These attacks coincide with an announcement by federal and local officials that a cache of ninety-seven fragmentation hand grenades, twenty-six sticks of dynamite, and 17,000 rounds of ammunition was seized at a Bullitt County dump, directly south of here. Police says warrants were issued in connection with an investigation of local "radical antibusing groups."

The attack of the SWP headquarters followed a threatening call received there August 5. The caller said that the National Socialist (Nazi) Liberation Front thought "SWPers should be bullwhipped and shot." This same group took credit for the 1975 bombing of the Los Angeles offices of the SWP.

At a well-attended press conference August 18, Debby Tarnopol, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor, blasted the inaction of Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane and Jefferson County Judge Todd Hollanbach. She demanded they conduct a full-scale investigation into these violent attacks.  
 
August 11, 1952
"Fire--not explosives or bullets--is the most horrible and devastating weapon in Korea," said The Militant of Feb. 19, 1951, in describing the massacre of Korean civilians by the U.S. air forces. This type of warfare, we wrote, has added a new word to the common speech --"napalm"--flaming jellied gasoline. "The U.S. command’s favorite method of warfare is burning people alive," we charged.

I cite what we wrote more than a year and a half ago about napalm bombings, because the Pentagon and U.S. Air Force officials are trying to represent the recent official complaints of the Chinese and north Korean government about U.S. napalming of civilian centers as nothing but a "new concerted Communist propaganda line." (N.Y. Times, Aug. 19)

Gen. Nathan F. Twining, acting Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, claims the U.S. Air Forces in Korea "have never employed napalm against civilians." Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett goes further to cynically describe napalm as a "weapon like a bullet, a bomb or a shell." He opined that fire has been used in warfare since "Biblical days" and termed the Chinese and north Korean complaints "obviously unjustified" and a "tiresome form of propaganda."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home