BY LISA CLAUSEN

Critics say Australia’s plan to process all boat people offshore threatens the U.N.’s convention on refugees

It seemed like old times last week when Philip Ruddock stepped forward to defend Australia’s immigration stance. Five years ago, as Immigration Minister, he steered into law the so-called Pacific Solution to discourage boatloads of asylum seekers. Now, as acting Immigration Minister, he was championing the latest version of that policy against criticism from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Australia was doing nothing wrong, he insisted. Under the new measures, revealed last month, it “will meet its international refugee protection obligations.”
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Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Apr 28 (IPS) - In a move long sought by large telecommunications companies, conservative lawmakers in the United States are pushing for new legislation that critics say would undermine the ability of Internet users to freely access any website, from the lowliest weblog to the fanciest corporate home page.
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By Eric Reeves | April 26, 2006

IDRISS DEBY, the president of the central African country of Chad, may soon lose power to a group of variously motivated rebel movements. The deposing of Deby might not seem occasion for much regret: he is a cruel, tyrannical, and corrupt man who has squandered a great deal of Chad’s new-found oil wealth. But the rebels who would replace him have the deeply troubling support of the genocidal regime in Khartoum, Sudan. In recent months, as Human Rights Watch has authoritatively reported, the National Islamic Front in Khartoum has supported the Chadian rebels, even as it has loosed its own murderous Arab militia allies on the non-Arab tribal populations of eastern Chad. Indeed, Human Rights Watch reports that ‘’the Janjaweed militias have carried out attacks inside Chad accompanied by Sudanese army troops with helicopter gunship support.”
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Praful Bidwai

TEHRAN, Apr 27 (IPS) - As the deadline set by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to halt uranium enrichment descends upon Iran, the already narrow window of opportunity to resolve the crisis over Tehran’s nuclear programme diplomatically may soon slam shut.

If the Western powers, led by the United States, adopt a tough posture and demand that sanctions be imposed on Iran, or worse, launch a military attack on its nuclear facilities, they will strengthen the hands of the nuclear hawks who at present constitute a minority in the Tehran regime.
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William Fisher

NEW YORK, Apr 26 (IPS) - In the unlikely event that the U.S. Congress reaches agreement on an immigration bill, it remains doubtful that legislators will include one of the simpler issues in this complex debate: granting asylum to battered women.
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By Charles D. Ferguson

The legacy of Chernobyl stresses the importance of security and nonproliferation.

WASHINGTON - Twenty years ago Wednesday, the world experienced its worst nuclear accident. In the early morning of April 26, 1986, a steam explosion blew the top off one of the Soviet-designed reactors at Chernobyl, Ukraine. The resulting fire burned for nine days and released massive amounts of radioactivity into the environment.
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From The Economist Global Agenda

Efforts to liberalise world trade have suffered a setback, after large trading powers admitted that a self-imposed deadline of April 30th for preparing a deal on farm and industrial goods will be missed. Ministerial talks planned for this weekend have been called off. Although more negotiations are expected in May and June, and there will be renewed efforts to get a deal by the end of July, there is every reason to be gloomy about the Doha round
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 25 (IPS) - The Nigerian government must take the lead in ending discrimination against millions of “non-indigenes” – citizens who cannot show that their family roots are native to the community in which they live – in part to better secure the country’s increasingly fragile unity, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released here Tuesday.
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M B Naqvi

KARACHI, Apr 24 (IPS) - As the crisis around Iran over its alleged nuclear ambitions assumes an ugly shape, Pakistan finds itself once again, under enormous political pressure because of aggressive United States policy towards a Muslim country in its immediate neighbourhood.

Already, the Pakistan government is under fire from powerful Islamist groups and political parties for supporting the U.S.-led ‘war-on-terror’ in Afghanistan, especially in the border areas of North West Frontier Province.
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By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Hawaii
Cuba
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Nicaragua
Honduras
Iran
Guatemala
South Vietnam
Chile
Grenada
Panama
Afghanistan
Iraq

What do these 14 governments have in common?

You got it.

The United States overthrew them.
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Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Apr 21 (IPS) - “There it is – that’s our human tsunami,” Communist party leader Madhav Kumar Nepal said Friday, watching more than 100,000 people flow past his house in the capital’s outskirts.

