The New York Times

SUNDAY, JULY 30, 2006 - When President George W. Bush nominated John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations last year, we argued that this convinced unilateralist and lifelong disparager of the United Nations should not be confirmed. The Senate agreed. Bush sent him to New York anyway, using the constitutional end run of a recess appointment. That appointment expires in January.
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Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Jul 31 (IPS) - Two Afghan journalists, who spent three years in the infamous United States military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have released a new chronicle on life in the now famous iron cages.

Their 453-page volume in the Pashto language is even more graphic than the one released recently by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan who was handed over to the U.S. military, shortly after it invaded Afghanistan and ousted the fundamentalist regime in 2001.
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François Traoré and Jean-Michel Severino

THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2006

Now that Doha seems dead and buried, what will come next for the poorest nations?

For decades to come, they will continue to rely largely on farming. Farming is responsible for 30 percent to 60 percent of their GDP, employs 70 percent of their active populations and provides up to 70 percent of their currency income.

Four issues weigh heavily on their future, the first two of which were meant to be dealt with through the Doha development round of trade talks.
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Analysis by Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jul 28 (IPS) - With U.S. and European leaders unable to agree on the conditions for a ceasefire, the Israeli cabinet authorising the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, and Hezbollah still firing dozens of rockets into Israel every day, an end to hostilities did not look near as Israel’s offensive against the Shia organisation in Lebanon entered its 16th day Friday.
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MERCOPRESS

President Michelle Bachelet said yesterday she will not be pressured on Chile’s vote in the election of a new regional member of the United Nations Security Council.

Bachelet spoke a day after Chilean Defence Minister Vivianne Blanlot said she was asked by her US counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, to support Guatemala over Venezuela in October UN election.
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Dahr Jamail

BEIRUT, Jul 27 (IPS) - Amidst the rapidly worsening situation in Lebanon, the government finds itself too weak and divided to deal either with the Israel or with Hezbollah.

In turmoil since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, the government of this tiny country of 3.8 million has been struggling to overcome internal factions. That is despite free and fair legislative elections which brought in a new parliament last summer.
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Bill Berkowitz*

BERKELEY, California, Jul (IPS) - Over the past two decades, as the Christian Right has grown in political power in the United States, there has been a parallel growth in support for Israel. Organisations made up of conservative evangelical and Jewish leaders have been founded, and millions of dollars have been raised and donated to charities in Israel.
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by toni solo;
ZNet | Mexico

Symptoms in Mexico, Mercosur

If people needed reminding that North American and European foreign policy, including policy on aid and trade, is based on sadism and hypocrisy, events in Palestine and Lebanon will surely have done so. While people inside the imperial Bluebeard’s Castle come to terms with the narcissistic cynicism of leaders like Tony Blair and George Bush, outside the Castle other people are determined to realise the potential of themselves and their families and rescue as best they can the settlement embodied in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights so contemptuously trashed by the imperial leaders. As natural resources of all kinds become harder to access and control, North America and Europe become more and more a threat to the fundamental bases and recognised standards of human life everywhere. For the moment, moral leadership has passed unquestionably and decisively to those countries and movements in Latin America that openly resist the anti-humanitarian barbarism of North American and European countries and their allies.
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by Ramzy Baroud; July 2006
ZNet | Israel/Palestine

At first glance, history seems to repeat itself in Lebanon, where a lengthy cold war is intermittently interrupted by an extreme show of violence as traditional players quickly sprint into action, stacking their support behind one party or the other.
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Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul (IPS) - A “straw poll” conducted in strict secrecy behind closed doors – no stenographers, no Secretariat staff – in the 15-member Security Council has left the race still wide open for a new U.N. secretary-general, who is due to take office next January.
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By Dahr Jamail

BEIRUT, Jul (IPS) - Much of Beirut is a devastated city, infrastructure in many areas lies in a shambles after the Israeli bombing. But the Lebanese are also just feeling devastated.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission

