Archive | October, 2009

The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for its life.  The union’s struggle has rallied allies in the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and solidarity from throughout the country and around the world, but, if […]

  Dear Indian Reader, Not that I would ever, ever consider you to be a dummy — heaven forbid!  After all, you are no US citizen of the (George Dubya) Bush years now, are you?  🙂  You are no placid ignoramus, incapable of pointing to ‘Eye-rack’ on a map, utterly untouched by any knowledge of […]

Washington, D.C. — Although the official policy of the Obama administration is that it will not recognize next month’s elections in Honduras if democracy is not restored first, it became clear last week that some State Department officials are undermining this position and signaling that the U.S. could accept the results of the November 29 […]

  1 The republication of Jean-François Bayart’s classic book-length essay, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, is an opportunity to reflect on the hypotheses he raises and their application to Sudan and especially Darfur.  Bayart’s book mentions Sudan only in passing but the scope of his ambition is certainly relevant to Sudan […]

  “Would it not be better to administer euthanasia?” Enrique Lacoste Prince is a Cuban cartoonist based in Havana. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

  “Now, my people are squashed between two powerful enemies.  From the sky, the occupation forces are dropping bombs, even using cluster bombs and white phosphorus and killing innocent civilians in the name of combating the Taliban.  On the ground, the Taliban and also Northern Alliance fundamentalists continue their fascism against men and women of […]

On October 15, thousands of people in Puerto Rico flooded the streets to protest the government’s decision to lay off around 17,000 government employees (in total there have been around 25,000 lay-offs this year).  Workers and members of trade unions, women, environmentalists, religious groups, students, teachers, professors, lawyers, and the LGBT community, among many other […]

  Dear Friends, The Defenders will be co-sponsoring an event this evening with the Richmond Peace Education Center.  It’s a Teach-In, Richmond’s contribution to the Oct. 17 national day of actions against wars and sanctions.  This event consists of a film screening and presentations by local activists and individuals concerned about the militarized path the U.S. […]

Signed Agreements between Local Law Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security Threaten Public Safety and Harm Immigrant Communities October 16, 2009, WASHINGTON — Today the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delegated its federal immigration enforcement authority to 55 local law enforcement jurisdictions, including localities that have a history of targeting Latinos and other immigrant groups. […]

“Around Jerusalem the average ambulance journey time for a Palestinian is now almost 2 hours, compared to 10 minutes in 2001. In the West Bank alone there are more than 600 internal military checkpoints and road blocks. At these checkpoints, Palestinians in need of immediate medical attention are routinely refused passage, denied medical help, forced to give birth, injured and even shot dead. This film is dedicated to them.”

WORK MORE, EARN LESSA reputable company, a leader in the global market, seeks a docile unemployed individual without a source of income, to work for nothing without rights. Job Description: Combat Crisis Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain in 1968, is a working-class cartoonist who has never stopped believing in revolution. He currently lives […]

The first mass protest of the Obama era — the tea-bagging gatherings of bigots aside — was a colossal success. In defiance of the corporate-run LGBT establishment, Gay Inc., and with no major organizations, media, or financing behind it, the National Equality March nevertheless drew more than 200,000 people to Washington, D.C., to demand full […]

If ever there was a time for gardens that time is now.  In this time of global meltdown and anxiety there can be no finer remedy than that of returning to the earth.  Gardening provides a hands-on therapy because it is one of the few remaining outlets for those of us who feel increasingly powerless […]

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In the past few months, the government, by repeatedly asserting its perception of the Maoists as the ‘biggest threat to internal security’, by criminalising the CPI (Maoist), and through a sustained project of trying to build a consensus against various forms of popular upsurge and dissent, has been creating ground for the onslaught that is […]

This photograph is one of the shortlisted photographs for “Labour Photo of the Year – 2009.”  You can vote for the photo at . Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian socialist journalist based in Cairo.  He blogs at . | | Print

If Obama was awarded the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite his being a native, and his having delivered on his promises.

U.S. and Iranian representatives meet this week at a time when trust between the two countries is at a low ebb following the revelation last week of a previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility under construction and the test firing of Iran’s long-range missiles on September 28.  Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s policy of engagement with Iran […]

  Listen to the 2008 Edward Said Memorial Lecture delivered by Sara Roy at the University of Adelaide on 11 October 2008: Download the text of the lecture in PDF: <adelaide.edu.au/esml/transcripts/2008/ESML-BY-Sara-ROY-2008.pdf>. Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.  Trained as a political economist, Roy has […]