On April 29, 2011 the Chamber of Deputies approved the constitutional reform that establishes the right to food in Mexico. On August 17, the Senate received reports that the required majority of the states in the country had approved the reform and ordered its publication in the official federal record.
In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things around. Others countries are desperate to have them. Almost anyone who writes about them becomes a groupie. Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon at their potentially wondrous techno-talents. They are, of course, the pilotless drones, our grimly named Predators and Reapers.
The four countries that will continue to receive military assistance despite the use of child soldiers in their armed forces include Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen and the newly independent nation of South Sudan, according to a memo released by the White House late Tuesday.
The past week has seen the United States effectively relinquish its role as the key negotiator of Middle East peace as the Palestinians, ignoring President Barack Obama’s entreaties, announced their decision to pursue UN membership and be recognized as an independent state. One of the key reasons for Obama’s failure to bridge the Mideast divide has been domestic politics—the power of U.S. “pro-Israel” factions, encouraged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to threaten the administration’s base if he strays too far from the Israeli line.
On August 26, 2011, Prime Minister Kan Naoto resigned from office after a tempestuous fifteen months in power. Since May 2011 a virtual lynch mob egged on by the media bayed for his resignation. Kan’s ouster became an obsession of the nation’s powerbrokers. This article examines why, in the midst of an unprecedented cascade of disasters, natural and nuclear, the Kan problem trumped all others.
Although she was never elected to parliament, Wambui is one of the few ex-Mau Mau who rose to public prominence in post-independence Kenya. As a young, Christian Kikuyu girl, Wambui, who was distantly related to Jomo Kenyatta, joined the Mau Mau at the start of the Emergency in 1953 as a scout and urban guerrilla, moving through the ranks until she had taken all 15 warrior oaths. In many instances she reported directly to the movement’s War Council. After the Mau Mau effectively lost the war in 1956, Wambui became a member of the resurgent trade union movement and worked closely with Tom Mboya and other trade unionists, becoming notorious for her activism against the colonial government.
Standing on the imaginary line that divides the two countries, Sicilia said, “We came to ask our Central American brothers and sisters to forgive us for having not spoken up before, for not having the consciousness and the strength necessary to prevent the kidnapping and murder that has affected thousands of migrants and Mexican citizens and has torn apart their families.”
Based in part on newly disclosed U.S. diplomatic cables recently posted by Wikileaks, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. military has been flying armed drones over both countries from a base in Djibouti and is planning to build a second base in Ethiopia.
I’m reminded of how Chinese premier Zhou EnLai supposedly answered a question in 1972 about the significance of the French Revolution. “Too early to tell,” was his reputed reply; and though he may never have said it, how true it is that the major events of our world carom through history in ways that remain unpredictable even hundreds of years later. How then to arrive at an assessment of the Arab Spring — and now far harsher Summer and Fall — of 2011, other than to say that it has proven monumental?
Libya is neither Tunisia nor Egypt. The ruling group (Gaddafi) and the forces fighting it are in no way analogous to their Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts. Gaddafi has never been anything but a buffoon, whose emptiness of thought was reflected in his notorious ‘Green Book’. Operating in a still-archaic society Gaddafi could indulge in successive ‘nationalist’ and ‘socialist’ speeches with little bearing on reality, and the next day proclaim himself a ‘liberal’.