Pakistan Progressive Youth Front (PYF) organized a seminar to commemorate Che

Karachi ( Pakistan ) : A seminar was organized by the Progressive Youth Front (PYF) to commemorate the 83rd birth anniversary of South American Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara here on Sunday.

Speakers at the seminar stressed on the struggle of Che and discussed what lessons can be drawn from his short but eventful life, and how they can be implemented in a Third World country like Pakistan.

Shaqfat Qadri, a lecturer of English literature at Sindh University, came all the way from Jamshoro to attend the seminar. He began his talk with a famous quote by the revolutionary, ‘Create two, three, many Vietnams’ and explained what Che Guevara meant by those words. Shafqat said that Vietnam was a poor country but it had the will to “kill thousands of American soldiers” and shot down fancy fighter jets so the country succeeded.

“In today’s world one can beg for freedom only to be disillusioned, or can snatch it from the hands of the oppressors to enjoy real freedom. The people of Vietnam did just that and Che Guevara wanted the oppressed people all over the world to follow that example. His words are as relevant today as they were some fifty years ago,” added Shafqat.

Azizullah Bohyou, an Islamic scholar and author of at least 50 books on Islam, shed some light on Che Guevara’s struggle in the light of the Holy Quran. In his short speech, Bohyou, who is also the chairman of the Sindh Sanger Party, quoted Surah Nisa that encourages people to fight for the right of the poor and said Che Guevara’s life was based of this very premise — to help the oppressed and to fight for them.

Speakers encouraged the youth to look up to Che Guevara as a role model and inculcate in them his true revolutionary spirit which, they believe, is the most important need of the hour.

Nasir Mansoor, an executive member of the Labour Party Pakistan, Sajjad Zaheer, a senior member of the Progressive Youth Front (PYF), Abdul Nabi Soho, a Sindhi author and Marxist intellectual, also spoke on the occasion.

The Progressive Youth Front is a youth group established in 2004. It organises regular study circles on revolutionary politics and promotes activism in Karachi and beyond. They have previously organized seminars and talks on birth anniversaries of Karl Marx, Bhagat Singh, Nisar Abbasi Shaheed, Comrade Hasan Nasir and Dr Najeeb. 

Source : http://www.thenews.com.pk

The Argentinian revolutionary is publishing a set of diaries of Che , 44 years after his death

Age: 83 years (39 of them alive).
Appearance: Bloody everywhere.
Not him again. Yes, him again. Argentinian rugby player, doctor, writer, soldier, politician, freelance revolutionary, beret model and father of five, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The coolest man ever to not quite grow a beard.
You forgot "self-starter". Thanks. Anyway, he's got a new book out.
Recipes for busy parents? Sadly, no. It's an unpublished set of diaries.
Oh well, I suppose writing anything is impressive from a dead person. How did he manage it? Well, the actual writing part he did while he was still alive.
Clever. And his widow's been sitting on it since his execution in 1967. The book was released on Tuesday in Havana, she said, "to show his work, his thoughts, his life, so that the Cuban people and the entire world get to know him and don't distort things any more".
Very wise. If you want to put a stop to tittle-tattle, you really need to get your story out within the first 44 years. What are these diaries about? Revolution.
You don't say. I do. Guevara started writing them in 1956 shortly after landing in Cuba, with Castro, on board the yacht Granma. They describe the following two years, which he spent travelling around the island's mountainous interior, conducting a guerrilla war to overthrow the Batista regime.
In a jeep called Grandad? That seems unlikely. You'll have to read the book.
Any chance of a precis? Did some war . . . Read Sartre to campesinos . . . Smoked pipe, thinking about US imperialism . . . Did a bit more war . . . Executed traitor . . . War's going well today . . . Adjusted beret . . .
I can't bear the tension. Don't worry. He wins in the end.
Do say: "'Che' is an Argentinian slang term, roughly equivalent in use to the way that some English speakers place 'man' at the beginning or end of sentences. Guevara used the word so frequently during his time in Guatemala that he acquired it as a nickname.
Don't say: "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine, man."

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Decades on, publisher presses ahead in spirit of Che Guevara's revolution

David Deutschmann

CUBA is a long way from Flemington and this week it seemed particularly far away. David Deutschmann was watching the news report of the launch in Havana on Tuesday of Diary of a Combatant, the third volume of diaries by that iconic revolutionary of the 1960s, Che Guevara. ''I was watching in Melbourne a launch in Havana of a book published by us.''
Mr Deutschmann runs Ocean Press, a left-wing press that he set up more than 20 years ago ''to change the world''.
The self-confessed product of the '60s produced a raft of books about Latin America. About 15 years ago in Cuba he met Aleida March, Che's widow. ''A few years later she and I decided to do the first book together.'' Global Justice, a collection of articles by Che, appeared in 2001 and was the beginning of a fruitful association.

