Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 07:04:20 +0100 (MET)
Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! #29 (Bougainville+Korea)


COCKROACH! #29 (Bougainville+Korea)

A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE.

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How often this zine will appear depends on you!
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1. No news on Bougainville

2. Ang and Ruanda!

3. Soft on Stalinism?

4. KOREAN LABOR: A LONG TRADITION OF MILITANT STRUGGLE.

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No news on Bougainville

News from Bougainville has often been hard to get, and it's not because nothing 
happens there.   Max Watts reports on some behind the scenes happenings at 
Channel 
Nine News.


On October 4, 1989, Channel Nine axed its early morning news program 
declaring cost 
savings were necessary.  At the time the Nine Network was owned by now-jailed 
businessperson Alan Bond, and the dropping of the news looked like just another 
move in a tightening media market.


At that time Bryan Murray was an Associate Producer for National Nine News;  he 
remembers the cancelling of the program.


"One morning I came to work, and learned that our daily 6 am news program 
was, as 
of today, cancelled.  When I asked the obvious question:  'Why?'  I was told 
that a 
Port Moresby politician had been angered by some news item we had broadcast.
"this minister had, so I was told, spoken directly to Alan Bond, who then owned 
the 
National Nine Network, or to Managing Director, Sam Chisholm.  The message 
was then 
passed down to our news chief, Ian Cook."

"Cook, according to my anchorman, Eric Walters, called a meeting of senior news 
personnel and said:  'We have to bend over, and give them whatever they 
want'.  And 
he killed our program."
 

The program's anchorman, Eric Walters, remembers the incident well.  Now 
semi-retired, Walters says that there had been complaints about the National 
Nine 
Early Morning News program's coverage of news from Papua New Guinea.

"I remember, I got very very angry.  Somare had complained about our 
coverage, and 
whether it was right away or later, anyway, the bulletin was cancelled."  

"Cookie, he was annoyed at my questioning this decision [to cancel that entire 
program]," says Walters.

"Cookie said to me that Somare had us 'dead to rights' because we had run file 
footage which we had not put a super on.  We had messed up, failed to 
identify it 
as file footage."

The news program had run an item about Bougainville featuring PNG's foreign 
minister Sir Michael Somare, the nation's first prime minister and the 
'father of 
the nation'.  Some file footage was added to the story but a mistake was 
made, and 
footage of Walter Lini, prime minister of Vanuatu, limping following a 
stroke, was  
shown.  Somare was reputedly furious.

Walters says he thought this cock-up relatively unimportant and no excuse for 
cancelling a whole news program.

"I certainly had that conversation with Ian Cook, and what he said was 
'Sometimes 
we've just got to bend over'."


Murray remembers that the event was followed up with a memo to staff.  "A 
few days 
later Mr. Cook sent out a computer memo to myself and other members of the 
Sydney 
news staff.

"The gist of this memo was unforgetable:  'No stories would be broadcast 
about the 
Bougainville uprising unless we could confirm the facts directly'."

"This was a tall order since we were relying heavily on wire service reports 
and no 
correspondents had been sent to Bougainville, although we clearly had the 
resources  
and the technology to do so.  We had dispatched correspondents as far afield 
as far 
northern Alaska to glimpse a whale trapped in the ice."

Walters too remembers receiving a memo later about the matter, but not all its 
details, except the general thrust that they were only to report on 
Bougainville 
when every fact could be checked.


Murrray was then already 35 and, in his own words "fairly jaded", but at 
that point  
in his journalism career he had "never seen such a blatant attempt to quash 
media 
coverage, particularly of something so newsworthy as a shooting war just off 
the 
Australian mainland."

Murray says that at the time neither he nor the other, younger journalists and 
producers with whom he worked at TCN did anything.  "They kept silent and 
went home 
to their mortgaged units;  I eventually went back to America.  I too kept 
quiet."

Murray says he was prompted to come out and tell of the incident now after 
seeing 
information of the continued carnage on Bougainville on the Internet.  "I 
remain 
haunted about Bougainville, and troubled by that 'chill' on the media."



