By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 27 (IPS) - The agreed reform of European Union (EU)
farm policy and its possible influence on the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) talks was received with caution by government
officials while drawing harsh words of criticism from civil
society groups.

The ‘’shoddy deal'’ reached by EU farm ministers Thursday only
increases the chance of a ‘’collapse'’ of the September WTO
ministerial meeting in the southeastern Mexican resort town of
Cancun, said Barry Coates, director of the London-based World
Development Movement (WDM). (more…)

By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 26 (IPS) - A new manual aimed at preventing torture offers
simple techniques and presents case studies showing successful actions that
have been taken in several countries to combat the problem, which is found
across the globe.

The over 300-page report released Thursday by the London-based rights
watchdog Amnesty International describes intentional acts that inflict
physical or mental pain and suffering on others, for the purpose of
extracting information or confessions, or inflicting punishment. (more…)

TNI-News is a bi-weekly e-mail service from the Transnational Institute. If you wish to view a complete version of this bulletin with direct links, please visit http://soros.c.tclk.net/maabc2saaYRZFb36p4Yb/

Feel free to forward this message!

======================================

In this issue:

1. The occupation of Iraq
2. From TNI fellows:
- Walden Bello on the Philippines experience under the WTO
- Achin Vanaik on the tragedy of Palestine and the “road map to peace”
- Boris Kagarlitsky on European identity and the sustained power of Che’s image
3. Privatisation of the power sector in India
4. Pinochet Watch No. 50 (more…)

By Katrin Dauenhauer

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - Roma in Europe face poverty rates more than 10 times higher than non-Roma, says a new report by the World Bank, released one week before a Budapest conference on the continent’s largest minority.

The 148-page document provides insights on the situation of Roma in the Eastern and Central European countries of Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic, drawing on data the Bank says it compiled over the last three years. (more…)

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
(translated to English by Bill Weinberg)

Since the end of the Cold War, we have seen the US
government resort to widely varied arguments and
alibis to justify its wars and foreign military
operations, now that it can no longer invoke the
famous communist threat. (more…)

Vikram Dodd in Guantanamo Bay
Saturday June 21, 2003

The Guardian

The US military clashed with British journalists yesterday at Camp Delta
in Guantanamo Bay after inmates shouted to a BBC Panorama team who had
been invited to tour the maximum security camp.

As the journalists walked through camp four, detainees shouted that they
wanted to tell their story and the US soldiers immediately halted the
tour, ordering everyone out. (more…)

By Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jun 20 (IPS) - An ambitious anti-corruption plan proposed in Paris by 14
international prosecutors Thursday is unlikely to find political backing.

‘The Paris Declaration’ as it is called proposes an end to immunity for public
servants suspected of corruption, and to secrecy of bank accounts for high-
ranking executives of private companies. It demands that elected officials reveal
the origin of their wealth.

Fourteen European prosecutors including Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon,
former Italian judge Antonio di Pietro and former Swiss judge Bernard Bertossa
signed the declaration. (more…)

By Moema L. Viezzer (*)

In the alphabet A = O. Two different letters, but equal in importance. In human beings’ lives things should also be this way equal in human rights and respected in their women/men differences.

However, the river of humankind’s history has not followed this “natural course". Along the millenniums the sexual division of work and social roles bestowed upon men and women have resulted in the superimposition of male gender over female gender, while the social relations based on the domination/subordination binomial were crystallized in all spheres of human life.

The world changed. (more…)

By María Isabel García

CARTAGENA, Colombia, Jun 19 (IPS) - The U.S. fight against
terrorism is undermining human rights around the world, warned
jurists speaking at the World Social Thematic Forum (WSTF) taking
place this week in Colombia.

The ‘’war on terrorism'’ launched in the wake of the Sep. 11,
2001 attacks on New York and Washington has given rise to ‘’a new
reading of international jurisprudence on human rights,'’ said
Ignacio Saíz, deputy director of the Americas programme of the
London-based Amnesty International rights watchdog. (more…)

By María Isabel García

CARTAGENA, Colombia, Jun 17 (IPS) - With a call to globalise civil
resistance in order to put the brakes on the “hegemony of social fascism",
Portuguese intellectual Boaventura de Sousa Santos inaugurated the third
World Social Thematic Forum (WSTF) in Colombia.

