MILLIONS STRIKE TO PROTEST IMF

Striking workers rally in Buenos Aires.

Compiled by Brendan Conley

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Nov. 24— Millions of workers stayed off their jobs Friday in the largest national strike in years as unions led a protest against government austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

During the second day of the 36-hour strike, protesters blocked roads and highways across Argentina with flaming tires. The strike, led by the country’s three most powerful unions, forced schools and businesses to shut down, and transportation, energy and banking services were all closed.

The Interior Ministry reported 34 arrests in strike-related incidents across the country.

The strike was a response to President Fernando De la Rua’s call for more economic austerity for a recession-bound nation where the unemployment rate tops 15 percent. It is the third and largest strike during his year-old presidency.

The strike was called 10 days ago, after De la Rua announced a five-year public spending freeze, an increase in the retirement age, and changes to the pension system.

The new measures came on top of an earlier austerity campaign that raised taxes, lowered salaries for state workers, and reformed labor laws. The measures are being promoted by the IMF, which says they are needed if Argentina is to receive a multi-billion dollar “bailout” – a new loan that would increase the country’s $123.5 billion debt.

The protest began Thursday, when thousands of workers poured out of offices and factories, and union stalwarts blocked roads, beating drums and sending bottle rockets screeching overhead.

The strike climaxed Friday when the country’s biggest union joined the strike, sending workers from hospitals, trains, gas stations, banks, and garbage collection services onto the streets.

Despite the shooting death of one striker, and arrests, the government said it was satisfied the strike was mostly peaceful.

Several union groups refused to comply with a government order that they provide “minimum services’’ during the strike, saying that the order violated Argentina’s constitution, which defends the right to strike.

Few traders made it to the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, where the select Merval Index opened unchanged in light trading. Officials barred the doors to the bolsa to protect the building from protesters and said they were unsure whether trading would open the next day.

“There’s no trading going on, no prices, nothing,’’ said Daniel Vogado, a trader at Banco Velox. “We’ll all be digesting the impact of this strike over the weekend.’’

This strike may cost the country $800 million from lost production, said Ricardo Ostuni, de la Rua’s spokesman. More than 100 buses were burned in an effort by activists to intimidate bus companies, which, in the past, haven’t supported strikes, according to Bullrich.

In Buenos Aires province, bus services dropped well below the demanded 50 percent, with many drivers supporting the strike and others reluctant to incur the wrath of colleagues by working.

On Friday, De la Rua took aim at the strikers, saying the stoppage had been “rejected and repudiated by the people.’’

Strike leaders, however, hailed the stoppage as a success that had the near unanimous support of workers.

The work action, involving millions of people, was distorted and underreported by the corporate media in the United States. The Asheville Citizen-Times found room on the front page of its Saturday edition for an article on holiday shopping, but failed to cover the strike. The New York Times devoted 150 words to the event, along with a larger article on the Argentine economy. The Associated Press, meanwhile, blandly declared that “unions do not enjoy broad support in Argentina,” while reporting on a strike that involved 90% of the country’s workforce.

Republican party orchestrates mob attack in Miami-Dade

By Kate Randall

Miami, Florida, Nov. 26-- More details have come to light concerning the events on Wednesday at the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board that led to the board’s decision to halt manual recounting of ballots in the presidential election. The board’s sudden announcement that it was abandoning the recount meant that hundreds of votes, mostly for Democratic candidate Al Gore, would not be included in the official state-wide tally.

The protesters who mobbed the board’s proceedings were not — as had been generally portrayed in the media — a collection of “outraged citizens” and rank-and-file Republicans who came together in a spontaneous outburst of indignation. The mini-riot was a carefully orchestrated operation designed by the Bush camp to halt the manual recounting of ballots that had been authorized only one day before by the Florida Supreme Court.

According to a report on ABCNews.com, the participants were not for the most part local party activists, but rather Republican Party operatives who have been functioning out of a large mobile home in Miami, some having come from as far away as Washington DC and New York City. These individuals were tight-lipped when questioned by a CNN reporter about who was in charge of their activities.