DROP CAP


EMTV had started broadcasting in PNG in early 1989.  Alan Bond had purchased 
the 
Nine Network from Kerry Packer in 1987 for $ 1,055 million.  In July 1990 
Packer 
bought it back for just $ 200 million;  Packer commented at the time:  "You 
only 
get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, and I've had mine".

Ian Cook had been News Chief at TCN Nine at that time.  Now he is Head of 
News at 
Rupert Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting Ltd, BSB.

Cook responded to questions about the incident by fax from his London 
office.  "I 
did not receive any instructions, complaint or advisory from him [Bond], from 
anyone associated with him or from any member of management regarding our 
coverage 
in Bougainville," he says.   "I have absolutely no recollection of any 
meeting or 
memo even remotely similar to those you have described."

Bryan Murray was understanding.  "I've been a small town TV news director, I 
can 
appreciate some of the pressures on a guy in Cook's position.

"I have a lot of respect for him.  He may have been on our side, fighting those 
battles in his own way," says Murray.

"We knew we had to lay off Bougainville, but they would never admit that."

Several other journalists then working at Channel Nine also confirmed, (on 
condition that their names would not be published) that there had been 
complaints 
"from above" about Bougainville coverage.


Sam Chisholm, then Nine's managing director and now head of BSB, was sent 
questions 
about the incident.  His office responded saying that "he doesn't think he can 
help".

Alan Bond is presently in jail in Perth under appeal.  His solicitor, Susie 
Cameron 
>from Galbally, Fraser and Rolph in Melbourne agreed to pass some questions 
about 
the matter on to him.  There has been no reply.

Murray says he felt that it was more than the cock-ups that were the 
justification 
for killing the show and sending the memo.

"We all knew it;  Channel 9 bowed to outside pressure," says Murray.  
"Bougainville 
was definitely heating up and we were definitely, specifically, told to 
leave it 
alone."


Paul Fenn, then second-in-charge and now Head of News at Channel 9, is quite 
definite.  He says that the 6 am news had been axed on October 4, 1989 "to cut 
costs".  Three other Nine programs had also been cancelled on the same day 
in an 
industry-wide economy drive.

Fenn assured us that these decisions were purely commercial, and had nothing 
to do 
with any outside criticism or pressure concerning PNG or Bougainville.  But 
he does 
remember the memo.

"Oh yes, there was a memo.  There was a complaint from the PNG government, 
probably, I don't remember, through Sam Chisholm, the Managing Director, rather 
than through Alan Bond.  About a couple of what they conceived as 
misreporting, as 
well as the misidentification of Michael Somare."

"And we were told to be careful, with our facts out of Bougainville.  Unless we 
could check things it was better not to run anything rather than be incorrect;  
unless it can be confirmed."

"It would have been dangerous to send a team, but more of the reason, rather 
than 
the danger, was that it was impossible to get in there.

"In practice that meant that news from Bougainville simply dried up."



30303030


Max Watts is a journalist who has written extensively about the conflict on 
Bougainville.  He considers that the blockade imposed on the island since April 
1990 by PNG and Australian forces is intended not only to prevent supplies, 
such as 
medicine, reaching the Bougainvillians fighting against Rio Tinto Zinc/Conzinc 
Riotinto Australia RTZ/CRA's mining  projects, but that this blockade also 
serves 
to prevent news of this exceptional conflict from reaching the outside 
world, above 
all the Australian public.
--------------------------------------------------------
Ang and Ruanda!

"The reconstruction of Rwanda will require `an alternative 
economic programme' implemented by a genuinely
democratic government (based on inter-ethnic solidarity 
and free from donor interference). Such a programme
presupposes erasing the external debt together with 
an unconditional infusion of international aid. It also
requires lifting the straitjacket of budgetary austerity 
imposed by the IMF, mobilising domestic resources, 
and providing for a secure and stable productive base 
for the rural people..." 

The above quote from the article ang sent in to the list says a lot. If in 
the advanced industrial world one of the central points for any kind of 
revolution is the confiscation of the banks into the hands of the workers 
then in the third world the key must be
expropriation and writting off of any debts that the IMF are responsible for.

