Reagan's anti-Cuba hate campaign

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Cu StIR tha pla 25m NEW wave of anti-Cuban paganda has been unleashed Reagan's State Department a US naval task force carries naval "exercises" off the ban coast.

JS spokesman John Hughes aightfacedly told newsmen I Fidel Castro's regime is nning a campaign of "terroragainst such targets as merican institutions, libraryes (!) and commercial interests.

I is perhaps ominous that such Farnings have been followec by a mysterious bomb attack or the Capitol building.

The State Department has gone to the absurd lengths of sending a highly publicised note BM Box 5355. London WCIN 3XX By Harry to Havana saying that Reagan's men 'will not tolerate a wave of anti-American attacks.

But such crass scare-mongering and slander is being avidly swallowed and regurgitated by reactionary US columnists, and carries added weight in the USA itself, where no established political or labour movement body has come out clearly against the Grenada invasion or the intervention in Nicaragua.

Columnist Jack Anderson, for example, claims that Castro has 'ordered" terrorists "to kill Americans" - and from the State Department, John Hughes has lent official endorsement to such nonsense, which trades upon the long-discarded guerrillaist politics of the early Castro regime.

In part the anti-Castro hysteria is a smokescreen for the scandalous treatment meted out by the US invaders to Cuban diplomatic envoys in Grenada.

While the diplomats held firm, demanding the right to check on the safety of Cuban workers on the island before they left, they were placed under rigorous house arrest by the occupying forces.

Yet only a short while ago the USA itself attempted to whip up world opinion against the abuse uf American embassy personnel held hostage by Iranian students in Tehran!

The propaganda war, however, is also linked to US military harassment of Cuba, as an aircraft carrier and eight other ships engage in a "no notice exercise" offshore, and Reagan's men admit that plans exist for military action against Cuba Missiles crisis In the 1962 missiles crisis, the plans considered by the Kennedy administration included a nuclear strike, air strikes followed up by invasion, and a naval blockade. In the event the naval blockade procured the desired dismantling of the Soviet missile launchers: but the US war chiefs had got to within inelve bours of implementing a Fali-scale invasion, and many plainly still hanker after completing the job.

Though Castro' Castro become an integral link in the chain of Stalinist states, it remains an especially vulnerable one - a mere 90 miles off the Florida coast. Were Reagan to move in a concerted attack on Cuba, it is at least open to doubt whether Castro's "allies" in the Kremlin would be prepared to risk world war in order to save him - though the fightback within Cuba would be formidable.

The defence of the nationalised economy which has brought significant gains to the Cuban working class must be combined with a struggle against the Stalinist politics of the Castro regime.

The fight for a political revolution to replace the populist facade of the Cuban system with genuine workers' democracy is a fight to be conducted by the Cuban and international working class - in opposition to Reagan and the NATO warmongers.

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Socialist Organiser no. 154. Veers: