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W(JRIlERS ,,1N(;(J,1RIJ 25¢No. 337 ~ ...... , ..• ~~., X.-523 9 September 1983

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.....Mission 007: Cold War Provocation

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NY Times

What was the sinister mission of Flight 007? Its flight path over themost militarily sensitive areas of the USSR was a deliberate anti-Sovietprovocation.

by Soviet interceptors to land. Whenchallenged over Sakhalin, it engaged inevasive action. Clearly this was adeliberate provocation, and if it wasn't apreplanned spy mission, it might as wellhave been.

If the government of the Soviet Unionknew that the intruding aircraft was infact a commercial passenger planecontaining 200-plus innocent civilians,despite the potential military damage ofsuch an apparent spying mission, if theydeliberately destroyed the airplane andits occupants, then, to paraphrase theFrench, the act of shooting it downwould have been worse than a barbaricatrocity, it \\,,) ...10 ll~ve Gi::en iAn idiocyworthy of the Israelis. But the piecemealfacts and obvious falsifications arguethat this was not the case, and some-thing resembling what really might havegone on is rapidly being pieced togetherinternationally.

What are the Americans up to? As astatement by the Soviet news agencyT ASS (printed on page 6) put it, it "isnecessary to find out the truth on whoand for what purposes sent this plane toSoviet airspace." As the Russians havepointed out, Washington badly wantedan incident that would give it an excuseto break off or sidetrack arms controlnegotiations and undercut demonstra-tions against the stationing of new U.S.missiles in Europe this fall. Meanwhile,they would like to put the Soviets in asituation like in 1919: no trade, nocommunication, no transportation, acomplete world blockade. This isn't1919 and it won't work. But that's themeaning of the ban on Aeroflot land-ings, begun by Reagan's flunky inCanada. This deadly provocation ispreparation for imperialist war.

The U.S. evidently needs about a two-year buildup for war with Russia. It's

continued on paKe 7

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figure out what the hell did happen.(P.S. So are we, and so is the rest of theworld. except for the most rabidchauvinists.) The plane certainly didn't"stray off course," it deliberatelychanged course, and not just in anydirection but heading straight towardSeoul and passing over a succession ofmilitary bases. Flying without naviga-tiona I lights. KAL 007 refused to followrepeated radio and visual instructions

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and Japanese authorities who wereclosely tracking Flight 007, was moreheinous than any hijacking. A SovietTV commentator compared it to theNazis, pointing out that "when theHitlerites attacked, they forced womenand children in front of them."

It is highly suspicious that the U. S.government seemed immediately toknow all about the incident whileMoscow was patently still trying to

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Reported PathOf u.s. Planejseou~~

SEPTEMBER 6-When Korean AirLines Flight 007 took off after refuelingin Anchorage, Alaska in the earlymorning hours of August 31, it headedsouthwest down the international cor-ridor known as R-20, the closest offiveair lanes to the Soviet peninsula ofKamchatka. Some time after it passedthe last American radar checkpoint inthe Aleutians, it apparently veered off tothe right and thereafter followed asteady course some 300 miles to the westof its assigned path. According to ABC-TV, two hours after takeoff "it passedover one of Russia's most sensitivemilitary installations. the submarineha',( at Petrop;p,dovsk" on the southernti.p of Kamchatka.

In response to this blatant violation ofSoviet airspace. KAL Flight 007 waspicked up by Soviet radar and pursuedby Soviet fighter planes as it crossed theSea of Okhotsk inside the KurilIslandschain. Two hours later, shortly after3:00 a.m. Japanese time, the planeoverflew the Soviet island of Sakhalinpassing near the Korsakov air and navalbase. Continuing its course would havetaken the jetliner over the port ofVladivostok, home of the Soviet Pacificfleet. But Western reports say that at3:38 a.m. the South Korean Boeing 747jet plunged into the sea just off Sak ha-lin, taken out by the Soviets.

N ow Ronald Reagan accuses theRussians of the "Korean Air Linemassacre." an "act of barbarism" by anevil society in which "shooting down aplane ... with hundreds of innocent men,women, children and babies, is part oftheir normal procedure." What shame-less hypocrisy! Who took the civilianpassengers as hostages on this cold-blooded Cold War provocation in thefirst place? This criminal game of"chicken" by the Korean military pilots,with the cooperation (at least) of V.S.

Greetings From Our Comrades

Under the Terror inSri Lanka

REVOLCTIO:\ARY GREETINGSTO SLjU.S.

Spartacist League/LankaColombo~ August 1983

The Spartacist League: La nka(SL, L) sends these warm greetings tothe sevent h :\ationa! Conference of theSpartacist League; l' .S. at a time whenSri Lar.ka is enveloped \n the most'evere political complexities :,-verrecorded in its recent historv.T~e six-year administration or 'he

rro-.-\ mencan. right 1;.\ J, R. Ja\ ewa r-dcne\ U:\P [lnited '..;:It!onal elrty]gO\ernment has not ~,oi\ed an\ :'roh-iems of the people. instead, the'. "',n·T

become aggravated lrom had to worse.The "oren ccorwm).' ;[no the "free"'fade lone'· !heor1cs thaI the t!o\'crn-rnent sought to :J~e tiS supportIng"illars lor the Cr3

For the Right of Tamil Eelam!U.S. Out of the Indian Ocean!

Under the Terrorin Sri Lanka(COni inued from page 1)

Arson, looting, murder continuedon Tuesday. Burning, charred cars,lorries, coaches still remained on theroads smoking.... Wednesday, "offi-cially," curfew was declared thewhole day....

Then came the most disgustingnews-the very people who wedemanded be released were hacked todeath in their prison cells. Kuttimani,Jeganathan and others (37 some say,75 others say), all Tamil politicalprisoners and suspects, were beatento death. Believe it [the officialaccount]-these prisoners were in themaximum security section, hard-coreterrorists as they were known, trans-ferred from the Army Cantonment atPanagoda-fellow Sinhala prisonersbroke open their own cells, pushedaside the guards in a maximumsecurity section (in the largest prisonin the island), broke into the cells ofthe Tamil prisoners and simplycrushed them to death! How manyshots were fired by the guards'? ..Then it happens again, the followingday, the prison riots repeat and 18Tamil prisoners are slaughtered. Allthese prisoners and suspects wereheld under that act that we demandedbe repealed-the Prevention ofTerrorism Act.

Thursday, and now people beginto feel the impact of the riot. Longqueues form opposite governmentretail stores and distribution centres.The "bread queue" is the longest.Food prices soar, black marketeersand racketeers make the buck. Manywho came to their workplaces foundthem smashed, burnt, looted orclosed down.

Friday, the President's and PrimeMinister's speeches are already heardand read by everyone.... On August4th legislation will be introduced inparliament to proscribe the call (or aseparate state. So this is going to bethe UNP solution (with the SLFP) tothe national question. What legisla-tion cannot the UNP pass in parlia-ment with its 6/7 majority? ..

So now we have refugee camps(concentration camps) holding over40,000 Tamils in Colombo alone.Another attack in the North, and willnot the gates of these camps beopened to the communalists, whowill simply repeat Shatila and Sabrahere in Lanka? ..

It appears that all political partiesof the left (leave aside the bourgeoisSinhalese and Tamil parties) lack acorrect solution to the NationalQuestion. Some even say they recog-nise the right of the :ramils toseparation, but none raise the call:Not Sinhalese against Tamils butclass against class! Lankan/Indianworkers key to the socialist revolu-tion in South Asia! Sinhalese. Tam-ils, men, women, forward towards aworkers and peasants government!

Direct from ColomboColomboFriday, July 29th 1983

We are now witnessing the cruelestattack on the Tamil people in Lankaever recorded in recent history. It allbegan on the evening of the 24th,when the government wanted to burysome bodies of soldiers, killed by"northern terrorists," secretly in acemetery in Colombo. Relatives ofthese dead soldiers wanted the bodiesto be taken to their home towns (inSinhala areas). As a show of protestthey began attacking all Tamil shopsand commercial establishmentsaround the cemetery area, Borella(Colombo-8). By morning on the25th the whole area was burned, andpeople who gathered in the city wereagitated by newspapers in bold thickheadlines. These people, encouragedby utterances and behaviour of somecabinet ministers and Members ofParliament of the UNP during thelast few years, ran amok in the city.

All hell broke loose when mobs,gangs, thugs, private armies armedwith knives, krises, iron bars, steelhammers, daggers got on to thestreets searching for Tamils. From allthe high-rise buildings in the Fort[downtown Colombo] area to theslums in Peliyagoda every Tamilproperty was set afire, destroyed.

I walked through the city onMonday. Colombo was wrapped in amist of dark black choking thicksmoke. Men, women, little childrenwere running for their lives. Half-naked, drunken thugs were chasingafter Tamils who like on any otherweekday reported to work. Hugeflames of fire were swallowing Tamilkovils (temples), hotels, jewelry andtextile shops, and finally spread andgutted the huge factories of Cyntex,KG Plastics, St. Anthony, Consoli-dated Engineering, Getro, Tatatextiles. All this happened in thepresence of the police who were bythat time deployed on the streets....

I saw a hundred [Sinhalese] chas-ing a Tamil man running for his life(towards a police post) and severalcops, armed, just watching this manfall and then be set upon by the crowdthat followed. I saw logs being placedon roads, vehicles stopped and thesearch for Tamils going on. Whathappened when an armed patrolpassed by? They waved and cheered.But what shook me most was when Isaw workers on McCullum Road(J.R. Wijewardena Mawatha) de-fending the government, smashingvehicles and demanding nationalidentity cards. The same men and theguns they stood to defend today willbe the death weapon not only ofthemselves but of the entire labourmovement of Lanka....

