French revolutionaries condemn
'vengeance' bombing
When social democrats have responsibility for an imperialist government they are even more hypocritical than the right itself. On Wednesday November 16, Francois Mitterrand, French president, appeared on the television programme 'L'heure du verite' (The hour of truth) to answer questions about French foreign policy. During this programme he justified the French presence in Lebanon thus:
'Our mission today remains to occupy the zone in Beirut that has been entrusted to us by the Lebanese government, and to do there what our soldiers do so well: ensure peace. Our soldiers are at once nurses, guardians, peacekeepers They help the old, they save the young, all those little children that one sees run into the street among the shells and the bullets. Every time, our soliders intervene to save lives. This is why they are called soldiers of peace.
The next day French Super-Etandards bombed the city of Baalbek as a 'punishment' for the attack on French paratroopers headquarters in Beirut. Mitterrand claimed that this attack was directed against a pro-Iran Shi-ite Muslim stronghold responsible for the attack. However the community denied responsibility.
We publish below the statement issued by the national leadership of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, French section of the Fourth International, on November 18, following the first news of this bombing.
By sending French naval airforce Super-Etendards to bomb the city of Baalbek, Francois Mitterrand has gravely escalated French imperialist involvement in the endless war in Lebanon.
The Baalbek operation represents a form of state terrorism that nothing can justify. It will unleash a chain of new guerrilla attacks and new reprisals, for which the primary responsibility will be on the French government, which is keeping its troops in a country where they have no business.
The LCR reiterates its demand for the immediate withdrawal of French troops from Lebanon. It issues an urgent appeal to the workers and democratic movement to act to force the withdrawal of French troops before the country finds itself involved by Francois Mitterrand's arbitrary decisions in another dirty colonial war.
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PALESTINE International Viewpoint 28 November 1981
have for U.S. imperialist domination, such indoctrination has not failed to have an effect.
Given this condition, the AustinCoard coup must have aroused deep fears. This is all the more so because the general political education given to the masses and the party did not include an explanation of why and how revolutions can degenerate and put these processes in their historical perspective.
Nonetheless, despite all the politica advantages the U.S. rulers had in their attempt to pose as defenders of "democratic law and order," they have very quickly revealed the ugly face of sadistic
THIS LAND and ruthless repressors.
In its November 15 issue, the Paris daily Liberation reported:
"Several hundred
Grenadians have been arrested and jailed by the American
INDS BELONgS occupation forces, the Washington Post correspondent has cabled from St. George's, the capital of Grenada. The persons arrested are suspected of sympathy for, or links with, the revolutionary regime overthrown by U.S. intervention.
"The arrests, which are completely arbitrary, are carried out on the basis of informers or lists of people who worked for the Grenadian government, as well as lists of members of the New Jewel Movement.
"At least 230 prisoners are being held in a camp run by the American army at Point Salines in the southeast of the island. The camp is overlooked by guard towers and surrounded by barbed wire."
The number of prisoners cited is very high for such a small island. The entire membership of the New Jewel Movement (NJM), for example, was only about 800. Furthermore, the U.S. authorities are apparently using a cat-and-mouse system, arresting people, releasing them, and rearresting them.