On Tuesday night, Bush campaigners began phoning Republican Party members, urging them to join the out-of-state operatives in an anti-recount protest the next morning at Miami’s County Hall. At 8 am Wednesday, a meeting of the board of canvassers voted to abandon a full hand recount of Miami-Dade’s 654,000 ballots and proceed instead with a hand count of approximately 10,000 “undervotes” - ballots for which no presidential choice had been registered in the original machine count. Since most of these ballots were from Democratic precincts, the board’s action outraged the Bush camp, which proceeded to organize a violent provocation.

A crowd of about 150 pro-Bush protesters gathered outside the room on the 18th floor of County Hall where the board of canvassers was meeting to begin the recount. In an effort to expedite the counting process, the board decided to move its proceedings - and the disputed ballots - to a room on the 19th floor where the general public would be excluded, but two representatives from both the Republican and Democratic parties would be allowed to observe.

At that point, according to a November 24 column by Paul Gigot in the Wall Street Journal, New York Rep. John Sweeney, a Republican “monitor” on the scene, gave the order to “shut it down.” The throng of Republican protesters moved to the 19th floor and began pounding on the doors of the county elections department, chanting, “Stop the count, stop the fraud!”

Numerous incidents of violence on the part of the demonstrators were reported. The crowd chased down Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Joe Geller, screaming that he was stealing a ballot. (It turned out he was carrying a sample ballot.) The mob attempted to rush the doors to the 19th floor elections office, and several people were trampled and manhandled in the process. Luis Rosero, a Democratic aide, told the New York Times that he was punched and kicked in the scuffle.

Key in mobilizing personnel for the Republican onslaught was the Spanish-language radio station, Radio Mambi. In an effort to whip up a lynch-mob hysteria, Republicans accused the Miami-Dade election officials of deliberately excluding Hispanic precincts, areas politically dominated by right-wing Cuban exiles that had voted overwhelmingly for Bush.

Radio Mambi reporter Evilio Cepero played a key part in fomenting the violence, chanting over a megaphone “Denounce the recount!”, “Stop the injustice!” His calls for people to come down to the demonstration were repeatedly broadcast over Radio Mambi, and he telephoned interviews with Republican Party politicians that were relayed by the station.

According to Gigot’s column in the Wall Street Journal, Republicans on the scene told the besieged election officials that “1,000 local Cuban Republicans” were on their way to the demonstration. The prospect of facing a mob of anti-Castro fascists - who earlier this year illegally held young Elian Gonzales in defiance of government orders to return him to his father, and whose leading figures have been linked to terrorist actions against Cuba - undoubtedly unnerved the canvassing board members, who had good cause to fear for their lives.

Gigot, who in addition to penning a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal is a regular commentator on the Public Broadcasting System’s Newshour television program, enthuses in his Journal article over the success of the mob attack: “The canvassers then stunned everybody and caved. They canceled any recount and certified the original Nov. 7 election vote.... Republicans rejoiced and hugged like they’d just won the lottery.”

This provocation, utilizing an openly fascistic element within Miami’s Cuban-American population, underscores the threat to democratic rights represented by the ultra-right forces that have come to dominate the Republican Party.

Source: World Socialist Web Site: www.wsws.org

Rebels pull the plug on Colombian exports

By Steven Dudley

Bogota, Colombia, Nov. 22— US coal giant Drummond Co. had relatively few problems in Colombia until a couple of months ago. But when the Birmingham, Ala., company decided to increase production significantly this year, it ran into big trouble.

In September, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest rebel group, dynamited train tracks belonging to the company. The rebels also kidnapped six Drummond employees, five of whom were subsequently released with a message for company officials: Pay up or risk more attacks.

The attacks continued on Nov. 4, when rebels from the country’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), reportedly dynamited another Drummond train.

Guerrillas have targeted oil companies in Colombia for years, extorting money, blowing up oil pipelines and kidnapping workers for ransom. But during the past 18 months, they have begun hitting other parts of the country’s vital energy sector.

