The unions in the new Change to Win federation plan to spend at least $750 million on organizing during the next 12 months, their leaders said during the group’s founding convention in St. Louis on Sept. 27...The Change to Win federation will also use its power to enforce its member unions to work together on joint efforts, through coordinating committees, with one committee for each of 17 industrial sectors it identified.

Alex Cohn, Wissam Qablan, Orwa Zidan and Shaul Mograbi-Berger are currently in military prison for their refusal, on grounds of conscientious objection, to serve the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories...Their imprisonment is meant only to punish them and prevent them from obeying the dictate of their conscience.

The government plans to publish an interim report on the Japan-U.S. talks on U.S. military realignment in October after a long delay due to the general election...The need now is for the government to let the U.S. government know how strong local refusal to accept U.S. bases in their municipalities is and to call for the cancellation of the realignment of U.S. bases in Japan.

The rise of disaster capitalism is extremely disturbing for a simple reason: if a private company makes its income by selling services to the victims of tragedies, it will have an economic interest in the increase in frequency of tragic occurrences, and may use its exorbitant political and economic power to promote policies which will make disaster more likely.

Conversations inevitably revolved around the current hardships - water rationing in the city, the lack of basic items, the exorbitant prices when they did become available, and President Robert Mugabe's recent response to the crisis: that people had the option of eating potatoes...In the last few weeks maize-meal has shot from the equivalent of US 50 cents for 10 kg to US $2.5, and rice up from $3 for a 2 kg bag to $7 - in part as a result of the government's easing of price controls.

Why do the "terrorists" and other people of the Middle East hate us? The truth is much more complicated than George Bush's disingenuous, propagandistic explanation to the American public...When [Bush] said, "They hate what we see right here in this chamber," he captured the true focus of the ire of the Arab world: the US government.

The New Orleans tragedy has demonstrated that the Bush administration is showing the same contempt for the poor in its own nation as for the peoples of the South, including Cuba, affirms Remy Herrera, a researcher with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) of France, and a professor at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

“We are really worried about how large this military operation will become because our hospital cannot cope with so many patients due to a lack of essential emergency materials,” [Dr. Rami] Massaibi said.He also noted that the hospital was still dealing with many children who had been suffering from malnutrition since the previous US-led offensive in the area five months ago.

INDIA voted with the US and the European sponsors of the resolution to arraign Iran in the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This paves the way for its nuclear issue being referred to the UN Security Council.

The Iraqi situation is further deteriorating as U.S. forces' attacks mainly in the North-west area intensify while endless terrorist attacks are killing citizens. About 300 Iraqis were killed in the week beginning September 14.

I had never visited a city ravaged by war, but as I drove across the Mississippi Bridge into the heart of this devastated city with People’s Weekly World reporter Tim Wheeler last week, I felt that I was in a war zone. Debris filled the streets and a dreadful stench filled the air.

David Cronenberg's classy new film moves the director back into the mainstream to present a critical commentary of a cinematic history that has been largely determined by Hollywood's version of the American Dream.

Continuing attacks by paramilitary forces aligned with the Sudanese National Islamic Front (NIF) regime on refugees and other non-combatants in Darfur indicates that despite agreements peace has not come to the southern region of the Sudan.

On September 24 over 500,000 people demonstrated against the war in Iraq throuhout our nation, 300,000 and more in Washington DC and tens of thousands in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A senior staff person for one of the most progressive and courageous members of Congress recently advised a room full of peace activists that they won't be able to persuade Democrats to oppose the war simply by showing them polls finding that a majority of Americans oppose the war. Rather they must assuage the Democrats' fears of being called "weak on national security."

We provide a list here of the top Republican criminals, ethics violators, failures as leaders, and just plain stupid. Enjoy or throw up, whichever....

While the Bush administration has consistently accused democratically elected President Hugo Chávez of "weakening democratic institutions" such as a free media in Venezuela, an audit released last week by the bi-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that Bush administration's policy of paying media personalities to promote its programs was "covert propaganda" and illegal.

There was a fascinating story from Japan yesterday. A Japanese court, the Osaka High Court, ruled against Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit to a religious shrine celebrating the Japanese soldiers who fought and died in World War II.