w faili

na food lines —

Faced with financial ban-
ptcy and production collapse,

uyana’s Forbes Burnham
80vernment has taken desperate
Measures causing intense hard-
Ship for thousands. Food bans,
Mass firings, wage freezes and re-
duction of social services have
‘Created long food lines and mini-
Mots with hundreds queuing for
bread, flour, cooking oil and milk.
The situation is even recog-
Nized by the government press
which wrote in March that ‘‘the
€conomy is in shambles’’. The
high-living Burnham regime has
been forced to admit that its pro-
Jected 17% growth in the econ-
Omy for 1978-81 was in fact a
Meagre 0.5%.

Inefficiency in management of
the economy and corruption has
Tesulted in actual drops in the
Country’s production of bauxite,
Tice, sugar, timber, poultry and
Tum.

The People’s Progressive Par-
ty, led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, has
Warned that ‘‘the day of reckon-
ing’’ is coming to the backlash
against pro-imperialist planning,
Wrong priorities, mismanagement
and minority rule.

» It has advanced a short-term

plan to help alleviate the crisis
which includes reduction of the
number of government ministers
and their salaries, cutting back on
some ministries which are simply
mouthpieces for the ruling
People’s National Congress par-
ty, reduction in the National Ser-
vice, freezing army and police
recruitment, a rescheduling of
Guyana’s debt payment and a
crackdown on official corruption.

In preparation for widespread
unrest, the government has- shar-
ply increased its repressive ap-
paratus re-enacting the ‘‘National
Security Act’’ giving it wide pow-
ers including preventative deten-
tion, restriction of movement and
search without warrant.

One indication of the Burnham
regime pro-western stance, de-
spite its professed ‘‘socialist’’
label, is its refusal to accept long
term, low interest loans for
development and trade offered it
by the USSR. That nation re-
ported Guyana had turned down
an offer of 10-year credit at be-
tween 3 and 4'4% and has instead
turned to western states. At pre-
sent 41% of the country’s export
earning are spent on foreign debt
repayment.

Guantanamo example of
U.S. threat to Caribbean

By ALICIA WEISSMAN

GUANTANAMO, Cuba — As
Cuba was celebrating May Day
with 1.5 million marching in
Havana, the United States and its
allies were carrying out ‘“‘Ocean

~ Venture °82’’, a provocative,

large-scale naval exercise in the
Caribbean.

Some 45,000 military personnel
took part in simultaneous man-
oeuvres in Viequez, Puerto Rico,
Saint Croix, Virgin Islands and
here at Guantanamo Bay. The
U.S. announced that some 60
warships (including the aircraft
carriers Forrestal and Independ-

ence) as well as 350 aircraft took 2
part in the exercises from April 29 3

to May 16.

Our group of foreign journalists
arrived at the lookout post May 3

i

Hi

TO — ALICIA WEI

and received a briefing by Angel
Rodriquez, head of the press sec- 2
tion of the Cuban Armed Forces wu

who explained the U.S. was using 3]
the exercises at the Guantanamo £&—

Base to intimidate the Cuban
people.

He told us that the 110 square
kilometre base with its 6,000 ser-
vicemen exists on Cuban territory
despite official protests by the
Cuban Government. “‘We do not
recognize the U.S. right to be on
our land,’’ Rodriquez said, and
charged the United States with
over 12,600 violations in recent
years over Cuba’s water and air
space.

The base itself, as we saw from
the helicopter, is quite large with

INE PH!

Warships at Guantanamo, May, 1982.

75 kilometres being land, the rest
water. It was used as a training
area for U.S. troops during the
Vietnam war and was leased by
the former Batista regime to the
WES:

On the hill we could see aircraft
landing and taking off as well as
two large ships and many small
ones in the harbor. Participating
in ‘Ocean Venture °82” along
with the U.S. were Canada, Hol-
land, England and the Federal Re-

public of Germany.

Before we left the town of
Guantanamo we received a sur-
prise from the people who live
every day with the proximity of
the base, the bombardment of
U.S. television and radio. On our
way to the airport, our buses were
stopped by a demonstration of
students and workers — one of
several held that day. ‘“‘We will
never surrender,” they-told us,
‘“‘we are strong!”

Tom Morris

How would you like to re-
port to work each day and
spend your time figuring out a
Selection process for who
Should be saved in a nuclear

. War?

