At a bleak and barren airbase in southern Iraq, the United States and British governments began the process of forging a post-Saddam Hussein government in their own image: a liberal democracy, preferably headed by a Western-educated elite.
Visdorpie police officers were out on a public awareness campaign in town last week, handing pamphlets to motorists at intersections. The pamphlet, entitled Avoid Becoming the Criminal’s Next Victim, was compiled by Cape Town Central Communication Services and distributed by ”a dedicated (plain clothes) police officer”. Some of the bits of the article stood out …
The recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proposal that business should pay reparations for profiting from apartheid must have left the sector wondering whether it will ever be allowed simply to get on with doing what it thinks it is supposed to do: make money for its shareholders.
The Mail & Guardian has consistently supported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a vital service to the truth about South Africa’s past. But the TRC was premised on the idea of exorcising historical abuses as a foundation for a just, non-racial future.
Fears that Iraq may not be the last United States target have been raised by bellicose statements from the Pentagon and US neo-conservatives directed against other members of the ”axis of evil” and the so-called ”states of concern”.
The retirements — one after the other — of two of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s key civil servants during the past two weeks, are testimony to the fact that many of the mandarins at his Munhumutapa offices have seen that the writing is on the wall.
The US is preparing to intensify its efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, sending in 1 000 scientists, intelligence analysts and others, straining further the international disagreement over who should verify that the country is WMD-free, it was revealed yesterday.
The Bush administration is putting pressure on Israel to make concessions in an attempt to restart the Middle East process after the Iraq war, say diplomats and officials in Washington.
Children lying on dirty vinyl mattresses, desperate mothers clutching whimpering infants, harassed doctors signing prescriptions that they barely have time to read — the scene at a hospital in the Iraqi capital is one of chaos.
The largest emergency food aid programme in the world is in top gear, shipping tens of thousands of tons of mainly US grain to Ethiopia each month, but it is proving pitifully inadequate for millions on the brink of destitution and starvation.