When the United States government declared its war on Afghanistan in October 2001, thus taking the first step in its so-called ‘war on terror’, following the devastating attacks of September 11 earlier that year, Iran jumped on board.
From declining worker protections to violent labor trafficking and ethnic cleansing, the dark underbelly of Southeast Asia's "tiger economies" is on full display this year.
National security officials and politicians have been pounding home the message that the “greatest threat” to Americans is an extreme and brutal jihadist movement thousands of miles away and the videos and social media messages its followers produce that make it seem close at hand.
A conversation with Mondragon President Josu Ugarte about cooperative values, how its member co-ops support one another, and how it interacts with its workers outside of Spain.
Source: The Atlantic
The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed.
Last night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat for an hour, and then killed nine people. Roof’s crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbol—the Confederate flag. Visitors to Charleston have long been treated to South Carolina’s attempt to clean its history and depict its secession as something other than a war to guarantee the enslavement of the majority of its residents. This notion is belied by any serious interrogation of the Civil War and the primary documents of its instigators. Yet the Confederate battle flag—the flag of Dylann Roof—still flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia.
Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval. But I cannot remember another time in recent history we needed journalists to shine, to challenge conventional wisdom, to think in terms of contexts, motives, alliances, not ideological, political or financial interests.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019