''Eventually she decided to give us world rights to all his writings. The family doesn't get a cent from it; the money all goes to Cuban social programs.''
When Ocean Press republished The Motorcycle Diaries in 2003, a year before the film adaptation came out, it was a huge success. More than 3 million copies sold. ''As a left-wing press, we weren't in it for the money. But all of a sudden we were talking about millions of dollars.''
He decided to set up a Spanish-language publisher and imprint, Ocean Sur, which is now based in Mexico City.
The income from Che's books also subsidises the cost of Ocean Sur books in South America and the company is committed to a number of cultural projects in El Salvador and Guatemala.
Ocean Press uses its money to subsidise Che's books. An edition of The Motorcycle Diaries that sells for $15 in the US will sell for only $2 in Bolivia.
''I do believe Che would have wanted that. After all, he died in Bolivia as part of the war - as he saw it - to liberate South America.''
Mr Deutschmann says the The Age was lucky to find him in Australia.
''I've spent most of the past five years in Latin America. I'm almost an expert on bookshops there.''
He's still a friend of Che's widow. ''I have had a close working relationship with Aleida but also a close personal relationship, I think. I have been with her when she's talked about Che, cried about him and we have hugged together.''
He has persuaded her to write a book, to be called ''Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara''.
Che's old comrade, Fidel Castro, is using his downtime to write his memoirs. Ocean Press hopes to publish them next year.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/

Cuba Celebrates Che’s 83rd Birthday with New Diaries

This week Castro’s propaganda ministry published another portion of Che Guevara’s “diaries.” Entitled “Diaries of a Combatant,” these passages were allegedly composed by Ernesto “Che” Guevara between 1956-58, and were published “unedited.”  We know this because a minister of the Stalinist regime (Che Guevara’s widow, Aleida March), vouchsafed this scoop to all foreign “news” agencies bestowed Havana Bureaus by the Cuban government.
According to Guevara’s widow, the goal of this latest release was “to show his work, his thoughts, his life, so that the Cuban people and the entire world get to know him and don’t distort things anymore,” reported CNN.
“She [Aledia March-Guevara] said she wanted readers to get to know Che Guevara just as he was,” assures the BBC.
“March told reporters the purpose of publishing the diary is to acknowledge his thoughts, life and work,” underscores the Associated Press.
“We’d have to ask if he [Che Guevara] really wanted the ‘Diary of a Combatant’ published,” said Maria del Carmen Ariet, another regime apparatchik, while leaking snippets to CNN’s Havana correspondent Shasta Darlington.
So there. The candid, courageous and revelatory nature of this Castro-regime publication is solidly documented — at least in the view of the same reporters who typically erupt in cynical snorts before any Republican finishes a sentence.

Che himself must be guffawing in his grave. He had the mainstream media’s number from day one: “Foreign reporters, preferably American,” he wrote in the first portion of these diaries titled “Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War” and published in 1963, “were much more valuable to us at that time [1957] than any military victory. Much more valuable than rural recruits for our guerrilla force, were American media recruits to export our propaganda.”
Che’s future patron and handler Castro thought similarly: “We cannot for a second abandon propaganda,” Castro stressed in a letter to a revolutionary colleague in 1954. “Propaganda is vital — propaganda is the heart of all struggles.”
But with this new portion of Che’s diaries, Castro’s propaganda apparatchiks should strive for better “synergy” with their foreign auxiliaries. To wit:
“One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting,” read a New York Times headline on Jan 4, 1959 about the “battle” of Santa Clara in central Cuba where Ernesto “Che” Guevara earned much of his enduring martial mystique. “Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties,” continues the Times article. “Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men.”
A year later, Che’s own diaries revealed that his forces suffered exactly one casualty during this Caribbean Stalingrad depicted by the Times.  British historian Sir Hugh Thomas, author of a 1700-page tome of Cuban history who initially vied with Herbert Matthews as a Castro sycophant, claims a grand total of six casualties for this Caribbean Verdun. Your humble servant here interviewed several eye-witnesses (on both sides) to this “battle” and their consensus came to about five casualties total for this alleged Caribbean Iwo Jima.