Radio Havana Cuba-05 October 2001 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 05 October 2001 . *MASSIVE RALLY SET TO MEMORIALIZE VICTIMS OF CUBANA AIRLINES BOMBING *CUBA AND JAPAN SIGN COOPERATION ACCORDS *NEW CUBAN MEDICAL GRADUATES DEPART FOR REMOTE MOUNTAIN CLINICS *AFGHANISTAN'S NORTHERN ALLIANCE A MAJOR PRODUCER OF OPIUM - UN DRUG EXPERT *UNPRECEDENTED SPAT BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND ARIEL SHARON *ARGENTINE UP AGAINST INCREASING CRITICISM AS ECONOMIC SLUMP WORSENS *PEACE PROCESS DEADLOCKED, BOGOTÁ AGAIN ACCUSED OF DOING TOO LITTLE *FAST TRACK VOTE IN U.S. CONGRESS POSTPONED ONCE AGAIN *Viewpoint: ELEPHANTS DON'T FORGET . *MASSIVE RALLY SET TO MEMORIALIZE VICTIMS OF CUBANA AIRLINES BOMBING Havana, October 5 (RHC)--Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend a mass rally on Saturday morning in Havana's Revolution Square to pay tribute to the victims of the sabotage bombing of a Cubana airliner that took place near the coast of Barbados in 1976. All 73 passengers and crewmembers were killed, including the island's junior fencing team. After 25 years, Cubans will be calling for the extradition of the two terrorists who planned the bombing: Orlando Bosch, who is a free man walking the streets of Miami, Florida and Luis Posada Carriles, who is currently in a Panamanian jail awaiting trial for planning the assassination of President Fidel Castro. *CUBA AND JAPAN SIGN COOPERATION ACCORDS Havana, October 5 (RHC)--Cuba and Japan moved towards establishing closer relations on Friday with the signing of three cooperation agreements. Special Japanese government envoy and former prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, attended the signing of the documents by the two countries' officials. One of the accords provides for the installation by Japan of modern sound equipment in Havana's ornate theater, the Gran Teatro. Another agreement will send two ambulances for use in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba. Electricity is the focus of the third agreement signed between Havana and Tokyo on Friday. Under that cooperation accord, Japan will give financial assistance to a program providing electricity to remote rural communities on the Isle of Youth, off Cuba's southwestern shore, where many Cubans of Japanese descent are living. With these most recent agreements, Cuban and Japan now have signed 14 cooperation accords worth some $910,000. Former Japanese prime minister Hashimoto reiterated his country's gratitude for President Fidel Castro's mediation in the conflict over the taking of hostages at the Japanese Ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru in l997. Hashimoto, who arrived in Havana on Thursday on a protocol visit that concludes Saturday, met with the Cuban president and is expected to meet with Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. *NEW CUBAN MEDICAL GRADUATES DEPART FOR REMOTE MOUNTAIN CLINICS Havana, October 5 (RHC)--Some 130 young medical graduates have joined the family doctor program, working for a year in the remote areas of Guantanamo, Cuba's eastern-most province. Graduates from all medical areas -- the new generation of young Cuban doctors -- will replace the 84 doctors currently working in Guantanamo and will offer their services to the almost 80,000 people living in nine out of the ten municipalities. They were officially welcomed to the province by local Communist Party leaders, Public Health Ministry officials and a group of local artists. The Director of Health Education in Cuba, Julio Portal Pineda, pointed out that the recently-graduated Cuban doctors would also receive special training to work in other Third World countries. *AFGHANISTAN'S NORTHERN ALLIANCE A MAJOR PRODUCER OF OPIUM - UN DRUG EXPERT Vienna, October 5 (RHC)--A United Nations drug expert has asserted that Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, now Washington's ally against the Taliban, has become that country's principle producer of opium. Mohammad Amirjizi, advisor to the UN Drug Control and Crime Prevention Office, stated Friday in Vienna that since the Taliban imposed repressive measures against the production of illicit poppy crops, leading to a 60 percent decrease in worldwide opium production, the Northern Alliance became the country's major opium producer with 150 tons this year. Amirjizi said that in reality the Alliance has always produced an annual 120 to 150 tons, but that due to Taliban elimination of large quantities of the drug, that amount, though the same, has become significant. Pointing to the impact of the Taliban regime's prohibition of illicit drug crops, the UN expert noted that Afghanistan produced 75 percent of world opium production in 1999, 70 percent in 2000, but will only produce 10 percent this year. Other observers have noted that leaders of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance have committed human rights abuses as horrendous as those committed by the Taliban. Writing last October 3rd for the London news daily "Independent," U.S. journalist Robert Fisk asserted that Washington is hiring one gang of terrorists to rid itself of another gang of terrorists - insisting that U.S. officials know full well the bloody, rapacious track record of what he called the "killers" in the Alliance. Fisk called the Northern Alliance a confederacy of warlords, rapists and torturers. He said the men of Abdul Rashid Dustum -- who the journalist called one of the most