Feb 15, 2003

South Africa’s Stop the War Campaign – a broad alliance of organizations from different sectors of South African society – has launched a ten-day period of intense anti-war activity aimed at bringing the maximum number of people and organizations into action against the Bush administration’s drive to attack Iraq.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) will begin operations on March 11, despite the Bush administration’s worst fears. Under the Clinton administration the United States had signed the Rome Statute, which formally began preparations for the formation of the ICC. But over a year ago under the direction of the Bush administration, the U.S. pulled out of the treaty.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil – Most Israelis want a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and the Bush administration’s policies are “very unhelpful,” Galia Golan, a leader of Peace Now, Israel’s oldest and largest mass peace movement, told the World.

CHICAGO – Indicating the widening gulf between the Bush administration and much of the nation and world over the administration’s drive to war, a leading Republican senator is saying the U.S. should let Iraq weapons inspections work.

Communist & workers parties say: No war!

Over 60 communist and workers parties from around the world, including the CPUSA, have joined in signing an Appeal against the Aggressive War on Iraq, initiated by the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia.

CHICAGO – After more than six months, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) finally has some of the funding that freezing elderly and working-class people all across the country have been waiting for. On Jan. 24 President Bush released the $200 million of the remaining $300 million that was budgeted to the program. But for some the funding has come too late.

Talking with airline employees in America can be an unsettling experience right now. They are being pushed for salary and work-rule concessions under threat of losing their jobs.

As the United States ramps up for invading Iraq, we should know that we are sending our troops into the most toxic battlefield on earth. And should those soldiers suffer the huge number of disabilities that Gulf War I vets do, they can expect their government, in the words of U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), to have “a tin ear, a cold heart, and a closed mind.”

CHICAGO – Elected officials, trade union and community leaders joined striking workers here Feb. 3 to demand Azteca Foods accept federal mediation to end a four-month strike.

In the wake of Sept.11, 2001, and the rightward shift in the 2002 elections, few in the Bush inner circle could have predicted that in the bitter winter of 2003, from Miami to Anchorage, millions of Americans would march...