CINA

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Yesterday irregular workers took the streets of Seoul to demand the same status like "ordinary" workers: working contracts, same payment, better working conditions..
Between 1000 and 2000 workers participated on the rally and demo.(BTW: There are about 8,000,000 irregular workers in S.K.!!) 

Also some representatives of MTU joined the event (사진: 민중의소리) 

For more about it(in Korean) please check out here:
http://www.voiceofpeople.org/new/2006102253436.html
http://www.newscham.net/news/view.php?board=news&id=37714

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Following interesting report was published in y'day's NYT/IHT (of course the article just reflects the bourgeois point of view^^):

A year later, France fears renewed unrest

Last year's mass riots in France

(I wrote about it here: http://blog.jinbo.net/CINA/?pid=322 )

When the call came about a car burglary in this raw suburb north of Paris one night last weekend, three officers in a patrol car rushed over, only to find themselves surrounded by 30 youths in hoods throwing rocks and swinging bats and metal bars.

Neither tear gas nor stun guns stopped the assault. Only when reinforcements arrived did the siege end. One officer was left with broken teeth and in need of 30 stitches to his face.

The attack was rough but not unique. In the past three weeks alone, three similar assaults on the police have occurred in these suburbs that a year ago were aflame with the rage of unemployed, undereducated youths, most of them the offspring of Arab and African immigrants.

In fact, with the anniversary of those riots approaching in the coming week, spiking statistics for violent crime across the area tell a grim tale of promises unkept and attention unpaid. Residents and experts say that fault lines run even deeper than before and that widespread violence could flare up again at any moment.

"Tension is rising very dramatically," said Patrice Ribeiro, the deputy head of the Synergie-Officiers police union. "There is the will to kill."

The anger of the young is reflected in the music popular in the suburbs. In her latest album, the female rap singer Diam's accuses Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy of being a "demagogue" and the police of hypocrisy. The rapper Booba proclaims that "Maybe it would be better to burn Sarko's car," while Alibi Montana, another rapper, warns Sarkozy, "Keep going like that and you're going to get done."

Next Friday is the one-year anniversary of the electrocution death of two teenagers as - rumor had it - they were running from the police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

The tragedy triggered three weeks of violence in which rioters throughout France torched cars, trashed businesses and ambushed police officers and firefighters, plunging the country into what President Jacques Chirac called "a profound malaise."

Last month, a leaked law enforcement memo warned of a "climate of impunity" in Seine-Saint-Denis, the notorious district north of Paris, where clusters of suburbs like Clichy-sous- Bois and Epinay-sur-Seine are located.

It reported a 23 percent increase in violent robberies and a 14 percent increase in assaults in the district of 1.5 million people in the first half of 2006, complaining that young, inexperienced police officers were overwhelmed and that the court system was lax. Only one of 85 juveniles arrested during the unrest had been jailed, it added.

In all of France, according to the Ministry of Interior, 480 incidents of violence against the police were recorded in September, a 30 percent increase from the month before.

On the other side of the debate, however, local officials and residents are disheartened that the shock of the unrest last year did not trigger a coherent plan to create more jobs, better housing and education and more social services - or even to raise the consciousness of the citizenry.

"Ours is a population that truly has been abandoned to its sad fate," said Claude Dilain, the mayor of Clichy- sous-Bois and a local pediatrician who recently wrote a book about the plight of his town.

"French society wants the poor to be squeezed into ghettos rather than have them living right next door. It says, 'Put the poor out there in the suburbs, but avoid violence at all costs so that all goes well and we don't have to talk about them anymore.' Our people feel betrayed. All the conditions are there for it to blow up again."

Clichy-sous-Bois is worse off than many other suburbs. It has no local police station, no movie theater, no swimming pool, no unemployment office, no child welfare agency, no metro or inter- urban train into the city.

For even some of the most crime-ridden suburbs, it is a 20-minute ride into central Paris; for Clichy-sous-Bois, depending on whether there is space on the bus, it can take an hour and a half. Unemployment is at 24 percent, and much higher among young people. Thirty-five percent of the population consists of foreigners, many non- French-speaking. The town's only municipal gymnasium and sports center was burned during the unrest last year.

When Nadia Boudaoud, a 27-year-old part-time educator, was asked why her family moved from Clichy-sous-Bois two years ago, she gave three reasons: the noise, the garbage and the rats.

But on the same evening that young people were attacking the police in Epinay-sur-Seine a few dozen kilometers away, Clichy-sous-Bois's only cultural space held the kind of special event they have in places like Paris: the opening of an ambitious photo exhibit about daily life in the town of 23,000 people.

The exhibit featured the works of a dozen world-renowned photographers, including Marc Riboud, William Klein and Sarah Moon, who mingled with hundreds of local residents. Visitors were met at the entrance with a long white panel bearing the photos of the two teenage electrocution victims, Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17.

The one disappointment of the evening, Dilain said, is that not one French official showed up. "It is symptomatic of the absence of interest in us," he said. "I'm ashamed for France."

Indeed, interviews with residents and officials in several suburbs ringing Paris in recent weeks made it clear that many are convinced that the government's main interest in them is to maintain security in advance of the presidential election next spring.

