So warned the Militant on June 19, 1950, more than four years ago. The warning was based on a revealing article in Collier’s magazine by David E. Lilienthal, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who demanded that the atomic energy industry be “freed” from “government monopoly” and turned over to “free enterprise.” What we then described as the “opening shot” in the “monopoly drive for atomic control” has now developed into a victorious major offensive signaled by the passage in the Senate of the administration-sponsored atomic energy bill. This bill has as “one of its purposes,” according to the July 28 N.Y. Times, “to favor private industry in the development of atomic power.” That, in fact, is its chief purpose.

Leland Olds, former chairman of the Federal Power Commission and a leading power expert, puts the matter conservatively in the July 17 Nation when he says that the atomic energy bill will “unquestionably prove the most far-reaching piece of legislation in its effect upon our social order of any in recent times. At stake is the question of who shall control the ushering in of the atomic age.”

By the “ushering in of the atomic age” is not meant the production of atomic weapons to wipe out mankind, but utilization of a source of unlimited power for peacetime production that could virtually revolutionize all industry and open the way for universal bounty. To safeguard the atomic future of the American people means to set up a Workers and Farmers Government which would not only retain full control of the atomic energy industry, but would develop its full useful possibilities to the maximum and gear them to all the other basic industries, which likewise would be nationalized.  
 
August 3, 1979
LOS ANGELES—On July 17 the Nicaraguan community here went out en masse to celebrate Somoza’s flight to Miami. The crowd was reported by TV news as more than 3,000. It was jubilant and obviously supportive of the Sandinista fighters who led the struggle against the dictator.

Two days later, Sandinista supporters occupied two tuna fishing boats in San Pedro Harbor. The registration of the boats was being changed from Nicaragua to a Somoza company with headquarters in Florida.

Fifty Los Angeles motorcycle police confronted the occupiers, who were attempting to protect Nicaraguan property. A lawsuit to stop the illegal expropriation of Nicaraguan property by the ex-dictator has been announced.

Sandinista supporters peacefully took over the Nicaraguan consulate in Los Angeles on July 20. The acting consul is Manuel Valle, a longtime Nicaraguan activist in Los Angeles.

The Frente Amplio Anti-Somocista (the Broad Anti-Somoza Front) has called on supporters of the Nicaraguan revolution to join in a victory parade and rally on Saturday, July 28, at noon at the Olvera Street Plaza in downtown Los Angeles.  
 
 
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