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SEVENTEEN
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COLUMN
SEVENTY-TWO, JUNE 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
FROM PORTSIDE
Portside
(the left side in nautical parlance) is a
news, discussion and debate service of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It
says it aims to provide varied material of interest to people
on the Left.
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BRIEFS
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ANOTHER U.S. LIE UNEARTHED
In
the summer of 1975, with the cold war raging and the memory of Saigon's fall
terribly fresh, the United States sponsored a covert operation to prevent
another Communist takeover, this time across the world, in Angola.
The
effort failed to keep a Marxist government from taking power but ushered in a
long and chaotic civil war, involving American, Chinese and Russian interests,
and Cuban and South African soldiers.
Now,
coinciding with the death last month of Washington's longtime rebel ally in
Angola, Jonas Savimbi, a trove of recently declassified American documents seem
to overturn conventional explanations of the war's origins.
Historians
and former diplomats who have studied the documents say they show conclusively
that the United States intervened in Angola weeks before the arrival of any
Cubans, not afterward as Washington claimed. Moreover, though a connection
between Washington and South Africa, which was then ruled by a white government
under the apartheid policy, was strongly denied at the time, the documents
appear to demonstrate their broad collaboration.
"When
the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, in June and July,
not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the U.S. government and the C.I.A.
were not even thinking about any Cuban presence in Angola," said Piero
Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, who used the Freedom
of Information Act to uncover the documents. Similarly, cables of the time have
now been published by the National Security Archive, a private research group.
"If you look at the C.I.A. reports which were done at the time, the Cubans were totally out of the picture," Dr. Gleijeses said. But in reports presented to the Senate in December 1975, "what you find is really nothing less than the rewriting of history." ##
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IS UNWANTED EMAIL A TRESSPASS?
March
29, 2002; CNN
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/03/29/email.pamphleteer.idg/index.html
(IDG)
-- The California Supreme Court agreed this week to review a lower court's
decision that effectively allowed companies to sue parties that send unwanted
e-mail to their employees, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
San Francisco-based civil liberties group.
The
case concerns former Intel Corp. employee Ken Hamidi, who was sued by the chip
maker after he sent six mass e- mail messages to Intel employees, complaining
about the way the company treated its workers.
Intel
won an injunction against Hamidi in November 1998, claiming that he was flooding
its systems and trespassing on its property. Hamidi appealed the case with
support from the foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union in New York,
claiming that his right to free speech was violated.
Last
December, the Third Appellate District Court of California ruled (download PDF)
that sending the unwanted e-mail was an illegal trespass, citing a legal
argument called "trespass the chattels."
The
doctrine prohibits others from interfering with personal property. According to
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the interference must be intentional
physical contact with someone else's property that results in substantial
interference or damage to the property. But civil liberties groups, including
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fear that this doctrine, if applied to the
digital world, would open the door for any number of claimants who contend that
an unwanted e-mail or search-engine crawl served as a trespass on their
property.
No one from Intel was immediately available for comment on the case. ##
* * *
KISSINGER MAY HAVE TO TESTIFY
March
29, 2002 The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,675745,00.html
The
former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger may finally have to face court
action over Washington's role in the overthrow of the Chilean government in 1973
and the bloody events that followed it. Mr Kissinger has been formally asked by
an investigating judge in Chile to respond to questions about the killing of an
American citizen, Charles Horman, in the wake of the coup. The story of the
journalist and film-maker's death became the basis for the 1982 film Missing.
Ever
since the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in Britain in 1998, there have been
attempts to show what part the US government played in the coup that brought him
to power.
Of
particular interest has been the issue of whether the US effectively gave the
military dictatorship carte blanche in dealing with dissidents, even if they
were American citizens.
Part
of the impetus for the new legal moves has come from declassified documents. One
such US state department memo, dated August 25 1976, says: "The GOC
[government of Chile] might have believed this American could be killed without
negative fallout from the USG [US government].
"There
is some circumstantial evidence to suggest US intelligence may have played an
unfortunate part in Horman's death. At best, it was limited to providing or
confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the GOC. At worst, US
intelligence was aware that GOC saw Horman in a rather serious light and US
officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of GOC paranoia."
Juan
Guzman, the judge leading the investigation, has determined that there are
sufficient legal grounds to consider Mr Kissinger an important witness to the
events surrounding Horman's death.
Witness
statements from many of the key players in the case will be taken over the next
six weeks.
Mr
Kissinger's lawyers indicated this week that the matter should be dealt with by
the US state department, as he was working there at the time. Mr Kissinger is
said to be willing to assist with whatever he remembers from "those distant
events".
Fabiola
Letelier, a lawyer with the Chilean human rights group Codepu, has said that a
number of "VIP surprises" will arrive in April to give evidence.
Codepu
lawyers have also secured the cooperation of retired military officials in
giving testimony. According to one lawyer, these officials include witnesses to
Horman's execution.
Mrs Letelier said yesterday that more than 150 declassified documents "affect this case one way or another", and that Mr Kissinger appeared in several of them. ##
* * *
ROCKER TELLS PARLIAMENT IT DOESN'T REPRESENT MOST BRITS
LONDON
(AP) - Rock singer Billy Bragg hiked up his sweater to show off a T-shirt
featuring the punk band the Clash as he testified in Parliament, telling
legislators they were out of touch with the British people.
"I
look at you here in your suits and ties and me sitting here in my Clash T-shirt,
and I don't really see myself represented here," he told the House of Commons
Public Administration Committee Thursday. 'the majority of us don't see
ourselves."
Asked
to speak about how public appointments are made, Bragg blamed Prime Minister
Tony Blair's Labor party government for making young people cynical by failing
to live up to its promises.
He
rebuffed a 44-year-old Welsh legislator who pointed out that he and the
44-year-old Bragg were from the same generation and both grew up on punk rock.
"You
should see my audience," the musician told lawmaker Kevin Brennan. 'they are
all the same age as us, and they don't look like you, mate."
Bragg,
whose music has a leftist political message, said it was important to convince
young people that they could have an impact on government.
He urged lawmakers to change the way members of the House of Lords are selected, saying the legislative body should include ordinary people who lack political connections. ##
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