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Workers around the world celebrate May Day

Compiled by Shawn Gaynor

May 5 (AGR)— Hundreds of thousands of workers around the world celebrated the 117th International May Day holiday on May 1 by holding rallies demanding better working conditions, higher wages, and new jobs. The holiday began following the 1886 Haymarket Riots in Chicago, where anarchist unionists struggled for the adoption of the 8-hour workday in US labor law.

Though rallies took place worldwide, no major rallies were reported in the United States, where unemployment and poverty continue to grow.

In Europe the annual May Day demonstrations got off to a violent start when police clashed with protesters in Berlin and the northern city of Hamburg.

Berlin police were out in force, with some 7,500 on city streets braced for battles with anarchists after 29 police officers and an unknown number of demonstraters and bystanders were injured in three hours of clashes overnight. The violence erupted after a peace rally that drew 6,000. It was unclear what triggered the violence, which left several cars overturned and burning.

In the afternoon, scuffles broke out with police as 300 far-left activists rallied in Berlin in a counter-protest against a demonstration by an estimated 1,200 supporters of the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD).

In England, around 300 demonstrators gathered outside the offices of giant US firm Lockheed Martin in High Holborn. The offices of the multinational company were boarded up and cordoned off.

In London, scuffles between about 400 protesters and police in Trafalgar Square and Whitehall broke out despite a huge police presence of 3,000 officers, with an extra 1,000 on standby, and a low turn-out of protesters -- estimated at about 1,500.

Amid concerns that anti-capitalists and anarchists would repeat the destruction seen in previous May Day rallies, dozens of businesses in central London were closed and boarded up.

Demonstrators marched under the banner of “Weapons of mass construction -­ Our day” and staged protests at the offices of oil and arms companies.

In the Swiss financial center Zurich, about 100 masked protesters threw stones and bottles at police, who responded with rubber pellets. Shop windows were wrecked and cars damaged.

Some 7,000 people staged a march earlier to condemn the Iraq war and criticize “fat cat” managers drawing huge pay packets while the global economy struggles. “Yesterday Afghanistan, Today Iraq, Tomorrow?” read a banner.

In Moscow, Communists mobilized 15,000 mainly elderly sympathizers for the traditional May Day parade past Red Square. They demanded the resignation of President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Trade unions and Moscow city authorities attended a separate rally of 25,000 people.

Tens of thousands of workers rallied in Italy, Spain and Bulgaria.

Across Asia workers took to the streets.

In Japan, with the unemployment rate hovering near a record high, demonstrators urged the government and businesses to protect jobs. Police estimated some 223,000 unionists turned out for May Day events held nationwide early yesterday.

In Tokyo, some 65,000 people gathered at Yoyogi Park for a rally, according to the organizer, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, Rengo.

“Suicide and crimes are increasing in accordance with company bankruptcies and job losses,” Rengo head Kiyoshi Sasamori told the gathering.

“It tells us that job losses not only destroy people’s everyday life but plunge the whole nation into a crisis,” he said.

With an estimated 3.84 million people out of work, Japan’s jobless rate was at 5.4 percent in March, just off a record high of 5.5 percent seen earlier this year and in late 2002.

Meanwhile, thousands hit the streets of Indonesian cities to mark May Day, calling for the resignation of President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her labor minister for alleged indifference to the plight of workers. In Jakarta about 2,000 workers picketed the presidential palace, calling Megawati and Vice President Hamzah Haz “lackeys of imperialists and anti-workers.”

In Seoul, South Korean marchers demanded that their work week be shortened from six days to five. They also chanted anti-globalization messages, including “Down, down WTO!” referring to the World Trade Organization, which promotes global trade.

Sri Lankan demonstrators gathered across the island, rallying for better pay and tougher laws to protect workers. The marchers were demanding a 25 percent monthly pay increase for unskilled laborers, who earn about 5,000 rupees (US$83) per month.

In Australia, US company Rio Tinto is attempting to throw five families out of their central Queensland homes and in the US, slash health care from retired Utah steelworkers while authorizing a $40 million retiremement payout for chairman, Robert Wilson.

More than 2,000 Western Australian trade unionists rallied outside the Perth offices of Hammersley Iron, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, demanding justice for the miners and steelworkers on May Day before representatives put their cases to shareholders at the nearby annual general meeting of Rio Tinto. CFMEU speakers at the meeting were joined by five steelworkers from the US and Canada.

In Africa, Zimbabwe’s main labor union marked international workers’ day by warning thousands of supporters to brace themselves for confrontation with the government over fuel prices and low wages, saying things would not improve without a change of regime.

In a May Day speech to some 5,000 people at a stadium in the capital Harare, Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), told workers to be prepared to take up the next call to action against the government.

In South America hundreds of thousands observed May Day. In La Paz, Bolivia over 100,000 rallied for Mayday, with 50,000 more rallying in El Alto.

200,000 rallied in Colombia and 20,000 marched in Buenos Aries, Argentina, where presidential elections are nearing.

