World

  • Briefs: US Occupy supports workers' and student protests

    Chicago workers occupy plant, score win Workers facing layoffs at a Chicago window factory have declared victory after occupying their plant for 11 hours, OccupyWallSt.org said on February 24. The Occupy Wall Street website said: “Through direct community action, including the support of Occupy Chicago, the workers and their union prevented the California-based Serious Energy company from closing the plant for another 90 days. The workers hope this will give them time to keep the plant open, possibly by purchasing it themselves and creating a worker-owned co-op.”

  • WikiLeaks expose: Corporate giants caught spying

    The release of secret emails from private intelligence company Stratfor by WikiLeaks has opened the door on the world of spying-for-profit. More than 5 million emails between Stratfor employees were stolen by hacker group Anonymous in December last year. The emails were passed on to WikiLeaks, which began releasing them on February 27.

  • Greek lessons: Real democracy needed to take on debt-bondage

    It is a truism to say that democracy began with the Greeks ― less so to say that it originated in popular rebellion against debt and debt-bondage. Yet, with the Greek people ensnared once more in the vice-like grip of rich debt-holders, it may be useful to recall that fact. For the only hope today of reclaiming democracy in Greece (and elsewhere) resides in the prospect of a mass uprising against modern debt-bondage that extends the rule of the people into the economic sphere.

  • Palestine: Hunger strike reignites prisoner rights movement

    Addameer is a Palestinian human rights organisation that works to support political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian jails. It offers free legal aid and works to end torture and other abuses of prisoners' rights. The group’s 10 lawyers visit more than 500 prisoners inside Israeli jails each year. They also represent prisoners held by the Palestinian Authority (PA), representing more than 400 Palestinian prisoners arrested by PA security forces in 2009-10.

  • Spain: ‘Books not truncheons’ -- students protest education cuts

    Last year it was the indignado movement that filled Spain’s city squares with hundreds of thousands of protesters. On February 19, it was the union-led movement against the Popular Party (PP) government’s new labour law. On February 29, another mass protest flooded the squares: tens of thousands of students protesting against cuts to education in 25 cities and towns across Spain. They had paid no attention to the plea of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who on the eve of the protest asked Spaniards “to understand that things are not that easy”. Huge support

  • Bolivia: 'Moving beyond capitalism is a universal task'

    Bolivia’s vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera brought a message of hope and anti-imperialist commitment to Mexico in early February. Speaking to an overflowing assembly of students and university personnel at Mexico City’s UNAM (National Autonomous University), he said the left-wing government led by President Evo Morales welcomes social-movement protests and conflict. The more, the better. “The struggle is our nourishment, our peace,” Garcia Linera said. “It does not overwhelm us. Absolute calm frightens us.

  • PHOTO ESSAY: 'The Malaysian people say stop Lynas!'

    Lynas, an Australian mining company, is building a rare earth refinery close to the heavily populated area city of Kuantan in Malaysia. The ore is to be shipped from a mine in Western Australia but the highly toxic and radioactive waste which the refinery will produce will not be accepted back by the WA government.