[MALIA EMOGADISHU250m Greater Somalia New York's Mayor Beame…]

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MALIA EMOGADISHU250m Greater Somalia New York's Mayor Beame has suffered a blow in failing to regain the Democratic nomination for this November's Mayoral elections. In a party primary last week he won just 18% of the vote compared to 20% for; Ed Koch, and 197 for Mario Cuomo. Koch and Cuomo will now battle for the nomination in a runoff election on September 19.

Israeli agricultural minister Ariel Sharon. last week reiterated the nakedly anti-Arab policy of Begin's Likud government, when he announced that Israel is to establish more settlements in the occupied West Bank. This follows a previous announcement that Israel has secretly established several Jewish settlements in the disputed area.

SOUTH AFRICA

Figures just released show that almost 200,000 black workers are now unemployed in the South African industrial heartland of Johannesburg, Pretoria and the East and West Rand. This represents some 18.8% of the black labour force. The figures are taken from the Johannesburg evening newspaper, The Star, since the apartheid government fails to publish official figures.

ITALY

With local elections due to be held in November, the • 'historic compromise" (ie class collaboration) between the long ruling Christian Democratic Party and the Stalinist PCI shows signs of cracking. In a recent interview in the Christian Democratic newspaper Il Popolo, the party's vicesecretary Giovanni Galloni openly attacked the PCI for allegedly trying to transform Italy into a "socialist society". In this attack Galloni has the full support of former Prime Minister Fanfani. The PCI have denied Galloni's charges that they have any such intentions.

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqur Ali Bhutto has been arrested by the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. Bhutto is alleged to have been complicit in a series of murders, as well as being guilty of widespread torture and, brutality. The real reason for his arrest is that in the past weeks he was managing to draw masses of people to his electoral rallies. Fearful that Bhutto might actually win the elections due to be held in October, the generals stepped in to order his arrest. It is thought likely that the elections will be postponed because of this. Meanwhile Bhutto is reportedly occupying a "suite of cells*

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Castro and Blas Roca chat during a recess. cracy.

And the local committees, which many workers undoubtedly looked to as representing real elements of democracy, were used by the leadership to legitimate the thoroughly bureaucratic national trade union structure which was erected on top of the local committees.

This was the Cuban Workers Centre. (CTC) which held its first Congress in its resurrected form at the end of 1973.

The purpose of this Congress was to ratify (which , it dutifully did all the changes in economic policy which the bureaucracy had been introducing since 19/1.

"ACCEPTED".

These changes embodied in a series of theses, came down from the leadership to be widely discussed in the local trade union committees before the CTC There was no serious possibility of amending them and within the locals they were "accepted" in true Stalinist style, by well over 99% of the workers.

The unanimous approval of the theses by the carefully stage-managed Congress was then presented as the ratification not of the prior decisions of the leadership (which it was) but of the will of the masses exactly to the existing leadership hierarchy in which the old Cutar Stalinist leadership has been playing an increasing role.

The President of the asseme itself is veteran Communist Paty leader Blas Roca.

SPEECHES

The inaugural session of the Assembly took place in December 1976 and was just another occasion for one of Castro's almost interminable speeches and messages of greeting from the Soviet government.

The people's "representatives" did little more than listen ard applaud.

And now it seems that the regular sessions of the Assembly are not going to be much different.

The first regular session took place in July this year (officiall! termed the "Year of Institutionalisation") and lasted a mere three days, during which members of the leadership made a lot more speeches and nine laws and three regulations were passed (most Ci them unanimously).

LESS WORK

One of the resolutions, proposed from the floor but enthusiastically supported by Castro was one which reduced the number of annual