government In ed the court's jurisdiction.
'law of the jungle'.
Reagan's campaigns against lawlessness' and terrorism stand exposed. Guns and dollars speak louder than legal formulas which are useful in so far as they defend the Pax but disposable old Macdonald's wrappers when they don't.
On Wednesday the US House Representatives cocailed aggression against In splay ur a new louna 'bipartisan politics, as Reagan put it, they voted $100 million aid to the contra armies will currently dug in and licking their WOULS along Nicaragua's borders. Significantly, $70 million of this is for direct military aid.
$40 million is for light equipment, to be delivered in September, maining $30 million for heavy high tech weaponry SECr ground to air missiles which to go through February. All this amounts to three times the previous level of such aid.
Reagan's rhetoric about 'freedom. fighters' aside, US policy becoming more open ment No Pentagon geneves nat the contras either the military Capacily popular support to hold a single Nicaraguan village alone topple the Sandinistas whose leadership of the country was endorsed with a thumping majority popular votes Nicaraguas first free election only eighteen months ago.
Indeed there has been a sharp debate in the US tional law in its efforts to destabilise the Sandinista Anticipating such result, the US announced that it no longer recognisNicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto deplored the US stance as an expression of an international policy based on the press that the contras comInana structure is so cor politically dubious incapable of absorbing the ald being fered. At the same time there has been widespread publicity for contra atrocities in Nicaragua and criminal activity across the region.
Revelations that the commandantes have Decile come or the principal routes from Columbia to is in Miami, various rackets have helped keep a majority of US opinion hostile to further but they have not cooled the ardour of the administration. Indeed, there has been direct from the White House of attempts the General Accounting Office to subpeona _contra bank accounts in Miami.
The solution to the conundrum MaKe force feeding the contras with high tech weaponry both possible politically acceptable has been to put the CIA directly in charge of fund allocation. On the one side establishes 'provisional zovernment in exile' made up of contra leaders. On the other, the state takes direct charge of running the war.
The government in exile' is window dressing for a war by proxy in which the US arms, finances and an army of mercenaries to do its dirty wOlk for it. The tall, white, blue eyed boys in the green berets will give the orders. The little brown NICO blue fatigues will fight, murder ON 6 JULY the United States government plans to and die at their command.
United States control of the war is now open and proclaimed by the • Us administration itself.
The United States' immediate aim is to punish Well equipped contras Call do great damage to the Nicaraguan The US decision means that people will starve, without medicine, live in fear.
It bears some blence to the last phase of Vietnam When the US knew that they had wal lost, they spent several billions dollars trying to bomb Vietnam flat. Not to 'win' the war but to try to cripple the victor, as a warning to anyone else of the terrible consequences of breakand detying imperialism. The United States wallls Nicaragua's 'threat of good example' to the rest of Latin America into a warning.
But there is a fundamental difference with Vietnam. The intervention into Nicaragua is escal"Off you go then and set fire to anything you see. save Nicaragua for democracy!
ating. Speculation Washington centres on Reagan's desire to overthrow Sandinistas before he leaves office in 1988. Wholesale commitment of US military forces is on the agenda.
In Nicaragua, the response has been swift. The pro-Reagan newspaper La Prensa, which greeted the contra aid vote by plastering a big picture of Reagan waving the victory salute all over its tront page, has been closed. 'What country in time of war allows the enemy to openly publish newspapers Is capital, askea ine Ministry of Interior.
Physically politalla Sandinistas what necessary to defend the That cannot help but involve the rep. I COS UN Torces who support the US aggresion. Supporters of the US will try to i pass this off as 'repression rights'. But it is the United States wnich is responsi ble for the war and for any - kill anyone you encounter and blow up One way or another we musi measures required to deal witn it. here is no right to be a fifth coloumnist.
International solidarity US pressure is designed to now s ever more cca! diplomatically politically isolate well this country, the observers Irom the US mingling with crowds at the Anti-Apartheid demonstration last Saturday must have been CLUT cibly struck by. the large numbers proSandinista T shirts.
The bellicill for Peru whom? eliminated from society'. by naked greed.
British delegates returning from the Second International congress in Lima, Peru have some explaining to do. As many as 400 Sendero Luminoso guerillas are now believed massacred since Wednesday 18 June when president Alan Garcia ordered the army and navy to crush a revolt in the country's three strongest jails. At least 70 were killed after they surrendered, and in two of the prisons not a single guerilla was left alive. This action will rank with the most barbarous atrocities of Latin American history.
The Second International, meeting for the first time in Latin America, under the banner 'Peace and Freedom', greeted it with a terse declaration. It expressed concern at 'excesses' but spent most of its time explaining that 'democracy has the right to defend itself against terrorists'. Excuse us: defend what against The 'threat' was not an army in the field but captives. As Peruvian writer Mario Vargas has charged, it involved 'settling accounts with ar enemy and had nothing to do with 'establishing order'. The prisoners, who could not possibly defend themselves, were massacred to intimidate guerillas in the field which the army could not deal with. Garcia knew perfectly well what the armed forces wanted to do. They had been straining at the leash for six months. His own navy minister, Admiral Julio Pacheco, had just stated that 'irrecoverable people have to be The brutal fact is that the Second International and all its parties, eager for the pickings of resistance to US imperialism in Latin America but frightened of losing new-found allies like Garcia, not merely stood by but congratulated the president on his action. A fitting warning to the people of Latin America of what they can expect from European 'democracy': barbarism and cowardice excused We repeat: defend what against whom? We hope the British delegates have an answer.