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World

By CHUCK IDELSON

The battle of Panama offers a preview of
the scenario now likely being written for
another Central American country, Nica-
Tagua, when it holds it national elections
next February.

On April 25, Radio Catolica in Managua
reported a poll claiming that opposition
parties led the governing Sandinista Front
by 36 to 29 per cent. Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega denounced the poll as a
fraud, and there are ample reasons for sus-
picion, beginning with its airing on Radio
Catolica, which is funded by U.S. sources
hostile to the Nicaraguan government.

On Jan.9, the Managua publication El
Nuevo Diario unveiled schemes underway
in the U.S. designed to alter the outcome of
the 1990 vote by financing and giving other
aid to opposition groups.

The article cites the Republican Institute

- for International Affairs, whose director

Janine Parfit, admits to a budget of
$100,000 channeled through the Dolores
Estrada Foundation and the Conservative
Institute, the latter being linked to the oppo-
Sition Conservative Party of Nicaragua.

One problem for the RIIA is a Nicara-
guan law which prohibits opposition
groups from operating with U.S. funds, so
Parfit said some money may be directed
through right-wing groups in the FRG or
Austria.

*e~mnOther group grappling with that prob=

lem, says El Nuevo Diario, is the Institute
for Latin American Affairs, which was, at
that time, drafting plans for activities and
searching for “new channels” to send funds
into Nicaragua.

If the use of third countries and other
fronts conjures up memories of the Iran-
contra scandal, consider further that both
RITA and ILAA are beneficiaries of the
National Endowment for Democracy.
NED is funded by Congress ostensibly to
support “democratic” or, more accurately,
anti-communist, unions and other institu-
tions abroad, has a bipartisan board of
directors that includes right-wing Republi-
cans and cold war Democrats and labour
leaders.

One place where NED money has gone is
Panama. In the Reagan administration,
another arm of NED was created, Project
Democracy, and was used for covert activi-
ties, including arming the contras in viola-
tion of congressional bans.

But NED’s covert role did not end with

the Iran-contra revelations.

Just last summer it was linked to a plan to
co-ordinate and assist Nicaraguan opposi-
tion groups that resulted in a July 1988
mobilization in Nandaime, Nicaragua, to
plan internal destabilization. That meeting
was attended by the U.S. ambassador to
Nicaragua, an act of interference in Nicara-
gua’s internal affairs which led to his expul-
sion and another flap in U.S.-Nicaraguan
relations.

Activities by NED and the two institutes
and a poll by Radio Catolica may seem
unrelated, but they are likely pieces ofa U.S.
policy whose aim is the overthrow of the
sovereign government of Nicaragua.

A May 4 article in the Panama City paper
Critica shows how the policy of destabiliza-
tion was employed in Panama:

“The U.S. government,” Critica said,
“has supplied funds to the opposition par-

ties, allowed U.S. diplomats in Panama to”

advise and instruct opposition parties in
tactics ..., constantly threatening to use
force, and unjustifiably withheld funds

The U.S. arnd-Panama’s
elections — apreview
for Nicaragua’s vote?

belonging to the Panamanian people ....

“Tt is waging a worldwide anti-Panaman-
ian disinformation campaign, carrying out
polls rigged by U.S. diplomatic officials or
by Caracas firms to present a distorted pic-
ture of the situation in Panama, establishing
a radio and TV interception network wher-
eby it could alter local broadcasts.”

Other destabilization efforts, the article
said, include “having U.S. diplomatic offi-
cials constantly visit towns in the interior,
sing facsimile

Activities by machines to dis-
seminate false
the National "Por publshed
Endowment fears tours
throughout the

for Democracy
continent by pro-
U.S. Panaman-
anda poll by ians to discredit
4 the government,
Radio and economically
a supporting and
Catolica may = encouraging sub-
versive activities
seem by Panamanian
politicians in
unrelated but) Washington,

like! Miami etc.”
they are likely Though Man-
uel Noriega is a
pieces of.a-- far cry from: the----

Sandinista leader-
U.S. policy ship of Nicara-
gua, it is now
whose aim is = ©bvious the U.S.
government _ set
the overthrow 1°‘ destabilize
the Panamanian
elections, pro-
of the claimed them a
ernment fraud even before
gov they were held
= and is now seek-
of Nicaragua. ing to use the
= ess it helped to

create to topple a government it doesn’t
like. With the groundwork already being
laid a few miles north, the same plan is
already becoming clear.

Chuck Idelson is a staff writer for the U.S.
People’s Daily World.

