WIIINEIIS'III/"II" 25¢No. 433. 24 July 1987

UPI

Contra in chief Reagan; media hype over sinister Colonel North.

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The media image-makers raved about"Olliernania," and the TV networksrolled all their daytime soap operas intoone running serialization of "Colone]North Goes to Washington." The IraniContragate conspirators bragged aboutlying to Congress, concocting falsechronologies, shredding evidence andflouting laws, all in the cause of provid­ing "plausible deniability" to the pres­ident and achieving a "democratic out­come" in Nicaragua. The Congressional"investigation" became a platform forglorifying counterrevolutionary cut­throats. Not once in -the hearingsofNorth and his putative boss Poindexterwere the crimes of the sadistic contrakillers against the Nicaraguan people somuch as mentioned. Instead there wasa-n orgy of anti-Communist patrioticgore that was the witchhunting SenatorJoe McCarthy and the strutting Gener­al Douglas MacArthur combined. TheDemocrats on the dais lapped it up.

And they squelched the most sinisterrevelation of the whole conspiracy: thatthe ramrod lieutenant 'colonel and hisdoddering commander in chiefhadplat­ted a military takeover in the UnitedStates. The chief counsel Liman wasduly shocked when North blurted outthat the Contragaters intended to con­tinue their "Project Democracy" as aworldwide self-financing, "stand-alone"privateering operation completely in­dependent of Congressional appropria­tions or even presidential control. Butwhen an out-of-step Dixiecrat Con­gressman asked about newspaper re­ports that there was a "contingencyplan" for martial law and suspension ofthe Constitution, committee chairman

Daniel Inouye shut him up quick. Theominous fact that the secret govern­ment was already in place, ready to beimplemented in case of a V.S. invasionof Central America, was not supposedto come out.

The White House cheered as their. born-again hero, the bemedaled Ma­rine, brazenly lied through his maniacalgap-toothed grin and thumbed his noseat Congress. Challenged if he had"denied the elected representatives ofour people the facts,". Honest Olliecrowed proudly, "I did." It was underthe shield of the oversized presidentialseal North still wears on the right pocketof his uniform. Inouye responded withthe cherry tree fable about GeorgeWashington who could not tell a lie.Democratic Congressman Dante Fas-:cell intoned, "The fact is, they dis­pensed with Congress and the Consti­tution" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 12July).And how did Congress respond? Everytime North kicked them in the teeth ,they asked for more. When AdmiralPoindexter blew smoke in the commit­tees'. faces, baldly claiming that "thebuck stopped with me," they breathed a .sigh of relief even though nobodybelieved it.

So now Oliver North has beenofficially proclaimed an "American

hero." There is soon to be an Ollie doll(does it salute and say it was only' fol­lowing orders"), an Ollieburger (every­thing shredded), "Ollie for President"T-shirts, etc. The Washington Post (19July) worried whether a "self-professedliar and desk-chair martinet" who onlyrecently recovered from his "FifthAmendment lockjaw" was a proper rolemodel. Well, maybe he is-for them andtheir system of murder and lies. We haveour heroes, like Benjamin Linder, thecourageous young American engineerassassinated by the contra scum forbringing electricity to impoverished"Nicaraguan peasants. When Ben lin­der's parents denounced the V.S. gov­ernment for the murder of their, son,they were subjected to Congressionalvilification; one Republican grotesquelysaid, "you've asked for it"! And now thecontra Congress is passing, a""Linderlaw" 'banning travel to Nicaragua forthose who would defend the embattledcountry against Yankee aggression!

The contras, meanwhile, flaunt theircrimes. On the eve of the eighth anni­versary' of the Sandinista victory overthe tyrant Somoza, they tried to stormthe town of San Jose de Bocay. Theywere stopped at the outskirts, but notbefore killing three children and a preg­nant woman, burning the houses of a co-

operative farm to the ground and steal­ing 40 head of cattle. The Americanmedia never mentioned that this was thesame town where Ben Linder was shotto death! Despite all the "human rights"baloney from Washington, Reagan's"freedom fighters" are the same oldmurderers: in July alone a Catholicpriest was blown up by a contra mine,seven peasants were killed in a contraraid and eleven civilians riding a buswere ambushed. And the contras arestill losers. Their "offensive," begunafter receiving $100 million in V.S.'aidlast fall, has flopped militarily.

North was able to put the Democratsin Congress on the defensive becausethey share his goal of overthrowing San­dinista Nicaragua in the name of aglobal war against Communism. What'sthe bigdeal, demanded North at the out­set: I just kept the contras going untilyou guys in Congress came aroundagain. It's not just that the Democratsare pusillanimous; they realize some­thing "this Marine colonel" does not:there's a big difference between gung-hoAnnapolis and West Point grads and themass ofthe American people. And iftheV.S. invades CentralAmerica, popularresistance among Americans would.begin at the level reached after sevenyears of the dirty, losing war on Viet­nam. North claimed the Vietnam Warwas lost in Washington. Wrong, it waslost on the battlefield by a V .S. and pup­pet army that wouldn't fight, facing theheroic people of Vietnam.

Popular revulsion against militarismwas so great and the army such ademoralized mess that the draft was

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lyand the staff created a heavy atmos­phere of racial violence in my sectionthat i was becoming a victim of racialdiscord. Staff quickly accused me ofbeing responsible for the racial violenceand therefore 'i invit-ed racist gangs tocome after me. The plan was clear aswell as the contradictions. For sixyears (1970 thru 1976) i was accused,punished, brutalized, persecuted, forcharges of unifying the prisoners, forattacking prison guaI1'ls and for agitat­ing prisoners to attack prison guards ....

I went to the board last year and wasdenied parole for. 3 more years. Now iam in Tehachapi. I've been in prisonover 22 years. I've gone without a con­tact visit for over 16years. Every humanand constitutional right violated, con­victions purely circumstantial .andcrooked. It is all political and personalbecause i am a Nicaraguan and youknow what is being done to Nicaragua. Ishould have been out long ago but thepowers who detain me have too muchpower.

That's about it. I like to hear fromyou. Maybe i can get busy and not hav­ing to constantly feel. this pain of whathas happened to my wife.

In truth and Justice.Hugo

After several months of illness,Hugo's wife, Shirley L.A. Pinell, died inApril of cancer. We extend our deepestsympathies to Hugo, who wrote abouther: "Shirley is the best person i know.We built a beautiful relationship andmade many plans for a future but thoseplans will have to be realized else­where." T9 the end; prison authoritiesrefused to allow Hugo to see Shirley.

The workers movement must take upthe fight to free Hugo Pinell and al1class-war prisoners!

The fifth issue of the PDC newsletterClass-Struggle Defense Notes is nowavailable, centering on our program forinternational class-struggle defense.This issue features other letters fromclass-war prisoners and speeches by

-Wadiya Abu-Jamal for her husband,MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal,and Judy Zimmet on behalf of Morde­chai Vanunu, the technician who dis­closed the Israeli arsenal of 100-200nuclear weapons. We encourage WVreaders to continue to-support and buildthe PDC Become a sustainingcontrib­utor, Send a donation of$5 or more andreceive a subscription to Class-StruggleDefense Notes. For a single copy send$.75 to: Partisan Defense Committee,P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, NewYork, NY 10013.•

