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Created: Friday, 05 October 2018 14:43

Written by Alvaro Michaels

Thousands of FARC fighters who demobilised after the 2016 peace agreement have been forced to take up arms again. The aggressive and vindictive assaults on the FARC during the long and difficult negotiations, the constant attempts to demoralise and corner the revolutionary organisation, the subsequent bad faith shown by the government in the implementation of the peace agreement, and the continuous assassination campaign against ex-FARC members, created this situation. ALVARO MICHAELS reports.

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Created: Tuesday, 16 October 2018 11:26

Written by Cassandra Howarth

Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the status and quality of life of Cuban women has improved dramatically with women now constituting almost 60% of all professionals and more than half of scientists. Women are also becoming increasingly represented in government, and in the national parliament 53.2% of members are women. The ministers for Education, Finance and Pricing, Domestic Trade, the Food Industry, Labour and Social Security, Science, Technology and the Environment, and the Minister and President of the Central Bank of Cuba are also all women, as well as the heads of the National Environmental Agency, and eight out of 15 provinces in Cuba are led by women.

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Created: Tuesday, 02 October 2018 10:03

Written by Will Harney

The summer of 2018 saw a rise in the activity of the far right in Britain. A number of high-profile street demonstrations in London by the far-right Democratic Football Lads Alliance (D-FLA) were organised in support of English Defence League co-founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka ‘Tommy Robinson’) and attended by thousands. This and other far-right events around the country have prompted calls to reboot the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), an anti-fascist movement formed by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1977. However, just like the original ANL, the mainstream anti-fascist groups’ strategy is to seek unity with the Labour Party and trade unions whose support for racist immigration controls and policing has not changed under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Re-forming the ANL has been endorsed by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, a key ally of Corbyn, and a ‘National unity demo against racism and fascism’ has been organised for 17 November. This festival of respectable anti-fascism will do nothing to challenge the chief perpetrator of racist violence, the British state. WILL HARNEY reports.

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Created: Thursday, 04 October 2018 13:08

Written by Charles Chinweizu

The question of land remains unresolved in South Africa 24 years after the official end of apartheid. Apartheid was a system of separate and racist 'development', with black South Africans brutally dispossessed and denied access to land, infrastructure and resources, while their white counterparts were given preferential treatment and access to the economy. On 27 February 2018, the National Assembly decided to review the property clause, Section 25 of the 1996 Constitution to allow 'land expropriation without compensation'. This followed the decision by the governing African National Congress (ANC) at its December 2017 conference, to implement a constitutional amendment to Section 25, provided it was 'sustainable and did not harm the agricultural sector or the economy’. In 2016, a law was passed allowing the state to expropriate land in the 'public interest'. Section 25 of the constitution, itself a compromise with imperialism, only allows for land expropriation for a 'public purpose or in the public interest', hence the need to amend the constitution to allow expropriation without compensation.

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