Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Sep 30 (IPS) - Unless the debts of the poorest African nations are completely forgiven, those countries stand no chance of achieving the world’s development goals by the target date of 2015, says a United Nations report released Thursday. (more…)

Today show
Updated: 1:13 p.m. ET Sept. 30, 2004

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter turns 80-years-old this October. “Today� host Katie Couric recently sat down with Carter in Atlanta, Ga., to talk about the war in Iraq, if he thinks the world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power, and the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

Saddam Hussein and the Iraq elections
Jimmy Carter: “Well, the world is safer without Saddam. Certainly the people of Iraq are better without Saddam. I never have believed that Saddam Hussein was a direct threat to the security of the United States or Great Britain or China or Japan or Australia.â€? (more…)

Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Sep 29 (IPS) - Tired of asking her husband to read soap opera subtitles on TV, Tasia Stanescu decided to learn to read them herself.

Tasia, 29, joined a group of other Roma women in Zanea in eastern Romania in a new reading programme aimed at putting the long-mistreated ethnic group on a more equal footing with Europe’s other peoples. (more…)

By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks
The Washington Post
Updated: 12:30 a.m. ET Sept. 29, 2004

A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.

While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say. (more…)

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 28 (IPS) - Three years of the Bush administration’s ‘’war on terrorism'’ appears to have reduced the appetite of the U.S. public and its leaders for unilateral military engagements, according to a major survey released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).

Indeed, the survey, the latest in a quadrennial series going back to 1974, found that key national-security principles enunciated by President George W Bush since the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon are opposed by strong majorities of both the public and the elite. (more…)

By Emily Wax
The Washington Post
Updated: 5:21 a.m. ET Sept. 28, 2004

EL FASHER, Sudan - As the sun set over this desert camp, Pvt. Lambert Sendegeya, an African Union soldier from Rwanda, popped in a tape of music from his country and launched into a series of leg bends. Lt. Eugene Ruzianda peered from his canvas tent and, removing his green beret, joined the evening exercises.

As they stretched, they lamented their daunting task: protecting 80 African Union military observers who are charged with monitoring a rarely observed cease-fire in Sudan’s strife-torn region of Darfur, an area about the size of France. (more…)

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 27 (IPS) - For Habiba Sarabi, Afghanistan’s minister of women’s affairs, the quest to secure women’s rights in her country remains a daunting task and it begins with fundamentals such as the expression of ‘’gender equality.'’

‘’The words, the idea, are still not common in Afghanistan,'’ Sarabi said in an interview during a recent visit to Thailand. ‘’Many people do not know what gender equality means.'’ (more…)

Freedom Thinking Native Nations Protest the “Dawn of Genocide of Lewis and Clark”

While a stone-faced Thomas Jefferson looks on from atop Mt. Rushmore, modern-day Lewis and Clark wannabes and a few descendants are commemorating Jefferson’s initial plan of cultural genocide, by trekking up the Missouri River through Indian territories.

A large contingency of American Indian resistors are planning to again confront and denounce the on-going celebrations of the Lewis and Clark Commemorative Expedition this weekend at Ft. Pierre, SD. (more…)

Joyce Mulama

NAROK, Kenya, Sep 24 (IPS) - Judy Santeyan and her sister Dorcas Keiwua have been badly mutilated, after being forced by eight persons to undergo unsafe traditional circumcision in Kenya.

Santeyan, 16, and Keiwua, 14, both traumatised, cry whenever they are reminded of the harrowing experience they met in the hands of their butchers Aug. 30. (more…)

There are many in Europe who want to keep Turkey out of the EU because it is large, poor and, most important, because it is Muslim

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Sept. 27 issue - Here’s a quiz: over the past two years, which developing country has undertaken the most dramatic economic, political and social reforms in the world? Some hints: this country has deregulated its economy, simplified its tax code and brought its fiscal house in order, resulting in 8.2 percent growth this year and a 10 percent rise in productivity. It has passed nine packages of major reforms that have reduced the military’s influence in government, enshrined political dissent and religious pluralism, passed strict laws against torture, abolished the death penalty and given substantial rights to a long-oppressed minority. The answer is Turkey. Even if it were not a Muslim country situated in the Middle East (sort of), its performance would be stunning. And yet, thanks to events last week, its long-sought quest to become a full member of the European Union may be thwarted. (more…)

By Mona Zughbi
Reporter
NBC News

As the 2004 presidential election draws near, recent polls indicate a sharp decline in popularity for President Bush among a segment of the population that was pretty equally divided in 2000: the nation’s Arab-American voters.

