Democracy Now!John Blake, CNN News, May 15, 2011The Freedom Riders were called communists and outside agitators. As they commemorate the 50th anniversary of their rides this month, another group of people in the Middle East is calling them something else -- inspirat...
Elisa Pierandrei, Reset, May 11, 2011"In the war against Islamist terrorism, are the young generations of Arabs, who took the streets of Cairo, Tunis, Benghazi, Damascus, Amman and so on, Al-Qaeda's worst enemy?" Yes they are, for two reasons. First th...
Ash Pemberton, Green Left Weekly, May 16, 2011About 6000 people rallied in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian-occupied West Papua on May 2 demanding a referendum on independence. The demonstration also commemorated the illegal occupation of West Pa...
Mustafa Sarwar, RFE/RL, May 13, 2011The recent emergence of the first, large-scale Facebook movement among Afghan university students calling for reform can't help but raise the question -- will the wave of antigovernment dissent in the Middle East ...
Russia’s Khimki forest defenders continue to face fierce repression. According to Greenpeace Forest Campaigner Asti Roesle, their camp was attacked over the weekend by “private security forces and unidentifiable thugs” who inflicted “serious injuries including head injury, broken nose, and broken jaw.” Since the Russian police have offered no help or security, Roesle is calling
For decades, Food not Bombs collectives have been providing food to the homeless and to activists engaging in nonviolent direct action. They are particularly spectacular at providing healthy vegan foods to feeds hundreds and thousands of activists at large scale demonstrations. There are now more than 100 groups all over the world. Food Not Bombs is one of many nonviolent groups that practices radical egalitarianism through consensus decision making prodecures. They operate on incredibly small budgets, by using volunteer labor and donated foods and services. From an ecological footprint standpoint, they have been extraordinary.
There is no reason to continue this senseless war in Afghanistan. We should end it immediately. That’s what many people across the country are now saying. There are only 100 Al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan, Jim Wallis wrote this week, but we st...
After September 11, 2001, the Taliban offered to negotiate about bin Laden. George Bush said no, we don't negotiate with terrorists. We see the brilliant results of that war system response: a decade of bloodshed for Americans and Afghans. The Taliban ...
My family updated you using my email on what happened on Nakba day (the three messages are now posted at my blog http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2011/05/nakba-events-and-arrest-of-dr-qumsiyeh.html). Hundreds of us were kidnapped by t...
In his New York Times review of Adam Hochschild’s important new history of World War I, To End All Wars, Christopher Hitchens writes: Increasingly, modern historians have come to regard that bleak November ”armistice” as a mere truce in a long, terrible conflict that almost sent civilization into total eclipse and that did not really terminate until the
As of now at local time Monday morning 2 a.m. May 16, 2011, Mazin is stillbeing detained. His cell phone battery died as he called and wanted me towrite down the names and countries of the seven internationals that weredetained with him so that I...
Last Wednesday, activists targeted the David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City. As The Other 98% writes: 1,000 people gathered to launch Koch Brothers Exposed — a new project of Brave New Foundation and The Other 98% — by projecting a short film about the billionaire Koch Brothers onto the front of the
The May issue of Sojourners has several great articles on nonviolence that are worth reading if you have the chance. In “People Power,” Erica Chenoweth succinctly explains the reasons why nonviolent movements have been significantly more successful over the last century, based off the results from her research on hundreds of violent and nonviolent movements
I'm sorry, but this is what we are doing, Mr. President, when we murder our adversary. The ultimate in oxymoronic, mutually exclusive, self-contradictory behavior is killing for peace. It is the endpoint of what we call negative peace, that is, peace d...
Khaled Diab, The Guardian, May 12, 2011Drawing lessons from the failure of the violent second intifada and the success of the largely peaceful first intifada, as well as the now-proven power of mass, nonviolent protest to instigate change in the region...
Photo by: vincentevanpig I was just talking to a scientist friend of mine. He told me, and I quote, that “unfortunately, in science, we fail 95% of the time, we inch along towards a breakthrough.” There is a lot of good talk about failure lately, but I don’t think I had ever heard it this way
