The Militant (logo)  
   Vol.66/No.44           November 25, 2002  
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
November 25, 1977
It was hardly surprising that thousands of angry protesters greeted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi upon his arrival in Washington, D.C., November 15. The shah’s regime is one of the most repressive in the world.

A report released last year by the International Commission of Jurists concluded that "there can be no doubt that torture has been systematically practiced over a number of years."

But President Carter takes a different view. Carter gave a ringing endorsement to the regime of the royal butcher. A White House statement said that Carter "gave his personal commitment" to strengthen ties with the Iranian government. At his dinner to honor the shah, Carter hailed Washington’s military relationship with the shah and spoke of the "beneficent" impact of this alliance.

Since 1972, Washington has sold or agreed to sell $18.2 billion worth of arms to the shah. Just last month, Congress approved Carter’s decision to sell the shah $1.2 billion in advanced radar equipment.

On his current trip, the shah is asking for more arms, including 140 F-16 fighter planes costing about $2 billion, and 250 F-18 attack planes priced at about $2.5 billion.

Carter’s support to the shah is a stab in the back of the Iranian people. It is a betrayal of the cause of human rights, which he claims to hold so dear. It is proof that American imperialism stands opposed to the needs and aspirations of the people of the world.  
 
November 24, 1952
The tributes paid the late Philip Murray by numerous industrialists, publishers, and government officials are sincere. They will miss him. In their eyes, as U.S. Steel President Benjamin F. Fairless put it, the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] president was a "great labor leader." If they must deal with union leaders, the capitalists prefer men like Philip Murray--conciliatory, yielding, timid and devoted heart and soul to the profit system.

From first to last, Murray was a devoted servant of American imperialism and a faithful executor inside the labor movement of the foreign policies handed down by the U.S. State Department. He was ruthless in lining up the CIO behind the Second World War and the Korean war. He sought to drive out of the CIO every opponent of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and their war program. He engineered the bureaucratic expulsion of ten unions and provoked a sizable split in the CIO in 1949 with an anti-Communist witch-hunt that paralleled Truman’s "cold war" and "loyalty" purge.

For the defense of their own interests, the CIO members need leaders fundamentally different from Murray in class outlook, understanding and loyalty. They need aggressive, fighting leaders, free of all ties with the capitalist government and politics, and devoted completely to labor’s independent class interests.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home