FOil INTUNATIONlL CI,ASS.STIIUIi&LE DEFENSE!

~~~ti§ftn Defen.............naittee ~

!!ao~"'i';lUitd!'·):ti:tU.1.n.j'j.:I..~ ...,JULY 1987

The fifth issue ofCrass-Struggle Defense Notesis a call to action.Get your copy now.

• For International Class-StruggleDefense!

• Outrage! Geronimo Pratt'sParole Denied

• Stop the Persecution ofRamona Africa

• Freedom for Mordechai Vanunu• Save Mumia Abu-Jamal­

Voice of the Voiceless• We Wonl Spartaclst Victory

Against AlA• In Defense of DemocratlcRlghta• International Labor Defense• Letten FrOm Prison• Build the PDel

With your contribution ~f $5 or more receive a subscription to.Class.:Struggle Defense Notes.

Fof a single copy of issue Number 5, send $.75 to:PartiUn Defense Coimniftee, P.O. Box 99, canal Street Station. New York, NY 10013

ed on charges of killing a prison guard,and. by force i was sort of pushed in theforefront. .Had to keep the programsgoing forward because the movementwas under heavy attack and we couldn'tlet it be destroyed. The Administrationhad been after me for years in attemptsto discourage me and they used thestrike as an excuse to isolate me fromeveryone. My whole world was turnedupside down. My contact visits weretaken from me, kept me in special cells,chained and taken to court for chargesagainst prison guards and labeled mostdangerous prisoner. This process ofchains, isolation and court procedures,lasted 6 years in which time the move­ment was destroyed (1973) and the Ad­ministration was back in control ofprison activities and racial violence wasback stronger than before. In 1976 i wastransferred to Folsom prison from SanQuentin. I was placed in a special cellbut no more manacles-and i could movearound people. Staff said'i could do mytime and in 90 days regain the privilegesof contact visits. A new strategy was inmotion and i suspected it but i had tomove around and try to unify the pris­oners and maybe bring the movementback. But thingshad changed drastical-

LNSClass-war prisoner Hugo Pinell,framed up by the killers of GeorgeJackson.

_11IE_. _

tion of judicial and authoritative out­side forces, came down violently on themovement in Jan 1970, murdering 3blacks. One of them was W.L. Nolen,the chairman and co-founder of theMovement. Massive confusion, hyster­ia and violence erupted after this treach­erous act and prison guards and blackprisoners were getting killed, assaultedand accused of crimes never proven.

I continued to. function within theprograms of the Movement. In late 1970i organized and represented a long strikein the lock up unit of 0 Wing in Soledad

'prison. The second leader of the Move­ment, George Jackson, had been isolat-

3-31-87

Dear Paul,

Have received ail the Newspapers andthe money for Feb and March. Thankyou, kindly, for your attention andsupport ....

I was, born and raised in Nicaragua. Icame to the states in 1957, at age 12.·ln1964, at age 19, i turned myself in to au­thorities to confront my. accuser. Ra­cism, brutality and manipulation led toa plea bargain and in Feb 1965 i was sentto prison. I entered with the possibilityfor parole in 18 months on a sentence of3 years to life. The prison movementbegan in 1967 in California and ijoinedit because i was impressed with its pro­grams, its opportunities for self devel­opment and growth, the real individu­als in charge, but mainly because i hadexperienced 2 years of extreme racism,injustice and deception by 'my keepers.The Department, with the collabora-

Last September we began sending amonthly stipend to Pinel1 as part of ourclass-war prisoner program. He wroteus of the state's cruel vendetta to crushhis unbroken wil1 to struggle.

Parti§au Defeu§e£o......ittee

'!!!!!!!or...'!!f'!.~~!,~DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon •

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Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December,by the Spartaeist Publishing Co.. 41 Warren Street. New York, NY 10007.Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24isSUes. Second-ClaSs postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send ~ddress changes to Workers Vanguard,Box 1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116.

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Imperialist War andBourgeois Democracy

In pursuing its war policies. supposedlyin the name of"defending democracy," theReagan administration set up a secretgovernment to bypass Congress and evenreadied a planfor declaring martial law inan "emergency." Almost 50 years ago, inthe opening stages ofthe second imperialistworld war, Leon Trotskv described how

TROTSKY the capitalist "democraci~s" ofEurope and LENINAmerica were prepared to transform parliamentary forms of bourgeois rule intoauthoritarian. dictatorial bonapartist regimes.

The war has not halted the process of the transformation of democracies intoreactionary dictatorships, but on the contrary is carrying this process to itsconclusion before our very eyes.

Within every country as wel1 as on the world arena, the war strengthenedimmediately the most reactionary groups and institutions. The general staffs, thosenests of Bonapartist conspiracy, the malignant dens of the police, the gangs of hiredpatriots, the churches of an creeds, are immediately pushed to the forefront. ThePapal Court, the focal point of obscurantism and hatred among men, is being wooedfrom al1 sides, especially by' the Protestant President Roosevelt. Material andspiritual decline always brings in its wake police oppression and an increased demandfor the opium of religion.

Seeking to gain the advantages of a totalitarian regime, the imperialist de­mocracies launch their own defense with a redoubled drive against the working classand the persecution of revolutionary organizations. The war danger and now the waritself is utilized by them first and foremost to crush internal enemies. The bourgeoisieinvariably and unswervingly follows therule: "The main enemy is in one's owncountry." .

-Leon Trotsky; "Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist Warand the Proletarian World Revolution" (May 1940)

Free Hugo Pinell!When they left the California state

house Reagan and his top cop Meese leftbehind a trail of corpses of black activ­ists while the survivors were con':demned to a lifetime of prison h~ILHugo Pinell spent much of his youth inCalifornia reformatories and prison. AtSoledad prison Pinell became a leader inthe prisoners' rights movement togetherwith Black Panther George Jackson.For his leadership in combatting racialconflict among prisoners he was repeat­edly brutalized by prison guards. Andhe was set up to be a victim of the racistFBI/cop COINTELPRO conspiracy.

Pinell was one of the San QuentinSix-prison activists accused of con­spiracy murder of prison guards in themelee touched off when' the state assas­sinated George Jackson on 21 August1971. Following an 18-month trial, inwhich the Six were brought to' courtshackled like slaves and chained to seats

.which were bolted to the floor, Pinel1was convicted of two counts of assault.

Prison officials have inhumanely keptPinel1 in "security housing" for the past17 years-i-preventing him from havingcontact visits even with his wife-citing'"affiliation" as one of their grounds.

...

lettersI

"The Main Enemy Is At Home!"Chicago21 February 1987

To the Editor:'

Recently the famous title from K.Liebknecht's anti-imperialist leaflet"The Main Enemy Is At Home" hasbeen seen here and there; as a subhead­ing in WV No. 418 (the Stonewallarticle) and as a chant during ourChicago anti-Amerika demonstration.In both instances we have used theslogan out of context, its originalmeaning unclear, only depending on its

great authority and militancy with theresult being militant confusion..

Advanced as the title of an antiwarleaflet by the German internationalistsupon Italy's entry into WW I in 1915,taken up by Russian internationalists ina November 1915 leaflet "Where Is theMain Enemy?" both insisted that "everypeople's main enemy is in their owncountry." This was specific to theconditions of interimperialist war andeven then use was limited. In the worldof 1915 this slogan would not be

advanced in a situation of war waged byItaly upon, say, Ethiopia; rather wewould desire the defeat of Italy (per­haps, two, three, many defeats forItalian imperialism!). Two years lateranother "limitation" was imposed onthis slogan with the Russian Revolution(October not February); certainly theSoviet working class was not at allinterested in raising this slogan and itstill ain't.

But neither should U.S. communistsraise it as part of our unconditional

military defense" of the Soviet Union.While all recognized that Germanmilitarism was an -enerny of Russianworkers and conversely the tsar of theGerman workers, millions arrayed oneither side, we do not want to suggestany similarity in the U.S./Soviet situa­tion (or U.S,jCentral America). Thereare those that would. however. TakePL. If consistency were their strongpoint this would be their slogan.

Comradely.Marc V:

Dietz Verlag Berlin .

Karl Liebknechtaddresses

Berlin workers,January 1919 (left).British Spartacists

correctly used"Main Enemy"

slogan inopposing 1982

Falklands/Malvinaswar between"Iron Lady~'

Thatcher andArgentine military

rulers (right).

Reagan's America:How Bad Is It?

12 July 1987Iowa City, Iowa

Comrades,

, I would like to comment on some­thing you said in WV 432 (I haven't gotthe whole thing read yet). In the article"Dump Reagan, Meese, Rehnquist!"speaking of the Bork nomination to theSupreme Court (p. II): "Liberal Dem­ocrat Kennedy said that 'Robert Bark'sAmerica is a land in which womenwould be forced into back-alleyabor­tions, blacks would sit at segregatedlunch counters, rogue police couldbreak down citizens' doors in midnightraids, schoolchildren could not betaught about evolution, writers and

artists could be censored at the.whim ofgovernment and the doors of the fed­eral courts would be shut on the fingersof millions of citizens' .... Sounds a lotlike present-day America to us." Thepoint though is that that is not presentday America. As WV reported a shorttime ago those who would ban or tie theteaching of evolution' to creationismwere defeated in the Supreme Court.Overt legal segregation does not exist inthis country. (De facto segregation per­haps, but the difference is important.)·Women still have the legal right to anabortion-if they can afford it. Copraids (and apparently not just "rogue"cops as Kennedy . says) happen, andthere is some censorship, but these

things are limited. If it is already thatbad what difference would the nomina­tion make? What you seem to have doneis in trying to make a cute comment youmisstated the severity of the currerit sit­uation. When dealing with a situation itis important to keep it in perspective­what really does exist and what doesn't(but could). Action is best when basedon reality, and the main point ofanalysis is to provide a basis for action.

In solidarity,Loren Schutt

WV replies: Perhaps our.comment was abit telescoped. Reagan's agenda forcounterrevoiution has not. been com­pleted, but it is certainly welr'iinder way.It's important that abortion is still legal,though all kinds of legal restrictionshave been imposed, to say nothing of thescores of clinic bombings. Despite theSupreme Court creationism decision,separation of church and state is underheavy attack, especially in the class­room. There is a wholesale legal

onslaught against school 'integration,and in the North today schools are sub­stantially more segr.egated than twodecades ago. From Tampa to. NewYork, police are on the rampage againstminorities. '

Bork's America is Reagan's America-with a lot of help from the Demo­crats. Liberals stabbed busing in Con­gress while the racists were riotirrg in thestreets of Boston. Kennedy himself is themain architect of preventive detention,which was part of his S-I "anti-crime"bill. It is because these bipartisanattacks on democratic rights have goneso deep that we have found ourselvesimpelled to intervene more activelyaround defense.cases and in defense ofdemocratic rights. Now the NAACP,ACLU, ADA, NOW'and a host of lib­erals have announced a drive to blockBork's Supreme Court nomination. But

. the American ruling class' .program toroll back social gains won in the pastcan only be smashed by hard classstruggle.•

Japan Inc. WantsSakhalin, Too National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

3

NorfolkBox 1972, Main PONorfolk, VA 23501

OaklandBox 32552Oakland, CA 94604(415) 839-0851

San FranciscoBox 5712San. Francisco, CA 94101(415) 863-6963

Washington, D.C.Box 75073Washington, D,C 20013(202) 636-3537 •

TorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8,(416) 593-4138

DetroitBox 441794Detroit, MI 48244

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz StaLos Angeles. CA 90029(213) 380-82j9

Madisonc/o SYL, Bax 2074Madison, WI 53701(608) 257-8625

New YorkBox 444, Canal St. Sta.New York, NY 10013(212) 267-1025

TROTSKYIST LEAGUEOF CANADA

AtlantaBox 4012Atlanta, GA 30302

BostonBox 840, Central Sta,Cambridge, MA '02139(617) 492-3928

ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 663-0715

Cleveland'Box 91037Cleveland, OH 44101(216) 881-3700

Wallis/JB Pictures

~Japanese' imperialism has designson strategic Kuril Islands andSakhalin, vital to Soviet defense.

Seattle, Washington1,8 May 1987

24. JULY 1987.. " ~

To the Editor,"Japan Inc. vs. Wall Street" [Jt::V

Nos. 424 and 425,20 March and 3 April]was a tremendous article. I would justlike to add one small footnote. Not onlyare Japanese right-wingers demandingthe strategically important Kuril Islandsreturn, they are also demanding one­half of Sakhalin (viz. the old imperialborders). This is common knowledgenot only to anyone who has ever heardthe demagogues on the corners ofShibuya Station, Tokyo but also it isseen by looking at modern Japanesemaps which often show the KurilIslands and one-half of Sakhalin asdisputed (i.e., Japanese) territory.

