Today it's fashionable to recall Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights hero and passionate reverend. But sadly, amidst his legacy the entirety of his intellectual prowess and vast philosophical wisdom often goes unrecognized. Particularly troubling, King has become a tool for a variety of causes wrongly associated with him, including the attack on the separation of church and state.
Paraguayan police and military attacked the peasant community of Tekojoja in Paraguay on June 24th, killing two men and leaving many injured. Paraguay's security forces were deployed to protect Brazilian Genetically Modified Soy Growers. In the melee, 270 farmers were evicted, 54 houses were burnt down and the community's crops were destroyed. Also, 130 people were arrested, many of them women and children.
The road is the baby of Mexican President Vicente Fox’s Plan Puebla Panama, an initiative meant to facilitate the transport of goods between Mexico and other Central American countries. At first glance, its promise to carry El Salvador to economic prosperity is convincing. Yet, a second glance, through the smeared window of an old US school bus chugging painfully up the asphalt’s easy grade, raises doubts.
For those riding in creaky vehicles puttering along in the right lane, or waiting among the crowds that mill on the shoulder, the road merely accentuates the contradiction of Salvadoran economic progress that has left them behind. In the emergency lane, the informal economy thrives. Elderly women plod slowly with bundles of firewood, jugs of water, cans of cooking gas, and baskets of vegetables balanced elegantly on their heads. Small children trail behind them, using their hands to steady the smaller items that sway above them. Piles of coconuts wait for thirsty travelers under improvised thatch roofs at every curve. Two long-eared cows are tethered to a tree in the median.
George Washington could hardly be called naïve about the use of military power. Yet, in his presidential farewell address, the general-turned-political leader issued a warning that would be wise to reconsider as the
In late March, a jailer at an Arlington, Texas, prison confessed that he helped another jailer rape a female inmate the previous evening. Israel Mouton, a prison employee since 2002, told police that he watched his colleague commit the assault from the jail control room. From there, he could alert his associate if anyone approached. According to both Mouton and the inmate, who was questioned later by investigators, Mouton afterward told the victim via the cell’s intercom, “Don’t say nothing. You don’t know nothing.”
In July 1915, Haiti’s head of state, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, was cornered in the French embassy by rebel forces. The insurgents had widespread popular support. After all, Sam was known as a rampaging, vindictive thug who had seized the government by force and murdered hundreds of his political enemies before running for cover. When a mob finally found him cowering in an attic, they hacked their president to pieces.
In the previous four years, the island nation had been through seven presidents, most of them killed or removed prematurely. The rural north was under the control of the Cacos, a rebel movement that adopted its name from the cry of a native bird. Although widely portrayed as a group of murderous bandits, the Cacos were essentially nationalists, and were attempting to resist the control of France, the US, and the small minority of mulattos who dominated the economy.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019