International Politics: July 2006 Archives

With the strong backing of the Bush administration, a Japanese-drafted UN resolution on North Korea's missile tests last week is further inflaming tensions in North East Asia.

For the first time since the end of World War II, Japan is playing a leading role in a major international crisis. Its draft resolution, submitted to Security Council last Friday, condemns the missile tests as a threat to international peace, demands an immediate end to missile launches and calls for economic sanctions against Pyongyang.

The draft urges member states to "prevent the transfer of financial resources, items, materials, goods and technology to end users that could contribute to DPRK's [North Korea] missile and other WMD programs." By invoking Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the resolution would make sanctions binding and even pave the way for military action. The US has been demanding a similar UN resolution condemning Iran's nuclear program.

"The campaign exposed Mexico's deep class divisions, with Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party pledging to govern for the poor and Calderon of the ruling National Action Party seen by many as the candidate of the rich."

MEXICO CITY - Two bitter rivals declared themselves winners of Mexico's extraordinarily close presidential race even though election officials said official results wouldn't be ready for days - sparking cries of fraud from supporters and fears of violence.

The candidates - a conservative bureaucrat and a leftist - were separated by fewer than 300,000 votes with more than 30 million counted in a preliminary tally by electoral officials. The conservative, Felipe Calderon, had 36.9 percent to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's 35.7 percent, according to results from 87 percent of polling places.

But the Federal Electoral Institute stressed those results weren't final - and said it wouldn't declare a victor until an official count due to start Wednesday.

"The extreme polarization of wealth that has occurred in Mexico over the past decade has fed resentments that found expression in Lopez Obrador's 'first the poor' platform."

"Renegotiation of the liberalization clause in agriculture forms part of a reorientation away from an economic policy based solely on market forces to greater state involvement and includes proposals to offer guarantee prices on some agricultural products, preferential credit rates and support to small producers."

Mexico´s three major candidates ended their campaigns Wednesday in emotional rallies throughout the country. During the few days left before the July 2 elections all campaigning is prohibited. With the proposals on the table, the test now will be to see if voters can cut through the media hype and mud-slinging to choose a direction for the next six years of the nation's future.

"Israeli war planes repeatedly bombed and utterly demolished Gaza's only power plant. About 700,000 of Gaza's 1.3 million people now have no electricity, and word is that power cannot be restored for six months.... No lights, no refrigerators, no fans through the suffocating Gaza summer heat.... As food in the refrigerators spoils, the only remaining food is grains. Most people cook with gas, but with the borders sealed, soon there will be no gas."

"A country that claims kinship among the western democracies of Europe is behaving like a murderous rogue regime, using any excuse to reduce over a million people to utter human misery and even mass death."

On the excuse of rescuing one kidnapped soldier, Israeli is now bombing the Gaza Strip and is poised to re-invade. It has also arrested a third of the Palestinian parliament, wrecking even its fragile illusion of capacity and reducing the already-empty vessel of the Palestinian Authority into broken shards.