~ Australasian ~

Number 104 Summer 1983/84 30 cents

Down With Reag~lHawke Anti-Soviet War Drive!

The Reaganites' constant talk of German). So the US, and its NATO called the "peacemaker" by Reagan in exactly according to the Reaganites' "protracted nuclear war", "limited allies are concerned about a "hot a touch borrowed from George plans. As more and more facts about nuclear war", any kind of nuclear war autumn" of mass protest against the Orwell's 1984, is the Pentagon's the ill-fated flight come out, fewer and against the "evil empire" ofthe Soviet Euromissiles, whose deployment will premier first-strike weapon. This fact fewer people believe it was an Union has a lot of people worried, indeed' bring the world a large step was openly stated by then Democratic innocent commercial flight which just especially in Washington's West Euro­ closer to nuclear holocaust. president Jimmy Carter, who pro­ happened to stray 300 miles off course pean allies. Over 70 percent of all Then comes the Korean Air Lines moted its development: "With the MX over some of the most militarily sensi­ West Germans now oppose the Flight 007 provocation, so convenient deployed in substantial numbers, in tive areas of the USSR. In other devel­ planned deployment of the Pershing 2 asa means to whip up the level of anti­ addition to the Minuteman, the US opments, the Soviet press reported missiles scheduled for this December, Soviet hysteria and, in both the US and would have acquired the capability to that Richard Nixon canceled a reser­ because they knQw that these West Europe, necessary to push destroy most of the Soviet silo-based vation on the doomed jetliner at the weapons, which are only six to eight through the Pentagon's war plans. ICBM force in a first strike" (quoted last minute "because the CIA 'did not minutes flight time from their targets .. With bipartisan support Congress duly in Robert C Aldridge, First Strike! dare send a former president to his in the USSR, could trigger a holocaust passed Reagan's military budget, [1983]). . death' and alerted him" (Philadelphia in which Central Europe would be the including the MX missile as well as the In the aftermath, however, the KAL Inquirer, 25' September). The West main battlefield (slaughterfield in B-1 bomber and nerve gas. The MX, 007 provocation has not worked out German magazine Quick had reported in its 8 September issue that Nixon had been booked on KAL 007 in seat B-2, in the row next to ultra­ conservative US Congressman Larry McDonald, traveling to an anti­ Communist celebration in Seoul. And He La Lackeys the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle (2 October) reports that The drums for war against the from which even this remote island it "would .have counselled against"). American officials are now crowing Soviet Union are beating in Wash­ continent will not be exempted. Days later, in a panic it changed its that, "Analysis of the KAL incident ington and they are being faithfully Who could doubt this after the "accidental" UN vote for "deeply gives US intelligence what one source echoed by Bob Hawke's Labor govern­ Korean airliner provocation and now deploring" the invasion to an absten­ called 'a bonanza' of new information ment in Canberra. We said this would Grenada? Reagan was so hard up for tion. So Hawke and Hayden don't want about Soviet radar gaps, communi­ be an openly pro-Reagan Cold War international support for his "big win" to deplete White Australia's thin cations capabilities and chains of government, the enemy of workers at over an island a quarter the population defences for a "Commonwealth command". home and abroad, and already we have of Tasmania that he had Hawke security force" on the other side of The Reaganites' wild anti-Soviet been proven massively right. Reagan traced to some sleepy Melbourne the world. But their troops are still in bellicosity in the past few weeks has to heads a degenerate and declining suburban shopping centre for a the US-led. Sinai "peacekeeping" some degree backfired. Three weeks American empire which he wants to fifteen-minute phone call to line him force in the Near East, with Lebanon after the KAL .007 provocation and also restore to its former glory through his up. Even Thatcher and the Queen in turning into a bloody quagmire for after the sight. of US warships bom­ insane anti-Soviet war drive. And the Britain were infuriated - "Marxist" Reagan. Whether they go to Grenada barding Lebanon a New York Times/ Australian ruling class, servile junior Grenada was part of the Common­ just depends on how hard the US CBS poll showed that for the first time partners of the US and also regional wealth. Canberra at first "could wants to push. We say: from Vietnam significantly more Americans disap­ imperialist jackals, have tied them­ understand" US security concerns, to the Near East to the Caribbean, proved of Reagan's conduct of foreign selves to his demented vision. These then eventually screwed up the down with Hawke, he's Reagan's affairs than approved of it. The well-trained lackeys are dragging this courage to issue the most pathetic and man I No Australian "peacekeepers" Reagan gang itself realized that their country "all the way with Reagan" inoffensive criticism of all Reagan's to Grenada I Get them out of Sinail down the road to a nuclear holocaust Western allies (had it been consulted Continued on page nine Continued on page two " -=-~~'''':~'-.

army controls eastern Lebanon, is missiles had two purposes: 1) the ogy in social-democratic colors with Russia ••• the principal Soviet client state in the Pershing 2s are intended to increase the support of the corrupt Stalinist Near East. And the borders of the the imperialists' first-strike capability bureaucracy. " Continued from page one USSR itself are only a few hundred against Russia; and 2) they are part of - "The Ominous Resurgence of miles to the north. The liberal Repub­ German Nationalism," unrestrained warmongering rhetoric the Pentagon's strategy for an anti­ Spartacist (English edition) was getting them into trouble. lican head of the Senate Foreign Soviet war to be fought out in the no 35, Autumn 1983 According to a senior White House Relations Committee, Charles Percy, European "theater". The West But the legitimate fear of nuclear official, there was concern that "we who voted for the War Powers Resolu­ Germans, already frightened by annihilation and national sentiments of were beating the drum too loudly and tion, nonetheless recognized: "I don't American scenarios for "limited" the German masses can be mobilized that it was time for Ronald Reagan, the think any of us know where this is nuclear war on Schlachtfeld Deutsch­ on a communist program. The TLD peacemaker, to consolidate his image" leading. It could lead to direct conflict land were "aghast" last week when calls for the revolutionary reunification (New York Times, 30 September). with Syria or direct conflict with the the US armed forces paper, Stars and of Germany as the motor for a United Soviet Union" (New York Times, Stripes, reported that an American Socialist States of Europe. So speaking before the UN on 24 September). The Marines in army unit was practicing mass burial September 26 Reagan offered a new And the missiles can be stopped, "disarmament" proposal. The US though not by human daisy chains would deploy fewer Pershing 2s than and civil disobedience, popular refer­ now planned if the Russians would enda and similar petty-bourgeois dismantle and destroy some of their pipe-dreams. What is necessary is SS-20 missiles already deployed in the mobilization of the powerful Europe. In other words, Reagan German proletariat against the anti­ demanded, as usual, the unilateral Soviet war drive. While the "peace disarmament of the USSR combined movement" is going through the with a buildup of the NATO nuclear motions with impotent mass demon­ arsenal, which already includes the strations against the Pershing and French and British medium-range cruise missiles scheduled for the end missiles and US submarine-launched ,. of the month, the German Trotskyists missiles in European waters. The demand: "Stop NATO First-Strike Russians naturally rejected out of hand Weapons with Workers' Strikes!" this "peace move", intended to (Spartakist. October 1983). The call for radically alter the nuclear balance of, labor action against the missiles is not forces in favor of US imperialism. .., , a cry in the wilderness, moreover. Thus for the upcoming congress of the Andropov reminded the world in his Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov exposes Reagan's lies In Moscow press confer­ reply to Reagan, "The Soviet state has Metal Workers Union, some 58 ence, September 9. In his speech Marshal Ogarkov stated: "The Soviet resolutions have been proposed on successfully overcome many trials, armed forces, standing guard over the peaceful work of the Soviet people, including crucial ones, during the six the issue of the rockets, including constantly are In high combat readiness. Throughout the history of the several advocating work stoppages. and a half decades of its existence", Soviet State they have been discharging their duties with honour. In and he went on to affirm: (The union tops' response is for a future, If need be, they will also perform their combat tasks." 5-minute "warning strike"!) In "The Soviet people can rest assured response the TLD has raised the that our country's defense capability Lebanon are yet another tripwire for procedures. Accompanying photo­ demand for a two-day general strike is being maintained at such a level World War III. . graphs showed bulldozed graves against the deployment of Pershing that it would not be advisable for The acute danger of World War III is similar to those the Nazis used for the and cruise missiles. Linked to recent anyone to stage a trial of strength." not caused, as. American liberal victims of the Holocaust. A television sit-down strikes at shipyards in But the Reagan gang is looking for "freezers" and European anti-missile commentator asked, "Doesn't the Bremen and Hamburg, this could precisely such a trial of strength with protesters believe, by an "insane arms American military realize ... that prepare a really "hot autumn" fQr. the Soviet Union. As one ofthem put it race" of the "two superpowers". The with such macabre practices they are the German bourgeoisie and bring a few weeks ago: "We need a win drive toward nuclear war is the drive suggesting that nuclear war is increas­ down the Kohl government through somewhere, whether it's Latin of capitalist imperialism to destroy the ingly likely?" An Army spokesman strike action. America, the Middle East or with the land of the October Revolution, the replied, not to worry, "mass burials Military preparedness and a deter­ Russians" (New York Times, 18 greatest victory for the world working would, be resorted to only in case of mination to' match the iltlperialists September). The US ruling class wants class in history. Six decades of Stalin­ massive los$ of life" . tb.roJJ&h. developjng-mtvanced ilucleq'- , to restore the short-lived "American ist bureaucratic. degeneration have The fear of being sacrificed' as weapons are crucial to defending the century" of the late 1940s and '50s certainly dimmed the glow of October; pawns in a war between the "super­ revolutionary conquests inherited from when it could and did practice nuclear the USSR today is a far cry from the powers" has, fed into resurgent the Russian October Revolution. blackmail against the Soviet Union. international revolutionary beacon it German nationalism, this time clothed This has been acutely understood by But today the USSR has rough nuclear was under Lenin and Trotsky. But the in "left" colors. Naturally, the Ger­ Soviet leaders ever since the 1962 parity and is not about to allow Reagan historic conquests of the Bolshevik man masses don't want to be annihil­ Cuban missile crisis, though the & Co to attain their declared goal of Revolution still remain - the social­ ated. But behind the nationalism petty-bourgeois pacifists willfully military "superiority." Washington's ized property and planned economy - of the "peace movement" stands the ignore this basic truth. Yet the global search for a trial of strength and these must be defended! It is the revanchist appetites of German counterrevolutionary danger cannot with the Soviet Union leads straight to Soviet nuclear arsenal which up to now imperialism to reconquer East Europe. be eliminated simply through military World War III. Don't Mess With has kept US imperialism at bay, which Thus Rudolf Bahro, former East action. In his Pravda statement, the Russians! kept it from invading Cuba and over­ German Stalinist turned anti-Commu­ Andropov replied to Reagan: "Those US imperialism has gotten itself into throwing Castro, from using nuclear nist Green, actually welcomes Rea­ who encroached on the integrity of our ,a real quagmire in Lebanon. Boy, is weapons in Vietnam. Soviet military gan's unrestrained warmongering state, its independence and our system this one unwinnable. The Marines strength, even in the hands of a because "it can only advance our found themselves on the garbage heap have a mission impossible in trying to nationalistic bureaucratic caste, has aims - to withdraw both parts of of history" (New York, Times. 29 prop up the government of Phalange bought the world proletariat precious Germany and Europe from the two September). This was true of Hitler, gangsters - the mass murderers of time to resolve the question of social­ military blocs and to neutralize but today the USSR faces a resurgent Shatila/Sabra, in collusion with the ism or nuclear annihilation. Europe" (New York Times. 30 Sep­ German imperialism. In fact, the Zionist army - who are hated by tember). This thinly disguised call for leaders of today's Japan and West 90-plus percent of the Lebanese Stop First-Strike Missiles in capitalist counterrevolution in the Gemany, many of whom have direct population. But behind the US military Germany! DDR (East Germany) is really a call ties to th~ previous fascist regimes, intervention on behalf of the Gemayel for a "Fourth Reich" to dominate were installed by Moscow's erstwhile mafiosi in Lebanon is the global The 1979 NATO decision to place a Europe, this time under the rule of "democratic" ally, Washington, as anti-Soviet war drive. Syria, whose new generation of medium-range "democratic" German capitalism. soon as the US had crushed its imperi­ As in two previous world wars, the 50? alist rivals in World War II. fundamental military obstacle will be Continued on page eight Russia. Spartacist Pamphlet German imperialism is no more ~--~------~~ pacific than its American and French allies. It merely has a rather different [SPARTACIST ~ J Contains articles which docu­ strategy than the Reaganite first­ Marxist monthly of the Spartacist League of ment the exposures surrounding strikers for rec()nquering the Soviet Australia and New Zealand. section of the KAL 007 as they emerged international Spartacist tendency. bloc bureaucratically degenerated/ EDITORIAL BOARD: Greg BlYthe. Darlene and analyse from a Marxist deformed workers states. As the revolutionary standpoint the Carlson. Doug Flynn. Andrew Giannakis. Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands Steve Hooper (editor) political I military alms of this (TLD), German section of the inter­ CIRCULATION: Vicki Pearson "Mission Provocation". nationalSpartacist tendency, wrote PRODUCTION: Linda Brooke last year: Printed by trade union labour. Registered Order from/pay to; at GPO. Sydney for posting as a pUblication - "The German bankers do not want a Spartaclat Publlcatlona Category B. Subscription $3 for 11 issues; GPO Box 3473, third world war now, whether fought overseas airmail $10 for 11 issues. Address Sydney, HSW, 2001 with nuclear or conventional weapons, all correspondence to: Spartacist Publications. because they would lose it now. Thus. GPO Box 3473. Sydney. NSW. 2001. the German bourgeoisie is striving to 'undermine the planned economies Opinions expressed in signed articles or @ through credits, commodities and joint letters do not necessarily express the editorial projects and at the same time to viewpoint. penetrate these with bourgeois ideol- Printed by Eastern Suburbs. Waterloo. NSW. 2 Australasian Spartacist

" From Roeboume to Redfern Blacks Face ~ Terror Vengeance lor John Pat!

