June 4, 2001
Hundreds of thousands of Berber people marched in Algeria May 21 demanding the removal of the police who have killed dozens of protesters. The mobilization comes on the heels of weeks of demonstrations involving tens of thousands.
Berbers, an oppressed nationality, comprise 30% of Algeria’s 30 million people. The protest also demanded jobs, better housing and steps to end the rising impoverishment of growing layers of workers and farmers.
The ruling party today bears the same name, the National Liberation Front, as the powerful movement that led the battle for independence. France had as many as 500,000 troops occupying the country from 1954 to 1962. By 1963 a workers and farmers government had been established under the leadership of Ahmed Ben Bella, which existed until 1965, when Ben Bella was overthrown by a military coup.
June 4, 1976
CHICAGO — Supporters of Ed Sadlowski, director of United Steelworkers District 31, have won overwhelming victories in local union elections in several of the district’s big steel mills. Support for Sadlowski in his home local in South Chicago was registered when John Chico decisively defeated incumbent president Frank Mirocha.
At Inland Steel in East Chicago, the largest mill local in the country, Sadlowski supporter Jim Balanoff defeated incumbent president Hank Lopez. His slate won eight out of nine other posts open.
Norman Purdue, a Sadlowski supporter who was elected president of the 10,000-member Local 1011 at Youngstown Sheet and Tube, said the victories are “sending a message to Pittsburgh.” Steelworkers Local 1657 at Interlake Steel in Chicago voted in Richard Alexander as president, another Sadlowski supporter.
June 4, 1951
The April 23 Militant charged that U.S. casualties in Korea are “more than double the misleading figures given out by the Defense Department.” This is now fully confirmed by the testimony of Gen. Omar Bradley before Senate hearings.
Bradley admitted that, in addition to 69,276 so-called “battle” casualties, the U.S. forces have suffered 72,679 “non-battle” casualties. Bradley tried to pass off the “non-battle” casualties as inconsequential. He used the example of a man “with a cold or something else.” But a lot of these “colds” were pneumonia and virulent influenza contracted by men lying in open fox holes in the sub-zero Korean winter.
As Sen. Bridges, who questioned Bradley, observed: “If a man loses a hand by frostbite or frozen off or he is otherwise injured he is just as much a battle casualty as the fellow who gets a bullet in battle.”