ComradelY greetings,Lawrence

VA Wand lAM officials, from top tobottom, are against. What's needed isindustrywide strike action, led by a mil­itant class-struggle leadership that cansweep away the pro-capitalist unionbureaucracy and smash the company/Pentagon union-busting drive. WithReagan on the ropes, a hard-foughtaerospace strike, now, could spark alabor offensive against the years ofgivebacks, and throw a giant monkeywrench into the war plans of the labor­hating "contra in chief." Bieber arrdLabor Department-hands off Local148!_

VAWand lAM tops are the hatchetmen for the Democratic Party. Theysupport the bipartisan anti-Soviet wardrive and peddle racist anti-Japaneseprotectionism in order to defend V.S.imperialism. These labor traitors willnever take on the aerospace giants andthe Pentagon's strikebreaking. lAMhead William Winpisinger knifedPATCO and the entire labor movementwhen he refused to pull out the Machin­ists and fight Reagan's smashing of theair controllers union. And there is along, sordid history of the McDonnellDouglas lAM and VAW locals scab­bing on each other's strikes.

Effective strike action in any industryrapidly escalates into a confrontationwith the capitalist state. But in aero­space, every work stoppage is political,and requires a leadership that willprepare the workers for battle with thebosses' war machine-something the

.106 ,WV Photo

Striking McDonnell Douglas workers march through Long Beach, Californiain 1984.

DOL (Department of Labor) to run theelection" (Long Beach Press Telegram,17 June). Both sets of bureaucrats placetheir confidence in the strikebreakinggovernment agencies and courts-thesame ones currently plotting to takeover the Teamsters in order to break itsunion power. Aerospace workers mustfight for the complete independence oftheir unions from the capitalist state;those chains must be broken for suc­cessful class battle against the bosses.

From Boeing to Mcfronnell Douglas,the aerospace companies are squeezinggivebacks out of the workers. And the

walkout and picket in support of hiscourt suit; the mass suspensions and fir­ings followed.

In their latest attack on Local 148members, the VAW tops asked theLabor Department to intervene and runnew local elections, scheduled forAugust I I. And Berghoff agrees: "Thebest remedy we could expect was for the

the lAM's Boeing agreement last fall. Atthe Douglas Astronautics plant and theaircraft plants in Long Beach and Tor­ranee, contracts for 9,500 VAW Local148 and 5,900 lAM Lodge 720 mem­bers expired in the fall. After the com­pany's takeaway demands were rejectedtwice, the management ripped up jobclassifications and imposed cuts in ben­efits (including forcing retirees to payfor part of their medical coverage). Butdespite three one-day protest walkouts,the VAWand lAM misleaders haverefused to strike. Of! July 16 lAM

'members narrowly approved a separatesettlement, which requires workers topay part of their medical insurance andprovides paltry wage hikes of 3 and 2percent in the first two years.

Berghoff has misled Local 148 mem­bers with a disastrous AFL-CIO ploydubbed "The Inside Game." Instead ofstrike action, with mass picket lines thatnobody dares cross, they call for"staying on the job and working fromthe inside." This work-to-rule scheme

. . keeps the planes rolling off, while set­ting up individual workers for vic­timization. But even this "no-strike"strategy was too. much for the VAWtops. With the aid of the company, Sol­idarity House worked oyertime todefeat Berghoff in the May 12-13 localelections. A poll watcher reported thatthe International's candidate appearedwith gun-toting thugs, and 15 sheriff'spatrol cars and a helicopter were calledtn.

Despite this and the 33 Internationalreps sent in, Berghoff won a large plu­rality of the votes. So on May 27 VAWpresident Owen Bieber held a 12-hourkangaroo court in Detroit. The follow­ing day the International seized the localhall with hired security guards. Ratherthan fight the Solidarity House traitors,Berghoff ran to the capitalist courts,pleading that they restrain the Interna­tional. On June 8 Berghoff called the

---UAW·Tops: Compa·ny Cop.s---

Pentagon's War onMcDonnell 'Douglas Work~rsAerospace giant McDonnell Doug­

las, aided by the United Auto Workersleadership, is waging war On workers atits Southern California plants. On June9 some 350 workers, members of VAWLocal 148, were suspended for a walk­out protesting company interference inunion elections and the seizure of thelocal by the VA W International. Sev­enteen others, including local presidentBob Berghoff. were fired. In an ominousmove, Reagan's Labor Department has.stepped in to take over and run theelection of Local 148 officers. This isa deadly threat to all aerospace work­ers, targeted by a company/Pentagonunion-busting drive. The anti-Sovietwar drive means war on the workersat home. According to Aviation Week(16 February):

"Defense Dept. is prepared to invokefederal national security restrictionsagainst any threat of a-strike at McDon­nell Douglas Astronautics. Hunting­ton Beach, Calif., to prevent delay of thenext Strategic Defense Initiative Deltabooster mission set for launch late thisyear." .

The aerospace industry is wallow­ing in massive profits' from Rea­gan's trillion-dollar military buildup.McDonnell Douglas, the Pentagon'slargest contractor, raked in $8.4 billionin government revenues in 1986. It has a .whopping $28 billion in back orders forcommercial airliners and Pentagon con­tracts, including F- I5 and F- 18 fight­ers, the new C-17 transport, Toma­hawk and Harpoon 'missiles and StarWars, components. But despite recordprofits, and the highest employment lev­els since the Vietnam War, aerospacebosses have shoved two-tier wage agree­ments and benefit cuts down the throatsof the' ranks of the VA W and the·International Association of Machin­ists (lAM).

In St. Louis, 11,000 McDonnellDouglas workers settled in early Junefor a giveback contract patterned after

,

Packinghouse Bosses Slaughter Workers

Bob GomelThe most dangerous industry in America: workers on the line at IBP'sAmarillo, Texas plant.

CH ICAGO-At plants from Wisconsinto Nebraska almost 7,000 meatpackersare on strike. as the packinghousebosses want to give everyone the"Horrnel treatment" with massive take­backs, lockouts and scabbing. Workersat the Dakota City, Nebraska IBP plant,the largest meatpacking company in thenation, have been out for seven months,fighting to defend their jobs at the onlyunionized IBP plant in the Midwest. Atthe Patrick Cudahy Co. plant near Mil­waukee, 700 scabs daily cross the lines ofstriking V nited Food and CommercialWorkers V nion members, while theUFCW tops preach reliance on Rea­gan's labor board and the capitalistcourts. But 3.300 strikers at John Mor­rell Co. in Sioux City, Iowa and SiouxFalls, South Dakota have defended"their picket lines from cop attacks.

The meatpackers are literally fight­ing for their lives in the most dangerousindustry in America. It's the workerswho ate being butchered, just as theywere at the turn of the century whenUpton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, hisfamous expose of conditions in theslaughterhouses. An article by WilliamGlabersonin the New York Times U4June), unusual for these haughty labor­haters, told the story of workers at the

Morrell plant in Sioux Falls, membersof UFCW Local 304A:

"Meatpackers work in extreme heat orrefrigerated cold, often standing shoul­der to shoulder, wielding honed knivesand power saws. Grease and bloodmake the floors and tools slippery. Theroar of the machines is constant. Occa­sionally. an overpowering stench from

open bladders and stomachs fills the air."The workers cut themselves. They cuteach other. They wear out their insidesdoing repetitive-motion jobs. They aresliced and crushed by machines thatwere not even imagined when Sinclairpublished his book in 1906."

Twenty-five years ago Morrell's hog killrate was 365 an hour; now the hog chain

runs at 1,065 an hour. Workers have aslittle' as 3.4 seconds to make their cuts.Those who last long enough wind upwith carpal tunnel syndrome, whichcripples .the hands by pinching thenerves in the wrist. On the line, drivesprockets and chains, pulleys and beltsare often left exposed, waiting to man­gle a .hand or sever a worker's fingers .

. Mary Tvedt, a worker at the SiouxFalls plant, told the Times oflosingfourfingers on her right hand when a co­worker accidentally restarted a baconslicer she was cleaning. Morrell refuses

.to provide safety locks to shut downequipment-that would slow down theline. So Mary Tvedt is crippled for life.Another worker, Marrianne Sudenga, .told of being forced to return to workthree days after she broke her leg in theplant, Three years earlier she lost twofingers in a sausage wrapping machine.And now, with the massive givebacksengineered by the UFCW sellouts, shehas to take a second job, at near­minimum wage, to make ends meet. TheTimes reported there was an outpouringof outraged letters at the conditionsexposed in the article.

Local304A vice president Jim Lyonstold WV, "All they want IS our bodies­

continued on page 10

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WORKERS VANGUARD....... ',# lo·· ....

San Salvador, July 15- Police open fire ondemonstration of striking workers. EI Salvador: Defiant workers march after police attack.

Banner of ASTTEL phone workers c~ntingent.

Duarte's Cops Shoot,Down Strikersrestrictions for preventing victory in thewar. The only reason there hasn't been acoup already is fear of losing U.S. aid.

Militarily, the spectacular FMLNraid on the supposedly impregnable ElParaiso army base on March 31 shookthe army's confidence to the core.Increasingly, the FMLN's actions havebeen coordinated with urban struggles.On May 2, the leftist insurgents carriedout an operation "Salute to the Coura­geous Working Class" occupying thedepartmental capital of San FranciscoGotera. Arid in response to the shoot­ings of trade unionists, in early June andmid-July the FMLN decreed trans­portation boycotts which brought traf­fic to a standstill for several days acrossthe country and in San Salvador itself.

. Yet the radical-nationalist FMLNand its petty-bourgeois liberal allies ofthe Revolutionary Democratic Front

"(FOR) continue to call fora negotiatedsolution "among Salvadorans" and theformation of a "government of broadparticipation." Does the FDR/FMLNpropose a coalition with the hit squadsof ARENA, or perhaps with, "deathsquad democrat" Duarte? Any "nego­tiated solution" laying down arms in theface of this blood-drenched bourgeoisieis a death trap for the Salvadoran toil­ing masses. The present stand-off willnot last. An implacable struggle by theworking class to smash the murderoussecurity forces and uproot its capitalistmasters could win the support of a war­weary population. But it requires theleadership of a Trotskyist proletarianvanguard party fighting for workers rev­olution throughout the isthmus.

The Caribbean and Central Amer­ican region, continues to boil. In.Haiti, demonstrators against the U.S.­imposed junta chant "Down with Amer­ica! Long live Communism!" Strikestruggles mushr-oom in Mexico. Even inHonduras, 20,000 marched on May Daydemanding the U.S. Army and the con­tras get out. In the United States, whilethere are ruling-class divisions over sup­porting the loser contras in Nicaragua,there is a bipartisan imperialist consen­sus to crush the leftist insurgents andcombative workers in EI Salvador. Yetthe liberal/ reformist "solidarity" milieustill looks to the Democrats who keepvoting for aid to Duarte. It is theAmerican workers who must be mobi­lized to smash the U.S. war on theembattled working masses of Central

. America and on the unions and the op­pressed black and Hispanic minoritiesat home.

Military victory to the leftist insur­gents-s-W orkers take San Salvadorljs

against solidarity activists in Los Ange­les (see page 12).

Politically, EI Salvador has becomeextremely unstable. Duarte's power­hungry Christian Democrats have bro­ken into warring factions over the pres-·idential succession and have literallycome to, blows. The far right is rallyingaround the fascistic ARENA party ofdeath squad leader Roberto D'Aubuis­son, who calls for a "peace" of 200,000dead. One of the army's most notoriousbutchers, Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa,resigned to run for president on theARENA ticket.adenouncing corruptpoliticians and U.S.•"human rights"

on July 15\a UNTS march was fired on,this time by the Treasury Police.

Meanwhile, the Salvadoran HumanRights Commission has denounced aresurgence Ofdeath squad activities withthe murders of 14 persons and the dis­appearance ofhundreds more in the firstfive months of this year. On May 28, theoffices of the COMADRES (the Com­mittee of Mothers and Relatives ofPolitical Prisoners, Disappeared andAssassinated) were bombed. hi mid-

'June, the feared Maximiliano Her­nandez Martinez Brigade resurfaced,publishing a death list of 14 NationalUniversity students. Of the 65,000 killedsince 1979, more than 40',000 have been'murdered by death squads. And nowthese psychopathic. killers are spread­ing their terror to the U.S. with kidnap­pings, torture, rape and death threats

they did in 1980.On June 3, security viceminister Colonel Reynaldo Lopez Nui­la, reputedly a death squad leader,warned that the almost daily labordemonstrations had reached "the limitsof tolerability," and that "the armedforces have decided to act' with fullcapacity and drastically" (El SalvadorProceso ; 10June). Already on May 31, aleader of the ANDES teachers union,Julio Cesar Portillo, was shot' in theback at a workers' demonstration out­side Mariona Prison. Duarte himselfhas refused to meet with leaders of theUN:rS labor federation, denouncing itas a front of the FMLN guerrillas. And

