International

International Socialism

Che and Fidel: Revolutionaries to the end

As we celebrate the sixty-first anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, a great Irish friend, loyal defender of Cuba, asked me to write for Socialist Voice about the imprint of Fidel

Castro and Ernesto Guevara on the most important event of the twentieth century in Latin America—not without first clarifying for me, with the typical frankness and the

classic and imperative Irish style: it had to be brief.

Imperialism International

International Anti-Imperialist Conference in Caracas

2019 was a year of victories for Venezuela, President Maduro claimed at a ceremony on 23 January for the anniversary of the fall of the Jiménez dictatorship in 1958. This was also the date chosen last year by Juan Guaidó to proclaim himself “interim president” of Venezuela. His argument, prompted by Mike Pence, was that the office was vacant, because of their non-recognition of the election of President Maduro, and therefore should go to the chairperson of the National Assembly, the office he held.

International

No peace in Colombia

The long war in Colombia originated in the countryside, from the state oppression of the peasants and the continuing drive of the large landowners (latifundistas) to enlarge their landholdings at their expense, using paramilitary gangs to terrorise the people. The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) began in Marquetalia, in the south of the country, in 1964

International

Letter from Havana

The Communist Party of Ireland has anti-imperialism in its DNA and has consistently supported the Cuban people in their struggle against US aggression. This year, despite decades of US imperialist economic blockade, the people of Cuba overwhelmingly endorsed a new…

International

Our planet is on fire

as part of Global Climate Action Day, Galway Alliance Against War held a vigil in the city on Friday 29 November to draw attention to the link between climate change and war. The group believes that this issue has been simply ignored…

International

Debt, austerity, and the European Union

Towards the end of November the Irish media published reports of comments made by Prof. Christian Kastrop, a former associate of the German minister of finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, one of the architects of the debt crisis. Kastrop now works for the Bertelsmann Foundation, a think tank sponsored by the Bertelsmann Group, one of the principal German transnational
corporations.

International Ireland

The Brexit budget

DAN TARAGHAN: THE BUDGET for next year was presented to the Dáil on 8 October. In his speech the minister for finance, Paschal Donohoe, made much of the threat from a no-deal Brexit. This would have dire consequences for Ireland, as Britain is our main trading partner in the EU.

History International

The return of the “German spirit”

A NUMBER OF misconceptions are perpetuated when it comes to the dismantling of the inner-German border as the first step to the annexation of the German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany. It has been deceptively described as a “peaceful revolution.” True, the GDR state did not oppress the protesters, and it carried out one of the demands, which was to open the border between East and West. However, the West German state began to campaign aggressively

Imperialism International

Tourism as a tool of displacement

LAST MONTH a talk was given in Berlin and other European cities by Grassroots Al-Quds, a Palestinian group that is organising civil-society resistance to Israeli occupation. It aims to build an economic base within East Jerusalem to try to liberate occupied Palestinians from their dependence on NGOs and settler-colonialism.