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Vol. 74/No. 11      March 22, 2010

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
March 22, 1985
While the U.S. government continues to deepen its war in Central America, it is also stepping up imperialist aggression in the Mideast. Two U.S. warships are steaming toward Lebanon to allegedly evacuate U.S. embassy personnel if threatened by Lebanese “extremists.”

The U.S. government seeks to crush the Palestinian national liberation movement and bolster proimperialist Arab regimes. The U.S. rulers are relying on the Israeli regime, their imperialist ally in the region, to do the job.

The U.S. government is helping to foot the bill for the Israeli regime’s aggression because the U.S. rulers share the same goals. Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in 1982 to try to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization and set up a stable proimperialist regime.  
 
March 21, 1960
City and state officials have imposed a regime close to martial law upon the Negroes of Montgomery, Alabama, who now risk life and limb if they attempt to assemble, petition, or peacefully demonstrate. In addition to city and state police, gangs of deputized horsemen and Ku Klux elements wearing Civil Defense insignia are terrorizing Negroes.

The actions of the authorities and the white-supremacist vigilantes in Alabama are so ominous that Roy Wilkins, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, asked the White House to act to avert a possible “massacre” of Negroes.

In Orangeburg, South Carolina, a demonstration by 1,000 students from South Carolina State and Clafin Colleges was met with tear gas and fire hoses.  
 
March 23, 1935
The imminence of the Second World War was vividly demonstrated last Saturday by the action of Hitler Germany when she tore up the Treaty of Versailles and threw it in the faces of the other European powers. Henceforth, announced the Nazi leader, compulsory military service will be introduced in Germany and the Third Reich will enter openly into the race for arms.

This announcement came at the end of a week filled with talk—and acts—for rearmament. And it came as no surprise to the responsible—or to be more exact irresponsible—rulers of France, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States.

Thus less than seventeen years after the end of the “war to end war,” preparations for the second World War are now publicly proclaimed.  
 
 
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