Former US Marine Carri Leigh Goodwin was like many young Americans from Alliance, a small town in Ohio. She was self-reliant, teaching herself to play guitar at 15. She wanted more out of life than the limited opportunities offered in her home town.
At NATO’s recent summit in Lisbon, President Obama promoted the missile defense shield that will someday cover all of Europe, including Russia. Critics of missile defense say a European shield is a ruse that’s keeping the West’s true intentions for Russia under wraps.
The recent arrest of an American lawyer by the heavy-handed Rwandan government has human rights implications for the resource war in neighboring eastern Congo. Eve Ensler, who wrote "The Vagina Monologues" and is now a major advocate for Congolese women suffering sexual violence, says the Rwandan government is part of the problem when it comes to ending the violence against women.
The The X-37 (Photo: USAF)
The Rwandan government and its military have largely been suspected by a UN Panel of Experts, human rights organizations and independent journalists, of financially supporting a number of violent militias that have destabilized the eastern Congo region to illegally traffic millions-of-dollars worth of minerals such as coltan, gold, and cassiterite. These minerals are then brought from neighboring Congo into Rwanda for eventual sale on the international market. Rwandan Soliders in Congo
Like a lot of American corporations that made mind-boggling profits over the last few decades, the Microsoft, IBM and Cisco technology companies have abandoned their own citizen workforce to exploit foreign workers. But this isn't happening in some far off sweat shop, this outsourcing is happening right on American soil. In this case, corporate power, channeled through high-paid lobbyists and fat campaign contributions, strong-armed elected officials into passing laws that surreptitiously squash the labor rights of both US citizens and foreign workers alike.Bill Gates
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019