“Let’s try to imagine what Karl Marx would be doing today.â€
It was Sunday, May 21st, and my host posing the question was Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly. It was Alarcon’s 69th birthday, and I was having difficulty understanding why he had pressed me to fly down for a visit. The purpose was nothing more than “two old guys talking,†according to his daughter Maggie, a thirty-something single mom and formidable interpreter of Cuba to many North Americans.
Looking back today, I don’t know whether or not Alarcon already knew that his longtime comrade Fidel was diagnosed as needing serious surgery. The question would become a “state secret,†at Castro’s wish. Alarcon is third in line to succeed Fidel after Raul Castro, although it is more likely Alarcon will blend into a collective transitional team.
The prospect of three days’ conversation with Ricardo Alarcon reflecting on his long revolutionary experience was too important to put off, and our interviews may be of greater value during the current rampant and reckless speculation over Fidel’s status. Few individuals alive have the range of Alarcon’s experience, from being a Havana student leader during the
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by Tom Hayden
In my first report, concerning troop withdrawals, I found the Iraq Study Group proposals for troop reductions too vague and equivocal. In my second report, I found their proposals for opening Iraq's oil reserves to multinationals repugnant and even self-serving. Now let's turn to the internal political solution offered by the Baker-Hamilton Group.
It deserves close attention, for it mirrors and endorses peace talks with the Iraqi insurgents that are already underway in secret, as first reported in the Huffington Post last week. (more...)
AN ACTIVIST GUIDE TO ENDING THE WAR IN IRAQ: THE PRESSURE OF PEOPLE POWER AGAINST THE PILLARS OF POLICY.
This is a strategy for sustaining the anti-war movement through the ups and downs of the long war in Iraq. I do not believe the war can be ended just by a moral escalation of protest. Nor is resistance likely to "drive" the Bush Administration out of office. For those who want to end the Iraq War, not just witness against it or resist it, I offer this strategy:
It will be ended by enough people power pressure against the pillars of the policy.
The Iraq War rests on certain "pillars":
1. the pillar of public opinion, above all;