Cornite EI Salvador

May Day 1987-Thousands of Salvadoran workers protest U.S.-imposedausterity and war; demanding Duarte must go.

state employees agreed to take jointaction demanding a $60 per monthraise, expulsion of the CIA labor frontAIFLD, union recognition and an endto anti-union repression. Leading theclass battles of the last two months is thestrike of 7,000 employees of the Salva­doran Social Security Institute. Thegovernment responded to the strike callby firing 103 union activists and send­ing in the military. On July 8,200 strik­ers tried to reoccupy the administrativeoffices. They were met with bullets ofthe National Police. Fifteen strikersand two TV reporters suffered bulletwounds; 50 received minor injuries. Thenext day, 100,000 workers struck insolidarity.

These shootings are part of a rightistoffensive threatening to .drown theworkers' struggles in rivers of blood, as

MEXICO CITY, July 18-Frustratedat its inability to crush leftist rebels afterseven years of civil war, ultraright­ist Salvadoran capitalist/landlord/mil­itary reaction is lashing out against acombative working class fighting for itssurvival. Twice in the last ten days,police have opened fire directly ondemonstrations of striking workers inthe capital. Miraculously, no one waskilled although more than two dozenwere wounded. Simultaneously, thedeath squads have raised their headsand are once again publishing their hitlists in San Salvador newspapers. Andthe isolated U.S. puppet regime of JoseNapoleon Duarte, besieged from leftand right, sinks further into corruption,ineffectiveness and violent internalfeuding. The stage is set for a bloodyshowdown. "

For, both Democrats and Republi­cans, El Salvador was the "successstory" of U.S. policy in Central Ameri­ca. The American-engineered! 984election of Christian Democrat Duartewas supposed to have "stabilized" thesituation in El Salvador while Washing­ton focused its anti-Soviet war drive onoverthrowing Sandinista Nicaragua.

• Three years later, the Sandinista Armyhas creamed the cutthroat Nicaraguancontras despite their $100 million [rpmCongress. And in tiny El Salvador,where the U.S. has poured in $2 milliona day in aid as well as an estimated 300military "advisers" (six of whom justdied in a helicopter crash), the govern­ment army still hasn't won a single bat­tle against the leftist guerrillas of theFarabundo Marti National LiberationFront (FMLN).

Life for the Salvadoran proletariatbecomes daily more impossible. Unem­ployment in the cities is a staggering 50percent, and real wages have fallenprecipitously since 1980. Last fall'searthquake in San Salvador, whichcaused an estimated $2 billion worth ofdamage, compounded the problems ofan already destitute economy. Threehundred thousand were left homeless,added to half a million internal refugeeswho had fled the army's indiscriminatebombing and 'murderous sweeps in thecountryside. And now the country isbracing for the return of tens of thou­sands of Salvadorans from the U.S: dueto the racist Simpson-Rodino immigra­tion law. As Duarte tried to raise taxesand slash subsidies to pay for the war,the union movement had no choice butto fight for its life.

In May alone there were 28 strikesand 20 workers' demonstrations. InJune, 13 unions representing 55,000

24 JULY 1987

•5

~n!1~erialists'Hands Off the South Pacific!

Fiji Coup M.ade in U.S.A.?

James Pozarik TrippettiSipa

Reagan's puppet? One month before Col. Rabuka's coup, U.S. ge~eral

Vernon Walters (right) turned up in Fiji.

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices

-MARXIST LlTERATURE­

Bay AreaFri.:5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (415) 839-0851

ChicagoTues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00 a.m.·2:oo p.m.161 W Harrison St., 10th Floor

, Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715

New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.rn.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone; (212) 267·1025

spread of "Kiwi disease"-referring toNew Zealand's ban on U:'S. nuclearships-through the island micro-stateswhich cover vast stretches of oceanwhere U.S. warships prowl. Bavadra'spleas that they would not allow theSoviets to open an embassy cut noice with the crazed warmongers inWashington and Canberra, for whomany' dereliction of Cold War duty is"anti-Western."

The Pacific, an American lake sinceWorld War II and ringed by U.S. mili­tary bases and alliances, has seen amassive anti-Soviet war buildup in re­cent years. Amajor nuclear flash pointis in the North Pacific around Koreaand Japan, key to the U.S. Navy's"forward strategy" to bottle up anddestroy the Soviet Pacific fleet in itsbases. Another Cold War hot spot is •Vietnam, whose victory over U.S.imperialism (and its allied troops fromAustralia, New Zealand and SouthKorea) over a decade ago resulted inSoviet access to bases at Cam Ranh Bayand Da Nang. We defend the historicgains of the Russian and Vietnameserevolutions and welcome the Sovietnaval presence in the Pacific, crucial tostaying the hand of the imperialist mad­men. Meanwhile, the huge U.S. bases inthe Philippines' rest on the unstableground of the crisis-racked Aquinoregime.

The small South Pacific islands havenot figured prominently in Americangeostrategic war plans except perhaps asweapons testing grounds-e.g., theH-bomb tests at Bikini and Enewetakatolls in the '50s in which the native pop­ulations were forcibly removed and-suf­fered supposedly "accidental" radia­tion contamination which became thesubject of war "studies," There are alsosome key American bases, such asKwajalein in the Marshall Islands. TheU.S. has been offering "free associa­tion" to the Palau islands in exchangefor its agreement to be a backup for U.S.bases if the Philippines are "lost." How­ever, this would require a reversal of thePalau constitutional ban on everything'nuclear, and four votes have so far failedto achieve the required 75 percentmajority. •

Even after independence movementsbegan in the '60s and '70s, South Pacificisland governments were consideredfirmly "pro-Western." But in the '80ssecond-generation leaders have charteda more independent course which hascaused the White House to see redsunder the beds. In 1985the small atoll ofKiribati signed a fishing agreement withthe USSR which brought in much­needed cash. Last year a broader agree­ment between the USSR and Vanuatu

continued on page 8

.' .."Hawaii ..

" Tuvalu'; Islands

'::' Kiribati Islands"

PacificOcean

:. Vanuatu.',Islands

-.. " ..\ FijiIslands

New ""­zealand."

'\New

Caledonia

ruin. Fiji is poised on 'the brink ofbloody repression and possibly descentinto a communal civil war. .

A year ago, U.S. Commander inChief Pacific Admiral Hays worried"about the growth of the Fiji LabourParty" (Manchester Guardian Weekly,24 May) and when Bavadra took officeyou can bet the CIA was not lazingabout on the sand at Waikiki. In addi­tion to General Walters' visit, five CIAmen were reportedly seen meeting with

.Lt. Col. Rabuka at Fiji's airport, andone was seen in parliament during thecoup. This was undoubtedly a jointoperation with Australian intelligence,for in U.S. eyes Fiji is an Australianprotectorate. The Wall Street Journal(18 May) editorialised: "Australia andNew Zealand, assuming they wouldprefer not to be surrounded by outpostsof the Russian empire, might have toface up to some greater responsibilitiesfor the peace of the region."

Hawke's rabid Cold War campaignagainst Libya in recent months gaveRabuka the green light. Hawkeundoubtedly had advance warning­two Australian warships just happenedto be in Suva on the day of the coup. Therevelation that the strategic U.S. spybase at Pine Gap in Australia collects"comprehensive intelligence about mil-

. itary developments in the South Pacificregion" means it had a role in this pieceof imperialist dirty work also. Fiji itselfis hardly strategic but they fear the

" . ~..... ! Mariana

VI'etna' m l l~hiliPPines i Islands Enewetak

• At!>" • Bikini Atoll~ Guam

Borneo 3 .•,Palau ~ .:' ':'.~ Marshallrv Kwajalein Atoll ,. Islands

~ • :' " Papua

~ '" ~ G~r~aJ,~~; -~."

"

'-, WV Map

U.S. nuclear fleet wants to keep South Pacific an"American lake"-oustedBavadra government closed ports to U.S. warships,

also with significant Fijian support),Washington and Canberra were antago­nised by its pledge to again close Fiji'sports to U.S. nuclear warships. Rabuka,

. who went golfing with Mara before thecoup, made clear his motives:

"First of all the way the Foreign policywas being taken, I believe it was head­ing towards pushing Fiji away from tra­ditional allies ... the Foreign Minister inthe Government I have just ousted (MrKrishna Datt) is a known, frequent vis­itor to the Soviet Union, as is theFinance Minister. The other one is thathis Cabinet is dominated by the Indianrace and the Fijians feel their land rightsbeing taken away." .

-r-Sydney Morning Herald,18 May

Rabuka emerged as the instrument ofMara and the Fijian "Great Council ofChiefs," established by the British to"cede" Fiji to the Crown in 1874. Andthisvery British coup found its "consti­tutional" fig leaf in the Queen's repre­sentative, the governor-general, whoemerged at the head of an "interim"regime in a deal dictated under the gunsof seven Australian and two New Zea­land warships off the capital Suva. Theregime has imposed press censorship,suppressed trade unions and impris­oned a number of opponents includingunion leaders. However multiracialprotests continue especially in the west,where the sugar cane harvest has beenheld up by strikes by the mainly Indiangrowers and mill workers. Many Indi­ans want to leave and the economy faces

Cold War CoupThe Fiji coup serves Washington's

anti-Soviet Cold War, and the interestsof its Australian imperialist junior part­ners. Since independence in 1970, Fijihad been a "model Pacific democracy"and regional Cold War pivot, ruled byRatu (chief) Sir Kamisese Mara'sFijian-dominated Alliance Party. The2,500-strong Fijian army is trained byAustralia, New Zealand, Britain andmore recently the U.S., with over half ofit manning imperialist "peacekeeping"forces in the Sinai and south Lebanon.Mara "befriended the Reagan adminis­tration by reversing Fiji's ban on visits1}y U.S. nuclear ships," noted the WallStreet Journal (26 May). But in April,Bavadra's coalition of the new tradeunion-based Labour Party and theIndian-based National Federation Par-

'ty won the election and formed Fijirsfirst mainly Indian government (though

Adapted from Australasian Sparta­cist No. 121, July-August 1987, news­paper of the Spartacist League of Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

On the morning of May 14, anopposition M P in the Fijian parliamentwas expounding on how the "peace andharmony" of this small South Pacificstate contradicted Mao Tse-tung's dic­tum that political power comes out ofthe barrel of a gun. Moments later asquad of soldiers led by Lt. Col. SitiveniRabuka burst in and arrested themonth-old coalition government of Dr.Timoci Bavadra at gunpoint. The coupshattered Fiji's image as a remote SouthSea paradise and spotlighted it as apowder keg of communal-racial divi­sion, the legacy of British colonialdivide-and-rule policies, It also under­lines the increasing impact of the globalanti-Soviet' war drive on the SouthPacific island micro-states. Their chiefoverlord Australia, under the Cold WarLabor regime of Bob Hawke, polices theregion as Reagan's "deputy sheriff," inthe words of the Soviets.

The imperialist media like the NewYork Times (20 May) have tried to paintthe coup as simply a parochial "ethnic

, , power struggle" (the Fijian populationof 700,000 is divided between the 46 per­cent indigenous Melanesians and 49percent Indian descendants of importedplantation labourers). But more andmore evidence is surfacing implicatingthe CIA. One month before the coup,U.S. general and top-level White Houseagent Vernon Walters (former deputydirector of the CIA, now ambassador tothe UN) visited Fiji. In Washington thismonth, ousted Fijian prime ministerBavadra suggested that Walters' visit,provided the opportunity to arrange thecoup with opposition leaders. He addeda bombshell:

"The deposed leader and his personaladviser. Dr James Anthony, said theyhad evidence- from Fijian intelligencesources that figures from the Iran­contra network. such as retired gen­eral: John Singlaub, may have beeninvolved in the coup."It was noted that General Singlaub,the chairman of the World Anti­Communist League and fund-raiser forthe Nicaraguan contra rebels, was inFiji before, during and after the coup."

-·London Guardian': t-7 June

Bavadra is now lobbying for a Con-,gressional investigation into CIA in-,volvement in the coup. Given theDemocratic-controlled Congress' politefriendliness with Singlaub <luring thelatter's appearance at the Iran/Contra­gate hearings, such an appeal is worsethan worthless.

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

--....... Uproar Over West German Censos--------

Der Spiegel Photos

May Day, 1987: Berlin's Kreuzberg district in flames (left). Police broke into local headquarters of boycott· movement, confiscated literature and provokedstreet battles. Boycotters burn census forms in protest action (right). '

,

Fourth Reich Counts Headsunusable for computer analysis."

Why all the uproar over a census? Inthe U.S. it is largely (except for undocu­mented immigrants) a routine collec­tion of statistical data every ten years.But the West German state already hassuph information. and much more. Eve­ryone must register with the local policeeach time they move; the national taxdepartment keeps records on your workhistory and every citizen is required tocarry an identification card. Now everyWest German citizen is obliged (un­der penalty of fines of up to 10.000

