The outcome of last Sunday’s elections in Cambodia, in which Prime Minister Hun Sen hoped to extend his 28-year rule, is in dispute. Even if he continues in office, Hun Sen’s tight grip on civil society is threatened, in part, by public anger against land grabs.
Source: The Hankyoreh
As people near retirement age, they enter the twilight years. Sometimes, they rebel against retirement. They want to keep working. They’re not interested in shuffling out of their office never to return. And if they’re in fact the owner of the workplace, conflicts often ensue. Those who have power rarely want to give up that power.
The United States is relatively young as a country. It is even younger as the “leader of the free world.” But for at least three decades, reports have circulated that the American empire has entered its twilight years, perhaps even its dotage.
As Walmart shareholders continue to gorge on the mega-retailer’s stock, up 12 percent from the beginning of this year, the empire is experiencing a summer of discontent as a growing number of low-wage Walmart workers continue to fight a labor war that’s winning small yet significant victories.
The neighborhood of West Oakland in California has long been without a large grocery store, let alone one that offers healthy, fresh food. With unemployment at about 10% and nearly half the population of 30,000 residents living at or below the poverty line, West Oakland is a neighborhood that grocery store chains have claimed isn't able to sustain a full-functioning store.
Source: The New York Times
On May 25, 1948, a former United States Army flier entered the American Embassy in Paris, renounced his American citizenship and, as astonished officials looked on, declared himself a citizen of the world.
In the decades that followed, until the end of his long life last week, he remained by choice a stateless man — entering, leaving, being regularly expelled from and frequently arrested in a spate of countries, carrying a passport of his own devising, as the international news media chronicled his every move.
Source: The Independent
What has happened to Egypt? The dead are being called “terrorists”, the word the Israelis use of their enemies. The word the Americans use. The Egyptian press talks of “clashes”, as if armed Muslim Brothers fought the police. Yesterday morning, I met an old Egyptian friend who said he looked at his country’s flag and began to cry.
I can understand why. Why did so many die? Who killed them? There are many Egyptians today, anti-Morsi people, to be sure, who told me yesterday that they could not believe this, that the Brotherhood folk were all holding guns, as one was indeed holding a Kalashnikov near the hospital – a man I saw – but the truth is that the police shot down the unarmed men and not a single policeman died. This was a massacre. This was a mass killing. There is no other word for it.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019