Twenty-three years ago this week, Fidel Castro led the attack on the Oncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, the historic action that marked the beginning of the Cuban revolution. Here, Castro is being questioned Y Batista’s Colonel Rio Chaviano after the attack failed. Although Many participants were tortured and murdered, Castro could not be eliminated as he was known to have been taken alive. Games threatened by US In what can only be described as _ 8 calculatedly provocative action, _ ie United States gymnastics team Will leave the Montreal Olympic Games site and travel directly to Tacist-South Africa for a series of Monstrations. _ The timing of- the visit, which Was confirmed last week by the President of the U.S. Olympic €deration, Philip Krumm, has €n viewed by many observers on _ *0th sides of the Atlantic Ocean, as deliberate attempt by the U.S. to “ther prevent the 1980 Games from being staged in Moscow, destroying the Games altogether, rat least significantly altering the character of the Games. The tour by the six woman €rican team comes as the total Number of Africa, Arab and aribbean countries boycotting the ames in protest of New Zealand’s } 8fowing relations with South Tica has risen to 30:and as South Tican police are shooting down lack people in South Africa and "ad again closed all the schools which serve the majority black population of South Africa. The New York Times gave substance to speculation that the U.S. was trying to scuttle the Olympics when it editorialized on July 20: ‘‘The abrupt withdrawal of some two dozen national teams from the Montreal Olympics — and more fundamentally, the far reaching political attitudes thus displayed — brings explosively to the fore the long simmering issue of whether the Olympic Games, as presently organized are worth holding. We think not.” However, the major factor in the boycott by the African nations has been largely ignored by the media. The boycott was not abrupt, nor was it unexpected. Long before the athletes had even left their home nations for Montreal, the Interna- tional Olympic Committee received an official request signed by 47 nations calling for New Zealand’s ouster from the 1976 Games. Nor has the reason why New FRASER VALLEY REGIONAL PICNIC Bianco’s Ranch — 10246-132nd St., Surrey SUNDAY, AUGUST 8 at 1 p.m. Concessions, sports, games and topnotch entertainment. SPEAKER: NIGEL MORGAN Admission $1.00 BARBEQUE SALMON SUPPER at 5 p.m. Price $2.50. Ausp. North and South Fraser Regional Committees, CPC SFU Club presents: “GOOD CLEAN FUN” at the Hewison’s 3717 Victoria Dr., Coquitlam Food, refreshments, dancing Sat., August 7 7:30 p.m. Admission $2.00 Left wing GIDORA | If one is to believe what the daily press is saying, it appears that the one question which is on everybody’s mind during the XXI Olympiad currently being played out in Montreal is: ‘‘Will these be the last Olympics?” Things have apparently become so crucial that even the president of the International Olympic Committee, Lord Killanin of Ireland, has bemoaned the future of the Games during the turmoil surrounding the withdrawal of the team from Taiwan. Rest assured that there will be another Olympic Games _ in Moscow in 1980, and another in 1984, probably in Tehran, and yet another Games somewhere else in 1988. - However, what is really in- teresting about the debate surrounding the future of the Olympic Games is the timing. It is no coincidence that the first time the validity of the Games are being Zealand was singled out from the many competing nations at the Games who maintain sporting ties with South Africa been explained in the media. New Zealand was targeted, not simply because of the rugby tour by the famed All-Blacks, but because its growing ties with the racist regime in South Africa are the result of a conscious political decision made by the ruling party in New Zealand, the National (Conservative) Party which defeated the New Zealand Labor Party last year. One of the major points in the National Party’s election program was the promise to re-establish relations with the apartheid regime, which had been cut off during the brief rule of the Labor Party. The National Party has made good on its promise. It is in this same light that the U.S. action must be viewed, as an attempt to draw South Africa back into the international sporting community. The implications of the U.S. action are far reaching. Some commentators feel that the tour may be a move calculated to draw the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries into the African boycott in solidarity thereby cancelling Moscow as the host of the 1980 Games, as according to IOC rules, strongly supported by the U.S., any country which stages a political protest during the Games is subject to expulsion from the IOC. Earlier, the U.S. had threatened itself to boycott the Games during the Taiwanese dispute, a move which would have taken a great deal of the glamor away from the Games, though not as much as the