. D-marks) to fill in detailed questionsabout education. religion. nationalityand means of livelihood. Many ques­tions in the census like those regardingreligious belief are justly and deeplyresented by wide sections of the popula- •tion. These questions reflect the absence'in Germany of a mass bourgeoisrevolution establishing such fundamen-tal rights as the separation of church andstate. Even today West Germany im­poses religious instruction and a churchtax for Protestants and Catholics.

As for the promised "confidentiality."this week a scandal broke out when itwas discovered that. with the secretapproval of federal interior ministerZimmermann, records on AIDS vic­tims have been entered in the police'computer network. It is widely believedthat the government intends for thecensus to provide crucial linkage in anationwide computerized data bank onall West German residents-that wouldinclude everything from traffic viola­tions to the voluminous files of thepolitical police. This is why the censushas alarmed civil libertarians and isinstinctively identified by a large seg­ment of the population with a draconianpolice state.

Comrade Kamp reports on theKreuzberg May Day riots. Certainly theimmigrant workers and squatters ofthisrun-down district feel threatened. A re­surgent fascist movement in West Ger­many has whipped up anti-foreignerhysteria and fascist "counters" armedwith lists are a deadly menace.The cen­sus also will uncover "iIIegals"-immi­grant workers who made it into WestGermany against all odds fleeing pov­erty and unemployment, or political ref­ugees hiding out to escape persecutionin their home countries. Also in dangerare .immigrant workers who defied theinhuman alien laws and illegallybrought in their wives or refused to sendaway their children over 18years of age.The West German workers movementmust come to the defense,of its foreign-

~continued on page 9

WV replies: It's hardly surprising that inWest Germany, when people are asked'to'fill in a census form asking "Are youJewish?" many think of gas chambers.(To provide data on hundreds of thou­sands of "guest workers" from the NearEast, a prime target of state repressiontoday, they added: "Are you of theIslamic faith?") Indeed, the data from

the 1939 census was used to round upJews, block by block. house by house. tosend them to their-death. And they hadthe same "guarantees" of "anonymity"which the Federal Republic authoritiesmake today. West Germany is in fact thesuccessor state of Hitler's Third Reich.and formally proclaims this by insistingthat it represents "Germany within the'boundaries of 1937."To "restore" thoseboundaries would require war. and thecensus is part. of a broader tightening ofcontrol and surveillance by the Germanimperialist state in the context of theanti-Soviet war drive..

The West German government hasmade the issue of the census into a "testof power" and of the authority of the

·state. In the legend of William Tell. the,, despot Gessler placed his hat atop a poleand required the citizenry to bow beforeit as a sign of submission. Tell refused.ultimately leading a popular rebellionfor Swiss freedom against Austriantyranny. Today there are quite a fewGermans who are defying the authori­ties. While the "active boycotters" so farnumber only 800.000, many more haverefused to fill in the census forms prop­erly. Der Spiegel (6 July) estimated thatin Hamburg alone about 12 percent ofall households refused to accept theforms. and according to preliminaryreports "one out of four forms is

Comradely,Ronald Kamp

, Darchinger/IHJGovernment poster campaigns for census: "Little effort-great benefit." "Butfor whom?" opponents' graffiti inquires.

only used for the war plans of the ThirdReich, but also provided the data for theinventory and murder of the Jewishpopulation. Today's census includes aquestion on "membership in a Jewishreligious community"!

With the background of growing ra­cism, the question referring to nation­ality becomes important. Given thepossibility of checking against existingfiles, and subsequent deportations, thisquestion can become deadly for ref­ugees with unclear legal status. But thereis a still more direct danger: in Hamburgthe fascist HLA ("Stop Foreigners")slate announced that a large number oftheir members have enlisted as census"counters." They expressly state thatthey are aiming at foreigners living"illegally" in Hamburg. So the fas­cists will be armed with address lists,paid by the state, to mark down theirvictims.

Calling for a boycott of the census isapetty-bourgeois strategy not capable ofstopping the census. The boycott mayaffect the statistical use of the census,but not its use for' repression. On theother hand, answering the census hasbecome something like saluting aGessler hat put up by the government.

semi-anonymous fashion. The censusdata would make re-identificationtrivially easy. Given that public dis­cussion of concentration camps forAIDS victims is common, this isanother ominous aspect.

In fact, censuses have a special tradi­tion in this country: 48 years ago, in1939. there was a census which was not

West Germany today: pitched battlesin the streets. police raids on leftistoffices, books seized. leaflets confis­cated. members of parliament finedthousands of deutschmarks-and allover a census. A comrade writes usfrom Hamburg:

Hamburg9 May 1987

Dear comrades,

The census has become quite a bigissue in West Germany, especiallyamongst rad-Iib and leftist layers whichhave (again) started a boycott move­ment. There are three aspects to the cen­sus: a wave of persecution against theopponents of the census; the importanceof the census for war preparations andthe state machinery of suppression; anddirect dangers, e.g., for foreigners. An

'especially ominous development oc­curred in Hamburg, where fascists areenlisting as "counters."

A wave of repression has come downon organizations and individuals whocall for boycotting the census, since eventhis call constitutes an infraction of reg­ulations. Hundreds of bookstores havebeen searched, especially in southernGermany. Virtua-lly every book againstthe census has been confiscated-amassive test run of the recently rein­forced law on political censorship. Boy­cott groups have not been allowed tomeet in public places, their information'stands are being cleared. On May Day,after the police raided the left-wing"autonomous" center Mehringhof inWest Berlin. a cop riot was started in.Kreuzberg. This led to a whole night ofdemonstrations, arrests and fires in thatneighborhood, which is overwhelm­ingly inhabited by immigrant workers.poor people and students who feel theyare being targeted by this newest gov­ernment scheme: "Green" party mem­bers of parliament were fined DM200,000for unfurling a protest banner infront of the Bundestag (parliament) onFebruary 18, calling for "Boycott thecensus." And the phones ofIawyers call­ing for a boycott have been cut.

The census is not only a trigger, butpart and parcel of the state machinery ofsuppression. It comes together with theintroduction of computer readable IDcards, the intensification of the "securi­ty" laws, the all-inclusive use of any filethe police can get their hands on. Therewill be special files for those who boy­cott the census which will be trans­ferred to the state security police, Sometime ago biochemical labs were orderedto report positive AIDS test results tothe federal ministry of health, in some

24 JULY 1987 7

Legacy ofBritish colonialdivide and rule:

anti-Indianprotest byindigenous

Fijians (left);.Indians (right)protest military .

coup.

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

together with descendants of immi­grants from Vietnam, Java and FrenchPolynesia (who work the nickel mines),comprise an anti-independence major-­ity over the Kanaks, the pre-colonialMelanesian population. The Chiracgovernment has announced a. new"referendum" on "independence" de­signed to affirm the colonial ties. Marx­ists denounce Chirac's "referendum"fraud and call for a boycott. We demandimmediate independence and the with­drawal of all French troops, policeforces and colonial apparatus, not con­ditional on any colonial election.

The Kanak independence front (theFLNKS) has called for a boycott, butdemands a referendum under the tute­lage of imperialism, in which the fran­chise would be restricted to second­generation (or earlier) Caledonians.This position reflects the FLNKS' pro­gram for "Kanak independence," a pro­gram which is not only a negation ofdemocratic principles for all the otherethnic groups, but isalso suicidal for theKanak people. This is an island .popu­lated by a mosaic of peoples and ethnicgroups. All these people have the rightto live and exercise their rights in anindependent island. The horrible crimesof French imperialism cannot justify a(futile and reactionary) attempt to denythe existence of other minorities anddecide arbitrarily which are more equalthan others. Moreover, every attempt toexclude any of them can only lead to amilitary solution where the Kanaks willbe decisively beaten, if not extermi­nated, and is an invitation to an inter­vention by the French or by Australia,which longs to become the new masterof New Caledonia. The expulsion ordeparture of the more educatedeconomically active layers would be aneconomic disaster disrupting links withthe world economy.

Within the confines of these tinySouth Pacific islands, where one canhardly speak of full-fledged nationsgiven the small size of the populationsand the primitiveness of the politicaleconomies, it is absurd to project an iso­lated "liberation struggle." A future ofplenty and equality for the island peo­ples can be envisaged only in close con­nection with the proletarian struggles inAustralia/New Zealand and especiallyJapan, the powerhouse of Asia.

But ANZ-style Laborism is built on"yellow peril" racism with its sordid his­tory of anti-Asian xenophobia andoppression of Aborigines and Maoris.With many immigrant workers fromthe islands .now living in Sydneyand Auckland, the opportunity is therefor common proletarian struggle-bycracking the white-chauvinist unity ofimperialist Australia and releasing theworking class from the shackles ofLaborism, The key lies in building a rev­olutionary Trotskyist party which fightsfor a racially integrated workers repub­lic of Australia in a socialist Asia, •

oppose Hawke's war moves, meeting areceptive ear from union militants, whoare facing the government's threats toclose the isjand. The "left" union lead­ership on the island 'killed this off,revealing that the navy was "exempted"from the ACTU bans, clear proof oftheir pro-imperialist nature.

Fijian "Democracy"­Imperialist DiVide and Rule

Australia's island neocolonies areeconomic slums hopelessly dependenton aid, getting poorer every year as theirpopulation grows, their tiny industriescrippled by Australian protectionism,and the immigration escape route frompoverty increasingly closed off by racistbarriers. Larger and more viable thanmost, Fiji's economy is .80 percentAustralian-owned. Colonial Sugar Re­fining (CSR) was Fiji's version of theUnited Fruit Company in CentralAmerica, monopolising the sugar indus-'try for nearly a century. The lndian .sugar workers were originally importedas indentured labour for its planta­tions, slaves in all but law. After reapingdecades of superprofits, CS R was gener­ously bought out in 1973 by the govern­ment-c-vindependence" meaning littlemore than handing over running theplantation to local intermediaries.

The simple-minded Australian "left"has tried to deny any communalist fac­tor in the coup, but the factis that theformer British imperialist masters of theisland left behind a knotty ethnic prob­lem in Fiji as they did practically every­where they went (Ireland, India,Cyprus). Thus the much-ballyhooed"democratic" constitution was in factthoroughly anti-democratic, des.ignedby the British to perpetuate the politicalsupremacy of their agents, the Fijianchiefs. Fijians were guaranteed owner­ship of most land (with the chiefs takingthe lion's share of the mostly Indian ten­ants' rents), overwhelmingly dominatedthe army and ran the government, leav­ing commerce, industry and the profes­sions to the Indians. Bavadra's LabourParty, under the tutelage of the Austra­lian and New Zealand Laborites, triedto bridge the racial divide with a mildlyreformist program. But it was not hard

. for the agents of imperialism to whip upa demagogic anti-Indian racist cam­paign as a backdrop for the coup.

In addition to Australia and the U.S.,France is active in the region-witnessits 1985 bombing of the Rainbow War­rior peace ship in New Zealand, to pre­vent' it from sailing to the site of aFrench nuclear test. In New Caledonia,imperialism has bequeathed another in-

. tractable communal conflict whichcould outlive direct colonial rule. Thegenerally privileged Caldoche (between35 and 40 percent of the population,largely descendants of French settlers,French exiles, including from the ParisCommune, and other "Europeans"),

0$2/4 issues ofWomen and Revolution

0$2/10 introductory issues ofWorkers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)

through political strikes demanding:"Hawke: Bloody hands off Fiji! Aus­tralian navy get out of Fijian waters!" .

In New Zealand, Prime MinisterLange was initially more aggressive thanHawke, proposing to fly Fijian troopsback from the Near East to put down thecoup. Lange must know he's skating onthin ice by posturing as an "anti-nuke"leader while trying to remain loyal to theanti-Soviet alliance-the U.S. wantsallies who don't talk back. Lange has oflate been anxious to prove that evenwithout nuclear ships he can still be agood Cold War soldier, expelling Rus­sian diplomats and pursuing illusoryRussian submarines round the CookIslands. But the U.S. has been steppingup the pressure. .

