A widening pattern of repression of social movements has taken shape around the world. Everywhere, space for dissent is shrinking rapidly. Governments and corporations alike are working to suppress and silence movements, organisations and individuals who organise against repression. This shrinking of public space threatens virtually all social movements. Around the world, the legality, physical safety, and public access of dissident movements and civil society more broadly are being threatened. This report examines the legal and political pressure exerted on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, a global campaign aimed at pressuring Israel to end human rights violations, launched in 2005 by a group of Palestinian activists.
Socialists and other progressives are running for U.S. office on strong domestic programs. Here’s how their foreign policy platform can be just as strong.
Over the last six weeks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached its lowest point since the 2014 Gaza war. The Palestinian protests on the Gaza border that started on March 30 under the name 'Great March of Return', turned into massacre on May 14.
With all the discussion and debate these days about intersectionality and the need for progressives to link our movements against racism and against war, the name of Muhammad Ali belongs right up in our pantheon with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Howard Zinn, and so many other women and men who fought and continue to fight those linked battles together.
In a surprise announcement on March 14, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that the Russians were withdrawing “most of our military” from Syria beginning immediately.
The destruction of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, with 22 dead so far, including doctors, other staff and patients, capped a week that also saw the bombing of another hospital in Afghanistan, plus the U.S.-backed Saudi Arabian bombing of a wedding party in Yemen set up in tents far out in the desert, away from anything remotely military.
The brutality of ISIS has led many to argue that only military action can stop them. Phyllis Bennis, fellow of Transnational Institute and a long-term observer and analyst of US foreign policy in the Middle East, argues that US occupation and military action was the principal cause of ISIS rise and therefore cannot be the solution. She outlines alternative options for constraining the advance of ISIS and bringing peace back to the troubled countries of Iraq and Syria. See also Phyllis' primer, Understanding ISIS and the new global war on terror
Policy analyst Phyllis Bennis says the United States has a moral responsibility to address the Syrian refugee crisis after the UK Guardian reveals Russia offered to help depose Assad three years ago.
It would not have surprised anyone who knew Praful Bidwai, that the night he died he was surrounded by friends who with him represented five continents, north and south.
Phyllis Bennis and Ali Abunimah about the move opposed by the United States and Israel, Palestinian leaders have submitted a request to join the International Criminal Court and sign over a dozen other international treaties.
