Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 31 (IPS) - When the United States, one of the self-declared champions of human rights, ran for a seat in the 53-member U.N. Human Rights Commission back in May 2001, it suffered a humiliating defeat and was ousted from the panel for the first time since its creation in 1947.
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Leonardo Boff

Theologian

People of La Casa Grande (The Big House - the home of the slave owners) never accepted in politics anyone who came from Senzala (the ghetto where the slaves were crowded). Due to the corruption of the main leadership of the Worker’s Party, PT, and to the mistakes of the Lula Government in its political alliances, people of “La Casa Grande” received the possibility of legally removing the President from office and of politically destroying the PT as a gift: they did not have to form a conspiracy.
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Secrecy Shrouds Patriot Act Powers
William Fisher

NEW YORK, Aug (IPS) - As the U.S. Congress prepares to vote on the final version of a reauthorised USA Patriot Act, a major civil rights group claims to have proof that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has used the law to snoop into people’s library records – a charge the FBI has vigorously denied since the Act was passed in 2001.
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By Stephen Zunes
Editor: John Gershman
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

The election of the hard-line Teheran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new head of Iran is undeniably a setback for those hoping to advance greater social and political freedom in that country. It should not necessarily be seen as a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate, however. The 70-year old Rafsanjani—a cleric and penultimate wheeler-dealer from the political establishment—was portrayed as the more moderate conservative. The fact that he had become a millionaire while in government was apparently seen as less important than his modest reform agenda. By contrast, the young Teheran mayor focused on the plight of the poor and cleaning up corruption.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Aug (IPS) - The United Nations summit next month on promoting the millennium development goals could end up delaying progress, a leading British charity says.
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Programmes will fail unless G8 backs its pledges with cash, say officials

Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
The Observer

Gordon Brown’s $40 billion debt relief deal for Africa could jeopardise aid programmes in some of the world’s poorest countries if the G8 fails to back its promises with cash, the World Bank is warning.
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Qurratul Ain Tahmina

DHAKA, Aug (IPS) - As world leaders gear up to review contributions to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the United Nations general assembly in September, activists in this least developed country worry for core concerns of women everywhere.
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August 2005 – Increasing poverty and a growing schism between the “haves� and the “have nots� continue to pose a major threat to developing democracies around the world, and the resulting economic and social inequality will continue to breed violence and terror if the trend is not reversed, a United Nations report said today.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Aug (IPS) - The best years of microfinance may be over despite the attempted revival by the United Nations, a leading expert on microfinance says.

The United Nations has declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit. But the UN push may not be moving donors and lending institutions sufficiently, Kate Bird from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a leading independent group in London, told IPS.
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By Roberto Savio

Perhaps, in the history of thought, none has been so broadly accepted nor declined so rapidly as the Free Market Theory – at one time considered a universal panacea for all problems. By default, so has its cosmogonist counterpart, the so called neo-liberal globalization. Certainly, this was not the case for Marxism and less so that of the great religions, which endured long periods of time and severe clashes before encountering proselytism. If one looks closely at the headlines, imperfect mirrors of our times, the Word “globalization� begins to appear only after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And most interestingly - this term does not appear as a phenomenon of historical reference, but as a vision without options, which has as its only purpose to mutate economic destiny and World society in a definitive manner, unable to make the most minimal correction or detour to its initial strategic plan.
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By Dante Chinni

By the strictest terms and in the most fundamental way, President Bush is
right not to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who created the
encamped protest down in Crawford, Texas.
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Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug (IPS) - A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report shows that less than encouraging results have been obtained so far in the international community’s efforts to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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Thalif Deen

