Vol. 78/No. 14 April 14, 2014
April 14, 1989
The decision of United Nations officials to use South African-led troops to stop what it claimed to be a massive incursion into Namibia by fighters of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) shows the enormous political battle that will have to be fought to ensure an independent Namibia.The UN’s use of the South African forces amounted to deputizing Namibia’s colonizers.
An enormous victory was won for working people around the world when the South African government was forced to sign an agreement last December. That action was made possible by the military successes of Angolan, Cuban and SWAPO troops in the spring of last year. An effective mobilization of Cuban internationalist fighters, along with the most advanced military equipment, resulted in the decisive defeat of South African forces at the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale.
April 13, 1964
The leaders of the AFL-CIO unions have been generally silent about the dangers to the entire labor movement in the federal conviction last month of Teamster President James R. Hoffa. At last, however, one member of the AFL-CIO executive board, National Maritime Union President Joseph Curran, has publicly denounced the conviction.Curran urges “that the leadership of the AFL-CIO immediately declare its full support to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against any efforts to raid or divide that union. We owe it not only to the members of that union, but to our own members, to make that position clear. The people behind this drive against the Teamsters and the labor movement have no intention of stopping with the conviction of James Hoffa. Their target is the labor movement.”
Curran’s statement is quite correct.
April 14, 1939
The sparks of war came closer to the European powder barrel when Mussolini, chief bandit of Italian fascism, acting in apparent concert with his axis-ally, Hitler, virtually completed the forcible annexation of Albania without bothering too much to offer a pretext for the armed invasion and the bombing and shooting of the resisting population.Rival imperialists with headquarters in London and Paris were concerned over the seizure of Albania being only one step in the direction of Italian occupation of the Greek island of Corfu, which would give Italy a dominant position not only in the Adriatic but also in the Mediterranean Sea.
The Anglo-French war with the Berlin-Rome axis has as much to do with democracy, the independence of small nations and the freedom of nationalities — as it has with the theory of relativity.
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