
>
>But what happened on May 15, 2000, showed that the
>Palestinian cause is far from defeated. The Palestinians will
>accept nothing less than a fully independent homeland. In
>their just struggle, they deserve the unconditional support of
>the world's working class and anti-war movements.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 22:57:25 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Sierra Leone History of Colonial Intervention
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>SIERRA LEONE IN CRISIS: A HISTORY OF COLONIAL
>INTERVENTION
>
>By Johnnie Stevens
>
>Renewed fighting in Sierra Leone in the last few weeks
>should be of great concern to the workers and oppressed the
>world over. There is a danger that the story of the missing
>United Nations troops could be used by Africa's former
>colonial powers in Europe and by the United States as a
>provocation to justify military intervention in the civil
>war, just as the Gulf of Tonkin incident was used in
>Vietnam in 1964.
>
>The first step toward analyzing the situation in Sierra
>Leone requires restating the background and history free of
>the racist bias of the big-business media.
>
>Since 1991 some 74,000 people have died in this civil war.
>A half-million refugees were forced into neighboring
>Liberia and Guinea-Conakry.
>
>Historically, the UN has played the part of lackey for the
>Group of Seven imperialist powers and the International
>Monetary Fund--denying Sierra Leone's people the use of
>their own natural resources like diamonds.
>
>Congo (Kinshasa) and Haiti are two countries where UN
>troops entered as "peacekeepers" and wound up turning the
>country over to the imperialists.
>
>New forces amassing in Sierra Leone today in the name of
>"peace keeping" and "human rights" include troops from the
>Economic Community of West African Nations, 19 West African
>countries led by Nigeria. Earlier these troops put down a
>soldiers' rebellion in the Ivory Coast for not paying for a
>peace-keeping mission there.
>
>British troops are in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital,
>ready to become a part of an international occupying force.
>Other European Union forces are poised to intervene. And
>the United States has a naval warship nearby, off the West
>African coast.
>
>Then there are the diamond companies like DeBeers, which
>have private armies in Sierra Leone. Between 1930 and 1996,
>Sierra Leone produced $15 billion in rough diamonds.
>
>DeBeers Chairperson Nickey Oppenheimer was penalized by
>the South African government for buying $5 billion worth of
>diamonds from the counter-revolutionary UNITA forces, which
>have been fighting the Angolan government since 1975--much
>of that time with the backing of apartheid South Africa and
>Washington.
>
>The capitalist-driven market will find a way of
>controlling other diamond-producing nations. War is one
>means to do so, even though war denies people their basic
>rights. This scramble by the imperialist powers for control
>of the region runs the risk of a global war.
>
>COLONIAL PLUNDER
>
>The West African nation of Sierra Leone has been plundered
>for centuries by the big capitalist powers of the West.
>
>>From the late 16th century until 1865, its people were
>enslaved and taken from their homeland. Seventy thousand
>freed slaves resettled there during the 1800s.
>
>Sierra Leone won independence from Britain in 1961. But
>its people continue to live in poverty and crisis as the
>United States, Britain and other imperialist powers--often
>acting through proxy governments in Nigeria and Liberia--
>keep the country destabilized in order to continue robbing
>Sierra Leone's enormous natural wealth.
>
>The country's 4.8 million people consist of two major
>ethnic groups--Temne, 30 percent, Mende, 30 percent--and
>others. The per-capita gross domestic product amounts to
>only $159 per year. Diamonds, bauxite, cocoa, coffee, palm
>kernels and corn are the major contributors to the economy.
>
>Some 75 percent of the population live in abject poverty.
>Life expectancy is 36 years for women and 39 years for men.
>
>A civil war has raged in Sierra Leone since 1991. There
>have been several coups by military factions.
>
>In 1998 President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was returned to power
>by troops of the Economic Community of West African States.
>This 19-country, Nigerian-led force is sometimes called the
>"African NATO."
>
>In July 1999 Kabbah's government signed a peace accord
>with two rebel armies--the Liberia-based Revolutionary
>United Front and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council--
>and brought their members into a governing coalition. The
>peace accord broke down early this year after RUF charged
>the government and AFRC with violating the agreement.
>
>Fearing a rerun of Somalia, where U.S. invaders were
>driven out by the people, Washington, London and Paris
>declined to send their own troops. But they supported
>sending a UN "peacekeeping" force of 8,700 troops from
>Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, India, Guinea, Jordan and Zambia to
>defend the Kabbah government.
>
>Tensions grew as the rebels closed in on Freetown.
>Starting in late April, RUF forces captured hundreds of UN
>troops. Heavy fighting in northern Sierra Leone drove
>350,000 refugees into neighboring Guinea.
>
>Now the imperialists, afraid that they will lose their
>profit pipeline to Sierra Leone's diamonds, are beginning
>to intervene directly.
>
>Several hundred British paratroops, accompanied by an
>aircraft carrier and other ships, have landed in Freetown--
>supposedly to evacuate British nationals. However, on May 9
>British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told BBC-TV that the
>troops could be part of a new "international force."
>
>Ominously, a heavily armed U.S. Navy warship has also been
>sent to the area. U.S. planes are airlifting Bangladeshi
>troops into Sierra Leone.
>
>On its web site www.sierra-leone.org/footpaths.html, RUF
>says it is a Muslim movement fighting to restore Sierra
>Leone's natural wealth to the people after centuries of
>colonial plunder.
>
>Many stories have appeared in the Western media alleging
>atrocities by the rebels. Whatever the case, working and
>poor people in the United States should remember that
>Washington and the big-business media are not neutral
>parties.
>
>U.S. corporations and banks make big profits off the backs
>of African workers and peasants and plunder the continent's
>natural resources. The imperialists want access to plunder
>Sierra Leone's diamonds and other natural wealth.
>
>Sierra Leone is a playground for imperialist rivalries in
>West Africa among the United States, Britain and European
>Union, just like Congo, Angola and other diamond-rich
>lands.
>
>The current UN occupation and the deepening involvement of
>the United States, Britain and EU are not the results of
>"humanitarianism." The imperialists are interested in
>profits, not the people of Sierra Leone.
>
>Remember, the U.S./UN forces are responsible for the
>genocide of 1.5 million Iraqi people through sanctions.
>
>The people of Sierra Leone and West Africa have the right
>to determine their own destiny free of imperialist
>interference.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
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