25, 50 and 75 years ago

January 29, 2018

January 29, 1993

The cowardly bombing of Iraq by U.S. military forces, with some help from Britain and France, is a brutal violation of that nation’s sovereignty.
Washington is asserting it has the right to lash out at will against Iraq, and by extension anywhere in the world where it feels its interests are being threatened. Through naked force the U.S. rulers hope to maintain their domination over this oil-rich region and get an upper hand against their imperialist rivals headquartered in Paris, London, Bonn, and Tokyo.

Massive bombing and other military assaults during the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991 left much of the country in ruins and took as many as 150,000 lives. The economic embargo against the people of Iraq, which remains in effect to this day, has produced great hardship and thousands more deaths.

January 29, 1968

The announcement that the People’s Republic of Korea had seized a U.S. spy ship off its coast, and Washington’s reaction to that announcement, both point to the danger created by U.S. imperialism in this section of the world.
A special correspondent of the New York Times said Jan. 23 that there is “no doubt” that the U.S. ship was “trying to pinpoint the sites of key radio and radar stations in North Korea,” to help American engineers “design jamming devices and other electronic countermeasures.”

Members of Congress said it was an “act of war” for the Koreans to do what they did — as if the U.S. has the right to send spy ships into the waters of any country any time it wishes.

Those opposed to the war in Vietnam should demand that the U.S. stop all provocative spy raids on North Korea and get its troops out of South Korea.

January 30, 1943

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — Post Office Attorney William C. O’Brien, demanding suppression of the mailing rights of The Militant at a hearing in the Postmaster General’s office here today, summed up the government’s case when he flatly stated: “We are not concerned here with questions of truth or falsity. It does not make any difference if everything The Militant said is true.”
The attempt to suppress The Militant was instigated directly by Attorney General Francis Biddle, when a letter from Biddle, urging the postal authorities to initiate this proceeding, was read into the record. The letter showed that the attack on The Militant represents a continuation of the government’s attack on the militant labor movement initiated by Biddle in the Minneapolis trial of 28 Socialist Workers Party and Local 544-CIO members in 1941.