ARS NOTORIA

Dearest Eve, Accept my sincere greetings for the coming year, may it usher in a new era in the progress of our struggle, I am convinced there must be a great change, we are moving to our goal, despite grievous obstacles. Incidentally, I must apologise for my very long silence again, you must get used to me now, everything has changed, I am no longer that efficient correspondent; with more problems on my head, at times I feel I am starting to have a breakdown, my transfer to Lusaka has, contrary to expectations, aggravated the situation. I have become more unproductive, if ever I was. Can you imagine not having an office, above all being a perpetual boarder, I can't determine my way of life. I am hoping, at least, that the latter will be soon solved, the comrades of MPLA gave us their house, which I will occupy as soon as it is cleaned, but I went away for two weeks and came back and they still hadn't cleaned it. I was attending a meeting of the NEC in Morogoro, I

...shouting 'Yippee ki yay Mother f***ers!' US citizen's celebrate the summary execution of Osama Bin Laden Here, from Europe, the displays of joy on the killing of Obama are unseemly to all but the relatives of the European victims of the attack on the Twin Towers who happen to believe in summary justice and capital punishment. Certainly, no Christian can claim to rejoice in the killing of any one or accept the taking of revenge as a Christian value. Moreover, personalising the victory in such a way is infantile. It is the US comic book politics that country reserves for its foreign policy. Obama is Superman now, and the US has completely disavowed Kissinger's killing me softly approach. It was Doris Lessing in her science fiction books, Shikasta and others, who talked of the importance of trials as a way of clarifying people's thoughts on global issues.Nuremberg did the job. The Hague. Then you even have the example of the Stalinist show trials. They served

What are the dealbreakers? Ed Davey, LibDem MP and Undersecretary of State for Business In a conversation an hour ago, Ed Davey insisted that if it wasn't for their participation in the government then things would have been much worse. We act as a brake on the Tories and are able to introduce a lot of policies that we are proud of. Look, I said. I voted against the Tories, but thanks to you, I've got a Tory government. N o, you got a LibDem MP and we've done a lot to look after people. He gave me some examples. We've raised the income tax threshold and it's benefitted a million and a half more people. We've helped disadvantaged children... He continued. Blunket , and Reed and others came on TV and ruled out the possibility of a  coalition with the Labour government anyway. And it would have been a minority government. What we see, I said, the people on the left who supported the LibDems because  of their green policies and tuition fees

Cameron and Sarkozy smash up Libya.   A Mad Max army of Islamic fundamentalists and all-sorts prepare for government . The African Union called for an immediate cessation to the bombing of  Libya. This call was ignored and censored by the British and French  media who are now, with honourable exceptions, embedded into their respective governments policy of military intervention.  The panel representing the AU calling for cessation comprises Presidents Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania, Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali and Sassou Nguesso of Congo.  The legitimate contribution of the high ranking representatives of the African Union, including the South African president Jacob Zuma, to a negotiated solution to a civil war in a country on the African continent, was sabotaged and subsequently dismissed out of hand by NATO and in particular by the two most important former colonial powers in Africa, France a

There is another, allied source of legitimate power. It is called historical and political awareness. Let's apply it:  NATO commander in  charge of bombing Libya Suharto was overthrown by popular pressure -- but just as much, because the cold war was over and, having done his job as a mega killer and ally for decades, the US could let him go. And Washington could look on without angst that the once-great non-aligned power under Sukarno up to the early 1960s, might start rebuilding itself as a nation, because whoops, there goes plucky little East Timor, finally getting independence, Aceh ready to split away too, and all kinds of religious fundamanics ready to keep Indonesia from even thinking about a progressive agenda.     Many many Serbs wanted to be rid of Milosevic, but he was certainly not overthrown by moral authority. It was NATO bombing that did it, because he represented, in however withered and warped a way, the last traces of that anti-imperialist, n

Noor Mohammed Taraki By John Ryan I was in Afghanistan on an agricultural research project in October and November of 1978. Through Kabul University I conducted my research project with the assistance of an agriculture professor. A Marxist government had come to power only six months before, so I was there at a significant period in the country's history.  The bulk of Afghanistan's people in the 1970s were farmers, but the landholding system hadn't changed much since the feudal period. More than three quarters of the land was owned by landlords who comprised only three per cent of the rural population. The king was deposed in 1973, but no land reform came about and the new government was autocratic, corrupt and unpopular. On April 27, 1978, to prevent the police from attacking a huge demonstration in front of the presidential palace, the army intervened, and after firing a single shot from a tank at the palace, the government resigned.

