WfJRNERS ,,1N'IJI1R' 25¢No. 323 :~) X-523 11 February 1983

Defend the Soviet Union Against NATO Imgerialism!

--

~~~~~CTK

Pershing 2 missile: eight minutes toMoscow.

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4

of the European continent and theAmerican continent." It must have beenthe first time in modern history that aFrench leader denounced the Germansas too pacifistic! And then George Bushwas sent to West Germany on a self-described "exercise in pUblic relations"to sell Reagan's hard line anti boost theChristian Democrats. But whatever theoutcome of the March 6 election, theresurgence of German nationalism-now mainly ex pressed in "left" pacifisticform-will continue to shake globalpolitical alignments.

The common joke in Europe thesedays is: "What is the definition of atactica,l. PM.clS}a{.W-QPon?,*~+thMexplodes ill Germany." With the scars oftwo world wars still remembered,millions of Europeans feel a sense ofhorror that the Pentagon wants to playout a nuclear World War III onEuropean soil. Certainly the Pentagonhas plans for such a nuclear Schlacht-feld Deutschland (Battlefield Ger-many). The German people know thisand are understandably frightened bythe prospect. But it is a species ofcrackpot rationalism a la Dr. Strange-love to think that a war between NATOand the Warsaw Pact could actually berestricted to the European continent.

Strangelovian notions about nuclearwar are, however, not restricted toPentagon think tanks. The Europacifistvision of a "superpower" war foughtoverhead with ICBMs is, if anything,more fantastic than the scenario of"limited" nuclear war in Europe. The

continued on page 8

ufomissiles

The well-founded fear that the Pen-tagon is about to turn their countriesinto a launching pad for World War IIIhas produced a strong reaction-at oncepacifistic and nationalistic-in WestEurope. especially in West Germany,Polls show that a majority of supportersof all West German parties, includingthe ruling conservative Christian Dem-ocrats, oppose the planned deploymentof the Pershings.

For this reason the W«St Germanelections scheduled for March 6 havebecome an international battlegroundin Cold War II. Last month Sovietforeign minister Andrei Gromyko visit-ed West Germany in a scarcely veiledattempt to bolster the oppositionalSocial Democratic "peace" forces. Theperennial Russian foreig'n minister toldhis German audience: "In the nuclearage the Federal Republic of Germanyand the Soviet Union are, figurativelyspeaking, in one boat." Even hostilecommentators conceded that Gromy-ko's appeals to the Germans not to tietheir fate to the Reaganite warmongershad some effect.

So no sooner did the Soviet diplomatreturn to Moscow, than French social-democratic president Franl;ois Mitter-rand rushed to Bonn as NATO'snumber one fireman, or, if you like,missileman. He warned the West Ger-man parliament against "the decoupling

er IOfeanan's•

fl"Missile Elections" in Germany

Thc American ruling class is prepar-ing to blow up the Soviet Union in anuclear first strike. The Pentagon'sinfamous "Fiscal 1984-88 DefenseGuidance" openly states that, "Plans forthe first use and possible follow on usesof theater nuclear forces should bedeveloped" (New York Post, 17 Janu-ary). These plans have naturally pro-duced an intense and widespread fear ofnuclear war in Europe. So to placateWest European public opinion, RonaldReagan came up with his cynical"disarmament" proposal, the so-called"zero-zero option" which calls forunilateral dismantling of all Sovietmedium-range missiles, in exchange forno dismantling of any NATO missiles.Not surprisingly, the Soviets res'ponded:"Nuclear surrender, no thanks!"

The front line of the Americannuclear offensive is the NATO plan todeploy new so-called theater nuclearweapons in West Europe this year,particularly the 108 Pershing 2s in WestGermany-a scant six minutes flyingtime from the major cities in the SovietUnion. This would force the SovietUnion to go to a hair-trigger "Iaunch-on-warning" strategy to protect itsretaliatory power. The introduction ofthese Pershings and the small, highlyaccurate cruise missiles will bring theworld a large step closer to nuclearholocaust.

Nigeria ExpelsOne MillionBlack Workers

Hundreds of thousands of blackAfrican workers poured into themakeshift border camps, clogged theroads in a 300-mile trek on foot orclambered into cattle trucks. Otherswere packed shoulder-to-shoulder inrickety boats in conditions reminiscentof the infamous Middle Passage in theslave trade. On January 17 the Nigeri-an government expelled all "illegal

aliens," giving them two weeks to getout of the country under threat ofarrests or worse at the hands ofxenophobic mobs. The expulsionswere prepared by a vicious campaignwhipped up to blame foreigners foreverything from the disintegratingeconomy to skyrocketing crime wavesin the big cities. So in what is probably

continued on page 2

.11'""

....Francolon/Gamma

Ghanaian workers expelled from Nigeria are beaten back by Togolesesoldiers.

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA

SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY

National Office Cleveland New YorkBox 1377, GPO Box 91954 Box 444New York, NY 10116 Cleveland, OH 44101 Canal Street Station(212) 732-7860 (216) 621-5138 New York, NY 10013

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Houston Norfolk, VA 23501Berkeley/Oakland Box 26474 (804) 543-4300PO. Box 32552 Houston, TX 77207Oakland, CA 94604(415) 835-1535 Los Angeles San FranciscoBox 29574Boston Los Feliz Station Box 5712Box 840, Central Station Los Angeles, CA 90029

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11 February 1983

African independence struggles fullyconfirms the Trotskyist theory ofpermanent revolution, which proclaimsthat neither the bourgeoisie nor variouspeJty-bourgeois forces can fulfill eventhe democratic tasks of the bourgeoisrevolution. Whether openly neo-coloni-alist, 'African socialist' or 'Marxist-Leninist,' post-independence national-ist regimes have bowed down before theimperialists. They have been unable toachieve even capitalist development oftheir economies, and as the povertydeepens it is accompanied by a recru-descence of tribalism. Only the proletar-iat, standing at the head of the peasantmasses and establishing its own classrule, can emancipate the black massesof Africa." ,

-"South Africa's Proletariatis Key," WV No. 160,3 June 1977_

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly ofthe Spartacist League of the U.S.EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION: Darlene Kamiura (Manager),Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau

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

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) publishedbiweekly, skipping an issue in August anda week in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York,NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial),732-7861 (Business). Address all corres-pondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY10116. Domestic SUbscriptions: $5.00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at NewYork, NY.

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

No. 323

WfJRKERSVANGIJA/tD

TONI RANDELL(1943-1982)

Died 12 February 1982

We miss and honor our comrade.

selves absolutely from the Biafranpolitical regime, pointing out thatnational independence without theexpropriation of the ruling class is veryfar from socialism" (Spartacist No. 14,November-December 1969).

In Ghana, the massive influx ofrefugees has fueled the Rawlings re-gime's fears of rising social tensionswhile it enforces draconian austerity.Once the richest country of the African"Gold Coast," it is now among thecontinent's most ruined economies.Ghana, the first African colony toachieve independence (in 1957), wasconsidered the showcase of the "Pan-Africanist" world. Under Kwarne Nkru-mah, Pan-Africanists {rom GeorgePadmore to W.E.B. Du Bois came toAccra where they, along with theStalinists, touted Ghana's supposedly"non-capitalist road." Far from amiddle road between communism andcapitalism, Nkrumah's regime sup-pressed workers' strikes and acted as aneo-colonial administration over thepeasants through the Cocoa MarketingBoard. But as commodity prices col-lapsed, so did illusions in Nkrumah's"African socialism" (with some helpfrom a scandal over a cabinet minister'sgold bathtub). In 1966 Nkrumah wasoverthrown and exiled to Guinea, whereSekou Toure's nationalist rule is main-tained through cooperation with impe-rialist aluminum companies and ageneral subsiding into impoverishedautarky.

The present crisis in Nigeria, whosefirst victims are almost a million blackworkers, tragically validates our call forAfrica-wide proletarian revolution:

"The experience of two decades of

VancouverBox 26, Station AVancouver, B.C. V6C 2L8(604) 681-2422

origin, as much as a fifth of the entireU.S. population lives in fear of beingseized in Gestapo raids by immigrationpolice.

But capitalist relations in the colonialworld are more barbarous, preciselybecause the low development of theeconomy affords less protection. Farfrom the Pan-Africanist glorification of"African socialism," conditions in thispart of the "Third World" in reality rivalthose of the period of primitive accu-mulation in Europe. As Trotsky wrote," ... the further east we go, the lowerand viler becomes the bourgeoisie, thegreater the tasks that fall on theproletariat." The "communitarianism"of the tribal village means a life ofgrinding poverty, and the workersreturning from Nigeria are not going tostay down on the farm after havinggotten a Sony radio in Lagos. Their onlysalvation is through proletarianrevolution.

While the Western bourgeois media isplaying it up, the Nigerian expulsionsexpress in the starkest form the destruc-tive irrationality of the world capitalistmarket. During the 1970s the Arabsheiks in partnership with the Anglo-American and Dutch oil cartel (theSeven Sisters) managed to jack up theprice of oil to twenty or thirty times thecost of production. The small, back-ward and venal Nigerian bourgeoisieacted as if these super-monopoly priceswould last forever. But $34 a barrel oilspurred the expansion of production inhigh-cost fields (e.g., the North Sea) andencouraged the substitution of otherenergy sources (coal, nuclear power,etc.). On top of these micro-economicchanges came the capitalist worlddepression, producing an oil glut whichfinally cracked the OPEC/Seven Sistersmonopoly pricing. The Ghanaian work-ers in Nigeria are victims of theprofit-hungry parasites the world over, fromthe glass and steel Exxon tower inHouston to the ancient City of Londonto the air-conditioned palaces in theArabian desert.

