Cardoso's moves are aimed at keeping the real pegged to the U.S. dollar and reducing investors' jitters that Brazil is headed on the same course of devaluation as "Asian tigers" like Malaysia, south Korea, and Thailand. "We're not a tiger... We're a whale," Cardoso had declared in response to the devaluation of the Thai baht last July, trying to be reassuring. "It is absolutely vital" that the Brazilian government stabilize its currency, demanded Thomas Smith, senior vice president for Community Energy Alternatives Inc., a Brazilian subsidiary of a New Jersey-based company that invested $1.49 billion into a formerly government-owned utility just days before the Brazilian stock market dived in October.
Killer cops go on trial in Brazil
Some 153 Brazilian state troopers who opened fire on
peasants demonstrating for land in the city of Eldorado do
Carajas in April 1996 will stand trial for the massacre, ruled
Judge Otavio Marcelino Maciel. Of the 2,000 protesters, 19 were
killed. If convicted, the cops could face up to 30 years behind
bars. The peasant struggle for land has been spreading across
that South American country of 160 million people, where the
wealthiest 20 percent own 88 percent of the land and the
poorest 40 percent command a mere 1 percent.
Venezuela schools shut
Officials at the Central University of Venezuela canceled
classes for five days starting November 20, citing fears that
police were organizing a raid to crack down on student
activists following several clashes. The 70,000-student campus
is legally off limits for cops and soldiers.
Colombians shot by mercenaries
A group of suspected paramilitary forces hired by Colombian
landlords arrived in the city of La Horqueta, Colombia,
November 21, and killed at least 14 people. More than a dozen
men in military uniforms entered a store in the small town,
just 30 miles from the capital Bogota, asked for three men, and
shot them on the spot. A shoot-out followed in which five more
villagers were killed and three women were wounded. A short
distance from the town police found five more
bodies - including two youths aged 14 and 15 - shot in the head
with arms tied behind their backs. Wealthy ranchers often
finance mercenaries like the ones behind this attack in the
name of fighting guerrillas. While government officials
publicly condemn the landlord-sponsored thugs, military
collaboration with them is common.
Moscow `reformer' loses post
Russian president Boris Yeltsin removed first deputy prime
minister Antoly Chubais from his post as finance minister. But
Yeltsin announced November 20 that Chubias, who has served as a
point man in the attempt to reintroduce capitalist property
relations in Russia, will remain in charge of Moscow's
"economic reform" program. The deputy premiere is immersed in a
scandal that alleges he accepted a $90,000 fee for authoring a
book on privatization in Russia. Privatization Minister Maxim
Boiko, First Deputy Chief of Staff Alexander Kazakov, and
Federal Bankruptcy Chairman Pyotr Mostovoi - also in on the
book deal - had already been dismissed. A recent article in the
New York Times described Chubais as "deeply unpopular, blamed
by ordinary Russians for the most painful economic upheavals"
associated with "market reforms."
Meanwhile, the head of the Russian central bank, Sergei Dubinin, warned November 21 that the ruble was under growing pressure for a devaluation. Foreign investors have pulled some $5 billion out of the government debt market over the last several weeks, forcing the central bank to use its reserves to prop up the currency. "The next seven to 10 days will be decisive," said Dubinin.
Poland court acquits 22 cops charged with killing nine miners
A hundred people packed the courtroom in Katowice, Poland,
November 21 chanting "Shame! Shame!" at the acquittal of 22
Polish cop defendants standing trial for shooting striking
miners in 1981. That year as part of protesting a martial law
crackdown by Warsaw on democratic rights, hundreds of miners
occupied the pits in Katowice. In response, the Polish
government deployed soldiers and riot cops, who opened fire
December 15 - the third day of martial law -killing nine miners
and wounding 25.
The accused claim they shot in the air, well above the miners' heads. Polish chief justice Ewa Krukowska - one of five judges ruling in the case - said evidence was inadequate to prove the cops' guilt. The bullets fired during the crackdown, which could provide ballistic evidence, were confiscated by military prosecutors at the time and have not turned up since.
`Down with School of Americas'
Some 2,000 demonstrators gathered outside the Ft. Benning
Army base in Georgia in a four-day vigil to mark the
anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989, massacre of eight people in
El Salvador by Salvadoran military officers, most of them
trained at the School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning.
About 600 protesters marched onto the base to present a 100,000-
signature petition calling for SOA's closing; all of them were
arrested.
The SOA, which trains up to 2,000 soldiers a year from across Latin America, published a Spanish-language manual that presented torture, blackmail, and assassination as tricks of the trade. SOA is the alma mater for two-thirds of the Salvadoran officers cited by the 1993 UN Truth Commission Report for crimes during that country's civil war. The U.S. Congress voted in September to keep the "school" running.
Kodak to fire 10,000 workers
Eastman Kodak Co. bosses announced November 11 that they
plan to lay off 10,000 workers, arguing that it is the only way
to stay competitive with rival film manufacturer Fuji of Japan.
The sacking of 10 percent of Kodak's workforce will be an especially hard blow in Rochester, New York, where a third of that company's employees are concentrated. In September Kodak fired 20 percent of its top managers and says it will cut 10 percent of its sales and administrative staff. Kodak cut its workforce by 40,000 between 1983 - 96, and "is looking at outsourcing, partnerships and various consolidations of operations to squeeze costs out of" those who work there, wrote the New York Times.
Capitalist myth: `a smaller workforce = safer conditions'
Coal production in West Virginia hit a record high of 174
million tons in 1996, with the fewest number of working miners
than any time in this century. The October 26 edition of the
Charleston, West Virginia, Gazette-Mail ran an Associated Press
article reporting these figures. Among other things it asserts
that "Declining employment and increasing production make for
better safety records." But that conclusion is deceiving.
According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, there was one fatality per 15.8 million tons mined in 1996. A decade earlier, one miner died for every 7.3 tons of coal produced. But the 21,296 miners employed in West Virginia in 1996 produced an average of 8,171 tons of coal each, double the rate in 1986. So the while the absolute number of workers killed in mining accidents may be down, the percentage of miners who die on the job has declined very little over the last 10 years.
- BRIAN TAYLOR