We hear this phrase frequently, used almost as a principle. I have never heard anyone question it. But, thinking of the underlying assumptions and of their possible consequences, we must seriously question it. It involves the typical freedom defended by liberalism as a political philosophy.
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by Marjorie Cohn; July 2006
Znet

George W. Bush claims he wants to bring democracy to the Middle East. But the evidence indicates that Bush only likes democracy when the elections go his way.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 21 (IPS) - Washington’s strong backing – hedged by occasional calls for restraint – for Israel’s 10-day-old military campaign in Lebanon has won it very few friends in the Arab world, despite recent criticism of Hezbollah by pro-U.S. governments in the region, according to a range of regional and foreign policy experts.
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Analysis by Bill Berkowitz*

OAKLAND, California, Jul 20 (IPS) - If you thought that a global conflagration on the order of a World War was more the stuff of Biblical prophecy, science fiction and apocalyptic end-times novels, think again.
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Compiled by Daily Star staff

A UN Middle East crisis team on Wednesday said the international community had to quickly deploy troops to Lebanon to stop an escalation that could destabilize the region. Speaking in Madrid, the UN envoys said it was too early to express optimism after their talks with Israeli and Arab leaders and urged a rapid increase in international military forces in Lebanon.
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By Jim Lobe

Analysis

WASHINGTON, Jul 19 (IPS) - After posing as the champion of democratic reform and the long oppressed Shia minority in the Arab world, the administration of President George W. Bush appears to be scurrying back to Washington’s traditional policy of strong support for the region’s Sunni-dominated, pro-U.S. authoritarian governments.
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Leonardo Boff

Theologian
Earthcharter Commission

There is an evident and self explanatory meaning to the World Cup of Football phenomenon, with the crowds it has mobilized and with the rich world of symbols it has produced. Whoever has seen the reception Rome gave to «The Azurra», the winning team, where almost a million persons gathered in the Circus Maximus, proudly waving the Italian flag, cannot help but ask if hidden or repressed feelings are not expressed through these manifestations that could be worth trying to raise to the conscious level. It is the philosophizing moment of all analyses of reality. What does this football euphoria, found in virtually the whole world, reveal? Let us attempt to go beyond the everyday meanings.
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By Bojana Stoparic
WeNews correspondent

When the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva reviews U.S. compliance with a civil and political rights agreement this week, advocates will be raising women’s rights violations in a critical shadow report.

(WOMENSENEWS)–The United Nations Human Rights Committee is meeting with United States officials in Geneva, Switzerland, today and tomorrow in a review of its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jul 18 (IPS) - Caught between the need to explore a possible diplomatic way out of an otherwise hopeless mess in Iraq and the domestic political need to keep the Democrats on the defensive, U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are playing a double game on the issue of timetable for withdrawal.
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By JON GERTNER
July 2006

Workers at the Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear-power generating station sometimes describe it as being in the middle of nowhere, and in many respects they’re right: situated on a bend in the Savannah River, in the thick pine forests of central Georgia, the plant is an hour south of Augusta and a two-hour drive, if you disobey the speed limit, from the outskirts of Atlanta. On the final approach to Vogtle, a narrow country road cuts through vast stretches of undeveloped land punctuated with small ranch-style homes; in some places, you can still discern remnants of convenience stores and cheap motels set back from the pavement, all now shuttered, some barely standing. When Vogtle (pronounced VOH-gull) was being built in the 1970’s and 80’s, it was more aptly described as the middle of everything, a bustling, improvised city of engineers and tradesmen, some 14,000 workers in all, many of whom lived nearby in tents and trailers. It was one of the largest construction projects in the history of Georgia. An entire concrete factory, now defunct, was built here during that time; so was a factory to manufacture ice, a necessary ingredient in making the superdense nuclear-grade concrete required for the reactor-containment buildings. To Ellie Daniel, a local man who has worked as an administrator at Vogtle for more than two decades, only two significant things have happened in the history of Georgia’s Burke County. “One is the Civil War,” he told me. “The other is Plant Vogtle.”
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By Roberto Savio (*)

ROME, Jun (IPS) - What can we expect from the future of the World
Social Forum (WSF)?

