COMMENTARY

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

TEHRAN - Without taking account of dissenting voices, particularly by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which now includes some 115 states, the United Nations’ chief, Kofi Annan, has fully endorsed a hand-picked panel’s sweeping proposals for changing the UN structure, thus setting the stage for heated debates in the coming months leading up to the September UN gathering in New York.
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Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Mar 31 (IPS) - Muslims and Catholics do not see eye-to-eye on many issues. But when it comes to practices which they fear will allow the encroachment of unacceptable secular values - abortion, gay marriage and condom use - they quickly close ranks to form a united front against the threat.
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Here in the West, poverty means a bad life. But poverty in the Third World means death.

By Fareed Zakaria
Editor, Newsweek International
Newsweek

Here in the West, poverty means a bad life. But poverty in the Third World means death.

March 28 issue - Paul Wolfowitz’s appointment might be a very good thing for the World Bank, but for a reason exactly the opposite to the one his supporters believe. The deputy Defense Secretary’s champions are certain that he will take over the bank and give it a thorough overhaul. In fact, it might be the bank that will change Mr. Wolfowitz. At least that’s the hope.
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Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 30 (IPS) - The rumblings spreading through South-east Asian capitals against Burma’s military regime is taking on the quality of a long overdue confession - namely that a political principle considered sacroscant by the region’s governments has failed.

The principle that stands exposed is the idea of ‘’non-interference,'’ by which the 10 members who belong to the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to avoid commenting about the domestic political affairs of a fellow member.
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William Fisher

NEW YORK, Mar 29 (IPS) - Despite a rising chorus of condemnation from journalists and media critics, the George W. Bush administration shows no signs of abandoning its distribution of taxpayer-funded “news” to U.S. newspapers, radio and television stations.

Free press advocates are up in arms about what they say is the covert dissemination of propaganda by government agencies.
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McDonald’s grabs a piece of the apple pie

In an effort to escape its junk-food image, McDonald’s, the company that built its success on fries and burgers, now buys more apples than any restaurant chain in the US. This also gives it enormous power over growers - which could lead to fewer varieties and fewer small producers. Gary Younge on how the golden arches could revolutionise an entire industry
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America, Wake Up to the European Dream

By Jeremy Rifkin

Europe: We love to vacation there, if we can afford it. It’s the cultural mecca many of us flock to, to awaken our senses and feed our souls. But Europe as a political entity? To Americans, it’s just a creaky old set of governments presiding over a moribund economy marked by inflexible labor policies, bloated welfare bureaucracies and an aging, pampered populace. It’s the state of Eurosclerosis, right?
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Economic Disparity Spells Disaster for Children

A. D. McKenzie

SIEM REAP, Cambodia, Mar 28 (IPS) - The East Asia-Pacific region has experienced unprecedented economic growth in the past 14 years, despite several crises, but the increasing disparity between and within countries means that not everyone is sharing in the prosperity. Those being left behind include the most vulnerable - the region’s 600 million children.

The growing gaps in society threaten many of them with malnutrition, exclusion from education, ill-health and exploitation.
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Leonardo Boff: Man cannot repeat the destiny of the dinosaur
Sergio Ferrari *

Adital -
Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff says, “If there is an essential challenge for the human being in this historical period, it is to save the ‘common house,’ the Earth.”

If there is an essential challenge for the human being in the present historical period, it is to save the “common house,” the Earth. This implicitly means to free the human being from a system that “paradoxically–and this is new–has created all the mechanisms for its own self destruction.” So says Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, with the simplicity of the teacher and the clarity of the militant, in this exclusive interview, where the present and the alternative-future of the world are not omitted.
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by M.Junaid Alam; Left Hook; March 2005

The blurring of political distinctions between America’s two major political parties, achieved through Democratic acquiescence to Republican ideas on every major national question, has prompted some progressives to conclude that Democrats and Republicans are now essentially identical. This conflation is a dangerous error: it is too kind an evaluation of the Democratic Party. For to view Democrats as mere Republican clones is to discount the far more pernicious role they play in encouraging a politically conservative framework that traps and demoralizes many Americans into adopting right-wing positions in the first place. (more…)

Mohammed Amin Abdulqadir

ARBIL, Mar (IPS) - Close to two months after the announcement of election results, Shia and Kurd leaders say an agreement over the formation of a new government is imminent. (more…)

By Anatoly Medetsky
Moscow Times

The Kyrgyz opposition might have hoped to start a velvet revolution by protesting parliamentary elections, but President Askar Akayev’s decision to use force appears to have brought the country to the verge of civil war. (more…)