Sarkozy, the front-runner for the nomination of the governing center- right party, has staked his reputation on an uncompromising attitude toward young offenders. But his increase in the number of police officers in the suburbs - many of them from far-away parts of France - has meant more harassment and random searches of young people, fueling complaints of unfairness.

Not to be outdone, the front-runner for the Socialist Party, Ségolène Royal, has offered her own proposals to curb youth violence, including military-led training programs to deal with young offenders and parenting school for parents of unruly primary school children.

Clearly, the French favor a tough line on security issues. According to an Ifop poll for Le Figaro published last month, 77 percent said that the judicial system was not harsh enough against young offenders.

After the unrest last fall, the government announced measures to improve life in the suburbs, including extra funds for housing, schools and neighborhood associations, and counseling and job training for unemployed youths. None have gone very far.

New legislation promoting the "equality of chances" passed with much fanfare last March largely has been ineffectual. An initiative to create blue- collar apprenticeships for teenagers from the age of 14, has been criticized for removing children from the universal educational system at early an age.

Another law aimed at curbing illegal immigration - and deporting youthful offenders - ignored the fact that most suburban youth are French, and a law to spur youth employment was abandoned following massive street demonstrations against it last spring.

The government said this week that it needed more "experimentation" before implementing the law requiring corporations with more than 50 employees to use anonymous résumés aimed at curbing discrimination against job-seekers with foreign-sounding names from troubled neighborhoods.

In any case, many young job-seekers and community activists consider the initiative gimmicky, even humiliating.

"We have to fight discrimination - not disguise differences as if differences are a crime," said Samir Mihi, a founder of ACLEFEU, an association created in Clichy-sous-Bois to promote the suburbs.

In an exercise that aims to celebrate the identity of the applicant, APC, another organization, has created a project - the videotaped résumé - that trains job-seekers how to sell themselves on camera.

At a training and taping session in the Paris suburb of Nanterre this week, Mariama Goudyaby, 33, said that she has been looking for a job as a receptionist for six months, but has been turned down 15 times.

"When I come, they see, 'she is black,'" she said. "And then they say, 'We've already found somebody.'" With the video, she said defiantly, "You like me; it's me. You don't like me, too bad."

Certainly, there have been changes since last year, though many of them seem symbolic or cosmetic.

The television channel TF1, for example, assigned Harry Roselmack, a 33- year-old black journalist of French Caribbean descent, to anchor the main evening news for six weeks this summer, the first time a Frenchman of color has served in that role. He became an overnight sex symbol and national hero.

The Henry IV public high school, one of the best in Paris, in September recruited thirty students from underprivileged backgrounds for its preparatory program that feeds some of France's most elite universities.

Marking anniversaries is deeply embedded in French tradition, so a number of events are scheduled in the run-up to Oct. 27. At a town meeting in the suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois on Wednesday, some speakers worried aloud about the street chatter they are hearing from young people about how best to "celebrate" it.

"The most violent of them think of it in terms of a celebration," said Franck Cannarozzo, a deputy mayor of Aulnay- sous-Bois. "For them last year was a victory over authority."

But for a 25-year-old man who lives in Clichy-sous-Bois and asks to be called Karim, the day will be one of mourning, not celebration. Karim had been showing the two teenagers how to play a new video game in the basement of his building the night before they were electrocuted.

"It is the anniversary," he said, "of a death."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/20/news/france.php

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A Movie by Avi Levis and Naomi Klein

The Story

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave.

All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - The Take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.

 In the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They're part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system.

But Freddy, the president of the new worker's co-operative, and Lalo, the political powerhouse from the Movement of Recovered Companies, know that their success is far from secure. Like every workplace occupation, they have to run the gauntlet of courts, cops and politicians who can either give their project legal protection or violently evict them from the factory.

The story of the workers' struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they'll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive.

Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.

With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

*****

Avi Lewis, Director/ Producer

 Avi Lewis is one of Canada's most controversial and eloquent media personalities, and has recently emerged as an acclaimed documentary filmmaker as well: The Take is his feature-length documentary directing debut. Shot in digital format over seven months in Argentina, Lewis worked with a fifteen-member crew originating from Canada, Argentina and Britain. Often using two cameras or more, the crew shot in situations including 50,000-strong political rallies, a surprise visit to the IMF contingent at their hotel in Buenos Aires, violent police repressions on the capital's streets, and behind the lines of a worker-occupied factory in Patagonia. Lewis made The Take with journalist and author Naomi Klein (No Logo), who is also the film's writer.

Changing the Conversation: Podcast interview with Avi Lewis for Bioneers In 2002, Lewis directed, shot and edited Gustavo Benedetto: Presente!, a short film on one of the victims of the Argentine police repression of December 19th & 20th, 2001. The film played in festivals in Canada, the UK and Argentina and was broadcast nationally by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Prior to directing, Avi Lewis worked as the host and producer of counterSpin on CBC Newsworld, where he presided over more than 500 nationally televised debates in three years.
 

