Radio Havana Cuba-12 June 2002 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 12 June 2002 . *MILLIONS TAKE TO STREETS OF CUBA TO RATIFY SOCIALIST REVOLUTION *US ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS WIN JUDI BARI CASE AGAINST POLICE, FBI *CHILEAN JUDGE ABOUT TO REQUEST EXTRADITION OF HENRY KISSINGER - GUARDIAN *MEDIA RAISES EYEBROWS OVER CAPTURE OF ALLEGED "DIRTY BOMB" TERRORIST *US LAWMAKERS TAKE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO COURT OVER UNILATERAL US WITHDRAWAL FROM ABM TREATY WITH RUSSIA Viewpoint: *DEADLY OPERATION *WHITE HOUSE CONTINUES ITS RHETORIC AGAINST WORLD TERRORISM *ENDING HUNGER: A BATTLE THAT HUMANITY IS LOSING . *MILLIONS TAKE TO STREETS OF CUBA TO RATIFY SOCIALIST REVOLUTION Havana, June 12 (RHC) -- Millions of Cubans Wednesday took to the streets across the island to ratify the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution and its political system. The mobilization was in support of a petition to Cuba's National Assembly from the island's mass organizations, calling on lawmakers to present a constitutional referendum asserting that Cuba's economic, social and political system is untouchable. The referendum is another political response to anti-Cuba speeches that US President George W. Bush delivered in Washington and Miami last May 20, on the occasion of what many Cuban-Americans celebrate as the island's independence. The date is seen in Cuba as the beginning of its neo-colonial subjugation to the United States after US troops intervened in Cuba's independence war - snatching Cuba's imminent victory over Spain and not even allowing Cuban fighters to participate in the victory celebrations. During the past several weeks, Cubans participating in diverse political rallies have expressed indignation over Bush's demand that Cuba hold US-style elections and adopt the free-market capitalist model. Speaker after speaker, from Fidel Castro to high school student leaders have rejected an electoral system capable of producing the fraud, racism and manipulations that occurred in Florida and resulted in Bush being the selected, not the elected, president, and have rejected a social, economic and political model that leaves millions of children without health coverage in a nation with the world's highest incarceration rate due largely to a racist and class-biased judicial system. The street demonstrations throughout Cuba, with more than one million marching in Havana alone, have been called the largest political rally in the history of the Cuban Revolution. *US ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS WIN JUDI BARI CASE AGAINST POLICE, FBI Oakland, California, June 12 (RHC) -- Environmental activists in the United States have won an emblematic case against police and the FBI. A federal jury has awarded 4.4 million dollars to activist Darryl Cherney and the estate of Judi Bari, who died of cancer in 1997, in their accusation against the Oakland, California police department and the FBI for trying to frame them for a 1990 bomb blast that wrecked their car and left them injured. The verdict of a federal jury came twelve years after the two First Earth activists were arrested for bombing their own car. Cherney and Bari always sustained that someone else planted the bomb, suing the police and the FBI for false arrest, illegal search, slanderous statements and conspiracy, and accusing them of lying and ignoring evidence to make a case. The activists argued that investigators did not bother to look into an anonymous letter sent to a newspaper shortly after the bombing giving details about its construction and placement, and claiming to be from "the Lord's avenger" seeking retribution for Bari's participation in an abortion rights demonstration. At the time of the blast, Bari and Cherney were organizing Redwood Summer, a series of protests against the logging of old-growth forests. In what is being called a legal victory of historic proportions, the jury found that 6 of the 7 FBI agents being sued violated the activists' constitutional rights and carryied out unlawful actions in the bombing investigation. The agent in charge of the 1990 bomb scene, Frank Doyle, was a leading member of a joint terrorism squad made up of FBI and Oakland officers who collected extensive files on political groups in the San Francisco, California Bay Area who were involved in legal dissent. 