While hitchhiking across Paraguay a few years ago, I met welcoming farmers who let me camp in their backyards. I eventually arrived in Ciudad del Este, known for its black markets and loose borders. Now the city and farmers I met are caught in the crossfire of the US military's "war on terror."
It has become broadly accepted that controlling the spread and use of small arms is vital in establishing genuine human security. The abuse of small arms is directly related to the violation of the right to life. In practice, it is small arms which are killing today both in armed conflicts and in domestic and community violence.
The multiple dimensions of the problem of the unrestricted flow and wide availability of small arms range beyond the confines of arms control and disarmament. Nevertheless, it was in the structure of the UN’s disarmament division that "The UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) was drafted in 2001.
Today's street gang killers in Somalia were barely 10 years old when I first came to Mogadishu in 1988. Since heavy fighting broke out again in Mogadishu in early May 2006, far more than 300 people have been killed and many more have been injured. Somalia has been the focus of repeated US attention. One might have thought that after the complete failure of the "Black Hawk Down" or officially the "Operation Restore Hope" mission in 1993, the US would have decided to call it quits in Somalia. They have not. (1)
Eugene Jarecki may not be
Imagine if, in your city, ordinary residents met regularly to decide how government funds were spent on playgrounds, health clinics and adult education. If you lived in the Canadian city of Guelph or in a public housing building in Toronto, you could do more than imagine.
During Argentina's financial meltdown, many unemployed workers occupied their closed factories and forcibly reopened them - under employee control. Four years later, Argentina's economy is well on the road to recovery, and many worker-run factories are seeking permanent legal status. Workers from the Zanon ceramics factory in the Patagonian province of Neuquen held a rally on July 4 to demand the government expropriate their plant and give permanent legal status to FASINPAT (Factory without a boss), their worker cooperative. If there's no action, it will lose its temporary legal status in October.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019