Cuba; Havana May 12th.
A leading Cuban film director, Julio Garcia Espinosa, who recently survived U.S. Artillery barrages while filming in North Vietnam, is making a documentary film to show "Third World revolutionaries" the practical lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War.
He recently spent 54 days filming in North Vietnam with a four-man camera team, and describes his 90-minute documentary to be screened in July as a "militant film, a denunciation, but also a weapon."
It will show not only the devastating effects of U.S. air-raids, napalm fire-bombs and mah machine-gunning, but also "how to shoot down a plane worth two or three million dollars with a rifle bullet worth 25 cents, how to capture a pilot.
A 19-year-old North Vietnamese youth explains in the film how he took prisoner a U.S. Lieutenant-Colonel shot down on a bombing raid, and an 18-year-old girl describes her 50 days and nights crawling among bomb craters to put identification flags on unexploded bombs. She was working in a region so devastated that it is a "lunar countryside", Espinosa said. According to the North Vietnamese, some areas were so badly blasted that it has taken two years for some grass to grow again after the bombing stopped.
In an interview, in Havana, the Cuban director said his aim was to illustrate "the most fabulous event of this century how a small and guerrillas against the 0.S. military might.
The Cubans shot the film during a 2,500mile tour of North Vietnam at the invitation of the "investigating commission on Yankee crimes in Vietnam' , Ilming in regions which no foreign cameramen had previously entered.
Espinosa, who is Vice-President of the Cuban Cinema Institute and studied film-making in Rome during the early 1950s, says he filmed U.S. planes as they bombed North Vietnam, observed reconstruction work in the Northern uppermost provinces, and also shot an interview with two captured U.S. airmen.
The airmen, an unnamed U.S. Captain and a Major, were interviewed for 15 minutes and Espinosa said they were in "good health" and had a diet superior to that of any Vietnamese.
The film will be the fourth film Espinosa has made since the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959. The first experimental film he shot, about impoverished peasants in Cuba's Zapata swamplands, was confiscated in 1953 under former dictator Fulgencio Batista.
At present, Espinosa is editing the twelve miles of film he shot in North Vietnam. The film has no title as yet but will be given worldwide distribution with versions in Spanish, French, English and Vietnamese.
Espinosa and his crew nearly met disaster when their three jeeps were spotted by U.S. gunners near the border between North and South Vietnam. Describing the experience, the Cuban Director said, "In Vin Linh, next to the 17th parallel, the bombing and artillery barrages were incessant. We wanted to film the bridge over the the River Ben Hai. We advanced, and the firing quickly intensified. The officer said the American gunners had seen us, because they were firing more rapidly. Everything LUCKIER. HE KILLED ME IN MY OWA COUNTRY VAL
MASS MEDIA DISTORTIONS Comrades will have noticed that at the time of the My Lai massacres the bourgeois press and television in this country very scrupulously referred to it as the "alleged massacre" till the military court/Pentagon/State Department confirmed the story. Of course when it comes to the United States Press Office in Saigon issuing reports about Vietcong atrocities, our fair-minded journalists aren't bothered at all.
Everything is reported categorically like: "The Vietcong killed x number of people and wounded y others. " This is the sort of crap the BBC TV News has been putting out through the mouth of their man in Saigon, a Michael Clayton. No evidence is provided and the tone of the commentator suggests that the NLF really enjoy "murdering civilians" and it is part of their "general strategy. Of course the propaganda value of this "news" is realised full well by the BBC mandarins who have to think up news stories to balance the very real atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in places like Kent State and Cambodia.
A FEEBLE RESPONSE A Red Mole correspondent who recently visited both Peking and Moscow tells us of an amusing story of the billboard competition between Peking and Moscow. At both Shanghai and Peking airports there are gigantic hoardings covered with Mao quotations relating to the death agonies of world imperialism and inciting the peoples of the world to continue the struggle till the end. Obviously perturbed by this, the Soviet bureaucracy instructed its propaganda departments to start thinking and come up with some replies at Irkutsk (on the border) and Moscow air ports. The bureaucrats must have thought very hard, but finally the inspiration came and there are now not-so-large hoardings which proclaim in English and Chinese: LONG LIVE THE PEACEFUL FOREIGN POLICY OF THE SOVIET UNION.
So peaceful that Moscow was one of the few capitals where there were no demonstrations against the American invasion of Cambodia... not even a bureaucratically manipulated demonstration.
Our correspondent who recently visited the Armistice Line in Panmunjom on the 38th Parallel in Korea reports that at a banquet which he attended, the representative of the Korean People's Army proposed a toast to the "Revolutionary newspaper, The Red Mole and all its readers.
