CINA

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Here the first stuff from the bourgeois S.K. media about the so-called General Strike by KCTU, starting tomorrow, 12.01. More about it will follow soon.

Semi-official news agency Yonhap today, 11.30:

Violent clashes between police and protesters expected Thursday

Violent clashes between police and protesters are expected Thursday as thousands are set to protest further liberalization of the rice market and discrimination against non-regular workers at a rally in downtown Seoul, the National Police Agency (NPA) said Wednesday.

Nearly 8,000 people are to gather in the district of Daehakro as both a continuing form of protest and a memorial to Jeon Yong-cheol. Jeon was a farmer who died of brain injuries sustained in a recent clash with police during a street protest against opening the rice market.

Umbrella labor groups at odds over non-regular worker issue

South Korea's two umbrella labor groups are on the verge of severing their alliance of more than a year after failing to settle differences over how to best deal with the non-regular worker issue, labor officials said Wednesday.

The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the more amicable of the two influential labor groups, said that it will go ahead with the submission of a labor law revision bill to a National Assembly panel in December.

In Tuesday's meeting of standing committee members, the federation decided to present the bill independently as opposed to its rival group's push for a general strike scheduled for Thursday.

"It is impossible to leave the non-regular issue in limbo anymore, so we've come up with our own revision bill aimed at satisfying 60 percent to 70 percent of the labor community," a federation official said, asking to remain anonymous.

Another representative umbrella labor group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), decided Monday to go ahead with a general strike to demand greater labor rights for non-regular workers.

The KCTU said that its nationwide strike will be staged in alliance with trade groups of local farmers and teachers, who are fighting government policies for wider market opening and a new teacher evaluation system, respectively.

"Hope for the improvement of non-regular workers' labor rights
is turning into despair, while the rice-market opening bill passed
the National Assembly last week," said Jeon Jae-hwan, a spokesman for the KCTU.

The Korean Teachers & Education Workers' Union is planning to call a strike in protest against the government-led teacher assessment program, while groups of farmers stage demonstrations almost every day to vent their anger at wider rice market opening.

The KCTU has about 750 affiliated labor unions from across 18 industrial sectors and claims a total membership of about 620,000.

It has been one of the most influential forces in the nation's labor movement over the past decade.

However, it recently lost public confidence as a result of a rise in corruption cases ranging from embezzlement of union funds to bribe-taking in return for job placements.

The FKTU is also struggling in the aftermath of its own corruption scandals.

In October, former FKTU leader Lee Nam-soon was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for receiving bribes from construction companies in return for helping them win a bid to build a union welfare center.

The Ministry of Labor called the planned strike illegal and politically motivated, because it will happen while dialogue is under way between representatives of labor unions and the employers' group on introducing a bill on the rights of non-regular workers.

"It is not a responsible attitude by the labor community to try to have their demands met through physical power rather than dialogue. It should withdraw the strike, which is illegal," Vice Labor Minister Chung Byung-suk said.

Daily newspaper Korea Times, 11.27:

Umbrella labor groups at odds over non-regular worker issue

South Korea's two umbrella labor groups are on the verge of severing their alliance of more than a year after failing to settle differences over how to best deal with the non-regular worker issue, labor officials said Wednesday.

The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the more amicable of the two influential labor groups, said that it will go ahead with the submission of a labor law revision bill to a National Assembly panel in December.

In Tuesday's meeting of standing committee members, the federation decided to present the bill independently as opposed to its rival group's push for a general strike scheduled for Thursday.

"It is impossible to leave the non-regular issue in limbo anymore, so we've come up with our own revision bill aimed at satisfying 60 percent to 70 percent of the labor community," a federation official said, asking to remain anonymous.

Another representative umbrella labor group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), decided Monday to go ahead with a general strike to demand greater labor rights for non-regular workers.

The KCTU said that its nationwide strike will be staged in alliance with trade groups of local farmers and teachers, who are fighting government policies for wider market opening and a new teacher evaluation system, respectively.

"Hope for the improvement of non-regular workers' labor rights
is turning into despair, while the rice-market opening bill passed
the National Assembly last week," said Jeon Jae-hwan, a spokesman for the KCTU.

The Korean Teachers & Education Workers' Union is planning to call a strike in protest against the government-led teacher assessment program, while groups of farmers stage demonstrations almost every day to vent their anger at wider rice market opening.

The KCTU has about 750 affiliated labor unions from across 18 industrial sectors and claims a total membership of about 620,000.

It has been one of the most influential forces in the nation's labor movement over the past decade.

However, it recently lost public confidence as a result of a rise in corruption cases ranging from embezzlement of union funds to bribe-taking in return for job placements.

The FKTU is also struggling in the aftermath of its own corruption scandals.

In October, former FKTU leader Lee Nam-soon was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for receiving bribes from construction companies in return for helping them win a bid to build a union welfare center.

The Ministry of Labor called the planned strike illegal and politically motivated, because it will happen while dialogue is under way between representatives of labor unions and the employers' group on introducing a bill on the rights of non-regular workers.

"It is not a responsible attitude by the labor community to try to have their demands met through physical power rather than dialogue. It should withdraw the strike, which is illegal," Vice Labor Minister Chung Byung-suk said.

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 The following article was published in yesterday's Guardian (UK, internet edition)

Nowhere to run

After what has been described as the most foolish war in over 2,000 years, is there a way out of Iraq for President Bush, asks Brian Whitaker

Tuesday November 29, 2005

To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.

Professor van Creveld has previously drawn parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, and pointed out that almost all countries that have tried to fight similar wars during the last 60 years or so have ended up losing. Why President Bush "nevertheless decided to go to war escapes me and will no doubt preoccupy historians to come," he told one interviewer.

