Forty-thousand march for McDonald’s saboteur

By Sophie Arie

Millau, France, July 2 (IPS)— If you want to make your worries heard about the dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods or the decline of your local bakery, hot-spots for the globalization debate like Seattle or Davos might spring to mind. You probably wouldn’t think of rushing to the small town of Millau, in rural southern France.

But the sleepy market town is now the site of France’s biggest anti-corporate globalization fest ever, with at least 40,000 people gathering to support the mustachioed crusader against junk food and multinational monopolies, Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a half-built McDonald’s restaurant.

The 47 year-old traditional sheep farmer and long-time militant has become a household name in France over the last year since he raided the American fast-food chain on Aug. 19, 1999.

Although he could be sentenced for up to five years for dismantling the McDonald’s site with nine union colleagues, the pipe-smoking small farmer and veteran militant is unperturbed. He is riding a wave.

“I am totally calm. If the court finds us guilty — and I do not think it will — then there will be trouble. People will go on the streets across France and cause serious damage to the government,” he said.

Public Prosecutor Alain Durand Saturday recommended that Bove receive a 10-month sentence and be put on probation for a further 18 months. He also suggested that his nine accomplices receive suspended sentences of no less than three months. A court is expected to hand down its decision on Sep. 13.

The charismatic left-wing militant, dubbed Asterix after the valiant cartoon hero who resisted Roman oppressors, turned his two-day trial into one huge carnival, rolling up to the Millau courthouse on Friday in a horse-drawn cart, with throngs of jubilant supporters cheering slogans against “McDomination.”

As the trial was transmitted on huge screens outside the Millau court house, the town —normally home to 20,000 people— became a swarm of workshops and debates on issues from food security and GM foods to immigration and human rights. For light relief, there were jugglers, hot dog stands and a huge open-air concert with three of France’s biggest bands.

For Bove and his militant agricultural union, the Confederation Paysanne, McDonald’s has turned out to be the ideal scapegoat in a huge publicity campaign against over-liberalized international trade and large-scale industrial agriculture.

The eloquent sheep-farmer rocketed to fame after his McDonald’s stunt and now spends most of his time addressing thousands at militant rallies and appearing in bookstores to promote his book, “The World Is Not For Sale” which has already sold 80,000 copies. He has met President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and in certain circles there is even some talk of him running for president.

But Bove says he has no political ambitions. He has been a militant all of his life — notably standing against the GATT treaty in 1994, French nuclear tests in Polynesia in 1995, and the World Trade Organization in Seattle last November — and now wants to use his new-found fame to force politicians to rethink their approach to globalization, which he feels is wiping out everything from quality of life and human rights to diversity.

But Bove does not just protest. He has a long-term project to set up a permanent monitoring committee, made up of law, finance and economics experts, to watch the WTO headquarters in Geneva like a “giant microscope.”

To challenge the WTO, Bove proposes to bring together, in Geneva, farmers’ unions, workers’ unions, and consumer and environmentalist groups to create a “Global Citizen Initiative,” to check that human rights, economic pacts and international conventions on the environment and biodiversity are respected in world trade.

US blocks cheap AIDS-fighting medicines

By Gustavo Capdevila

Geneva, Switzerland, June 28 (IPS)— One of the critical issues taken up by the United Nations (UN) Social Summit, underway here this week, is how to provide medicine and treatment for the millions of people facing death from HIV/AIDS, but it hit a snag Wednesday in Working Group II when the United States objected to a proposal by a group of developing countries.

The delegation from South Africa, a country that could lose a quarter of its labor force to the AIDS epidemic, condemned the indifference expressed by the United States and other governments as they stand in the way of solutions promoted by the developing South.

The controversy takes on greater significance coming just after the UNAIDS program released its report Tuesday on the expansion of the disease, announcing that HIV/AIDS caused 5.4 million deaths worldwide in 1999 alone.

The initiative of the Group of 77 (G-77), a coalition of developing nations, is an attempt to subordinate intellectual property rights, reflected in pharmaceutical patents, to international human rights, especially when it comes to access to medicines and lowering their prices.

The G-77 text proposes the exclusion of patent rights for medications deemed essential and fundamental for saving the lives of AIDS patients. This will allow the distribution of these medicines at accessible prices, says the document.

Developing nations demand recognition of the fact that intellectual property rights under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) do not take precedence over other human health-related rights.

The demand of the developing South specifically points to the right to high-quality health services, recognized by numerous instruments of international humanitarian law.

The initiative also appeals to the ethical responsibility of providing life-saving medications at accessible prices for developing countries and populations living in poverty.

At the center of the controversy are the pharmaceutical patents that transnational laboratories attempt to enforce throughout the world, particularly as established by TRIPS, under the neoliberal legal legislation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Most countries of the South see the TRIPS Agreement as being “insufficiently attentive to development needs,’’ according to a report released this week in Geneva by Centro Sur (the South Center), authored by Carlos Correa, of the University of Buenos Aires.

Correa maintains that the national legislative reforms required in developing countries to adapt them to TRIPS norms on pharmaceuticals create tensions due to their consequences on access to medicine and on public health policies.