STOCKHOLM, Aug (IPS) - The crisis-weary African continent, which has two of the world’s longest rivers – the 6,400-kilometre Nile River and the 4,370-kilometre Congo River – is suffering from a virtual economic paradox: a shortage of water amidst potentially plentiful supplies.
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Bush administration officials Tuesday disavowed Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson’s call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela’s Vice President Vicente Rangel accused Robertson of inciting violence and challenged the White House to take action against Robertson.
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Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Aug (IPS) - Has the U.S. public lost so much confidence in the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war that its current strategy – to the extent one actually exists – is unsustainable?
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By JAN M. OLSEN
The Associated Press

ILULISSAT, Greenland – Environmental ministers and officials from 23 countries met Thursday near a glacier that is retreating at an alarming pace and agreed that governments must stop arguing over global warming and start acting.
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Two Sides to a Withdrawal
Sanjay Suri

LONDON, AUG (IPS) - The beginning of the pullout of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip presents two contrasting pictures of two very differently placed people. While the Israelis are looking at comfortable compensation packages, thousands of Palestinians face the threat of starvation as a result of the Israeli pullout.
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By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service

BIRGI DANGOTCHO, Niger – In a clearing among the millet fields of this starving village, tiny red-earthen graves are sprouting in a row.

Yet what perplexes village chief Issufu Ibrahim, who can count 24 mounds from the past few months alone, is not the tragedy of so many children dying but the apparent unwillingness of anyone to help alleviate the worst spell of hunger in local memory.
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Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Aug (IPS) - An overemphasis on Security Council reform is undermining efforts to help the world’s one billion people escape poverty, disease and illiteracy, warns the top official of the U.N.’s development agency.
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BBC Online

Britain needs a stronger sense of national identity, Conservative leader Michael Howard has told the BBC.

“We should be British first and British last, while staunchly adhering to our respective faiths,” Mr Howard said.
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Analysis by Ushani Agalawatta

JERUSALEM, Aug 16 (IPS) - �This plan is good for Israel in any future scenario,� Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said of the Gaza pullout. And it may not be as good for Palestinians as it seems.
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www.chinaview.cn

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. (Xinhuanet) – UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan decided to commission a full financial and internal control review of the current procurement system of the United Nations, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
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Ferry Biedermann

GUSH KATIF, Gaza Strip, Aug (IPS) - He is bronzed, carries a pistol prominently on his hip, and generally looks the part but Socrate Soussan does not sound like a typical Jewish settler in Gaza.
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By Ian Bremmer International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK Once a U.S. president wins a second term, his job becomes more
difficult. Allies and rivals at home and abroad can see the end of his
presidency and measure the drop in his political influence. Any
second-term president must carefully maintain his political capital if he hopes to
successfully push an agenda, and George W. Bush’s capital has taken some
serious hits in recent weeks.
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By Jeremy Laurance

Scientists announced for the first time on Thursday that they could be nearing a cure for Aids, the worst infectious disease of modern times which has already claimed 25-million lives worldwide.

A decade after the development of a therapeutic drug cocktail which went some way to transforming Aids from a killer infection to a chronic disease, doctors believe they may have made the next big breakthrough.
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William Fisher

NEW YORK, Aug 12 (IPS) - The work of the Innocence Project is a �good news, bad news� story.

The good news is that as of Aug. 11, 161 wrongfully convicted people have walked out of prison on the basis of DNA evidence. Of these, 14 were on death row, though not all of them were freed by the Innocence Project.

The bad news is that sometimes exoneration comes too late.
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Ian Sample, science correspondent

Siberia feels the heat It’s a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting

Thursday August 11, 2005
Guardian

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11 (IPS) - Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the developing world where the shortage of food has �substantially worsened� over the last three decades, a new study warns.