The Fijian coup drew a hard line onthe Australian left: while the SpartacistLeague/ ANZ denounced the machina­tions of Australian imperialism, thesocial-democrats and Stalinists urgedHawke to act. more aggressively indefence of its little sphere of influence.With a bit more left cover and a trade­unionist twist, this was also the line ofthe Socialist Labour League (SLL),one-time followers of British fake­Trotskyist bandit Gerry Healy and nowof his American ex-lieutenant DavidNorth. While denouncing Australianmilitary intervention the SLL backedthe Australian Council of Trade Unions(ACTU) blockade of all trade to Fiji.This was the labour fakers' Accord withHawke in foreign policy, designed toback his grandstanding as a knight ofdemocracy ana called off at his bidding.

Revolutionaries oppose the ACTU'spro-government blockade, and fight for.effective class solidarity action directedagainst the Australian ruling class andits military. A concrete opportunitycame at Cockatoo Island dockyard inSydney, when orders came down to rushthrough repair work on a naval ship togo to Fiji. Militant iron worker andSpartacist supporter Neil Florrimellagitated for class-struggle action to

433 .

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Cold War Libya ScareThis is no idle speculation. Australia's

Labor prime minister Gough Whitlamwas ousted in 1975 at the behest of theCIA by the Queen's representative, sim­ply for asking too many questions aboutthe U,S. spy base at Pine Gap, The U.S.needs a junior partner to take care of itsSouth Pacific rear and Hawke's Aus­tralia is ever willing. Hawke has raisedthe spectre. of Libyan penetration of theregion, supposedly as a surrogate for theSoviet Union. So Hawke has issuedbarely veiled threats to give Vanuatu theGrenada/Fiji treatment because of itsLibyan contacts. As usual, Hawke wasdancing to the Reaganites' tune: whenthe 18 May Wall Street Journal said itwas time to expel the Libyan People'sBureau in Canberra, it was ordered outwithin 24 hours!

Hawke's "condemnation" of theFijian coup was mainly a "democratic"imperialist posture for domestic con­sumption, behind which he. movedrapidly to legitimise this Cold War faitaccompli. It was telling thatat the re­cent South Pacific Forum meeting­Australia's ministry of colonies at­tended by the island. government lead­ers-s-Bavadra's ministers were barred atthe door. The duty of the Australianworking class is to fight Australianimperialism, exploiter and oppressorof Fiji's oppressed masses, including

Fiji..••(continuedfrom page 6)

gave the Russians access rights forSoviet boats and landing rights for theSoviet airline Aeroflot, The pro-NATOJane's Defence Weekly (23 May) recent­ly noted that the target of ANZUS­sponsored "exercises" a few years agowas a mythical "enemy" country whichwas "sited just about where, in reality,Vanuatu sits astride some of Australia'smest sensitive lines of econpmic andpolitical communication."

~ ....._----------------_..8 WORKERS VANGUARD,

Contragate in the South Pacific

AFL-CIOAustralian prime minister' Hawke (left), Reagan's man in the South Pacific,with Lane Kirkland, CIA's labor stooge.

u.S.Murder Inc. in Palau

"AFL-CIA" at WorkThe same gang who brought you the

Grenada invasion have been up to their, dirty tricks in. Fiji. In fact, some of theContragaters who hit the beaches of thisSouth Pacific isle during the recent mil­itary coup flew in direct from Congres­sional hearings in Washington.

Speaking at a June 16 press confer­ence in the U.S. capital, deposed Fijianprime minister Bavadra revealed thatReagan emissary General Vernon WaI­ters (a former CIA deputy director)and World Anti-Communist League(WACL) leader General John Singlaubwere both in Fiji at the time ofthe coup,attending a meeting of the so-calledPacific Democratic Union chaired byformer pro-U .S. prime minister Ratu·Mara. Also present were the Institutefor International Affairs, affiliated withContragater Carl Channell's NationalEndowment for the Preservation of Lib­erty; the CIA-conduit National En­dowment for Democracy. (NED); andthe Asian-American Free Labor Insti­tute (AAFLI). The AAFLI likewiseattended a meeting between Mara andU.S. admiral Hays in Hawaii shortlyafter Bavadra's election.

That this "Free Labor" Institutefindsitself in company with "the Company" isno accident. The AAFLI is a CIA front,the Asian/ Pacific counterpart of theAmerican Institute for Free LaborDevelopment (AIFLD), notorious forits anti-labor activities in Latin Ameri­ca. From helping topple the leftist Jagangovernment in Guyana in the early1960s to its role in the bloody Chileancoup of 1973 to its recent counterinsur­gency "land reform" program in EI Sal­vador, the AIFLD has earned the name

. On July 2, ABC-TV's "20/20" newsprogram revealed an elaborate schemeof American murder and mayhemaimed at turning the tiny Micronesianisland republic of Palau into a floatingnuclear aircraft carrier akin to thestrategic Guam air base several hun­dred miles to the north. For years, theu.s. has unsuccessfully tried to bam­boozle the 14,000 Palauans into -repu­diating their constitution prohibitingnuclear weapons in the islands. Hun­dreds of thousands were spent on "vot­er education" and one billion dollars in"aid" was promised. When voters didn'tbuy it, Washington engineered a finan­cial swindle to bankrupt Palau, impos-

WestGermany...(continued/rom p(lge 7)

born class brothers, organizing union­based defense guards against fascistattacks, mobilizing against reactionaryanti-foreigner laws and demanding fullcitizenship rights for all immigrantworkers.

But the anti-census protest by the ex­New Left milieu is marked above all bypetty-bourgeois hysteria. Virtually theentire West German left has been con­sumed in the boycott, but they studi­ously ignore the plight of the immigrantworkers and the political refugees.There were no protests from thenationalism-intoxicated left against ameasure making it harder for foreign-

24 JULY 1987

"AFL-CIA" for its parent organiza­tion. And wherever there is a pro­American military coup or dictatorshipin the Pacific basin, you will find theAAFLI. Since its formation by the ColdWar AFL-CIO labor bureaucracy in1968, the AAFLI has been deployed in18 countries.

It is active in open-shop SouthKorea-e-which boasts a 54-hour work­week, the longest in the world, andwages under 50 cents an hour-i-bolster­ing the Federation of Korean TradeUnions, sponsored by the military dic-'

tatorship to suppress any independentworking-Class organization. We notedlast month that there was little directparticipation by the industrial proletar­iat in the mass protests rocking SouthKorea. The AAFLI 'wants to keep itthat way. The lavishly paid, KCIA­connected "union" bureaucrats at theDaewoo Motor Company, braggedAAFLI's country director George Cur­tin. are "the kind ofguys we like to workwith;" When garment workers in Seoulwere arrested and beaten 'while occupy-

ing a $30 million white elephant powerplant while pulling out three generatorsleft over from _the post-WWII U.S.occupation. ABC's Tom Jarriel report­ed that Palauans suspect "the whole ex­pensive project was conceived for onepurpose-i-to force Palau into such a des­perate financial situation that its onlyhope for economic survival was torescind the nuclear-free constitution.". It didn't stop with lies and dirty tricks.The home of an American attorneyworking with Palauan opponents of theU.S. deal was firebombed. And on 30June 1985, just hours before he was toappear on television to blow the lid offthis scandal, Palauan president Haruo

born workers to get legal work papers,nor against the concentration camp-likeconditions in which Tamils and otherpolitical refugees are held. This is hardlyastonishing given the German national­ism of the "peace" movement which issilent about West Germany's expan­sionist threat to Eastern Europe and theSoviet Union. This deep-seated nation­alism is also behind the left's refusal tofight 'rising anti-Semitism in West Ger­many, demonstrated most drastically byits absence from the protest' organizedby Jewish groups against Reagan andKohl's despicable salute of Nazi gravesin Bitburg.

There has been an ominous escalationof state repression in West Germany inrecent months: late last year "anti­

_ terrorist" laws were "toughened" with a"muzzle law" threatening jail sentencesand fines for any publication support-

ing AAFLI offices, a spokesman for the"free labor" institute amnestied thisunion-busting with a racist slur about"different ethnic standards" (Nation, 15February 1986).

AAFLI activity in the Philippines wasdrastically stepped up as social struggleescalated following the assassination ofBenigno Aquino in 1983. There it sup­ported the Trade Union Congress ofthePhilippines, an instrument of the Mar­cos dictatorship. Its primary aim wasto undercut the mushrooming leftistunions of the Kulusang Mayo Uno

(KMU~May First Movement). TheNED, created by Reagan in 1983 tolaunder CIA funds, allocated $3.2million to the Philippine AAFLI oper­-ation through April 1985. This money isused for more than the usual stuff ofpropping up reliable labor toadies andbuying elections. Last year the head ofthe KMU was assassinated, and nowSalvadoran-style death squads areproliferating under the "democratic"rule of conservative landowner CoryAquino. -

Remeliik was assassinated. The U.S.­appointed attorney general of the tiny"trust territory" colony picked up theson and nephew of a principal spokes­man against the American deal (who wasalso a leading contender to replace Re­meliik) and threw them behind bars for25 to 35 years! At press time, an appealscourt ordered them acquitted. Micro­nesians have vivid memories of theslaughter which ravaged their islandsduring WW II and which continued withthe calculated nuclear devastation ofseveral islands after the war. In the faceof Reagan's Murder lnc., in early JulyPalauans once again rejected the Amer­ican diktat. U.S. out of Micronesial B

ing "violent" acts like blocking anentrance; now rail, postal, airline ormaritime workers who take such actionas stopping trains during a strike, as theFrench railwaymen did this winter,could be tried for terrorism! And nowthese terrorist laws are being usedagainst the census boycotters. The headof the Republican Lawyers Guild wasgiven a heavy fine, thousands of leafletshave been seized by the police, boycottoffices were broken into by cops andmail to the Green party and radicalnewspapers like the daily TAZ has beenheld up.

As our comrades of the Trotzkis­tische Liga Deutschlands (TLD) wrotein 1984, when they were the object of avicious government smear campaign byZimmermann:'

"All of us on the state's hit list had bet­ter knowwhat it can mean to be treated

Since last fall, General Singlaub hasbeen in and out of Manila frequently.The cover story is he's hunting for the"Yarnahita treasure"! -Meanwhile hehired 37 mercenaries, veterans of theU.S. Special Forces in Vietnam, whohave been training Filipinos in "uncon­ventional warfare techniques." One ofthe death squads set up with army back­ing is the Alsa Masa vigilante group,linked to CA USA, the political arm ofthe "Unification Church" of Koreanultrarightist Sun Myung Moon, aSinglaub associate in the fascisticWACL. Alsa, Masa Fuhrer Jun Porrasreads CAUSA manifestos over localradio, declaring, "I imitate the style ofHitler," and threatening Communists:"We will exhibit your heads in theplaza ... your head will be cut off ...your brains will be scattered in thestreets" (New York Times, 4 April).

The hidebound- anti-CommunistAFL-CIO bureaucracy has had itshands deep in CIA blood money fordecades, in Asia as well as Europe andLatin America. Before the 1965Djakar­ta coup, ILGWU tops carried out a"training program" for Indonesiantrade unionists who were subsequent­ly involved in massacring hundreds

- of thousands of members of pro­Communist unions. And this anti­Communist terror has spread to theU.S. as well. InJune 1981, two FilipinoAmerican' militants in Seattle Local 37of the ILWU were gunned down in theirunion office two months after embark­ing on a campaign of support for theKMU within the labor movement here.The murder weapon belonged to formerlocal president Tony Baruso, a friendand supporter of Marcos, but the FBIintervened to scuttle any investigation.

The AAFLI, AIFLD and other CIA"labor" fronts are a deadly threat toindependent unions everywhere. TheAFL-CIO labor lieutenants of Ameri­can imperialism police the workersmovement by pushing givebacks athome and burying workers' strugglesin blood abroad. Smash the AAFLI/AIFLD!.

ABC-TVPalauan president Haruo Remeliik,assassinated in 1985.

as a terrorist and 'enemy of the consti­tution' in West Germany. We are com­pelled to undertake this battle not onlyto defend ourselves... but also to pre­serve the existing democratic rights ofthe working-class movement. The rev­olutionary Marxists are the only con­sistent defenders of democratic rights,particularly in a period when the anti-

.Sovietwardriveplaces thedefense ofallgains by the working class, from thetrade unions to the Soviet Union itself.clearly on the agenda."

-Spartakist supplement,12 December 1984

There is an urgent need to forge a Trot­skyist party in West Germany capableof mobilizing the powerful German pro­letariat, with its sizable foreign-borncomponent, for internationalist social­ist revolution. Only this can sweep away

.tht; nightmarish legacy .of the NaziThird Reich and its "free world" succes­sors in the "Fourth Reich" of Germanimperialism.•

9

....

hero and vituperating as a diehardanti-Communist, he took care-to indicteveryone below Reagan. If I go, you go,he said to Meese. Shultz, Weinberger,Poindexter. McFarlane. And the mas-