12 years after the event the bomber or bombers are still free because, as overwhelming evidence revealed at the trial, instead of mounting a genuine investigation of the bombing, the FBI and Oakland police falsified, fabricated and manipulated evidence, perjured themselves under oath to get search warrants and high bail, conducted a sustained media smear campaign to fool the public, blamed the victims despite clear evidence of their innocence, conspired to frame and demonize Judi Bari and Earth First for political reasons, spied on nonviolent environmentalists in a phony investigation of the bombing, failed to investigate fingerprints and other evidence pointing to the real bombers, and covered up their own wrongdoing and obstruction of justice. The Judi Bari web site called the verdict a referendum against the FBI's gross interference with people's right to dissent at a time when Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration are arrogating huge power to themselves and the FBI to spy on legitimate groups and organizers and infringe on the Constitutional rights of the public. *CHILEAN JUDGE ABOUT TO REQUEST EXTRADITION OF HENRY KISSINGER - GUARDIAN Santiago de Chile, June 12 (RHC) -- A Chilean judge investigating crimes during the Pinochet dictatorship is on the verge of opening extradition proceedings against former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, according to the British news daily The Guardian. An American journalist who has been in the Chilean capital during the past month to give evidence in the investigation of the US's role in the bloody Pinochet coup told The Guardian that Judge Juan Guzmán stated this week that if the US doesn't act soon on his request to gather testimony from Kissinger and other US officials he'll have no choice but to file for their extradition to Chile. Journalist Marc Cooper, once the translator for overthrown, constitutionally-elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, knew the American journalist murdered by dictatorship agents, Charles Horman. Judge Guzmán is investigating whether US officials passed the names of suspected leftwing Americans to Chilean military authorities. Declassified documents have now revealed that such a list existed. At the time of his death, Horman was investigating the murder of Rene Schneider, the chief of staff in the Chilean army whose support for Allende and the constitution was seen as an obstacle to the coup. The CIA had been involved with groups plotting Schneider's murder, providing them with weapons and advice, according to a CIA internal inquiry in 2000. It found that the agency had withdrawn its support for the plotters before the murder but had paid them 35,000 dollars afterwards "to maintain the goodwill of the group". At the time of his murder, Schneider had five young children, who filed suit in a Washington DC court last year against Kissinger and other top officials in the Nixon administration. They are seeking 3 million dollars in damages. It's widely believed that Horman was targeted because he unwittingly stumbled upon a gathering of US military personnel and CIA agents in Chile in the days before the coup. This is not the first attempt to interview Kissinger about the turbulent period in Latin America. During a visit to London in April, judges in Spain and France unsuccessfully tried to question him about America's role in Operation Condor, which has been described as a coordinated hit squad organized from Chile and including six South American nations aimed at dealing with leftwing opposition groups. Several declassified documents which have emerged over the past two years have shown an increasingly visible American hand in Operation Condor. British journalist Christopher Hitchens has also been in Santiago to testify before Judge Guzmán. Hitchens gave evidence on the Operation Condor case which he researched for his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, published last year. In Santiago, Hitchens told The Guardian that today "Henry Kissinger is a frightened man," that he "is very afraid of the exposure that awaits him." *MEDIA RAISES EYEBROWS OVER CAPTURE OF ALLEGED "DIRTY BOMB" TERRORIST London, Washington, June 12 (RHC) -- Some prominent media outlets are raising eyebrows over the capture in the United States of an alleged terrorist planning to detonate a radiological dispersion device, or "dirty bomb". The British news daily The Independent and the BBC both noted on Tuesday that the arrest conveniently comes at a moment when the Bush administration and US intelligence agencies are under intense scrutiny for having bungled investigations that could have prevented the September 11 terror attacks. The USA Today news daily's Wednesday edition affirmed that the capture of the alleged terrorist "meshed neatly with President Bush's agenda" and that some people, particularly Democrats, are wondering whether the arrest announcement dovetailed "a little too tidily" with that agenda. Those questions, reported the prominent US newspaper, were fueled by the fact that the announcement came a month after the alleged terrorist's arrest on May 8 and by reports Tuesday that he had no radiological material, no concrete plan and no target - quoting a Democratic pollster who said it would be interesting to know why any particular day is chosen more than a month later to make an announcement of such magnitude. The pollster, Mark Mellman, told USA Today that the Bush administration has engaged in a pattern of daily political calculations. While stressing that "dirty bombs" are not to be trifled with, The Independent noted that the US track record of identifying "known terrorists" is far from reproachless. BBC correspondent in Washington, Alex Van Wel, wrote that for a government under pressure to show it's getting results in its war on