As host of City TV's landmark music journalism show “The New Music” in the mid 1990s, he interviewed hundreds of celebrities from David Bowie and Leonard Cohen to The Rolling Stones and the Spice Girls. Mr. Lewis was also MuchMusic's Political Specialist in those years, pioneering political “uncoverage” in two federal elections and the 1995 referendum on Quebec separation. His 1993 election night special won a Gemini Award for best Special Event Coverage.

Avi Lewis lives in Toronto, Canada

Naomi Klein, Writer/ Producer

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and author of the international best seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Translated into 27 languages and with over a million copies in print, The New York Times called No Logo “a movement bible.” In 2000, The Guardian Newspaper short-listed it for its First Book Award, and in 2001, No Logo won the Canadian National Business Book Award, and the French Prix Médiations.

Naomi Klein writes an internationally syndicated column for The Nation, The Guardian and The Globe and Mail. A collection of her work, entitled “Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate” was published in October 2002.

She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and is presently the Freda Kirchway Fellow of the Nation Institute.
 

Ms. Klein lives in Toronto.

Credits

Produced by Barna-Alper Inc. and Klein Lewis Productions,
in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada
and in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Directed by:
Avi Lewis

Written by:
Naomi Klein

Editor:
Ricardo Acosta

Director Of Photography:
Mark Ellam

Location Sound:
Jason Milligan

Composer:
David Wall

Produced by:
Avi Lewis
Naomi Klein

Co-Producer:
Katie Mckenna

Producer for fhe NFB:
Silva Basmajian

Executive Producer:
Laszlo Barna

For The CBC:
Jerry Mcintosh
Marie Natanson

Line Producer:
Pim Van Der Toorn

Field Producers:
Esteban Magnani
Julian Massaldi-Fuchs
Cecilia Sainz
Silvana Santiago

Senior Field Prod/ Visual Research:
Dawn Makinson

Second Camera:
John Jordan
Robin Mckenna

Second Sound:
Susana Guichal

Prod. Mngr. (Arg)/ Post Co-Ord:
Paula Talesnik

Logistics Coordinator:
David Meslin

Research:
Tomas Bril
Joseph Huff-Hannon

Please see also:

www.thetake.org

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S.K. STATE TERROR

AGAINST LABOR UNION

 "The government tries to destroy our union, using the same methods as the past military dictatorships. We will strongly resist the authorities.." (Kwon Seung-bok, chairman of KGEU)

Union Offices of Government Employees Shut Down (Korea Times, 9.22)
 
 
The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs Friday began to shut down 140 outlawed offices of the Korean Government Employees’ Union (KGEU) across the country despite strong protest from the unionists.

In addition to 12 offices such as those located in Socho-gu, Seoul; Namgu, Inchon; and Kyonggi Province which were already closed, 140 more were to be subject to the crackdown, according to the ministry.
 

Since the ministry announced the deadline to close the KGEU offices Thursday, tension between the two parties has been increasing.

It has decided to forcibly close the offices of alleged illegal civil servants’ unions, such as the KGEU, which used government buildings without permission, unless they are converted into lawful labor unions.
 

With the closure scheduled, the ministry sent documents to local entities nationwide on Thursday, with the request to prepare thoroughly so that the shutdown process takes place without difficulty.

``KGEU has been conducting illegal group activities, such as election intervention, by creating a trade union against law. It was unavoidable to take measures to forcibly close down the offices,’’ said a ministry official.
 

However, KGEU Chairman Kwon Seung-bok started a hunger strike in Seoul yesterday to protest the crackdown.

``We have been carrying out just union activities but the government is forcibly closing offices just because we have not registered them,’’ said Kwon. ``We will continue to fight together other civil organizations and labor unions such as the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).’’
 

About 200 law experts and lawyers yesterday urged the government to withdraw its decision to close down KGEU offices and stop oppressing union activities of government employees
 

``Many other labor organizations including the International Labor Organization (ILO) have emphasized the need to permit unionized activities of government employees and solve the problems through dialogue. Instead of blocking their activities through forceful means, the government should support the establishment of KGEU,’’ a KGEU statement said.
 

With the deadline for the crackdown approached, the unionized government employees across the nation braced themselves to block the government’s shutdown.
 

Unionized workers from Mapo and Kuro district offices in Seoul were holding sit-in strike surrounding themselves with barricades with water and electricity supply stopped.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200609/kt2006092217284511990.htm

Source of the pics: Chamsesang News

Reports in Korean you can read here(by Voice of People, incl. two video docus):

The ultra-conservative daily JoongAng Ilbo is writing following:

Officials close offices of civil service union
 
Enforcing an earlier ultimatum, the Home Ministry yesterday ordered local governments to immediately close 150 offices of the Korean Government Employees' Union's around the country. Members of the unauthorized union put up a stiff fight in many cities.

By 8 p.m., 93 offices had been closed down; another 12 had earlier been shuttered by local administrations. There are 162 union chapter offices nationwide.

The ministry issued the order to clear all the union's offices after the group defied rules requiring it to register as a union with the Ministry of Labor. The union claims more than 100,000 members; it chose not to register as a union because of laws that severely limit the rights of public-sector unions to take job actions.
 
