U.S. contra aid vote fuels Nicaragua war
1988 1988-01Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 1
at La Esperanza, Nicaragua, a settlement center for refugees. The contra war has left Over 3000 children have been killed in the fighting; 11,000 have been orphaned.
As 1987 drew to a close, diplomatic pomp and ceremony held the spotlight. The U.S. government toned down its most bellicose language, embraced the Arias peace plan for Central America, and organized the Gorbachev-Reagan summit meeting.
The Democratic Party was loudest in joining the hoopla. As long as the peace plan continued, said liberal members of the House, they would never support funding for the Nicaraguan contras. Unfortunately, many antiwar activists were convinced that contra aid was no longer an issue.
As it turned out, the politicians' wide smiles and handshakes were a coverup for further escalation of the war in Nicaragua. Fighting has increased dramatically there since the signing of the Arias plan. Since June, the number of clashes has jumped to 90 per week from a previous average of 25.
Last month, with support from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, (continued on page 4, in “Unionist refutes AIFLD El Salvador report”)
Steve Cagan Palestinian youth. Over 2500 Palestinians were seized as of Dec. 27, many of them as young as 12. The "militants" were marked for deportation. Israeli high-security jails and detention centers are overflowing. Mass court-martials of Palestinians are underway.
The act of brutality which most inflamed the population was the army seizure of the wounded from hospital beds. This practice, standard procedure throughout the Lebanese invasion of 1982, made Shifa Hospital in Gaza a center of resistance, as great crowds (continued on page 6)
N.Y. protest On Dec. 21, over 700 people jammed into the Borough Hall subway station in Brooklyn, N.Y. As part of the "Day of Outrage," they halted subway service into Manhattan to protest racism and violence against Black people.
On the same day, three defendants were found guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the December 1986 Howard Beach incident in which a Black man was Photo by Donna Binder/Impact Visuals killed by a white mob. Since charges of riot and murder were dismissed, there is a good chance that the seven remaining defendants will be freed.
Violence against Blacks continues in New York-abetted by city authorities. Subway police made as many as 224 unfounded racially motivated arrests between 1983 and 1987. Blacks and Latinos were charged with phony sexual crimes to fulfill a quota system of arrests.
----- pull-quotes -----
Reagan/Gorbachev summit. See pp. 11-13.