Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts

Monday, July 12, 2021

Cubans Take to the Streets in Protests against Communist Regime | DW News

Jul 12, 2021 • Anti-government protests in Cuba amid food shortages and COVID surge.

Protests have broken out in Cuba, with thousands of people taking to the streets against the communist regime.

Demonstrators expressed frustration at food shortages, rising prices and the lack of COVID-19 vaccines. The government has tried to blame the US for the unrest and is rallying its own supporters. It is the greatest show of discontent with the socialist government since the 1990s. Like back then, the trigger for this protest is the desperate economic situation.

Right now, the country is suffering from food shortages. Soon the police arrived and began to drag off people in the crowd. The arrests and the violence only make the demonstrators angrier. "We are not afraid" they cry out. Supporters of the government have been out in the streets too. President Miguel Diaz-Canel himself led a rally. It was organized quickly - in a town outside Havana, where the anti-government protests began early on Sunday.

With the president encouraging his supporters to mobilize against his opponents - there were ugly confrontations. A group of government supporters detain opposition protesters.

A communist regime has ruled Cuba since 1959. It has survived the fall of the Soviet Union and the death of its founder, Fidel Castro. Now, it is again being challenged. But displays like these show it is unlikely to go without a fight.



Related: Thousands March in Cuba in Rare Mass Protests amid Economic Crisis »

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

People’s Century: 1917 Red Flag


This episode is about the events in Russia and Soviet Union in the time frame of post World War 1 and pre World War 2

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Moscow: Nostalgia for Communism 25 Years On | DW News


It has been 25 years since Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the last leader of the Soviet Union. Today, the Communist Party is in the opposition, and many communists express nostalgia for the old days. But do they really want to go back to the USSR?

Sunday, October 16, 2016

"We Wanted to Transform East Germany“ | DW News


He was a dedicated Communist who chose to live in East Germany. He became a dissident and the regime later revoked his citizenship. In the DW interview Wolf Biermann talks about his break with Communism and his conviction that you have to speak out.

Monday, June 08, 2015

Is the Pope a Communist?

BBC AMERICA: Pope Francis's critique of free-market economics has made him an icon for the Left and prompted claims that he is a communist. The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics has called capitalism a source of inequality at best - and at worst a killer. Is the Pope, as his critics claim, a red radical?

On his way back from the Victory Day Parade in Moscow last month, the Cuban leader Raul Castro stopped off in Rome to thank Pope Francis for his role in Cuba's rapprochement with the United States. "If the Pope continues this way," Castro said afterwards, "I will go back to praying and go back to the church - I am not joking."

In September Francis will return the compliment with a stop-over in Cuba when he travels to the United States. And the American visit could turn out to be the most difficult overseas trip of his pontificate.

Raul Castro's endorsement is unlikely to recommend Francis to the American right, many of whom responded with visceral rage to President Obama's Cuban initiative.

"There is a lot of scepticism among (US) Catholics," says Stephen Moore, the chief economist at the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation, and himself a Catholic.

"I think this is a Pope who clearly has some Marxist leanings. It's unquestionable that he has a very vocal scepticism (about) capitalism and free enterprise and… I find that to be very troubling." » | Ed Stourton, BBC News | Sunday, June 07, 2015

Friday, December 05, 2014

German Far-Left Party Takes State Parliament


THE DAILY TELEGRAPH East German communists return to power 25 years after fall of Berlin Wall

Germany's far-Left party has returned to power in a state government for the first time since the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, stoking heated debate about its communist roots.

The Left Party, widely seen as the successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED) that once ruled East Germany, will head the government of Thuringia after the state parliament narrowly voted to approve a new coalition.

The new state prime minister, Bodo Ramelow, used his first speech in parliament to apologise to victims of the former communist regime, and said he wanted to "reconcile rather than divide".

Thousands of people braved sub-zero temperatures on the streets of the state capital, Erfurt, on Thursday night to protest against the expected result of the vote.

Angela Merkel predicted the decision would be "bad news" for Thuringia, while the German President, Joachim Gauck, broke with the traditional neutrality of his role to speak out against it. » | Justin Huggler, Berlin | Friday, December 05, 2014

NORD-WEST ZEITUNG ONLINE: Ramelow ist Thüringens neuer Ministerpräsident: Der 58-jährige Bodo Ramelow erhielt im zweiten Wahlgang 46 von 90 gültigen Stimmen. Damit stellt die Linke 25 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall erstmals einen Ministerpräsidenten in Deutschland. Bei der Wahl lief aber nicht alles glatt. » | Freitag, 05. Dezember 2014

Monday, January 21, 2013

Saturday, January 12, 2013

As Hugo Chavez Fights for His Life, Cuba Fears for Its Future

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Venezuela is not the only Latin American nation that is monitoring every moment of president Hugo Chavez's illness. His ally Cuba has relied on him for economic help, and that could soon come to an end.

Away from the constitutional wrangles and impassioned crowds of Caracas, the future of Venezuela after Hugo Chavez is being plotted this weekend in an elegant pre-revolutionary mansion in Havana's old playboy quarter.

The firebrand Venezuelan president is fighting for his life in a nearby hospital, stricken by severe respiratory problems and a lung infection after his latest round of surgery for cancer.

His illness left him unable to be sworn in for his fourth term as president last Thursday, having won a close-fought election in October.

But for his Cuban hosts, much more is at risk than simply the loss of a fellow left-wing Latin American radical who has long venerated Fidel Castro. His death would also put at risk the remarkable oil-fuelled largesse that has allowed Cuba to cling to its experiment in tropical communism.

