Sun, 27 Apr 1997 00:05:30 -0400 COCKROACH! #56 (Nato contingency plans to occupy Russia.) A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to Subscribtions are free at Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://www.algonet.se/~malecki How often this zine will appear depends on you! Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ -------------------------------------------------------- 1. Nato contingency plans to occupy Russia. 2. Detcom, Peru and Foreign Policy! 3. Statement by the IWL/FI on Peru -------------------------------------------------------- Nato contingency plans to occupy Russia. Nato does not excite much interest among list members. Perhaps the reasons are understandable. The issue of Nato-expansion often seems both remote and recondite. It is neither. As I have been saying on JRL for a while, Europe is on a glacis as it was before 1914. There is now a real danger of uncontrollable events cascading together to produce nuclear war. This is not my opinion alone. It is also a strongly-held view within the Central Intelligence Agency. The gulf that separates official White House optimism from the alarm actually felt within the CIA and privately by the US Administration has never been wider. The reason is because most people in a position to make authoritative assessments believe that the final disintegration of the Russian Federation is already irreversible and has actually begun. Therefore plans are well in hand to safeguard the most urgent western interests. Hence the rush to expand Nato. The Clinto Administration's somersault on this -- it rejected the Republican congress's resolution to expand Nato earlier -- has happened because of the perceived ned to defend Europe at all costs from the final Russian implosion. But the worst feature of all this is, of course, the fate of Russian nuclear weapon stockpiles. Nato contingency planning, it is now clear, envisage that sometime in the near future it may be necessary for western military forces to be inserted into Russia, to take control of and 'safeguard' Russia's nuclear weapons bases and facilities. Otherwise the obvious danger is that as the country collapses, these will fall into the hands of criminals or warlords. There is the related danger of Russia being taken over by a completely irresponsible (in western terms) nationalist leader. There is a risk of Lebed coming into power and making inflammatory statements while Nato tanks and troops are entering Russian cities. Once western armed forces invade Russia -- and if they do, they will do so albeit in the first instance only to safeguard nuclear stockpiles and missile bases, they certainly will not leave, even after these facilities are disassembled and the nuclear materials (whatever has not already been stolen) have been removed to the West. I do not claim to have any idea how great the probability is of any of this happening, but it is obviously real. Mark, Having brought the Russian revolution to its knees and now about to carve up the former SU, imperialism in crisis will no doubt cause wars including nuclear wars. In many ways the situation today parallels that of the 1930's. Except today capitalism is much more unstable,and the SU no longer exists. The reality is the imperialist powers are forcing impossibleterms on the former SU, EE and now China. The obvious solution is Balkanisation under bourgeois dictatorships, with the contending big powers picking up the pieces. This is barbarism. So what to do about it? Most of the left is still punch drunk from the collapse of stalinism. They gave up on an independent left years ago to cheerlead whatever petty bourgeois current looked "progressive". With the death and transfiguration of stalinism, today they are cowering behind bourgeois "democracy" as the allernative to prospective fascism. In their hearts they agree with the bourgeois that 1917 was a mistake which de-railed civilisation, and now we have to pay the price in re-civilisating humanity. This is SD recycled with menshevik undertones. " History can only set itself the tasks it can acheive blah blah" - comrades this means democracy today. So in reponse to the threat of a new round of imperialist wars we can expect the same old capitulation to bourgeois nationalist/democratic anti-fascism we saw under the popular front period of the late 1930's. Many on this list push this menshevik line. This can only lead to disaster in the former SU where some of us hold out hopes that the experience of the last 80 years is not lost and workers can organise against a barbaric capitalism given a revolutionary leadership. The danger will be the redbrown nationalism behind Zhirinovsky or Lebed against NATO, and workers in NATO countries mobilised to defend `democracy' against Russian "totalitarianism/fascism". Because the stakes are extremely high, and the difference between socialism and barbarism is a revolutionary vanguard, some of us on this list keep on flogging the need for a new international. There is no other way to be a Marxist and to fight against the destructive forces you and others have described. We cannot stop a new round of imperialist wars, including the use of nuclear weapons unless the working class recognises that its main enemy is at home, and turns imperialist war into civil war, comandeering the [nuclear] weapons and putting them under workers control. Dave. -------------------------------------------------------- Detcom, Peru and Foreign Policy! Detcom has finally done somthing with his skills. He has gone and found a whole list of *real* enemies of poor and working class people! Hats off to Det com! Publishing a list like this of American diplomats to Peru is great!This is much better then your pictures used against political opponents! In fact I use to work in the mail order department of one of the biggest department stores in Sweden. It was cooperative owned and a Social Democratic pipedream which evolved out of the workers struggles in the 20ties and thirties. However this is another story. What was interesting about this job was that the diplomatic corps had a blank check to buy all the stuff they needed when being sent out to their posts. in this big store they bought everything from furniture to caviar to be shipped out to the embassies around the world. Not only that it usually was the wives to the diplomats that did the shopping and they usually came in pairs or groups and gossiped alot! Not only could you see who was who but a lot of the whys for how Swedish fake "neutrality" diplomacy worked. For example every time their was a crisis in the middle east whether and Israeli invasion into Lebanon or war with Egypt one could see how this made the activity of the diplomatic corps in Sweden do hat tricks.But you got the physical confirmation by the amounts of furniture and caviar being sent out and to where it was being sent! Caviar (something every Swede just can,t be without for breakfast) would suddenly stop being sent to one country and huge amounts of caviar would be moved to another. All depending on how the government in power determined their foreign policy in relation to the crisis. Not only that-one could allso see