At the first WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001, just a
few thousand people were expected; at least 25,000 showed up,
putting the organisation of the event to a real test. It was the
first time that different representatives of civil society had met
to debate global agendas with a deliberately open format for
dialogue: there were neither final declarations nor processions but
only a space for exchanging ideas and experiences and making
proposals for work together.
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Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN, Jul 14 (IPS) - Civil society organisations and a Euro-parliamentarian have tabled a wish list to G8 leaders ahead of the summit that begins Saturday in St. Petersburg.

“The G8 must live up to their Gleneagles promises or risk the disdain of millions,” Member of the European Parliament Glenys Kinnock warned Friday.
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by Jonathan Cook
July 13, 2006
ZNet

The same malign intent by Israel towards the Palestinians is stamped through its history like the lettering in a children’s stick of seaside rock. But despite the consistent aim of Israeli policy, generation after generation of Western politicians, diplomats and journalists has shown a repeated inability to grasp what is happening before its very eyes.
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Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Jul 13 (IPS) - Leaders of the eight most industrialised nations will gather this weekend in St. Petersburg, Russia with energy security, the critical state of global trade talks, infectious diseases, education and other vital issues for the world economy on their agenda.
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by Ruth Rosen

TomDispatch

Abu Ghraib. Haditha. Guantanamo. These are words that shame our country. Now, add to them Mahmudiya, a town 20 miles south of Baghdad. There, this March, a group of five American soldiers allegedly were involved in the rape and murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza, a young Iraqi girl. Her body was then set on fire to cover up their crimes, her father, mother, and sister murdered. The rape of this one girl, if proven true, is probably not simply an isolated incident. But how would we know? In Iraq, rape is a taboo subject. Shamed by the rape, relatives of this girl wouldn’t even hold a public funeral and were reluctant to reveal where she is buried.
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Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jul 12 (IPS) - Anyone unfamiliar with football could be excused for asking whether Italy was playing the World Cup final with France or with a team from Africa.

All the Italian players were white, their challengers almost all black. But it was of course the French team.
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Toronto Star

The United Nations is facing a sea change in coming months as Secretary-General Kofi Annan prepares to step down.

To focus the global agenda for his successor, a UN panel is studying ways to make its far-reaching development, humanitarian and environment programs more coherent. And Stephen Lewis, the high-profile Canadian who serves as Annan’s tireless AIDS envoy to Africa, is taking the opportunity to push women’s issues to the very top of that rethink.
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Fritzroy A. Sterling

NEW YORK, Jul (IPS) - Consider the following statistics: at the beginning of the 20th century, the world population was less than two billion, but at the dawn of the 21st century, there were more than six billion people on earth.
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By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY

HONG KONG — Asia’s poorest countries are being out-muscled economically by China and remain stranded in poverty despite a regional boom in free trade, the United Nations says.

In a 152-page report released last week, the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) disputes the U.S. position that busting down trade barriers is the surest way to reduce poverty. Instead, the U.N. agency advises poor Asian countries to do what Japan and South Korea did successfully in the 1970s and ’80s: protect key industries temporarily with tariffs before exposing them to foreign competition.
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Louise Brown

TRIPOLI, Jul (IPS) - Like a horde of angry animals, Tripoli’s black and white taxis circle its central Green Square, each vehicle in a hurry to reach its destination. Oddly, only a few appear to actually be carrying any passengers: “We still don’t get enough foreign visitors", says taxi driver Mustafa, navigating his way through the treacherous straits of Tripoli’s traffic. “When people in the West think of Libya, they still only think of terror.”
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission
contactos@servicioskoinonia.org

