SAIGON CUTTHROATS TRAINED BY BRITISH LABOUR GOVERNMENT
According to a London Sunday Times dispatch, reprinted in the November 10 Los Angeles Times, the British government's "attempt to assume the role of honest broker" in the Vietnam war is not as aboveboard as Prime Minister Wilson would like it to appear. In fact, during the past two years the Labour government has paid all expenses for training 1,450 South Vietnamese in the British Jungle Warfare School in Johore, South Malaya. "And the training program shows no signs of letting up."
"This year," according to the report, "seven specially designed 6-week courses are being run for the Vietnamese in Johore. And the arrivals have boasted some of the top Saigon brass. Other pupils this year included 22 Americans.
The Johore school was set up in 1948 to train British soldiers in putting down Malayans. It was also very active in training experts for the fighting with Indonesia before the reactionary coup d'état in Djakarta in October 1965.
"Half the 6-week course is spent in the lecture theater," the article continues, "and in such activities as learning to jump from hovering helicopters and to recognize edible jungle fruits and berries. The rest is devoted to extremely tough exercises -- ‘They painfully learn to use muscles they never knew they had' -- in the surrounding countryside."
THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN GERMANY
By Franz Dreher
Frankfort
At the end of October West Germany was shaken by two events: a full-blown cabinet crisis and a powerful political demonstration that brought out 24,000 persons in this city in protest against the "state of siege" laws proposed by the government and accepted in fact by the Social Democrats. These two events mark the beginning of the end of the exceptional stability which the German bourgeoisie have enjoyed for the past seventeen years.
The heavy defeat suffered by the government party, the CDU [Christlich-Demokratische Union -- Christian Democratic Union], in the Landtag [provincial legislature] elections in Nordrhein-Westfalen was the first overt symptom of the political crisis now affecting the West German bourgeoisie. This crisis is dual in origin. It is the result of a turn in the economic cycle and developments in the international situation, primarily a shift in American imperialist policies in Europe.
The slowing down of the boom in West Germany and the current scarcity of capital have caught the federal government in 4 contradictory squeeze. On the one hand, the Bundesbank, the bankers and wide circles in heavy industry are demanding a deflationary policy, a "hard money" policy, in order to balance the budget at any cost and stop the rise in prices. This would entail not only the elimination of many subsidized social gains granted to various sectors of the population during the "seven years of great plenty"; but also the imposition of new taxes. On the other hand, the unions (including the "Christian workers" wing within the CDU itself), commercial circles and even industries engaged in the production of consumers goods, demand a policy aimed at maintaining overall demand, with an increase in social expenditures and no increases in income taxes.
Because it did not agree with the increase in taxes projected by Chancellor Erhard, the FDP. [Freie Demokratische Partei -- Free Democratic party] broke the coalition it had with the CDU, precipitating the governmental crisis inasmuch as the CDU lacked the majority of seats in the Bundestag [federal legislature] necessary to constitute a new administration.
The international situation is dominated by the war in Vietnam and by the concern of American imperialism to protect its European flank during the conflict in Asia. This has involved advancing and accentuating a policy of relaxing tensions with the USSR and placing increasing pressure on its "favorite ally" in Europe, West Germany, to recognize the Oder-Neisse line, reestablish diplomatic relations with the Soviet bloc countries, normalize its relations with the DDR [Deutsche Demokratische Republik -- German Democratic Republic] and give up the push for nuclear arms. West German diplomacy is not ready to "let go" in this way; it has not yet adjusted to this new situation.
The different elements in this crisis came to a head around Chancellor Erhard, leading to his replacement. Erhard seemed resigned to going, but sought. to throw his weight behind Schroeder as his successor.
The SPD [Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands -- German Social Democratic party] has long sought to get back into the government, no matter what the cost. It is even ready to join in a "grand" SPD-CDU coalition headed by the most dangerous and corrupt of all the Christian Democratic politicians, the former minister of defense, Franz Josef Strauss. Yet it seems unwilling to lose a unique chance to gain an electoral triumph. All the polls indicate that if general legislative elections were held now in West Germany, the Social Democrats would win, if not an absolute majority, at least a higher percentage than it has ever gained in the past, including 1919. It would most certainly become the main political party in West Germany.
If Wehner and Brandt appear to be "hardening" in their attitude, it is not at all because they have given up the idea of a "grand coalition" with the Christian Democrats; it is only because they want to gain a more advantageous position in the coalition with the bourgeoisie. That is why they are demanding new general elections before constituting such a coalition.
An important wing of the bourgeoisie is not unfavorable to the Social Democrats returning to the central government of capitalist Germany from which they have been absent since 19430. The central problem at present, as they see it, is to stop the rise in wages resulting from the long period of full employment. They expect that an administration in which the Social Democrats would be included would help in this by
placing more effective pressure on the unions. They hope in particular that an administration including the Social Democrats would succeed in gaining the two-thirds majority necessary to revise the constitution and institute the "laws providing for a state of seige" [Notstandsgesetze]. This would provide the necessary legal instrument for establishing a "strong government," even a dictatorship, as in 1943.
In the current climate of "relaxed tensions" in Europe, the arguments of the ruling circles in Bonn on the need to adopt such laws in face of the "foreign threat" appear completely hypocritical. The admissions of the current minister of the interior are more believable. According to him, the laws ought to be passed in order to arm the state in case "the sun of the economic boom should cease to shine." The target is not so much the "foreign foe" as the "domestic foe" -- the German workers movement, the trade unions or at least their most radical wing, the socialist movement and its various groupings. ;
The unremitting campaign for these laws is aimed in particular at ending the procrastination and sham resistance of the Social Democratic leaders. As always, these leaders end up by accepting a little "arm twisting." They are ready now for the main: thing; i.e., to collaborate in working out and voting for the laws, provided that parliament (that is, their own parliamentary fraction) is associated in applying them.
But among the youth, the intellectuals of the left, and the trade-union movement, opposition to these laws has likewise grown stronger and found expression during the long preparatory period. Initiated by a group of university professarsand the SDS [Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund -- Association of Socialist Students of Germany, a group expelled by the Social Democrats], this opposition gained a broader mass base when a considerable section of the unions (particularly those in metalworking, chemicals, bookmaking, lumber) accorded it official organized support.
Thus the initiative of the SDS in calling a congress "to protect democracy" was picked up by a coordinating commission in which the metalworkers union constitutes the main force. The leaders of this union at first sought to convert the congress into a rather academic affair, limiting the number of participants to 3,000. But under the pressure of other unions, combined with the pressure of their own rank and file, the straitjacket burst. It ended up with 24,000 participants gathering in Frankfort on October 30 in the most powerful political demonstration of the left seen in West Germany in many years.
The meeting devoted a day to study and discussion during which 7,500 participants (particularly trade-union militants and students) took up all the aspects of the Notstandsgesetze in six different panels.
Hundreds of automobiles brought the demonstrators from all parts of the country, and the smoothness with which the congress was organized impressed the participants no less than the energetic approach of the speakers among whom were the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, in exile for several years from East Germany, and Georg Benz, a member of the leadership of the metalworkers union).
Thus something more is occurring in West