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At 8.50 p.m. local time (6.50 p.m. British time), Nelson Mandela, the great liberation hero, the leader of the ANC, the first Commander-in-Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the first democratically-elected president of South Africa, passed away at the age of 95 at his home in the Houghton Suburb of Johannesburg. Although expected, his death brought … [Read more…]

After its election victory in 1948, the National Party (some of whose leaders had been locked up as Nazi sympathisers during the Second World War), guided by the racist ideology of apartheid, built a state to entrench white supremacy. Through more than 40 pieces of legislation enacted by the whites-only Parliament, the majority of the … [Read more…]

Following a last lengthy battle with cancer, on 16 September 2013, Comrade Chin Peng, who served as the secretary-general of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) for well over six decades, passed away in a hospital in the Thai capital, Bangkok, at the age of 88. Ironically, 16 September is Malaysia Day, marking the country’s … [Read more…]

On 17 October the US public debt hit the $17 trillion mark for the first time – $53,765 for each US citizen;$751,940 per family; $148,747 for each US taxpayer! This is 107% of GDP. Total personal debt is also over $16 trillion. It is more than obvious that these staggering amounts are nothing short of … [Read more…]

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Ghadar movement. By way of a tribute, Lalkar is dedicating this long article to the memory of its founders and participants – the forerunners of India’s struggle for liberation from British colonialism. What follows is an attempt to give a brief history of the Ghadar movement – … [Read more…]

On 4 October 2013, in a military hospital in Hanoi, where he had lived for the last few years of his life, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese patriotic hero, staunch, loyal and devoted communist, and a man almost universally recognised as one of humanity’s greatest military geniuses of all times, sometimes referred to as the … [Read more…]

The capitulation by Unite to the so-called “survival programme” bulldozed through at Grangemouth by Ineos is a black day for workers everywhere. The terms of the surrender are galling to read: a three year pay freeze, a three-year abstention from strikes, the imposition of inferior pension arrangements and a ban on fulltime union convenors. Unite … [Read more…]

Kang Dong Kyun, the Mayor of Ganjeong Village on Jeju Island, South Korea, has been touring Europe, visiting Dublin, London and various other English cities and Paris to draw attention to the destruction that is being wrought to an area UNESCO has declared to be one of the world’s most important sites of natural beauty, … [Read more…]

The eventual complete privatisation of Royal Mail (with only the post offices separated and remaining in public hands) passed with barely a whimper let alone anything resembling a bang. This privatisation was one, along with the NHS, that various governments have considered over the years but every one of them, from Thatcher to Major, Blair … [Read more…]

The revelations earlier this year by Edward Snowden re the Prism programme and the spying on the whole world by the US government through its National Security Agency (NSA), see Lalkar July/August 2013 edition http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/jul2013/snowden.html, have just about been dropped by most imperialist media outlets, be it newspapers or TV news programmes, as a subject … [Read more…]