Page 551 – Toward Freedom

Honduras: A Chronicle of Hell, Women and Hope

Jessica Isla March 13, 2012 Jessica Isla

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Inferno, Canto III, line 9
The Divine Comedy

We all have different ideas of Hell. But most us raised and brought up in the Judeo-Christian Western culture share a religious image of a lake of fire that sears hundreds, thousands or millions of people, condemned for unmentionable sins.

That’s the myth. Then there’s the reality.

The reality arrived this February 14th, the day we celebrate love and friendship. On this day Hell became reality when the penitentiary of the city of Comayagua —absurdly called the “penal farm”, as if sentences, prisoners or prisons were cultivated there— caught on fire. read more

Obama’s Broken Resolutions

Mark Engler March 13, 2012 Mark Engler

Unfulfilled promises may come back to haunt Obama this election year.

Hungary’s Right-Wing Threat

Ari Paul March 12, 2012 Ari Paul

The European Union is confronting a Hungarian government that some say is bringing the country dangerously close to the fascism Europe has been striving to bury in the history books.

Obama Breaks New Ground When It Comes to War With Iran

Tom Engelhardt March 12, 2012 Tom Engelhardt

Source: Tom Dispatch

When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble — dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock. There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice. The tagline was: “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.”

Those ads came to mind recently when President Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical. Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans — but just about nobody noticed. read more

The Slide Toward War

Conn Hallinan March 9, 2012 Conn Hallinan

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

Wars are fought because some people decide it is in their interests to fight them. World War I was not started over the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination, nor was it triggered by the alliance system. An “incident” may set the stage for war, but no one keeps shooting unless they think it’s a good idea. The Great War started because the countries involved decided they would profit by it, delusional as that conclusion was.

It is useful to keep this idea in mind when trying to figure out whether the United States or Israel will go to war with Iran. In short, what are the interests of the protagonists, and are they important enough for those nations to take the fateful step into the chaos of battle? read more

The Politics of Security: Policing, Dictatorships and Resistance

Kristian Williams March 9, 2012 Kristian Williams

The book Anti-Security represents a frontal attack on the concept of security, its internal logic, the politics surrounding it, and the institutions that employ it as a rationale.