>
> WW News Service Digest #97
>
> 1) Africa & AIDS: Protesters disrupt Congress
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) Albright's speech prompts protest
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) 'What's happening in Iraq is genocide'
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) The AFL-CIO and the China Trade Relations Act
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) Prominent Black paper features May 7 Day for Mumia
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 6) In occupied Kosovo: NATO, UN admit women are enslaved
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
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>Message-ID: <000d01bfc281$98b80630$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Africa & AIDS: Protesters disrupt Congress
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 13:34:05 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BEHIND GROWTH & OPPORTUNITY ACT: "ASFRICA IS NOT FOR SALE"
>
>By Pam Parker
>Washington
>
>There was no business as usual here May 4 as activists
>protesting a vote on the "Africa Growth and Opportunity
>Act" shut down Congress. Members of ACT UP Philadelphia and
>a delegation of militant students stormed into the gallery
>of Congress shouting "Africa is not for sale!" and "AIDS
>drugs now!"
>
>They chained themselves to chairs and balconies as they
>unfurled banners that read the same.
>
>The controversial trade bill, HR 1432, was initiated three
>years ago in the Senate. It has since gathered widespread
>support from both houses of Congress and the Clinton
>administration.
>
>The bill never really offered fair trade to southern
>Africa. But the recent revisions have been especially
>biased--and have ignited a firestorm from activists who
>organize to improve medical care for people with AIDS.
>
>The bill finally cleared Congress on May 12.
>
>The South African government began manufacturing less
>expensive versions of AZT, the most-used AIDS drug, and
>other life-extending drugs to use for the many people with
>AIDS in that country. An estimated 3.6 million people are
>infected with HIV in South Africa. That is close to 8.6
>percent of the population.
>
>Several big pharmaceutical companies that hold the patents
>for these drugs threatened to sue South Africa for
>producing its own less costly versions of the drugs. The
>U.S. government, at the behest of these pharmaceuticals,
>warned South Africa that its actions were jeopardizing
>passage of the trade bill.
>
>Nelson Mandela and many in the South African government,
>including the Congress of South African Trade Unions, have
>denounced the bill. They characterize it as "extreme and
>unjust."
>
>Many African nations agree. But, burdened with tremendous
>debt and ravaged by years of colonization, they are forced
>to do business with the imperialists. When South Africa
>came under attack, many in the U.S. AIDS movement organized
>in support of that nation.
>
>STRUGGLE WON CONCESSIONS
>
>In response to widespread protests, the U.S. government
>entered into an agreement with South Africa that would
>allow that country to continue to manufacture the cheaper
>versions of the drugs, without supporting the
>pharmaceutical companies' contention that South Africa was
>violating intellectual property rights. Washington never
>agreed that the pharmaceuticals should not have the right
>to sue--only that it would not offer U.S. tax dollars
>toward those efforts.
>
>Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis
>Hastert stripped even that language from the bill. This
>leaves no assurance that Africa would be able to produce
>its own versions of the life-extending drugs.
>
>They also removed any language that offered to protect
>human rights. There are also no binding labor agreements in
>favor of the workers--most notably no provision against
>violations of child labor laws.
>
>The corporations that have endorsed the bill--Occidental
>Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Caterpillar, Amoco--are certainly no
>friends of the working class. They would not be involved
>for humanitarian reasons. They are involved because of the
>promise of super-profits.
>
>With this agreement, these corporations are guaranteed
>hundreds of millions of dollars. Sub-Saharan Africa is home
>to over 700 million people. This is potentially one of the
>largest markets in the world.
>
>The corporations get to snap up these resources at bargain
>prices. They get a 10-year moratorium on export tariffs
>from the participating countries, and assurances that human
>rights and labor laws will be ignored.
>
>In exchange for their participation, the African nations
>that sign on to this agreement would be required to join
>the World Trade Organization, a move that many have thus
>far chosen not to make. They would have to adhere to the
>harsh requirements of the International Monetary Fund--
>including radical economic restructuring, reducing the size
>of their governments, and privatizing much of their
>infrastructure and precious resources.
>
>They would have to direct their agriculture even more
>toward export and away from domestic needs. This is on a
>continent where four out of 10 people are already in some
>way malnourished.
>
>At the same time, the bill would offer no debt relief, and
>no provision that would allow these suffering nations to
>develop medicines and resources that could help themselves.
