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Vol. 74/No. 40      October 25, 2010

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
October 25, 1985
When four U.S. jet fighters forced an Egyptian airliner to land at a U.S. base on the island of Sicily in Italy October 11, they were carrying out an act of U.S. government piracy against Egypt and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

U.S. officials in contact with the combat planes could have ordered the civilian airliner shot down if its crew had resisted.

The plane carried 17 Egyptians, two officials of the PLO, and four Palestinians accused of hijacking the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and killing passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The four were being flown out of Egypt after being turned over to the PLO by the Egyptian government. The hijacking was denounced from the start by the PLO as harmful to the Palestinian cause.  
 
October 24, 1960
Oct. 19—A desperate attempt, inspired by the State Department, to overthrow the Cuban government by force and violence, ended in defeat last week as counter-revolutionary invaders, rounded up by armed peasants, were sentenced in court for their criminal acts.

The revolutionary regime answered the stepped-up drive of the State Department for a blood bath in Cuba by nationalizing industry, transportation, commerce and banking “down to the nails in their shoes,” as [Fidel] Castro had warned. In addition, all housing was taken over. New far-reaching reforms were announced, including acknowledgment of “the right of every family to a decent living.”

Castro declared that the Cuban revolution had reached a major turning point.  
 
October 26, 1935
Thirteen leaders of the Bolshevik-Leninist group of France have been expelled from the French Socialist Party. The Socialist and Stalinist bureaucracies are seeking to disembarrass themselves of a revolutionary left wing.

In response to this reactionary offensive an organized bloc under the name Revolutionary Left is taking form in the Socialist Party of France.

The expulsion of the Bolshevik-Leninists, long expected and forecast in these columns, was openly stated by the National Disputes Committee of the S.P. to be based upon the fact that the “program of the Bolshevik-Leninist Group cannot for a single instant be admitted since it would lead the party into an impossible situation.” Impossible, because it would lead the party to the conquest of power by the proletariat!  
 
 
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