: political
¢ luck or aahaing?

combat brigade’ j
gn rigade”’ in Cuba and
went on last autumn? Is
© vision of U.S. Marines
at Guantanamo still
fresh? Whatever happened to
erica’s ‘‘resolve’’ to have
them evicted and the posturing

and threats?

It would seem Washington
has found a better stick to beat
the Soviets with and fans mass
Public fear and hatred. Iran
and Afghanistan have almost
saved Carter from political ob-

- livion, and the whole episode
would appear to be a stroke of
800d luck for the president.

But was it really luck?

_This paragraph appeared in
Time magazine Sept. 17, 1979
as part of a long cover story on
the “Storm Over Cuba’”’. It de-
scribed the State Department’s
Possible moves to put the

. Screws on the USSR: “Uf the
Soviets prove adamant about
their brigade, some Administ-
ration aides hinted that the
U.S. could try to apply pres-
sure to points on the globe
where Moscow is particularly
sensitive. One possibility that
has been mentioned is Af-
ghanistan ...’’

f—— INTERNATIONAL FOCUS
On July 31, 1979, Soviet wri-
ter Alexei Petrov wamed that
the imperialist powers =
persuing two main aims agains
Afghanistan”. The first, he
says, is “they are seeking to

Remember that ‘Russian

rican muscle-fiexing

_ BRZEZINSKI — an accident’

create permanent centres of
subversion, supply bases and
‘arsenals for armed provoca-
tions against Afghanistan from
neighboring countries.”’ The
second prong is “‘to_ bring
about a deterioration in Af-
ghanistan’s relations with its
neighbors and stir up mis-
trust.”’

Petrov writes that “‘irrefuta-
ble evidence has come to light
of intense subversive activity

against Afghanistan from
neighboring Pakistan with the
full knowledge of that coun-
try’s authorities... It is worth
noting that groups opposed to
the Afghan government are
also receiving arms from China
and that sabotage groups are
undergoing training there.”’

Two weeks ago China’s vice
premier visited Pakistan and
last week Carter’s National
Security Advisor Brzezinski
was there with a huge arms
package for that country’s mili-
tary regime.

Some political accident.

Baez’ phoney staid”?
and real aid

A couple of weeks ago the
Canadian Tribune printed a let-
ter describing U.S. folk singer
Joan Baez as “‘shrill’’. The wri-
ter talked about her new-found
role as an apologist for the
U.S. in Asia and the current
campaign to place the blame
for the plight of the Kam-
puchean people on their Viet-
namese neighbors.

Now we find Baez, Liv
Ullman, Winston Churchill,
Alexander Ginsburg and
others threatening to march
across the Thai-Kampuchean
border to ‘‘bring relief” to the
Kampucheans. And, accord-

ing to the press, the Viet-
namese are staging a troop
build-up to stop them.

Baez and these other
Samaritans, part of the anti-
Kampuchean mob, are dream-
ing in technicolor if, 1.) they
think this stupid little provoca-
tion will do more than provide
copy for the press, 2.) that the
Vietnamese or Kampuchean
armies regard them as any
threat and 3.) that they are
helping anyone but Pol Pot’s
killers who sit astride the fron-
tier and who use this so-called
‘‘aid’’ sent via Thailand as
black market currency.

By contrast, Operation
California, which also includes
public figures in the U.S., (but
with their heads screwed on
right) people .such as Jane
Fonda, Alan Alda, John Voi-
ght, Danny Kaye, Peter, Paul
and Mary, Julie Andrews,
Glen Campbell, Robert
Goulet, John Travolta, Walter
Matthau, Ed Asner, Mary
Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart,
David Soul, Seals and Croft,
have raised $250,000 in. aid
which will go to the people of
Kampuchea who do need it. It
will go, as aid should, to the
government — to Phnom Penh
— and not be used by assorted
bandit groups and the Western
press against Kampuchea. ~

Or how about a little request

Speaking of Kampuchean
aid, persons wishing to contri-
bute to this genuine effort may
do so by sending their con-
tribution to the Canadian
Peace Congress, 671 Danforth
Ave., Toronto, Ontario. 5

Let’s ask them
while they feel good

Letters from adoring Ameri-
cans saying ‘‘thank you’’,
“‘merci’’, and all those nice
things about Canada’s Iran
embassy caper still fill the pap-
ers. We can get free meals, free
drinks, cheap bus fares — just
by showing our social security
cards with the bright red maple
leaf. That’s neat.

While he’s in a good mood
maybe we could snuggle up to
Carter and ask him to get his
Trident subs off our doorstep.

that he keep his supertankers
away from our Pacific coast?

Maybe we could ask that
American firm not to dump its
chemical waste into the Niag-
ara River while they still love
us. And, somebody suggested
it’s a good time to re-negotiate
the Auto Pact. :

God knows, if we could only
spring the other 43 Americans
maybe the U.S. would give us
our economy back. This thing
has possibilities.

Moscow
Carter’s

In a major editorial in response
to U.S. president Carter’s State of
the Union address delivered be-
fore Congress Jan. 23 the Soviet

>\ newspaper Pravda challenges the

U-S._contention that it has the
right to “‘dictate its orders in any
region, to any state... to use any
means including arms, to resist
national liberation, revolutionary
and all progressive movements”’.

The Pravda editorial, published
Jan. 28, says ‘“What we have is a
new claim to American suprema-
cy.’ It continues:

“‘By what right does the U.S.
seize the role of supreme arbiter
in how people should build their
lives and the principles and values
they select to govern their internal
affairs? The U.S. government
proclaims areas of the globe as
spheres of American ‘vital’ in-
terests and in the process there
has been a tendency to advance
these spheres all the way to the
borders of the USSR.

