GLOBAL PROBLEMS CAN ONLY BE SOLVED IN GLOBAL TERMS.

By Mario Soares (*)

LISBON, (IPS) - Is the world divided? Certainly. In a
certain sense it always was – between large and small nations,
between developed and underdeveloped peoples, between the and poor
countries. It was like this from remote antiquity.

It is divided today in a different way. (more…)

December 2003

Immediately after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, United States officials began large-scale detentions of foreign Arabic nationals and Muslims. Many, if not most, of the detentions were on the flimsiest of excuses-overstaying a visa, for example-something that would ordinarily have been dealt with by a note saying “come in and get this straightened out.”

It was important that these individuals were “detained” rather than “arrested.” Had they been arrested, they would have been caught up in the criminal justice system, and they would have had access to its protections. If they were detained, they were in limbo, which is just what the Bush administration wanted. (more…)

By Sanja Romic

BRUSSELS, Dec 29 (IPS) - Europeans are growing increasingly sceptical about
prospects of a better life in the face of the expansion due next year.

Development programmes meant to increase employment within the European
Union (EU) are seen to be under particular threat.

Ten more European countries are due to join the EU. These are Cyprus, the
Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia
and Slovenia. (more…)

FRANCE: Iraqi Hangover Clouds Ties with U.S.
By Julio Godoy

PARIS, Dec 23 (IPS) The diplomatic tension that arose between France and
the United States over the invasion of Iraq was put aside formally, but it is far
from over.

Differences have arisen between the two countries over several issues
recently. And somewhere in these differences, many analysts smell Iraq. (more…)

by Kate M. Levin

A recent issue of National Geographic Traveler featured a list of its Top Five Caribbean hot spots for the year. Number one is Cuba, the perfect destination if you love those “faded Commie icons,” as the magazine put it. Their second favorite is the Puerto Rican island-municipality of Vieques, which was, until recently, a bomb-testing zone for the US Navy.

Last month, two tourists, perhaps acting on a tip from the glossy mag’s feature, visited a Vieques beach. They found, in addition to the stunning natural beauty they’d been promised, something unexpected: a small cylindrical detonator with two wires dangling from it. Navy specialists confiscated the object, inspected it, declared that it was an explosive of nonmilitary origin and destroyed it. (more…)

World Summit on the Information Society: From heated debate to tepid commitments

Sally Burch

Phase one of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) concluded in Geneva on December 12, with the adoption of a Declaration and Plan of Action, which outline policy for global management of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and propose actions to “bridge the digital divide", with the declared intention of contributing to development goals and social inclusion. Civil society organizations, meanwhile, adopted their own Declaration expressing an alternative vision and proposals.

The tepid commitments contained in the official documents indicate feeble political will of the world’s leaders, which was ratified by the absence at the Summit of the heads of State or government of most of the world’s most influential nations. The adoption of the final documents ­ which only one week earlier seemed headed for failure- have nonetheless forestalled what could have been a new set-back for multilateralism, already badly shaken in recent months. Moreover, although many of the actors participating in the process find the results largely unsatisfactory, most seem to consider that they express a compromise solution that is more acceptable than earlier drafts. (more…)

Firm Bechtel Planned to Evade 1988 Sanctions - Document

By Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - U.S. construction giant Bechtel, a firm with a major contract to help rebuild Iraq, planned to hire “non-U.S. suppliers of technology” so it could evade economic sanctions imposed by Washington after Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iraq’s Kurdish minority, according to a newly declassified document.

In April 2003 Bechtel was awarded one of the largest contracts to date by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for infrastructure repair work in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The deal is worth an initial payment of 34.6 million dollars and up to 680 million dollars in total. (more…)

www.worldforum.org

The Report of the Working Party on the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, convened by Co-Chair Juan Somavia, Director General of the international Labor Organization, has been completed and can be accessed below:

Click here:

http://soros.c.tep1.com/maabMD1aa23V4b36p4Yb/

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“Other News” is a personal initiative seeking to provide information that should be in the media but is not, because of commercial criteria. It welcomes contributions from everybody. Work areas include information on global issues, north-sutrh relations, gobernability of globalization. The “Other News” motto is a phrase which appeared on the wall of Barcelona’s old Customs Office, at the beginning of 2003:â€?What walls utter, media keeps silentâ€?. Roberto Savio

By Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - The United States criticised several countries on
Thursday, both allies and adversaries, for failing to
protect religious freedom, a charge it has faced itself since launching its “war
on terror".

