[Does U.S. "national security" really require this? The…]

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Does U.S. "national security" really require this? The State Department contends that to allow the Nicaraguans to remain in power or the Salvadoran revolutionaries to win would allow them to set up a staging area for an attack on our borders in Mexico. I always thought those were Mexico's borders-and the Mexican government doesn't accept this scenario at all.

The second "national security" reason cited is that the Soviets might build bases in these countries from which they could shut down the sea lanes. But the Soviet Union knows that this would be an act of war, and the only circumstance in which it would be an effective act of war is if the war were a conventional war limited to the Caribbean. If it were a nuclear war, of course, the sea lanes would be irrelevant. It is totally unreasonable to suppose that the Soviets would start a conventional war in the hemisphere where U.S. conventional forces would finish them off in a week.

As other speakers will point out today, it is not the Soviet Union that poses the real threat to peace in the world today. Indeed, the Soviets have been downright timid about providing large-scale military or economic aid to Nicaragua, just as they refused to provide it to Allende in Chile or Manley in Jamaica. The Sandinistas have offered to negotiate any Washington security concerns directly with the United States, and the Reagan administration's rejection of this shows that Washington, D.C., knows perfectly well it is raising a smokescreen.

The Kissinger Report does manage to identify one threat to American interests in Central America, however, pointing out that 62 percent of private U.S investment in the developing world is in Central America and the Caribbean. I could provide them with a few more figures, such as the fact that U.S. corporations take three times as much money out of Latin America as a whole than they invest. And I'd be willing to grant the fact that such figures do give someone an interest in quashing rebellions in Central America, be they local or foreign in origin.

I deny, however, that this has anything to do with the national interest, since less than 2 percent of the population provides more than 96 percent of the investment funds for such ventures. We here in Washington State have experience with what happens when private investors refuse to accept what's supposed to be the normal risk that supposedly justifies returns to investment in the first place. They hike our taxes and power bills to subsidize their profits. Our government's Central American foreign policy is simply the Washington Public Power Supply (WPPS) disaster on a national scale-and we're being asked to subsidize private investments abroad not only with our tax dollars but with the lives of our sons.

U.S. distorts economy

Guns and money: That's what the Kissinger Report claims will solve the problem. "Economic growth and military aid." The idea that economic growth will solve the problem rests on the assumption that the growth will trickle down to the bottom of the population and improve their standard of living. The Report proposes allocating $8 billion for Central America over the next five years. Such economic growth is, in a very real sense, part of the original problem.

Just as Europe underdeveloped Africa, U.S. investments have distorted the development of Central American nations, enmeshing the peasants in a web of debt that allowed local elites to corner their land, creating economic incentives for those elites to produce crops and raw materials for export to the developed world rather than building a balanced economy, and channeling production not to the needs of the people but to the demands of U.S. manufacturers. U.S. loans and "aid" have only compounded the problem, as the debt service alone is now more than the GNP in Latin America, and the conditions of aid have further increased the inequities of wealth. Thus in Nicaragua, after 40 years of U.S.-backed dictatorship, half the arable land was occupied by just 1,800 ranches, with 96,000 small plots crowded onto the other half, and another 200,000 peasants entirely dispossessed.

The country that has made the most rapid progress toward reversing such inequalities is Nicaragua under the Sandinista government-the country the U.S. is trying to destroy. Nicaragua has reduced illiteracy from 50 to 12 percent, decreased infant mortality by 25 percent, and increased health services by more than 1,000 percent-a fact referred to in the Report as "significant gains against illiteracy and disease" but considered to be outweighed by "poor economic performance"' It's hard not to conclude that they mean poor performance for U.S. corporations-though it is of course true that Honduras Comayagua Jamastra Cucuyagua Tagucigalpa Sierra de la San Lorenzo El Salvador -Tiger Island o San Salvador Gulf of Fonseca Puerto Corinto Puerto Sanding Pacific Ocean Miles 100 Air Force radar installation Airfields built last year by U.S.

•Tribute (continued from page 10: “Farrell Dobbs and Marvel Scholl”) president of Local 544, was assassinated. These two killings caused a tremendous strain on most of the officers of the union because it was not known who would be next. Marvel had to live with this.

In addition, there was the tremendous accelerated activity of Farrell, brought about by the job of being secretary of perhaps the largest local in the Teamsters union. The activity of coordinating organizational activities and laying the groundwork for what later became the 11-state area committee kept Farrell busy from morning until late in the night. And above all, he was away from his home a great share of the time.