>
>This bill is no solution to the development crisis in
>Africa. Instead of leading to better opportunities and
>growth, it will lead directly to deeper poverty, and more
>deaths due to AIDS. The bill is nothing but a thinly veiled
>attempt to cover up the subjugation, racism and oppression
>that have been the U.S. policy toward the continent of
>Africa for centuries.
>
>In a related development, on May 11 five giant
>pharmaceutical companies offered to cut prices on their
>AIDS drugs in the poorer developing countries to 20 percent
>of the price in the rest of the world.
>
>While this is a big concession, it still prices these
>medicines out of the reach of most people in these
>oppressed countries.
>
>At the same time, it exposes the enormous mark-up in
>prices on AIDS drugs in the United States and Europe, where
>the pharmaceuticals rake in enormous super-profits for
>their patented medicines.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <001301bfc281$ac90e550$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Albright's speech prompts protest
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 13:34:39 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
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>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BERKELEY, CALIF: ALBRIGHT'S SPEECH PROMPTS PROTEST
>
>By Nancy Mitchell
>Berkeley, Calif.
>
>In a development that outraged progressives, the
>administration of the University of California at Berkeley
>invited Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to give the
>keynote address at this year's senior convocation at the
>commencement ceremonies May 13. Albright, along with
>President Bill Clinton and Secretary of Defense William
>Cohen, is notorious worldwide as a vicious spokesperson for
>U.S. imperialism.
>
>The university has long since lost its reputation as a
>radical institution. So perhaps the UC-Berkeley
>administration thought it could get away with asking
>someone who represents U.S. aggression worldwide to speak
>at its impressive Greek Theater.
>
>The administrators were wrong. Hundreds of protesters
>greeted Albright with a strong message to the ruling class
>that its murderous representatives and their bloody lies
>are not welcome in this community.
>
>Eight thousand students, family members and friends
>attending the convocation first had to pass a rally outside
>the Greek Theater's entrance. There, 200 protesters
>denounced Albright and distributed information about the
>genocidal U.S. foreign policy she represents and what it
>has meant for countries from Iraq to Colombia, Yugoslavia
>to Puerto Rico and Cuba.
>
>Police searched attendees thoroughly before allowing them
>to enter the theater. Police also forced them to throw away
>any leaflets they had received.
>
>But the police couldn't keep the protest's message from
>getting to the crowd. Chanting from outside could be heard
>throughout the program in the open-air theater. Police also
>couldn't keep out the protesters, many of whom were
>students.
>
>When Albright rose to address the crowd, she had to look
>straight ahead at a banner that read "Madeleine Albright is
>a War Criminal."
>
>Dozens of clusters of protesters rose, one after the
>other, shouting, "How many kids have you killed today?" and
>"You are guilty of war crimes!"
>
>The disruptions remained constant throughout her speech.
>In all, police ejected 59 protesters from the theater.
>
>As police scurried around to remove the protesters,
>Albright served up the standard boasts that Washington had
>promoted human rights around the world, fought the
>trafficking in women, and contributed to peace in the
>Middle East. She made no mention of the 1.5 million Iraqi
>people who have died at the hands of U.S. policy, nor of
>the criminal destruction of Yugoslavia. She gloated about
>the U.S. role in "saving the Kosovars."
>
>When International Action Center activists chanted as they
>unfurled a banner reading "Clinton, Albright, you can't
>hide! We charge you with genocide!" Albright took a lengthy
>pause from her talk to read the banner. Then she tried to
>cover for herself by saying, "It's Berkeley, what do you
>expect?"
>
>The most courageous of the protesters was graduating
>senior Fadia Rafeedie, a University Medalist. Rafeedie's
>address was scheduled for just before Albright's. This
>Palestinian-American woman had planned to denounce Albright
>and U.S. policies from the podium.
>
>But before she had the chance, the UC ad ministration
>changed the order of the talks, so that Albright could
>speak first and be whisked away instead of being
>humiliated.
>
>Rafeedie rose from this insult, altered her speech, and
>gave a powerful polemic to her classmates about the
>genocidal sanctions against Iraq. She made reference to the
>notorious "60 Minutes" interview in 1996, when Albright
>publicly declared that Washington's sanctions against Iraq
>were "worth the price" of the lives of a half-million Iraqi
>children.
>
>Although Albright pretended to be unaffected by the
>disruption, those outside saw her sprawled stomach-down
>across the back seat as her car sped away from the protest.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <001901bfc281$bf9cfe90$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] 'What's happening in Iraq is genocide'
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 13:35:11 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>"WHAT'S HAPPENING IN IRAQ IS GENOCIDE"
>
>[Excerpts from a talk by University Medalist Fadia Rafeedie
>at UC-Berkeley May 13, following Secretary of State
>Madeleine Albright's address.]
