WW News Service Digest #245
1) Bush picks Otto Reich: A man with Nicaraguan blood on his hands
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) April 4 rally to honor Dr. King by supporting Mumia
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Critical Resistance East: Conference scores U.S. injustice system
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WHO IS OTTO REICH?
BUSH PICK HAS NICARAGUAN BLOOD ON HIS HANDS
By G. Dunkel
The Bush administration has proposed the nomination of Otto
J. Reich as assistant secretary of state for the Western
Hemisphere. They must feel they need a skilled propagandist
and covert-action expert to handle the hot crisis in
Colombia and the emerging struggles in Ecuador, Argentina
and Mexico.
Reich is a Cuban exile who made it big in the business
world, peddling his influence as a public relations expert.
Bacardi-Martini paid him $600,000 after he got a provision
into the Helms-Burton Act allowing the company to sue its
foreign competitors in U.S. courts for doing business with
Cuba--an extra twist in tightening the embargo.
He also worked on getting Lockheed permission to sell F-16
jet aircraft to Chile, which broke a two-decade ban on
exporting high-tech weapons to Latin America.
Gov. Jeb Bush also supports him because Reich is an
important figure in the right wing of the Cuban community in
Miami, a bedrock of Republican electoral support in Florida.
But Reich may be most valued by the new Bush administration
for the role he played in overturning the Nicaraguan
revolution in the 1980s through a dirty and illegal contra
war.
WASHINGTON'S WAR ON NICARAGUA
The Somoza family controlled Nicaragua from 1934, when Gen.
Anastasio Somoza García carried out a coup, to July 19,
1978. That's when a popular army, led by the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN), seized the capital city of
Managua after years of guerrilla struggle.
The Somozas had relied on the firm and copious support of
the United States to maintain their rule, and certainly
returned the favors. For example, they supplied the bases
from which Cuban mercenaries organized by the Central
Intelligence Agency launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba in 1961.
Founded in 1961, the FSLN led an increasingly popular
struggle against the corrupt and brutal regime. Its appeal
grew especially after the great earthquake of 1972, when the
government did nothing to help the suffering population but
pocket international aid money. The front led mass strikes,
armed actions, big protests and hostage takeovers. It won
over the peasants, who didn't have enough land to support
themselves, and women.
According to Holly Sklar in "Washington's War on Nicaragua,"
women not only provided a significant part of the leadership
of the armed wing of the FSLN, they made up about 30 percent
of some of its armed units.
When the Sandinistas finally took over in 1979, they faced
an economic, political and social crisis. Some 2 percent of
Nicaragua's people--50,000--had been killed over the
previous two years; cities that hadn't been destroyed in the
earthquake had been destroyed in the fighting. Somoza and
his family and friends looted the banks, taking about $500
million before they fled. Two out of three Nicaraguans lived
in severe poverty, according to the UN, and one out of the
two didn't even earn enough for food.
U.S. government economists, according to Sklar, estimated
Nicaragua would need $800 million in aid to restore the
economy. The Sandinista government certainly didn't get
anything near what it needed, but it was still able to do a
lot. It won a UNESCO prize in 1980 for reducing illiteracy
from over 50 percent to 13 percent. The poorest villages got
clean water and basic medical care. The government
redistributed Somoza's extensive land holdings.
It was certainly willing and anxious to have peaceful
relations with the United States, but most Sandinistas were
far more inspired by Cuban communism than U.S. capitalism.
WORKED WITH OLIVER NORTH
By the end of 1981, the Reagan administration was fully
committed to overthrowing the Sandinistas. It set up a group
of counter-revolutionaries who came to be called the Contras
and began funding and arming them.
In 1982, Otto Reich, then assistant administrator for Latin
America of the Agency for International Development,
testified before Congress that the U.S. was sending aid to
Nicaragua, but not through the usual central banking
channels. It was going directly to groups like the Private
Enterprise Council, the Associations of Cattlemen, Coffee
Growers and Rice Producers, the American School and the
Roman Catholic Church. All these groups opposed the
Sandinistas. (Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1982)
Then Ambassador Reich became head of the U.S. State
Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, where he worked
directly with Lt. Col. Oliver North. North was running the
whole operation against the Sandinistas out of his office in
the basement of the White House. North illegally sold arms
to Iran and used the profits to fund the Contras.
Reich was officially a member of the National Security
Council, headed by President Ronald Reagan and Vice-
president George Bush. The NSC had a number of CIA station
chiefs and Pentagon intelligence operatives on it.
The role of Reich's office was to discredit positive images
of Nicaragua and create negative ones, answering domestic
critics of the administration. He acted as a censor,
monitoring and pressuring the news media; for example, he
called National Public Radio "little Havana on the Potomac"
after it reported on a Contra massacre.
Now his talent for deception and flouting the law in the
interests of imperialist profit is once again in great
demand. The problem his nomination faces is that this
domestic propaganda work was prohibited by Congress at that
time and the Government Accounting Office issued a report in
1987 noting this violation. Since nothing else was done
about it, and the Sandinistas gave up power after 10 years
of armed destruction by the Contras led to an election
victory for the U.S.-supported opposition, Reich could get
the nomination.