Union members promised to man the barricades in several cities, and police were called in to control attempts at violence. Forty-nine union members were arrested in Seoul, Busan and Gangwon province on charges of resisting the order to clear the premises. Eight more union members were arrested for unauthorized demonstrations in Jeongseon, Gangwon province while Lee Young-sup, the home minister, was attending a meeting there.
 
In Busan, about 100 city officials and police met resistance as they tried to evict 17 union members who built barricades in a hallway and turned fire extinguishers on the officers. The office was emptied after a scuffle; no injuries were reported.

"Legitimate union activities are guaranteed by law, but the civil servants' union chose not to abide by the law," a ministry official said. "We had no choice but to evict them."

Kwon Seung-bok, the head of the union, complained that his organization had done nothing illegal. "Our activities are all legitimate, but the government is forcibly shutting down our offices just because we did not register," he said. "We will fight against the government in cooperation with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions."

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200609/22/200609222200105609900090409041.html

Korea Herald is writing this:

Unionists ejected from offices   
 

Finally the "left-liberal" Hankyoreh...

Gov’t workers union shut down by police
Civil servants’ labor group says it will continue struggle
  
 
The government shut down about 140 offices of the Korean Government Employees’ Union (KGEU) on September 22, under a law stating that the union must register as a legal entity. The law went into effect in January, but the union had refused to do register itself officially, saying that the law would limit its freedom of assembly and freedom to strike.

Police were sent to forcibly close the offices, and clashed with members of the KGEU in many parts of the country. Forty-nine union members were arrested.

The Yeongdeungpo district police station forcibly pulled the unionists out of their local office and closed the office that morning. In the process, the police arrested seven demonstrators, including Jeong Jong-gwon, chairman of Seoul committee of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Meanwhile, the Jongno district police station took in six union members, who disregarded an order to vacate their office. In the union’s Mapo district office, 10 unionists were arrested after a confrontation with police.

According to the police, among 104 offices which will be forcibly shut down, 35 have already been completely closed and 54 are in the process of being vacated.

Regarding the enforcement of the shutdown, an official of the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs said, "The public servants’ union hasn’t registered as a legal entity, disregarding the law enacted this year. As we can’t associate with unlawful organizations, we will continue to urge those union members to withdraw from the union after shutting down the union offices."

In response, the KGEU, supported by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of the nation’s two largest umbrella labor groups, firmly declared that it would strongly resist the government measure. In consequence, clashes and conflicts between the authorities and the union will likely become even more serious. "The government tries to destroy our union, using the same methods as the past military dictatorships. We will strongly resist the authorities and fight to recover our union offices," said Kwon Seung-bok, head of the KGEU. Kwon has been on a hunger strike for 11 days.

Choi Nak-sam, a spokesperson of the KGEU, said, "We can’t accept the current law, which completely ignores workers’ fundamental rights. We are going to stage a joint demonstration with civic groups."

Civic organizations urged the government to stop suppressing the union. Over 200 legal experts, including lawyers and jurists, held a press conference in front of the Central Government Complex in Seoul, reproaching the government for its measures toward the union. The group said that bodies such as the International Labor Organization (ILO) also urged the government to solve the problem through dialogue.

In a statement, the DLP said, "The government is interfering in labor rights by forcing us out of our offices for the sole reason of not registering as a legal entity, when our actions have been just."

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/159476.html

Source of the pic: Voice of People

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"The developing destruction of the industrialization in the West created a new class of un-productive and mentally neglected. These alliens in the own country become a serious danger for the democracy." (Der Spiegel, 9.16)

This sentences should describe just the growing number of more and more unemployed proletarians in Europe, especially in Germany.

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Thirty years after the death of Mao Zedong, Sidney Rittenberg, the only American to join the Chinese Communist Party, remembers the man he knew and his legacy for China.

Arriving in China in 1945, Rittenberg became friends with Mao and other Chinese leaders.
 

Joining the communists when they were in their mountain stronghold of Yanan in northern China, he took part in the resumption of the civil war against the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-Shek.
 

In the years after the 1949 revolution he remained in China and was imprisoned twice, spending 16 years in solitary confinement.

Aljazeera.net: You knew Mao for many years. What was he like?

Sidney Rittenberg: Firstly, my overwhelming impression of him was he had a giant mind, a giant brain. The reason he was able to dominate his colleagues was his ability to dominate by sheer force of brainpower.
 

He was certainly a political genius. This has nothing to do with whether he was an evil genius or benign genius but simply the force of mind when you sat and talked with him.

Secondly, I would say I never found him a loveable person personally. There were people around him such as Zhou Enlai [future Chinese premier] who were extremely outgoing. With Mao, there was something always cold and aloof about him.
 

Saturday nights we would get together and play Chinese gin rummy. And while we would be at the table jostling, teasing and cuffing each other around, Mao would only sometimes take part. And nobody teased or cuffed him around. It was just different. You felt that he was not one of the boys.

AJ: What do you think drove him?

