On January 31, the UN International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory published damning findings. They revealed multiple international law violations. Settlements compromise fundamental Palestinian human rights. Violations are "interrelated." They comprise "part of an overall pattern of breaches."

Last week, the "Dismantling Racism" class from St. Catherine University in Minnesota was taken on a Black Panther History Tour in Oakland and Berkeley, led by Billy X Jennings from It's About Time BPP Alumni & Legacy...An important friend and ally of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, Billy X Jennings' work was previously spotlighted in an interview with Angola 3 News, entitled "We Called Ourselves the Children of Malcolm."

It's well known that Israel's government reflects militarized occupation, colonialism and apartheid. It's done to enforce harshness. It continues because it's profitable. Doing so breaches international law.

Regional uprisings achieved nothing. Daily life reflects poverty, unemployment, and despotism. Tens of oppressed millions suffer.

By Martin Kreickenbaum - 28 January 2013

A report by Human Rights Watch documents the way in which Italian border police are deporting groups of asylum seekers to Greece without any attempt to examine their grounds for asylum...In the second half of 2012, Human Rights Watch interviewed 29 refugees deported from Italy to Greece. All testified to human rights violations and abuses committed by the Italian and Greek security authorities.

Palestinians in Israeli prisons are grievously abused. Conditions resemble gulag hell. Treatment is deplorable. Fundamental human rights are violated.

At perhaps the most perilous time in world history, exposing vital truths takes on greater urgency than ever.

Freedom requires committed activism. Liberation depends on working for what Israel denies. The alternative is more of what's too intolerable to bear.

For 30 years, she defended America's poor, underprivileged, unwanted, and forgotten. Without advocates like her, they never have a chance for due process and judicial fairness.

On January 20, Netanyahu said no to independent Palestine, yes to settlement expansions.

Police states operate that way. Israel is one of the worst. It spurns rule of law principles. It turns democratic values on their head. It targets Palestinians for praying to the wrong God.

By Bill Van Auken - 16 January 2013

Nothing serves as a more searing indictment of US imperialism’s predatory policy in the Middle East than the conditions of the overwhelmingly migrant and semi-enslaved working class in these countries and the ultra-reactionary and medieval character of the regimes that rule them...The foundations upon which this imperialist policy rests are utterly rotten and must produce, sooner rather than later, revolutionary explosions.

Israeli Arabs always knew what increasingly affects Jews. Israel is unfit to live in. It's unfair, unjust and unsafe. Rogue leaders control things. Wealth, power, privilege and dominance alone matter. Militarism and violence are prioritized over peace. Social justice rights go begging.

January 11, 2013 marks Guantanamo's 11th anniversary. On January 11, 2002, its first 20 prisoners arrived. It's one of many US torture prisons globally. Most held there are innocent victims. They're not terrorists. They're lawlessly detained. Many remained for years uncharged and untried. Fundamental rights are denied.

By Frida Berrigan - January 10, 2013

It was a tough trip. We listened to story after story after story. We wept endlessly. We were reminded again and again of the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic, military and political support doled out by Washington over the decades to repressive oligarchs in Guatemala City. We heard about human rights violations and crimes carried out by Guatemalan soldiers trained at the U.S. School of the Americas. We visited modest monuments inscribed with the names of men, women and children slaughtered by government-backed death squads.