Financial Times- Editorial comment

Published: December 30 2005 02:00

So that was the Year of Africa. It was billed as a breakthrough year, the best opportunity for a long time for the world to dwell on what needs doing to improve the lot of its most backward region. Exceptional attention was devoted at both the United Nations, in a renewed push for progress on development targets, and the Group of Eight, which responded in part to a list of recommendations by the British-organised Commission for Africa. But these efforts were eclipsed at almost every turn by events elsewhere. In Africa they went mostly unnoticed or else were received with scepticism.
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Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Dec 30 (IPS) - Without breaking stride to mull over the disappointment of Hong Kong, the developing countries will be back at work in early January striving to recover the ground lost at the 6th World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference held mid-December in that Asian city.
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By Simon Divecha

ON LINE opinion - Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
29 December 2005

Almost ten thousand people attended Montreal for the United Nations climate change conference in Canada. The conference occurred as carbon dioxide, the principle climate change culprit, is the highest it has ever been over the 650,000 years of history we can measure.
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Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - The Reader-in-Chief is at it again, and anti-imperialists around the world have reason to be concerned.

According to the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush has taken two books with him to Texas for his holiday reading, which he will presumably indulge between his favourite ranch pursuits – clearing brush and biking.
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The nation suffers from high numbers of AIDS, TB and malaria cases, but gets minimal foreign assistance because of its repressive regime.

By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer

YANGON, Myanmar — A growing humanitarian emergency has sparked fears that thousands could die of disease and malnutrition in Myanmar, whose repressive military regime has drawn international condemnation and punishing U.S. trade sanctions.
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Zoltán Dujisin

KIEV, Dec (IPS) - Russia is playing the energy card by raising state-owned Gazprom’s fuel prices, in what Ukraine has termed a politically charged move.
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By John Feffer | December 2005
Editor: John Gershman, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

Though it would be difficult to find anyone in the United States who would praise North Korea for its dismal human rights record, this consensus of opinion by no means extends to practical foreign policy. In other words, there is broad agreement on what is wrong in North Korea, from the political labor camps to the lack of basic freedoms of speech and assembly, but little agreement on what to do about it or who should be doing it.
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Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Dec (IPS) - With 2005 the warmest year in modern times and new research confirming scientists’ worst fears, most experts agree that urgent and innovative international action on climate change is needed.
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BY ANTHONY R. WOOD
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - Hundreds of miles from any land, the waters of the North Atlantic suddenly developed an oddly deep-blue hue and turned incongruously warm.

Patches of peculiar brown seaweed rode the surface, and the ocean brewed mild, damp winds that the muscular 20-year-old could feel on his skin.

To the sailor, Benjamin Franklin, it was a puzzle, one that would baffle and bedevil him for decades.
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Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Dec 23 (IPS) - The United States was roundly criticised again this year for the continued hardening of its immigration policy, which is largely to blame for the death of about 300 migrants a year. But the criticism has not had any effect, and some observers predict even greater difficulties in 2006.
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Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Dec (IPS) - The year 2005 will be remembered as the ‘’annus horribilis” in the European Union with political wrangling, terrorist attacks, social unrest and natural disasters, and there are questions over how the bloc will progress next year.
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Dec 2005
The Economist

ENOS BANKS tells a cracking yarn about ketchup. One day, he spilled a
splurge of it on his shirt. For fun, he persuaded his brother in law to
shout angrily and shoot through the window. When their two wives came
rushing in, they saw Mr Banks lying there covered in what looked like
blood. “My wife passed out,” chuckles Mr Banks, “and my
brother-in-law’s wife shook him till his [false] teeth rattled.”
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Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (IPS) - The strong turnout in last week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq may have been just the kind of civic demonstration that U.S. Pres. George W. Bush needed to restore some confidence in a weary public that Washington’s adventure in the country may not turn out to be such a disaster after all.
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Leonardo Boff

Theologian

The biggest debt of Brazil’s Worker’s Party, the PT, is not financial: it is political and ethical. The events of the last few months, which included sophisticated corruption in the party’s leadership group, have had a devastating effect on the population, especially among those who nourished the historical dream of a change of course. A great de-politicization was underway in Brazil, as in the rest of the world. But the arrival of the PT and Lula’s charismatic eruption, ignited the much desired flame of liberation.
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Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed

BAGHDAD, Dec (IPS) - Despite the parliamentary elections last week and temporary ease in violence, Iraqis remain bitter about the outgoing year, and sceptical of 2006.

