============================================================================ Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 17:51:13 -0300 From: •••@••.••• To: •••@••.••• Subject: Zapatistas's 2nd American Meeting in Brazil Dear friends: Excuse me if you have by chance already received this message from other sources. --------------------- Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 Subject: (en) FZLN,Second American Encuentro,Sept 4 From: •••@••.••• (Chiapas95-english) To: •••@••.••• >From The Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN). Mexico. To Organizing Committee of the 2nd American Encuentro For Humanity And Against Neoliberalism To Organizations and individuals who are being called, from Belem, across the entire continent, to meet with us in Belem do Pará, Brazil. To The peoples of the American Continent: Brothers and Sisters: We received your Call to the 2nd American Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, to be held from December 6 to 11, 1999, in the City of Belem, Pará, Brazil. The beauty of the text could alone sustain, and be in keeping with, the abundance of dreams promised by the extremely rich diversity of Brazilian social movements and their struggles. By having you as our hosts, the intergalactics of all Our America will be able to feel at ease, and we will be inspired to share the experiences, ideas and most daring intentions for humanity and against (already, in itself, old) neoliberalism. The natural beauty of Belem / Pará, and the struggle of its residents to socialize it, points to a scenario that augurs a true encuentro of Our America with itself, that is, a truly wonderful encuentro of those who are seeking and struggling to make their dreams reality. Because of that, from La Realidad to Belem, a dream is drawn: that of Our America being free, democratic and just. It has been three years now since the 1st American Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, held in Chiapas, Mexico, and we are happy that Brazil, that country of continental dimensions and great variety of social struggles, is offering us the opportunity to join together, now in Belem do Pará, in order to continue the necessary coming together that will allow us to build, among all of us, the path of a future with peace. We Mexican zapatistas will be coming to Belem with the conviction that we will meet everyone there: social movements and organizations, citizens, religious, women, homosexuals, lesbians, young persons, unionists, campesinos, indigenous, blacks, political wings of various shapes, all, in order to confirm the breadth, diversity and strength of our hopes. We Mexican zapatistas are now beginning to prepare for our attendance and participation in the 2nd American Encuentro. To all of our brothers and sisters of the continent, we are saying: let us walk together to Belem. We are going ready to lend our modest contribution to the common struggle of Our America. But we are going, above all, with the intention of listening to, and learning from, all of your efforts. To our brothers and sisters of Mexico, we are calling you to build together a National Promotional Committee for the 2nd American Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, that will be in charge of the preparations for the participation of a broad Mexican delegation, open to any organization or individual who wants to participate in this encuentro. Together, we shall try to decipher the unknowns of this end of millenium, we shall share the ideas that move us and inspire us, we shall share and be inspired by the experiences of resistance and struggle against inequality, against oppression and against exclusion, battles which our American peoples fight every day. And in that way we shall continue to weave the immense net of all us who are confronting the cynicism of a system which knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. To our Brazilian compañeros, to our compañeros of Belem do Pará, we are grateful for your generous willingness to receive - in your enormous house in solidarity - a continent that, with all its wounds, will arrive willing to be a dignified and human future. Be assured that, from this moment on, we Mexican zapatistas will contribute all of our efforts towards the success of this effort of American unity. Liberty! Justice! Democracy! "FOR A WORLD WHERE MANY WORLDS FIT" The Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) This message is forwarded to you as a service of Zapatistas Online. Comments and volunteers are welcome. Write •••@••.•••. Send submissions to •••@••.••• Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 23:45:12 -0400 From: irlandesa <•••@••.•••> Subject: FZLN: 2nd American Encuentro Sender: irlandesa <•••@••.•••> To: •••@••.••• Originally published in Spanish by the Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) _________________________ Translated by irlandesa Date: Friday, September 3, 1999 22:03:11 -0500 From: fzln <•••@••.•••> -- To subscribe from this list send a message containing the words subscribe chiapas95 to •••@••.•••. Previous messages are available from http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html or gopher://eco.utexas.edu. ============================================================================ Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1999 06:00:37 -0500 To: •••@••.