WW News Service Digest #376
1) U.S. abuses POWs
by WW
2) Enron's scandal, skullduggery and swindling
by WW
3) Michigan: Gov't moves detained Muslim leader
by WW
4) 'Black Hawk Down': Pentagon war propaganda
by WW
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: torstai 24. tammikuu 2002 13:21
Subject: [WW] U.S. abuses POWs
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 31, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
Worldwide outcry says
U.S. ABUSES POWs
Another reason to hate this war
By Deirdre Griswold
The cruel, illegal and unprecedented treatment of prisoners
captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and flown halfway
around the world to "Camp X-Ray" in Guantanamo, Cuba, should
be a matter of grave concern to anyone worrying about where
U.S. society is going.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doesn't see anything
wrong with what his Pentagon is doing. He said so in a
lengthy, rambling briefing on Jan. 22 intended as damage
control after the International Committee of the Red Cross
criticized the conditions at the camp, and after a group of
lawyers, including former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark,
filed a petition in Los Angeles challenging the detentions.
Rumsfeld won't even admit that the prisoners are prisoners
and therefore subject to certain international norms of
conduct. He calls them "unlawful combatants," which is
supposed to allow the Pentagon to do anything they want with
these men.
Anyone who ever served in the military knows that you are
told only to give your "name, rank and serial number" if
taken prisoner. The 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment
of prisoners of war protects them from brutal treatment,
torture and forced interrogation. Rumsfeld says the hell
with all that. On Jan. 11, the day the first prisoners
arrived at Guantanamo, the U.S. government announced
officially that it was refusing to abide by the Geneva
Convention.
What has shocked most of the world--prompting media
denunciations from even the staunchest allies of U.S.
imperialism in Europe--seems to have created barely a ripple
in the moneyed media here. All the news commentary is
designed to explain to the public why it is reasonable and
necessary that hundreds of men from the Middle East be
shackled, hooded, blindfolded, drugged, their arms and
sometimes mouths immobilized with tape, to be herded into
military planes and transported in this condition for a 27-
hour flight.
On arrival at the base that the Pentagon has arrogantly
imposed on Cuban soil, they are dragged into exposed, 6-by-8-
foot chain-link cages that would be condemned by dog owners
if their pets were confined there for any length of time.
But race and class hatred have so poisoned a large part of
the populace in the United States that plenty of apologists
can be found for this repugnant treatment of Arab and Asian
people.
Isn't what is happening an extension of the brutal and
racist prison conditions inside the U.S. itself? According
to the United Nations, this country imprisons more people
than any other in the world--some 2 million. Executions have
become routine here even as most other industrialized
countries have done away with capital punishment. The
popular culture takes for granted that prisoners are
tortured, raped, set up for beatings, driven mad by sensory
deprivation, and even murdered while in the custody of the
state.
U.S. "justice" throws poor people, especially those of
color, behind bars while it protects the quality of life of
the rich. Yet even this proven system of injustice is not
tough enough for Rumsfeld and the brass. They want their
prisoners kept off U.S. territory and outside the reach of
the Geneva Convention so they can have no recourse to either
constitutional rights or international protection.
Why is the Bush administration so anxious to keep these
prisoners, supposedly members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda,
from being able to communicate with the world in any way? Is
it really to stop terrorism? Or might there be other
reasons?
How many of them might indict the government and armed
forces of the U.S. for their deliberate bombings of Afghan
villages, hospitals, food warehouses, journalists,
surrendering troops, and even elders headed for Kabul? How
many might know the details of what dirty deals preceded the
military assault, when U.S. oil giant Unocal and government
officials were trying to get the Taliban to agree to a
pipeline through Afghanistan?
How many who came to Afghanistan from other Arab countries
hold secrets of CIA operations back when the U.S. was
backing the "mujahadeen," not only against the progressive
Afghan government of the 1980s, but in Kosovo, Bosnia,
Chechnya and other places targeted for fratricidal war by
the devious strategists in the U.S. foreign policy
establishment?
Just as the Enron corporation is now scrambling to shred its
compromising documents, the Pentagon and CIA are trying to
erase not just the hard drives but also the memories of
those it has used and abused.