In its fifth annual report on religious persecution, the U.S. State Department
condemned many Muslim governments, including those in
Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as remaining communist states
China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea, of similar
offences. (more…)

The Answer Is Social Equality, Not Walls
Analysis - By Tito Drago

MADRID, Dec (IPS) - Walls, electrified barriers, military operations and
police presence are not enough to stop the waves of migrants from
impoverished countries to rich, industrialised, or at least less poor
nations.

The migrational flows that the major news media cover most are those that
head towards industrialised countries: from Latin America to the United
States, and from Africa, the Arab world, Latin America and Eastern Europe to
the countries of the European Union. (more…)

The end of the west

Europe is no longer the centre of the world - the future belongs to the
might of Asia

Martin Jacques
December - 2003
The Guardian

Throughout the cold war, Europe was the centre of the world. The global
fault line ran through the heart of Europe. In the face of the Soviet
threat, the world’s most powerful country, the United States, felt that it
must act in concert with western Europe, in an organic alliance, the
western alliance, that gave rise to the modern notion of “the west". The
communist threat persuaded the US to subordinate, at least in part, its
own identity and interests to that of “the west". The revolutions of 1989,
which brought the cold war to an end and transformed the physiognomy of
global politics, were exclusively European events. In reality, though, the
cold war served to exaggerate Europe’s true position in the world and mask
its underlying decline; 1989 was the last time that Europe was the centre
of global affairs. Ever since, its star has been on the wane. That fact
alone is a portent of the world that is now slowly taking shape. (more…)

A surprise festive blockade by peace activists is preventing workers getting into Faslane naval base in Scotland, leading to long tailbacks of traffic.

The blockade began this morning at 7 a.m. as 7 activists, from Trident Ploughshares’ ‘Local heroes’ affinity group, lay down in the entrance to the north gate of the base and attempted to lock on to each other by linking their arms through tubes and pipes which had been disguised as outsize festive crackers. A banner gives the message ‘peace is not just for Christmas’.

Protesters from Faslane Peace Camp blockaded the south gate. (more…)

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Dec 17 (IPS) - The International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia at The Hague is becoming a new power centre for Serbia. Its two
most famous inmates are campaigning from their cells for parliamentary
elections later this month.

Former president Slobodan Milosevic and his long time political ally Vojislav
Seselj are both accused of crimes through the wars of the 1990s that took the
lives of more than 200,000 people in former Yugoslavia. Most of the dead were
non-Serbs. (more…)

By: David Coleman - VHeadline.com

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Secretary General, former Venezuelan Energy & Mines Minister Alvaro Silva Calderon says the oil cartel is seriously considering to abandon the US$ as a trading currency and to adopt the €uro to compensate for the US$’s recently plummeting international value.

The plan is to ditch the greenback in one way or another and an alternative proposal is to trade international oil in a basket of currencies other than the US$, Silva Calderon says in an telephone interview from Vienna (Austria) with Venezuelan state news agency, VENPRES. “There is talk of trading crude in €uros … it’s one of the alternatives!” (more…)

By Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Dec 16 (IPS) - One of the main architects behind the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is pushing to have former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein tried by that tribunal.

Arthur NR Robinson, the former president of Trinidad and Tobago, says the United States or “the countries of the occupying forces” in Iraq should refrain from conducting any hearing of Saddam, which he suggested would be “another Nuremberg type trial". (more…)

by Richard B. Du Boff

“Global hegemony� might be defined as a situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests, and it raises the danger of imperial overreach, as was the case for Britain in South Africa (1899­1902) and the United States in Vietnam (1962­1975).

Britannia ruled the waves from 1815 to 1913, but by the 1890s she was under economic challenge from the United States and Germany, and between the two world wars was no longer able to function as underwriter to the world system. U.S. hegemony began during the Second World War and peaked some thirty years later. The United States still has immense—unequalled—power in international economics and politics, but even as the sole superpower it finds itself less able than it once was to influence and control the course of events abroad. Its military supremacy is no longer matched in the economic and political spheres, and is of dubious value in preserving the global economic order and the stake that U.S. capital has in it. Even during the golden days of 1944­1971 the United States was unable to avoid military defeat in Vietnam and a draw in Korea. (more…)

IRAQ: U.S. Takes Custody of Another Wayward Client
Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (IPS) - At last in U.S. military captivity, ousted former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein will soon mark an important 20th anniversary, the kind of anniversary that brings with it an appreciation of the ironies of life, and politics.

