Frann Michel as the Well-read Red shows how Mothers' Day began a century ago as an action for peace, and how that association is being revived by Code Pink. To read her commentary, complete with many links to things you can do and read, go to Frann's Kboo blog.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and by some counts it was the one-hundredth anniversary of Mother’s Day in the US . In 1870, social activist Julia Ward Howe wrote her Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament, a call to unite women to organize against war.
18 hour radio broadcast on 60 years of Palestinian dispossession
On THURSDAY, MAY 15th, from Midnight until 6pm (EST), the International Middle East Media Center in Bethlehem (Palestine) participated in an historic international radio reflection of the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe. This unprecedented 18-hour collaborative radio broadcast included the participation of CKUT 90.3fm
in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), CHRY 105.5fm in Toronto (Ontario, Canada),
and KBOO 90.7fm in Portland (Oregon, USA), and contributions from
Pacifica Radio and Democracy Now!
British-born Mozzam Begg spent a total of 3 years imprisoned at US-run prison camps at Guantanamo, Bagram and Kandahar. His book, Enemy Combatant, details the horrendous conditions he suffered, including 2 years in solitary confinement. He also writes about relations with US prison guards and interrogators. Since his release, Mozzam Begg has campaigned tirelessly for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. In this interview with Bread and Roses, Mr. Begg talks about his family's activism during his imprisonment.
If you've seen the Hollywood movie, Rendition, you'll recognize the story of Saifullah Paracha. In the Hollywood movie, an innocent man is literally kidnapped off a plane by US agents, hooded, shackled and sent to a prison camp. This is essentially what happened to Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman who in 2003 was removed from a flight and sent to a horrendous US prison camp in Bagram, then on to Guantanamo. As in the movie, the Paracha family had no idea of his whereabouts for over a month. However, unlike the movie which has a happy Hollywood ending, Saifullah remains in Guantanamo where he has been held since 2004. Bread and Roses spoke to Saifullah Paracha's teenage daughter. She lives in Pakistan.
During Omar Deghayes' 5 years of imprisonment at Guantanamo, his family became very outspoken. For the Deghayes family, it seemed history was repeating itself: In 1986, they had fled persecution in Libya where Omar's father had been assassinated, and had sought asylum in Britain. But in 2002, Omar, who had moved to Pakistan, was kidnapped and sold for a $5,000 bounty to US authorities. Details of his subsequent torture at US-run detention centers is well documented. Omar was released, without charges, in December 2007.
In this interview, Omar's brother, Taher, talks about the terror of Omar's imprisonment, but also of the great community of activists from around the world who became involved in trying to free him.
Hosted by Tom Becker, this program has pieces on the International Longshoreman Workers Union and May Day, the Italian radical film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, the left turn in Paraguay, and the impact of the economic crunch on the poor. You can hear the whole show by clicking on the arrow above, or individual segments by clicking on their links below:
Joe Uris and Abe Proctor rant 'n' rail on with a pre-May Day Special covering the history of the Labor Movement in the United States, and how it's been steadily eroded since the last of the *real* Domocrats were in power.
