April brings another victory

BAY OF PIGS 

Madeleine Sautié

Granma | April 22, 2021

Photo: Granma Archives

Just when some might think that, exhausted by brutal U.S. attacks, Cuba would lose strength, here is our vanguard fighting with bare fists to make this extraordinary island a more prosperous, contented country.

Following a year of the pandemic’s pain and death, the world continues to seek solutions to control the virus that has ravaged even the most solid economies, while Cuba, “punished” by the most powerful empire on the planet, resists, having committed no other “crime” than giving back to Cubans what for centuries was denied, and rather than despairing, has mobilized to produce five candidate vaccines, the work of scientists trained by the Revolution.

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez elected as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee

8TH CONGRESS OF CUBAN COMMUNIST PARTY

 Yaima Puig Meneses & Leticia Martínez Hernández

Granma | April 22, 2021

Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected as Central Committee first secretary. Photo: Cubadebate

President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez was elected today, Monday, as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, during the first plenary meeting of the leadership body, elected by the delegates to the 8th Party Congress Sunday evening.

Army General Raúl Castro Ruz made this announcement after reporting the 14 members of the Political Bureau, including nine returning to the body and five added as new members:

Central Report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba

8TH CONGRESS OF CUBAN COMMUNIST PARTY

Raúl Castro Ruz

Granma | April 22, 2021

Photo: Juvenal Balán

(Transcript: Presidency of the Republic/Translation: GI)

Compañeras and compañeros:

The opening of the Eighth Party Congress takes place on a transcendental date in the nation’s history: The 60th anniversary of the proclamation by Comandante en jefe Fidel Castro Ruz of the socialist character of the Revolution, on April 16, 1961, at the funeral farewell for those killed the previous day in the bombing of our air bases, prelude to the mercenary invasion at Playa Giron, organized and financed by the United States government as part of plans to crush the example of the Cuban Revolution and reimpose neocolonial rule on the island, with the complicity of the Organization of American States.

Lenin on Class Tasks of Proletariat

LENIN 151

POLITSTURM 

Conversation with Comrade Lenin

LENIN 151

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Awhirl with events,
packed with jobs one too many,
the day slowly sinks
as the night shadows fall.
There are two in the room:
I
and Lenin-
a photograph
on the whiteness of wall.

The stubble slides upward
above his lip
as his mouth
jerks open in speech.
The  tense
creases of brow
hold thought
in their grip,
immense brow
matched by thought immense.
A forest of flags,
raised-up hands thick as grass…
Thousands are marching
beneath him…
Transported,
alight with joy,
I rise from my place,
eager to see him,
hail him,
report to him!
“Comrade  Lenin,
I report to you –
(not a dictate of office,
the heart’s prompting alone)

This hellish work
that we’re out to do

will be done
and  is already being done.
We  feed and we clothe
and give light to the needy,

the quotas
for coal
and for iron
fulfill,
but there is
any amount
of bleeding
muck
and  rubbish
around  us still.

Without you,
there’s many
have got out of hand,

all the sparring
and  squabbling
does one in.
There’s scum
in plenty
hounding our land,

outside the borders
and  also
within.

Try to
count ’em
and
tab ’em –
it’s no go,

there’s all kinds,
and  they’re
thick as nettles:
kulaks,
red tapists,
and,
down the row,
drunkards,
sectarians,
lickspittles.
They strut around
proudly
as peacocks,
badges and fountain pens
studding their chests.
We’ll lick the lot of ’em-
but
to lick ’em
is no easy job
at the very best.
On snow-covered lands
and on stubbly fields,
in smoky plants
and on factory sites,
with you in our hearts,
Comrade  Lenin,
we  build,
we  think,
we breathe,
we  live,
and we fight!”
Awhirl with events,
packed with jobs one too many,
the day slowly sinks
as the night shadows fall.
There are two in the room:
I
and Lenin –
a photograph
on the whiteness of wall.

Lenin’s Birthday

LENIN 151

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | April 22, 2021

Lenin, the proletarian revolutionary, was born on this day – April 22, 1870.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, led the Great October Revolution in 1917 in Russia that has changed the world forever.

The epoch-making revolution by the exploited stood as unparallel among all revolutions as the revolution overthrew all the exploiting classes while all the past revolutions replaced one exploiting class with another. Breaking the chain of imperialism, the proletarian revolution opposed imperialist war, and stood for emancipation of the peoples in colonies. The world shall never be the same since the Great October Revolution.

The Unraveling of the American Empire

EMPIRE IN DECLINE

Chris Hedges

MintPress News | April 22, 2021

Princeton, New Jersey (Scheerpost) — America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not – wisely – attempt to occupy Iraq, the United States political and military leadership has stumbled from one military debacle to another. Korea. Vietnam. Lebanon. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Libya. The trajectory of military fiascos mirrors the sad finales of the Chinese, Ottoman, Hapsburg, Russian, French, British, Dutch, Portuguese and Soviet empires. While each of these empires decayed with their own peculiarities, they all exhibited patterns of dissolution that characterize the American experiment.

Tanks and Think Tanks: How Taiwanese Cash is Funding the Push to War with China

IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST CHINA

Alan Macleod

MintPress News | April 22, 2021

TAIPEI — At MintPress, we have been at the forefront of exposing how Middle Eastern dictatorships and weapons contractors have been funneling money into think tanks and political action committees, keeping up a steady drumbeat for more war and conflict around the world. Yet one little-discussed nation that punches well above its weight in spending cash in Washington is Taiwan.

By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States. This has coincided with a strong upsurge in anti-China rhetoric in Washington, with report after report warning of China’s economic rise and demanding that the U.S. intervene more in China-Taiwan disputes.

Ukraine: Fascism’s toe-hold in Europe

IMPERIALISM 

Francis Lee

Saker Blog | April 21, 2021

Stepan Bandera statue in Lviv.

Politics in the Ukraine can only be understood by reference to its history and ethnic and cultural make-up – a make-up criss-crossed by lasting and entrenched ethnic, cultural and political differences. The country has long been split into the northern and western Ukraine, where Ukrainian is the official and everyday lingua franca, and the more industrialised regions of the east and south where a mixture of Russian speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians reside. Additionally, there has long been Hungarian and Romanian settlement in the west of the country, and a particularly important Polish presence, whose unofficial capital, Lviv, was once the Polish city of Lwow. The Russian Orthodox Church is the predominant form of Christianity in the East, whilst in the west the Christian tradition tends towards Roman Catholicism.

PEPE ESCOBAR JOINS JEFF J. BROWN FOR A GREAT CONVERSATION ABOUT THE US, EU, CHINA, RUSSIA, IRAN AND DPRK, PLUS MUCH MORE.

WORLD

Greanville Post | March 31, 2021

Pictured above: Jeff J. Brown on the left and Pepe Escobar on the right, cover news and events on every continent on Earth, except the Antarctic, but especially Asia and East v West.

 

This is Jeff’s most recent conversation with one of our dearest colleagues, the well-known geopolitical analyst and (genuine) journalist Pepe Escobar. The focus is on the tug of war between the US empire and its vassals in the EU and elsewhere, and the emerging bloc of truly independent powers led by Russia, China and Iran. As the talk of war and all sorts of interventions increases on the American side, the world is watching the birth of a new order. American global hegemony, enforced by lies, hypocrisy, economic blackmail and brutal military power is on the way out, largely victim of its own arrogance and excess, and the incurable problems of capitalism  Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing are busy constructing a multilateral order based on mutual benefit and respect for every nation’s sovereignty.  

—The Editor

By Jeff J. Brown

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