••• From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <•••@••.•••> Subject: DAMN: 30-AUG-1999 - 02-SEP-1999: Colombia General Strike popular mobilization in Columbia, many groups Title: Colombia General Strike Author: various, compiled by <•••@••.•••>, DAMN's labor topic specialist Date: 30-AUG-1999 - 02-SEP-1999 Source: <•••@••.•••>, DAMN's labor topic specialist Reference: Compiled from mainstream and union media sources (Associated Press, BBC World Service, Reuters, ICFTU, etc.) http://infoseek.go.com/Content?arn=a1721LBY677reulb-19990829&qt=union+strike &sv=IS&lk=noframes&col=NX&kt=A&ak=news1486 http://www.icftu.org/english/pr/1999/eprol153-990830-ld.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_434000/434049.stm At least 1.5 million union workers, joined by thousands of members of peasant and grass-roots social organizations, heeded the call for a nationwide strike to protest against government austerity measures and free-market economic policies. Students and housewives joined teachers, health, communications and oil workers and truck drivers in a bid to bring the country to a standstill. Hospitals, schools and the courts were closed, and public transport badly disrupted. The main purpose of the general strike, called by all the Colombian national trade union centres (CUT, CGTD and CTC) as well as the people's movements which together form the Comando nacional unitario (United National Command), is to press home demands on the government for an economic and social recovery plan which respects the needs of the majority of the population. The austerity plan for the 2000 budget, drawn up along neo-liberal lines, and announced by the conservative government of President Andres Pastrana last week, catalysed the trade union protest, at a time when the country is facing its most serious economic crisis for 70 years, and more than one third of Colombia's 38 million population already live below the poverty line. The draft budget foresees a fall in civil service wages, with the exception of the lowest paid, an end to index-linking for wages (inflation is currently at 9%), an increase in the retirement age to 62 for men and 57 for women (as compared to 60 and 55 at present), and a fall in overtime rates and in redundancy costs. ***Last July, for the first time in its history, Colombia asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of 3 billion dollars, now under negotiation, in order to meet the cost of servicing its external debt, estimated at 35 billion dollars.*** The trade union and social organisations have published a 41-point list of demands making a series of concrete proposals to improve the country's economic and social situation. The demands also include guarantees as to the respect of the freedom to form and join trade unions, of human rights and of the freedom of expression at the workplace. Schools were closed and mass transit crippled as protesters burned buses in several cities on Tuesday. In all of Colombia's main cities, demonstrators hurled rocks at helmeted riot police, who fired tear gas and crouched behind plastic shields. City officials said protesters burned two buses in Medellin, and three more in Cali, Colombia's second and third-largest cities respectively. Tire-burning protesters blocked major roads in some regions and protesters clashed repeatedly with riot police in working-class neighborhoods in the south of the capital. Demonstrators blocked several major highways across Colombia, including a main route through the central coffee-growing region. In a nationally televised speech Monday, President Pastrana appealed to workers to call off the strike, which could complicate talks with the IMF over a $3 billion loan agreement. He said the strike was politically-motivated and would only make things worse. Military sources said they believed Marxist guerrillas could stage attacks to coincide with the strike and block major highways in a bid to snarl traffic across the country. Security forces were placed on alert for possible violence and alcohol sales and firearms have been banned in Bogota and many major cities from Sunday. Last Thursday, seven bombs were detonated outside savings and loans corporations in the capital, causing heavy damage but no injuries. Military sources suggested the blasts could have been carried out by Marxist guerrillas in support of the general strike. Trade unions and leftists suggest that right-wing paramilitaries could be involved in the bombings in order to precipitate a crisis situation. For example, last Saturday, two bombs exploded in the northwest industrial hub of Medellin -- one outside a regional human rights office and another outside a union building, police said. A third bomb planted outside local offices of the powerful oil workers' union USO was defused. In the most serious incident in the capital, gunmen opened fire on Domingo Tobar, an executive member of the Unitary Workers' Confederation (CUT), the country's largest labor organization. The attack was close to the offices where union bosses had been holding daylong talks to plan the indefinite strike. "Domingo escaped unhurt but his bodyguard was wounded. This was carried out by the military working with (illegal, ultra-right) paramilitaries," stated Wilson Borja, head of the public sector workers' union. He said he had received a tip-off from within the army that the military would try to kill him and other