Kez
22nd May 2002, 11:32
INTERNATIONAL NEWS IN BRIEF
VENEZUELA: OIL GANGSTERS VS. CHAVEZ
The oil gangsters running the U.S. government wanted
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez out of the way for several
reasons, one of which was his defiance of Washington's
attempted isolation of Iraq. After Venezuela rotated on as
chair of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,
Chavez in August 2000 was the first head of state to visit
Iraq since the U.S.-imposed embargo. Now Bush's team are
openly discussing another war against Iraq even more
devastating than the one launched by Bush Sr. in 1991. But
Chavez has survived a recent U.S.-aided attempt to overthrow
him. And the Iraqi government, more than a decade after the
war, still stands despite lethal sanctions and frequent U.S.-
British overflights and bombing.
NEPAL: U.S. HELICOPTERS AGAINST LAND REFORM
The armored knights protecting feudal aristocrats in Europe
had a military edge over the peasants until armies of yeomen
started using the crossbow, whose arrows could penetrate
chain mail. Today's aristocrats prefer helicopters to horses
as they try to hold onto their crowns and privileges.
The U.S. government, ever the friend of the idle rich at
home and abroad, is providing helicopters and other modern
military equipment to the kingdom of Nepal, which has been
in a civil war involving peasants fighting for land reform
led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Nepalese Prime
Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba met with George W. Bush the
second week in May and was promised $20 million in military
aid--which will go straight into the military-industrial
complex here.
Nepal, a country of 25 million people high in the Himalaya
mountains, has been in political turmoil for years because
its archaic social structure--utilized first by British
colonialism and now by U.S. imperialism--traps half the
population in abject poverty. The average yearly income is
only $220. The previous king, Birendra, and most of his
family died in a mysterious shooting spree in June 2001
when, according to palace sources, his son gunned them down
before being shot himself. Nepalese progressives see an
outside hand, however. Birendra was negotiating with the
opposition over land reform when he was killed. The present
king, Gyanendra, is taking a hard line, which fits right in
to Washington's military expansion in the region.
The workers and peasants of Nepal have no love for
capitalism. The Communist Party of Nepal (UML) at one time
held 40 percent of the seats in parliament and held
political power in 1994-95, but its parliamentary approach
did not achieve land reform, leading to the rise of the
guerrilla insurgency in the countryside. The government
staged an attack on a guerrilla camp to coincide with
Deuba's trip to Washington and claimed to have inflicted
many casualties. But official claims of large guerrilla
losses were contradicted by military officers.
ZIMBABWE: LAND DISTRIBUTION MOVES AHEAD
Zimbabwe's Parliament passed a Land Acquisition and
Amendment Bill on May 8 that will accelerate the process of
the government taking over white-owned commercial farms and
distributing their land to African farmers. Some 6,000 white
farmers have controlled half the country's arable land;
850,000 Black farmers have had to make do with the rest.
This situation is the heritage of colonial conquest at the
beginning of the 20th century. When decolonization came
after a liberation war, Britain agreed to foot the bill for
buying out the white settlers, but never lived up to its
agreement.
Since President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU party made land
reform a central objective, the government has been under
tremendous pressure from the U.S. and Britain, which openly
spent millions on building up an opposition political party.
It was defeated in presidential elections in March, however,
when rural people, who make up the vast majority of the
population, turned out in record numbers.
Zimbabwe, like other countries in the region, is suffering
from a drought and food shortages exacerbated by economic
sanctions. Imperialist critics try to blame the food
shortages on land reform, arguing that the huge plantations
run by the whites are more efficient and modern. They are--
but at making profits, not at providing food for the rural
poor. Much of what they grow is export-oriented, which
brings in hard currency but doesn't feed hungry people in
the countryside.
--Deirdre Griswold
GERMANY: METAL WORKERS STRIKE FOR 4 PERCENT
In the largest job action since 1995, tens of thousands of
German metal workers stopped work for a day at various
factories in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurtenburg
beginning May 6. On May 13, thousands more stopped work in
the eastern states of Berlin and Brandenburg. The workers
are among 2.7 million members of the metalworkers' union, IG
Metall, who are asking for a 4-percent annual pay increase
in their national contract. The union bargains for a
national contract with an association of the manufacturers.
German bosses and their paid economists and commentators
have opened a broad propaganda campaign against the union.
They charge that the increases are not warranted and that
they will "stop the recovery" and cost jobs. There are also
charges that a strike will lose the upcoming national
election for the current Social Democratic chancellor,
Gerhard Schroeder.
These analysts omit the fact that from 1993 to 2000 real
wages declined 6.5 percent. Meanwhile profits went up 85
percent between 1991 and 2000 and management salaries 90
percent. Unemployment has crept up again to 4 million
despite the lack of strikes over the past seven years.
Union strategists have chosen to hold one-day strikes at
selected factories, such as the DaimlerChrysler Mercedes and
Porsche plants in Stuttgart, hoping to hit the bosses in the
pocketbook without giving them the excuse for a general
lockout. Management so far has responded by threatening to
move more jobs outside of Germany. Observers ask whether it
will be necessary to mobilize a full-fledged strike before
the bosses will make any concessions.