The professor's puzzlement is understandable. More than two years after the war began, and despite the huge financial and human cost, it is difficult to see any real benefits.

The weapons of mass destruction that provided the excuse for the invasion turned out not to exist and the idea that Iraq could become a beacon of democracy for the Middle East has proved equally far-fetched.

True, there is now a multi-party electoral system, but it has institutionalised and consolidated the country's ethnic, sectarian and tribal divisions - exactly the sort of thing that should be avoided when attempting to democratise.

In the absence of anything more positive, Tony Blair has fallen back on the claim that at least we're better off now without Saddam Hussein. That, too, sounds increasingly hollow.

The fall of Saddam has brought the rise of Zarqawi and his ilk, levels of corruption in Iraq seem as bad as ever, and at the weekend former prime minister Iyad Allawi caused a stir by asserting that the human rights are no better protected now than under the rule of Saddam.

Noting that some two-thirds of Americans believe the war was a mistake, van Creveld says in his article that the US should forget about saving face and pull its troops out: "What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon - and at what cost."

Welcome as a pullout might be to many Americans, it would be a hugely complex operation. Van Creveld says it would probably take several months and result in sizeable casualties. More significantly, though, it would not end the conflict.

"As the pullout proceeds," he warns, "Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge - if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not."

This is one of the major differences between Iraq and the withdrawal from Vietnam. In Vietnam, it took place under a smokescreen of "Vietnamisation" in which US troops handed control to local forces in the south.

Of course, it was a fairly thin smokescreen; many people were aware at the time that these southern forces could not hold out and in due course the North Vietnamese overran the south, finally bringing the war to an end.

Officially, a similar process is under way in Iraq, with the Americans saying they will eventually hand over to the new Iraqi army - though the chances of that succeeding look even bleaker than they did in Vietnam.

"The new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was," van Creveld writes.

Worse still, in Iraq there is no equivalent of the North Vietnamese regime poised to take power. What will happen once the Americans have gone is anyone's guess, but a sudden outbreak of peace seems the remotest of all the possibilities.

Not surprisingly, many who in principle would argue that the Americans had no right to invade Iraq in the first place are apprehensive about what might happen once they leave. The conference organised by the Arab League in Cairo last week was one example: it called for "the withdrawal of foreign forces according to a timetable" but didn't venture to suggest what that timetable might be.

With or without American troops, the war in Iraq has acquired a momentum of its own and threatens to spill over into other parts of the region.

There are four major issues: terrorism, Sunni-Shia rivalries, Kurdish aspirations, and the question of Iraq's territorial integrity - all of which pose dangers internationally.

Back in July 2003, terrorism in Iraq seemed a manageable problem and President Bush boldly challenged the militants to "bring 'em on". American forces, he said, were "plenty tough" and would deal with anyone who attacked them.

There were others in the US who talked of the "flypaper theory" - an idea that terrorists from around the world could be attracted to Iraq and then eliminated. Well, the first part of the flypaper theory seems to work, but not the second.

As with the Afghan war in the 1980s that spawned al-Qaida, there is every reason to suppose that the Iraq war will create a new generation of terrorists with expertise that can be used to plague other parts of the world for decades to come. The recent hotel bombings in Jordan are one indication of the way it's heading.

Contrary to American intentions, the war has also greatly increased the influence of Iran - a founder-member of Bush's "Axis of Evil" - and opened up long-suppressed rivalries between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

The impact of this cannot be confined to Iraq and will eventually be felt in the oil-rich Sunni Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia) that have sizeable but marginalised Shia communities.

Kurdish aspirations have been awakened too - which has implications for Turkey, Syria and Iran, especially if Iraq is eventually dismembered.

With a fragile central government in Baghdad constantly undermined by the activities of militants and weakened by the conflicting demands of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, the demise of Iraq as a nation-state sometime during the next few years has become a distinct possibility.

The effect of that on the regional power balance is difficult to predict, but at the very least it would bring a period of increased instability.

No one can claim that any of this was unexpected. The dangers had been foreseen by numerous analysts and commentators long before the war started but they were ignored in Washington, mainly for ideological reasons.

There were, of course, some in the neoconservative lobby who foresaw it too and thought it would be a good thing - shaking up the entire Middle East in a wave of "creative destruction".

The result is that even if the US tries to leave Iraq now, in purely practical terms it is unlikely to be able to do so.

Professor van Creveld's plan for withdrawal of ground troops is not so much a disengagement as a strategic readjustment.

An American military presence will still be needed in the region, he says.

"Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war ... Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf states, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches.

"A divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.

"The Gulf States apart, the most vulnerable country is Jordan, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Amman. However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance."

As described in the article, van Creveld's plan seems to imply that the US should abandon Iraq to its fate and concentrate instead on protecting American allies in the region from adverse consequences.

A slightly different idea - pulling out ground troops from Iraq but continuing to use air power there - is already being considered in Washington, according to Seymour Hersh in the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine.

The military are reportedly unhappy about this, fearing it could make them dependent on untrustworthy Iraqi forces for pinpointing targets.

One military planner quoted by the magazine asked: "Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame it on someone else?"

Focusing on air power has obvious political attractions for the Bush administration, since it is the safety of US ground troops that American voters are most concerned about.

But, again, that would not amount to a real disengagement and would do little or nothing to improve America's image in the region - especially if reliance on air strikes increased the number of civilian casualties.

The inescapable fact is that the processes Mr Bush unleashed on March 20 2003 (and imagined he had ended with his "mission accomplished" speech six weeks later) will take a decade or more to run their course and there is little that anyone, even the US, can do now to halt them.

In his eagerness for regime change in Iraq, Mr Bush blundered into a trap from which in the short term there is no way out: the Americans will be damned if they stay and damned if they leave.