Two backers for Numeiry New Stage in Friendly Relation

IT HAS not taken Moscow long to follow Peking with a tribute to the Sudan's reactionary military dictatorship and an attack on the left-wingers, murdered, hunted and jailed by the regime.

Chinese premier Chou En-lai sent an extremely • effusive telegram Numery on he far Gen Tafar the l6th anniversary of Sudan's independence from Anglo-Egyptian rule.

Deaths

The message specifically attacked 'subversives' who were trying to undermine the regime.

This was a clear reference to the communists, trade unionists and left-wing officers who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Numeiry last July. Many of them, including Abdel Mahgoub, general secretary of Sudan's Communist Party, have since been put to death after perfunctory military 'trials'.

Hundreds of others are still held in prisons and concentration camps. China's support for Numeiry has been strengthened rather than weakened by his brutal suppression of the CP.

Congratulatory Chou's message was more congratulatory than any of the previous declarations of support for The Moscow Stalinists, who were at pains after the July coup attempt to dissociate themselves from the left-wing 'plotters' protests against the repression which they made at the time. Trimming the Polish waistline December 1970: Food riots in Gdansk. Malcolm ols. 4.15 in Dog.

00-6.20 10 Spo 0-6.20 Today, Weste Abdel Mahgoub general secretary of the Communist Party of Sudan, murdered by Numeiry last July. In its 'Sudan Corner', , broadcast on the National Day, Moscow Radio referred in veiled terms to 'enemies of the Sudanese people' who are 'fabricating social and economic difficulties within Sudanese society, particularly in the villages.

John Spencer The Stalinist Crisis Magic Scene : on Look 1 Look Toray, Neather.

This is certainly not a reference to the Numeiry government, which operates from the capital, Chartoum, and makes no secret of its desire to break the back of the trade unions and imprison all communists.

It can only refer to the outCHRISTMAS DAY in the workhouse had nothing on this description of the festivities in one unfortunate village of 'socialist' Poland. The description comes verbatim from a Warsaw Television broadcast on January 'Until now we have had no advice to offer our friends who like to indulge in Christmas fare without regard to their expanding waistlines. But now we have a sensational bit of advice for fashion-conscious ladies and figure-conscious gentlemen: the best way to avoid getting fat is to spend your Christmas in Szklarska Poreba.

'We are not advocating skiing or any other kind of sport; we are simply talking about provisions. We say this because the Szklarska Poreba commercial people with persistence worthy of a better cause, every Christmas time and at other holidays subject both the locals and the visitors to a reducing diet.

'It seems to us that the joke has gone far enough when people who come for a few days' rest cannot buy any bread in Szklarska Poreba, as happened on New Year's Eve, and when there was no butter, meat or tinned goods, not to mention citrus fruit. How is it possible that the same thing happens every year?

*From year to year things do not change or get better and what is worse no one has been punished for the way things go on. ... We have discovered that the supplies in Szklarska Poreba are the responsibility or at least should be the responsibility of the Board of the village cooperative in Jalenia Gora.

"To them we address this question. When will it be possible to travel to Szklarska Poreba without having to take one's own provisions? When will we hear that those responsible for the mess have been found and that they have changed their jobs? lawed left-wingers who are now working underground against the Numeiry dictatorship. Radio, tais talis in the category to Moscow of 'provocations and manoeuvres' with the object of splitting and putting the various factions of the Sudanese society against one another.

More treacherous still is Moscow's attempt to blacken Numeiry's opponents as agents of imperialism.

According to the radio broadcast, it is the imperialists and not the reactionary military dictators, who are 'sowing discord in order to disrupt the friendship between the Soviet and Sudanese people and thus weakening Sudan's position...' Crushing The Soviet commentator boasted of the bureaucracy's consistent support for Numeiry and his predecessors in their fight to make their state independent and democratic'!

He laid particular stress on the role of Soviet aid in building up the Sudan's armed forces:

'With the active participation of the Soviet Union and other countries of socialist camp, the government economic sector grew and developed as did the country's defence ability.' It was, of course, the Sudanese army which installed the Numdictatorship and provided the judges and firing squads for his repression of the Communist Here, at least, is a frank admission that the Soviet Stalinists paved the way for Numeiry's military repression and bear a lion's share of the responsibility for the crushing of the Sudanese Mao with Numeiry—picture and caption from 'China Pictorial' No The rivals in uneasy REGIONAL IT coalition BOLIVIA BOLIVIA'S military juntaheaded by Col Hugo Banzer since he seized power last August — is deeply divided and opposition in the country is growing.

Threat

Or The dismissal of the Minister Selich, who helped organize the coup, came because Banzer considered him a threat to his personal power.

He has been • replaced by …a less well known figure, Col Mario Zamora., Both colonels represent the extreme right-wing Socialist Falange.

While at the Ministry of the Interior, Selich acquired a great deal of power and turned into a strong man inside the government. After his dismissal there were rumours that he was preparing another coup to oust Banzer.

In any case, the Banzer government rests on an uneasy coalition between the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) of former president Dr Paz Estensoro and the fascist Socialist Falange.

The Falange shock-troops wear white shirts, give the fascist salute and parade in military order. It finds its mass support largely in the urban petty bourgeoisie-like the classic European fascist movements. Its financial backers are drawn from the big landowners.

Aberdeen- -a new Riviera?

ABERDEEN Corporation's director of publicity, Jack Nicholl. has been trying to whip up a bit of team spirit-just in case the thought of a million on the dole this New Year might be leading anyone to think that the postwar boom has come to an end.

'We must all of us,' he urges Aberdeen's business community in the most recent edition of the local 'Chamber of Commerce Journal' 'sell our city and assure it of a confident march into the eighties on the backs of three winning horses-oil, tourists and conferences' This will come as a shock to a large section the city's workers who are employed in fishing, fish-processing, papermaking, engineering and shipbuilding. Aberdeen's unemployment rate has been rising steadily, but--partly because it is distorted high level emigration—it is, at under 4 per cent, low by Scottish standards.

But the threat of world recession, particularly on the shipbuilding and machine tool industries, and of Common Market entry most specifically on fishing and paper-making, lurks menacingly over almost every major section of industry in the area.

Against this the local press— notorious for parochialism and civic patriotism, and backed the Labourites and Stalinists in the labour move- has been propagating optimistic forecasts of the employment guaranteed by North Sea oil exploitation.

The principal of the local university chipped recently suggest that university expansion would mean thousands of extra jobs in the construction industries, over and above those that the oil bonanza' is supposed to be going to provide..

The realities of the world crisis of capitalism, or even of the Tory government's education policies. never enter into these calculations, of course.

But lest relying on the oil alone for Aberdeen's promised prosperity should seem to overtax our credulity, PR man Nicholl is offering us a 'tourist bonanza' as well. Aberdeen, with its granite tenements, its high percentage of sub-standard housing, its cold east winds, its uncanny quantity of churches, is to become cross between Kuwait and Las Vegas.

We can hardly wait! Satchmo's secret fan 'IN HALF an hour, how can you do justice to Beethoven and Bach, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong?' asked guest disc jockey on Radio Four Scotland's