By Howard Zinn

The following are excerpts from A People’s History of the United States

… the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans … so tremblingly respectful [in the direction] of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements -that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission. (more…)

By Katherine Stapp* - Tierramérica

NEW YORK, Jun 30 (IPS) - Growing international demands to suspend the use of cluster munitions, which scatter hundreds of small ‘’bomblets'’ over a wide area and are blamed for thousands of civilian deaths around the world, appear to be falling on deaf ears among the governments that stockpile them.

‘’The war in Iraq has sharpened the call for action on cluster munitions… Over a thousand Iraqis were injured or killed during the bombing and its immediate aftermath by cluster sub-munitions, or bomblets,'’ said Virgil Wiebe, a legal adviser to the U.S.-based Mennonite Central Committee, one of the leading groups working for a moratorium. (more…)

The British transfer of sovereignty in the 20s was equally meaningless

Haifa Zangana
Tuesday June 29, 2004
The Guardian

In Iraq, we have an expression: same donkey, different saddle. Iraq’s long-heralded interim government has now formally assumed sovereignty. Official labels and tags have duly changed. The US administrator will now be an ambassador, while Sheikh Ghazi al Yawar and Iyad Allawi, US-appointed members of the former governing council, are to be known as president and prime minister.
To formalise the change, the UN has already issued a resolution under which “multinational forces” will replace “US-led forces". On the issue of control over US troops, the message is clear: the US forces are there to stay only because “Iraqi people” has asked them to. But which Iraqi people? Do they mean the new administration headed by the CIA’s Iyad Allawi? And why does all this sound strangely familiar? (more…)

By Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Jun 29 (IPS) - The spirited Maoist student leader at the University of Lisbon, José Manuel Durão Barroso, never imagined during the turbulent years of the Portuguese revolution that three decades later he would become president of the European Commission, where conservative parties prevail.

The political history of the conservative Portuguese leader, now 48 years old, began during the leftist military ‘’Carnation Revolution'’ of 1974. He was the student leader of the Movement for the Renovation of the Proletariat Party/Portuguese-Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MRPP/PCP-ML). (more…)

By Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jun 28 (IPS) - The kind of torture inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. army followed methods France used during the Algerian war of independence in the late 1950s, several French historians and journalists say.

Both the U.S. and the French armies had obviously studied Islamic traditions in order to devise torture methods aimed particularly at Muslims, they say. (more…)

By Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, June 25 (IPS) - A devout Muslim with beard, flowing gown and prayer cap folded his arms as a female participant reached out to shake his hand. They ended up exchanging verbal greetings.

On the opposite side of the hall, a man suggested a dress code for young women, drawing the ire of feminists. Welcome to South Africa’s conference on ‘The Eradication of Unfair Discrimination through Access to Equality Courts’, held in the commercial capital of Johannesburg this week (Jun. 24-25). (more…)

COMMENTARY

By Michael Ventre
MSNBC contributor

Updated: 3:22 p.m. ET June 23, 2004What “Fahrenheit 9/11â€? represents, more than anything else, is the promise or threat — depending on how you look at it — that Michael Moore will get an opportunity to deliver another incendiary acceptance speech at the next Academy Awards. He had a few choice words for President George W. Bush when he took the microphone with an Oscar in hand after “Bowling for Columbineâ€? won best documentary feature in 2003. It enraged those on the right and heartened those on the left. (more…)

By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 24 (IPS) - Independent human rights experts are asking the United Nations to send an urgent mission to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, the U.S. enclave in Cuba, to monitor humanitarian conditions and legal status of the people being held on suspicion of terrorism.

The group of experts said this delegation should include the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Argentine expert Leandro Despouy; rapporteur and chair of the working group on arbitrary detention, Algerian Leila Zerrougui; and the rapporteur on torture, Dutch expert Theo van Boven. (more…)

Updated: 3:31 p.m. ET June 24, 2004

WASHINGTON - U.S. Central Command has asked the Army to prepare for the possibility that an additional 25,000 troops may be needed in Iraq if the security situation there continues to deteriorate after the transfer of sovereignty on June 30, NBC News has learned.