the shift in policy from the glorious days of Social Democratic support to third world struggles of the past Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua for example as the Social democrats marched to the right into the hands of German and American imperialism of today. Anyhow I think that my position in the basement of this large department store in a sense was much more effective in determining who is who in the diplomatic corps then the model that DetCom is using. The reason is that IT information can be falsified and a search like Detcom's can give the results that the class enemy want people to think. Whereas in my position we got concrete conformation because we packed and shipped all the goods to the various embassies around the world. Although i no longer have this job I can certainly give you some tips on the situation of Swedish foreign diplomacy. The once gigantic corps in Vietnam has been reduced drastically. The same in Nicaragua and the Latin American countries. They have grown and expanded enormously in the former east block countries and especially the "Baltic states". Naturally in the United States they have grown and are expanding as well as in Germany, not to mention the former Yugoslavia. It basically has to do with the fundementals of the new world we are living in after the demise of the Soviet Union. The Swedes have always been opportunists at best and their niche during the late 60ties and early seventies of supporting third world countries with contacts to ABB and other Swedish companies has gone over to support of Swedish imperialism in taking a big a piece of the pie possible in the former deformed and degenerated workers states as possible. Naturally Detcom work is valuble and proves quite clearly that Latin America is still considered as America's backyard. However I think that in Africa and in the former "workers" states the scramble by the various imperialist interests to get a piece of the action is much clearer. It is going to be quite interesting to see the expansion of NATO debate in relation to the hungry appetites of the Germans for example. Just as Africa is quite interesting because the games being played their are in fact very near classical historical examples of the inter-imperialist rivilries that are still very real along the lines of pre second world war diplomacy.. And don,t forget the rather "quiet" diplomacy of the Japanese imperialists at this point. Talking about sleeping tigers their we certainly have a power to reckon with. All in all it is only a revolutionary international that can solve these problems and stop a new war which will used by imperialism to redivide the pie. Finally a short note to Godena who is once again writting off the working class as the only revolutionary force capable of changing things. Godena should not be so pessimistic! In fact i saw a report on Swedish TV last night that showed some of the experiments the Americans are working with for crowd control. Laser,s, pepper bombs, high frequency sounds, etc. Of course this points to the obvious question of how up tight the ruling class is knowing that class struggle like the stuff that recently has been going on here in Europe and Adam has been quite active in writting about and not to mention the recent events in Korea make your latest depressing contribution to M-I a big joke! No I am sorry it is not a joke coming from Godena. It fits right in his world of and appetite to find third world anti-imperialist struggles to capitulate to. The latest round from Godena mentions "Islam" among other things. He does not come right out and say it but the obvious thrust of his contributions are very clear! Glad to see that quite a number of people reacted to his anti working class drivel. Naturally some have reacted for all the wrong reasons. But that also is another story.. Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- Statement by the International Workers League on Peru WE REPUDIATE FUJIMORI'S MURDEROUS ACTION On 22 April, Fujimori's government put an end to the hostage crisis by massacring 14 guerrillas of the MRTA. The spectacular operation, which had been planned for months, was carried out with the collaboration of the repressive agencies of the U.S. Those taking part in it had been trained by the FBI, and the CIA, an acknowledged specialist in operations of this kind, had provided arms and other equipment needed for the task. The "Rambo" in a bullet-proof vest who appeared on TVs all over the world to celebrate "the triumph of democracy over terrorism", is the same dictator who has plunged millions of Peruvians into the worst poverty in the country's history; the same dictator who is applying systematic state terrorism responsible for massacres such as those of Barrio Alto and Canuta; who imposed the system of "faceless" judges in which sentences are handed down by sinister individuals known to no one; who has filled the prisons not only with guerrillas, but also with a great number of popular activists who have nothing to do with the guerrilla; who has created the "tomb prisons" in which prisoners are buried alive, without recreation, without light, without visits and without medical attention. Imperialism sends its praises and congratulates Fujimori for his "feat". The various bourgeois governments of the world are do the same. We of the IWL/FI (LIT-CI), on the contrary, repudiate this murderous action, the same as we repudiate every action taken by the Peruvian dictatorship, and we grieve the loss of the 14 fighters against the dictatorship. We repudiate Fujimori's action although we neither share the methods nor agree with the actions of the MRTA. Our difference is based on the fact that actions of this kind, isolated from the mass movement and not controlled by it, generally turn into their opposite. It is a fact that, regardless of the intentions behind it, the action of the MRTA has diverted attention in Peru from the country's dramatic economic and social problems and from trade union demands and struggles, and led the bourgeois opposition to grant a truce to the government, thus helping to slow the process of political erosion that has been eating away at the regime. And today it cannot be denied that the figure of Fujimori has grown internationally. We don't know for how long, but it is a deplorable fact that the dictatorship in Peru has been strengthened. For this reason, the IWL/FI calls for the repudiation of this murderous action by the Fujimori government, and for an increase in the pressure on the Peruvian dictatorship. We declare that now there will very probably be an increase in the repression unleashed against working-class and popular sectors, the same as there may well be a campaign of reprisals against the regime's political prisoners, who are already having to endure subhuman conditions of life. Freedom for all political prisoners! Down with the "faceless" judges! Down with the "tomb prisons"! Down with the Fujimori dictatorship! The International Secretariat of the International Workers League 24 April 1997 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read the book! 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