Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - Stephen Lewis, the U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, invariably returns to New York with half a dozen harrowing stories of death and devastation in a continent ravaged by the spreading disease. (more…)

Honolulu, HI – A group of nonviolent protesters have entered Bachman
Hall, the University of Hawaii administration building, and have
demanded an end to the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC)
project, which would establish a secret military research facility to
conduct Navy weapons development. The group – consisting of students,
faculty, and concerned community members – has prepared a formal
statement of legal, moral, health, cultural, and political reasons why
UARC should be dropped. They have prepared a formal letter to the US
Navy for Interim President David McClain to sign stating that UH is
withdrawing its UARC application, because of the substantial public
concern over increased secret military research. The nonviolent
protesters have stated that they will not leave Bachman Hall until Mr.
McClain publicly declares the end of UARC. (more…)

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Apr (IPS) - European Union member states must â€?take meaningful stepsâ€? to build a global partnership for development, says a new report from a network of Catholic development groups. (more…)

By GINGER THOMPSON
April 2005

ILLAHERMOSA, Mexico, - The legal proceedings that threatened to knock Mexico’s most popular politician off next year’s presidential ballot and to plunge this country into turmoil seemed to come to a sudden end on Wednesday night, when a beleaguered President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of his attorney general and a review of the government’s case against the politician. (more…)

An Unauthorised Report on the Outcomes of the 48th CND Session
TNI Drug Policy Briefing - April 2005

The US pressure on the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to withdraw support from needle exchange and other harm reduction approaches backfired at the 48th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) from 7-11 March in Vienna. During the thematic debate on the issue delegates from around the globe stood up to defend the overwhelming evidence that harm reduction measures are effective against the spread of HIV/AIDS. In a marked shift from previous years, the European Union presented a common position on this issue, and Latin American, African and Asian countries almost unanimously showed support for harm reduction programmes. One after the other explained that they implement needle exchange and substitution treatment projects, convinced by the available evidence and lessons learned from other countries that a humane and pragmatic response to injecting drug use -as a major triggering factor in the HIV/AIDS crisis in many countries- is the only effective way to reverse the epidemic. (more…)

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - The 53-member Geneva-based Human Rights Commission (HRC) has come under fire for accommodating abusive governments as its elected members. But proposals to fix it are drawing mixed reaction. (more…)

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr (IPS) - The Brazilian minister of culture, renowned singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, has a new passion: the creative industries, which he believes can play a key role in boosting the economies of developing countries. (more…)

Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic
vote. Can American democracy survive their shared medieval vision?

By Sidney Blumenthal*, April 2005, Salon.com.

President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican
City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke
from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help
him win the election. “Not all the American bishops are with me,” he
complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with
the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against
abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season. (more…)

Sanjay Suri

GLENEAGLES, Scotland, Apr (IPS) - The long and winding road from Scotland’s capital Edinburgh to Gleneagles where the G8 summit will be held in July was never built to carry a couple of hundred thousand demonstrators over the space of a day or two. (more…)

Leonardo Boff
Theologian

The elevation of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Pope of the Catholic Church has brought satisfaction to some, and concern to others. Two factors cause these concerns: his style of governing the Church, and his basic attitude vis-a-vis today’s pluralistic world.
As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for more than twenty years, and in his homily to the Cardinals before entering the Conclave, Benedict XVI made it clear that he will continue the line of his predecessor. (more…)

By Howard Fineman
MSNBC contributor

War over role of faith in public life could intensify

WASHINGTON - The line between religion and politics isn’t clear, but the papacy of Benedict XVI could erase it altogether. Remember the nasty arguments over whether Sen. John Kerry — a Catholic supporter of abortion rights — was entitled to receive Communion? Some American bishops threatened to deny it to him. Well, in retrospect, those were merely opening skirmishes in the bitter war over the role of faith in public life. And the Vatican of this pope will play an out-front, aggressive role.
- (more…)

Richel Dursin

JAKARTA, Apr 22 (IPS) - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday made an emotional plea to Asian and African leaders urging them to be bold and support his push to reform the world body, which has been mired in scandals and plagued by corruption.
- (more…)

‘He Was Very Angry’
A U.S. ambassador is the latest to charge that John Bolton has engaged in some ‘undiplomatic’ behavior.

