August 11, 1997
Working people in the United States and around the world should join our brothers and sisters in Cuba in denouncing the latest terrorist bombings of tourist hotels in Havana. Whether the U.S. government has a direct hand in the blasts or not, these attacks are the product of Washington’s policy of economic war aimed at starving the Cuban people into submission.
Forty-four years ago, July 26, 1953, marked the insurrectionary start of the popular movement that a few years later overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship.
The U.S. empire has never forgiven the Cuban people for defending their national independence and the socialism they chose and for refusing to bend their knees ever since, never forgiven the Cuban people for their selfless internationalism as they joined national liberation struggles around the world.
August 4, 1972
JULY 27 — The threat of a general strike in Great Britain has forced the release of five longshore leaders who were imprisoned July 21. This is a massive blow against Britain’s new antilabor National Industrial Relations Court. The dockers were jailed in an attempt to punish them for staging unauthorized picketing in the ports. A general strike would have been the first since 1926.
The national outcry erupted within hours of their imprisonment under the Industrial Relations Act. It was heralded in the financial press as the British version of the Taft-Hartley Act, as a significant step toward curbing the rising tide of labor militancy. It hasn’t worked out that way.
The nationwide strike was the response to the first use of this act to imprison fellow laborers. The dispute at issue was unauthorized picketing against increasing containerization.
August 4, 1947
For the past 12 days, 4,500 Jewish refugees bound for Palestine have undergone bloodshed and torture at the hands of the British imperialists that Hitler could hardly excel.
Packed like sardines in an American ferryboat renamed Exodus 1947, this mass of tired, hungry, unwashed people, clad in rags, sleeping on boards, endured their hardships in the hope of finding a place where they could begin a new, decent life for themselves. About 17 miles out of Haifa, six British warships smashed into the Exodus from three directions, enveloping the ship in a cloud of fire bombs, gunfire, tear gas.
The British imperialist brigands are not alone in their responsibility for this monstrous episode. President Truman’s crocodile tears cannot cover up the crime of Wall Street’s government in closing the doors of this country to these displaced persons.