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U.S. Rule on Trial - Behind the Crisis in Iran

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EDITORIAL: FIGHTING THE KLAN

David DuBois' series on the White left's abandonment of the Black left in America (see back page) is timely in light of recent anti-Klan activities in the South organized by White left organizations.

Many Southern Blacks are suspicious of the current White radical-led drive against the KKK, and rightfully so. It is true that several Whites were killed in the Greensboro, North Carolina, anti-Klan demonstration in November. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases in which there has been Klan violence in America, Black people have been the victims. We are the ones who have been castrated, beaten and left dead hanging from trees.

The Klan has been organized and financed throughout the over 100 years of its existence by rich White business interests for the purpose of maintaining racial hatred between Blacks and Whites. Rarely will you find someone of the rank of David Rockefeller marching down the street in Klan garb, but it is Rockefeller money that helps to finance the Klan. It is Rockefeller money that helps to convince the largely poor White working men who make up the rank and file of the Klan that Black people are to blame for all their problems.

The present anti-Klan organizing by White radical groups in the South is another example of the White left, in the words of David DuBois, "…allowing battlegrounds to be chosen for it rather than choosing the battlegrounds." The results are particularly serious for Black people because we are the ones who suffer from this misdirected political activity.

Black people have and will never tolerate Klan violence against us. However, we must not drain our energies fighting the Klan. The Klan is not the cause of the unemployment, inflation, and bad health care, housing and education we are experiencing. The cause of these problems is the White business interests who control America and keep the Klan in business.

The Black community does not need advice from Whites, no matter how sincere they may be, on how to organize against our problems. We know what our problems are. But, we ask, will those Whites who are genuinely committed to achieving equality for all people in America ever organize the White community against racism and injustice?

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Ben Chavis Released From Prison

(Raleigh, N.C.) - Rev. Ben Chavis, leader of the Wilmington 10 defendants and the last to win release from prison, was paroled December 14 two weeks ahead of schedule. He said he would continue to try to prove his innocence.

North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt said he granted parole for Chavis because of his "excellent record" while an inmate at Orange County Prison and "to permit him to be home with his family at Christmas." Chavis, 31, who spent nearly four years in prison, had been scheduled for parole January 1,1980.

"The quest for freedom is a long struggle," said Chavis. "We're going to march again and we're going to keep on struggling until freedom is realized."

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YOUR HEALTH: You Are What You Eat

As poor people, we have not always had our fair share of healthful food. And because of a lack of nutritional education we often kill valuable nutrients in healthful foods we eat frequently, such as greens, by overcooking them.

The following are guidelines suggested for a healthy diet:

1) Make the largest percentage of your diet fresh, raw or slightly cooked vegetables. These are nature's best source of vitamins, minerals and roughage.

2) Consume one to three servings of fresh, whole grain products daily to enhance the elimination process

3) Drink at least six glasses of water daily to aid in elimination of impurities and in all the body's processes.

4) Minimize intake of fried and fatty foods (i.e. nuts, cheeses, potato chips, ice cream) to avoid fat buildup in the body.

5) Limit flesh foods, if eaten at all, to those low in fat, toxic additives and colorings. This will lower your body's intake of harmful chemicals. Chicken and fish are more easily digested.

6) Consume adequate amounts of protein for the building of healthy new tissue.

Many food items that are good for you may be unfamiliar to you. Instead of dwelling on preconceived dislikes, be adventurous for the sake of good health.

Use safflower or olive oil instead of "grease." Health food advocates say that cold pressing, the method of extracting the oils from seeds, such as sesames, safflowers and the pulp of olives, reserves more Vitamin E than processing under the greater pressure of many of the highly advertised oils.

Be careful about milk. It has been found that cow's milk can be difficult for people of African descent to digest.

Try vegetable salt. It's higher in potassium than table salt. Potassium is the most important mineral in the body cells.

The best way to good healthfulness and a life of feeling good is to listen to your body -- it'll tell you how it feels. Remember this: your food becomes you.

(The above article was reprinted from Essence magazine.)

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HUEY P. NEWTON SENDS LETTER TO IRANIAN GOVERNMENT: B.P.P. DEMANDS SHAH STAND TRIAL

(Oakland, Calif.) - The Black Panther party has demanded that the deposed Shah of Iran be returned to stand trial for the countless murders and other crimes he committed against the Iranian people during the 26 years of his rule.

In a letter sent to the Iranian Consulate in San Francisco, BPP President Huey P. Newton states that "… the Shah should stand trial as a criminal for the over five million people he murdered and the over 50 billion dollars he stole from the Iranian people…"

The text of Huey's letter states:

"To The Iranian People:

"The Black Panther Party wishes to express its full support of the demand of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian people that the deposed Shah be returned to stand trial for the murders of over five million human beings and countless other atrocities he committed against the people of Iran during the 26 years he was in power.

"As Black Americans, we view the Western world's coverage of the struggle of the Iranian people as a series of outrageous lies which `decontaminate' the U.S. government's participation in the history of oppression of the Iranian people.

"Last year, our Party invited students studying here from your country to a meeting where they gave us a moving and graphic account of the situation in Iran. They showed us pictures of people tortured or murdered in the streets in September of 1978.

"The United States Government and the Western press have painstakingly tried to convince Americans that the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian students have violated international law. However, they purposefully omit the fact that he Shah came to power as the result of a coup d'etat organized and carried out by the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency.

"The Black Panther Party believes that the Shah should stand trial as a criminal for the over five million people he murdered and the over 50 billion dollars he stole from the Iranian people and the irreplaceable resources he drained from the land.

"I personally offer my services to the people of Iran in this period of crisis. The Black Panther Party fully supports the struggle of the Iranian people to win their freedom from Western domination, particularly that of the United States government.

Yours in struggle,
Huey P. Newton,
President, Black Panther Party"

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Government Seeks Dismissal Of B.P.P. Lawsuit

(Washington, D.C.) - Oral arguments were heard here recently on a government motion to dismiss the Black Panther Party's $100 million lawsuit against the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies.

The hearing was held December 10 before U.S. District Court Judge John Lewis Smith.

The government claims the BPP lawsuit should be dismissed on the grounds that:

(1) the party has failed to provide a complete list of its national and local leaders during the 13 years of its history. (2) Huey P. Newton has failed to answer questions put to him regarding a July, 1974, incident in which he was severely beaten by two Black Oakland vice squad policemen.

The incident, which took place at the Fox Nightclub, occurred after the two policemen, Richard Tyson and George Whitfield, followed Huey to the club and began to verbally insult and harass him. An undercover agent of the federal Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (AFT) department was also at the club, a strong indication that the entire incident was preplanned.

Huey will be tried early next year on false misdemeanor charges made against him in the Fox incident, and has rightfully invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to answer government questions regarding the case.

Bruce Terris, chief counsel for the BPP in the federal lawsuit, argued that the government grounds for dismissal were highly insufficient. He cited the April 23, 1979, ruling by the 7th Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeal in Illinois, in which the court cited an FBI conspiracy to destroy the BPP in ordering a new trial in the Fred Hampton murder case.

The BPP lawsuit, filed here on December 1, 1976, charges 40 past and present high officials of the FBI, CIA, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), U.S. Post Office and other federal agencies with hundreds of civil rights violations against the Party, its members and supports, including the assassinations of several Party members.

A statement released by the Party at the time the suit was filed said, in part:

"Through this lawsuit, we intend to bring an end to a long national nightmare, exposing that the most extreme and violent actions were employed by high government officials against citizens of this nation.

"Federal and local police, in a coordinated effort over a period of years, sought and seek to destroy the Black Panther Party, our Free Breakfast for Children Programs, our Free Clinics, Prisoner Rehabilitation Programs… harassing our members, subjecting us to injurious assaults, illegally prosecuting us, imposing unjustifiable high bails, falsely and, ultimately, carrying out its plan to outright kill leading members of the Black Panther Party…'"

The lawsuit charges that federal police, "at the highest level," conspired:

(1) To kill and did kill BPP members John Huggins, Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, George Jackson, John Savage, Sylvester Bell, Alex Rackley and others;

(2) To discredit, destroy, "neutralize" and kill Huey P. Newton.

(3) To block the Party's right to freedom of the press by sabotaging its newspaper, The BLACK PANTHER Intercommunal News Service;

(4) To eliminate financial support and steal funds from the Party by threatening the finances of its supporters;

(5) To illegally secure over three million dollars in bails for false arrests of Party members -- money that could have been used to maintain BPP community service programs; and

(6) To carry out a massive program of psychological warfare against the Party through a mass media propaganda campaign.

