Latin America Should Withdraw from the World Bank’s Harsh Trade Court
A secretive World Bank tribunal lets multinational corporations sue governments over basic regulations. Mexico should lead a Latin American exodus.
The Real Meaning of Squid Game
South Korea has been a big winner in the game of globalization. But it has come at a price.
How to Truly ‘Build Back Better’ on Climate
The Build Back Better program isn’t just inadequate on climate—it may be a disaster. Here’s what movements are demanding next.
Biden’s AUKUS Alliance is Taking the World to the Brink of a New Cold War
Given the 20 years of disastrous warfare during the “war on terror,” what business does Washington have building a new military alliance in Asia?
Great Game in the Horn of Africa
The United States announced this past week that it is deploying a 100-man mission to assist the Ugandan government in tracking down the remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a force whose bloody conflict with the Ugandan military has devastated northern Uganda and its environs since 1987. But why now, in 2011, is the U.S. government making this commitment to combat the LRA?
Iran Assassination Plot Has Earmarks of FBI Care and Feeding
For many years, almost every terrorist plot the FBI has unearthed has been planted and nurtured by the FBI.
Dealing with the Haqqanis
In a year of promises, unmatched violence, and pointed fingers, public attention has been diverted away from the Taliban and onto a new source of violent opposition. The Haqqani network is now the target of American ire in Afghanistan. Recent Haqqani attacks like the daring assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul have infuriated the American military and political brass. As the United States confronts this persistent and lethal force, the flaws in the U.S. effort to root out terrorism and establish stable governance in Afghanistan turn out to have been inherent in the U.S. strategy since the very beginning.
Paving Over the Money Pit of Nuclear-Weapons Spending
Members of Congress are concerned with the rising costs of nuclear weapons, including new facilities for plutonium and uranium.
ANPO: Art X War – In Havoc’s Wake
ANPO: Art X War is a film depicting decades of resistance to U.S. military bases in Japan, through a treasure trove of oil paintings, photographs, contemporary art and film clips I discovered, mostly languishing in museum storage and private collections in Japan. Although I made the film in 2009 and 2010, it is rooted in my childhood in provincial Japan where I was raised the daughter of liberal American missionaries. In the 1960s, my family lived in the Inland Sea port of Hofu, situated 70 kilometers from the Iwakuni Marine Corps base and 120 kilometers from Hiroshima. Although I never visited either as a child, the U.S. military presence in Japan and the atomic bombs we dropped would complicate my identification as an American, long after I moved to the U.S. to attend university and settle in the late 1970s.
The Last Colony in Africa
‘The Western Sahara is the last country in Africa that has not been correctly decolonised – instead, the right of the Sahrawi people to post-colonial independence has been frozen in time,’ writes Konstantina Isidoros in introducing this special edition of Pambazuka News. ‘If we are to take the rule of international law as our guiding foundation, then Morocco has blatantly defied international law twice, by its illegal invasion of someone else’s sovereign territory and by its illegal occupation that still continues today.’
The Nobel Prize and The African Woman
Three women are sharing the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace. One is Yemeni human rights leader Tawakul Karman. The other two are African: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s current president and Africa’s only female democratically elected head of state, and her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee who is a peace activist and spellbinding challenger of the ultra-male, brutality-wielding world of warlords.
The Ungreening of Obama
Barack Obama was green when he entered the Oval Office. He was a relative newcomer to politics. He was also the most successful fundraiser in presidential history, hauling in more green than the two Democratic and Republican candidates in 2004 combined. And he was, more or less, an environmentalist.
Burma’s Junta: Can a Tiger Change Its Stripes?
Burma’s leadership announced it would free 6,359 prisoners, but only 207 political prisoners have been released thus far.
Ford Confirmation: Too Little, Too Late
In early October, Senate Republicans reversed a yearlong policy of deflection and unanimously confirmed Robert Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria. Though Ford has served in the post since his recess appointment by President Obama in early 2010, Republicans had balked at the idea of “rewarding” the Syrian government with the presence of an official U.S. ambassador, a position that had previously remained unfilled since the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Haririin 2005. Since the Syrian uprising began earlier this year, Ford has been a persistent and vocal supporter of the opposition, and has issued a number of scathing indictments against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.