In January 2009, Bolivians held a national Referendum to approve a peoples constitution under Evo Morales. The country, historically polarized by the strength of the wealthy landowners and the struggles of the indigenous masses, suffered vicious opposition to the proposed changes. In this documentary, the impact of the new Constitution is shown through two very different realities; one of courage, the courage to bring about change vs. the culture of fear. Interviews with people from all sectors of society sheds light on the contrasts of opinion and, finally, demonstrates Bolivia’s transformation towards a more dignified and just society. Witness a nation write their own history as its people rediscover their identity.
US Army Specialist Victor Agosto served a 13-month deployment in Iraq with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. “What I did there, I know I contributed to death and human suffering,” Agosto told Truthout from Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, in May, “It’s hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it.” Agosto’s lawyer, James Branum, who is also the legal adviser to the GI Rights Hotline and co-chair of the Military Law Task Fore, told Truthout during a phone interview on July 10 that, contrary to mainstream opinion that believes Afghanistan to be a “justified” war, the invasion and ongoing occupation are actually in violation of the US Constitution and international law.
Zelaya, a former centrist who has recently made leftward moves, raised the ire of the entrenched Honduran oligarchy by, among other things, joining the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a radical counterpoint to U.S.-promoted free trade agreements. His overthrow has been followed by a press blackout, military curfew, and repression in the streets, as hundreds of thousands have rallied to the cause of their former leader, only to meet an iron heel reminiscent of Honduran military regimes of the past (dodging bullets in the street, as the maganificent BoRev puts it, ‘is sort of like Twittering, for poor people’). There have been mass arrests, injuries, and deaths, but some exceptions not withstanding, these Hondurans are nevertheless, to quote one observer, ‘Protesters We Don’t Tweet About.’
The Honduran de facto government and private media insist on denying the coup d’etat and say that they accept the mediation of Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, but exclude any conversation over the return of Zelaya to the presidency. At the same time they sustain that they are the spearhead of a ‘war’ against the ‘dictatorship of Hugo Chavez.’ The headlines of these newspapers and the declarations of the current leaders of the State are a copy of the anti-communist manual of the press campaigns in the decades of the sixties and seventies in the last century.
There is widespread belief that the interim government is stalling in a bid to hold out until the November elections, and the dissatisfaction with the results to date manifested in Zelaya’s perhaps rash announcement yesterday that if he is not reinstated by the end of the next round of talks, scheduled to begin Saturday, he will resort to other means. Before the coup, Honduras was already mired in poverty and corruption, notorious for its reputation as one of the least transparent countries in Latin America, and extremely dependent on the United States and multilateral organizations for financial support.
Islamism may be described as a version of Islam predicated on the centrality of the notion of an “Islamic state” whose principal function is to enforce, and rule by, what is conventionally regarded as shariah law. Islamism is far from being the homogenous phenomenon that it is often taken to be. Nor are all versions of Islamism necessarily incompatible with democracy. Undeniably, however, many forms of Islamism are. Islamist ideologues, driven by triumphalist, even apocalyptic, fervor, have failed to a develop consistent position on such crucial issues as limits to state authority, people’s participation in law-making and governance, the role and status of non-Muslims and women, and the question of violence.
Had Obama been willing to forego the illusory US missile shield (which is incapable of offering any protection against incoming missiles, since those missiles could easily be accompanied by a barrage of indistinguishable decoys rendering the missile defenses useless) Russia might well have agreed to larger reductions in their mutual arsenals which together now total about 25,000 warheads with only about 1,000 more in the possession of all seven other nuclear powers—UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
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