Part 6 - DW062 001 030 006

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Cambodia. Democratic Kampuchea's leaders are not prepared to accept these -- or any other costs -- which would detract from the country's hard-won independence and right to go its own way: "With both Vietnam and Thailand relying upon installations deep inside Cambodia, the Cambodian leaders would face the choice of serving their rivals' inter- ests -- or facing the military and political consequences if they did not. There is little doubt what the consequences might be. Vietnam and Thailand together have a population of some 90-95 million people. The Cambodians number less than 8 million." So much for Kampuchea's "irrational- ity", "xenophobia", and all the rest of the vilification reserved for it in the Western media... 6 ARGENTINA USSR Challenges US for Possession From our Correspondent covering the World Cup between the super- powers. EDITOR'S NOTE: Some tactics of state terrorism similar to the ones described in this article have been tested out by the Labour govern- ment in northern Ireland in prepar- ation for being applied when neces- sary elsewhere in Europe. We face a danger not just from openly Nazi elements like the NF but also from the corporate state which is the special creation of the Labour government. At the same time, Sov- iet social imperialism is prepar- ing to impose its savage rule on the whole of Europe. NEW AGE is careful to point out that fascist regimes are not necessarily openly rightist but very often pretend to be leftist, and are not always pro- American but increasingly often pro- Soviet. In 1973 Pinochet's fascist re- gime came to power in Chile by killing thousands of workers and progressives. This was promoted by the US ruling class. The bosses in the Kremlin made a disgusting show of "condemning" this coup -- the pur- pose of this hypocritical "condemna- tion" was to help them in contending with the USA for world domination. Because the anti-imperialist for- ces are getting stronger, US-backed dictatorships are crumbling all over the world. The Russians are trying in various ways to bring their own supporters to power and set up regi- mes which are often more reaction- ary than the ones they replaced, like in Ethiopia at the moment. In Latin America, where Soviet economic interests have been ex- panding vastly over the past five or six years, the popular movement against US domination is very strong. In order to profit from this anti- US movement, the Soviet bosses have to persuade people not to rely on their own strength but instead to rely on Soviet "help". The Soviet revisionist (i.e. phoney Communist) paper Internati- onal Affairs recently published an article about "the multi-nati- onals in Latin America" which grossly exaggerates the power of the US- owned companies so as to make it seem that the only way for Latin America to escape the clutches of the USSR as to the USA. Because of the contradictions ari- sing from the restoration of the capitalist system in Russia, the Soviet economy and particularly the agricultural sector is in a hopeless mess. The Kremlin bosses are oblig- ed to import foodstuffs on a massive scale in order to forestall starva- tion and the threat of revolution at home. Argentina, which used to be domi- nated by Britain and then by the United States, is unique among Third-World countries in having a large amount of food for export (it is the world's second biggest exporter of maize and third big- gest exporter of meat). This is one reason why the Russians would like to expand their stake in Argentina and take over control from its pre- vious imperialist bosses. Since the fascist coup of March 1976 the finance minister Martinez de Hoz has been pursuing a policy of brutally attacking the living standards of the working class in order to expand exports at all costs. Not surprisingly, he is con- sidered by pro-Soviet forces as "progressive". The Russian capitalist bosses are also interested in expanding their exports to Argentina, which have not so far been very great. They have sensed a vast potential market for their shoddy hydro- electric generating equipment, since important schemes are now underway in the central part of South America, including the Para- na River "project of the century", in which the Russians have already got themselves involved. Argentina has been the prey to a raging inflation, at its worst in 1976. In such circumstances it was up to the working class to see how much of its purchasing power it could wrest back through class struggle, and in order to prevent this the fascists (using "left-wing terror- ism" as an excuse) unleashed a sinister white terror which is still raging unabated. In Argentinian fascism, one ten- dency is to gang up with the USA (like the Chilean junta