AN

| WORLD

FOR PEACE, DETENTE, DISARMAMENT

| Communist Party of Greece

in the front line of struggle

is Beat 08 Kepesis, a member of the Central Commit-
visite ag Communist Party of Greece (KKE), recently
of the aia on the invitation of the Belogiannis Club
ae ommunist Party of Canada. He spoke at a cele-
ee n dinner and dance in Toronto, April 7, to mark 63
the ee Communist Party of Canada and 65 years of

sou en Kepesis extended greetings to the CPC and
ad a Sreat international movement for peace,
ar) nd disarmament that has developed against the

anger. He then turned to the situation today in

reece with these comments ( abridged):

ce November the KKE completed 65 years. This
_ ¢ anniversary was celebrated throughout Greece.
Ominant mood was one of enthusiasm, certainty

- 4nd optimism for the future.

open eked founding was directly influenced by the
Revol Message brought by the victorious October
ofthe ution. With the creation of the KKE the monopoly
ame ae and their parties was broken. Since then, ever
ie early and louder would one hear the voice of the
Se a ite voice of all working people, all the
ES he sce : E
people. patriotic, democratic voice of our
Sane KE developed into a Marxist-Leninist inter-
tunies ISt party with a non-stop struggle against oppor-
anal te Trotskyism, anarchism, revisionism
. —t-SOvietism. It carri its inter-
nationalist ee es out to the full its inter
P hia KKE continuously shows its solidarity with the
pean _People, the people of Central America
the: § against U.S. imperialism. We are on the side of
Boss of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile. Our
oe Y has become the flag bearer of peace, national inde-
€nce and socialist change in our own country.

ere j . 3 :
Te Is not a single problem — economic, social,.

ret ural, national, ideological — with which the KKE did
Tame itself. In all categories the KKE placed its
P of scientific Prestige — the stamp of dialectical

i

thinking, the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary way of
dealing with reality.

The KKE has revived in the hearts of our people the -

spirit of 1921 which was trampled upon by the landlord,
the ruling class and their parties and with the aid of
foreigners.

The KKE unfurled the flag of struggle for land reform,
for the 8-hour day, for social security, for women’s
equality and the rights of youth. It stood first in the fight
for education reform and for the establishment of the
demotic language as the official language of Greece.

In its tireless struggles our party created strong bonds
with the people. In these struggles many martyrs met
cruel deaths. Persecutions by foreign tyrants and local
traitors failed to destroy the KKE. Oppression was un-
able to bring it to its knees. Slanders, jails, torture,
assassination and exile proved useless.

The KKE was the only party to predict the attack
against Greece by Mussolini’s fascist forces in 1940, five
years before it took place. It is the party that stood in the
vanguard of the struggle against the nazioccupiers. It is
the party that was the soul of our National Resistance.

And today the KKE is in the front line of struggle of
the working class and all working people against the
policy of dependence and compromise, for peace,
democracy, national independence and real change..

We have declared a thousand times that change, real
change, substantive change, can not occur with Greece
inside NATO and the European Common Market.
Change cannot occur with U.S. death bases in our coun-
try which constitute a state within a state, omitting for
the moment the danger which they pose for the destruc-
tion of our people.

We cannot have change with the forces of change

‘ divided — by going it alone. We cannot have change with

continuous concessions to the monopolies and with the
revival of anti-working class laws. Without an_anti-
monopoly, anti-imperialist policy, real change will re

main merely a dream. :

Nikandros Kepesis of the Communist Party of Greece
(KKE) addressing the meeting. To his right, Tom Lianos,
organizer, Belogiannis Club, John Bizzell, central organ-
izer, CPC and Stathis Stathopolous, organizer, Metro
Toronto Committee, CPC.

But the idea of change has ripened in the conscious-
ness of the Greek people. There exist both the conditions
and the capacity to open the road toward it.

This path was defined by our 11th Congress and life
has proven us correct: we can get out of this no-exit
situation created by government policy by the creation
of a democratic government with a program that will
include the basic goals of real change.

We need to intensify the mass struggle for unity in
action around demands to solve basic everyday prob-
lems and connecting them with more general, national,
social and economic questions — for nationalization of
the key economic sectors, for democratic control, for
working people’s participation in decision-making
bodies. It is important to develop a mass, popular
movement with an anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist edge.

