Democracy & Governance Archives - Page 200 of 359

The Last Porto Alegre

by Mark Engler, John Gershman | Oct 2, 2005

ItÂs not Paris or Tokyo, Beijing or New York. Nor is it SÃ£o Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Enthusiastic residents of Porto Alegre, Brazil will tell you that their modest city of 1.5 million people in the countryÂs deep South is Âthe last bastion of socialism and rock ÂnÂ roll.Â Indeed, stalls covered with black Iron Maiden t-shirts stand in the public markets, and the municipality long served as a stronghold of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the Brazilian Workers Party. But today Porto Alegre is best known around the globe, especially among those inclined to hold a critical opinion of capitalism, corporate power, and U.S. military aggression, as the original home of the World Social Forum.

Historic Victories, New Challenges

by Mark Engler, Emira Woods | Oct 2, 2005

How 100% debt cancellation for poor countries–now being debated by wealthy nations–was transformed from an implausible demand into a winning issue, and what barriers lie ahead for the debt relief movement.

The Trouble With CAFTA

by Mark Engler, John Gershman | Oct 2, 2005

On December 17 officials from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua finished negotiations with the United States on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). CAFTA is a bad deal, one that promises to extend the harmful impacts of NAFTA to Mexico’s weaker southern neighbors.

Anti-Terrorist Security Sweep In Pakistan Winding Down

by John Gershman, Abubaker Saddique | Oct 2, 2005

Pakistan’s government on March 30 began pulling troops out of South Waziristan following a 12-day security sweep of the area to root out Taliban and al Qaeda militants. The withdrawal was accompanied by an official admission that no Islamic radical leaders had been killed during the operation, as was earlier claimed.

Defense of Israeli Assassination Policy by the Bush Administration and Democratic Leaders

by John Gershman, Stephen Zunes | Oct 2, 2005

The U.S. veto of a proposed UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel’s March 22 assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin has once again placed the United States both on the fringe of international public opinion and in opposition to international legal norms. Despite the proposed resolution condemning “all attacks against civilians,” the United States once again was the lone dissenting vote, marking the 28 th time since 1970 that the U.S. has blocked a Security Council resolution criticizing the actions of its most important Middle Eastern ally.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

by Bushra Asif, John Gershman | Oct 2, 2005

As donors met in Berlin last week to review Afghanistan’s progress and reaffirm their commitment to its reconstruction, the Afghan National army was swiftly moving into the northern province of Herat. Its mission was to quell an upsurge in factional fighting, following the murder of Mirwais Sadeq, the Afghan aviation minister and son of the powerful warlord and governor Ismail Khan. Although the army may have prevented the escalation of violence, the episode highlights the weakness of the central government and the fragility of security in the country. Almost two years after the fall of the Taliban, peace and security in Afghanistan still remains elusive.

A Debacle in the Battle for Hearts and Minds

by Pascale Combelles Siegel | Oct 2, 2005

A major battle in the “War on Terror” was lost last month and not a shot was fired.

Bush’s AIDS Relief Plan Will Delay Drugs, Reward Big Pharma

by John Gershman, Jim Lobe | Oct 2, 2005

Africa and AIDS activists say the Bush Administration’s pledge to expedite its approval process for low-cost, generic anti-retroviral drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will really slow delivery of drugs to those suffering while undermining the authority of the United Nations and World Health Organization.

The Yugoslavian Fairy Tale

by Erik Leaver, George Szamuely | Oct 1, 2005

It is always fascinating to watch the eagerness with which so-called progressives unquestioningly accept an official history full of virtuous U.S. officials and villainous savages trying the patience of the peaceful, law-abiding Great Powers. Case in point: the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and Stacy Sullivan’s recent account of them in Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0402milosevic.html). The actual sequence of events that caused those wars is very different from the reporting of the establishment media and, unfortunately, much of the progressive media. According to this story, the wars of the past decade were all started by the Serbs, who sought to destroy Yugoslavia and turn it into a mono-ethnic Greater Serbia.

Stacy Sullivan on Milosevic and Genocide

by Edward S. Herman | Oct 1, 2005

Liberals and much of the left have been badly bamboozled on recent Yugoslav history and the role of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, with former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic having been hyper-demonized and the history of the Balkans rewritten to fit what Lenard Cohen calls the “paradise lost/loathsome leaders” paradigm. But numerous serious scholars have rejected this history and regard the U.S. and other NATO powers as heavily responsible for the disasters since 1990. Lord David Owen’s Balkan Odyssey, and his testimony before the Tribunal, make it very clear that Milosevic was eager for a settlement of the Bosnian wars well before the Dayton agreement in 1995, and that he regularly had major conflicts of interest with the Bosnian Serbs. It is clear from Owens, as well as from other experts that the U.S. government played a key role in the failure of the 1991 Vance plan, the 1992 Cutileiro plan, and the 1993-94 Vance-Owen and Owen Stoltenberg plans, as the Clinton administration armed the Bosnian Muslims, and later the KLA in Kosovo, while encouraging them both to hope (and work) for U.S.-NATO military intervention on their behalf.