AROUND THE WORLD
Strike wave in Flanders FOR THREE months, a wave of strikes has been sweeping Flanders, struggles were sparked off, majority of cases, by negotiations of collective agreements. Workers wanted to recoup the losses they have suffered under the austerity Wilfried Martens' government. They have already won example in the chemical industry in
Significantly, these struggles for the most part began after the signing of between unions and bosses. losses there are added problems of employment and working conditions. Confronted by competition, the bosses are trying to reorganize production and increase profits by introducing flexible hours, job versatility, Saturday working and so on.
During the last ten years a whole new layer of militants and union representatives have become active. Now having the confidence of their the central union apparatuses. It is this layer of activists and representatives who have the develop a class-struggle trade it is important to stress that these struggles, led jointly by the Christian Trade-Union Confederation tion of Belgian Workers (FGTB) throw some light on the relation of organizations. The CSC is seeing its orientation of "necessary and its image of being a "responsible" union demolished by its own base. And even if the CSC remains the largest union organization in Flanders gaining ground in the big workplaces. O Nicaragua Contras in crisis
DEBACLE is the only way to describe the ongoing crisis of the US-backed contras. Arturo Cruz resigned 26 in mid-March from the triumvirate leading the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), the "political arm" of the contras. Now it is the turn of "El Negro" Chamorro, the leader of Revolutionary Armed Forces (UDNFARN), to withdraw from the UNO. The UDN-FARN operates from Costa Rican territory.
In the summer of 1985, the Reagan administration created order to give the counter-revolutionary movement a unified image and international legitimacy. It was also created to try to erase the far from bril liant image of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), mainly composed of ex-Somozaist guards and led by the retired general of the National Guard,
But Washington is visibly incapable of controlling the contras' internal squabbling, provoked by the struggle for money and power.
Last year Arturo Cruz 7,000 US dollars a month "to maintain his family" (sic). Now the US press has revealed that Chamorro was also paid by the CIA so that his the UDN, could unify commando leaders in the FDN have sent a letter to Alfonso Robelo, head of the UNO, in which complain about the ment of funds allocated by the US
The leaders of other contra groups who are not part of the UNO -Alfredo Cesar of the Southern Opposition Bloc (BOS, heir of Eden Pastora's ARDE) and Brooklyn Rivera of MISURATA - have with pleasure" the various resigna-
No doubt they Washington will pay a bit more attengive them more money? A part of the painting "Guernica" by Picasso
Basque country Commemoration of Guernica FIFTY YEARS ago, on April 26, 1937, the German bombers of the Condor Legion devastated the Basque town of Guernica. Guernica is important for the Basque country, containing as it does the which is a focal point for the celebra tions of the Basque national day, and being the capital for the Basque autonomous government created in
The bombings in support of the reactionary Francoist forces took place despite the agreement of nonintervention by foreign powers in the Spanish Civil War. Some 2,000 people slaughtered. An eyewitness
• The day was well chosen. Monday is market day in Guernica, and all the peasants from around about crowd into the town. It was 4.30 in the afternoon, the market was full and peasants were still arriving when the church bell began to toll to warn them that the planes were coming.
"Five minutes later, one German bomber appeared. It made a lowcircle over the town and dropped six big bombs, apparently aimed at the railway station. A rain of bombs and grenades fell on a school, houses and the neighbouring streets Then the plane moved away. Shortly afterwards, a second bomber appeared and dropped bombs on the centre. A quarter of an hour later it was the turn of three Junkers to continue the work of destruction. From this point on, the intensity of the bombing raid increased and did not stop until 7.45 in the evening
"The town, containing 7,000 inhabitants and 3,000 refugees, was systematically destroyed eight kilometers. planes were given the task of bombing all the farms in the surrounding re-
This year, a series of activities are planned April 16-26, which will reflect the role of the town in Basque resistance and culture. After the traditional "Aberri Eguna" (Basque national day) on April 19 there will be a peace congress to which movements and countries fighting for their liberation have been invited - Kanaks, Salvador eans. Filipinos, Irish, Nicaraguans and so on. International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
USSR Soviet play includes Trotsky that the October Revolution was led by a group of spies, that Lenin was surrounded by renegades, criminals and terrorists. that the great purges of the 1930s are part of the Leninist tradition. With my life, with my work, I have tried to demonstrate that this is not true, that Leninism and socialism are something quite different.
