MONTREAL (AP) — The United States came under renewed criticism Tuesday as thousands of environmentalists and international officials hammered out rules for a global treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
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Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov (IPS) - Revelations that the U.S. government maintained illegal camps to detain Muslims on European territory has led to a wave of protests across the continent.

The protest is leading to diplomatic tensions between several European capitals and Washington.
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By Andrew Quinn

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Bureaucracy, poor management and inadequate funding have scuppered a global drive to put 3 million poor people on life-saving AIDS drugs by the end of 2005, activists said on Monday.

At least 4 million people still desperately need anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition said in a report on the failure of the United Nation’s “3 by 5″ AIDS initiative.
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Julia Spurzem

UNITED NATIONS, Nov (IPS) - Sudanese officials and rebel leaders from Darfur started a seventh round of peace talks Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, as human rights activists have stepped up lobbying at the United Nations to bring sanctions against the government in Khartoum.
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Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Nov (IPS) - Despite improved laws and international treaties signed by various governments in the past few years, millions of women continue to suffer from violence at the hands of men.
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by Lawrence S. Wittner; History News Network; November 2005

George W. Bush’s recent claim that the U.S. war in Iraq is part of an attempt to spread “democracy” to the Middle East should not surprise anyone familiar with the use of that word to camouflage sordid realities.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian

The Workers Party, PT, has introduced some novelties into Brazilian politics, such as internal democracy (although that has not stopped the leadership group from going astray), a participatory budget, and a new way of organizing the mandate of the elected officials vis a vis an organic relationship with the bases. Plus, without a doubt, if still in an insufficient form, there is an accent on social themes from an emancipatory perspective.
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Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Nov (IPS) - A reliable, pragmatic leader who is tough on Palestinian violence but willing to make calculated sacrifices for peace. A leader who does not trust the Palestinians, but understands that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank cannot continue in its current form. That is how Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will present himself to Israelis ahead of the upcoming election on March 28 next year. He will be hoping that the vote turns into a referendum on his second term in office, which has been dominated by the surprisingly speedy and popular withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. But as considered and as measured as Sharon will want to paint himself, there is no escaping the risks inherent in his decision this week to abandon his ruling Likud party and set up a new political base.
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By MARIA SANMINIATELLI
The Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year, and more people are malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa this decade than in the 1990s, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov (IPS) - John Bolton, the abrasive U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has been dubbed by one New York newspaper as “a human wrecking ball", is living up to every critic’s gloomy expectations.
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By Conn Hallinan | November 2005
Editor: John Gershman
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

In the wake of a United Nations investigation implicating a number of Syrian and Lebanese officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the Bush administration is calling for international sanctions, and leaking dark hints of war. But the United States is already unofficially at war with Syria. For the past six months, U.S. Army Rangers and the Special Operations Delta Force have been crossing the border into Syria , supposedly to “interdict� terrorists coming into Iraq . Several Syrian soldiers have been killed.
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Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Nov (IPS) - Kenyans have decisively rejected a proposed constitution that was put to a referendum on Monday.

According to figures released by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), 3,548,477 people voted against the new constitution (57 percent of those who cast ballots), while 2,532, 918 came out in favour of it.
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Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov (IPS) - Amid growing pressure to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and mounting charges by Democrats that senior administration officials misled the nation into war there, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to have taken charge of defending his boss and taking on the critics.
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By LAURA KERN

“Aristide and the Endless Revolution” is a probing look into the 2004
overthrow of the twice democratically elected Haitian president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had previously been ousted in a 1991 coup.
Mr. Aristide was cherished by his country’s poor (in 2001 he won with an
astounding 91 percent of the vote) and deemed ineffectual by the wealthy
powers of the United States, France and Canada, among others.
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Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Nov (IPS) - True to the hawkish image that propelled him to electoral victory, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, has begun his six-year-term in office by indicating readiness to review not only a Norwegian-mediated peace process with Tamil rebels but also the historic 2002 ceasefire.
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US finally admits using white phosphorus in Fallujah - and beyond. Iraqis investigate if civilians were targeted with deadly chemical

