IRANIAN communists hailed the beginning of a new chapter in workers struggle today, as unions sent messages of international solidarity to striking lorry drivers.
Goods and haulage transportation has ground to a halt in Iran, with a dispute over terms and conditions and the rising prices of tyres and spare parts rolling into a second week.Read More »
WE ALL know our prisons are in a state of emergency — with horrifying stories of hospitalised officers, soaring suicide rates and synthetic-drug-fuelled riots reported almost every week.
Attacks on staff and prisoners have skyrocketed since the coalition government sacked 7,000 prison officers under the direction of serial wrecker Chris Grayling, while the Tories’ recent desperate recruitment drive has proved to be too little, too late.Read More »
This brief input deals with the meaning of Steve Bantu Biko for young people today and whether his vision of bestowing upon South Africa “a more humane face” remains valid. Biko is without doubt one of the most important figures of Black liberation of the past century. Today, 41 years after his murder, his mission of total independence for Black people, remains unfinished.
Opening remarks
In order to argue this conclusion, we will reflect on critical moments in Black radical resistance that occurred during the month of September, provide a brief description of Biko’s philosophical character, suggest which of today’s young people may be described as having been “touched” by Biko, and attempt to illustrate the implications of Biko’s vision of a ‘human face’ for the advancement of the Black liberation project, today.
The cauldron of corruption and lies has been boiling non-stop 24 hours a day. The time has come to overturn it, for Haitians to begin to see the light of peace. Haiti is for all Haitians. – Fanmi Lavalas statement, 8 July 2018. Fanmi Lavalas is the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, and represents Haiti’s poor majority.
On 6 July 2018, Haiti exploded. By the tens of thousands, Haitians poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse. The protests were sparked by the government’s announcement that it would reduce or remove subsidies on fuel, leading to a rise of 38 percent in the price of gasoline, and that the price of kerosene would jump 50 percent to US $4.00 a gallon. The uprising spread across the country and lasted three days. Port-au-Prince was brought to a standstill. Protesters set up barricades in the streets, burned tires, and attacked stores owned by the rich. Luxury hotels in the Pétion-ville area were sacked by angry demonstrators.
The recent and ongoing political violence in West Bengal must be seen in light of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s efforts to capture that most culturally and historically significant state from the ruling Trinamool Congress party, as well as the latter’s attempts to retain hold of the power it snatched from the Left nearly a decade ago now.
So are the banksters all right after all?
Nope. All there is to show after 400 years is a kind of Pax Hamstera, or better, Pax Lemmus. The horrors of the 19th-20th centuries, now going off the horror chart in the 21st century. We run faster and faster, inventing and marketing ever new gadgets, and the standard of living, we now realize, is plummeting, not so much in dollar terms (that, yes) but in terms of all the ‘external economies’ that come along with those gadgets, and the lifestyle of homo hamsterus.Read More »
Before he went to prison, Mark Loughney used watercolors and acrylics to create bright, playful portraits of his favorite musicians. His early work features Trey Anastasio and Grace Potter and Snoop Dogg, all smiling and content, deep into their guitars and joints. But then Loughney committed a crime that even now, years later, he can barely explain.Read More »
This is a film about the life of the Communist poet Saroj Dutta, and the turbulent days of the Naxal movement in Bengal in the sixties and seventies, where the poet and his context become inseparable from each other.Read More »
Journal of People 