General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Cuba’s triple troubles: pandemic, blockade and economic crisis
Buffeted for six decades by the US economic blockade and recently having had to cope with restrictions due to Covid- 19, the economy is deteriorating. Government leaders recently outlined remedial steps for the 'new normal' in Cuban socialism, reports W T WHITNEY JNR
Cuba stock photo
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
THE UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) reported in October that the region “is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a century” and that Cuba’s GDP this year will be down at least 8 per cent.
Tourist income, remittances, foreign trade and tax collections have fallen. Oil and gasoline shortages, the result of US sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela, have stressed the economy.
Public spending on health care, unemployment compensation and pensions are up; 150,000 state workers and 250,000 private-sector workers have been idled. Effects of the US economic blockade compound matters, with restrictions affecting the tourist industry, foreign imports and access to foreign currency and loans.
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WT WHITNEY JR connects the dots between the 1804 revolution and modern anti-immigrant, pet-eating hysteria, looking at the deep-seated fears of black self-determination that still haunt the modern US psyche
The views of Cuban leaders on problems now enveloping the country shed light on the realities of a nation under siege and a revolution in trouble from poor food production, emigration and black-market scalping, writes WT WHITNEY JR
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