Aimed immediately at the thousands of Haitians fleeing the murderous dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the September 29 order opens the door for new U.S. aggression. It can be used as the pretext for stopping Cuban ships that “might” be carrying immigrants.

The ships of other countries on Washington’s “enemy” list could be interfered with, too. The Reagan order specifically authorizes the Coast Guard to fire at ships which do not comply with its command.

Until now, the Coast Guard has had the authority to intercept ships only within U.S. territorial waters. Washington says it has the agreement of the Duvalier regime to flout international law relating to the high seas.  
 
October 8, 1956
Several Moscow newspapers came out Oct. 2 with reports that Stalin had failed as a military commander as early as 1918, and admitted that historians (under Stalin’s regime) had credited him with a greater role in the Bolshevik Revolution than he actually played.

The Soviet military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda said historians mistakenly had given primary importance to the Southern Front during the Civil War, which followed the Bolshevik Revolution.

“The activities of J.B. Stalin on this sector were evaluated as decisive,” the paper said. “Actually, the Southern Front at that time was of secondary importance. The Eastern Front was the most important one.”

This is the first breach in the myth that Stalin himself built up about his career as a military leader. Actually, as Trotsky details in My Life, Stalin was removed from the Southern Front for his intrigues and cliquist activities.  
 
October 17, 1931
It is not a danger of war that exists in Manchuria. It is a state of war in actuality. Whole sections of the country have been invaded and occupied by Japanese military forces. Squadrons of Japanese airplanes have flown over Chinese cities, raining down machine gun bullets and bombs, terrorizing the civil population and already placing to its account a growing list of casualties. The situation is almost identical, feature for feature, with the invasion of Belgium by German imperial troops in August 1914.

The veritable war which Japan has launched against China marks no new departure in its relations with that country. It is part and parcel of that arbitrary, domineering, rapacious policy of plunder and subjugation which it has pursued in common with the other imperialist powers since the industrial revolution towards the end of the last century brought Japan to the forefront in world politics and economics, and more specifically as an Asiatic and Pacific power.  
 
 
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