Fifty years ago, Ghana was the first sub-Saharan country to achieve independence. And fifty years ago, in the fall of 1957, my father took my brother and me - just out of high school - to visit this new nation, and to interview Ghana's prime minister Kwame Nkrumah and the other shining lights of the Pan-African independence movement.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly elected French President, wanted to mark the difference in governing style between himself and outgoing President Jacques Chirac - although both belonged to the same political party and shared basic political orientations. Thus Sarkozy ran on a program of a "break with the stagnant past" as though he had not been a member of the outgoing government. Sarkozy
Toward Freedom publisher writes about a recent trip to Rwanda, community justice courts in the country, the situation under current President Paul Kagame and Keith Harmon Snow's article on Paul Rusesabagina.Prisoner at Gacaca Court*
"I'm not talking for Hutus or for Tutsis. I am talking for all those people who have no voice, who cannot have access to the media. I'm trying to be their voice. But I am not talking for Hutus. I am not talking for Tutsis. Because with Paul Kagame, whoever frustrates him, whoever might raise a voice, whoever talks against him-being Hutu or Tutsi-Kagame sees them as his enemy."Paul Rusesabagina
Rural eastern Paraguay used to be full of jungle, small farms, schools and wildlife. Now it is a green sea of soybeans. The families, trees and birds are gone. The schools are empty. The air is filled with the toxic stench of the pesticides like paraquat and 2,4-D used to protect the soy crops.
What happens when "Business as Usual" clashes with the vocabulary of the "War on Terror"? We got a glimpse of one case this March when the Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International, Inc., paid a $25 million settlement to the United States Justice Department for paying off right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia, groups which Washington classifies as "terrorist organizations."
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