About the new but unreferenced new_class, Guido sez:

> Looks like an experiment by Oren Tirosh that didn't get nuked.  I
> think you can safely lose it.

It's gone.

Objects/classobject.c

@@ -155,21 +155,6 @@ PyDoc_STRVAR(class_doc,
 Create a class object.  The name must be a string; the second argument\n\
 a tuple of classes, and the third a dictionary.");
 
-static PyObject *
-new_class(PyObject* unused, PyObject* args)
-{
-	PyObject *name;
-	PyObject *classes;
-	PyObject *dict;
-  
-	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "SO!O!:class",
-			      &name,
-			      &PyTuple_Type, &classes,
-			      &PyDict_Type, &dict))
-		return NULL;
-	return PyClass_New(classes, dict, name);
-}
-
 static PyObject *
 class_new(PyTypeObject *type, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwds)
 {