Vol. 81/No. 13      April 3, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 
April 3, 1992
Armed clashes between forces supported by the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have left scores of people dead and forced tens of thousands to flee Nagorno-Karabakh in recent weeks. Fighting in this predominantly Armenian enclave, located inside Azerbaijan, has intensified since the break up of the Soviet Union last year.

The regimes in the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan both claim sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Media reports have described the war as part of an “age-old dispute between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan,” as a New York Times article put it. The cause of the conflict is not ethnic or religious differences but the decades of bureaucratic misrule and national oppression in the former Soviet Union.

April 3, 1967
It is the duty of those here in the U.S. who are opposed to the war, to support the position taken by north Vietnam in rejecting Johnson’s negotiations proposal. It is true that under the pressure of the U.S. attack, north Vietnam may eventually be forced to negotiate. But we here inside the U.S., must recognize that the U.S. has no right to impose its will upon Vietnam. To demand that the U.S. negotiate in Vietnam, or to call upon the administration to get behind negotiations proposals of Kennedy or U Thant or anyone else, grants to Johnson a right he does not have, the right to negotiate the future of Vietnam.

The discussion in the press over the exchange of letters between Johnson and Ho highlights the danger for the antiwar movement in demanding that Johnson negotiate to settle the war.

April 4, 1942
CLEVELAND — Stalinist officials of the CIO Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers on March 26 endorsed a War Labor Board decision upholding the firing of four union shop stewards for allegedly “instigating a slowdown” in the Aluminum Corporation of America’s plant here.

The fired union militants, by the admission of the union officials themselves, had resisted company attempts to institute a vicious speedup and pay-cutting system in their division. All four of the fired shop stewards were Negroes.

The most damning part of the Stalinist leaders’ actions is their own admission that reprisal against the four militant job stewards “is the result of an investigation which was originally requested by the union” — that is, the Stalinist officials.  
 
 
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