WHEN: Friday, April 20 – Sunday, April 22 (schedule below) WHERE: Cooper Union, New York, NY TICKETS: RIGHT HERE There are communities around the world that have stopped waiting for the systems around them to change. They are engaged in alternative practices right now — in economics, safety, media and communications, politics and more. […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
U.S. Hands Off Mali! An Analysis of the Recent Events in the Republic of Mali
Recent developments in the West African Republic of Mali are raising serious concerns about the possibility of yet another U.S. intervention. On March 22, one month before a scheduled presidential election, a military coup toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré. Quickly taking sides, the regional 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) […]
Are You With Me? (Louis Reyes Rivera 1945-2012)
This is a 10-minute film dedicated to freedom fighter Louis Reyes Rivera. Rivera was a member of the 1969 occupation of City College, which was led by students of color and won open admissions. He spoke to Students United for a Free CUNY at the AME Church in Harlem on October 27, 2011 before […]
Canada’s Austerity Budget Wonderland
Canada’s federal and provincial governments are falling in with other Western countries in delivering austerity budgets that foist costs of the global capitalist crisis onto the backs of workers and the poor. Canada’s federal government is trying to package its latest austerity budget as something that must be done to reduce government debts and deficits […]
Colombia: Struggle for Peace, Struggle over Land
Terror, political persecution, arbitrary detention, and militarization have long dominated Colombia. State-mediated killings now run into the tens of thousands. More than four million rural inhabitants have been displaced from sustenance-providing land. In the face of seemingly endless suffering, however, there is now a better chance for peace in Colombia. Having recently announced that its […]
A Palestinian in Indefinite Detention — 10 Years Ago in the United States
The 66-day hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan brought overdue attention to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians for lengthy periods without criminal charges. It also brought attention to the same practice in other countries, including the United States, where, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, indefinite detention is “now firmly in place” for […]
#Blockupy for Global Change
We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union. We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs, and livelihoods […]
Legislative Elections in El Salvador: Under U.S. Pressure, the FMLN Loses Ground in Struggle With the Right
On March 11, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans headed to the polls in the first major contest between parties of the right and left since the leader of the latter, Mauricio Funes, was elected president three years ago. Like mid-term congressional elections in the U.S., voting for municipal officials and national legislators in El Salvador […]
Turning Point on the Syrian Front: Dealmaking in Search of a Face-Saving Exit
In recent weeks, there has been a notable shuffle in the positions of key external players in the Syrian crisis. Momentum has quite suddenly shifted from an all-out onslaught against the Assad government to a quiet investigation of exit strategies. The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping […]
Amazon’s Assault on Intellectual Freedom
There is an undeclared war going on in the United States that threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom. In a statement worthy of Cassandra, Noah Davis wrote in Business Insider last October, “Amazon is coming for the book publishing industry. And not just the e-book world, either.” When titans battle, it is tempting […]
Free Market Health Care: True Stories
I recently wrote an article about my personal experiences in dealing with the medical system while undergoing surgery (“Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account”). In response, a number of readers sent me accounts of their own experiences trying to get well in America. Health care in this country is hailed by conservative boosters as “the […]
Not Quite “Ordinary Human Beings” — Anti-Imperialism and the Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon
Attempting to latch onto the just, vital, and growing movement in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Gilad Atzmon is one of a very small and unrepresentative group of writers who have argued (in agreement with many Zionists) that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between Jews in general and Israeli atrocities. […]
Honduran Resistance Front Forms Political Party
Honduras’s National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP) gathered in Tegucigalpa February 11-12 to launch a political party. The name, “Liberation and Re-foundation Party (Libre),” is timely: Honduras is mired in catastrophe. Its murder rate is the world’s highest. Political violence, crime, militarization, poverty, malnutrition, drug trafficking, and police corruption are overflowing. Landowner thugs kill family […]
Human Rights in the New Libya
Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela. Cf. “A Libyan diplomat who served as ambassador to France for Muammar Gaddafi died from torture within a day of being detained by a militia from Zintan, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Friday. . . . On January 26, humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres said […]
Obama Ignores Worsening Climate Crisis
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 25 contained distressing news for opponents of global warming who recognize the need to begin substantially reducing reliance upon carbon-based fossil fuels. “Over the last three years,” Obama said, “we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration. And tonight, I’m directing […]
Occupying the Immigration Debate
People in the United States may not be as rabidly anti-immigrant as we’ve been led to believe. An article posted on the Center for American Progress website in December, “The Public’s View of Immigration,” summarizes five recent U.S. opinion polls. Authors Philip E. Wolgin and Angela Maria Kelley find that while the media and the […]
Turkey: The Honduras of the Middle East for a New Contra War
We all know it from the movies of Costa-Gavras: once “the leaders of the free world” start visiting your country frequently, carnage won’t be far behind. Nowadays, the capital city of Turkey, Ankara, looks very much like the set of a Costa-Gavras movie (except, of course, what we really want to see happens off-camera). […]
Targeting Iran on a Syrian Battlefield
Still stinging from the “travesty” of their defeat in the United Nations Security Council over the weekend, the United States and the “international community” have already begun to hatch their next ploy for intervention into Syria. On Monday — with the Security Council, and ostensibly diplomacy as well, having been deemed “neutered” by Secretary of […]
ALBA Reaffirms Its Support for Syria
Communiqué The heads of state and government of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) reiterate their condemnation of the systematic policy of interference in and destabilization of the brother Syrian Arab Republic, the aim of which is to impose, by force, regime change on the Syrian people. The ALBA member […]
Amnesty Demands Russia Let Imperialists Turn Syria into Another Libya
Dear Amnesty (amnestyis@amnesty.org): “Russia’s threats to abort a binding UN resolution on Syria for the second time are utterly irresponsible,” said José Luis Díaz, Amnesty’s representative to the UN. “Russia bears a heavy responsibility for allowing the brutal crackdown to continue.”1 With Libya still suffering the lethal consequences of western military “liberation,” with Iran gravely […]