SLlLanka

Sri Lankan army and Sinhalese mobs burn down Tamil shops in Colombo.

fight capit2!ism, but social democracy,reformism and centrism too, Our part inthe world is extremely diffict:!t. Risky,We are devoted, as a propaganda groupagainst all types of reactionaries, tobuilding a party on the lines of Bolshe-vik traditions.

Comrades, Colombo is filled withguns, bayonets, barbed wire, fire, ashand burnt remains, and refugee camps,And from this city, with deep comradelyfeeiings we hold your hand that israising the red banner of struggle in theconference today,

• The main enemy is at home!• Indian/Lankan workers key to the

socialist revolution in South Asia!• For the rebirth of the Fourth

International! •

terror for their lives. Among the tens ofthousands of homeless refugees stillstarving in government camps are many"stateless" plantation workers from theuplands. This superexploited plantationlabor force (legally disenfranchised in1948) has been central to the island'seconomy since British colonial days.

Despite the government's press cen-sorship, the foreign press has document-ed the wholesale army rampages in theNorth and the participation of the copsand army in the killing elsewhere. IndiaToday's comprehensive story (31 Au-gust) on the terror stressed the leadingrole of the UNP and rightist Buddhistextremist groups, and the organizedquality of the terror: e.g., "spontaneous"Sinhalese mobs had voters lists anddetailed addresses of Tamil-ownedproperty. Eyewitness accounts in theforeign press have also destroyed thegovernment's claims, absurd on theirface, that the massacre of 52 Tamilactivists inside Welikada prison wascarried out without the connivance ofthe authorities. Some of the mostprominent Tamil spokesmen on theisland-Kuttimani, Jeganathan, Raja-sunderam-were slaughtered in thisatrocity aimed at beheading militantwings of the Tamil nationalistmovement.

J.R. responded to the pogroms byrefusing to even hypocritically criticizethe anti-Tamil terror for weeks, illegal-izing advocacy of a separate Tamil state(Eelam), cracking down on three Sin-halese leftist parties (but not thehopelessly discredited reformist shell ofthe LSSP), and quietly sounding out thepossibility of U.S. imperialist or otherforeign help against his mutinous army,spinning for such a purpose fantasticaltales about "Marxist officers" and aSoviet-planned or JVP-inspired "Ieft-wing" military coup. (Swift protest fromIndia against the prospect of Sri Lankabringing foreign powers into the regionbrought denials from Jayewardene andthe expulsion of the UPI correspondentwho broke the story.)

It has since become a commonplacethat the mutinous ringleaders of theanti-Tamil pogroms were rightists,virulently chauvinist forces high up inthe UNP and the military. Figures likehard-line chauvinist UNP demagogueCyril Mathew and the increasinglyprominent Douglas Liyanage haveemerged as factional powers within theUNP. Meanwhile, with India acting asmediator in negotiations between Jaye-

continued on page 109 September 1983No. 337

Lnion, To serve American and otherimperialists' interests, Sri Lanka isinvitingly waving its hand to Americanforces via capitalist trade tactics, !t isseeking to join ASEAN [the Associationof Southeast Asian Nations] and othercounterrevolutionary organisations inan attempt to disgrace the Red victoriesin Afghamstan, Vietnam and Kampu-chea, The government is highiy respect-ful of the Solidarity trade-union move-ment activities in Poland whilst denyingthe right of the local workers todemonstrate, picket and strike! Thefierce government, having been unableto get out of the capitalist crisis, is nowgradually absorbing military juntas intoits administration.

As a part of the International, we ofthe SL/L today join you not only to

WORKERSVIINGUIIRIJMarxist Working-Class Biweekly ofthe Spartaclst League of the U.S.EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau

EDITORIAL BOARD: Charles Burroughs,George Foster, Liz Gordon, Mary JoMcAllister, James Robertson. ReubenSamuels, Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) pUblishedbiweekly, skipping an issue in August anda week in December. by the SpartacistPublishing Co" 41 Warren Street, New York,NY 10007, Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial),732-7861 (Business), Address all corres-pondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY10116, Domestic subscriptions: $5,00/24issues, Second-class postage paid at !'lewYork, NY, POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377,GPO, New York, NY 10116.

Opinions expressed in signed articles orletters do not necessarily express the editorialviewpoint,

The seventh national conference ofthe Spartacist League/U.S. was held inAugust. International Spartacist ten-dency (iSt) fraternal delegates andobservers were present from seven othercountries. Unable to be with us werecomrades of our section in Sri Lanka.That small Indian Ocean island nationwas being torn apart by Sinhala chau-vinist terror against the national/religious minority people, the Tamils, aspogroms instigated and organized bysections of the governing United Na-tional Party (UNP) of J. R. Jayewardeneripped the country apart along nationallines. The army which has for yearsterrorized the overwhelmingly TamilNorth simply ran wild, while in Colom-bo and throughout the South Sinhalesemobs carried out wholesale burning ofTamil-owned businesses and wholesalemassacres. Tamil men, women andchildren were incinerated inside buses,thrown from moving trains, beaten andtorn to shreds in the streets.

The anti-Tamil terror is severing theeconomic and geographical interpene-tration of Lanka's peoples. The syste-matic destruction of Tamil-ownedfactories and stores (incidentally de-stroying 150,000 jobs) has wiped outformerly important Tamil commerciallayers of Colombo and the South (andthe government has now seized alldamaged property). The orgy of blood-letting is compacting the Tamils into theNorth as 100,000 or more have fled in

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

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M.".r

legal Smokescreen Ex~oses Cult's Lies

Fight MOODie Libel That Kills

Moon: "Even god lies very often." 80 HI Pak (right), Moon's right-hand manand publisher of the Washington Times.

SL Files Amicus Brief in Muunie Tax Case

IRS Case Threatens Left

The Moonies are trying to squeezethrough a legal loophole in an evidentattempt to avoid the charges againstthem in the Spartacist League (SL) libelsuit. But it won't work. The Moonies'Washington Times article, "Left-WingGroup Linked to D.C. Riot," is such anobvious pack of lies, the Moonielawyers are left with no defense. Thusthe Moonies' lawyers' first response, onJuly 20, to the SL libel suit was a"motion to dismiss" based on nothingbut a legal technicality, claiming that theSL, as an unincorporated association,doesn't have the right to sue.

The Moonies' Washington Timesfalsely and dangerously branded theSL-initiators and principal organizersof the 5,000-strong Labor/Black Mobi-lization which stopped the KKK inWashington on November 27-aswould-be cop-killers, criminals andoutlaws engaged in "provoking vio-lence" against the police. They made upthe most absurd and grotesque claimsthat the SL was some kind of terroristic,beret-wearing paramilitary outfit. Noliewas too vile or too wild for the libelouspress of the M oonies: they wrote that onNovember 27 the SL handed out "heavymetal bolts" and rocks to throw at thepolice, "even to children."

These libels not only attacked thesuccessful and important mass actionagainst racist terror, they directlythreatened the members of the SL andSpartacus Youth League (SYL). So theSL/SYL was forced to sue this danger-ous, ultrarightist cult and its publishingarm, the Times-Tribune Corporation,publisher of the Washington Times. Aswe stated on June 14 when we filed thelibel suit: "In short, we are being set upto be shot first and questioned later. ...These are libels that kill" (see "MoonieLibel That Kills," WVNo. 332, 17 June).

But now the Moonies don't want toanswer for their despicable libels.Instead, they claim the SL and SYLcannot sue them because we are "unin-corporated associations" and as suchare not "legal entities." Their "motion todismiss" and its accompanying "memo-randum of law" argues that as "unincor-

It must have come as a surprise to theMoonies and their lawyers when theSpartacist League (SL) submitted anamicus curiae "friend of the court" briefto the U.S. Court of Appeals against thegovernment's methods in the 1982conviction of Sun Myung Moon forincome tax evasion and fraud. After all,the Moonies had just set up the SL formurder with their libelous article on lastyear's November 27 anti-Ku Klux Klanprotest in Washington, D.C. But the SLwas compelled to file both the libellawsuit against the Moonies' publishingempire and submit this amicus brief asurgent matters of self-defense, as parti-sans of the working class and its right toorganize and as partisans of all thoseconcerned for the defense of democraticrights.

The government's trial of Moon hasgenerated opposition from a broadrange of religious groups, who other-wise detest the Moonies. The NationalCouncil of Churches and four of itsconstituent organizations filed an ami-cus curiae brief which explicitly dis-

4

porated aSSOCIatIOns, plaintiffs lackcapacity to sue and cannot be defamed."The Moonie lawyers had 20 days torespond to our complaint. Their lawyersasked the SL for an extension andreceived one. Now this is how theMoonies have chosen to make their firstresponse to our libel suit. This, theflimsiest legal smokescreen, is the saleground for their motion to dismiss.Their total and guilty silence on the

substance of the issues involved speaksloudly to the fact that the libel charge isincontestable.

Political organizations, religious or-ganizations, labor unions and manyother. organizations including Moon'sUnification Church take the organiza-tional form known legally as "unincor-porated associations." In a minority ofstates and jurisdictions in the U.S. such"unincorporated associations" cannotsue or be sued as organizations. Themembers are recognized as "legalentities" but the organizations them-selves are not. Already most states andjurisdictions have rejected this anachro-nistic common law holdover and arerecognizing the legal rights of "unincor-

claims sympathy for Moon or agree-ment with his doctrine which isdescribed as "not consistent with that oftraditional Christian theology as be-lieved through twenty centuries." But ifthe means by which the governmentobtained its conviction of Moon areupheld on appeal it will be an attack onthe legal foundations upon which manyinstitutions-including religious organ-izations, political parties and tradeunions-are organized in this country.It was to raise. these larger questionsespecially as they affect the democraticrights of "unpopular minority politicalorganizations" that the SL submitted itsown amicus brief.