In addition to the United States objection, Canada, Japan and Australia also opposed the G-77 initiative during the debate taking place during this special UN General Assembly on development, also known as Copenhagen Plus Five.

Delegates from the European Union (EU), which also rejected the South-led proposal, presented an alternative text saying it was sufficiently flexible to adapt to the items included in the G-77 initiative.

The United States representatives alleged, according to unofficial sources, that the G-77 proposal introduced issues related to human rights and other technical questions that would require broader consultation with experts in the field.

The South African delegation responded, saying such indifference was not appropriate given that several nations in southern Africa could lose 25 percent of their workforce to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The South African representatives stressed that AIDS medications are critical in fighting the epidemic and that eliminating the G-77 proposal would only mean greater disaster.

Mercia Andrews, president of a coalition of South African non-governmental organizations (NGOs), said her group is pressuring governments and the private sector to adopt a joint strategy to combat the disease.

If a solution is not found soon, she said, the impact of the disease on the economy in the next decade will be devastating.

Following US Senate vote, Colombian revolutionaries vow to confront aggression

By Andy McInerney

The US Senate took a giant step toward all-out war in Colombia on June 21.

The Senate voted 94 to five for a billion-dollar package of military aid for the Colombian government. The package is part of a much bigger $7.5 billion “Plan Colombia” that is being orchestrated by the US government.

The reaction from Colombia was swift and defiant. “If the people of Colombia are threatened, we will confront the aggression,” warned Simon Trinidad, spokesperson for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP).

“The Plan Colombia will raise more Manuel Marulandas,” Trinidad said. Manuel Marulanda, popularly known as “Tirofijo” — Sureshot — is the legendary leader of the FARC-EP.

The Colombian Communist Party issued a June 23 statement opposing the aid. “The approval of the Plan Colombia by the United States Congress shows that a new chapter of military intervention in Colombia is unfolding,” the CCP’s Executive Committee wrote. The party called for a national mobilization against the Plan Colombia.

Before the Senate vote, 60 Colombian labor, human-rights and community groups signed a declaration to the international community opposing the Plan Colombia. “We reject the Plan Colombia because it uses an authoritarian concept of national security exclusively based on a strategy against narcotics,” the statement explained.

“It will lead to the escalation of the social and armed conflict. It fails to provide real solutions to drug trafficking. It attacks the Indigenous populations by destroying their culture and way of life.”

US war package

The $932 million approved by the Senate is primarily designed to bolster the Colombian state-armed forces. The package now needs to be reconciled with the $1.7 billion package approved by the House of Representatives.

The final package — attached to a bigger appropriations package whose passage is all but assured — is expected to total at least $1.3 billion.

The centerpiece is an armada of 60 combat helicopters. The House package includes 30 Huey II attack helicopters and 30 advanced Blackhawk helicopters; the Senate package provides 60 Hueys.

The package also provides funds for training three elite counter-insurgency battalions, expanding the number of Special Forces “advisers” beyond the 200-300 that the Pentagon admits are already there. These battalions are supposed to lead a “push into the south,” referring to the FARC-EP’s stronghold.

The Plan Colombia is marketed in the United States as part of the “war on drugs.” But any analysis of the aid package and the current situation in Colombia reveals that this is for public consumption only.

The package is actually aimed at Colombia’s powerful insurgencies, the FARC-EP and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Military aid has skyrocketed from around $50 million in 1998 to over $1 billion —a 20-fold increase in just two years. Colombia is now the third biggest recipient of US military aid in the world.

Study after study shows that drug traffickers in Colombia maintain close connections to both the Colombian Armed Forces and the political elite there. They have no independent armed forces.

Ruling-class crisis deepens

The massive aid package is designed to prop up Colombia’s weak and notoriously corrupt ruling class. This regime is currently facing depression-level economic conditions as well as an unprecedented political and military challenge from both the armed insurgencies and the mass movement.

Unemployment in Colombia is officially over 20 percent; in many areas it is over 50 percent. The Colombian peso has lost over half its value against the dollar in the last year alone.

After a string of military defeats at the hands of the insurgencies, the government of President Andres Pastrana has been forced to the table for talks with the FARC-EP. For the last 18 months, Pastrana has ceded a five-municipality “demilitarized zone” to the FARC-EP so that talks can be carried out.

The talks have featured a series of “Public Audiences,” in which Colombians from around the country can travel to the zone and make proposals for how they would address the problems facing Colombia. These meetings have often become popular speak-outs against the government’s economic policies that capitulate to the demands of the International Monetary Fund.

In the past two years, unions have led a series of general strikes against Pastrana’s economic policies. Peasants have staged blockades of highways. In June, residents of the Chocó province staged a general strike to protest the government’s neglect of the region.

Few believe that the Plan Colombia can resolve this deep crisis. “The US aid is going to trigger a total crisis and stimulate the war,” political analyst Alejo Vargas told USA Today on June 23.

The package does signal a new level of struggle —a sign that US imperialism will not stand by quietly while its representatives in Bogota are in trouble. Now US diplomats are twisting arms in Europe to approve more aid at a high-level ministerial meeting in Spain in July.

As opposition to the aid mounts in Colombia, Colombians will surely be looking to the progressive movement in the United States for allies and for solidarity.

Source: Workers World News Service