March 2009 - Page 2 of 4 - Toward Freedom

The Bush Family of Secrets: Truth or Reconciliation?

Russ Baker March 18, 2009 Russ Baker

Prescott & George H. W. Bush

They are really coming. Official investigations of the George W. Bush administration are on the way. Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have just agreed to limited testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which is looking into the seemingly politically-motivated firings of seven U.S. Attorneys. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, his senate counterpart, have additional potential improprieties in their sights, and they are not alone.

Deconstructing U.S. Militarism: Humanism and the Peace Revolution

Jeff Nall March 18, 2009 Jeff Nall

The time has come for humanists to actively assert that they are as committed peace and ending U.S. militarism as they are to the separation of church and state. Humanists, atheists, and assorted freethinkers should join anti-war/peace organizations in assertively calling for a dramatic change in U.S. foreign policy away from neoliberal imperialism and militarism.

Why Are So Many Women Still Dying in Childbirth?

Chris Brazier March 17, 2009 Chris Brazier

Habibu is lying on matting on the mud floor of her hut. The contractions are coming thick and fast now. The pain is intense, but she draws comfort from the memory that, the previous three times, this agony gave way to the peaceful, exhausted bliss of holding her baby in her arms.

Decolonization’s Rocky Road: Corruption, Expropriation and Justice in Bolivia

Benjamin Dangl March 16, 2009 Benjamin Dangl

El Alto Anniversary Event. Photo: Quintana/ABI

After the nationalist confetti of the January 25th constitutional referendum blew away, and the busted water balloons and foam of Carnival washed down the streets with the rain, political scandals filled the Bolivian airwaves. Besides the challenges of applying the changes in the new constitution, recent cases of government corruption, shaky relations with Washington and political unrest show that the road to the December general elections is likely to be a rocky one.

Radioactive Flies Released on Brazilian-Uruguayan Boarder

Michael Fox March 12, 2009 Michael Fox

Mosca da Bicheira

Twice a day, four day a week, 1,500 boxes are loaded onto a cargo jet near the Northern Uruguayan city of Artigas. They are carried high in to the air and then dropped on to the green fields below, which cover this hundred-kilometer region along the Uruguayan-Brazilian border. Each box carries 1,800 flies. But these are no normal flies. They are sterilized with nuclear energy, Caesium-137 to be exact. A radioactive isotope not found in nature, and only created when you explode a nuclear bomb or run a nuclear reactor.

Guadeloupe: A People Arise

Dimitris Fasfalis March 11, 2009 Dimitris Fasfalis

Protests in Guadeloupe

Since January 20, Guadeloupe has been providing a tremendous lesson in social resistance to the local bosses and the French government. Its people have responded to the growing insecurity with an historically unprecedented general strike. What is behind this mobilisation? The answer would seem to lie in the capacity of the social movement to embody the people's aspirations for emancipation.