Archive | News

  International Solidarity Movement activist Vittorio Arrigoni was kidnapped in Gaza today.  News sources in the Gaza Strip say that the kidnappers are members of a Salafi group.  In a YouTube video, the group threatens to kill Arrigoni in 30 hours, counting from 11 AM in Gaza (10 AM in Italy), if the Hamas government […]

  “Syria hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees who have fled their home since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.  Estimates as to how many refugees are huddled in Syria vary, but most organizations estimate that roughly 1.2-1.5 million Iraqis have staked a temporary claim on neighboring soil.  ‘Temporary,’ however, is a relative time-frame for the […]

Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  His cartoons frequently appear in Aporrea and Rebelión.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 12 April 2011; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print

Amy Goodman: The Bahraini government is intensifying its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.  In a pre-dawn raid Saturday, masked police officers broke into the home of Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, a prominent Bahraini human rights activist.  Alkhawaja and other family members were beaten and detained.  They remain in police custody at an unknown location.  Human Rights Watch has […]

  House Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s proposal for Medicare has two primary goals.  It would end Medicare as a government program and shift it to private insurers, and it would reduce the government’s payments to the program, shifting more of the costs to the Medicare beneficiaries. This analysis by the Congressional Budget Office* demonstrates that […]

March 2011 was marked by the worst repression seen against the people of Honduras since the June 2009 military coup.  The repression came in response to massive protests against an all-out final push by the Pepe Lobo regime to essentially privatize Honduras’ public education system while destroying teachers’ independence, politicizing schools, slashing salaries in half, […]

Video by STMEN100.  For more information, visit and . | Print

  There are some sectarian slogans being chanted by SOME (not all) protesters in Syria (they refer to the need for “Sunnis who fear God”).  It is an opportunity to make this point: if one supports protests and revolutions against all Arab regimes (and Iran), it does not follow that one should endorse all strands […]

  10 April 2011 Congratulations to the people of Iceland! The Repudiate the Debt Campaign welcomes and applauds the decision of the people of Iceland to reject the bank bail-out that would subsidise the wealthy elite.  They showed great courage in rejecting the terms and conditions and in resisting the pressure from the European Union […]

The South African Communist Party greets the people’s determination and their actions in the epoch of Swaziland’s revolutionary crisis. Our party supports the victory of Swazi popular forces as a victory that will place the political struggle in the region on a new advanced footing.  It will mark a sea of change and intensify the […]

COSATU Mpumalanga memorandum directed to King Mswati III delivered during the protest march held on 12 April 2011 at the Oshoek border gate 12 April 2011 His Majesty King Mswati III Today, the 12 April 2011 members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, together with the Alliance partners are gathered here at the […]

  “An astronaut son of a carpenter, Yuri Gagarin, a son of Red October” I Giovani Comunisti/e (Young Communists) is the youth wing of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation Party).  Music by Banda Bassotti (“Juri Gagarin”).  Cf. “Gagarin’s experience shows that the son of a Soviet carpenter enjoyed material foundations to make it […]

  In the afternoon of April 8, 2011, the farce that had begun thirteen weeks ago in El Paso, Texas, came to an end when terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted of all the charges pressed against him during a migration trial. To all those who have been following the sinister history behind this terrorist […]

  Testimony of Sara Kaminski, Executive Director,Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors,before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education, 7 April 2011 Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Garland, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee: my name is Sara Kaminski, and I am the Executive Director of the Ohio Conference of the […]

  Flynt Leverett, a professor of international affairs at Penn State and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire.  Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the author of the forthcoming book In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness […]

Recent events in Wisconsin have highlighted the necessity of collective bargaining.  The governor of Wisconsin notwithstanding, collective bargaining is recognized internationally in numerous conventions, constitutions, and courts as a human right. Legal Background Our Constitution addresses the right of collective bargaining.  The Thirteenth Amendment provides that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment […]

  The Icelandic nation has now delivered its verdict and shouldered unequivocally the responsibility it is granted by the Constitution.  The turnout was high by Western standards, and this, together with the extensive and thorough debate in the run-up to the referendum, shows clearly how important the issue was to the nation. The people have […]

This year, 8 March marked a century of the celebration of International Women’s Day.  But aside from a few publications and websites of women’s movements, this event went largely unremarked in the mainstream press, and also in the public consciousness. The idea of International Women’s Day was born in the socialist movement in the first […]

Debate over public pension funds continues unabated across the nation.  Some have argued that states should assume a risk-free rate of return on pension fund assets, which makes funding shortfalls appear considerably larger.  A new calculator from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) demonstrates that such a low rate of return is extremely […]

Thousands of Lebanese took to the streets on Sunday to demand the abolition of the sect-based electoral system in Lebanon, according to which the key political offices are apportioned among religious communities. The demonstrators, starting from the national museum in Beirut, marched to the parliament.  They demanded the overturning of the sect-based system and democratic […]