Nigeria's economic collapse andexpulsion of foreign workers intersectthe ethnic, regional and religious ten-sions which have been rife for years.When oil production was begun insoutheastern Nigeria in the mid-1960s, itled to sharp rivalry over the revenues.When the locally dominant Ibo tribedeclared their own state of Biafra in1967, the Nigerian army responded byblockading the region, leading to thedeaths (mostly due to starvation) ofmore than two million people. Whilemost of the left lined up behind Nigerianmilitary strongman General Gowonbecause of his "anti-imperialist" preten-sions, we said, " ... the SL supports theright of the Ibo nation to self-determination, but we separate our-

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

(continued from page 1)

the biggest forced population transfer inmodern African history, close to amillion people, mainly young workersfrom Ghana, are battling thirst andstarvation, victimized by profiteers andbrutally attacked by troops and borderguards of three countries as they maketheir way back to a precarious existencein the destitute lands they had left insearch of work.

Ghana's would-be strongman, FlightLieutenant Jerry Rawlings, ordered theborder sealed against the massivehuman tide until just days before theexpulsion deadline expired. Tens ofthousands just over the frontier at acamp in Lome, Togo sat on piles ofbaggage or mattresses, guarding theirmeager possessions and handing overtheir life savings for tickets on thetrucks, buses and taxis that would takethem back to Accra. Sporadic riotingbroke out as refugees grappled witheach other and with soldiers each timenew supplies of the scarce bread orwater arrived. Wharves in the formerboom town of Lagos, capital of Nigeria,were turned into teaming squatterscamps. On February I the governmentbegan a massive search operation for allremaining aliens, stretching a giantdragnet across the sprawling capital ofLagos with its 5 million people, target-ing hotels, restaurants and privatehomes.

On TV and in glossy magazines theWestern press documents the horror ofa million poor blacks thrown out to facethe elements, condemned to misery anddeath. These expulsions express thelogic of the capitalist world market in itsmost naked, unrestricted form. Duringthe "oil boom" of the mid-1970s, foreignworkers were drawn to Nigeria. Brutallyexploited by the employers who usedtheir illegal status to force them into themost menial jobs or into skilled jobs atlower pay scales,now that the Nigerianeconomy is in a tailspin the foreignworkers are simply tossed out to starve.

This is no African "peculiarity."During the Great Depression of the1930s, France expelled a million largelyNorth African workers. The ex-ploitation/expulsion cycle for foreignworkers is a standard occurrence inWest Europe, albeit not on such amassive scale or under such desperateconditions. And in the United States thesuperexploitation of undocumentedforeign workers combined with massexpulsions has reached mammothproportions. Every year more than800,000 "illegal aliens" are deported toMexico. Altogether, including familymembers and citizens/residents of Latin

Nigeria...

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

Defend Busing in Norfolk!

Free Pamphlet with eachSubscription to Young Spartacus!$2/9 issues of Young Spertecul (Newspaper of the Spartacus Youth league)

Make payable/mail to:Spartacus Youth Publishing Co., Box 3118, Church Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10008

A Spartacist Pamphlet 25-

Black Historyand the

Class Struggle}{~, .'".:fcj.,·

educating black youth at all-after all,in this depression-ravaged country morethan half of today's black teenagerscan't find a job. From Boston toLouisville to Chicago even the largelytoken and voluntary busing programswere challenged by racist mobs in thestreets. As the liberals knifed busing inCongress the courts too have rushed toput their stamp of approval on increas-ing segregation. From the ban on cross-district busing, to the "intent doctrine,"to the current drive to undo the 1971landmark decision which allowed bus-ing to achieve racial balance in the firstplace-they have gone a long waytoward reversing Brown vs. Board ofEducation.

For a Labor/Black Mobilizationto Defend Busing

Norfolk's labor unions and blackcommunity organizations must rely ontheir own organizations and power andtake the lead in mobilizing a pro-busingoffensive. The International Longshore-men's Association (lLA) and the UnitedSteelworkers of America (USWA) arepowerful unions with a large blackmembership in the Tidewater area. Alabor/black mobilization led by theunions could cut across the presentblack-white polarization over the bus-ing issue.

But to date the unions have done littleto actively fight for busing. The narrow"professionalist" policies of the teachersunions have caused them to shy awayfrom a militant fight to defend busing.The Education Association of Norfolk(EAN), which organizes the majority ofthe teachers, took a position on paperopposed to any reduction of busing thatwould lead to a resegregation of theschools and opposed magnet schools asa substitute for busing. The AmericanFederation of Teachers (AFT), which isconducting an organizing drive in thearea, took a similar position in theeleventh hour. A class-struggle teachersunion could win working people andblacks to the cause of unionism bylinking the fight for the interests of laborwith aggressive involvement in thesocial struggle for black rights.

The busing plan adopted in 1971involves only the predominantly blacksouthern end of Norfolk and the whiteworking-class areas of Ocean Viewand Willoughby. The relatively morewealthy west side has always been ex-empt from busing. This has bred resent-ment in the white working-class areasand fueled the racist backlash whichspawned organizations like the NorfolkTea Party, an anti-busing tax reformgroup that led the opposition to busing.Real integration would not only requirebusing to the west side, it would meanextending busing to the suburbs. Therelatively better suburban schools

continued on page 10

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Just Out!• John Brown and

Frederick DouglassHeroes of the Anti-SlaveryStruggle

• Forward to a Workers State!Finish the Civil War!

• Sit-Downs Not Soup Lines!Fight or Starve!

• Washington, D.C., November 27Stop the KKK!

when he announced last year that he andschool board chairman Johnson hadbeen scheming to ditch busing for years."Norfolk could become the first city onthe East Coast to reverse the trendtoward white flight," he argued.

The strategy of the pro-busing forceslike the Norfolk Coalition for QualityPublic Education has been to rely solelyon legal action in the capitalist courts,and they apparently think they will winthat way. Their opponent Johnson, theauthor of the proposal to eliminatebusing, has a better sense of which waythe political winds are blowing. That'swhy he's willing to voluntarily submithis proposal to end busing for review bythe courts. It was the strategy of reliance

on the racist federal government that ledthe civil rights movement to defeat.Most black people know they don't havea friend in the White House but manystill harbor illusions in the courts. Yetthe courts have trampled on the demo-cratic rights of black people time andtime again-under Democrats as well asRepublicans-because they are there todefend the interests of the bourgeoisie,not protect black people.

The Norfolk school board voteagainst busing is part of an overallattack on black education. Of course thebourgeoisie has no interest in integratedschools. In fact they have no interest in

Protesting Jim Crow decision by Norfolk's school board.

build a contingent which adopted thename Nat Turner Brigade to participatein the Washington, D.C. Labor/BlackMobilization that stopped a race-hatingKKK parade.

Busing in Norfolk

Integration of the schools has been anissue in Norfolk since Reconstruction,when the first public schools wereestablished in the South. The NorfolkJournal at the time expressed the racistsentiments of the ex-slaveholders andpropertied classes who recoiled inhorror at the spectre of black equalityposed by Reconstruction:

"The simple question before the people isthis-are we to have our State officers

and our judiciary filled by intelligentwhite men of character, or are we tohave all our officials, from the Gover-nor to the coroner, composed ofnegroes and their radical friends, ourLegislature of the same, our judgesradical pettifoggers, our magistratesnegroes. and our children forced intomixed schools. or denied the privilegesof education?"

-quoted in No~ro{k: HistoricSouthern Port.Wertenbaker and Schlegel

In the bloody political counter-revolution against Reconstruction thenewly freed blacks were again strippedof political rights, economically subju-gated and socially segregated.

When the Supreme Court handeddown the Brown vs. the Board ofEducation decision, Virginia enactedthe "massive resistance laws" in 1956,which required the automatic shutdownof any integrated school. After a legalbattle the Norfolk school board reluc-tantly assigned 17 black students topreviously all-white schools. Stategovernor Almond immediately tookover the schools and locked out 10,000Norfolk high school students for fivemonths. Racist "states' rights" advocatespreferred the end of public education toint~gration and sought to establishalternative segregated private schools.Finally on 2 February 1959 black chil-dren walked through the door of apreviously all-white school for the firsttime in the state of Virginia.

Today's anti-busing segregationists inNorfolk sound a lot like the recalcitrantconfederates during Reconstruction.The city's businessmen and politiciansfirst tried to prevent integration through"freedom of choice" plans, then at-tempted to scuttle the plan when thecourts ordered busing to achieve racialbalance in 1971. Now Mayor VincentThomas made clear his racist intentions

Extend SchoolIntegration

to the Suburbs!

Defeat Rac.ist Backlash!

Jim Crow is on the rise again InNorfolk, Virginia. On February 2, thecity's majority-white school board votedto scrap busing and legally return tosharply segregated schools. Schoolboard chairman Thomas Johnsonbarred public discussion at the meetingwhich rammed through the decision toend Norfolk's decade-old desegregationplan which had bused more than half ofthe city's elementary school children.Under the new Jim Crow plan, 10 of thecity's 36 elementary schools will be 95percent black; altogether 18 schools willbe overwhelmingly segregated. ThusNorfolk, the city which shut down itsschools in 1958 rather than integratethem, has become the first Southern cityto abandon a relatively successfulbusing program.

The racists of Norfolk have beentrying to get rid of integrated schools foryears. Now, in Reagan's Americathey've done it. Blacks have beendeclared expendable. Token gains wonduring the civil rights movement arerolled back: busing for integration hasbeen gutted, voting rights laws are underattack, "states' rights" ison the rise andominously so is Klan violence. Whatlittle money there was for the lunches ofblack schoolchildren goes toward anti-Russian missiles. Hypocritically, theNorfolk anti-busing campaign has beenfloated on thousands of pages of reportsand arguments made in the name of"student achievement" and stopping"white flight." And when they needed ananti-busing pro to declare the Norfolkbusing plan a failure, they hired DavidArmor from the Rand Corporation, thePentagon think tank which thought up"pacification" chem-war for Vietnam.Rev. Watson, the head of the NorfolkNAACP, got it right when he said,"They may use fancy terms, deceptiveterms like 'neighborhood schools,' butthe bottom line is segregation."