His captor, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, might also recall – or memories best forgotten – of what he was doing exactly 20 years ago.

If so, he will remember that he was in Baghdad, as a special envoy from then-president Ronald Reagan, assuring his host that, to quote the secret National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) that served as his talking points: the United States would regard “any major reversal of Iraq’s fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West". (more…)

Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - As the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush searches increasingly desperately for a viable “exit strategy” from an Iraqi quagmire, its policy there is appearing ever more incoherent.

The latest example – and an especially spectacular one – took place Wednesday when, at the same moment that Bush himself was personally asking key European and other leaders to forgive tens of billions of dollars in Iraq’s crushing debt, the Pentagon announced on its website that companies from the same countries will not be permitted to bid on 18.6 billion dollars in reconstruction contracts there. (more…)

Jason Deans
Friday December 12, 2003
The Guardian

The government yesterday began its biggest ever public consultation about the future of the BBC, appealing to the millions of licence fee payers to air their views on the corporation’s funding, structure and obligations.

The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, launched the consultation as the first stage of a review, which runs to the end of 2006, of the BBC’s 10-year charter.

Ms Jowell said that for the first time the future of the BBC would be decided by the British people rather than the “great and the good". (more…)

Introduction:

The initiators of the World Forum on Communication Rights in the Information Society believe that securing communication rights should be at the core of information and communication developments.

Communication rights encompass all those internationally accepted human rights that pertain to the field of information and communication. Communication rights provide for free speech, protection of privacy, cultural diversity, sharing of knowledge, inclusion and participation. (more…)

Dec 10th 2003
From The Economist Global Agenda

Afghanistan’s loya jirga (grand assembly) meets this week to approve a new constitution that sets the stage for elections next summer. Though stability is a distant prospect in many parts of the country, Afghans are feeling a little more optimistic

Jonathan Ledgard

IF AFGHANISTAN ever becomes a democracy with peace throughout the land, Saturday December 13th may be remembered as the date when it started to get serious about its future. This is the date when the loya jirga, or grand assembly, is due to meet to approve a constitution for Afghanistan. Under this constitution, elections for a national assembly are due to be held next June. Afghanistan, still in turmoil after the American-led invasion two years ago to topple the Taliban regime, badly needs a success. Will this be it? (more…)

WSIS Focuses on Illiteracy and Poverty
By Ramesh Jaura

GENEVA, Dec 11 (IPS) - Share the benefits of information technology with the
poorest countries and shape its use to fight illiteracy and poverty: this is the gist
of appeals to rich countries and business organisations at the first global summit
on information.

Political leaders from 175 countries, some 4,900 representatives of 660 non-
governmental organisations (NGOs), and 636 business representatives have
joined the conference that began in Geneva Wednesday. The conference is due
to end Friday. (more…)

PEACE CAMPER LEAVES CHRISTMAS MESSAGE FOR SAILORS IN TOP SECURITY TRIDENT
SUBMARINE BASE

Early yesterday evening a member of Faslane Peace Camp, Zoe Weir, entered
the top security Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane and spraypainted an early
Christmas message “Merry Christmas from Faslane Peace Camp ­ No More War!�
for the sailors on board the Trident submarines berthed there.

Zoe remained undetected for over two hours whilst she spray painted her
message across the entrance to the top-security jetty where submarines
carrying Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons were moored. She then avoided
being arrested for another three hours by climbing on top of MoD Police
Security Post 4 at the entrance to Berth 12. At 11pm Zoe finally agreed to
voluntarily come down after the Base Commander had promised her a mug of hot
chocolate. (more…)

By Peter Deselaers

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 (IPS) - After several fluctuations, the world’s population will swell to 9 billion people by 2300, according to new projections by the United Nations.

“These are scenarios. No one knows the future, but we are tying to give a range of what may happen,” Joseph Chamie, director of the U.N. Population Division, said at the launch of the report at United Nations headquarters in New York. (more…)

Global Civil Society or Global Civil War

What Direction for the Post Neoliberal-Neoconservative World?

Mark Ritchie
Brazilian Social Forum
November 8th, 2003
Belo Horizonte, Brazil

This social forum is looking at three specific dimensions of the world we are trying to create.

First, the individual and collective citizenry ­ our roles and responsibilities in sustainable human development.

