The Legacy of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

telesur | 14 June, 2016

Ernesto Che Guevara was executed by a Bolivian soldier in the village of La Higuera, Bolivia, on Oct. 9, 1967. The soldier was acting on orders that emanated directly from the president of Bolivia at the time, Rene Barrientos. Guevara was summarily executed for fear that his trial would become a public spectacle that would garner sympathy for Guevara and his cause.

History has proven that what Barrientos, and the elites of Latin America, wanted was impossible. Guevara’s ideas live on and he continues to serve as an inspiration for leftists and revolutionaries not only in Latin America but throughout the world.

Nearly 50 years after the death of Guevara, Latin America in particular has experienced a 21st century rooted in the same kind of ideas that he represented: justice, equality and the liberation of the oppressed.

People’s Summit: Progressive Gathering Fertilizing Momentum of Bernie’s Revolution

By Andrea Germanos

Common Dreams | 18  June, 2016

 

(Photo: thepeoplessummit.org)

Harnessing the broad desire for “transformative change,” thousands are expected to gather this weekend in Chicago for a three-day event centered around many of the progressive issues that Bernie Sanders put at the forefront of his presidential campaign.

Backed by organizations including 350.org, Physicians for a National Health Program, National Nurses Union (NNU), Hedge Clippers, and the People for Bernie, the People’s Summit says in its call for the event that it aims “to bring together activists committed to a different kind of agenda: a People’s Agenda that can enhance and expand issue campaigns and hold all elected officials accountable to popular demands for justice, equality, and freedom.”

Commercializing Elections to Destroy Our Democracy

By Ralph Nader

Common Dreams | 18 June, 2016

 

(Photo:  P.O. Arnäs/flickr/cc)

Our political economy – a wonderfully embracing phrase much used a century ago – has three main components: The electoral/governmental powers, the marketplace, and the civil society, which is composed of we the citizens.

It is well known that when “we the people” get lax about our consumer rights and our voting choices, both the companies and the politicians turn their backs on us and look out for themselves and their fat-cat donors. The civil society’s energy or apathy has a profound role in shaping how the other two sectors function, and can either safeguard our democracy or drive it into the ground.

Venezuela: What’s Going on in the Barracks?

By MILTON D’LEÓN – IZQUIERDA DIARIO

venezuelanalysis.com | 16 June, 2016

 

The military is Maduro’s pillar of support in the face of the current, profound political and economic crisis. Pro-government and opposition figures define the armed forces as potentially determining the government’s fate.

The military has been at the centre of the political tapestry of the country, and above all because of the depth of the economic, social and political crisis that it is living. The military is considered to be one of the fundamental pillars holding up the government of [Nicolas] Maduro,* even more so since Chavismo lost the parliamentary elections and the opposition won a majority in the National Assembly, as well as within the open rivalry between the [political] powers that exist in the country. Last Saturday, attempting to show complete control over the armed forces, Maduro was actively present in the nation-wide military exercises that were organised on the basis of possible foreign threats to the country.

Brazilian political scientist denounces U.S. support for coup against Dilma

By Prensa Latina

Granma | 17 June, 2016

 

The existence of powerful U.S. interests behind the impeachment process launched against Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was denounced by Brazilian political scientist Luiz Alberto de Vianna Moniz Bandeira, in an interview published this Thursday, June 14.
This coup attempt must be understood within an international context in which Washington is attempting to rebuild its hegemony within Latin America, so much so that it is in negotiations with the Mauricio Macri government to install two military bases in strategic regions in Argentina, he stated.  

Hiroshima, Fukushima and Kurosawa

Sandeep Banerjee

Frontier | Vol. 48, No. 49, Jun 12 – 18, 2016

 

How quickly things happened! In silence AK (character of Akira Kurosawa) was observing a Van Gogh gallery; he moved this side and that side and then he suddenly entered Van Gogh’s world through Le Pont de Langlois (1888) near that very bridge. He saw an injured Van Gogh whose time was running out and who was busy as if in the ‘Field with Haystacks’ (1890), a Wheatfield that the artist made immortal before he himself breathed his last. A melancholy Chopin piece (Prelude 15 in Db major) got interrupted by whistle sounds of some steam locomotive sometimes, and once the steam loco was visible too—an invention of early 1800s which had already found its place in vocabulary; as people heard Gogh commenting, “I work! I slave! I drive myself like a locomotive!” which happens when the complete picture appears before him ‘inside’ after he ‘devours’ the natural setting. Then, Crows were flapping wings. That could be heard. Van Gogh’s finally snapped the conversation saying, “I can’t stand here wasting my time talking to you!” He goes off, the crows rise up from the fields and the train again whistled, though it was faint, as if from a faraway place.