“The people in Washington
seem to proceed from the as-
sumption it is enough to declare
Iran, Afghanistan and other
countries or areas thousands of
kilometres from its shores as
zones of ‘America’s vital in-
terests’ — that is, in the interests
of the big multi-nationals and the
military-industrial complex —
and for everyone to accept this
claim.”’

Race for Land

Pravda goes on to attack
America’s oil claims: “‘Coveting
the natural wealth of others, the
U.S. today proclaims the oil rich
areas In the near and middle east
as its ‘sphere of influence’. To-
morrow, following the pattern of
a race for land in the ‘wild west’,
Washington will stake a claim to
other natural resources. After
that, who knows, it will declare as

_ its’‘own’ the’ atmosphere itself,

the planet’s oxygen ...””
newspaper outlined Car-

answers
address

ter’s military budget and espe-

cially criticized Washington’s

plan to boost arms spending by

$20-billion in the next fiscal year. _

“A special emphasis is being
made to build up nuclear missile
forces ... in particular the MX-
missiles, Trident submarines,
Cruise missiles.” It says that in-
creased pressure can be expected
by the U.S. on its NATO allies to
increase their contributions to the
alliance. ©

Pravda called Carter’s re-
sponse to the USSR’s aid to Af-
ghanistan and the U.S. presi-
dent’s ‘Soviet threat’ theory ‘ab-
surd invention’ used to cover
boosted military budgets. It
pointed out, for example, that the
U.S. ‘quick strike force’ designed
to intervene in the Mideast, was
sanctioned by the White House in
1977 — long before events in Iran
and Afghanistan.

Pointing to another example of
long-term U.S. policy, Pravda
says, ‘West Europeans were
being persuaded that stationing of
Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles on
their soil carried no serious
danger with it because SALT-II
would be put into effect. How- ~
ever, as soon as NATO decided
on the medium range weapons,
the SALT-II discussion was ad-
journed by the U.S. Senate ...”’

Iran and Afghanistan
The editorial listed the history
of U.S.-Iranian relations and its
25-year backing of the shah’s re-
gime and asks how it can today
claim to be interested in the well-
being of the Iranian people.
_ “In its calumny against Af-
ghanistan and Soviet policy to-
ward that country the U.S. Gov-
ernment is breaking all records
... the Afghan people have made
their choice and have overthrown
the feudal regime,’’ ‘Pravda
writes. ‘Any attempts to return
to the past will be met with the

ops %

in the U.S., Israel and China.

resolute opposition of the over-
whelming majority of Afghans..

**Soviet assistance has no other
object than protecting Afghanis-
tan from external threats which
are due to imperialist interference
in the country’s internal affairs.
No one should forget that there
arose a real threat to the interests
and security of the USSR on its
southern border. As soon as the
imperialist intervention ends, the
causes which made Soviet assis-
tance necessary will cease to
exist.”

Disarmament Missing

The newspaper accuses Wash-
ington of returning to a policy of
brinkmanship and, in collusion
with China, fanning up anti-
Sovietism and intensifying ten-
sions. It describes the ending of
the arms race as ‘‘today’s most
burning problem’’ and issues a
call to move over to ‘‘real steps in
the field of disarmament’’.

“How did Carter respond to
this?’’. asks Pravda. ‘‘Disarma-
ment was practically absent in his
message.’’ Rather than a positive
response to this vital question,
Washington is charged with in-

creasing arms supplies to Pakis-
tan which has refused to sign the
treaty on Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons. Similarly,
SALT-II was given the lowest
priority and subordinated to arms
programs in the president’s
speech.

Pravda reiterated the USSR’s
position that it is ready to enter
into serious negotiations on arms
reductions with the U.S. but
pointed out that Carter’s remarks
on this topic when he was elected
have been replaced by his actions
to accelerate the war danger.

Although the presidént spoke
of U.S.-USSR relations as being
the most important factor in de-
ciding the issue of war or peace,
says Pravda, his reasoning re-
places good neighborly relations
with confrontation and an end to
cooperation. ;

‘*The message asserts it is im-
possible to do business with the
USSR as before,’’ the editorial
says. ‘Thus, everything has been
turned upside down because it is
Washington that shows itself to
be an unreliable partner which un-
ilaterally breaks agreements and

( tees

Part of the arsenal of weapons seized by Afghan troops during fighting with rebel forces. The guns were made

universally-accepted norms of
interstate relations.’’ The news-
paper asserts that the U.S. cannot
influence Soviet foreign policy by
such actions.

U.S. Elections —

Carter’s speech, Pravda re-
minds its readers, is being made in
an election year when the U.S.
voter can see the results of three
years of his administration. It
notes that such key issues as in-
flation, unemployment, the
energy crisis, were passed over in
silence. ‘‘... the government re-
sorted to the old device of divert-
ing public attention from these fai-
lures in domestic and foreign pol-
icy and stirring up a militarist and
chauvinistic psychosis’.

The editorial ends by charging
the White House with an unwill- |
ingness to accept the new world
reality, with holding on to an im-
perial mentality and with a refusal
to see that in the 1980s ‘‘one can-
not speak of the cold war lan-
guage of Dulles and Truman.” It
says U.S. efforts to turn, back the
clock of history and impede the
march to social liberation are
doomed to failure.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 15, 1980—Page 9