Priorities on the international front: Ahead of the Communist Party’s forthcoming Congress, KEVAN NELSON takes a look at the global issues of war, peace and imperialism that will be up for discussion among comrades this weekendIN 1924, the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain made “pledges of solidarity with the struggling colonial workers and promises the fullest possible assistance in the development of their struggle for freedom. It appreciates it as an immediate duty to denounce and expose the treacherous conduct of the Labour government in this country. This government has since its accession to office not merely allowed but excused and condoned the shooting down and massacre of colonial workers. Thousands of workers are in gaol in Egypt and India and the Labour government does nothing.” This weekend, 101 years on at the 58th Congress of the Communist Party, similar criticisms will echo through time as delegates condemn the complicity of today’s Labour government with the Israeli-perpetrated genocide in Gaza and its pre-eminent role in Nato’s drive to war. Typically, the Congress will have a substantial international character with an array of delegates and visitors from sister communist and workers’ parties. Invitations to Congress have been accepted by Ofer Cassif, a communist member of the parliament (Knesset) in Israel and Bassam al-Sahli the general secretary of the Palestinian People’s Party who will give first-hand accounts of resistance to Israel’s war machine and occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/priorities-international-frontHow the US Intervened to Sabotage Angola’s IndependenceNovember 11, 2025, marks the fiftieth anniversary of Angola’s independence, ending more than five centuries of Portuguese domination. The independence struggle had been long and bloody, marked by outside intervention that turned Angola into a Cold War battleground. In this regard, Angola was not alone. In the aftermath of World War II, African independence movements sprang up in French, British, and Belgian colonies, where civilian populations had been forced to support the European war effort. In exchange for their sacrifices, they demanded political rights, better living and working conditions, and eventually complete independence. By the early 1960s, France, Britain, and Belgium were forced to concede. They granted political independence to most of their colonies in exchange for economic privileges that provided them with the same benefits but without the hassles and expense of political control. Portugal, in contrast, was an impoverished country with an underdeveloped economy. Without the cheap labor and raw materials that resulted from a harsh colonial regime, Portugal’s industries would not be profitable. Unable to compete in an unprotected market, Portugal was thus determined to retain political control of its African colonies. From 1961 to 1974, it waged devastating wars to keep them.
https://jacobin.com/2025/11/angola-civil-war-independence-kissingerFrom self-demobilization to the abolition of Ukraine. Late autumn 2025 interview with the AssemblyAbout the situation: - How would you describe the situation in Kharkiv right now? On the social, economic scale, as well as your mindset right now? - What happened for you on the 24th of February 2022?
- The city has been 20 km from the front line for a year and a half now (since May 2024). You can find more details about the economic situation in our separate big material for City Day. The rest is little different from other southeastern cities. It's like the 1942-1943 occupation: every day, civilians are safaried on the streets, packed into minibuses called gas vans and driven to their death. This is not to mention the regular prisons and pre-trial detention centers full of political prisoners of all ages, who receive many years of imprisonment for terrible crimes such as working in the municipal services of the Russian-occupied Kupyansk or talking about the common historical past of Russians and Ukrainians. The local language, holidays, monuments, and toponyms are banned by the administration like some kind of colonizers. The prospects for getting through the heating season with heat and electricity are very dim. Naturally, this doesn't apply to the elites – they will definitely have it. A wonderful illustration of the Ukrainian authorities’ attitude toward our local population from the Odessa-based leftist historian Vyacheslav Azarov: "Language Ombudsman Ivanovska called on Kharkov police to conduct a preventive conversation with the owners of some bar where visitors sing karaoke in Russian. The official herself admitted that the law does not prohibit this, but in the face of Russian aggression, such songs provoke public outrage, which the ombudsman shares. In essence, the official called on the police to violate the law because the emotions of a segment of society intolerant of fellow citizens speaking other languages are more important to her. The familiar social hierarchy is once again at play, where there is the rank-and-file citizenry, above them the state, and on top of them a patriotic elite that is above all law. I have to disappoint those fighting imperialism, but this scheme accurately reproduces the order of the late Russian Empire, when public behavior was dictated by the Black Hundreds. This "salt of the land," "truly Russian people" also had the patriotic privilege of using arbitrary reprisals to improve the behavior of their fellow citizens for the benefit of the autocracy, and the police actively used them for this purpose when they were not legally allowed to do so." Meanwhile, according to government data, in 2024, a total of 51% of young people in Ukraine spoke Russian in everyday life. This year, 40% of schoolchildren in Ukrainian schools speak Russian during recess, and 30% do so at home and with friends. The proportion of those who consider Ukrainian their native language has officially declined from 71% to 64% over the past year.
https://libcom.org/article/self-demobilization-abolition-ukraine-late-autumn-2025-interview-assembly