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: On 29 barmaid, Cathy Park, was sacked and arrested Aboriginal women were sex­ integration into the proletariat as part September 17 year old Aboriginal John told to get out of town. As for the ually assualted. With several senior of a revolutionary strategy to smash Pat was murdered in the Pilbara town police they openly tlaunt their racist cops present and all identification tags White Australia. We do not pretend to of Roebourne, 1200 kilometres north filth. Senior cops at the inquest removed the cop riot had all the mark­ hide the gulf that presently exists of Perth. Eight police, including four defended Pat's murderous treatment ings of a planned provocation. With between the organised workers move­ off-duty cops, attacked a group of as perfectly normal: "you· grab the Wran Labor government and its ment with its racist Laborite leader­ black youth outside the town's only Aboriginals where you can get a cops mired in charges of corruption the ship and the desperately oppressed hotel after taunting them with racial secure hold on them" because "when motion passed the next day by Redfern black population. But we understand insults. Pat was punched to the stirred up and looking for a fight Aboriginal residents declaring it was what Marx meant when he told the ground, repeatedly kicked in the head [they] tend to get very greasy and "prearranged to get the Wran English working class that they could then dragged unconscious by the hair slippery", testified sergeant Pethick Government off the front page" rings never hope to emancipate themselves to a police van. '(They threw him in who heads up the police force at all too true. We note too that Ronald while they were complicit in the like a dead kangaroo", said one of the Wickham (Sydney Morning Herald, Mcintosh's killers went to trial in colonial oppression of the Irish. This witnesses. One hour later he was 2 November). Sydney only days after. Get Wran's goes doubly for the Australian workers "discovered" dead in his police cell. Murderous racism is the everyday racist cops out of Aboriginal areas I in this nasty white imperialist outpost, Four black youths arrested with Pat reality for Aboriginal people in this "Land rights" will cjo nothing to built on the near genocide of the have filed reports of police brutality, country. And not just in the Far West. change the hideous reality facing the original black popUlation. While the one hospitalised with spinal bruising. We remember Ronald McIntosh, a Aboriginal population. We defend any Australian proletariat remains in, No charges were laid and right now young Aboriginal shot dead in Moree actual extension of land rights for at best, racist indifference to the daily these racist killer cops in Labor-run last year by white racists that are now blacks (which usually means land title racist discrimination and terror that Western Australia still roam the out free on bail. More recently, on to the decrepit reserves or virtually excludes or marginalises Aboriginal streets. November 2, in the heavily black resi­ worthless land) but we reject with people from this, society they will Days later the cops arrested and dential sections of Sydney's Redfern, disgust the Labor/liberal "solution" never make a social revolution. As jailed Mavis Pat for swearing at the Aboriginal fury exploded in running of land rights to racist terror and revolutionists we aim to build a party murderers of her son. The town street battles with police after over 100 degradation. "Land rights" in this that will be a fighting tribune for all exploded when another black woman of Wran's cops went on a rampaging crisis~ridden white imperialist enclave the oppressed. Even the most was arrested at the hotel and over 100 riot, attacking Aboriginals in the local will only mean a further relegation into elementary justice, democratic rights blacks stormed the hotel, forcing the Oifton Hotel, beating and dragging bantustan-like existence for blacks and human dignity for Aboriginal cops to retreat ina hail of bottles and many blacks out of their nearby homes ("out of sight, out of mind"), a people requires a revolutionary prolet­ shouts of "murderers, murderers". to be arrested. The cops particularly segregationist policy of institutional­ arian perspective for it means Any white witnesses giving evidence targetted black women. One woman ised poverty and unemployment. destroying the racist capitalist state against the cops have faced harass­ miscarried after being beaten, another We look instead to the social power root and branch. Vengeance for John ment and threats of violence. After had teeth knocked out and Aboriginal of organised labour to champion the Patl Jail his cop killers and throwaway she had put in an affidavit the local Legal Service spokesmen charged that rights and defence of blacks and their thekeysl. On the Kurdish Question Reprinted below is a slightly edited Kurdish militants is the burning and abridged presentation by Spart­ necessity for an internationalist party acist League Central Committee mem­ with a proletarian revolutionary per­ ber Andrew Giannakis to a solidarity spective, in hard opposition to the meeting organised by the Kurdish many shades of nationalists, mullahs Association in Sydney on 27 August and officers that all have Kurdish 1983. The meeting was attended by blood on their hands. The Iraqi revol­ over 150 people, mostly Kurds. An SL ution of 1958, referred to by Comrade literature table sold a large amount of Giannakis in his speech, laid bare the literature, including publications in broad contours of such a perspective, Turkish and Farsi. concentrated on the Iraqi proletariat, Also present were representatives of for social emancipation throughout the the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) , whole region. The Iraqi revolution was Socialist Party of Australia (SPA), the betrayed by the Stalinists. In pursuit of Turkish Workers Association and the "peaceful coexistence" Khrushchev Iranian National Society. But amongst ordered the CP to tum power over to the presentations to the meeting the General Kassem and his nationalist of­ Spartacist League alone counterposed ficers, who in tum suppressed the a socialist strategy to treacherous Iraqi CP and its working-class base. nationalism and class collaboration­ Khrushchev was responding to the Kurdish militants shot by Khomelnl's firing squ~d. ism, a strategy focused on the power­ "Eisenhower Doctrine" of containing ful proletariat in the Kurdish "Soviet aggression", ie, the landing of even recognised and their language il­ fact a lie was perpetrated here, populated areas in the Near East. 10,000 US marines in Beirut for use as legal, we of the Spartacist League claiming they {the SWP] stood for the The 15 or so SWPers who did show a staging area for military intervention stand firmly on a revolutionary per­ right of self-determination. But we ask for the meeting spent most of their into Iraq. spective, a program than can crack the for whom was it a victory? It was no time hiding their support for Khomei­ Now the US Marines are in Beirut yoke of exploitation and oppression victory: for the working class, where 'ni's "Iranian Revolution" and its but­ again, seeking to build a bridgehead throughout the Middle East. strikers get savagely repressed; for the chery against the Kurdish population. for anti-.5oviet war in the Near East. In 1978 in Iran, in the midst of the left, whose parties are all banned; for When challenged after the meeting by Their entry into Beirut as "peace­ anti-Shah rebellion, we said "Down women who are forced to wear the veil; SLers and a Kurdish militant they ran keepers" allegedly to save the Pales­ with the Shah I Down with the for the homosexuals. It was not a vic­ away, which prompted one young Kur­ tinians from slaughter at the hands of Mullahs I For workers revolution in tory for the Kurds or the national min­ dish woman to remark that the SWP is the Zionist blitzkrieg was supported by IranI" We warned that Khomeini's orities of Iran. While traditional feu­ "against us" and the SL are "for us". the PLO's Arafat and all his fake-left rule would be no less brutal, no less dalist Kurdish leaders like Mohammed The SWP's only contribution to the cheerleaders. They must take re­ vicious than that of the Pahlavi dyn­ Ahmad Moffizadeh, a religious leader, meeting, apart from hiding their pro­ sponsibility for the inevitable mass­ asty. We stood alone against the os­ offered to support Khomeini's Islamic Khomeini politics in a lying "soli­ acres that followed the disarming and tensible left and we campaigned for republic in return for" autonomy" , the darity" statement was to lump the expulsion of the Palestinian fighters, a the right of self-determination for the period was brief before Khomeini Soviet Union in with Iraq, Syria, tragic confirmation of the Trotskyist Kurds. We campaigned for an inde­ turned his genocidal plans upon the Turkey and Iran as oppressors of the upderstanding that petty-bourgeois pendent working-class axis against the Kurds. Today th_e parties of the SWP Kurds. . The SWP champions of nationalism will always subordinate mullahs. and the Socialist· Party, the Tudeh Ustasha-style "national liberation" itself to imperialism. The Socialist Workers Party, the Party and HKS, are facing repression. were the only ones to do so. It was the Socialist Party of Australia, the Com­ Their loyalty to Khomeini did not save­ SL that pointed out that the Kurds live * * * * munist Party, the whole ostensible left them. We defend them against the re­ qualitatively better as a result of the To Kurdish militants, to the Kurdish lauded Khomeini's rise to power. They pression but we point out that the price great October Revolution of 1917. oppressed across the four countries called it a victory I It was not a vic­ The key question that confronts where Kurdish separate identity is not tory. They still call it a victory. In Continued on page eight Summer 1983/84 3 r

Anti-Soviet SWP Dump-s "Trotskyist" label Big Strange Bedfellows "Leon Trotsky. is an agent of the sta~ line will not be purged before Mikado." "Lenin received German Barnes' supporters are neutralised or gold." "Jewish ritual demands drink­ suffer the same fate. ing the blood of Christian youth." Now Now, with the Croatian "national we hear that the Spartacist League struggle" relegated to the back pages (SL) attacks meetings to defend Viet­ of Direct Action, the SWP is chasing nam. And where does this latest Big another hot "opportunity", the sorry Lie come from? None other than the remains of the post-split Socialist poisoned pens and mouths of Jim Party of Australia (SPA). The SWP's Percy's Socialist Workers Party political convergence with pro-Ustasha (SWP), an organisation most lately re­ counterrevolution may be pretty nowned for its championing of the bizarre but it is only the logical con­ Croatian Movement for Statehood clusion of the USec's long-held view (HDP), a group broadly viewed in the that any and all oppositional forces in labour movement as a front for the the Soviet bloc are progressive forces fascist Ustasha. for "political revolution" against the In the 16 August edition of the Stalinist bureaucracy, no matter how SWP's Direct Action the same Dave openly pro-imperialist and anti­ Holmes who charges' the Yugoslav communist. So the spectacle of the government with "terrorism" while , pro-Moscow Stalinists running around painting convicted Ustasha assassins with this group which also vicariously as "free"om fighters" now attempts declared itself "the most closely to create an obscene amalgam be­ aligned to [Polish] Solidarity in Aus­ tween the Spartacists, Jrotskyist rev­ tralia" has raised some eyebrows, olutionaries, 'and the - counterrevol­ notably in the anti-communist Com­ utionary scum who fled to this. white munist Party of Australia (CPA), imperialist outpost to escape the just themselves busy discussing how wrath ofthe Vietnamese masses: fastest and best to escape "indepen­ "On August 13, thugs from the Spart­ Spartaclst League pickets SWP/CARPA "public" meeting on Vietnam, 13 dent" existence and liquidate into acist League, a bizarre sectarian August. Down with antl-communlst excluslonsl Hawke's ALP. grouplet, attempted to wreck an im­ that Hawke must stick to ALP policy counterrevolution by marching with portant meeting in defence of Viet­ Gloating over the SWP's troubles nam ,... The meeting was protected which in the case of Vietnam ties token the "Captive Nations" crew. In this the CPA's David McKnight taunts and by a defence guard as it was feared economic aid to "strenuous diplomatic Keig cited the dubious authority of red-baits his fellow social democrats that right-wing Vietnamese elements efforts" to secure the withdrawal of "the US comrades", namely Jack for lining up with what the SWP has might launch an attack. But the attack Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea, Barnes' American Socialist Workers always called the "hard-line Stalin­ that did come was from a different ie, the same policy for counterrevol­ Party which happens to be at war ists", and along the way reports the quarter." ution Australian imperialism shares within the United Secretariat SWP grabbing the opportunity to pub­ So what really happened? The SWP with the US, China and the ASEAN against Ernest Mandel on this very licise dumping their always gro­ called a "public" meeting on Vietnam states. question. But a few months after tesquely misplaced "Trotskyist" under the auspices of its CARP A front While maintaining a figleaf of oppo­ Keig'sBarnesite line was voted down label. at Sydney Trades Hall, a venue his­ sition to particular government pol­ at the SWP's 1983 national confer­ "'We don't feel that the label Trotsky­ torically open to th~ entire workers icies the SWP has been eager to dem­ ence, the final coup de grace to the ist' is either useful or accurate in des· movement, strung a line of stick­ onstrate its own brand of US-loyal pro-Barnes faction was delivered when cribing ourselves or our political pos­ wielding goons across the entrance to social patriotism. Thus they organised Mandel hit town as the star attraction itions,' SWP official Doug Lorimer the building to physically enforce the a "protest" around Central America at the SWP's mistitled "Karl Marx told Tribune . ... Breakaway groups political exclusion of the Spartacists, this year on American Independence Centenary" conference. Now it's from the Fourth International, such as and then when some of their goons got Day (July 4) under the slogan "No rumoured that both Mandel and the Socialist Labour League and the hurt in the course of this dirty work, More Vietnams", the very slogan Barnes have condemned the SWP's Spartacist League, exhibit quite squealed: "this outrageous attack which encapsulates the program of all consorting with the HDP. strong sectarian tendencies and these completely justified the decision of wings of US and Australian imperial­ Meanwhile Barnes' local supporters are, in our view, just logical eXten­ CARP A not to admit the Spartacists to ism, still smarting from their military continue to revolt over Afghanistan, sions of certain ideas -that have been the meeting" . prevalent in the movement generally and political defeat on the battlefields demanding that their party bring its ... taken to their furthest extreme,' Of course, the SWP has plenty to of Indochina. But for the workers and queasy pro-Soviet stance into line with Lorimer said. " fear from our political exposure of peasants of Central America, for rev­ the US SWP (and Mandel's) third­ - Strange new alliance Of left parties, their self-proclaimed "defence" of olutionaries here and around the campist "troops out" position. Said Tribune, 2 November Vietnam. As Australasian Spartacist world, Vietnam was a victory! Speak­ minority reporter David Howard to an has pointed out, the SWP's idea of ing from Managua airport on Sep­ SWP national committee plenum last Of course the SWP's dumping of "aid" to the embattled Vietnamese tember 6, visiting Vietnamese foreign year: "Trotskyism" .is not mainly for the workers state is the US Marshall Plan minister Nguyen Co Thach warned the benefit of the SPA Stalinists but rather "I get the impression from a number the Labor Party circles the SWP-SPA (I), Eisenhower's instrument for "con­ US government that' 'North American of comrades that they aren't terribly taining" communism in post-war intervention in Nicaragua could lead to "alliance" hopes