It is that bottom line of segregationwhich must be fought with all thestrength we have. It is desperatelynecessary for black people to break outof the ghetto, to be integrated into everyaspect of social life in America. In thisracist countr,y "separate" has never been"equal" and it never will. Sure, busing isutterly inadequate as a solution toschool integration: it's the most minimalapplication of the right of black peopleto equality in education. But busingdoes strike a blow at segregated educa-tion. That is why it must be defended.Today in Norfolk, while the anti-busingracists look to the courts to bless theirJim Crow plan, the pro-busing forcesalso look to the courts to save it. But theWhite House, Congress, the courts-thecapitalist state has helped to bury busingfrom Boston to Los Angeles.

The federal government and theliberal politicians of the DemocraticParty won't defend black rights. Busingmust be defended by a massive mobili-zation centered on the labor movementof the Tidewater area. The concentra-tions of black and white workers cen-tered in the region's key shipbuilding andlongshore industries have tremendoussocial power. The need to bring thatpower to bear in defense of the blackpopulation was championed last No-vember 27 by unionists who helped

11 FEBRUARY 1983 3

..

Local 6E-Board Member Fired For Honoring Picket Line

Rehire ILWU Militant Jackie Clark!J-Ve reprint below a statement by

Jackie Clark, a member of the MilitantCaucus and of the executive board ofInternational Longshoremen's andWarehousemen's Union (IL WU) Local6 in the Bay Area, protesting hervictimization for honoring a unionpicket line at herjob. Clark reports thaton Monday, Februarr 7 she wasfired bythe company. The "Warehouse Mili-tant" leaflet was dated February 7.

* * * * *On Friday February 4 I was sus-

pended for honoring the picket line of'BEW Local 617 at the Heublein plant.The company told me in writing thatunless' returned to work immediately'would be fired. Honoring picket lines isa question of elementary union solidari-ty. a principle on which the labormovement was built. When' was electedhouse steward and to the GeneralExecutive Board (of which I've been amember sinc~ 1980) , said, "Picket linesmean don't cross," and I meant it.

, learned of the picket line only lastweek after returning from a two-monthlayoff. The 'BEW picket line has beenup since December 20-over six weeks!Heublein, recently bought by the notori-ously anti-union R.J. Reynolds Com-pany, hired a scab electric company todo work that normally would have beendone by IBEW members. The use oflow-wage non-union outfits is becomingwidespread not only throughout theconstruction trade, but in industries allover the country. Ever since Reagan

smashed PATCO unions have beenunder attack everywhere, including theILWU. 1982 saw the lowest wagesettlements nationally since 1945, noteven keeping up with the depression'slowered inflation rate. In Local 6 we gotsaddled with a first time ever wage freezein the Master Contract. The Heubleincontract expires July 31. We shouldshow some muscle now and go intonegotiations from a position of strength.

This is a picket line that Local 6should be honoring. It has been ap-proved by the San Mateo LaborCouncil and is being honored byTeamster Locals 70 and 85 and by otherbuilding trades locals. Furthermore, ourown contract allows members to honorpicket lines (Section 18A). Local 6 itselfhas engaged in similar strikes. But Local6 officers have done nothing for sixweeks. President Al Lannon and BA[business agent] Ben Madrid firstclaimed Local 617 had not informedthem of the situation. But a letter wassent by IBEW to Local 6 dated Decem-ber 20. I have seen a copy of that letter.Madrid calls it a "flaky situation."Lannon and ex-president Eickman saidif people are so hot to honor picket lines,they should do it on their own. HeubleinChief Steward Ellis Johnson went so faras to make the outrageous accusationthat the IBEW picketers were being paidby the company to "trap Local 6." Thisis disgusting! These pickets are goodunion men who are fighting for theirjobs.

Talking to Local 6 officials is liketalking to company lawyers. They try to

find sixteen different reasons to forceILWU members to cross the IBEWpicket line. After I was suspendedFriday I went to Lannon and asked himto inform the company that the uniondefended my action. He not onlyrefused, but said if he wrote any letter, itwould be to order me back to work. OnThursday February 3 Madrid andJohnson read the riot act to Heubleinworkers at a lunchtime meeting, warn-

. ing them against honoring the picketline. I know the workers at Heubleinwell enough to know that this policy isbeing forced upon them against theirwishes. .

It is urgent that this policy of theofficers be reversed. If the company isallowed to single me out and victimize asteward and GEB member for honoringa picket line, then others in the local willbe picked off too. Even now the officersare refusing to arbitrate the case of MikeKasian, who was a G EB member whenhe was fired by Guittard Chocolate forunion activity.

For honoring the IBEW picket line,Heublein is charging me with "failure tocooperate and work harmoniously."This same catch-all "rule" has beeninvoked in several suspensions andfirings over the past month. The unionmust take a stand. The only rights wehave are those we fight for and defend.What is at stake here is the right toadvocate labor solidarity and engage inunion activity. My suspension andprobable firing threatens the right tostrike, to set up and defend picket lines,

WV Photo

ILWU militant Jackie Clark supportspickets at Heublein warehouse.

and ultimately the ILWU itself. Aleadership that shows more respect forcompany rules than for picket lines isincapable of defending the membership.

Jackie ClarkIt 10509

Cop Terror in Richmond, CaliforniaRICHMOND, California-On the nightof January 25 Richmond cops smasheddown the front door of black paroleeDonald Kizart's home, charged into hisbedroom and blew him away as hecrouched in the corner of a closet.Sergeant Dennis Browne claims he firedtwo semi-automatic shotgun blasts(each of which contains nine .32-calibershells) into Kizart's chest only after thevictim had fired at him. But criminalis-tics "experts" spent several days tryingunsuccessfully to find a single shred ofevidence to back up Browne's assertion.

The racist police department of thiseconomically depressed industrial cityhas been sued over and over for themurderous brutality it directs againstRichmond's black population, but theattacks continue unabated. This latestpolice murder of a black-the city\sixth since 1980-took place just daysafter some 40 witnesses in a federal courthad finished providing a stark, detaileddescription of systematic racist copterror. The next day the judge in the casedeclared a mistrial on the grounds thatjurors had seen news reports about aproposed out-of-court settlement andexpressed concern over the "divisive"effect of more testimony about copatrocities.

Browne had been implicated in therecent trial testimony as a member of agroup of white cops called the "cow-boys" who have been meting out racist"street justice" to blacks in Richmondfor years. The testimony was part of alawsuit brought by the NAACP and theACLU on behalf of the families ofJohnny Roman and Michael Guillory,two black men gunned down in their

4

--.....::::l!!i.. _:•.;~::~~~~~;(;kW~M~:~

WV Photo

Richmond, California blacks protestracist cop brutality outside court-house, 23 October 1982.

homes by the city cops in 1980 and 1982,respectively. The suit was initiated lastfall amidst the public outrage generatedby the "choke hold" killing of yetanother black, Willie Lee Drumgoole,in the Richmond city jail.

Far from being isolated instances ofwhat the capitalist politicians like to call"excessive force," these murders are partof a systematic pattern of cop abuse andintimidation. Witnesses gave innumer-

able examples of racist violence: adisabled 57-year-old man beaten, hand-cuffed and dragged out of his homewhile his wife and daughter wereclubbed-all for an outstanding trafficfine; a Human Relations Departmentemployee who was skeptical about allthe complaints 'of cop brutality that hehad to process, until he himself wasbeaten and his wife's arm broken by thescum in blue; police breaking up a"noisy" party by turning an attack dogloose. The list goes on and on.

It is not surprising that U.S. districtjudge Robert Aguilar, who has beenpresiding in the NAACP suit, says it isnecessary to "dispose of this case asrapidly as possible." A lengthy anddetailed exposure of the everydaycrimes committed by the forces of "lawand order" can only aid in breakingdown illusions that the cops are any-thing but racist thugs in the service ofthe bosses. Certainly the dirty work ofthe "cowboys" reflects the race-terrorprogram of the Ku Klux Klan, which

- has in recent years been gaining strengthand terrorizing blacks here in mainlywhite Contra Costa County. But thetrial has illustrated that the intimidationof the 50 percent black population ofworking-class Richmond is the goal ofthe entire police apparatus. The cops'job is to defend the racist system ofcapitalist exploitation.

We're all for the families of Romanand Guillory squeezing every cent theycan out of the city of Richmond. Wealso demand that the killer cops whocarried out the slayings be jailed. Butthe out-of-court settlement which theNAACP lawyers were ready to accept

(before the Richmond city councilrejected it as an "admission of guilt")wouldn't have slowed down the racistcops one bit. Its centerpiece was the callfor an "impartial" arbitrator to dealwith civilian complaints, backed up by apanel of "experts" to propose reforms inpolice functioning. Such schemes for"reform" and civilian review have neverstopped police brutality. As we pointedout last fall, the NAACP has made out-of-court settlements with both Rich-mond and Contra Costa County pledg-ing police "reforms," but that didn't"mean a damned thing when WillieDrumgoole was choked to death onSeptember 28, or on November 3 whenthe murderers went scot-free" ("JailContra Costa Killer Cops!" WV No.318,26 November 1982).

Race-terror is an integral part ofReagan's America, a country gearing upfor war against the Soviet Union andpaying for it by bleeding blacks, thepoor and working people dry. Whatblacks and all workers need to put a stopto the racist attacks, the layoffs, thewage cuts, is class struggle: sit downagainst mass layoffs and shutdowns,organize labor jblack defense againstKKK/cop terror, bring Reagan downthrough mass strike action! The liberalspeddle an endless string of do-nothing"reforms" while accepting theDemocraticj Republican program ofmilitary rearmament. The SpartacistLeague seeks to build a workers party tobreak the working people from thebosses' Democrats and lead the strugglefor socialist revolution to sweep awaythe blue-uniformed as well as the white-hooded racist murderers forever! •

WORKERS VANGUARD

Bust Union-Buster Levesgue!

