Vol. 77/No. 7 February 25, 2013
February 26, 1988
Soviet Communist Party head Mikhail Gorbachev announced that Soviet troops will begin pulling out of Afghanistan on May 15. Gorbachev said the withdrawal would be completed within 10 months.Gorbachev called for an agreement that would include “international guarantees of non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.”
The “international guarantees” sought by Gorbachev include an end to Washington’s massive aid—more than $1 billion over the last two years—to rightist-led forces combating the Afghan government.
Washington has vastly increased its arms shipments to these groups since December 1979, when tens of thousands of Soviet troops poured into the country to prop up the government. Soviet military intervention, far from rolling back the insurgency, enabled it to win more popular support.
February 25, 1963
A McCarthy-type hysteria is raging in Washington on the Cuba issue. It results from the publicly avowed commitment to destroy the Cuban Revolution, and the resulting frustration because Washington has been unable to accomplish any such thing.This demagogy is by no means confined to extreme right-wingers but has become a central political tactic of the leaders of the Republican Party. Nor is it confined to the Republicans.
[President] Kennedy himself began the current wave of hysteria and demagogy with his performance before the Bay-of-Pigs Brigade in Miami’s Orange Bowl last month. There, to shouts of “War, War” from the crowd, he promised the destruction of the Cuban Revolution. Kennedy keeps promising the very thing the right-wingers are clamoring for, but since he can’t produce, the clamor increases.
February 26, 1938
The swift pace at which the ruling class is preparing to plunge this country into war with Japan in order to establish American domination of the Pacific was revealed this week.This information describes a series of meetings recently held by President Roosevelt with key leaders in the worlds of finance, industry, journalism, labor, and, of course, the army and navy. The purpose was to prime the pumps of the propaganda machine already at work to prepare the American masses for war.
The campaign to whip up the war spirit will be two-fold in character: First, appeal will be made to patriotic sentiment—the need to protect American “rights” abroad. The second and supplementary line will be “idealistic,” stressing the desirability of “defending the sanctity of treaties.”
It was emphasized that forces vigorously opposing the war drive must be silenced as quickly as possible.
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