In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations

It is with a profound sense of sadness that we at AIDC have heard the news of the passing of Carl Brecker, the first Chairperson of the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC). We send our condolences to his family, especially his devoted daughters Tania and Dee, their children as well as his sister Valerie and her husband Ivan.

Fidel Castro was by far the greatest statesman of this last half century. He was also the last of the great revolutionary leaders of the democratic revolutions of national liberation that began in 1910 with the Chinese, Persian and Mexican revolutions and during and after the Second World War led to the independence and unity of China and the independence of the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia, Indochina, the African colonies, Nasser’s Egypt and Algeria.

Fidel Castro Ruz, Cuba’s revolutionary leader, president, and prime minister for five decades, died in Santiago de Cuba on Friday, Nov. 25. He was 90 years old. Although one of the most profound, clear-sighted, honest, and dedicated revolutionary leaders of the past half-century, Castro has been demonized by the corporate media as a dictator, tyrant, murderer, and torturer.

Trupti I don’t whether this is an anecdote or how I saw in movements or how your smiling face and an ever optimism made me think positive. [1]

The movements for socialism, women’s liberation, secularism, environmental rights, all suffered profoundly with the demise of Trupti Shah on 26th May evening. [2]

This tribute was made at the the funeral of Claude Jacquin (see Claude Jacquin (Gabriel) — an internationalist commitment to the end) at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris on 27th April 2016 by Brian Ashley and Mercia Andrews.

A brilliant Marxist historian and theorist, Ellen Meiksins Wood passed away January 14, after a long battle with cancer. As a friend and colleague Vivek Chibber stated, “Wood was a thinker of extraordinary range, writing with authority on Ancient Greece, early modern political thought, contemporary political theory, Marxism, and the structure and evolution of modern capitalism. But even more importantly, she was one of those few from the New Left who never relented in their commitment to socialist politics.” Ellen Wood is survived by her loving husband Ed Broadbent, a former Canadian MP and leader of the New Democratic Party, as well as two brothers, Peter and Robert Meiksins.