In prosecuting Moon, the govern-ment did not dispute the UnificationChurch's claim that it is a religiousinstitution or that Moon is its spiritualleader. But the government deniedMoon the exercise of legal precedentsgranting religious groups the right toestablish and control money entrustedto them. Also, the government wouldnot allow Moon to explain the "relig-

porated associations." But to its discred-it the District of Columbia is not one ofthem.

Of course, the Moonies' legal tacticwas anticipated. The Moonies and theirlawyers know full well we have otheroptions to pursue in our libel case. Theyknow we can withdraw the suit from theDistrict of Columbia and file it in NewYork State court where the legalrestrictions on "unincorporated associa-

tions" do not obtain. Therefore, theMoonies are trying first of all to duckthe substantive questions of the libelcase and failing that to drive the case asfar as possible from the Washington,D.C. area where the Klan was stoppedcold.

An impartial observer might thinkthat both sides would want to try thecase in Washington. After all that iswhere the event took place. It is thehome of the Washington Times, itsreporters, editors and, one assumes, itsreaders. Washington is where the SLwants to try this case. The lawyers forthe SL wrote to the Moonies'lawyers onJuly 26 arguing to keep the issue joinedin Washington because of the SL's

ious reasons for and religious meaningof [his] conduct," nor allow the Unifica-tion Church authorities to make its owndeterminations of organizational formand expenditures. Central to the gov-ernment's claim that Moon committedfraud and tax evasion was the conten-tion by the government that the Unifica-tion Church has no legal status, since itis an unincorporated association.Therefore all money received must besimply Moon's personal income. Ironi-cally, the Moonies attempt to exploitthe very same legal tactic in attemptingto have the SL libel suit dismissed on thegrounds that the SL is an unincorporat-ed association (see article above).

The government's case against Moonposes an obvious and immediate threatnot only to religious organizations, butespecially to "unpopular, minoritypolitical organizations." All politicalorganizations are sustained by contribu-tions by members, supporters andfriends (sometimes received and held byan individual in trust for the organiza-tion and its members). Further, the

"desire to get to the substance of thiscase." The letter challenges the Mooniespointblank to drop the legal technicalityand pursue this case where it happened:

"Since your motion, if successful,cannot dispose of our clients' claims-but merely their ability to bring theirclaims in Washington-we urge you toconsider our suggestion that the caseproceed in Washington, D.C. Webelieve that the alternative is costly andtime consuming motion practice whichwill not resolve the merits of the claimwhich must ultimately be addressed inan appropriate tribunal."

We want to try this case in Washing-ton because we are telling the truth. Wewant to put our case before the peoplewho know what happened on that daythe KKK was stopped in its tracks onNovember 27. We would welcome ajuryof Washington residents who are closeto the events in dispute and who felt theimpact of the Labor IBlack Mobiliza-tion, They know what ;t would ha,'emeant if the KKK had marched inWashington, D.C. for the first timesince 1925. They know that it wouldhave meant more black families' homesfirebombed and more bummg crosses.

No wonder the M oonies want to drivethis case as far from the scene of theconcrete facts as possible. Maybe SunMyung Moon will have his lawyers tryto find a way to get a change of venue toSouth Korea where they deal withcharges against open Marxists in waysdoubtless more to the liking of theMoonie messiah. He thinks he has thedivine right to publish any lie aboutMarxists and others on his widelydrawn enemies list. He does not thinkhis holy crusade need answer for itslibels in a court of law or anywhere else.The Moonies say: Marxists are "agentsof Satan." The Moonies' lawyers say:throw this case out-after all, Marxistorganizations do not legally exist. Andthey invoke this legal technicalityagainst "unincorporated associations"even though the government has used itto go after them (see article below).

The Moonies will not take the issueshead on because they have no case. But

continued on page 13

normal functions of poELea] organiza-tions include not j us!: running fGr t;iectedoffice but pub:ishir,g nC''>'',pcpers andother literature, organl,::ng d'~monstrations, purchasing eqEipi..r:enL hiri:lgemployees-any of V,'l:C)c. co])],;:l bedeelned the functions of a "'·bu.siness

August 27:

Black Democrats Push Liberal Mush

WV PhotoPreachers of defeat. For the black masses, M.L. King's dream has become aliVing nightmare.

November 27 and August 27

Labor/Black Mobilization vs.Democrats' Voter Registration Rally

WASHINGTON, D.C.-"Keep onDreaming (and Vote Democratic)": thiswas the message for 300,000 blacks andother prote~tersgathered at the LincolnMemorial August 27 to commemoratethe 20th anniversary of the 1963 MartinLuther King "March on Washington."The crowd broiled under the August sur.in the name of "jobs, peace andfreedom," but what they got was hourafter hour of Walter Faulltroy, JesseJackson, Andrew Young, the widowKing, etc., preaching their gospel ofgetting out the vote to dump Reagan ...and bring back the Democrats. Yet itwas Jimmy ("ethnic purity") Carter andthe Democratic Congress who let theracist mobs kill busing in the streets,who chiseled away at the gains blackpeople won in struggle. As we said in ourarticle for August 27, "both Democratsand Republicans have been steadilydismantling even the token gains of the

;

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WV Photo

"Jesse James" Jackson

By Cliff Carter

On the date of August 27, 1983 aMarch on Washington took place witha National Director, Walter E. Faunt-roy, and seven co-chairpersons whichincluded Jesse Jackson and entertainerStevie Wonder. This March on \Vash-ington. as very clearly stated to theworkers of the world, was basically fortwo major things.

First. it was to honor the 2Cthann:versary of Martm Luther K:"g's1963 March on Washington (MOW,v, !-..;:h \,as nothing but a farc;,,;, ye'<

'Jilt farce Matter of ;;" itCG,~Id '.erv \Iel: have been the L" '.~ (;1the decade. for it \va~ a comed~ v.--~d1e:ocaggerated SituatIOns and ridic'uiuusactions. and. too. it was a failur-:, Itwas a failure because the revolutionwas supposed to have started in 1963,but King along with the other fiveblack House Negroes and whiteHandkerchief Heads accepted money

9 SEPTEMBER 1983

civil rights movement."While virtually the entire American

left was calling to "fulfill" MLK's"dream," in which plantation ownerslike Senator Eastland would hold handswith the grandchildren of his grand-father's slaves, the Spartacist League(SL) proclaimed that black liberationwill only come about through finishingthe Civil War, through socialist revolu-tion. We insisted that:

"To the jobless, angry and hungry blackpeople of this country, the marchorganizers say: 'Let 'em eat dreams.'And what is their lousy dream when youstrip away the preachy milk-and-honeyrhetoric? They dream of putting aDemocrat in the White House. That'sall. This march isn't about jobs. norfreedom, nor peace."

-"Labor, Blacks: Don't Crawlfor the Democrats!" WV No.336, 12 August

And that's the way it was. "We arehere because we are committed to theelimination of Reaganism from the faceof the earth. Reagan no more in '84.Reagan no more," intoned NAACPexecutive director Benjamin Hooks.The crowd dutifully chanted back,"Reagan no more in '84!" Democraticpresidential hopefuls Walter Mondaleand Alan Cranston oiled their waythrough the crowd, riddled with liberalcapitalist causes like the "nuke freeze"or consumer advocacy. It was thequintessential anti-Reagan popularfront. But the politics of the marchamounted to such empty platitudes thateven Ronald Reagan could send greet-ings to the rally!

Even the· bourgeois press couldn'tmiss it. A Washington Post (28 August)editorial compared the rally to "timekilling sessions at a Democratic Nation-al Convention when speaker afterspeaker jumps up and down on theRepublican adversary." The New YorkTimes (29 August) called the event"unfocused except for one aspect: It wasalmost universally anti-Reagan," andnoted that the "activist left" had nowgone over "almost entirely to the

and broke bread with the DemocraticParty and when they finished with thesupposed "revolution" the workerswere in the streets "singing instead ofswinging."

What happened in 1963 was nothingbut a circus, a sideshow attraction. Inthe '20s or '30s it would have beencalled a "minstrel show." King read aspeech from a piece of paper, nowcalled "I Have a Dream." 1 will agreewith him there. for in order to have adream. one must be asleep. andBrother King was very much asleepthen. If King had been awake and nothaving his dream, he would have takenthe money President John F. Kennedyoffered and the other five black leadersand thrown it in his face. King shouldhave stayed out of the March initiatedby ghetto workers of cities around thecountry. Second, King, while in hissleep, was trying to love everybody,and you just cannot do this for youcannot love the Ku Klux Klan. This issomething for Fauntroy and Mayor

Democrats." The Times also gloatedthat "there was no call to radicalism,"and thus it was "a belated vindication ofDr. King's tactic of nonviolence andreconciliation, which in 1963 was beingchallenged by a number of blackorganizations that subsequently splin-tered and disappeared in the waves ofurban riots that swept the cities."

It sure wasn't a rally for blackfreedom. Not once did the blackDemocratic rally organizers, who'vebeen selling out struggles for years bytrading on their reputations as old civilrights activists, even mention the fightfor busing. What about racist copsmurdering black people in their ownhomes? Or bloody Ku Klux Klan terroron the rise again-the "BEOs" ("blackelected officials") weren't going tomention that. Because it was the WalterFauntroys and Marion Barrys up thereon the platform who tried to keep blacksand labor off the streets last November27 when the KKK threatened to marchin Washington. In contrast to the vapidrhetoric and politics of defeat, theSpartacist League's message to August27 was "We Stopped the Klan!" It was

Marion Barry to remember. Third,King wasn't getting fully involved withthe labor unions around August, 1963.Any change to help the workers of theworld will have to be done by theworkers of the world.