Americans would like to believe. Now, with the latest tour of South Africa by an American team, it appears that the U.S. is prepared to try and force the issue to a head, by directly challenging the ef- fectiveness of the African boycott. The only certainty at this point, is the fact the U.S. (and, it appears, the IOC,) has come down in favor of sports relations with apartheid states and is prepared to sabotage the Games if necessary to further its own aims. Beaver Transfer * Moving * Packing * Storage 790 Powell St. Phone 254-371 1 questioned is the same time that American pre-eminence in the Olympics is being challenged by the athletes from the world socialist community. It is particularly revealing that those questioning the Games are, by andlarge, propagandists for the United States, including some home-grown apologists in the Vancouver press. Who would have dared to say that the Games were in danger when the teams from the U.S. were dominating the com- petitions as they did in the first 60 years of the Olympics? After all, with the sole exception of the 1936 Games in Berlin, the United States was the major power in every Olympics until the 1956 Games in Melbourne where for only the second time in the history of the Games, the U.S. was not the winner of the unofficial com- petition which goes on during the two week. sport fest. (Due to the purity of the Olympic ideal, no official title is awarded, but an unofficial scoring takes place nonetheless. ) In 1956, the title went to the team from the Soviet Union which was competing in only its second Olympic Games, a feat which they repeated four years later in Rome. The American teams won again in both 1964 and 1968, but in each case, their former domination of the Games was being further weakened and they finished in second spot following the com- pletion of the 1972 Games in Munich. And, now, in Montreal, the American team faces the prospect of finishing not only behind the Soviets, but in third place behind the team from the German Democratic Republic. The solution, at least to the most staunch upholders of the doctrine of American invincibility, is quite simple: Declare the Games a bust and cancel them forever. It sounds familiar doesn’t it? Like the Olympics, the United Nations was once regarded by the U.S. as one of the finest things to happen to the ‘‘civilized world.” That day has passed of course as the world body, which once followed U.S. dictates so thoroughly that American troops invading Korea marched beneath the UN flag, reflects more and more the changing relationships in the world and member states, particularly those of the developing world, now refuse to put aside their own interests in favor of American interests. Like the Olympics, the American solution to this situation has been quite simple; since the UN won’t do what the U.S. tells it to, dissolve the United Nations. And that is why a number of leading spokesmen from the United States Olympic Committee have hinted that maybe the Games should be cancelled. The call for abandonment does not come because of the so-called reasons given by the American’ propagandists, but simply as the U.S. teams no longer dominate the Games, the Games have outlived their usefulness. The outraged cries about graft and corruption dominating the Montreal Games site construction havenothing to do with it. After all, Watergate showed the world that graft and corruption are as American aS mom and apple pie and certainly don’t threaten the ‘American way of life.” And it’s not because of the so- called ‘‘politics’’ surrounding the Games; the withdrawal of Taiwan, and the boycott by 30 African nations. Wasn’t it a_ political decision by the International Olympic Committee which kept the USSR out of the Olympics for 35 years, from 1917 to 1952. It was only after the IOC had to accept, and I’m sure it was a painful realization, that the Soviet Union was going to be around for some years, did they invite the USSR to compete in the Games. And wasn’t it a political decision by the IOC to insist that the two Germanies compete as one team until 1968? No, like graft and corruption, politics has always played a major part inthe Olympic Games, and as Tom Morris pointed out in these pages last week, it’s only a question of whose politics that’s important. As the Games go into the final few days, you can be sure that the wise men of the sports pages will be questioning the validity of the Olympics more and more, par- ticularly as the medal count for the socialist countries continues to rise. And, you can be sure that the true reasons for the success of the athletes from those countries, the excellent mass participation sports programs which all of the socialist states have developed will somehow be pushed into the background along with the tremendous performances of a number of athletes, no matter where they come from, as the pages of the daily press carry an all out attempt to discredit the Olympic Games. 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