April 10, 2000
Various fronts in labor battles point to the many ways unionists are finding to show their strength. From conferences of labor women to picket lines to mass rallies, many workers are charting a path of solidarity and organizing their numbers in fights against the bosses.
The possibilities to bring the lessons of one fight to the next is something that all vanguard militants can become involved in. Farmers will continue their struggle; truckers and others are demanding government relief from profiteering by oil monopolies; working people are standing up to police brutality; and youth are taking a stand in defense of democratic rights.
The great strength our class has to draw on — in addition to the possibilities to organize union and political instruments — is the legacy and experiences of the struggles of the exploited and oppressed for more than 150 years.
April 11, 1975
Ten years ago this month Lyndon Johnson began the massive military escalation that ended with 540,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. As the years of napalm, antipersonnel bombs, defoliation, strategic hamlet concentration camps, and B-52 saturation bombing went on, the whole world recoiled in horror. Vietnam became the central issue of world politics.
The public opinion combined with the tenacity of the Vietnamese eventually forced the U.S. rulers to bring the troops home from Vietnam.
“A rout beyond our wildest fears” was the way one military analyst summed up events over the past three weeks. So thorough has been the collapse and demoralization of the Saigon forces that the liberation fighters have been able to take over three-quarters of South Vietnam, including four of the five largest cities, without a single major battle.
April 10, 1950
There is an especially sinister side to the Atomic Energy Commission’s censorship of the H-Bomb article by Dr. Hans Bethe in the April Scientific American. Under a special law the AEC has control over all technical data relating to atomic energy.
The AEC formally and hastily declared the already published material in Bethe’s article “classified.” From now on, those who write on this subject and those who publish such writings do so at their own risk. The AEC may slap a “classified” label on it.
This is not a measure of “military security.” It is aimed at political suppression. Its purpose is to halt any and all discussion of the politics of the H-Bomb, as well as its moral and social implications.
In short, it is a move to muzzle any voice that may be raised against the production of the H-Bomb as such and against World War .