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

April 20 - President George W. Bush’s former ambassador to South Korea has contacted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to report two confrontations he had with United Nations Ambassador-designate John Bolton, NEWSWEEK has learned. And Senate investigators are raising more questions about how Bolton and his staff handled sensitive intelligence matters while serving as under-secretary of state for arms control and international security.
– (more…)

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Apr 20 (IPS) - Three influential civil rights groups charged Wednesday that border control tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security discriminate against U.S. citizens solely on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
- (more…)

Elisa Marincola

ROME, Apr (IPS) - All the bells in Rome were pealing as cardinals elected Joseph Ratzinger the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Ratzinger, who will be known as Pope Benedict XVI, turned 78 three days back. It was quite a week for him as he appeared at the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and gave his first blessing, the Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world). (more…)

MAJURO (AFP) - A US study has found that the number of cancers caused by hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands is set to double, more than half a century after the tests were conducted in the tiny Pacific nation. (more…)

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now to be known as Pope Benedict XVI, is the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church - and of 1.1 billion faithful around the globe.

The charismatic John Paul II, who died on Apr. 2, will be a tough act to follow, though the 78-year-old Ratzinger was a close friend and confidant of his predecessor and is seen as a symbol of continuity in terms of their shared conservative views.

As head for more than two decades of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was once the Holy Office of the Inquisition, Ratzinger silenced dissidents, such as clergy who preached Liberation Theology, and drafted some of the more right-wing positions of John Paul’s papacy, condemning contraceptive methods, the recognition of homosexual rights and the ordination of women as priests. (more…)

Ferry Biedermann

GAZA, Apr (IPS) - Two dates in the Middle East that once seemed set in stone are now being challenged as Israel considers delaying its Gaza disengagement and Palestinians mull over postponing their elections. (more…)

April 2005
By Naomi Klein

Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration’s doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate “post-conflict” plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries “at the same time,” each lasting “five to seven years.” (more…)

By Damien Millet and Eric Toussaint*

The conservative offensive within the multinational institutions has scored a few points in recent months. People like us who are trying to put across a different logic cannot afford to rest yet awhile. On the other hand, such frustrations nourish the fighting spirit. - (more…)

Eunice Mafundikwa

HARARE, Apr (IPS) - Emily Muronda, 55, spent seven months in hospital in 2003. She had been down with AIDS-related complications, which saw her in and out of the hospital, that year. Muronda’s ailments included tuberculosis, severe vaginal thrush and pneumonia. (more…)

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - When U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was asked about the sluggish flow of concrete aid to tsunami-affected countries more than three months after the massive devastation, he told reporters: â€?Pledges are good, but cash is better.â€? (more…)

Saul Landau and Sarah Anderson
Foreign Policy in Focus

On February 25, Riggs Bank agreed to pay $9 million into a fund for victims of Augusto Pinochet to settle a case over the bank’s role in hiding the former dictator’s ill-gotten gains. This latest development in the decades-long fight to hold Pinochet accountable for his crimes stands in stark contrast to the twisted human rights rhetoric – and record – of the U.S. government. (more…)

Zoltán Dujisin

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine, Apr (IPS) - Almost 20 years have passed since the world’s worst nuclear accident, but Chernobyl continues to bring back traumatizing memories for many Ukrainians. (more…)

The United Nations and Harm Reduction
TNI Drug Policy Briefing

Conflicting views within the UN system on harm reduction have become a major concern. Consistency in messages is crucial especially where it concerns joint global programmes such as the efforts to slow down the HIV/AIDS epidemic; efforts in which harm reduction practices like needle exchange and substitution treatment play a pivotal role. Longer existing tensions reached a new peak after a meeting between the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, and US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), Robert Charles, on November 10, 2004. At the meeting the US government - the biggest donor of UNODC - threatened Costa to cut funding to UNODC unless he assured that UNODC would abstain from any involvement in or expression of support for harm reduction, including needle exchange programmes. (more…)

Adam Morrow

CAIRO, Apr (IPS) - In another reflection of warming diplomatic ties, Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom - a member of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party - visited Cairo Tuesday to hold discussions with President Hosni Mubarak. (more…)

Source: Third World Network
Anthony James

The World Bank anticipates that poverty will continue to worsen in the majority of the world for at least the next generation. In the rural north of Guatemala, in Central America, 75% of families in Fray Bartolome de las Casas (Fray) know what this feels like - 85% live in ‘extreme’ poverty (on less than US$1/day). A land of lush tropical green, it rains eight to nine months of the year, yet Fray also finds itself in chronic drought. (more…)

Bob Burton

CANBERRA, Apr (IPS) - Trade liberalisation of basic foods such as rice could have potentially catastrophic impacts unless the World Trade Organisation allows developing countries to determine their own policies on agricultural reform, warns a leading aid agency. (more…)

Sergio Ferrari *
Adital

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. (more…)

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Apr (IPS) - Official development assistance rose to record levels last year, but they will have to be improved substantially next year for donor countries to meet their commitments. (more…)