For aQuebec General Strike!MONTREAL, 7 February-Quebec la-bor, the most combative section of theNorth American proletariat, is lockedinto a life or death struggle with thebourgeois nationalist Parti Quebecois(PQ) government headed by premierRene Levesque. Levesque is trying topull off a giant Reagan-style union-busting "PATCO" against Quebec's335,000 provincial government work-ers. These workers have been a bastionof support for the PQ and its "franco-phone" [French-language] nationalistpolicies. Their "reward": after monthsof refusing to negotiate, on DecemberII Levesque pushed through the provin-cial National Assembly an unprecedent-ed union-busting measure, Bill 105. Thelaw tears up existing contracts, reverseshard won gains in working conditionsand job security, imposes a three-yearcontract and a strike ban that slasheswages up to 20 percent in a countrywhere inflation is currently 10 percent,and promises thousands of layoffs!

In response, an "unlimited generalstrike" of provincial workers was calledby Quebec's "Common Front" repre-senting 210,000 hospital workers, teach-ers and other provincial governmentemployees organized by the three majorlabor federations-the Confederationof National Trade Unions (CSN), theQuebec Teachers Federation (CEQ) andthe Quebec Federation of Labour(FTQ). But so far the strike has beenlimited to 95,000 teachers, out sinceJanuary 26. and five thousand othergovernment workers. The 60,000 CSNhospital workers went out on Monday.January 31. But they were sent back towork 22 hours later when their leadersreached a tentative agreement with thePQ government which accepted theterms of Bill 105 with only minorsweeteners. However, in a two-daymeeting the 800 member delegateassembly for the hospital workers votedoverwhelmingly to throw this stinkingdeal back in the face of the CSN tops.The announcement that the deal hadbeen rejected was greeted with chants of"We Want to Go Out!" and "TogetherWe Shall PrevaiL" But the bureaucratsare desperately trying to keep thehospital workers on the job by retakingthe strike vote.

When CEQ leader Yvon Char-bonneau tried to pass off the CSN dealas "a success for the Common Front"striking teachers responded: "Betrayal!"and asked "What the hell happened tothe Common Front?" Good question.The teachers, who were the most ferventsupporters of the PQ, are the sectorhardest hit by Bill 105. They are targetedfor the loss of 11,000 jobs.

The "Common Front" strikes are"illegal" under Bill 105. But up to nowLevesque has relied on his laborlieutenants in the leadership of theCommon Front who have gone out oftheir way to try to stop the strike

Maous/Gamma

Premier Rene Levesque, PQ nation-alist labor-hater,

11 FEBRUARY 1983

themselves. But the PQ cabinet haslegislation waiting in the wings thatwould impose massive firings and fineson striking workers and eliminate duescheck-off for unions. These bills are theharshest anti-union measures sinceMaurice Duplessis, who ruled Quebecfor 18 years with the iron hand ofclerical reaction, corruption and savagestrikebreaking, decertified the Mon-treal teachers union in 1949. Already the

PQ has filed thousands of chargescarrying massive fines against strikingworkers, their unions and officials.Riot-equipped police are backing upLevesque's order that any workersdefending a picket line against scabs areto be immediately fired. What Levesquehas in store for the Quebec labormovement was demonstrated on Janu-ary 28 when the president of theMontreal transit workers union wassentenced to a jail term of 120 days andfour executive board members to 60days each. They were sentenced becausethe 2, 100 member transit union, withouta contract for months last year. joined aCommon Front one-day general strikelast November 10.

Lessons of the 1972 QuebecGeneral Strike

Levesque is not yet proposing thejailing of Common Front strikers andleaders because he remembers all toowell the consequences of similar mea-sures in 1972. The Common Front wasformed in that year for negotiationswith the then Liberal provincial govern-ment in Quebec City of Robert Bouras-sa. Bourassa jailed Common Frontleaders even though they called off a ten-,day public sector strike in the faceof massive strikebreaking legislation.Two of the Common Front leaders then.Charbonneau of the CEQ and Louis

. Laberge of the FTQ, hold the sameposition today. Although the CommonFront workers went back to work thejailing of their leaders precipitated aspontaneous walkout of thousands ofMontreal longshoremen belonging tothe International Longshoremen's As-sociation (ILA). The ILA walkoutspread to Quebec's industrial proletari-

at, concentrated in company towns builtaround mines, paper and pulp mills andindustrial plants. As workers took overthese towns and industrial sites a state ofvirtual dual power was created.

Levesque, like Reagan when hetrashed PATCO, is not just targetinggovernment workers but all of Quebeclabor. The outcome of his confrontationwith the Common Front is a life ordeath matter for Quebec's industrial

o3D>:J()::J"(I)

~~:J

Montreal,January 29:Common Frontdemonstrationdraws 50,000 insupport ofstriking publicworkers,Levesqueta[~ets allQuebec labor.

unions as well. If Levesque can get awaywith trashing the Common Front whichconstituted a bastion of support for thePQ, he will have no hesitation in goingafter Quebec's industrial workers, whenunemployment in this province andespecially in the vital resource industriesis the highest in Canada outside theMaritimes. Common Front workerscannot rely on their pro-PQ unionleaders to win this crucial showdownwith the PQ union busters. The CSNdelegates assembly demonstrates thatmass union meetings are needed to electstrike committees to implement theCommon Front's strike call, to organizemass picketing to defend the strike, andto turn the strike into a genuine generalstrike by extending it to Quebec'spowerful industrial proletariat. ShutDown Quebec!

Labor Must Break with QuebecNationalism

The general strike, especially againstgovernment strikebreaking and union-busting, raises the question of politicalpower. But in the absence of a revolu-tionary proletarian leadership, thecombativity of the 1972 general strikewas dissipated. Hatred for the Liberalsboth in Ottawa (where Trudeau hadimposed the War Measures Act in 1970)and in Quebec combined with mountingresentment over the national oppressionby arrogant and chauvinist English-speaking Canada was channeled, espe-cially by the Common Front leadership.into the PQ, sweeping Levesque topower in 1976 and 1981.

But now a Common Frontdemonstrat{on of 50.000 called in frontof the National Assembly on January 29saw workers carrying placards which

read: "Duplessis-Levesque: Like Father,Like Son!" "Levesque, Pinochet" and"Levesque, Fascist." Before the strikebegan there was a move in the teachersunion to expel union members who asPQ delegates in the National Assemblyvoted for Bill 105. And at the January29 demonstration Charbonneau de-nounced 40 former unionists who sit onthe PQ benches as "Rene-gades!" Thebureaucrats are reaping the "rewards"of their years of support to the PQ. Butthis critical showdown between Quebeclabor and the PQ provides an unprece-dented opportunity to win this militantlabor movement to a perspective ofmultinational revolutionary class unitywhere it is destined to playa vanguardrole.

Levesque has of course always been anotorious labor hater. In 1971, a year ofmounting class struggle in Quebec,Levesque stated he would "rather live ina South America banana republic" thana Quebec dominated by the "ranting andraving of labor leaders" (quoted inQuebec: A Chronicle. 1968-72). But thereason that "Pinochet" Levesque is nowtrying to introduce a banana republicstandard of living for the Quebecworking class is the same reason thatTrudeau imposed wage controls onfederal workers and Reagan has goneafter every sector of the Americanpublic that does Qot own a substantialpiece of the Fortune 500: the crisis ofAmerican imperialism, of which Cana-da is a junior imperialist partner, andthe respective ruling classes who see noother way out than strikebreaking andunion-busting at home and the anti-Soviet war drive abroad. Levesque canwrap himself up ,in the jleur de lys of."Sovereignty-Association" but as aservant of the capitalist system in thisperiod he marches to the same drummeras Reagan and Trudeau.

In spit~ of its pro-PQ leadership, theQuebec proletariat has repeatedlyspearheaded nationwide labor actionsincluding several postal strikes and the14 October 1976 one-day general strikeagainst Trudeau's wage controls. Todaywere the Common Front to beat backLevesque's union-busting, especially if itbrought out Quebec's resource-basedindustrial proletariat, this could ignite aCanada-wide labor offensive againstTrudeau's wage controls on federalworkers and the massive layoffs andtakebacks that have been imposed onthe Canadian proletariat in miningcenters like Sudbury.

In English-speaking Canada, therefusal of labor tops or the wretchedsocial-democratic New DemocraticParty (NDP) to defend Quebec's right toself-determination has been a barrier tobi-national class unity. In 1972 the now-deceased longtime leader of the NDP,David Lewis, supported the jailing ofthe Common Front leaders. Morerecently the NDP has been in an uproarover the PQ's application for admissionto the Socialist International. In amoment of unbridled hypocrisy, oneleading NDPer, citing the PQ's Bill 105,queried, "Do you think that a socialistparty would do a thing like that?" ThePQ responded: What about Mitterrand!This was apt as well as diplomatic: thePQ could have mentioned the NDP'smassive strikebreaking in British Co-lumbia in 1975 or declaration of wagecontrols in Manitoba in 1976 which wonthe NDP premier for that province, EdScheyer, the post as her Majesty's loyalservant, the governor-generalship inOttawa. But there is a fundamentaldifference between a bourgeois-

continued on page 10

5

The "Pope Plot"Against Andropov

Cold War Big Lie

to mention U.S. puppets Diem in SouthVietnam and Trujillo in the DominicanRepublic.

AndropoY and the USSR

If the CIA is expressing skepticismabout the "pope plot," it is scarcelybecause the Company is scrupulousabout the truth in such matters. Nor,contra Safire, is it because it's soft onRussia (shades of James Jesus Angle-ton, the former CIA head of counterin-telligence who suspected the Agencyhad become a KGB front, and consid-ers the Sino-Soviet split a gigantichoax!).