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SAN QUENTIN 6 CASE: DEADLINE NEARS ON JOHNNY SPAIN'S APPEAL

(San Francisco, Calif.) - December 25 marks the end of the 90-day period in which three judges of the California Court of Appeal here are scheduled to decide whether to overturn the conviction of Black Panther Party member Johnny Larry spain. Johnny, a former San Quentin 6 defendant, was falsely convicted in 1976 in connection with the events of August 21, 1971 -- the day BPP Field Marshal George Jackson was assassinated at San Quentin Prison.

Of the six Black and Hispanic inmates falsely charged for the events of "Bloody Saturday," Johnny was the only one convicted of murder and of conspiring to escape with George. Two guards and three inmates were killed in the incident, which resulted from an elaborate conspiracy created and carried out by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

At the oral arguments heard in the case on September 25, 1979, Dennis Riordan, deputy state public defender and Johnny's attorney, forcefully argued before state appellate justices Clinton White, Sidney Feinberg and James Scott that the 30-year-old BPP member's conviction be reversed on the grounds that:

- The post trial discovery of two highly improper conferences held during the trial between the judge and one of the jurors. The juror revealed facts making her incompetent to sit on the San Quentin 6 case, but the judge kept hidden from the defense both the occurrence and the content of the conferences;

- The prejudicial shackling of the Six in open court during the entire 18 months of the trial, the longest criminal proceeding in California and U.S. history.

In the opening brief filed in the appeal last year, Riordan emphasized the "blatant misconduct" of juror Patricia Fagan.

During the trial, noted attorney Charles Garry acted as chief defense counsel for Johnny. On September 24, 1976, over a month after the conclusion of the trial, Garry filed a motion for a new trial on the grounds that juror Fagan failed to disclose her extreme bias against the BPP during the initial jury selection in 1975.

In the motion, Garry said that he and his assistant, Pat Richartz, had interviewed Fagan at her home after the trial. She told them she believed her best friend had been murdered in "cold blood" on a tennis court in Los Angeles by Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt.

During his testimony in the trial, Black ex-agent provocateur Louis Tackwood mentioned Pratt, a former BPP member in the Southern California Chapter, Fagan said that when she heard Pratt's name in court, she became "greatly upset."

Fagan then informed her fellow jurors of her feelings about Pratt and the circumstances of her friend's death. Neither Fagan, the jury or Broderick ever communicated the matter to Garry or any of the other defense attorneys.

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Voter Initiative Urges Family Choice Of Schools

(San Francisco, Calif.) - "Public education is in serious danger in California. The centralization required by Proposition 13 has not only destroyed local control but soon will reduce all school districts to a uniform level of spending and education.

"There will be no light house public schools. Those who can afford to do so are choosing private schools in greater numbers, further reducing taxpayer support. If school finance is not basically restructured, our public schools in a few years will be populated principally by low income families who lack any other choice."

So states a brochure published by the locally based, non-profit organization Education by Choice. Concerned about the growing crisis in California's public school system, Education by Choice has prepared a ballot initiative for the June, 1980, statewide elections.

The Initiative for Family Choice will insure that families of every income level are able to choose their child's school whether it be nearby or distant, public or private, religious or secular, modern or traditional. The initiative will amend the state constitution to create a state-funded system of competing schools.

Under the provisions of the Family Choice Initiative, parents of school age children who are dissatisfied with the public school system will be given educational certificates by the state valued at a set amount and redeemable at the participating school of their choice.

The initiative eliminates the use of property taxes for education and places a six-year limit on school spending.

Regular public schools will continue to operate under the direction of local school districts and boards and will be fully funded by the state. But families will have the right to petition their school districts to establish "independent" public schools governed by combinations of parents, teachers, trustees and others.

Private schools that choose to participate in the certificate plan will be called "family choice" schools. Independent public and family choice schools will be required to accept certificates in lieu of tuition. Every applicant with a certificate must be admitted unless the school has reached its enrollment limit.

The certificate system allows parents three basic choices. They may keep their children in the regular public schools or apply for a certificate redeemable at an independent public or family choice school.

Following are excerpts from the proposed initiative:

CERTIFICATION OF SCHOOLS

Independent public school and family choice schools shall be certified upon proper application to an agency designated by law. A school whose application satisfies the curriculum requirements and standards for teaching personnel fixed by law for private schools on July 1, 1979, shall be entitled to immediate certification. The legislature may not augment such requirements and standards.

No school shall be ineligible to redeem certificates because it teaches moral or social values, philosophy, or religion, but religion may not be taught in public schools or independent public schools.

A curriculum may be required by any school, but no pupil shall be compelled to profess political, religious, philosophical or ideological belief or actively participate in ceremony symbolic of belief.

EDUCATIONAL CERTIFICATES

Every child of school age is entitled to a certificate redeemable only for educational purposes in independent public and family choice schools. Certificates shall be equal for every child of similar grade level and circumstance and shall reflect the reasonable cost of transportation…

Schools shall accept no fees or consideration other than state certificates nor impose any other financial burden except in a manner, accommodating family capacity to discharge the burden.

John E. Coons and Stephen Sugarman, co-authors of the Initiative for Family Choice in Education, state:.

"…The crucial question is who should have the power to decide what sort of education an individual child should have. Given adequate information and professional assistance (as provided by the initiative), the family, in our view, is the best decider…"

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International Year Of The Child Celebrated

(Oakland, Calif.) - Children of Oakland Community School (OCS) performed a special dance as part of their International Year of the Child Celebration. The program included skits and songs by the children. One of the children read a statement prepared by the entire school which declared, "We believe International Year of the Child is a farce." The statement said that nothing concrete was done in 1979 by wealthy countries to help end the poverty suffered by 350 million children across the world.

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BUILDING BURGLARIZED FOUR TIMES IN NOVEMBER: OAKLAND COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER FREE PROGRAMS ATTACKED

(Oakland, Calif.) - Oakland Community Learning Center's (OCLC) free community service programs have come under vicious attack in recent weeks, In November, the East Oakland facility was burglarized four times.

OCLC was established here at 6118 East 14th Street in 1973 by Educational Opportunities Corporation (EOC), a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, to provide free educational, health and cultural programs for the Black and poor community of Oakland.

Describing the recent vandalism of the OCLC at a press conference, Ericka Huggins, director of Oakland Community School (OCS), the elementary school housed in OCLC, said:

"The idea for our center originally came from the Black Panther Party. We believe that the same forces who are still trying to destroy the Party are responsible for the burglaries of our building. The people who have been unsuccessful in prosecuting Huey P. Newton may be vandalizing our center as a way of getting back at Huey and the Party."

Ericka then read the following statement:

OUR BUILDING

"Our building, the Oakland Community Learning Center, which houses our school, our teen (and adult educational) program and a variety of other free community services, has been repeatedly burglarized since its doors opened in 1973. The center's offices have been ransacked, gas and electricity turned off, phone lines disconnected or scrambled and items refrigerated in the kitchen removed and left to rot.

"Our center is a haven for the community of East Oakland, a community which is almost totally neglected by established government agencies. For seven years, we have provided our services with little or no funding. However, when those few agencies which do fund our programs request site reviews or financial reports, our building is burglarized and our files ransacked.

"The forces behind the sabotage of our building attempt to confuse us by making us belive that our children, teens, staff and community are responsible for this Watergate-like activity. We know who is responsible.

"Oakland Community Learning Center poses a threat to the state because for seven years it has continuously provided free community services without total dependence on state funding.

"On November 7 our center was ransacked. On November 16, all of our offices were ransacked, files sprayed with water or fire extinguisher fluid, our phone lines were scrambled, thermostats in the area where our smallest children take naps were broken, gasoline and wax were poured onto floors, our piano which we use in our children's performances, was sprayed with fire extinguisher fluid. And, parents sing-in sheets were sprayed.

"We wanted to inform you about these things and assure you that though certain forces seem to oppose our services, our school -- the love we give to every human being who steps through our doorway -- we are not impressed or hindered."

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VOLUNTEERS

INSTRUCTIONAL
AIDES AND TUTORS

Volunteers are needed to assist in the instruction of Oakland Community School children, ages 2½ to 11. We especially need people skilled in language arts and mathematics.

PROPOSAL WRITERS,

RESEARCHERS & TYPISTS

If you are an experienced proposal writer, researcher or typist, why not use your skills to help us raise funds so that our center can grow and flourish?

RECREATIONAL AIDES

Wanted -- drill team leaders, athletes, and other interested people to organize recreational activities for elementary school children and teens.

NUTRITIONAL AND HEALTH AIDES

Sound nutritional and health care is vital for growing children. Volunteer your time to work in the Oakland Community School kitchen or health office.

IF YOU ARE SKILLED
IN ANY OF THE ABOVE AREAS,
PLEASE HELP US.
CALL 562-5262 TODAY.

