Khmer Rouge Begins to Rebuild

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week indicated that. Prince ently of Sihanouk, does not only Narodom Sihanouk, Cam- depend on the internal situation. would not be welcomed back devastation, economic recovery, by the leadership of the Khmer supplies cannot be achieved overSihanouk, presently in North economies. But the Cambodian Korea after spending the last five government is strengthened by the years in China, will not be allowed revolutionary struggles in the other to bring his large retinue of hangers countries of South East Asia. IS The much talked of econi "recovery" continues to ander, before it even begins, i the rocks of mounting ation. Interest rates con»e to rocket, major price ¡eases have been announced intly by the big steel panies, and in all the whole ! price index shot up last ith to an annual rate of per cent.

Even though there are abundant bar supplies, raw material supi are competing for buyers, and ie are wide open markets for • of increasing inflation even the early stages of recovery" Es clearly that the economic • has not yet run itself out. In the largest capitalist country the world, even with an un¡doyment rate of 9% still more *ruptcies are required before thing approaching the conditfor a restoration of profitcapitalist production can be ed.

DEMOCRATS

deanwhile, the Democratic Party • the painful process of finding cadential candidate for 1976. I campaign has begun within the • to stop the extreme right - racist candidate George Wallace Tahama being adopted. Vallace on anti-union and racist tickei Hoffa, former president of the teamsters union said recently, "if Wallace became President of the U.S.A. the first thing he would do would be to destroy the labour movement."

Hoffa has recently himself disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In the mean time the only answer the Democratic Party machine can produce to Wallace is the ageing Hubert Humphrey-who refuses to see himself, so far, as a candidate.

American workers have already shown what they think of Humphrey when they shouted him off the platform at the massive 300 000 strong anti-unemployment rally in Washington three months ago.

These political developments reveal sharply the need for a working class party independent of both Republican and Democratic Parties a Labour Party in the USA. At the same time they show the large scale support such a party could win amongst American workers in the class battles ahead. bodia's titular head of state, Rouge liberation forces.

on back into Cambodia, but only his immediate family and one aide.

'CHAOS Despite reports of massacres and chaos inside Cambodia which have been enthusiastically retailed by the capitalist press in the last few months the government set up by the Khmer Rouge appears able to act with increasing indep. endence.

• They have successfully negot iated the evacuation of the coastal islands occupied by the South Vietnamese liberation forces. To ease the acute food crisis in Cambodia the government is demanding that the Provisional Revolutionary Government in Saigon release the large stocks of American rice there, originally destined for the Lon Nol regime. The Phnom Penh government have also proposed the re newal of diplomatic relations with Thailand and the settlement of frontier arrangements on the long common border of the two coun tries.

The strengthening of the lib and their ability to act independAfter five years of war and even the guaranteeing of basic rice night and in isolation from other In Thailand, the Pramoj government faced a wave of demonstrations and strikes against the assassinations, now running into dozens, of peasant and trade union leaders.

And in the north of the coun try Communist liberation forces are regaining ground; ten days ago they took a heavily guarded police post in the province of Nakhan.

THREAT

It is the threat posed by this internal situation that makes the Thai regime unable to encourage the rightist Cambodian exiles on their territory, some of whom would be eager, with the backing of Us imperialism, to begin armed excursions into Thailand.

And it is equally the struggle in Thailand itself that forces the regime there to negotiate with the Cambodian government.

What the struggle of the Thai revolutionaries demonstrates is that only the extension of the revolution into the rest of South East Asia can, in the long run, protect the gains made in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

from John in New York.

Minutes away from the billion dollar banking houses in the skyscrapers of Manhattan stand the crumbling blocks of tenements and seedy shops and derelict buildings that make up much of New York.

The city, now sweating in the stifling summer heat and humidity is a glaring warning to the effects of long-term hard-core mass unemployment and the impact of the full weight of capitalist crisis on the working class.

CUTS

While New York's mayor, Abraham Beame, imposes a pay freeze on city employees, slashes the number employed by a further 9,000, hacks $32 million off a university budget already $87 millión short of the minimum needed and prepares to jack up bus and subway fares more than 42% one million workers, over an eighth of the city's population, is chronically unemployed, dependent on welfare payments.

Every cut-back on the city's pay roll adds to the unemployment problem, but also the decay of the city itself. Roads are scarred with huge unrepaired pot-holes and a key section of freeway between New York and New Jersey has collapsed, with no cash to restore RUBBISH Piles of stinking, rotting rubbish, outcome of the cut-backs.of sanitation workers, lie along the

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* firms that have survived the op all is not well. The exist-