Gunfire disrupted a May Day demonstration against President Hugo Chavez’s government in Caracas, Venezuela, killing one person, local television reported.

Chavez was the focus of rival May Day marches in the Venezuelan capital. 10,000 opponents of the populist left-wing president, led by the CTV trade union and the Democratic Coordination (CD) umbrella opposition group, marched to O’Leary Square in the center of the capital.

Meanwhile 30,000 Chavez supporters, marching under the banner of the newly created National Workers Union (UNT), marhced from the Plaza De Mayo and headed towards the Avenue Libertador.

Sources: Agence France Presse, Independent Media Center, Independent (UK), Irish Examiner, Reuters, Sun Star News, Workers Online

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Bush’s peace plan: ‘road without a map’ say Arabs

Compiled by Seán Marquis

May 7 (AGR) - Because too many Middle East peace initiatives have failed in the past, Arabs are skeptical about the possibility that the new ‘’road map’’ for peace, released last week, can end Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance.

The low-key announcement, which was delayed six times since it was drafted last December, is seen as a metaphor for the reluctance with which US President George W. Bush has accepted the role of peacemaker in the Middle East.

Dubbing the plan “a road without a map,’’ UAE (United Arab Emirates)-based political analyst Inad Khairallah said: “Domestically, with an eye on re-election, Bush has more to lose from pushing too hard for a peace deal than he does from failing to win an agreement.’’

He adds that “Bush’s closest political allies — religious conservatives — are fiercely protective of Israel and would resist any pressure on [Israeli] Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’’ to accept a peace plan that includes the creation of a Palestinian state.

According to Rima Sabban, international relations professor at the Dubai University College, negotiations will not yield a state that will meet Palestinians’ expectations.

“Remember that Sharon won elections earlier this year on an anti-Palestine vote. Like the 1993 Oslo agreement which forced the Palestinians to accept peace on Israeli terms, the next deal will also eat into Arab aspirations.’’

The three-phase plan envisions a comprehensive peace agreement and Palestinian statehood by 2005. But Israel has reservations and stresses that any progress is contingent on the Palestinians’ “halting the violence’’, referring to violent attacks and suicide bombings.

The plan is already woefully behind schedule with the first phase set to run until May 2003, which means the parties are supposed to have accomplished their objectives by last week.

The plan’s first big demand on the Israelis is a freeze on building settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where more than 200,000 settlers live. Israel is also expected to dismantle illegal settlement outposts -- and both of these demands are unacceptable to right-wing Israeli groups.

On the Palestinian side, the appointment of a prime minister for the first time in April is being viewed with suspicion. Mohammed Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is considered a moderate by the United States and Israel and is expected to crack down on hardliners.

The Palestinian legislature’s approval of his appointment and cabinet was a precondition for the “road map.”

“Abu Mazen is Israel’s and the US choice to undermine Palestinian President Yasser Arafat,’’ says Mohammed Qattan, a UAE university student.

According to another Dubai-based analyst, Victor Shalhoub, the implementation of what he calls a “ridiculous’’ road map risks replacing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with inter-Palestinian strife and civil war — “just what the Israelis are hoping for’’.

Evidence of that contention is already visible. The new Palestinian premier’s call for a collection of unauthorized weapons to curb hardliners’ resistance tactics was rejected by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. Both see armed resistance as the only way of winning all demands, including “erasing” Israel from the global map.

Abbas pledged to disarm militants, including an armed offshoot of his and Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction.

“There is no room for weapons except in the hands of the government,’’ Abbas told the Palestinian parliament shortly before it voted 53-18 to approve his cabinet last Wednesday.

Legislators who voted against the cabinet said they objected to disabling armed “resistance’’ before the Israeli army had withdrawn from Palestinian cities, and also to Abbas’s retention of Arafat appointees they said were suspected of corruption.

With Sharon’s view of the size of the provisional Palestinian state being only 42 percent of the West Bank, the challenge for Washington is to turn the heat on Tel Aviv to accept and implement the “road map.”

The Palestinians say the plan should be implemented to the letter, but Israel insists that it should not be required to take any major steps before Palestinians halt all attacks against its citizens and Abbas consolidates his control over the Palestinian Authority.

So far, the administration has sided with both its Quartet partners — Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, which all helped draft the plan — and the Palestinians in insisting that the obligations are mutual and simultaneous.

As the peace plan states: “In each phase, the parties are expected to perform their obligations in parallel, unless otherwise indicated.”

Another part of Phase I of the plan calls for the “Palestinians [to] hold free, open, and fair elections.”

But with much of the Palestinians’ infrastructure destroyed by Israel, this can be extremely difficult on the practical level.

What is more problematic is that the plan then calls for Israel, which is the occupying power, to oversee the elections.

Specifically the plan says: “GOI [government of Israel] facilitates Task Force election assistance, registration of voters, movement of candidates and voting officials.”

“Israel has...destroyed the Palestinian Authority,” said Haim Oron, a leader of Israel’s left-wing Meretz Party with six seats in the knesset, Israel’s 120-member single-chamber parliament.