Proposal for India and the USA Commercial banks should not be allowed to create money. by Anandi Sharan Thursday, 07 April 2011 at 12:28 Proposal for India Three point programme: a) a bill to prohibit the creation of money by commercial banks; b) A bill to pass the land (that is right to land) to Gram Saba and town committees,  subject to a constitutional amendment bill; c|) a budget 2012-2013 that includes an ecological tax reform bill. Brief elaboration The constitution is basically sound. distortions from the industrial mindset have been adopted from  the colonial mindset. However, respectability of the law, and hence desire for respect for the law - because it makes us feel reassured - can be restored through creating a small shift in perspective on the three  burning issues confronting the country. Measures we should take include: a) Prohibition of  money creation by commercial banks and instead reintegrate RBI into Fin Min and give money to centre and states to

Corporate rot started with the East India Company Corporate governance is a big problem today, witness ridiculous risk taking, huge cash bonuses out of revenue (not profit) and investment in products no one understands. Why is it like this? The answer strangely is the East India Company . Johnny Company was the corporation most responsible for the public limited company structure that is so prevalent today. There were many things wrong with the company, starving Bengali’s to death to increase profits for one, but the one I’m particularly concerned with here was its governance. The Company was owned by share holders based in London, but more often than not by appointed managers who didn’t own majority stakes. As a consequence the only way that managers could make money was by using the corporate machinery to make short term profits, hence starving people to death in Bengal. If you don’t believe me read Nick Robin’s fantastic, The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East

SKYLON an opportunity for British commercial space development It seems that all the three main UK parties have one economic thought in common, and that is we do too much finance as a % of our GDP. What nobody seems to agree on is how we as a nation diversify our economy sufficiently so it starts to look more like Germany and less like a club for the city. I thought I would throw out a few ideas to add to the debate: INVESTMENT Money is the grease and the engine of the economy. Hence CAPITAL ism. So how does it get to small, medium sized technology/industrial based enterprises? This has been a deep concern of politicians and economists alike since the banking crisis in 2008. Quantitative Easing has been the most used indirect way of floating the system in capital and thereby hoping that investment ends up in the place it needs to. This works to a degree, but if we want to have a more directed effort the following two solutions are workable: 1 We own big high street banks

Resolution 1973 has offered a legal base for the until-recently dithering West to choose a side in the ongoing Libyan conflict. Vague enough and faced with suspicion from some of the big players in the UN, it did, however, pass. The big players have been caught off guard by these sweeping social revolutions. This wasn’t the case with the Arab and Muslim nations, for they call their collective will, call it Islam if you please, the sleeping, or at worst the chained, giant. The declared aim is to save the lives of civilians from the despot Muammar Gaddafi's thugs. Whether Gaddafi was to see through with his threats or not, that question seemed to Britain, France and other leading enthusiasts a risk too 'unethical' to bear in mind. Thus the 3 months that took the international invasive action in Kosovo in 1997 was reduced now to 3 weeks in Libya. This was impressive but a quick look at the normal pace of decision taking within UN leaves one rather cynical and it is too un

Resolution 1973 has offered a legal base for the until-recently dithering West to choose a side in the ongoing Libyan conflict. Vague enough and faced with suspicion from some of the big players in the UN it did however pass. The big players have been caught off guard by these sweeping social revolutions. This wasn’t the case with the Arab and Muslim nations for they call their collective will, call it Islam if you please, the sleeping or at worst the chained giant. The declared aim is to save the lives of civilians from the despot Muammar Gaddafi's thugs. Whether Gaddafi was to see through his threat or not, that question seemed to Britain, France and other leading enthusiasts a risk too 'unethical' to bear in mind. Thus the 3 months that took the international invasive action in Kosovo in 1997 was reduced now to 3 weeks in Libya. This was impressive but a quick look at the normal pace of decision taking within UN leaves one rather cynical and it is too un-bure

Aghostino Neto with Fidel   “…a historical imperative to express our gratitude…” Raul On reaching the 20th anniversary of the formation of the internationalist combatant columns of Cubans who carried out missions in Congo Leopoldville and Congo Brazzaville [...] I am honoured to accept the task commended to me by the leadership of the Party, the Council of State and the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro , and thus award the Order of Ernesto Che Guevara and the Medal of Internationalist Combatants to the members of those units who had the privilege to be forerunners of the struggle of the peoples of Africa and Cuba against colonial oppression; for national independence and for the triumph and consolidation of socialism. Sending these contingents of men and women  to help represented the great strategic importance that our party and our commander has always placed on African revolutionary processes in their fight against imperialism and this action demonstrates how we identify