It mustn't be forgotten that President George W. Bush's main
excuse for the war was to "get" Osama bin Laden, the
supposed mastermind of the World Trade Center and Pentagon
attacks. This dominated the news for months, but now bin
Laden is almost forgotten and the menacing eye of the
Pentagon has moved to other targets.
In the meanwhile, no evidence has been presented anywhere to
prove anything, except a sensationalized videotape with a
muffled soundtrack that is scoffed at by Arabic-speaking
people. The Pentagon, however, has thoughtfully provided the
U.S. media with a " justifying its assault upon yet another
poor nation.
No wonder they are doing everything possible to deny the
prisoners of war not only humane conditions but any contact
with the world or chance to have their day in court.
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: torstai 24. tammikuu 2002 13:25
Subject: [WW] Enron's scandal, skullduggery and swindling
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 31, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ENRON'S SCANDAL, SKULLDUGGERY AND SWINDLING
Capitalism's real core revealed in times of crisis
By Leslie Feinberg
Squalls of scandal swirl around the Enron collapse. The
lakes of printers' ink are deep with "she said" and "he
said" and "who knew what, when?"
Much is being made of the mountain of documents still being
shredded in recent days. The really tantalizing question--
what's more damning in those electronic and paper trails
than what has already been bared?--has yet to be answered.
Economic pundits and career politicians are writing off the
Enron financial failure, the largest corporate bankruptcy in
the history of the world, as though it was just a huge scam.
That makes it easier to offer the public assurance that
Enron was a corporate anomaly, an exception to the rule, a
glitch that won't happen again.
But one well-placed Washington attorney observed, "There are
many Enrons out there." "He knows because he has represented
a couple of them," notes William Greider in The Nation of
Feb. 4.
Those scrambling to save their assets are trying to
quarantine the Enron corporate collapse from public scrutiny
with yellow crime scene tape: "Nothing to see here folks,
keep moving." And no wonder. A closer look reveals the
foundations of capitalism itself.
Many of the "crimes" of Enron are really just business as
usual under capitalism. And, stresses economic analyst Louis
Uchitelle in the Jan. 20 New York Times, "Business booms are
famous for hiding underlying problems in an economy. It
takes a recession to make them obvious."
Of course, it's not necessary to dig deep in order to find
artifacts that point to scandal, skullduggery and swindling
in the Enron fiasco. First and foremost, when the economic
storm hit, the already affluent CEO captains unloaded more
than $1 billion in Enron shares and sailed away in lifeboats
with scads of cash. Meanwhile, the crew that had built and
kept the ship afloat watched every cent of their retirement
funds sink to the ocean floor.
Just before Enron imploded, 60 percent of its 401(k) assets
were reportedly held in its own company shares. (New York
Times, Jan. 20) As a result, 15,000 Enron workers lost $1.3
billion of the $2.1 billion that had been in their company
401(k) plan last year. (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 20)
Enron employees and shareholders are suing the corporation
to try to freeze $1 billion accumulated by Enron executives
when they secretly cashed in their stocks, anticipating
their collapse, while publicly saying that the company was
in great shape.
WHAT'S THIS 'WE' STUFF?
The employee retirement setup was unjust from the get-go. It
is part of a pattern of larger corporate crimes that should
be illegal, but aren't.
In the 1980s and 1990s, bosses sang a siren song about the
soaring stock market to millions of employees to persuade
them to invest in their own company's stock plans for their
retirement. Many times the stocks are "locked down";
employees can't sell off shares when the price tanks on the
market. Matching employee contributions to 401(k) plans with
company stock rather than cash was often cheaper for the
bosses.
But while top management can open golden parachutes in a
recession, workers crash to earth without a safety net.
And the built-in class gaps were further exacerbated during
the 1990s. Enron was one of many U.S. big businesses that
pruned back its employee retirement plans to save big bucks
while gifting top executives with profitable nest eggs, on
top of their already lucrative salaries. (Wall Street
Journal, Jan. 23)
The 401(k) lobby has fought hard to keep this status quo.
