Jun 8, 2002

In an election where only 45 percent of the electorate went to the polls, the right-wing candidate, Alvaro Uribe, was elected president of Colombia on May 26. Uribe, a dissident from the Liberal Party, is opposed to the peace negotiations between the government and the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN). He campaigned on a promise to end the political violence by increasing military actions against the FARC and the ELN.

NEW YORK – The Communist Party’s national conference on “Building the Party clubs and grassroots organizing,” will bring together nearly 200 delegates, representing local Party organizations from coast to coast. The conference will be held here June 28-30. For the entire article, click on the headline. For more information, visit the page on the conference at the Communist Party USA website.

Defensores de la Carta de Derechos denunciaron las nuevas reglas que el secretario de Justicia, John Ashcroft, anunció el 30 de mayo. Ellos dijeron que las reglas abre la puerta a más espionaje contra el movimiento popular, causando miedo e intimidación mientras hace nada para combatir al terrorismo.

The May 28 Texas execution of Napolean Beazley drew sharp criticism from many human rights groups. Beazley, an African American man, was 17 when he shot and killed John Luttig, a wealthy white businessman whose son is a federal judge. Texas is one of seven states that has carried out an execution of a juvenile offender.

More than 30 portraits from 30 years of work by acclaimed painter Frederick J. Brown will be featured in the retrospective Frederick J. Brown: Portraits in Jazz, Blues, and Other Icons at the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, Mo., from June 16 to Sept. 1. The portraits celebrate trailblazers who have shaped American culture.

The Central Committeee of the Communist Party of Greece, in an allusion to the events preceding the fascist takeover of Greece in the 1960s, yesterday called a subpoena served on a Central Committee member and former parliament deputy by the Attika police “new state terrorism” and has placed responsibility on the government’s minister of public order appointed by the ruling socialist party.

Helen Sobell, who fought to save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg from the electric chair and free her husband, Morton Sobell, from a 30 year prison term – all three framed on bogus “atom spy” charges – died this past April 15 in Redwood City, Calif. She was 84.

SHOREWOOD, Wisc. – About 250 students, community leaders and supporters gathered around the knapsack-strewn lawn at Shorewood High School on May 24 to protest the presentation of an “excellence award” to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a graduate of the school. For the entire article, click on the headline. For more information, visit the homepage of Justice-Watch-Wisconsin.

Juan Samavia, director general of the International Labor Organization (ILO), called the situation in the Occupied Territories of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip a “socio-economic meltdown” resulting from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the “deep humanitarian crisis that Palestinian families are living through.”

In a quick scan of the world, let’s look at what has happened in the name of “fighting terrorism.” The right-wing Israeli government is invading Palestinian lands, arresting thousands of Palestinians, forcing Palestinian children to go through military checkpoints and killing Palestinian people with U.S.-made bullets, rockets and bulldozers. None of which has made the Israeli people any safer or more secure.