What yardstick would you

use? Who would select and re-

ject? ;
The US: Federal
Emergency Management

Agency (FEMA) does just
that. It’s job is to ‘“‘evacuate”’
millions of American city dwel-
lers on doomsday.

FEMA has designated 380
“high risk areas’’ and has
worked out several schemes
on paper which have created a
Stir among sane people. One
plan, for example, calls for the
evacuation of 330,000 Balti-
Moreans without private cars
on MTA buses. They will be
moved according to their zip
codes, say the planners.

Critics question the logis-
tics: first, most FEMA plans
are based on 72 hours’ prior
notice of a nuclear attack (no
one has quite explained how
this may occur — perhaps “‘the
other side’’ will send a tele-
gram to FEMA).

Other flaws include convinc-
ing thousands of bus drivers to
stay on the job in the last 72
hours of their lives and the in-
cidental problem of just where

to take these millions of
people.

Undismayed, the planners
plan. One of them, Robert
Kingbury in Los Angeles, has
it all worked out. He’ll only
‘‘save’’ the young, healthy and
skilled. Who, he argues, needs
old people after the bomb
drops? He even excludes his
mother.

Another plan collapsed

_when it was discovered some
200,000 people in Colorado
would be sent to a small resort
town with one four-room
motel. Still another calls for
evacuation past U.S. missile

silos, which, critics suggest,

Act Now For
Disarmament!

would be a top priority target
area.

FEMA plods on. It advises
people to have a bag packed
with 55 essential items, includ-
ing a portable toilet.

All this could be material for
a gallows humor play or a rock
musical lampooning stupid,
mindless bureaucrats if there
wasn’t a deadly serious side to
it.

The problem is FEMA ped-
dles the dangerous idea that
all-out nuclear war is surviva-
ble. It projects a society emerg-
ing from the dust, complete
with marketplace, free enter-
prise, good-old-fashioned U.S.
values.

FEMA deals in illusions.
And as such is unable to pro-
duce a single workable
‘‘survival’’ plan — because
there isn’t one.

The only remotely workable
idea is to have president Rea- -
gan flying about in a specially-
equipped 707 jet as his country
sizzles below him. No one has
discovered where he would
land, or why he would want to.

Imagine the brains and
budget FEMA commands
being applied to the real issues
of safeguarding peace; of
developing ways to step back
from the nuclear threshhold, of
educating a nervous American .
public in one, simple concept
— that peace is the only
answer.

From those who
know the Bomb

But here’s another America.
And these views from people
who know what nuclear war is
all about — the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences.’

At their 119th annual meet-
ing recently NAS issued a ring-
ing call to the U.S. Congress,
the president and other world
leaders to stop the drift toward
nuclear war.

They called for observance
of SALT-2 and other arms con-
trol agreements.

They want a reduction of
nuclear wéapons and delivery
systems. They urge all steps
possible be taken to reduce the
risk of accidental nuclear war

and a halt to the spread of nu- -

clear capability.

NAS urges those in power to
avoid military doctrines which
treat nuclear explosives as or-
dinary weapons.

What a contrast to the man-
iacs running FEMA and other
Reagan agencies!

U.S. scientists are joining
with physicians, and others
who are proving with data and
facts based on all available
knowledge that a nuclear war
is unsurvivable, and that
everything must be done to
stop it.

They are joining a world-
wide crusade for peace un-
heard of in scope and power, a
movement that cuts across
class and political lines, one
that will prevail over the rela-
tively few who somehow are
able to argue that mutual

‘destruction is an option.

Wasteful —
and profitable

While nuclear weapons pose
the major threat to this planet,
the conventional arms trade, it
should be recalled, is a story in
itself.

In the past decade the U.S.
supplied more than $123,000-
million worth of weapons to
foreign states, most of this to
prop up dictatorships and
make the world safe for its
transnationals,

That’s over one-half of the
world’s arms trade.

For the people in Haiti or El
Salvador, Chile or the Philip-
pines, Guatemala or South
Korea, the equipping of the
regimes which repress them
by American arms is an every-
day reality.

It’s profitable, too. Normal
arms profits run between 50-
100%.

It’s also the world’s biggest
economic waste: every minute
of every day we spend $1-mil-
lion on weapons.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 4, 1982—Page 9