‘’As a doctor I usually travel daily from home to college,” said Um Feras, a doctor of physics at Baghdad University who asked that her last name be changed for her protection. ‘’2005 was a terrible year, and now it has become unacceptable for me to leave my house to go teach due to the troops, who always where sunglasses even on gloomy days, aiming their rifles at everyone like they are gangsters.”
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By Ian Davis and Paul Ingram
Editor: Miriam Pemberton, IPS
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

A Treaty in Peril
Ever since the USAF let the nuclear genie out of its bottle over Hiroshima on those fateful days in August 1945, the importance of slowing and reversing nuclear proliferation has been at the top of the international disarmament agenda. The agreement of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) in 1968, following on from the global shock of the Cuban missile crisis, was a high-point in the endeavor to reach international consensus. But even as the Treaty was being signed, India’s complaint that it legitimized a nuclear apartheid should have been sufficient warning of the Treaty’s internal contradictions and troubles to come. For while the number of signatories to the Treaty has grown so that it has become one of the most universal international instruments in the canon of international law, disaffection with it has grown.(1) The end of the cold war created new openings for strengthening the global non-proliferation regime. Yet today, the foundations of this regime, and its cornerstone, the NPT, look weaker than ever, for these reasons:
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Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Dec (IPS) - The election of indigenous leader Evo Morales as president of Bolivia is being hailed by native leaders from throughout the region as a “sign of hope” for all impoverished and discriminated indigenous peoples in Latin America.
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By Paul Vallely
December 2005
The Independent

Aid agencies praised a number of minor successes in the Hong Kong world trade deal yesterday but overall they were unimpressed with the outcome which, Oxfam said, was a “betrayal of the promises” that this round of talks would promote development for the world’s poorest countries.
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By Mark Doyle
BBC World Affairs correspondent

The last United Nations troops left Sierra Leone on Thursday following a five-year mission which faced military disaster when it began, but ultimately succeeded in ending one of Africa’s most brutal wars.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec (IPS) - The world has suffered more than 200 billion dollars in economic losses as a result of weather-related natural disasters over the past year, making 2005 the costliest year on record, according to preliminary estimates released Tuesday by the Munich Re Foundation at the international climate conference in Montreal.
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Aaron Glantz

HONG KONG, Dec (IPS) - After months of rumours that opponents of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will wreak havoc on the city, activists here say Hong Kong authorities have launched a targeted campaign of harassment.
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By Ben Saul | December 2005
Editor: John Gershman, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

In recent times, it has become fashionable to regurgitate old arguments in favor of torture, without fully thinking through the human implications of making such statements. Not only lawyers for the U.S. government, but academics from Harvard Law School and Deakin Law School in my own country of Australia have argued for torture.
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H.D.S. Greenway The Boston Globe
DECEMBER 2005

BOSTON My heart sank when I read that Syrian exile Farid Ghadry met recently with Ahmed Chalabi, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, in a Washington suburb. Ghadry heads something called the Syrian Reform Party. The party was formed three years ago, and is made up almost entirely of exiles, such as Ghadry, who left Syria when he was 10. “Ahmed paved the way in Iraq for what we want to do in Syria,” Ghadry told The Wall Street Journal.
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Analysis by Mohammed Amin Abdulqadir

APRIL, Iraq, Dec (IPS) - Tensions between ethnic and religious groups have been rising in Iraq ahead of the elections Thursday.

