______________________________ ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN News * Analysis * Research * Action ______________________________ - AFIB No. 247, April 23, 2000 - (snip) When JM/Wave was dismantled, [CIA station chief Theodore] Shackley and his staff left Miami for Laos, leaving behind a highly trained army of 6000 fanatically anti-Communist Cubans allied to organized crime and powerful elements of the U.S. far Right. ... In that same period Cuban exile activist organizations sprouted all over Miami's Little Havana. They spawned, in turn, terrorist subgroups like Alfa 66 and Omega 7, whose more notorious leaders--Guillermo and Ignazio Novo, Orlando Bosch, and Nasario Sergen--had all been trained by the CIA. Between 1965 and 1971 they staged sporadic acts of sabotage and assassinations, with Guillermo Novo repeatedly arrested only to be released each time. Cubans, terrorists among them, were also being paid by Santo Trafficante and the Syndicate to help spin their intricate U.S. narcotics web. And they also found time for dirty tricks on behalf of Richard Nixon and his White House staff. -- Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism [Boston, South End Press, 1980] p. 207. * * * (snip)ling more than 90,000 Jews in trucks by piping lethal engine exhaust gases into the interior of the vehicles. Rauff died in Chile in 1984. Santiago turned down requests for his extradition. Chile also hosts a secretive German enclave founded in 1961 by Paul Schaefer, a former member of the Nazi military. Schaefer, a fugitive, is wanted for allegedly molesting boys at a boarding school in the colony, which leftists claim was used as a center to torture opponents of Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship. Thursday marks the 111th anniversary of the birth of Hitler. Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***** ____________________________________________________________________ RACE CARD WINS HEARTS OF MILAN BOURGEOISIE ____________________________________________________________________ THE TIMES World News: Europe Wednesday, 19 April 2000 http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/04/19/x-timfgneur01002.html BY RICHARD OWEN IN MILAN yesterday there was no doubt why Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the Italian centre Right, had forced the centre-Left Government to its knees in regional elections. "We need tougher measures against illegal immigrants," said a woman at an elegant cafe beneath the cathedral. "Berlusconi and Bossi have the right ideas." Nearby, a Senegalese salesman looking out for the police said: "I am not so happy. Things look bad." In the rich industrial North, where the alliance between Signor Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi of the separatist Northern League won big victories, the shift to the Right is partly due to the fact that Signor Berlusconi is a local boy made good. Northerners are more impressed by his entrepreneurial style than allegations of corruption. The centre Left, led by Massimo D'Alema, was in power for four years and was seen as arrogant and too Left. Signor D'Alema is a former Communist. But above all, there is the race card. Italy is preoccupied with immigrants, mainly from North Africa and Eastern Europe, because it has a 5,000-mile coastline that is almost impossible to police. Signor Berlusconi skilfully exploited the issue, forming an electoral alliance with the hardliner Signor Bossi. The two agreed that if they gained office they would crack down on illegal immigration, ordering coastguards to open fire. The Left argues that "honest" immigrant labour is needed because of a declining Italian birthrate. But immigrants are still associated with crime and prostitution. As one leftwinger put it: "Berlusconi and Bossi have understood the popular mood, and the Left has not." "The Milanese bourgeoisie has spoken," said one local journalist. Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***** ____________________________________________________________________ BELGIUM TO DEPORT 1,500 SLOVAK GIPSIES ____________________________________________________________________ THE DAILY TELEGRAPH International News Wednesday, 19 April 2000 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels THE Belgian government is to deport up to 1,500 Slovak gipsies in an effort to control its immigration crisis. Rejecting claims that they are the victims of persecution at home, the interior ministry has asked city mayors to instruct undocumented Slovak nationals to leave within 10 days. They can either accept a free airline ticket to the Slovak capital, Bratislava, sweetened with a small payment of cash, or face forced expulsion by the police. The Slovaks, almost all gipsies or travellers, have been requesting political asylum on grounds of ethnic discrimination, even though Slovakia is a candidate for entry into the European Union and the Slovak government is now recognised as fully democratic. The new hardline policy is intended to steal the thunder of the anti-immigrant Vlaams Blok, which has emerged as the biggest single party in the Flemish bastion of Antwerp, with 30 per cent of popular support, but it exposes the government to charges of hypocrisy over the Haider affair in Austria. Louis Michel, the Belgian foreign minister, has been a vehement critic of the Austrian government, calling for a boycott of Austria's ski resorts to protest the presence of Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in the coalition. Yet there is no longer any appreciable difference between the treatment of foreigners in Belgium and Austria. Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000. ***** ____________________________________________________________________ HAIDER MAY RUN FOR AUSTRIA CHANCELLOR ____________________________________________________________________ ASSOCIATED PRESS Saturday, April 22, 2000 10:45 AM ET VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Joerg Haider's designated successor as head of the Freedom Party was quoted Saturday as saying she supports the right-wing leader as the party's candidate for chancellor in the next national election. Haider, governor of Carinthia province, has announced he will step down as leader of the Freedom Party on May 1 to be succeeded by the vice chancellor, Susanne Riess-Passer. ``I am certainly not thinking of becoming chancellor myself,'' Riess-Passer said in an interview with Profil news magazine. Her comments were distributed Saturday by the Austria Press Agency. ``I have not given up the hope of having Haider as a candidate for chancellor,'' Riess-Passer said. ``He is too young to go into retirement.'' Haider, 50, gained notoriety for his controversial statements praising the ``orderly'' full employment policies of Adolf Hitler, and calling Waffen SS veterans ``men of honor.'' He has repeatedly apologized for such remarks. Those comments, however, triggered diplomatic sanctions by the rest of the European Union after Haider's party joined a governing coalition with the conservative Austrian People's Party in February. Speaking of those sanctions, Riess-Passer said that because there was no indication that the EU was prepared to reverse the measures, the Austrian government should consider legal steps against them. Riess-Passer also leveled criticism at Austrian President Thomas Klestil, who she said should speak out more strongly against the EU-imposed sanctions. Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***** ____________________________________________________________________ FRENCH EXTREME-RIGHT FIREBRAND LOSES HIS LAST ELECTED PLATFORM ____________________________________________________________________ AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Sunday, April 23, 2000 8:56 AM SGT PARIS, April 23 (AFP) - France's controversial far right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was stripped of his last elected office Saturday when he was barred from his seat in the European Parliament. A decree signed by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin came after the 71-year-old leader of the National Front was barred from holding public office for a year after he assaulted a Socialist candidate during the 1997 general election. At the height of his influence, Le Pen won 15 percent of the vote in the first round of the 1995 presidential election despite shocking mainstream opinion with his anti-immigrant, nationalist views. Most famously he once dismissed the World War II Nazi gas-chambers as a "detail of history" and called for four million immigrants to be expelled from France. Le Pen immediately declared that he would appeal against the ruling and commentators believe he will use the outrage Jospin's decision will inspire in his supporters to energise his ailing party at its 11th congress next week. Last year the National Front split in two after followers of Le Pen's deputy Bruno Megret rebelled against his leadership, but neither faction has since managed to capture the public imagination. "I now have two months to attack this decree which was made in violation of the general principles of right, the law, French and community jurisprudence to the State Council. That is what I will be doing in due time," Le Pen told AFP in a telephone interview. He said the order would make his supporters "mad with rage" but that it "inspired" him. The decree, drafted on March 31 but only published Saturday just ahead of the National Front congress, highlighted a November 1998 appeal court ruling, banning the National Front leader from public office for one year. Le Pen was deprived of his seat on a regional council in southern France in February, following his conviction over the 1997 attack. He was told at that time that he would be forced to give up his mandate as deputy of the European Parliament. Le Pen was fined and given a suspended jail term in 1998 for shoving Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during campaigning in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris, in May 1997. Although a member of the European parliament since 1984, Le Pen is fiercely anti-European and