World

Following the announcement by Fidel Castro on February 19 that he would not stand in the election by Cuba’s National Assembly (AN) for the position of president, the Western media coverage has ranged from grudging acknowledgement of Cuba’s social gains in the face of 50 years of US aggression, to outrageous claims of “dictatorship” and US government plans for a “transition” in Cuba.

The National Student League for Democracy (LMND) held an action at the office of Exxon-Mobil in Jakarta on February 25 to demand the nationalisation of the Indonesian mining sector.

Tens of thousands of Gazans attempted to form a human chain thelength of the Gaza Strip on February 25. The action was a protest against Israel’s illegal collective punishment of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza.

“Never again will they rob us — the ExxonMobil bandits. They are imperial, American bandits, white-collared thieves. They turn governments corrupt, they oust governments. They supported the invasion of Iraq.”"Never again will they rob us — the ExxonMobil bandits. They are imperial, American bandits, white-collared thieves. They turn governments corrupt, they oust governments. They supported the invasion of Iraq."

Should poor people be given pit latrines and other devices to limit their consumption of water? A resounding yes was heard at the Africa Sanitation conference held during February at the Luthuli International Conference Centre in Durban.

Visibly overcome with emotion, four former Colombian legislators — Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Perez, Orlando Beltran and Jorge Eduardo Gechem — held prisoner by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for years, were reunited with their families in the Simon Bolivar International airport near Caracas on February 27 after a successful Venezuelan-led humanitarian mission.

Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano once stated about US domination of Latin America: “Marines shouldered bats next to their rifles when they imposed imperial order in a region by blood and fire. Baseball then became for the people of the Caribbean what baseball is to [them].”

The following is abridged from an interview with Haiti solidarity activist Roger Annis for the Norwegian left daily newspaper Klassenkampens.

On February 24, the left-wing party Die Linke extended its recent run of breakthroughs in German regional elections, winning eight seats in the Hamburg state parliament.

On the morning of February 19, without fanfare, Cuban media released a statement from President Fidel Castro stating that he would decline to stand for re-election to the presidency.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil corporation, has launched an attack on the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez and the process of social change, known as the Bolivarian revolution, that aims to eradicate poverty and develop Venezuela’s economy along pro-people lines.

On February 1 the Bolivian government introduced its “dignity pension” — a pension payment for those over 60 years-old that is a first of its kind in Bolivia.