My stepmother Shanthie Naidoo and her sister Ramnie were on an overnight flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow for a speaking tour when Extinction Rebellion offshoot Heathrow Pause began wilfully endangering aircraft by flying drones over the airport this morning. Shanthie is an ANC struggle veteran who lived in exile in London from 1973 to 1993, apart from some time in the exile community in Mazimbu, Tanzania. She and all her immediate family were jailed by the Apartheid government for political reasons. Shanthie's late brother Indres did 10 years on Robben Island and later wrote the book 'Island in Chains'. Their grandfather Thembi Naidoo worked alongside Mohandas K Gandhi during the civil disobedience campaigns against the early form of Apartheid. Extinction Rebellion has chosen for its logo a variation on the 'sonnenkreuz', a symbol used by both proto-fascist neo-pagan organisations and modern neo-Nazis. Around 220,000 passengers fly in and out of Heathr...

WHAT do you call an event that would see a country lose a third of its population? A catastrophe? An apocalypse? In Europe they call it “Union.” According to the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the “free movement of labour” between European Union member states will see that fraction of some countries' populations emigrate in the next 40 years. A recent IIASA study, reported on Friday by the EU Observer website, says Romania and Croatia's populations will fall by 30 percent by 2060, and Lithuania's by 38 percent. By contrast, eight years of the West's proxy war on Syria, when much of the country was overrun by terrorists who behead followers of other religious sects, has seen between 12 and 23 percent of the population flee the country. The 1983-85 Ethiopian famine killed about 1.2 million people and drove another 400,000 out of the country, about five per cent of the population at the time. Another 41 years of EU...

“Jovian” French President Emmanuel Macron spelt out this week, for anyone with lingering doubts, that membership of the European Union is incompatible with national sovereignty and independence – and that the bloc should assume an imperial role. In deference to the new Sun King, newspapers in all of the 28 current member states dutifully printed his proclamation on Monday, including Britain's liberal sneer-sheet The Guardian. Macron began by repeating the common but false claim that the EU, established in 1993 as a successor to the European Economic Community (which only contained NATO members), had kept the peace in Europe since the end of WWII. Then he turned on those, like Britain, daring to reassert national self-determination. “What country can act on its own in the face of aggressive strategies by the major powers?” Macron asked, seemingly ignoring the fact that three of the great military and economic powers are currently EU members. “Who can claim to be sovereign,...

Continuing a long British tradition of political protest, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was 'egged' on Sunday. A man described in news reports as a “pro-Brexit protester” caught up with 'Jezza' outside the Finsbury Park Mosque and slapped a raw egg down on his head, with the words: “When you vote, you get what you vote for.” The protester was arrested for assault. The media was quick to assure us that the Labour leader was unharmed after his ordeal. Labour shadow home secretary Diane Abbott ramped up the hyperbole when she tweeted: “He punched Jeremy very hard. He happened to have an egg in his palm. But it could have been a knife.” But the sticky situation Corbyn found himself in was no more than what he deserved after selling out his principals, his friends and his country twice last week in a vain attempt to appease factions in his party who want him out. First he declared his support for a re-run of the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union,...

Teachers from across Africa urged the continental bloc to halt the privatisation of national education systems today. Unions affiliated to the Education International (EI) federation pressed the African Union (AU) to stop the spread of sordid tin-shack schools funded by the world's richest man. The EI statement, issued in the Ethiopian capital and seat of the AU Addis Ababa warned: “we are witnessing a shift away from education as a public good,” with “a reduction in education budgets and increased privatisation of education.” “This is not the Africa we want,” said EI Africa Committee Chair Christian Addai-Poku, referring to the AU's 'Agenda 2063' plan. “Quality education for the public good is an indispensable condition for the development of our continent and the realisation of the full potential of all its people.” The teaching unions criticised the rapid growth across the continent of ‘low-cost’ private schools, which they said were “notorious for empl...

