In an interview with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Baltasar Garzón has condemned the assassination of Osama bin Laden. "Not even the worst terrorist on earth deserves to be killed, especially when other options are still open," declared the Spanish judge, who is a staunch opponent of the death penalty. "If I do not...
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UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies has put a video online of the speech Baltasar Garzón gave there on April 27th, entitled "Universal Jurisdiction and International Justice." View the 1.5-hour clip here:
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Scott Horton's investigative piece on the suicides at the Guantánamo detention facility has just won the National Magazine Award. Horton, who writes for Harper's, has also been one of the most perceptive U.S. followers of Baltasar Garzón's work (see previous Volunteer coverage here). Guantánamo will be one of the topics covered by Prof. Jonathan...
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"Judge Garzón is a personal hero," Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School writes on his blog today:
For civil libertarians, there are few heroes who can match Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 and later worked to identify human...
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High-school and college teachers interested in bringing their classes to ALBA's annual celebration this coming Saturday May 14 in New York City may contact Marina Garde at mgarde@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398 for special group discounts.
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Preparations for ALBA's annual celebration in New York City this Saturday May 14 are entering the final stretch. Some tickets are still available for the lunch with ALBA-Puffin Human Rights awardee Baltasar Garzón and Prof. Jonathan Turley (12-2pm) and for the award ceremony--with music, speeches, and commemorations of the Lincoln vets we lost...
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Simon Leys reviews new editions of George Orwell's diaries and letters in the latest issue of the New York Review:
Blair’s personal life and Orwell’s public activity both reflected one powerfully single-minded personality. Blair-Orwell was made of one piece: a recurrent theme in the testimonies of all those who knew him at...
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The Guardian's Giles Tremlett explains the significance of the new national map identifying thousands of mass grave sites in Spain, which was published last week:
Presenting the results of almost four years of work, the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said: "No human being should be buried in a ditch." Not...
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The new film by Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Mission) tells the story of Josémaría Escrivá, the founder of the militant secular order Opus Dei, whose members formed the institutional backbone of the Franco regime, is attracting a lot of media attention. This past week it has been reviewed--not very enthusiastically--in the
Our friends at the International Brigades Memorial Trust in the UK send along their latest newsletter featuring, among other things: news on the IB musical, "Goodbye Barcelona"; some interesting insights on Harry Potter & the Spanish Civil War; a review of Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust; a profile of Janet Vaughan, who...
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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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New information about the New Zealand-born Spanish Civil War surgeon Doug Jolly (1904-1983) has emerged following the recent publication of his biography, Frontline Surgeon.
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On September 24, 1945, Dr. Barsky delivered this speech during the Spanish Refugee Appeal rally at Madison Square Garden.
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In 1944, Barsky wrote A Surgeon Goes to War, an 18-chapter memoir of his time in Spain, which was never published but can be consulted at NYU’s Tamiment Library. This is the first chapter.
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Self-effacing and shy though he was, Dr. Edward Barsky’s experience in Spain made him an outspoken activist, tireless organizer, innovative frontline surgeon, and political prisoner. “Eddie is a saint,” Hemingway wrote. “That’s where we put our saints in this country—in jail.”
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The Volunteer is thrilled to honor Dr. Barsky on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
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For Edward Barsky, political and humanitarian activism were two sides of the same coin. Those who persecuted him begged to differ.
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The time she spent in civil-war Spain loomed large in the life of Martha Gellhorn, the St. Louis-born war journalist. “The truth is that Martha could not stop thinking, feeling, and writing about her Spanish experiences.” “Objectivity bullshit.” That’s what Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) called the journalism of her day. Her letters to personalities like...
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Among the thousands of Jewish volunteers who joined the International Brigades were many descendants of the Sephardim. What was it like for them to “return” to Spain? Three case studies: Lini de Vries, César Covo, and Samuel Nahman, aka Manny Harriman.
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How the 22-year-old Jewish American dancer Janet Riesenfeld performed flamenco to help raise money for the Second Republic under fascist attack.
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Why did Jawaharlal Nehru, future prime minister of India, visit civil-war Spain in 1938? As it turned out, the triangular relationship between Britain, Spain, and India had deep cultural and geopolitical implications.
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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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