Pat Cleary, a vice president at the National Association of
Manufacturers--a lobbying group--argues, "There are a lot of
millionaires out there at all levels, white and blue collar,
who became millionaires by investing in their own companies'
stocks. We would not want to discourage that." (Wall Street
Journal, Jan. 20)
Do you know any?
Management mentor Peter Drucker maintains that the millions
of workers who have a few shares of company stocks are
actually the owners of the giant means of production--just
like Karl Marx wanted. This is what school kids are taught
in civics: "the people" are the ruling class in the United
States.
Enron shows this isn't what Marx meant at all when he said
the workers must liberate the means of production from the
capitalist class.
On the day the real owners of the company publicly declared
bankruptcy, the workers who had built it from the ground up
were reportedly given 30 minutes to get their possessions
and leave the privately owned premises. What did they own
when they left? A coffee mug, a leafy plant, desktop photos
of their loved ones. And stocks whose value had sunk from
$90 a share to 26 cents.
Former Enron employee Mark Lindquist doesn't know how he'll
pay for therapy for his autistic child. Clyde Johnson, a
single parent, doesn't know if he'll lose his home. Charles
Prestwood, a pipeline operator who's been with Enron since
the first day of its operations, summed it up: "I've lost
everything I had. I'm just barely surviving." (New York
Times, Jan. 20)
Tens of thousands of workers employed by other corporate
giants know just how desperate former Enron workers feel.
Coca-Cola, General Electric and McDonald's workers saw their
company's stock prices plummet by more than 20 percent in
the last year. All three have 401(k) plans that are deeply
invested in company stocks. (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 20)
Lucent Technology workers saw company stock plunge 92
percent in 18 months. Texas Instruments, whose stock is down
46 percent over the past two years, still has 76 percent of
its 401(k) fund in company stock. (Newsweek, Jan. 21) And
while Lucent's stock price took a nosedive, CEOs sold $12
million in shares back to the company.
NO TRANSNATIONAL IS AN ISLAND
Enron was no fly-by-night cockroach-capitalist enterprise.
The energy-trading behemoth ranked seventh among the
powerful Fortune 100 transnationals. It had offices and
operations in some 20 countries and territories in the
Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe.
Enron grew to handle one-fifth of the electricity and
natural gas sales in the United States. Enron Europe
accounted for about 20 percent of the continent's energy
trades.
Enron Online traded one out of every four energy deals in
this country through its Internet operations. (Washington
Post, Nov. 29)
Enron opened its trading floor in 1994 and packaged and
brokered energy like pork bellies. "They arrived at this
model back in the mid-1980s almost out of desperation, when
crude-oil prices had collapsed, natural-gas deregulation had
thrown that market into chaos, and the Peruvian government
had just nationalized Enron's offshore properties," observes
Time magazine. (Aug. 28, 2000)
Was Enron's spectacular financial collapse the result of
flimflam on an unparalleled scale? Or was the colossal
energy broker, ultimately, a casualty of the contracting
economic market?
It is true that Enron executives set up off-the-books
subsidiaries to pump up profits and mask debts. It's a
public fact now that the conglomerate paid no taxes for four
out of the last five years using the shelter of 900
subsidiaries in tax-haven countries. CEO Kenneth Lay
admitted last fall that his company overstated its profits
by $600 million and the stockholder equity by $1.1 billion.
"Enron systematically exploited a loophole in accounting
rules in which its trading revenue was booked at its gross
rather than its net value," says Forbes.com. "This practice,
possibly legal, made Enron's revenue seem dramatically
larger than it otherwise would have appeared."
But, the capitalist tool continues, "To be fair, Enron's
competitors such as Dynergy account for revenue the same
way."
The Jan. 23 Wall Street Journal explains, "Many companies
have turned to off-the-books partnerships to insulate
themselves from risks and share costs of expansion. Pressure
to develop new technologies, drugs and other products drives
companies into ventures with rivals that limit exposure."
The Journal continues, "And the growing use of the stock
market as a place for companies to raise capital means a
high stock price can be the difference between failure and
success. Hence, companies have an incentive to use
aggressive--but, under the rules, acceptable--accounting to
boost their reported earnings and prop up their stock
price."