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar (IPS) - A major drive has begun to counter the alarming spread of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, deputy counter narcotics minister Dawood Daoud told IPS in an interview Wednesday. (more…)

Anil Netto

Selling water rights to private institutions and then having people buy them back again is an issue that keeps rearing its ugly head at every World Water Day, which falls on Mar. 22. (more…)

Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
Progreso Weekly, March 2004

After 9/11, Administration neo-cons offered a “noble lieâ€? to sell the public on the need to invade and occupy Iraq (The Iraqis will shower our troops with flowers and kisses). The same group has invented a new “virtuous prevaricationâ€? to build support for an attack on Syria. Ignoring recent testimony by CIA Director Porter J. Goss that “Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadistsâ€? (Washington Post, February 17, 2005), this group of high U.S. officials in Defense, State and the Vice President’s office have organized a “get Syriaâ€? movement. (more…)

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Mar (IPS) - Civil society groups are calling for a change of course in the European Union’s approach to water and sanitation in developing countries. (more…)

Walden Bello
Focus on the Global South, March 2005

(Adapted from the author’s speeches during an anti-war tour of Italy, Feb. 22-27, 2005)

Europe and the world have witnessed over the last few days the unfolding of a diplomatic offensive that is designed to convince Europeans, “to put Iraq behind them.” The effort is, in fact, geared to persuade not only Europeans but also the world that with the recent elections in Iraq, there is a new game that must be played, and the name of that game is democracy. (more…)

by Greg Palast; BBC Newsnight ; March 17, 2005

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq’s oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC’s Newsnight has revealed.
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Tito Drago

MADRID, Mar (IPS) - Changes to the current agricultural policy of the European Union would benefit not only the world’s poor nations – and thereby help achieve the Millennium Development Goals – but also the majority of European farmers, who are short-changed by the system now in place.
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by Dilip Hiro; TomDispatch; March 2005

The United States flaunts the banner of democracy in the Middle East only when that advances its economic, military, or strategic interests. The history of the past six decades shows that whenever there has been conflict between furthering democracy in the region and advancing American national interests, U.S. administrations have invariably opted for the latter course. Furthermore, when free and fair elections in the Middle East have produced results that run contrary to Washington’s strategic interests, it has either ignored them or tried to block the recurrence of such events.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar (IPS) - If sending arch-unilateralist John Bolton to the United Nations sent a message of contempt for multilateralism, what does U.S. President George W. Bush mean by sending that ardent advocate of â€?hard powerâ€?, Paul Wolfowitz, to the planet’s single biggest purveyor of â€?soft powerâ€?, the World Bank?
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THE NEW YORK TIMES - March 2005
By DOUGLAS JEHL

ASHINGTON, March - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar (IPS) - The Commission for Africa report outlines at length what the world must do for Africa and Africa for itself. The report also sets out what Britain could be doing for Africa, and is not.
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Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Mar (IPS) - China’s parliament adopted a highly controversial anti-secession bill Monday that aims to curb Taiwan’s moves toward independence by threatening the use of force.
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Boris Kagarlitsky
The Moscow Times, March 2005

On his recent travels through Europe, U.S. President George W. Bush tried to put his best face forward. He was as polite and well mannered as he could manage. In Paris, he listened attentively to President Jacques Chirac speaking in French. In Eastern Europe, he recalled the various velvet revolutions. He commented on human rights to human rights defenders but did not deign to mention them when he met with President Vladimir Putin.
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Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Mar (IPS) - Violence in Iraq claimed the lives of 23 journalists and 16 media support workers in 2004, making it the most deadly year for press freedom in a decade, according to the annual report of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
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March 2005
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News
By DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

“Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,” a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of “another success” in the Bush administration’s “drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it “one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.” A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration’s determination to open markets for American farmers.
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Legionaries of Christ Launch Conservative ‘Megamission’

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mar 11 (IPS) - Some 50,000 followers of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative Catholic congregation founded in Mexico and viewed with favour by the Vatican, will set out later this month to distribute donations and doctrine to the poor in 31 different countries – while fervently striving to defend their founder, accused of pedophilia. (more…)

TNI-News - Transnational Institute.

