Teach-Ins Reveal U. S. Role in Indochina

Speakers at yesterday's Anti-imperialist Teach-In directed their attention to the national liberation struggles currently being waged in Indochina, southern Africa, and Puerto Rico, and agreed that the road towards victory would be long and arduous.

The day-long teach-in, sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Liberation Alliance, drew over 150 people to Long-fellow Hall.

Cynthia Frederick, a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, who was recently expelled from South Vietnam by the Saigon regime, said that the NLF is "trying to create a new society in the liberated areas of South Vietnam." The American response to the NLF effort to create new social relationships within the liberated areas has been to make living in those areas impossible, thus forcing the inhabitants into Saigon-controlled urban areas, Frederick said.

Ngo Vinh Long, a Vietnamese graduate student, criticized the American press for its inadequate and distorted reporting of the war in Indochina, and said that Americans are "essentially unaware of what is really happening in Vietnam and Laos." He also criticized the American anti-war movement for its "ethnocentric arrogance," and for its factionalism.

"I think it's about time people in the anti-war movement stopped debating about whether or not this group should ally itself with that group.

Caroline Hunter, a representative of the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, described Polaroid's involvement in helping maintain South Africa's racist regime. Polaroid supplies the South African government with the ID2 "instant identification system," which the government uses to issue identity cards and to keep a computerized data bank on all those persons to whom identity cards are issued.

Chris Enteta, a black South African student, discussed the current status of the guerrilla movements fighting the Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola. He said that nine of 15 provinces in Angola are now controlled by the liberation forces, but that the recent American decision to sell two Boeing 707s to the Lisbon government (which Enteta claims the Portuguese will use to transport troops and material to their African colonies) indicates an American commitment to supporting the Caetano regime.

"Asians' unwillingness to complement the Western economy is the main 'communist threat' to America," Noam Chomsky told a teach-in at M. I. T. last night.

The M. I. T. professor and antiwar activist emphasized the role the U.S. wants to play in the world economy, citing the view held by many Western economists that Asia is a "paradise for international bankers and investors."

About three hundred people attended the teach-in, sponsored by the New University Coalition, in M.I.T.'s Kresge Auditorium.

David Deitch, financial columnist for the Boston Globe, spoke on the war and U.S. business. He took the recent increase in the depreciation allowance for American corporations as a sign that "the government is no longer sure that inflation can be remedied by unemployment."

"War and preparation for war are endemic to the system," he charged. "They support it in the short run, but ultimately aggravate the system's built-in destabilization. The present inflation exposes the system as unfair, autocratic and rigid."

Fred Braniman, former Dispatch News Service International Correspond-ent in Laos, spoke on his personal experiences with victims of bombings. He described peace overtures made by the Pathet Lao and rebuffed by the U.S. Branfman said that the only parallel he could find for the present American actions in Laos was in the novel 1984.

Daniel Ellsberg, research associate at the Center for international Studies at M. I. T. and former Vietnam consultant to presidential advisor Henry Kissinger '50 decried the "criminality" of intervention in Laos. He accused the American people of "widespread unconcern of people over the war" and corresponding unwillingness to support criminal charges against U.S. officials. He referred to the success of the Moratoria of 1969 and 1970, when "the emphasis was on the costs of the war, rather than its criminality."

Ellsworth called on Congress to take more risks, even up to impeachment of the President. "This war is degrading, immoral and brutal," he concluded. "Calling it criminal is only one way of suggesting that."

Cynthla Frederick, a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, was scheduled to speak but could not be present.