SR: I think it was his own ideology in Marxist clothing. Not that he was not a sincere Marxist. But his view of Marxism was to take dialectic materialism and use it to analyse Chinese reality and then develop a Chinese programme.
 

He had no interest in copying what was done in the Soviet Union or any other country.

In the days before the PRC [People's Republic of China] it was whether the Chinese revolution would depend on the peasants or urban industrial workers. And the orthodox Soviet line was that Marxism belonged to the proletariat. There was no Marxism in the mountains they used to say. The peasants are backward.
 

But Mao said when the Party educates the Chinese peasants they could be just as good revolutionaries as anyone else in the world. That was the bedrock of his thinking.

AJ: Mao has been revered across the world. Why, and does he deserve it?

SR: I don't think he deserves reverence.
 

I think he deserves acknowledgement as a serious historical leader at a certain period and he needs to be studied, both the good and the bad. And I keep saying this in China.
 

I was on Chinese Central Television last month and they cut that bit out.

In the years leading up to the revolution he made tremendous contributions to Chinese history, inspired his people, and led them to set up a new regime that cleared out corruption, epidemic diseases, banditry, the warlords, unified the country ... and for the first five years carried out tremendous social reform and improved the lives of a great majority of people.
 

AJ: And then?

SR: And then after 1955-56 the regime started going downhill.
 

His hubris started coming to the fore and he tried to do more class miracles and things went from bad to worse.
 

He did good things as a leader that nobody else could do and when he did horrible things he did horrors on a scale nobody else could do either.

AJ: Why?

SR: The main reason is Mao was a very skilled military strategist and tactician so he presided over the strategy from guerrilla warfare to the agrarian reform movement.
 

He defeated his enemies and he came to power. But he knew very little about administration, economics, or how to run the country.
 

And I think he was not content with seeing China plod along. He wanted to see China advance to a prominent position in the world during his lifetime and I think he became overly ambitious.

He said in 1958 at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward that he would use the strategy and tactics of a people's war and not use the Soviet way of brick upon brick to build the economy.
 

This was totally unrealistic and resulted in this huge man made famine.

I think it was what went on inside his head that was the problem. His plans during the Great Leap to catch up with Britain and America met with opposition from almost all his sober-minded colleagues. This awoke the conspirator and narrow envious peasant in him. And he began to conspire against his colleagues.

AJ: Can you give an example?

SR: The most vivid thing in my mind was when I first met him in Yanan in the mountains. Apart from a great mind he was the best listener I had seen.
 

I was an unknown young American who did not know which end was up, and he would listen to my answer as though what I was saying was the most important thing in the world to him.

But later on when I was translating his works in the early 1960s he was quite different. When you sat down and talked with him he did not pay much attention to other people's views. That was a fundamental change. It's the old adage about corruption and power.

AJ: You spent 16 years in jail. How did you feel when you were locked up on false charges of being a spy?

SR: I was in prison for two different episodes. First in 1949 Stalin accused me of being an American spy.
 

So I sat in solitary confinement for six years until Stalin died and all those trumped up spy ring cases were thrown out. Mao several times made public apologies and offered to make any kind of restitution that was possible.
 

And then during the Cultural Revolution I spent another 10 years in solitary.

The first time it was a terrible shock. I felt not angry but hurt. How could they so misunderstand me? How could they not see I was with them and worked hard and supported them?
 

The second time I knew why I was there. My wife and I had been supporting the young people who had been fighting for a kind of town-hall democracy in China.
 

And of course it was silly, an illusion, and could not have happened but we put everything we had into it. And they put me back in prison and I knew why.

AJ: How did you spend your time? Where you tortured?

SR: They never physically beat me. In the first four years during the Cultural Revolution when the elite guards ran the prison there was a lot of torturing going on and you could hear the screaming and the blows falling.
 

But nobody laid a finger on me. For me, there was only mental torture and harassment. The only thing that worried me was I had to keep my health.
 

When you are faced with a long term in solitary the real danger is you are going to collapse. That is the thing you have to fight against. So you can't afford to dwell on rage and self-pity.
 

You have to find ways of dealing positively with your daily life in that little room. So I would get up in the morning and first clean up the cell. Then I took exercises. I developed a kind of callisthenics that didn't take much room and I would also jog in circles.
 

The room was only 6.5 feet by 3 feet [2 metres by 1 metre]. After the first year, I had books and could write. I studied hard, like a medieval monk in a cell.

AJ: How did you feel when told Mao had died?

SR: It was a strange sensation. I had cried for days when Zhou Enlai died, because I felt I had lost a very dear personal friend, and just when the country needed him.
 

When Mao died, I felt that this was a much more important loss for the Chinese and, indeed, the world revolution – which at that time I still fervently believed in. A terrible loss!
 

That being the case – why was it that I couldn't shed a single tear? I couldn't understand it. My "emotional intelligence" was much smarter than my "rational intelligence" at that point.

AJ: As someone who has been engaged with China for so long, how do you view the current Sino-US relationship?

SR: If you are reading the congressional journals and what the politicians are fuming about it looks like they will disown China any day. But actually the relationship seems to be quite good and I think our relationship with China for the last four or five presidencies has continually moved forward.
 

