The widow of a US military personnel who committed suicide after seven tours of duty in West Asia has confronted former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “whose lies led my husband to join the military, and so many other soldiers”.
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Sep 012011
Both the United States and its trade rival, the European Union (EU), have been forced to modify their strategy in South-east Asia in pursuit of their ‘free trade’ and ‘liberalisation’ agenda.
The Malaysia-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is effectively dead; negotiations had gone nowhere after eight rounds of talks. The Malaysian side was afraid of opening up access to government procurement contracts mainly awarded to bumiputera firms. The Americans, under the Obama administration, were worried that free trade would result in an influx of cheap goods into their country while American jobs are lost to low-wage countries. Continue reading »
In a much-awaited speech in Cairo just now directed largely at the Muslim world, Obama has vowed to:
- shut down Guantanamo Bay by next year,
- prohibit the use of torture by the United States (what about rendition or outsourcing of torture?) and
- remove US troops from Iraq by 2012 (what about the large permanent or “enduring” US bases it has built?).
- seek a world in which no nation holds nuclear weapons.
He has also pledged to work for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate. He has called for the Palestinians to “abandon violence” – without issuing a similar call to the Israelis. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements, he adds – but what about existing settlements?
