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On the 12 April 1961, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin made history as the first human being to enter space, in Vostok 1 a Soviet spaceship.  His flight lasted just 108 minutes, the distance travelled before he ejected to return to earth by parachute was 40,806 Km and 600M.  He had reached a maximum height of 327Km … [Read more…]

On 9 April, the electorate of the small north European country of Iceland, for the second time, rejected, in a referendum, a proposal by their social democratic government that they accept a regime of enforced penury so as to repay, at onerous rates of interest, the British and Dutch governments, for the payments made by … [Read more…]

The violent overthrow of Ivory Coast’s government by French imperialism, in cahoots with northern rebel militia and with the hypocritical blessing of the UN, signals not the end but the beginning of yet another round of cruel civil strife inflicted on the Ivorian people by imperialism. Yet this desperate stab at recolonising Africa by brute … [Read more…]

A war prepared in advanceThe imperialist war against Libya, now under way, has been in preparation for a long time, needing only a flimsy pretext to be triggered.  This pretext, well-prepared by imperialism through its Libyan stooges, arose on 16 February when anti-government insurgents began their armed rebellion against the government of Colonel Gaddafi. No … [Read more…]

At the end of April, the Arab state of Syria was in the grip of a severe crisis, with protests against the government, led by the progressive Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party, in numerous towns and cities, leading to violent clashes between security forces and those whom the government have termed armed insurrectionists backed by foreign … [Read more…]

Comrade Tishchenko’s speech gives a graphic account of the devastating effects of the restoration of capitalism in the Ukraine, involving a precipitate decline in population, drastic reduction of living standards, a dramatic decline in GDP, unprecedented levels of unemployment, social degradation and destitution – all the things that the freedom-loving imperialist media are totally silent … [Read more…]

In the wake of the two-month-long Franco-Prussian war of autumn 1870, which saw the French capitalist state resoundingly defeated (with its self-styled emperor, Napoleon III, being captured on the battlefield) and witnessed the birth of a united Germany, the workers of Paris briefly established, for the first time, a dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of … [Read more…]

In developments of great magnitude, wrote Marx, “Twenty years are no more than a day – though later on days may come again in which twenty years are embodied” (‘Letter to Engels’, 9 April 1863).The current revolutionary struggles in Tunisia and Egypt furnish yet more proof of the correctness of the above profound observation.  Tunisia, … [Read more…]

The political map of the Republic of Ireland has undergone an unprecedented change as a result of the general election held in that state on 25 February 2011.Occurring against the backdrop of the impact on Ireland of the eurozone crisis, which has seen Ireland forced into a humiliating £72 billion EU-IMF bailout to rescue its … [Read more…]

The Socialist Party gets it half rightThe decision taken by the National Shop Stewards Network at a special conference on 22nd January to put its growing weight behind a national anti-cuts campaign, with organised labour at its core, is welcome news.  The rising tide of popular support amongst union militants for the proposal to break … [Read more…]