FREEDOM DAY
BEHIND THE PROTESTS IN CHINA
ITALIANS BLAST U.S. REPORT

Today, April 27, is a special day for me and millions of South Africans. They call it Freedom Day because it marks the 11th anniversary of the historic 1994 election in which Nelson Mandela became President after serving 27 years in prison as a convicted terrorist and worse.

I was fortunate to be there, making a film called “Countdown to Freedom,” an insider’s “War Room” type documentary on the ANC campaign which concluded on this day with a democratic election, the first in which all South Africans took part. I remember the long lines at the polling stations and the incredible joy and good feelings that everyone felt as they waited to mark an “X” for the party and the person of their choice.

There were no hanging chads. No electronic voting machines. No massive political ad campaigns. On election day, I traveled around Soweto — long the scene of township rebellion — and watched the outpouring of voters. I actually ran into outgoing President DeKlerk, who freed Mandela and negotiated the elections with a movement that had seen itself for years as a liberation army, not a bourgeois political party. The ANC adopted, learned the drill, coined their own slogans (”A Better Life for All”), and prevailed. The National Party has since dissolved itself. One of its ministers actually joined the ANC, the party once considered a tool of the Soviet “total assault.”

FREE AND FAIR?

Actually, there may have been some funny business in the count — not because the ANC wanted to win all the votes, but because they didn’t. They wanted to assure that the whites who supported the National Party of apartheid would be represented in the Parliament and could not claim that the ANC was imposing its will. There was still fear of a violent right-wing backlash, even a coup So, I was told, and I am not sure if it is true, that after the ANC won 63% of the vote, they just stopped counting.

The outcome was preordained and anchored in the country’s history of oppression and disenfranchisement of the majority. Everyone in South Africa won that day because the fears of a bloody civil war did not come to pass. The country was not destabilized. An accommodation had been negotiated. Revolutionaries became reformers and reformers became revolutionaries.

Today, its hard to find anyone in South Africa who remembers supporting apartheid. At the same time, this “Rainbow Nation” was unprepared for the AIDS epidemic then quietly building steam. The social justice that so many fought for is still a distant goal because of systemic inequality and great gaps between the rich and poor. Many never survived the struggle years or lived to see the transformation, including people I knew well and respected,

MAKING THE MIRACLE

I had been in South Africa during the dark days of apartheid and I know what progress has been made. Back then, our own country criticized apartheid publicly but backed the white regime. Real transformation is far slower than I and many others want, but it is happening. Can more be done? Of course. Were there setbacks and disappointments? Absolutely. But did people of good will worldwide of all races and backgrounds help the change happen? Yes, we did. It is a struggle that is still underway.

And I am proud to have been privileged to play a small role.

But still what is still called a miracle happened because enough people believed it could, and transcended their fears and absolutist positions. South Africa is still a model for the world, and we in the U.S. can learn from its experience.

Viva, New South Africa. Viva.

U.S. TARGETS BELARUS

South Africans fought for the democracy they have. Other peoples are getting a sometimes unwelcome assist from the United States, which did not back the fight against apartheid. MOS News reports: “The U.S. Senate has approved an extra $81 billion war budget that includes $5 million for programs aimed to support democracy in Belarus, RIA Novosti reports:

“The programs will be under the control of the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The Bureau announced earlier this month that $2 million would be spent on ‘consolidation of democratic parties’ in Belarus. During her visit to Russia earlier this week, the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the former Soviet republic ‘the last dictatorship in the center of Europe’. She also added that Belarus should be the next country to establish democracy.”

Part of my family comes from a part of what is now Belarus. They suffered for years under the tsars, the Nazis and the Stalinists, and I for one would prefer they avoid the Bushists and a Condoleezza Rice-style democratization process. The Belarusian foreign minister. Sergei Martinov, meanwhile, said that his country’s future will not be “determined by Rice, but by the people.”

IRAQ AND THE NEW BUSH STRATEGY

A Z-Net commentary suggests:

“Much has changed in the two years since the United States toppled Hussein. National elections took place in Iraq at the end of January, and the Iraqi National Assembly has just selected a Kurd to be their new president. Movements for democracy have gained strength in Lebanon and Egypt. Palestinians recently held elections. Paul Wolfowitz is heading over to the World Bank, where he will use money instead of guns to make the world safe for neo-conservatism. And a new bill introduced into Congress, the ADVANCE Democracy Act, proposes that the United States should eliminate, non-violently, the world’s remaining 45 dictators in the next twenty years.

“In other words, what was once a minority opinion in the Bush administration — the promotion of democracy as a prime directive of U.S. foreign policy — is on its way to becoming a defining feature of George W. Bush’s tenure as president. Promotion of democracy is not simply an after-the-fact justification for the Iraq war the weapons of mass destruction didn’t materialize.