It is not a smooth path, with lots of bumps and challenges and fissures and conflicts and so on. But generally speaking it moves forward and that's because our national interest in America, and the Chinese national interest, at least in this period of history, doesn't contain major conflicts that I can see.
 

I am not a fan of the Bush administration but on their China policy I think I would call it satisfactory. Much better than their relationship with Europe, Latin America or the Middle East. They have been more sensible with China.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EAF16069-05EF-4D42-B705-E15AD31BC161.htm

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The other September 11 (Asia Times, HK/China/9.12)
 

You don't need an Osama bin Laden to pull a September 11. Forget Boeings-turned-into-missiles crashing into twin towers. Switch for a moment to four military planes bombing a presidential palace - and replay a different September 11 movie starring Dick and Henry. "Dick", of course, is the late US president Richard Nixon. "Henry" was his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Foreign policy-wise, it's quite an enlightening plot.

Scene 1: Washington, the Oval Office, September 1970. Dr Salvador Allende, a man of culture, grand bourgeois and charismatic founder of the Socialist Party, has just won the presidential election in Chile fair and square, with 36.22% of the votes. Nixon and Kissinger receive Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Richard Helms. Nixon tells Helms, according to Kissinger, that he wants "a major effort to see what could be done to prevent Allende's accession to power. If there were one chance in 10 of getting rid of Allende, we should try it."

Scene 2: Santiago, La Moneda Palace, September 11 of the year 1973, 8am. Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, is worried about a general called Augusto Pinochet. Radio stations are mute. The navy has taken over Valparaiso - where the president was born. But he worries about his new army commander, chosen less than three weeks ago: "Poor Pinochet, he must have been arrested ..."

General Pinochet is far from arrested: he is conducting a coup. Troops march over Santiago. At 8.30am a solemn military declaration makes treason official. Tanks roll into the city center. At noon, four Stuka planes destroy Allende's private residence on Tomas Moro Street and bomb La Moneda Palace. The president chooses resistance, fighting the troops surrounding the palace and spurning offers of a plane for himself and his family to leave the country. When his capture is imminent, Allende presses his chin against the AK-47 that Cuban leader Fidel Castro gave him, and fires. At 2pm, the military junta takes power. Systematic arrests, torture and executions start almost immediately.

Between these two scenes is the story of a coup that unfolded in slow motion for virtually three years. The United States was still embroiled in Vietnam. Nixon's policy for the whole of Latin America was one word short of "war on terror": "to prevent another Cuba". Nixon simply could not tolerate "that bastard Allende" (in his own words). Chile had the largest copper reserves in the world. Allende was about to nationalize Chilean copper - thus sabotaging the monstrous US corporate profits of Anaconda Copper Mining Co and Kennecott Copper Co, which had been bleeding the country for decades.

The Chilean-destabilization strategy, presided over in detail by Kissinger, developed into a series of operations called Track 1 and Track 2. The CIA tried to stage a coup even before Allende's inauguration on November 1970, giving US$50,000 to a crypto-Nazi gang to kill chief of staff General Rene Schneider on October 22, and bribing generals and admirals. It didn't work.

Allende wanted to develop "a peaceful Chilean way towards socialism". He was elected by workers, peasants and the marginalized, urban lower classes. Educated urban youth celebrated the "socialism of red wine and empanadas" (stuffed pastry). But Washington would prevent any turn to the left by devastating the Chilean economy, deploying mass bribery, spying and blackmail.

Allende in fact was a moderate compared with Chilean popular movements further to the left that occupied factories, lands or just property (1,278 occupations in 1971 alone). Then strikes started to spread (3,200 in 1972). Industrialists sabotaged production. No one could explain how Chilean credit was suddenly cut off in international markets. Loans were suspended.

The CIA, apart from non-stop sabotage, financed strategic strikes - doctors, bank clerks, a very long truck drivers' strike. Conservative newspapers conducted a non-stop vicious disinformation campaign. There were coup rehearsals. And political chaos compounded economic chaos: the Christian Democrats - the centrists - ended up joining the right and the extreme right against Allende.

Nixon got exactly what he wanted. On September 11, US Navy ships monitored all Chilean military bases to warn the plotters about who might be supporting Allende. Pinochet took over and entered history as the definitive, sinister Latin American dictator from central casting.

Dictatorship in Chile coincided with the ascension of neo-liberalism (which in the 1990s would be remixed as "globalization"). Chileans with scholarships had been a fixture of the University of Chicago for years. The charter of neo-liberalism - and Pinochet's Holy Economic Grail - was written by two of them, Sergio de Castro and Arturo Fontaine. Afterward, it was classic division of labor: the armed forces killed while the "Chicago boys" applied neo-liberal economic policies. Military repression assured economic "freedom".

Some other dictators were in place before Pinochet, more were to follow. By the mid-1970s, six US-backed South American dictatorships - Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay - were united in deep secret under the infamous, transnational Operation Condor, a Latino war "of" terror eliminating everyone who was or might become a political adversary.

