Jul 20, 2002

Nigerian women win jobs for villagers/ILO: Justice for fired Jakarta hotel workers/Demand rights for child detainees/China’s economy continues to grow/Canadian hotel workers set one-day strike

The corporate media and waterfront employers have carried on a year-long campaign to paint longshore workers as “overpaid, pampered and resistant to progress.” Their propaganda has claimed that longshore wages are over $100,000 a year, while concealing the fact that only about a third of the workers make anywhere near that amount, with many of the rest earning $20-$30,000.

An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian fighter were killed July 17 as Israel mounted a massive manhunt in the rocky hills of the West Bank following the bombing of a bus that killed eight Israelis near an orthodox Jewish settlement.

As the Bush administration steps up its threats against Iraq, other governments, especially in the Middle East, are raising strenuous objections.

Las autoridades nos dicen que el mundo cambió en el 11 de septiembre. Resulta que los profesores universitarios ahora tienen que cuidarse de lo que dicen en sus salones de clase o arriesgan ser denunciados a la policía del “pensamiento”. Los oficiales electos tienen que censurarse o ser censurado por los medios de comunicación. Muchos ciudadanos ahora denuncian a la policía conducta de personas con apariencia sospechosa. Hoy existen leyes que anulan a nuestras libertades civiles.

BUFFALO, N.Y. – “An eighth-grade education is not enough,” said Western New York parents and education activists at a press conference here July 11. They were protesting Gov. George Pataki’s support of a recent Appeals Court decision that said that under the state constitution, New York is only required to educate children to an eighth grade level “in preparation for low-wage jobs.”

Los jefes de once organizaciones noticiosas enviaron una carta a los congresistas, el 10 de julio, pidiendo que rechacen la Sección 204 del proyecto de ley Seguridad Patria del 2002, HR-505. Esta sección permite que el gobierno no dé “información proveída voluntariamente [al gobierno federal] por entidades o individuos que tiene que ver con vulnerabilidad en la infraestructura o otra vulnerabilidad al terrorismo” bajo la Ley Libertad de Información.

LAWRENCE, Massachusetts – Cuando Nicole Ayala de Killeen, Tejas, decidió llevar a su suegra a pasear a Méjico por un día no sospechaba que iba ser insultada o hecha sentir “como si yo fuera una delincuente” al tratar de regresar a Estados Unidos a través de la ciudad Del Rio. Ayala, que ha vivido en EEUU 25 de sus 26 años, se le había quedado su tarjeta de residencia en su hogar.

In its Summer 2002 issue, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent quarterly newspaper, provided excerpts from statements by public school students. The students were among the dozens who spoke against privatization at a School Reform Commission meeting earlier this year. The students’ testimony makes it clear that privatization brings about disaster for our schools.