Leonardo Boff,
Theologian

John Paul II was a man of deep faith. He believed in everything that makes up the ecclesiastic galaxy, from the holy water, the relics, the saints, the holy places up to the Holy Trinity. He assumed in its totality, without restrictions, Catholic metaphysics (the way in which Catholics understand and organize the world.) He believed and made his own everything the Church declares his job as Pope to be, as described in the first page of the Annual Pontifical:«bishop of Rome, vicar of Jesus Christ, successor of the prince of the Apostles, high pontiff of the universal Church, patriarch of Occident, primate of Italy, metropolitan archbishop of the Roman province, sovereign of the State of the Vatican City and servant of the servants of God». (more…)

Jeppe Hirslund Wohlert

NEW YORK, Apr (IPS) - Hawa Aden Mohamed was only eight when she experienced the brutal pain of circumcision. Performed in a small Somali village, the operation was carried out without anesthesia, using only basic cutting tools and thorns. (more…)

The People?s Health Movement and its members work with UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other United Nations? agencies. Our members and constituent organizations were so alarmed to hear of the appointment of Ms. Ann Veneman as the next Executive Director of UNICEF that we have written and are distributing this Letter of Concern calling for a rethinking of both the appointment and the appointment process. If you or your organization would like to sign onto the letter, please read (more…)

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - As expected, the United States has once again raised the politically divisive issue of abortion at a crucial U.N. meeting here, refusing to reaffirm the landmark Programme of Action unanimously adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. (more…)

By DOUGLAS JEHL and STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, April - A former chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research is expected to testify in opposition to John R. Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds hearings on Mr. Bolton next week. (more…)

Sekai Ngara*

HARARE, Apr (IPS) - Supporters of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party look frustrated and helpless following their defeat in the Mar. 31 elections which civil society groups claim were rigged by President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party. (more…)

Jim Lobe

On September 20, 2001, just nine days after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) laid out a consensus agenda for President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism.â€? In addition to military action to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and “capture or killâ€? Osama bin Laden, PNAC called for regime change in Iraq “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,â€? and “appropriate measures of retaliationâ€? against Iran and Syria if they refused to comply with US demands to cut off support for Hizballah. Signed by prominent neo-conservatives and a smattering of liberal interventionists, the letter also called for a cutoff in aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it immediately halted attacks against Israel and a “large increaseâ€? in defense spending in order to prevail in the conflict many of the signers, notably former CIA director James Woolsey and former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, were soon describing as “World War IV.â€? (more…)

Letter regarding John Bolton’s nomination for US Ambassador to the UN for individuals outside the U.S. to send to Karen Hughes, US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, if that is their wish.

Dear Ms. Hughes: (more…)

Stephen Leahy*

BROOKLIN, Canada, Apr (Tierramérica) - Species are going extinct 1,000 times faster than at any time in history, with up to 30 percent of all mammal, bird and amphibian species in danger of disappearing, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (more…)

ROME, Apr (IPS) - Karol Josef Wojtyla was a theatre lover and budding actor in his youth in Poland. He never quite made it as an actor, but since 1978 when he became Pope, the world became his stage. (more…)

By JOE FLINT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 4, 2005
A cable channel recently acquired by an investment group led by Al
Gore is to relaunch Aug. 1 under the name Current, hoping to generate
much of its content from viewers.
The former vice president and his partners, including entrepreneur Joel
Hyatt, are taking an unconventional approach to TV programming in hopes of attracting viewers aged
18 to 34. That demographic, heavily sought by advertisers, has become difficult for TV networks and
newspapers to reach. (more…)

Humberto Márquez

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Mar (IPS) - Family farming can be a more efficient means of producing food and promoting development than large-scale agricultural operations, Brazilian expert Edson Teófilo told participants at the International Land Coalition Global Assembly currently underway in this eastern Bolivian city. (more…)

by Philip Agee and Jonah Gindin; Venezuelanalysis.com; March 23, 2005

Philip Agee is a former CIA operative who left the agency in 1967 after becoming disillusioned by the CIA’s support for the status quo in the region. Says Agee, “I began to realize that what I and my colleagues had been doing in Latin America in the CIA was no more than a continuation of nearly five-hundred years of this, exploitation and genocide and so forth. And I began to think about what, until then would have been unthinkable, which was to write a book on how it all works.â€? The book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, was an instant best-seller and was eventually published in over thirty languages. In 1978, three years after the publication of CIA Diary, Agee and a group of like-minded journalists began publishing the Covert Operations Information Bulletin (now Covert Action Quarterly ), as part of a strategy of “guerilla journalismâ€? aimed at destabilizing the CIA and exposing their operations. (more…)