to influence. Both of ,enthusiastic about the presence of the these organisations are in trouble and Europe following Hitler's defeat by the many Vietnams" (New York Times, 7 Soviet Union in Afghanistan. I'd just Soviet Red Army (see "SWP Calls for September). Against those like the ask comrades to go back to the original on the outs with the Cold War Labor Marshall Plan in Vietnam", ASp 103, SWP who grovel to the imperialist copies of Direct Action and the way we mainstream - but their desperate Aug/Sept 1983). The source of this rulers, who spit on the Vietnamese and motivated, the way we explained, the' search for "unity" is doomed to a mis­ treachery isn't hard to find: since the Central American fighters, the SL way we presented the Soviet interven­ erable end. The SWP is an aggress­ coming to power Robert Hawke's im­ says: two, three, many defeats for US tion to the Australian working class ively anti-Soviet grouping, as was so perialist Labor government has vowed imperialism and its Australian lackey! ... In fact, we hailed itl" . amply demonstrated over Poland, and, - SWP Discussion Bulletin, no matter how capitulatory, the SPA is to "free" Vietnam from' "stifling de­ Perhaps the SWP is hoping that a October 1982 pendency" on the Soviet Union­ smear campaign against the Reds who damned in the eyes of Hawke's ALP so while reneging on resuming token oppose Hawke and defend Vietnam In fact, as Howard and the SWP well long as it remains a Moscow-line economic aid. Militant internationalist and the Soviet Union will distract at­ know, it is the Spartacist League which party. defence of Vietnam and the gains of tention from the stench of corruption hailed, and continues to hail, the For our part we welcome the SWP's the great Russian Revolution that surrounding the HDP affair. For the Soviet Red Army in action against admission that it has nothing to do stand behind it is central to our oppo­ waves created by the HDP affair have CIA-backed mullahs who shoot school with "sectarian" Trotskyism. As sition to the Hawke government. It is been felt inside the SWP as well, stir­ teachers for instructing little girls to Hawke heats up Reagan's anti-Soviet this program that the SWP has em­ ring the troubled waters of this highly read and write. This is not the least of war drive at home these increasingly phatically, violently, counterposed unstable organisation and aggravating the reasons for the SWP's discomfort; panicky and degenerate reformists feel itself to. They greeted Hawke's already inflamed factional polaris­ Barnes has once before threatened their very survival rests on throwing election as a "victory" and have now ations. Latest reports are that Nita them with ,the spectre of Spartacism overboard every pretence to a revol­ assigned themselves the task of Keig, formerly a top insider in the (see "SWP's About-Face on Afghan­ utionary tradition while attempt­ proving ~that this right-wing, pro­ Percy regime, faces expUlsion for istan", Spartacist, Summer 1981). ing to suppress the Trotskyist SL Reagan government really isn't forming a "secret faction". Of course Now, continues Howard, "comrades with political exclusions, violence, and imperialist. The SWP/CARPA 13 it's no secret that Keig and former say, they're 'reluctant' concerning the Big Lies. We have no intention of be­ August "defence of Vietnam" plat­ Mandelite Communist League leader presence of Soviet troops, at times ing suppressed and, as the SWP has form of course was mainly a platform Ron Poulsen went oppositional nearly 'profoundly unhappy"'. No doubt. already found out, it will pay a price if for "dissident" ALP politicians, like two years ago over whether it was But given the evident state of factional it thinks it can tread on the Spartacist Ken Fry. Like Fry, the SWP moans good "tactics" to support Solidarnosc disarray, the SWP's present Afghani- League .• 4 Australasian Spartacist In Reply to the Healyites (and all "Little Australia" Nationalists) Against White Australia ~~ ism" Last April Australasian Spartacist operation for Qaddafi rests on their the forging of an internationalist class­ that support to the imperialist anti­ no 101 ran an article entitled "Life in a domestic posture as the "militant" struggle workers party - these are Soviet war drive and eternal loyalty to Remote White Imperialist Enclave" workerist wing of Laborite national­ among the critical issues facing the the ALP at election time are two of the (originally printed in the International ism. Thus answering the Healyite woman worker today." For the most decisive questions on which the Women's Day issue of the Spartacist squeals of outrage is not just a matter Healyite scribblers this is just the Australian "left" must pass the test or League/US journal Women & Revol­ of elementary political hygiene, be­ views of an "unstable section of the be cast outside the Laborite pale. The ution), which in angular fashion took cause the "little Australia" Laborite 'radical' middle class now moving to central pillars of social-democratic up the question of women's oppression nerve we hit is one they share with all the right at a rate of knots". But those reformism are support to its "own" in this country as an integral part of a the Australian reformist "left". who are moving rapidly rightward are imperialism in war, and subservience revolutionary and internationalist the anti-Soviet Laborite "lefts", tied to the capitalist state and ' 'demo­ perspective. Its main fire was directed Out of Their Own Mouths .... to the apron strings of the bureaucracy cratic" parliamentarism. at the program and values of the and the Cold War Hawke government The SLL, like the SWp' and similar Australian Laborite nationalist tra­ The Healyite defence of Laborite and completely incapable of chal- groupings, were born anti-Soviet, co- dition which has historically domi­ nationalism is quite open and un­ nated the left a.nd workers movement. ashamed. Workers News simply Laborism, with its White Australia quotes sections of our article with no racism, brutal male chauvinism, attempt at refutation: narrow economist trade unionism, parliamentary cretinism and glorifi­ "According to the Spartacists, Aus­ tralia is a 'land of sport and drink' cation of the philistine "national where 'wife and child beating are a culture", is the political expression of "normal" part of life'. This is the the trade union/ ALP bureaucracy. Spartacists' view of the working class. This bribed and reactionary labour 'Racist reaction is on the rise, nofonly aristocracy are the agents of the in the country towns where black Australian bourgeoisie in the working unemployment runs at 90 per cent, class, who want to maintain this but in the industrial cities, lite the coal country as a bastion of white imperi­ and steel towns of WoUongong and alist privilege ~nd reaction in Asia. Newcastle, where unemployment stands at 20 per cent and protectionist The article was meant to needle poison is fueUiIlg anti-Asian racism.' anti-Soviet and Laborite nationalist There is more: 'In this penal settler­ sensibilities and we are glad to report colony outpost in Asia, first of British it succeeded, provoking a somewhat and now American imperialism, "little hysterical response headed "Sparta­ Australia" social-democratic national­ cist hysteria has a political basis" in ism is not only white racist, but proud of its brutally male chauvinist and Communist Party of Australia delegates with Asian comrades at the fourth Workers News (25 June), the nev~r- self-indulgent parochial philistine - quite-daily 'paper of the Healyite "national character" - best de­ congress of the Communist International, Moscow, 1922. Socialist Labour League (SLL). The scribed as the culture of white pigs.' " SLL is the Australian satellite of Gerry . .enging their straitjacket on the alescing out of the anti-Vietnam war Healy's British-based "InternatiollaI For our Healyite hack, o~ Mike Head, class struggle. New Leftism of the early 1970s during Committee" , a pseudo-Trotskyist such simple truths about Laborism and . ,the "detente" period following the Backward Workerlsm vs Class Australian reality are a "jaundiced US/ Australian defeat in Vietnam. tendency which long ago degenerated Consciousness. Their "Trotskyism" (which the SWP into political banditry. Their organis­ middle class view of the working has now formally abandoned) was a ation and press are out for hire and class". Our hardly controversial ob­ It is telling that the Healyites say some years ago their deeply corrupt servation that the working class "re­ nothing about women's oppression, a bid for anti-Stalinist respectability in pimping for Muammar Qaddafi, mega­ mains dominated by the reformist key question for the socialist revol­ Labor Party circles. It also differen­ lomaniacal Ishimic dictator of Libya, Labor Party bureaucracy" is turned ution which our original article was all tiated them from the Maoists with and a passing parade of Middle East­ into a "mournful" denial of its revol­ about. They have always denied the their absurd "two-stage" scheme of a ern bourgeois despots, effectively re­ utionary potential. For such left existence of special forms of op­ struggle for bourgeois "Australian in­ dependence" from "US domination". moved them from the workers Laborites, unable to conceive of pression (racial, sexual) and their movement. Thus they support the breaking the working class away from dim-witted lider maximo Jim Mulgrew Like the Maoists, the SWP/SLL's . is known for his vile abuse of women "anti-imperialism" was never more political opponents. Their workerist than anti-American nationalism aimed glorification 6f the backwardness of at keeping "little Australia" out of the 2«; the working class is summed up in US's wars. The difference was that the · :s~~;~r.F, ....~:.::::." ~~fi3~.:--.,.".::.:~::' :fj !f:'a'"'''''" tac;~t On',,,,, former American Healyite leader Tim fake Trotskyists considered Australian " r~'=.=::::::: .:::=.:."::-"= r :::.:--_ .. I ,::::., :;.;;~.::-..::.=--= ~.~:,'.:.:,,:=:,,~-= !' ;::.,:,.~~ Wohlforth's comment: "the working capitalism already fully independent ~~~="~=.-. ", ~§ffr~ ;~~I~ '<07;!~, '., . ' , class hates faggots, women libbers which under a Labor government could II··"···:,,::i:: ' ,',f,'l. KevollltlOnc~fll . be its own master in the world. Now and hippies and so do we", and ':~'" c. 7 Ilk" in Thnih,)IA1U11S111 UIIdtt springs from adaptation to the labour with the US-led anti-Soviet war drive, bureaucracy. Genuine communists the Russian Question dominates all seek to fight, not flatter, the backward­ political. developments, leaving no ness of the workers. We stand in the· room for such pretensions. Via the Leninist tradition of building a com­ ANZUS alliance, particularly the CIA munist party which fights to be the spy bases which abruptly ended "tribune of the people". This is all the Gough Whitlam's career as "world more crucial in a period of social reac­ statesman", Australian imperialism is tion such as we face now, for combat­ tied into its role as US junior partner ing all forms of social oppression and more tightly than ever. the racial' and sexual divisions they The Laborite "left" began shifting foster is the precondition for revol­ hard to the right over Afghanistan. utionary class consciousness, for The Spartacist tendency hailed the forging a socialist proletariat which Red Army's progressive intervention can rise to the task of taking state in defence of the Soviet workers state power. And it is especially crucial in and in opposition to feudal Islamic re­ this imperialist outpost in Asia, where action. With most of the "left" the Healyites joined the shrill anti"Soviet Left, Workers News halls the advent of the messiah Hawke last March. the deep-going chauvinism intensifies backwardness of all kinds. hysteria coming out of Washington Right, taking up the cudgels for White Australia Laborlsm. and Canberra. But the emergence of murder of communists in Ba'athist of the ALP· and transforming it under Cold War Healyltes anti-communist Solidarnosc in Poland Iraq in 1978 and still hail the Islamic communist leadership into a class with a mass working-class base was fundamentalist fanatic Khomeini in conscious of its revolutionary historic What Workers News did take the Cold Warriors' dreams come true. Iran. In 1982 they hailed' Arafat's task, the ALP is the working class and offence at was as instructive as what "Democratic" pro-Western counter­ treacherous evacuation of the PLO forever shall remain so. it ignored: our call for "No Vote to revolution was pitted against dis­ fighters from Beirut under supervision In Australasian Spartacist we Labor" in the last election, and our credited "Stalinist totalitarianism" , of imperialist troops, as a great "vic­ sketched a class-struggle perspective: opposition to the clerical-nationalist resulting in an international Cold War tory", while their hero Qaddafi called "The fight for industrial unionism, Polish Solidarnosc which earned us the convergence of 'the social-democratic upon the PLO to commit "revolution­ si~-in strikes to fight sackings, a title "most slavish defenders of the and centrist left with the most reac- ary suicide". Nevertheless their PR political break with the Labor traitors, Stalinist bureaucracy". They know Continued on page eight Summer 1983/84 5 ---~"-~-"""~-=-:'?-~:--:---',

Greetings From Our Comrades • Sri Spartacist League/Lanka counterrevolutionary organisations in Colombo an attempt to disgrace the Red vic­ 8 August 1983 tories in Afghanistan, Vietnam and Kampuchea. The government is highly The Spartacist League/Lanka (SLlL) respectful of the Solidarity trade­ sends these warm greetings to the union movement activities in Poland seventh Natiobal Conference of the whilst denying the right of the local Spartacist League/US at a time when workers to demonstrate, picket and Sri Lanka is enveloped in the most strike! The fierce government, having severe political complexities ever been unable to get out of the capitalist recorded in its recent history . crisis, is now gradually absorbing The six-year administration of the military juntas into its administration. pro-American, rightist JR Jayewar­ As part of the International, we of dene's UNP government has not the Sl/L today join you not only to solved any problems of the people. fight capitalism, but social democracy, Instead, they have become aggravated reformism and centrism too. Our part from bad to worse. The' "open in the world is extremely difficult. economy" and the "free trade zone" Risky. We are devoted, as a propa­ theories that the government sought to ganda group against all types of use as supporting pillars for the Colombo: Tamil homes, shops and factories were systematically burned reactionaries, to building a party on crashing economy, are now cracking down by terror orchestrated by JR's United National Party. the lines of Bolshevik traditions. under the unbearable burdens that Comrades, Colombo is filled with rest on them. By abolishing one by one tators' medals soaked with agony and and the force ofthugs. guns, bayonets, barbed wire, fire, ash the rights of the people and by intro­ blood of the Tamil people - the The government, to keep up with its and burnt remains, and refugee ducing tough legislation the govern­ victims of violent suppression during -friends, is using all public media, pol­ camps. And from this city, with deep ment keeps away the people from the the last weeks. The intellectuals' and itical platforms and forces to declare a comradely feelings we hold your hand path of struggle. This cruel govern­ students' movements within the "cold war" against the Soviet Union. that is raising the red banner of ment that appeared to brighten up not judiciary, religious and hUman rights To serve American and other imperial­ struggle in the conference today. only the earthly life of the people but organisations and also in the other ists' interests, Sri Lanka is invitingly • The main enemy is at home! even their lives after death, and layers of society are filled with unrest. waving its hand to American forces via • Indian/Lankan workers key to boasted that it laid the foundation for a More than at any time before, the capitalist trade tactics. It is seeking to socialist revolution in South Asia! "Dharmista" [Buddhist righteous­ poorest sections in the island are join ASEAN [the Association of • For the rebirth of the Fourth ness] society, has now got all its dic- now facing brutal military law Southeast Asian Nations] and other International!