Some imperialist policy makers sim-ply do not want to see Andropov sovilified that it renders impossible mak-ing deals advantageous to imperialismwith the new Soviet leader. SomeWashington Kremlin-watchers thinkthe former KGB chief(a post he receivedas a party watchdog after alreadyestablishing himself in Hungary) may infact be more "realistic" than the immo-bile Brezhnev; i.e., conciliatory toWestern imperialism. For example,State Department official Sidney Plosswrote in the CIA's house organ, Prob-lems of Communism (September-October 1982), right before Brezhnev'sdeath, that "Reform of the domesticorder would seem to necessitate alowering of East-West tensions, andAndropov has been more vocal thanother top leaders in supporting im-proved relations with the UnitedStates."

There has been speculation thatAndropov might be willing to withdrawfrom Afghanistan in return for a deal onmissiles or trade, or perhaps withoutsuch a deal. Somebody's disinforma-tion? Wishful thinking? Moscow hasangrily denied the inspired rumors in theWestern press. Nevertheless, the Krem-lin bureaucrats are certainly capable ofsuch a betrayal. In 1946, for example.Stalin. in return for oil concessions andas a gesture of "peaceful coexistence,"withdrew the Red Army from northernIran. allowing the shah's army todestroy the left-nationalist DemocraticRepublic of Azerbaijan (somewhatanalogous to the Democratic Republicof Afghanistan), which had been formedunder Soviet protection.

Should this happen, it would be trulya counterrevolutionary crime againstthe people of Afghanistan. It wouldmean turning the country over to U.S.-armed Islamic fanatics and feudalistcutthroats who shoot schoolteachers forteaching young girls to read. It wouldalso result in a hostile government onthe southern border of the USSR. Wesay. "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan-Extend the social gains of the OctoberRevolution to the Afghan peoples!"

continued on page 9

The "free press"In action:

Hysterical rumorsIn the service of

anti-Communism.

discover what the guy had in hispockets?

Suddenly the "principal players," asNewsweek put it, all have new namesand faces. No longer center stage isSterling's sinister "Turkish godfather"Abuzer Ugurlu and his "luxurious Sofiamansion," and the "two Omars" (Ayand Bagci) so prominent in Reader'sDigest. Now it's the "three Bulgarians"and a brand-new "godfather," oneBekib Celenk, who supposedly metAgca at the Hotel Vitosha, "a hotbed ofBalkan intrigue." Celenk, who describeshimself as a simple "fruit and vegetableimporter/ exporter," is apparently want-ed in Turkey on smuggling charges, andlast we heard was being "detained" inBulgaria. They all sound rather as ifthey'd stepped out of an Eric Amblcr-type thriller ("A Coffin for Wojtyla"?)-and perhaps they did.

Now Sterling primly asserts (havingblown it the first time) that "The proofof Bulgaria's guilt in the plot to kill thepope is much too complex to explain ina couple of newspaper paragraphs"(Wall Street Journal, 22 December1982). Au contraire, Claire: it all rests onwhat Agca, who has had lengthy andrecent interviews with Italian security

. specialists in his isolated cell, is said tohave said lately.

William Safire's New York Timescolumn (27 December 1982), sarcasti-cally titled, '''You Have No Proof',"lists some of those "facts" Sterlingdemurely didn't. Like Agca "was able todescribe accurately the living quarters ofthe Bulgarian officials who were hiscontrols and contacts." Now just howdo the Italians know his description isaccurate? Safire states there was a"flurry of electronic communication"out of the Bulgarian embassy just beforethe attack on the pope, "similar to theactivity that took place before anAmerican general was abducted." Howcurious. We recall that at the time of theDozier kidnapping, the "terror net-work" crowd was claiming a "Czechconnection" for the Red Brigades, thenthey tried to pin it on the Libyans-today the Bulgarians.

The indignant Safire attacks those"faceless officials" in the CIA who don'tbuy it, quoting former Director ofCentral Intelligence Richard Helms,"who was pointing a finger at this'classic intelligence operation' from thestart." Well, Mr. Helms is a convictedperjuror. for his lying testimony to theSenate over the CIA's complicity inplots against Allende. But of course forthe CIA, murder plots against heads ofstate or the equivalent is a "classicmtelligence operation": Lumumba, CheGuevara, two dozen attempts againstCastro, blowing up a commercial planethat was supposed to be carrying ChouEn-Iai. General Schneider in Chile, not

The Two Omars and theThree Bulgarians

The latest twist in the "pope plot"thesis was dramatically unveiled lastNovember, when the Italian policeannounced they had arrested an actualBulgarian, one Serge Antonov, a lowlyclerk in the Bulgarian airline office inRome, and sought two more minorofficials in the Bulgarian embassy. Thissensational revelation followed a sud-den visit to Washington, D.C. onOctober 5 by the Italian judge investi-gating the pope case, llielo Martello,ostensibly for "consultations" withmedia people (and who else?).

When Agca was first arrested in May1981, he insisted he had acted alone. Onthe other hand, all evidence points to hisheavy connections with the fascisticGrey Wolves Turkish organization toexplain his wanderings through Europe.He'd also threatened as early as 1979 tokill the pope (a year before Solidarnoscwas founded). So "Bulgarian Connec-

Time

Soviet Communist Party head YurlAndropov.

tion Part I" involved heavy discreditingof Agca as a source of information.

Sterling's September 1982 ReadersDigest opening salvo stated of Agca,"He may never have known who reallypaid and controlled him." Indeed? Nowit turns out Agca knew everything allalong. Newsweek's cover story (3January) breathlessly retailed Italian"press reports" that Agca had in hispocket when arrested the phone num-bers of the Bulgarian embassy. theBulgarian Consulate, the Balkan Air-lines office and their employee Anto-nov's home phone number. How come ittook a year and a half for the Italians to

International Monetary Fund, wascrushed in its reactionary bid forpower-at the last possible moment-by the Polish bureaucracy and armyitself, and without much of a fuss. ButPoland was the focus. and Solidarnoscthe hoped-for vehicle, for U.S. imperial-ism's plan to "roll back Communism" inEast Europe, and there are plenty ofdiehard anti-Communists still lookingfor ways to make the "Polish connec-tion" in their anti-Soviet crusade.

Who really believes the latest interna-tional terror conspiracy production,"The B.ulgarian Connection, Part II"']The plot is so incredible: that USSRhead Yuri Andropov tried to assassinatethe pope via a "Bulgarian connection"to a "Turkish connection" to a crazed.fascistic Turk, one Mehmet Agca, whowounded the pope in broad daylight inSt. Peter's Square in 1981. Or moreaccurately, who pretends to believe, andwhy? "Evidence" has nothing to do withthis projection onto the Soviet bloc ofevery sinister assassination and terrorschema imaginable; indeed the majorpushers of "Bulgarian Connection II"cheerfully enough admit that probablynobody will ever prove an "Andropovconnection." Those professing beliefinclude Henry Kissinger and ZbigniewBrzezinski. the London Economist, theWall Street Journal. Time, Newsweek,former Nixon/ Agnew speechwriterWilliam Safire. and a nest of "interna-tional terror experts" around Al Haig'sfavorite far-out conspiracy-mongerClaire Sterling.

What these Kremlin demonologistsare really about is whipping up fanaticalhatred of the Soviet Union, by anymeans necessary. The latest "pope plot"assault by the "neo-conservatives,"coming only days after Andropovsucceeded Brezhnev, is intended tocreate a scare atmosphere that canundercut any inclination in Washingtonto bargain with the new Soviet chief.For liberal/academic Cold Warriorswho find the plot line hard to swallow, aminor industry in speculation ("What Ifthe Accusations Are True ... ") isflourishing.

There have been significant demurs,however, from this hard-line horrorstory, including the CIA and manyother Western spy agencies, while theReagan administration so far hasmaintained an official silence. Accord-ing to Henry Kamm of the New YorkTimes (18 December 1982), "Israeli andWest German intelligence and securitysources with a special interest ininternational terrorism are skeptical ofcharges of a Bulgarian connection in lastyear's attempted assassination of PopeJohn Paul II by a Turk." (Of course,after Wojtyla's meeting with YasirArafat. we don't imagine the Mossad isfeeling friendly toward the Christiangod's vicar on earth.) British intelligenceis also reportedly skeptical (althoughthere are some who think M 16 may becloser to the KGB than the Bulgariansare).

The alleged motive on which the plotpushers are hanging their" Andropovkilled the pope" concoction is Poland.Rumors have been floated that Wojtylasent a secret letter to Brezhnev threaten-ing to give up the papacy and lead hisPolish legions against any Russianthreat. After the shooting. some tried toexplain away Solidarnosc's stunningcollapse with assertions that the popewas "wounded in spirit" (see "WhoseKill Pope Plot?," WV No. 315, 15October 1982). In fact, Lech Walesa'sSolidarnosc. whose counterrevolution-ary character was firmly consolidated inits open alliance with the CatholicChurch and the Western bankers of the

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

Financing Latin American Death §guads and Polish Solidar,.osc

The Vatican ConnectionNot everything in life is a conspiracy.

For example, why a fanatic Muslimfascist Turk would want to kill the popefor other than revenge for the Crusadesis not clear. But for those who areenamored with conspiracy theories,recent revelations centered on theVatican's financial dealings shouldprovide grist for the mill. One gets aglimpse of a shadowy underworldinvolving key figures in the Vaticanbank. high-level Italian financiers,government officials and neo-fascists,and some Argentine generals for spice.It is a story of mysterious bank failuresand several highly unnatural deaths, ofLatin American death squads andPolish Solidarnosc. About the onlypeople not involved in this Byzantineintrigue are Andropov and the KGB.

The story begins with the election ofthe first non-Italian pope in fourcenturies, Karol Wojtyla, the archbish-op of Krakow, Poland. The accession toSt. Peter's throne of this hardened anti-Communist meant a sharpening of theCold War and much more ....

