Vol. 73/No. 5      February 9, 2009

Participants in the panel include Carlos Borroto, deputy director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana; María del Carmen Barroso, international relations secretary of the National Association of Small Farmers; Gladys Hernández, director of international finances at the Center for the Study of the World Economy; and representatives of the Federation of University Students and Pathfinder Press.

Pathfinder, which distributes Nueva Internacional, is presenting several new books at this year’s fair, which it has participated in since 1986.

Among the articles featured in the magazine that will be discussed at the presentation is “The Clintons’ Antilabor Legacy: Roots of the 2008 World Financial Crisis,” by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. It explains how the economic policies carried out by the Clinton administration enabled the U.S. capitalist rulers to build up the massive mortgage, household, corporate, and government debts, along with an array of derivatives, that are at the foundation of the current world capitalist economic crisis.

The article notes how under the Clinton administration the U.S. rulers stepped up their assaults on the rights and social gains of working people. These ranged from the elimination of “welfare as we know it”—which slashed millions of workers from welfare rolls, pushing many into minimum-wage jobs or onto unemployment lines—to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which expanded the powers of the immigration police to deport workers without judicial review or appeal.

Another feature in the magazine is “The Stewardship of Nature Also Falls to the Working Class: In Defense of Land and Labor.” This statement by the Socialist Workers Party is a companion piece to the article “Our Politics Start with the World,” published in New International no. 13. It argues that the conquest of state power by workers and farmers is the only road to the defense of labor and of nature from the ruinous consequences of the workings of capitalism. It explains why capitalist hysteria campaigns and catastrophism—from panics over epidemics to “natural disasters” to the dumping of carbon emissions into the atmosphere—aim to deflect attention from the real source of these threats to civilization: the capitalist mode of production and its world imperialist order.

Yet another topic of discussion from Nueva Internacional will be “Setting the Record Straight on Fascism and World War II,” which explains the multiple class conflicts that are often obscured under the umbrella phrase “World War II,” and the record of the communist movement in these battles.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban president: Shut down U.S. base at Guantánamo
Cuban 5 offer solidarity to Palestinians in Gaza
Cuba: former sugar workers discuss challenges of boosting food production
Workers at Havana province farm co-op assess progress in making
transition to new jobs growing food crops to reduce dependence on imports
U.S. troops out of Guantánamo!  
 
 
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