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Vol. 74/No. 27      July 19, 2010

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
July 19, 1985
South African cops murdered at least seven Blacks in KwaThema township July 9. Anglican Bishop Simeon Nikoane and other residents said the massacre began when cops fired tear gas into a theater where Blacks were holding a silent vigil for four of the eight Blacks killed in KwaThema June 26. As Blacks fled the theater, the cops opened fire.

Despite the police terror, hundreds attended the funeral of the four that day. "Funerals represent one of the few ways for South Africa's Black majority of 23 million to hold legal meetings," reported the July 10 New York Times.

Massacres and assassinations by the racist apartheid regime have taken the lives of more than 500 Black freedom fighters in the past year.

There is growing evidence that the government is organizing covert death squads to "disappear" and murder opponents of apartheid.  
 
July 11, 1960
The Socialist Workers party today published the text of the platform upon which its national candidates—Farrell Dobbs for president and Myra Tanner Weiss for vice president—will run in the 1960 elections.

Three key issues dominate the 1960 campaign, its opening paragraph states: "(1) How can the world be free from the threat of nuclear destruction? (2) How can hunger and poverty be wiped out? (3) How can democracy and equality be won and maintained?"

"Forty-three years after entering the first global conflict to 'Make the World Safe for Democracy,' America has yet to make its lunch counters safe for Negroes in the South." The platform contains over a score of proposals to restore and expand civil liberties, defend labor's rights, and protect the positions of minority groups.  
 
July 20, 1935
Tribesmen of all Ethiopia are prepared to drop the ploughshare and seize the sword to drive back the Fascist marauder and preserve the independence of their nation.

To a man, they responded to the battle cry of Haile Selassie, who exhorted them with the appeal: "Better die free than live as slaves."

Close to 200,000 Italian troops are now in eastern Africa prepared to assume military operations against the legions of Haile Selassie. Three hundred planes are being dispatched by Mussolini to overcome hazards of desert fighting. Corroding acid to burn the soles of the feet of the Ethiopian soldiers is being turned out in large quantities and shipped to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.

Reports emanating from Italian territory in east Africa declare that demoralization is setting in among the troops stationed there.  
 
 
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