Recent polls of Arab-American, as well as Muslim voters, demonstrate how the war in Iraq and the ongoing crisis between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East has had a negative effect on a voter demographic that may have helped Bush against Al Gore. (more…)

Stefania Bianchi

Fresh challenges and opportunities for EU development policy will be explored at a critical meeting next week.

BRUSSELS, Sep 23 (IPS) - Fresh challenges and opportunities for EU development policy will be explored at a critical meeting next week.

The issues will come up at a conference in The Hague organised by the Society for International Development (SID), a Rome-based international non-governmental association of individuals and organisations with members and activities in 125 countries. (more…)

Joyce Mulama

The killing remains vivid in their minds. And the deep scars on their bodies will for a long time remind them of the slaughter of their compatriots at a refugee camp in the tiny central African nation of Burundi.

NAIROBI, Sep 21 (IPS) - The killing remains vivid in their minds. And the deep scars on their bodies will for a long time remind them of the slaughter of their compatriots at a refugee camp in the tiny central African nation of Burundi. (more…)

Leonardo Boff

There are many factors that led to the war against Iraq: economic (oil), political (world hegemony), ideological (to do globalization following Northamerican molds) and others. One, I believe, is like the tread of a collar that sustains all the others. It is the mystical vision of President Bush and of his closest advisors. That vision is sustained by two cornerstones of the Northamerican cultural tradition: manifest destiny and civil religion. (more…)

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Sep 20 (IPS) - Hurricane Ivan, the incredibly powerful storm that killed at least 120 people in the Caribbean and southern United States, may be a harbinger of the Earth’s hotter future, say experts.

“As the world warms, we expect more and more intense tropical hurricanes and cyclones,” said James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University. (more…)

Five years after Nato’s attack on Yugoslavia, its administration in Kosovo is pushing through mass privatisation

Neil Clark
Tuesday September 21, 2004
The Guardian

‘Wars, conflict - it’s all business,” sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is already well under way in a part of the world where B52s were not so long ago dropping bombs in another “liberation” mission. (more…)

Report of the UN Secretary-General on the Proposals of the High Level Panel on Civil Society

This report has been prepared in Response to the report of the Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations–Civil Society Relations (Cardoso Report). (more…)

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Sep 20 (IPS) - Climate control is a good idea, but it can also be good business. Companies can make profit and do the world a favour, or so British companies are being told.

That message went out loud from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to a business gathering in London last week. The audience of business leaders said something just by listening; Blair was not addressing environmentalists. He saw businessmen in a position to actually do something to control climate change. (more…)

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Sep 17 (IPS) - Two high-profile envoys of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, have arrived in China amidst hopes that their visit could lead to a substantive dialogue with the Chinese government after tentative behind-the-scenes contacts in recent months.

The Dalai Lama is said to seek assurances from Beijing that it would not usurp his authority in appointing religious figures and interpreting religious texts. At 68, and in exile for 45 years, the Tibetan leader also wants China to allow him to return to his homeland. (more…)

As Iraqi frustration mounts over sovereignty, Americans have a place to dance and eat pizza

By Scott Johnson
Newsweek

Sept. 20 issue - President George W. Bush and his advisers like to say that sovereignty has been returned to the Iraqis. But the heart of the Iraqi capital, where the symbols of power are most concentrated, belongs to America. Enclosed inside a maze of blast walls, protected by Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters, the 10 square kilometers of the Green Zone contain some of Baghdad’s finest real estate—the local equivalent of the White House, the Washington Monument and other prime sites in downtown Washington. Many Iraqis, including senior ministers and the mayor of Baghdad, want the Americans to move out of town. But the Americans won’t budge, and don’t have to. (more…)

Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, Sep 16 (IPS) - �No More Bush�: it has become a slogan echoed with increasing frequency, on signs and banners carried by protesters and painted on walls throughout Latin America.