opposed to all closer European integration. Despite being well-versed in classical Greek and Latin, the politician from western Brittany has been no stranger to the rougher side of life. He worked as a sailor and a miner to put himself through law school and enlisted in the Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina in the 1950s. He served briefly as a paratrooper in Algeria, where he was accused of torturing prisoners, and took part in the Franco-British invasion of the Suez Canal zone in 1956. At 27, he was the youngest member of parliament when first elected in 1956 on the back of a populist tradesmen's movement. Le Pen subsequently represented Paris districts in parliament for six stormy years, losing an eye during one election rally brawl. For many years, he appeared in public with a black patch. In 1972 he launched the National Front, keeping it going through its early days thanks to an inheritance from a rich cement baron. He divorced his first wife Pierrette in 1985, remarrying in 1991. It was his idea that his politically naive second wife Jany, rather than Megret, should head the National Front list at last year's European elections which sparked off the present power struggle. Copyright 2000 AFP. All rights reserved. ***** ____________________________________________________________________ CHILE FACES MOMENT OF TRUTH WITH HEARING TO SEAL OFF PINOCHET'S ESCAPE ROUTE ____________________________________________________________________ THE GUARDIAN International News Saturday, 22 April 2000 http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,212918,00.html Jonathan Franklin in Santiago A team of leading human rights lawyers aided by the Chilean government has convinced the supreme court to take legal action against General Augusto Pinochet. Seven weeks after he was released from house arrest in Britain and returned to Chile, the effort to put the former dictator under formal investigation is due to begin next week. A hearing will be held on Wednesday to decide whether he can be stripped of his immunity and tried on human rights charges. In a series of unprecedented government moves against Gen Pinochet, the state defence council has taken an active role in helping the prosecution. Carmen Hertz, a human rights lawyer and author, called the development Chile's "moment of truth". "Now we will see who has the power," she said. "The elected civilian authorities or the military." There are rumours circulating that the US will ask for Gen Pinochet's extradition should the Chilean justice system fail to put him on trial. Following up the murder case known as "The Letelier Bombing", in which the former Chilean ambassador to the US, Orlando Letelier, and his aide were killed by a terrorist car bombing in Washington 24 years ago, the US justice de partment recently sent a team of FBI investigators to Chile to question key Pinochet aides. But many believe that this was no more than than a public relations effort to satisfy victims of the Pinochet regime. Except in the case of the sometime Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, who was also a close ally of US military intelligence, Washington has avoided charging its former Latin cronies on US soil. Doubts about the Chilean judicial system's ability to work independent of military pressures are being fully tested by the Pinochet case. Under Chilean law, civilian judges are often subservient to their military counterparts and are legally barred from entering military facilities to carry out investigations. As commander in chief of the military junta for nearly 25 years, Gen Pinochet led a government that committed thousands of murders and carried out systematised torture sessions. But because of an amnesty law created by Gen Pinochet himself in Chile's 1980 constitution, and his status as a self-appointed "senator for life", he has never been investigated in Chile. Before a criminal case can begin, he must first be stripped of this immunity. Gen Pinochet's lawyers have tried on several occasions to have the case thrown out by submitting medical tests that prove that he is legally "crazy and demented", as Chilean law designates those mentally incapable of defending themselves. But there is no provision in the law to let Gen Pinochet's mental condition be a factor in deciding whether he should be stripped of his senatorial privileges. Medical reasons can only be considered later in the process - for example, in a criminal trial. "The immunity hearing is exclusively focused on two points [the charges of being the intellectual author of 19 assassinations and an accessory to those crimes]," said Crisologo Burgos, a lawyer for the Chilean government, who is assisting the prosecution. In an effort to deflect the efforts to prosecute him, the 84-year-old general's children reluctantly agreed that their father was mentally ill and unfit for trial. The fact that their decision came after widely publicised haggling with the defence lawyers did little to dampen speculation that the general's mental illness was being managed with military