End the Use of Perjurers Northern Ireland

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JOAN Maynard MP said last week that the word "terrorist' The vicious outery with which the press responded proves how much they value the misleading ruling-class propaganda tags with which they colour their 'news' reporting and misreIn truth the IRA are the militia of an oppressed community. Their central tactic is neither isolated attacks on prominent individuals, nor the blanket terror against a whole population which the British Army practises in Catholic areas.

Joan Maynard spoke at a press conference (above) to protest at the continuing use of bribed and coerced informers in Northern Ireland to put Republicans behind bars.

Some INLA prisoners say they will start a hunger strike April in protest at 'supergrass justice' in Northern Ireland.

Left to right: Betty Duggan, Deirdre McManus, Cathy Joan Maynard, Helena Kennedy, and Jim Falconer.

Paddy Dollard THE Reagan administration has just submitted for approval to Congress the annual research and development budget of the Federal government. The total is $53 billion (£38 billion) of which 60% is allocated to defence.

The huge defence allocation is almost entirely to cover the development costs of the weapons the Reagan administration requires for its latest rearmament drive.

The money is to help finance the MX missile (nicknamed "The Peace Maker"), the new X-1 bomber and the submarinelaunched Trident II missile. Another area to receive huge funding is the "strategic defence initiative" more commonly known as the Star Wars Venture.

Next year $1.7 billion is to be spent on laser beam and antisatellite weaponry. This alone is does not accurately describe the IRA.

present opponents of the status quo. twice the money spent on agricultural research and seven times that spent on environmental research.

The construction of the budget has ensured that the defence allocations will enjoy real growth over and above the inflation rate while the reverse is true for most areas of purely non-military research. The only non-military projects not to suffer serious curtailments are ones of so-called prestige, mainly NASA space exploration and high energy particle physics.

Congress could of course drastically revise the research and development budget but almost certainly it will be content to make a few amendments, leaving it essentially intact. it seems unlikely on its past record to turn off the financial tap for Reagan's war drive.

Become a supporter of the Socialist Organiser Alliance - groups are established in most large towns. We ask £1.50 a another.

The fighting continues in Lebanese army faces total rebel Muslim militias.

LEBANON is a small country with a bewildering variety of religious and ethnic groups - Maronite and Greek Orthodox Christians, Sunni, Shi'a and Druze Muslims, Kurdish and Armenian national minorities.

The political system established with the 1943 National Pact gave a built-in majority to the Christians and was organised in such a way that the only form of representation that existed was religiously based.

The system discriminated against the Muslim communities but especially the Muslim poor. It was dominated by an alliance increasing.

Lebanon and the collapse before Straits of Hormuz.

governments. between Maronite and Sunni Muslim capitalists as traditional leaders getting rich on the commercial basis of the Lebanese economy.

Huge belts of misery surrounded the major towns, especially Beirut, side by side with fantastic luxury.

Lebanon became a base for the Palestinian guerrillas after the Six Day War of 1967 and became the main base after the guerrillas were driven out of Jordan in 1970.

military build-up.

Britain's first demands will be: normalisation of trade oil supplies pass, if its oil reserves are threatened in the war. With the new turn in the fighting, the chances of iran doing sO are for supplying military spare parts to Iran.

The Maronites who had a close relationship with French imperialism, saw themselves as different from other Arabs and were hostile to the Arab nationalist sentiment which swept the Middle East in the '50s and '60s.

Consequently they were hostile to the Palestinian presence while the Muslim community tended, if only tended, to support the Palestinians. • After 1969, when the right of the Palestinian guerrillas to exist as an armed force in Lebanon was established, sections of the Muslim community formed close links with the different Palestinian organisations. They were armed and trained by the Palestinians to resist attacks from the gangster-like militias of rightwing Maronite groups of the

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Reagan steps up armaments rth nd uth