Today, with the U.S. presidential election drawing near, this sentiment has come to be shared by the majority of the region’s politicians, intellectuals, and even heads of state. (more…)

“GET ON THE BUS” for the MILLION WORKER MARCH, OCT. 17, 2004, WASHINGTON, D.C.!

· JOBS & WORKERS RIGHTS - NOT WAR
· BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ!
· ORGANIZE BUSES - BUSES - BUSES

Danny Glover, actor:
“We must keep marching … before the elections and after the elections … until we win justice for the homeless, the unemployed and we bring the troops home now … Come out on Oct. 17th.” (more…)

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Sep 15 (IPS) - Developed countries are failing to live up to their commitments to fund sexual and reproductive health care leaving poorer countries to pick up the bill, says a new UN report released Wednesday.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report titled ‘The Cairo Consensus at Ten: Population, Reproductive Health and the Global Effort to End Poverty’ says poor countries themselves are providing around 40 percent of the money spent on reproductive health programmes and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. (more…)

By: Eva Golinger - Venezuelafoia.info

New York, September, 2004—Documents recently obtained from the U.S. Department of State under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by www.venezuelafoia.info demonstrate that more than $5 million annually during the past two years was given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to various organizations in Venezuela, many of which are aligned with the opposition. One of the key groups collaborating with USAID is Súmate, the organization that promoted the recall referendum campaign against President Hugo Chávez and is now rejecting the results that have been certified by the most credible international observers and even by the U.S. government. Súmate, despite its numerous undemocratic positions and actions, has also been a recipient of U.S. government funds from the National Endowment for Democracy in 2003. (more…)

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Sep 14 (IPS) - Debate about the role played by mercenaries in Africa has been revived in recent months, following the arrest and subsequent sentencing of 68 men accused of plotting to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema: president of the tiny, oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea.

The trial of the men took place in Zimbabwe, where they were arrested in March at the airport in Harare. Although it initially appeared that the men would face coup charges, they were ultimately tried for lesser crimes that included the possession of dangerous weapons. (more…)

Its pro-Arab diplomacy isn’t helping in the wake of a kidnapping in Iraq

By John Rossant
Business Week
Updated: 4:00 a.m. ET Sept. 14, 2004

When two French journalists were abducted in Iraq by a shadowy Islamist group on Aug. 20, France’s initial reaction was consternation. How could this have happened to a country that did so much to oppose U.S.-led war plans in Iraq – and has espoused so many Arab causes? But then France swung impressively into action, calling in its Middle Eastern chips. Almost immediately, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat, Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi – and even radical movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad – were all appealing for the hostages’ release. It was a vivid reminder of the time and effort France has put into constructing a web of relations across the Mideast. “You didn’t see that kind of support for Blair or Berlusconi,” notes Francois Heisbourg, director of Paris-based think tank Foundation for Strategic Research, referring to the hostage crises faced by both leaders. (more…)

In Rwanda, CWS (Church World Services) operates development programs and assistance for returning refugees.

Since 1994, CWS had been actively involved in providing assistance to the refugees in Tanzania and Zaire.

Hunger in Kenya
Kenya is facing mass hunger due to a severe drought in the country’s northern and eastern regions. Some 2.5 million people are affected, and the drought is worsening. Church World Service has already provided 20 metric tons of beans to two communities in southeast Kenya, and plans to provide beans, as well, to people in need in northeast Kenya near the Somali border. The beans are part of the assistance CWS is planning for 16,000 families over a three- month period until the next harvest. Additional funds are needed to help provide food for the CWS-supported families in drought-stricken Kenya. (more…)

Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep (IPS) - Three years after al Qaeda-commandeered planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon, the leaked ruminations of U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seem more pertinent than ever.

â€?Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror,â€? he wrote in a memo to his top staff 11 months ago. â€?Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?â€? (more…)

By: Bart Jones - National Catholic Reporter

Oscar Rodríguez had left his new part-time home of West Palm Beach, Fla., and was on an airplane headed for his homeland, Venezuela, with an urgent mission: to vote President Hugo Chávez out of office in a recall referendum.

