Javier Sicilia, a poet who lost his son to drug war violence in March of 2011, catalyzed the Caravan for Peace — a coalition of victims and Mexican citizens fed up with the bloodshed that has claimed more than 60,000 lives and left tens of thousands more disappeared since former President Felipe Calderon launched the drug war five years ago.
Ten years ago, I wrote a series of articles for the Foreign Policy in Focus website in which I put forth a series of arguments against the Bush administration’s push for a U.S. invasion of Iraq prior to the fateful congressional vote authorizing the illegal, unnecessary, and ultimately disastrous war.
In a stunning violation of its own rules, the wishes of the majority of delegates at its national convention, and positions taken by the United Nations and virtually every country in the world, the Democratic Party leadership pushed through an amendment to its platform stating that Jerusalem “is and will remain the capital of Israel” and should be “undivided.”
The bad dream unfolding in Mali is less the product of a radical version of Islam than a consequence of the West’s scramble for resources on this vast continent, and the wages of sin from the recent Libyan war.
This past month was the hottest July in the United States ever recorded. In India, the monsoon rains are long delayed, resulting in the country’s second drought in four years. Triple-digit temperatures in New Delhi and other cities have already provoked the worst power outages in the country’s history and the expected bad harvest is likely to slice at least 5 percent from GDP growth.
The most prominent and unequivocal public articulation of an alliance between feminism and counterterrorism came at the dawn of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, when Laura Bush argued that “the fight against terrorism is a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
Weeks after Mexico’s presidential elections, thousands of people have turned out to protest the declared winner, Enrique Peña Nieto, and the imminent return to power of the party that ruled Mexico for more than seven decades. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which is slated to take office December 1, now faces increasing accusations of fraud, a legal demand to declare the elections invalid, and a youth movement that refuses to go away.
The Palestinian solidarity struggle would be considerably strengthened if, instead of calling for divestment specifically from companies supporting the Israeli occupation, the call was for divestment from companies supporting all foreign belligerent occupations.
On July 5, South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings against the Ministry of National Defense for proceeding with construction of a naval base on Jeju Island without an environmental impact assessment (EIA). It also ruled that the governor of Jeju had the authority to change the designation of absolute preservation areas. This ruling wasn’t just a major blow to residents of Gangjeong village where the navy base is being built but also to the many voiceless marine organisms. As you read this, massive caissons the size of four-story buildings are about to drop on soft coral reefs, forever destroying local marine ecosystems home to several endangered species.
Now that the talks with Iran on its nuclear program appear to be on the ropes, are we on the road to war? The Israelis threaten it almost weekly, and the Obama administration has reportedly drawn up an attack plan. But in a sense, we are already at war with Iran.