PRAGOTI

A Blog post and a first hand report on a Marxist conference on Victor Kiernan by Pragoti editorial member, Maidul Islam.

"To render terrorism and terrorists as the enemy fails to distinguish between the tactics that a people use and the social and political conditions that generate their hostility. To defeat those who use terrorism, one has to understand and deal with the conditions that produce those who take to terror." Writes Vijay Prasad

"The world capitalist system is in the midst of probably its worst economic crisis since 1929. Capitalism is, of course, seldom crisis free, and there have been a series of crises over the past decade and a half. These included, for instance, the extremely grave Asian crisis of 1997-8. This latter crisis resulted in millions of job losses and deepening poverty in many Asian countries, but it was largely confined to a single region, and it proved to be of relatively short duration, thanks in no small part to continued surging growth in China. On a world-scale the global economy suffered a disruption but continued to grow..." Extracts of the Political Report delivered to the 6th Plenary Session of the 12th Congress Central Committee of South African Communist Party

Sixty five communist and workers' parties from fifty four countries congregated in Sao Paulo at the invitation of the Communist Party of Brazil for the 10th International meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. This is the first time that such a meeting was being held in Latin America. Fifteen communist and workers' parties from thirteen Latin American countries, the largest number to attend since Athens 1998, were present. Sitaram Yechury writes from Sao Paolo.