Second, the question of how we produce and make available the goods we need for living ­ keeping in mind others with whom we must share this planet now and in the future. (more…)

Former Top US Officials Back Geneva Accord
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - Three days after the administration of President
George W. Bush shrugged off the unofficial
Israeli-Palestinian peace plan released last week in Geneva, a bipartisan group
of eight former top U.S. national-security officials
said they supported the so-called “Geneva Accord".

The endorsement of the group, which includes four former national security
advisers, comes amid a growing controversy within the
U.S. Jewish community about the plan, as well as indications that Israel’s
ruling Likud coalition is deeply divided about how to
react to it. (more…)

THE SOUTH ASIAN INTERFAITH PLEDGE ON CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE AND HIV/AIDS: PREVENTION, CARE AND COMPASSION

From the South Asia Interfaith Consultation on Children, Young People and HIV/AIDS,
Kathmandu, Nepal, 4th-6th December 2003

We, the representatives of religions and faith communities in South Asia ­ from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - who met at the South Asia Inter-Faith Consultation on Children, Young People and HIV/AIDS, in Kathmandu, Nepal on 4-6 December 2003, together with partners from governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international agencies, as well as people living with HIV/AIDS, young people, activists, and opinion makers. (more…)

A Sunday in Samarra

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - On one point, all sources appear to agree: what happened in the northern Sunni town of Samarra last Sunday could tell us a great deal about whether U.S. forces are likely to succeed or fail in pacifying and stabilising Iraq.

That there was a three-hour battle between U.S. soldiers and Iraqis is also not in question. The problem is that everything else about events there last Sunday is. (more…)

www.worldforum.org

Even in U.S. –15% Go without Food, 26% without Health Care

MOST OF THE WORLD STILL DOES WITHOUT

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Andrew Kohut, Director
Bruce Stokes, Project Consultant
Elizabeth Mueller Gross, Special Projects Director
Nicole Speulda, Project Director
Pew Research Center for The People & The Press
202/293-3126
www.people-press.org

The United States may pride itself as the land of plenty.
But the portion of Americans who occasionally go hungry for
lack of money to pay for food has not decreased in three
decades. And America may have the best trained doctors and
most advanced hospitals in the world. But the portion of
Americans who periodically can’t afford medical care each year
has actually increased since the mid 1970s. By comparison,
Canadians, Europeans and Japanese are far less likely to go
hungry. But they, too, face a growing challenge in finding the
means to pay for a doctor. Meanwhile, widespread basic
deprivation–the lack of resources to pay for food and medical
care–remains a daily challenge in most of the rest of the world,
especially among the poor, according to 38,000 interviews in
44 countries by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. (more…)

U.S. Exporting Torture Tools - Amnesty
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (IPS) - U.S. companies are exporting millions of dollars worth
of equipment known to be used for torture,
including selling devices to 12 countries where the State Department says the
use of torture is “persistent", according to a new
report by Amnesty International.

In doing so the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which approves
the sales, is violating the spirit of its own export
policy, adds the report, released here Tuesday. (more…)

New Book: Courageously Crossing Thresholds / 29 Examples of International
Peace Work

Within the new Bremen Peace Award of the Threshold Foundation in November
2003 (www.dieschwelle.de) a book (78 pages) has been published presenting the three Award winners and a selection of 26 especially convincing award proposals to share their work with the public and to get support for their work. We distribute the English version for free,
only charging surface delivery mail costs. Orders (up to 20 copies) via: stiftung@dieschwelle.de

You may inform other colleagues and organizations about that offer too. (more…)

Arabs and Europeans ‘Condemned’ to Cooperate
By Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Dec (IPS) - The violence and instability arising from the U.S.-led
occupation of Iraq and from the ongoing conflict between Israel and
Palestine are the most glaring examples that intercultural dialogue is
needed to strengthen relations and understanding between Europeans and
Arabs.

This is the basic premise of a Euro-Mediterranean conference to take place
in Amman on Saturday and Sunday, organised by the Council of Europe’s
North-South Centre (NSC), based in Lisbon, and the Jordan Institute of
Diplomacy. (more…)

“Even the most optimistic supporter of this kind of summits has been disappointed by the results of the Padova meeting - commented Cesare Ottolini, the HIC European Coordinator, at the end of the two-day gathering which hosted the housing ministers of 25 European countries - in fact, the final document is an empty amount of mere observations, while there is total disagreement on concrete issues: there remains the NO to the housing right into the European Constitution and the NO to the use of structural funds for housing policies.
The uselessness of these outward show summits is stressed by the absence of the European Commission and, even more seriously, by the impossibility to establish a significant debate between the civil society and governments - Cesare Ottolini denounced.
In fact, differently from the last Brussels meeting where we had at least the chance to discuss with the ministers, in Padova we were forced to a fleeting appearance amid the marketing spots of the meeting’s sponsors. (more…)

Recent Visitors Question U.S. Tactics
Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - While electricity generation now exceeds pre-invasion
levels, markets are plentiful, and virtually all
school-aged children are back at their desks, the war for Iraqi ‘’hearts and
minds'’ remains very much up in the air, say
independent analysts who have recently returned from that country.