powerful Alliance gangsters -- looted and raped their way through the suburbs of Kabul in the 1990's, choosing girls for forced marriages, murdering their families and taking women as sex slaves as they fled from the Taliban offensive. *UNPRECEDENTED SPAT BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND ARIEL SHARON Tel Aviv, Washington, October 5 (RHC)--In an unprecedented spat between Washington and Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Thursday launched a public message to the United States in particular, and Western nations in general, that the White House has termed as unacceptable. Sharon warned the U.S. and the West concerning an anti-terrorist coalition with Arab nations that would be detrimental to Israel's interests. The warning was made with a fury that reportedly surprised the Israeli press and political circles in Tel Aviv. Sharon demanded that the West refrain from committing the terrible error of 1938, when European democracies sacrificed Czechoslovakia in exchange for a provisional agreement with Adolph Hitler. According to Israeli media outlets, Sharon in this way compared President George W. Bush with then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who returned from the 1938 Munich Conference announcing that he had preserved peace. Observers are noting that the Israeli government has reacted with concern and suspicion to Bush's statement last Tuesday in favor of a Palestinian state -- the first time the U.S. president has made such an announcement. According to an Israeli official quoted by the AFP news agency while requesting anonymity, Sharon is hoping to mobilize the U.S. Jewish community by mentioning Chamberlain and in that way launching a threat of a new holocaust. This source stated that it's also an expression of Israel's anger over Washington's refusal to include the organizations Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbola on its list of terrorists. Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid denounced the comparison to Czechoslovakia, insisting that Israel can defend itself, no one can sacrifice the country and Sharon should apologize to Washington. The independent news daily "Maariv" wrote that Sharon lost his wits and declared a political war against the United States by accusing Washington of trying to stab Israel in the back. The "Yediot Aharonot" news daily affirmed that the Israeli Prime Minister's statements were unfortunate, historically false and politically damaging. In other news from Israel, since Sharon assumed office Tel Aviv has begun construction of 25 new Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank, according to the Israeli pacifist organization Peace Now. The organization said the constructions are new and not merely expansions of existing settlements, though they're being built near old settlements so as to appear as their outlying neighborhoods. The continued building and expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied territory has been repeatedly condemned by the international community and is seen as one of the major stumbling blocks to peace in the region. *ARGENTINE UP AGAINST INCREASING CRITICISM AS ECONOMIC SLUMP WORSENS Buenos Aires, October 5 (RHC)--Argentine President Fernando de la Rua is coming up against increasing criticism as the economy continues registering record slump indexes despite International Monetary Fund bailouts and domestic economic shock packages. Not only opposition leaders, but also the head of de la Rua's political party -- the Radical Civic Union -- is also turning his back on the President. Former president and Radical Civic Union leader Raul Alfonsin said the country's economic model is in check, insisting that that model has to be changed because Argentina cannot continue going from recession to structural adjustments, and then back to recession and more adjustments. Opposition leader Eduardo Duhalde stated that with this, in his words, perverse model not even a magician can get the country back on track. In the past few days, stocks and bonds have been taking nosedives, while Argentina's risk-country factor is daily registering record highs. The Governor of Santa Cruz Province, Nestor Kirchner, stated that Argentina's biggest risk is the de la Rua administration. But despite the criticism and a less than 16 percent approval rate, the Argentinean President Thursday reiterated his defense of last July's 7th economic shock package in 20 months of his presidency. Alfonsin asserted that another adjustment package dropped on the shoulders of public employees, retired workers and pensioners will not be tolerated. Another old de la Rua ally, Chaco Province Governor Angel Rozas, stated that if there isn't a drastic change of course Argentina is heading for bankruptcy and a national disaster -- though labor leaders say the disaster has already set in. *PEACE PROCESS DEADLOCKED, BOGOTÁ AGAIN ACCUSED OF DOING TOO LITTLE Bogotá, October 5 (RHC)--As Colombia's rebel-government peace process flounders, Human Rights Watch has asserted that President Andres Pastrana has only made superficial efforts to do away with ties between the armed forces and right-wing paramilitary death squads. The organization released a report in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, with detailed accusations of the ties between three army brigades and the right-wing Colombian Self-Defense Units in the southern Putumayo Department - the principal region targeted by the U.S.