Condor had two key players: Pinochet in Chile (who kept Condor's centralized computers) and Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay (he died this year in Brazil). The Pinochet regime kept a small lab for the fabrication of botulism soup and nerve gas - which were and remain certified weapons of mass destruction; the chemist responsible later escaped to Uruguay and was assassinated. Orlando Letelier, Chile's ambassador to Washington under Allende in 1970-72, was assassinated under Condor. Who cared? Military fascism was Washington's daily special, every single day.

Pinochet and Condor, in Chile, were responsible for as many victims as September 11: about 3,000, including 1,198 "disappeared". In Argentina, there were officially at least 10,000 dead: for human-rights organizations there were more than 30,000 dead and "disappeared". In Paraguay, there were at least 2,000 dead; in Bolivia at least 350 dead and "disappeared", in Brazil almost 300, in Uruguay almost 200. Families of the "disappeared" are convinced Kissinger knew about everything. He will take his secrets to the grave, as will model dictator Pinochet - who still refuses to die.

Behind the rebuilt La Moneda palace in central Santiago, facing the Ministry of Justice building, there is a statue of Allende. Underneath, the words: "I have faith in Chile and its destiny." These were his last words before he committed suicide, instead of becoming a hostage on South America's September 11.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI12Aa01.html

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"REBELLION IS JUSTIFIED"

毛主席同志

(*)

Today - 30 years ago - Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong died in Beijing.

For more(first) informations about him please check out here:

毛澤東紀念館 (http://mzd.chinaspirit.net.cn)

毛澤東 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2003-01/17/content_693606.htm)

毛澤東 (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%9B%E6%B3%BD%E4%B8%9C)

Mao Zedong - Wikipedia

Mao Zedong -- A Great Man in China History

Later, at least in the coming days, I'll write more about it.

* All peoples of the world, unite, to overthrow American imperialism! To overthrow Soviet revisionism! To overthrow the reactionaries of all nations!

東方紅

[毛主席，爱人民...^^(**)]

** 东方红，太阳升，

中国出了个毛泽东。

他为人民谋幸福，

呼尔嗨哟，他是人民大救星！

毛主席，爱人民,

他是我们的带路人，

为了建设新中国，

呼尔嗨哟，领导我们向前进！

共产党，像太阳，

照到哪里哪里亮。

哪里有了共产党，

呼尔嗨哟，哪里人民得解放！

..

본문

Government's threats led to the end/collapse of the strike of

power plant workers

Power company workers end strike, returning to work (Yonhap)

Unionized workers at South Korea's state-run power companies ended their strike Monday, just 15 hours after they walked off the job to press for improved working conditions and other demands.

The strike of the Korean Power Plant Industry Union began at 1:30 a.m. Monday as the workers failed to reach an agreement with management on demands for better working conditions and the reinstatement of fired colleagues.

The 6,500-member-union representing different regions of the nation -- Korea Midland Power Co., Korea Namdong Electrics, Korea Western Power Co., Korea Southern Power Co. and Korea East-West Power Co. -- had also demanded the government merge them into a single power company, remove a wage cap for workers and introduce a three-shift work system.

The government and management both rebuffed the demands.

"We've decided to withdraw our strike for strategic purposes," said union leader Lee Joon-sang. "We will resume negotiations with management in a bid to eventually achieve our demands."

Lee expressed concern over mounting discontent from the public over the walkout. "We understand people's worries about power plant operations," said Lee. "We were afraid that we could be misunderstood as taking the electricity supplies hostage," until our demands were met, he said, stressing that this was not the case.

The strike came despite the National Labor Relations Commission's decision on Sunday to have the government arbitrate the labor dispute, which defines any strike during the arbitration period illegal.

The move by the labor commission automatically makes it mandatory for workers to suspend any strike for 15 days pending further negotiations. If no breakthrough is made at the talks, both labor and management must accept an arbitration ruling by the commission.

Around 2,200 unionists staged a rally in downtown Seoul on Sunday, and moved to the Korea University campus where they stayed overnight.

As of 1:00 p.m. Monday, nearly 40 percent of the companies' workers participated in the strike, but power plants around the country operated without problems with management filling vacant posts with temporary workers, the government said.

The government and management warned of disciplinary action for those who did not end the illegal strike by 1 p.m.

Police have sought the arrest of 20 union leaders who organized the walkout.

This is the second strike by local power company employees, after the five regional power companies were created by the splitting up of state-owned Korea Electric Power Corp. in 2001. The previous 32-day walkout in 2002 also did not cause any disruptions in electricity generation.
http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20060904/620000000020060904174834E2.html

Power Union Ends Strike (K. Times)

Unionists of the nation’s power companies ended their half-day walkout voluntarily Monday afternoon and all of the members will return to work from Tuesday.

The decision came out as the government takes a hard-line stance against their demands and management agreed to talk further with the union on the remaining issues.

The union, with about 65,000 members at five companies under the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), announced the decision three hours after they started a full-scale strike.

The decision came hours before the government threatened to invoke its emergency arbitration power to ban them from striking for 15 days and police moved to arrest 20 union leaders.

