December 25, 2000
Meat packers and other unionists should join with the United Food and Commercial Workers union in protesting the Dec. 5 raid at Nebraska Beef by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, aided by Omaha police and Nebraska State troopers.
The raid and the company’s subsequent firing of workers protesting line speed is a direct attack on the union-organizing drive at the plant and on others in the region. A vigorous and united response can demand: Stop the deportations! End the raids! Rehire the fired workers! Recognize the union!
Many meat packers have been drawn into the workforce in the U.S. from around the world. Making immigrant workers “illegal” and “alien,” relegating them to a second-class and pariah status, and setting them up for victimization is an age-old divide-and-rule tactic of the bosses and their government.
December 26, 1975
A dispute in the State Department over how far to go in intervening in the civil war in Angola was made public in a front-page story in the New York Times. This significant development can be ascribed to the experience in Indochina.
A sector of the ruling class recognizes that a new adventure abroad would in all likelihood meet with mass opposition from the start. Meanwhile, the Ford administration has already become involved in the Angolan civil war. The arguments used to justify intervention: The threat of a Communist take-over.
It is clear that the main enemy in Angola is imperialism. For all those who believe in the right of peoples to determine their own fate, these considerations dictate a course similar to the one followed in opposing the imperialist aggression in Vietnam. The slogan ought to be “Get them out before they get us in!”
December 25, 1950
What is this “national emergency” which demands that the American people submit to “austerity” and regimentation under a “garrison” regime? What is this “grave danger” that President Truman says must be met by “full mobilization” and the exercise of his dictatorial war-time powers?
Truman’s armed intervention in the Korean civil war has led to a military disaster. American imperialism’s scheme for a “cheap” conquest in Asia has been shattered against a formidable obstacle it did not foresee: the tremendous power of the Asian revolution.
The American people don’t feel threatened by anything except the danger of the catastrophic war, inflation and dictatorship that the actions of Washington are leading to. The “national emergency” that Truman’s proclamation is designed to overcome is the popular opposition to the war plans.