Before 19-year-old Keith Franklin left for Vietnam four months ago, he left a letter with his mother to be opened if anything happened to him.
On Saturday May 16th, after being notified by the Army that he had been killed in Cambodia, the family opened the letter-and found that he told them he had died for nothing:
"The question is whether or not my death has been in vain. My answer is Yes'. This war that has taken my life, and many thousands of others before me, is immoral, unlawful, and an atrocity unlike any misfit of good sense and judgement known to man. I had no choice as to my fate, It was predetermined by the warmongering hypocrites in Washington.
"So, as I lie dead, please grant my last request. Help me to inform the American people-the silent majority who have not yet voiced their opinions. Help me let them know that their silence is permitting this atrocity to go on and that my death will not be in vain. By prompting them to act I can, in some small way, help to bring an end to the war that brought an end to my life...
*President Nixon and President Johnson before him have told the American public time and time again that it was our obligation to the people of South Vietnam to save them from the surging wave of communism which has plotted to engulf the world.
"This is a lie, the magnitude of which is witnessed only by the hundreds and thousands of G.I.s in South Vietnam.
"The inhabitants of this bug-infested, backward, God-forsaken Hell-on-Earth want no part of the American war machine. But they have no choice." -Unpublished Agency Report year, is to become a national park, the United States government said. The park's theme will be "the particular contributions the American Indians have made to our country."
THE LONDON FOREIGN LANGUAGE ASSISTANT COMMITTEE urges all the assistants of Great Britain to join the ASTMS (Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff).
After the completely unjustified sacking of a German assistant in October, solidarity committees were set up throughout the country to demand his reinstatement.
Since they wanted to go beyond mere protest against repression, the various committees have mainly worked to achieve the two following objectives:
- to obtain a contract defining the rights and duties of the foreign assistant in accordance with the basic rules for the other teachers;
- to be admitted into the teachers' trade union, the NUT.
In both cases there was no success. The union not only refused to defend the dismissed assistant, but also to allow us to be members (the union is only concerned with "qualified people").
In our isolation it was clear that our negotiations with our employer, the Central Bureau, could only be sterile.
But a new factor has appeared which offers some possibility of progress: the ASTS has declared itself ready to undertake any action aimed at defending our interests and to accept us meanwhile allowing us to maintain our dutonomY.
The Committee urges all assistants to make contact as soon as possible with the ASTMS, and write with enquiries to:
The London Foreign Language Assistant Committee, c/o 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
COMPUTERS FOR APARTHEID the need for computers to help rationalise and direct the economy. South Africa is in the market for computers.
According to the Senior Commercial Officer in the American Consulate General's Office in Johannesburg, South Africa, there are already 350 computer installations in the racist 80% per year in the next five years. The familiar Corporation, Honeywell, and G.E.
Most of the computers will be used for business, but...in a country where the black and coloured peoples are brutally oppressed, forced to live where the government tells them-to, and where carrying a "passbook " is the way the government keeps track of its blacks, think of what a little computerisation will do! Already the new Bureau of State Security (BOSS) has begun using computers to facilitate more efficient repression. The Bureau has learned a lot from the FBIICIA. -Africa Research Group GREETING BRAZILIAN REVOLUTIONARIES ONCE AGAIN THE COMRADES IN LATIN AMERICA HAVE MADE EXCELLENT USE OF THE TACTIC OF KIDNAPPING IMPERIALIST AMBASSADORS. WE SOLIDARISE WITH THEIR ACTION AND GREET VENCEREMOS.
In their search for COSVN, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces have managed to find arms caches and supply depots. Washington argues that the war material captured will set back the V-C and DRV forces by six months to a year. The question is though what is the true value of the supplies unearthed by the Americans? The issue is clouded by two factors: 1. no one knows how many supplies there were hidden altogether to start with, and 2. as yet the U.S. and S.V. forces have only managed to search 5% of the 7,000 square miles of borderlands.
And as a leading U.S. magazine points out in its latest issue, the figures given by the U.S. Armed Forces are misleading *The 11,805 rifles, pistols and sub-machine guns captured so far could equip 35 Communist battalions, as the military says. But the 126 battalions in the lower half of South Vietnam that rely on the caches are already fully equi equipped. Also, most of the rifles are dated SKS models that were replaced by the AK-47 two years ago The 3,334 tons of captured rice could feed 90,000 tons for 50 days. But much more than that has been captured in each of the last three years with no apparent effect on the enemy.
*The 1,700 tons of captured ammunition is a huge haul. Yet two-thirds of it is .51-cal. ammunition used for anti-aircraft purposes; the small arms ammunition used by the average paddy-field variety Viet Cong totals only 75 tons.
