Pentagon tests new missile

The U.S. military announced with media fanfare that it had carried out a successful test of a new missile October 3. The electronically guided weapon tracked and hit a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launched more than 1,400 miles away. The missile is the first element brought to the testing stage of a scaled-down version of the "star wars" space-based scheme that the U.S. rulers pursued in the 1980s. Based on the destruction of enemy missiles by surface-to-air weapons, the missile system is an attempt to gain the ability to carry out a nuclear first strike without fear of retaliation.

The Pentagon plans to deploy one such system in Asia, dubbing it the Theater Missile Defense system. Washington claims such weapons are necessary to thwart strikes by "rogue nations" like Iraq and North Korea. Beijing, however, has recognized the proposal for the aggressive move it is, and the Russian government has also protested.  
 

China marks 50 years since revolutionary victory

On October 1 China marked the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Red Army over the imperialist-backed nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. This blow against imperialism by workers and peasants in the world's most populous country led to the formation of a workers state. The Chinese military marked the day with a major display of firepower featuring infantry, mobile nuclear-armed missiles, and new fighter jets.

Commentators in the capitalist media grudgingly acknowledged the social gains, including in the field of health and education services, that Chinese working people have won and maintained in the last 50 years. They trumpeted the reforms that the bureaucracy introduced in the late 1970s, which opened up the economy to substantial foreign investment, and urged Beijing to start dismantling more aggressively the basic social protections that still remain. Commentators noted, too, that workers and farmers are increasingly ready to take action to improve working and living conditions. In one indication of this, Beijing placed restrictions on participation in the celebrations, and on movement in and out of the capital.  
 

Gurkhas protest unequal pay

"End the discrimination. We want justice," chanted 5,000 former Gurkha soldiers as they marched through Katmandu on September 18. Gurkhas from Nepal have served in the British Army for 200 years and have some 3,000 members currently enlisted. Two hundred and fifty are today part of the imperialist occupation force in East Timor.

The retired soldiers explain that they are given much lower pay and pensions than British-born recruits. London has recently raised the levels, but the pension received by a retired Gurkha rifleman amounts to one-seventeenth of that received by his British counterpart.  
 

Russian troops enter Chechnya

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia admitted that Russian troops struck inside Chechnya at the end of September. The Russian army has assembled thousands of troops on the border between the two territories, with the declared aim of establishing a "sanitary zone" between them. Its war planes have pounded the capital, Grozny, and other areas inside Chechnya with bombs and missiles for two weeks, forcing an estimated 100,000 people from their homes. Chechen forces defeated the Russian military in 1996.

In northern Chechnya residents of a number of farming villages have put up stiff resistance to incursions by Russian troops. Accompanying its military escalation with political provocation, Moscow has withdrawn recognition of the Chechen government and recognized instead the former pro-Moscow government that was ousted during the mid-'90s.  
 

Slovak unions take action

The Slovak Trade Union Confederation organized 40,000 members in a march in Bratislava at the weekend. The workers demanded jobs in response to a rise in unemployment from 14 to more than 18 percent since the government took office last October. They also demanded wage raises and lower taxes. The cost of living in Slovakia has risen from 6 percent to more than 14 percent due to increases in regulated prices.  
 

Ecuador engulfed in debt crisis

Ecuador remains at the center of the deepening debt crisis in Latin America. On September 30 the government promised the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that it would take austerity measures by December in return for a $350-million "standby" loan. The government has backed off previous wholesale austerity measures in the face of mass demonstrations and strikes.

To date Quito has failed to pay a large part of the interest owing on Brady bonds, issued by the U.S. government during the debt crisis of the 1980s, which constitute almost half of the country's external public sector debt. IMF officials have expressed reluctance to respond on a large scale to Ecuador's problems, indicating that in their view the country has a problem of "insolvency."  
 

Global inequality soars…

The gap in wealth between the world's richest country and the poorest — as measured in per capita gross domestic product — has grown by seven times since 1913, report researchers from the United Nations. In 1992 the wealth ratio stood at 72 to 1. The UN Human Development Report says that countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes all the imperialist powers, account for 20 percent of the world's population, and 86 percent of world output. The poorest 20 percent account for 1 percent of output.

In many African countries, the average per capita income has declined since 1970. Another study, by the World Bank, found that 55 to 60 percent of the world's population saw incomes decline between 1988 and 1993.

The human toll exacted by imperialist exploitation is expressed in life expectancy statistics: on average, a person in North America lives 26 years longer than their counterpart in Africa. Infant mortality in Japan stands at 4 deaths per thousand live births; in Sierra Leone and East Timor respectively, 170 and 135 infants die.  
 

…Along with U.S. inequality

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released figures showing that the percentage of the population living below the poverty line (defined as an annual income of $16,455 for a four-person household) fell from 13.3 to 12.7 percent of the population over the last year. In large part this is due to increased working hours. The Conference Board's Consumer Research Center recently reported figures that reflect this, showing that the average "middle-income family" worked 256 more hours in 1997 than in 1989.

At the same time disparity in the spread of income did not decline, and the poverty rate among workers who are Black remained at 26.1 percent, 2.5 times greater than that for whites. Meanwhile, the annual earnings of the top directors of the country's top 365 companies was 419 times that of the average factory worker, having risen 481 percent since 1990.

— PATRICK O'NEILL  
 
 
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