Thanks to the close personal relationship between Mr Chavez and Mr Castro, energy-rich Venezuela supplies more than 100,000 barrels of dirt-cheap oil a day to Cuba - an estimated 50 per cent of the island's petroleum needs.

Venezuela also hires tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers to work in its barrio slums, propping up the Cuban economy to the tune of some $6 billion a year in total. Without that subsidy, Havana would have long ago been forced to introduce market reforms to its communist regime. » | Philip Sherwell, and Andrew Hamilton in Havana | Saturday, January 12, 2013

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Discovery Channel - End of the USSR

Documentary about collapse of the Soviet Union



Part 3

Part 4

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Margot Honecker Defends East German Dictatorship

THE GUARDIAN: Widow of GDR leader Erich Honecker gives unapologetic interview in documentary showing her at home in Chile

She was known as the "purple witch" for her arresting lilac rinses and tenacious political outlook. Now the widow of the former East German leader Erich Honecker has broken a 20-year silence to defend the dictatorship, attack those who helped to destroy it, and complain about her pension.

Margot Honecker, 84, who as education minister of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) served alongside her dictator husband, describes her homesickness for a "lost nation" and calls its demise a tragedy in an interview due to be broadcast on German television on Monday evening.

The documentary, which was years in the making due to Honecker's dogged insistence she would never give an interview to "West German" media, shows her at home in Chile where she escaped to with her husband after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s.

For the first time since 1989 Germans are given an insight into Honecker's life and a full-blown taste of her unforgiving views about a GDR that she continues to idealise. In shockingly frank exchanges in which she cuts a robust, vigorous figure, she defends East Germany to the hilt and refuses to accept any responsibility for its more tyrannical traits, including her own role as the minister responsible for thousands of forced adoptions.

"It is a tragedy that this land no longer exists," she tells the interviewer, Eric Friedler, adding that, while she lives in Chile "my head is in Germany". She does not, however, mean united Germany, rather the "better Germany" of the GDR. » | Kate Connolly in Berlin | Monday, April 02, 2012

Watch the documentary (in German) »

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Georgia Passes Law to Destroy Soviet-era Monuments and Street Names

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Georgia will destroy Soviet-era monuments and change any street names which refer to its Communist past, MPs have decided.

The parliamentarians passed a new law on Tuesday, aimed at distancing the country from its former master Russia.

Ties between Russia and Georgia have soured since President Mikheil Saakashvili ousted post-Soviet leader Eduard Shevardnadze in the 2003 "Rose Revolution" and vowed to move the country out of Moscow's sphere of influence.

"Our people have been waiting for this law to be passed for 20 years and I'm proud that it is passed by this parliament," said Gia Tortladze, an opposition lawmaker who proposed the law.

The so-called Freedom Charter will set up a commission led by the Interior Ministry to identify symbols, monuments, inscriptions, street and park names "that may reflect or contain elements of Soviet or fascist ideology" and consider their removal.

The law will also prevent former KGB agents and senior Communist party officials from occupying high-ranking positions in government. » | Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Friday, May 06, 2011

China Bans Crime Shows and Soap Operas to Make Way for 'Red' TV

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Television bosses across China have been ordered to clear their schedules and broadcast improving 'Red' television as the country gears up to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party this July.

Popular low-budget crime sagas, romantic soap operas and spy thrillers that entertain millions of Chinese every night have been ordered off the airwaves by central government TV regulators to be replaced by improving, patriotic content.

The decision, which has caused widespread disgruntlement, is the latest example of a concerted attempt by China's ruling Communist Party to use so-called "Red" propaganda to bolster what it calls "social unity" and old "revolutionary values" in modern Chinese society.

The news of the three-month ban on what authorities have labeled frivolous or vulgar television has provoked a wave of discussion on China's online bulletin boards and discussion forums.

The issue had generated more than 20,000 comments on 163.com, one of China's leading internet portals, with many contributors largely taking a weary "don't care" attitude and promising to find other diversions or download American programmes from the internet.

"So the red songs and red movies are promoted national-wide from now on," said one comment, "It doesn't really matter as I only watched American TV soaps anyway since I started to have access to the internet". » | Peter Foster, Beijing | Friday, May 06, 2011

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Riz Khan: A Cuban Evolution

Cuba's legendary leader Fidel Castro has taken his last bow as leader of the party he founded more than 50 years ago. Joining us on the Riz Khan Show to discuss Cuba's future are Richard Gott, British journalist and historian and Eric Hershberg, Director at the Centre for Latin American and Latino Studies at the American University in Washington DC.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Cuba to Allow Homes to Be Bought and Sold for First Time under Communist Rule

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Cubans will be allowed to buy and sell homes for the first time since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 under a package of sweeping reforms.

Since the Communist revolution, inhabitants of the island have only been allowed to swap homes through a complicated system or pass them on to their children.

But a raft of reforms agreed at the first congress of the Communist Party since 1997 includes a plan to legalise property sales.

Under the current system of home swaps, a culture of corruption involving "under-the-table" payments has developed.

However, President Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, said that the concentration of property would not be allowed and no details were given on how sales would operate.

The plan to allow home sales was one of about 300 approved by the party, which also include more self-employment, cutting a million government jobs in the coming years, encouraging foreign investment and reducing state spending. » | Robin Yapp, Sao Paulo | Tuesday, April 19, 2011