Let's begin the trail with the lateRoberto Calvi, president of the now-defunct Banco Ambrosiano of Milanoand closely associated with the Vaticanbank. No doubt the "loss" of over $1.4billion could make one mighty de-pressed. When Calvi's body was foundlast June hanging from London's,Blackfriars Bridge, the death was ruled acase of "self-suspension"-i.e., a sui-cide. If so, it's rather curious-only aweek before his death Calvi jumped bailand fled to England along with abodyguard. Mind you, it's possible thatthe pudgy 61-year-old banker stuffed hispockets with thousands of dollars inassorted currencies, a phony passportand 12 pounds of bricks and stones, thenclimbed up the scaffolding on the bridgeand "suspended" himself. But Calvi'sfamily is screaming "murder" andalleging a Vatican cover-up.

Nor was Calvi the only casualty. "Hissecretary defenestrated herself' byjumping out a fourth-story window,reported the New York Times (18 July1982). An investigating judge wasassassinated and the vice chairman ofBanco Ambrosiano was wounded by anunderworld gunman last April. Apattern perhaps?

The Panama Cabal:In God We Trust

Calvi rose from a lowly clerk topresident of Ambrosiano over the space

APDeath squad gunman In EI Salvador:Vatican funds right-wing militaryactivity In Latin America.

11 FEBRUARY 1983

President's Cold War pope givesrevolutionary Solidarnose::.

of 28 years. In the process, the bank wastransformed from a provincial institu-tion to a $20 billion financial empire.Part of the growth was through market-rigging stock purchases which inflatedthe value of Ambrosiano's stock; anoth-er source was Vatican money. TheVatican bank, known as the Institute forReligious Works (lOR), admits toowning 1.6 percent of Ambrosiano.(Calvi's son puts the figure ten timeshigher.) The head of the lOR,American-born Archbishop Paul Mar-cinkus, sat on the board of Ambrosia-no's offshore Nassau subsidiary.

Starting in the mid-1970s, Calvi gaveout some $400 million in unsecuredloans to a collection of a dozen obscurePanamanian shell companies. No inter-est was ever paid-it was simply addedonto the debt. By 1981 the Panamaniancompanies' indebtedness had more thantripled, and Banco Ambrosiano's LatinAmerican subsidiaries-who were sup-porting the bulk of the "Ioans"-beganto get worried. Who were these shadowyborrowers? The Wall Street Journal (30August 1982) characterized the Pana-manian companies as having "murkyorigins and no ascertainable businessactivities." Among the interlockingdirectors were Calvi associates such asthe head of Banco Ambrosiano Over-seas, the Nassau affiliate.

When Calvi needed help to assuagethe fears of his directors and hisPeruvian affiliate he turned to Marcin-kus. And he got what he wanted-themonsignor wrote letters of patronagestating that the Panamanian companieswere "controlled, directly or indirectly"by the Vatican bank. Not surprisingly,after the default, the Italian governmentwanted god's bankers to come up withsome cash to cover the debts of theborrowers they had endorsed. TheVatican has so far refused, claiming thatit and Marcinkus were innocent victimsof Calvi's schemes. Curiously. Marcin-kus has taken up residence insideVatican City-where he's immune fromItalian state prosecutors.

Vatican Cash forCounterrevolution?

Publicly, Marcinkus claims his rela-tions with Calvi were strictly business.But Michele Sindona, convicted swin-dler, suspected murderer and Calvi'spredecessor as the Vatican's financialadviser, says differently. No stranger tothe Holy See's overseas ventures,Sindona stated that, "The goal [of thePanama operations] was to stop the

Fabian/Timemore than spiritual aid to counter-

advance of Castro communism in SouthAmerica." He added that Marcinkusknew and approved of Calvi's Latinventures because "to fight communismautomatically means supporting Ca-tholicism" (Wall Street Journal, 23November 1982). Sindona, of course,like many others in the Banco Ambro-siano affair, certainly has motives otherthan pursuit of the truth.

Take Licio Gelli. H'e was arrested inGeneva last fall when he tried towithdraw tens of millions of dollarsfrom a Swiss account containing "be-tween $50 million and $70 million, all ofwhich had been transferred from SouthAmerican subsidiaries of Banco Am-brosiano" (Wall Street Journal, 20September 1982). Turns out Gelli,Sindona and Calvi were buddies-theyall belonged to a secret Italian Masoniclodge called Propaganda Due (P-2).When P-2's membership list came tolight in May 1981, the ensuing scandaltoppled the Forlani government. P-2was found to include over 950 of Italy'stop politicians, military and businessleaders; it was linked to several coupplots in Italy centered on the secretpolice. P-2's "grand master" was anindustrialist who had fought in anexpeditionary corps for Franco duringthe Spanish Civil War. He is describedas "a diehard Mussolini fascist, withactivities that include the financing ofExocet missiles for Argentina during theFalklands Islands war" (Wall StreetJournal, 23 November 1982). His name:Licio Gelli.

Gelli's P-2 links extended toArgentina. "Mr. Gelli has been de-scribed as having been close to almostevery Argentine president over the lastdecade through lodge connections....When Mr. Peron returned to Argentinain 1973, Mr. Gelli was on the plane"(New York Times, 3 October 1982).Latin American Weekly Reports (24September and 22 October 1982) addsGeneral Roberto Viola and AdmiralEmilio Massera, members of the juntawhich ousted Peron's widow in 1976, tothe list of Gelli's Argentine friends.

So where did the $1.4 billion inPanama loans go? According to theWall Street Journal (20 September1982): "The loan money hasn't beentraced, but Italian investigators believethat at least part of it was used to financeright-wing political and military activi-ties in Latin America" (our emphasis).What kind of "right-wing militaryactivities"? Over 30,000 people have"disappeared" in Argentina during the

military regime's "dirty war" againstleftists in the mid-'70s. Gelli is tied toArgentina's top brass throughout thisperiod and to Banco Ambrosiano'sLatin operations. Calvi ran Ambrosia-no. Marcinkus put Vatican cash intoAmbrosiano, sat on the board of direc-tors of Banco Ambrosiano Overseas,wrote letters of patronage for theshadowy Panamanian companies.Ergo...

"You Can't Run theChurch on Hail Marys"

So said Marcinkus, according toNewsweek (13 September 1982). Heought to know. The Vatican hashistorically been a seething nest ofintrigue much more akin to the poison-ous treacheries of the Borgias than thepious mythology of the Bible. Manyquestions were raised when John Paul I,that affable peasant pope who wroteletters to Pinocchio, was recalled to godafter a mere 34 days in office. Hissuccessor, John Paul Wojtyla, walkedinto a mammoth bank scandal and hasreportedly found himself at loggerheadswith the entrenched Italian Vaticanbureaucracy. But the pope has powerfulallies, most notably Opus Dei, the layorder which achieved political promi-nence in Franco's Spain and is widelyknown as the "saintly Mafia." Accord-ing to the Wall Street Journal (30December 1982):

"Most Opus Dei leaders found previouspopes too 'liberal' for their taste and. inturn. weren't welcome in the Vatican.But Opus Dei saw inan obscure Polishcardinal of Krakow. Karol Wojtyla. afellow conservative and worked for hiselection as pope. Now John Paul 1\ isgiving Opus Dei greater autonomy fromlocal bishops and far greater opportuni-tv to affect church affairs.';The alliance is a natural one. for OpusDei and John Paul share a trio ofconcerns: a fixed opposition to commu-nism: a strong desire to enhance papalauthority: and a firm commitment topreserve orthodox church doctrine onabortion. contraception. priestly celiba-cy and other traditional concerns...."Pope John Paul appears eager to useOpus Dei's strength to counteract theliberal tendencies of the Jesuits, who areactively engaged in social and politicalreform in Latin America. The pope hasalready promoted some Opus Deipriests to bishops in Latin America....Opus Dei leaders would like to takeover from the Jesuits the running of theinfluential Vatican Radio ...."

Now back to the Ambrosiano affair.Charges have been made by the Calvifamily that Opus Dei had offered to helpuntangle the Vatican connection with

continued on page 9

A Spanaclst Pamphlet $100

SolidarnoSc:Polish

Company Union forCIA and Bankersl' ','" '.'" ,"'''''''

/:~ " > !~ir/~ "'_~

Spartakist

Bonn, October 1981: German Trotskyists of TLD denounce nationalism ofthe "left": "Down with NATO-Defend the Soviet Union!"

Missiles...(continued from page 1)

idea-propagated also by the Stalinistsand far left-that if only Europe couldbecome a "nuclear free zone," itspeoples could somehow escape WorldWar Ill, is absurd. A war between U.S.imperialism and the Soviet Union,however and wherever it starts, willquickly escalate into a northern hemi-spheric holocaust at least. Only success-ful socialist revolution, not least in theUnited States itself, can prevent imperi-alism from unleashing its awesometechnology of death.

The "Missile Elections" andResurgent German Nationalism

It isan index of the changed politicalsituation in Germany that the December1979 NATO decision to introduce newtheater nuclear weapons in Europe wasfirst proposed and pushed by HelmutSchmidt, then Social Democratic headof the Bonn government and a pillar ofthe Western imperialist alliance. Toplacate pacifistic sentiment in Europe,their actual deployment in 1983 wasmade conditional on lack of significantprogress-whatever that meant-in theU.S.-Soviet disarmament talks. Thisproviso was window dressing, not takenseriously in NATO capitals.

However, as Washington's warmon-gering escalated, first under Carter andthen Reagan, popular opposition to theNATO rearmament mounted in Eu-rope. So the disarmament negotiationsbecame an elaborate exercise to influ-ence the hearts and minds of the millionsof West Europeans frightened by thegrowing spectre of World War Ill. InNovember 1981 Reagan launched a"peace offensive" with his famous "zerooption." The Russians naturally reject-ed this out of hand and have since madecounter-P,foposals of their own, mostrecently Andropov's offer to limitSoviet medium-range missiles to thenumber currently deployed by Britainand France. This was categoricallyrejected by Reagan, Mitterrand andBritain's Margaret Thatcher.

But the German Social Democratswelcomed it. Schmidt came forward asan advocate of Andropov's proposal asagainst Reagan's "zero option":

"Put yourself in the Soviets' placefor a minute. Then you would alsohave to consider that the other atomicpowers, Great Britain and France,dismantle their medium-range wea-pons, which can reach Soviet territory."

