U.S. Hands off Nicaragua!

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The U.S. war against Nicaragua continues unabated. Events surrounding the Oct. 28 summit of Western Hemisphere leaders in San José, Costa Rica, indicate that the U.S. war might, in fact, heat up.

Consider the following: Despite the ceasefire agreement between the Sandinista government and the U.S.-backed contra mercenaries, 736 government soldiers have been killed in contra ambushes since the cease-fire. An estimated 5000 armed contras are currently in Nicaragua, half of them having crossed the border from Honduras in recent weeks.

These contra attacks are a direct violation of the peace plan engineered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Contra aggression is explicitly forbidden under the $49 million "humanitarian" aid deal approved by Congress last April.

But Democratic and Republican party politicians are little concerned about the continued death and destruction being brought on the Nicaraguan people by the ex-Somoza Guardsmen. Hardly a word of criticism of the contras has been raised by these "champions of democracy."

When Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega dared defend the sovereignty of Nicaragua, declaring at the San Jose summit that Nicaragua would no longer honor a "ceasefire" that is being violated every day of the week by the contras and its U.S. sponsors, then all hell broke loose.

"Traitor," cried the Democrats, in reference to Ortega. "Hypocrite," charged Costa Rican President Arias. "Little man" and "animal" were the words of ex-CIA head George Bush.

The day after Ortega's declaration, the rallying cry in support of the contras gained steam.

"We intend to honor the agreement the Democratic-led Congress struck with the administration last spring to provide humanitarian assistance through the Feb. 25 elections in Nicaragua," stated Senate majority leader George Mitchell (D-Maine).

Maintaining contra aid until the Feb. 25 national elections in Nicaragua is a violation of the accords signed by the five Central American presidents in Tela, Honduras, last August. The five presidents called for the demobilization of the contra forces by Dec. 8.

The U.S. war against Nicaragua has stepped up on the economic and political fronts as well as the military front. Shortly before leaving for the San José summit, President Bush extended the trade embargo imposed by (continued on page 9)

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troops were marched onto the stillradioactive Ground Zeroes.

The government tried to keep the public in the dark about the development of its nuclear arsenal. Scientists who dared to speak out lost their jobs. Of course, it wasn't easy to cover up a giant mushroom cloud and a blanket of deadly fallout the truth. A new big-budget movie, "Fat Man and Little Boy," dramatizes the production of the first atomic bomb during World War II. One of the characters, a scientist, points out that-even in 1945enough plutonium had been stockpiled to produce thousands of bombs far into the future. tween 1945 and 1947.

I saw the film three days after the earthquake. Like many other "quake survivors" in the theater, my eyes filled with tearshaving just lived through a small sample of what the Big One might do.

Now the government wants to reassure us that the threat of nuclear