-sponsored anti-drug offensive. While recognizing that the Pastrana administration has forcibly retired several army generals suspected of having ties with the death squads, and that the persecution and arrest of paramilitaries has increased recently, Human Rights Watch affirmed that the gap between words and action is still wide. The report carries the title "The Sixth Division," insinuating that though the Colombian army only has five divisions, it really has six with the Colombian Self-Defense Units. Though the Colombian government has yet to respond, Bogotá has traditionally downplayed numerous similar denunciations, calling them partial and inexact. Meanwhile, Colombian rebel leaders continued Friday for the third consecutive day talks with High Commissioner for Peace Camilo Gomez in an effort to once again rescue the peace process from its deathbed. Criticism of the peace process has been growing within political and business circles that see little progress in the past three years of rebel-government talks and reject continuation of the vast demilitarized zone controlled by the insurgency since November 1998. *FAST TRACK VOTE IN U.S. CONGRESS POSTPONED ONCE AGAIN Washington, October 5 (RHC)--The White House and U.S. business interests have failed in another effort to pave the way for approval of fast track trade negotiation powers for President George W. Bush. The House Ways and Means Committee Friday postponed until next week a vote on the measure amid on-going disputes concerning the protection of labor rights and the environment. Grassroots and human rights organizations opposed to fast track have been warning that the Bush administration will try to take advantage of the wave of patriotism and bipartisan sentiments in Congress to obtain approval of the measure. But the leading Democrats in the House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel and Sander Levin maintain opposition. House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt Thursday blasted any effort to hurriedly vote the fast track measure, asserting that neither should it be a priority following the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington D.C. Fast track would allow Bush to present to Congress for approval or rejection, but not revision, of free trade deals he's negotiated. *Viewpoint: ELEPHANTS DON'T FORGET The mainstream media in both the United States and Great Britain have been firmly behind their governments in preparing their populations for war. Jingoism, xenophobia and chauvinism are the order of the day and anyone openly critical of these preparations has found themselves in an abused minority. Ask those US journalists fired for criticizing their President the day after the attacks on New York and Washington DC. In England, Margaret Thatcher has further fanned the wave of racism against anyone Muslim, looking Arab or perceived to be so, by making an off-the-cuff remark that she did not think Muslim "priests" had condemned the September 11th terrorism strongly enough. Aside from being untrue, the comment takes all Muslims to task because of what appears to be Muslim involvement in the attacks. Were all Christians treated this way after the Oklahoma bombing by the good and very white Christian, Timothy McVeigh? The rash of abuse and physical attacks against Muslims and Sikhs (because they look like Arabs due to the turbans they wear) in both the United States and Great Britain has prompted George W Bush and Tony Blair to censure the racism and visit one or two mosques before getting back down to the business of their crusade against Osama bin Laden. They have made no effort to address the more profound issues or attempt to tackle the deeply seated racial stereotypes. In George Orwell's poignant short story "Killing an Elephant," he describes how taking his elephant gun as protection against an elephant on heat forced him to kill the calmed beast. Although the elephant no longer posed a threat he had to kill it to save face before the hundreds of people who had come to watch. Although Osama bin Laden clearly continues to pose a threat to us all, the gathering of forces of war has historically compelled their use. Bush and Blair have backed themselves into a corner and are now expected to sound the trumpets and send in the troops, which - judging from previous such military interventions over the last decade - means many civilian deaths, or, as we are expected to stomach it, collateral damage. Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon - who many regard as a terrorist by any definition of the word - has threatened that he will not stand by if the US and England do another Neville Chamberlain and "sacrifice" his country to maintain peace. The Daily Mirror newspaper from England opines - incredibly - that "before poverty, drought, disease and starvation can be defeated there is a more immediate foe - terrorism." This is in complete reversal to the most simple, common sense position that most level-headed people on this planet believe: that to eradicate terrorism one must first address the very things that promote it: poverty, drought, disease and starvation. Add to that social justice and promotion of peace and we have some semblance of a plan for saving our planet. The problem will be to persuade the world's most powerful leaders to resist temptation and put down their elephant guns. (c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= rhc-eng-25715 2001-Oct-06 05:14:24