15,000 farmers protest in Brazil
Some 15,000 farmers from throughout Brazil traveled in
tractors and other vehicles to converge on the capital city,
Brasilia, August 18 demanding the government take measures to
reduce their debts by up to 60 percent. The farmers' protest
followed a four-day national strike by truckers that ended
July 29 with major concessions by the government. In late
July 1,500 auto workers at the Ford Motor Co. truck plant in
Sao Paulo walked out for several days to protest the
company's plans to shut down the plant and transfer
production to another facility. Meanwhile, militants of the
Movement of Landless Rural Workers of Brazil began a 75-day
march to the capital July 23 to denounce the government's
economic policies, including plans to sell the state-owned
oil company Petrobras to private investors.
The Brazilian economy has hobbled along during the first half of 1999, shrinking 4.2 percent compared with the same period last year. Also during the first half of this year several state governments defaulted and stopped paying debts. The real, Brazil's currency, has plunged 31 percent against the U.S. dollar this year, including a 10 percent drop since the beginning of June.
Thousands demand jobs in Peru
Thousands of people protested in the streets of Huaraz,
Peru, August 20 demanding jobs and a share of the profits
from the Canadian-owned Antamina copper-zinc mine and Barrick
Gold Corporation's gold mine. The Peruvian government
responded with a military takeover of the city. Soldiers
armed with automatic weapons guarded bridges, gas stations,
and public buildings. Schools, public buildings, and most
businesses were closed and public transportation paralyzed.
Unemployment in the country has soared, with half of the
workforce jobless or underemployed amid an economy that has
been crippled by recession for the past two years.
Infant mortality rising in Iraq
The United Nations Children's Fund released a survey August
12 reporting that children in Iraq are dying at more than
twice the rate they did before the U.S.-led economic
sanctions imposed on the country in 1990. The mortality rate
for babies younger than one year rose from 47 per 1,000
before the embargo to 108 per 1,000. Children under five
years are now dying at a rate of 131 per 1,000, up from 56
per 1,000.
Meanwhile, U.S. and British warplanes have fired more than 1,100 missiles against Iraq over the past eight months. The Clinton administration is debating whether to step up its military assault on the country with an arsenal that includes 200 aircraft, 19 warships, and 22,000 U.S. troops. Paris, which has raised the volume of its complaints against the bombing raids and sanctions, is pressing for a new "weapons inspection" plan that would allow French and other foreign oil companies to resume investment and production in Iraq.
Yeltsin dumps another premier, faces armed revolt in Dagestan
Reflecting a regime of permanent crisis, Russian president
Boris Yeltsin fired Sergei Stepashin August 9, his fourth
prime minister in 17 months. Stepashin replaced Yevgeny
Primakov in May. Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin, who vowed to
crush a separatist rebellion in the Russian province of
Dagestan, to serve as the next premier.
Eighteen Russian soldiers were killed August 18 in an attempt to storm Tando, a Dagestani mountain village occupied by the rebels. Some of the fighters are Chechens who participated in defeating an invasion force of 30,000 Russian troops launched by the Kremlin in 1994 to crush the independence movement in Chechnya, which borders on Dagestan.
Palestinian fights jailing based on `secret evidencé
Hany Kiareldeen, a Palestinian native, filed a lawsuit in a
U.S. federal court August 19 against being jailed based on
"secret evidence" supposedly linking him to "terrorism." The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has detained
Kiareldeen for 17 months in the Hudson County jail in New
Jersey, and is trying to deport him. The government has not
produced any witnesses nor has Kiareldeen been allowed to see
the "evidence" used against him, violating his constitutional
rights.
Last April INS judge Daniel Meisner ordered Kiareldeen released on bond, saying no reasonable person could believe the "allegations of [Kiareldeen's] involvement in terrorist activities were true." In July the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned Meisner's decision. Some 20 people of Arab descent facing deportation have been imprisoned on so-called secret evidence. Another detainee, Nasser Ahmed, who has been jailed for nearly three years, recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York.
Racist killer indicted
A federal grand jury indicted August 19 Buford Furrow, a
member of the Aryan Nations, on charges of shooting Filipino
mail carrier Joseph Ileto because he was not white. On August
10, Furrow fired more than 70 shots from an Uzi submachine
gun, wounding five people at a Jewish community center in
California. Later that day he shot Ileto who was delivering
mail. The cops say last year Furrow had told Seattle
authorities who had arrested him for assault that he was a
racist and wanted to carry out mass killing.
Furrow's violent assault came one month after Benjamin Smith went on a racist rampage in Illinois and Indiana, killing two men, one Black and one Korean, before shooting himself in the head. Smith was a member of the World Church of the Creator, an ultrarightist organization based in East Peoria, Illinois.
Kansas school board votes to drop evolution from curriculum
More than a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled state
school systems could not impose the teaching of creationism
in schools, the Kansas Board of Education voted August 11 to
remove mention of Charles Darwin's well established theory of
evolution from the science curriculum. No questions on
evolution will be included on standardized state tests in
Kansas, although teaching the subject is not prohibited.
Creationism teaches that a divine being created humans and other species, while evolution is based on scientific investigation of fossils, anatomy, and genetic evidence. Other challenges to evolution in school curriculum have occurred in Texas, where the state school board deleted references to evolution from a standard biology textbook. In Washington, Ohio, Tennessee, and New Hampshire legislation opposing evolution has been voted down.
- BY MAURICE WILLIAMS