Vol. 80/No. 22      June 6, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

June 7, 1991

The wanton brutality of the South Korean police in killing Kang Kyung Dae, a 20-year-old student, unleashed years of pent-up popular anger and hatred for the U.S.-backed South Korean regime.

The May 24 New York Times called the current protests in South Korea a “violent annual show” and the Wall Street Journal dismissed protesters as “hard core radicals.” But this presentation passed on as fact is at variance with reality.

Today, hundreds of thousands of Koreans in the South are aiming their fire squarely at President Roh Tae Woo’s regime, which despite democratic pretenses, has been an obstacle to conquering greater democratic rights, social justice, and the reunification of Korea.

June 6, 1966

Three hundred people jammed into the Militant Labor Forum Hall May 27 to attend a memorial meeting for Leo Bernard, the Detroit socialist who was shot down by a fanatical anti-communist. The meeting was sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialist Alliance.

The speakers’ list, and the audience itself, represented the broadest act of left-wing unity that has been achieved in this country in more than three decades. This was also true of the messages.

All of the speakers were agreed that the Detroit shooting was not simply the act of a deranged individual, but a product of the anti-communist poison pumped into American society over years.

June 7, 1941

Now pending in the House of Representatives are two bills which would authorize the F.B.I. and other police agencies to engage in wiretapping. Representative Hobbs, sponsor of one of the bills, is also parent of the “concentration camp” bill for aliens.

In the last war, although wiretapping was supposedly illegal, the Department of Justice practiced it freely. For every case of espionage and treason prosecuted against German agents or sympathizers there were hundreds of raids against “reds” and militant workers. The campaign of intimidation, mass raids and strikebreaking, with wiretapping as one of its main weapons was directed at that time by the same J. Edgar Hoover who now heads the F.B.I. Nor did he stop when peace came.  
 
 
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