Jonathan Alter, writing in Jan. 18 Newsweek, observes that
the Enron debacle will be a "full employment act for lawyers
for years to come." But, he emphasizes, "for all of the
potential criminal violations, much of the misbehavior
connected to the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the
world was perfectly legal." He adds, "As for the
politicians, accountants and regulators, most of what they
did will likely turn out to be disturbing, even disgusting--
but all-too-legal."
In other words, it's abhorrent; but it's business as usual.
According to the Nov. 29 Washington Post, the troubles for
Enron "began after energy prices fell this year,
undercutting trading profits. Costly investments in Internet
networks and foreign projects backfired."
The Jan. 23 Wall Street Journal agrees. "The problem wasn't
Enron's trading business," writes Business World columnist
Holman W. Jenkins Jr. "Enron's problem was bad assets of a
conventional variety: a power plant in India, utility and
pipeline investments in Brazil, a waterworks in Britain,
unused and inoperable telecommunications assets in this
country. Traditional accounting would have required the
company to mark down its current earnings to cover the
declining value of these assets."
He continues, "Worse, margins were eroding in Enron's core
energy trading business. The Wall Street factor: Enron ran
into the dilemma that comes to companies whose share prices
reflect extravagant hopes about the future that prove
unfounded--how do you let the air out of your own stock?"
While its meteoric rise was showering profits on all who
invested in the energy broker, Enron was a darling of Wall
Street. No wonder: the company's stock valuation reached a
summit of $66 billion in September 2000.
"Not only were most of the big Wall Street firms bullish on
Enron over the past few years as its stock went up," recalls
the Jan. 20 New York Times, "but they also kept the faith as
cracks started to appear in Enron's foundations last summer
and fall. Analysts at firms like Goldman Sachs, Lehman
Brothers, Salomon Smith Barney and UBS Warburg recommended
the stock to investors well into the fall, after Enron's
problems started to become public."
Banking giants like J.P. Morgan Chase and Citibank that have
billions in "exposure" in Enron often wore conflicting hats
with the energy broker: lenders, trading partners,
investors, advisers and investment bankers.
So where do the borders of the Enron Empire actually end and
the rest of the realm of capitalism begin? Do such
boundaries exist in this era of goliath monopolization in
which the banks and industry and commerce have fused to
become global pillaging beasts?
'FREE MARKET!'
Since its founding as a natural gas company in 1985, Enron
surfed the swell of energy-industry deregulation. "As Enron
took the lead in the deregulation movement, the company
showered millions of dollars on state and federal
politicians in both parties whose support was critical in
forcing open the energy markets." (New York Times, Jan. 20)
Today, the Democrats would like to leave the Enron disaster
at the White House doorstep. But in truth, all roads lead to
Enron. They all took money from the energy giant--on both
sides of the aisle. You can't throw a pebble within the
Beltway without hitting someone who has an Enron connection--
it's like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. Now, in
uncharacteristic acts of philanthropy, they're falling over
each other in their race to give back some of the tainted
campaign contributions to charity.
Since 1990, Enron had given $5.95 million to the two
parties, with 74 percent going to Republicans and the rest
to Democratic war chests, according to the Center for
Responsive Politics. So how can the criminal and civil
investigations into the Enron collapse bear even a semblance
of impartiality?
This isn't isolated graft or influence peddling that can be
fixed with a Band-Aid like campaign-finance "reform." It's
the nature of the system. The elephants and the donkeys are
both the parties of big business. That's who they work for.
They may play hard cop or soft cop, but they administer the
capitalist system for the banking and corporate dynasties.
The real question is: What did Enron get for its money?
"Everyone says they didn't get anything," said Charles
Bowsher, comptroller general of the U.S. during the Reagan
administration. "But if you look back over the last five
years, what they did get was no oversight." (New York Times,
Jan. 20)
Enron's central corporate demand was the removal of all--
even the most slender--regulations that limited their
growth. They got it. And the Bushes played a well-documented
role. Dubya, who called Lay "Kenny boy," appointed his
friend to the position of chief energy advisor.
