Imperialist Wars And Interventions Fuel Refugee Crisis In Africa

by Thomas Gaist

Countercurrents.org | 09 March, 2017

Large numbers of persons fleeing war and famine in sub-Saharan Africa are transiting through Libya in a desperate effort to reach Europe, UNICEF reported last week.

An estimated 80,000 refugees, including 25,000 children, left Libyan ports in an effort to cross the Mediterranean Sea and enter southern Europe last year, with 4,000 of them dying during the crossing.

Another 320 refugees died attempting the crossing during the first two months of 2017 alone, a 300 percent increase from the same period in 2016. Some 16,000 African refugees have crossed from Libya to Italy so far this year, nearly double last year’s figure for the same period. Twenty-two refugees from sub-Saharan Africa were killed and 100 wounded during clashes between smugglers along Libya’s Mediterranean coastline on Tuesday.

Time on the Clock of The World: Amin Husain on How We Handle Trump

by Susie Day

MR Online | 09 March, 2017

Rounding up immigrants, pissing on transgender bathroom rights, barring press from press briefings… The only good thing Donald Trump has done is to galvanize millions of people into political outrage. For months now we’ve gone to dozens of marches and rallies. Of course, this isn’t enough, but what more to do?

Then I happened on a Facebook post by Amin Husain: “I wish I could share what’s wrong and what’s missing in how we’re handling the Trump era without many of my dear friends thinking that I am just being a downer on the ‘resistance.’” I had to hear more.

Amin is a Palestinian artist and political organizer, who has helped form Occupy Wall Street; Decolonize This Place, a project for indigenous movements; and MTL, a collective joining art with politics. He’s producing, with Natasha S., a film about Palestine, On This Land, which is scheduled for release this July. Below a condensed version of our conversation.

Teachers Leading Way Against Neoliberalism in Latin America

by Ramiro S. Funez

telesur | 09 March, 2017

Latin America, like most regions of the world, is under assault by neoliberalism. Public sector jobs are being cut. Government institutions are being privatized. Foreign companies are attacking union leaders. Transportation and utility prices are going up. Laws preventing monopolization and environmental destruction are being rolled back.

Venezuelans Come Out for Day Against Imperialism

telesur | 09 March, 2017

The Day Against Imperialism has been observed since 2015. | Photo: VTV

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said that Latin America had raised its voice against interventionism, in a speech celebrating the country’s Day Against Imperialism.

“Today is Day Against Imperialism, day of courage, of dignity, for a people who chose to be free and have demonstrated over the past years that they are made out of the indestructible strength of our Liberators,” said Maduro to the Venezuelans gathered at the outdoor rally.

The ceremony was meant to reject the imperialist policy of the U.S., which issued an executive order in March 2015, during former President Barack Obama’s administration declaring Venezuela “a security threat” because of alleged human rights violations and widespread corruption, extending economic sanctions against the country.

Remembering Melba

by Lauren Céspedes Hernández

Granma | 09 March, 2017

During a visit to Laos in 1972, at the entrance of one of the caves where the people sheltered during the war: Melba (third from left to right) and Mirta (sitting on the right). Photo: Courtesy of Mirta Muñiz

She was from a family with a mambí heritage. She was one of those women who, in the 20th century, left her university title hanging next to her lawyer’s gown and devoted herself, body and soul, to the struggle against the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship.

Melba Hernández del Rey’s strong character was in line with her decision to become a guerrilla of the Cuban revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro.

A Celebration of US Labor’s Women Fighters

IN PICTURES: The women who led some of the key struggles for social equality in the U.S. embodied working-class internationalism and militancy.

telesur | 08 March, 2017

Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons (1853-1942), labor organizer, socialist and anarchist: “We are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.”Photo:Public Domain

While a legacy of McCarthyism and right-wing ideology has clouded labor history in the United States, the U.S. workers’ movement has played a profound role in advancing social rights in the country.

However, what is often omitted from U.S. school textbooks and Hollywood-produced histories of social struggle is the key role played by women, who stood – and continue to stand – at the forefront of the fight for workers’ rights whether they be U.S.-born or immigrant, adults or minors, organized or unorganized.

Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791

by Olympe De Gouges

Olympe de Gouges was a French feminist activist, advocate of complete equal rights for women, freedom of divorce, the abolition of slavery, and of capital punishment. In 1791, she became part of the Society of the Friends of Truth; an association with the goal of equal political and legal rights for women; and “a mixture of revolutionary political club, the Masonic Lodge, and a literary salon. She advocated leniency toward King Louis XIV. She authored The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, modelled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This ironically written document exposed the failure of the French Revolution’s promise of equality. It states that:“This revolution will only take effect when all women become fully aware of their deplorable condition, and of the rights they have lost in society”.  Olympe de Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793 during the Reign of Terror for attacking the tyranny of the Jacobin regime and for her close relation with the Girondists.