Stop EU from hijacking Africa’s clean energy future

by Mohamed Adow

Pambazuka News | May 18, 2017

The Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) was one of the greatest achievements to emerge from the COP 21 climate summit in Paris in 2015 and, as an African and climate activist, my proudest moment. It made headlines around the world. Attracting pledges totalling $10 billion of public support from the G7, EU, Netherlands and Sweden, the scheme has ushered an exciting dawn of African leadership on climate change to see the continent harness it’s huge clean energy potential.

However, that vision is now in tatters after attempts by the EC to control and divert Africa’s renewable energy initiative to its own ends. It is imposing itself on the AREI Board and the initiative’s Independent Delivery Unit (IDU) and, together with France, forced through undue approval of a host of 19 energy projects, bypassing the AREI’s transparent procedures. 

Authoritarianism in Venezuela? A Reply to Gabriel Hetland

by LUCAS KOERNER

VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM | May 19, 2017

Venezuelan opposition protesters burn a National Bolivarian Police motorcycle at an anti-government barricade in the affluent eastern Caracas municipality of Chacao. (AVN)

Venezuela is once again dominating international headlines as violent opposition protests bent on toppling the elected Maduro government enter their seventh week. The demonstrations have claimed to date at least 54 lives since April 4, surpassing the previous wave of violent anti-government protests in 2014, known as “the Exit”. However, this time around, the unrest coincides with a severe economic downturn and a transformed geopolitical landscape defined by the return of the right in Brazil and Argentina as well as an even more bellicose regime in Washington.

Meanwhile, the international outcry at this latest violent effort to oust the Chavista government has been far more muffled than the last time.

‘Out Temer, Elections Now!’: New Round of Protests Hit Brazil

teleSUR | May 21, 2017

Demonstrators take part in a protest against Brazil’s President Michel Temer in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 18, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

Just when Brazil’s political crisis can’t seem to get any worse, Michel Temer is caught red-handed on tape giving his blessings to bribes paid to judges, prosecutors, a police task force member and a powerful witness in government corruption investigations, Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of Brazil’s lower house of representatives.

Dreams Of Rebels Past Offer Us Hope As We Approach June 8

by Trish Lavelle

Morning Star | May 20, 2017

WHEN we started planning for Levellers’ Day 2017 back in October, little did we know that we would be holding it in the middle of a general election campaign the likes of which we have not experienced for many decades.

A campaign in which voters are being presented with real radical alternatives.

It is therefore timely that this year we will gather today in Burford with a theme of “movement building.”

US and Turkey: The Balkanization of the Middle East

by James Petras

Dissident Voice | May 15, 2017

For the past 20 years Washington has aggressively pursued the age-old imperial strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia and East Africa. Frustrated at its inability to control national policy of various independent nation-states, Washington used direct and indirect military force to destroy the central governments in the targeted nations and create patchworks of tribal-ethno-mini-states amenable to imperial rule. Tens of millions of people have been uprooted and millions have died because of this imperial policy.

Anything Wrong With Eco-Socialism?

by Robert Meeropol

MR Online | May 18, 2017

This month’s Monthly Review features an article by Paul Burkett entitled: “Global Warming: An Eco-Revolutionary Tipping Point?” While discussing three books: Ian Angus’s Facing the Anthropocene, Andreas Malm’s Fossil Capital and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, he succinctly summarizes a key Eco-Socialist position.

“To deny that the climate crisis is hardwired into capitalism, and that we need a new system to deal with it, is just as misleading and dangerous as to deny the existence of human-induced global warming.” In other words, green capitalism is not a solution. Human-induced global warming is a scientifically demonstrable, existential threat that can’t be successfully addressed within any capitalist framework.

Ballad of People

by Sheshu Babu

Countercurrents.org | May 17, 2017

In the base of Himalayas, one day,
Where splendid tea gardens lay,
Migrant labourers, workers and peasantry
Repulsed landlords in the village of Naxalbari

The Mundas and Santhals united
Mass protests ensued
Women and children killed
In police firing in Naxalbari

But the struggle did not die
Despite rulers’ outcry
From Shingur to Niamgiri
Continued the legacy of Naxalbari

From a small village revolt
Capitalists felt the fury of thunderbolt
Pronounced the biggest threat to internal  security
The ideology inspired by Naxalbari

Fifty springs have passed
Number of people martyred
But, till democratic equality is not attained
Future torch – bearer is Naxalbari