mutinous army, spinning for such a island is poised for the next outbreak For the Right of Tamil Eelam I purpose fanta~tical tales about of catastrophic anti-Tamil terror. "Marxist officers" and a Soviet­ . Until shortly before the American US Out of the Indian Ocean I planned or JVP-inspired "left-wing" national conference occurred, we had military coup. (Swift protest from India received from Sri Lanka no information The seventh national conference of etration of Lanka's peoples. The against the prospect of Sri Lanka on the safety of our comrades, who the Spartacist League/US was held in systematic destruction of Tamil-owned bringing foreign powers into the while a very small group had become August. International Spartacist factories and stores (incidentally region brought denials from Jaye­ known in the course of their work as tendency (iSt) fraternal delegates and destroying 150,000 jobs) has wiped out wardene and the expulsion of the UPI outspoken and active· defenders of observers were present from seven formerly important Tamil commercial correspondent who broke the story). Tamil national rights on the island, other countries. Unable to be with us layers of Colombo and the South were comrades of our section in Sri (and the government has now seized Lanka. That small Indian Ocean island all damaged property). The orgy of nation was being tom apart by bloodletting is compacting the Tamils Sinh ala chauvinist terror against the into the North as 100,000 or more have national/religious minority people, fled in terror for their lives. Among the the Tamils, as pogroms instigated and tens of thousands of homeless refu­ organized by sections of the governing gees still starving in government United National Party (UNP) of camps are many "stateless" plan­ JR Jayewardene ripped the country tation workers from the uplands. This apart along national lines. The army super-exploited plantation labor force which has for years terrorized the (legally disenfranchised in 1948) has overwhelmingly Tamil North simply been central to the island's economy ran wild, while in Colombo and since British colonial days. throughout the South Sinhalese mobs carried out wholesale burning of JR responded to the pogroms by Tamil-owned businesses and whole­ refusing to even hypocritically criticize sale massacres. Tamil men, women the anti-Tamil terror for weeks, and children were incinerated inside illegalizing advocacy of a separate Berlin, 7 August. 150 militants rally to the call of the Trotsklstlsche Llga buses, thrown from moving trains, Tamil state (Eelam), cracking down on Deutschlands, part of an International campaign. three Sinhalese leftist parties (but not beaten . and tom to shreds in the It has since become a commonplace including by seeking to link up the streets. the hopelessly discredited reformist shell of the LSSP), and quietly sound­ that the mutinous ringleaders of the leftist student movement at Colombo The anti-Tamil terror is severing the ing out the possibility of US imperialist anti-Tamil pogroms were rightists, University with the militant Tamil economic and geographical interpen- or other foreign help against his virulently chauvinist forces high up in nationalist activism on the Jaffna the UNP and the military. Figures campus. Over the past several years like hard-line chauvinist UNP dema­ international protests against the anti­ gogue Cyril Mathew and the increas­ Tamil terror in Lanka, including Indian Seamen "Strongly Support Your Clarion Call" ingly prominent Douglas Liyanage united fronts between exile Tamil We are pleased to reprint. below a "Our AIl India working committee have emerged as factional powers groups and iSt sections, have also telegram received from the Forward strongly support your clarion calI for within the UNP. Meanwhile, with received significant publicity on the Seamen's Union of India baSed in boycott ali cargo to Sri Lanka from India acting as mediator in nego­ island. Calcutta. It is in response to our calI Australia and New Zealand ports. We ' tiations between Jayewardene and the The main document adopted by the to Australian waterside workers and appreciate your write-ups and publi­ bourgeois-nationalist Tamil United conference, written before the massive Indian seamen working the Indian cations. For international working Liberation Front (TULF, which form­ government-inspired pogroms in ship Vishva Kaumudi to black all Sri class solidarity and for advancing ally advocates Eelam) , the occupying Lanka, noted "the increasingly omin­ Lankan cargo in protest at the horrific proletarian internationalist action. army continues to rule the North under oqs backdrop of anti-Tamil terror and anti-Tamil massacres carrled ont Our members on board Vishva the murderous "emergency" regu­ state semi-bonapartism." The docu­ by the Jayewardene government Kaumudi shall be in action with you lations, round-ups of leftists and ment further noted: during July/August. Internationalist shoulder to shoulder. Warm others reportedly are continuing, "Ours are Sinhalese comrades whose sentiments such as .hese must be Greetings. government workers are being forced main work, in accordance with their translated into action by workers Abanerjee, General Secretary, to undergo loyalty oaths (eschewing Marxist·Leninist propaganda, is around the world. 6 Sept 1983 FSUI (CITU)" advocacy of Eelam) , and the whole necessarily linked to the defense ofthe Continued on page eleven ·6 Australasian Spartacist Spartacist Demos Demand: " Pot of I"• On September 27, simultaneous pro- '2 tests were held in six countries, organ- ! ised by the international Spartacist !; .. tendency (iSt) to oppose continued i recognition of the genocidal Pol Potl .... Ieng Sary forces as United Nations :' representatives of Kampuchea (Cambodia). Protesters denounced the obscene spectacle of the United States, authors ofthe My Lai massacre and the secret bombing of Cambodia, prating about human rights while backing the phony "government of Democratic Kampuchea" - now existing only in CIA safe houses in Thailand - which murdered more than two million of its own people. Demonstrations took place in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza outside the UN in New York, at the State Department in Washington, at UN Plaza in San Francisco and in Paris, London, Bonn, Toronto and Sydney and Melbourne. New York (left), Sydney (right): Protests demand Pol Pot out of UN, seating of real Heng Samrln government of Kampuchea. Oose to fifty people took part in spirited demonstrations outside the bloody US-backed Central American who sat out the war against French edge of extinction, the mass murder Commonwealth Government Centres dictators, Pakistan's General Zia, or Colonialism in Paris, then returned to was started long before - by the US. in Sydney and Melbourne. The banner even compared to Idi Amin, the take over the Cambodian party by In 1969 under Nixon and Kissinger at both demonstrations read, "Defend murderous Pol Pot and his number murder and whipping up Khmer the US began four years of devast~ting Vietnam/USSR Against Reaganl two mass killer Ieng Sary are an chauvinism. The first to be wiped out secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia, Hawke War Drive! Seat Heng Samrm obscenity. Since early 1979, when the by Pol' Pot's forces were the with at least the passive acquiescence Government! Genocidal Pol Pot Gang Vietnamese toppled the Pol Pot Cambodian Communist cadres associ­ of then-ruler Prince Sihanouk. From Out of the UN!" and many of the regime, which killed two million of its ated with the Vietnamese. Pol Pot 1970 to 1973, the US rained down chants and placards in particular own people, the US in alliance with Killed Real Khmer Communists, then more than 100 tons of bombs for every highlighted the role of the Hawke China has armed the terrorist bands of Committed Genocide! person in Cambodia, shattering the Labor government in Reagan's war the deposed dictator for attacks The logical extension of Pol Pot's fragile economy. Probably more than plans against Vietnam and its Soviet against Kampuchea. On September Cambodia wasn't even Stalin's purges a million died during the civil war ally. Demonstrators placards read, 21, 1979 and each yeat since the UN and labor camps, it was Jonestown! against US puppet Lon Nol, and "Down with Hawke, Reagan's man in has voted to seat the universally Pol Pot's abolition of cities, of famine was raging when the US Southeast Asia! Defence of Vietnaml despised Pol Pot forces instead of the factories, of money and_ his massive brutally imposed a blockade in 1975. USSR Begins in Pine Gap, Diego Heng Samrin government as part of . reversion to subsistence agriculture - Today US imperialism tries to starve Garcia and Trincomalee!" while the US imperialism's unrelenting drive to a pre-feudal program based on fan­ Vietnam and Kampuchea via a chants included "Hawke, Pol Pot and punish the victorious Vietnamese tasies of recreating the barbaric Washington-orchestrated blockade of Son Sann, Reagan's lackeys against Revolution and undo its own humili­ Angkor Wat slave kingdoms­ trade and credits. Thus immediately Vietnam! Vietnam was a victory! ating defeat. No UN Seat for Pol Potl utterly shattered any rational econ­ following its election, the Hawke Two~ three, many defeats for US leng Sary - Bloody Imperialistl omic base for the regime, thus any government reneged on its (miserable) and Australian imperialism!" and Chinese Toys! Seat Heng Samrin restraints on the ruling clique. Just aid commitment to Vietnam,. of course "Smash the imperialist blockade, Government, Real Government of after the Khmer RouBe took power in continuing to aid the counterrevol­ Vietnam should get its aid!" Kampuchea! 1975, we denounced Pol Pot's brutal utionary forces in the region. Most The obscenity of seating Pol Potl The US attempt to strangle the depopulation of the capital, noting that criminally, some two and a half million Ieng Sary is part of US imperialism's heroic Vietnamese, whose strategic "for Marxists, it is crucial to preserve Vietnamese have been withdrawn unrelenting drive to punish the Cam Ranh Bay naval port is a road­ this economic infrastructure". The from the desperately necessary work victorious Vietnamese Revolution and block to American ambitions, is part of mountain of skulls found in mass of economic construction in order to its war plans against Vietnam's the US all-out war drive against the graves at Cheoung Ek, the torture defend northern Vietnam against main ally, the Soviet· Union. What Soviet Union. And Hawke's imperialist chambers in Phnom Penh, the stories Chinese military pressure, backed by Johnson and Nixon failed to do with Labor government is aggressively from every survivor of people beaten the US. B-52s and napalm - crush the fronting for Reagan in Southeast Asia, to death with poles, starvation and Today the US and their puppets Vietnamese Revolution - Reagan is working closely with the anti­ brutal slave labor - this was Pol Pot's back a witches brew of capitalist now trying to accomplish with rear­ communist ASEAN bloc. From Pol Cambodia. cliques with the bloody remnants of guard actions like an economic block­ Pot to the deadly Flight 007 Cold War Even former US diplomat Emory the Pol Pot forces clinging to the Thai ade and arming Cambodian counter­ provocation, from Pine Gap to Diego border for survival. They have tried to revolutionary mercenaries. Protesters Garcia to Sri Lanka's Trincomalee, Swank, who was US ambassador to the Lon Nol regime in Phnom Penh, force together an unholy alliance of the in New York drove the point home these efforts to whip up war hysteria CIA-favoured semi-fascist monarchist with the chant: "US bombed Cam­ and encircle the USSR with a ring of admitted in an interview (Far Eastern Economic Review, 17 March) that "businessman" Son Sann, the shame­ bodia - US backs Pol Pot! US get out nuclear launching pads have left a less playboy pimp Prince Sihanouk of Southeast Asia - US, you lost!" bloody trail of terror and death across "The Vietnamese, who occupied a the globe. For its part Australia totally disorganised, almost destitute (much of whose family was slaugh­ In London and Toronto the dem­ land, have provided assistance of all tered by the Khmer Rouge) with the onstrations were joined by Tamil intends installing an FI A-18 fighter­ Pol PotlIeng Sary IKhieu Samphan bomber squadron at its Butterworth sorts. . .. Practically starting from militants who had also participated in forces. This wretched gang, com­ base in Malaya, only 600 miles from scratch, Cambodia has made an emergency protests called by the iSt astonishing and remarkable recov­ mitted to capitalist restoration in in late July and August against the Ho Chi Minh City. Criminally, the Kampuchea could only come to power Peking government has eagerly ery". When the Vietnamese army bloody anti-Tamil massacre unleashed intervened in 1979, we declared our on the back of an outright imperialist by Ronald Reagan's Sri Lankan backed this deadly imperialist policy, repeatedly launching military attacks opposition to a long-term occupation military onslaught. Prince Sihanouk - satrap, President J R Jayewardene. Stay on the Riviera! Capitalist Res­ against northern Vietnam in line with army, which could raise to the fore the The protests denounced US designs on toration Never! Smash Imperialist US policy. China: Keep Out of Indo­ national question for the Khmer military facilities at Trincomalee, to people, but did not demand immediate Blockade of Vietnam! become part of a string of bases china! US, Australia - You Lost! Smash ANZUS, ASEAN - US and withdrawal. We asked: Given a choice, The Trotskyist Spartacist League/ ringing the USSR from the Indian would the Khmer people prefer to US, as American revolutionists in the Ocean to the North Pacific. Below is Australian Imperialism Out of South­ east Asia! US Bases Out of Australia retain the irrational peasant xeno­ "belly of the beast" during the reprinted the leaflet building the phobia of the murderous Pol Pot or to Vietnam War, raised the slogan demonstrations. and the Indian Ocean! Defence of VietnamlUSSR Begins in Pine Gap, have schools, marriage of their choice, "All Indochina Must Go Communist!" Diego Garcia and Trincomalee! food, children, medicine and wages? and called for labour strikes against • • • • The verdict is clearly now in. Hail the war. In 1975 the international We protest the obscenity of the When the US and its corrupt hench­ Liberation of Khmer People! Hail Re­ Spartacist tendency hailed the victory genocidal, ousted Pol Pot forces hold­ men like Lon Nol fled Indochina after construction - Kampuchean People of the Vietnamese Revolution and the ing the United Nations seat for the triumph of the Vietnamese Revol­ Now Have a Future! driving out of capitalism from Indo- Kampuchea (Cambodia)! Even in the ution, the Khmer. Rouge occupied UN, whose predecessor Lenin aptly Phnom Penh. Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Though Pol Pot's murderous horror called "a den of thieves", even among were led by a bunch of college boys helped bring the Khmer people to the Contlnued on page mne Summer 1983/84 7 The fate of the Soviet work~rs state Kurds ... cannot be separated from the fate of the working class and oppressed Continued &om page three throughout the world. We have been hard, we have been firm, in our of opportunism is measured in blood. struggle to defend the Soviet Union. Beware of opportunism I _ And that task is crucial because today In the reactionary war between Iran the US imperialists are mounting a war and Iraq the ostensible left took the drive that finds expression in the pro­ side of Iran. But we point out that the imperialist, Pope-supporting politics working people of Iran, the working of Polish Solidarnosc and the reaction­ people of Iraq, have no interest in the ary rebels in .Afghanistan. For these victory of either side in this squalid rebels the seeds for their discontent lie war. We ofthe Spartacist League said: in a battle to maintain religious back­ tum this reactionary nationalist war wardness and oppresion, a backward­ into a civil war against the mullahs and ness and oppression that exists colonels. To the Kurdish people we througliout the region, the enemy pointed out that they are savagely at­ of th~ struggle of the working class tacked by both the Ba' athists and and oppressed, a backwardness that Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards, finds as its central theme the woman and that the Iran-Iraq war offers them question. In the East there is no the greatest opportunity to carve out a other democratic question that is nation-state since the short-lived more decisive. It was in defence of the "Kurdish Republic" of Mahabad veil perhaps more than anything else in 1946. that Khomeini rose up against any re­ In Iran the national minorities, like form. In Afghanistan we' said "Hail the peasantry, can be an enormous re­ Red Armyl" against Islamic reaction­ Flight 007 was delayed 40 minutes to synchronise Its flight with the traJec­ serve for social revolution - but only aries. The dictatorship of the prolet­ tory of the spy satellite Ferret-D (Illustrated In map above, reproduced if the working class champions their ariat which is the precondition to break from the Soviet New Times, October 1983). Also monitoring the flight were rights. For it is the proletariat that has the chains of enslavement in the East two RC-135 and two Orion reconalssance planes, an AWACS plane, the social force and the power to end is the question of a revolutionary several US naval vessels Including -the frigate Badger and ground tracking national exploitation and degradation party. The full achievement of the stations on the Aleutian and HawaIIan Islands, In Japan and South Korea. forever. In Iraq the oil workers in the democratic tasks posed by the Kurdish Quite probably the CIA's super-secret Pine Gap base received and fields of Kirkuk are part of a strategic national struggle can only take place in relayed Information about flight 007. Drive the US bases out! Don't mess core of proletarian power. They are a framework that is profoundly inter­ with the Russians! Kurdish and they are key to a socialist nationalist. For this reason it is perspective. A socialist perspective Trotskyist parties, revolutionary pro­ revolution, to effect the transition demands that the working class Russia ••• from our strictly national revolution to letarian parties, that are desperately the world revolution. " . struggle independently. Any rejection \ needed for a socialist federation of the Continued &om page two of the working class' independence in Near and Middle East. Today, the Soviets are threatened favour of political alliances with the In this country under the ANZUS Speaking before the Seventh not just with sabre-rattling but actual class enemy, whether it be the reac­ alliance and amidst the US bases that Congress of the Russian Communist war plans. A class-conscious prolet­ tionary mullahs of Iran, the nationalist play their role in the imperialist war Party (Bolshevik), held in March ariat, led by a Leninist-Trotskyist van­ butchers of Iraq or Syria or the bour­ drive, we make our call loud and clear 1918, Lenin emphatically declared: guard, must unconditionally defend geois populists of Ecevit in Turkey, is a that the victories of the working "International imperialism, with the the Soviet bloc against imperialist recipe for bloody defeats. masses as expressed in the Soviet and entire might of its capital, with its attack, must oust the Stalinist bureau­ highly organised war machine ... crats who seek an impossible "peace­ Under the mantle of two-stage rev­ Vietnamese workers states must be defended. To entrust the pro-US could not, under any circumstances, ful coexistence" with imperialism, olutions and popular fronts the Kurd­ under any conditions, live side by side must take power from the capitalists ish people have already been victims imperialist government of Hawke with with the Soviet Republic. . .. This is calls for help·. is· to only sow illusions before it is too late. And time is getting of such treachery. In Iraq following the , the greatost difficulty of the Russian short. overtht:ow of the Hashemite monarchy in the enemy. We say for a workers revolution, its greatest historical prob­ in 1958, the Iraqi Communist Party Australia, part of Socialist Asia. For lem - the need to solve international - abrldged &om Workers Vauguard was on the verge of power. It was only the Kurdish people as indeed for the problems, the need to evoke a world no 339,7 October 1983 to be betrayed, along with its mass working masses of the world the working class base and huge Kurdish Russian Revolution of 1917 was the recently members of the sinister Cath- oppression of the hundreds of millions component. They were then to face greatest event in history. It ended once 'olic NCC. While they are never short of Asians to the north. To defend this massacre at the hands of Kassem and and' for all national-chauvinist pog­ of anti-CIA rhetoric when it comes to enclave of white privilege in Asia, the later the Ba'athists. Again in 1978 the roms against the populations there. It "little Australia" nationalism, the left weak Australian bourgeoisie has shel­ Iraqi CP (the Com~unist Party) en­ is an inspiration that we want to Laborites'open embrace of the CIA's tered behind the military protection of tered the Ba'athist government in re­ defend and will seek to defend in all men in the Australian trade unions and a great imperialist power, necessarily turn for sUPI?0rt. This support included instances. It is the perspective of the their Polish counterparts shows that, at the price of unquestioning subservi­ support for anti-Kurd terror. Again Spartacist League internationally. face to face with the Russian Question, ence, a servility that is tempered only they were brutally suppressed. Thank you .• they line up in the .camp of CIA by the fear of being abandoned. The binding of the proletariat's "democracy" . This basic reality, which no tend­ hands and feet to the bourgeoisie by ency on the reformist Australian Trade Unionism and White "left" has even attempted to address such alliances figures strongly in the Healyites ... Australia "Socialism" talk of the so-called "Arab Revol­ for fear of challenging the basis of ution". But the so-called anti­ Continued &om page five The perspective of the' Laborite Laborism, chief prop of the Australian imperialists of the "Arab Revolution" tionary imperialist spokesmen and "left" is captured by the SWP and status quo, has stamped the con­ like Hussein and Assad are at home their fascistic fringe. SLL's perennial appeals for a "Labor sciousness of the labour movement brutal oppressors of their own national The Healyites and the anti-Soviet government pledged to socialist pol­ with an intense xenophobic fear and minorities. Similarly in every instance "left" didn't care what Solidarnosc icies". Stripped of embellishments, hatred of all oppressed and non­ attempts by the Kurdish Democratic stood for as long as it was "anti­ what this means is that simple exten­ European peoples. The racism funda­ Party to shape some sort of deal with Stalinist". The SLL amnesties Sol­ sion of trade-union militancy will farce mental to Australian nationalism re­ the nationalist butchers has led in­ idarnosc's counterrevolutionary pro­ the ALP "lefts" to take over from the sembles that of South Africa, except variably to defeat. The solution to the gram and leadership in the same way right wing, form a "socialist" here racial exclusionism means the Kurdish question can only be a it does the ALP -'- by declaring it syn­ government and nationalise every­ "threat" is external, or Israel, exc~pt regional-wide one that involves the onymous with the working class. As thing, thereby peacefully carrying out this island continent has the luxury of smashing of four reactionary bour­ was true internationally "solidarity the 'socialist revolution. Such a com­ hundreds of miles of ocean separating geoisregimes. The politics of national­ with Solidarity" drove not only the pletely nationally self-contained, it from the nearest" Arabs". The ALP, ism are indeed the politics of bour­ corrupt Qaddafi-Ioving SLL but most of parliamentary-centred schema, best as the most nationally-minded party, geois rule in the Middle East and will the radical "left" into the arms of the characterised as "White Australia has always been one of the most right­ always lead to that. An independent most sinister and reactionary forces in socialism", is quite at home with the wing social-democratic parties in the Kurdistan could only be a Soviet labour movement. In August 1982 the mainstream Laborite dream of a "fair world. The number one plank of white independent Kurdistan that extended Clerks Union (FCU) and Shop Assist­ share" in the prosperity of a "demo­ racial homogeneity in its founding the property forms of the socialised ants (SDA) organised a tour by cratic" workers paradise for the white platform kept it out of even the ren­ economy. That the Kurds of the two Solidarnosc "activists", Jerzy man. Australian prosperity was egade Second International until 1965 Soviet Union live qualitatively better Milewski and Magda Wojcek(now founded on racial exclusion of "cheap when it was dropped as a cosmetic than elsewhere speaks volumes employed by the CIA's Radio Liberty). Asian labour' " industrialisation be­ clean-up in order to pursue a more of the gains represented in the 1917 The SWP, SLL, CPA etc all hailed this hind high tariff walls and a share in aggressive regional role. October Revolution. Today that is tour, while avoiding the rabid anti­ colonialist super-exploitation of South­ The Healyites and SWP want above threatened by a war drive by US im­ communist meetings that stomped and east Asia, both as a sheet anchor of' all a place in the labour bureaucracy. perialism, a war drive that in this .re­ cheered for "freedom" in Poland. The imperialist domination and directly as That is why their boring and parochial gion of the world is represented in FCU and SDA are notorious bosses' a minor Pacific imperialist power. The "mass" papers forever extol the many forms, not least amongst them "free trade unions" that have been Australian proletariat has historically empty mouthings of the "militant" the Turkish junta which is a key run for decades by CIA-loyal anti­ been bought off by its relative privi­ bureaucrat or "left" parliamentarian component of the imperialist encircle- communists like John Maynes of the lege which both lives off and is insu­ of the moment. And that is why they ment of the Soviet Union. ' FCU and Jim Maher of the SDA, until lated from the desperate misery and glorify the great "militant" tradition 8 Australasian Spartacist of the "party of the working class" the relatively high wage levels directly struck against the war. Maritime nists everywhere is unconditional which they seek to rescue from oppor­ to high tariffs, reinforced the Laborite unions blacked US shipping in protest military defence of the USSR and its tunist betrayers and return to its pris­ illusion of workers and bosses in part­ against Nixon's 1972 Christmas allies like Cuba and Vietnam against tine "class struggle" origins. Thus the nership sharing the fruits of this. bombing of North Vietnam. In 1979 the imperialist war drive, despite the formation of the ALP in the aftermath whites-only "lucky country" . Sydney and Port Hedland waterside bureaucratic usurpation of political of the mass strikes of the 1890s is con­ The artificially high (still .about 50 workers blacked Chinese ships pro­ power from the revolutionary Bol­ ventionally presented by Laborite per cent) level of unionisation in Aus­ testing China's invasion of Vietnam. sheviks of Lenin and Trotsky by Stalin, nationalists simply as the great step , tralia is a product not of struggle but of Organised labour must continue to that great advocate of "peaceful forward onto the road of independent Arbitration-protected and state­ . stand ready to defend Vietnam. Today, coexistence". The Soviet generals working class action - when in fact supported "compulsory unionism" . as we call for military victory to the today know well that in 1941 Stalin's the turn to the parliamentary ("politi­ The most deadly threat the