Paul Wolfowitz, in an interview with “Hardball with Chris Matthewsâ€? on MSNBC, wouldn’t confirm but did say that “CENTCOM has plans to deal with whatever may confront us.â€? (more…)

By Moyiga Nduru

BENONI, South Africa, June 23 (IPS) - Young South African women are being given false job offers to lure them into prostitution in Macau, a former Portuguese colony now under Chinese control, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). (more…)

Threat to Kerry may grow this weekend at party’s convention

Dennis Cook / AP file

Green Party activist Peter Camejo explains Monday why he is serving as Ralph Nader’s running mate.

By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC

Updated: 12:35 p.m. ET June 23, 2004WASHINGTON - When independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader met with members of the Democratic Congressional Black Caucus at the Capitol on Tuesday, angry shouts were heard from inside the meeting. Some of the Democratic lawmakers stormed out, apparently frustrated by Nader’s determination to stay in the presidential race. (more…)

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - While more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq continue trying to impose security in advance of the Jun. 30 handover of limited sovereignty to the new Iraqi administration, the security situation in nearby Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.

With national elections just three months away, observers here say that tribal warlords, as well as resurgent Taliban forces, appear as strong as at any time since the Taliban was ousted 30 months ago, making it increasingly unlikely that the balloting, if it goes forward as scheduled, will be judged free and fair by international and other observers. (more…)

A MESSAGE FROM BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

A few weeks ago at N.Y.U. Al Gore gave one of the most important speeches I’ve heard in a long time. The issues it raises need to be considered by every American concerned with the direction our country is headed in. It’s my pleasure to reprint it here for my fans.

Remarks by Al Gore

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. (more…)

By Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jun 21 (IPS) As European Union leaders mull over the successes of last week’s European summit in their home countries, an even tougher task lies ahead convincing a sceptical electorate to agree.

European Union (EU) leaders agreed a Constitution for Europe, which aims to respond to an expanding bloc, late Friday evening (Jun. 18) after intense negotiations spread over almost two-and-a-half years. (more…)

Quito/Brussels – The EU needs to engage more deeply and effectively in the increasingly unstable Andean region. Better recognition and understanding of Andean countries’ problems is needed so that Brussels and the member states can act in a way that really helps tackle them.

Increasing Europe’s Stake in the Andes, the latest briefing paper from the International Crisis Group, argues that the EU should play a more substantial role in helping the Community of Andean Nations (CAN) achieve stability and deepen its regional integration. The need is significant: the five states of CAN – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela – all face serious crises that taken together call the peace of the entire region into question. (more…)

The Long-Awaited Return Home

By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 17 (IPS) - The number of refugees and others attended by the United Nations refugee agency fell dramatically in 2003 to 17.1 million people, the lowest total in a decade, according to figures released just days before World Refugee Day, Jun. 20.

The causes behind the 18-percent reduction are various, according to former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers, who now serves as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (more…)

Conventional versus Emergent Alternative Wisdom

By David Korten

An important starting point in any discussion of sustainable development is to clarify the basic assumptions we each bring to the table. While the views on sustainable development cover a broad spectrum, the following contrast of the conventional wisdom and the emergent alternative wisdom on this subject helps to define the range. Most of the economists, governments and official agencies (including the World Bank, IMF, and the GATT) that define national and global policies profess the conventional wisdom. A growing number of alternative economists, independent thinkers, and citizen organizations concerned with economic justice and environmental issues are engaged in articulating and elaborating the alternative wisdom as the foundation for policies they hope will prove to be more people and environment friendly. Which best captures your view of sustainable development? (more…)

Maputo, 17 Jun (AIM) - Despite the recent impressive rise in the literacy rate, the vast majority of Mozambicans never buy a newspaper.