“In a shift from the three-sided ‘axis of evil’ to a much larger assault on ‘outposts of tyranny,’ the Bush administration is now attempting to draw parallels between democracy promotion in Iraq and elsewhere in the world, including Iran, Ukraine, and North Korea. By sending Wolfowitz to the World Bank — and possibly former State Department firebrand John Bolton to the United Nations - the administration is attempting to preach its sermons from different pulpits.”

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-04/20feffer.cfm

IRAQ: INSURGENCY ESCALATES

BBC reports:

“Iraqi insurgency ‘undiminished’: The U.S.military’s most senior member says Iraqi insurgents have lost none of their ability to stage attacks.”

IRAQ: DEADLINE EXTENDED

Al Jazeera reports:

“The kidnappers of three Romanian journalists in Iraq have extended by a day the deadline for killing their hostages unless Romania pulls out its troops, the reporters’ TV station says.”

IRAQ: NO WMDs FOUND

“The CIA’s top weapons hunter in Iraq said his search for weapons of mass destruction ‘has been exhausted’ without finding any. Nor did Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, find any evidence that such weapons were shipped officially from Iraq to Syria to be hidden before the U.S. invasion.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8659.htm

EDITOR & PUBLISHER REPORTS NEW POLL

“Gallup: 50% of Americans Now Say Bush Deliberately Misled Them on WMDs: Half of all Americans, exactly 50%, now say the Bush administration deliberately misled Americans about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.”

“A BLOW TO OUR MOVEMENT”

United for Peace and Justice reports:

“On Thursday, April 21, the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 99-0, passed President Bush’s request for an additional ‘emergency’ $81 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“No sugarcoating this one: It was a major loss for our movement.

“It was also dramatic evidence that we need to turn up the heat on elected officials who support this criminal war.

“There was some good news:

“The Senate passed Senator Leahy’s amendment to establish a ‘Marla Ruzicka Iraqi War Victims Fund,’ with $30 million to assist families and communities who’ve suffered losses in Iraq as a result of military operations, and $5 million for families in Afghanistan.”

CHINA VERSUS JAPAN

What’s behind all the protests in China against Japan? Is it just about textbooks? I have been sent a letter from Asia by a scholar who believes that political forces in Japan may be provoking the protests for reasons that most of the media ignore. If you like conspiracy theories, try this one:

“…the current Japanese Government would like to revise its constitution so that it can become a ‘normal’ country with armed forces that are not restricted to defensive purposes only and with the flexibility to develop nuclear arms if necessary. There is a sizable proportion of the Japanese population committed to pacifism. It is much easier to persuade these people of the necessity of a constitutional revision if one can portray all the neighbors as being chronically hostile. I believe the entire event has been intentionally planned and scripted by Japan politicians, possibly with the tacit support of the U.S. (that would love to sell them the weapons.)

“…many of the demonstrators are not students but young hooligans looking for an excuse to make trouble. The Chinese Government was caught a little off-guard and is now taking steps to make sure that the demonstrations are peaceful and that Japanese citizens and firms are protected.”

Sorry, I can’t name the author. Is there a secret deal underway? It has happened before.

Note:

Mainichi Shimbun reports:

“A former Mainichi Shimbun reporter who was handed a suspended prison sentence after obtaining and reporting on documents that showed a secret agreement between Tokyo and Washington over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japanese rule has launched a lawsuit seeking compensation for damage to his reputation.

“The 73-year-old former reporter, Takichi Nishiyama, is seeking 34 million yen in compensation over the ‘unfair’ charges that were laid against him at the time…”

The Gulf Times reports that a Palestinian lawyer, Kaked Kasab Mohammad, has opened the first Arab museum of the Holocaust in his home in Central Nazareth, He has set out to teach local pupils about Nazi crimes. “If a Palestinian comes and shows empathy, the impact is far greater than a suicide bombing. He can achieve more,” he says.

ON THE HOME FRONT

President Bush is rallying support for Tom Delay and, as a gesture of solidarity, gave the controversial (odious?) ex-exterminator-turned-House-leader a ride to Washington from Texas on Air Force One… Condi Rice is pushing the Bolton nomination… The Washington Post reports: “GOP to Reverse Ethics Rule Blocking New DeLay Probe “… “GOP May Be Splintering on Social Security”… “GOP Pushes Bolton Floor Vote” and “Strategy Frames Nomination as Debate Over U.N. Reform.”

CONTROLLING THE LANGUAGE

Molly Ivins writes:

“I was all set to write a column about the nuclear option — the proposal to change the rules of the Senate in order to get President Bush’s most questionable judicial appointments through — when, lo, word came that there is no nuclear option anymore. It is now called ‘the constitutional option.’

“Who changed it? Why, the Republican Party, of course. Having found that ‘nuclear option’ does not poll well, the Republicans simply decreed the rules change can no longer be described by that name. Further, the Republican Party sent media operatives around to major news organizations to inform them that anyone who fails to obey the new diktat on usage will be demonstrating the dread ‘liberal bias.’”