World

As we passed by the Tintaya open-pit copper mine, I was unprepared for the scene of utter desolation. The fully laden hired lorry was heading back to Arequipa from the highland town of Yauri, where my companions had purchased 20 head of ganado (cattle) earlier that morning. The cattle market had seemed impressive enough to my untutored eyes, but it was nothing like the old days, they informed me.

On September 29, US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered to meet Taliban leader Mullah Omar and give the Taliban — classified as “terrorists” by the US and its NATO allies — posts in his government.

“In a setback for the United States, Iran won a two-month reprieve from new UN sanctions over its nuclear program on Friday. The Bush administration and its European allies ceded to Russian and Chinese demands to give Tehran more time to address international concerns”, Associated Press reported on September 29.

More than six months have passed since the inauguration of the new “21st Century Sandinista” government of Nicaragua after Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) assumed the presidency in January. Jubilant celebrations of that event expressed the excitement of hundreds of thousands of Sandinista supporters. New hopes for an escape from the hell of neoliberal catastrophes breezed across our country’s mountains, volcanoes, valleys and lakes, from the large cities to the remote hinterlands and coasts.

According to official figures, over 1 million aspiring members of the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) participated in the election of spokespeople, as part of the latest phase in its construction, which will culminate with a founding congress scheduled to begin on October 27. Congress delegates will be elected from the spokespeople.

Class-free analysis seeking to justify Beijing’s pursuit of capitalism with a human face will likely find a place in the Communist Party of China’s constitution at the party’s 17th congress, which begins on October 15. A scheduled constitutional amendment is expected to be couched in such terms as the pursuit of a “socialist harmonious society” and a “people-centred” “scientific concept of development”, which will be credited as “major theoretical developments” of CPC general secretary Hu Jintao.

The death toll for US troops in Iraq in September — 66 — was the lowest monthly total since August last year when 65 US troops were killed. However, by the end of last month, a total of 804 US soldiers had died this year in Iraq — 301 more than in the first nine months of 2006.

One of the last favours the Howard government will be asked to perform for the Bush regime will be to attempt to soften the crushing diplomatic defeat the US suffers every year at the United Nations over its ongoing economic blockade of Cuba.

In the wake of mass protests for democracy spearheaded by Buddhist monks, triggered by five-fold increases to fuel and public transport costs, Burma’s major cities of Rangoon and Mandalay have become the scene of an intense crackdown by the military, which has ruled the country since 1962.

Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, has captured the imagination of people around the world and sparked widespread commentary on the nature of the process of social change under way in the oil-rich South American nation.

“In a very short time, we have begun to advance over all of that which was reversed over the past 80 years” in Latin America, argues Argentine author Luis Bilbao. “Many revolutionary militants and leaders in Latin America and the world are left perplexed and don’t understand what is happening in this region today.”

Forty years after his assassination, Ernesto “Che” Guevara remains ubiquitous. His image is familiar to everyone. Taken by Alberto Korda, the famous photo of Che shows a young revolutionary looking into the middle-distance with an expression of intense, steely determination. The image has come to symbolise the struggle for Third Wold independence, and is synonymous with the Cuban Revolution, which overthrew a US-backed dictator to institutionalise people’s power.