Rwandan President Paul Kagame distributes mosquito nets. Studies show that malaria, which kills more than a million Africans every year, could be contained in just a few years at the cost of $3 billion a year.
By Jean-Paul Piérot
Original October 11, 2008, l'Humanité article in French: ``Et pendant ce temps, l’Afrique …''. Translated by Gene Zbikowski
While Africa needs US$72 billion a year in aid, hundreds of billions are being freed up to pay Western banks for the consequences of speculation.
Maria Eugenia is the sister of Tony Guerrero, one of the ``Cuban Five'' political prisoners held for 10 years in US prisons on ``conspiracy to commit espionage'' charges for reporting on the Miami-based, Washington-backed terrorist groups operating against Cuba.
Eugenia recently toured Australia to build support for the campaign to free the five. Below is the three-part video of her Sydney public meeting. (For more background on the case, click HERE.
For more information about the Free the Five campaign, visit http://www.fiveheroes.blogspot.com.)
Part 1
Below are two poems presented by veteran anti-apartheid and global social justice activist Dennis Brutus, in Venezuela for the eighth meeting of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity and the World Forum for Alternatives, October 18, 2008.
NOW with audio: Listen to Federico Fuentes' assessment after just returning from Bolivia. Morales seems to have outmanouevred the ultra-right's attempts to unseat him and to have made his position stronger, while his enemies are in disarray. He is so confident of his support in the popular social movements now that he is holding another referendum next month. Thanks to Left Click.
Part 1
By Federico Fuentes
La Paz, Bolivia -- October 28, 2008 -- After three months of intense class struggle, there can be no doubt that the US-backed right-wing opposition to the government of President Evo Morales has suffered three important defeats. The right’s offensive to topple Morales, which climaxed with the September 11-12 “civic coup” attempt, has been decisively rolled back by the combined action of the government and social movements.
The government secured a historic vote in its favour with more than 67% endorsing Morales’ mandate in a referendum in August that also revoked the mandate of two opposition prefects. Another opposition prefect was arrested for his role in the coup. And now Morales has secured a referendum for the new draft constitution to “refound Bolivia” on the basis of justice for the indigenous majority.
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
October 25, 2008 -- Talk of assassination plots and rising concerns about a high abstention rate have marked the beginning of the November 23 regional elections race here in Venezuela.
Formally at stake are 23 governorships, more than 300 mayorships and hundreds of representatives on the state legislative councils. However, the result of these elections could also have an important impact on the future of the Bolivarian Revolution led by the Chavez government.
During the November 2004 regional elections, the pro-Chavez forces, on the back of the thumping victory in the August 2004 recall referendum on Chavez’s mandate, painted the electoral map red as they swept into 21 of the 23 governorships up for election (they later rewon the governership of Amazonas to make it 22 out of 24 all up).
By Peter Boyle
October 25, 2008 -- Some parties in Malaysia’s ruling National Front (BN) government are trying to intimidate opposition parties and social activists, Socialist Party Malaysia (PSM) secretary general S.Arutchelvan told Green Left Weekly, a few days after the PSM’s sole federal MP, Dr D. Jeyakumar, had his car torched by thugs on October 17.
The previous day, a 26-year-old human rights activist, Cheng Lee Whee, was arrested under the notorious Internal Security Act (ISA) after she made a report accusing the police of abuse of power in an eviction of a poor squatter colony in the state of Johor. She was charged with “spreading false information”.
Cheng had complained that about the violent eviction of 27 squatters and their supporters who were attempting to stop the demolition of a predominantly Malay village Kampung Baru Plentong Tengah on October 16.
Choo Shinn Chei, a PSM activist, also had her laptop confiscated by police in this incident.
This follows mounting arrests and detentions of other activists — and even bloggers — under the ISA. This has provoked thousands to demonstrate in recent months for repeal of this colonial-era detention-without-trial law.
By Patrick Bond
October 25, 2008 -- A far-reaching strategic debate is underway about how to respond to the global financial crisis, and indeed how the North's problems can be tied into a broader critique of capitalism.
The 2008 world financial meltdown has its roots in the neoliberal export-model (dominant in Africa since the 1981 World Bank Berg Report and onset of structural adjustment during the early 1980s) and even more deeply, in 35 years of world capitalist stagnation/volatility. Africa has always suffered a disproportionate share of pressure from the world economy, especially in the sphere of debt and financial outflows. But for those African countries which made themselves excessively vulnerable to global financial flows during the neoliberal era, the meltdown had a severe, adverse impact.
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation central committee statement on developments in Sri Lanka.
John Bellamy Foster: We need to go down to 350 parts per million [of carbon dioxide], which means very big social transformations on a scale that would be considered revolutionary by anybody in society today -- transformation of our whole society quite fundamentally. We have to aim at that, and we have to demand that of our society.
Forget about capitalism, forget about whether the system can do it. Don't let that be your barometer. Say this is necessary for the planet, for human survival, for justice, for environmental justice, and we just have to do it.
We demand that be done, and we work out the operating system of the world economy, we work out our social relations of production, in accordance with necessity, in accordance with what is necessary for the planet, not in accordance with what is necessary for the accumulation of wealth and profits for a very few.