Vol. 78/No. 7 February 24, 2014
February 24, 1989
LONDON — By 235 to 134, the British Parliament recently approved a new Prevention of Terrorism Act. Since its enactment in 1974 by the then Labour Party government, the law has been subject to yearly renewal.The new act permits the detention of individuals for up to seven days without charge; confiscation of funds going to the Irish republican struggle; harassment of fundraisers; and stipulates that those convicted of what are deemed “terrorist offensives” serve a minimum of two-thirds of their sentences, rather than half.
The legislation allows the authorities to exclude from Britain people who are British citizens. Some 260 people have been subject to such exclusion orders. The act also permits detention for up to one hour for people traveling between Ireland and Britain. In 1986 alone, some 60,000 were stopped at ports of entry in this way.
February 24, 1964
“There are no political parties claiming any broad base of support” in South Vietnam. That is how one diplomat cynically commented on the attempts of Gen. Khanh, the new ruler, to find a civilian “fig leaf” to cover over his naked military rule.This revelation confirms that U.S.-supported regimes in South Vietnam, whether Diems, Minhs or Khanhs, have no support in the population.
The U.S. government justifies its “war for democracy” in that country with claims that “Communists from North Vietnam” are trying to impose an unwanted regime on the South Vietnamese people.
While the warlords and civilian puppets in Saigon have no support, the peasant guerrillas are supported by most of South Vietnam’s farmers — the some 10 million poor who live on the land, out of the country’s 12 million population.
February 24, 1939
An imposing, fighting demonstration of fifty thousand workers assembled near Madison Square Garden on Monday evening to protest the first big fascist mobilization in New York City.In addition to the fifty thousand demonstrators who responded to the call of the Socialist Workers Party for a labor rally against the fascist concentration, official police estimates given to the press counted another fifty thousand among the spectators. With few exceptions, the latter made clear their sympathy with the aims and slogans of the demonstrating thousands.
With a brutality recalling the days of Czarist Cossacks, 1,780 of Mayor La Guardia’s police, the largest number of cops ever collected in the city against a single demonstration, slugged and trampled under horses hooves scores of workers in an unsuccessful attempt to break up the demonstration.
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