Democracy Now!Benjamin Joffe-Walt, Change.org, December 10, 2010Earlier this month we reported that a Starbucks in Bahrain willingly agreed to an unofficial government request to kick out a group of journalists, international observers, human rights advocates and...
My Joy Online, December 13, 2010Some slum dwellers in Agbogloshie in Accra, are threatening a naked demonstration over their planned eviction by city authorities. The AMA has given them up to tomorrow to evacuate the place or face forced eviction. T...
A few years ago, Bob Dylan was asked about his plans. “I’m looking forward to some dreams,” he answered. “Excuse me?” the befuddled interviewer replied. “It says right there in the Bible,” Dylan explained, “‘Your young men and women w...
“the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly” If anyone managed to come away from Part I: Humans: not just selfish with an overly sentimental view of human nature, this post will rob you of that delusion. Yes, we humans have a remarkabl...
While things are heating up in Haiti, in New York it’s getting cold. Freezing cold. Perhaps this is one reason so few people showed up outside the United Nations headquarters on Friday afternoon to demand the withdrawal of troops from Haiti and that a legitimate election take place. But it wasn’t just the weather that
More religious terrorists were convicted today of multiple felonies in the US. This cell of five desperadoes comprised two priests aged 81 and 60, an 84-year-old nun, and two women--66 and 60--with criminal records. These radical Christians call their ...
Femen Activists Strike Again in Ukraine, this time protesting the new Ukrainian Cabinet that does not include any women. Femen protested that the new cabinet is akin to a men’s-only bathroom and simulated urination in front of the Parliament. Femen has protested a variety of feminist causes for the last 2 years in Kiev Ukraine, gaining much publicity for its use of nudity, sexual innuendo and humor. What is unusual about Femen is this is one of the few actively protesting feminist groups in the world today. Why Ukraine? Is it the only country that still have a patriarchal...
Inmates in Georgia are mounting a historic strike, and they’re using technology to coordinate it. The New York Times reports: In a protest apparently assembled largely through a network of banned cellphones, inmates across at least six prisons in Georgia have been on strike since Thursday, calling for better conditions and compensation, several inmates and
Several hundred nuclear energy opponents formed a human chain around a German nuclear storage site yesterday to protest transports of radioactive material. About 100 animal rights advocates gathered at a bear check station in New Jersey on Saturday to protest the last day of the state’s first bear hunt in five years, which killed nearly
“not a joiner” The other day I met up with my friend Mike at a coffee shop here in Providence, RI. Mike is an adjunct history professor at a local community college. Across the country, there are a lot more adjunct professors today than the...
The Progressive is a magazine, that is to say, it is part of the press, and we in the US have this thing called Freedom of the press, enshrined in the First Amendment. So when the government agents descended on my friend Sam back in the day, back when ...
Can we gain a bit of rational perspective on the ravening, howling bloodlust of those who have decided that Julian Assange is obviously the problem? Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst and journalist I've relied on for years to decipher and rationally expl...
'Tis the season to give, to really think about how to find some of the fruits of our labors to donate to organizations that do good work. But how do we think about this? We live in an era when funds are scarce and yet, as it turns out, many nonprofits ...
Published on Thursday, December 2, 2010 byCommonDreams.org Open Letter to Our World Leaders by Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Dear Mr Obama, Mrs Clinton, Mr Petraeus, Mr Rasmussen, and all our world leaders, We are Afghans and we ask the world to listen...
Michelle Goldberg, Tablet Magazine, December 9, 2010Last month, the yearlong prison sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a schoolteacher and activist involved in nonviolent civil disobedience in the West Bank, came to an end. But an Israeli military cour...
Stephen Zunes, FPIF, December 7, 2010The November 28 Egyptian parliamentary elections were a farce. The vast majority of Egyptians boycotted the charade. But even those who did try to vote witnessed massive ballot-stuffing, vote-buying, intimidatio...