This hard fact is made brutally clear by the report for 2003 from the board of directors of Sociedade de Noticias, the company that publishes Mozambique’s main daily paper, “Noticias", the Sunday paper “Domingo", and a sports weekly “Desafio". (more…)

World Bank Shifts Sights From 2015 to 2050

By Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jun 17 (IPS) A focus on the Millennium Development Goals can be counterproductive, a senior World Bank economist told IPS in an interview Thursday.

Intense measures to meet some of the goals may not be sustainable, Kirk Hamilton said. (more…)

Susan Gray

Last Friday, two days before the 3rd European Documentary Film Festival in Oslo, Norway, Film Institute (NFI) director Vigdis Lian announced that Citizen Berlusconi, a 56-minute documentary on Italy’s prime minister, would not be shown at the event. Lian made the decision after meeting with Italian embassy officials.

Directed by Susan Gray, the joint US and European documentary, whose title is a reference to Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ masterpiece about a US media mogul, has been screened in several countries and broadcast on US, Australian and Norwegian television in the past six months. It has never been screened in Italy where the filmmakers face possible legal action and jail. (more…)

Group Urges U.S. to Lead Troops Into Sudan’s Darfur

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 16 (IPS) - Amid increasingly strident calls from United Nations officials for international intervention to stop “ethnic cleansing” in western Sudan, a U.S. group is calling on Washington to declare the situation “genocide” and lead a military force into the region until U.N. troops can be assembled.

Washington-based Africa Action on Tuesday announced it was circulating a petition urging Secretary of State Colin Powell to declare the situation a “genocide.” The national grassroots group said it hoped to collect more than 10,000 signatures within two weeks. (more…)

By Jason Burke

The Observer U.K. , June 2004

Jason Burke charts the worldwide hidden network of prisons where more than 3,000 al-Qaeda suspects have been held without trial - and many subjected to torture - since 9/11.

The United States government, in conjunction with key allies, is running an “invisible” network of prisons and detention centres into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the “war on terror” began. (more…)

By Norman Solomon

If journalism is history’s first draft, the death of Ronald Reagan has caused a step-up in the mass production of falsified history.

It’s mourning in America.

The main technique is omission. People who suffered from the Reagan presidency have no media standing today. It’s not cool to mention victims of his policies in, for example, Central America. (more…)

By Pavol Stracansky

BRATISLAVA, Jun 15 (IPS) - Roma leaders in Slovakia have backed a controversial suggestion by a European Commission ambassador that Roma children be educated in boarding schools.

Roma leaders have said that the proposal by Eric van der Linden, European Commission (EC) ambassador to Slovakia on Dutch television last month is arguably the best way to educate Roma children they say are failed by the current education system. (more…)

Jayson Blair, Alive and Well at the New York Times

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Pentagon Cartoons

They keep talking about Reagan being a “big picture” man, indifferent to petty detail. The phrase gives a false impression, as though Reagan looked out at the world as though at some Cinemascope epic, a vast battlefield where, through those famous spectacles (one lense close-up, for speech reading, the other long-distance) he could assess the global balance of forces. Wrong. Reagan stayed awake only for the cartoons, where the global balance of forces were set forth in simple terms, in the tiffs between Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, or Tom and Jerry. (more…)

By Ricardo Grassi*

KABUL, Jun 14 (IPS) - On the flight out of Dubai, an item in the pockets of the passenger seats removes all doubt about the airplane’s destination: along with the laminated sheet detailing aircraft safety procedures is a brochure from the United Nations Landmine Action Service explaining how to avoid death or injury from the explosive devices in Afghanistan.

The airplane lands at Kabul, a city built – and destroyed – in a valley 1,800 metres above sea level, surrounded by mountains reaching 4,000 metres high, reminiscent of a scene from the South American Andes. (more…)

Child Domestic Workers Are ‘Slaves’ Behind Closed Doors

By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 11 (IPS) - “There are children in the world who are treated like slaves,” says expert June Kane in a report for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the situation of minors working in domestic service.