‘’This could go either way,'’ Kenneth Pollack, a former Middle East analyst for
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told an
audience gathered at the Brookings Institution here Tuesday. (more…)

A Conversation With Hugo Chavez

By: Mark Weisbrot

This interview was conducted last May by Mark Weisbrot, and published by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) website www.NACLA.org
M: First I would like to try to set the record straight. This is for a U.S. audience. I have spoken with almost all of the journalists who report for U.S. newspapers from Caracas, and they agreed that people in the United States have a distorted view of Venezuela—they think it some sort of dictatorship, and has a repressive government.

Can you respond to this, and explain why you believe that Venezuela is a democracy?

H: Well we can try to measure democracy, just as you measure temperature with a thermometer, or pressure with a barometer. In light of everything that’s happened here, is there a single journalist imprisoned here? In four years of government, can anyone point to an imprisoned or persecuted journalist? Has there been a single media outlet closed for even a second? Well, yes, there was Channel 8, the state television, during the coup that they [the opposition] carried out. We can measure whether there is real repression of the media or of speech… (more…)

Unofficial Mideast Peace Plans Get Global Backing
Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - If the success of the unofficial Israeli-Palestinian
peace plan launched amid great fanfare in Geneva on
Monday were dependent on international goodwill, it could be implemented
tomorrow.

With three Nobel Peace Prize laureates – including former U.S. president Jimmy
Carter – in attendance, as well as messages of
support sent from leaders from around the world, including a video hook-up with
former South African president Nelson Mandela, the
so-called ‘’Geneva Initiative'’ was signed by former ministers Yossi Beilin and
Yasser Abed Rabbo before more than 300 Israelis and
Palestinians. (more…)

www.albawaba.com
November 22, 2003

An Opportunity Lies Waiting in the Mideast

by Timothy Rothermel

Trends in development policy and diplomacy are influenced by contemporary global challenges. Some of these challenges fall into two distinct categories: prevention and recovery. Good examples of the two might be Kashmir, on one hand, and the Balkans, on the other.

University courses and lectures abound on such subjects as crisis prevention, preventive diplomacy, reintegration, etc. The literature is also filled with phrases such as natural disaster reduction, postwar reconstruction, peacekeeping and peace-building, post conflict (more…)

It’s fair to be uncivil when liberty is at stake

By Paul Krugman (NYT)

PRINCETON, New Jersey: ‘One of the problems with media coverage of this administration,” wrote Eric Alterman in The Nation, “is that it requires bad manners.” He’s right. There’s no nice way to explain how the Bush administration uses cooked numbers to sell its tax cuts, or how its arrogance and gullibility led to the current mess in Iraq.

So it was predictable that the administration and its allies, no longer very successful at claiming that questioning the president is unpatriotic, would use appeals to good manners as a way to silence critics. Not, mind you, that Emily Post, the doyenne of etiquette, has taken over the Republican Party: The same people who denounce liberal incivility continue to impugn the motives of their opponents.
Smart conservatives admit that their own side was a bit rude during the Clinton years. But now, they say, they’ve learned better, and it’s those angry liberals who have a problem. The reality, however, is that they can only convince themselves that liberals have an anger problem by applying a double standard. When the conservative author Ann Coulter expresses regret that Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal laughs it off as “tongue-in-cheek agitprop.” But when the satirist Al Franken writes about lies and lying liars in a funny, but carefully researched book, he’s degrading the discourse. (more…)

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, (IPS) - Now that the Bush administration has decided to sharply accelerate the transfer of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government, why does it not invite the United Nations to help with the transition?

At this point, an invitation appears logical. At a minimum, it would give the occupation greater international legitimacy and encourage other countries to contribute both troops and more reconstruction assistance, easing Washington’s burden.

Moreover, the world body has much more recent experience than the United States in governing traumatised societies around the world. (more…)