union representatives during the labor strife. According to the Colombian trade unions, 72 trade union leaders were assassinated last year. In addition to threats from far-right para-military groups and even guerilla groups on the far-left, trade union leaders are also subject to degrading treatment by the Colombian police during arbitrary arrests or the repression of demonstrations, explain the trade unions. The trade union organisations, led by the United Workers' Centre (CUT), the Confederation of Labour of Colombia (CTC), and the Democratic Workers' Confederation (CGTD), have demanded guarantees before the demonstrations and work stoppage planned for Tuesday. Twelve trade union activists were killed during last October's general strike, according to trade union figures. Colombia's most violent strike in recent memory was in 1977 when 20 protesters were killed in a single day amid widespread rioting in Bogota. In an act of solidarity with the strike, armed rebels from the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, took over a hydroelectric plant near the Pacific port of Buenaventura, refusing to allow some 40 employees to leave, the military said. However, the rebels state the number is closer to 100. A guerrilla commander, who identified himself as "JJ", told Reuters by telephone from the power plant near the Pacific coast port of Buenaventura that FARC rebels would stage other attacks around the country "to support the workers". The guerrillas were demanding a reduction in electricity rates -- but their action did not interrupt service, company president Carlos Eduardo Sinesterra told Caracol radio. He said the people being held inside the 360 megawatt capacity plant were mostly employees and did not specify if they were being held as hostages. The plant was privatised two years ago and is operated by Colombian power generator EPSA in conjunction with a U.S. and Venezuelan partner. The FARC unit remained holed up in the plant Thursday morning. In other parts of the country, rebels of the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) blew up three power pylons in Antioquia province in the northwest and Cesar province in the north, while demonstrators torched buses in the regional capital of Medellin. The strike ended late Wednesday following an upsurge in political violence that authorities said left more than 65 people dead nationwide. There were sporadic reports of violence by strike demonstrators around the country, mostly in and around Bogota, all day Wednesday. In the end, union leaders agreed to further negotiations with state officials on a list of demands including an end to the privatisation programme and a moratorium on debt payments. Students lobbed rocks and Molotov cocktails at riot police, who responded with tear gas and baton charges, outside Bogota's National University. Authorities clamped a curfew on three towns on the edge of Bogota where police fought pitched battles with looters early Wednesday. But the end of the strike, which snarled traffic across the nation, promised to return Colombia to normalcy by midday Thursday The heaviest death toll from strike-related violence came Wednesday around the town of Hato Corozal in oil-rich eastern Casanare province. The military said troops, backed by helicopter gunships, killed up to 50 FARC guerrillas as they tried to flee the town before dawn after a bungled attack. An army statement said 400 FARC fighters fired gas cylinders packed with explosives at the police barracks and a bank in Hato Corozal, then tried to escape when army units surrounded the town. Among the rebel dead was a guerrilla commander who allegedly ordered the brutal kidnap-murder of three American activists in northeast Arauca province in February, the army said. The FARC, which fields more than 15,000 fighters nationwide, was founded in the mid-1960s and is the hemisphere's largest and oldest guerrilla group. In a separate attack, an ultra-right death squad murdered at least 15 peasants in a rural area near the town of Yolombo in northwest Antioquiaprovince, town mayor Dario Orrego said. He said the death squad was led by a rebel deserter who returned to the region to hunt down guerrilla sympathizers. Orrego said the attack, which came 10 days after paramilitary gangs killed 36 peasants in the northeast, was carried out overnight Tuesday, but the bodies were not found until Wednesday. A veritable civil war has raged in Colombia for the last 35 years, with a death toll so far of 120,000. Parties to the conflict are the army, the Marxist guerrilla group, the Guevara-inspired "National Liberation Army" (ELN) and far-right para-military militias. -------------------------------- This is the DAMN News Email list http://damn.tao.ca To unsubscribe, send an email to •••@••.••• Asking to: unsubscribe damn ***DAMN DISCLAIMER - IMPORTANT PLEASE NOTE*** DAMN receives many unsolicited reports and tries but can not verify all information contained within. DAMN therefore disclaims responsibility for the information in this message and urges you to contact the reporter personally for further verification. ============================================================================ Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 15:57:13 -0300 From: •••@••.••• Message-Id: <•••@••.•••> X-Sender: •••@••.••• Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain To: •••@••.