To this admonition, Kane adds a call for decisive action. The eradication of child labour requires measures to remove children from situations of exploitation, not simply improving their living conditions, she says. (more…)

The Big Caring for The Small

Leonardo Boff

La Republica.2004

Walking my street, that almost no one else uses, in only 50 meters I counted 58 dead beetles. Since we do not pay attention to those the smallest of our brothers, we step on them, and our automobiles massacre them. If Saint Francis would see them dead, he would cry of compassion. Then I remembered a beautiful myth of the Maue people that has lots to teach us. The Maue are part of the cultural area located between the rivers Tapajos and Madeira of North East Brazil. I will relate the myth and that each one draws his or her own lessons, that can be ecological and even of international politics. (more…)

Allan J. Lichtman

Using the Keys to the White House, a prediction system based on the analysis of every American presidential election since 1860, I first predicted the reelection of President George W. Bush on 24 April 2003 in the column I regularly write for the Montgomery Gazette newspaper. That prediction still stands today.

I developed the Keys system in 1981, in collaboration with Volodia Keilis-Borok, a world-renowned authority on the mathematics of prediction models. Our analysis demonstrated that the choice of a president does not turn on debates, advertising, speeches, endorsements, rallies, platforms, promises, or campaign tactics. Rather, presidential elections are primarily referenda on how well the party holding the White House has governed during its term. (more…)

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 10 (IPS) - Coca-Cola and other companies must do more to ensure that the sugar they buy from El Salvador is not provided by the thousands of children working illegally in the country’s sugar cane fields, says a report released Thursday by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

From 5,000 to 30,000 children, some as young as eight years old, work in sugar cane plantations in the Central American nation, where injuries, particularly severe cuts, are common, according to the report, ‘Turning a Blind Eye: Hazardous Labour in El Salvador’s Sugar Cane Cultivation.’ (more…)

By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun (IPS) - Civil society will be an opposing but cooperative presence at the eleventh United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XI) next week in Sao Paulo, not mere naysayers, according to activists.

Although UNCTAD is critical of the existing globalisation process, “it is still based on the idea that trade should be intensified in order to promote development,” which is an inadequate approach and could entail distortions, says Sergio Haddad, head of the Sao Paulo group Açao Educativa (Education Action). (more…)

Tinashe L.Chimedza

1.0 The poor are guilty.

Below is an excerpt of an article that appeared in The Herald of the 3rd of June 2004. This article exposes the extent to which poverty is now a criminal offence in Zimbabwe punishable by illegal and inhuman detention. The message from the Hospital Authorities I that the poor must go home and die without post-natal hospital services. In analyzing such a brutal treatment of poor rural women and their children one must bear in the mind that this hospital is public institution built and sustained by public resources. Quickly what comes to our minds is what is happening to the taxes that Zimbabweans are paying; add to this the fact that Zimbabweans are some of the blatantly taxed citizens of the world. (more…)

By WAYNE MADSEN

Having just hit the half-century mark age wise, I can’t remember a time when Americans were more apprehensive and frustrated than they are today. Sure, there was Watergate. But thanks to our then working system of checks and balances, the American political system righted itself and did not capsize as some doomsayers predicted. After Richard Nixon’s resignation, the newly-sworn in President, Gerald Ford, said America’s national nightmare was over. Unlike 1974, 2004’s nightmare ­ called the George W. Bush administration ­ shows no signs of abatement. And for that reason, a majority of Americans with IQs representing a semblance of education are growing increasingly restless. How and when this simmering boil among Americans will overflow is anyone’s guess but the consequences may shock advertising sponsored political pundits, corporate newspaper editors, and bought-and-paid for pollsters. (more…)

THE SOCIAL ECONOMY
A VEHICLE FOR ANOTHER FORM OF INTERNATIONALISATION

Can internationalisation be synonymous with human progress? This is clearly an aspiration increasingly strongly expressed by citizens in both the southern and northern hemispheres. This aspiration has led them to challenge the dominant vision of a form of internationalisation which is just liberal, market-led, capitalistic: it has led them in particular to find concrete solutions to the civil, social and environmental dimensions, or even better, to fuel a new type of economic development. It hardly seems likely that Davos will give rise to such expectations. It is no doubt in Porto Alegre or Bombay that they have been outlined, but just outlined! (more…)

