Vol. 81/No. 45      December 4, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 

December 4, 1992

The decision by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Western European Union to implement a full naval blockade of Yugoslavia is a major step toward military intervention by Washington, Bonn, Paris and London. Warships belonging to these military alliances are now authorized to halt and search all merchant vessels accused of violating the United Nations trade embargo against the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro.

Naval blockades are an act of war. The U.S.-led slaughter in Iraq in 1991 was preceded by several months of blockade similar to the one imposed on Yugoslavia today. An oil embargo against Japan, enforced by U.S. warships, prepared the ground for the direct entry of Washington into World War II.

What is needed is real solidarity with the Yugoslav people.

December 4, 1967

There was an important side to the story of Pfc. John W. Guinn that received sparse coverage in the American press. Guinn is the GI mistakenly reported killed in Vietnam. He was allowed to go home to Tennessee for Thanksgiving after the Army had sent his family the body of another GI, which was buried in his place.

Scenes of Guinn’s mother, tearfully greeting her son as he stepped off the plane from Vietnam were broadcast across the nation. Guinn declared: “When my three years are up I’m coming out and I’m not going to re-enlist. All the United States boys should be brought out. It’s no war of ours.”

This typical GI, chosen by accident and given an unexpected chance to speak to the American people, said one more thing that was left out of most press reports. He said most of the GIs he knew in Vietnam agreed with him.

December 5, 1942

Responsibility for the defeat of the anti-poll tax bill in the Senate lies not only on the poll taxers, but also on the Roosevelt administration, the Republican Party and the “liberal” Senators, said A. Philip Randolph, director of the Negro-March-on-Washington Movement.

“The most disgraceful spectacle of democracy in action witnessed in America in contemporary times was the bi-partisan conspiracy of Republican and Democrats to defeat the anti-poll tax bill,” said Randolph. “It served definitely to disillusion the Negro masses, North, South, East and West, with respect to the Republican Party constituting the ship for their salvation, or the Democratic Party representing any hope whatsoever. It served to make Negroes completely aware that the New Deal, is bankrupt so far as providing any answer to the problem of the Negro masses.”  
 
 
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