As war raged in the occupied territories, peace flowered in Tel Aviv. On Saturday, February 16, 14,000 Israelis marched, sang peace anthems, lit candles, and demanded Israel “Get out of the territories, get back to ourselves!”
Reviewing the Korea-U.S. Summit: What Lies Beneath By Brent (Won-Ki) Choi February 22, 2002
“What the hell have you come here for? We’ve got nothing here! The mines have shut down and those bastards in their offices are corrupt to the bone! We had a strike, but there’s no way of controlling them. It’s not like the USA where everyone’s rich and you’ve got democracy. Shulan Town? It’s a joke.”
As the American and allied military forces continue to operate in Afghanistan, the world is increasingly getting dragged into yet another war–the war for food supremacy. And like the war against terrorism, the battle for food superiority is also going to be long drawn. With the battle lines already sketched and with the back-up support of international financial institutions, this war is being aggressively pursued on the trade front.
U.S. President George W. Bush’s upcoming trip to South Korea in mid-February is an opportunity for the Bush administration to demonstrate its new vision by explicitly support the “sunshine policy” of South Korea’s President Kim Dae-Jung–a policy that has led to significant reduction in tensions in one of the last remaining hotspots of the cold war. Over the past year, the Bush administration has demonstrated little of the flexibility and vision necessary to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula. Instead, the administration has been inconsistent and obstructionist.
Porto Alegre, Brazil–Under a strong summer sun and a broad political proclamation that “Another world is possible,” tens of thousands of activists from around the world are arriving here for the second annual World Social Forum. The host, like last year, is Brazil’s southernmost major city, capital of the state of Rio Grande de Sul. The city and state governments, which are both facilitating and underwriting some of the Forum’s cost, have won international acclaim for their progressive policies, providing extensive social services and a high quality of life.
President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 was the first in many years to focus primarily on foreign policy. Despite widespread accolades in the media and strong bipartisan support in Congress, a careful examination of the language and assumptions in the address raise disturbing questions about the direction of U.S. foreign policy under the current administration. What follows are some excerpts consisting of the majority of the speech addressing foreign policy issues and interspersed with some critical commentary. This should not be interpreted as in any way minimizing the very real danger from terrorism, or the need for a decisive response, nor to imply that Bush administration policy regarding terrorism and other foreign policy issues has been totally negative. Yet the failure to recognize the misleading verbiage and to recognize the dangerous implications of such words–however eloquent and reassuring to a nation that has experienced such trauma in recent months–will not only make us less safe from the threat of terrorism, but will deprive Americans of our greatest defense and asset: our freedom to question and challenge government policies that are not in the best interests of our country and the world.
Somalia and the U.S. are apparently doomed by fate to collide at critical moments in global politics. The collision has never brought anything but trouble to both parties. We are about to crash into one another again, this time in an expanded war on terrorism.
I’m John Cavanagh, and I’m the director of the Institute for Policy Studies. And it’s great to be here with Alejandro, Thea, John, and Kristin, who between them have about a half a century of working on these issues. We at IPS have had a program on the global economy since 1975, founded by Orlando Letelier, and we’re certainly not planning to close it down any time soon.
I want to remind us that, even before September 11, we were heading toward a very militaristic world and police state, not only in the U.S. but globally. There have been recent revelations that the Bush administration was already planning on building up the antiterrorism campaign very intensively; and, at one of the street protests at Genoa, Italy, last year, a protestor was shot and killed by the police of Italy. So this is all part of a continuum. However, I would also agree that the movement is stronger than ever.