Socialist Action /May 2001
Editorials
U.S. prosecution of Cuban agents backfires
The U.S. prosecution of a group of Cuban intelligence
agents on espionage charges has begun to backfire. The Cubans had successfully
infiltrated the Miami-based anti-Castro terrorist organizations, risking
their lives to protect their country against the counterrevolutionary acts
illegally organized and financed by the U.S. government.
By means of a bold defense these courageous revolutionaries
have been able to turn the tables on their prosecutors. Rather than claim
"innocence," all five have acknowledged that they were working
for the Cuban ministry of the interior. But their unique defense against
the charges has been to put U.S. policy and actions on trial.
Over the last few weeks, their lawyers have called
a string of witnesses-some from Washington's own military and police agencies-to
back up their contention that the real terrorists are the ones the United
States repeatedly has sent to Cuba to attempt to murder their leaders, destroy
their economy, and overturn the revolution.
The defendants have made judicial history in the
course of their trial. Over the prosecutor's objections, the presiding judge
has repeatedly allowed the jury to see and hear videotaped testimony from
witnesses and experts living in Cuba-a tacit admission that their lives
could be in jeopardy from the ultra-right-wing Cuban American commandos
if they were forced to come to the U.S. to testify.
The significance of this case goes far beyond the
lives and freedom of these five men, one of whom is being tried for murder
in relation to the shooting down of the "Brothers to the Rescue"
planes a few years ago.
That shoot-down was an obvious defensive move when
you consider that the planes were led by a CIA-trained expert in explosives
and sabotage who had carried out previous terrorist acts against Cuba and
was sworn to overthrow Castro by any means. Yet it served as the pretext
under which Clinton and Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, further escalating
the attempt to strangle Cuba economically.
As we write, the case has just gone to the jury.
These courageous men should not only be freed but applauded as the true
heroes they are.
Mass action for women's right to
choose
In the face of escalating attacks on what is left
of the right of abortion by a government tied to the most reactionary forces
in the country, 7000 supporters of choice demonstrated in Washington, D.C.,
on April 22.
It was a small demonstration by comparison with
past demonstrations by the women's movement. In the past, the National Organization
for Women, organizers of this protest, has been able to rally up to half
a million supporters of the right to choose in the national capital.
But the composition of the April 22 event was largely
young, including many high-school women. Hopefully, the demonstration marked
the beginning of a remobilization of the right-to-choose movement that over
the years has become demobilized by the involvement of the established women's
movement leadership in Democratic Party politics.
The spirits of the marchers were lifted by their
confidence that they represent the majority opinion in the United States,
although over past decades the right to abortion upheld in the Supreme Court's
Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 has been steadily whittled away by capitalist
politicians pandering to organized bigotry.
As of 1998, 86 percent of counties in the United
States had no abortion providers and almost a third of the cities. Now it
is probably less.
The history of the fight for the right to choose
is an object lesson in the limitations of American bourgeois democracy.
In the early 1970s, the Supreme Court decision headed off the development
of a mass movement for the right of abortion. But once that right appeared
to have been granted, the majority public opinion was increasingly thwarted
by politicians seeking to consolidate a right-wing constituency.
Hopefully, the time has come for the mass movement
to be rebuilt. It is clear that the right of abortion will not be respected
unless masses are mobilized in the streets independent of all capitalist
politicians-the faint-hearted liberal friends as as well as the reactionary
attack dogs.
War threat increases in Middle East
On April 30, Israeli tanks once again shelled Palestinian refugee neighborhoods
in the Gaza Strip. The effect of this impressive military operation was
to wound one nine-year-old boy and two elderly women.
In the same period, military clashes between Palestinian and Israeli
armed forces took place in a number of other areas in the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank.
More and more the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israeli state
forces is looking like war, although a one-side war, with the Israeli military
machine attacking unarmed Palestinian crowds and lightly armed Palestinian
police.
The miserable Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza strip over the past
several weeks have repeatedly been the targets of shelling by heavy military
weapons.
The plan for resuming negotiations proposed by Jordan and Egypt notably
calls for an initial "ceasefire." That is, it is a proposal to
suspend a war.
In these conditions, the recent Israeli strike against Syrian radar units
deep in Lebanon set off alarm signals throughout the Arab world, because
it indicated that the Zionist rulers were straining at the bit to solve
their problems with another general war in the Middle East, focused against
Syria.
The only apparent solution for the Zionists is to intimidate the Palestinian
masses by inflicting disastrous defeats on one or more Arab states. The
Zionists can utilize their military superiority best in conventional warfare.
It is far less useful in suppressing popular insurrection, where it also
creates increasing political problems.
In all their wars against the Arab populations of the region, the Zionists
have won lightning military victories, only to be forced later to abandon
territory that they could not hold in the face of the unremitting hostility
of the people living on it. The logic of this situation is endless and escalating
wars. Ultimately, the Jewish settler state cannot sustain this conflict.
Now Israel is running into the additional problem that the United States
is according an increasing weight to its agreements with the conservative
Arab regimes, and that Washington does not want its achievements in this
respect blown sky high by another full-scale war in the Middle East. That
obviously is why the U.S. rushed to restrain Israel after the Lebanon bombing.
The Zionists are now like beasts caught in a trap. They cannot get out,
and every way they turn they suffer more damage.
It is clear that the Zionists offer no solution either for the Jewish
people or the Palestinian people. They have to be removed from power by
a combination of the Palestinian revolt and Jewish opposition to make way
for a solution based on respect for the democratic rights and equality of
both communities-a democratic secular Palestine.
End spy flights over China!
The bully U.S. imperialists cried foul last month when their high technology
spy plane, in a confrontation with a Chinese fighter aircraft, went down
on Chinese territory. The Chinese pilot was killed in the event.
The official statement from the 23-person super-spy crew captain, backed
by the U.S. government, was that the United States did not recognize the
airspace claimed by the Chinese government, and therefore, the U.S. plane
had committed no violation of Chinese territory.
But when The New York Times reported that the U.S. government claimed
the same, if not greater, airspace limitations as China in regard to its
own territory, the imperialist cat was out of the bag. The big lie was exposed
once again.
With public threats of military and economic retaliation, the Bush administration
sought to limit the damage caused by its illegal actions.
The semi-apology issued by the White House was likely accompanied by
agreements between the U.S. government and the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy,
including a limitation on the strength of the military weapons the U.S.
planned to sell to its client state Taiwan.
The latter has long been used as a military threat against the Chinese
deformed workers state.
Socialist Action /May 2001 |