govern­ heroic leftist rebels in EI Salvador and criminal faith in his pact with Nazi cal") sphere was also a defeatist rejec­ ment can hang over a trade union's Central America, we raise the slogan Germany brought the USSR to the tion of class struggle. Likewise the head is "deregistration" - with­ against the bourgeois defeatists: brink of defeat due to unpreparedness 1916 split over conscription for World drawal of recognition by the bosses' Vietnam was a Victory! Two, Three, and failure to react to provocations War I is mythologised as the true state! And the myriad craft union div­ Many Defeats for us and Australian like flight 007. Reagan & Co obviously Labor "anti-militarist" tradition ver­ isions obstructing genuine industrial Imperialism! think that the Russians' commitment sus "Hughes the rat" (Billy Hughes, unionism were created and sustained The legitimate national rights of the to detente means abject capitulation. Labor PM who defected to the Tories) by Arbitration. Strikes as a rule are not Khmer people can only be fulfilled in Given what is known of the KAL 007 - when'in fact opposition to conscrip­ fought with mass picket lines or plant a genuine Soviet federation of Indo­ mission provocation, we can only be tion for a European war by "social­ occupations but as short, Qn-and-off, china (in which Vietnam would thankful that, to quote Soviet chief of ists" like John Curtin was motivated stay-at-home affairs which more often necessarily playa leading role) based staff Marshal Ogarkov, "The Soviet by fear of a British sellout of White than not only end up back in court. on revolutionary internationalism. The military forces protecting the peaceful Australia to its Japanese ally and en­ They often. lead to much exasperating Stalinist bureaucracies from Peking to labor of the Soviet Union honorably tirely consistent with Curtin's later disruption but no decisive result, e.g. Moscow have for decades sold out fulfilled their duties' , . calls for Australia to be the imperialist the series of rail strikes in NSW this other people's revolutions for their In 1965 Australia under Menzies policeman of Asia. None of this is new, year, breeding anti-unionism in the own narrow nationalistic interests and fought to be allowed to send troops to being addressed notably by Humphrey petty bourgeoisie, isolation and de­ utopian reactionary dreams of "co­ Vietnam, hoping thereby to lock-the McQueen in his book "A New featist passivity in the working class. existence" with capitalism, with bitter US into the defence of White Australia Britannia" nearly fifteen years ago, Such major class confrontations as effects from Central America to Sri against the "yellow/red peril", the but all of it is anathema to the fake­ have so far taken place in Australia Lanka to Indochina. Despite the threat of revolution in Asia. Today the Trotskyists who if they mention Labor­ have been in spite of and against heroism of the Indochinese workers greatest service AQstralia renders ite racism and imperialist militarism at Laborism. For example the Stalinist­ and peasants in defeating US imperi­ 'under ANZUS is hosting the US all only do so to excuse it as unfortu­ led 1949 Coal Miners' strike, smashed alism, that war-torn and imperialist­ military and secret spy bases which nate but secondary blemishes. Politi<:s by the troops of an ALP government. blockaded but Soviet-aided area faces are a strategic global link in US war for these people is pressuring the ALP Such class battles have been generally great difficulties in holding out against plans. "Unconfirmed" reports in the and via it the bourgeois state. associated with forces like the Indus­ the US war drive and unrelenting Melbourne Herald (2 September) For genuine communists a Marxist trial Workers of the World and the pressure. It is the historic under­ said the US spy base at Pine Gap was understanding of this reality is the pre­ Communist Party, representing in standing of Marxism/leninism/Trot­ the ground station for spy satellites condition for a program than can break however deformed, partial and capitu­ skyism which can lead the working monitoring the flight of KAL 007 on the working class from treacherous latory ways an attempt to challenge class to the shattering of the parasitic the night of September 1. Quite pro-imperialist Laborism and mobilise the dead hand of the ALP on the Stalinist bureaucracies and to placing probably. With its unabashed parrot­ it in revolutionary struggle under working class. It was these forces too the enormous economic resources of ing of Reagan's war hysteria over Trotskyist leadership: for a revolution­ that imported the "foreign" ideology the degenerated and deformed KAL 007 the Labor government ary party that is a "tribune of the of proletarian internationalism. workers states from Peking to Moscow declared that it will not flinch when the people", for the workers to use their A revolutionary perspective in this to Hanoi fully in the service of world Cold War turns hot against the Soviet social power to fight all forms of op­ region for Australian communists revolution. For a Genuine Soviet Union (and Vietnam once again). pression, particularly racial and sexual must begin with the Marxist, material­ Federation ofIndochina! Forward to a Defence of the USSR/Vietnam begins discrimination; for militant class­ ist understanding that this White Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in with struggle against this warmonger­ struggle tactics (occupations, mass Australia outpost of imperialism Southeast Asia! For the Rebirth of an ing imperialist Labor government and picketing) to fight the capitalist econ­ against Asia is historically doomed, as Authentic Communist, Fourth Inter­ the ANZUS alliance and spy bases it omic crisis - against the class collab­ surely as Zionist Israel and Apartheid national- World Party of Socialist defends. orationism and chauvinist poison of South Africa, and that attempts to Revolution! • Hawke took office on a program of protectionism; for fighting class maintain it are just as reactionary . continuing a bipartisan pro-US foreign independence and organisational unity While Australian imperialism sees its policy and "national reconciliation" (industrial unionism) against craftism future as expanding its exploitation of based on the ALP-ACTU wages­ and Arbitration; no reliance on parlia­ this region under the US umbrella, we Labor Lackeys. prices accord, enlisting the union ment and pressuring the capitalist insist that Australia's future is inextri­ • • bureaucracy to police the working state; for labour solidarity action with cably connected to the revolutionary Continued from page one class in the face of over 10 percent struggle of the Asian masses. There unemployment, wage cutting and revolutionary struggles inter­ In September Hawke joined Reagan nationally. And as we noted in the 'can be no talk of an Australian revol­ government austerity. But his nine ution separated from the task of in whipping up anti-Soviet war fever months in power have been dominated original Women & Revolution article, over the Soviet shooting down of the ripping the yoke of American and Aus­ by an almost continuous campaign South Korean airliner. KAL Flight 007 " As Australian communists we have a tralian imperialism from the neo­ of anti-Sovietism and nationalism particular responsibility to combat our was sent by the US on what was designed to get the country in shape own ruling class, American imperial­ colonies of Southeast Asia. clearly a deadly Cold War provocation ism's proxy in Southeast Asia, and to The awakening of revolutionary for war. Hawke continually speaks of staged with live bait over sensitive the "splendid example" of wartime defend the USSR and the Vietnamese possibilities in the Australian prolet­ Soviet military installations. We revolution, which despite bureaucratic ariat will be the product of great his­ ALP leader John Curtin who forged refer readers to the Spartacist pam­ , "a national consensus for the prosecu­ deformations represents a tremendous toric events, for example the military phlet, "KAL 007: US War Provo­ historic victory for the working class , defeat and humiliation of the Austra­ tion of the war effort" (Australian, throughout the world. " cation", advertised in this issue, for 29 September). lian ruling class in a counterrevol­ a detailed refutation of the anti-Soviet utionary war in Asia or economic lies and for a Marxist analysis. The Laborlt. "Militancy" and catastrophe, shattering the insular Down with Anti-Soviet Bans! Arbitration Australian government echoed almost chauvinist complacen<:y of this remote word for word Reagan's anti-Soviet Laborite trade union "militancy" island continent. The defeat of US and slanders and war threats. Hawke The anti-Soviet furore over Flight has always been subordinated to the Australian imperialism by the heroic dismissed "the preposterous claim 007 capped it off. Hawke's "national "national interest" of White Aus­ Vietnamese gave but a glimpse of that that the Korean airliner was on an consensus" extended from the anti­ potential. Our task is to politically pre­ tralia. This means that in this period of intelligence mission", denounced communist demonstrations in Sydney Cold War' and economic crisis the pare for such opportunities by forging the Russians' "barbaric act" and and Canberra, 'attended by Korean an internationalist, Trotskyist cadre in 'workers are supposed to sacrifice for and Vietnamese rightists, Moonies, struggle against Laborism and all its stressed that his line was "closely Polish Solidarnosc and "Captive the good of the country and so all the consistent with that of the US", as former "militant" pretensions of the defenders. For a Workers Australia, Nations" types, across the parlia­ part of Socialist Asia! Reforge the if no one could tell. Their UN repre­ mentary spectrum to, most signifi­ bureaucra<:y have evaporated. Historic sentative echoed Reagan's "massacre cantly, the entire trade-union economic militancy in Australia, ex­ Fourth International!. in the sky" lie while foreign minister bureaucracy. The September ACTU pressed in the high strike figures of, Hayden praised his "sober and congress was turned into a Cold War for example, the years from 1969 (the disciplined" avoidance of trade congress which backed Hawke's mass strikes over the penal powers sanctions. But Reagan was not after pro-Reagan stand and imposed and the O'Shea jailing) to 1981, never Pol Pot ... unworkable, pin-prick sanctions but 60-day bans against the Soviet airline translated into a mass political break . Continued from page seven the ideological banner for - the big with Laborism. Most of this "mili­ Aeroflot and Soviet airline travellers. bang - World War III. The postal workers union (APTU) also tancy" has been safely contained US imperialism targets the Soviet china as a historic victory for the banned mail to and from the USSR for within the limits of pressuring, but loy­ world's working people. Union because it embodies the historic ally submitting to the Arbitration gains of the world's fIrst workers 60 days. In a circular to union system, this permanent machinery of In Australia both during and after revolution which ripped' one sixth of members at the' Melbourne Inter­ institutionalised class collaboration, the war militant solidarity with the the globe from capitalist exploitation, national Mail Centre the APTU which regulates trade unionism and workers and peasants of Indochina and because it is the military / bureaucrats spelled out the meaning enmeshes it with the capitalist state. found a base in the organised labour industrial power capable of thwarting of Hawke's patriotic anti-Sovietism, Arbitration was a key plank in the movement. Seamen blacked Aust­ their appetites from Southeast Asia to denouncing "unauthorised industrial early ALP platform and by coupling ralian supply ships in 1968. Wharfies Central America. The duty of commu- Continued on page ten Summer 1983/84 9 - '~---=:"':.:~::,:"v...3O';

Sydney Waterfront R,buffs Hawke/ACTU Anti-Sovietism was Hitler's war cry against the Labor Lackeys. • • German Social Democrats. This "lucky country", which hosts The motion reprinted below was passed by the midnight shift of waterside vital links for US imperialism's Contlnued from page nine workers (WWF) working a Soviet ship In Sydney's DarlIng Harbour In early lunatic preparations for a nuclear September, and a copy presented to the ship's first mate. ThIs, and similar first strike, has never known the action" against the bosses because the meetings across the Sydney waterfront, were an Important rebuff to Hawke and devastation of even a conventional "only authorised -ban in force ... the AcrU tops' attempts to line up AustraIIaD anlQD8 for Reagan's antl·Soviet war is the ban on Russian mail" . war. But the targetted Soviet Union drive. But as the KAL 007 incident Itself showed, hopes of disarmament and has, losing over 20 million defeating detente with the imperialists are utopian foDy. The only strategy that wUI disarm Leading the charge at the Congress the imperialists Is one which mobUises class·wlde action to bring down the German imperialism in WW n, and were some of the most prominent Hawke.Reagan warmongers. it is determined that it will never CIA-lovers in the unions - John happen again. Only Soviet capacity Maynes of the Clerks, leader of the "ThIs meeting of workers employed on the USSR ship notes the reported expla· to mount a devastating retaliatory anti-communist Catholic right, and nation given by USSR Foreign MInIster A Gromyko concerning the recent events strike has so far stayed the hand of NSW right-wing Labor kingpin relating to the loss of a Korean airliner. the US madmen who incinerated Barrie Unsworth, both well known fQr Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Australia We regret the I08S of life associated with this tI'agIc incident and express our their connections to the CIA's inter­ sympathy to the relatives of the families Involved. may not be "battlefield Germany" national trade-union fronts. The Having In mind the totaUy unexplained presence of the airliner 80 far off coarse but the US