Subjects Archives: Movements

  Sitting in the shadow of an elegant carbet, feeling the trade wind, Roger de Jaham, age 60, lets his Creole accent lilt, talking about the blow that he recently suffered: “For the first time in my life, a man whom I greeted told me: ‘I don’t shake the hand of a béké.”  The man […]

Thirty years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed equity and social justice as the Revolution’s main objective.  His successor, Ayatollah Khamene’i, continues to refer to social justice as the Revolution’s defining theme.  Similarly, Presidents Khatami and Ahmadinejad, though they are from very different political persuasions, placed heavy emphasis on social justice in their political rhetoric.  Yet the […]

  Our Plan of Action: Communique #2 We, the Baldwin-Wallace Food Justice Council, have had our first meeting and discussed the strategy and tactics we plan on using in combating the insanity and greed of the college administration’s food policies. We then declared the following: we will be circulating a petition among the student body.  […]

John Gibler, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, 356 Pages, City Lights Publishers (January, 2009). Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, calls Mexico home, as do millions of impoverished citizens.  From Spanish colonization to today’s state and corporate repression, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, by John Gibler, is written from […]

  Nearly two hundred people gathered yesterday afternoon at the crossroads of Sodeco in Beirut to protest against violations of the rights of social minorities in Lebanon.  The defense of the homosexual community was clearly the dominant theme of the demonstration, organized at the initiative of the Helem association, which has been fighting for the […]

The Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of New York invites you to join us in April for a 10-day trip to Venezuela examining advances in food sovereignty and other initiatives for social change.  Start off in the capital city of Caracas, then travel to four additional states, including visits to newly formed cooperative farms and rural […]

The text below is composed of short excerpts (abstract, introduction, conclusion) from Esteban Pérez Caldentey and Matías Vernengo, “Back to the Future: Latin America’s Current Development Strategy,” International Development Economics Associates Working Paper No. 07/2008. The full text of “Back to the Future” is available (in PDF) at <networkideas.org/working/dec2008/07_2008.pdf>. — Ed.

  In an unprecedented action, the first following the recent Israeli war on Gaza, workers of the Egyptian Fertilizers Company in Suez protested on Saturday, 7 February against the export of fertilizers to Israel. The Egyptian Fertilizers Company is owned by Onsi and Nassef Sawiris under the umbrella of Orascom Construction Industries.  The Egyptian Fertilizers […]

2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.  The Revolution ended a symbiotic relation between the US and the Shah, whereby the latter helped to sustain the economic and political interests of the US in the Persian Gulf region and the former helped to preserve the rule of the Shah.  Since the end of […]

  The general strike in Guadeloupe began almost a month ago, and the strike movement has spread to Martinique over the last two weeks, and yet the government and the management are still maneuvering, stalling and buying time, refusing to meet the demands. Backed by the entire population holding the largest demonstrations ever seen in […]

  In spite of the tireless calls of the Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP, Collective against Exploitation), the employers and the French government have let the situation deteriorate. Instead of really facilitating the negotiations, the French government’s representatives went from evasions to evasions (the prefect left the negotiation table on the 28th of January, and the […]

  ‘I didn’t know Che had any economic ideas’ has been a frequent reply I’ve received when telling people about the topic of my research and my book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution.   It reflects the caricature of Guevara as a romantic guerrilla fighter with idealist notions of how human beings are motivated […]

  Washington D.C., February 15, 2009 — Twenty years ago today, the commander of the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan Boris Gromov crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan, thus marking the end of the Soviet war which lasted almost ten years and cost tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan lives. As a tribute […]

The Jewish Association of Venezuela expressed its appreciation to the Chávez government and its organs of security for their investigations of the attack against the Tiferet Synagogue.  Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro expressed the government’s desire to cooperate with the Jewish community and made it clear that the national government maintains “absolute respect for religious freedom.” […]

  Rageh Omaar: Amnesty International’s 2008 report on human rights states that allegations of torture and other ill treatments and the use of excessive force by law enforcement officials persist in Turkey.  This despite an overt expression of zero tolerance for torture by the Turkish government since 2002.  Kurdish-born human rights lawyer Eren Keskin has […]

  The Middle East has always been a difficult challenge for Western human rights organizations, particularly those seeking influence or funding in the United States.  The pressure to go soft on US allies is in some respects reminiscent of Washington’s special pleading for Latin American terror regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.  In the case […]

In 1846, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The German Ideology, the first mature statement of what became known as historical materialism.  This passage was on the second page: We know only a single science, the science of history.  One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature […]

Thirty years ago, during the several months past, my generation was restructuring social life in Iran, breaking down government doors previously impervious to people’s demands, evicting a dictatorial bunch of idiots who had been imposed on us in 1953, in a coup inspired in the U.K. and carried out by the CIA. And so it […]

Featuring interviews with Abbas Abdi, Ervand Abrahamian, Dr. Farhad Aftar, Hussein Alaie, Ali Ansari, Nazanin Ansari, Reza Ansari, Assadolah Badamchian, Shaul Bakhash, Daniel Brumberg, Shirin Ebadi, Masoumeh Ebtekar, Zahra Eshraqi, Dr. Ahmed Etemad, Shideh Gourani, Ayatollah Mehdi Karoubi, Lowell Bruce Laingen, John Limbert, Abbas Milani, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Ata’ollah Mohajerani, Seyed Ali Akhbar Mohtashamipur, Hojatolislam Seyed […]

  “Supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination is a duty of Israeli communists.” The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and its front Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) were the only political forces in Israel that confronted the massacre perpetrated by the Tzahal (IDF), the Israeli armed forces, in Gaza last January.  Regrettably, […]