Helping to build the April 20 antiwar actions

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SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1985 now in these types of demonstrations.

We also believe that the religious groups will come out in force for that first planning meeting. The attack on the Sanctuary movement, concern over the violation of human rights in Central America, concern over the deportation of refugees, the moral questions posed by the arms race and by the 35,000 homeless people in Los Angeles will bring the religious community out in large numbers.

S.A.: What do you think is the importance of mass action in stopping U.S. intervention in Central America?

White: These demonstrations can have a dramatic effect. They show that thousands of Americans can mobilize and join with other citizens in the streets to call for a redirection of U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

We know that these demonstrations had an effect during the Vietnam war. The administrations at that time were aware that citizens were in the streets protesting their tax dollars being exported to kill innocent men, women, and children. Now we're going to try to demonstrate that the American people do not want U.S. tax dollars exported to kill Nicaraguans and Salvadorans. We do not want to militarize space. We do not want U.S. collaboration with apartheid in South Africa. Name.

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The following letter was written by a young Nicaraguan woman, Raymunda Morales Morales. It What are the implications of the British miners' strike in Britain and for was addressed to the North American "brigadistas" and to the U.S. antiwar movement. It was workers fighting to defend their right to work everywhere? How are the Nica- given to Socialist Action member Dianne Feeley, who was in Nicaragua last September on the Marvin Jose Lopez International Brigade. The translation from the Spanish is by Socialist raguan revolutionaries responding to the worldwide propaganda campaign and the threats of direct imperialist intervention against them? How have the Polish workers continued to organize since the 1981 military crackdown? I hope that when you read these lines you will all be together to listen to my words. What is the response of revolutionary socialists to these events? I see that you are great people-friendly, respectful, and caring. I have only known you for a International viewpoint carries reports and analysis of all these events, short time and already I have a lot of warm feelings for you. You are the warmest human beings I have ever known. I thought that everyone in the United States was like your president—with bad through on-the-spot reports, major analytical articles, and interviews with thoughts for Nicaragua. But now I see that I was wrong and that only your president is a dictator. leading figures of the workers' and socialist movements. It reports on the I hope you will relay my message that the people of Nicaragua were happy to have you here with activity of members of the Fourth International in the workers' movement, in us and that we will do everything possible for you to take back with you a good impression of campaigns against repression and attacks on human rights, and as political your Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. We hope that you help us prevent more massacres of Don't think that you cannot do anything for us. You have already done a lot. You are showing us International Viewpoint is a biweekly review of news and analysis pub- that you are human beings with big hearts, with feelings. You are warm, loving proletarians for lished under the auspices of the United Secretariat of the Fourth Interna- helping us with such spirit in all that you do within the reach of your hands.

In the name of all Nicaraguans, I give you thanks for being so good. I thank God for that. This is a country that loves all countries without regard for color, size, or race. We want to live in peace.

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Let there be no more blood flowing from children, the elderly, women, and men. subscription is $22, and one year of International Viewpoint is I hope that the people of the United States will understand this reality and that we may relate $42. Subscribe now! Write to Box 80B, 2520 N. Lincoln Ave., more to each other and live in peace like brothers and sisters. You and we are the living example.

10 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1985 ...Arms talks (continued from page 1: “In Solidarity Ve Remember”) with the United States will soften the edge of hard-line U.S. antagonism to their country. The Reagan administration, too, wants to convey the impression to its European allies and the American public that it can keep the nuclear lid on U.S.-Soviet relations from blowing, while U.S. military expansion proceeds apace.

At issue in future negotiations are U.S. demands to negotiate major cuts in land-based missiles, a proposal seen by the Soviets as a ruse to strip them of their most effective weapons. The U.S. arsenal of 11,190 strategic warheads is primarily concentrated in submarines and bombers.

The Soviet Union, by contrast, has 5800 of its 8240 nuclear warheads on land-based missiles. The Reagan administration also insists that the Soviets dismantle hundreds of their triple-warhead SS-20s targeted on Western Europe or face full deployment of 572 Pershing 2 and cruise missiles. The Soviets insist that parity already exists between the NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact countries.

Star wars

The Soviet Union says that the success of any future agreements in resolving these issues rests on a commitment by the United States to curtail its Star Wars project. The Reagan administration, however, has made it clear that nothing will deter the launching of this $26-billion project. The Star Wars program involves research into developing a system of space-based weapons using lasers, particle beams, and projectiles, which could intercept Soviet ICBMs in flight.

The American negotiators did "concede" to Andrei Gromyko's demand that they at least agree to the objective of "preventing an arms race in space, a shift from the Reagan administration's previous willingness to only "discuss" the arms race in space. In return for this weighty concession, the Soviets agreed to include under discussion of space weapons, ground-based weapons aimed into space, which would include Soviet anti-ballistic missiles.

Reagan claims Star Wars is a "defensive" system that would provide a shield against nuclear attack, protecting the populace and shifting the focus of nuclear strategy away from a mutual "balance of terror."

But the paramount concern of the 1 year ($42) • 6 month ($22) trial subscription -3 issues ($3)

organizations.

tional.

60614. Pentagon, regardless of Reagan's starry-eyed pitch for a new, improved nuclear deterrent, is "to pursue development of a defensive system for the purpose of protecting not whole populations" reports Charlotte Saikowski in The Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 7, 1985), "but hard targets; that is, ballistic missiles."

The Star Wars plan will, in fact, increase the likelihood of a preemptive nuclear attack by the United States, which refuses to disavow first use of nuclear weapons in a future conflict. The Pentagon warriors will feel all the more confident in pushing the button if they think a Soviet retaliatory attack can be neutralized.