The whole article is filled with the criminal politics of how the IMF is 
responsible for much of the economicc policies in Africa which directly lead 
to tribal and nationalist conflicts. 

Unfortunately "unconditional infusion of aid" is a pipedream. Because IMF 
policies has nothing to do with aid but is a direct imperialist agent and 
exploiter in the third world. Only and independent political movement and 
party based on the South African proletariat and linked to a program of pan 
Africa socialism independently of all wings of imperialism and their lackies 
can solve the problem.

One of the most horrible crimes in Africa that the Stalinists committed was 
basically a reverse policy of supporting any nationalist and military click 
that opposed imperialism. Basically because they had entirely gone away from 
any kind of policy of struggle based on classes.

One of the more interesting reports on National TV here last night was how 
the International community and especially the UN talk about "aid" and when 
push comes to shove this aid is always to late! In fact a concious policy of 
genocide where another million or so of Africans die off like flys. The 
reportage took up this in the aspect that the African tragedies are no 
longer interesting as an aspect of human interest. In other words a "suck" 
of "Oh another crisis in Africa". But in reality killing millions of 
Africans in fact makes territorial control for the white imperialists in the 
long run much easier. And in the final analisis the key question on all the 
minds of the imperialist bougeoisie is who will control the natural 
resources of Africa!

And if they can not find life on Mars,well then wiping out every African on 
the continent will give them some breathing space. 

I am also very enraged that our "Marxists" on MI are playing their silly 
petty bougeois game of "serious discussions" and "cyber seminars" about 
things that the American and European white new left find so fucking 
important. In fact very trivial and an ego trip of the worst calibre as 
events in Africa are sent out on the media daily. But also the general rise 
in combativity of the European working class and other serious issues are 
being conciously ignored on MI. In fact it is the same olf faces that have 
ursurped MI for a personal intellectual ego trip. 

No workers, No Africans and especially no Trotskyists are welcome.It is a 
collection of the elements of m1,m2,foucault lists who have taken over a 
little corner of cyberspace in order to ignore whats going on in the real world.

Bob Malecki
--------------------------------------------------------
Re: Soft on Stalinism?

Proyect writes

>The charge that I am soft on Stalinism is so bizarre it is hardly worth 
>commenting on, but let me do so anyhow:
>
>1. Stalin was a terrible dictator. He gave socialism a bad name. He had 
>a conservative foreign policy and held back revolutions. He was also 
>guilty of national chauvinism in the USSR and made the lives of Jews, 
>Crimean Tatars, etc. utter hell. The Soviet Union was a vast work-
>camp under his direction. People like the engineer Palchinsky who had 
>an alternative vision were snuffed out.
>
>2. Trotsky was basically correct in his criticisms of Stalinism. His 
>"Revolution Betrayed" and his writings on fascism are the most 
>important contributions to Marxist thought since the Russian 
>Revolution and prior to the rebirth of Marxism after WWII.
>
>OK. So what now?

Well, for starters your support to the Cuban revolution and events in 
Nicarugua. Because the politics there are in fact an extension of Stalinist 
poliics Internationally. More concretely "Socialism in one country",peaceful 
coexistence with imperialism"
"the popular front", and not in the least party building..

Your "support" of Trotsky against Stalin in the Soviet Union is a cheap shot 
and anybody who is "soft" on Stalinism in his right mind could say things 
like this. The point is the political program of Stalinism that evolved out 
of the bankrupt policies of the COMINTERN. 

And Louis is more then soft on these kinds od Stalinist politics but 
supports them and defends them. But he also uses Stalinist tactics against 
political opponents such as slander, cop baiting and yellow journalism.

>This is not 1938 when people like Fred Baker were everywhere to be 

No it is 1996 and the politics of Stalinism expressed in the ideas of the 
"broadies" on this list are a good expression of "neo-Stalinism. The popular 
front politics of today are not the Stalinists Gulags but they are popular 
fronts and will lead to the defeat of the working class.