After Pat's assassination and until the first areawide strike was settled in February 1939 after 22 very trying Nicaragua faces desperate shortages, due to the flight of capital from local elites, the problems of reversing the effects of 40 years of dictatorship, and the systematic terrorism of U.S.-sponsored contras.

Who will get American "aid,' and where will it go? Most of it will be channeled through the Agency for International Development (AID), and will be used-the Report insists upon this—to encourage private investment. But it is precisely the private investment in Central America that accounts for the fact that half the arable land is devoted to export crops, the cash from which goes to the large private landowners.

The AID, moreover, has in the past used much of its "foreign aid" to subsidize American private enterprise. In the 1960s the program financed $2 billion a year in U.S. exports to Latin America and could also boast such "reforms" as achieving "a revised mining code favorable to private investments" in Bolivia-at the cost of state-subsidized commissaries for the impoverished miners-while funding 50 percent of U.S. mining companies' pre-investment surveys in Latin America. These gains did not trickle down to the average Latin American: They dammed up at the top, creating a local ruling class with all the luxuries that could possibly be exported from the U.S., and all the most modern repressive techniques the U.S. could supply them with for maintaining their privilege.

Even if the AID were to change the pattern of direct subsidies to U.S. corAguacal Nicaragua Managua Nicaragua Airfields under construction by U.S.

U.S. training center for Honduran and Salvadoran forces weeks, there were few days that Farrell was able to be with his family. When he was in Minneapolis, he worked literally from early in the morning until almost midnight every day. This was a tremendous strain on the family. It was a most difficult task for Marvel. So a great share of the credit for Farrell's efforts must be given to Marvel, who made it possible for Farrell to be the efficient person that he was. Marvel's efforts, in my opinion, cannot be measured on the basis of any one incident. They were a continuing and ongoing daily contribution toward the aim of making the world a better place to live.

Now, it would be most unjust of me in making this recollection of Farrell and Marvel's life not to mention their three daughters: Carol, Mary Lou, and Sherry Dobbs. They realized early in life what Farrell was doing. They realized what their mother was doing. And they, in their own way, contributed to the staporations, the Commission proposes to give the aid to the very people who benefit from the perpetuation of inequality. Basically, the Report says this: "Look there's been a long history of elites strangling the local economies, so now we're going to give them some more money and tell them firmly that we'd be pleased if they'd use it to undermine their stranglehold on the economy?

At the same time, U.S. leaders do not want these elites undermining the power that allows them to hold off any proposals for socialized investment and development, so the Report recommends unconditional military aid to these governments. Indeed, it even claims that giving more military aid and training can be a human rights policy of its own, teaching leaders in El Salvador and elsewhere to adopt a more "humane" policy • of "enlightened counter-insurgency?' But it was the U.S. who trained these murderers in the first place. Between 1950 and 1973, more than 64,000 Latin American officers and soldiers-including 170 heads of state-were trained in the U.S. Army School of the Americas. Probably a majority of the current officers in El Salvador's army were trained in such institutes between 1965 and 1977. U.S. military and economic aid is not part of the solution to the crisis in Central America; it is a very large part of the problem.

President Reagan says we must "confine the Central American crisis to Central America"' The only way to do that is for North America to stop imposing private economic interests there, propping up dictators in Guatemala and El Salvador, and directing the campaign of terrorism and subversion against the legitimate government of Nicaragua. Yankee, come home.

Caribbeen Sea El bluff copair SANDINO San Juan del Norte San Juan Costa Rica Guerrilla incursions My Ports mined bility of the family unit in order that both Marvel and Farrell could continue making the great contributions they made to the class struggle. They understood and accepted the privations and the way of life of a revolutionary person.

Much of what I recall is written in the books by Farrell, but only Harry DeBoer and I remain of that staff who can remember the devotion and the dedication of Farrell Dobbs and Marvel Scholl. We have lost a great man and a great woman.

In summing this up I must pass on what Farrell told me more than once: "Jack, you and I may not live to see or enjoy life in a workers' state. But one day the workers will take what is theirs, and the efforts of those who helped bring it about will prevail" Certainly Farrell and Marvel did their best in this effort and those efforts shall not be wasted.

Socialist Action May 1984

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A tribute:

This was a very major decision for Farrell to make. He was well on his way forward, if he wanted to remain in the