Bush fought federal price caps in California. That allowed
Enron and other energy traders to force up prices more than
1,000 percent in the first major state to be deregulated.
The result? Rolling power outages and retail power rates
spiking 40 percent higher than the previous year. Consumers
reported home energy bills doubled, tripled, quadrupled.
Enron used its political clout to flex its muscles around
the world, as well.
A former Argentine cabinet minister reported being strong-
armed by the young Bush, when he was merely the son of the
then-vice president, to award a contract worth hundreds of
millions of dollars to Enron. (The Nation, Feb. 4)
Vice President Richard Cheney has been forced to admit that
he intervened with Indian officials last year on behalf of
Enron regarding a troubled $2.9 Dabhol power project, in
part financed by the U.S. government. The White House also
admits that Cheney met with Lay half a dozen times in 2001,
the last time just days before Enron's collapse.
Enron's deep ties to the Bush family give it an as-yet-
unrevealed relationship to the CIA.
The current Secretary of the Army, Thomas White Jr., was an
Enron executive.
But when Enron began shuddering in critical mass, the
administration either couldn't or didn't bail them out. Lay
went through his Rolodex. Robert Rubin was asked to
intervene. Rubin was former-President Bill Clinton's
treasury secretary.
Lay phoned Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Commerce
Secretary Don Evans and Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan.
Greenspan, by the way, doesn't take campaign contributions.
But he did accept the Enron Award for Distinguished Public
Service--on Nov. 13, days after Enron admitted it had filed
misleading financial reports. (Newsweek, Jan. 28)
But Enron went under anyway.
A KODAK MOMENT
So now it's all howls of mock rage from the White House and
finger pointing on the Hill.
But the Enron explosion is really a snapshot of business
ethics under capitalism.
Enron executives fired their stable of auditors from the
Arthur Andersen Company, implying they were to blame.
Andersen auditors had signed off on Enron's ledgers. But
this is not a case of a rogue accountant, either. Andersen
is a venerable firm, nearly a century old, that reportedly
had revenues of $10 billion last year. It employs 85,000
people in 84 countries. And it's the smallest of the Big
Five accounting firms.
Andersen was given the job of improving the FBI's record
keeping after the agency said it lost thousands of documents
in the Timothy McVeigh case. Andersen's managers seem most
skilled at shredding.
The offices of Andersen auditors and consultants were in
Enron's 50-story Houston skyscraper. Anderson often had as
many as 250 employees working there. And many top Enron
executives started out at the accounting firm.
So while the media talk about a "conflict of interests,"
it's really just the opposite. The accounting industry sells
diverse services to their audit clients, and the industry
"regulates" itself.
"For all the talk about Enron's influence," reports the Jan.
19 New York Times, " by some measures the accounting
industry has even stronger ties to government. Of the 20
largest contributors to President Bush's 2000 campaign,
three accounting firms--including Andersen--gave more money
than Enron. All Big Five accounting firms were among the
campaign's top 20 contributors."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 94 current
senators and more than half the current members of the House
have taken campaign donations from Andersen since 1989.
So when it comes to Enron, one Vinson & Elkin attorney--the
law firm that represented the energy conglomerate--
concluded, "Do you think it's any different from anything
going on in L.A., or in Reagan's crowd. Or in Clinton's
crowd?" (New York Times, Jan. 20)
A BETTER WORLD'S IN BIRTH!
Business and political analysts are so eager to portray the
whole Enron economic collapse as scandal because they want
to convince all those who struggle to cobble together a
living that capitalism can be tinkered with and reformed.
It's an old song. And while it plays, people who get up to
go to work every morning, or to look for a job, get another
day older and deeper in debt.
So let's get back to the real core question: What did Karl
Marx mean when he said that the workers had to take over
ownership of all the mighty tools of production and commerce
and banking and transportation?
Marx was not talking about 401(k) retirement plans for
social security. He was talking about socialist security.
Marx showed that only human labor creates value. And today,
in this epoch of mammoth transnationals, workers are united
in a vast network of socialized labor. So what is it that
keeps the working class and oppressed from planning
production to meet the unique needs and desires of every
adult and child on the planet?