terrorism, the apparent foiling of an attempt to make a dirty bomb will certainly not be unwelcome to the Bush administration. *US LAWMAKERS TAKE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO COURT OVER UNILATERAL US WITHDRAWAL FROM ABM TREATY WITH RUSSIA Washington, June 12 (RHC) -- Thirty-one members of the US Congress have sued the Bush administration for violating the Constitution when the White House decided earlier this year to drop the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. Withdrawal from the nuclear pact is scheduled to take effect on Thursday. The thirty-one lawmakers said the Constitution requires the president to obtain congressional approval before ending international treaties. The lawsuit coincided with reports of growing concerns in Congress over the Bush administration's growing secrecy concerning its Star Wars project. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that as the Pentagon boosts spending and intensifies development of a national antimissile system, it is also taking steps to shield the program from Congress, the public and traditional oversight measures within the Defense Department itself. In recent months, defense officials have reportedly exempted missile defense projects from the planning and reporting requirements normally applied to major acquisition programs. They have stopped providing Congress with detailed cost estimates and timetables for antimissile systems. And they have announced plans to restrict information about targets and decoys used in flight tests. According to the Post, Democratic lawmakers and other missile defense skeptics are accusing the administration of trying to pull a veil over a development effort long troubled by test failures and cost overruns. Without the kind of standard reports and disclosures used in the past to assess missile defense programs, critics argue, it will be harder to hold the administration accountable for the additional billions of dollars it is investing in the effort. Senator Jack Reed, chairman of the Armed Services subcommittee on strategic weapons, told the Post that "these are disturbing trends." Viewpoint: *DEADLY OPERATION June 12, 2002 A cellular telephone saved the lives of four undocumented Mexicans lost in the Arizona desert, after their "Coyote" or human trafficker left them to die. According to the Mexican news agency, Notimex, the illegal immigrants managed to takeaway the Coyote's telephone and call the US Border Patrol for help. The Border Patrol, after saving the four unceremoniously deported them. Also last week, another 37 Mexicans were discovered by the US Border Patrol in the blazing hot Imperial Valley. According to the Spanish news agency EFE, the group was wandering about lost, without food or water, dangerously dehydrated and isolated. After they were given medical attention, they were repatriated to Mexico. But these stories frequency have tragic endings. Last year, for example, 14 Mexicans died attempting a similar crossing in the desert in Yuma, Arizona, after their guide had abandoned a group of 24 people who had been trying to illegally enter the United States. The sad truth is that approximately every 42 hours a Mexican tries to cross the border into the "paradise" known as the United States, which in fact, has become a bunker enclosed by huge cement and steel walls and tough anti-immigrants laws and controls. The "war" on illegal immigration has turned the border into a high-risk area and has forced those who insist on attempting the crossing into evermore treacherous routes. It is not by accident that more than two thousand Mexicans have died in the last seven years, most of them from exposure and dehydration, or snake bikes. Just since the so-called "Operation Guardian" was implemented in San Diego, more than 500 Mexicans have died trying to evade US immigration officials, known simply as "La Migra". As the La Opinion newspaper of Los Angeles charges, Operation Guardian is a mechanism which pushes undocumented Mexicans to risk death; a kind of capital punishment without trial and without regard for age or sex. *WHITE HOUSE CONTINUES ITS RHETORIC AGAINST WORLD TERRORISM June 11, 2002 The government of the United States continues its intense rhetoric about its so-called war against world terrorism, causing unease in the international arena and panic among its citizens with warnings of further real or illusionary terrorist attacks against them. What stands out is that these strong declarations from the highest authorities in Washington are made so soon after the rain of criticism that they have received about their security apparatus, evident in the mistakes committed that allowed the perpetration of events last 11th September. They are now putting on pressure to create a super security organization with a budget of more than 37 million dollars, employing more than 160,000 people to coordinate the existing intelligence organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs among others. Even as the world was assimilating the news footage of September 11th, President George Bush - and we don't know if he was influenced