This edition of the WSTF, an offshoot of the World Social Forum, has brought
3,500 delegates to this Caribbean city for sessions to last through Friday.
The participants are debating issues related to four areas in which Colombia
serves as a living laboratory: democracy, human rights, war and drug
trafficking. (more…)

by David Cline

May 1, 2003 marked the beginning of a new era for the people of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. On that date the land was officially transferred from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior, ending 62 years of bombing and shelling as the main military training site , the “crown jewle” of the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet.

I traveled to Vieques for the Celebration with a six person Veterans For Peace delegation. For more than three years, US veterans have worked together with Puerto Rican veterans and community groups on this cause and wanted to share in the joy of this important victory. (more…)

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to introduce you to the acclaimed international journal, development. Published by the Society for International Development since 1957, development addresses the cutting edge issues and debates on sustainable human development. From visions of development alternatives to strategies at the local level or reports of debates at the UN, development provides a provocative, broad view of current development issues.

…development provides a unique a resource and point of reference for the dialogue between activists and intellectuals committed to social transformation and justice. (more…)

TNI-News is a bi-weekly e-mail service from the Transnational
Institute. If you wish to view a complete version of this bulletin with
direct links, please visit http://soros.c.tclk.net/maabaN0aaYDCWb36p4Yb/
Feel free to forward this message!
======================================

In this issue:

1. The legacy of war
2. G8 and counter-summit
3. Drugs & Democracy Publication
4. New book: Neo-Imperial Ideology and the US War on Iraq, by
Mariano Aguirre and Phyllis Bennis
5. From TNI fellows
Boris Kagarlitsky on political instability in Russia
Praful Bidwai on quotas for the Indian upper castes (more…)

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - As beloved New York Yankee catcher and phrase-maker Yogi Berra once said, it seems like ‘’deja vu all over again'’.

Fourteen months ago, U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas, withdraw from cities Israeli forces had re-occupied, and refrain from further unilateral actions that would inflame the conflict.

‘’Enough is enough,'’ snapped the U.S. president, who had conquered Afghanistan four months before. (more…)

By Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 (IPS) - Do you want the International Criminal Court or our help in renovating your airport?

That is how a U.S. diplomat reportedly tried to sway leaders of the tiny Caribbean island of The Bahamas to not join the International Criminal Court (ICC) some three months ago.

U.S. Ambassador Richard Blankenship not only threatened the country with an ‘’unfavourable response'’, he warned other Caribbean nations that they might lose U.S. financial assistance if they signed on to the new court, set up to investigate and prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. (more…)

By Ziaad Mohamed

DURBAN, South Africa, Jun 12 (IPS) - The losers in this world are those who
are excluded from globalisation and Africa stands the risk of being left
out, Norway’s Minister of International Development, Hilde Frafjord Johnson
warned Thursday.

Addressing the plenary session of the World Economic Forum - Africa
Economic Summit 2003 taking place in Durban, South Africa, Johnson said it
was important not to overlook Africa, while the focus was on Iraq. (more…)

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 (IPS) - Having led the charge to war in Iraq, an
influential think tank close to the Bush administration has added a new
target: international non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Not just any international NGOs, but especially, if not exclusively, those
with a “progressive” or “liberal” agenda that favours “global governance”
and other notions that are also are promoted by the United Nations and other
multilateral agencies. (more…)

By N Janardhan

DUBAI, Jun 12 (IPS) - Two months after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the
Arab media is coming under scrutiny for ‘misleading’ people in the region
into believing that Iraq would provide stiff resistance and even win the
war against the U.S.-led forces.

But this, journalists and analysts in the region also say, may be no
different from how many in the western media followed the line of the U.S.
and British governments, and trumpeted the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction – which have still not been found today. (more…)

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 11(IPS) - A group of 26 developing countries has launched an action plan for reactivating the stalled World Trade Organisation negotiations, with sights on the ministerial conference to take place in Mexico in three months.

Their proposal aims to ensure the success of the meeting, Sep 10-14 in the south-eastern Mexican resort city of Cancún, and to energise subsequent trade talks, said Hernando José Gómez, Colombia’s representative to the WTO, who presented the plan.

The WTO has already missed nearly all of the deadlines it had set for achieving agreements before the Cancún meet, and has little progress to report. The three months remaining are also the last chance for member nations to reach “understandings". (more…)

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - Much like its successful military campaign in Iraq, the Pentagon is moving at seemingly breakneck speed to re-deploy U.S. forces and equipment around the world in ways that will permit Washington to play ‘’GloboCop'’, according to a number of statements by top officials and defence planners.

