Many years ago, in a situation that still produces much pain, close friends were thinking through treatment for their gravely ill child. They had exhausted conventional and experimental therapies; their doctors were urging them to do what they could to make their son feel comfortable and loved. Then, suddenly, after years of suffering, our friends had smiles on their faces. A cure was available! For a brief moment, I shared their joy but then realized that we were victims of quackery. I had no reasonable alternative to offer them, but I knew that the quacks and their expensive cure would only rob our friends of their last memories of their son. That pain has resurfaced as I contemplate how to respond as a progressive organizer to the recent events in Libya.

Last night I attended a large gathering of activists who came together in Arlington Center, Massachusetts, to listen to MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky and Institute for Policy Studies fellow Phyllis Bennis discuss how to reinvigorate and expand the Peace Movement. Both speakers emphasized the need for anti-war activists to make links with other groups working for change, and particularly to get involved in supporting the majority of Americans who are overwhelmed by the ongoing economic crisis. Unemployment, cuts in wages and benefits, inflation in the area of fuel, food, and college tuition, have left many working people and youth depleted by everyday survival demands, as well as made them vulnerable to right-wing messages blaming immigrants and other victims of economic depression for their own suffering.

On 24th Dec 2010 when a central Indian court handed down a life-sentence to human-rights activist and physician, Dr. Binayak Sen, it was a vicious strike by the power of a state against a threat it defines and perceives. That threat, the Indian state says, is posed by left-wing insurgents, who are referred to as Maoists or Naxalites. The latter term derives from the place, Naxalbari, of an armed peasant uprising in the eastern state of West Bengal in 1969 which spawned a variety of left-wing resistance movements. Dr. Sen was accused of being a courier between a known Maoist ideologue in jail and other Maoists outside.

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Cambridge, MA - On November 10, noted historian and novelist Tariq Ali spoke about his new book "The Idea of Communism" at Harvard Book Store to an audience of over 70 people.



The 1 hour 6 minute audio recording of the talk can be played directly on this page or downloaded from the Internet Archive audio service in the free software Ogg Vorbis format. Download the free software VLC Player to play Ogg Vorbis files on your own computer.

BOSTON/Dorchester - Malalai Joya, now 31, was the youngest ever woman elected to the Afghan Parliament in 2005 and is an outspoken critic of the Karzai government and NATO occupation. Press Pass TV caught up with Joya and supporters at an event hosted in Dorchester by United for Justice with Peace and Dorchester People for Peace.

BOSTON/Dorchester – For three years, the Israeli and Egyptian governments have blockaded Gaza; preventing locals and foreign nationals from crossing in and out of the tiny occupied territory.

Jeff Klein, a retired machinist and union leader and now an activist with Dorchester People for Peace, recently returned from Gaza following his participation in the Viva Palestina aid convoy from Cairo, Egypt to Gaza City. Klein, interviewed Thursday, August 6, 2009 in the studios of WMBR, Cambridge, says family members of Palestinian-Americans in the convoy (including children who were born in the United States) are trapped within Gaza, and were prevented from crossing back into Egypt when the convoy left Gaza last month.

BOSTON/Chinatown - Venezuela's Adjunct Ambassador to the United Nations Julio Escalona and economists Richard B. Freeman of Harvard University, Julie Matthaei of Wellesley College and Arthur MacEwan of the University of Massachusetts Boston spoke on the Global Economic Crisis to an audience of over 60 people on Friday at the encuentro 5 movement space.

Cambridge, MA - Michael Albert of Z Magazine and Prof. Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spoke to an audience of over 200 at a panel on Building a Society from Below in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States. They were joined by Gregory Wilpert of Venezuela Analysis and Julio Chávez, former mayor of the Torres municipality of Venezuela. The event was sponsored by the Boston and New York Consulates of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The accompanying 57 minute audio recording of Albert and Chomsky's presentations can be played below or downloaded from the open source Internet Archive.

Gaza is the most densely populated area in the world: 4,500 people per sq. mile. Over one-half of its 1.5 million citizens are children. On the fourth day of continuous Israel bombing, the known number of dead in Gaza is 380, mostly civilians - including women, children, the elderly, ill and disabled. Over 1000 are said to be badly injured. Israeli government officials say that innocent civilians should move away from the Hamas militants so they won’t be injured. To where were the 5 young sisters crushed to death by collapsing walls of a mosque bombed by Israel supposed to escape? The mosque, one of five now bombed to rubble, was next to their home.