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IN MEMORIAM: Fleeta Drumgo

(Oakland, Calif.) - FLEETA DRUMGO (shown above shortly after his release from prison in 1976) a defendant in the celebrated Soledad Brothers and San Quentin Six cases, was murdered here on Noveember 24. Along with George Jackson, field marshall of the Black Panther Party and John Cluchette, Drumgo, 35, became one of the Soledad Brothers, falsely accused of killing a Soledad Prison guard in January, 1970. Following the police set-up and assassination of Jackson on August 21, 1971, Drumgo became a member of the San Quentin Six, who were charged in connection with the incident.

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PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE

POLICE KILLINGS IN
U. S. UNDERESTIMATED

(Washington, D. C.) - The number of citizens killed by police each year could be underestimated by 50 per cent or more, New York criminologist said recently. Lawrence Sherman of the State University of New York at Albany, writing in the current issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, said an exhaustive study suggests that "the police may account for up to 3.6 per cent of all homicides -- but even those estimates are questionable."

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that More than 3,300 civilians died between 1968 and 1977 as a result of what it called "legal intervention." The percentage of non-Whites among them remained constant at about 50 per cent -- far exceeding their proportion in the general population.

SCIENTOLOGISTS
SENTENCED FOR
SPYING ON
GOVERNMENT

(Washington, D. C.) - A federal judge recently sentenced five hig-ranking members of the Church of Scientology to prison terms for conspiring to burglarize and infiltrate government agencies. In addition, U. S. District Judge Charles R. Richey fined the five church members $10,000 each and ruled that four of them must go to jail immediately, denying lawyers' requests that they remain free on bond while they appeal their convictions. In Los Angeles, a Scientology spokesman said, "The U. S. attorney's office has never been motivated to seek actual justice in this case. If they had they wouldn't have obsessively tried to avoid the massive 30-year-civil rights violations against the church and its members by intelligence agencies, which; is at the root of this controversy."

MIND CONTROL
DRUGS TESTED
ON PRISONERS

(Philadelphia, Pa.) - The University of Pennsylvania used 320 inmates at Holmesburg prison as human guinea pigs in the 1960's to test mind-control drugs and "skin hardeners" for the U.S. Army, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The Inquirer said in late November that information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed the experiments were conducted on prisoner "volunteers" between 1964 and 1968. The researchers were trying to steadily increase the dosage of mind-control drugs administered to prisoners until they ranched a dosage level known as MED-50 -- the minimum amount needed to mentally incapacitate half of a given population.

INDIANS WIN
$52 MILLION
FOR LAND

(Washington, D. C.) - The U. S. Court of Claims recently awarded $52.5 million to several groups of Chippewa Indians as payment for land the federal government took over in 1905. The land involved is eight million acres located in north-central North Dakota on the Canadian border.

HARLEM
CROWD JEERS
ROSALYNN CARTER

(New York, N.Y.) - Vice President Walter Mondale, his wife and "first lady" Rosalynn Carter received a rough welcome at a Harlem church in early December with speeches frequently interrupted by boos and catcalls. The trio attended the Ministerial Interfaith Association rally at the Salem United Methodist Church as a Harlem kickoff to Carter's re-election campaign.

IRANIAN DEPORTATIONS
PROTESTED

(Washington, D. C.) - A coalition of civil rights groups is urging the Carter administration to abandon plans to appeal a court ruling that held deportation of Iranian students without proper visas is unconstitutional. The Justice Department has asked for a stay of a recent ruling by U. S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green, pending appeal. In a letter to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, Peggy Shaker, national coordinator of a group known as Campaign for Political Rights, charged will "not only prolong an unacceptable situation, it will also heighten the tensions which already exist."

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HOW THE I.R.S. PLAYS POLITICS WITH TAXES

In its November 30, 1974, issue THE BLACK PANTHER newspaper reported that 99 poor people's and left organizations in America, including the Black Panther Party, were the targets of a top secret, illegal investigation carried out by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to IRS documents made public in November, 1974, by Ralph Nader's Tax Reform Research Groups, an IRS-created "Activist Organizations Committee" -- a name later changed to "Special Services Staff" -- monitored the tax records of socalled "ideological, militant, subversive and radical organizations."

The IRS probe began in July, 1969.

Following, we reprint excerpts from a series of articles that oppeared in recent issues of the Church of Scientology's Freedom newspaper. The series provides further details on the federal government's use of the IRS to destroy individuals and organizations that have actively worked for social change in America.

The use of the Internal Revenue Service lever against enemies of the "establishment" is not new. Throughout the 1960's, the IRS was used to spy on and harass private citizens and for a time served as an intelligence-gathering agency for the FBI and the CIA. Tax audits were used routinely as a part of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, the internal campaign of domestic spying and harassment.

In 1961, the IRS established the Ideological Organizations Project. Eighteen different organizations were selected for concentrated tax enforcement activity and tax audits. The organizations were not picked on the basis of any information indicating they were not in compliance with tax laws, but rather the organizations were singled out because of their political beliefs.

The initial organizations wee "right-wing extremist" organizations; but later, as the project developed, a number of "leftwing" organizations were added to the list.

The organizations singled out for tax audits included such groups as the Students for a Democratic Society, and, at the other end of the political spectrum, the Ku Klux Klan. It also included such groups as Rev. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The IRS audits division attacked not only organizations, but taxpayers rumored to be financial backers of those organizations. Investigations were begun in both New York and San Francisco by the IRS offices there.

The Project itself was spearheaded by Mitchell Rogovin, then attorney assistant to the IRS commissioner. Throughout the Project, Rogovin was the IRS liaison man between the White House and the Justice Department. Both the White House and Justice Departments sere kept closely informed of the activities of the IRS during this time.

Under Rogovin's guidance, plans were made to expand the scope of the Ideological Organizations Project. Rogovin intended to expand the number of groups audited to include over 10,000 "extremist groups," but allegedly the plan never got carried out.

In recent months, the Carter

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administration has been embroiled in a controversy surrounding Presidential aide Hamilton Jordan, who was allegedly seen sniffing cocaine a year ago at Studio 54, a fashionable New York discotheque. The charges were brought by the owners of the disco, and were vehemently denied by Jordan.

But behind the allegations was another investigation, this one involving the owners of Studio 54 itself. In June, 1978, the owners were indicted on charges of tax evasion, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. The allegations against Jordan were part of a "plea bargaining" arrangement whereby the owners would get leniency in their cases in return for information about the illegal activities of the President's top aide.

The man in the thick of the Studio 54 plea bargaining was Mitchell Rogovin.)

A 1976 Senate Investigation of intelligence abuses among government agencies found that Rogovin has been responsible for targeting a number of organizations for punitive tax audits, simply because White House insiders had marked those organizations for political harassment via the IRS.)

Throughout the 1960's, the FBI and the IRS maintained a close working relationship. The IRS supplied the FBI with tax returns and other tax information, a procedure the chief of the IRS Disclosures Branch termed "illegal," when he learned of it in 1968.

The process that was followed was simple. The FBI would request a particular return or set of returns, setting forth the request in some detail. The FBI would then prepare a form letter for signature by the assistant attorney general, Internal Security Division at the Department of Justice, stating that the information was for an official investigation, but giving no specific reasons for the request.

The form letter was delivered to IRS intelligence, which in turn supplied the information but kept no record of the request.

Between 1966 and 1974, the FBI made approximately 200 requests to the IRS for tax returns. The majority of the FBI's requests for data involved domestic intelligence or Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) matters.

Of the 200 requests, approximately 130 (64 per cent) insolved domestic intelligence activities.

The majority of the 130 domestic intelligence requests were part of two major FBI counterintelligence programs, one directed at the anti-Vietnam war movement and the other at the so called "Black Nationalist" movement. Each of these programs had two components:

1. Targeting of individuals in either movement for intensive intelligence gathering activity.

2. Targeting of the same individuals for so-called COINTELPRO operations, operations designed to expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize the activities of the target organizations.

The FBI's attacks on the antiwar movement were initiated via the IRS under the "Key Activists" program. Under this program, leaders of the "New Left" were singled out by the FBI.

The FBI requested the tax returns of 16 "Key Activists" for the years of 1966 and 1967. The returns were marked for tax audits.

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Black Youth Beaten In Prison

(Hagerstown, Md.) - TERRENCE JOHNSON, a 16-year-old Black youth who is serving a 25-year prison term at the Maryland Correctional Institution, recently charged that he has been repeatedly attacked by prison guards.

Terrence, who was convicted earlier this year of killing two White policemen who beat him and his brother, said that he is often placed in isolation and is drugged and tear gassed.

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Hearing Set For Oakland Police Review Board

(Oakland, Calif.) - The Oakland Police Department (OPD) has declared a virtual war on the city's Black youth. Oakland Tribune columnist Sidney Jones reported the following on December 12:

"Seventeen-year-old Robert Gamble says the police beat him up behind the gas station next door.