The chair of Exxon Inc., Lawrence
Rawl, attending an annual shareholders’
meeting in Parsippiny, New Jersey ear-
lier this month brushed aside criticism
that the firm is a corporate criminal for
spilling nearly 11 million gallons of crude
oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound
last March 24.

The four-hour meeting was domi-
nated by a debate on the worst spill in
U.S. history and the best Exxon’s chair-
man could promise was a new random
drug and alcohol testing program to be
administered to “several thousand”
employees “including me.”

Hundreds rallied outside the share-

-evholder’s’ meeting hotel and+zreeted the
coupon-clippers with shouts of “Exxon
is a human error” and “Exxon is organ-
ized crime.” Some stood on stilts with
signs while mock tombstones bearing the
names of Alaskan bays and inlets fouled
by oil lined the long driveway leading to
the hotel.

Meanwhile, the debate on whether
double-hulled oil tankers would have
prevented the spill or reduced the dam-
age continues.

A New York Times article May 14
quoted several experts arguing that dou-
ble hulls may have helped. “For some-
thing like this,’ said Dr. William
Morgan, director of ship hydromechan-
ics at the U.S. Navy’s Washington test
laboratory, “there might not have been
any spill.”

Protesters at the Exxon aininiel fidating in New Jersey May 18.

Double-hulling debate
points blame at Exxon

“For any accident, you’ve got to be
better off with a double hull,” agreed
Everett Hunt, director of the Maritime .
Research Department at the Web Insti-
tute of Naval Architecture in Glen Cove,
New York.

Paul Atkinson, president of Sun Ship-
building and Drydock, was definite in his
assertion that there would have been “no
spill of oil” if a double-hulled tanker had
been in service. Atkinson’s company has
built three double-hulled vessels, called
“ecology tankers,” for the Valdez
trade.

In the Exxon Valdez case, the single

‘hull tanker failed to clear Bligh Reef by

less than two metres, a distance which
would have been more than covered bya
double hull. A 1970 U.S. government
formula provides for the gap between
hulls of one foot for each 15 feet of beam.
The Exxon Valdez is about 166 feet wide
which would have meant a space

. between the two hulls of 11 feet ae
than three metres).

“However, Exxon continues to contend
that double hulls are not necessarily safer
and cost more to build. The U.S.
National Transportation Safety Board
seems to agree. Its hearings did not
address the issue of double hulls, saying
the inquiry would concentrate on human
factors. Firing a skipper, apparently, is
more cost-effective.

GDR single parents given support

By RITA HOPPE

It would seem the definition and cause
of poverty can change with the eye of the
beholder.

An interesting view being pushed
nowadays in the U.S. holds that poverty is
caused by a disintegration of family struc-
ture, and cited as proof are the following
statistics: 1) Last year 24 per cent of U.S.
children lived with one parent; 2) Most
single-parent families are headed by
women and such households have a pov-
erty rate of 55 per cent.

These figures have led to the conclusion
that because a growing number of women
are raising their children alone, a social

- regression is occurring which is being

blamed for a new disease-like condition
— something called the “inter-genera-
tional transmission of poverty”’.

U.S. government leaders and their
advisers describe the circumstances as a
social problem of unprecedented complex-

ity for which they see no solution and no
model in other countries to emulate. But a _
brief outline of the GDR’s experience may
help point ways to a cure.

Here in the GDR, the family-structure
statistics are roughly comparable. Sixty
per cent of women having their first child
are unmarried, and one in 10 children lives
with his/her mother in a single parent fam-
ily. Yet the poverty rate is zero.

According to prominent GDR social
scientist Dr. Jutta Gysi, single-parent fam-
ilies are an accepted feature of modern life.
“It’s not a question of either glorifying or
deploring this development,” she says,
“but rather treating it as an inevitable fact
of life for which society must make the
necessary adjustments.”

Because it is recognized that one-parent
families are here to stay, and because they
still require special assistance of both a
material and moral nature, GDR society
has accepted and begun to address its col-

lective responsibility.

Worth noting are the considerable
efforts aimed at providing positive social
reinforcement to single mothers, who
often find themselves in a particularly
vulnerable situation. Since career advance-
ment has proven to be one of the best
routes toward greater personal success,
companies are largely expected to provide
special help in order to compensate single
mothers for certain disadvantages they
often encounter when caring for very
young children. These women are then
able to upgrade their job status without
undue interruption.

Two examples of special assistance: a
single parent receives fully-paid sick leave
when off work to care for an ill child. (This
benefit is not extended to a married parent
of one child). And because a shortage of
child care space remains, (currently at
about 85 per cent availability), single par-
ents get priority placement opportunities.

Pacific Tribune, June 12, 1989 e 9