FEATURES | Rostock — There are four shipyards in Rostock County of the GDR. The biggest is the Warnowwerft, or Warnow Works. It was established at the mouth of the Warnow River in 1946, essentially for ship repairs. With Soviet co-operation, it was converted toa major shipbuilding yard in 1950. It never looked back. Today, the Warnow shipward employs 6,900 workers. Of these, 1,300 are women. By today’s standards the first ships built for ocean traffic were small and of conser- vative design. Now they have their own engineering staff of some 900, many of whom are college and university graduates. Their unique designs of container and “roll on-roll off” ships are world renowed. Their production schedule calls for 11 sea-going ships per year, of 16,000 to 19,000 tonnes each. Nearly all are for export, with some 50 per cent going to the Soviet Union. Other cus- tomers are China, Yugoslavia, Norway and Hong Kong. When visiting the Warnow yards, the first person to whom I was introduced was Willy Balzer. He has worked in this company ever since it was first put. into operation. He started as an ordinary worker, studied, became an engineer. After further studies he graduated as an economist and was promoted to assistant general manager. In what would be a surprising switch for us, he became leader of the local union. For the past decade he has been serving as general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party in the shipyard. He certainly knows his way around. — After we had been introduced and shaken hands, he abruptly said to me, ‘So you are from Sudbury, eh?” I acknowledged that indeed I was. He then said, “‘I know the mining industry. I worked three years in Soviet = a prisoner of war. That’s where I learned how to work. He went on with, ‘At times we only were fed a piece of bread a day. But I noticed that was twice as much as they gave their own people! That shook me. I vowed that I would give my life to the future of socialism.” I turned to his young assistant, Frank Kampowski, and queried, ‘‘Is he a tough boss?” ; Frank relaxed into a broad grin, then replied, ‘‘ Very tough. But he is also very fair.”’ Willy Balzer smiled, then began to throw the statistics at me. He stressed that the political level of these ship- yard workers was so high that 1,500 of them were Socialist Unity Party members. Some 1,700 were in the Free German Youth (FDJ). The average monthly wage is 1,040 marks, with a year-end bonus of about a month’s wages. He then rhymed off facts, figures and subsidies on social and cultural funds, housing meals, club rooms, Sport facilities, holiday homes, polyclinic at the plant, and vacations, which usually run to 24 working days per year. All of these are enjoyed at a fraction of the actual costs, because of government and industry subsidies, many of which are negotiated by the union in the annual contracts. From ordinary worker to general manager, GDR shipyard workers are efficient, politicized and determined. 18 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 2, 1984 ‘It never looked back’ | From the GDR | Jim Tester Balzer said the working class in the GDR shipyards understood that efficient work helped their country’s economy and strengthened it in the struggle for peace. “Furthermore, we are not pacifists. This shipyard has a volunteer workers’ militia that consists of about 500 members. They are trained to defend socialism in no uncertain terms. We are not prepared to put up with any nonsense.”’ : ; “The ships produced at Warnow are of all-welded construction, much of it is automatic.welding. All the plate pieces are cut with very sophisticated oxy-ace- tylene torch equipment and automatically follow the blue-print patterns. Then come the sub-assembly units, much in the same way as first introduced into shipbuild- ing by Kaiser and his Liberty-ships. The difference is that these GDR ships have a 100 per cent record of flawless design. In 1949, the GDR had one ocean-going vessel. Today, — it has over 200 ships plying the four seas under the GDR | merchant marine flag, with Rostock as their home port. Many other nations fly their merchant marine flags on Rostock-built vessels, with justifiable pride. That’s de- tente in shipping. Willy Balzer has fulfilled the vow he made in the Soviet mines. His will be a tough act to follow. But with such an inspirational teacher I am sure young Frank Kampowski will easily slip into his shoes. Portrait of a contra By VICTOR CARROZZINO. The “‘charismatic’’ Eden Pastora is the most familiar contra to North Americans. He has received gener- ally favorable coverage from the mass media, leaving us with many doubts as to whether he is a ‘‘real democratic revolutionary,’ or a ‘traitor’; if he is acting for what he believes to be ‘‘Nicaragua’s best in- terests’’ or for selfish personal gains. To summarize the mass media, Pastora ‘‘was one of the best known Sandinista leaders in the mid and late 70’s, who has turned against his former comrades, because he was disillusioned with the ‘undemocratic and communistic’ path that the revo- lution had taken; now fighting from his bases in Costa Rica with ARDE, the group he co-founded.’’ In this story Hollywood has enough mate- - rial for a movie, if they could only find a good ending. ' There is more information avail- able about Eden Pastora, however it puts him in a not-so-sympathetic light. Hector Frances was an Argenti- nian intelligence officer until Dec. 82, who worked in Costa Rica in an “operation designed to overthrow the. Nicaraguan Regime’’, co- sponsored by the Argentinian intel- ligence and the CIA. Frances’ com- ments on Pastora are revealing. ‘‘I met a man who had abandoned the revolutionary mystique. and had come under the profound mystique of money and power.’ Pastora never admitted to receiv- ing any financial support from the CIA, but it was reported by. Time magazine that financial aid-had been channelled through Israel and El Salvador. At the same time that some ARDE officials deny receiving any help, others complained to the London ‘Times’ correspondent in Costa Rica that ARDE was compet- ing with the FDN (Honduran-based. contras) for CIA money and not get- ting it ‘‘to the extent :we’d be happy with.”’ ‘ Frances further shattered the idealistic figure of Pastora when he declared that ‘*... Pastora had, as early as 1979, been informing the State Department about the Nic- araguan revolution, because he was PASTORA: enough material for a Hol- lywood movie ... finding out that he was not going to have the degree of power that he thought he should have within the revolution.” Jeff Gerth of the New York Times (October 6/83) did magnificent re- search work on the Sept. 8, 1983, air raid by two small planes on Managu- a’s Augusto Sandino International Airport. Pastora claimed credit for this attack. It was revealed a month later that the Cessna plane downed in the raid’ was, until shortly before, owned by Investair Leasing Corporation of McLean, Virginia. The company is directed by Edgar L. Mitchell, who had worked ‘until 1975, for Inter- mountain Aviation Inc., a company which was identified in the Church Committee reports as a CIA front. The marketing director of Investair, as Gerth aptly put it was ‘‘a Mark L. Peterson, was secretary and trea- surer of Air America Inc., a CIA proprietary involved in air cargo operations.” 5 ae The pilot of the downed plane had in his possession, information on how to make contact with the American embassy in Costa Rica. Eden Pastora had denounced the CIA’s role played in supporting FDN contras in Honduras. He went - as far as offering the service of his forces in the fight in northern Nic- aragua, trying to gain some recogni- tion and political space for himself. After the failure of his man- oeuvres, around May 19, 83, he turned around and joined forces with the. FDN. As payment Pastora re- ceived a force of 2,000 men, most of them former Somoza National Guards. Since then the FDN and ARDE have co-ordinated their strategy and targets under the CIA command asit was shown in the notorious mining Pastora’s of Nicaragua’s ports. ARDE claimed the mining in El Bluff and Nicaragua Lake. He still denies” receiving any aid from the CIA, de- spite all information presently avail _ able. His latest action, the taking of San — Juan del Norte, a practically aban- doned port town on the isolated Caribbean coast and only defended by 72 Sandinistas was greatly pub- licized as a land mark in his ‘‘fight for -democracy.”’ In this action was Jon Anderson, a Time correspondent, who received - information from some of the officers that San Juan del Norte at different times had been hit by gud fire from the sea. The contra com- mander also mentioned the sinking of a Sandinista patrol ship by a small ship launched from a mother ship offshore. This contra also told An- derson ‘*... your countrymen did it~ ... we don’t have the trained people to take care of anything on the sea. So it was understood that marine engagements would be taken care of by another party.”’ Another intriguing aspect of this operation is the origin of the un- marked helicopter that removed ARDE’s casualties from the battle- field. It is estimated that the heli- copter was supplied by the CIA or by — the Honduran army from its new American stockpile. The American support also ex- tended to the logistics of the opera- tion. According to the contra officer, ten days earlier they received new 82 ; mm mortars, 50 cal. machine guns, as well as food and ammunition from a U.S.-built C-47 transport in Costa Rica. 4 An ARDE mercenary from the U.S., George Davis from Great Falls, Mont., stated that the C-47 pilot was also an American. He further commented ‘‘I’m here to fight communism, and I guess the pilot is too.”’ Any more doubts, about Pastora’s role?