``We’ve decided to end the strike and resume a negotiation with the management,’’ Lee Jun-sang, head of the union, said at a park near the Korea University in northern Seoul, where about 2,200 workers from regional companies nationwide were gathered for a sit-in.

Early in the morning yesterday, presidents of the five companies warned the striking workers to return to work by 1 p.m. According to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, more than 60 percent of unionists returned to work by that time. The remaining striking workers also began to return to workplaces after the announcement of scrapping the walkout.

Earlier, the power companies filed complaints against some 20 union leaders for the illegal strike, and said they would file compensation suits against the unionists. The police also planned to request arrest warrants for the leaders.

The union said they had sought the planned strike, as the management did not actively negotiate with the workers but waited for the government’s arbitration decision.

The unionized workers are demanding the KEPCO to consolidate the five regional companies into one, increase the number of workers, allow senior workers to participate in union activity, and abolish a cap on the rates of annual wage increases.

The company, however, confirmed their position not to accept the demands.

``Their call for the consolidation of firms is against the government’s policy to enhance power industry’s competitiveness, and it is beyond the subject of labor-management negotiation,’’ CEOs of the five companies said during a press briefing at the KEPCO headquarters in southern Seoul.

They also said they cannot allow senior workers’ union participation, as walkout by the seniors, in charge of core control at power plants, would bring about a total disruption of power supply.

Following the unionists’ walkout, 3,500 alternative workers have run the power plants. The power supply has not been disrupted.

In 2002, the power union staged a strike for 38 days.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200609/kt2006090417423010440.htm

Minjung-ui Sori(Voice of People) wrote following(there you can see also a video about the declaration of the end of the strike):

발전노조, 사측의 교섭제의에 파업중단

Following documentary was recorded in the night between yesterday and today in Goryeo/Korea Univ(to watch it, please click on "play").

Documentary by 숲속홍길동同志

PS: In my opinion this result - the end of the strike - isn't just caused by the threats of the gov't.. It might be also a result of a kind of weakness of the S.K. labour movement/KCTU.

And I think also that such "tactics"(by KCTU) are very dangerous for the next actions by the S.K. labour movement.. (That's just MY opinion!!)

본문

It seems that all two years S.Korea is facing a real, or at least potentially increasing confrontation between unionized hospital/medical workers and their employers (better you call them exploiters!!). And no wonder that the conflict continuously is increasing, sometimes escalating: continuously the employers are refusing to meet the main demands of the workers(aeh~ actually like usually..).

At least since 2002 hospital/medical workers are demanding better work conditions, 5-days working week and real work contracts for irregular workers.

Already in later summer 2002 I joined some demonstrations and rallies during the first nationwide strike of S.K. hospital workers. At that time the government and the employers sent thousands of riot cops to smash the strike. KCTU wrote this, among many other articles, leaflets.. about the strike:

5,000 Hospital Workers Strike in Solidarity 

Hundreds of strikers and their supporters were arrested(including my ^^friend..) during the struggle.

Hospital Workers' Sit-in at the Myongdong Cathedral
Some of the activists called this struggle "Our 9.11"!! 

About this struggle at that time I wrote short reports for Base21:

http://base21.jinbo.net/show/show.php?p_cd=205&p_dv=0&p_docnbr=22528

http://base21.jinbo.net/show/show.php?p_cd=205&p_dv=0&p_docnbr=22627

Two years ago, in June 2004, we, migrant workers, at that time in sit-in strike in Myeong-dong, joined the strike of hospital workers. ETU-MB wrote also about it at that time:

6.09/10 struggle report (hospital workers general strike) 

Now two years later S.K. press is reporting that in this week a new round of struggle for the nearly same  demands hospital workers were/are struggling since 2002 will begin:

S. Korean hospital workers to go on strike this week

Tens of thousands of hospital workers will go on strike as planned this week to press their demand for higher salaries and better working conditions, their union said Sunday.

The Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union said it has decided to launch the walkout on Thursday after 73.6 percent of its 26,630 members voted for the strike.. (Yonhap, 8.21)

Health Workers Opt for Strike (K. Times, 8.20)
 

The Korea Health and Medical Worker’s Union, with workers at 113 hospitals nationwide, voted to launch a general strike this week, after failing to resolve a dispute with management representatives over wages and working conditions.

Announcing the results of a three-day vote Saturday, the union said its walkout will start next Thursday, after nearly 74 percent of those voting approved the industrial action. More than 26,600 of the union’s 32,000 members participated in the vote.

The union is calling for a 9.3 percent rise in salary, permanent employment of temporary workers, and the implementation of a five-day workweek.

The union said if the management refuses to alter its position, there will be strikes starting from 7 a.m. Thursday, taking place in each hospital lobby. Both the management and union were close to an agreement, but still differ over three issues. The management has refused to accept the union’s demand for a salary hike, citing a lack of money.

There are 113 union branches, with workers at hospitals such as the Korea University Medical Center, Ewha Womans University Medical Center and Hanyang University Medical Center. In 2004, the union went on a general strike for three days causing inconvenience to patients through long queues.

However, the government said while the event will bring some discomfort, there will not be as much ``chaos’’ as there was two years ago..

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200608/kt2006082017522611970.htm