Read new poems from Gary Hicks on the blog:
Month: April, 2012
Happy May Day!
“Wealth belongs to those who produce itâ€
The World Federation of Trade Unions addresses a fraternal salutation to all working women and men around the world. The 1st of May is the day that reminds us of our irreplaceable social role in the production of all the wealth in the world. The 1st of May is the day that reminds us of the invincible power, that class unity can provide us with, to change the world according to our needs and abilities. A world of prosperity, peace and fraternal solidarity. The only obstacle standing in the way of this progress is the parasitic activity of the monopolies. The predatory exploitation of the wealth-producing resources for their own profiting in burden of the peoples and the environment.
In times of capitalist crises, especially at a deep and synchronized one as the one we are facing nowadays, their inter-imperialist rivalries intensify, their lust for more spheres of influence, control over the wealth-producing resources, larger markets and cheaper labour force is splashing. They get more ruthless in the course of competition. The fire of imperialist wars and conflicts caused by the imperialist interventions is spreading. The intercapitalist rivalries give birth to wars and conflicts.
The impact in the peoples’ lives is dramatic:
16% of the total population is undernourished.
Unemployment rises continuously.
1 out of 6 people worldwide do not have access to adequate clean water.
More than 100 million people are homeless. Millions live in slums. Hundreds of millions of people live on rent or have to pay unbearable house loans in order to get their own home.
920 million people remain illiterate.
8,1 million children died in 2009 before reaching five years of age.
Each year about 2,1 million people around the world die from vaccine-preventable diseases.
The workers’ rights in decent basic salary, social security, free and qualitative public services (education, healthcare, transport, electricity) are being undermined and attacked.
The freedom of association and the trade union freedoms in general are being attacked.
Trade unionists are murdered, imprisoned, fired.
On the contrary, the capitalist profits rise or remain defiantly high.
In 2010 amidst the capitalist crisis, the 50 more profitable companies earned profits more than 715 billion dollars.
This reality forces us, the workers of the world, into coiling and militant counterattack against the capitalist exploitation and barbarity for the fulfillment of the contemporary basic needs and a world without exploitation of man-by-man.
On the 3rd of October 2012, the International Action Day 2012, we will struggle side by side with strikes, demonstrations, mobilizations, activities in dozens of countries of the five continents to end the multinationals’ predatory exploitation, to demand our right in Food, Clean Water, Housing, Medication, Education, Transport and Free and Qualitative Public Services for all.
A world without workers is impossible
A world without capitalists is necessary
W. T. Whitney Jr.
“Pitiless glacial rain was falling in Bogota†on April 23, one observer said. Then, “as if by magic, that mute, lugubrious world fell apart as marchers rumbling by brought color, happiness, fraternal embrace, and hope.†They filled the Plaza Bolivar from all sides; 100,000 people had arrived in 2500 buses from all 28 Colombian departments. They were, “the forgotten Colombia, the Colombia of young people, children, old people…men and women whose views were shaped on the land and in adversity.â€
Speakers at this founding celebration of Marcha Patriotica called for a “second and definitive independence,†structural transformation, and peace with justice. Demands were heard for agrarian reform and access to health care and education. Marcha Patriotica “emanates from workers, small farmers, women trying to hold families together, indigenous peoples, and Afro-Colombians,†Nelson Lombana Silva writes. The movement seeks to integrate social movements and political parties. Planning started in 2010, the bicentennial year of liberation from Spanish rule.
Over two previous days, 4000 delegates representing 1700 social and political organizations, with two delegates each, had gathered at a convention center. They discussed Colombia’s political situation, outlined organizational structures, defined tasks, approved a political declaration, established commissions, and appointed a National Patriotic Council. Some 130 international guests were present. Plenary session speakers included: Voz newspaper director Carlos Lozano; Piedad Cordoba, leader of Colombians for Peace; Senator Gloria Inés RamÃrez of the Alternative Democratic Pole (POLO); Jaime Caycedo, Communist Party secretary general and former Bogota city councilor; and Marcha organizers.
