VATION SOUP 1ENE KAT MASSACRE FORWARD TOFREEDO SO A/FR like Nelson Mandela imprisoned for over 20 years for opposing apartheid.
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Trafalgar Square Dennis National condemned as lars whose who claimed that investment in Rail South Africans. Neil Kinnock pledged a future labour government to end all the aparmela regime ano ruly en force United Nation CaLLIOUS Special free book offer! Take out a years inland subscription and we will send you free one of these books.
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US client states such as Taiwan and Israel.
The Contras were auick to take advantage of the situation. A press conference held the day after the US congress vote announced the fusion of the TWO Man contra group:
• the FDN based in HonAlfonso declared a target of achieving a Con tra strength of 22,000 by September and an autumn offensive to overthrow the Sandinistas.
The US military and state department have a more realistic assessment of the Contras achieving their aim however. General Paul commander of the US military base and regiona headquarters in Panama, February that the Contras ICOULLCH have no chance of signifi. cant military success in the forseeable future' even with increased aid from the US.
This view is based on experience. Not once have the Contras been able to set up a zone they control since they started their incursions into Nicaragua in 1983. They have never been able to hold a town. They have never been able to mount any urban campaigns, either military or political. There have been no demonstraHOUS LECT support. Nothing!
The Contra policy of raid, burn murder is abberation or mistake. They have nothing to offer to advance the interests of the peasants in the countryside peasants op operate. The peasants that they centres, clean schools, and that their only chance of getting or keeping them is to defend the revolution.
The Contras therefore cannot operate like classical moving like fish through the water of popular support. They can only function by terror. And terror nearls and minds. Nicaraguan women train for the militia to defend their revolution THE US congress has just voted $38 million of 'nonThis clear In the last month the been hit hard. The FDN has admitted to the loss of two of its main advance bases Nicaraguan soil. The Hon•ur covered. sniffing defeat in the wind, has appealed to other Latin American countries Lake responsibility for 'dispersing' the Contras, ie get them out of Honduras.
The US ala will therefore be holding operation to save the contras from collapse and to maintain their campaign of destruction in parcoffee proволатике ducing zones that are vital Nicaragua's earnings. The aim is to force Nicaragua to put still more of its slender resources into defending itself. As such, the Conare no "solution' for the US.
The vote in the US congress is a more clear indicaUS ruling class towards the Nicaraguan revolution •than the previous vote to reject aid in The Washington Posi noted at Lie time, 'virtually no member of the House or Senate defended Nicaragua's leftist san dinista government during he senate cant for the future that most Democrats probably would agree with Shultz' Eugene J Carroll Jnr, director of the Centre for Defence Information, wrote last useari *асcelerating military preparations suggest that the decision been made by president Reagan to send US troops into Nicaragua' The policy the seems to be to put the screws on the Democrats within congress. They are create a clear two party 'consensus on the nature of ine Sandinista government the potential threat poses to US interests the Republican head of the senate intelligence committee put it.
Putting the military option firmly on the agenda means Inere is no ques being left simolv as a option' alternative. They are part or a process to try to politically, , economicaland militarily soften up Nicaragua for an ultimate invasion, The US thinking months and years ahead.
Reagan is also trying to soften up congress and US puone opimon to ine vich that an Invasior of Nicaraeua would be mor like Grenada than Viet'Intelligence Holli ports, liberally leaked, put across a bizarre vision of a Nicaraguan population ready to rise up in suppori ot the incoming marines.
All first hand reports Nicarapna no calt that these views are about accurate as the old 'inteligence' renorts thai the US was just about to win the Vietnan wal. n few more thousand troops. a lew mor strikes, just one more offensive, and the war would be won. As the knows it wasn't.
The military scenario that being even more bizarre. "officer • liary is quoted in the New York Times as stating: 'The US would come in heavily for a month or so, mostly with facilities government would be put into place (sic!) would come with its own army'. That's where the Contras come in.
This extraordinary failure to learn anything the Vietnam perience - that an armed people can't be defeated by napalm, that a stooge army of over-equipped mercenaries is not a stable base for a pro-us regime - won't stop the US ruling class talling victim to its own war drive. The only thing that will stop them is the continuing dermina• of the people to defend them. selves and their revolution and the mobilisation of a anti-intervention H1CS movement that extends solidarity campaigns, to mass organisations of the labour move.
This is what the movement in Britain has to build.
Public meeting To launch
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signal of US support gives the Contras the backing they need to get further aid from private capital and