precision. Gen Pinochet's circle of supporters has so withered in the past months that the Pinochet Foundation has reverted to denouncing the pending court actions as plots by '"extreme leftists" designed to besmirch the general's good name. In a hasty effort to galvanise that flagging support, the Pinochet defence team has begun working with public relations agencies. The slogans chosen for the new Pinochet image have not yet been released but, based on the recent flurry of confessions by retired military officers, the general's ability to recreate an air of impunity seems to be slim. A recent public opinion poll showed that 50% of Chileans had a very negative impression of the once-revered general. Insanity now appears to be the only recourse that might let the military strongman who just two years ago walked in self-created glory live his last days in relative peace. Eighty-six separate cases are pending against him, and further ones are being filed almost daily. The sheer number of criminal complaints and the hundreds of victims involved have led the investigating judge, Juan Guzman Tapia, to sort the cases chronologically and geographically. The first of them is the 1973 "Caravan of Death", in which at least 72 political prisoners were kidnapped and executed by a roving hit squad. The prosecution accuses Gen Pinochet of being the "intellectual author" and an accessory to the crimes. The strongest evidence against Gen Pinochet comes from high-ranking military officers who have implicated him in 19 separate assassinations. Sergio Arellano Stark, an army general who is alleged to have led the death squad, is said to have received written orders from Gen Pinochet. Gen Stark and five other senior officers have already been arrested and are being investigated for the Caravan of Death murders. None of them enjoys senatorial immunity. Judge Guzman's interviews with Gen Pinochet's aides have led to unprecedented evidence that he directly ordered assassinations, according to copies of the Guzman documents which were recently published in the Argentine daily Phania 12. In an attempt to save Gen Pinochet, several far-right political groups, including the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), have unsuccessfully sought to cobble together a deal by which the dictator would be allowed a "dignified exit" from the political arena without being prosecuted. But the interior minister, Jose Miguel Insulza, has ridiculed the idea. "These are issues beyond the reach of congress and government," he said. "The Pinochet issue must be resolved in a legal arena." The recently elected president, Ricardo Lagos, called the UDI party actions "inappropriate". President Lagos has repeatedly insisted that his administration will support the judicial branch. "There is no doubt that by attempting to influence the conduct of judges, [rightwing senators] have fallen away from their constitutional obligation to respect the independence of the judiciary." But despite recent events, there remain many obstacles to a Pinochet trial in Chile. Efforts to televise the initial hearings were rejected by judges as too invasive, and in recent weeks the judges have objected to the public interest in the case, leading many observers to doubt that he will even be investigated. The spectacle of the once feared leader being tried or convicted is, to many Chileans, unthinkable. "They are not going to do anything in the end," said Elda Bravo, 40, a school teacher who believes the country's judiciary is merely making a bit of noise to avoid criticism for its 30 years of inaction. "The government has never wanted to judge him, they just want Pinochet to retire." Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000 ***** WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Web: http://www.wsws.org/ E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Wednesday, 19 April 2000 - ----- _________________________________________________________________________ A sharp contrast in US policy: CLUBS AND PEPPER SPRAY FOR IMF PROTESTERS, CRINGING BEFORE CUBAN ANTICOMMUNISTS _________________________________________________________________________ News & Analysis: North America By Jerry White http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/wash-a19.shtml It is worth contrasting the violent repression meted out by US authorities against anti-IMF protesters in Washington, DC this weekend with the conciliatory treatment of the right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami who have defied government orders to turn over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his father. The Clinton administration has avoided any direct confrontation with the Cuban-American anticommunists who have held the child for nearly five months. Instead the authorities have rewarded every act of defiance by abandoning deadlines, granting concessions and issuing more temporizing statements. This culminated last week when Attorney General Janet Reno--who had come to Miami to plead with the relatives to obey the law--announced that she would not enforce