The coming Euro-parliament elections will provide an
opportunity for the further strengthening of my party —
the heroic, honored KKE — the party of thousands of
known and unknown heroes in the struggle for national
independence, democracy, progress and socialism.

re—__

International Focus

Tom Morris

STS AT et

Sabotagin
the Olymples

Former president Carter
ttied to scuttle the 1980 Olym-
Pics in Moscow and _ failed
When his boycott only suc-
ceeded in preventing a few

€nds from participating.

President Reagan might just
Succeed where Carter failed.
The fiasco building in Los
Angeles is reflected in a story
elsewhere in this issue as na-
“on after nation is expressing
Teal fears about the Games’
arrangements.

The 23rd Olympiad
Scheduled to start this August
18 the world’s first commercial
Games. Arrangements are
Shoddy. The athletes and spec-

tators will travel incredible dis-
tances. Security will be a joke.
Costs to teams will be hor-
rendous.

The Games will be run by
outfits like Coca-Cola, Buick,
MacDonalds. Contrary to the
rules of the Olympic charter,
the torch, lit in Olympia,

Greece, is being peddled in the -

U.S. for $3,000 per kilometer.
Radio Free Europe is accre-
dited, also contrary to the
rules, because it isn’t an inde-
pendent news organization,
but a CIA arm. Groups like
“Ban the Soviets’? are wel-
comed at the White House.
Even the British press is
worried. ‘‘Many countries,”’
writes the Daily Mail,
“including Britain, fear the

Olympic flame peddled for $3,000 a kilometer.

Olympic participants and spec-
tators will be subjected in Los
Angeles to brutal exploitation
so that the Games will be used
as a pretext for unprecedented
fleecing.”’

The situation has become so
bad that a special meeting of
the International Olympic
Committee has been called in
Switzerland, April 24, to look
into the can of worms.

Everything, it seems, that
Reagan touches, falls apart.

How it’s done
in the big press

The Toronto Star, April 10
carried a photo of External Af-
fairs Minister. MacEachen
being greeted in Nicaragua by
that country’s assistant
Foreign Minister Nora Astor-
ga. The story below carries the
title: ‘““‘Mata Hari’ of Nic-
araguan Politics gives Mac-
Eachen warm welcome’’.

The ‘‘Mata Hari’ reference,
the Star explains, is to a story
in Time Magazine which de-
scribes Astorga’s role in the
disposal of Somoza’s notor-
ious henchman, General
Reynaldo Perez Vega during
the civil war.

On April 12 the same paper
carried this letter of protest

from Nicaragua’s consul-
general, Pastor Valle-Garay.
It's worth reading on two
counts: because it explains
Nora Astorga’s act which
made her a national heroine
and because it reveals how the
big press bends the news.

**... Lam shocked and dis-
mayed that The Star would
lower its standards to echo the
tactics being used by Wash-
ington in reference to Nora As-
torga, deputy minister of ex-
ternal affairs for the govern-
ment of Nicaragua.

The Mata Hari headline, as
well as other suggestive and
chauvinistic labels originating
in U.S. to vilify Nicaragua’s
newly appointed ambassador
to Washington, demonstrate a

» lack of respect for a minister of

state whose government main-
tains cordial relations with
Canada.

When The Star dwells on Ms
Astorga’s ‘charms’ and ‘daring
crime’’’, it fails to mention the
external affairs minister is also

a brilliant criminal lawyer and a_

champion of women’s rights.

She is also the former chief.

prosecutor in the trials against
Somoza’s genocidal National
Guard, a superb diplomat, the
mother of four children and a
Nicaraguan heroine.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 25, 1984 e 9

General Reynaldo ‘‘Mad
Dog’’ Perez Vega, on the other
hand, will be remembered as a
criminal brought to justice
when the people were at war
with Somoza by a Sandinista
commando with the assistance
of Ms Astorga. (She was al-
leged to have lured the general
to her room where five ac-
complices emerged from hid-
ing and slit his throat.) Perez
Vega, Somoza’s second-in-
command in the hated Na-
tional Guard was a notorious
assassin. His greatest claim to
fame is that he was an agent of
the Central Intelligence
Agency — a torturer and
traitor of the ‘Nicaraguan
people. Good riddance.

It is a sad commentary when
the media shows more com-
passion for the Perez Vegas of
this world than for those who
carry out a wartime operation
that amounts to a very brave
act of justice. Ms Astorga will

_ be a formidable Nicaraguan

representative in ~ Wash-

ington.”

Interestingly, while the Star
ran Valle-Garay’s letter, it did
so under the headline, ‘‘Nic-

nn ee

a Ste SOI PICT

mse SET SE AE I EIA A A EE