"Seventeen-year-old Marvin Floyd and his two brothers, Larry, 15, and Donald, 16, are still in detention charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.

"Norma Floyd, the mother of the Floyd boys, says when youngsters came and told her that her sons were being arrested she ran to the scene without bothering to put her shoes on.

"She said that when she asked what happened she was shoved to the ground.

"Eighteen-year-old Jasper Lowry said he had only been playing the pinball machine when he was beaten and arrested.

"Jasper, who recently qualified to join the Navy, has no prior criminal record and says all he was carrying during the entire incident was a pair of sunglasses.

"Jasper is charged with assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon and his mother, Billie Wright, says she had to come up with $500 to get her son released on $5,000 bail.

"So far, she says, nobody has even told her what kind of weapon her son was supposed to have had.

"I didn't get Reggie Dunn's age. However, he says he was almost run over by a policeman who drove his car up on the sidewalk.

In the months since the March 17, 1979, murder of 15-year-old Melvin Black by four Oakland policemen, the city's Black and poor community has renewed its longtime demand for the establishment of a police review commission. Such a body ideally would be composed of community residents who would have the power to investigate incidents of police brutality and murder and make recommendations to the city council on police procedures.

Community outrage over Melvin Black's killing forced Mayor Lionel Wilson last spring to appoint a Task Force for Citizens Complaints. Chaired by Oakland City Council member John Sutter, the Task Force has been widely criticized because most of its members are business and professional people. There are few grassroots community representatives on the Task Force and no Spanish-Speaking

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people at all.

The City Council has set a January 9 hearing on whether a citizens police review board should be established. Proposals outlining the make-up of the board have been made by the Task Force, the NAACP and other community groups.

Oakland police officers, the majority of whom are White and do not live in Oakland, strongly oppose any type of citizen control over their activities. he predominantly White Oakland Police Officers Association (OPOA) has marched through the city's downtown area to express its opposition to a police review board.

Wilson, who is seeking re-election next year, has jumped from one side of the issue to the other. Soon after he finally publicly stated his support for a citizen's police review commission and harshly criticized police for the murder of a young Black man last month, the mayor, obviously under pressure from White business interests, held a well publicized press conference with police chief George Hart and City Manager David Self. The mayor stated his support for Hart and Self, both of whom have come under severe criticism from the community.

Many community people here feel that the source of the problem of police brutality, unemployment and other problems of the poor in Oakland lies in the present form of city government. The real power in Oakland lies with the city manager. The mayor and city council members are little more than figureheads, and community leaders are calling for a change in the city charter so that the elected officials, the mayor and city council members, will have the power to run the city.

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A.I.M. ACTIVIST CHARGES GOVT. PLOT

(Los Angeles, Calif.) - A Los Angeles federal judge became visibly angry recently when defense attorneys attempted to introduce testimony concerning a government assassination plot against American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier.

U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence T. Lydick had earlier barred a defense strategy designed to show that Peltier was forced to escape from federal prison to save his life, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Peltier, 34, and inmate Bobby Garcia, 32, are charged in a July 20 escape from the Federal Correctional Institute at Lompoc, with the alleged help of Roque Orlando Duenas, 40, who is charged with supplying them weapons and maps.

Heated remarks came during testimony by Robert Hugh Wilson, 47, a federal prisoner called as the first defense witness.

In response to a question about his relationship with Peltier, Wilson blurted out that he first met the defendant "after the government hired me to kill Leonard Peltier."

Judge Lydick warned Wilson, and defence attorney Lew Gurwitz accused the judge of trying to intimidate his witness and making "uncalled for comments" in front of the jury.

After a meeting at the bench, the judge angrily ordered both the question and Wilson's answer stricken from the record.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert Biniaz and Lourdes Baird took turns objecting each time Gurwitz or defense attorney Bruce Ellison tried to get any testimony into the record concerning the government plot to assassinate Peltier.

The hearing was interrupted time after time by whispered conferences at the bench, called by Lydick and attorneys for both sides to iron out various issues and objections.

Wilson, who also is called "Standing Deer," was an inmate with Peltier in the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois.

In an affidavit filed by the defense, Wilson said he was recruited by prison officials and a government agent to "neutralize" Peltier by setting him up to be killed in an escape attempt.

At one point during his testimony, after he had been warned by Lydick to wait for objections before testifying, Wilson turned to the bench and said, "Judge, you frighten me."

Gurwitz and Ellison tried time and again to introduce the assassination plot against Peltier only to be faced by objection after objection from Biniaz and Lourdez based on Judge Lydick's earlier rulings.

Finally, in frustration, Gurwitz told the court, "I have no further questions you will allow me to ask."

Ellison and deputy public deender Karen Smith also were unsuccessful, and Wilson was excused from the witness stand and returned to the federal prison on Terminal Island where he will be held as a rebuttal witness.

A second defense witness, Darrel D. Butler, former American Indian Movement worker from Santa Monica, was also called to the stand as a witness for Peltier.

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The Black Political Agenda For 1980

(New Orleans, La.) - On August 21-24, 1980, the National Black Political Assembly (NPBA) will sponsor the Fourth National Black Political Convention here. The NBPA is the outgrowth of the historic National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana, in 1972. More than 8,000 people attended that convention which adopted a National Black Political Agenda.

In 1974 the National Black Political Convention was held in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Little Rock convention was attended by 3,000 people selected as delegates through state conventions or assemblies.

The convention placed heavy emphasis on skill development, community organization, comnity development, and NBPA state and local chapter development.

In 1975 the NBPA finally ratified a constitution which simplified the structure and adopted a statement of principles which for the first time officially declared a definitive direction for the NBPA based on the Gary Declaration.

The NBPA Statement of Principles affirmed the organization's commitment to a popular independent, progressive, Black politics of social transformation provided for the NBPA to mobilize all sectors, and constituencies within the national black community who believe in the same or similar principles, goals and objectives.

At the same time elements within the NBPA who were basically wed to the Democratic Party, exclusively elected to become less active in the NBPA after the organization voted to run an independent Black Presidential candidate in 1976.

In 1976 the major focus for the Black Political Convention which was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the effort to draft Julian Bond or Congressman Ron Dellums to run for President as an independent.

While the NBPA was unsuccessful in its efforts to persuade either Bond or Dellums to run for the Presidency, a National Committee for a Peoples Politics was formed prior to the convention, representing Black, Third World, and progressive White organizations.

The convention, which was attended by 4,000 people, also ratified a 1976 Priority which included a "Right to a Decent Life Agenda," and voted to create the Independent Freedom Party as the electoral arm of the NPBA.

Among the major goals of the 1980 National Black Political Convention are the following:

- To offer a major statement on the state of Black America

- To examine the critical issues confronting the Black community and to examine projects, programs, and institutions which should be initiated or supported by the Black community.

- To examine the relationship of the Black community in America to Africa, the Caribbean and the rest of the Third World and to shape strategies to aid in the liberation of the Third World.

- To adopt a statement of

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principles, structure and implementation strategy for an independent Black political party (the Independent Freedom Party as adopted in 1976).

Below, THE BLACK PANTHER reprints excerpts from an NBPA position paper entitled "Revitalizing Independent Black Politics: Towards A Strategy for 1980 and Beyond."

"In 1976, the national Black community, at least those who bothered to vote, entrusted their dreams, aspirations and future to a Bible quoting, populous preaching, peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia.

"Jimmy Carter's moralist pronouncements on issues, his vague commitment to human rights, and his claim to `trust-worthiness' were seen by many Blacks as offering a greater promise and prospect than the `blatant neglect' and overt racist and fascist policies of the Nixon-Ford era.

"Now, we as a national Black community are confronted with the failure of `tweedle-dum' to effectively deliver on our agenda, despite the fact that Jimmy Carter received 94 per cent of the Black vote in 1976, the vote which provided the critical margin in his election.

"The Carter administration and the Democratic Party have not responded to the Black agenda in proportion to Black voters' support for Carter and the Democratic Party.

"Instead, we have been treated to an emasciated Hawkins-Humphrey `Full Employment' Bill; a wholly inadequate urban policy; and a pronounced and growing tendency to emphasize controlling inflation at the expense of economic and social programs to relieve the plight of the masses of Black, poor and working people and the struggling middle class.

"The national Black community must come to function with the understanding that neither Jimmy Carter or any other President, Black or White, has the capacity to solve our problems under the present system. And certainly, the two parties which serve as extensions of and proponents for that system cannot be relied upon to advance the politics which are required to ultimately provide for the liberation of Black people…

"The American economic system and order is in a severe crisis. This crisis has intensified the competition for scarce and decreasing jobs, educational slots, and the inadequate local, state and federal revenues.

