Want to know what a sustainable climate-change-proof agricultural system might look like? Here’s an example from Cuba, in an academic paper written by my friend, comrade and former boss, Peter Rosset, together with folk from Cuba’s peasant agriculture movement. The article’s free to download (for now), but the key parts from the abstract are:
Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.
Venezuela: United Socialist Party of Venezuela defines new strategies
By Tamara Pearson, Mérida
January 24, 2011 — Venezuelanalysis.com — On Janurary 21, 2011, over one thousand members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) met with President Chavez and decided on five key strategic lines for the next two years. The discussion included recognition of important weaknesses in the party and steps for activating the Patriotic Pole coalition.
Chavez, president of Venezuela and also of the governing PSUV, presented the document, Strategic Lines of Political Action of the PSUV for 2011-2012 to the “National Assembly of Socialists” in Vargas state, where around 1440 party leaders were present.
Chavez originally proposed the strategic lines in a draft document in December last year to a meeting of the national PSUV leadership.
PSUV legislator Jesus Farias, speaking to YVKE, said the idea of the “Socialist Assembly” was to “relaunch the project that the PSUV represents, in unity with other political organisations and social groups”. He said the “reflection and establishment of new lines of action for the PSUV is related to a need to strengthen the party as a great machine of agitation and propaganda”.
Sudan: Why the people of the south voted for independence
By Kerryn Williams
Cuba: Australian Workers Union tips its hat to Washington
More than a million Cuban workers mobilise each year on May Day, organised by the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba trade union federation.
[See also "Cuban trade unionist: `Workers are key participants in the Cuban revolution'".]
By Tim Anderson
January 26, 2011 -- This January the Australian Workers Union (AWU) wrote an insulting letter to the new Cuban ambassador to Australia, Pedro Monzón. The union’s response shows the tight ideological hold that the US has over the weaker, more compliant sections of the trade union movement in Australia.
United States: Obama out of touch with the people, State of the Union shows
"What a distance from the White House to the unemployment line. From the Rose Garden to the food pantry."
By Billy Wharton
January 25, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The 2011 State of the Union speech revealed just how far out of touch US President Barack Obama is from the reality of working people in the United States. What a distance from the White House to the unemployment line. From the Rose Garden to the food pantry.
Tonight’s State of the Union sent the message one final time that the Obama presidency was and is designed to protect the privileges accrued by the richest 5% in society. Obama lived up to the characterisation of him as a “hedge-fund Democrat”, a politician assigned the task of deflecting the real demands of the people for a society and economy based on solidarity, peace and justice.
A call for more corporate globalisation
January 26, 2011 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, with the kind permission of
Nepal: ONU retira entre punto muerto
[English original at http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/46486.]
Domingo, 23 de Enero de 2011
Por Ben Peterson, traducido por Sean Seymour-Jones
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Green Left Weekly-- El primer ministro, Madhav Kumar Nepal, ha argumentado que las balas, los explosivos y otras municiones ya no constituyen “armamento letal” con tal de que sea usado para “el adiestramiento y otras obras relacionadas”.
Tariq Ali on `The Palestine Papers': Total capitulation
Mahmoud Abbas with US President George W. Bush and Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Red Sea Summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, 2003.
South Africa: Declaration of the Democratic Left Front; New left seeks revamped SA
By the steering committee of the Democratic Left Front (previously the Conferen
The following article was recommended by Raj Patel. Patel writes:
Bolivia: Fuel subsidy backdown reveals pressures on Morales
Protest against fuel subsidy cut, El Alto, December 30.
By Federico Fuentes
January 24, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- On December 31, the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales repealed a decree, passed five days earlier, to remove subsidies for fuel. The repeal came after protests and discontent at the resulting price increases from many of the government’s poor supporters.
“Why is the government making us suffer during these days … I don’t understand, I don’t understand”, Carla, a housewife in El Alto told Radio Atipiri on New Years Eve. An elderly woman expressed the shock of many supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president: “We are poor, we don’t have anything, what are we going to now, Evo has betrayed us, he must go.”
They were among the many that came out against the government’s decree, which sent petrol and diesel prices up by 73% and 83% respectively. It also caused spikes in the price of transport and food.
Tunisia: Masses create people's power bodies in neighbourhoods and workplaces
Demonstration against RCD ministers, January 19. Photo by Nasser Nouri.
Martin Hart-Landsberg: China and the jobs issue
"Approximately 90 per cent of China’s high technology exports to the US are produced by multinational corporations and many of them are being bought and sold in the US by other multinational retailers."