Andrew Buncombe in Washington Kim Sengupta in Baghdad and Colin Brown

The Iraqi government is to investigate the United States military’s use of white phosphorus shells during the battle of Fallujah - an inquiry that could reveal whether American forces breached a fundamental international weapons treaty.
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Marty Logan

TUNIS, Nov (IPS) - The Swiss government has been at the centre of controversy here over host government Tunisia’s treatment of journalists and human rights activists prior to the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
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By Stephen Zunes | November 2005
Editor: John Gershman, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

The details revealed thus far from the investigation that led to the five-count indictment against I. Lewis “Scooterâ€? Libby seem to indicate that the efforts to expose the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson went far beyond the chief assistant to the assistant chief. Though no other White House officials were formally indicted, the investigation appears to implicate Vice President Richard Cheney and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, in the conspiracy. More importantly, the probe underscores the extent of administration efforts to silence those who questioned its argument that Iraq constituted a serious threat to the national security of the United States. Even if no other White House officials ever have to face justice as a result of this investigation, it opens one of the best opportunities the American public may have to press the issue of how the Bush administration led us into war.
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Pratap Chatterjee*

WASHINGTON, Nov (IPS) - This summer, dozens of people converged in the high desert town of El Paso, Texas, en route to spending six months in Iraqi prisons.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian

Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), one of the founding masters of psychoanalysis, together with Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), mentions in his works the great dreams that may visit us. Ancestral archetypes surface in those dreams, filled with messages that can change the state of consciousness and even a person’s destiny.
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Analysis by Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO , Nov (IPS) - By pledging U.S. support for efforts to resolve the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea, visiting President George W. Bush, on Wednesday, hinted at the importance of the alliance in countering Japan’s biggest security threat and also in tackling troubles elsewhere in the world.
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By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times Online

Later this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will
debate the Iran issue, and already in the welter of competing interests
and considerations riveting the attention of the IAEA’s governing board,
the issue of where Russia stands has gained a unique prominence.
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Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov (IPS) - Questions continue to hover above 180 French firms said to have profited illegally from the oil for food programme in Iraq.

Many of the firms named in the Volcker report that inquired into corruption around that programme deny wrongdoing. Some have announced internal investigations.
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By Stephen J. Hedges
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – In an effort to fight what it sees as an insidious propaganda war waged by terrorists, from incendiary Web sites to one-sided television images of the Iraq war, the Pentagon has been quietly waging its own information battle throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.
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Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov (IPS) - The contribution of immigrants to France is immeasurable, and cannot in any case be counted simply in economic terms, experts and artists of Maghrib origin say.
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Written by Benjamin Dangl

In 2003, tired of the US media’s inaccurate portrayal of the realities of the Iraq War, independent journalist Dahr Jamail headed to the conflict himself. Instead of following in the footsteps of mainstream media’s embedded, “Hotel Journalists,” Jamail hit the Iraqi streets to uncover the stories most reporters were missing. His countless interviews with Iraqi citizens and from-the-ground reporting have offered a horrific look into the bowels of the US occupation. From covering the bloody siege of Falluja to breaking a story on Bechtel’s failure to reconstruct water treatment plants, his writing and photographs depict an Iraq that is much worse off now than it was before the US invasion. As one Abu Ghraib detainee explained to Jamail, “the Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house.”
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Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Nov (IPS) - International efforts to break down the digital barriers facing the world’s poor will backfire if governments fail to work out their differences on the issue of internet governance, diplomatic observers here say.
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Lisbon, November, 2005 – Greenpeace commended the efforts of 1998 Nobel
Prize in Literature winner, José Saramago, and several of his publishing
houses today for joining the Greenpeace Book Campaign and printing
the Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Italian, French and Catalan editions of
his new novel on paper not sourced from ancient forest destruction. (1)
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov (IPS) - Six countries – the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan – have been singled out for violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.
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startribune.com

This fall the world saw not only the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina but the devastating effects of incompetence in FEMA. This week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a chance to show it has learned from political appointee Michael Brown’s abysmal performance. It should reject the nomination of Ellen Sauerbrey to the post of assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration (PRM). She is both unqualified and inappropriate for the post.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Nov (IPS) - An informal summit in London Monday night brought clear indications that little agreement can be expected at a meeting of ministers in Hong Kong next month to agree a new trade deal.
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New America Foundation American Strategy Program Policy Forum
TheWashingtonNote.com

Below is an interview with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Former US State Department Chief of Staff. The discussion is moderated by Steven Clemons, Director of the American Strategy Program within the New America Foundation.

