ON December 28, the central secretariat of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) expressed profound grief over the demise of Comrade Kali Ghosh at 8.00 on the same morning, in a hospital at Kolkata. He was 83 and was one of the senior most leaders of the CITU.
A LAST-DITCH attempt by the BNP-Jama’at-e-Islami combine to lay a siege at capital city, Dhaka, on December 29 so as to force the Sheikh Hasina government to quit has fizzled out. A week before the Bangladesh parliamentary election --- that were scheduled to be held on January 5, 2014 --- Mrs Khaleda Zia, chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), called upon all the ‘able-bodied’ men to come to Dhaka on the day for what she called ‘March to Democracy.’
THE preliminary nuclear deal which Iran and the P-5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France, UK and Germany) finally signed in the last week of November, has partially lifted the sanctions on Iran for six months. The groundwork for the agreement was laid much before the formal agreement was announced. Secret talks between American and Iranian officials have been ongoing since last year. The contacts were intensified following the election of the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, who had won the elections with a massive majority earlier in the year.
NOTWITHSTANDING the fits and bursts of hopes of recovery in 2013, the world capitalist economy continued to falter and stagger, confirming that the global crisis triggered by the financial meltdown of 2008 continues to plague the global economy. Except for socialist China, all the other so-called emerging economies which, like India, might have initially withstood the devastating impact in 2008, have also begun to buckle under this impact.
THE Central Kisan Committee (CKC) of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) met at Kannur (Kerala) on December 28 and 29. This was the first meeting of the CKC after the 33rd all-India conference of the AIKS. About 50 members from different states attended the CKC meeting and discussed the serious issues faced by the peasantry. The CKC noted that the attacks on the peasantry are intensifying and, under the impact of the neo-liberal economic policies, peasants are increasingly finding agriculture to be unviable. Suicides are continuing unabated.
THE third most important set of revelations from Snowden's treasure trove of NSA documents took place last week. Der Spiegel, a leading German newspaper, published a set of reports that show how networks and computers have been compromised by the NSA. This was complemented by Jacob Appelbaum's address in the 30th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, which brought out the range of methods that NSA uses to take over and eavesdrop on networks and systems. What also stands out is the number of American companies that have such “backdoors” in their systems and equipment.
EVERY call for the observance of the birth centenary of pioneers and veterans of the Indian communist movement by our party's Central Committee has never been intended to be either a formality or a ritualistic remembrance. Such observations are meant to arm the party as a whole to carry forward the struggles to achieve the strategic objective in a more resolute manner. It is with such spirit that the central committee has called upon the entire party to observe the birth centenary of Comrade Makineni Basavapunnaiah, or MB as he was fondly and universally referred to.
WHILE meeting held in Agartala on December 13-15, 2013, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) decided to observe M Basavapunnaiah birth centenary year from December 14, 2013, which was his birthday.
Since Comrade MB’s main contribution to the party and the communist movement was in the ideological sphere, the Central Committee decided that the focus of the centenary celebrations should be on an ideological campaign.