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Vol. 79/No. 29      August 17, 2015

 
25, 50, and 75 Years Ago  

August 10, 1990

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has claimed the lives of some 84,000 people over the last decade.

U.S. government officials have known since 1981 how the AIDS virus is transmitted. But an effective national plan of public health measures to save lives and provide care for people with AIDS has yet to be implemented.

The spread of AIDS did not just happen. It was and is being allowed to happen.

Working people need to champion the rights of those struck with AIDS no matter who they are. We must demand government funding for adequate medical care and for stepping up the research for better treatment and prevention of AIDS. The rulers’ complacent attitude now shrouding the spread of AIDS should be forcefully rejected.

August 23, 1965

LOS ANGELES — The social explosion which rocked this city’s black ghetto for nearly a week was elemental in its fury and revolutionary in its implication. The biggest uprising of U.S. Negroes in the Twentieth Century, it was ignited by unendurable white racist oppression.

Touched off by the strong-arm methods of two cops arresting a 21-year-old youth on charges of alleged drunken driving, the outbreak was met by savage police repression. Of the 33 reported dead, 29 are black people, victims of trigger-happy cops and national guardsmen. So far 3,352 residents of the ghetto have been jailed and they are being held in punitively high bail.

Watts has the aspects of an oppressed colonial people in revolt. They are in rebellion against the forces that oppress them.

August 17, 1940

The British retreat in Asia is taking on the semblance of a rout. On August 8 the British Viceroy of India announced a new and slightly more precise promise of dominion status for India … after the war.

The new promise to India is no less empty than all those that have gone before. But it is clearly tinged with the desperation of an imperial regime that knows its end is drawing near. Lord Linlithgow’s statement was clearly an appeal to the native ruling classes of India, promising “free partnership” in the British Commonwealth in return for support against the threat of complete submersion of British power implicit in the German march of conquest. Finally, he promised that after the war the Indians would themselves be permitted to draw up their own constitution.  
 
 
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