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Vol. 77/No. 44      December 9, 2013

 
25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

December 9, 1988

Several South African government officials, including President Pieter Botha, have said that Nelson Mandela will not be returned to Pollsmoor Prison.

Mandela is being held under guard at the Constantiaburg clinic. He was transferred from Pollsmoor Prison to a nearby hospital after contracting tuberculosis.

Mandela is a central leader of the African National Congress, which is fighting to overthrow the apartheid regime and to establish a nonracial, democratic South Africa. He was imprisoned on a life sentence along with other leaders of the ANC in 1964. International pressure for his release has intensified over the last year.

Mandela has consistently rejected all offers by the apartheid rulers to release him on the condition that he renounce the use of violence in fighting against apartheid, and collaborate with the regime.

December 9, 1963

A growing wave of demonstrations climaxed by the self-immolation of a 20-year-old girl, Tran Bath Nga, is rocking South Vietnam. The deep unrest of the people of that unhappy nation was not eased by the substitution of a gang of power-hungry generals for the tyrant Diem.

Tran Bath Nga was reported to have left a note saying that her suicide was to protest “Vietnamese fight Vietnamese,” that is the war against peasant guerillas.

Continuation of the mass demonstrations and self-immolations that were the beginning of the end for Diem shows that the Buddhist protest expressed a deep and powerful mood among the Vietnamese.

The crisis of Vietnam will be resolved only by the withdrawal of American troops and the end of U.S. intervention in that country’s affairs, when the people of South Vietnam will be free to determine their future for themselves.

December 10, 1938

HOUSTON, Nov. 29 — The militant young workers who last week struck the warehouse industry in one of its most vital spots, the Walgreen Drug and Supply Warehouse, are determined to win a real victory. Only sixteen in number and entirely new to unionism, they are fast learning the value of progressive unionism and the need for workers’ vigilance.

The warehouse is tied up 100 percent and effective secondary picketing is being conducted at all the key downtown stores of the notorious national drug chain.

The company, in a desperate effort to smash the effectiveness of the strike, has hired almost fifty ten-dollar-a-day finks who just stand around and look at the pickets and “guard” Walgreen’s precious real estate. Squads of union cabs are parked near the key stores waiting for any finks who might dare to attack the strikers.  
 
 
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