April 2, 2001
SEATTLE — A West Coast-wide meeting here celebrated the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban people in defending their socialist revolution by routing a U.S.-backed invasion at Playa Girón. The gathering was an opportunity to celebrate the publication of Pathfinder’s book, Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington’s First Military Defeat in the Americas.
The final speaker was Jack Barnes, author of the foreword and SWP national secretary. One of the central lessons of the events, Barnes said, “is a tendency for us to underestimate what we can accomplish and what we will be capable of doing.”
In the “missile crisis” of 1962, President Kennedy took the U.S. to the brink of nuclear war. When advisors told the president and his colleagues that a U.S. invasion would cost the lives of as many as 18,000 GIs in the first 10 days, they decided against it, Barnes added.
April 2, 1976
[The following open letter to Communist parties worldwide was issued by Ukrainian fighter Leonid Plyushch. He was imprisoned in a “psychiatric hospital” in the Soviet Union for defending Ukrainian national rights. After a worldwide outcry he was released and allowed to emigrate.]
The Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union will soon begin. Your representatives will be there. I want to remind you that the Stalinist Gestapo liquidated virtually all the figures in the October revolution and the civil war. The party of the Bolsheviks was physically and morally destroyed.
Many peoples of the Caucasus, Crimea and the Volga region were exiled. The Crimean Tatars have been waging a struggle for many years to return to their ancestral lands. Active participants in this struggle are prosecuted and jailed. The CPs have discredited the ideals of communism.
April 2, 1951
Gen. Douglas MacArthur renewed last week his unceasing efforts to extend the war in Korea to the Chinese mainland. MacArthur has tried to palm off his statement as an “offer” to discuss “a truce” with Beijing’s military commander in the field. Actually, this was no “truce offer” at all, but an arrogant demand for surrender.
MacArthur and his associates are seeking at all costs to prevent a peaceful solution of Korea and are acting more and more recklessly. The State Department and the Pentagon, it is reported, want curbs placed on MacArthur.
Curbs are needed — not alone on MacArthur but on all the militarists and their political co-plotters, from Truman down. And the best of these curbs is for the American people to decide themselves in a national referendum to put a halt to the “police-action” in Korea. Bring the U.S. troops back home!