"Affirmative action programs are being quietly and openly dismantled. Black unemployment and underemployment continue at depression levels among adults and persist at disastrous levels for young people.

"Police repression is running rampant in the Black community,

"The present climate and pattern of events points clearly to the urgent need to revitalize the independent Black political movement and to build a strong independent Black political organization within the national Black community.

"The crisis in the American political-economic system and the broadranging attack on Black interests on all fronts must also be seen as an enormous opportunity to mobilize and organize the broadest possible spectrum of constituencies, organizations and leaders who can agree on the need for a politics of social transformation.

"As the Gary Declaration put it: `It is the challenge to consolidate and organize our own Black role as the vanguard in the struggle for a new society."

Anyone wishing further information about the NBPA or the 1980 National Black Convention may call (216) 743-1734.

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U.S. RULE ON TRIAL-BEHIND THE CRISIS IN IRAN

KHOMEINI: SPOKESMAN FOR THE OPPRESSED

The following article was written by Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu, former minister of economic affairs and development planning for Tanrania. The article is reprinted from the Oakland Tribune.

While edgy governments throughout the Muslim world have expressed opposition to the taking of the American hostages in Iran, Muslim masses everywhere from Pakistan to East Africa believe they have discovered in Ayatollah Ruyullah Khomeini a leader who makes their official spokesmen irrelevant.

To them, the Ayatollah is at the vanguard of a great revolutionary tide that is sweeping out imperialism and oppression.

That the tide of upheaval in the Muslim world has taken an anti-American turn is the result of past American policies in the region. The countries that have been staging demonstrations against the U.S. and burning embassies and consulates were all, hardly a decade ago, the staunchest U.S. allies in Asia.

Pakistan, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Iran and Turkey were all linked to post-World War II American military pacts against the Soviet Union and all provided facilities to U.S. military bases to encircle communism. These are all Muslim countries, and at the time, Islam was viewed as the greatest ideological force against communism.

The U.S. spent billions of dollars to arm the ruling eliques in these countries to fight communism. When it turned out that most of the arms were used to suppress their own people instead. American and other intelligence agencies combined to make the subjugation of dissenters more effective.

The mass of the people in the region, lacking leadership for organised resistance, succumbed to the pressure.

Khomeini's advent to effective state power in Iran has changed all that. For the first time since the death of Nasser in Egypt the common man in the Middle East has found a spokesman at the helm of one of the most powerful countries in the region.

The only important difference is that, unlike Nasser, Khomeini speaks politics with the authority of religion, which gives him a much wider appeal, reaching practically all countries with any significant Muslim population. Islam is the dominant religion in the region, hindered by no national boundaries.

U.S. policy for this region grew from the foundations laid by John Foster Dulles who chose some of the most discredited and despicable despots as America's allies in his blind crusade to "toll back communism." In his real he hardly bothered to think what the people in the area thought or what the repressive rulers were doing to their people. He took the latter's suffering as an act of God, unavoidable if not altogether necessary.

All of Dulles' successors have followed his footsteps, culminating in Kissinger, who succeeded in reducing Egypt from a bulwark against repression into a bastion of reaction. "My friend Henry" from the lips of Sadat was a kiss of death to American diplomacy in the entire Muslim world.

Muslims, who had been expected to be in the vanguard of the struggle to regain Jerusalem, the seat of Masjid el Aqua, the third most important Mosque in Islamic tradition after Mecca and Medina, now witnessed that country becoming pliant.

They have decided to have nothing to do with Sedat.

This isolation of Sedat in the Muslim world was also the isolation of the U.S. in spite of "friends" in power whom the U.S. sustained and nourished.

The smoldering resentment of the Muslim world against the U.S. and her local "allies" exploded from the lips of Khomeini and the masses responded with unabashed approval. Unaffected by diplomatic frills, he not only spoke the language of the people, he aired the repressed resentment and assumed leadership by talking to the masses of the region over the shoulders of their leaders.

Khomeini raised the banner of fighting oppression anywhere in the name of nearly one billion poverty-stricken Muslims of the world.

It is no use trying to divide the Muslim world into Shi'a and Sunni branches, because oppressed Muslims know that Khomeini's relevance does not lie in his being a Muslim, only, but in his being a fighter against national oppression. Therefore, differences of sects are immaterial.

We are passing through a period of revolutionary change in Asia and Africa similar to the last days of British and French colonialism shortly after World War II. Khomeini's defiance is reminiscent of Nasser's in 1986 when he nationalised the Suez Canal and thereby single-handedly challenged France, Britain and Israel. From then on Nasser emerged as a hero of the oppressed.

In challengeing the U.S., Khomeini is emerging as a new Third World hero. The Anglo-French aggression of 1956 was designed to dislodge Nasser; it ended in establishing him more securely. Current American tactics in Iran, which involve the veiled threat of force, will beyond any doubt have the same effect for Khomeini -- even if they do not lead to armed intervention of "punishment."

While the global focus now is on Iran, Islam has also played an important role in African revolutionary movements.

As long as Khomeini continues to be the spokesman of the oppressed in the name of Islam he will be assured of popular support throughout Africa. Note that not a single African country (apart from Mobutu's Zaire) has come out in opposition to Khomeini.

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C.I.A. PROPAGANDA IN THE AMERICAN PRESS

Harry Rostrke a 25 year CIA veteran, describes previous CIA techniques in Iran as follows:

"The August, 1953 coup, directed by a small group of CIA operators working out of a basement in Tehran, was preceded by a propaganda campaign with a simple theme; if (the) anti-Shah regime remains in power, the Soviet Union and the Iranian Communists will take over the country."

Is there a known CIA media organization? Who are the CIA propagandists? In May, 1978, More magazine carried a story titled "Covering the World for the CIA Correspondent tells of employment by secretly funded news service, Forum World Features" (FWF)."

FWF was, until recently, a London-based wire service. According to the author, Russell Warren Howe, "Forum was, in fact, the principle CIA media effort in the world."

The view is supported by classified CIA documents quoted verbatim: "In 1968, then CIA Director Richard Helms had asked for a report on Forum from Cord Meyer, the London station chief. Meyer's answer said:

"Forum World Features is an international news feature service located in London and incorporated in Delaware whose overt aim is to provide a comprehensive weekly service covering international affairs, FWF Service is an activity of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, from which the CIA withdrew its support in 1966."

Meyer's position as station chief in London made him directly responsible for all covert operations in the area. As such, he was aware of, if not involved in, the goals and strategies of FWF.

The Santa Barbara News & Review obtained the incorporation papers of FWF from the state of Delaware. These documents show its officers as Brian Crorier, president, and Gene Gately, vice-president during 1966 and 1967.

We now have the names of specific CIA propagandists: Cord Meyer, Brian Crorier and Gene Gately. A distinction should be made between CIA officers (Meyer and Gately) and CIA media assets (Crorier). The principal writer for FWF was Robert Moss. Moss and Crorier are Australian citizens working as agents of CIA officers.

Crorier, in "Islamic Marxists" (National Review, March 16, 1979) argues, "There is, alas, one more lesson to be drawn from these searing events. It is this. In the Middle East and elsewhere, fanatics who wish to overthrow `pro-Western' governments know that they can act with impunity because the American administration will do nothing…"

Crorier further argues that "the Soviets are helping to destabilize Iran," and that the Soviets will dominate "the regime of Ayatollah Khomaini -- if it survives; and if it does not, the groups that supercede it will be Marxist anyway."

Moss, in "Who's Meddling in Iran?" (New Republic, December 2, 1978), alleges," Throughout the upheavals in Iran, the taboo subject has been the extent to covert Soviet involvement. I have been able to assemble, from both Iranian and non-Iranian sources, some striking new evidence of surreptitious Soviet involvement in this year's troubles."

We already know about Moss' non-Iranian sources, but who are his contacts in Iran? "The shah told me when I met him a month ago…"

Meyer wrote an editorial for the Coplay-owned San Diego Union recently titled "A Decade of Folly Ends," which criticizes not just Carter, but the last 10 years of U.S. government policy as "do-nothing while the Soviets wait like vultures for the disintegration of Iran."

How influential are CIA propagandists?

Crorier and Moss have been the successive directors of another London-based special distribution intelligence report, the Foreign Report. The Foreign Report costs several hundred dollars to subscribe to, which hundreds of newspapers are willing to pay. Stories which have appeared in the London Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post dealing with Moss' CIA links have done nothing to discourage subscribers to the Foreign Report.

The former staff members of FWF also contribute to a U.S. version of the Foreign Report called the Bulletin. This intelligence digest is distributed under the auspices of National Review, where Moss and Crorier are regular columnists. But the Bulletin reaches many reporters who would never subscribe to the conservative political philosophy of National Review.