••• Subject: (en) Arena en las Ruedas -- SAND IN THE WHEELS (n°02) Cc: •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••, "Connie Fogal" <•••@••.•••>, •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••, "RWeissman" <•••@••.•••>, •••@••.•••, "World Order Conference List" <•••@••.•••>, •••@••.••• X-Mailer: <PC Eudora Version 1.4> Este es periódico de Attac en lengua inglesa. Notar que su contenido difiere del periódico en francés. SAND IN THE WHEELS (n°02) Weekly newsletter - Wednesday 09/08/99 %%%%%%%%%%%% Content 1- French Farmers Fight Globalization 2- The Toronto Dollar Project 3- Resolution on Trade and Liberalization and its Impact on Human Rights 4- News from a liberal business model 5- Rendezvous with ATTAC __________ French Farmers Fight Globalization What's the difference between Roquefort cheese and Coca-Cola ? Well, er ... However, there's one difference which has far-reaching implications, and - as recent events in France have shown - explosive potential. It is expressed by Philippe Folliot, mayor of the tiny village of St Pierre-de-Trivisy, centre of production of the ewe's milk from which the famous cheese is made: "Roquefort is made from the milk of only one breed of sheep, it is made in only one place in France, and it is made in only one special way", explains Mr Folliot. "It is the opposite of globalization. Coca-Cola you can buy anywhere in the world and it is exactly the same". He could have said much the same of McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's has been the target of a wave of protests by French farmers against sanctions imposed on a slew of luxury French food products, ranging from Roquefort cheese to foie gras. The sanctions were imposed by the World Trade Organisation (dutifully relaying Washington), in retaliation for the European Union's decision to ban imports of US hormone-treated beef. If the tiny village of St Pierre-de-Trivisy reacted to the sanctions by a 100% "tax" on Coca-Cola sold at local functions, as a symbolic protest against the US-dominated process of globalization, the radical farmers'union, the Confédération Paysanne led a protest on a different scale, when hundreds of its militants in the Aveyron region of South-West France demonstrated in front of the new McDonald's restaurant building site in Millau. The trade-union protest gave an early French send-off to the international campaign, due to take place from October 12th to 17th, against the Millennium Round (an MAI "clone" whose well-aired objective is to bring all human activities under the control of the transnational corporations). A disturbing aspect of the union protest in Millau was the reaction of the French authorities, who have in the past tolerated far more disruptive and even violent assaults on French institutions without any legal action being taken. In contrast, the demonstration targeting McDonald's, as a symbol of US-dominated globalization, gave rise to the imprisonment of five leading unionists, in three different prisons, with family visits forbidden them. As the Confédération Paysanne is a founding member of ATTAC, this organization has been very active in getting support for the five unionists. The latest news is that McDonald's, no doubt alarmed by the ruckus among French farmers and their supporters, has dropped charges against the protesters, and the Court of Appeal in Montpellier is expected to decide to release them. 09/07: Jose Bove has accepted to be released on bail paid for by French and American farmers, various organizations, ATTAC being one, and agricultural companies from Aveyron. The golden arches of McDonalds are indeed spanning the globe but they are also spawning a solidarity of mounting resentment to globalization. ---<snip>--- __________ News from a liberal business model >From the Bureau of International Labour and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Americans worked 2000 hours in 1997 (a 4% increase per year since 1983) or, in other words, two weeks more per year than, for example, the Japanese. Every other nation is seeing a decrease in the amount of time spent working.Salaries between 1977 and 1999 - 10% of Americans (the poorest) have seen their salary decrease. - 60% of Americans have seen their salary increase by 8% (less than 0.5% per year) - 20% of Americans have seen their salary increase by 43% - 10% of Americans have seen their salary increase by 115% (more than double) Figures based on after-tax and taking into consideration inflation. In 2000, 2.7 million Americans with the highest salaries, will earn as much income (after taxes) as 100 million poorest Americans.The average annual salary in 1977 was $10,000; in 1999, it is $8,800 after taxes and taking inflation into consideration. And in Europe, it's the English who are spending more time at work with also the greatest salary disparity... __________ Rendezvous with ATTAC (omitido por razones de espacio) ======================================================================== an activist discussion forum - •••@••.••• To subscribe, send any message to •••@••.••• A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance •••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org **--> Non-commercial reposting is encouraged, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. Copyrighted materials are posted under "fair-use". 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