2017 according to Fidel

by  Sergio Alejandro Gómez

Granma | August 16, 2017

Fidel always advocated improving relations between the United States and Cuba on the basis of absolute respect for the sovereignty of our country. Photo: Archive

THIS is our first year without Fidel. At least the first 365-day cycle that will end in November, without the physical presence of the historic leader of the Revolution – without a piece of advice or timely warning, like that he offered in the 7th Party Congress on the super-human effort required to govern any people in times of crisis.

But Fidel leaves us a guiding body of thought, a way of understanding the world through his ideas, which will never lose their relevance. Just as philosophers continue to read Aristotle, revolutionaries of today and tomorrow will reach for the guerilla of the Sierra Maestra, for the statesman who put a small Caribbean archipelago on the map.

Che Guevara: Human dignity adamantly alive (+Photos)

by  Yisel Martínez

Granma | August 16, 2017

Che participating in a meeting of exemplary workers at the Habana Libre Hotel. Foto: Centro de Estudios Che Guevara

PRESERVING, safeguarding, and showing the world the life of Ernesto Guevara and his thought, teaching it to younger generations, and helping them understand why they should be like Che, are a few of the roles taken on by the Che Guevara Studies Center.

The Personal Archive was created in 1983, but the Center did not begin to function until the end of the 1990s, once the task of organizing, transcribing, and cataloguing all the material was concluded.

Venezuela to boost food production with urban farming program

Granma | August 17, 2017

Around 20,000 Venezuelan adolescents will learn about urban farming as part of a plan launched by President Nicolas Maduro to support food production and the country’s youth programs. Under the program, thousands of members of the Chamba Juvenil program will be trained on how to grow and harvest fruits, vegetables, legumes as well as on how to raise sheep, goats, pigs and other livestock, said Minister of Youth and Sports Pedro Infante.

Lula Begins ‘Caravan of Hope’ Tour Through 25 Brazilian Cities

teleSUR | August 17, 2017

Supporters of Brazil’s Worker’s Party at a rally. | Photo: AFP

The caravan will look to identify needs and struggles, and stimulate resistance against the unelected Temer government.

The former President of Brazil and founder of the Workers Party, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva embarked on the “Caravan of Hope” tour which will take him through nine states and 25 cities in Northern Brazil.

Uruguayan and Spanish Groups Denounce US Venezuela Threat

teleSUR | 16 August, 2017

Members from several organizations and parties express solidarity with the Venezuelan government | Photo: Frente Amplio

Representatives call for the international community to work “within the framework of the most unrestricted fulfillment of respect for human rights”.

Deputies from Uruguay’s ruling party have rejected the threat of possible U.S. military intervention against Venezuela as alluded to by President Donald Trump last week.

Chomsky, Pilger Slam Trump Threats Against Venezuela

The Dawn News | August 13, 2017

Noam Chomsky and John Pilger spoke with teleSUR, denouncing U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Venezuela as irresponsible, but typical according to the president’s behavior and U.S. history.

During a conference Friday in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump told reporters that the U.S. has a number of solutions to Venezuela’s situation and military force was still an option being considered.

Twenty Years after the Asian Financial Crisis

by Prabhat Patnaik

People’s Democracy | August 13, 2017

EXACTLY twenty years ago, a major financial crisis had hit the countries of East and South East Asia in July 1997. This crisis was a watershed in the history of third world development, in the sense that these “tiger economies” which had seen extraordinarily high growth rates until that time, remained permanently crippled thereafter. Just around the time that they were shaking off the effects of the 1997 crisis on their respective economies, the collapse of the “housing bubble” in the United States plunged the entire world capitalist system into a crisis which also affected them, so that they could never recapture their earlier growth trend.

The earlier growth performance of these Asian economies had been used by the World Bank, the IMF and the OECD (the rich countries’ club) to debunk the growth strategy pursued by India and a host of other third world economies in the immediate aftermath of decolonisation (what we call the “Nehruvian strategy”) which visualised delinking from world capitalism through trade and capital controls, and emphasised dirigiste development based on the domestic market, for breaking out of the colonial pattern of international division of labour. It was argued against such a strategy of “economic nationalism” that the Asian economies were doing remarkably well by hitching themselves to the global economy and eschewing dirigisme and controls.

Book Review: Reclaiming Edward Said’s Political Legacies

 by T T Sreekumar

Countercurrents.org | August 17, 2017

Edward said, a towering intellectual and political philosopher of our times, was also a crusader of justice and human rights. He taught us to rethink the colonial enterprise in precise political terms by delineating the epistemological violence at its core. He underscored the fact that its strategy of control and domination derived basically from an attempt to define oriental knowledge by deforming and disfiguring it in ways that suited colonial interests. He called this massive devastation of civilizational knowledge, Orientalism. It became a classic work on its own right, although it had ostensible intellectual debts to the emerging fields of post structuralism and post modernism in multiple ways. His work paved the way for the emergence of a new hybrid discipline known as postcolonialism that gleaned freely from philosophy, literature and pollical science and shocked academia for decades to come. The book by Prasad Pannian is a significant addition to the global discussions on Edward Said and his enormous contributions to our cultural, political and social history.

60,000 suicides in India linked to climate crisis

A Journal of People report

High and rapidly rising suicide rate in India have been linked to crop damage due to increasing temperature trends over the last 30 years, finds a new study.

One fifth of the world’s suicides happen in India, typically at more than 130,000 deaths a year. With more than half of the country’s population employed in agriculture, crop failures due to increasing temperatures have been suspected to be behind the increasing trend in suicides in the past three decades. Nearly all parts of India are experiencing rising temperatures due to climate change.

The huge scam that was Nigeria’s oil subsidy

by Audu Liberty Oseni

Pambazuka News | June 08, 2017

The fuel subsidy regime was a huge scam in the Nigeria oil and gas sector, with the state colluding with its friends to steal from the people. It was during this time that entrenched corruption such as inflation of the subsidy figures, the rise of proxy marketers, over-invoicing and non-record keeping became common.

At the peak of the subsidy fraud, the Nigerian state said it could not fund it anymore, arguing that its payment was taking a huge amount of monies from the federation account, thereby impeding the state’s ability to fund core infrastructures. Pursuant to that, by 31 December 2011, the subsidy was removed. This was followed by massive protest, with citizens holding a strong view that it was the huge corruption in the scheme that needed to be addressed and not subsidy removal.