Source: Truthout

I can’t take it anymore. All week, I’ve watched Nelson Mandela reduced to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly outfit they choose.

Poor Mandela. When he’s not a doll, he’s a statue. He joins Martin Luther King as another bronzed monument whose use is to tell us that apartheid is now “defeated” – to quote the ridiculous headline in the Times. read more

Source: Washington Post

U.S. intelligence, GPS bomb kits help Latin American nation cripple rebel forces

The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.

The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000. read more

Source: Truthout

Iraqi oil workers are the backbone of the industry that produces most of their country’s wealth. And since the US invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein, they’ve also organized its strongest and most vocal union. They’ve shut their industry down in the past, successfully challenging Halliburton during the US occupation and forcing it to leave Iraq. To try to stop Iraq’s government from signing unfavorable contracts virtually handing over the oil to foreign transnational corporations, they shut off the oil spigots again after the US withdrew. read more

Source: Open Democracy

New social movements are different. Instead of asking for alternatives, they are bringing them to life.

“The greatest problem we have is that we can’t imagine any alternative. And that is the challenge: to invent, create and think as if we were living just after the collapse, if there is a collapse of capitalism, and how we will organize.” Ana, Observatorio Metropolitano and 15M, Madrid.

For the past ten years I have been travelling the world and talking with people like Ana, who are creating new social movements that challenge our conceptions of collective action. I lived in Argentina after the 2001 economic crisis and recorded an oral history of the rebellion that followed. I spent time with self-organized water users’ groups in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and with Occupy throughout the USA. And I worked with neighborhood assemblies in Greece and Spain, as well as with housing defense groups in the USA and Germany. read more