Following defeats for Evo Morales’ MAS party in Bolivian regional elections, new checks and balances to MAS power from a variety of political positions may continue to open up spaces of dissent, debate and contestation that will deepen Bolivia’s wider process of change, a process that the MAS doesn’t, nor did it ever, completely control.
While social conservatives push to further criminalize abortion rights in the U.S., women in Latin America are fighting on both sides of the law to save lives. In Latin American countries where abortion is illegal or inaccessible, thousands of women die each year from forced life-threatening pregnancies, unsafe abortions and suicide due to pregnancy.
There seems now to be a real possibility of an agreement between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that would end the fierce struggle that dates at the least from the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
Source: The Nation
Most forecasts of the future presume that something in the present will continue to grow and increase its power or influence. It’s as simple as doing a math problem on compounding interest or multiplication tables.
Orwell did this intentionally in 1984, creating the vision of a postwar Stalinist Britain circa 1948 that was taken to its absurd and appalling conclusion. Less imaginative people, however, genuinely believe that history moves in a straight line. Alarm about the “population bomb” arose from the assumption that women would continue to have babies at the rate they were worldwide in the 1960s. But thanks to reproductive rights and other factors, birthrates have plummeted so dramatically that some nations, from Germany to Japan, are now worried about a steep population decline.
Source: The New Internationalist
Let’s end partisan squabbling and find common ground. Let’s bridge the ideological gulf and work together to solve the problems that face us all.
Do these pleasing sentiments sound familiar? Rarely has a politician emerged who hasn’t voiced a rhetorical call to join hands, overcome differences, or otherwise bask in the glow of togetherness.
Of course, there’s a catch: if coming together means having elected officials unite to push corporate interests at the expense of the 99 per cent, it’s hardly a unity worth achieving.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019