The March on Washington of

oo.cCL

>3:

Washington,November 27,

1982: Westopped the

Klan!

the SL which spearheaded the 5,000-strong Labor/Black Mobilization onNovember 27 which stopped the Klanfrom parading in the nation's capital.

The big event on August 27 was theappearance of the Rev. Jesse Jacksonwho has been touting himself as a blackpresidential candidate (in the Demo-cratic primaries, of course). Jacksonbegan with his usual rap, trying to foolblack youth into thinking they can makeit in the system through individualachievement (and when he repeats "me-me-me," he also means none other thanJ.J. himself): "I am somebody! Respectme-protect me-never neglect me!Down with dope! Up with h01W!"Jackson made clear tlulfaTt' fleasinterested in was pushing his drive toamass the black voting bloc that allDemocratic Party leaders see as a key tovictory in '84: "There is a freedom traina-coming! But you got to register toride!" His rally speech explicitly sold hiscandidacy to head off the danger of riotsand revolution:

"We need not explode through riots,nor implode through drugs. We can use

continued on page 11

August 27,1983 called for Jobs, Peaceand Freedom. Did you read anyliterature directly connected to theMarch on Washington, August 27,1983 with a positive program for Jobs,Peace and Freedom? No, you didn't,because the initiators weren't con-cerned about jobs for the workingclass, they (the initiators) have them-selves a job, they just wanted votes forthe Democratic Party. As for peaceand freedom, less than a year ago,November 27, 1982, Fauntroy andMarion Barry would have made itpossible for the Ku Klux Klan tomarch down the streets of Washington

continued on page 11

5

-'----"------__- __'--- c...:i..~... _ ~~ ~~,~-_: ..... _ + _~." __ ___ L

MOSCOW, September I (TASS)-An unidentifiedplane entered the airspace of the Soviet Union over theKamchatka Peninsula from the direction of the PacificOcean and then for the second time violated n\~airspace of the U.S.S.R. over Sakhalin Island on t',cnight from Aug. 31 to Sept. I. The plane did not hil' .:;navigation lighh. did not respond to queries and d:dnot enter into contact with the dispatcher senk::.

Fighters of the antiaircraft defense. which were sentaloft towards the intruder plane. tried to gi\(' i'assistance in directing it to the nearest airfield. But theintruder plane did not react to the signals and warningsfrom the Soviet fighters and continued its night in thedirection of the Sea of Japan.•

MOSCOW, September 2 (TASS)-As it has alreadybeen reported, on the night from August 3I toSeptember I this year, an unidentified plane had rudelyviolated the Soviet state border and intruded deep intothe Soviet Union's airspace. The intruder plane haddeviated from the existing international route in thedirection of the Soviet Union's territory by up to 500kilometers and spent more than two hours over theKamchatka Peninsula, the area of the Sea of Okhotskand the island of Sakhalin.

In violation of international regulations the planeflew without navigation lights, did not react to radiosignals of the Soviet dispatcher services and made noattempts to establish such communications contact.

It was natural that during the time the unidentifiedintruder plane was in the U.S.S.R. airspace Sovietantiair defense aircraft were ordered aloft, whichrepeatedly tried to establish contacts with the planeusing generally accepted signals and to take it to thenearest airfield in the territory of the Soviet Union. Theintruder plane, however, ignored all this. Over theSakhalin island, a Soviet aircraft fired warning shotsand tracer shells along the flying route of the plane.

Soon after this the intruder plane left the limits ofSoviet airspace and continued its flight toward the Seaof Japan. FOf about to minutes it was within theobservation zone of radio location means, after which

MOSCOW, September 3 (TASS)-Washington isfeverishly covering up traces of the provocation stagedagainst the Soviet Union with the utilization of theSouth Korean plane, which has flown out ofthe UnitedStates and intruded into the Soviet Union's airspace.

The White House and the Department of State aremounting a worldwide rabid anti-Soviet campaign.The tone is set by the U.S. President. In his statementpermeated with frenzied hatred and malice for theSoviet State, for Socialism, using as a cover-upbombastic phrases about "humanism" and "noblefeelings," the head of the White House is trying toconvince public opinion that the U.S.S. R. allegedly isguilty of loss of life. Issuing forth torrents of viciousabuses, representatives of the U.S. Administrationwant to avoid answering clear questions: Why did theplane happen to find itself in the airspace of the SovietUnion, deviating by 500 kilometres from the existinginternational route? Why did the authorities of theU.S. and Japan, whose air traffic controlling servicescontrol flights of planes on this route, knowing that theplane had remained for a long time in Soviet airspace,had not taken appropriate measure to put an end tothis flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the SovietUnion?

U.S. journalists also have been putting thesequestions to the U.S. Administration, and each time itsrepresentative has been wriggling out of answeringthem. However, the answer is necessary to find out thetruth on who and for what purposes sent this plane toSoviet airspace.

Let us quote a statement on this score, which wasmade on French television by General Gallois, aspecialist of France in strategic issues. He declared:"the Soviet armed forces have two zones which may beconsidered as being top secret; the area of Murmanskin the Kola Peninsula and the zone of the Sea ofOkhotsk, where the Kamchatka Peninsula and theisland of Sakhalin are situated." There are, the generalsaid, "a considerable part of the Soviet Navyconcentrated and intercontinental ballistic missiletesting facilities located there." General Galloisrecalled that several years ago the Soviet Air Force inthe area of the Kola Peninsula compelled what alsowas a "South Korean" plane to land. Now an aircraftof the same company emerges in another strategicallyimportant area of the U.S.S. R. The scientific commen-tator of the French television program TF-I summedup explicitly what had happened: "the Boeing 747deliberately veered off course with the purpose ofperforming an intelligence mission."

Professor Stephen Meyer from the MassachusettsTechnological Institute said that in the existing

•

it could be observed no more.Now a hullabaloo has been raised in the U.S.A. and

some other countries around the disappearance of aSouth Korean plane carrying out a flight from NewYork to Seoul.

One's attention is drawn to the fact that already inthe first report about this reference was made to theU.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Further reportsemanating from the United States provide increasinglymore grounds to consider that the itinerary and thenature of the flight were not accidental. It is indicativethat now, post factum, the American side not onlyofficially admits the fact of that plane's violation ofSoviet airspace, but also cites data which indicate thatthe relevant U.S. services followed the flight through-out its duration in the most attentive manner.

So one may ask that if it were an ordinary flight of acivil aircraft which was under continuous observation,then why were there not taken any steps from theAmerican side to end the gross violation of the airspaceof the U.S.S.R. and to get the plane back to aninternational flight route?

Why the American authorities, which now resort toall kinds of dirty insinuations about the U.S.S. R., didnot try to establish contact with the Soviet side andprovide it with the necessary data about this flight?Neither was done, although there was more than ample

conditions the corresponding Soviet bodies had everyreason to suspect that the plane was fulfilling an intel-ligence mission over a strategically important area.

U.S. officials are striving to prove that all this is"mere coincidence," that the plane "wandered off itsflight path," that it "lost communication contact," etc.What "loss of communication contact" can it be, if theU.S. authorities admitted that they had been followingthe flight throughout its duration? The flimsiness of theattempts of the White House to justify the "appearanceof the South Korean plane in the airspace of the SovietUnion by some technical malfunction" is also madeobvious by the statements of the former head of theJoint Chiefs of Staff of the Japanese armed forces, atpresent the military observer of the newspaper"Mainichi Shimbun" G. Takeda. "With 'Boeing'having a computer on board, two pilots and a system ofdouble-triple checking, the deviation of the plane ofthe South Korean air company looks more thanstrange," he writes in this newspaper. This is alsoconfirmed by a report published by The New YorkTimes.

Materials, which were made public by the Japanesenews agency Kyodo, prove the discourse of U.S.Administration spokesmen about some "technicaltroubles" on the intruder plane to be wholly untenable.Quoting sources which had been carefully monitoringthat flight, the news agency reported that "the SouthKorean liner's radio communications with Japaneseair traffic controller stations had been maintainedalmost until the very moment of the plane's disappear-ance." Thus, the Washington version that the plane'sradio equipment got out of order and that its crewcould not respond to the signals given to it does notcorrespond to reality. This is confirmed also by thefact, reported by Kyodo, that more than an hour afterthe Soviet planes' first attempt to establish contactwith the Boeing, a telegram was sent from aboard theplane, which said, in particular, "the plane's naviga-tional equipment is operating normally."

According to Australian newspapers, the U.S.Central Intelligence Agency followed the plane's flightmost closely. A BBC broadcast pointed out that U.S.and Japanese tracking services had been continuouslytracking the South Korean plane over the entire lengthof its route but had not adopted measures to correct itspath.

The Western press reported also that the crews of theSouth Korean liners on this route are made up solely ofair force pilots.

The Australian newspaper Sydney Morning Heraldpointed out, in its turn, that the South Korean planecould have been taken in the Soviet Union for a U.S.

time for this.It is appropriate to recall that instances of deliberate

violation of the state frontiers of the Soviet Union byAmerican planes, including in the Far East, are farfrom rare. Protests have repeatedly been lodged withthe U.S. Government over that matter.

In the light of these facts the intrusion into theairspace by the mentioned plane cannot be regarded inany other way than a preplanned act. It was obviouslythought possible to attain special intelligence aimswithout hindrance using civilian planes as a cover.

More than that, there is reason to believe that thosewho organized this provocation had deliberatelydesired a further aggravation of the internationalsituation striving to smear the Soviet Union, to sowhostility to it and to cast aspersions on the Sovietpeaceloving policy.