Robert M. Bowman, president of the Institute for Space and Security Studies and former director of Star Wars programs for the Air Force, notes that "star wars battle stations, orbiting 300 miles above the Soviet Union, can hardly be considered "defensive" in nature (The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 10, 1985). Bowman says that even if Star Wars weapons were ineffective ..Nicaragua (continued from page explain his absence from the Jan. 9 cel monies in Managua:

"My gesture and my words ...are a call to reflect upon what the Latin American democracies and the rest of the world hoped for from that great revolution of all the Nicaraguan people: political pluralism, a mixed economy, and a nonaligned position-as the LEAPONI A six-month available for Chicago, IL against ballistic missiles, they could prove quite deadly against targets on land, including populations.

New offensive weapons will certainly be built to counter any Star Wars system and the price paid in lives in a nuclear confrontation will multiply accordingly. The expense, needless to say, for this added destructive potential will not come cheap. The full cost of a Star Wars system is estimated to be as high as $1 trillion.

The United States appears determined to proceed with the development of Star Wars weapons, while using the project as bargaining leverage to pressure the Soviets. Liberal critics of Reagan's "irrational" hard-line stance can remind themselves, should Star Wars throw a cog into the wheel of future U.S.-Soviet agreements, that when you dangle a trillion dollars before the aerospace industry, things have a way of justifying themselves in the end.

Elizabeth Pond remarks in The Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 10, 1985) that the Soviet leaders have a hard revolution pledged—conveying the true wishes of its people."

Perez, while asserting his opposition U.S. intervention, played into the S. propaganda campaign around the caraguan elections:

"Those of us who believe we have done so much for the Sandinista revolution feel cheated, because sufficient guarantees were not provided to assure the participation of all political forces.

Sadly, the limiting in this way of true political pluralism weakened the credibility of the elections."

These comments by Perez are indicative of a shift in the attitude of a series of governments in Latin America and Western Europe that have greeted the measures taken by the Nicaraguan government since 1979 with distrust or outright opposition.

In contrast, the Cuban government has made significant sacrifices to come to the aid of the embattled Nicaraguan revolution. The day after attending Ortega's inauguration, Castro went to A letter from Nicaragua Action.

women, children, the elderly, and men of great value for our people.

Warmly, Raymunda Morales Morales time reconciling their search for "stability" with the "Marxist precept" of "inevitable world progress toward a socialist future."

A lasting modus vivendi?

"It is, however, the live-and-let-live basis,, she reminds us, "of the modus vivendi the superpowers have evolved over the decades in order to survive in the nuclear age."

That is not entirely true. The Soviet leaders have long since reconciled their brand of Marxism with their eternal quest for a lasting modus vivendi with the United States and its allies. In the lexicon of the Soviet bureaucrats, the "theory" of stability goes by the name of detente or peaceful coexistence. The problem for the Soviets is that this search is continually strained by the inevitable ruptures of the class struggle.

"The only way to change East-West relations fundamentally,' The Wall Street Journal candidly admits in its otherwise hopeful assessment of the Geneva talks, "is to change the character of either the West or the East. We are not volunteering, and the Soviet elites don't dare."

That job is better left to the working people of East and West, who offer the only escape from the "balance of terror" that threatens to topple us into the abyss of nuclear obliteration. It is a path that leads not to Geneva but to mass struggle against the Washington warmakers to ensure that they no longer menace the globe with their nuclear toys.

That task, too, requires disarming the ruling rich and their generals of more than just their weapons. It demands putting them out of business for good. That route leads to a new kind of society-a socialist democracy—where capitalists, bureaucrats, and nuclear weapons will all be consigned to the status of curious antiques of a deadlier age. But that was not a perspective present in Geneva.

ceremonies marking the completion of a sugar refinery built outside of Managua with Cuban aid. He announced the cancelling of the entire $45-million debt owed by the Nicaraguans.

Castro commented, "You can construct works like this sugar mill with your own efforts, but perhaps, for example, you cannot search for oil, so it is correct to reach an agreement with foreign investors."

He added, "Here there can be a capitalist economy, but what does not exist, and this is crucial, is a government at the service of capitalism."

In comparison to the days immediately following the July 1979 Sandinista victory, the aid coming from foreign capitalist sources is becoming extremely limited as the economic blockade the United States is trying to impose becomes stronger. Fortunately for the Nicaraguan revolution, the solidarity felt by the Latin American working classes is far stronger than that exhibited by the social-democratic ex-president of Venezuela.

Nicaragua, Sept. 24, 1984.

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tinians who live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories, were driven in 1948 from their homes in what became Israel. The Dheisheh refugees, among the most militant in the West Bank, are the focus of hatred of the Israeli government and the settlers, who want to drive them out of the camp and into Jordan.

In early October the camp was attacked by Kahane and dozens of his armed supporters. They broke down doors of Palestinian homes, fired shots into the air, and shot up rooftop water reservoirs. Kahane prayed near the camp mosque and cursed Arabs as "dogs."

The Israeli military, who accompany Kahane everywhere due to his Knesset status, did nothing to stop him.

The next day 300 armed Israeli settlers led by the American Rabbi Moshe Levinger, leader of the rightwing Gush Emunim movement, raided the camp. The Israeli authorities turned the settlers back, but responded by closing eight of the camp's entrances. Eleven entrances had already been closed in the last two years. Now only one small entrance remains open for the camp's 10,000 residents.

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