Miami: Vultures Move in

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USA week by week As the dust settles, literally, on the rubble that was once the Northern section of Miami, some of the inherent tensions of capitalism begin to emerge from the smoke and ashes of America's most explosive race-riot for 10 years.

The civil rights lobby and the liberal leadership of the black community has concentrated its fire on the role of the police in provoking the riots.

This is obviously true in immediate terms, but there is nothing that Carter and the US bosses would like more than to pass it all off as the inevitable backlash against a corrupt and vicious police department in that one area.

In fact the blacks outrage against the acquittal of the policemen who beat Arthur McDuffie to death has its roots in the very foundations of big business exploitation and racialism.

Blacks make up roughly a quarter of the city's population. À further half of that population is Hispanic-the most prosperous of whom are the Cuban petit-bourgeoisie and displaced capitalists.

Apart from the the hub of the cit 1s mi central area which houses the headquarters of several major multinational companies and a large number of American and European banks operating in key areas of Central America.

This is also the haven of some of the shadier capitalist racketeers, many of them close associates of Richard Nixonlike Bebe Rebozo.

There is already evidence that the property speculating vultures are circling over the devastated ghetto area.

The plan seems to be to redevelop and price the blacks out of the city and into makeshift suburban shanties. • This would provide the ideal opening to give a base to many more of the Hispanic bourgeoisie fleeing from the ever more unstable situation in Central and Southern America.

The Nicaraguan Somoza clique, for example, is already well entrenched. The oppression and exploitation of blacks at home and at work is the major prerequisite for this scheme.

It is against this background that the police campaign against blacks has to be viewed. This campaign has been waged in Miami even more diligently than in such notorious areas as Los Angeles, and Memphis.

The McDuffie murder is just the most blatant in a long, connecting series of attacks and violations. National figures show that 10 times more blacks die as a result of police homicide than whites.

In Miami now there are over 1300 awaiting trial for offences arising from the riots.

Police have miraculously detained only blacks suspected of murder, but have done nothing to track down the gangs of white neo-fascists who toured the streets killing stray blacks.

And what of the measly $11.5 million in state aid to "rebuid" the Northern streets of the city?

Already it has gone to pad out the bank vaults of the very businesses whose profiteering stranglehold led to the grinding deprivation of the blacks in the first place.

But there's just one thought that must disturb the sleep of the Miami business community as they bed down in their plush villas behind barbed wire and guard-dog compounds-not even the most high-powered insurance company in Florida offers a policy against lightning striking twice in the same place. sisters Wreckage after the riots Bani-Sadr In fact the regime has decided once again to give enormous prominence to an illegal Iraq, US and Israelibacked military coup attempt which was pre-empted by a series of arrests of leading officers.

While it would not be at all improbable that such a military coup was planned, President Bani-Sadr-now limping pathetically behind the Ayatollahsdescribed the coup in terms designed to promote a sense of outrage and national unity.

The officers, he claimed, had planned to seize an airforce base and send planes to bombhorror of "horrors!-the residence of the infallible Ayatollah Khomeini himself.

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