Lifting the veil on racism - FRFI 194 December 2006 / January 2007
'On 5 October the Leader of the House of Commons, Labour MP for Blackburn, former Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary Jack Straw wrote in his local newspaper about his objections to Muslim women wearing the full veil, or niqab. Almost immediately attacks on Muslims escalated throughout Britain with assaults on women with veils...' Read more >
Andrew O’Hagan’s Grenfell ‘novella’: truly a class act
The 60,000+-word essay published by the London Review of Books just one week before the anniversary of the Grenfell fire, by novelist and reporter Andrew O’Hagan, shows the kind of establishment backlash we can now expect against those fighting for justice for the 72 people who died. Read more >>
On Saturday 28 July, following the latest Israeli airstrikes on besieged Gaza, supporters of FRFI* were on the streets in Newcastle, protesting British support for Israel with a picket of Marks & Spencer – Britain’s largest corporate sponsor of the Zionist state.
The run up to the on off on summit between US President Donald Trump and DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on 12 June saw Trump, Vice President Pence and John Bolton, his fascistic National Security Advisor, threaten that if North Korea didn't agree almost immediately to destroy its nuclear capabilities then it would end up like Libya, and Kim would face the same fate as Gaddafi. Yet just over one month after the summit Trump told members of the US Congress that there was 'no time limit, no speed limit' on the DPRK giving up its nuclear capabilities.
The private multinational provider of public services SERCO has announced plans to evict up to three hundred ‘failed’ asylum seekers in Glasgow from the week beginning 30 July. They are currently contracted by the Home Office to provide housing for around 5,000 asylum seekers in Glasgow. SERCO’s eviction plans were announced to a range of charities on Friday 27 July and publicly exposed on 30 July prompting two subsequent days of protest attended by hundreds of people outraged at the issuing of these ‘lock change’ notices. The RCG supported both the protests on Buchanan Street on 31 July, called by an individual Facebook user, and provided chants and a megaphone for the protests, called by Living Rent and the Unity Centre, the following day outside the SERCO Building and the Home Office’s Border and immigration centre on Brand Street. So far around six lock change notices are known to have been issued.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is the longest serving political prisoner in Europe, approaching his 35th year in prison; for comparison, Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years. Abdallah was arrested in Lyon, France on 24 October 1984 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for the assassinations of a US military attaché and an Israeli diplomat in Paris in January and April 1982. Georges is a Lebanese revolutionary communist who has dedicated his life to the struggle against imperialism and Zionism, becoming a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) before in 1979 helping form the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which claimed the two assassinations.
In the final vote for the presidential elections on 17 June, Senator Ivan Duque (Democratic Centre Party) standing for the Grand Alliance for Colombia coalition was elected President of Colombia. He defeated Gustavo Petro, a prominent leftist, ex- member of the disbanded M-19 guerrilla group and former mayor of Bogota, representing the List of Decency coalition. Petro took 41.81% of the electoral votes while ex-banker Duque won with 53.98%, in a turnout of 53.04%, the highest in 20 years. The FARC’s (Common Alternative Revolutionary Force) presidential candidate Rodrigo Londoňo, known as Timochenko, suffered a heart attack and was forced to withdraw from the campaign on 8 March. FARC then declined to field another presidential candidate. FARC’s legal political activities were obstructed from the day peace negotiations finished, and the new president will intensify the attack against it, an attack that undermines all socialists in Colombia.