The owner of a chain of furniture stores in Venezuela, Rodríguez believed the leftist firebrand Chávez was destroying the country. In the last two years, Rodríguez shut down 20 of his 50 stores, and then moved his wife and two daughters to Florida because he feared for their safety. Now he commutes between the two countries every week. (more…)

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Sep 10 (IPS) - The so-called �abortion ship� belonging to the Dutch pro-choice foundation �Women on Waves� (WoW) is on its way home after spending two weeks in international waters off the Portuguese coast.

The â€?Borndiepâ€?, a converted tugboat, set off Friday for the Netherlands, the Portuguese news agency LUSA reported. The crew, led by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the head of WoW, had been planning to stay until Sunday but decided to leave early. (more…)

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 8 (IPS) - Adding their voice to a steadily growing clamour, eight retired generals and admirals have called on President George W. Bush to appoint a bipartisan, independent commission to conduct a comprehensive investigation of U.S. detention and interrogation practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In a letter to Bush, the former flag officers, most of whom reached the top ranks of their services’ legal divisions, said investigations to date, including those headed by two former Pentagon chiefs and that released their findings last month, were too limited in their mandate and could not be considered truly independent. (more…)

Roger Burbach & Jim Tarbell

Bush declared in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention that he is fighting terrorism abroad “not for pride, not for power,” but to protect American lives. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are wars of empire.

The Kerry campaign is floundering in part because it buys into Bush’s rational for conflict abroad. Instead of recognizing that the United States is embroiled in an ever-deepening morass in the Gulf because it is acting as a neo-colonial power, Kerry asserts that Bush has bungled the war due to incompetence, mismanagement and arrogance. The situation can be righted if only the United States involves the United Nations and its Europeans allies in a more astute application of military force. (more…)

Leonardo Boff,

On September 7th, it is 20 years since I sat in the same small chair where Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno also sat, in the Palace of The Holy Office (former Inquisition), in Rome, to defend the opinions expressed in my book, «Church: Charisma and Power». To be asked to appear before the highest doctrinal body of the Church is not an everyday event in the biography of a theologian. As the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, said, it certainly is memorable -and at the same time heartrending- to embody at least for an instant, the reason and the destiny of a whole form of ecclesiastic thinking and action with the poor. (more…)

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 8 (IPS) - If the people of the rest of the world could vote in November’s U.S. elections, Democratic Sen. John Kerry would beat U.S. President George W. Bush in a landslide.

That is the finding of a poll conducted by GlobeScan Incorporated and its affiliates during July and August of nearly 35,000 people in 35 countries from all regions of the world. (more…)

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Sep 7 (IPS) - Cutthroat competition at Chinese universities and a bleak labour market are driving thousands of Chinese students to buy higher education abroad, making the country the biggest source of foreign students in the world.

But as cash-rich Chinese students are pouring into foreign universities, questions are being raised whether obtained degrees reflect real academic achievements or an easy way for universities to boost their coffers. (more…)

By Emily Wax
The Washington Post
Updated: 3:59 a.m. ET Sept. 7, 2004

FURAWIYA, Sudan - The greasy, stinking Land Cruiser, with its screeching fan belt and goatskin water jug swinging off the back, beat a fast pace across the desert in rebel-held Darfur, until it slammed to a jarring stop.

Riding on the roof was Issac, an energetic sharpshooter from the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA). He had spotted the target. The Land Cruiser, haphazardly camouflaged with black spray paint, rested quietly for a moment. Issac looked down the sight of his AK-47 rifle. He fired, the crackle of gunshots echoing through the silent desert. (more…)

By David Ansen
Newsweek

Sept. 13 issue - If talk radio and Fox TV are the preferred media of the right, film has emerged this year as the left’s not-so-secret weapon. There’s never been an election in which political documentaries played a significant role—until now.

