As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM
A splash of protest
Just Stop Oil activists aren’t out to destroy art, they are here to save us. We should thank them not jail them, argues LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Just Stop Oil supporters sit on the floor after throwing soup over two of Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers paintings at the National Gallery in London, September 27, 2024
[Just Stop Oil] 
The move against alleged PKK members that sparked outrage as a community centre in north London was raided last year has now come to trial, writes TONY BURKE, but in the meantime, the peace process abroad has changed the situation almost entirely
A new report points a way to overcome complacent framing of climate issues, ‘by sparking a wider public reckoning with climate realities,’ and reconnecting with working-class people. IAN SINCLAIR reports
We cannot understand today’s world without understanding the rise of China – and we cannot understand China without understanding how it was shaped by the second world war, writes JENNY CLEGG
NICK WRIGHT reports from Italy, where 80 cities saw Gaza strikes as unions paralysed transport and massive crowds clashed with police in Milan — but France is also kicking off, and Westminster, in a very different way, is facing a crisis of legitimacy too
Escalating anti-China rhetoric from the West has a clear purpose – to manufacture consent for the new cold war, and potentially a hot one, argues CARLOS MARTINEZ
LUDI SIMPSON and I were at university together in the 1970s, connected by our involvement in left politics. Then we lost touch. In recent years we found each other again and were relieved to discover that, unlike a number of our contemporaries, we have not drifted to the political centre. Our radical roots remain firmly anchored.
Ludi’s, though, flowered in a more courageous way than mine. Last Friday, he was arrested, not for the first time, alongside two other Just Stop Oil activists, after throwing vegetable soup on two of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings in the National Gallery.
The paintings are being featured as part of the Poets and Lovers exhibition there. Just Stop Oil uses non-violent civil disobedience and direct action to achieve its objective — an end to oil, gas and coal by 2030.
More from this author
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER salutes an extraordinary portrait of contemporary protest in the UK: resolute determination wrapped in stillness
Women opponents of the Trump regime fear his misogynist, racist and anti-immigrant views are taking hold in Britain, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER, as protests against his visit hit London’s streets
But the beneath the racism and misogyny of the far right lies a shared grievance with the left — Starmer’s complete betrayal of working people, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