When the final of the World Cup of Soccer is played, from two to three thousand million persons will surely be watching the game on the screen of their television sets. This can be considered among the many massive spectacles, such as the funeral of princess Diana or the solemn funeral rites for Pope John Paul II. However, that understanding is merely empirical and does not capture its new, profound meaning. In the history of planet Earth, understood as a living super-organism, Gaia, and in the human phenomenon as a whole, something is occurring that must be grasped and deepened. It is the emergence of a new phase of the process of evolution, that went through cosmogenesis, burst into biogenesis, spread out into anthropogenesis and now is taking a new leap, forward and upwards, with noogenesis.
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Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Jul 7 (IPS) - On Jun. 28, IPS reporter Alaa Hassan was ambushed and shot six times as he drove to work in Baghdad, bringing to 75 the number of reporters who have been killed while working in the country since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The figure quoted by the International Federation of Journalists is even higher: 131.
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By LARAY POLK *

On July 4, 2006, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights issued a press release: An Israeli helicopter gunship had fired a second rocket on the Islamic University campus in Gaza; Atfaluna institute for children with hearing disabilities was damaged due to sonic booms earlier in the week; and two bombs had been dropped on Dar Al-Aqram School.
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Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Jul 5 (IPS) - IPS contributor Alaa Hassan was killed on his way to work last Wednesday. He was 35 years old. He is survived by his mother, five brothers, five sisters and his wife who is pregnant with their first child.

Alaa was not killed for being a reporter. Indeed, he had only just begun helping IPS gather news. When fighters ambushed him and machine-gunned his car, it was simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time – one of so many people killed seemingly for no reason in Iraq each day.
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Story from BBC NEWS

A team of Cambodian and foreign judges are beginning the long process of bringing former Khmer Rouge leaders to trial.
A day after being sworn in at a ceremony in Phnom Penh, the 17 Cambodian and 10 foreign judges met for the first of four days of workshops.
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Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jul (IPS) - No less than a quarter of annual development aid – about 20 billion dollars – is being used by donor countries to fund technical assistance of sometimes dubious worth, says ActionAid International in a new report.
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Evo Morales interviewed by
Pablo Stefanoni

July 2006
Greenleft
Znet

On July 2, elections for a constituent assembly and a referendum on regional autonomy were held in Bolivia. A week earlier, Pablo Stefanoni spoke with President Evo Morales about the new assembly and Morales’s first five months in government. The following is abridged from the interview.
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Brian Conley and Omar Abdullah

BAGHDAD, Jul (IPS) - More than three years after the invasion, Iraqis seem increasingly to want to leave the country. Reports come pouring in about Iraqi refugees overwhelming Syria, Jordan and other nations in the region.
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Severin Carrell
Independent

Fleets of unmanned “drone” aircraft fitted with powerful cameras are to be used to patrol Europe’s borders in a dramatic move to combat people-smuggling, illegal immigration and terrorism.
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Hidayat Greenfield

Most TV murder mysteries end with the arrest (or elaborately justified killing) of the perpetrators of the crime. The criminals are caught. The truth is revealed. And justice (revised, modified, and adapted for commercial viewing) prevails. There’s always a neat ending to every terrible (yet entertaining) crime spree. But what if the criminal always gets away? What if the perpetrators depart the scene of the crime in first-class comfort, while the people trying to stop them are arrested? And what if these crimes are real – inflicted daily on millions of people? This particular criminal organization has already escaped justice for more than a decade. Truth was an early victim and hope is missing, presumed dead. So where does that leave us? We’re all witnesses to these crimes. We saw it happen. And we saw them leave the scene of the crime – again and again. So how do we stop them? How do change the ending?
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Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jul 3 (IPS) - Ismail Haniyeh had not been seen since an Israeli soldier was kidnapped last Sunday by Palestinian militants from a military base close to the Israel-Gaza border. Fearing he might be targetted for assassination by Israel, the Hamas Prime Minister scratched his public appearances.
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