Archive | April, 2013

Hassan Juma’a Awad, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, faces three years in jail and heavy fines for organizing workers in the Iraqi oil fields.  They oppose privatization of Iraqi oil and demand fair treatment and respect at work.  Meet Hassan in this short video and act in international solidarity as requested in […]

Since Marx, we know that what characterizes and differentiates societies is the way in which they organize the production, distribution and use of the material and symbolic resources
they possess. In other words, the mode of production¹ is what defines the material content of the social life of the distinct human territorial collectivities (nations, peoples, communities), within which there can be differentiated the historically specific form in which each of their components develop, and the manner in which various existing modes of production interrelate within the same society.

  Pablo Solon is the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok.  He was formerly Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations and Bolivia’s chief negotiator on climate issues as part of the UN COP process.  He was also instrumental in organizing the People’s Climate Summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He spoke with […]

  On 22nd April, Roza Tuletaeva, one of the activists from the Zhanaozen oil workers’ strike, started a hunger strike.  She has taken this extreme step because she has been refused essential medical aid at the women’s prison colony in Atyrau, where she is currently serving a lengthy jail sentence.  She was arrested after the […]

  Bangladesh stands petrified as an unprecedented horror unfolds in Savar, near the capital city of Dhaka.  In the morning of the 24th of April, a nine-story building crashed down in Savar Bazaar.  Thousands of garments workers were in the building.  The death toll, as of this writing, was more than 175, with over 1,000 […]

In the final weeks of a six-month prison sentence for protesting remote-control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here.  In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists […]

Like most of the white liberal-to-left elite, I am mesmerized by radical 1960s and ’70s activist groups such as SDS and the Weather Underground.  My auto-entrancement likely stems from a deep nostalgia for the glory days when 100,000 protesters could march on the Pentagon and nary a one could be linked to Al Qaeda. For […]

  Aijaz Ahmad: Ever since this young man [Kim Jong-un] became the president, the head of state, of North Korea . . . the West has been testing his will, to see whether he can be stared down. . . .  Every year these very provocative war games take place, involving South Korea and the […]

H/T Dan Beeton. | Print

April 16, 2013 New York A delegation of National Lawyers Guild (NLG) election monitors visited polling sites in five Venezuelan states on April 14 and found that the Venezuelan presidential election process was fair, transparent, participatory, and well-organized. With over 78 percent voter turnout, Nicolas Maduro Moros was declared Venezuela’s new president with a 50.66 […]

Opposition protests turned deadly yesterday, with at least seven people having been reported killed and over 61 others injured as opposition groups reportedly burned the homes of PSUV leaders, community hospitals, and mercales (subsidized grocery stores), attacked Cuban doctors, attacked state and community media stations, and threatened CNE president Tibisay Lucena and other officials.  Violence […]

The White House said today that a 100 percent audit of the votes in Venezuela was “an important, prudent and necessary step.” Now it is no surprise that the White House would be on the side of the opposition to the Chavistas, which has been the U.S. position even before the military coup that Washington […]

  President Dilma Rousseff called Nicolás Maduro, certified as president-elect of Venezuela by the National Electoral Council of that country, this Monday afternoon, to congratulate him on his victory in the presidential elections held on Sunday. Dilma Rousseff expressed her satisfaction with the climate of normality during the voting and said she stood ready to […]

The late, late snow has finally disappeared from Berlin’s streets.  Visible once again, here and there, are the “stumble stones” — Stolpersteine in German. Many Berlin tourists will enjoy the night life.  They may also look upwards — at the giant TV tower, the Brandenburg Gate, at ancient and less ancient churches.  There is a […]

If there has ever been any question that the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is essentially a political organization — one that took up arms guided by a political vision and will abandon them when a new political strategy leads them to do so — that question may be forever laid to rest by […]

  “I’m in Cuba, I love Cubans This communist talk is so confusing When it’s from China, the very mic that I’m using” Jay-Z is an American rapper, whose licensed trip to Cuba with Beyoncé has driven the anarchronistic Cuba embargo enforcers bonkers. | Print  

This video shows a panel discussion, moderated by Gayatri Gopinath, featuring the following scholars and papers: Katherine Fobear, “Queer Settlers: Exploring the Intersections of Colonial Violence and Settler Homonationalism With LGBTQ Refugees in Canada”; Colleen Jankovic, “Paranoia, the ‘Untold Story’ of Queer Palestine, and Non-Aligned Queer Solidarity”; Emrah Yıldız, “Alignments of International Refugee Law, Liberalism […]

  Resist CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, and the Greens — the Left Party (Die Linke) can hold its own only if it refuses to become another wing of the German Unity Party. In the coming months a comedy will be staged in Germany.  The piece is called “The Electoral Battle of the Two Camps.”  The leading […]

The anti-immigrant right has been mounting a scare campaign since late January about the supposed dangers of legalizing the country’s estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants. — “When you legalize those who are in the country illegally,” Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, announced on January 28, “it costs taxpayers millions of dollars, costs American workers […]

A few days ago I mentioned the great challenges humanity is currently facing. Intelligent life emerged on our planet approximately 200,000 years ago, although new discoveries demonstrate something else. This is not to confuse intelligent life with the existence of life which, from its elemental forms in our solar system, emerged millions of years ago. […]