This is illustrated also by the impudent, slanderousstatement in respect of the Soviet Union that was in-stantly made by President Reagan of the United States.

Tass is authorized to state that in the leading circlesof the Soviet Union regret is expressed over the loss ofhuman life and at the same time a resolute condemna-tion of those who consciously or as a result of criminaldisregard have allowed the death of people and arenow trying to use this occurrence for unseemly politicalaims.•

spy plane since on radars it looked like an intelligenceplane of the U.S. Air Force, and that it could also wellbe mistaken for a U.S. E4B bomber.

All this corroborates the fact that the correspondingU. S. services had a direct relation to this provocation.The conclusion drawn by the New York correspondentof the Australian radio and television network ABCthat the c.I.A.'s conduct in that whole affair appearedvery suspicious, therefore, looks to have its grounds.Isn't it the involvement of the well-known terroristcenter of the United States in the whole affair thatcaused U.S. State Department spokesman Hughes tosidestep on more than one occasion at a pressconference in Washington journalists' questions ofwhy the corresponding U.S. and Japanese services hadnot warned the plane that it had violated the airspaceof the U. S. S. R. and why they had not guided it out ofthere.

In this connection, it is proper to ask: what thethoroughly hypocritical "sorrow" demonstrated by theWhite House is based on? Or does Mr. Presidentbelieve that the very concept of national sovereignty nolonger exists and one may intrude with impunity intothe airspace of independent states? Or is he viewing thewhole world now as a "zone of U.S. vital interests"?

There is one more side to this question. The U.S.President asks: How one can conduct negotiationswith a state which is capable of such actions?

This phrase in itself explains a great deal. Why so?Because the U.S. Administration is going out of its wayto disrupt the process of the normalization of thesituation in the world. to evade solving problemsfacing the world which are vital to the interests ofnations. •

The head of the White House is shedding hypocritictears over what has happened! More than once theworld has witnessed the situation when Washingtonofficials speak of "humaneness." while at the same timeU.S. marines, acting in concert with Israeli aggressors.commit mass killings in Lebanon, when under theguidance of American instructors bandits perpetrateatrocities in sovereign Nicaragua and make short workof Salvadoran patriots. The world knows the worth ofthis "sorrow" and "concern for humaneness." Sometime ago it brought about the killing of several millionpeople in Indochina.

The purpose of this provocation with the plane ismore than obvious. However, the WashingtonAdministration will be unable to put the Soviet Unionand its people in a bad light, as it is frantically trying todo these days. Its designs are frustrated by irrefutablefacts. It will be impossible to cover up the traces ofdirty deeds with the help of vicious abuses.•

WORKERS VANGUARD

..

13

instrusions into their airspace. Para-noia, but explicable paranoia. "Whenthe Koreans five years ago went 1,000miles into Soviet territory, and thenhave done it again this time, I think thatmakes them suspicious." And "para-noia" with good reason. What Hitler'sGermany did to Soviet Russia was PearlHarbor on a giant scale, the equivalentof seizing and destroying all of the U.S.east of the Mississippi. Meanwhile, theUSSR is besieged by American imperi-alism in every known malicious way,

forced into a giant arms race, penetrat-ed, damaged, you name it. In fact, agood part of the Western tourists,newsmen, scholars, etc.. etc. that doturn up in and around the Soviet Unionare spies. Take for example the 1980salvage operation on the HMS Edin-burgh related in the book Stalin's Goldby Barrie Penrose. Presumably astraight commercial venture. yet aBritish "scientist" involved attempted toset off underwater charges in order torun tests in the shallow seas just offMurmansk.

And then the 747 is supposed to be thepreeminently civilian aircraft. Nevermind that it was originally designed asthe world's largest military transportwith a cargo capacity of75 tons (almostdouble any other commercial plane). It'snot hard to imagine KAL's Flight 007with 30 Korean military men down inthe freight compartment with variouskinds of sensing devices: who wouldknow the difference? And the SouthKoreans are not novices at this game.Ernest Volkmann, "national securityeditor" of Defense Science magazine,said in an interview broadcast by theCanadian CBC network on September 2the Korean Air Lines, among others,was "notorious" for placing "specialsensors and photo equipment" on boardtheir planes. He also noted that "thepilots and crews of Korean planes are allmilitary personnel." In fact, the pilot ofKAL Flight 007, Colonel Chung Byung,was the airline's senior 747 skipper, whopiloted Korean dictator Chun Do Hwanto Washington when he visited the U.S.in 1981.

But it's not some kind of Koreanspecialty. The New York Times (2September) noted that "this week'sincident came against the backdrop ofan aggressive American effort to devel-op technical intelligence penetration ofthe Sea of Okhotsk over more than 30years and after more than a score of suchincidents ...." The purpose of aircraftpenetration would not only be forsurveillance but also to test Sovietresponses.

In particular, the Pentagon andNATO strategists are concerned 10thwart a supposed primeval Russiandrive to conquer access to "warm waterports." Located atop the Eurasian landmass, the Soviets can reach the high seasonly through four main passages. Onthe northwest. the Red Banner Fleetbased in Murmansk must pass throughthe narrow passage between Norway'sNorth Cape and the Arctic ice pack. TheBaltic Fleet operating out of Leningrad

continued on page 13

until House Democratic leader JimWright inadvertently leaked that theRussians at first identified the SouthKorean airliner as an RC 135. Yester-day's Pravda reported that the U.S. hadseven RC 135s flying off the Soviet FarEast during this time period, in additionto three American naval vessels. ''I'msorry it was ever mentioned," saidSenate Democratic leader Robert Byrd.So, no doubt, is Ronald Reagan. But thefact is that Washington does conductaerial surveillance of the Soviet Union

on a 24-hour basis. Spies-in-the-sky arenot limited to satellites. Moreover, theUnited States now concedes that the oneRC 135 they admit to was tracking theKAL 747. Curiouser and curiouser.

"We Don't Spy and We Don'tLie"-Oh, No?

The 2 September New York Timesquoted Major General George Keegan,former chief of Air Force intelligence.saying:

"I have never failed to be surprised athow careless the Koreans are. despitethe risks of nying near Soviet airspace.Despite all that the Soviets had there.the Koreans continued to fly too close.The Koreans continued to bruise theSoviets on this. What happened todaythey invited."

A Korean predilection for playing withfire, perhaps? There is indeed a prece-dent of another KAL flight, in April1978, which belligerently intruded onSoviet airspace and was shot down. Onthat occasion, the South Korean airliner!lew north from London on a polarflight, headed west over Greenland andthen doubled back, 1,000 miles offcourse, flying straight over the strategicnaval base at Murmansk on the KolaPeninsula. That time, as well, the SouthKorean pilot took evasive action ... andreceived a blast of machine-gun firefrom Soviet fighters. An "enormousnavigation error"?

Washington is pretending that civil-ian airliners never spy, or at least not forthe "free world." Ha! In the first place,there are the "routine reconnaissance"flights of the U-2 or SR71 s. Then thereare the more than 400 American"listening posts" surrounding the SovietUnion, from Helsinki to Hokkaido.And the use of commercial flights forespionage against the Soviet bloc ishardly novel. John Ie Carre's novel, TheLooking Glass War, begins with a sceneof a British intelligence agent waiting inFinland for the pilot of a civilian airlinercontracted to go off course and photo-graph sensitive installations in EastGermany. Impossible? In the Philadel-phia Inquirer interview, ex-NSA chiefInman said that the U.S. did not usepassenger planes for spy missions,because it had adequate informationfrom satellites. Of course. the U.s."might at one time have used commer-cial aircraft for spying, 'perhaps in theBerlin Corridor''' ... but that is suppo-sedly ancient history.

On the I September program of ABC-TV's "Nightline." former CIA director(under Democratic president JimmyCarter) Stansfield Turner repeatedlyreferred to Soviet "paranoia" about

Standardnavigation map

provided forInternational

airliners warnsagainst flyingover militarily

sensitiveSoviet area.

plane swerved directly west across theKorsakov naval-air base. At 3: 12 a.m.,according to the U.S., Soviet pilotsreport visual contact with the plane. At3: 15 a.m., again without reporting anyproblems. Flight 007 requested permis-sion from Tokyo to climb to 35,000 feet,which it did without receiving permis-sion. As a Philadelphia Inquirer (4September) article pointed out,

" ... to interceptor pilots, who want toforce the intruder to land. that is defiantaction.... he may have been trying toshake the fighters as [former NationalSecurity Agency director and formerCIA deputy director Admiral] Inmanspeculated."

What, then, about the Japanese aircontrollers, U.S. and Japanese "com-munications monitors" who were close-ly tracking the plane? The Americansclaim to know precisely when Sovietradar picked up the KAL plane, howmany fighters were sent after it, what thepilots said to their ground control. TheJapan Defense Agency said its radarshowed the plane crossing SakhalinIsland. But, noted the Washington Post(2 August), "Despite the monitoring,there are no reports of anybody'swarning the flight that it was badly offcourse. Nor is there any indication thatthe pilot radioed for help or soundedalarmed." And. as TASS points out, noone bothered to inform Soviet authori-ties either. So why wasn't there anyattempt to notify anyone? One only hasto recall the imperialist fury againstGary Powers, the U-2 pilot in 1959. forhaving brought his crippled plane downand lived, rather than dying in a fierycrash-which would have let Washing-ton go on peddling the lie that it wasonly a "weather flight." These are.supposed to be suicide missions if youget caught. The KAL pilot did his job.