bases will necessarily emergence of this -axis between the and Dying In Soviet air space over sensitive Soviet military InstaUatlons; the make it a nuclear target. The over-200 hard-line pro-US ALP forces and the presence In the nearby area of a US military plane daring the time of the airliner's innocent passengers sacrificed for the Catholic anti-communists in the rught; the reported 10ng.tIme sarveUlance of Soviet activities In that area by US KAL 007 provocation will be peanuts drivers seat in the ACfU represents a military authorities and the weD known spying purposes and activities of the compared to the global holocaust that real shift to the right at the top. It American CIA, we beHeve the Korean plane was being used for ulterior purposes. will follow if Reagan attempts to nuke continues the. process of healing the Stevedoring and shipping Industry anions have a long assoclatlon and contact the Soviets: We say: don't mess with 1955 ALP split when the reactionary with the Sea and RIver Workers Union of the USSR and we know that that Union the Russians! Smash ANZUS, drive Catholic witchhunters were driven out, and Its mllUons of members share our alms for disarmament and a world at peace. out the US bases! and also the reformation of the We reject the accusations made against the USSR of deHberately shooting down anti-communist Cold War I "Industrial This will never be done through a plane knowing It to be a passenger plane. We regret and condemn the hysterical parliamentary resolutions or hand­ Group" alliance - under the Cold and war.mongerlng abase of the US spokesmen and others supporting them. War II banner of Hawke's Labor holding protests like the "Women's We express our 80Hdarlty with the trade anion forces of the USSR, with the _ Party. Peace Camp" picnic at Pine Gap. genuine peace loving-forces-In the USA and assure them of our contlnued support The imperialist warmongers cannot be The division at the congress was for detente, disarmament and peace." pressured to disarm, they must be only over how hard and how openly to driven from power through socialist identify with Reagan/Hawke war revolution. What is needed is a fever. So it was the Unsworth/ Federation (WWF) continue to identify only the illusion of the "anti­ revolutionary movement based on Maynes/Dolan forces, supported by with the Soviet Union, a legacy of American" nationalist wing of social class struggle, for political strikes Maoist Builders Labourers leader long·time Stalinist inDuence in the democracy and its associated "peace" against concrete manifestations of Norm Gallagher, which defeated union. We reprint on this page one of a movement that Australia can opt out the war drive, both US and Australian. 582 votes to 479 a "left" -backed number of motions passed across the of ww m. Sorry. the price for US Moreover the US is quite worried amendment by Laurie Carmichael Sydney waterfront -in opposition to protection of this white imperialist about its Subic Bay and Clark Field of the Communist Party (CPA) which bases in the Philippines, in the front this Cold War provocation. This is the enclave is slavish subservience to line against Vietnam and the Soviet denounced the Soviet Union just as sort of example that needs to be US war plans. The Laborite "left" strongly but deleted the bans, also followed and developed. Down with nationalists are trapped by the hard base at Cam Ranh Bay, because of the raising a few mealy-mouthed "ques­ crisis threatening to topple the Marcos anti-Soviet bans! For political strikes realities of "little Australia" into the tions" of Reagan's story which even to defend the Soviet Union against pathetic and impotent strategy of dictatorship. Australia also trains its the Cold War right felt able to co-opt. Reagan/Hawke's war drive! pressuring Reagan's ALP lackeys ... share of officers in the Philippine Only Pat Clancy, BWIU head and to pressure Reagan, while increasingly army, supplies considerable military leader of the trade union breakaways Hand in hand with building a Cold accepting- the basic framework of the and civilian aid, and has substantial from the pro-Moscow Socialist Party, War consensus in the unions goes the imperialist war drive: ANZUS and the investments. Should a revolutionary rightly called Flight 007 a "spy crisis develop which threatens the attempt to enforce anti· Soviet ideologi· US bases. > plane" and a "crude provocation" cal homogeneity across society by Furthest down this road is the . foundations of capitalist rule, the against the USSR. But Clancy & Co strengthening the state's secret demoralised anti-Soviet CPA desper­ shock waves would reach all the way to don't intend to let "friendship" with police agencies. Hawke wants to ate now that Cold War II is here to White Australia. There are two, three, the Soviet Union get in the way of outlaw opposition to the war drive abandon their much·heralded "inde­ many potential Vietnam defeats "unity" at home and after putting no through building a witchhunt mental­ pendent road" and find comfort in waiting for Australian imperialism, counter-motion went on to support ity in which any pro~Soviet sympa­ the bosom of Hawke's ALP. Today the anyone of which would open the Carmichael's anti-Soviet amendment. thies, travel to Russia, or association CPA denounces as "ultraleft" the road to the socialist solidarity of the awakened Australian working' class with Russians amounts to "treason". slogan "US bases out!" which would Hawke and the ACTU want these and the insurgent Asian masses. This is what's behind the McCarthyite make the "peace" movement look bans to ensure organised labour's The Spartacist League says: Defend witchhunt of former ALP national "anti-American", while in the unions complicity in anti-Soviet action, action USSR/Vietnam! Smash ANZUS and secretary and lobbyist David Combe its members are the most vigilant which leads to war. But they hit ail anti-Soviet alliances! For workers organised opposition on the Sydney for his association with Soviet diplomat defenders of Hawke's "accord" and Valeriy Ivanov, expelled in April as "centralised wage- fixing" (ie, Arbi­ action to drive out US military and spy waterfront where many among the bases! Down with Hawke/Hayden, ranks of the Waterside Workers part of a worldwide US-orchestrated tration-run wage·cutting). Thus campaign. Through the Hope Royal Carmichael's other hatchet job at the Reagan's flunkeys in Southeast Asia! For a workers Australia, part of Commission, Hawke and ASIO are ACfU Congress was against the socialist Asia!. seeking to destroy Combe and frame small Victorian Food Preservers CONTACT THE SPARTACIST him as a Soviet spy or "agent of Union who had broken ranks and won' LEAGUE: influence". This witchhunt is widely wage claims outside the guidelines MELBOURNE ...... (03)654-4315 unpopular in the workers movement, ofthe "accord" . Just Out! SYDNEY ...... (02)264-8195 but the Labor lefts "defending" Combe are mainly worried about their Behind them there's the anti­ own necks being chopped in Hawke's Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party Cold War clean-up of the ALP, and (SWP) who lectured the CPA not to above all anxious to assert their "throw itself behind the concerted anti-Soviet IQyalty. So the Socialist anti-Soviet campaign" over the SUBSCRIBE Left·dominated Victorian ALP confer­ Korean airliner. (Direct Action. 13 Australasian Spartaclst ence in October voted both to "de­ September). Their "anti-Reagan" o 11 Issues for $3 plore" the Soviet shooting down of line expressed mainly concern at the (includes Spartacist, theoretical the Korean jet while it backed Combe effect of the KAL 007 hysteria on the journal of the international against Hawke/ ASIO. These cowardly "peace" movement. The SWP may Spartacist tendency) "little Australia" nationalists will oppose the anti-Soviet "two super· overseas rates: find out soon enough that you can't powers" line, but their form of anti­ o surface mail - $3 for 11 issues play both sides of the Cold War Sovietism is to deny that the imperial­ o ai rmai I - $10 for 11 issues fence. KAL 007 was a US war provo­ ist war drive is centrally aimed at the mall to/make cheques payable to: cation - defend the Soviet Union! USSR to avoid posing defence of the Spartaclst Publications. Smash Hawke/ ASIO's anti-Soviet Soviet workers state. As for their GPO Box 3473, witchhunt - defend David Combe! latest international factional allies, the Sydney, NSW, 2001 !=E~=L::;;:;l" .. =~~=·""''' Smash ASIO and all imperialist European followers of Ernest Mandel, ~"; _ .. " r,;",;,;;r;~;';;1;;g;;"".-- ::" Name spy agencies! they outdid the CPA in their frenzy Address over the anti-Soviet nationalist "peace" movement in Germany, accusing the Soviets of "a stab in the Pay/mall to: Smash ANZUS! Drive Out US City Postcode'T, ___ back of all those fighting the Spartaclst Publications @~O~ Bases! imperialists super arms build-up" GPO Box 3473 Phone ______Donatlon ____ The lingering resistance of the anti­ (International Viewpoint. 19 Septem­ Sydney, NSW 2001 Soviet "left" to being chained by ber). So "Marxism" has "stabbed Hawke to Reagan's war drive reflects the German nation in the back"? This 10 Australasian Spartacist the remaining 90 percent. Last year, in fhese anti-Communist ideologues governments can easily see them­ '- Sri Lanka ... selves suffering Grenada's fate. But response to an uprising instigated by understand well that the basis for this most powerful and deadly imperi­ the Muslim Brotherhood, the bourgeois defeatism and mass pacifist Contlnued from page six alist power in history will not be Damascus regime leveled Syria's sentiment in the US during recent stopped or even restrained by moral fourth largest city, Hama. Assad first years, the so-called "Vietnam syn­ Tamil people, which makes them protest and UN resolutions. As the intervened in Lebanon, during the drome", is the fact that the US lost. a unique Bolshevik formation on that great German chancellor Otto von 1975-76 civil war, on behalf of the For them the key aspect of the island. The fight against Lanka's Bismarck said a century ago, "The Christian Maronite forces and with the Grenada invasion is that they can win incorporation by US imperialism is encouragement of the US. Even now, intimately linked to opposition to the great questions of our time will not be somewhere, anywhere, to restore the anti-Tamil terror. The JR Jaye­ settled by resolutions and majority Republican right-wingers like Utah US' role as global imperialist police­ wardene government, which has been votes ... but by blood and iron". senator Orrin Hatch have contested man. moving large numbers of Sinhalese' Reagan's invasion of Grenada only the view that Syria is an "intransigent True, the odds are rather uneven. If into the traditionally Tamil Eastern underscores the fundamental truth of Soviet puppet". They well remember it has taken 6,000 American troops to province where Trincomalee is lo­ that statement. how Sadat ditched Egypt's Soviet "secure" this tiny island, what will it cated, sees the prospect of Trinco as a alliance a decade ago. And for all its take to conquer a really big place like military base for' US imperialism as Anti-Soviet War Drive Caught In verbal rejection of peace with Israel, . Nicaragua, the size of Michigan, which the trade-off to secure access to the US Lebanon Quagmire Ba'athist Syria has been reluctant to is 450 times larger than Grenada? In market for the cheap manufactured In chess there is a gambit known as attack the Zionists. With the Arafat Fidel Castro's October 26 press products produced by the super­ the "poisoned pawn". Take it and you leadership of the PLO pushed to the conference, he claimed that, as in exploited, mainly female workforce in sidelines, Reagan could even play the Grenada, Cuba lacked the naval and the Free Trade Zone" . will land in trouble. For the US, Lebanon is a poisoned pawn. In the Syria card. air means to send direct assistance to Right before the conference, we summer of 1982, while the Israeli At bottom the present fighting Nicaragua in the case of a full-scale received our first word from Sri Lanka, blitzkrieg spread terror across the in Lebanon is a continuation of US invasion. While he was right to a press release which we published in country, Zionist leaders claimed they the centuries-old communal/ sectarian emphasize the importance of an armed Workers Vanguard no 336 (12 were conquering Lebanon for the conflicts between Muslims and people which has already fought to August). The SLiUS national confer­ "free world". A senior Jerusalem Christians, Sunnis and Shi'ites, Druze achieve a revolution, he was wrong ence adopted a motion of communist official bragged, "We've given the and others. A victory of the "other about Cuba's own duty. Today the solidarity with the Spartacist League/ West the gift of Lebanon on a silver Sandinista radical-nationalist regime Lanka comrades. The greetings from side" (whoever that is at any given platter. We've created a vacuum, and moment) against the US and the desperately needs effective weapons, the Lanka section published here were all we ask is for them to step into it" Phalange would simply lead to new particUlarly antiaircraft missiles, not received in time to be presented to (New York Times, 16 June 1982). Sure. conflicts and deals among the myriad which can be, supplied by the Soviet the conference. enough, the Reaganites grasped the feudalist warlords of Lebanon, re­ bloc. And to be successful, the answer Sometimes heroism is not a matter "historic opportunity" , took the silver storing conditions more or less as they to the CIA and the contras is to wage a of doing things, but just of being there platter and stepped into the Lebanese existed before the Israeli invasion of revolutionary war - for workers and standing fast. Forward to a fed­ vacuum. The Marines were sent into June 1982. revolution throughout Central America erated socialist republic of Ee1am and Beirut to be the visible sign of a new "Marines out of Lebanon, now, and extending north to Mexico with its Lanka I US-Israeli protectorate in Lebanon. alivel" evokes the widespread anti­ several millions of proletarians. And - Abridged