.termind was CIA chief Casey, now con­veniently in the grave. It got prettysleazy. North offered to shadow boxwith the shadowy Abu Nidal, 'and usedhis l l-year-old daughter as a sympathyshill like Nixon used his dog Checkers.His voice cracking, he accused Con­gress of leaking sensitive informationleading to the deaths of American GIs.(Inouye shot back that the leaks over theLibya attack came from the adminis­tration, and Newsweek revealed thatNorth himself leaked the story of theU.S: skyjacking of the alleged AchilleLauro hijackers.)

North left the politicians breathlesswith his cynicism, bragging about shred­ding documents while Justice Depart­ment officials sat ten feet away. Aboveall he flagellated the Democratic­controlled Congress for its "fickle,vacillating, unpredictable, on-again-off­again policy" toward the contras. Hedenounced not only the Boland Amend­ment but also the Contragate hearingsas a Commie plot:

'The Congress of the United States leftsoldiers in the field unsupported andvulnerable to their Communist enemies.When the executive branch did every­thing possible. within the law. to pre­vent them from being wiped out byMoscow's surrogates. in Havana. inManagua, you then had this investiga­tion to blame the problem on the exec­utive branch."

-New York Times. 10 July

Replace the Purple Heart by an IronCross, and you could just hear the "littlecorporal" Adolf Hitler denouncing theDolchstoss ("stab in the back") andd.emocratic decadence. With the Dem­ocrats' complicity, North turned theCongressional hearings into a court­martial of Congress for being "soft onCommunism." North's popularity rat­ings skyrocketed (though Reagan's didnot) ..

The Congressional "investigation" iswidely seen as a cover-up of a cover-up.In Watergate terminology. they weresupposedly looking for a "smokinggun." This became a "smoking shred­der," and when Poindexter replacedNorth on the stand, a "smoking pipe."Anything would do, to duck the obvi­ous fact·that "Reagan knew." Because,as the Washington Post (12 July)pointed out, "That simple political fact

Truman with General MacArthur,the would-be American Caesar.

Speaker: George Foster, SL Central Committee

----Saturday, July 25, 7:30 p.m.----­First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin (at Geary)

For more information: SAN FRA"NCIS'CO For more 'information:(415) 863-6963 . (415) 839-0851

Dump Reagan, Meese, Rehnquist!

Sparmc~t~;_~_o_ru_m _Break with the Democrats! For a Workers Party!

to be heard." It is this fact which causesthe likes of North and Reagan to dreamof military coups.

Col. North Goes to Washington

He was prepared to be the fall guy,take the spears, protect his boss, saidLt. Col. Oliver North, until he foundout it might mean a few months behindbars. From that point on he was look­ing out for Numero Uno. While flash­ing his medals as a patriotic military

(continued from page 1) .

abolished the year after u.s. troopswere pulled out of Vietnam.' As a result,the low-paid "volunteer" armed forces.especially combat units, were increas­ingly recruited from black- and His­panic ghetto poor. And black Americahates thecontras and their quartermas­ters like North. In a recent poll, even assupport for contra aid shot up duringthe Contragate hearings, blacks op­posed giving a dime to these butchers byfour. to one. In his parting words toNorth, Republican Senator Rudmanremarked that in Vietnam "the people... had enoughof the killing." As forcontra aid, he added, "the people in thiscountry just don't think that's a verygood idea.. .. There comes a point thatthe views of the American people have

BarricadaNicaraguan mothers (left) protest contras' murderous crimes.

ReaganlNorth...

L.A....(continued from page 12)

war on Central America. Neil Lancas­ter, a staff member of CISPES in LosAngeles, pointed to the - Contra-gatehearings, specifically the testimony ofAssistant Secretary of State ElliottAbrams, who read a list of solidarityorganizations. "When he came toCISPES' name. he said it was a front forthe Communist guerrillas in EI Salva­dor," which is"a code way of saying thatit's OK to do anything to them."

According to Varelli, only a fewweeks. after he left the FBI in 1984, hewas visited by two former operatives ofthe, CIA who "asked him to developavenues of support in the United Statesfor the Nicaraguan contras-sesi effortthat his visitors said was being coordi­nated by Lieut. Col. Oliver North"(Nation, 7 March). North sat on theinteragency Crisis Management Com­mittee together with Oliver Revell of theFBI. "Asked if an investigation ofCISPES would be a topic for coordina­tion" by the Committee, reported theGuardian (4 March), Revell replied,"Yeah, but we don't comment onspecific cases."

The FBI has admitted it mounted anationwide search-and-surveillance op­eration against CIS PES, citing Ex­ecutive Order 12333 as a license fordomestic spying in the guise of"counter­intelligence" against supposed "agentsof a foreign power." They tried to labelCIS PES as agents Of the SalvadoranFDRjFMLN rebels. In fact. CISPES isa pressure group. mainly geared to lob­bying Congressional Democrats. whichcalls for a "political solution" to theSalvadoran civil war rather than avictory on the battlefield by the leftistinsurgents. Throwing charges of "corn­munism" against these left-liberals issetting them up for a hit.

Since 1979, tensof thousands of Sal­vadoran workers, peasants, students,leftists and church people have fallenvictim to the death squads of the U.S,­backed junta and bloody. "democrat"Duarte. In this country. the Reaganregime has sought to criminalize po­litical opponents. branding them as"terrorist" outlaws to. be shot first andinterrogated later. Now the deathsquads are stalking L.A. 'The left andlabor movement must come to thedefense of the organizations and indi­viduals under attack. This campaign of.terror is inspired by the Contragate warcriminals. from the top levels of theWhite House to North and his buddiesin the basement. To stop Reagan's rabiddogs of war, the workers and oppressedmust kick out their capitalist masters.•

brought in Jesse Jackson to derail laborstruggle into votes for the Democrats in'88. A host of Democratic presidential'candidates are crawling all over Iowa,including Arizona governor "Scabbit"Babbitt, who sent in the National Guardagainst the Morenci copper miners.From Ja~kson to Babbitt to Minnesotagovernor Rudy Perpich, who sent theNational Guard against P-9, these cap­italist politicians are the sworn enemiesof labor and minorities. It was theDemocrats Jimmy Carter and WalterMondale who used the Taft-Hartleyslave-labor law against the 1978 coalminers strike.

To win, meatpackers must break thestranglehold of the bosses' labortraitors. Instead of "Cram your Spam"boycott rallies, there must be plantoccupations, defended by mass picketlines. The labor movement, especiallythe Teamsters and rail workers, 'mustcome .to the aid of the meatpackers byshutting down the transport of scabproducts. Above all, there must be apolitical break from the bosses' parties,to forge a workers party fighting for aworkers government that will stop thebutchery going on in this country'spackinghouses.•

PackinghouseWorkers~.·.(continued from page 4)

and then they dispose of you." A newbook by James Barrett, Work and Com­munity in the Jungle, Chicago's Pack­inghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (1987),graphically describes the barbaric con­ditions faced by meatpackers 70 yearsago. It could easily be-about plants in 'the Midwest today:

.. , , . one of every two of the [Armour]company's 22,381 workers was injuredor became ill at work during 1917.Armour's Chicago plant averagedtwenty-three accidents' per day. Eachjob had its own dangers: the dampnessand cold of the pickling room and hidecellar: the sharp blade of the beefboner's knife: the noxious dust of thewool department and fertilizer plant:the wild charge of a half-crazed steer onthe killing 1100r."

These are the conditions that led tobitter, hard-fought strikes for threedecades in Packingtown. With themigration of black workers from theSouth during the First World War, thebattle for unionization of the Chicagopackinghouses turned on the racequestion. The 1919 Chicago meatpack­ers strike was smashed when the bossesfueled bloody race riots and broke theunions (see our review of the TV filmThe Killing Floor, "Chicago 1919: Ra­cism and Union-Busting," WVNo. 422,20 February).

The official injury rate in the in­dustry today is over 30 per 100 workersevery year, four times the average for allindustry. And this is only what getsreported by the Occupational Safetyand Health Administration (OSHA),justly known throughout the workingclass as "OSHit." At the-Dakota Cityplant of IBP, a' subsidiary of Ar­mand Hammer's Occidental Petro­leum, UFCW Local 222 uncovered sys­tematic fraud in which the company ,grossly' underreported its slaughter ofmeatpackers so as to avoid in-plantinspections. In a three-month period,.IBP reported 160 injuries in one part ofthe processing department alone, whilea second set of hidden books revealed1,800 injuries (Los Angeles Times, 2March)! IBP places injured workers on

, the "cripple crew," at reduced wages. In1978 a company nurse remarked: "It's aheartless outfit. They do have humaneways of killing cattle"!

Meatpackers from Hormel to IBPhave fought hard class battles againstthe vicious packinghouse bosses. Therehave been five strikes In' 17 years at theDakota City IBP plant where NationalGuard troops have brought inasmoredpersonnel carriers and machine guns.When roving pickets 'from Local P-9 inAustin, Minnesotaset up lines at Hor­mel plants in Ottumwa, Iowa andFremont. Nebraska, their fellow meat­packers shut down those plants. And theMorrell plant in Sioux Falls struck insolidarity with Local 1142 strikers inSioux City, who picketed the plant onMay I.

In every instance the courageouspackinghouse workers have come upagainst the courts. cops and troops ofthe capitalist state. And they are sad­dled with a union "leadership" whichhas openly scabbed on striking UFCWlocals. The UFCW tops, led by strike­breaker president William' Wynn,preach reliance :on useless consumerboycotts and faith in the agencies of thebosses' state. But the opposition to theWynn gang, such as former P-9 pres­ident Jim Guyette, shares the same pro­gram. Guyette dragged the union intothe bosses' courts and appealed to theNLRB when Wynn took over P-9 dur­ing the Hormel strike. And supportedby various pseudo-socialists, Guyettefled from the political fight against theUFCW tops, forming a separate unio~.

The Wynn gang and his '.'militant" ­opponents place their faith in the cap­italist Democratic Party. Both' have

10 WORKERS VANGUARD

republic. All the Reaganauts- wetdreams about getting rid of "Congres­sional restraints""':'-'codified in bureauc­ratese in documents like NSDD 52,prepared for in "readiness exercises"like REX-84-would mean civil war ifthey attempted to carry them-out, Butthe nuclear nuts and contra killers run­ning loose in the White House aredeadly serious.

And key sections of the Americanbourgeoisie are visibly biting taeir nails.ANew York Times (18 July) editorial isheadlined "552 Days of Twilight?" andlaments the disarray at the Helm: "Lameduck is bad enough; paralyzed duckwould be catastrophic .... " And yet theyrefuse to lift a finger to dislodge thisproven liar and incompetent who by thestandards of their own Constitutionshould have been impeached monthsago. Because on the fundamentals, theAmerican bourgeoisie is united. Theyare united around the defense of theimperial presidency. They are unitedaround their resolve to "roll back Com­munism" in Nicaragua and other "So­viet -surrogates." And, fundamentally,they are united around the drive towardnuclear war against the Soviet Union,homeland of the world's first victoriousworkers revolution.

The bourgeoisie's problem with Rea­gan is not that he is a liar, a crook and a .war criminal-that's hardly unique.Every American war since wwn hasbeen a "secret war," and most of themwere initiated under Democratic ad­ministrations.But the Reagan gang, likethe contra killers they deploy against theNicaraguan people, are losers. Indeed,Fawn and Ollie turned on the shredderthe moment American mercenary Eu­gene Hasenfus was shot down and ledaway in handcuffs by a young Sandi­nista soldier. The Reaganites came intopower thinking they could score an easyvictory in Central America on the roadto. Havana and Moscow. But for eightyears the Nicaraguan masses havecourageously defended their revolutionin the face of enormous hardship, pov­erty and terror.

Democratic rights have always beenamong the first victims of imperialistwars for "democracy." As Leon Trot­sky wrote in "War and the Fourth'International" (J une 1934):

"The bourgeoisie of a number ofcivilized countries has already shownand is continuing to show how, in caseof internal danger, it changes withoutmuch ado the parliamentary form of itsrule for an authoritarian, dictatorial,Bonapartist or fascist form. It will makethe change that much faster and moredecisively in time of war when bothinternal and external dangers willthreaten its basic class interests withtenfold force."

In Reagan's America, the bipartisananti-Soviet war drive has meant union­busting, racist terror and an across­the-board assault ondemocratic rights,by the Meese police and the Rehn­quist Supreme Court. But try as theymight, the Reaganites' attempts to over­come the "Vietnam syndrome" andmobilize the American population for"war against Communism" have failedmiserably.

Contra in chief Reagan and his blood­thirsty brothers are losers, but they aredangerous losers. And they are proppedup by the Democrats, their partnerparty of imperialist rule. The warmak­ers and strikebreakers will not fallbecause of scandals, however spectacu­lar: they must be driven from power bythe working class at the head of all theoppressed. From the start of the U.S.war in Central America we have insistedthat anti-imperialism abroad meansclass 'Struggle at home. What's needed tomobilize. the opposition to the crazedwar plans of the declining Americanempire, abroad and at home, is a Trot­skyist party buill in the struggle toreforge the Fourth International. DumpReagan/Meese/Rehnquist! We need aworkers party to fight for a workers gov­ernment and the liberation of mankindfrom the horrors. of. capitalism in itsdeath agony•

