South Africa: Women’s Issues Missing from Election Manifestos
Come rain or shine, single mother of five, Sylvia Mathebula,* can be found selling fruit and cigarettes at the roadside because it is the only way her family can survive.
Month: May 2011
Chomsky on Bin Laden Death
Source: Guernica Magazine
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.
It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”
Last of the Power Couples
Are we witnessing the decline of the US, the rise of China, or the birth of a new global order?
Tanzania: Killings and Toxic Spill Tarnish Barrick Gold
The Thigithe River in North Mara, Tanzania meanders through scattered villages and clumps of trees in a vast expanse of land ringed by hills close to the Kenyan border. The Canadian Barrick Gold Corporation operates a notorious gold mine in this region.
Global Warming Law Shifts Responsibility from Polluters to Communities
Source: Alternet
Communities in California and Mexico are angered by a cap-and-trade plan that could shift the burden from polluters to poor communities.
California leads the United States in energy efficiency, and is often hailed as a global beacon of environmental protection; at the same time, it is the 12th largest emitter of carbon dioxide worldwide, making the state a significant driver of climate change. Any efforts to reduce these emissions would clearly benefit not only California, but the world. So when the implementation of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, came to a grinding halt due to San Francisco Superior Court’s March 18 ruling that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), it came as a shock to industry and environmentalists alike.
Palestinian Unity and the New Middle East
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the Hamas-Fatah deal in Cairo was both swift and predictable. “The Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both,” he said.