How ‘femicide’ drove the caravan
Violent clashes at the US-Mexican border, with refugees throwing rocks and police firing tear gas, are the latest sign of intensifying trouble in Central America. Why are its people fleeing? Some of the reasons are easy to identify. Decades of exploitation by US-owned corporations left a legacy of political oppression and weak coffee-and-banana economies. Militarization in […]
Three heretic authors take on the US foreign-policy blob
“We are far off course,” the development guru Jeffrey Sachs laments in his new book. The curmudgeonly geo-strategist John Mearsheimer agrees: “Something went badly wrong.” So does Stephen Walt, the dissenting realist at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “Pursuing liberal hegemony did not make the United States safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more […]
Jair Bolsonaro threatens us all
MIDTERM ELECTIONS IN the United States have shaken national politics, but they are hardly this season’s most important message from angry voters. That message came from Brazil. On Oct. 28, a right-wing former military officer, Jair Bolsonaro, won the Brazilian presidency with 55 percent of the vote. His outspoken misogyny and flamboyant racism are beyond disconcerting. […]
Oscar Romero: The saint I knew
IF YOU LIVE LONG enough, someone you knew might become a saint. Not just saintly, but a real Roman Catholic saint, ready to be immortalized in stained glass. It just happened to me. As a young reporter in El Salvador during the late 1970s, I came to know the country’s highest-ranking cleric, Archbishop Oscar Romero. A […]
No peace prizes for politicians
IN A RITUALIZED ceremony at Oslo City Hall later this year, two humanitarians whose names were little known until now will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Then, as tradition dictates, they will be honored with a torchlight parade. They deserve it. The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose well when it bestowed this year’s prize on Denis Mukwege, a […]