The US’s multi-level diplomatic game is running into paradox. First, we had President Bush and his Secretary of State Rice’s diplomatic tour of Europe, where they tried to assuage tense relations with Europe over the war on Iraq.
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Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar (IPS) - Just one week ago, conventional wisdom both here and in European capitals was that President George W. Bush’s second term would see a modest turn toward multilateralism and a new readiness to compromise on key issues with traditional U.S. allies.
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WITNESS FOR JUSTICE # 0206
March 2005 - By Bernice Powell Jackson

Last March 1, I was in the Marshall Islands, tiny atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Bravo test. On March 1, 1954, the United States dropped a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was one of 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Marshall Islands by the U.S. between 1946 and 1958. But while many of the islanders had been evacuated in previous tests, on March 1 the people of four tiny atolls were not. In fact, they were not evacuated until for four days after the massive explosion whose radioactive cloud spread over an area about the size of New Jersey.
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Sonny Inbaraj

BANGKOK, Mar (IPS) - Press freedom in the world’s newest nation, East Timor, is under attack with a major daily newspaper being harassed by the government after it reported on famine deaths in the island.
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By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade and Stephen Castle in Brussels
March 2005

The Independent

The fallout from the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s has prompted the resignation of Kosovo’s Prime Minister and dealt a blow to Croatia’s hopes of starting EU membership talks this month.
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María Cecilia Espinosa

SANTIAGO, Mar (IPS) - Although most countries of Latin America have made strides towards achieving gender equality, progress has been slow, and at this pace it will take at least 50 years to reach the targets agreed in 1995 at the Fourth U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. (more…)

THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL
March 2005

One of the biggest nonsecrets in Washington these days is the Central Intelligence Agency’s top-secret program for sending terrorism suspects to countries where concern for human rights and the rule of law don’t pose obstacles to torturing prisoners. For months, the Bush administration has refused to comment on these operations, which make the United States the partner of some of the world’s most repressive regimes. (more…)

Analysis By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar (IPS) - In a breathtaking victory for right-wing hawks, U.S. President George W. Bush has nominated Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton to become his next ambassador to the United Nations. (more…)

Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian

Ukraine is the right way to spread freedom, Iraq the wrong way. Has this lesson come too late for Iran? (more…)

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Mar (IPS) - Question: Should poverty reduction be at the heart of the European Union’s development policy?

Although an affirmative response may seem obvious, European citizens are being cautioned that the answer is not as clear-cut as it first seems. (more…)

by Friends of the Western Sahara; Friends of the Western Sahara; March 2005

This week activists from twenty countries opened up a campaign against the U.S. energy corporation Kerr-McGee, which is colluding with the Moroccan government to exploit the occupied Western Sahara. (more…)

Peyman Pejman

BEIRUT, Mar (IPS) - Ever since former prime minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a car explosion last week, two pillars of opposition have stood out.

The first is the opposition members of parliament, a coalition of diverse groups that has vowed to carry on the fight till the complete departure of the Syrian military and intelligence apparatus from Lebanon.

But the second group is the one that the opposition could not succeed without. This is people power – mostly youth power - in a continuing and forceful expression of dissatisfaction with Syrian involvement in Lebanon. (more…)

Brussels - The European Commission has reportedly declined the European Parliament’s request for a restart of the legislative process on the controversial software patent directive. The EP had taken a three-tiered decision to ask the Commission to begin the process from scratch: On 2 February, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament near-unanimously decided to make this request. On 17 February, the EP’s Conference of Presidents (i.e., the group chairs) unanimously backed that decision. A week later, on 24 February, the plenary of the EP reinforced this by unanimously “inviting” the Commission to review its proposal for a software patent directive although there was no more formal requirement for the plenary to vote on this subject. (more…)

by Ray McGovern; TomDispatch; March 2005

“‘This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.’
“(Short pause)
“‘And having said that, all options are on the table.’
“Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: ‘(Laughter).’”

(The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin on George Bush’s February 22 press conference)

For a host of good reasons – the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran’s ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters – the notion that the Bush administration would mount a “preemptive” air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective includes overthrowing Iran’s government again, as in 1953 – this time under the rubric of “regime change.” (more…)

Raúl Pierri

MONTEVIDEO, Feb (IPS) - Three Latin Americans could walk away with an Oscar on Sunday, two of them for the film â€?Motorcycle Diariesâ€?, about the youth of legendary Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto â€?Chéâ€? Guevara. (more…)

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Mar (IPS) - The European Commission said it wants to see an extension of smoking bans across the European Union member states as it launched a 72 million euro (95 million dollar) anti-smoking campaign Tuesday. (more…)

by Uri Avnery; March 2005

Seven words uttered by President Bush in Brussels have not been paid the attention they deserve.

He called for the establishment of “a democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity” in the West Bank, and then added: “A state on scattered territories will not work.” (more…)