Then there is the 22-hour gap betweenwhen the airliner went down and when itwas reported by U.S. Secretary of StateShultz. Everyone remembers the Rose-mary Woods 18-minute gap, of Water-gate fame, but this one is of monumentalproportions. Especially considering, asthe Washington Post put it. "somebod-y's radar knew a great deal about theprogress of Flight 007." The U.S. claimsit didn't know the KAL jetliner was introuble until after it was downed, andexcuses the delay with the difficulties oftranslating from Russian to Japanese toEnglish. Both of these claims arecontradicted in press reports. TheWashington Post (3 September) reportsthat "intelligence specialists ... listen toair communications as they take place."and that "the information arrived inWashington sooner than has beenpublicly acknowledged." Besides which,if the evidence is so conclusive, whyhaven't the unexpurgated tapes beenplayed for public consumption?

What about the Soviet side? At theUnited Nations, the American delegateaccused the Russians of "wanton.calculated, deliberate murder." TheSoviets say that they were not awarethat the intruding plane was a commer-cial airliner. Whom to believe? In thefirst place, Reagan in his speech lastnight said "the 747 has a unique anddistinctive silhouette ... there is no way apilot could mistake this for anythingother than a civilian airliner." Wrong.There is a military plane which hasexactly the profile of a Boeing 747,namely the E4B. Ronald Reagan iscertainly familiar with this. since theyare used as command-and-controlcenters for nuclear warfare. The Sovietshave also said that their pilot might havemistaken the 747 for an AWACS radarplane. The AWACS has a bubble on thetop; a 747 has a bulge. At 3:30 a.m .. aSoviet pilot who probably had neverseen a 747 before, since they aren't in thehabit of straying into Russian airspace.might well have thought he had anAWACS in his sights, a particularlydangerous aircraft.

And the RC 135, a U.S. spy plane thatwas admittedly in the area and evencrossed the flight path of KAL 007?Washington said nothing about this

(continued from page 1)

insane, but then the Reaganites areinsane. And to whip up war hysteria,their battle cry will be "Remember theKorean Air Line Massacre," Reagan'sversion of Teddy Roosevelt's "Remem-ber the Maine." As Trotskyists weunconditionally militarily defend theSoviet Union against imperialist attackbecause it embodies gains of the firstworkers revolution overthrowing capi-talism,despite the bureaucratic degen-eration under Stalin and his heirs. Whilerad-libs and reformists fell prey toJimmy Carter's "human rights" crusadeover Afghanistan, we hailed the RedArmy fighting against Islamic reaction-aries. We have exposed Washington's"yellow rain" hoax and the phony "KGBkill pope plot." From the Caribbean toPoland, we have defended the Sovietbloc deformed workers states againstcounterrevolution, and today vigilanceis more necessary than ever in defendingthe homeland of the OctoberRevolution.

Mission 007...

007 Big Lie

We offer below some of theinnumerable contradictions in theAmerican story. To begin with: how didthe South Korean airliner get overSoviet airspace in the first place?Reagan sugge.sts mistaken informationfed into the plane's computer or ma-chine malfunction, "no one will everknow." At least he hopes so. But theKAL 747 carried three state-of-the-artinertial navigational systems made byLitton Industries, which cross-check oneach other. According to the New YorkTimes (3 September) "the odds againstmore than one computer malfunction-ing are enormous." Before being fed in,the coordinates are supposed to bechecked by a second crew member. Inaddition the plane had a weather radarwhich can pick up land masses up to 200miles away, and standard operatingprocedure along route R-20, because itis so close to Soviet territory, is to pointthe radar down and scan at everywaypoint. Was it possible, Ted Koppelasked on ABC's "Nightline," that youhad a problem with the computer, andthe lights were out, and the radio wasn'tworking? "To have them all fail simul-taneously or even in close sequence, theodds against it are astronomical,"answered Captain Tom Ashwood, vicepresident of the Airline PilotsAssociation.

Then there is the course followed byFlight 007 once it left the standardroute. "The plane did not veer offsuddenly in some completely randomdirection," said a senior intelligenceofficial, "It was on the wrong path forseveral hours, never deviating from aline that would have taken it straight toSeoul" (New York Times, 4 September).While intentionally flying throughSoviet airspace was "unthinkable" toexperienced pilots, officials said otherexplanations like machine malfunctionare "even more unlikely." And there canbe no doubt that all pilots on the routeare aware of the danger. The mostwidely used navigational map, theJeppesen, carries a specific warning overSakhalin Island saying that aircraftflying over Soviet territory "may befired on without warning" (see illustra-tion). The pilots of Flight 007 knewwhat they were doing.

This was further demonstrated by theplane's actions after being pursued bySoviet interceptors. According to theU.S., Russian fighters scrambled tochase the plane as soon as it passed overKamchatka, but at no time in the next 2-1/ 2 hours did the KA L pilots radio toAmerican or Japanese air controllersthat they were in trouble. When ap-proaching Sakhalin Island. the planeradioed its position to Tokyo airport aslongitude 147 east. latitude 41 north.The press speculates they may have hadthe coordinates reversed, but then the

9 SEPTEMBER 1983 7

________________________________________________.l'~ifii!lll·~U!l\lJF••••••Almost a thousand job seekers line up for 30 positions at a Pennsylvania oil refinery.

UPI

protectionism, who not only in the U.S.but also in West Europe are often foundon the left wing of the reformistestablishment-Benn in Britain, Che-venement and the Stalinists in France.(Interjection: Imagine an internationalconference of the presidents of all thesteel unions in all the big producingcountries-a bloodbath!)

So this is often sold with a lot of left-wing, populist, anti-capitalist rhetoric.Michael Harrington recently had anop-ed article in the New York Times indefense of the UAW's domestic-contentbill. He argued: We socialists, we tradeunionists have never accepted the freeworkings of the capitalist market. Whyshould the multinationals determine theauto trade? Responding to this kind ofdemagogy, we say that if anti-Semitismis the socialism of fools then protection-ism is the economic planning of fools.

One of the effects of the inflationaryconditions of the 1970s, associated withthe OPEC oil boom, was to completelydistort world financial markets. Therewere periods when real interest rateswere actually negative. Naturally a lot ofthe tinpot generals in Latin America andsome of the stupider Stalinist bureau-crats in East Europe went on a borrow-ing binge. And bankers, too, believedthat inflation was the wave of the future.Particularly after the downturn in theU.S. and West Europe in 1979, bankersconcentrated their loans on a few LatinAmerican countries which had oil, meatand other primary products which werestill going up in price. And in their ownway bankers understand that the EastEuropean regimes are planned econo-mies. While they have no faith in thetinpot despots of the Third World, theydid believe that the Stalinist bureaucratswould honor their debts. So they were

level of social security, unemploymentinsurance, hospitalization, wages, etc,

Beginning in Britain with Thatcher,you not only had a right-wing govern-ment displacing Labour-this hadhappened before-but the most right-wing government in halfa century. ThenReagan displaced Carter, again givingus the most right-wing government inhalf a century. Then the ChristianDemocrats replaced the SocialDemocratic-led coalition which hadgoverned West Germany for the previ-ous 13 years. What's significant is notmerely that these governments naturallydenounced the policies of their prede-cessors for ruining the economy, butthat they denounced the basic economicpolicies of the entire postwar period,contending that decades of Keynesian-ism or welfare-statism had ruined theeconomy.

The doctrine known as monetarismhas basically two elements. One, to cutback government-supplied social serv-ices in the hope of transferring theseresources into private profit or, in thecase of the United States, into militaryspending. And two, to use fiscal andespecially monetary policy to deliber-ately induce mass unemployment tobreak the power of the unions andincrease the rate of exploitation, whichhas been particularly successful inReagan's America.

The question of protectionism is im-portant for us because in a sense it is thelabor bureaucracies' and reformists' an-swer to monetarism. We do not do muchpolitical combat with the advocates ofMilton Friedman except occasionallyon campuses and usually in a veryhostile setting. (Interjection: Yeah, theydrive cars at us!) It is rather differentwith the advocates of national economic

Neither "Socialism in One Country"Nor Keynesianism in One Country

But International Workers Revolution

scenarios. My favorite is from the WallStreet Journal, which had the newArgentine government, headed by aminister Thomas Aquinas-Marx, de-faulting on its $55 billion in debt. Thiscame as a particular shock to interna-tional bankers, who thought they hadonly lent Argentina $40 billion.

Until a few years ago the predominantbourgeois propaganda in the advancedcapitalist countries was: Things havenever been better. Capitalism is moreprosperous than ever before. The GreatDepression of the '30s would never,could never happen again. But whatwe've seen now across the board is a verydifferent kind of bourgeois propaganda:We've been living beyond our means.We can no longer afford the present

The following is an edited presenta-tion on the world economic conjuncturegiven by comrade Joseph Seymour atthe Spartacist League's seventh nationalconference.

UPI. IMF-Imposed austerity pauperizes Mexican workers. Unemployed carpen-ters, painters, electricians forced to offer their skills In front of Mexico Citycathedral.

It has become a journalistic com-monplace that the world economyis in the worst shape since the GreatDepression of the 1930s. In every

major capitalist country without excep-tion the level of unemployment is todayhigher than at any time since theimmediate postwar period and in theU.S. since before World War II. Rightnow there are more people unemployedin North America and West Europethan at the depth of the Great Depres-sion. Since the Great Depression wasunique and occurred in a differenthistoric setting, perhaps a better com-parison is with the second worst con-traction. At the depth of the 1974-75downturn there were 16 million peopleunemployed in North America andWest Europe. There are today morethan twice that many.

Another interesting measure is howfar back do you have to go in time to geta level of industrial production lowerthan today. For the U.S., you have to goback to '77: for Britain, '72: France andWest Germany, '78. Only in Japan is thelevel of industrial production slightlyhigher than in the late '70s. And sincethe population has increased, thatmeans in the past half decade there hasbeen an absolute decline in industrialproduction and also capacity percapita-an absolute decline in worldcapitalism.

