The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 75/No. 9      March 7, 2011

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
March 7, 1986
The overthrow of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship by the Filipino people is a tremendous victory.

With one of Washington’s favorite tyrants driven out, the door now opens for the Filipino people to begin the process of addressing themselves to resolving the massive social and economic problems that burden them.

And the door is also open for achieving the equally necessary goal of independence from U.S. imperialist domination.

For nearly half a century, the Filipino people suffered direct U.S. colonial rule. And, since they won formal independence in 1946, they have continued to suffer U.S. economic, military, and political domination. Throughout his repressive rule, Marcos enjoyed bipartisan support from Washington.  
 
March 6, 1961
The American press recently reported a speech made by Fidel Castro in Havana at the first national conference of the delegates of Councils of Technical Advisers.

The main point in Castro’s speech was not reported by U.S. capitalist papers. This is quite understandable, since it was a direct challenge to Kennedy on how to solve the problem of unemployment, a question the Boston millionaire debating champion is not too strong on.

Castro, on the other hand, is able to speak with unusual authority on the subject inasmuch as unemployment before the revolution in Cuba normally affected 25 percent of the labor force. Castro is now able to report Cuba’s experience in seeing the problem shift to one of labor shortages a bare two years after the revolutionary victory.  
 
March 7, 1936
Nazi Germany this week ripped the paper bottoms out of the Versailles and Locarno treaties by marching troops, guns and tanks into the demilitarized Rhineland.

This move, long heralded and sedulously prepared, brings French and British imperialism face to face with the alternatives of mobilizing once more against Germany or accepting Hitler’s offer of a united front against the Soviet Union.

Faced with the Italian threat to support the Reich in its denunciation of the Locarno pacts, Britain, which has just launched the mightiest armament program the world has ever seen, has given ample indication that it would far sooner make terms with Hitler than risk war at a time when it could have little confidence in the outcome.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home