Guest post by the Vice-Chancellor of the Johannesburg Communist University The US assault on Venezuela is part of something bigger. It is part of an attempt by the USA to restore the position it had in the 1950s (when this writer was a child). This is the full meaning of “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). MAGA is not a withdrawal from the world, but it represents a US-led colonialist attempt to repossess the world. In the pursuit of its megalomaniac goals the USA is putting out mass-scale misdirection and misrepresentation, mixed with crude frankness. The USA sends mixed messages. Those of us who are to be the losers have to work hard to gain a clear picture of what is happening, and of what can proceed to happen in the near future. For Africans and for the once-called “Tricontinental” former colonial countries, the USA’s project, which is a bipartisan (Democrats as much as Republicans) project, represents an intended reversal of the “independence” movement that swept th...

The Hispanosphere was interviewed by news website Sputnik International on Thursday January 31, about the latest attempted coup d'etat in Venezuela. Here is the original transcript. What do you know about the ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela? Who is Juan Guaido, and what is his relationship to US intelligence services? Who is backing the coup and what's going on there? Like a lot of wealthy Latin Americans, Juan Guaidó went to university in the US. He studied “governance”, which is about telling people how to run their country.  Guaidó appeared on the political scene in Venezuela just after that, about 2007. For years before that the opposition had been taking money from the National Endowment for Democracy, which sounds like a charity but is really part of the US State Department. If you know the history of the NED, it took over the CIA's old job of channelling money to opposition and regime-change forces in other countries. Guaidó is from the Popular Will party, ...

Lima Group rules out intervention Washington's Latin American allies will not back any invasion of Venezuela to overthrow its elected government.  Peruvian Foreign Minister Néstor Popolizio insisted on Tuesday that the 'Lima Group' of nations – those hostile to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government – was against “military intervention.” “As the Lima Group we have said that we do not support any military intervention in Venezuela,” Mr Popolizio said at a meeting of the group in the Canadian capital Ottawa. The prospect of a US-led invasion to back extremist Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guadió's claim to the presidency appeared more likely on Tuesday after White House National Security Advisor John Bolton appeared at a press conference holding a notepad scrawled with “5,000 troops to Colombia.” But Mr Popolizio insisted “we have no information” about a planned invasion. At Tuesday's pressconference US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin annou...

Europe's corporatist empire The British people's decision to leave the European Union (EU) in the June 2016 referendum was painted by EU-rophiles as a victory for the far-right – even before the polls opened. But who are the real fascists? Coup plotters Yesterday the unelected commission that runs the EU came out in support of the latest of many violent coup attempts against the elected government of Venezuela. The latest scheme, backed by US Vice-President Mike Pence, saw the opposition-controlled National Assembly declare its speaker Juan Guaidó 'president' just days after Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for his second term. “Violence and the excessive use of force by security forces are completely unacceptable, and will for sure not resolve the crisis,” the commission's 'foreign minister' Federica Mogherini insisted, days after 27 National Guard troops kidnapped their officers, seized weapons and tried to start an armed insurrection. “The Venezuelan...

South African former minister claims he doesn't know which Gupta brother offered him millions and ministry Former South African deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas has thrown 'State Capture' hearings into confusion by admitting he didn't know who offered him a huge bribe and promotion. Jonas told Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo's commission of inquiry on Friday he only recognised the man he claimed to have met on 23 October 2015 as one of the three Gupta brothers “from media reports.” The commission's key witness claimed the mystery man, who did not identify himself, offered him a 600 million Rand (£33 million) bribe and his then-boss, finance minster Nhlanhla Nene's job – if he would help the family group raise its share of government and parastatal enterprise contracts. “I had not previously met any of the Gupta brothers, but I recognised him... from media reports,” said Jonas in his statement. “At the time, I did not know his name as he...

Nicaragua's foreign minister has accused the continent's human rights body of undermining its claimed neutrality and violating the regional bloc's charter with a “biased and politicised” report on months of violent anti-government protests. Minister for International Policy and Affairs Siddharta Marin's office denounced the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) final report in a statement late on Saturday night. It said the commission, a wing of the Washington DC-based Organisation of American States (OAS), had joined a “political and media campaign of lies, misrepresentation, epithets and stigmatization” against Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government. The statement accused the IACHR of ignoring documentary evidence presented by the government in favour of “audio-visual information and testimonies edited and manipulated by the perpetrators” of the “attempted coup.” The ministry said the commission “used biased criteria” and avoided passing judgem...