Despite the moderate recovery in theU.~ . 'heres by no means expected anysignj(icant Improvement. Europe islagging behind. In France, in particular,things are gOlng to get worse. Theofficial government forecast in France ishalf a million more unemployed in thenext year and a half. And that's notmerely a forecast: it corresponds to theintent of the Mitterrand government,which is exercising an austerity programto break the inflationary spiral andrestore international confidence in theever-shrinking French franc.

There are three political responses tothe economic conjuncture which areparticularly important for us. One is themarked-in some ways qualitative-shift to the right within the bourgeoisiewith the oncoming of the contractionfollowing a period of inflationarystagnation. This shift to the right ineconomic policy goes by the rubric ofmonetarism. Second is the tendency-inthe short run irreversible-towardnational economic protectionism. Andthird, there is the well-publicized dangerof an international financial collapsetriggered by one of the big LatinAmerican or, less likely, East Europeancountries defaulting on its debt. One ofthe small pleasures of reading thebusiness press (economics really is thedismal science) is all the doomsday

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

-'

Andropov's RussiaUnder the Gun

monarchy did not want to share itswealth with the Venetians and so set upa state-owned glassworks. This is theorigin of the Saint Gobain trust.

The Giscard/ Barre governmentbucked this tradition and dismantledsome of the etatiste [state-controlled]elements of the French economy. Thishad two major political effects. Whenthe world downturn hit France in 1979there was a popular tendency to blamethis right-wing government and its"free-market," monetarist policies forthe worsening economic conditions. Atthe same time, a section of the bourgeoi-sie. concentrated in the Gaullists,opposed these Giscardian policies. Theywanted a more nationalistic, morestatist economic policy.

Mitterrand came to power in 1981promising renewed Keynesianism-hepromised to create a half a million newjobs, mainly in the public sector-and apolicy to "reconquer the domesticmarket." And these policies had acertain amount of bourgeois support,mainly backhanded support from theGaullists. Two of the key economicministries were given to former Gaul-lists: the ministry of trade to theloudmouth Michel Jobert and theministry of finance to Jacques Delors.

Mitterrand embarked on a policywhich the snotty right-wing LondonEconomist called "Keynesianism in onecountry." The predictable result wasrecord budget deficits, record balance-of-payments deficit s and record interna-tional indebtedness. In the first yearMitterrand was in power the Frenchgovernment's foreign borrowing morethan doubled. France was on its way tobecoming the Poland or the Mexico ofWest Europe.

After Reagan informed him that theU.S. would not subsidize the Frenchsocial democrats. about a year ago theMitterrand government did a U-turnand has attempted to impose an austeri-ty program more severe than anythingGiscard and Barre ever tried. A govern-ment which came to power promising tocreate half a million new Jobs is now,two years later, promising half a millionmore unemployed. A very dramaticshift.

So you now have a government inFrance which in different ways hasalienated all sections of the population.The immediate effect is to demoralizethe proletariat, that is, the native Frenchproletariat. The large population offoreign workers, mainly North African,are more combative since they neveridentified with the Mitterrand popularfront to begin with. The petty bourgeoi-sie, hit by higher taxes and reducedsocial benefits, is driven into a frenzy ofhostility to the government. And the bigbourgeoisie is prepared to encourageextra-legal violence against a regime itbelieves has ruined the economy. Jobertresigned from the government in protestand said that Mitterrand has broughtthe country to the brink of the economicequivalent of the fall of France in 1940.This is, of course, a crazy exaggeration.But it is indicative of how significantsections of the French bourgeoisie arefeeling.

As a result last spring there was amassive right-wing mobilization ex-tending into a section of the police. Thegroup of ultrarightist police symbolical-ly marched on the presidential palace.The working class has been slower tomove. There has recently been someresistance to mass layoffs in the auto-maker Peugeot, the largest private firmin Franee. This resistance is centered onthe foreign workers. When the popula-tion returns from their August vacation,it looks like France is heading forexplosive times.

One hears a lot about the so-calledSoviet economic crisis, the Sovieteconomic collapse from the Reagan

continued on page 10

ENTSiCl

Spectacular Failure of theMitterrand Popular Front

In France there have been a numberof dramatic changes in the politicalsituation which are a direct product ofthe world economic conjuncture. This isimportant. because of all the majorimperialist countries France has a post-war history of being the least stable. Onethinks of de Gaulle's coup in '58, the pre-revolutionary situation in May '68. Alsothe Ligue Trotskyste de France is in asense the second section of our tenden-cy, so what happens in France has a veryconsiderable effect on our tendency.

The political and economic de-velopments in France have differedfrom the general pattern in the rest ofthe advanced capitalist world. Monetar-ism came to France well in advance ofthe present world contraction beginningin 1979. The right-wing Giscard/Barregmernment of the mid-late '70s at-tempted to increase productivity bymodifying the traditional economicpolicy known as dirigisme [governmentcontrol]. This has a long history inFrance. At the time they were about tobuild the palace at Versailles, theRepublic of Venice was the world'smajor producer of glass. The French

problems for the rest of the capitalist\\orld. Thus. Helmut Schmidt-by nomeans an anti-American demagogue-exclaimed that real interest rates inGermany were the highest since the timeof Jesus Christ.

What about the immediate conjunc-ture? As Marx wrote in Capital-contrary to Gerry Healy-there is nosuch thing as a contraction which goeson forever. The contraction producesthe mechanisms which restore the rateof profit In this case, there has been anincrease in the rate of exploitation-theunion givebacks. probably far greatercutbacks in non-union shops-and alsoa sloughing off of marginal facilities.These factors created conditions aroundthe beginning of the year for some kindof recovery, which, however, remainsvery narrowly based, In terms of theindustrial economy, we are seeingbasically an inventory buildup and somerecovery in housing. It does not extendto capital imcslment.

Even though the recovery is only afew months old, even though therereally isn't much demand to finance

,capital expansion, already private inves-tors are running up against the hugeamount of government borrowing. Afew weeks ago the head of the FederalReserve, Paul Volcker, stated: "Asthings stand now, the rising privatecredit demands. a reflection -of risingprivate activity, are beginning to clashwith heavy borrowing needs of thegovernment." As a result in the past fewmonths bond issues have fallen, newstock issues have fallen and mortgageloans have fallen as the military sectoreats up the available economic surplus.Under these conditions it's hard toforesee a very vigorous economicrecovery, which would necessarily haveto be based on massive capital renewal,which god knows this country needs.

de

':1&~

At present the federal and state govern-ment deficit is about 6 percent of grossnational product. This means there isonly 1 percent of social product avail-able lor modernizing and expanding thecivilian industrial sector.

The bourgeoisie is acutely aware ofthis problem. but it doesn't know whatto do about it. No section of theAmerican ruling class is prepared toabandon the ambition to restore the"American century" and adjust the U.S.role to its real and shrinking economicpotentiaL Willy-niHy, they have collec-tively opted to go for military superiori-ty at the expense of long··krm economichealth. Maybe they think they can win anuclear war against Russia and thatwould solve all their problems.

Reagan's peculiar contribution to thisdilemma was to finance this massivemilitary buildup by cutting taxes. Hereyou have a government which preachesnineteenth-century bourgeois virtues-a penny saved is a penny earned. Yet inthe nexi five years the U,S. governmentis going to nm a deficit greater than inthe previous 200 years of the history ofthe American state.

Wh

market-oriented, decentralized system.This is the so-called "Hungarian mod-el." Andropov has a long associationwith Kadar's Hungary, which in 1968decentralized the economy, givingfactory managers much greater freeplay.

Within the framework of Stalinismthere is an immanent tendency towardeconomic decentralization as an alter-native to workers democracy. Since youcan't subject managers and workers tothe discipline of Soviet democracy, anda return to Stalin's methods is. veryunlikely, what is the alternative? Tosubject them to the discipline of themarket. Clearly this is an option withwhich the Soviet bureaucracy is flirting.

But "market socialism" has its owncontradictions, its own dangers and alsoits own points of resistance. Anotheraspect of the Hungarian experience isthat workers resist the discipline of themarket. They resist getting laid off if thefirm they're working in doesn't happento make a profit. The;' resist piece-ratewages. They resist earning 20 percentless for doing the exact same thing as aworker in a neighboring firm. And theSoviet working class has a fairly strongsense of egalitarianism. So market-oriented "reforms" would cause prob-lems for the Soviet bureaucracy with theproletariat.

There must be an increasing sensewithin Soviet society that the promisesand the policies of the bureaucracy haveproven false. The Soviet people mustknow that detente has broken down andthat they are faced with a war drive byan American government whose openprogram is nuclear superiority. Theymust know that the economy is runningdown and that, one way or another, theeconomic situation is likely to get worse.There must exist in the USSR one ofthe elements which Lenin said defineda potentially revolutionary situation.That is. both the bureaucracy and theworking masses, each in their own way,know that things cannot go on as before.If for us in the Spartacist League of theU.S. the defense of the Soviet Unionbegins in Central America, for theSpartacist League of the USSR to be thedefense of the Soviet Union meanstaking back political power from theusurpers in the Kremlin.•

%

tion going to retooling and modernizingexisting factories. By the late '70s thepossibilities for this type of extensivegrowth had pretty much run out. TheSoviet Union must have the highestlabor force participation rate in theworld with the possible exception ofEast Germany. Furthermore, extensiveindustrial growth worsens the problemsof Soviet agriculture as the labor forceon the collective farms becomes older,less efficient.