Oil is Colombia’s top export, earning $3.8 billion last year. Coal is third, with $848 million in sales in 1999, making Colombia the world’s fourth-largest coal exporter; government officials in the coal sector have said they would like to see production double over the next five years. Colombia also hopes to export natural gas and electricity in the near future.

But guerrilla attacks have cast a shadow over many of these projects.

When the government privatized its coal company last month, two of the five bidders dropped out at the last minute, including Drummond. The remaining three - Switzerland’s Glencore, South Africa’s Anglo American PLC, and Britain’s Billiton PLC - formed a consortium to purchase the company for the minimum asking price, $384 million.

“What [the attacks] show is that the government cannot provide these companies the protection they need,” said Alvaro Reyes Posada of the Colombian economic research group Econometria.

Since the beginning of 1999, rebels have also destroyed more than 500 electricity pylons.

The attacks are one of the reasons the government has delayed selling its largest electricity generator, its transmission service, and 14 local electricity distribution companies.

The $1.5 billion expected from the sales was to be used to help the government reduce its ballooning deficit. The sales were a condition for a $2.7 billion International Monetary Fund loan approved last year. The delays suggest that the government fears that the value of the companies may have dropped because of the attacks.

Both major guerrilla groups also seem to be using the new tactics to pressure the government at the negotiating table. The government began a peace process with FARC and held preliminary talks this year with ELN. But talks with FARC have stalled on several occasions, including last week when the rebels demanded the government do more to combat right-wing paramilitary forces.

The stepped-up campaign against energy companies comes as the government prepares to implement Plan Colombia, its $7.5 billion strategy to fight drugs and shore up the ailing economy. The United States is contributing $1.3 billion over two years, most of which is for military hardware to fight the guerrillas in drug producing areas.

Rebels siphon a tax from the drug producers and traffickers to finance their war and recently linked their campaign against energy companies to the increased US role in the 36-year conflict.

ELN said after a spate of bombings along the Caqo Limon oil pipeline in July and August that the attacks were a “protest against North American intervention.” The pipeline transports 95,000 barrels a day of California-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s crude to an Atlantic port for export.

The two guerrilla groups have bombed Caqo Limon 87 times this year, and 739 times since 1986, spilling more than 2.3 million barrels of oil. In September, Occidental Petroleum was forced to suspend its contractual obligations at Caqo Limon because of the bombings.

FARC rebels hit state oil company Ecopetrol’s southern pipeline 31 times in September, forcing Ecuador’s state oil company, Petroecuador, which uses the line to transport 45,000 barrels a day for export, to suspend its obligations.

Oil workers have also become targets of new actions, beyond kidnappings for ransom. In the last few weeks, a driver contracted by Occidental Petroleum and an engineer contracted by BP Amoco PLC were stopped, then killed, by suspected rebels as they traveled along country roads between project sites.

Despite these problems, oil remains one of the few industries that can still draw new investors to Colombia. In September, Ecopetrol auctioned off 21 areas, some of them larger than 500 square miles, where companies could explore for oil. Thirteen areas drew offers, and four of the winning companies have not worked in Colombia before.

Ecopetrol officials said the auction will bring more than $600 million in new investment over the next six years. Ecopetrol has also signed 25 new oil exploration contracts with mostly small to medium-size companies this year.

Some representatives of multinational companies working here say the perception is worse than the reality.

“It’s a dangerous place,” said Martin Keeley of the British oil firm Emerald Energy, which discovered a sizable oil field last year. “But the danger is manageable.”

Still, others argued that Ecopetrol’s auction suffered from the effects of the deteriorating security situation. Twenty-five companies participated in the bidding after 44 initially expressed interest. Those that dropped out included Occidental Petroleum, Texaco Inc. and Chevron Corp.

“We are worried,” the head of the Colombian Petroleum Association, Alejandro Martinez, said. “We are starting to ask ourselves: Is it worth it to invest in this country?” Source: Colombian Labor Monitor: www.prairienet.org/clm