25, 50, and 75 years ago

December 5, 2022

December 8, 1997

U.S. hands off Iraq! Lift the embargo and get all the “inspectors” out of the country! End the U-2 spy flights and the “no-fly” zones that violate the country’s sovereign air space! That’s what anyone opposed to the imperial use of Washington’s economic and military might to subjugate oppressed nations needs to demand.

The U.S. government broke its teeth during the 1990-91 war against Iraq. It was unable to overthrow the regime in Baghdad and replace it with a protectorate in order to increase its domination in the region and its control over Iraqi oil.

Weakened on a number of fronts, the Clinton administration is in fact more likely to lash out and unleash its weaponry. That is exactly what war secretary William Cohen is hammering on when he demands the “right” for U.S. agents to go anywhere they please on Iraqi soil.

December 8, 1972

The latest issue of the Ukrainian Herald, the underground publication of the Ukrainian oppositional movement, began to circulate early in September.

Items reported include the trial of three schoolboys where the children tore up portraits of prominent party and government officials. Two of the boys were from the eighth grade; one from the seventh. An eighth-grader explained his actions at the trial as a protest against Russification and Great-Russian chauvinism.

As the bureaucrats have sat on podiums listening to themselves lie about the “definitive resolution of the nationalities question in the USSR,” the Soviet secret police has been carrying out the most sweeping campaign of repression since Stalin’s death, directed against those forces in Ukraine who stand by the original conception of a real and equal federation of republics.

December 8, 1947

TOLEDO, Nov. 26 — A four-day strike has brought a smashing victory to AFL dairy workers here. The final settlement provides for wage adjustments based upon a cost-of-living index to be made every three months, in addition to a 15 cents an hour increase effective immediately.

The brief strike was marked by an attempt by the dairy owners to create a critical situation on a city-wide basis. Only the workers in one dairy actually went on strike. The other six Toledo dairies thereupon immediately locked out their workers, thereby creating a serious milk shortage. Undoubtedly they hoped to provoke a crisis and invite the Taft-Hartley NLRB into the picture.

However, the strikers rejected successive company offers and finally won 15 cents plus the important cost-of-living adjustment provision. The dairy workers have pointed out the correct road to all labor.