October 22, 1971
The military realities of the Vietnam war are being concealed from the American public to a greater extent than at any time since President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in 1970.

Press, radio and TV report that the war is "winding down." Even critics of Nixon's "Vietnamization" policies like the New York Times relegate battlefield news to a few summary paragraphs in back-page articles.

Yet there is significant evidence that far from having wound down the war, the Nixon administration has escalated it. But now the main battlegrounds are in Laos, Cambodia and the border regions between North and South Vietnam.

The importance Washington attaches to the war in these areas was underlined in debates in the U.S. Senate Oct. 4 and Oct. 5 concerning amendments to the military appropriations bill for fiscal year 1972.

On Oct. 4, Senator Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) attempted to put a $200-million limit on U.S. financing of the war in Laos, not including money spent bombing the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail.

Symington revealed the continuous escalation of U.S. war spending in Laos, figures that were kept secret until this year.

"Prior to this year the only figure the public knew was the annual economic assistance program, which has been running at about $52-million a year since the fiscal year 1969.... Actually, we have spent over $1.5 billion in Laos, if we count the bombings of the Ho Chi Minh Trails" (Congressional Record, pp. S15763-65.)

This is nearly 20 times more than when the aid program began nine years ago. October 19, 1946
Climaxing the greatest series of labor struggles in Japanese history, involving seamen, railwaymen, miners, newspaper and radio workers and others, the Japanese CIO has scheduled a general strike for Oct. 15.

The strike is a protest against the conspiracy by the Japanese employers and the Yoshida puppet regime, backed up by the American occupation authorities, to crush the resurgent labor movement.

Their demands include a halt to mass firings initiated by the government; workers' participation in the restoration of industry; protection of the right to strike and collective bargaining; and the abolition of recent antilabor laws.

The call for a general strike was precipitated by government attempts to break the press and radio strikes. Newspaper workers began their walkout when Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Tokyo's leading dailies, and its Hokkaido affiliate fired a group of workers for union activities. The Hokkaido affiliate refused to abide by a recommendation of the central Labor Relations Bureau, government arbitration board, to rehire the 53 discharged workers.

It is now revealed that the workers were originally fired upon orders of Major D.C. Imboden, head of the Press and Publications Division of the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers (SCAP).  
 
 
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