-Der Spiegel, 31 January

And Social Democratic Party (SPD)chairman. Willy Brandt is proposingthat the scheduled deployment of thePershings be postponed pending furtherWashington-Moscow negotiations.

These seasoned and cynical NATOsocial democrats are not, as the Ameri-can Cold Warriors absurdly contend,being taken in by the Kremlin's "peace"offensive, nor are they simply compet-ing with the "anti-nuke" Greens (petty-bourgeois ecological hysterics) for the"peace" vote. Rather the Social Demo-crats now believe that the interests ofGerman imperialism, especially its long-term ambitions toward Soviet-dominated East Europe, can be fur-

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8

thered by a greater distance fromAmerican imperialism.

The rise of the new nationalism of the"left" in West Germany (not so long agoAmerica's most loyal European ally) hasnaturally set off alarm bells in Washing-ton and also Paris. Forexample, the Dr.Strangelove of the Carter years, Zbig-niew. Brzezinski, writes: "we witnessadoption of an essentially neutralistposture by one of West Germany's twomajor political parties, with its newleader, Hans-Jochen Vogel, going out ofhis way to treat Washington andMoscow on an equal basis" (New YorkTimes, 30 January).

This is quite an overstatement. TheGerman Social Democrats remain an

Atlantic Alliance party (though far lessfervently than before). No J'rominentSPDer has even hinted at withdrawingfrom NATO at the present time. But theparty's direction of motion is toward aGerman nationalism balancing betweenthe Soviet Union and American imperi-alism. Right-of-center SPD leader HansApe!, a former defense minister, nowpunctuates his campaign speeches withthe slogan: "We are against displays ofsubservience toward the West andagainst displays of force toward theEast."

Schmidt, Brandt, Vogel & Co. looktoward the day when they can get backPrussia and Saxony (the GermanDemocratic Republic) from the Sovietbureaucracy. A "neutralist" Germanymeans a reunified capitalist Germany.Stalin himself made such an offer in1952, but the German bourgeoisie wasthen too weak vis-a-vis the Americans totake it up. Stalin's heirs are not nowabout to turn over East Germany to theFrankfurt bankers and Ruhr industrial-ists, but they are more than willing toencourage the new nationalism of the"left" in West Germany.

A New York Times editorial (4February) has the nerve to warn theRussians against letting the evil genie ofGerman nationalism out of the bottle:

"No diplomacies have been moredisastrous in this centurv than thosethat underestimated German nation-alism.... How can any 20th-centuryleader dare arouse that dark force fortransient purpose? .."Because unification also remains theEast Germans' dream. it is sheermadness for the Russians to be promot-ing neutralism in West Germany. Aneutralist West Germany would useevery ounce of its strength to subvert theSoviet grip on East Germany."

It is sheer duplicity for this leadingorgan of the American ruling class toinvoke the spirit of Yalta, that divisionof Europe (centrally Germany) intoU.S.- and Soviet-dominated spheres.American imperialism is not defending(and has never defended) the postwarstatus quo in Europe and it is now intenton turning West Germany into a nuclearlaunching pad to incinerate the SovietUnion, killing tens of millions ofRussians.

While decrying German nationalismas a threat to the peace of Europe, the

liberal Times in seamless unity withReagan has done everything in its powerto inflame Polish nationalism againstthe Soviet Union. In the fall of 1981Poland stood on the brink of civil war,staved off 'at the last minute when theStalinist regime spiked Solidarnosc' bidfor· power. Had Solidarnosc takenpower, Poland would have been trans-formed into a fanatically anti-Communist ally of Western imperialismbringing the military forces of NATOright up to the Soviet border. Andcounterrevolution in Poland would inshort order pose the reunification ofGermany on a capitalist basis.

The German Social Democratic dem-agogues, the nationalists of the "left,"

are laying the basis for a revanchistFourth Reich by exploiting the nationalsentiment of the German workingmasses and their desire for peace. Undera genuinely communist (i.e., Trotskyist)leadership the German proletariat, Westand East, could be the vanguard for thesocialist revolution in West Europe andpolitical revolution to overthrow theparasitic bureaucracy in the Soviet bloc.West Germany is the dominant econom-ic power in capitalist Europe. The EastGerman deformed workers state byitself is the tenth leading industrialcountry in the world. A unified Germanworkers state would be the industrialpowerhouse of a Socialist United Statesof Europe. This is the program of theTrotzkistische Liga Deutschlands, Ger-man section of the international Sparta-cist tendency, which combats both theopenly reactionary Christian Demo-crats and the Social Democrats andtheir Green fringe.

Not Detente, But InternationalProletarian Revolution

It is not only the Europacifists andopponents of Reagan who preach thevirtues of detente with the Soviet Union.Leading European advocates of NATOrearmament, such as Mitterrand andWest German Christian Democraticleader Helmut Kohl, also speak in favorof "detente." especially in terms ofeconomic relations with the East. Isn'tthis a contradiction? No. For theEuropean imperialists, detente is analternative strategy, one correspondingto their specific strengths, to roll backSoviet power in East Europe. TheGerman bourgeoisie knows it cannotwin a war against the Soviet Union now,but it certainly possesses the capacity toeconomically undermine and politicallysubvert the Soviet bloc.

The detente road to counterrevolu-tion came very close to success inPoland. The massive loans Frankfurtbankers made to Warsaw in the 1970sproduced an orgy of corruption amongthe bureaucratic elite, while allowing forincreases in the consumption levels ofPolish workers and peasants whichcould not possibly be sustained. Howdetente contributed to the anti-Communist explosion in Poland in1980-81 is explained in a vulgar,

exaggerated way by.an American ColdWar academic:

"Detente does not liberalize rulingLeninist parties, it corrupts them-organizationally, ideologically, andpersonally. In Poland, the absolutecommitment of former Party FirstSecretary Edward Gierek to the interna-tional politics of detente corrupt-ed Polish Communist authoritiesabsolutely."

-Richard Spielman, "Crisis inPoland," Foreign Policy,Winter, 1982-83

For European imperialism, promotinginternal counterrevolutionary forces inthe Soviet bloc seems less risky thanattempting a nuclear first strike, but thetwo are by no means mutually exclusive.

Since the Stalinist bureaucracyinstinctively fears proletarian revolu-tion internationally, the Kremlin leadersmust maintain illusions in "peacefulcoexistence" even with Reagan's Ameri-ca. Thus Andropov recently renewedthe offer of a "non-aggression pact"between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.A "non-aggression pact" with Reagan isworth about as much as the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939 in protecting theSoviet Union.

All of the bourgeois, petty-bourgeoisand reformist forces which the Kremlinlook to for "peace" are to one degree oranother part of the Reagan-led anti-Soviet war drive. In the U.S. theideological leaders of the "freeze"movement and "no first use" advocatesare certified Vietnam War criminalsRobert McNamara and McGeorgeBundy. These Democratic Cold and hotWarriors simply want a more rationalmix of nuclear and conventional forcesto confront the Soviet Union. In Britainsocial democrat E.P. Thompson, aleader of the European Nuclear Dis-armament movement, actually wel-comed Reagan's "zero option" as "aremarkable change in tone," suggestingthat all it needed was a "freeze" tackedon to become fully supportable. Thesupposedly pro-Moscow French Com-munists are loyally serving in thegovernment of Reagan's most bellicoseEuropean ally, Franc;ois Mitterrand,and even hailed his anti-Soviet Bundes-tag speech. And the Italian Communistshave decided not to agitate against thedeployment of the cruise missiles in Italyso as not to disturb their hopes for "ahistoric compromise" with the Vatican.With "friends of peace" like these ...

The Soviet Union, land of theOctober Revolution, is in danger. It isconfronted not just with war threats butwith nuclear war plans. The search for apopular front with some "peace-loving"wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie ismore than an illusion, it is a directdanger to Soviet defense. Only therevival of revolutionary proletarianinternationalism can defend the SovietUnion by destroying world capitalism.This requires a world Trotskyist party-to lead socialist revolution in the capital-ist world and to oust the counterrevolu-tionary Stalinist bureaucracy throughproletarian political revolution. The fateof mankind is in the balance.•

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Zionist Excommunication

UPIZionist theocratic reaction: War criminals Ariel Sharon and Menachem Beginwith coalition partners.

Snuffing candles to symbolize theextinction of their spiritual lives andblowing a ram's horn, three rabbisconstituted a "Bet Din" or Jewish courtand using an 18th century text excom-municated several hundred Jews. Thedocument dates from the banning of theJewish group called the Satanic Sabba-tian Frankists in the Pale or Jewishghetto of Brode, Poland in the year1757. However, this excommunicationtook place not in the period of tsaristreaction, but only last December in aMassachusetts Holiday Inn. Themodern-day Jewish heretics were foundguilty of alleged Marxist views on Israeland sex.

The "excommunicated" included twogroups: the signers of a June 20advertisement in the New York Timesby the "Ad Hoc Committee in Defenseof the Palestinians and Lebanese Peo-ple" that protested the Israeli invasionof Lebanon, and members of the NewJewish Agenda, which not only opposedthe invasion but supports democraticrights for homosexuals. The spokesmanfor the Holiday Inn Bet Din, RabbiMarvin Antelman, excoriated the sign-ers of the Times ad for "adopting theword 'J ewish' to get across a Trotskyiteprogram in defense of the PalestineLiberation Organization." As for theNew Jewish Agenda, Antelman thun-dered: "You can't be Jewish and homo-sexual. It's a contradiction in terms. It'san abomination." It's "like undoing thecircumcision."