from Workers Vanguard The Israeli army and its local allies, . government outrage felt by . the meanwhile there must be sharp class no 337, 9 September 1983 the Phalange gangsters, were sup­ A~erican masses at Reagan's squan­ struggle in the United States to bring , posed to provide the killing power on dering of life in the Lebanon "quag­ Reagan down. This is the program of the ground while the US forces played mire", reviving memories of Vietnam. the Trotskyists, of permanent revol­ the "soft cops". Thus Washington We recognize a fundamental differ­ ution requiring the construction of Grenada ... hypocritically condemned the mass­ ence between American intervention authentic Leninist-Bolshevik inter­ acre of defenseless Palestinian famil­ nationalist parties. Contlnued from page twelve in Lebanon and itf~ Vietnam. In ies in the Sabra and Shatila camps Vietnam, US imperialism intervened Following its humiliation in Viet­ older Cuban volunteer militarily­ after having set it up by disarming and to suppress a social revolution. In that nam, under Ford and Carter US trained construction workers would deporting the PLO commandos. war, the defeat of the US expedition­ imperialism was committed to a fight Ijke hell. As Fidel Castro pointed ~Today the Americans' puppet' ary force and the Saigon puppet army "1-% wars" posture, maintaining out in a press conference in the early president of LebanoJl, Gemayel, is not was key to victory of the social revol­ sufficient military power to fight a morning hours of October 26, "Proof even mayor of Beirut. The Israelis, ution. The slogan of the reformist major war in Europe and one "brush- . of the fact that they are construction caught in the crossfire between the Socialist. Workers Party (SWP), fire" war somewhere in the Third workers is the excellent airport they fascistic Christian Maronite Phal­ "Bring Our Boys Home Nowl" was World. Under Reagan, the US is built in such a short time, where angists and Druze communal militias, deeply social-patriotic and anti­ currently engaged in at least four wars dozens of US planes landed, even unilaterally withdrew from the Shuf revolutionary. In the Vietnam War (EI Slavador, Nicaragua, Lebanon and though it is not finished yet". Told by Mountains outside Beirut in order to "our boys" were the Viet Cong and Grenada) and threatening a fifth at the their leaders to defend their camps consolidate a buffer zone in southern North Vietnamese soldiers. Not so in Straits of Hormuz, and bogged down with energy and courage if fired upon, Lebanon. This left the US alone to prop Lebanon. When the PLO fought the in all of them. The Pentagon is they did so. A communique read over up the Gemayel "government" , US-backed Israeli invasion in the stretched so thin that they're trying to Radio Havana later that day reported: exposed to attack by" any of the two summer of 1982, we gave the use the same forces in two places: the •'The fighters in the final redoubt did dozen armies floating through Palestinian commandos unconditional Marines who "took" Grenada are now not surrender and gave their lives for Lebanon. Reagan is now acting as if military support. But now no side is supposed to be on their way to the homeland." Today the US an­ the Marines in Beirut were innocent fighting imperialism. On the contrary, Lebanon. Now is the time for the nounced that it had killed 50-60 tourists wantonly attacked by terror­ from the PLO and Jumblatt to Salvadoran leftist guerrillas to strike, Cubans andwounded another 40. But ists. But just last month terrorist Gemayel, all sides are jockeying for for the Nicaraguans to land a powerful in the process the Americans lost six to American warships bombarded the sponsorship from one imperialist blow against the contra mercenaries. eight helicopters (Aviation Week, Shuf, wantonly killing Muslim vil­ power or another. However, if US And we should rub Reagan's nose in 31 October). Now the reported 638 lagers. The US Congress' backed up military intervention escalates to a war the bloody Lebanon mess. While the Cubans being held by the US forces the president by applying the War with Syria drawing in the Soviet liberals fear - rightly or wrongly­ are hostages, to be subjected to who­ Powers Resolution, authorizing Union, then for all class-conscious "another Vietnam" in the Near East knows-what kind of "interrogation" American troops to stay up to 18 proletarians, the duty of unconditional and Central America, for revolution­ by the CIA. We demand that all Cuban months. They have Lebanese blood on military defense of the USSR against aries, "Vietnam was a victory - Two, prisoners in Grenada be returned their hands. And now they are paying imperialism would be posed. three, many "defeats for US at oncel the price. imperialism I" In response, the liberals, Stalinists As in Grenada and everywhere else, Smash Imperialist War Drivel In the Transitional Program written and Third World nationalists turned to the Reagan administration sees in 1938, the great Russian revolution­ the hot air chamber of the United Lebanon through the prism of its It has been clearly established that ary Leon Trotsky wrote that, "it is Nations. Cuba .eloquently compared global war on Communism. But the Reagan's rush to invade Grenada was necessary to differentiate strictly the Caribbean countries who joined American claim that Walid Jumblatt's designed to divert attention from his between the pacifism of the diplomat, Reagan's phony "multinational" in­ Druze militia, or the Shi'ites, or the disaster in Lebanon. To a degree even professor, journalist, and the pacifism vasion as thieving jackals leaping onto Sunnis, are Soviet "surrogates" is protests centered on Grenada served of the carpenter, agricultural worker, the prey ofthe tiger. Grenada's repre­ absurd. If they were anywhere near this purpose. It is striking that the the charwoman. In one case, pacifism sentative noted that his was among the Afghanistan they would be making American "left" went along with this is a screen for imperialism; in the smallest of countries while the US was lampshades out of Soviet soldiers ploy, for various reasons. First, there other, it is the confused expression of one of the largest; but other countries instead of shooting Yankees. Touted is the fact that many of them, includ­ distrust in imperialism." Thus, he should take heed that "though bigger as a "leftist" (he is a vice president of ing the SWP and Workers World concluded, "the Fourth International than Grenada, [they] are much smaller of the Second International), Jumblatt Party, supported the introduction of" supports every, even if insufficient than the United States". In the end, looks to French imperialism, leba­ imperialist troops into Lebanon last demand, if it can draw the masses to a the UN Security ,Council "deplored" non's former colonial master, as his fall in the guise of "peacekeepers". certain extent into active politics, the American action by an 11-1 vote would-be patron, and opposes with­ Secondly, the rad-libs and reformists awaken their criticism and strengthen (vetoed by the US). To what effect? drawal ofthe Foreign Legion. want to harp on Reagan's violations of their control over the machinations of Even the "desertion" by Reagan's So the Russians want to dump a lot "international law" and democratic the bourgeoisie" . The American European allies will change little. of military hardware on the Syrians? rights. But the new Cold Warriors in masses do not want to die in Beirut. In his October 26 press conference, Moscow can no more control the Near power in Washington make no bones We say: US Marine.s out of Lebanon, Castro described the US invasion of East through Syria than Washington about the fact that for them the class now, alivel US out of Grenada I Defend Grenada as "a Pyrrhic victory and a 'can through Israel. Besides it's not interests of American imperialism are Cuba/USSR against the bipartisan disastrous moral defeat' ' . Certainly "the Syrians", just 10 percent of paramount. Reagan glories in up­ anti-Soviet war drivel Otherwise Reagan's pirate adventure has height­ them - the Alawites - or rather holding "covert" action, such as the Reagan is liable to blow us all up. ened worldwide fears of unrestrained Ba'athist dictator Assad and his US' undeclared war on Sandinista Abridged from Workers Vanguard American militarism. Third World security chief brother, lording it over Nicaragua, so long as it is successful. no 341, 21 October 1983 Summer 1983/84 11

""- - Australasian ... SPARTACIST

e 01 Grenada Bloody ess • Lebanon

NOVEMBER 1: - Finally they thought they found a country small enough for Reagan's supercommandos' US Marines Out of Lebanon, Now, Alive! to cream. Ronald Reagan had to divert attention quickly from the Beirut bombing that wiped out Marine head­ US Out of Grenada, Dead Or Alive! quarters in Lebanon, killing more than 230 US troops. "We need a win," kept insisting election-minded White Australia Out of Sinai! Keep Out of 'Grenada! House advisers. Invading tiny Grenada, only twice the area of Wash­ unprecedented press censorship can what they're dying for." tary compound . . . or how to blow one ington' DC with a population no larger turn the Grenada invasion into a great "Go in or get out" was a cry heard up - witness the Zionists' 1946 attack than a couple of Harlem housing pro­ US victory in its anti-Soviet war drive. particularly from the military, which on British HQ in Jerusalem's King jects, appealed to the Pentagon be­ Reagan is in big trouble over has been more than a little gun-shy David Hotel.) cause it was "do-able". But five days Lebanon - big enough to be the un­ over Central America - wary of after the leathernecks stormed the doing of his administration. Those another unwinnable war without pub­ Reagan's Grenada Diversion white sand beaches of this Caribbean body bags being flown into Dover Air lic support. Even conservative hawks Grenada turned out to be the all­ island, the "can do" generals and Force Base should be stacked up in the like Georgia senator Sam Nunn were time walkover that wasn't. Acutely admirals still couldn't seem to do it. White House. Things got so bad last for a phased withdrawal from embarrassed by their slow progress, With 1,900 Marines, several units of week that they stopped announcing "Mission Impossible". And Marines the military blamed "faulty intelli­ Rangers, more than 5,000 para­ the number of dead and began an­ interviewed in Beirut wanted out, now, gence", even though US spy planes troopers of the 82nd Airborne and a nouncing the survivors. It was the alive. We can support that. regularly overfly the island. Each day war fleet of 20 ships, they managed to largest number of US troops killed on a In this particular deal America has the operation dragged on they would seize two airports and the town of St single day since the height of the Tet been manipulated into becoming discover more Cubans at one point George's. They saRi it could take offensive in Vietnam. And the im­ Israel's cat's paw. Pointing to Israel's claiming another 1,000 mythical guer­ weeks to clean out Cubans holed up in mediate reaction of Marine families withdrawal, Sam Nunn argued: rillas lurking in the Grenadian the hills. The Yankee shark will suc­ was to see their sons as victims rather "Lebanon is surely no more vital to "jungle". But after Havana gave a ceed in swallowing the Caribbean sar­ than heroes: "It almost seems like our interests than to those of Israel, detailed list of every Cuban man, dine, of course. But after all the flag Vietnam again . . .. Those poor boys yet Israel has recognized that its woman and child in Grenada, totaling waving has died down, not even the dying, and I'm sure they don't know soldiers' lives should not be risked fur­ 784, the US backed down and "didn't ther in the cauldron of Lebanon's fac­ challenge" the Cuban figures. Simi­ tional strife. " larly on Reagan's accusation that Given the comparative populations, if Grenada was "a Soviet-Cuban colony "We Salute Heroic Cuban Fighters !" the 230-plus dead in the October 23 being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine We reprint below a communique hours the Cuban embassy in Grenada blast had been Israelis, it would be the democracy". The admirals could only by the Cuban government broadcast reported that the latest enemy attack equivalent of 23 thousand American over Radio Havana at 4pm, Wed­ on our positions was carried out soldiers killed. And with the Zionist come up with "secret arsenals" with enough weapons to arm "8,000 guer­ nesday, October 26. using all avaIlable means: fighter "master race" psychology which equates one dead Israeli with 100 rillas", and by the time you got down "The people were informed that aircraft, helIcopters, heavy and medium calibre artillery and mortars. Arabs, the country would have ex­ to the corporal on the scene, this at approximately 0700 hours com­ ploded. So Israel's terrorist generals turned out to be a couple of quonset munications between the Cuban But at the end, a group of six comrades, clutching our fiag, cont· and terrorist cabinet ministers are huts with an assortment of AK-47s, embassy in Grenada and the Cuban inued fighting. openly laughing themselves silly. They W orId War II British Bren guns and defensive positions were cut off. did it smart: swearing they wouldn't some 1870 US carbines, the latter "It was not possible to receive "At 1117 hours our ambassador leave Lebanon, dragging in the Ameri­ "guns we used to fight Indians with, any more information on the course communicated .that there is no cans' to cover them when they got but they can still kill you", said of the latest fighting and the indio further Cuban resistance. The trapped in Beirut and then precipi­ the corporal. vidual fate of each one of the com­ fighters in the final redoubt did not tously withdrawing, leaving the US All the talk of Cuban troops was also rades defending their positions. surrender and gave their Dves for the holding the bag. (And at least the a lie: the US just couldn't accept that "We can only tell you that at 0955 homeland. " Israelis do know how to protect a mili- Continued on page eleven 12 Summer 1983/84