"The time is over when lists were drawn up of supposed agents of imand the time has come to rewrite the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet Union. No one can be expelled from history, nor should be afraid of confronting history."
The Soviet dramatist Mikhail Shatmade this point in an interview Corriere della Sera. He was in Italy attending a meeting organized by the Accademia dei Lincei and the ItalyUSSR Friendship Society. The Italian daily described him as "an ambassador of the perestroika [Gorbachev's structuring"]. It noted that his career began under the star of Khrusche's Twentieth Party Congress and that it was now re-emerging from the eclipse of the Brezhnevite period.
Shatrov went on to say,
"fierce struggle.' after Khruschev's removal, they were inexorably blocked. The wind renewal has brought them back into the daylight. After the 'Dictatorship of Conscience, an examination of the degeneration of socialism that is playing in Moscow theaters, where it gained success and notoriety, four films on Lenin have been broadcast over TV that have aroused a sensation, because the Lenin played by the actor Mikhail Ulyanov, along. side whom Bukharin appeared for the first time over TV screens, is not the hagiographical Lenin, the Lenin they put on a pedestal, but a flesh and blood human being"
Shatrov's next play, "The Brest Peace," also promises to be a succes de scandale. Its characters include Trotsky, Bukharin and Kamenev, and the author indicated that they would not be repetitions of the old Stalinist re-emerging from the prisons and documents from the archives, I thought that it was necessary to take a lesson from these events, take a look back, change to a new belief."
He started the project in 1962,
International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
Khruschev, and it went into cold storage after his fall. But now, Shatrov said, "it is possible to break the chains of history because there is a will to create a society in the USSR that will not be afraid of anything, that thinks acts on its without being passively dragged along, condemned to darkness and ignorance. ned figures" appeared in the play. He present Trotsky Bukharin as leaders of the revolution, of the Central Committee, companions of Lenin, faithful to the role that they played in a given historic mom-
Trotsky is hardly the hero of Shatbut the author claimed that he sought to treat him objectively:
"In the debate over the Brest peace, which was decisive for the fate of the
Lenin, he did not go to the root of the situation. In his arguments there was no lack of interesting points. He agitated and spoke forcefully in the debate, but apart from theatrical gestures offer a valid contribution to the solution of the problem. Good and bad intentions are demonstrated by results and the latter have shown that Lenin's was more correct and more also point up Trotsky's zational gifts, the effervescent oratory. Here, as in the case of Bukharin, who reproved Lenin for abandoning the hopes of expanding the revolution, I do not add or take away anything. It is necessary to study objectively what the great Bolshevik leaders did and said, to analyze the positive and negative sides, which is what was done in his time by Lenin himself, who considered Bukharin the favorite son of the party, an outstanding theoretician, but openly recognized his errors.
Shatrov was asked when he thought it would be possible to rewrite the history of the Soviet Communist Party.
"When the line of the TwentySeventh [Gorbachev] Congress has triumphed...
"It is necessary to put an end to the criteria that started to be used at the end of the 1920s. This is a ridiapproach. Violence has been done to history.
abuses have been passed off as socialism. This was
We have ourselves why the historical process took that path in our country, so many horrible crimes were asked, when this would be accomplished, and he repeated: "At the risk of sounding monotonous, when the line of the Twenty-Seventh Congress triumphs." Then, he shifted the entire problem onto a subjective level: "The funda mental obstacles to the reconstruction are not outside of ourselves but within ourselves. The fundamental thing is your talent, what you think, how you see the situation. You have to come to terms with yourself, to analyze yourself. The perestroika must come from within you."
Shatrov's play is to be published in the April issue of the literary magazine Novy Mir.
27
ISRAELI STATE
features. But the attempt to gag us has backfired.