In CIA terminology, these intelligence bulletins have a "multiplier effect." They are read by hundreds of journalists, who in turn reach millions. We have shown that CIA propagandists are active on the Iran issue, their themes are similar to the ones used in the past, with a slight variation on the main theme due to changed circumstances.

Before being able to alter the internal situation in Iran, the CIA has to alter the internal situation in the U.S. There has to be a President and a domestic public opinion that will support CIA covert operations in Iran. They ideally would like their man in the White House -- somebody like former CIA Director George Bush.

What distinguishes a CIA propaganda theme from a normal news story is that in the CIA version the facts are used to justify some pre-planned CIA action.

Earlier this year, intelligence hosted a conference in Jerusalem to honor the memory of an officer who died during the raid on Entebbe. Present were former CIA Director Bush, former Deputy Director of CIA Ray Cline. Brian Crorier, Robert Moss and others. The keynote speaker, according to the Wall Street Journal was Robert Moss, editor of the Foreign Report.

"Mr. Moss charged that the Soviets, plus Lybia and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were heavily involved in the campaign to overthrow the Shah. In Iran today a Soviet-trained PLO-unit 'functions as a nucleus of a secret police, a revolutionary SAVAK,'" The Journal reported.

Recently, Bush has been using his campaign for the Presidency to argue for a covert action capability in Iran and a strengthened CIA.

In November, Moshe Dayam of Israel arrived in the U.S. and offered, light of the weakened position of the CIA, to assist in launching as Entebbe-like raid in Iran.

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THE YEAR IN REVIEW

1979 was another year of victories for the Black Panther party. In March, BPP president HUEY P. NEWTON (shown in top left photo) was brought to trial in the case of Kathleen Smith, a 16-year-old Black prostitute whom Huey was falsely accused of killing in August, 1974. The jury deadlocked in a vote of 10-2 for the BPP leader's acquittal, and a mistrial was declared County District Attorney Lowell Jensen announced that the BPP founder would be retried. The community responded by organizing a campaign to recall Jensen from office (top right photo). Prior to Huey's second trial, which ended on September 25 with the jury voting 11-1 for acquittal and the charges being dismissed against Huey, a Justice for Huey rally (center left photo) was held in West Oakland's Bobby Hutton Park. In April an appellate court in Illinois ordered a new trial in the FRED HAMPTON (center right photo) case. The year was also one of growth and celebration for Oakland Community Learning Center, which celebrated its eighth anniversary on February 17. (ERICKA HUGGINS, director of Oakland Community School, is shown in bottom left photo with OCS student KELLITA SMITH at the celebration.) On June 22, OCS co-sponsored a successful radiothon with KRE Radio (bottom right photo).

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1979 was also a year of tumultuous protests and important victories for Black and poor people in the U. S. and around the world. Nationwide anti-Weber protests on June 2, such as the massive demonstration in Oakland (top left), forced the U.S. Supreme Court, on June 27, to uphold the legality if affirmative action programs. A demonstration in front of Oakland's City Hall (top right) was one of many such protests against the March 17 police murder of Melvin Black, a 15-year-old Black Oakland youth. CESAR CHAVEZ (center left) led the United Farm Workers in a successful, ongoing strike against big lettuce growers in California. (Center, right to left), Black South African freedom fighter DAVID SIBEKO, a leading member of the banned Pan Africanist Congress, was assassinated on June 11; a guerrilla of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which overthrew the regime of Anastasio Somoza in July; cartoon depicting the dangers of nuclear power, which were further exposed following the "accident" at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in March. The success of the armed liberation struggle by guerrillas of the Patriotic Front (bottom left) forced the White minority regime in Rhodesia to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Two Black men falsely imprisoned for the assassination of MALCOLM X (bottom right) called for a Congressional probe of the murder.

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Intercommunal News: People Of East Timor Hit With Famine

(Jakarta, Indonesia): While the dubious and self-righteous efforts by the U.S government to alleviate the so-called plight of Cambodian refugees in Thailand has been drawing most of the attention of the American media, the battle of the people of East Timor against a famine and an outbreak of disease that long ago reached epidemic proportions has been virtually unnoticed.

Over 200,000 persons - about one-third of the island's population -- are suffering from acute malnutrition in East Timor, located about 1,500 miles east of here. In one village of some 60,000, many have been reduced to skeletons loosely draped with skin.

The pro-Western regime in Indonesia, which forcibly annexed the former Portuguese colony in 1976, has been accused by Timorese exiles and several international human rights groups of fostering the famine through its occupation policy there. Among their charges are that Indonesian troops take food that was to have gone to the Timorese people.

An estimated 100,000 persons have died either as direct casualities of the four-year armed struggle -- led by FRETLIN (the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor -- against Indonesia's occupation or from starvation.

The U.S. supplied Indonesia with weapons in their takeover of East Timor. The Southeast Asian country still receives lucrative economic and military aid from the U.S. Successive administrations in Washington have considered Indonesia important because it is a staunchly pro-Western, oil-producing nation with the fifth largest population in the world.

Portugal colonized Timor nearly 400 years ago for use as its "coffee plantation." When the

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Portuguese were forced to pull out in 1974, they left behind a single high school, a population of 653,000 that was 90 per cent illiterate and only 13 miles of roads.

Rescue workers report that as many as nine persons die each day from starvation in the vicinity of the village of Halotia. Red Cross doctors report that 80 per cent of the 8,000 people of Halotia had malaria. Farther east, in Laga, doctors estimated malnutrition and disease claim three to five victims each day.

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Z.A.N.U. WARNS NEW BRITISH GOVERNOR OF RHODESIA

Following are excerpts from a statement issued by Tirivafi Kangai, chief representative to the United Nations of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), at a December 4 press conference in San Francisco concerning the peace conference in London. ZANU is allied with the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) in the Patriotic Front, which is leading the armed struggle in Rhodesia.

British rule was officially restored in Rhodesia earlier this month with the arrival of Lord Soames, who was appointed interim governor. Patriotic Front leaders are still negotiating ceasefire terms in London.

By arriving before a ceasefire is in effect, Soames is in the position of commanding the fight against the guerrilla forces. Patriotic Front leaders, in turn, have warned him that he will be considered their enemy until a ceasefire is negotiated.

"…The conference in London was convened because of the war for national liberation that ZANU, a component of the Patriotic Front, has been waging for years.

"It was called because of pressure from the international community: the Organization of African Unity, the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations and solidarity and religious groups. All these organizations have rejected the so-called `internal settlement,' and have declared the bogus elections `null and void.'

"Britain had no alternative but to try to talk to us and see if something could be worked out. However, the British objective remained that in Zimbabwe there should be a moderate, or what we would call a neocolonial regime whereby they would put some Blacks in power and continue to exploit the African people of Zimbabwe.

"When the conference was convened, the British felt that we might refuse to attend or that we might go there and present unnecessary demands -- as far as they were concerned -- and walk out of the talks. The British would then use that as an excuse to life economic sanctions and recognize the Muzorewa regime.

"So we went to London, first of all, because we believe that negotiations and revolutionary armed struggle are not exclusive of each other. They are complementary. Although we look at armed struggle as the main form of our struggle, we went to London to fight with the British at the table. Our leaders are fighting with the British at the table, but the majority of our forces are fighting the British and their puppets in the bushes of Zimbabwe.

"The conference opened at the beginning of September. When the British tabled their draft constitution after a day or so, we also tabled ours.

"There was the question of seats assigned Rhodesian Europeans. The British were proposing that at least 20 seats in the National Assembly of 100 seats should be put aside for Rhodesian Europeans. As far as they were concerned, this would encourage Europeans to stay in the country and contribute towards its rebuilding.

"That was not acceptable to us because that is essentially reintroducing the very racism that we have been fighting against for decades.

"Finally, a solution was found whereby these 20 Rhodesian Europeans will not have a veto in the National Assembly. In

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other words, they will not block any amendments to the constitution or any legislation.

"We then moved to the conditions of the transitional phase of government. The British proposed that a British governor would go to Zimbabwe, with political, military and security advisors, take control of the existing armed forces in the country, and maintain law and order. He would be assisted by Commonwealth (former British colonies) observers to supervise elections in the event of an agreement.

"We agreed that a governor could come, but insisted that there should be an electoral commission to which the Patriotic Front would be included. A ceasefire commission, in which our armed commanders would be maintaining law and order in the country, should also be established.

"The British shifted from their position that the Rhodesian armed forces and the British governor would maintain law and order to the position that a Rhodesian police force and a British governor would maintain law and order and supervise elections.

"As far as we were concerned, the Rhodesian police force cannot be isolated from the Rhodesian armed forces. The British finally agreed that our forces would have equal status with those of the Muzorewa regime's -- that our forces should also maintain law and order. They should also be housed, and be given a salary by the interim government.

"We then moved on to the ceasefire arrangement. We want a formula whereby the process towards decolonization will be irreversible. We want a mechanism whereby elections will be freely and fairly conducted.

