Remembering Samar Sen in Centenary Year

by Chaman Lal

Frontier | October 15, 2017

I met Samar Sen only once in life in February 1980 on my first visit to Calcutta. But I knew his name from much earlier period, perhaps from 1969 or so, when I may have seen Frontier for first time at my home town Rampura Phul in Bathinda district of Punjab. I became regular reader of ‘Frontier’ from 1971, when I joined Panjab University Chandigarh as a student of M.A. in Hindi. Some of my friends in Chandigarh at that time were readers of Frontier, like Hindi poet Kumar Vikal. Frontier was available in those days in Chandigarh at English Book Depot or shop in Sector 22. It was famous shop in those days for intellectual gathering as well. Punjabi and Hindi writers of the city used to sit in Sector 22 Coffee house and visit English Book Shop nearby. There was a corner around the shop, which was perhaps called ‘Lovers Corner’ also, though it was used more by writers in evening. I knew in those days also that Samar Sen was a well-known Bengali poet, apart from being editor of Frontier, but his Frontier editor image over shadowed his poet image. His poetry was not easily available in Hindi or English and those were the days of ‘Spring Thunder’ and Frontier represented it most widely throughout the country.

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Samar Sen revisited

by Asok Chattopadhyay

Frontier | October 11, 2017

Come October 10 and history shall seal on the date as hundred and one-year after Samar Sen, the renowned journalist and esteemed editor of Frontier, was born. His birth centenary year had passed almost unceremoniously. August 23 last was his 30th death anniversary which has gone lost in the abyss of oblivion. It’s more painful than surprising to have seen the so-called left-wingers’ apathy towards a daring, conscientious and uncompromising left intellectual of West Bengal like him.

History had recorded the dots of a famous and unbending rural journalist who, in the seventies of the nineteenth century Bengal, taught the lesson how to wage war against both the tyrant zaminder and the profiteering ruling class in the general interest of the peasantry of Bengal. And just a century latter we found another one who had held his head high in spite of state-terror and heinous political goons in West Bengal. Of the two, first one was Kangal Harinath Majumder, the renowned editor of Grambartaprakashika, a Bengali weekly published from Kumarkhali, and the other one was no other than Samar Sen himself.

Remembering Che Guevara 50 Years After His Assassination

by James Cockcroft

teleSUR | October 09, 2017

Argentine communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who helped lead the Cuban Revolution of 1959. | Photo: Archive

In light of a recent upsurge in denunciations of Che and the Cuban Revolution, it is important to separate fact from fiction.

 

The year 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the CIA-ordered assassination of Che Guevara.

In light of a recent upsurge in denunciations of Che and the Cuban Revolution, it is important to separate fact from fiction.

‘Be Like Che’: Cuba Observes 50th Anniversary of Revolutionary’s Death

teleSUR | October 08, 2017

Cubans pay homage to Che. | Photo: Cubadebate

Hundreds of thousands of Cuban and international guests poured into in Santa Clara, Cuba to pay homage to the revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara, one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

Villa Clara youth to pay tribute to Che

by Ángel Freddy Pérez Cabrera

Granma | October 03, 2017

As part of the activities, on October 16 students of the Camilo Cienfuegos Military School will perform the traditional guard of honor before the mausoleum to the combatants of the Las Villas Front. Photo: Freddy Pérez Cabrera

SANTA CLARA.– Thousands of students from across Villa Clara province will lead the traditional “Por la ruta del Che” (Che’s route) walk this Thursday, October 5, in honor of the Hero of the Battle of Santa Clara on the 50th anniversary of his death, which will be commemorated across the island this October 8.

The walk will begin at 4.00 pm at the Marta Abreu de Las Villas Central University, which served as Guevara’s command headquarters during the capture of the city of Santa Clara, and where he returned in December 1959 to receive the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Pedagogy. It will conclude close to the Loma del Capiro, in areas of the Sandino Cultural and Recreational Complex, with a concert by trova artist Adrián Berazaín, as José Antonio Marimón Carrazana, vice rector of expansion, computerization and communication of the institution, told Granma.

