workers

Prison Revolt, Fire, Gunshots at Notorious Evin Facility in Iran, which houses Political Prisoners, as Iran Protests enter 5th Week

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Dubai-based Al-Arabiya assembles Tweets from Iran about the prisoner uprising at Iran’s maximum-security prison, Evin, which led to the outbreak of a major fire on Saturday. The facility holds political prisoners, including foreigners. Interrogations there have routinely involved torture. Despite government claims that the fire had been extinguished on Saturday […]

Feminism

Women-led Protests in Iran gather Momentum – but will They be enough to bring about Change?

The Conversation

By Tony Walker, La Trobe University | – As protests in Iran drag on into their fourth week over the violent death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, there are two central questions. The first is whether these protests involving women and girls across Iran are different from upheavals in the past, […]

China

The World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint: Mounting Tensions Over Taiwan

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s recent implicit threat to employ nuclear weapons if the U.S. and its NATO allies continue to arm Ukraine — “This is not a bluff,” he insisted on September 21st — the perils in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict once again hit the headlines. And it’s entirely possible, as ever […]

Authoritarianism

Iran: In Widening of Social Base of Protests, Oil Workers go on Strike in Support of Youth Demonstrators

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The student protests continued in Iran on Monday, as youth rallied at the University of Shiraz and at several campuses in the capital of Shiraz. They pledged to multiply their movement every time another youth was killed. Nearly 200 people have died because of the repression of the protests according […]

Corporations

Optimism of the Will: Noam Chomsky on Organizing, Labor and taking on the Corporations

Tomdispatch

By David Barsamian and Noam Chomsky | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – [The following is excerpted in shortened form from Chapter 9 of Notes on Resistance by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, published by Haymarket Books.] David Barsamian: What we are facing is often described as unprecedented — a pandemic, climate catastrophe and, always lurking off […]

censorship

Iran Protests for “Woman, Life, Freedom” and against “Tyranny” spread to 31 Cities, with 35 Dead

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iran is witnessing the worst mass unrest since the failed Green Revolution of 2009, which saw its biggest crowds come out in major cities such as Tehran, Tabriz and Shiraz, and which was spear-headed by college students and youth more generally. The 2009 movement was not joined by the bazaar, […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Emergency Caused our Scorching Summer, but Inequality meant it hit Workers Hardest

Sam Pizzigati

( Inequality.org ) – The heat. Never been hotter in our lifetimes. This past spring the mercury nearly hit 124 in the Pakistani city of Jacobabad, “just below,” notes science writer David Wallace-Wells, “the conventional estimate for the threshold of human survival.” This summer’s U.S. daily high temperatures are continuing our torrid global pace. America’s […]

unions

How Amazon, Starbucks and other Companies fight Unions

Robert Reich

( Minnesota Reformer ) – You as a worker have a legal right to join a union, but there are many ways big corporations are skirting the law to stop you from getting your fair share. You could be working for a union-buster and not even know it. Here are four of the biggest union-busting […]

Inequality

One-Off Demonstrations are not Enough: Progressives need Standing Mass Organizations

Tomdispatch

By Beverly Gologorsky | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – To begin, an anecdote. This past summer, a pigeon walked through my open balcony door while my attention was elsewhere. I shooed it out, but when I turned around two more pigeons walked out of my bedroom. In the 20 years I’ve lived in my apartment, […]