The radicalization of the political specter in the United States is a cause of concern for those who looked to that country as an example of democracy and debate of ideas, based on protestant values and ethics, which after the Second World War brought to life initiatives like the Marshall Plan. Today it is a country growingly divided on sectarian lines. The aligning of the great majority of media with the government viewpoint has created ever-growing initiatives on the Internet, to provide alternative information.
We provide you with one of them, as a source of analysis, for your evaluation.
Roberto Savio

———————————————————————————————
“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-south 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

Sanjay Suri

The World Bank says it will double its loans for renewable energy projects over the next five years, but falls short of the total proposed by the Extractive Industries Review, a study that Bank president James Wolfensohn himself commissioned in 2000.

BONN, Jun (IPS) - The World Bank has proposed doubling of its loans for renewable energy projects over the next five years from the current 200 million dollars a year.

Under the proposal, the World Bank will increase lending by around 20 percent every year until the loans reach about twice the figure by 2009. (more…)

by Anthony Fenton; June 2004

In his seminal text on the subject of destabilization “Grenada: the Struggle Against Destabilization", Chris Searle characterized the essential role of propaganda in this historical context:

“The examples of propaganda destabilization in Guyana under Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party, the media blitz suffered by Allende’s Popular Unity Government in Chile.and the outright war declared upon the Manley government in Jamaica.were cogent examples to [Grenada’s] People’s revolutionary Government of how the imperialist press and its local branches would work against them too.” [1983, p. 60] (more…)

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jun (IPS) - Remembering the early days in June, every year, leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is indeed haunting when innocuous people are made to pay the price for China’s unlamented dead youth and its leaders’ unspoken guilt.

The reprisals still continue after Jun. 4, 1989, while the Chinese government wrestles with the legacy of killing hundreds, or possibly thousands, of unarmed students who were demonstrating for democracy. (more…)

“The War on Terror: Victims Turning Perpetrators”
Commencement Address
Delivered at the Columbia School of International & Public Affairs by George Soros
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City

Today, you are graduating from the School of International & Public Affairs. This ought to be an occasion for celebration. You have successfully completed your studies and you are about to enter the real world. But the real world is a very troubled place and international relations are at the core of our troubles. So it may be appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect on the world you are about to face. (more…)

Analysis - By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun (IPS) - The return to power of India’s Congress party – riding on support from communist parties with whom it shares ideologically similar views – naturally carries with it the diplomatic baggage of the Cold War era, a time India was firmly aligned with the former Soviet Union.

While India’s new foreign minister, Natwar Singh, a career diplomat-turned politician, is charting out a bold new course is said to be pragmatic, he will not be as overanxious to please Washington and its friends as the ousted, right-wing government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). (more…)

By AMY GOODMAN and DAVID GOODMAN

In our new book, The Exception To the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them, we titled one chapter “The Lies of Our Times” to examine how The New York Times coverage on Iraq and its alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction helped lead the country to war. Yesterday, The New York Times, for the first time, raised questions about its own coverage in an 1,100-word editor’s note. Here is an excerpt from our section of the book on the New York Times and Iraq.

“From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” – Andrew H. Card, White House Chief of Staff speaking about the Iraq war P.R. campaign, September 6, 2002 (more…)

Efforts to Get ARVs For Kids Are Still in Their Infancy

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, May (IPS) - When AIDS activists have locked horns with the South African government in recent years, it has often been over the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant women - or adults living with AIDS. The challenges of supplying the medicines to HIV-positive children appear to have received less attention.

That may change as the national programme to provide anti-retrovirals (ARVs) - which became operational earlier this year - gathers momentum. For 14-year-old Sthandiwe Gumede, such change can’t come a moment too soon. (more…)