The movement’s political platform displays revolutionary aspirations. It notes “new dynamics of collective action in our country,†and “growing desire [for] exercise of politics linked to the many social and class conflicts.†The document proclaims a “vocation for power, while signaling the necessity for political change to overcome imperial domination and hegemony imposed by dominant classes over two centuries.†Marcha Patriotica is “not simply a tactic of alliances but is a process for building subjective consensus as to unifying the oppressed and exploited classes, our historic task.â€
The platform calls for political solution of armed conflict; democratization of society, state, and economic model; alternative ways of life and production; human rights guarantees; “humanization of work,†reparations for victims; land reform and protection of rural people, educational reform based on “teaching for emancipation; a “culture of solidarity and transformation of the social order;†and lastly, Latin American integration, internationalism, and national independence.
The Liberal Party’s left wing headed by Piedad Cordoba and the Colombian Communist Party helped launch the Marcha Patriotica. National student organizations, the Fensuagro agricultural workers union, indigenous groups like the National Minga, small farmer groups, and protesters against the El Quimbo dam project were also instrumental.
Colombia is used to political projects aiming at left unity. The Patriotic Union (UP) and the Democratic Alliance, propelled by demobilized M-19 insurgents, emerged in the 1980’s. The recently established POLO electoral coalition, joined by the Communist Party, now suffers from internal divisions and disregard of social movements. Leaders issued a statement supporting the Marcha Patriotica, but POLO was unrepresented at the inaugural events.
Communist Party involvement with the UP and Marcha Patriotica suggests kinship of the two, which Marcha organizers deny. The UP came about because insurgents of the Revolutionary Army Forces of Colombia (FARC) abandoned armed struggle to enter electoral politics. The FARC now apparently has no role with the Marcha Patriotica.
Yet one clear sign of Marcha Patriotica’s impact is government scapegoating. President Juan Manuel Santos, other officials, and the media say Marcha Patriotica was a FARC idea and is infiltrated by the FARC. Evidence is cited derived supposedly from captured FARC computers, even though the Supreme Court earlier had discredited computer-based evidence used against journalists and other left wing political figures. Soldiers and police throughout Colombia have monitored and harassed Marcha activists over several months, arresting and tailing many of them, threatening family members, and barging into homes. They interfered with travel to Bogota. Intelligence operatives watched over proceedings there.
The U.S. – allied Colombian government, protective of banking, landowning, mining, and drug-running interests, intimidates also through killings. Under its auspices, 5000 activists associated with the UP were massacred. Now, three Marcha organizers are dead, or feared dead. Victims are: Martha Cecilia Guevara Oyola, community leader in Caquetá, who disappeared on April 20; Hernan Henrry Diaz, Fensuagro organizer responsible for getting 200 Putumayo people to Bogota, who disappeared on April 18; and Mauricio Enrique Rodriguez, bodyguard for Carlos Lozano and others, killed on April 27.
Nevertheless, expectations for the Marcha Patriotica are high. According to its political declaration, “Colombian patriots arrived in Bogota to affirm the existence of collective dreams, to lay out routes of dignity, to open doors of hope just as did liberators for the first independence. We are participating in a new historical chapter, forged necessarily in the broadest possible popular unity.â€
Check this out
Hanoi, Apr 27 (Prensa Latina) The Pharmaceutical Biological Laboratory
(LABIOFAM) presented in this capital new highly-effective medical
products from banana peel that stirred up interest and admiration among
Vietnamese scientists and researchers.
LABIOFAM executives Jorge Luis Martinez and Yudit Rodriguez
presented the products to the Vietnamese pharmaceutical industry at the
Institute of Medicinal Materials.
After a meticulous process of lab study, tests of medicinal properties
and health registration strictly according to international
regulations, those products have already been on the market, Rodriguez
stated.
This is the case, for example, of ASMACAN, a bronchodilator and
expectorant, which is very effective for ambulatory asthma patients, as
systematic inquiries have demonstrated among patients in Cuba.
Another medicine is NUTRISOL, a nutritional, restorative supplement
used in the treatment of anemia, anorexia and convalescence.
Other medicines to treat specific types of anemia are FERRICAL and
ACITAN. They provide a missing dietetic-fiber supplement, encourage
more healthy processes, and are an effective protector of the gastric
mucus.
Another medicine is PROPOLINA, a restorer for immunological disorders,
rapid cicatrization, anti-parasite, anti-inflammatory, analgesic and
anti-bacterial, all at once.
LABIOFARM has also fostered a line of products obtained from mango
peel, known as VIMANG, for many physical uses, among them as a
nutritional supplement for people subdued to high tensions such as
pilots, high-performance athletes and divers, among others.
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