The vote wile be the third in less than a year, and the last step in the current process of political transition to a democratic government.
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Stephen Leahy*

TORONTO, Dec (Tierramérica) - The members of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change resolved at their week-long meeting in Montreal to support the treaty’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows industrialised countries to obtain credits by investing in clean energy projects in the developing South.
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By Philip Thornton in Hong Kong
December 2005

After millions of air miles, countless secret meetings, forests of reports and one failed summit, ministers from 150 countries are facing the prospect of failure in their attempt to free world trade and drag millions of people out of extreme poverty.
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By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
December 2005
Editor: John Gershman, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

Diverse forces are assembling to bring Bush administration officials to account for war crimes. Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Mother for Peace, insists: “We cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.â€? 1 Paul Craig Roberts, Hoover Institution senior fellow and assistant secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan, charges Bush with “lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centersâ€? and calls for the president’s impeachment. 2 Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and former president of the American Society of International Law, declares: “These policies make a mockery of our claim to stand for the rule of law. [Americans] should be marching on Washington to reject inhumane techniques carried out in our name.â€? 3
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Julio Godoy

PARIS, Dec (IPS) - French opposition to reform the European common agricultural policy is at the bottom of the difficulties the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is expected to face in Hong Kong this week.
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Tim Shorrock

WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (IPS) - The United States is rapidly losing its influence in the South-east Asia region to China, thanks to an overly narrow focus on terrorism and a propensity to place bilateral ties above multilateral relationships, according to U.S. and Chinese analysts.
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By Fiona Harvey in Montreal

Businesses and poorer nations will gain more than €10bn by 2012 from the international effort to combat climate change under a significant reform agreed to the Kyoto protocol on Thursday.
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Emmanuel Goujon

Abuja, Nigeria 08 December 2005 . It is time to rethink the strategies used so far in the fight against HIV/Aids as they have shown their limitations, particularly in Africa, according to Michel Sidibe, the Malian who is deputy head of UNAids, the body coordinating the fight against the pandemic.
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Ayesha Gooneratne

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (IPS) - Last year, more than 92 million families – most of them living on less than a dollar a day – benefitted from small loans known as “microcredit", marking a bright spot in international development efforts too often frustrated by missed targets and broken promises.
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Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Dec 7 (IPS) - A decision by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to make a provisional 2003 agreement allowing poor countries to import affordable generic drugs permanent has drawn criticism from activists.

The chair of the WTO General Council, Kenyan ambassador Amina Mohamed, celebrated Tuesday’s decision, stressing that the African nations “really drove this process.”
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Editorial

THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 7, 2005

It was a sad enough measure of how badly the Bush administration has damaged its moral standing that the secretary of state had to deny that the president condones torture before she could visit some of the most reliable American allies in Europe. It was even worse that she had a hard time sounding credible when she did it.
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Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 6 (IPS) - The United States appears to be on verge of a head-on collision with the United Nations over the question of how the world body should be running its affairs.

The confrontation intensified last week when the U.S. ambassador John Bolton suggested that his country would not approve the full U.N. budget unless the organisation implements proposed management reforms.
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By Alister Doyle

Reuters , December 06, 2005 —

MONTREAL — U.N. climate talks in Canada are likely to avoid setting a target date for agreeing a successor for the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, disappointing environmentalists who want a 2008 deadline, delegates said Monday.

Backers of Kyoto – such as the European Union, Canada and Japan – want to signal they are committed to agreeing an extension of Kyoto’s curbs on greenhouse gases blamed for global warming well before a first phase runs out in 2012.
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By Evelyn Leopold

Source: Reuters

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - A joint military team will visit Darfur next week to study whether the United Nations should take over efforts to bring order to Sudan’s lawless west, U.N. officials and diplomats said on Sunday.
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William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) - Since former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt presented the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the United Nations for ratification 37 years ago this Saturday, the world has witnessed – and often ignored – some of the most egregious rights violations in modern history.
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Nov 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

As the world marks AIDS Day, there are few victories to cheer, but ever more victims to mourn. Ambitious targets for spreading treatment have been missed by a mile
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov (IPS) - The United States is leading a behind-the-scenes effort to eliminate or shrink “outdated” programmes and missions ostensibly to cut costs and prune the U.N.’s biennial budget.

As part of the new cost-cutting exercise, there is a proposal to either abolish or downsize U.N. programmes and activities relating to Palestinians.
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