What Proyect does in cyberspace is his real program and he openly admits 
that he is in political agreeement with the liberals of the MI like Doug H. 
This is the cyber expression of neo-Stalinists politics of ther 90ties.

Against this must be posed the independant mobilisation of the working class 
and its organisations against all wings of the bougeoisie. Proyect and Doug 
H can not support this because they are neo-Stalinists and support popular 
front politics. They see the elections in Nicarugua where the Sandinistas 
gave away the power and now today are moving even futher to the right to 
appease imperialism as the model that they have historically represented on 
this list as M1 before.

Adam who usually critisises them from a left state cap position 
unfortunately winds up blocking with the neo-Stalinist Proyect and the 
liberal Doug against the Trotskyists.

Louis G who is constantly trying to white wash most of the philthy crimes of 
the Stalinists usually turns to boycotting people who attack him politically 
both from the left and the right.

I see that some solidarity people also have turned up and appear comfortable 
here at MI. Naturally as supporters of Mandel they find it at times a bit 
hard to swallow the politics of Louis G., Proyect, and liberal Doug. This is 
because they want to keep the name Trotskyism while liquidating the 
politics. However in this battle I would support them against the 
neo-Stalinist Proyect, the Stalinist Louis G. and the liberal Doug.

However it is interesting that the big fights on M1 are still lying their 
like a sore that will not heal. The reason is that the bottom line of 
politics goes along the basic lines that it as been going the last 70 years 
or so. The politics of the second International, the politics of Stalinism 
and the poltics of the Left Opposition and Trotsky.

Nothing is really knew about the general political situation. Other then the 
Stalinists are trying to cover their asses with a lot of flack. It reminds 
me a lot of the Pabloite liquidaters in away. The neo-Stalinists like 
Proyect trying to get rid of the more attroucious crimes of Stalin while 
keeping the basic rotten political line.

Ha Ha.. What a illusion! 

Just as those on this list who are whining about the working class no longer 
being the only revolutionary class. It is the cries of the petty bougeois 
intellectual trying to justify his or hers own middle class exiostence. Thus 
the very interesting personal bios that Proyect presents from time to time 
being a good example of a petty bougeois intellectual who has broken with 
any kind of working class politics and is a part of the neo-Stalinist 9 and 
1/2 International which they are trying to build.

Bob Malecki 
---------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 16, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

KOREAN LABOR: A LONG TRADITION OF MILITANT STRUGGLE

By Hillel Cohen

The strike wave that has hit south Korea continues a long
tradition of militant struggles by Korean workers.

For decades prior to World War II, a militant national
labor movement fought for workers' rights during the
colonial occupation of Korea by Japanese imperialism.

During the war, the vanguard of the workers' movement
participated with the communist-led guerrilla struggle that
fought the Japanese occupation army.

After liberation in August 1945, these forces became the
core of the new workers' state that consolidated in the
north. But the U.S. army occupied Korea south of the 38th
parallel and established a U.S. military administration with
the cooperation of former collaborators with the Japanese
colonial government.

U.S. OCCUPIERS ATTACKED LABOR GROUPS

For five years, the U.S. army administration carried out
attacks on all organizations and sympathizers of the labor
movement, socialists and supporters of an independent Korea.
Tens of thousands were killed, and many more were jailed or
beaten.

When the Korean war broke out on June 25, 1950, it was a
war of the peoples' army defending the socialist north from
the U.S. army and its neocolonial, capitalist administration
in the south.

Although the war ended in a cease-fire in 1953, the Korean
nation has remained divided, with about 40,000 U.S. troops
still occupying the south. While the north pursued a path of
socialist construction, in the south the U.S. military
administration gave rise to a series of military
dictatorships that promoted a state-capitalist, neocolonial
economy.

Heavy investment from the U.S. and Japan, coupled with
severe repression of labor rights contributed to the growth
of the choebols--the huge Korean conglomerates like Hyundai,
DaeWoo and Samsung. Bribes from the big corporations flowed
freely to the military governments, and government subsidies
for industry flowed back.

Statistics in 1994 showed that workers in Korea had longer
working hours than any other workers in Asia. The enormous
profits from this intense exploitation were the basis for a
prolonged period of capitalist expansion.

