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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 10, No. 3. April 2, 1947

US Sidesteps UN

US Sidesteps UN

March 1947 has been full of political significance for people all over the world. Many eyes have turned to the great bastion of world reaction and imperialism to witness its degressive nets being put into legal form. Congress and its satellite President Truman have finally dropped all pretence of achieving Big Five unity as outlined at Potsdam and Yalta. It has given up the traditional line of foreign policy based on the Monroe doctrine and has exchanged it for one of "intervention wherever there is the danger of the people taking control under left-wing militant leadership." Congress has set out on its democratising mission by bolstering up a Fascist regime in Greece which, in the words of Mr. Thomas. M.P., makes the Franco regime look like a Sunday-school picnic. Assistance will also be given to Turkey, which after 28 years of Ataturk-lnonu dictatorship, still lacks the essential democratic rights of free speech, association and assembly. The aims of American Imperialism are crystal clear. With, a diminishing home market and increasing unemployment. Wall Street capitalism must "export or die." It must assert its dominance abroad in order to divert the American people's attention from its problems at home thus paving the way for World War III. By sidestepping the United Nations, President Truman has shattered all illusions of American co-operation in the collective effort of solving the world's problems.

The ink has hardly dried on this shamefaced document of intervention when Truman issues another equally vicious executive order. This time he follows up his former attacks on the American labour movement by a purge order to the Civil Service Commission and heads of departments. "All totalitarian, fascists, communists and their sympathisers are to be removed." On this asumption we must expect almost the whole of the State Department to be dismissed. However, we know only too well against whom this order is directed. If ever you have belonged to an "Aid for Russia" committee or if ever your wife has knitted sox for Russian children, it will be taken as sufficient grounds for dismissal. The task for American labour and the progressive forces in the world today is to intensify the struggle against the Fascist clique in Washington and not to allow them to impose their rule on either the Americans, on us or any people which today is subject to their attacks.