Oscar López Rivera, a tireless activist

by Jeiddy Martínez Armas

Granma | October 02, 2017

Photo: Granma

Shortly before completing his term in office, former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Puerto Rican independence fighter Oscar López Rivera on January 17, 2017; following a strong international campaign for his release, according to PL.

López Rivera was born in San Sebastián, Puerto Rico in 1943, and at 14 years of age moved to the U.S. city of Chicago with his family. Later, he was drafted into the army to fight in the war against Vietnam for which he was awarded the Bronze Star, reports Puerto Rican newspaper, El Nuevo Día.

Karl Marx makes a comeback

by KATHY M. NEWMAN

People’s World | September 14, 2017

Marketing materials produced by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation seek to make Marx and Lenin cool again. | CPRF

Several months ago the Communist party in Russia updated their visual propaganda by giving three of their most controversial icons—Lenin, Stalin, and Karl Marx—a makeover. In their new poster series, Stalin looks handsome and serious in a puff of vaping smoke; Lenin looks like a college student or a hacker, hunched over a bright red laptop; and Marx looks like a rock star in a red t-shirt and a black leather jacket. Marx has a copy of Das Kapital tucked under one arm and is vowing, “I’ll be back.”

The comedian as activist: Remembering Dick Gregory

by REV. JIM CONN

People’s World | August 31, 2017

Dick Gregory in January 2016. | Scott Keeler / The Tampa Bay Times via AP

Dick Gregory changed my life. No, I never met him, and I saw him on stage just one time. No, I was not a fan in the usual way of following a public figure’s career over decades. It happened like this.

I grew up on the white side of Stockton, the Central Valley town 50 miles east of San Francisco, which everyone referred to as The City, and 50 miles south of Sacramento, the state capital. “Fifty miles from everything,” as we said as teenagers. Provincial doesn’t quite catch the essence of my childhood. More sheltered, as in fundamentalist religion, a monastery, narrow, and inhaling the same air almost all white people breathed in this country at that time — racist.

Bolivia Commemorates Tania the Guerrilla, Revolutionary Who Fought Alongside Che in Bolivia

teleSUR | September 01, 2017

During her years working for the Cuban government, Bunke used sever disguises. | Photo: WikiMedia Commons

The revolutionary and spy was killed in battle by the CIA-backed Bolivian Army Rangers on August 31, 1967.

On the 50th anniversary of death of Tania the Guerrilla — the only woman to fight alongside Marxist guerrillas under the late Che Guevara during the Bolivian insurgency — tributes have been paid to the fighter at an event titled “Woman and Revolution”.

Remembering Khokan Majumdar

by Anirban Biswas

Frontier | Vol. 50, No.6, Aug 13 – 19, 2017

Khokan Majumdar, one of the architects of the historic Naxalbari peasant uprising, passed away on 29 May at the North Bengal Medical College Hospital at the age of eighty-six. As per reports from his colleagues, the doctors had made their best efforts to save his life, but failed. Majumdar’s original name was Abdul Hamid, and since the mid-fifties of the last century, he became known as Khokan Majumdar. His phenomenally long political life started when he was only a boy of fiteen. While in jail, he first came into contact with the Communist Party of India. He was imprisoned several times before the outbreak of the Naxalbari uprising. What was significant about the uprising was that alongside the struggle for the seizure of landlords’ land, the peasant activists and leaders of the region decided to resist the police, if necessary. On 24 May, 1967, a large posse of policemen tried to enter the area and peasants, led by Khokan Majumdar, resisted, killing one inspector. On the very next day, the police fired upon a group of peasant women, killing seven along with the children they had been carrying in their laps. The uprising was hailed by the then Communist Party of China as ‘spring thunder over India’, and led to a serious split inside the CPI(M). The breakaways came to be known as Naxalites.