ANNOUNCING: A new cohort of Council members from 18 countries — activists and artists, MPs and ministers, trade union militants and tenant organizers — joins the @ProgIntl on the occasion of its first anniversary.
A thread on the newest members of the Council:
1/ Lina Attalah (@Linaattalah) is an award-winning journalist and campaigner for freedom of speech based in Egypt. She is co-founder and Chief Editor of @MadaMasr, an independent online Egyptian newspaper and member of the @ProgIntl Wire.
2/ Selay Ghaffar (@Selay_Ghaffar) is a fearless activist for political and women’s rights in Afghanistan. She is spokesperson for the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan (@hambastagi), a member of the @ProgIntl.
3/ Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) is a Member of UK Parliament and the founder of the Peace and Justice Project (@corbyn_project), a new member of the @ProgIntl.
4/ Walter Chambati (@wsschambati) is Executive Director of The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies (SMAIAS), Harare, Zimbabwe and Associate Editor of the Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy.
5/ Hasina Khan is one of India's most courageous activists for women's rights in general and Muslim women’s rights in particular. She is the founding member of Bebaak Collective (Voice of Fearless), fighting repressive forces from an intersectional feminist perspective.
6/ Tara Raghuveer (@taraghuveer) the director of @KCTenants, organizing tenants across Kansas City, leading rent strikes, and directing the national campaign for a #HomesGuarantee.
7/ Ammar Ali Jan (@ammaralijan) a historian who works on Communist thought in the non-European world. He is a member of Haqooq-e-khalq Movement, an anti-capitalist organization that is working among workers, farmers, students and women to build an alternative political project.
8/ Baltasar Garzón is an international human rights lawyer, renowned for his courageous efforts to deliver justice for the victims of authoritarian repression, from his indictment of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 to his defense of Julian Assange two decades later.
9/ Dr. Yara Hawari (@yarahawari) is a Palestinian activist, academic and political analyst. She received her PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter in 2018. She currently works as the Senior Analyst for @AlShabaka, a Palestinian transnational think tank.
10/ Tom Morello (@tmorello) is an activist, advocate, and founding member of Rage Against the Machine. His rules are simple: "Feed the poor. Fight the power. Rock the f*ck out.”
11/ Solomon Yeo is the co-founder of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (@pisfcc) and the World’s Youth for Climate Justice (@WY4CJ), both organizations dedicated to address the climate crisis and inequality through a human rights-based approaches.
12/ Gerardo Pisarello (@G_Pisarello) is a member of the Congress of Deputies for @EnComu_Podem. He served as First Deputy Mayor of Barcelona between 2015 and 2019, and represents @CatEnComu, a member of the @ProgIntl on the Council.
13/ Vashna Jagarnath (@VashJag) works in the office of the General Secretary of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (@Numsa_Media). She is also the Deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party.
14/ Luka Mesec (@LukaMesec) is a Member of Slovenian Parliament and a founding coordinator of @strankalevica, an eco-socialist party and member of the @ProgIntl.
15/ Zarah Sultana (@zarahsultana) is the Member of Parliament for Coventry South. Elected in 2019, Zarah has a background in community organising and anti-racist movements.
16/ Sacha Llorenti (@SachaLlorenti) is the Excecutive Secretary of ALBA–TCP. Previously he was Ambassador to the United Nations for the Plurinational State of Bolivia and President of the UN Security Council.
17/ Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher, political theorist, and — in his own words — a "moderately-conservative Communist." He is the international director at the Birkbeck Institute of Humanities, London University.
18/ Lidy Nacpil (@lnacpil) is the Coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (@AsianPeoplesMvt), the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (@gcdcj), and member of the Coordinating Committee of the Global Alliance on Tax Justice (@GA4TJ).
19/ Tiny Kox is a Senator for the Socialist Party in the Dutch Parliament and Chair of the Group of the Unified European Left in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a new member of the @ProgIntl.
20/ Nazma Akter (@NazmaAkter73) is President of the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation, one of the largest union federations in Bangladesh. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Awaj Foundation and co-chair of Asia Pacific Women’s Committee of @IndustriALL_GU.
21/ Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) is a senior public interest lawyer and human rights activist. He has been a relentless crusader for the rights of the poor and the marginalised. He is the convenor of the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms.
22/ Leïla Chaibi (@leilachaibi) is a member of the European Parliament La France insoumise. She is a fierce defender of workers' rights, and leads efforts in the European Parliament to protect digital platform workers and fight against the corporate ravages of Amazon.
23/ Eyal Weizman (@weizman_eyal) is the founding director of @ForensicArchi and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a prolific author and holds a range of positions at international organizations like the @cijournalism.
24/ This Council cohort joins a range of organizations — including @corbyn_project, @GravelInstitute, @IGJ2012, and @WiphalasW — as new members of our planetary front as we prepare for a second year of actions, campaigns, and internationalist organizing.
END/ So join us.
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BREAKING 🇪🇸🇮🇱 An ongoing pattern of military cargo flights from the Zaragoza Air Base in Spain to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv has transported over 60,000 weapons parts directly to Israel since October 2023, reveal @ProgIntl, @palyouthmvmt and @afsc_org.
@palyouthmvmt @afsc_org Over the last 12 months, the @ProgIntl and the @palyouthmvmt have carefully tracked the flow of arms to Israel through Europe's ports and across the Mediterranean Sea.
Today, together with the @afsc_org , we reveal the regular illegal air traffic of arms to Israel.
@palyouthmvmt @afsc_org These flights are part of a broader pattern which sustains Israel's genocide from the air.
Challenge Air Cargo, National Air Cargo, and Atlas Air have all been shown to transport military cargo from other destinations to Israel, such as Belgium and the US.
On this day in 1962, US President John F. Kennedy first implemented the US embargo against Cuba, significantly expanding measures put in place by his predecessor.
Officially, the embargo hoped to stall the spread of socialism in Latin America, seeking to isolate the “present Government of Cuba and thereby [reduce] the threat posed by its alignment with the communist powers”.
A declassified 1960 State Department memorandum revealed its sinister logic: to make “the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
Today, nine nations — collectively known as The Hague Group — gathered in The Hague to coordinate legal, diplomatic and economic measures against Israel’s violations of international law.
"Just as the international community once united to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, we must now unite to enforce international law and protect the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination."
— @VarshaGandikota, Co-General Coordinator of the @ProgIntl
@VarshaGandikota “After many decades of Israel’s evasion of accountability, this is a glimmer of hope that Palestine will soon be free and liberated.”
Today, nine nations — collectively known as The Hague Group — gathered in The Hague to coordinate legal, diplomatic and economic measures against Israel’s violations of international law.
Convened by the @ProgIntl, the meeting between state representatives of Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa explored collective action at both national and international levels to further the cause of Palestinian liberation.
The US began to invade Panama on this day in 1989.
Washington dispatched more than 20,000 soldiers to the Latin American nation to overthrow the regime of former CIA asset General Manuel Noriega.
Codenamed Operation Just Cause, the US invasion killed as many as 3,000 people, wreaking such destruction that local ambulance drivers referred to parts of Panama City as “little Hiroshima”.
On this day in 1975, representatives of the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Santiago, Chile to establish a covert network of transnational repression.
Inspired by the Truman Doctrine and engineered by the CIA, Operation Condor (known as Plan Cóndor in Spanish) enabled South America’s US-backed dictatorships to abduct, torture and murder dissidents across the continent – and around the globe.
For Eduardo Galleano, Operation Condor was the "MERCOSUR of terror”.
Within three years, Operation Condor had expanded to include eight of South America’s 13 countries.