David Granville reviews Michael Quinn's new biography of Michael O'Riordan, former IRA member, International Brigader and Irish Communist Party leader for over four decades, for the Morning Star:
Quinn's book, covering the years 1938-1947, spans O'Riordan's return from Spain - where he had continued the fight against fascism begun in...
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José Sanchís Sinisterra 1987 blockbuster Spanish Civil War play ¡Ay Carmela!, very successfully adapted to the screen by Carlos Saura in 1990, has just opened in a new production at the GALA Hispanic Theater under the direction of José Luis Arellano García. The show is "stirring" and "eloquent", Celia Wren wrote...
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James Salter reviews Hemingway's Boat, Paul Hendrickson's new biography of the writer of For Whom the Bell Tolls, in the latest NYRB:
Hemingway’s Boat, which covers the last twenty-seven years of Hemingway’s life, from 1934 to 1961, is not, as is made clear at the beginning, a conventional biography....
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Amy Goodman's Democracy Now features an interview with anthropologist David Graeber, son of Lincoln vet Kenneth Graeber, about the "Occupy Wall Street" campaign. "Occupy Wall Street," finds it inspiration, among other things, in the recent mobilization of Spanish indignados:
As President Obama prepares to outline a deficit-reduction plan that includes tax increases,...
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David Fellman, son and nephew of ALB vets Sol and Harry Fellman, recently featured in an episode of PBS's History Detectives, writes to supply additional details and to share remaining questions.
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Judge Baltasar Garzón, recipient of the first ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism last May, has accepted a special assignment from the Organization of American States (OAS) to work on the peace process in Colombia. As Special Advisor to the Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP), he will coordinate the...
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Five major new documentaries on historical memory and transitional justice in Spain, Latin America, and Africa! That is how, this November 3-5, ALBA, the Puffin Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the North American Congress for Latin America, and several other human rights organizations are honoring the work of...
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In today's Times, Kathryn Sikkink, a Minnesota political scientist, makes the case for the kinds of human rights persecutions that Baltasar Garzón helped institute:
My research shows that transitional countries — those moving from authoritarian governments to democracy or from civil war to peace — where human rights prosecutions have taken place...
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Mike Hall writes for the AFL/CIO blog about a new online exhibit on the activism of Paul Robeson, who famously traveled to Spain in support of the Spanish Republic and the volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade:
Paul Robeson, once the premier African American artist of the 20th century, is well known...
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Manus O'Riordan, Ireland Secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, alerts us to the resuscitation of charges in relation to Irish IBer Fran Ryan that have already been refuted. On 11 September 2011, the Irish edition of News International’s Sunday Times carried the following report by Lorraine Wemyss:
The campus of Queen's University Belfast was festooned with Nazi...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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Peter Verbergh translated this article from CeSoir describing the arrest of the Dallet-Nelson Group. “The Interrogation of the Passengers of the Sans-Pareil”, CeSoir, March 29, 1937 (From our Special Correspondent) Perpignan March 28 (By Telephone) Yesterday morning around 10am, The Coast Guard Vessel Cebère docked in the port of Port-Vendres alongside the torpedo boat...
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Only five veterans of the Spanish Civil War are known to be buried in Virginia outside of Arlington National Cemetery: two in Richmond, two in Norfolk, and one in Big Stone Gap. ALB Tribute visited the graves of Harry Edward Farris and Thomas Moore in Richmond as well as Manuel Lizarrago and Crawford Morgan...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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