The use of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism
Ordinance to close a licensed office on the hackneyed pretence that its activities were harming state security has provoked vehement protest from civil rights associations, journalists, politicians and all people who value democracy in Israel and abroad.
"We will not be gagged!
"We will not sit idly by while our civil rights are systematically violated And we will not acquiesce to the authorities' attempts to monopolize
A FIRST battle against the new attack on the right of information in
Israel was won with the release of Michel Warschawsky on bail on
March 17. The director of the Alternative Information Centre (AIC)
had been jailed a month before in a spectacular raid on the indepen dent communications office. [See the last issue of IV.]
A flood of protests by defenders of freedom of the press and democratic rights in Israel and throughout the world got him out of jail. But the fight to reaffirm the right of freedom of information is still being fought out, and the Alternative Information Centre continues to need the maximum international solidarity.
Within days after the raid on the
Alternative Information Centre and its closure by the Zionist police, a new issue of the Centre's bulletin, News
Within appeared.
frontfrom
"We will not page story declared.
be gagged!" The article continued:
"On February 16, 1987, the Israeli authorities' iron fist came down within of 1948 the green line [the Israel from the territories occupied in 1967] against Israeli Jews .... Israeli and
Palestinian members of the
AIC stacks of collective were arrested, printed material were confiscated and the centre's equipment were seized.
"Our
'crime' lay providing
Israeli, Palestinian and foreign journaland up-to-date information on human rights violations in the occupied on social and related to the Israeli-Palestinian con-
Alternative
Information
Centre operated openly. Our office was registered with the Ministry of the Interior and its publications were submitted to the censor in accordance with censorship regulations. The door to the office was open to everysave for members of Kach one,
[Rabbi
Kahane's anti-Arab racist party ], Gush Emunim [a West Bank
Jewish settler organization] or illegal organizations, until the police locked up the centre.... For three years, the centre provided news, translation and typesetting services to thousands of clients, including journalists, news consulates and embassies, agencies, institutions public and individuals interested in the Israeli Palestinian without even the slightest did the authorities suddenly decide to close the centre? Was it because the centre was successfully challenging the Israeli Defence Force spokesperson's monopoly on the flow territories? Did the authorities close down our office in order to claim 'even-handedness' when next it closes down licensed offices similar to ours occupied territories? have the authorities reacted with such anxiety to the centre's concern rights of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees under interrogation. And is it mere coincidence that exactly one week after members the AIC collective organized a demonstration in Jerusalem on behalf of Mordachai Vanunu's right to a fair
....What is clear is that the centre's it easier for the authorities to conceal their current campaign of repression in the occupied territories under a cloud of unknowing. Attempt to gag the Centre has backfired
"Ignorance is purposefully directed The Israeli government has all the reasons in the world to suppress information about the seamier side of the occupation. And its abhorrence form of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is one of its most salient the flow of information.
"Our determination to keep open alternative channels of information has not been deterred.
"News from Within will continue to appear." Drop the charges against Warschawsky!
The high reputation for profes sionalism and News from Within has helped in particular to arouse protests from journalists and journalists' organizations. For example, immediately after the raid on the Centre the Israeli
Ha'olam Haze (February 18) reported that the closing of the was "arousing outrage" among Israeli journalists and foreign cor respondents who used its The Jerusalem Journalists' Association issued a protest, as did the Danish Journalists' Union on March 4.
But the Centre remains Its materials and equipment are in the hands of the Israeli security
And Michel Warschawsky continues to face charges under a could lead to a sentence of up to ten years. Moreover, his legal defence is made more difficult by that the decree puts the onus of proof on the defendent and not on the
It is essential that protests continue calling for the dropping of the charges against Warschawsky for allowing the Alternative Information resume its work without interference. In the meantime, the AIC badly needs material support so that it can continue to get out the news that it collects until it can get its equip-
The Centre's present address is PO Box 165, West Jerusalem, Israel. Messages of support for, and contri butions to, the campaign for Warshawsky's defence and for the Centre can be sent to the Release Michel Warschawsky Fund, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.
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