The bureaucracy recognized that it

would have to turn to intensive growth,increasing the productivity of theexisting labor force. At this point all ofthe micro-economic inefficiencies whichhave long characterized the system.their weight, their significance. becomemagnified. The tendency to cheat on theplan, to produce shoddy goods, toproduce goods in odd sizes and assort-ments (the famous mammoth nail in theKrokodil cartoon), the conservatismtoward innovation-all these factors,which in the past had a relatively smallerdrag on the economy. suddenly have amuch greater drag. '

Andropov campaigned for office. as itwere, with the equivalent of John F.Kennedy's slogan in 1960: "Let's get thiscountry moving again." There's been alot of speculation about big changes inthe economy. So far there's only beenlittle changes. Most of the speculationcenters around a shift toward a more

wasn't such a good idea, since the EastEuropeans now waste oil.)

During this period the Sovietbureaucracy no doubt thought that theworld was basically going its way. This,I believe, accounts for the extremeconservatism, the immobilism, thecomplacency of the late Brezhnev era.However, in the late '70s things began tounravel for the Soviet leaders. Here Iwill focus on the worsening domesticeconomic performance.

There are a number of conjunctural

i,JDer Spiegel

Reagan wants to wage economic warfare against Russia, but the attempt tosabotage Soviet gas pipeline to West Europe blew up in his face.

reasons why. During much of the '70sthe Soviet economy benefited from ahighly favorable international situation,Its main exports are oil, natural gas andgold, all of which increased multiply interms of world market prices. However,in the beginning of the '80s these pricesfell.

Abstracting from these kinds ofconjunctural factors, the Soviet bu-reaucracy has run into a more funda-mental problem. Historically, the pat-tern of Soviet economic growth hasbeen what economists call extensivegrowth. Basically this means buildingnew factories and drawing upon aseemingly inexhaustible supply of laborfrom the peasant population. Histori-cally, the structure of Soviet investmentis very different from that in theadvanced capitalist countries, a muchlarger proportion going to constructingnew factories, a much smaller propor-

WorldDepression...(cQntinued from page 9)

administration and its supporters.Behind this are a couple of things. One isa tendency to view the Soviet Unionthrough the distorting prism of PolishSolidarnosc, a belief that what hap-pened in Poland could be extended toRussia. That is nonsense. The otherfactor is a revival in Washington-notjust limited to the Reaganites-of anotion pushed by Nelson Rockefeller inthe 1950s. Rockefeller argued that since.the Soviet Union had a per capitaincome about half that of the UnitedStates, this was a society which couldless afford an all-out arms race. Thus,the arms race was not ~:>nly to achievemilitary superiority-which the U.S.had in the '50s-but to force the Sovietleaders to cut standards of living andhopefully therefore create populardiscontent. There has been a revival ofthis doctrine, which is a motivation forthe arms race apart from purely militaryconsiderations. At one level all this issimply bourgeois false consciousness,that is, wishful thinking. The Sovieteconomy is not going to collapse, andthe problems the Soviet Union doeshave will lead to a very different popularresponse than the clerical-rationalist,pro-imperialist Solidarnosc in Poland.

The Soviet Union has, however,suffered a marked deceleration ofgrowth-not negative growth as in theWest, but a deceleration. Last year therate of industrial growth was less than 3percent, the lo ....'est rate since WorldWar II. To put the present problems ofthe Soviet economy in perspective, oneshould remember that during the firstten years (from 1965 to 1975) of what isnow referred to as the Brezhnev era percapita consumption in the Soviet Unionincreased between 40 to 50 percent. Atthe same time, in part because the U.S.was bogged down in Vietnam, theSoviet Union was able to achieve roughnuclear parity. And in the early '70s theSoviet Union even had sufficient re-sources to massively subsidize EastEurope, mainly by selling it oil far belowgalloping world market prices. (This

Asylum for Tamil Refugees!

Terror inSri Lanka ...(continued from page 2)

wardene and the bourgeois-nationalistTamil United Liberation Front (TULF,which formally advocates Eelam), theoccupying army continues to rule theNorth under the murderous "emergen-cy" regulations, round-ups of leftistsand others reportedly are continuing,government workers are being forced toundergo loyalty oaths (eschewing ad-vocacy of Eelam), and the whole islandis poised for the next outbreak ofcatastrophic anti-Tamil terror.

Until shortly before the Americannational conference convened, we hadreceived from Sri Lanka no informationon the safety of our comrades. whowhile a very small group had becomeknown in the course of their work asoutspoken and active defenders ofTamil national rights on the island,including by seeking to link up the leftiststudent movement at Colombo Univer-sity with the militant Tamil nationalistactivism on the Jaffna campus. Over thepast several years international protestsagainst the anti-Tamil terror in Lanka,including united fronts between exileTamil groups and iSt sections, have alsoreceived significant publicity on theisland.

The main document adopted bythe conference, written before the mas-

sive government-inspired pogroms inLanka, noted "the increasingly ominousbackdrop of anti-Tamil terror and statesemi-bonapartism." The document fur-ther noted:

"Ours are Sinhalese comrades whosemain work. in accordance with theirMarxist-Leninist propaganda. is nec-essarily linked to the defense of theTamil people. which makes them aunique Bolshevik formation on thatisland. The fight against Lanka's incor-poration by U.S. imperialism is inti-mately linked to opposition to the anti-Tamil terror. The J.R. Jayewardenegovernment. which has been moving

Nineteen Tamils seeking politicalasylum from the bloody government-instigated anti-Tamil massacres in SriLanka are currently being held in theBrooklyn Immigration and Naturali-zation Service (INS) detention center.Some of those presently detained areamong the over 70,000 Tamils fromthe Colombo area alone who fled theirhomes in terror only to be driven intothe squalid refugee camps where theywere held at the mercy of the murder-ous Sinhalese army without food.water, sanitary facilities or medicalaid. Others were among the thousandsevacuated by ship to Jaffna in theNorth.

Fearing for their lives, these Tamils

large numbers of Sinhalese into thetraditionally Tamil Eastern provincewhere Trincomalee is iocated. sees theprospect of Trinco as a military base forU.S. imperialism as the trade-off tosecure access to the U.S. market for thecheap manufactured products pro-duced by the superexploited. mainlyfemale workforce in the Free TradeZone."

Right before the conference. wereceived our first word from Sri Lanka,a press release which we published inWV No. 336 (12 August). The SL/U.S.national conference adopted a motion

fled Colombo the last week of August.While en route from Paris to Montrealit was learned that the Canadiangovernment would refuse them ad-mittance. They were hauled off theplane in Boston and interrogated bythe INS. In urgently appealing forpolitical asylum in the U.S., the Tamilspointed out that their names and.passport numbers had been recordedby security personnel at Colombo'sKatunayake Airport. The Tamils werethen carted off to the seedy. miserableINS-style concentration camp inBrooklyn where they are treated likeprisoners. We demand the Tamils befreed at once and given immediatepolitical asylum! Stop anti-Tamil

of communist solidarity with the Spar-tacist League/Lanka comrades. Thegreetings from the Lanka section pub-lished here were not received in time tobe presented to the conference. We arealso publishing on page 2 anotherspecial dispatch from Colombo, whichhas been excerpted and slightly con-densed for reasons of space.

Sometimes heroism is not a matterof doing things, but just of being thereand standing fast. Forward to a fed-erated socialist republic of Eelam andLanka!.

massacres in Sri Lanka! Politicalasylum for all Tamil refugees!

The Eelam Tamils Association ofAmerica has taken up this case. Theyask that telegrams and letters demand-ing political asylum for the Tamilrefugees be sent to: United NationsHigh Commissioner for Refugees,Washington Liaison Office. Suite 405.1785 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W..Washington, D.C. 20036; and Con-gressman Mario Biaggi. 2004 Wil-liamsbridge Road, Bronx. New York10461. Contributions toward legalexpenses can be sent to: Eelam TamilsAssociation of America. 66 GlenStreet, Somerville. Massachusetts02145.

10 WORKERS VANGUARD

Murder, Inc.•.•(continuedfrom page 3)

"Interviewer: Pop their eyes with aspoon'l"Death squad member: You have tofilm it to believe it, but boy. they sure

The Only Solution:Workers Revolution

In the face of this brutality andmilitary aggression, the reformistswithin the Salvadoran oppositionDemocratic Revolutionary FrontjFarabundo Marti National LiberationFront (FDR/FMLN) and the Nicara-guan Sandinistas have sought to meeklyconciliate the imperialists. The FDRjFM LN popular front is pursuingdialogue toward a political solution tothe civil war, last week meeting withReagan envoy Richard Stone, a formerPR man for the Guatemalan junta. But

a negotiated settlement would necessari-ly leave the bloody military officer caste,the protectors of exploitative privilege,intact. Neither would it affect the deathsquads which will exist as long as thewealthy oligarchs who fund them. Anegotiated settlement then would onlyopen the way for even a bigger blood-bath. That is wh~ the Spartacist League(SL) calls for military victory to theleftist insurgents,

Here in the U.S. the various Salvado-ran and Nicaraguan popular front"solidarity" committees have for thepast three years been orienting to theCongressional liberals to oppose onlymilitary, not economic aid; to put"human rights" certification riders onappropriations bills, and now mostrecently to cut funds for "covert" CIAoperations in the region. We havewarned repeatedly that the liberalDemocrats have only tactical differ-ences with the Reaganites, that both

share commitment to the globaranti-Soviet war drive in which CentralAmerica is currently the front line. OnJune 7 Democrats in the House ForeignAffairs Committee voted for a massiveovert aid budget of $80 million. usingthe same pretext as Reagan. to stop thesupposed Dow of arms from Nicaraguaand Cuba to the Salvador leftists

The S L takes a side in the classstruggle in Central America and else-where. the side of the workers andpeasants, That is also why we defend theSoviet and Cuban ..vorkers states,despite their bureaucratic misrulers.against imperialist attack. Here in theU.S.