"The British first proposed that there should be a two-month transitional period between the ceasefire and elections. We proposed that at least six months would be needed to effect a ceasefire. We say six months because it would take us quite some time to communicate with our forces, which are scattered throughout the country.

"The British proposed that we communicate with our forces through radio, television or newspapers in our country. We cannot do that because, in the past, Ian Smith has broadcast to our forces, through the media, telling them a ceasefire has been declared.

"That form of communication is unacceptable as far as our forces are concerned. If there is an agreement, we are going to a place in the country and tell our commanders to tell the units under them to cease fire. We have to communicate with them in human form, personally.

"The British are now proposing that countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Kenya should contribute Commonwealth ceasefire military forces.

"We disagree because most of those countries have been sympathetic to the Smith regime. In addition to those countries, we are proposing that countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, Guyana and India should also provide forces.

"It should be a strong peacekeeping force. This force should control airports and patrol borders throughout the country so that foreign troops cannot intervene if we win elections.

The other major issue is the position of our forces and those of the regime during the transitional period The British are proposing that our forces should come out of their bases in the country and be located at 15 different points within the country.

"The British are saying nothing as far as the location and the role of the Rhodesian police force. It would be suicidal for us if the Rhodesian armed forces remain in their operational areas and our forces come out in the open to be relocated.

"We propose two phases for the ceasefire arrangement. One: the disengagement of both forces. Two: The Rhodesian forces should be withdrawn to areas where they would be under normal conditions. In other words, they should be confined to their barracks. Most of those barracks are around urban areas. When they do that, our forces would also move freely within the country and would be settled to comparable positions.

"Furthermore, the Rhosesian warplanes should be grounded and mercenaries should be disarmed.

PUPPETS

"We know that the British support the puppets and Ian Smith in our country. We are saying this undesirable element, this fascist crook should be disarmed because we cannot win elections if these troops are armed. They will stage a coup.

"We are taking precautionary measures in the view of what happened in the Congo and in Ghana. You can have a popular government, but if the instruments of power are those you have been fighting, and they remain intact, your programs will not be implemented. This is our argument.

"We believe that the British don't want a lasting solution. They simply want to wash their hands and leave."

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Mozambique Builds Socialist Society

The following article was written by Stephen Talbot, former editor of International Bulletin, who recently returned from a trip to Mozambique. The article is reprinted from The Nation.

(Maputo, Mozambique) - Mozambique is trying to build a socialist society rooted in popular political participation -- the substance, not the rhetoric, of socialism.

While striving to meet the subsistence needs of its own 10 to 12 million people, Mozambique must also cope with an influx of 150,000 impoverished Zimbabwean refugees who have fled the war. The refugee camps are administered by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and although the Zimbabweans try to be as self-sufficient as possible, Mozambique must still divert scarce and badly needed resources to insure their survival.

In addition, Mozambique has lost more than $500 million in transit revenues and salaries since it closed its border with Rhodesia in March, 1976, in compliance with the U.N. sanctions and in solidarity with the Zimbabwean independence movement.

The Mozambican port of Beira had served as landlocked Rhodesia's main outlet to the Indian Ocean; now it suffers from unemployment and sharply curtailed economic growth.

While enduring these economic hardships, Mozambique has been subjected to repeated raids by Rhodesian jet fighters, helicopter gunships and paratroopers. The most recent attacks -- two occurred during the London conference on the future of Zimbabwe, hardly improving the atmosphere for negotiations -- have taken on a particularly ominous implication. The Salisbury regime describes the raids as "preemptive" strikes against buildups of guerrilla forces near the border, but there is an abundance of eyewitness evidence from Western journalists and international aid officials that the assaults are increasingly directed at civilian targets deep inside Mozambique.

With characteristic bravado, the Salisbury military command claimed to have killed some 300. Zimbabwean guerrillas in one incursion in early September. But according to Christian Science Monitor correspondent Allen Isaacman, who visited some of the bombed areas 250

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miles from the Rhodesian border, "there was no Mozambican, much less Zimbabwean, military presence there, with the exception of a small force of Mozambican soldiers guarding the dam at Aldeia de Barragem."

The Rhodesians, who had tried in March and April to destroy the dam that irrigates the fertile rice-growing Limpopo River valley, succeeded in damaging one of the four sluices (waterways). The only conceivable purpose of bombing this obviously nonmilitary target was to hamper Mozambique's campaign to turn the region into the nation's breadbasket.

Since December, 1978, the Rhodesian forces have repeatedly sabotaged roads and railways in an attempt to disrupt Mozambique's already tenuous communications and transportation system, blown up strategic bridges to block Mozambique's export of coal (its chief mineral resource) and killed a number of foreign technicians, including a young Belgian couple working for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization.

In March, Rhodesian-trained and financed Mozambican counterrevolutionaries blew up large fuel storage depots in Beira, the country's second largest city.

Isaacman and other knowledgeable observers believe that the Rhodesian attacks are designed "to cripple Mozambique's fragile economy, create popular discontent and demonstrate to the Mozambican government the futility of continued support for the Patriotic Front." But, judging from my recent three-week visit to Mozambique, which included areas near the Rhodesian border, it appears that, contrary to the intentions of Salisbury's military commander, Lieut. Gen. Peter Walls, the raids have not disuaded Mozambique from continuing its long-standing support for the Patriotic Front, nor do they seem to have dampened the Mozambicans' support for the guerrillas.

It is evident from popular culture, the state-controlled radio and newspapers, and numerous interviews and conversations I had with a wide variety of Mozambicans that they see the war in Zimbabwe as the continuation of a process of liberating southern Africa

Ultimately, the fate of Mozambique's experiment in socialism is inextricably bound up with the outcome of the war in Zimbabwe.

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Africa in Focus

U.S. TO DECIDE ON
RHODESIAN SANCTIONS

(Washington, D.C.) - President Carter is expected to soon announce his decision on lifting sanctions against Rhodesia. Critics of the move within the Carter administration have said that the President should not follow Britain's lead and send the economic embargo without referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which imposed the measures in 1966 and 1968.

Donald F. McHenry, the Black chief U.S. delegate to the U.N., charged that Britain should have requested "appropriate action" by the Security Council to terminate the sanctions formally. McHenry strongly urged the administration to recommend that course to Britain during a telephone conversation he had in early December with William C. Harrop. deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, according to a memorandum circulated to key State Department officials to Harrop.

MOZAMBIQUE, ZAMBIA
ATTACKED BY
RHODESIA

(London, England) - A spokesperson for Robert Mugabe, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), charged in early December that recent raids by the Black, Western-backed regime in Rhodesia into neighboring Mozambique and Zambia prove that their guerrilla forces would be wiped out if they agreed to relocate in designated areas inside Rhodesia as called for under the British ceasefire plan. "This confirms our belief that the forces of (Black "Prime Minister" Abel) Muzorewa will massacre our people if we accept this plan for so-called assembly places," the spokesperson said.

Rhodesian warplanes have made at least eight air strikes into Mozambique and Zambia since the London peace conference began 13 weeks ago. Since the beginning of this year, Muzorewa's White-led forces have launched over 30 attacks against the two countries.

PUBLISHER'S
S. AFRICA
TIES PROBED

(Washington, D.C.) - A federal judge ordered publisher John P. McGoff to obey subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is investigating his ties with South Africa. U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell recently ruled that McGoff and two of his companies -- which the SEC said were Global Communications Corporation and Sacramento Publishing Company -- must supply the requested testimony and documents. The SEC says it is trying to learn whether McGoff used South African money to buy U.S. newspapers and then failed to disclose the arrangement to stockholders as required by law.

FORD FIRES
S. AFRICAN
WORKERS

(Port Elizabeth, South Africa) The Ford Motor Company -- one of the largest U. S. investors in South Africa -- last month fired all 700 Black workers at one of its plants here, the center of the country's auto industry. The workers had been on strike to protest Ford's racist policies. Within a day, the General Tire and Rubber Company, another U.S. firm with operations in Port Elizabeth, fired 625 Black workers who were fighting for union recog-

SAHARA GUERRILLAS
WIN BATTLE

(Algiers, Algeria) - The Polisario Front, fighting for the independence of Western Sahara, said earlier this month that nearly 200 Moroccan troops were killed in recent, fighting over a key military outpost in southern Morocco. According to the Polisario, its forces were encircling the outpost at Zak, which includes the headquarters of Morocco's southern sector.

