["Behind its white in overcrowded wards. "They scream…]

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"Behind its white in overcrowded wards.

"They scream in disbelief when told they will never see or walk again".

So ran part of the report wired from Kabul by Bruce Loudon in the Daily Telegraph. His inside source is not revealed at the hospital-which he says is under heavy Russian guard, and the whole report is riddled with the signs of a fantastical allegory.

"I learned ... according to East European diplomats ... people I spoke to at Kabul International airport. . . apparently because . .. it is believed that...

Behind this smokescreen of guesswork and invention the two paragraphs of how the Soviet troops react to their injuries comes as a triumphant jeer.

Clearly for the newspapers, whatever their editorial line on violence' as an abstract thing in itself, reaction to violence depends entirely on who is on the receiving end.

This admission of materialis nowhere more evident than in the spate of publications which have spewed onto the streets following the SAS raid on the Iranian Embassy in London.

Barely a single Fleet Street newspaper has not been associated with one of these special commemorative issues.

The Sunday Times is producing a book. The Express has published a 'pictorial' account of the raid; the Mirror is involved in production of another and the Observer used the presses at the lockout bound IPC to produce its account complete with an introduction by John Le Carre.

Corruption

What does this symbolise? Everywhere the evidence which dents the image of the 'democratic' forces of law and order stands tarnished and abused.

Hardly a day goes by without police defending themselves at one inquest or another into the death of someone in police custody or during a police action.

Trials of police involved in theft and corruption continue unabated. In Ireland the army suffers one defeat after another at the hands of the IRA.

During the embassy seige itself an SAS soldier was shot dead in Belfast raiding a house.

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For nearly two decades Julius Nyerere has posed as a leader taking his nation of Tanzania along a path of "non-aligned socialist development" ; to the great applause of bourgeois reformists of all shades and of the Stalinist bureaucracies.

But behind the opportunist mask of "African socialism' lies the reality of an agent of imperialism, compelled to step up attacks on workers and poor peasants as the world crisis of capitalism deepens.

The Nyerere regime balances more and more unsteadily between its imperialist overlords and the working masses of Tanzania, as it battles to stabilise its rule in the face of a developing threat of mass Decline The Tanzanian economy is now plunging. headlong into decline, reflecting its organic ties to a world market that is gripped by capitalist crisis.

Following temporary breathing space in 1976-7, the recession that set in with the international downturn of the early seventies has picked up momentum dramatically.

Falling prices for the agricultural exports on which the economy is based, and a rocketing oil bill (which now devours half ¿ashew is structured in such a way that local investment in industry depends on export earnings from agriculture.

In the epoch of imperialist decay, the stranglehold of capitalism can lead only to the further disintegration of the productive forces and impoverSOCIALIST Workers on Tanzanian collective farm 442• Wednesday

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surrounding wall Russian soldiers lie swathed in ban- dages on the makeshift cots