Private ownership. Lay did not lay a single mile of gas
pipeline. His capitalist cronies didn't create a single cent
of the $9 trillion annual gross national product of this
country. But they assert their right to privately
appropriate all the fruits of collective labor.
As the Enron imbroglio dominates the media and social
debate, let this one thought predominate: The rich have no
right to write their names on the buildings that scrape the
sky. The class that built it all should own it all.
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: torstai 24. tammikuu 2002 13:27
Subject: [WW] Michigan: Gov't moves detained Muslim leader
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 31, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MICHIGAN
'FREE RABIH HADDAD'
Gov't moves detained Muslim leader
By Jane Cutter
and Andrew Freeman
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Without prior warning, U.S. Marshals moved Rabih Haddad from
the county jail in Monroe, Mich., to an undisclosed location
in Chicago on Jan. 14. No explanation was given to him or
his family for this move.
Haddad, an immigrant from Lebanon and a leader in the Ann
Arbor Muslim community, has been held since Dec. 14, after
he was arrested and charged with a minor visa violation. He
has been denied bond after three hearings, despite an
outpouring of support from the community. He has received
support from at least two members of the Michigan
Congressional delegation: Lynn Rivers and John Conyers.
Haddad's case fits the pattern of racial profiling of Arab
and Muslim men that has taken place in the name of "fighting
terrorism." Haddad is a member of the board of trustees of
Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity. This
charitable organization has been smeared as having links to
terrorism--although no evidence to support this claim has
been presented. The U.S. government froze the charity's
assets in December.
Support has continued to build for Haddad in the
southeastern Michigan area. At all his bond hearings, held
in Detroit, hundreds of community members have come to show
their support. When the judge closed these hearings to the
public, conducting them in secret, supporters marched and
rallied outside in winter cold.
The Ann Arbor City Council passed a resolution on Jan. 6
urging the government to be fair and open and to provide due
process to all U.S. residents, including Haddad.
The Michigan Student Assembly--the student government--
passed a resolution on Jan. 15 demanding that the U.S.
government grant Haddad a speedy trial with due process. The
next day, 250 people attended a public meeting on campus
with Rep. Rivers and Michigan American Civil Liberties Union
leader Michael Steinberg, in which they discussed Haddad's
case and threats to civil rights.
For many of Haddad's supporters, a particular concern has
been the secrecy with which the government has conducted
itself. Haddad was arrested without warning on the eve of
Eid Il-Fitr, a major Islamic holiday, and taken to an
initially undisclosed location. His hearings have all been
closed to the public. He was denied bail. The reason given?
That he owns a registered hunting rifle. Now he has been
moved to an undisclosed location four hours away from his
wife and four children.
Without coming out and openly charging him with anything,
the government is trying to create the impression that
Haddad is a dangerous supporter of terrorism. However, the
community is refusing to stand by while Haddad's rights are
violated in secret proceedings, and the civil rights of
immigrants and others continue to be eroded.
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: torstai 24. tammikuu 2002 13:30
Subject: [WW] 'Black Hawk Down': Pentagon war propaganda
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 31, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
Somali people still defiant
'BLACK HAWK DOWN': PENTAGON WAR PROPAGANDA
By Johnnie Stevens
Hollywood produces bad movies all the time. But "Black Hawk
Down" is more than bad. It is a conspiracy by the Pentagon
and Hollywood to distort history and demonize the Somali
people, right when the administration is considering another
invasion of that battered and impoverished African country.
The Pentagon commended director Ridley Scott for rushing the
film's release after 9/11. The Motion Picture Association of
America arranged a private screening for senior White House
advisors. Vice President Dick Cheney attended. So did
Contragate criminal Col. Oliver North, as well as a group of
U.S. Army Rangers.
"Black Hawk Down" pretends to tell the story of what
happened on Oct. 3, 1993, when tens of thousands of Somali
people, most of them civilians, fought off an attack by U.S.
Rangers and Delta Force commandos in the center of the
capital city, Mogadishu.
