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Our soldiers did not go to Africa to conquer, but to liberate.” — Fidel Castro¹Fidel Castro. “Speech in Havana on Angola.” December 1975. Transcript in Granma archives; reprinted in Pathfinder Press collections.

Read Part I and Part II.

In late 1975, as Angola prepared to cast off Portuguese rule, its fragile independence was threatened by apartheid South Africa’s armies and CIA‑backed mercenaries. Into this storm stepped Cuba. Within weeks, Havana launched Operación Carlota, named after an enslaved woman who led a …

(Full article …)

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  Fidel Castro. “Speech in Havana on Angola.” December 1975. Transcript in Granma archives; reprinted in Pathfinder Press collections.

On June 20, members of Palestine Action broke into a Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, going on to spray paint two military aircraft activists claimed were being used in “direct participation in the commission of genocide and war crimes across the Middle East.” This was deemed so horrible as to draw the ire of then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who went on to invoke section 3 of the Terrorism Act to proscribe the organisation.

At the time, it seemed impulsive, rash, and most likely intended to placate Israeli voices that something was being done about these …

Ximdo is a people’s peace movement that has been growing in the war and famine-plagued Horn of Africa for several months now. The word is from the Tigrinya language, used by Eritreans and Tigrayans in Ethiopia. It has a number of meanings, but the best is “coexistence and cooperation” between people, peacefully. Like when two cows are harnessed side by side to plow a field?

Its first manifestation was the work of Eritrean activist/entertainer Awel Seid, and it took place exactly where the Eritrean and Tigrayan border met, with Awel sitting on the Eritrean side and Bro. Berhane, a prominent Tigrayan …

If the camel is a committee’s version of a horse, then the concluding notes of the 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) at Belém, Brazil, were bound to be ungainly, weak, and messy. That is what you get from an emitting gathering of over 56,000 mostly subsidised attendees keen to etch their way into posterity. Leave aside the fact that some of the conference mongers might have been well-meaning, the final agreement was always going to be significant for what it omitted. It was also notable for lacking any official role from the United States, a country where …

Next year will mark 250 years since the “official” date assigned to the rebellion against British sovereignty in its North American colony, popularly known as the “American Revolution.” In early July of 1776, a number of prominent figures and leaders of colonial resistance to the authority of the English Crown met in the port city of one of the English colonies and signed a resolution and an audacious document declaring independence. The impressively crafted and innovative document drew an administrative and military response from English authorities in both London and the colonies and forced the colonies to plan their next …

Note: In the Local Newspaper, Newport News Times, now called, The Leader.

These are unprecedented times for human intelligence and collective memory. We are seeing turbo charged the scarfing up of the American and Western collective consciousness through the illicit actions of billionaires and their hoarding henchmen millionaires.

So much common sense and clear thinking have been virtually memory holed by the advancing armies of information and data controllers. Larry Ellison isn’t just hoarding all the data of the world through his many operations tied to Oracle. He’s Big Brother of another Mother.

This isn’t your grandparents’ …

It’s increasingly obvious that the US military threats against Venezuela have a wider agenda. Their game plan is regime change, but not only in Venezuela. This is the objective – on a longer timescale in some cases – across several of the countries in the Caribbean Basin, aiming to cleanse the region of governments deemed undesirable to Washington.

As international relations professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer reminds us, the US “does not tolerate left-leaning governments… and as soon as they see a government that is considered to be left-of-center they move to replace that government.”

In …

London is counting on arms contracts fueling the Ukraine conflict and won’t let the US just put and end to it, the SVR has warned….

It began with the colourful confessions of former Australian Army rifleman Oisin Donohoe. In a report published in The Age on November 8, Donohoe made salty allegations that the private security intended for overseeing “unlawful noncitizens” transferred from Australia to Nauru would be staffed by members of the Finks outlaw motorcycle gang. “It was pretty confronting to know that an outlaw motorcycle group was running a company that had got a government contract,” he stated with consternation. It was “mind-boggling” that such figures could participate in a “contract to oversee quite a significant national security item on the …

Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises all sorts of wonderous things. We are told that it will add trillions to GDP; diagnosis, prescribe treatment and register cures for all manner of illnesses; relieve us of mind-numbing tasks at work and at home; and ensure that every one of us is better than average. Doubtless, AI does carry the potential to improve some aspects of our lives. To gain perspective on the impacts that it will and will not make, though, prudence tells us to ponder how exactly AI will resolve the following matters that are bedeviling us.

* Americans’ selection as their President a …

A missing story thread of the Epstein scandal involves his connection to and service in behalf of Israel. Yes, we know the marketing platitude: “sex sells.” It goes without saying, genocide doesn’t. But there is a connection: The confederacy of pervs of the economic elite’s sense of entitlement includes possessing a proprietary attitude towards all they survey — whether it involves exploitation of the bodies of women and teenage girls or parceling off for profit the real estate of Gaza by means of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Ecocide, perpetual war, for profit …

Two of the most significant dates in my life as a progressive activist and organizer are April 4, 1968 and August of 2003. The 1968 date is the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. His killing pushed me to finally do something about racial injustice and the Vietnam War rather than just reading and thinking about them.

August of 2023 was when there was a brutal heat wave in western Europe which led to 70,000 deaths, primarily of elders. This was my wakeup call as far as the climate crisis, leading to several months of book-reading to understand how …

“A straightforward case,” says the public defender assigned to me. “We’ll settle this easy. Don’t you lose a wink of sleep over it.”

“That’s good to hear,” I say, “but it’s unsettling that the law I supposedly broke is identified only by symbols and numbers, not words.”

He smiles. “No sweat, young fella. Welcome to the 21st century; everything’s computerized now.”

“Yes, I know about computers. But when a SWAT team wrestles you to the ground, the least you expect is an explanation. All they did was shout a string of numbers and symbols at me.”

“I get it. That must have been frightening,” …

There has been an insufferable degree of smugness of late in the chatting classes about Australia’s electoral system. A special for Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced by veteran journalist Annabel Crabb has done much to swell the heads of officials, politicians and pundits. But the production called Civic Duty has to be seen alongside a general sense of puffed-up worth on Australia’s singular compulsory voting system. From the outset, the nature of the relationship between citizens (we might say subjects, given that Australia retains as its head of state the British monarch) and polity is made clear: you do …

If you think Trump’s threat to invade Venezuela is about stopping the influx of drugs into the United States, you need to take a closer look at Project 2025. That document advocates American hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. But Trump does not read documents or strategy papers. He wants to bully the hemisphere and control its vast natural resources. His “Gulf of America” apparently includes the vast oil reserves of Venezuela. The socialist nation has the world’s largest proven reserves. Still, with its politics chaotic and its military weak, and its close relationships with China, Russia, and Iran, it is …