George W. Bush and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez crisscrossed Latin America on parallel tours recently, pushing opposing agendas. While Bush touted free trade, cooperative ventures and US aid programs, Chávez touched down in Bolivia, where his socialist ally, President Evo Morales, is dancing precariously with a divided population.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has declared it will go ahead with an April 3-4 "stay away" by workers despite the wave of repression suffered by opponents of President Robert Mugabe's regime and authorities' threats to crush the ZCTU strike. Already ZCTU members have been arrested, their offices raided and material relating to the stay away confiscated.
The Venerable Maha Ghosananda, a learned Cambodian monk, died in early March 2007 near the temple where he was living in Leverett, Massachusetts. Maha Ghosananda, who had a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from India, was a key person in the revival of the Buddhist Sangha in Cambodia after the Pol Pot years (1975-1979). In 1992, Maha Ghosananda revived the tradition of the Dhammayietra - a country-wide pilgrimage as a symbol of peace and reconciliation among a still-divided population.
After having lunch with family and supporters, Cathy Webster of Chico, California turned herself in at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Facility today to spend 60 days behind bars and high security fences for a simple trespassing charge at last November's protest at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Less than four weeks after 9/11, on October 7, 2001, the US attacked Afghanistan in the opening salvo of what was later justified as a new "war on terror." The US dropped more than 10,000 bombs, including air strikes from B-2 and B-52 stealth bombers and cruise missiles from submarines in the Arabian Sea.
"These Latin American political leaders and social movements are recuperating the meaning of democracy, freedom and what it means to be an American in a unified Americas against imperialism and corporate looting."
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019