[INSIGHT into the dangers of the escalating arms…]

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INSIGHT into the dangers of the escalating arms race came last week from an unlikely source -Robert McNamara, one of the chief instigators of the 1960s missile build-up.

McNamara, writing in the US magazine Foreign Affairs, lifted the lid of mystery on the crash of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber in North Carolina 22 years ago.

The falling bomber dropped two 24 megaton nuclear bombs - each potentially 1,800 times more powerful than the one which destroyed Hiroshima.

One broke apart on impact; the other was prevented from exploding only by the final stage of seven safety devices - after six had been triggered.

Until now US sources had suppressed this information on how close the USA had come in 1961 to reducing itself to 49 rather than 50 states.

Among those struggling to hold back the facts was the then Secretary of Defense in the rabidly anti-Soviet Kennedy administration: Robert McNamara!

Kennedy had strongly attacked the Eisenhower administration for allowing the emer«Fighting It seems that the Tories' Nationality Act has effects outside of Britain as well. In recent months 700 black people using 60 hour identity cards were turned away by French immigration because they 'feared' many of them had no right to return to Britain. This time a trip to France for underprivileged children is likely to be gence of a "missile gap" leaving the USA lagging behind the USSR.

Yet when he took office in 1961 McNamara discovered - if he didn't already know - that this "missile gap" was an elaborate fiction, encouraged by US airforce chiefs, who wanted a permanent "first strike" superiority over the USSR.

McNamara - a leading executive from the Ford Motor Company - forged ahead regardless, authorising the deployment of 1,000 intercontinental 'Minutemen' missiles and the development of the Polaris submarine missile system. : It was under McNamara that development work on the Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads began in earnest; and to McNamara must be attributed the first moves towards Trident and MX missiles.

It is of course interesting that this man who has contributed as much as any living individual to an all-white outing for fear that black children will be turned back.

* Obviously the French customs officials are being racist by specifically singling out blacks. but essentially the responsibility lies with the British government and their racist laws.

It is a general trend throughout capitalist Europe to use immigrant workers as scapegoats and the West German and French ștates are actively trying to repatriate immigrant workers. In France one union leader has called for all immigrants who have been in France for less than ten years to be sent home.

In Germany the Christian Democrat government is trading under the slogan "Germany is not a country of immigration" and it plans to reduce its immigration population by 2-3 million by 1990. the dangers of nuclear war should now declare as he has done in "Foreign Affairs" magazine that "nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever."

But perhaps one reason for this limited degree of enlighternment flows from McNamara's intervening years of work in the World Bank, where he had to devote his energies to extracting the maximum profits from the labour of workers and peasants in Third World countries. AS tens of thousands of antiwar activists in West Germany prepare for mass demonstrations this autumn against the stationing of American Pershing missiles, there are signs that a November special conference of the Social Democratic Paty could well overturn its present policy and declare against the missiles.

Schmidt

Former SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, a staunch upholder of NATO strategy and the US alliance, has apparently gone to earth, and is making little attempt to stem the tide of opinion away from support for the deployment of the : spend them, then?

In such an enterprise - or indeed in last year's Malvinas war — nuclear weapons are little use. McNamara advocates a strengthening of NATO's "conventional" forces, and the establishment of a 'nuclearfree zone" in Europe.

With touching confidence which few will share, his article also assures the world that:

'It is difficult to imagine any US President under any circumstances initiating a strategic strike except in retaliation against a Soviet strike." Pershings.

Meanwhile an SPD regional conference in Baden-Wurttemburg has voted unanimously to resist the missiles.

Stung by this breach in the 'bi-partisan' line of support for US imperialism, Christian Democrat leaders have arranged a massive series of party rallies across the country to counter the show of strength by the peace campaigners.

Stitt new restrictions on demonstrations have been introduced by Chancellor Kohl's government, who are now incensed at the fact that many of the demonstrators will be able to take advantage of hefty reductions through block bookings on German railways. PERUVIAN security forces have summarily executed hundreds of Andean Indians in massive counter-insurgency operations launched this year, according to Amnesty International.

Since January 1983, "disappearances" and extra-judicial executions in a nine-province emergency zone under military rule 'have been perpetrated with impunity and are increasing in number.

Army statistics put the number of people killed by security forces this year at over 500. All the dead are said to have been guerrillas but officials give few details, Amnesty International said. Military communiques on operations in remote rural areas rarely report that prisoners have been taken, it added.

According to evidence collected by Amnesty International, many of the unnamed victims have been killed after being detained, wounded or tortured by military units and recently established civilian anti-guerrilla groups.

The security operations, now covering the Andean areas of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurimac, are a response to killings of hundreds of peasant villagers by the guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso, The Shining Path.

Examining the killing of eight journalists on 26 January in the Andean community of Uchuraccay, Amnesty International cited evidence that they were detained and summarily executed on the authority of the Teniente Gobernador, the most senior local official appointed by the central government.

Uchuraccay authorities said they had been given military orders to interdict all movement on trails in the region to block guerrilla routes, said Amnesty A resident, Saturnino Ayala Robles who was in Uchuraccay at the time of the executions, said troops had ordered the killing of all strangers passing through the area and had instructed the locals to "do so with great cruelty, to torture them and mutilate them" Democratic Republic people are regularly jailed for even mild criticism of official policies.

For example, those who have difficult in getting exit visas and talk about it can be sent to prison on charges of treasonable passing on of information' The law makes such actions an offence even if the information is accurate and not an official secret. Amnesty, the world wide human rights organisation, says (in the September issue of Amnesty Newsletter) it has yet to learn of a single prisoner brought to trial on such charges being acquitted.

rge ne IN A renewed surge of working class action, the two major union confederations in Argentina have threatened a general strike if their package of • wage demands are not conceded on September 21.

Already public sector workers are to stage a 24-hour strike on Thursday September 22, with a further 48 hour strike next week if their demands are not met. New pamphlet, 50p; latest TSC bulletin, 30p, plus postage. From TSC, BM Bx 5905, London WCIN3XX.

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Socialist Socialist Organiser conference discusses PHOTOS: JOHN HARRIS

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