The Benefits Of Being A Slave

by Sally Dugman

Countercurrents.org | August 04, 2017

My friend K. Sheshu Babu wrote a statement:

If government’s see people as private property, that may be ok because at least they ‘ value ‘ them. But, they see people as ‘ voting machines ‘ which is worse than slaves … The politicians Garner votes during elections and forget that they are in the govt because of votes and voters …not even valuable property that can be looked after …!!

Sheshu’s words remind me of comments that another person emailed me around ten years ago. They, paraphrased, went something like this:

Catalonia has not abandoned its hopes of independence

by Gabriela Ávila Gómez

Granma | 03 April, 2017

Source: Internet

Attempts by Catalonia to separate from Spain continue to make the news, with the region’s legislature recently approving a budget for 2017 which included funds for the holding of a referendum on the issue.

In one of the body’s most controversial votes, the measure was approved by a slim margin, with the independence forces, Juntos por el Sí (United for a yes) and the People’s Unity Candidature, winning with 64 votes, while Ciudadanos, Partido por los Socialistas, Cataluña Sí se Puede, and the Partido Popular mustered 62 no votes.

The Zapatistas Are Building The World We Ask For

by Ann Deslandes

telesur | 31 December, 2016

Zapatista women arrive at an information session. | Photo: Ann Deslandes

“If we had spent those 23 years exchanging gunshots,” says Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in an evening address to the many gathered for “The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity” encounter currently taking place in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, “would we have been able to build this?”

Standing strong as a rock

by #NoDAPL action

 Pambazuka News | 15 December, 2016

The power of mobilized, united people was proven once again on December 4, when the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit necessary for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to be laid under the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s ancestral Missouri River. The Army announced that it would explore alternative routes.

Food crisis: Weaving a web of peoples’ resistance to corporate capture of agriculture

by Leonida Odongo

 Pambazuka News | 10 November, 2016

Multinational corporations that are directly responsible for the destruction of food systems in Africa and globally are now purporting to provide innovative approaches to addressing the crisis – the so-called “green revolution.” Absent from these discussions are the voices of smallholder farmers who in reality feed the world. But these farmers are fighting back by establishing resistance networks to restore the power over food into their own hands.

The necessity of food to human life requires that everyone gets concerned about food debates. Unfortunately, the agenda being pushed is one that profits corporates at the expense of smallholder farmers. The global food crisis was most felt in 2008 when citizens of developed and developing nations took to the streets to protest against abnormal food prices.

 

October 1, 1949: Chinese people stood up

Chairman Mao Tse-tung (now, Mao Zedong) solemnly proclaims the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Tiananmen rostrum, October 1, 1949. The just-concluded first session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative meeting elected a Central People’s Committee in Beijing, September 30, 1949. Chairman Mao Zedong declared to the world: the Chinese people, who account for a quarter of humanity, must stand up. Since then China’s history has opened up a new era. People’s Republic of China founding ceremony was held at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, October 1, 1949.

Somethings aren’t forgotten

By  Yenia Silva Correa

Granma | 16 September, 2016

 

Miguel Ángel Ariza Rodríguez was a member of the Association of Young Rebels at the age of just 15. On May 17, 1961, he joined the Literacy Campaign.

“In my house we sympathized with the Revolution. Already in ’61 I was a member of the National Revolutionary Militia and the call to teach literacy arose.

“There are events that mark a before and after, not only in people, but in the life of a country. The Literacy Campaign was one of those moments in the life of the entire country and in that of the over 100,000 kids like me who participated in that feat.

Without wishing to exaggerate, I would say that I don’t recall the Revolution doing anything as huge in the past 50 years. Back then we did not see it as a great feat, but as the most natural thing in the world, as just another thing done by the Revolution.”

A very difficult year …This is how Ariza remembers 1961, and he does not lack grounds.

Cuban Foreign Minister stresses the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement on arriving in Venezuela

By  Dilbert Reyes Rodríguez

Granma | 15 September, 2016

 

ISLA DE MARGARITA, Venezuela.— Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrill stressed the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) on arriving to participate in the 17th NAM Summit, in session through September 18.

“Non-alignment has huge historic merits, but also remains fully valid,” Rodríguez stated on arriving to Margarita Island. Referring to the issues to be discussed during the multinational event he added that “We must defend independence, sovereignty and self-determination, through unity and consensus.”

“A revolutionary, anti-imperialist and solidary embrace for the Venezuelan people,” he emphasized, and wished the Bolivarian Republic well in its presidency of the Movement, which it will assume during the Summit. “Venezuela will receive the presidency and will do so successfully. It will be a victory of the Venezuelan people,” he noted.

He travels through the sky, rounds the world, sets the record for hot air balloon travel

A Journal of People report

Getty

A 65-year-old Russian balloonist, Fedor Konyukhov, came back to Earth in the Australian Outback on 23^rd July, after claiming a new record by flying solo around the world nonstop in 11 days, officials said.

Starting his journey on July 12, he landed 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Northam, where he started, about three hours after he flew over the same town on his return, flight coordinator John Wallington said.

One Berta, One Niyogi

A Frontier Comment

Vol. 48, No. 52, Jul 3 – 9, 2016

Early in the morning of March 3, Berta Cáceres was assassinated as she slept. Nearer home Shankar Guha Niyogi, the legendary trade unionist who showed alternative path of trade union movement to the tribal mining workers of Chattisgarh was shot dead when he was asleep.

A world-renowned environmental activist, Berta had been a driving force in protecting the lands and waters of rural communities in Honduras. Among the many victories of the organisation she founded was the delay of a megadam project on the Gualcarque River that could be disastrous for the indigenous Lenca people living there. Guha Neyogi was eliminated because his idea of new trade union initiative caught the imagination of a vast number of unorganised sector workers in the Bhilai industrial region.

For one thing Berta is not alone, nor is her story unique to Honduras. Across the Global South, mega hydroelectric projects are expanding—driven by governments and multinationals as a source of ‘cheap energy’, and branded by international institutions as a solution to poverty and the climate crisis.