Syrian troops and allies have opened several new fronts and won a string of victories against terrorists despite Saturday's missile raid by the Western powers. On Thursday night the Syrian Arab Army and allied Palestinian refugee militia launched an offensive against Islamic State (ISIS) and the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra Front in Yarmouk, a southern suburb of Damascus, Lebanon's Al Masdar News reported .  That was after the extremists rejected an offer of safe passage for them and their families to parts of the country still held by their fellows. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said only that air strikes had been launched against the two groups in al-Hajar al-Aswad, a neighbouring district to Yarmouk in the last terrorist-occupied area of the capital. But claimed video footage of the fighting emerged on social media. Foreign-backed sectarians seized the heavily urbanised Palestinian refugee camp since soon after the attempted 2011 coup against the gover...

Assad defies NATO after medical centre bombed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says his country no longer fear NATO after Saturday's failed cruise missile attack by the combined forces of the western powers. Mr Assad told a visiting delegation of Russian MPs his country was “no longer afraid of NATO” after Syria's 30-year-old Russian-made air defences shot down around around 70 per cent of the incoming missiles, with no hits scored on military bases. “ According to the president's point of view, this was aggression and we share this position,” State Duma member Sergei Zheleznyak said, according to Sputnik International . “He has highly appreciated Russian weapons, which showed supremacy over the arms of the aggressors.” The US, Britain and France claimed they hit a chemical weapons facility in the attack in the small hours of Saturday morning. But the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the target was the Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries Research Ins...

US President Donald Trump left his European allies high and dry on Thursday as he signalled a last-minute swerve away from bombing Syria. British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were left looking like turkeys after Mr Trump blinked in his game of chicken with Russia. “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place,” Mr Trump tweeted early on Thursday morning, Washington time. “Could be very soon or not so soon at all!” The three European leaders had backed military action over dubious claims ― by the US-British funded and founded 'White Helmets' ― of a chemical weapons attack on the Army of Islam terrorist group's stronghold in Douma, a few miles northeast of the capital Damascus. In the same tweet, Mr Trump abruptly shifted focus to the near-total defeat of Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq, in which Syrian, Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces played a leading role. “In any eve...

Chemical weapons claims, US threats and Israeli air raids failed to halt the liberation of Syria's Douma from Western-backed extremists on Monday. Army of Islam gunmen continued their withdrawal from the town in the East Ghouta region, just northeast of the capital Damascus yesterday, even as US President Donald Trump raised the spectre of a repeat of last year's cruise missile attack. A deal struck on Sunday to evacuate the insurgent group from Douma to the Turkish-occupied border town of Jarabulus, north of Aleppo, was holding. The national SANA news agency reported that 41 buses carrying hundreds of gunmen and their families left on Monday through a ceasefire corridor. A government source said hostages held for years by the Army of Islam ― often in cages as human shields ― would be freed by tonight. The first busload of mostly women and children left the terrorist stronghold about 11pm on Sunday night, a SANA reporter confirmed . A local source in Douma told Leb...

The trial of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma was postponed for two months on Friday pending his legal challenge to the resurrection of decade-old corruption charges. Outside the Durban High Court, thousands of Mr Zuma's supporters from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other organisations brought the Indian Ocean port city to a standstill. Zuma supporters rally around a stage set up outside the Durban High Court The ANC Women's League, Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans' Association were present, along with the Black land First Campaign, National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs. Revellers wore ANC t-shirts and other merchandise in defiance of warnings by Police Minister Bheki Cele Former minister Des van Rooyen and Eastern Cape ANC leader Andile Lungisa accompanied Mr Zuma to the doors of the court. Inside he sat smiling a few feet apart from Christine Guerrier, a representative of Fre...

An overnight vigil in support of beleaguered South African ex-president Jacob Zuma turned into a festival of song and dance on Thursday night. Durban's Albert Park reverberated to the "Hands Off Zuma" rally, initially dubbed a vigil and "mother of all prayers" for the popular former leader who faced trial on 16 corruption charges at the city's High Court on Friday morning. Those charges relate to allege kickbacks from the mammoth 1998 arms deal, struck before Mr Zuma was even a member of the national government. His supporters have called the reinstatement of the charges, which were thrown out of court in 2008 and finally dropped in 2009, a witch-hunt orchestrated by "White Monopoly Capital," common parlance for neo-colonial Western business interests looking to maintain their dominance of the South African economy. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) pressured Mr Zuma to resign in February, just over a year ahead  of scheduled electi...