Antelman, who claims to be the chiefjustice ofa 13-memberSupreme Rabbin-ical Court of America, Inc., said thatthe excommunication could only bereversed by the chief rabbis of Israel.One of the signers of the June 20 ad,noted linguist Noam Chomsky, said ofthe anathema pronounced against him,"I don't think it will carry very muchweight in Israel except in very kooky

circles." But the "very kooky circles,"the Rabbi Antelmans of Israel, havestate power to impose their decisions.Israel is not merely a racialist "Jewishstate," but a theocracy run by an alliancebetween "secular Zionists" and a verypowerful Orthodox Jewish rabbinate,organized into the National ReligiousParty (NRP) and Agudath Israel.

The Orthodox rabbinate rival Iran'sAyatollah Khomeini in their attempts toenforce religious intolerance. Basing

themselves on the pre-medieval Talmudand the ancient laws the Torah evolvedfor an ecclesiastical slavocracy, theydictate laws that impinge on everyaspect of daily life in Israel. This despitethe fact that the overwhelming majorityof Israeli Jews are not orthodox, andmany are not religious. To give just oneexample of the power of this Orthodoxrabbinate: in Israel, the only recognizedJewish denomination is Orthodox, andfor Jews the only valid marriages,divorces, religious conversions, burials,etc. are those performed by an Ortho-dox rabbi. Therefore, Jews converted byReform or Conservative rabbis are not

recognized as Jews in the "Jewish state,"are excluded from the racialist "right toreturn" (automatic citizenship) andcannot reside in the 92 percent of Israeloff-limits to non-Jews! Similarly, theoffspring of non-Orthodox Jewishmarriages are considered "bastards" andare not entitled to Jewish legal rights.

The rise ofJewish religious fanaticismin Israel is closely associated with the~oming to power of Menachem Begin'sright-wing Likud government. But

opposition leader Shimon Peres of theallegedly more secular Zionist "Labor"Party helped the Likud pass, in March1980, a new "Chief Rabbinate Law" thatstrengthened the exclusion of Reformand Conservative Judaism from officialrecognition. This is not surprising as"Labor" ruled Israel for 25 years inalliance with the NRP.

Zionism is a product of the modernage of nationalism and imperialism, butit had to turn to the "Torah sages" andTalmudic scholars-to the most back-ward, bigoted religious obscurantism-to find "legitimacy" for attempting toforge a racialist "Jewish state" in the

Arab East. The NRP has spawned amass fascistic movement, the GushEmunim, in the rabbinical schools thatprovide the cadres that colonize andterrorize the Palestinians in the WestBank as well as terrorizing Israel's ownnon-orthodox Jewish population.

Chomsky recalled that he shared thehonor of excommunication with the17th century philosopher BenedictSpinoza, whose ideas foreshadowed theEnlightenment. But Antelman hurls thename of the great communist LeonTrotsky, Lenin's comrade-in-arms andfounder of the Red Army, at the signersof the New York Times ad. And theliberal anarchist Chomsky, who sup-ports CIA-backed mullahs against theSoviet Army in Afghanistan, would findthis almost as much an anathema as theTalmud-thumping rabbis of the Holi-day Inn Bet Din. Yet Antelman is rightto recognize in Trotskyism the archenemy of Zionism. For the only ones toconsistently fight the Israeli genocidal-ists while recognizing that the right toself-determination for both the Palesti-nian Arab and the Hebrew-speakingpeoples can only be realized in a socialistfederation of the Near East are theTrotskyists of the international Sparta-cist tendency.

Isaac Deutscher remarked in hispenetrating essay, "The Non-JewishJew," that Spinoza and Trotsky alongwith Karl Marx and Heinrich Heine,Sigmund Freud and Rosa Luxemburgare in fact part of a very Jewishtradition: the Jewish heretic who tran-scends Judaism. 'They all look forideals and fulfillment beyond it and theyrepresent the sum and substance ofmuch that is greatest in modernthought, the sum and substance of themost profound upheavals that havetaken place in philosophy, sociology,economics and politics in the last threecenturies." Raised on the borderline ofdiverse nations, cultures and epochs,they embody "the moral and politicalheritage that genius of the Jews whohave gone beyond Jewry has left us-the message of universal humanemancipation." •

bankers, where does it fit in? Accordingto L'Espresso (5 September 1982)Calvi's associate Flavio Carboni has atape recording of a conversation inwhich Calvi screamed at Marcinkus:"Watch out! If it comes out that youwere paying the wages of Solidarnosc,not a stone of the Vatican will remainstanding." Carboni split to Switzerlandupon hearing of Calvi's death. Earlier,at the time of Roberto Calvi's death, JlGiornale (18 July 1982) reported thefamily's charge of murder:

"Rather. what seems significant is whatCarlo Calvi declared immediately after-wards. when he explained how he doesnot believe the 'lead' on internationalarms trafficking. but does not howeverconsider entirely 'unfounded' the hypo-thesis of a secret service intervention inthe murder of his father. And alierhaving confirmed the story of' thefinancing of the Polish trade unionSolidamo.5c bl" the Banco Ambrosiano,Carlo Calvi concluded with words thatmake one's hair stand on end: 'Perhapsin this case. there may be even moreserious connections, but if this lead is tobe followed. either they'll make us look

VaticanConnection...(continued from page 7)

Ambrosiano and use its financial wealthto help out the hard-pressed lOR. In aninterview printed in the Rome DailyAmerican (25 November 1982), CarloCalvi said:

"Two months before dying. my fatherwent to the Pope in the Vatican and toldhim that he had established contactswith Opus Dei with the purpose ofnegotiating to sell them the 16 percentof the Ambrosiano then in the hands ofthe lOR.... He [the pope] gave hisconsent to the operation. but immedi-ately Marcinkus reacted strongly. andhe had Monsignor Agostino Casaroli[the Vatican Secretary of State] and theHon. Giulio Andreotti [former Chris-tian Democratic prime minister] on hisside."

And Polish Solidarnosc, that com-pany union for the CIA and Western

11 FEBRUARY 1983

,

\

o~(f)"Uen'"~

ArchbishopPaulMarcinkus,head ofVatican bank,with the pope:Hiding outin Vatican Citywhere he isimmune fromprosecution.

like madmen or we'll put our own skinsin serious danger as well'." [ouremphasis]

And of course there had to be a Nazi.To clean up the Ambrosiano mess theVatican called in none other thanHermann Abs. AbswasakeyfinancierinNazi Germany during World War II,chairman of the Deutsche Bank and arepresentative on the supervisory boardof I.G. Farben, the German chemicalconglomerate which invested $250million in a plant utilizing slave laborfrom the Auschwitz concentrationcamp. The post-war U.S. militarygovernment recommended that he beindicted for war crimes. It neverhappened: Abs was "considered essen-tial to the reconstitution of the WestGerman economy" (Washington Post,30 December 1982).

What ties shadowy right-wing con-spirators and criminals like Abs andGelli to the Vatican's pursestrings isanti-Communism. And Karol Wojtylais the embodiment of papal anti-Communism. More actively than hiscautious Polish colleague CardinalWyszynski, the former archbishop ofKrakow promoted the clerical-nationalist circles which became thecore leadership of Solidarnosc aroundLech Walesa. When Wojtyla wasunexpectedly elected pope in 1978, wewrote, "he now stands at the head ofmany millions of practicing Catholics inEast Europe, a tremendous potentialforce for counterrevolution" ("ThePresident's Pope')" WV No. 217, 20October 1978). And during the next twoand a half years Wall Street's man in theVatican would help push Poland to thebrink of capitalist counterrevolution.

Over a century ago the great Italianrevolutionary democrat Giuseppe Gari-baldi called the papacy "the cancer of

Italy." Today the "cancer of Italy" hasbecome part of the general socialmalignancy that is the death agony ofcapitalism.•

"Pope Plot" ...(continued from page 6)

The imperialist bourgeoisie, or at anyrate its more far-sighted representa-tives, understand that the Soviet leadersare not, as they profess, communists butnarrowly nationalistic-and often cyni-cal and corrupt-bureaucrats who willsell out, especially other people's revolu-tions. The Soviet Union can be defendedagainst imperialism and regain itsrightful place as a bastion of worldsocialist revolution, as it was underLenin and Trotsky, only through aproletarian political revolution whichsweeps away Stalin's heirs from theKremlin.

Selling out other people's revolutionswill not buy the Kremlin bureaucracy"peaceful coexistence." In this relentlessdrive to destroy the Soviet Union, theimperialists are willing to employ thewildest, most fantastic lies, like theRussians supposedly are dropping"yellow rain" on the Afghan andLaotian tribesmen. This from the samepeople who dumped millions of tons ofdeadly chemicals, not to speak ofnapalm, on Indochina! Now comes thestory Andropov tried to kill "god's vicaron earth," from a ruling class that isplanning a "protracted" nuclear holo-caust against the USSR, starting by"decapitating" the Soviet leadership!The monstrous terrorists of the worldare to be found in Washington, D.C.and its suburbs Langley and Arlington,Va.•

9

Solidaridad

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Open Letter toCasa EI Salvador

"Farabundo Marti"

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Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

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zational basis for a proletarian revolu-tion and a workers anj peasantsgovernment.

The Trotskyists are intransigentopponents of a negotiated sellout, andof the reformist capitalist programwhich leads to it. Where the FDR/FMLN calls for maintaining "freeenterprise," we call for expropriation ofthe bourgeoisie (not just the aristocraticoligarchy). Wh~re the FDR/FMLNcalls for implementing the land reformdecreed by the Christian Democratic-military junta, communists call foragrarian revolution-seize the hacien-das! And unlike the petty-bourgeoisnationalists, who dream of a "Free EISalvador" in cooperation with an"enlightened" U.S. imperialism, a Trot-skyist party would seek to spreadsocialist revolution to all corners of theregion. This could transform CentralAmerica from Uncle Sam's back yardinto the vital link uniting socialistrevolution throughout the Americas.•

ence in Washington on January 19 thatfor the FMLN to win the war militarilycould mean "to lose in the end." "Lose"for whom? Certainly not for the exploit-ed r.lasses. _

The Spartacist League says that aleftist military victory is necessary in EISalvador because it can open the door toworkers revolution throughout CentralAmerica, because the real alter