>
>I was going to remind her [Madeleine Albright] and I was
>going to remind you that four years ago, I heard her on "60
>Minutes" talking to a reporter who had just returned from
>Iraq. The reporter was describing that a million children
>died due to the sanctions that this country was imposing on
>the people of Iraq. And she told her, listen, "that's more
>children than have died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you
>think the price is worth it?"
>
>[Albright] looked into the camera and she said, "The price
>is worth it."
>
>And I was going to tell her, "Do you really think the
>price is worth it?"
>
>I need to speak about Iraq because I think what's
>happening there is a genocide. It's another holocaust.
>
>And I'm a history major, and sometimes I look back at
>history and I see things like the slave trade, the
>Holocaust you know, I see people dropping atomic bombs and
>not thinking what the ramifications are, and I don't want
>us to think about Iraq that way.
>
> In Iraq, the hospitals, they clean the floors with
>gasoline because detergent
>isn't even allowed in because of the
>sanctions.
>
>These are all United States policies.
>
>And Secretary Albright--she's a symbol. ... In fact, she
>was introduced as the "greatest woman of our times." Now
>see, to me that's an insult.
>
>United Nations inspectors found [again] that Iraq has no
>nuclear capabilities and yet we are bombing them every
>other day with depleted uranium. And what this does is it
>releases a gas that the people breathe. It's making them
>ill, and they're dying and they don't have medicine.
>
>I'm speaking to a crowd that gave a standing ovation to
>the woman who typifies everything against which I stand,
>and I'm still telling you this because I think it's
>important to understand.
>
>And I think that if I achieve nothing else, if this makes
>you think a little bit about Iraq, think a little bit about
>U.S. foreign policy, I've succeeded.
>
>Thank you very much.
>
>[Standing ovation]
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <001f01bfc281$d3b5f3f0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] The AFL-CIO and the China Trade Relations Act
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 13:35:44 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>THE AFL-CIO AND THE CHINA TRADE RELATIONS ACT
>
>By Milt Neidenberg
>
>The AFL-CIO has embarked on a furious campaign to oppose
>the Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act, which would
>normalize trade relations with the People's Republic of
>China and speed that country's entry into the World Trade
>Organization.
>
>President Bill Clinton has assembled an array of powerful
>forces--including Wall Street, its allies and congressional
>supporters--to overwhelm the AFL-CIO opposition. Getting
>the act passed in Congress is a must for a substantial
>section of the ruling class. Their plan is to exploit the
>markets in China where there are over 1 billion people.
>
>This is what progressives, class-conscious workers and the
>activist youths who battled in Seattle and Washington must
>oppose as they continue to fight the International Monetary
>Fund, World Bank and the World Trade Organization. The
>forces of capitalist globalization would like to turn China
>into one huge sweatshop.
>
>The corporate-owned media have charged the AFL-CIO with a
>return to protectionism and isolationism. They charge the
>labor leaders with a rerun of the Cold War times of AFL-CIO
>Presidents George Meany and Lane Kirkland.
>
>AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has emphatically denied
>this. But leaders from the Auto Workers, Steel Workers,
>Teamsters, and Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and
>Textile Employees have created such an anti-Chinese frenzy
>to defeat the bill that there's a grave concern that there
>is some truth to the charge.
>
>These union leaders say China has conspired with
>transnational corporations to bring about an exodus of U.S.
>factories, used low-paid Chinese labor to produce for the
>market in this country, repressed independent unions,
>illegally exported goods produced in forced-labor camps,
>and so on.
>
>These unsubstantiated and virulent charges have begun to
>isolate the AFL-CIO from other sectors of the international
>labor movement.
>
>The attacks smack of such rampant racism that Zwelinzima
>Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African
>Trade Unions, questioned the hypocrisy of the campaign.
>Vavi noted that the Chinese government and labor movement
>supported the liberation struggle against apartheid in
>South Africa.
>
>Vavi suggested a meeting with the Chinese unions to
>discuss these so-called problems. To date there has been no
>response from the AFL-CIO leadership.
>
>These AFL-CIO charges against China--itself a target of
>U.S. imperialist attacks--divert attention from Corporate
>America's ever-expanding prison-industrial complex, child
>
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