Michael Moore’s incendiary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ packed movie houses, but most of these new documentaries are meant for home viewing; theatrical distribution is just the icing on the cake. The major movie companies won’t touch these films: Disney famously refused to release “Fahrenheit,” and last week Warner Bros. announced it was pulling an antiwar documentary David O. Russell made to accompany the re-release of “Three Kings” both in theaters and on DVD, claiming it was “inappropriate” in a political season. And Sony got cold feet about the DVD of “The Control Room,” a documentary on Al-Jazeera that is implicitly unsympathetic to the war in Iraq; Lions Gate will bring it out instead. (more…)

Peyman Pejman

How does a journalist report from a country like Iraq where the dynamics of the situation and the danger level change so rapidly? If you are a first-timer, don’t be a Rambo, suggests IPS correspondent Peyman Pejman.

BAGHDAD, Sep 6 (IPS) - How does a journalist report from a country like Iraq where the dynamics of the situation and the danger level change so rapidly?

That question is put often to journalists. There is no simple answer, but the following words come to mind: flexibility, caution, experience, judgment, and calm. (more…)

ANALYSIS
By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC
Updated: 11:55 p.m. ET Sept. 1, 2004

NEW YORK - “Are we winning the war against al-Qaida?�

If the Republican National Convention were a coroner’s inquest or a criminal trial, instead of a made-for-television spectacle, then Dick Cheney might well be called as an expert witness to answer that question.

After all, as a former secretary of defense, Cheney knows in intimate detail the nuts and bolts of Hellfire missiles, asymmetric warfare, and the plutonium used in nuclear weapons. (more…)

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Sep 3 (IPS) - Obsessed with image building and sport triumphs, China has pledged to host the best ever Olympics in 2008; but the realities of increased international scrutiny over the next four years is beginning to dawn upon the communist government.

Obsessed with image building and sport triumphs, China has pledged to host the best ever Olympics in 2008. (more…)

Hugh Muir
Thursday September 2, 2004

The Guardian

A British Council official who assumed a pseudonym to write Sunday Telegraph articles attacking “the black heart of Islam” has been sacked.
The government-funded body, which recently commissioned a handbook on Islam “to prevent ignorant comments about Muslims being made in [the] national press", said yesterday it had dismissed Harry Cummins, a senior press officer, after an internal investigation.

The author’s identity was unknown to all but the Sunday Telegraph’s executives until it was revealed by the Guardian’s diarist, Marina Hyde, four weeks ago, prompting a flood of complaints to the council from Muslim groups. (more…)

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 2 (IPS) - As the 53-member African Union (AU) prepares to bolster its peacekeeping force in Sudan tenfold, U.N. chief Kofi Annan is appealing for funds, equipment and other support to sustain the body mandated to stem the rising number of atrocities and killings in violence-prone Darfur Province.

But senior U.N. officials and representatives of humanitarian aid agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are sceptical as to whether African countries have the economic and military resources needed to collectively mount a major operation – and whether western nations will fill the gap. (more…)

Diana Cariboni

LONDON, Aug 31 (IPS) - “I think Islam can be very liberating for women if truly followed,” said young Palestinian activist Rana Abu Ghazaleh in an interview with IPS on the conflict in the Israeli-occupied territories, the rise in fundamentalism, and women’s rights.

Ghazaleh, 24, lives in east Jerusalem ("the capital of Palestine,” she clarifies). She has a degree in architecture and city planning from Birzeit University in Ramallah, which she earned despite the continuous Israeli roadblocks, in which she faced the risk of being killed and spent hour after hour just waiting to be allowed through. (more…)

Europe is no utopia but, using Britain as a bridge, it can share its global vision with the US

Jeremy Rifkin
Wednesday September 1, 2004

The Guardian

In a deeply polarised America, where virtually every value has become fair game for criticism, there is one that remains sacrosanct: the American dream - the idea that anyone, regardless of the circumstances to which they’re born, can make of their lives as they choose, by dint of diligence, determination, and hard work. The problem is that one-third of all Americans, according to a recent national survey, no longer even believe in it. Some have lost faith because they worked hard all their lives only to find hardship and despair. Others question the very dream itself, arguing that its underlying tenets have become less relevant in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. For the first time, the American dream no longer serves as the rallying point for everyone in America.
Meanwhile, a new European dream is beginning to capture the world’s imagination. That dream has now been codified in the form of a draft constitution and Europeans are currently debating whether or not to ratify its contents and accept its underlying values as the core of a new Europe. (more…)