the April 13 deadline for the boy's release. Shortly afterwards, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta issued a temporary stay barring any federal action to remove Elian from the territory of the United States. This has only emboldened the cabal of right-wingers and outright fascists in Little Havana who have surrounded the house where Gonzalez is, daring federal agents to seize the boy. The government's temporizing has also encouraged the Miami relatives to press ahead with their legal case to strip Elian's father of the custody of his child. The government's retreat before the Cuban rightists has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns or considerations for Elian Gonzalez's safety. It is abundantly clear that the relatives and their supporters are cruelly exploiting this child to further their reactionary political agenda. This fact was underscored Monday when the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) released a letter from a pediatrician working on the case which urged that Elian be removed from the Miami relatives as soon as possible because he was being "horrendously exploited." Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of community pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Montefiore Hospital in New York, wrote, "Elian Gonzalez is now in a state of imminent danger to his physical and emotional well-being in a home that I consider to be psychologically abusive." The Clinton administration has bowed before these right-wing elements because they exert considerable influence in America politics. For years, both the Democrats and Republicans have cultivated anticommunists in Miami and elsewhere as a base of political support and Clinton is terrified of alienating them. In deference to these forces, the authorities have refused to enforce Elian's father's legal rights and have created the conditions where he may lose his child. No such considerations were involved in the treatment of the anti-corporate and left-wing demonstrators who protested against the World Bank and IMF in Washington, DC. Although protesters were involved in acts of peaceful civil disobedience, police, US Marshals on horseback and national guardsmen attacked them with batons, clubs, tear gas and pepper spray. Over 1,300 were thrown in jail and scores were injured, including at least one demonstrator who was hit by a police vehicle. The nation's capital had eerie feeling of a city under military siege. The streets were virtually deserted as police banned traffic from 90 downtown blocks surrounding the World Bank and IMF headquarters and told non-emergency personnel not to report to work. In the areas were the protests occurred, police helicopters circled overhead, while armored cars and mounted police and US Marshals patrolled the streets. Hundreds of police officers in full body armor and shields, and armed with long batons, manned steel barricades. National Guard troops were deployed in the streets at the request of Mayor Anthony Williams. On Saturday night, on the eve of a planned rally and protests at the IMF meeting, the police carried out a pre-emptive strike by arresting 637 protesters. Demonstrators and tourists said that police did not give any instructions to disperse and prevented those who wanted to leave from doing so. A double line of riot-helmeted police, pumping batons across their chests and stamping their feet rhythmically, blocked off both ends of the street and moved in on the crowd. The protesters were dragged into buses, handcuffed behind their backs, and hauled off to jail. Many were held 20 hours or more, most of the time still in handcuffs. They were denied access to a phone, had little or no food and were shuttled from one jail to another during the night. They were not released until they paid a $50 fine for "parading without a permit." While carrying out the mass arrests the police had little regard to who was caught in their snare. Among those injured or arrested were reporters and photographers from Associated Press and the Washington Post. A consultant to the World Bank who was arguing with demonstrators was also arrested when the police moved in. When the consultant, a Bolivian citizen, protested to the US Marshal that his rights were being violated, he was violently slammed into a wall. The US Marshal screamed in his ear: "Down here there is no democracy. This place is a dictatorship and I am God. If you open your mouth again I will kick your ass 'til you are sorry." After the arrests on Saturday, DC Mayor Anthony A. Williams acknowledged that police had tested the "boundary line" of constitutional rights in dealing with the protesters but said the city was determined to "prevent a replication of what happened out in Seattle." When it comes to accommodating right-wing anticommunists the government refuses to enforce its own laws. For those protesting against key institutions of US and world capitalism, however, there is no such temporizing. Copyright 1998-2000 World Socialist Web Site. 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