Comrade Kamo
VENEZUELA: OIL GANGSTERS VS. CHAVEZ
The oil gangsters running the U.S. government wanted
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez out of the way for several
reasons, one of which was his defiance of Washington's
attempted isolation of Iraq. After Venezuela rotated on as
chair of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,
Chavez in August 2000 was the first head of state to visit
Iraq since the U.S.-imposed embargo. Now Bush's team are
openly discussing another war against Iraq even more
devastating than the one launched by Bush Sr. in 1991. But
Chavez has survived a recent U.S.-aided attempt to overthrow
him. And the Iraqi government, more than a decade after the
war, still stands despite lethal sanctions and frequent U.S.-
British overflights and bombing.
NEPAL: U.S. HELICOPTERS AGAINST LAND REFORM
The armored knights protecting feudal aristocrats in Europe
had a military edge over the peasants until armies of yeomen
started using the crossbow, whose arrows could penetrate
chain mail. Today's aristocrats prefer helicopters to horses
as they try to hold onto their crowns and privileges.
The U.S. government, ever the friend of the idle rich at
home and abroad, is providing helicopters and other modern
military equipment to the kingdom of Nepal, which has been
in a civil war involving peasants fighting for land reform
led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Nepalese Prime
Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba met with George W. Bush the
second week in May and was promised $20 million in military
aid--which will go straight into the military-industrial
complex here.
Nepal, a country of 25 million people high in the Himalaya
mountains, has been in political turmoil for years because
its archaic social structure--utilized first by British
colonialism and now by U.S. imperialism--traps half the
population in abject poverty. The average yearly income is
only $220. The previous king, Birendra, and most of his
family died in a mysterious shooting spree in June 2001
when, according to palace sources, his son gunned them down
before being shot himself. Nepalese progressives see an
outside hand, however. Birendra was negotiating with the
opposition over land reform when he was killed. The present
king, Gyanendra, is taking a hard line, which fits right in
to Washington's military expansion in the region.
The workers and peasants of Nepal have no love for
capitalism. The Communist Party of Nepal (UML) at one time
held 40 percent of the seats in parliament and held
political power in 1994-95, but its parliamentary approach
did not achieve land reform, leading to the rise of the
guerrilla insurgency in the countryside. The government
staged an attack on a guerrilla camp to coincide with
Deuba's trip to Washington and claimed to have inflicted
many casualties. But official claims of large guerrilla
losses were contradicted by military officers.
ZIMBABWE: LAND DISTRIBUTION MOVES AHEAD
Zimbabwe's Parliament passed a Land Acquisition and
Amendment Bill on May 8 that will accelerate the process of
the government taking over white-owned commercial farms and
distributing their land to African farmers. Some 6,000 white
farmers have controlled half the country's arable land;
850,000 Black farmers have had to make do with the rest.
This situation is the heritage of colonial conquest at the
beginning of the 20th century. When decolonization came
after a liberation war, Britain agreed to foot the bill for
buying out the white settlers, but never lived up to its
agreement.
Since President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU party made land
reform a central objective, the government has been under
tremendous pressure from the U.S. and Britain, which openly
spent millions on building up an opposition political party.
It was defeated in presidential elections in March, however,
when rural people, who make up the vast majority of the
population, turned out in record numbers.
Zimbabwe, like other countries in the region, is suffering
from a drought and food shortages exacerbated by economic
sanctions. Imperialist critics try to blame the food
shortages on land reform, arguing that the huge plantations
run by the whites are more efficient and modern. They are--
but at making profits, not at providing food for the rural
poor. Much of what they grow is export-oriented, which
brings in hard currency but doesn't feed hungry people in
the countryside.
--Deirdre Griswold
GERMANY: METAL WORKERS STRIKE FOR 4 PERCENT
In the largest job action since 1995, tens of thousands of
German metal workers stopped work for a day at various
factories in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurtenburg
beginning May 6. On May 13, thousands more stopped work in
the eastern states of Berlin and Brandenburg. The workers
are among 2.7 million members of the metalworkers' union, IG
Metall, who are asking for a 4-percent annual pay increase
in their national contract. The union bargains for a
national contract with an association of the manufacturers.
German bosses and their paid economists and commentators
have opened a broad propaganda campaign against the union.
They charge that the increases are not warranted and that
they will "stop the recovery" and cost jobs. There are also
charges that a strike will lose the upcoming national
election for the current Social Democratic chancellor,
Gerhard Schroeder.
These analysts omit the fact that from 1993 to 2000 real
wages declined 6.5 percent. Meanwhile profits went up 85
percent between 1991 and 2000 and management salaries 90
percent. Unemployment has crept up again to 4 million
despite the lack of strikes over the past seven years.
Union strategists have chosen to hold one-day strikes at
selected factories, such as the DaimlerChrysler Mercedes and
Porsche plants in Stuttgart, hoping to hit the bosses in the
pocketbook without giving them the excuse for a general
lockout. Management so far has responded by threatening to
move more jobs outside of Germany. Observers ask whether it
will be necessary to mobilize a full-fledged strike before
the bosses will make any concessions.
Comrade Kamo