Whether or not Reich gets in, the fact that Bush picked a
spy-master and propaganda expert to head U.S. diplomacy in
Latin America says a lot about the way he intends to handle
the growing mass resurgence there.
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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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ON APRIL 4: RALLY TO HONOR DR. KING BY SUPPORTING MUMIA
By Greg Butterfield
New York
Anti-racists, community activists and death-penalty foes in
New York will commemorate the 33rd anniversary of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.'s assassination with a march and rally for
death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The April 4 demonstration is set to begin at 4:30 p.m.
outside the Federal Court Building at 40 Foley Square in
Manhattan, near City Hall. The protest is co-sponsored by
the International Action Center, International Concerned
Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the New York Free Mumia
Coalition, the Jericho Movement, the Patrice Lumumba
Coalition, Asians for Mumia, the Haiti Support Network and
others.
Actions and teach-ins are also being planned in other
cities, including Abu-Jamal's hometown of Philadelphia.
"Mumia's upcoming court appearance before Judge William Yohn
could be his last," explained IAC Co-director Larry Holmes.
"He will soon appear in federal court to argue for the right
to present a mountain of evidence proving his innocence.
This is his last mandated court date. All subsequent
hearings are at the discretion of the courts.
"We must mobilize for Mumia now," he said.
The King commemoration is one of several activities planned
this spring to draw attention to Abu-Jamal's case. On March
24 a Youth Conference for Mumia is planned in Philadelphia,
followed by an East Coast Strategy Conference in Washington
March 31.
Mass protests are planned in Philadelphia, San Francisco and
other cities worldwide on May 12--the International Day of
Solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal.
At any time Judge Yohn could announce a date for Abu-Jamal's
hearing at the Federal Court in downtown Philadelphia. When
that happens, supporters across the country will mobilize to
fill the courtroom and rally outside.
"We need to mobilize in large numbers and with a strong
message, both now and on Mumia's day in court," said Imani
Henry of Rainbow Flags for Mumia, the lesbian/gay/ bi/trans
solidarity group. "We must force Yohn to hold that
evidentiary hearing and overturn Mumia's conviction. This
would result in his release or at the very least a new
trial."
Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and award-winning
journalist, was accused of killing a white Philadelphia cop
on Dec. 7, 1981. He has always maintained his innocence.
Last year Yohn rejected a series of "friend of the court"
briefs filed on Abu-Jamal's behalf. One of these briefs, by
the Chicana/Chicano Studies Foundation, brought to light new
evidence that Abu-Jamal's court-appointed attorney conspired
with the trial judge and prosecutor to secure a conviction
and death sentence.
"These new revelations came on top of all the earlier
evidence of police intimidation of witnesses, jury
manipulation to exclude African Americans, the concoction of
a phony confession story, suppression of ballistics
evidence, etc.," Henry said.
"None of this is in the official record presented to Yohn or
whatever judge might hear the case later. Mumia must be
allowed to present this evidence and prove his innocence
once and for all."
For more information or to get involved with the planned
activities, readers can call the IAC at (212) 633-6646 and
visit the Web site www.mumia2000.org; or call International
Concerned Family & Friends at
(215) 476-8812 and visit the Web site www.mumia.org.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
CRITICAL RESISTANCE EAST: CONFERENCE SCORES U.S. INJUSTICE SYSTEM
By Leslie Feinberg
New York
More than a thousand people took part in "Critical
Resistance East" here on March 9-11. The three-day
conference dealt with many facets of the U.S. prison-
industrial complex.
Activists young and old traveled from all over the Northeast
and as far away as California to attend, including many
people of color and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people. The
conference drew former prisoners, family members of
prisoners, students, scholars and activists from diverse
struggles.
Some 2,000 people attended a March 10 evening program held
in Riverside Church in Harlem. Former political prisoner
Angela Davis delivered the address at that event. Exiled
political prisoner Assata Shakur sent a message of
solidarity from her safe haven in Cuba. Marilyn Buck, who is
serving a total of 80 years behind bars, also sent a
message.
Packed workshops left many standing in the halls listening
to the discussions. Dozens of workshops and round tables
took up many aspects of the prison-industrial complex,
including the corporate exploitation of prisoners for
profit.
The impact of prisons on people from oppressed
nationalities, women, youths, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and
trans individuals were topics of various workshops. So was
the struggle to free political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal and
Leonard Peltier.
In a media release, organizers explained, "The three-day
conference is designed to initiate a dialogue on the issues
to collectively build new strategies against the systematic
injustices in courts, policing and prisons. Critical
Resistance East is a regional conference, which will focus
on 12 states in the mid-Atlantic region and the northeast."
The New York conference grew out of a similar 1998 gathering
in Berkeley, Calif., which attracted 2,000 activists .
Today in the United States 2 million people--
disproportionately people of color--are locked away behind
bars. The U.S. population is only 5 percent of the world's
total. But this country's prison population is 25 percent of
prisoners around the world.