“People were teasing us, they were making fun of us, they were sceptical but there it is. And it’s because the people of Nepal wanted the change,” Nepal told United Nations Resident Representative Matthew Kahane, who visited him and other leaders of the moderate United Marxist-Leninist (UML) wing of the party.
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By Paul R. Epstein and Frank I. Smizik - Boston Globe

April 21, 2006

THE CLIMATE is changing; we know that. And the change is caused by global warming from burning fossil fuels. It’s time we turned to solutions, and New England can take some bold steps.

Many forces are lining up to drive a change in energy policies. Oil and gas prices are climbing; conflicts in supply regions are multiplying. Oil will run out at some point, and climate volatility is sending shivers throughout insurance and investment communities.
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Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Apr (IPS) - After two decades as one of the IMF’s most dedicated pupils, Bolivia is now preparing to follow in the footsteps of Argentina and Brazil, and free itself of the corset imposed by the multilateral lender.
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Slavoj Zizek

Since 2001, Davos and Porto Alegre have been the twin cities of globalisation: Davos, the exclusive Swiss resort where the global elite of managers, statesmen and media personalities meets for the World Economic Forum under heavy police protection, trying to convince us (and themselves) that globalisation is its own best remedy; Porto Alegre, the subtropical Brazilian city where the counter-elite of the anti-globalisation movement meets, trying to convince us (and themselves) that capitalist globalisation is not our inevitable fate – that, as the official slogan puts it, ‘another world is possible.’ It seems, however, that the Porto Alegre reunions have somehow lost their impetus – we have heard less and less about them over the past couple of years. Where did the bright stars of Porto Alegre go?
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Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed

BAGHDAD, Apr (IPS) - The new clashes between Shia militiamen dressed in Iraqi military and police uniforms and resistance fighters and residents from the Sunni Adhamiya district of Baghdad have convinced many that what Baghdad is witnessing is no less than a civil war.
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Joseph Massad*

In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of relief that Americans finally can see the “truth” and the “error” of their ways.
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by David Edwards

On March 27, Channel 4 News included a report by Washington Correspondent Jonathan Rugman: ‘Hugo to go?’*

Rugman relentlessly smeared Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, in a piece described by John Pilger as “one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen". (Email to Channel 4 News, copied to Media Lens, March 27, 2006)
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Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr (IPS) - Despite White House efforts to put an end to the controversy, the battle over the fate of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld shows little sign of abating.
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Por Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, abr (IPS) - Venezuela acusó nuevamente a Washington de aplicar un doble rasero en materia de terrorismo, a raíz de que un juez estadounidense ordenó no deportar a dos militares venezolanos sindicados de atacar con explosivos sedes diplomáticas de Colombia y España.
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Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Apr (IPS) - On one side are hundreds of protesters, most of them college-age men in T-shirts, some waving party flags, some pumping fists in the air. “Down with the king!” they chant. Facing them are rows of armed police in blue camouflage and body padding. Most carry metre-long canes (’lathis’) and wear helmets; some tote plexiglas shields, rifles or thicker teargas guns.
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A Team for Building the Alliance

Many hands have worked in this planting. Many more are joining in as
we expand this network of people all over the world. Learn who are these
volunteers and workers who are shouldering the hard work of building this
Plaza of Human Convergence, this alliance of people who want to share a
new awareness of humanity’s interconnectedness and to connect caring
communities, groups, and individuals at a global level, to promote
understanding of humanity’s underlying unity and to advance its
expression through peace, social justice and ecological balance.
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William D. Nordhaus | March 2006
Editor: John Gershman, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus

Abstract: This paper reviews different approaches to the political and economic control of global public goods like global warming. It compares quantity-oriented control mechanisms like the Kyoto Protocol with price-type control mechanisms such as internationally harmonized carbon taxes. The pros and cons of the two approaches are compared, focusing on such issues as performance under conditions of uncertainty, volatility of the induced carbon prices, the excess burden of taxation and regulation, accounting finagling, corruption, and implementation. Although virtually all policies involving economic global public goods rely upon quantitative approaches, price-type approaches are likely to be more effective and more efficient.
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Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Apr (IPS) - Large-scale projects such as dams and nuclear power plants, more funding for renewable energy and greater market liberalisation by poor nations are all solutions to climate change, poverty and fossil fuel dependence, according to an internal World Bank document leaked by a non-governmental organisation.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr (IPS) - Three years after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces, Washington is abuzz about new reports that the administration of Pres. George W. Bush is preparing to attack Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons.
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By Rina Jimenez-David
Published on the Philippine Daily Inquirer

