Subjects Archives: Movements

1. The General Union of Tunisian Workers is a national organization necessarily interested in political affairs, given its history of struggle during the colonial epoch and the period of the construction of the modern state, considering the dialectical links among economy, society, politics, and culture in the process of development, but out task has become more urgent than ever.

Jean Tulard is a historian, specializing in the French Revolution and revolutions in general.  According to Tulard, the future of the Tunisian uprising will depend on the role played by the army. In a month of uprising, the Tunisian people has successfully toppled the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali regime.  Is it a revolution? Right now […]

  Calls are mounting for disbanding the Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique (RCD) or at least banning it from participation in the transition government of Tunisia.  Amid streets chants of “RCD out,” the RCD leadership (such as it still exists) first kept a low profile and then felt compelled to do “something.”  That something translated into a […]

  Tegucigalpa, 19 January 2011 The National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) denounced today that, in Honduras, grave human rights violations persist under the Porfirio Lobo Sosa administration. According to Berta Oliva, Coordinator of the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), her organization documented 1,071 human rights violations in just […]

I shall relate a bit of history. When the Spanish “discovered” us five hundred years ago, the estimated population on the Island was no more than 200,000 inhabitants who were living in harmony with nature. Their main sources of food came from the rivers, lakes and seas rich in protein; they were also carrying out […]

  1. The success achieved so far is only half the way, and the other half is achieving the desired democratic change and implementing it on the ground. 2. Democratic change cannot spring from the same party, figures, institutions, apparatuses, and legislations that maintained the dictatorship and deprived the people of basic rights for more […]

The regime is playing its last card today in Tunisia.  That last Card is the RCD (the party of the former dictator).  After the formation of a so-called “National Unity Government ” yesterday, and after the UGTT (the largest trade union in the country) supported and even participated in it with three ministers, alongside three […]

Towards the close to what is arguably Karl Marx’s most well-known treatment of religion appears the following sentence: Germany’s revolutionary past is theoretical, it is the Reformation.  As the revolution then began in the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher . . . But if Protestantism was […]

“Saad Hariri went to the United States and had meetings there.  Right after that, the Saudis contacted the Syrians to tell them that they could no longer continue this initiative [of Syria and Saudi Arabia to broker a deal between Hezbollah and Hariri on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon]. . . .  The Americans and […]

  The attack on the public sector through pay freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and proposed cuts is also an attack on Black and Latino workers. Cuts to social safety nets hit Blacks and Latinos hardest. Video by United for a Fair Economy. Read United for a Fair Economy, “State of the Dream 2011: Austerity for Whom?,” […]

The Tunisian revolution continues to dictate its own logic on all levels. . . .  After attempts by regime leftovers to spread chaos by several techniques (cars driving through the streets shooting at people and houses randomly, destroying infrastructure, etc.), the Tunisian people organized itself in committees that spread all across the country, in every […]

14 January 2011 Where are the ‘democracy promoters’ on the Tunisian uprising?, asks Marc Lynch.  It’s a fair question: Thus far, a month into the massive demonstrations rocking Tunisia, the Washington Post editorial page has published exactly zero editorials about Tunisia.  For that matter, the Weekly Standard, another magazine which frequently claims the mantle of […]

From day one it was clear this was a revolution that was not about bread only, it was also against dictatorship and corruption.  The revolution was supported by all segments of society.  Poor, middle class, and even upper middle class.  Especially the middle class showed its claws in the last days in Tunis.  Many friends […]

  It is bad enough that, by delaying reconstruction aid to Haiti, the United States has failed to give adequate assistance to our neighbor, which was struck by a devastating earthquake one year ago.  It is far worse that we have also actively cooperated in its deeply flawed election.  Our government helped impose an election […]

  People’s Houses (Turkey) is preparing to organize the second People’s Rights Forum on 21-23 January 2011 in Ankara, in a time when people’s rights struggles against neo-liberal capitalist aggression on labour, humanity and nature are growing. The first People’s Rights Forum was held in July 2007 with the common initiative and contributions of People’s […]

  Sadri Khiari, Tunisian activist exiled in France since early 2003, is one of the founding members of the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (PIR), of which he is currently one of the key leaders.  He has published, among others, Tunisie. Le délitement de la cité : coercition, consentement, résistance, éditions Karthala, Paris, 2003; […]

  Highlights: Zhao Dongmin, a labor lawyer and Maoist, was sentenced on 25 October 2010 to three years in prison for applying to set up a workers’ organisation to monitor the privatization of state enterprises and alert the authorities about cases of corruption.  The Zhao Dongming case is significant for a number of reasons: First, […]

  Excerpt: As family and work patterns have shifted over recent decades, the demand for time off from work to address family needs has grown rapidly.  Women — and increasingly men as well — often find themselves caught between the competing pressures of paid work and family responsibilities, especially when they become parents, or when […]

As it is well-known, the state of Arizona, a territory that was taken from Mexico by the United States along with much more territory, has been the scene of painful events for hundreds of Latin Americans who die trying to immigrate to the US in search of work or to join their parents, spouses or […]

None other than Ileana Ros, the woman who kept the child Elián kidnapped in Miami, the promoter of coups d’état, crimes such as those committed by Posada Carriles and other heinous deeds, shall be travelling to neighbouring Haiti, where the earthquake killed a quarter of a million people and the cholera epidemic, in full swing, […]