Vol. 77/No. 46 December 23, 2013
December 23, 1988
The government of Angola, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States have signed an agreement that represents a substantial step toward ending the 13-year-old U.S.- and South African-run war against the people of Angola. It also opens the way to implementing a United Nations plan for the independence of Namibia, which has been militarily occupied by South Africa since 1915.The agreement was signed December 13 in Brazzaville, Congo, and is known as the Brazzaville Protocol. A formal signing ceremony of the protocol will take place at the United Nations on December 22.
Angolan and Cuban troops dealt a decisive military defeat to South African troops and their Angolan ally, UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), in March of this year at the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale. The Angolan and Cuban forces were joined by fighters from the South West Africa People’s Organisation.
December 23, 1963
The State Department’s “long-held but rarely articulated” China policy was recently made public in a speech by Roger Hilsman, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Though his reference to an “open door” policy for normalization of relations was greeted with fanfare, there is nothing new in the statement.It is still aggressive and imperialist. It is a policy of military intervention and threats, of embargo and non-recognition.
All this is justified by the claim of China’s hostility toward the U.S. But the true origin of present relations with China lies in U.S. attempts to smash the Chinese Revolution. In the course of its intervention in China’s civil war, the U.S. backed Chiang Kai-shek and his reactionary clique, later installed him on Formosa with the U.S. Navy to guard him, and armed his forces for counter-revolutionary forays and a hoped-for invasion of the mainland.
December 24, 1938
The failure of the capitalist system to supply even the most elementary needs of the workers is no more glaringly illustrated than in the persistent phenomenon of mass unemployment in the richest country on earth.It becomes increasingly clear, particularly in the mass production industries, that the organized labor movement and the employed workers in general, face chronic mass unemployment, the most devastating menace to their interests.
Despite all the tremendous gains of the past few years, particularly in the field of industrial unionism, constantly recurring economic declines heaping up new and more extensive strata of unemployed have cut wide swathes in the union ranks and hold the terror of insecurity over every employed worker. The knowledge that there are thousands of jobless men, desperate for any opportunity to earn a livelihood waiting just outside the plant gates cannot help but breed caution in the average worker.
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