Workers, students revolt from Poland to Burma
1988Adam Wood 1988-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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13 YAS Last month the Senate narrowly approved a plan sponsored by the Democrats to provide the Nicaraguan contras with $27 million for humanitarian aid-food, clothing, and medical supplies-for six months beginning Oct. 1.
The plan is almost identical to one written by the Republicans. The one difference is that the Republicans would S.F. nurses waged a militant send the contras the $16.3 million worth of See story on page 3. arms and ammunition now, whereas the Democrats would sent it "later" if the Sandinistas created an "emergency situation" in Central America.
The Sandinistas have now had the imperialist guns at their head for over nine "Peace is breaking out everywhere" according to just about every T.V., radio, or magazine commentator you hear.
The capitalist media would like us to believe that in Nicaragua, Angola, Palestine, and elsewhere around the world, unruly workers and peasants are coming to their senses and realizing that American imperialism is just looking after their best interests.
Even the Soviets are coming around, they say with glee. Gorbachev and the other bureaucrats are no longer willing to stick the Nicaraguan and South African revolutions.
In Nicaragua, the pro-Moscow Communist Party of Nicaragua (PCN) put forward the demand "To the Streets for a Government of National Salvation" as the front-page headline of its newspaper, Avance, stated on June 29, 1988.
This is the same demand pushed by the U.S. State Department and the contras. fore settling. May May Gong/Socialist Action U.S. Ambassador Richard Melton was expelled by the Sandinistas for advocating this demand and supporting the internal capitalist opposition behind the back of the Sandinista government.
A "government of national salvation" would mean that the Sandinistas would have to share power with the political representatives of the contras and accept their demands to dismantle the gains of the revolution. What a "peaceful" situation that would be!
The Soviet foreign ministry, the guiding light of the Nicaraguan Stalinists, announced in mid-July to a meeting of over 1000 top Soviet diplomats, ministers, and key party officials that "the class struggle is no longer the decisive factor" in world politics and that foreign policy is really just about "economic development." (London's Financial Times, Aug. 13)
If this kind of "peace" smells funny to you, you're on the right track. The kind of peace we're being sold is a settlement of conflicts in the interest of the bosses, landlords, and financiers—at the expense of the world's workers and peasants. It is the See peace of the graveyard.
Millions in the streets One of the reasons that the capitalist media is selling this line so hard may be that there aren't that many buyers. A brief look at the real world, visited only occasionally by most capitalist editors and section station managers, shows a real heating up of the class struggle.
In Burma, opposition sources estimate that 3000 students and workers have sacrificed their lives in the current struggle
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INTO CALAVERA KILLED I CONTRAS: US RNS
WE ARE PATIENT CARE? Democrats vote new contra aid
out their necks for "regional conflicts" like Palestine uprising grips Jordan, See pp. 8-9.