Slobodan Milosevic is an innocent man. Technically, this is the final outcome of his trial at The Hague. With his death on Saturday, he was able to escape responsibility for the part he played in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. A person is innocent until proven guilty, and since he was not convicted while he was alive of any crime, he has thus died an innocent man. Technically, at least.
For nearly three decades, Argentina's Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have fought for the right to re-unite with their abducted children. The Mothers began their protest in 1977 to demand information about the whereabouts of their children from authorities. Some 30,000 activists were kidnapped and murdered during the military junta dictatorship, which ruled Argentina from 1976-1983. During the Dirty War in Argentina, much of the population remained silent due to the censorship imposed by the military government. Those who did not stay silent risked being disappeared themselves.
Japan is one of the minor members of Bush's "coalition of the willing" in terms of troop commitment, but the Asian superpower's anti-war movement has made more progress than any other in the world in establishing direct links of human solidarity with the civil resistance in Iraq-groups of the embattled secular left which oppose the US-led occupation and the Islamist insurgents alike.
NEW DELHI: Step one was in July last year when India and US signed the historic nuclear deal. Step two has happened in New Delhi last week that marks another major move towards the recognition of India as the nuclear exception that will enable it to access enriched uranium and nuclear technology from international sources.
The headlines are blaring daily about another big corruption scandal that has the makings of being the mother of them all - at least for a generation or so. We won't know how big until one well-connected influence peddling lobbyist under multiple indictments involving crony capitalism and corruption begins to sing to the Justice Department after copping a plea in return for a lighter sentence. It's likely that before this ends, it may involve many Republican members of Congress and some Democrats including some high level ones from both parties as well as their aides, members of the Executive Branch and various other Republican party figures. It may even go higher than most observers now expect.
This month - March - marks the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. 2,500 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the line of duty, while countless Iraqis, many of them women and children, have lost their lives. It seems fitting to stop and reflect on the meaning of U.S. wars with those who have served in them, and a new film called "After The Fog," co-produced by Jay Craven, does just this. Stitching together the personal testimony of 11 U.S. war veterans, "After The Fog" is an intimate and human look at the consequences of war, told by those who fought.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019