does), but there has for a long time been an anti-American fascist tendency which during the Second World War pinned its hopes on a victory for Nazi Germany; today, this trend may be prepared to link up with Soviet social-imperialism. The anti-US trend used to be re- presented by Ramon Diaz Bessone, Minister of Planning who in practice the US is to hand itself over heart and soul to the Soviet Union. This article argues that "inter- national monopoly capital disposes of powerful levers by which it can exercise political, military and economic pressure, and there still exist many ways in which the Latin American countries depend on im- perialism, a fact in no little de- gree connected with the considerabl economic and sometimes also politi- cal isolation of many Latin American states from the socialist community countries" (i.e. the economic bloc controlled by Soviet social imperi- alism - ed.) Another Soviet article on "the liberation struggle in Latin Ameri- ca" argues that Latin American uni- ty "would be unthinkable without in- ternational detente which is growing in strength and which serves to nar- row imperialism's sphere of activity and put insurmountable obstacles in the way of imperialist interference in the affairs of other states in order to undermine the ongoing libe- ration process and prevent any change in their policies towards progressive socio-economic develop- ments". For "progressive" read "pro- Soviet". This means that the only way for Latin American countries to win "liberation" is to align with the Soviet policy of contenti- on with the USA for world domination under the cover of phoney detente, and at the same time lay themselves open to Soviet economic plunder. A key target of Soviet expansion in Latin America is Argentina, its largest trading partner in the re- gion. The Soviet Union has not ut- tered a word of disapproval about the fascist atrocities committed by the Argentinian junta. On the con- trary, in August last year Russia deliberately blocked discussion of the case of Argentina in the United Nations human rights commission in Geneva. This Soviet assistance came only a few days after the conclusion of a major Soviet-Argentinian trade agreement (August 19 1977). Even before that economic relations were flourishing. According to offi- cial junta statistics, in the first three months of 1977 Argentina expor- ted over ¢ 61 million worth of goods to the USSR, about 5% of Argentinian total exports. Over the whole of 1976 it exported almost as much to was the second most powerful person in the ruling clique after Videla. When he was kicked out at the end of December last year, the Kremlin ih- structed its mouthpiece, the revisi- onist "Communist" partyof Argenina, to speak out in his support. A statement by this party publi- shed in the East German revisionist rag "Neues Deutschland" expressed also their support for General Vi- dela, head of the fascist junta, particularly over his proposal for a "dialogue" leading to a closer in- volvement of civilians in the govern- ment. According to the revisionists this would be the only way of preven- ting a so-called "Pinochetization". In fact it is obvious to anyone that the fascist dictatorship in Ar- gentina is already even more brutal and repressive than the Pinochet re- gime in Chile. It is well known that a favourite method of the junta is, apart from the murders, kidnappings and tor- tures openly carried out by its own security forces, to encourage at the same time bands of fascist thugs to do the same kind of things in a semi- autonomous way and thus increase the atmosphere of terror. This is obviously a well-co-ordin- ated part of the whole system and an indispensable support for the Argen- tinian junta's vicious anti-working class policies. Yet in their eager- ness to butter up the potentially pro-Soviet elements, the Kremlin leaders go so far as to say (in their journal New Times of December 1977) that "the authorities have not taken effective enough action to deal with the ultra-right terrorism" - as though the junta ever had the slightest intention of "dealing with" it!! Fascist terrorism is already prac- tised in a systematic way in the USSR and in countries under its con- trol like Ethiopia. The only reason the Russians fear a "Pinochetization" in Argentina is that Pinochet in Chile represents a pro-American style of fascism, whereas the Russians are striving to promote a pro-Soviet fascist system. Evidently Brezhnev is encouraging the Argeninian junta to throw it- self into the Soviet sphere of in- fluence, whereupon it will be accor- ded the assistance of the revision- ist "Communist" Party to help cont- rol the labour movement from inside, and will be described by Russia as a "progressive" regime. *

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