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Vol. 73/No. 6      February 16, 2009

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
February 17, 1984
Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Mel Mason denounced President Reagan’s February 7 statement on Lebanon and called for “immediate, unconditional withdrawal of every U.S. Marine, ‘adviser,’ battleship, and jet” from Lebanon and the rest of the Mideast.

“The U.S. government has no right to impose its will on the Lebanese people,” Mason said February 8. “The people have clearly rejected the terrorist regime of Lebanese Pres. Amin Gemayel, who was put in power by Washington and Israel. So now Reagan has given orders to bomb the Lebanese people into submission.

“As long as there are any Marines in Lebanon, or off the coast, those troops will be used for aggression against the Lebanese people. They never were—and cannot be—a ‘peacekeeping force.’”  
 
February 16, 1959
The United Auto Workers has called on Congress to aid the growing army of permanently jobless by enacting legislation for a shorter workweek. Meanwhile Senator Patrick McNamara (D.-Mich.) introduced a bill January 21 to reduce the federal workweek law to 35 hours.

Announcement of the shorter hours stand taken by the UAW International Executive Board was made by Walter Reuther, the union’s president.

Reuther also said that the program being worked out calls for creation of union machinery at local, state and national levels to deal with the unemployment problem.

Such activity had already been initiated in the Detroit area by the recently formed UAW Production and Skilled Workers Unemployed Committee.  
 
February 17, 1934
Demonstrating their solidarity with their heroic Austrian comrades, 5,000 militant workers paraded to the Austrian Consulate at 5 p.m., Wed., Feb. 14, where they were joined by thousands of others. Several hundred police, mounted and on foot, brutally charged into the crowd again and again.

Carrying red flags and banners, denouncing Fascism and pledging solidarity with their comrades on the barricades in Austria, the workers kept their lines solid and marched around the block where the Consulate is located.

The demonstration, which was originally called by the S.P. and YPSL [Socialist Party and Young Peoples’ Socialist League], was supported by all Left wing workers and was a splendid united front action, marred only by the efforts of the Stalinists to disrupt the Socialist marching lines.  
 
 
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