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World Scope

INDONESIA TO
RELEASE DETAINEES

(Jakarta, Indonesia) - The government of Indonesia recently claimed that it will soon release the last of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who have been detained since 1965 without trial. Buru Island, the notorious penal colony in the Moluccas Archipelago, which at one stage housed as many as 11,000 political prisoners in 21 malaria-infested prison camps, has allegedly already been cleared of detainees. A total of 2,211 remain in prisons elsewhere -- the last of some 500,000 opponents of the right-regime who were rounded up after a bloody uprising was squashed in 1965. With the exception of 41 detainees, desribed as former members of the Indonesian Community Party who will be formally charged and brought to trial, all of them will soon be freed, the government says.

PALESTINIANS PROTEST
SETTLEMENT

(West Bank, Occupied Palestine) - Israel deployed scores of troops to prevent Palestinian mayors from holding a meeting to dramatize their opposition to a new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. Army roadblocks kept the mayors gathering near the city of Nablus to protest a settlement on Mt. Kebir that is to replace the Elon Moreh settlement declared illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court.

2,000 KILLED
IN GUATEMALA

(London, England) - More than 2,000 persons have been killed in Guatemala for political reasons in the last 18 months, Amnesty International said this month. In an earlier report, the London-based human rights organization said more than 20,000 Guatemalans had been killed since 1966 by squads originally formed to suppress leftists and that the squads "act with complete immunity" from the Central American nation's military rulers. Amnesty based its new report on a recent fact-finding mission to Guatemala to investigate " an alarming upsurge in political killings, much of it carred out by semi-clandestine "death squads" that often include uniformed members of the military and security forces. The organization said if knows of no killing that has been fully investigated or of any killers brought to justice. The delegation reported labor unionists and members of political parties planning to contest the 1962 elections have been prime targets for intimidation and assassination. "To be a union leader or active member of a trade union in Guatemala today means risking one's life," the report said. Ultra-rightist terrorists are responsible for killing two prominent Guatemalans this year, Alberto Fuentes Mohr and Manuel Colon Argueta, a leader of the leftist United Revolution Front.

U. S. CHARGED
WITH COLONIZING
PUERTO RICO

(Mexico City, Mexico) Delegates from over 100 nations recently accused the U.S. of pursuing a policy of "colonialism" in Puerto Rico and planting CIA agents on the island. Nearly 1,000 delegates ended the three-day Second International Conference in Solidarity with Puerto Rico by issuing a document containing the charges. "The U.S. government has attempted to systematically destroy the Puerto Rican national identity for 81 years, through ideological penetration, political domination and economic control," the document said. In attempts to "impose the American way of life," the U.S. "has converted a large part of (Puerto Rico's) national territory into military bases" and employs "espionage and repressive agencies such as the FBI and the CIA," the document said.

SHAH TO FLEE
TO PANAMA

The government of Panama reportedly will allow the deposed Shah of Iran to reside in that Central American country. As was the case in the recent abortive attempt by the Carter administration to pressure the Mexican government into giving refuge to the Shah, the U.S. is believed to be similarly involved in facilitating this arrangement.

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C.I.A. Agent Expels Mormon

(Sterling, Va.) - A CIA official had a primary role in the recent expulsion of a woman member of the Mormon Church who has campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

Sonia Johnson, whose family has been in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the formal name of the Mormon Church) for five generations, was excommunicated following a three-hour church trial.

Johnson said her bishop, Jeff Willis, urged her to repent and be rebaptized, but she said, "I haven't got anything to repent of.

"He doesn't want me to repent," she said. "He wants me to stop my ERA activities."

In a letter to Johnson, Jeff Willis, who is a personnel officer at the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, said he had never "tried to dissuade" her from campaigning on behalf of the ERA, and implied -- as he has in previous statements -- that the dispute did not center on the ERA.

But, Willis claimed, Johnson in the past has knowingly preached false church doctrine, hurt the church's missionary effort and undermined the authority of the church's leadership by her public statements.

The Mormon Church is well known for its racist teachings about Black people. Church doctrine maintains that Blacks are inferior to Whites, and for this reason, Blacks are not allowed to be ministers in the church.

Johnson said she would appeal the decision to excommunicate her to the hierarchy of the church.

She also said she would continue to campaign for the ERA and would travel to Illinois and Missouri for that purpose.

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DAVID G. DUBOIS: “THE WHITE LEFT HAS ABANDONED THE BLACK LEFT”

Below, we present Part 2 of a series of articles by internationally acclaimed Black journalist and author David G. DuBois, who probes what he describes as the "almost total loss of credibility by the left among the Black American masses."

PART 2

Thus, in this era, when the American people are coming to realise that most people in this world are people of color; when the very presence of this great majority of people of color looms like a forboding threat to the existence of the minority, and when the rulers from among the minority are repeatedly demonstrating their racist ignorance, confusion, fear and arrogance in dealing with people of color everywhere, White Americans sense that they have a personal individual stake in the outcome of this confrontation.

They sense further that the first task, because it is the task over which they have individual control, is ridding themselves of the hated, unwanted but persistent White racism. This awareness is just below the level of consciousness today for most White Americans. That is why it is almost impossible to discuss the race issue in depth without tempers flaring, while sterile, surface, nice talk about race is everywhere.

It is the task of the left to force the issue to the foreground compelling Americans to face it seriously, examine it in depth and move to resolve it finally. No task is more important if a revolutionary left of militant Black-White unity capable of leading a socialist revolution is ever to emerge in the U.S.

In this period of world history -- chiefly characterized by the relentless and victorious struggles to throw off the remaining vestiges of European colonialism and neocolonialism by Third World people of color -- the relationship of Black and colored Americans to the institutions and ideals of the U.S. is the most vulnerable and least defensible unresolved issue facing the American people and the nation.

No issue reveals more vividly the hypocrisy of this nation allegedly championing human rights in the world. No issue exposes more clearly the truth of U.S. monopoly-capitalist goals and objectives in Africa and the Third World.

This is why in the 1970's, despite the deteriorating condition of life for America's Black masses and increasing blacklash reverses of the few gains realized to hush the rebellions of the 1960's. Black liberation in the U.S. has become a non-issue.

Under U.S. power structure orders, the U.S. popular media has entered into a conspiracy of silence on the deteriorating Black condition and the increasingly frequent Black, fight-back throughout the country. Instead, TV, newspapers, radio and the popular periodicals convey the false impression that the mainlines of the "Black problem" were solved in the 1960's. What remains is merely a little tidying up.

Gargantuan efforts are being made to enlarge, promote and reward a new "Black bourgeoisie" of high income professionals, local politicians and the isolated, high-ranking federal appointee, as evidence that Blacks can now make it to the "top."

Media attention is almost solely focused on these individuals, while the worsening conditions of the Black masses and the smouldering desperation among them is ignored. On those rare occasions when an ordinary working-class Black American is represented, he or she is usually shown or described as a down and out, broken, pitiable individual, victim of an innate inability to make it in this "best of all possible systems where everybody has an equal opportunity.

It is not the system's racism that is responsible, but the race itself," the power structure wants the world to believe.

The people of the world are not so gullible. Few Americans knew how great an impact the civil rights movement and the Black urban rebellions of the '60's had on people's movements and governments around the world. One had to have been outside the U.S. during that decade, as I was, to have some idea of that phenomenon.

The American media gave scant attention to the scope and breadth of that world reaction. It would have been dangerous to the established order, already under attack, for Americans en masse to have learned that the world was watching closely, judging fiercely and reacting with horror at the extent and ferocity of the White resistance.

In many European countries, formal support committees were formed that included members of parliament, leading trade unionists and outstanding intellectuals and cultural figures, as well as youth and student activists. These committees issued and distributed information newsletters and bulletins on the movement, counteracting and supplementing the misleading U.S. media reports and interpretations appearing in the local media.

They arranged lecture tours in public halls, at factory sites and in universities for visiting representatives of the movement. They collected money and other material assistance for the movement and provided refuge for individual victims of political repression.

In African and Asian countries, young militants took up some of the same slogans, incorporated into their struggles some of the same symbols and copied many of the tactics and strategies used by militant Blacks in the U.S.

In the Soviet Union and the eastern European countries, support and encouragement emanated from the highest levels of government as official state policy.

In the People's Republic of China the people, government and Communist Party were so moved that Chairman Mao Tsetung departed from Head of State and party precedent to issue his historic 1963 and 1968 statements, praising the leading role U.S. Blacks were playing in confrontation with U.S. monopoly-capitalism and emphasizing the inspirational impact the movement was having on people's movements for liberation throughout the world.

In Africa especially, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Rapp Brown and Stokely Carmichael, among others, became household names and heroes. Their trials and tribulations, victories and defeats were closely followed. Local newspapers and periodicals throughout Africa printed everything they could get as the movement unfolded, including the misleading interpretations and analyses distributed abroad by the U.S. wires services, Associated Press (A.P.) and United Press International (UPI).

Black American visitors to and residents in African countries were besieged with inquiries, requests for interviews, lectures and articles.

TO BE CONTINUED