“The crumbling of the Palestinian Authority is a very negative thing, because there are only two possible replacements: an Israeli military government or the fundamentalists of Hamas. There is no third alternative.”

Oron added, “but if what we are going to offer is a Palestinian state on 42 percent of the territory, as Sharon said, that will mean just four or five districts connected by highways, tunnels, and bridges. Who would be willing to negotiate that?”

Several senior Bush officials and advisers - the same hawks around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney who led the charge for war on Iraq -- are known to sympathize strongly with Sharon’s views about the “road map,” as well as his hopes of retaining at least one-half of the West Bank in any eventual settlement.

Richard Perle, the powerful former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, has denounced the “road map’s” simultaneity provisions explicitly.

Significantly, Perle and other current key officials — director for Mideast affairs on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith; another undersecretary of defense, Dov Zakheim; and Michael Mobbs, a top Justice Department official who now holds a senior post in the occupation authority in Iraq — all signed an ad in the New York Times 11 years ago publicly denouncing Bush’s father for pressing then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir into negotiations with Arab states after the first Gulf War.

“As friendly as the United States is with many Arab states,’’ they wrote, along with 30 other former senior government officials who called themselves the Committee on US Interests in the Middle East, “when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the United States must be squarely on the side of the Israelis’’.

Militants take to streets

Firing rifles into the air and hoisting bodies over their heads, tens of thousands of Palestinians filled the streets Friday to mourn 12 people killed in an Israeli raid, and warned their new prime minister against any attempts to disarm militants.

“No to Abu Mazen!” they chanted angrily.

Like a drumbeat, hundreds of gunmen popped rifle shots into the air as others bore stretchers carrying bodies of the dead on the way to graves. The crowd stretched for nearly two miles in central Gaza City.

The target of the raid was the home of Yousef Abu Hein, a top Hamas fugitive. The Israeli military said that troops came under heavy fire and eight soldiers were wounded.

Forty Palestinians were wounded in the ensuing gunfight, and twelve were killed, including two boys aged 2 and 13.

Two-year-old Amer Ayad was hit by a bullet to the head while he was near a window in his home, said his father Ahmed, a blacksmith.

“Is this the new peace President Bush promised?” Ayad said. “They wrote the answer using the blood of my son.”

Thursday’s raid came a day after a suicide bomber killed three people and wounded 55 others in Tel Aviv. Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to the Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israeli officials have confirmed the bomber and his would-be accomplice were British citizens.

Sources: Associated Press, Inter Press Service, New York Times, Reuters

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Vieques islanders declare victory over US bombers

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, May 2— The long and often bitter campaign to end the US Navy’s bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques culminated in victory for the islanders yesterday, who celebrated the military pull-out with fireworks displays and parties.

The midnight ceremony marked the conclusion of a dispute in which more than 1,000 protesters had been arrested over the years.

Opponents claim that the bombing caused severe health problems, but the Navy denies the allegations. Anger peaked in 1999 after a civilian security guard, David Sanes, was killed when two bombs missed their targets.

The protests and growing resentment against a military presence that stretches back nearly 60 years led to President Clinton announcing in 1999 that only dummy bombs would be used and the exercises phased out over five years.

Further protests led to an announcement by President Bush in 2001 that the Navy would withdraw, and the area would be turned over to the US Department of the Interior. This week the Navy finally departed from the 17-acre site.

Opponents of the bombing celebrated at the range by breaking through a fence and waving the Puerto Rican flag. American flags were burned and Navy vehicles and equipment were vandalized amid cries of “get out” aimed at the Navy.

The withdrawal — resisted for many years by the Pentagon — marked a victory for the protesters, although they said yesterday that they had won “a battle not the war.” Many campaigners would like the land handed over to Puerto Rican authorities rather than to the US Department of the Interior which will turn the former bombing range into a wildlife reserve.

“We are here today to mark the beginning of a new era in peace and prosperity for Vieques,” Puerto Rico’s governor, Sila Calderon, said. “It is a moment of great joy, for we have achieved our dream.”

The islanders — numbering nearly 10,000 — have long complained about both the health, economic, and environmental damage done to the island by the military presence. It has also fuelled support for the island’s small independence movement and had become a rallying point for members of the American Latino community.

Puerto Rico was taken over by the US in 1898 as part of the Spanish-American War and became the equivalent of a crown colony two years later. Its inhabitants were granted US citizenship in 1917. Military activities started on Vieques in 1947 after locals had been forced to leave the land.

Among the many public figures jailed after joining in the demonstrations were Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Democratic Party presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton.

Local and international support groups have claimed for many years that the bombing and the storing of ammunition presented serious health problems for the islanders; higher than average cancer figures, heart abnormalities, and childhood asthma have been cited by protesters.

The US Navy waged a public relations campaign to try to counter the hostile publicity.

It denied that its presence was responsible for health problems and pointed to its role in helping to halt drug smuggling, offering hurricane relief, and providing employment for local people.

About 5,000 Puerto Ricans serve in the US Navy.

Source: Guardian UK

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