"The first official intelligence estimate moreover was that the captured ammo amount amounted to a week's supply, based on a use rate of 17 tons per battalion per month. A few days later, as if by magic, the estimated use rate was said to be one ton of such ammunition per battalion per month. By such judicious juggling, intelligence and analysts overnight increased the value of the haul to an admirable 4½ months supply."
Source: TIME MAGAZINE, June 1, 1970.
NO COMMENT "PROPERTY OR DEVELOPMENT financing is just about the happiest home for funds at the moment. So l am not surprised to hear that property men have been seen visiting the Moscow Narodny Bank lately The bank, that Russian financial outpost deep in the heart of the City, tells appointed a new man to look after its property interests.
The Moscow Narodny is regarded as a fairly effibankine actives barucuRrv in the held or toreter have certainly carned it respect in the City and a healthy income. Its directors don't do too badly inte £7500 to £17,500 bracket, including the chairman, who gets E16,875. -Evening Standard, 16th June 1970.
NOTES ON SOME CHARADES AT GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET & BOW STREET Here are a few random examples of what has happened to some people who were unwise enough to demonstrate against U.S. imperialism in Vietnam and Trinidad on April 26th.
1. Great Marlborough Street (magistrate: Robie). Young man, not a sympathiser of the FACTORY Panthers, whom he considered "a bit wild" well-dressed, fils de famille, no previous convictions, black. Charged with obstruction. The officer he was supposed to have obstructed said in the witness box that he didn't actually obstruct him. Convicted; fined E10.
2. Great Marlborough Street (Robie). Trainee secretary in a government department, no previous convictions, black. Charged with possessing an offensive weapon, The "weapon" was a rather peculiar stick with a nail in the place where the police said he was holding it, which he had seen for the first time at the police station. He was arrested as he was about to leave the demonstration, at Speakers Corner, with two friends who had been with him throughout the demonstration, and who both appeared as witnesses. At the police station no one knew what to do about him, so a police officer came forward and said, "T'll take him, I like him"; and they produced the stick. Convicted; sentenced to one month inside.
3. Great Marlborough Street (Robie). Young man from Brixton, well known for mild and quiet disposition, black. Charged with obstruction, which he convincingly denied. Convicted; fined £13.
4. Bow Street (chief magistrate: ?). Young girl, two children, unmarried, several previous convictions, black. Her witnesses contradicted each other, one of them admitted she had a stick of the sort she was charged with having. Convicted; fined £15. Conclusion: arrested demonstrators should try to go to Bow Street (if the alternative is Great Marlborough Street).
5. Bow Street (chief magistrate: ditto). Writer, etc., very "respectable" background and history, no previous convictions, female, white. Charged with assault: taking hold of the collar of a policeman, dragging him to the ground, and hitting him repeatedly on the head with a yellow plastic bucket. The policeman said he was running at speed at the time, and that he was angry at not having caught the man he was chasing. Actually he gave up the chase, stopped, turned round, found her behind him, and arrested her instead. She didn't catch hold of him, didn't drag him to the ground, didn't hit him over the head with the plastic bucket. She had a witness, equally "respectable". Convicted; fined E15. Maybe Bow Street is not so good after all.
6. Great Marlborough Street (Robie). Writer, no previous convictions, male, black. Charged with having an offensive weapon. The "weapon was a comb. It fell out of his pocket, and he was arrested trying to pick it up. Convicted; sentenced to one month inside.
These examples are random; they are the cases at which the writer happens to have been present. Other demonstrators have got worse sentences: for example one got two sentences of three months and one got three of three months (to run concurrently).
Some of the convictions and sentences would seem incomprehensibly stupid and wide of any particular target if they did not fit into a general pattern of intimidation, especially of black people who dare to raise their heads and enter political life. (Remember that demonstrations are, supposedly, legal). The magistrates and police apparently have total impunity in perpetrating their lies and false convictions; the cases are usually not reported in the press; it is hard to see where to begin to defend ourselves against their malicious attacks on demonstrators and their disregard of what are supposed to be British standards of "justice". The treatment of demonstrators is insignificant compared with what happens regularly to black people in their communities. We must take up the task, again, of exposing this.
Mole hanger-around of courts in the last few weeks.
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One of the surest indications-almost a badge of a sophisticated growing moder economy is
Republic worth approximately $112 million. The computer market is expected to grow at
firms already "active in this fast growing field" are IBM, National Cash Register, Control Data
THE COMRADES WHO HAVE BEEN RELEASED FROM PRISON.
MASTE K.TANK