While preparing sharp reductions in forces in Germany, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, military planners are talking about establishing semi-permanent or permanent bases along a giant swathe of global territory – increasingly referred to as ‘’the arc of instability'’ – from the Caribbean Basin through Africa to South and Central Asiaa and across to North Korea. (more…)

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 10 (IPS) - The question is, is U.S. President George W. Bush really serious – serious enough to put real pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – about implementing the much-heralded ‘’road map'’ to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians?

If not, most analysts here believe, the latest attempt to resolve a 55-year-old problem is doomed from the outset.

But views about the question are surprisingly varied here in Washington. Conventional wisdom before Bush’s travels to the Middle East, which culminated in his summit at Aqaba with Sharon and new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, held that Sharon and his Likud Party had little to fear. (more…)

Analysis - By N Janardhan

DUBAI, Jun - These are tough days for Palestinians and their
supporters in the Middle East, who face the question of whether the time
has come for the ‘intifadah’ or armed uprising to end given the current
negotiations with Israel.

This debate has been rekindled by the U.S.-Israel-Palestinian summit at
Aqaba, Jordan last week, followed by the rejection by some Palestinian
groups of the call to end the uprising and two attacks by Palestinian
groups on Israeli targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sunday. (more…)

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - After the Sep. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the big question here was, ‘’Why Do They Hate Us?'’

Still, the attacks unleashed a wave of solidarity with the United States around the world. French President Jacques Chirac, for example, was the first foreign leader to visit the wreckage at the site where the World Trade Centers collapsed. Three months later, when U.S. troops helped oust the Taliban in Afghanistan, the voices of protest were very few indeed.

Now, 21 months after those fateful attacks, almost all the sympathy and support that poured forth on Sep. 12, 2001, have evaporated into thin air as the aggressive unilateralism of the George W. Bush administration has transformed Washington’s image from one of a well-intentioned – albeit clumsy and uninformed – superpower, to one of a self-righteous and aggressive global bully. (more…)

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 5 (IPS) - Thursday’s announcement that the State Department’s director for policy planning, Richard Haass, is leaving to become the next president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), marks the latest sign of the eclipse of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s influence in the Bush administration.

Next to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Haass was seen as Powell’s closest adviser.

While there is no doubt that his new job, which begins Jul. 1, has real attractions – a lengthy contract to direct the oldest and most prestigious U.S. foreign-policy think tank – Haass has historically preferred to be in the thick of the action. (more…)

By Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Jun 3 (IPS) - Sustainable development and solidarity, rather than
charity, are the watchwords of the European foundations that met Sunday
through Tuesday in the Portuguese capital.

‘’Assistance yes, charity no'’ was the premise that brought together more
than 600 delegates of 324 institutions from 55 countries in the 14th annual
congress of the European Foundation Centre (EFC). (more…)

NYC June 4, 2003
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass
destruction (W.M.D.’s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big
story. But is it the real story we should be concerned
with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it’s
the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war:
the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the
stated reason. (more…)

By Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Jun 4 (IPS) - NATO claimed for itself the right to act in
any part of the world, to judge by remarks by Secretary-General
George Robertson at the close Wednesday of a two-day meeting of
the alliance’s foreign ministers in the Spanish capital.

Robertson said that as a collective security alliance, NATO
(the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) had to be ready ‘’to go
where the threats are.'’ (more…)

by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

Table of Contents

Introduction – AMERICAN CALIGULA (47,195 bytes)
1 — THE HOUSE OF BUSH: BORN IN A BANK (33,914 bytes)
2 — THE HITLER PROJECT (55,321 bytes)
3 — RACE HYGIENE: THREE BUSH FAMILY ALLIANCES (51,987 bytes)
4 — THE CENTER OF POWER IS IN WASHINGTON (51,699 bytes)
5 — POPPY AND MOMMY (47,684 bytes)
6 — BUSH IN WORLD WAR II (36,992 bytes)
7 — SKULL AND BONES: THE RACIST NIGHTMARE AT YALE (56,508 bytes) (more…)

Credibility Gap Anyone?

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 2 (IPS) - When all three major U.S. newsweeklies – ‘Time’, ‘Newsweek’ and ‘U.S. News & World Report’ – run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal.

And when the two most important outlets of neo-conservative opinion – ‘The Weekly Standard’ and ‘The Wall Street Journal’ – come out on the same days with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington. (more…)