SaluteBen Linder!Contra terroristsmurdered youngAmerican,shown hereat work' onhydroelectricproject in ruralNicaragua,

z()»-l

country will ... reassume that spiritualand moral leadership recently lost in aquagmire of political ineptitude andeconomic incompetence."

This government has a program foranti-Soviet nuclear war and domestic

- military takeover. Ed Meese, the "cop'scop" who has a chemically pure fascist

.mentality, gets off on the idea ofa policestate for its own sake; North sees him­selfas the man on the white horse. As forthe buffoon in the White House, GoreVidal observed:

"Thirty years ago I wrote that shouldthe U.S. ever have a dictator, it wouldnot be a spellbinding autocrat likeDouglas MacArthur: rather it would besomeone really nice and folksy likeArthur Godfrey, a popular radio-TVpitdtman of the era."

-Ne,,'swft'k, 13 July

. Tbe tJttitcd State:; is not some .......

. Haynes Johnson observed in the Wash-ington-Post (14 July): . •

"Not since Gen. Douglas MacArthur'sreturn to the United States in 1951 afterhe was fired by President Harry S. Tru­man 'for insubordination during theKorean war has a military officer hadsuch dramatic effect on the nation as Lt.Col. Oliver L. North."

After publicly denouncing the Truman.government for refusing to launch afrontal assault on Mao's China, MacAr­thur circumvented the civilian govern­ment completely, issuing his own ulti­matum to China to either surrertder inKorea or be wiped out. When Trumanfired him, MacArthur returned tolaunch an open campaign against theadministration. Amid talk of impeach­ing Truman, he addressed a joint ses­sion of Congress and toured the coun­try in a scarcely disguised show offorce.The general rode down PennsylvaniaAvenue under an umbrella of air forcejets; in New York there was a seven-hourticker-tape parade. He vowed: "Our

Ed Meese directed Operation CableSplicer; Louis Giuffrida braintrusted it.Today Meese is the nation's top cop,Giuffrida became head of FEMA.According to the story by, AlfonsoChardy in the Miami Herald (5 July),the "scenario" outlined in a 1982 memofor Reagan's plan for military rule"resembled somewhat" a paper Giuffri­da wrote in 1970 "in which he advo­cated martial law in case of a nationaluprising by black militants. The paperalso advocated the roundup and trans­fer to 'assembly centers or relocationcamps' of at least 21 million. 'American'Negroes'''! A 1984 FEMA plan estab­lished ten "military detention camps"for jailing 400,000 Central American"aliens" living in the U.S. as well 'assome 28,000 American citizens. Then­Attorney General William FrenchSmith wrote a letter protesting this planfor an "emergency czar." Shortly there­after, he left office, replaced by Meese.

The "genesis" of the "secret govern-

rnent" structure, reports Chardy, camewith Reagan campaign manager BillCasey's creation in October 1980 ofa so­called October Surprise Group "to mon­itor Jimmy Carter's feverish negotia­tions with Iran for the release of 52American hostages.... One of thegroup's first acts was a meeting with aman claiming to represent Iran who

. offered to release the hostages to Rea­gan." The hostages were released toReagan, the day of his inauguration; sixmonths later, when a plane crashed onthe Soviet-Turkish border, it turned outto be loaded with American-madeweapons in transit from Israel to Iran(Na/ion, 20 June). So, the payoffs to theIranian "terrorists" started a lot earliertban 1985...

Attempts at military bonapartism • renot U8heant of in this country: As

government" and preparations for mar­tiallaw go back to the late'6Os when theReagan mafia ran California. The Vil­lage Voice (21 July) reports (based 011 apiece by Ron Ridenhour published in1975 in the Arizona New Times) thatbetween 1968 and 1972 Reagan "organ­ized a series of 'war games' involvingstate and local police, the CaliforniaNational Guard, and elements of theU.S. Sixth Army. The exercises, code­named Operation Cable Splicer I, II,and Ill, were aimed at training thesegroups for the establishment of martiallaw."Kicking off Cable Splicer II, Rea-gan remarked: ,

"You know. there are people in the statewho, if they could see this gatheringright now and my presence here, woulddecide their worst fears and <:onvic­tions had been realiled~ \\las plan­ning a mititarytakeoVer."

Ashe/ imeNorth cows Contragate committee (right), turns hearing into platform for contra terror.

Reagan's Plan For a "Self-Coup"

But this "colonel's coup" was meantto include the president, not oust him.Among North's Latin military cronies,they call itautogolpe-a "self-coup." Aswe reported last issue, the infrastructurefor a military dictatorship had been setup in the Federal Emergency Manage­ment Agency (FEMA). This "secret

of life-that impeachment of RonaldReagan is virtually unthinkable-posesa fundamental problem for the con­gressional investigation of' the Iran­contra affair." So out the window gofive North· memos to Reagan on thediversion of Iranscam "profits" to thecontras; ditto for a 1986 Poindextermemorandum quoting Reagan's insis­tence "to figure out a way to take actionunilaterally" bypassing Congressionalbans to aid contras; not to mention Rea­gan's own admission that "it was myidea to begin with." So the committeesput on the kid gloves and let North callthe shots. They even let him give his pro­contra fund-raising slide show (withoutslides) !

Oliver North is a veteran of the igno­minious U.S. defeat in Vietnam and ofJimmy Carter's bungled "Desert One"(aimed at retrieving American hostagesfrom the Khomeiniites' Teheran embas­sy seizure). He is a right-wing nut caseand psychopathic loser who cracked upafter a four-year stint in Vietnam,"reportedly found by a superior officertalking incoherently while runningaround naked waving a .45 pistol"(Washingtonian, July 1987). Posted tothe National Security Council, Northearned a reputation as "a man who got'the job done," be it the invasion of blackGrenada, hijacking of a jetliner over theMediterranean or gunrunning to thecontras, Novelist James Michener ob­served that North's statement to thehearing made him sound like "a SouthAmerican colonel about to call for atakeover of the Congress" (WashingtonPost, 10 July). In fact, he is reportedly"very popular within Salvadoran mili­tary circles" where a colonel of his ageand energy should have led a coupalready!

M,JiIlLVt117 tt

W'Il/{IIlI"II'fJ'Il'

Death Squad Kidnappings in L.A.

, Der SpiegelEI Salvador, December 1980: discovery of the bodies of four Amer'icanCatholic church women murdered by Salvadoran death squads.

---Is 'This Next?......'--

LOS ANGELES-Salvadoran deathsquads are stalking the streets of LosAngeles. On the evening of July. 7,Yanira Corea, a Salvadoran woman liv­ing in L.A., was standing outside theoffice of CIS PES (Committee in Soli­darity with the People of EI Salvador)when she was kidnapped at knifepointby two men and shoved into a van. Forthe next five hours she was blindfolded,interrogated and tortured while beingdriven around the city. Her captorsdrove her past the homes of otherCISPES activists, referring to them as"communists," and saying that the ter­ror was just beginning.

Corea "was beaten, burned with cig-, arettes and cut.on the tongue and hands

with 6 knife.... She was sexuallyassaulted repeatedly with a stick duringthe incident" reported the San JoseMercury (14 July). An examining phy­.sician. Dr. Craig Stephens [rom theUniversity of Southern CaliforniaSchool of Medicine, said "the pattern ofher injuries is remarkably similar to thatof other victims of torture from EI Sal­vador and Guatemala whom I have pre­viously examined." Despite the savagetorture, Corea refused to talk.

The death squad terror was just be- .ginning. On the night of July 17,anotherCentral American woman, Ana MariaLopez, was kidnapped at a bus stop inHollywood on her way to a politicalmeeting at the First Unitarian Church,which houses the Guatemalan CulturalCenter where she works. Two armedmen wearing face masks drove her

.around for two hours, interrogating herabout a list of people involved in Cen­tral American solidarity activity. Uni­tarian pastor Phil Zwerling denounced"these cowardly death squads [which]have chosen to attack unarmed women"(Los Angeles Times, 19 July).

The killers have targeted CentralAmerican activists. Yanira Corea said

she had received threatening phone callsand letters over the last few months. Oneletter was sent to her father in 'EI Salva­(for demanding that his daughter stopher political activities in L.A. A monthago, a stranger forced her ear to the sideof the road and threatened her and herthree-year-old son. A passer-by inter-

.vened and the stranger left, taking her 'handbag. A few days later, she received

another threatening letter-and a pic­ture of her son that had been in thepurse.

Over the last two weeks, there havebeen at least a dozen written or phonedthreats to Salvadoran activists aroundLos Angeles.' On July 10, Marta Alicia

.Rivera, a representative of the Salvado­ran teachers union, ANDES;received adeath threat in her mailbox. Written in

Spanish, the letter listed her and 16other people: "For being a traitor to the

- country you will die together with yourcompanions," the letter said. The lastline was hauntingly familiar, Riverasaid: "Flowers do not live in the desert."This was almost identical to the lan­guage of threatening letters she receivedsix or seven years ago in EI Salvador,before she was kidnapped and tortured

by the National Guard.Among those listed was Victor Rios,

CISPES Southwest regional coordina­tor, whose car was also broken into anda threatening note left behind. On JulyII, the house of another CIS PES activ­

-ist was ransacked. Then on July IS, Rev.Luis Olivares receiveda letter with theinitials "E.M." scrawled on it, standingforescuadron de la m~~rte (death

squad). "These are the 'initials put ondoors or buildings of those marked forassassination by the death squads in EISalvador," said Olivares, whose churchhas given sanctuary to Salvadoranrefugees.

California Democratic Congress­man Don Edwards, who has been hold­ing hearings into the scores of break-insat offices of groups ~opposed to V.S.policy in Central America, announcedwhen he heard of the Corea kidnap­ping, "I'll get the FBI in on this tonight.We're going to get to the bottom of this" ~

(Los Angeles Times, II July). He alsocharged that the FBI has not beenfully investigating the break-ins. Smallwonder-when the evidence pointsstraight to the government! YetCIS PEScalls for an "independent investigation"by Edwards, a former FBI agent, who inturn calls upon the FBI toinvestigate.

It was at hearings of Edwards' Sub­committee on Civil and ConstitutionalRights last February that ex-FBI oper­ative Frank Varelli spilled his guts aboutan FBI wrecking operation againstCIS PES between 1981 and 1984..Varellitestified that they broke into the' DallasCISPES office, members' phones weretapped and the feds kept "terrorist" fileson almost 700 people, including twoU.S. Senators, a House member and aformer ambassador. Varelli set up theFBI's liaison with the SalvadoranNational Guard. Junketing between EISalvador and the V.S., he swapped hitlists from the police intelligence of bothcountries. When Salvadoran refugeeswere arrested in the U.S., Varelli sup­plied their names to the National Guard,so that they would face death upondeportation!

And now the death squads are turn­ing up here. The terror campaignagainst Central American activists athome goes hand in hand with the V.S.'

continued on page 10

Stop 'Racist Vendetta,Against New York Eight!

12

Three weeks ago the cover was blown on thesinister New York City police "black desk" oper­ation: taping and filming of black activists,undercover agents spying on community meet­ings, monitoring talk shows on black radiostation WUB. The cops' prime targets are theradical black nationalists known as the New YorkEight. When the NYPD distributed photos andrap sheets of the eight to 75, police precincts, wecalled it a "hit list, setting them up for the kill."Already the cops are moving in. On July 16, twomembers of the New York Eight, Robert Taylorand Coltrane Chimurenga, were arrested inupstate New York. The lives of these black activ­ists are in danger. We demand the charges bedropped and this outrageous victimization of theNew York Eight be stopped! .

Taylor and two other men were charged withweapons possession after being stopped foralleged speeding in Monroe, New York. The copsincredibly claim that Taylor's companions,Arthur Barnes Majedd and Abdul Haqq, freed

, themselves from their handcuffs with a key hid­den in Haqq's sock and that Haqq then attackedand injured two cops during fingerprinting. Thethree men are luckyto be alive. Such stories usu­ally "justify" executions "within police guide­lines." That night, Chimurenga was arrested by"suspicious" police four miles away for drivingwithout a license.

Racist mayor Koch's black police commis­sioner Ward, who owns property In the area, saidthernen were "perhaps Jooking for me" (NewYork Post, 18 July). It's the other way around.The NYPD is running a local version ofthe FBI'sCOINTEL program of the '60s to "neutralize"(eliminate) black leaders. In August 1985, a fed­eral jury found the New York Eight not guilty on"terrorist conspiracy" charges after they wererounded up and held in South Africa-style"preventive detention." This racist vendettabackfired in the courts, so now they're setting'

.thern up in the streets. Hands off the New YorkEight!'

New York Magazine

Black radicals on NYPD hit list. Defend the New YorkEight! .

24 JULY 1987