by his colleagues in Tel Aviv - threatened preventative strikes against whatever country, entirely judged by him, that appears to be a risk against the security of the US. To make the first strike is the modus operandi of President Bush and the world already knows by the experience of the Palestinian people what similar ideas can mean and the only thing that is lacking is that the White House make public their policy of selective assassinations as part of his national defense. In this war of words, that does not exclude the risk of other types of aggression, Washington has the intention of linking Cuba to its war against terrorism with accusations of creating biological arms and the exporting this technology. Alongside this accusation comes the aggressive outburst by President Bush against the political, economic and social system that the Cubans have freely chosen for themselves. To complete the flow of propaganda from Washington, the security organizations are desperate for results, like the announcement of the discovery of a plot to detonate a bomb on the streets of the US. In practice such announcements further damage the already flawed credibility of the intelligence apparatus of the US, and actually add to the increase in panic among a population already well fed by the unnecessary tragedy of September 11th and in the end magnifies the risks run by those living in that country. The best contribution they could make to the national security of the country would be a drastic change in their erratic behavior, through changes in their aggressive foreign policy putting an end to their military actions all over the world, bring to an end their support for the Israeli army and the raising the level of ideology in the White House, which at the moment includes racism, xenophobia and a good dose of fascism. *ENDING HUNGER: A BATTLE THAT HUMANITY IS LOSING June 10, 2002 Five years ago the international community set a modest goal of lowering the numbers of the hungry by 20 million a year, with the aim of arriving at the year 2015 with 400 million people less going to bed hungry. We say that the goal is modest because humanity understands that this huge mass of people are starving not because of a lack of food, but rather, due to deficiencies in production and most of all to the inequalities in distribution. Nevertheless, today, five years later, the point of departure at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization Conference in Rome was the recognition of the total failure to take that small step and admitting that far for reducing those numbers, each year more human beings are going hungry. Even if the number of hungry people failed to grow each year, at the current rate it would take 60 years to eliminate hunger, which kills 24 thousand people each day, most of whom are women and children. Or in even more spine chilling terms: there is one death every four seconds for lack of food in a world that produces in abundance. More than armed conflicts or intolerance, hunger and poverty are the principal causes of death today. But the worst part is that the only ones who appear to be concerned are the victims themselves and not those who are in large part responsible for this human tragedy. Proof of that is in the current UN World Food Summit, of the 29 most developed countries, just two heads of government are present and one of them is Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who must show his face since the event is taking place in Rome. The other, Spanish Jose Maria Aznar, is attending as rotating president of the European Union. The rest say they are too busy to attend an event, which according to them doesn't have much to do directly with their countries despite the fact that no one can deny that if hunger were to disappear from the earth we would all live better lives. Despite the pretty words against hunger that will be said during the Summit, despite the documents it will approve that ratify the objective of reducing the numbers of hungry by half by the year 2015, the truth is without the clear and effective commitment of the developed world, it will be nothing but a dream. UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, authorities estimate the amount needed to achieve that goal at 24 billion dollars. That is too much to pay for the African countries, which account for 25 per cent of the world's hungry. Nor can the nations of Asia and Latin America afford it, but it is a miniscule amount for the great powers that spend ten times as much on fantastic defense projects in space or developing sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. In a world where food has become a political instrument and a force at the service of the powerful to bring people to their knees, the only way out for those on the bottom is to struggle for their true liberty which begins with the solidarity and unity of all those who have suffered for centuries from hunger which is much more than just a simple lack of food. (c) 2002 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. 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