There are many parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan. The recent American mayors’ resolution to “bring our war $$ home” and Obama’s announcement that troops are now being withdrawn are fresh reminders, but the story they tell is grim, says Eric Walberg

In Baltimore, the nation’s mayors debated and passed a War Dollars Home Resolution at their annual meeting, the first time they have taken a stand on war since they passed a similar resolution in 1971, during the Vietnam war. The anti-war resolution even made the TV news, which has downplayed the fact that the majority of Americans have wanted an end to their illegal wars for years.

Mladic’s upcoming trial in The Hague reminds us that international justice is a complicated business, however simple its motives, writes Eric Walberg

Ratko Mladic, the most wanted fugitive of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was arrested last week after 16 years on the run. As former commander of the Republika Srpska Army from 1992–96, he was indicted by the ICTY following the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, and charged by ICTY Judge Richard Goldstone with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of laws and practices of warfare from 1992 to 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The same indictment charged Radovan Karadzic, president of the Republika Srpska and Mladic’s supreme commander.

The fall of Egypt’s leader and his political party is because he learned the wrong lessons from his patrons. Will Americans learn something from Egyptians, asks Eric Walberg 

The Supreme Administrative Court order to disband the National Democratic Party and confiscate its properties last week was based on the NDP’s violation of the constitution; namely, monopolising power, preventing legitimate competition from other parties, and allowing corruption by the marriage of business and politics. As the only political force in control of the administration of the country, the NDP allowed powerful businessmen to rise through its ranks and then enact laws and run the country in their personal and corporate interests.

What is this scenario but the Western electoral system, governed in the US by what is increasingly known as the Republicrats? Albeit minus the need by corporations and other lobbyists to divide their donations between two look-alike NDPs. It is impossible for a genuine alternative party to gain any traction in this polyarchy, defined by Noam Chomsky as “a system of elite decision-making and public ratification”, where elections are rigged, but indirectly -- by media control and their huge cost.

A man, a plan -- a new Ivory Coast. Eric Walberg looks at the rationale behind the Western intervention

Few around the world watching the drama unfolding in Ivory Coast rout for the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, who to his credit held reasonably fair elections last year, but then promptly ignored the results, suddenly claiming that those who voted for his rival Alassane Ouattara were not really citizens of Ivory Coast at all. With even the cautious African Union against him, his demise was inevitable.

An epic drama is unfolding after the Wikileaks founder gave himself up to Scotland Yard, but will Assange suffer the fate of Ellsberg or Pollard?

It was United States president Woodrow Wilson who called for “open diplomacy” — number one of his fourteen points in 1918 — so that “diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.” He would surely approve of Wikileaks’ efforts at open diplomacy, though current US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called them “an attack on America’s foreign-policy interests” and indeed on “the international community”, though she failed to specify which particular community members were the victims, or what they were the victims of.