Peace and Security
Rattling Democracy in Latin America
In late September, tear gas and the smoke from burning tires filled the air as Ecuador’s president was held hostage in a police hospital.
The Lineup: Week of September 20-27, 2010
Here’s what you’ll find in the latest OtherWords editorial package.
No Happy Ending in Honduras
Honduras isn’t drawing the waves of tourists Costa Rica has lured. And that’s not just because its food is lackluster. Honduras is experiencing the worst political turmoil in Latin America–thanks in part to the Obama administration’s embrace of a regrettable U.S. foreign policy tradition.
Gun Violence and Children
Somalia, whose government collapsed in 1991, has been in a constant state of conflict and tension for years and still has no legally recognized government. The United States joins Somalia as the only two countries in the world not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international treaty recognizing the human rights of children that UNICEF points out is the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history.
Remembering Ronni
Until 9/11, most Americans didn’t believe that a terrorist attack could ever happen on U.S. soil. Yet one had occurred just a generation earlier–on September 21, 1976 on Embassy Row in Washington. One of the victims was New Jersey-born Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old college graduate and newlywed. She was killed on her way to work, as the car she was riding in succumbed to a car bomb planted by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Orlando Letelier, her colleague and the car’s driver, also perished.
Game Time for New START
After 20 hearings and more than four months of debate, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is gearing up to vote on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed in April.
A Gentler Name for Psychic Warfare
Adopting an alias has also been tried as a public relations strategy by corporations that find themselves struck with an image problem. Most recently, this deception has been employed by Blackwater, the infamous government contractor involved in so many nefarious deeds that it now disguises itself with an inscrutable new moniker: Xe. Fittingly, Xe is the abbreviation for xenon, a chemical defined as a colorless gaseous element.
Rebranding the Iraq War
The war in Iraq is over. Or so the government and most media outlets will claim on September 1, by which time thousands of U.S. troops will have departed the land of two rivers for other assignments. With this phase of the drawdown, says President Barack Obama, “America’s combat mission will end.” The Pentagon is marking the occasion by changing the name of the Iraq deployment from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.
Another Curse for Afghanistan
As if war, tyranny, drugs, corruption, disease and misogyny weren’t misfortune enough for Afghanistan, now the Pentagon reports that it also suffers that worst affliction of all–mineral resources.
U.S. Military Aid to Colombia Violates Human Rights Law
A “false positive” diagnosis causes relief when it means earlier signs of cancer were wrong. In Colombia, a “falso positivo” deepens grief, for it means the suspicion that a murdered youth belonged to the guerrilla forces was a mistake. Usually, the murderer likely knew that already.
