Chilean Communist Gladys Marín, 1941-2005

London Times

GLADYS MARÍN was sometimes known as Chile’s “La Pasionaria”. Like the redoubtable Spanish communist leader Dolores Ibárruri, she was an impassioned and indefatigable campaigner for the causes she believed in.

A supporter of Salvador Allende’s left-wing Government, she became a leader of the long resistance to the military dictatorship that followed his violent overthrow in September 1973, and felt the impact of General Augusto Pinochet’s iron fist in her personal life: her husband, Jorge Muñoz, another communist leader, “disappeared” in 1976 and has not been heard of since.

US Attack Against Italians in Baghdad Was Deliberate, Companion Says

Agence France Press

Rome — Pressure has increased on the United States to explain its troops firing on a convoy carrying freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, that wounded her and left one of her rescuers dead.

The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Saturday leveled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate.

"The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Pier Scolari said on leaving Rome's Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery following her return home.

"They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."

The shooting late Friday was witnessed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged.

"Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive," he added.

Anonymous Comrade writes

International Anti-G8 Meeting, Tuebingen

Dissent! International Networking Group

From 26th-27th February 2005, people involved in anti-capitalist groups and networks from twenty-three different countries, gathered in Tuebingen, Germany to continue planning resistance to the 2005 G8 Summit.

The meeting declared, "This year's Summit professes to address issues important to us all, amongst them: climate change and poverty. Yet these are issues produced by a system from which the G8 was born and which it attempts to manage. Resistance is the obvious and growing response to the current order. Our aim is not merely to oppose the Summit, but to contribute to the daily struggle to create new worlds."

A number of action plans were developed over the weekend, reflecting the diversity of the perspectives from which those attending were coming.