50 years on from the Cuban Missile crisis, and the US is once again threatening the world with nuclear war – this time by staging ‘Exercises’ to practise dropping nuclear bombs on North Korea.
Its never been more relevant to reflect on the aggressive wars and propaganda of the US imperial goliath – and how best to wipe their bloodthirsty crimes from the face of the earth.
Imperialism strives for domination, not democracy: this is the profound truth, and also the practical political lesson we must all learn when trying to understand and make sense of world events.
Giles Shorter gives this pithy and profound analysis of the events and meaning of the two weeks in October 1962 that are known as the Cuban Missile Crisis in the west, or the October Crisis in Cuba.
Part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrT9fhcRPTU
Part 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IokewOgCar8
Part 3 –
Read Giles’ article on the Crisis, published in LALKAR here:
http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/jan2013/octobercrisis.html
This presentation was made, at the Stalin Society in October 2012, to mark the 50th anniversary of the crisis — days remembered clearly by those who witnessed them from afar, as Students and young adults, as seeming to threaten the “End of the World”: nuclear holocaust.
The key ideas put forward by US propagandists at the time of the Crisis – that the Socialist camp, the oppressed nations and all who resist imperialism bear responsibility for the frenzied, blood thirsty murderous and often outright genocidal acts of US, British EU and NATO imperialism – are still a mainstay of British and US propaganda.
Much of the ‘left’ and student movement failed utterly to come to terms with these arguments and tactics at the time, and have failed to answer these and similar accusations resolutely and clearly to this day — as they have either not understood the nature of imperialism, or have capitulated before what they perceive as its overriding strength.
It is particularly useful, on the 50th anniversary of the Crisis, and as US aggression against Korea reaches a crescendo, to look back and ask: “So is the world a safer place today than in 1962, as Kennedy and the imperialists claimed it would be in the absence of a strong USSR and socialist camp?”
How should we oppose imperialism — in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Mali, in the Ivory coast, Congo, South America, Nepal, Korea, the Phillipines… by ‘appealing to its better nature’, by begging? Or by an uncompromising and resolute no holds barred struggle — by any means necessary?
Who is responsible for the decisive diplomatic victory, and shift in military power that has taken place as a result of this incident and subsequent events?
Clearly imperialism bears the brunt of the responsibility – but it cannot be reproached, in a sense, for acting according to its nature – it must simply be recognised and overthrown. Khruschevite revisionism, however, by splitting the socialist camp, by light-mindedly playing at confrontation with so dangerous an enemy, and by its cowardice in backing down so humiliatingly, and deserting its Cuban ally must be exposed.
It is the disastrous path of Capitalist restoration in the USSR, and the incompetence in management at every level of soviet society that ensued, that must be identified and explicitly disavowed as the force that brought our movement, from the perspective of victory, and constructing a peaceful and prosperous world, to the brink of defeat — a divided socialist camp and people’s liberation movement, an economically and socially devastated world, dominated by imperialism and imperialist poverty, disease, famine, capitalist crisis, environmental devastation and war.
It is lamentable to reflect upon the decline of the Socialist camp since the capitalist roaders dismantled the once great and glorious Soviet Union and the Eastern European people’s democracies from the top downwards, but it also points the finger of blame, and indicates how we can rebuild our socialist movement and liberation struggle, from the bottom up.
Hasta la victoria – siempre!
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