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   Vol.66/No.41           November 4, 2002  
 
 
25 and 50 years ago  

November 4, 1977
A week of token protests.

That’s how the Carter administration has responded to South Africa’s October 19 crackdown [banning more than 20 anti-apartheid organizations and two Black-run newspapers].

Neither Carter, nor [United Nations Ambassador Andrew] Young, nor other administration figures have said anything about reducing the $3.8 billion in direct and indirect American investments in South Africa.

But these help prop up the apartheid economy and the entire system of racist rule.

In a November 5, 1976, interview in the Johannesburg Financial Mail, he said, "Our American businessman can be a constructive force achieving racial justice within South Africa."

One year later, this U.S. investment in apartheid has borne bitter fruit. Can there be a more damaging indictment of Carter’s real South Africa policy?

Carter is the chief executive for the American corporations that profit off the racist superexploitation of Black workers in South Africa and the continued existence of white-minority regimes in Rhodesia and South-West Africa.

That’s why supporters of the African freedom struggle should not be misled by the president’s words. They need to build a movement that takes on both the bigots in Pretoria and their backers in Washington.  
 
November 3, 1952
A series of new witch-hunt moves, partly designed as pre-election efforts to beat off Republican charges of "softness towards Communism," have been made by the Truman administration in the past two weeks.

On October 20, a two-member subcommittee of the Subversive Activities Control Board set up under the McCarran Act called the Communist Party "a puppet of the Soviet Union" and recommended that the CP be compelled to register its officers, members and finances.

The CP is not yet legally required to register. This gives the anti-witch-hunt forces time to organize a strong movement against this first attempt in U.S. history to (in effect) outlaw a political party.

On October 28, Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party and Morris L. Ernst of the American Civil Liberties Union joined with the labor editor of Business Week and several other signers in a letter to the N.Y. Times "warning" liberals against joining any committee to defend the CP against the McCarran Act.

The letter said that the finding of the McCarran panel is "fair, proper and correct." It tries to do an advance hatchet job on any movement to defend civil liberties against the McCarran Act by hinting that such movements are "Communist-inspired or Communist-directed."  
 
 
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