In 2006, Filipino trade unionist Diasdado Fortuna died under suspicious circumstances. Nobody was arrested or charged. Later in the year, International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) member Brian Campbell arrived in the Philippines to investigate his death. After discovering the local police unconcerned and unwilling to investigate, Campbell's efforts to uncover the truth were met with opposition.
Like many people who lived under the Baathist dictatorship, Abdelhussein Saddam passionately yearned for change. Born in 1957 in Basra, Saddam became known as a progressive thinker, for which he was imprisoned for two years by state security forces. When the US/UK coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, he understood that the future lay within Iraq's ability to organize itself independently - free of both the gun-toting hypocrisy of western imperialism and the machinations of political Islam.Abdelhussein Saddam
In 2003, the combined forces of the UK/US coalition stormed into Iraq, unleashing perhaps the most profound political and humanitarian crisis of our time. Four years later, the war to reassert Anglo/American dominance in the Middle East has become a brutal conflict with mounting casualties, sectarian violence, and religious and ethnic unrest. Unwilling to admit defeat, the occupation forces have developed a strategy to seal off entire Baghdad communities with the construction of dividing walls interspaced with entry points guarded by heavily armed soldiers.
Borders melt in this increasingly globalized world. Modern capitalism has generated mutual dependencies between nations. The tempting nooks and crannies of foreign climes have been battered open in the name of progress, enterprise, and a healthy profit margin. In this thriving global market, foreign goods and foreign investors are often welcome. Foreign workers, on the other hand, are all too often branded as "illegal".
For many, Russia is now a land of dashed hopes and profound disappointment. After the heady days of the Solidarnosc, the resounding defeat of the August 1991 coup, and the eventual collapse of the USSR itself, a feeling of numbing disillusionment has set in. For those who had held out hope of a new dawn of social equality and, dare I say it, economic abundance, the current epoch lies in stark contrast to the times of the late 1980s and early 1990s and the intense political enthusiasm they brought with them.
Fifteen years ago, the super power that had once ruled over more than a fifth of the earth's surface collapsed in a conflagration of economic chaos and social upheaval. After all manner of frenzied reforms and adjustments, the entire economic and political apparatus of the USSR imploded in the process ushering in a whole new era of global politics.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019