Peacekeeping: Fiction vs. Reality
(Image: Protest in Haiti against UN sexual crimes against women. Source) The word peacekeeping is like the word terrorism: it is meaningless on its own and able to be molded to serve the interests of a political clique. Like Alex P. Schmidt’s description of terrorism in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research, peacekeeping “is usually an instrument for the attempted realization of a political…project that perpetrators lacking mass support are seeking”[1]. Peacekeepers have never kept the peace in any conflict. On the contrary, peacekeepers themselves have been linked to an increase in… Read More
War is Peace: The Foreign Policy of Justin Trudeau
Since July of this year, rumours have been circulating of a major Canadian Forces deployment in Africa. Those rumours have now been confirmed. As of late August, the Trudeau Liberals have pledged up to 600 troops in support of United Nations missions on the continent. This comes on the heels of an earlier commitment, made in late-June, to deploy 450 troops to Latvia in support of NATO missions in eastern Europe, as well as the addition in February of over 100 special forces to Canada’s mission in Iraq. In total, the Liberals… Read More
Eritrea, Human Rights, and Neocolonial Propaganda
From Global Research The East African country of Eritrea is once again being demonized internationally as a systematic violator of human rights. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has issued an allegedly damning report detailing what it claims are “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” taking place in Eritrea.Media coverage has similarly echoed those claims, presenting Eritrea to a western audience as a backward and “brutal dictatorship,” playing on the traditional stereotypes of totalitarianism from East Germany to Stalin’s Soviet Union. However, a closer and… Read More
Tragedy in the Mediterranean: Immigration and the Crimes of Capitalism
From In Defense of Marxism The death of more than 800 people who drowned when a small fishing boat capsized 60 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa late on Saturday brings the death toll to of people among people attempting to reach Europe by boat in 2015 alone to 1,600. This tragic event highlights the dramatic situation that has developed in Africa and the Middle East after years of imperialist meddling. lampedusaThis latest “accident” is a direct result of the cut to the funding of the EU search and rescue… Read More
Australian Uranium Mining Company Accused of Contaminating Lake Malawi
From CorpWatch Paladin Energy, an Australian mining company, has been accused of discharging uranium-contaminated sludge into Lake Malawi, which supports 1.7 million people in three countries – Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. The company began uranium mining operations in Malawi in 2009 although it suspended operations last year after ore prices fell. “It is rumored that Paladin secretly have started discharging the so called purified water. Reports from the Beach Village Chairman indicates that this started in late November,” wrote Rafiq Hajat of Malawi’s Institute for Policy Interaction on Facebook. “[At] a radius of… Read More
The Global Scale of U.S. Militarism
From WSWS Last month President Obama dispatched a formal letter to the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, listing a series of countries where US troops were or have been engaged in military operations during 2014. The preamble explains that the document is “consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148), as part of my efforts to keep the Congress informed about deployments of U.S. Armed Forces equipped for combat.” The War Powers Resolution was enacted by Congress in 1973, in the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and over… Read More
Saudi Star To Restart Rice Project on Disputed Anuak Lands in Ethiopia
From CorpWatch Saudi Star Agricultural Development plans to pump $100 million into a rice export project in Gambella region of Ethiopia despite allegations of human rights violations surrounding the “villagization” program under which the land has been taken from indigenous Anuak pastoralists to lease to foreign investors. The company is owned by Mohamed al-Amoudi, who was born in Ethiopia to a Saudi father and an Ethiopian mother. Al-Amoudi made a fortune from construction contracts to build Saudi Arabia’s national underground oil storage complex. Now a billionaire many times over, al-Amoudi has invested… Read More
IMF Austerity Helped Fuel Ebola Crisis
From Common Dreams The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has through its strict lending policies contributed to the Ebola crisis, professors from three British universities have charged. In a report published online last week in The Lancet Global Health the four researchers lay out how conditions the organization imposed on Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia–the three countries hardest hit by the virus–in order to accept loans put further burdens on local healthcare systems. “A major reason why the Ebola outbreak spread so rapidly was the weakness of healthcare systems in the region, and it would be unfortunate… Read More
The Conflict Continues in the Central African Republic
With the West’s latest war in the Middle East against the Islamic State and the vilification of Russian President Vladimir Putin dominating the news it is easy to forget that the West is involved in numerous brutal military interventions around the world – in Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Niger, Haiti, Yemen, and elsewhere. The Central African Republic, an impoverished former French colony with abundant mineral resources, has been marred in sectarian violence since the start of hostilities between Seléka, a coalition of insurgents led by Michel Djotodja,… Read More