The heavily armed U.S. troops had come in Humvees and Black
Hawk helicopters to try and kidnap Mohamed Farrah Aidid and
two of his lieutenants. They intended to take them to a ship
anchored off the coast. Aidid was the Somali leader most
resistant to U.S. efforts to establish military and economic
domination in the area, under the pretext of providing food
aid.
The arrogant and racist presence of 28,000 U.S. troops was
hated by the Somali people. Sent there originally by George
Bush Sr. in December 1992, they had opened machine gun fire
on unarmed protesters and flown their helicopters so low
over the city that the downdraft pulled the tin roofs off
people's houses.
When one of the helicopters sent to capture Aidid crashed
near a crowded market and reinforcements were sent in with
guns blazing, the Somali people responded in a massive
uprising against them.
'SHOOTING AT ANYONE AND ANYTHING'
The 16-hour battle ended in hundreds of Somali deaths--
helicopter gunships fired indiscriminately on the people in
the streets and market. Mark Bowden, in his book on which
this film claims to be based, wrote: "The Task Force Ranger
commander, Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, testifying before
the Senate, said that if his men had put any more ammunition
into the city 'we would have sunk it.' Most soldiers
interviewed said that through most of the fight they fired
on crowds and eventually at anyone and anything they saw."
U.S. forces with their sophisticated weapons have wreaked
death and destruction on many oppressed peoples--most
recently in Afghanistan. What made this battle different was
that it ended in the deaths of 18 elite U.S. Army Rangers,
the Pentagon's biggest battle loss since the Vietnam War.
This led to a hasty U.S. withdrawal from the country.
The Somalis were jubilant at having defeated these flying
death machines. "Black Hawk Down" was really a Somali
people's victory over what had been considered the
invincible Rangers and Delta Force.
But the film, in the words of New York Times critic Elvis
Mitchell, "converts the Somalis into a pack of snarling dark-
skinned beasts ... it reeks of glumly staged racism." (Dec.
28, 2001)
That's what the Pentagon wants U.S. audiences to get out of
the film. Racism and fear of Third World peoples are being
whipped up here as the Bush administration moves to spread
its war of domination in Afghanistan to other Third World
countries.
But the reaction the film is getting elsewhere in the world
is far different.
SOMALIS STILL DEFIANT
CNN reported on Jan. 22 that hundreds of Somalis crowded
into an outdoor playground just a mile from the battle site
to watch one of the first copies of "Black Hawk Down" to
reach their country. "Audience members seemed to take
delight in scenes of U.S. defeat. Each time an American
chopper went down in the film, the audience cheered. Every
time an American serviceman was killed, the audience cheered
some more."
Afterward, some of the Somalis criticized the accuracy of
the film. But they were proud of the resistance it showed.
"As you can see, Somalis are brave fighters," one man said.
"If the Americans come back to fight us, we shall defeat
them again."
This film was released soon after the Bush administration in
November shut down the overseas branches of the Somali-owned
Al-Barakaat banking and telecommunications firm, which
Somalis living abroad had used to send money home. It was a
cruel blow aimed at destroying the Somali economy and
bringing the people to their knees in the face of
starvation. But two months later, the Somali people have
refused to be broken--as their reaction to the film showed.
Several groups in the U.S. are calling for a boycott of this
film and see it as evidence of the Pentagon's continuing
desire to reinvade Somalia, under the pretext this time of
fighting "terrorism."
Larry Holmes of the International Action Center points out
that the film "is being linked to new war moves against
Somalia, a poor country believed to have unexplored oil
reserves."
Activists are particularly angry at the decision to hold the
film's Washington, D.C., premiere on Jan. 15--the birthday
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Dr. King was an outspoken
opponent of the Vietnam War. How dare they hold a gala
showing of this racist film on the 73rd anniversary of his
birth," said Sarah Sloan, a youth organizer for the IAC. The
group plans to protest the film and leaflet filmgoers with
educational material on what really happened in 1993.
The Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis has also
called for a boycott of the film. Its executive director,
Omar Jamal, was visited by the FBI after the group
criticized U.S. policy on Somalia and the shutting down of
money transfer facilities here.
- END -
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