February 19, 2001
For decades the British government has sought to cover up its responsibility for the 1972 killing of the civil rights marchers in Derry who were shot down in cold blood by British troops.
London hoped this murderous assault would help break the resistance of the Irish Catholic population of Northern Ireland, whose land has now been occupied by thousands of British soldiers for more than 30 years.
The Catholic population refuses to get down on their knees or give up their demands for the truth to be told about Bloody Sunday and for an end to the British military occupation of the six counties of Northern Ireland.
Working people around the world should join with Irish freedom fighters in their demands for a united, democratic Ireland and for British troops to get out of the country.
February 20, 1976
Ukrainian dissident Leonid Plyushch, now living in France, held a news conference Feb. 3 at which he thanked all those whose protests helped secure his release from a Soviet psychiatric prison hospital:
“In 1966 I began to write articles for the samizdat press, articles on the nature of the Soviet government, on its ideology, on the national question in the USSR. A Marxist by conviction, I took Marx and Lenin as a point of departure for my examination. On Jan. 15, 1972, I was arrested. From 1973 to 1976 I was subjected to a ‘treatment.’ The aim is to break the human being during the first few days, to break his will to resist.
“We Soviet neo-Marxists have always placed hope in the Communist parties of France, Italy and Great Britain. We hoped that these parties would compel the Soviet Communist party to choose between Mao-Stalinism and Communism.”
February 19, 1951
The railroad workers have just had another lesson on justice under capitalism. Two events have served to drive this lesson home: the government’s smashing of the railroad strike and the terrible Woodbridge, N. J., derailment that took 84 lives and injured 500.
When the low-paid, over-worked workers go out on strike, the full power of the capitalist movement is hurled against them. President Truman slanders them as unpatriotic and “like a bunch of Russians.” They are whipped back to work at forced labor under military command by an Army ultimatum.
But the railroad corporation that is responsible for murdering hundreds of passengers and crewmen and injuring more than a thousand in a series of accidents does not receive even a censure from Truman. The nationalization of the railroads under workers control has become a burning immediate need.