World News & Views

We celebrate 60 years of failure. Human rights have been converted from a noble goal into an instrument of foreign policy used by rich and powerful nations against the poorest and weakest people of the world.

President Barack Obama delivers his Inaugural Address on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009 - see the videos, photos and transcript.

I am writing this as ambulance and rescue crews continue to search for bodies. Gaza is currently enduring one of Israel’s heaviest bombings. In the last hour, during and after Iftar, the meal breaking the daily Ramadan fast, 80 air strikes were launched on Gaza, according to Israeli sources. These strikes targeted homes, streets, schools, mosques, governmental buildings, greenhouses and agricultural fields.

In March of 2011, I accompanied Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide on his trip home to Haiti following years of forced exile in South Africa. I did so in support of Haitian democracy and Aristide’s civil rights, and in protest against my country’s role in illegally removing him from power in 2004 and then preventing him from returning to his native land for seven long years. Today, Haitian democracy and the rights of Aristide are again under threat.

The African Union summit has elected Libyan Revolution Leader Muammar Al-Qaddafi the new president of the AU. The position will give Al-Qaddafi the power to influence policies across Africa for the next year.

Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. congresswoman and member of the Free Gaza movement, gave a talk at the San Francisco Lunacy Theater on Sunday, Aug. 23. The event was a benefit for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, an independent monthly that covers a variety of local and international stories. Her speaking tour follows her recent expedition on a Free Gaza boat attempting to break the siege of Gaza by sea and on a Viva Palestina caravan from Egypt that succeeded in delivering some of its cargo of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Egyptian revolution was successful because it had no leaders, only coordinators of bottom-up energy. This new form of leadership among Egypt’s – and ultimately the world’s – young people suggests there will be many more such surprises in the future, both at home and abroad.

We live in times when Western extremism has been elevated to pure logic, and we have been made to realize our military worthlessness as NATO terror bombers descend on Libya with a high-tech military arsenal specifically meant to intimidate the African leadership and to make it abundantly clear that military might will define and determine the affairs of this world, especially in weaker nations.

About one inch of rain fell on the capital of Port au Prince early this morning sparking angry protests that tied up traffic near the airport for nearly four hours. Police held the march back as a short scuffle broke out with angry protesters demanding tents, food, water and the return of former President Aristide.

We went to court today to bring Bandile home. We had to leave without her. She was denied bail. Thembinkosi Qumbelo is dead. Nkululeko Gwala is dead. Nqobile Nzuza is dead. Nkosinathi Mngomezulu is in hospital. Luleka Makhwenkwana is in hospital. Our members have been beaten during evictions, during protests and in the police stations. Our homes have been destroyed again and again.

Matt Meyer shares his loving appreciation and acknowledgment for his friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, fallen warrior for liberation for all, now transitioning to the ancestors.

In 2003, the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Whistler won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Since then, the devastating impacts of the Games have become clear: expanding sport tourism and resource extraction on Indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor neighborhoods; increasing privatization of public services; exploitative working conditions, especially for migrant labor; fortification of the national security apparatus with the largest military deployment in Canadian history; ballooning public debt as corporate Olympic sponsors get bailed out; and environmental destruction despite promises of “green” Games.

Half a year following the earthquake, conditions in Haiti are worse than ever. Still, there is “a lot to be hopeful for,” according to Robert Roth of the activist network Haiti Action Committee who recently visited the Caribbean island. An interview.

One of the stories least reported has been the one about Haitians organizing for themselves. This is one woman’s story of how she, her family and the people in the various communities in which she works came together collectively to care for each other’s needs and how that struggle has become the foundation of a new movement of the poor for change in education and the material lives of women and men – a struggle for dignity.

We, grassroots organizations located in the south of Haiti, call on all people who believe in democracy to help President Aristide return promptly - to make President Titid come back to us healthy and able this week as expected by us.

As part of the solution to the country’s serious housing shortage, the Venezuelan government will take over 210,000 square meters of land as a first step to utilizing idle land that belonged to collapsed banks of the 1970s and 1990s.

The recent police killing of a young man in Ughelli, Nigeria, sparked the people’s uprising against SARS’ increasing police brutality in the militarization of politics and social life, along with a strong clientelist trend of administration. The streets are quiet now – temporarily – the people are not satisfied.

The research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

In less than three weeks, 3 million to 4 million people will mobilize to vote for El Salvador's next president - likely ushering in a new progressive chapter in the country's long, violent history of dictatorships.

African American contractors are more likely to hire workers of color, so a barrier to the contractor has a broad impact. Now a new initiative in Oregon is working to stop the lockout of Blacks from construction.