A congressional bill that would create a truth commission to explore the U.S. role in the 2004 regime change in Haiti is languishing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee with only 12 co-sponsors. But Rep. Barbara Lee's (D-Calif.) H.R. 331 has sparked hope among some Haitians who think the bill might pass under a friendly Obama administration and bring needed change to the indebted island nation.
War was God’s way of teaching Americans geography," once wrote Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist and social critic. Today, a University of Kansas (KU) professor may be using geography to teach Americans war.
The international financial crisis reflects the collapse of laissez-faire economics and the growing discredit of market fundamentalism. What was being hailed yesterday as the only road to 'growth and prosperity' is now under fierce attack by the same countries and institutions that promoted it for years. In leading developed countries, states have drawn up massive rescue plans to bail out industries or nationalise banks and financial institutions.
Lately, many may have heard the affable radio jingles for nuclear energy as a clean and reliable candidate to supplant the U.S.'s reliance on foreign fossil fuels. This is sheer, malignant propaganda. Nuclear energy, along with its requisite mining, is not only unsustainable to a high degree, but is, in all aspects, violently rapacious as it dissolves the planet's fecundity and ultimately encumbers the creation of life for generations to come.
Cost factor may prove the most potent ingredient yet in the long-awaited change to medical marijuana policy. Although President Obama has publicly affirmed he is 'not in favor' of the legalization of pot, the President's position on medical use is unambiguous: "Federal resources should not be used to circumvent state [marijuana] laws."
The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years. This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas of people taking back the reigns of power and governing their own communities. Beyond Elections is a road map for social change, drawing from communal councils in Venezuela and social movements in Bolivia to participatory budgeting in Brazil and worker cooperatives in Argentina.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019