Walls; Electric Fences; Eliminations; Dogs; Closure; Collective Punishment; Tanks; Assault Helicopters; F-16s; Reciprocity; Retaliation; War. Welcome to the new Israeli lexicon concerning the Palestinians–the “new speak” of the post-Oslo period. And as with the Orwellian “new speak,” there is no longer any real discussion of issues and options, no plurality of opinions among the Israeli public, let alone the political leadership.
Have Faith in Free Trade–The Greatest Story Over Sold By Kevin Gallagher
One of the most controversial “structural adjustment” policies promoted by the World Bank and the IMF is the imposition of user fees on primary healthcare and education. These user fees have been associated with lower school enrollment and reduced access to primary healthcare. For some years, the World Bank, while acknowledging problems with the implementation of user fees, defended them in principle on the grounds that there were, or were supposed to be, exemptions for the poor, even though, as the World Bank was eventually forced to admit, the track record indicates that exemption schemes do not work.
The 14 undocumented Mexican migrants found dead on May 24 after their smuggler abandoned them in the scorching desert near Yuma, Arizona, are among the most recent of more than 600 casualties due to border patrol strategies that have upped the risks of illegal immigration since 1994. These strategies squeeze Mexican workers into the most dangerous crossings in the mountains and deserts of California and Arizona, and into the proverbial Valley of Death.
In today’s complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the political assumption that a Palestinian State is part and parcel of any future peace agreement is now a common realization that the U.S. and Israel have finally come to terms with. The U.S. administration, the Israeli press, and even the hawkish Israeli government, now openly make public statements to this regard. I do not question the fact that a Palestinian State is on the horizon, but I have serious doubts that the geographic location of this State is the same between the world’s conviction and that of the Israeli government led by Prime Minster Ariel Sharon.
The Jerusalem Post website reported, “IAF [Israeli Air Force] F-16 warplanes may have dropped munitions as large as 250 kilograms on their targets” (5/18/2001). Among these targets were a Ministry building, police stations, a TV station, and a prison–all in civilian neighborhoods in several Palestinian cities under Israeli military occupation for the past 34 years. The warped justification for Israel’s latest war crime is that it is a response to yet another Palestinian suicide bomber, who hours earlier took the lives of seven Israeli citizens in a shopping center in the Israeli City of Natanya.
For there to be a successful antidrug policy in Peru, two conditions must be met. First, there must be a clearly democratic government, with executive, legislative, judicial, police, and military institutions that effectively guarantee a balance of powers and enforcement of the rule of law-all of which will prevent impunity and increase government accountability to the country’s citizens. And second, there must be an economic policy that makes a priority of reducing unemployment and improving the rural economy.
On January 6, the U.S. released summaries of its proposals for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would extend NAFTA-type rules to 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere (with the notable exclusion of Cuba). A month later, the New York Times issued a series of articles describing how NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has changed the lives of poor families on the Mexico-U.S. border.
Despite reports in the mainstream press to the contrary, the optimism sparked by Vicente Fox’s unprecedented electoral victory and the new political openness in Mexico, which he has inspired, are not likely to permanently reduce undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States. Rather, both the human rights situation on the border and the future stability of the U.S.-Mexico region necessitate a change in the way the U.S. and Mexico are handling crossborder migration.
Bush will have no opportunity to be a uniter on trade policy. The political landscape is simply too divided, and the same divisions that virtually paralyzed the Clinton administration on trade policy threaten to do the same with Bush. Rather, Bush’s choice will be whether to be a clever divider or a clumsy divider.