In 1987, a huge strike wave of workers and students shook
the U.S.-backed military government of Roh Tae Woo. The
workers were demanding higher wages and democratic rights.
At the same time, the corporations had outgrown their need
for state capitalist methods and were chafing at the
excessive cost of bribes and support of the expensive tastes
of the military-bureaucracy.

One of the bourgeois opposition leaders, Kim Young Sam,
was coopted into the government and in 1992 prepared for the
first civilian government since a popular government
appeared for a brief period following student uprisings in
the early 1960s. With the new government in 1993, the
National Security Law was amended to remove the labor
movement from the jurisdiction of the Korean CIA.

Until then, this hated, brutal arm of the state could
investigate, harass and jail union leaders along with others
in the opposition. Almost all labor leaders have been in
jail for at least one or two years for union work, including
the chairman of the Korean Federation of Labor or
Minjunohchung, Kwan Young Kil.

`THE NOTORIOUS LABOR LAW'

>From the first days of the U.S. military occupation of the
south of Korea, through the war and right up until today,
there has not been a legal, national labor organization in
the south. A variety of anti-union regulations under what
Korean unionists call "the notorious labor law" have been
used against the labor movement.

Under these laws any support of a strike by non-strikers
is considered illegal third-party intervention. They also
make illegal membership in the independent unions that are
part of Minjunohchung and that are leading the current
general strike.

Only the government-dominated Hanguknoh chung (Federation
of Korean Labor Unions) unions are legally recognized. The
strength of the strike movement and the widespread
opposition to the government's labor policy has forced
Hanguknoh chung to support the strikes so far.

Since 1993, the independent unions have been able to
function a little more openly, with offices and literature.
Kim Young Sam had promised in his campaign to repeal the
repressive labor laws. This never happened, and the
independent unions are still banned from legally
representing the workers.

Despite the legal ban, the unions have successfully
carried out strikes--that are almost always declared illegal
by the government--and negotiated wage increases.

In addition the workers had some legal protection from
layoffs. The corporations would find ways around the law,
with false charges of misconduct or by bribing officials.
Nonetheless the law offered some protections.

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN SOUTH KOREA

But the long period of capitalist expansion in the south
started winding down last year, and it seems that a classic
crisis of overproduction, as described by Karl Marx, has
begun unfolding.

To resolve the crisis, the Korean corporate giants are
looking to do more investment abroad and to "restructure"
the south Korean work force with layoffs and conversion to a
provisional, temporary or "contingent" work force. To do so
meant repealing the law that prohibited layoffs.

Along with this strategy, south Korea applied for
membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development. But as a result of pressure from the
International Labor Organization and some social-democratic
representatives in the OECD, reform of the labor laws was
made a condition of joining.

At the same time, with the prospect that a decline in the
economy along with layoffs would lead to more labor unrest,
the Kim Young Sam government tried to pass new legislation
that would allegedly legalize the unions but only after
three years and with all sorts of restrictive conditions.

These laws would restore the power of the successor to the
KCIA to investigate and prosecute labor activists and would
allow corporations to legally lay off at will and hire
replacement workers as temporaries and provisionals.

The struggle to block this new anti-labor legislation and
to immediately legalize the unions is at the heart of the
current strike struggle.

U.S. policy toward north Korea, like U.S. policy on Cuba,
has combined economic embargo with military threats and
promises of economic aid if the socialist state was
dismantled. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S.
government officials have been predicting the fall of the
socialist government in the north.

It is undoubtedly unwelcome news to the U.S. government
and Wall Street that mass rebellions are taking place in the
south, not the north, and that it is the south government
that is in crisis. But this is welcome news to all class-
conscious workers who are in complete solidarity with the
struggle of the Korean workers.

Trade unionists and others who would like to send messages
of solidarity to the union can address them to Chairman Kwon
Young Kil, Minjunoh chung and send them via fax care of 301-
989-0037 and they will be forwarded.

                         - END -

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint
granted if source is cited. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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ww-info-AT-wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)
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