As a result, says the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Africa will fail to meet the much-trumpeted U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which project the �eradication of extreme poverty and hunger� by 2015.
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Ruth Ayisi

MAPUTO, Aug 10 (IPS) - For children in Mozambique who are orphaned by AIDS, burying parents may simply signal the start of their battle with the pandemic. All too often, these orphans also find themselves amongst those most at risk of contracting HIV.
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Leonardo Boff

Everything has limits, even tolerance, because not everything in this world is worthwhile. The prophets of yesterday and today sacrificed their lives because they raised their voices and had the courage to say: «You are not allowed to do what you are doing.» There are times when tolerance means complicity with crime, guilty omission, ethical insensitivity or simply, accomodation.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Aug 9 (IPS) - Indonesian soldiers cut the face and body of Petto Wenda with a razor and a knife before pouring petrol on his head and setting him on fire. Petto was attacked when the soldiers overran Pyramid village of the Lani tribe in the Papuan highlands in July. He is not expected to survive.

Two other men were shot and have now disappeared in the jungle, where the rest of the villagers are also hiding. An estimated 6,500 people fled their villages and at least 50 have died from starvation and disease, says the British charity Survival International.
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FromUN Wire

Critics slam tax breaks for oil companies

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) – After years of debate in Congress, President Bush on Monday signed sweeping legislation that he touted as part of a long-term solution to the nation’s energy problems.

“This bill is not going to solve our energy challenges overnight,” Bush said just before signing the bill into law. “It’s going to take years of focused efforts to alleviate those problems.”
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Marcela Valente*

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 8 (IPS) - Although Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have formally accepted the fact that Paraguay has allowed U.S. troops to enter the country and granted them immunity from prosecution, the decision has become a thorn in the flesh of South America’s Mercosur trade bloc.
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Programmes will fail unless G8 backs its pledges with cash, say officials

Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday August 7, 2005

Observer

Gordon Brown’s $40 billion debt relief deal for Africa could jeopardise aid programmes in some of the world’s poorest countries if the G8 fails to back its promises with cash, the World Bank is warning.
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 4 (IPS) - The United Nations is heading for a political showdown over a landmark declaration to be approved at an upcoming major summit meeting, described by Secretary-General Kofi Annan as potentially ‘’the largest gathering of world leaders ever.'’
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.
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Early Warnings on Prisoner Abuse Ignored
William Fisher

NEW YORK, Aug (IPS) - As early as March 2003, senior U.S. military lawyers complained to the Pentagon about the Justice Department’s definition of torture and how it would be applied to interrogations of enemy prisoners captured by U.S. forces.
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By Stephen Zunes | July 2005
Editor: John Gershman
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

The election of the hard-line Teheran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new head of Iran is undeniably a setback for those hoping to advance greater social and political freedom in that country. It should not necessarily be seen as a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate, however. The 70-year old Rafsanjani—a cleric and penultimate wheeler-dealer from the political establishment—was portrayed as the more moderate conservative. The fact that he had become a millionaire while in government was apparently seen as less important than his modest reform agenda. By contrast, the young Teheran mayor focused on the plight of the poor and cleaning up corruption.
(more…)

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul (IPS) - WTO authorities played down the significance of the new stalemate in the Doha Round of talks and the threat hanging over the sixth ministerial conference in Hong Kong. But civil society organisations see the multilateral trade system’s latest fiasco in a much more serious light.
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by BRUCE SHAPIRO

Judge John Roberts is a white male who has spent his entire adult life in
Washington. Those facts themselves mean nothing, but they do beg a
question: What could be so compelling about Judge Roberts as a Supreme
Court candidate that the White House was willing to forswear all claims
on ethnic diversity and all geographical political advantage, not to
mention the express desire of Laura Bush and countless other women to see
a nominee of their gender?
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Dear All,
I hope you can answer this question: Are americans like you and me?

I am writing this letter to my friends, from the Island of San Salvador, in the Bahamas, where I have a house, right on a two mile beach of pink sand. I share it with some seagulls and nobody else.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Jul (IPS) - Most Russians want new oil money spent on social projects, a new survey shows.

The economy of Russia, the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia, is riding high on a boom in oil prices. Oil and gas add up to more than half of all Russian exports, and taxes on sales account for more than a third of government revenue.
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