The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my study of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy didn’t know were being made. And then when the bureaucracy was presented with the decision to carry them out, it was presented in such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.
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Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Nov (IPS) - Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was arrested Monday in Chile after arriving here unexpectedly on Sunday, and will be facing an extradition trial within the next few days.
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By Emir Sader
Americas Program, International Relations Center (IRC)

The serious mistakes committed by the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), both within the party and in government, clash with the traditions of both the PT and the left. The Lula government errs and will continue to err when it insists on continuing policies that characterize the right, rather than the left.
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Marcela Valente

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina, Nov (IPS) - The opening of the fourth Summit of the Americas Friday was marked by a heated controversy among the hemisphere’s leaders over the future of Americas-wide trade integration, while activists caused disturbances outside the 20-block area that was cordoned off for the meeting.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian

This November 6 and 7, in Amsterdam, people will take stock of the five years since the approval of The Letter of the Earth. This document was born as a reply to the threats that weigh over the planet and as a way of coherently thinking through the many socio-ecological problems, with the Earth as a central point of reference. In 1992, during the Summit Conference of the Earth in Rio de Janeiro the document was proposed, but for reasons that need not to be repeated here, it was not accepted. Instead, the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development was adopted. Thus, Agenda 21, the most important document of ECO-92, was left without a sound foundation or a comprehensive vision. Dissatisfied, the organizers, especially Maurice Strong, of the UNO, and Mikhail Gorbachev, director of the Green Cross International, launched the idea of creating a world movement to formulate a Letter of the Earth, which would spring from the ground up. It would collect humanity’s hopes and aspirations for our Common House, the Earth.
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Burying Lenin Will Not Be Easy
Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Nov (IPS) - A political storm over proposals to bury the embalmed remains of the leader of the Bolshevik revolution Vladimir Lenin shows no signs of subsiding.

Inevitably, the debate centres not just on the man who led the Red Revolution, but on the burial of communism itself that Lenin came to symbolise.
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By Chris Floyd
The Moscow Times - November 2005

Last week, a legal thunderbolt struck at the heart of the grubby conspiracy that led the United States and Britain into an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. But this searing blow didn’t fall in Washington, where a media frenzy raged over a White House indictment, but in southern England, in a military courtroom, where a lone soldier stood against the full force of the great war-crime enterprise, armed only with a single, rusty, obsolete weapon: the law.
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Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov (IPS) - The urban guerrilla war between immigrant youth and police forces on the outskirts of Paris, and the war of words between politicians this week have again shaken claims that France is the “cradle of human rights".
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
November 2005 Editorial

It’s maddening. Why does the Bush administration keep forcing policies on the United States military that endanger Americans wearing the nation’s uniform - policies that the military does not want, that do not work and that violate standards upheld by the civilized world for decades?
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov (IPS) - Amid growing concern over the fate and conditions of inmates engaged in a lengthy hunger strike at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday said he would not permit U.N. investigators to interview detainees there.
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By Lawrence B. Wilkerson*
The Los Angeles Times October 2005

In President Bush’s first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security - including vital decisions about postwar Iraq - were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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By Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Nov (IPS) - Development groups say the latest EU offer on cutting tariffs and subsidies is inadequate.

The European Commission, the European Union (EU) executive, offered Friday (Oct. 28) to reduce its highest import duties on farm produce by 60 percent, and to cut its average agriculture tariff by 46 percent from 22.8 percent to 12.2 percent.
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By Col. Daniel Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.) | October 2005
Editor: John Gershman, IRC

Random thought: Columbus Day is here again.

When I was growing up, Old Chris was still regarded as the first European to set foot on dry land in the western hemisphere. Then someone discovered that the Great Discoverer may actually have come in second. Yet it was Columbus’ voyage, not that of the Norse that, for good and ill, resulted in the eventual migration of Europeans to the Americas followed by people from other parts of the globe, some involuntarily.
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