Carry on Fidel Castro’s global legacy, says Cuban ambassador

Cuban ambassador to New Zealand Mario Alzugaray during his passionate tribute to Fidel Castro
at Auckland Trades Hall tonight. Video clip: Café Pacific

By David Robie 

CUBAN revolutionary leader Fidel Castro’s contribution to global social justice and dignity, and to developing nations worldwide – including the Pacific, was praised in New Zealand tonight.

Activists, politicians, academics, journalists, teachers, trade unionists and community workers were among about 100 people gathered at the Auckland Trades Hall to hear Cuban Ambassador Mario Alzugaray and other speakers give tributes to Castro’s life.

Alzugaray challenged the audience to continue Castro’s half century of struggle for a better society: “The best way to remember Fidel is to carry on his legacy and keep it alive.”

The ambassador said Castro had social justice at the core of his ideals and action.

“He was an internationalist since the very beginning,” Alzugaray said. “He was involved in every movement connected to the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America.”

On Charlie Hebdo: An open letter to my 'Anglo' friends

What Voltaire might have said to Charlie Hebdo - and the answer below. Cartoon: Ironman

'We are all trying to find the narrow path – defending the French Republic against the twin threats of fundamentalism and fascism (and fundamentalism is a form of fascism). But I still believe that the best way to do this is to fight for our Republican ideals - secular and democratic.'*

By Olivier Tonneau writing for France's Mediapart

Dear friends,

LAST week, a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Muhammad, by men who screamed that they had “avenged the prophet”. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all sorts of criticism started pouring down the web against Charlie Hebdo, who was described as Islamophobic, racist and even sexist.

Countless other comments stated that Muslims were being ostracised and finger-pointed. In the background lurked a view of France founded upon the “myth” of laïcité, defined as the strict restriction of religion to the private sphere, but rampantly Islamophobic - with passing reference to the law banning the integral veil. One friend even mentioned a division of the French Left on a presumed “Muslim question”.

As a Frenchman and a radical left militant at home and here in UK, I was puzzled and even shocked by these comments and would like, therefore, to give you a clear exposition of what my Left-wing French position is on these matters.

Firstly, a few words on Charlie Hebdo, which was often “analysed” in the British press on the sole basis, apparently, of a few selected cartoons. It might be worth knowing that the main target of Charlie Hebdo was the Front National and the Le Pen family. Next came crooks of all sorts, including bosses and politicians (incidentally, one of the victims of the shooting was an economist who ran a weekly column on the disasters caused by austerity policies in Greece).

A tale of two cities – Tripoli and NZ's quake town

THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD captured the contrasting mood between two cities with poignancy, but almost accidentally. After three days of heavy black borders to mourn the loss of some 147 dead and a further 50 missing, the newspaper and other media across NZ told stories of courage, drama and devastation in the Christchurch earthquake.

A world away, and tucked deep on p. 17 in today’s Herald, the Libyan crisis raged on in Tripoli: “A city in the shadow of death.”

More than half the front broadsheet page of the Herald was devoted to the death of five-month-old Baxtor Gowland, a child of the last quake. Pictured clad in a scarlet Father Christmas outfit and cottonwool beard, Baxtor was born just two weeks after the 4 September 2010 quake. And now, tragically, he is a victim.

The inside front page told of “one street’s misery”, showing a fullpage graphic of Santa Maria Ave in the seaside suburb of Redcliffs: Reported Andrew Koubaridis:

In the minutes after Tuesday's devastating earthquake, the people of Santa Maria Ave, Redcliffs, gathered at the top of the street and hugged and cried.

Still in shock from the violent shaking, they scrambled from their shattered homes and sought comfort from one another - many will never be able to live in their homes again.

One side of the street has several homes cracked beyond repair. Others have been almost split in half and are now in danger of falling down on to a street below.

Another story reported how an Australian female urologist used tradesman’s tools – a hacksaw and a multipurpose knife – to amputate both legs of a quake victim lying trapped under a beam in a collapsed building. She saved the 52-year-old’s life.

Columnist Noelle McCarthy cited “the great poet of collapse, William Yeats, who wrote: “All is changed, changed utterly.” While noting that there is a scale to measure earthquakes, she asked how do you quantify their toll?:

In the aftermath of disaster, where to start? We start with each other. We take care of each other, we acknowledge this loss.

On Pacific Scoop, former Fiji Times editor Jale Moala, now a subeditor with the Christchurch Press, described the city as being “like a war zone” and a shock to Fiji migrants just used to cyclones and hurricanes.

Local Radio Apna and Suva’s Fijivillage.com were condemned by authorities for quoting an unnamed doctor saying eight Fiji Islanders had died in the earthquake. The authorities insisted this was false.

Meanwhile, from Tripoli in Libya, The Independent’s Robert Fisk reports in the Herald on gunfire, fear and rumour in the capital:

Up to 15,000 men, women and children besieged Tripoli's international airport last night, shouting and screaming for seats on the few airliners still prepared to fly to Muammar Gaddafi's rump state, paying Libyan police bribe after bribe to reach the ticket desks in a rain-soaked mob of hungry, desperate families. Many were trampled as Libyan security men savagely beat those who pushed their way to the front.

Among them were Gaddafi's fellow Arabs, thousands of them Egyptians, some of whom had been living at the airport for two days without food or sanitation. The place stank of faeces and urine and fear. Yet a 45-minute visit into the city for a new airline ticket to another destination is the only chance to see Gaddafi's capital if you are a "dog" of the international press.

There was little sign of opposition to the Great Leader. Squads of young men with Kalashnikov rifles stood on the side roads next to barricades of upturned chairs and wooden doors. But these were pro-Gaddafi vigilantes – a faint echo of the armed Egyptian "neighbourhood guard" I saw in Cairo a month ago – and had pinned photographs of their leader's infamous Green Book to their checkpoint signs.

There is little food in Tripoli, and over the city there fell a blanket of drab, sullen rain. It guttered onto an empty Green Square and down the Italianate streets of the old capital of Tripolitania.

But there were no tanks, no armoured personnel carriers, no soldiers, not a fighter plane in the air; just a few police and elderly men and women walking the pavements – a numbed populace.

Sadly for the West and for the people of the free city of Benghazi, Libya's capital appeared as quiet as any dictator would wish.

But this is an illusion.

Turkey is mounting the biggest evacuation operation in its history, with more than 25,000 Turks living in Libya fleeing. Twenty one other governments have asked Ankara for help getting their nationals out. A US-chartered 600-passenger ferry is leaving Tripoli for Malta and Israel has allowed 300 Palestinians from Libya to enter the occupied territories.

Petrol and food prices have trebled; towns outside Tripoli have been ripped apart by bitter fighting between Gaddafi supporters and opposition groups.

Loyalist forces patrol the capital’s streets, tanks guard the outskirts and the state radio station is heavily guarded.

This war zone is rapidly exploding.

• Christchurch recovery map
  
• New Zealand Herald earthquake coverage - photos, videos
• Christchurch quake: One street's misery
• Doctor uses hacksaw in amputation
• Pacific reactions to the Christchurch quake
• Tripoli: A city in shadow of death - Robert Fisk
•