A smoky sunset in the choking streets around Old Delhi Railway Station, where the traffic is permanently stalled. Low sunlight through a violet cloud bathes the scene in blood. Stringy cycle-rickshaw drivers strain every muscle with a mountainous load of goods to be despatched from the station. Everything moves with agonizing slowness, as though people are in an alien element. As indeed they are: displaced villagers struggling to survive in the city.
In a speech to military troops at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina on February 27, US President Barack Obama announced that most of the 142,000 US soldiers in Iraq will be withdrawn by August 2010, leaving behind a "residual force" of 50,000 troops. The remaining troops will be withdrawn by the end of 2011, he said. Obama supports continuing, and even intensifying, Bush's phony "war on terror" in Afghanistan, while signalling he wants to wind it back in Iraq.
In the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where some analysts say a decade-long "resource war" has taken the lives of millions, a Canadian mining company has caught a fever over gold. Once again, the presence of a foreign mining company in the DRC offers a stunning example of disparity between the "have-mores" of the West and the local Congolese, who in turn seemingly have nothing but violence and struggle. Mining in the DRC
In the coming weeks, the Obama administration is expected to release its plans to address the dual problems of global climate disruption and excessive dependence on foreign oil. Meanwhile, in the background, the debate among environmentalists over biofuels and their contribution to future energy needs continues to intensify.
Carlos Slim, the second richest man in the world, calls Mexico home, as do millions of impoverished citizens. From Spanish colonization to today's state and corporate repression, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, by John Gibler, is written from the street barricades, against the Slims of the world, and alongside "the underdogs and rebels" of an unconquered country.
Joel Kovel holds the Alger Hiss chair in social studies at Bard College and is the author of Overcoming Zionism among other titles. He has recently been informed by the college that his contract will not be extended beyond July 1. In this statement, he argues that the termination is due to his views about Zionism.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019