FOLLOWING the practice of “regional rotation” in the choice of secretary general of the United Nations, it’s now supposedly Asia’s “turn” to have a representative chosen as head of the global body, to take the place of Kofi Annan. But no one, apparently, has given much thought that it might also be a woman’s turn.
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Sabina Zaccaro

ROME, Apr (IPS) - Ten years after the first match between Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi in 1996, the final count from the Sunday-Monday elections suggests that governability in Italy is still a challenge. Prodi’s centre-left Union won by such a razor-thin margin that it will be difficult to form a government capable of leading a deeply divided nation.
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By RON FOURNIER,
AP Political Writer

President Bush’s approval ratings hit a series of new lows in an AP-Ipsos poll that also shows Republicans surrendering their advantage on national security — grim election-year news for a party struggling to stay in power.
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By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

In their makeshift offices in a former Baghdad palace, a small army of American builders and engineers, oilmen and budgeteers is working overtime on last-minute projects to help reconstruct Iraq.
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Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Apr (IPS) - Foreign policy circles in Washington, including some figures considered close to the George W. Bush administration, have begun talking privately and in off-the-record meetings about the need to give both Iran and Iraq’s Arab neighbours key roles in peace negotiations, according to Middle East experts.
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - A proposed blueprint for a radical restructuring of the United Nations as envisaged by outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan has fallen short of its target in one specific area: gender empowerment.
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Salih Booker & Ann-Louise Colgan | March 2006
Editor: Emira Woods
Foreign Policy In Focus

2006 will help clarify whether the compassionate concern for the African continent, worn like a badge by western leaders last year, is a true determinant of Africa policy, or whether it merely masked other, more “strategic” and less “benevolent” impulses and interests.
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By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 2006

Sri Lanka’s candidate to lead the United Nations said yesterday that as secretary-general, he would push ahead with reforms to the world organization and take a more proactive stance toward “what is evil and wrong with the world.”
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John Lasker

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Apr (IPS) - After 50 years of international cooperation and peace in space, the U.S. military insists that it has no plans to usher in an age of space-based warfare.
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By JUAN FORERO QUÍBOR,
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Venezuela — Julio Borges is an unusual politician among Venezuela’s fragmented opposition. He is running for office.

While much of the rest of the opposition is intent on boycotting the presidential election this year, Mr. Borges was busy here on a recent twoday campaign swing, shaking hands, kissing cheeks and trying against long odds to win over supporters of President Hugo Chávez.
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr (IPS) - The top 10 countries hosting the largest number of international migrants have neither signed nor ratified a 1990 U.N. convention aimed at protecting the rights of migrant workers worldwide.
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Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Apr (IPS) - Beaches, islands and even continents are shrinking as ocean levels rise ever higher due to the accelerating meltdown of the world’s glaciers and polar ice due to climate change.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Letter of the Earth Commission

From March 20th to the 31st an important world gathering of the United Nations on biodiversity is taking place in Curitiba, Brazil, addressing items of the 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity adopted by 188 countries. This gathering is the most important of all those organized by the UN, because, in fact, it seeks to discuss strategies to safeguard life from the threats directed against it. Starting with the Summit of the Earth or Rio de Janeiro Eco-92 the topic has been gaining centrality and has been the subject of numerous official documents, especially the 2000 and 2003 Cartagena Protocols on biosecurity.
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Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Apr (IPS) - Last week’s attack by U.S.-led Iraqi paramilitary forces on a building that Shiite leaders claim was a mosque may have marked the beginning of a new stage of U.S. policy in which Iraqi forces are used to carry out military operations against Shiite militia forces – especially those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr.
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The New Progressives are In-Front, Deep Green, and Beyond Left vs. Right

By Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. Integral Partnerships LLC

How can progressives actually win in the face of the right wing political juggernaut, composed of big money, big media and religious right shock troops? This article shows two of the necessary pieces that have to be set up to win:
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