Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 (IPS) - The statistics are mind-boggling: of the more than six billion people in the world today, over one billion have no access to improved drinking water – a basic necessity for human life – and about 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation.
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by Jeffrey Blankfort*

We publish, today, the second part of Jeffrey Blankfort’s study on the ambiguities of Noam Chomsky. Having shown, in the first part of his article, the professor’s commitment to support the investments in Israel and to accredit the misleading theory of the guard of the oil wells, Blankfort dissects, below, two other dogmas. On the one hand, far from being a strategic asset for the United States, as Chomsky claims, Israel is a handicap. On the other hand, it is not Washington that prevents the solving of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but Israel itself, which wants to be, simultaneously, a Jewish state and the single state in Palestine.
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Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Sep 28 (IPS) - As a new generation of Chinese communist party leaders consolidates its grip over the world’s fastest growing economy, fighting corruption has become the new ideological weapon wielded in power struggles within its governing ranks.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 28, 2006
Editorial

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
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by Michael Albert; September 2006

What can leftists learn from Chavez’s UN speech and its aftermath? That the U.S. is the world’s most egregious rogue state. We already knew that and, in fact, so does most everyone else. That Bush and Co. engage in repeated acts of amoral, immoral, and antimoral behavior such as a devil would enact, if there was such a thing as a devil. We already knew that too. That the emperor has no morality, integrity, wisdom, or humanity. We knew that as well.
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Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Sep (IPS) - One of the world’s most exclusive business clubs warned the United States Tuesday that its open-ended national security and war expenditures, along with tax cuts that led to large budget deficits, could affect the country’s status as a powerful economic force.
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Laura Carlsen, IRC | September 2006
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

On September 16, over one million people raised their hands in a vote to recognize center-left leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the “legitimate president” of Mexico. Gathered in Mexico City’s historic center, the delegates to the National Democratic Convention (NDC) agreed to inaugurate their president on November 20—ten days before the inauguration of the officially recognized candidate, Felipe Calderon. This act of civil resistance ushered in a new stage in an electoral conflict that has developed into an all-out battle for the country’s future.
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Alejandro Kirk

UNITED NATIONS - Developed and developing countries should work together as equal partners in strengthening local resources and values, rather than trying to reproduce the “distorted” model of northern countries, Italy’s Deputy Foreign Minister Patrizia Sentinelli told IPS.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission

ALAI AMLATINA, Rio de Janeiro.- The attitude of Pope Benedict XVI is causing justified rage in the Islamic communities, as a result of his unfortunate quotation from a XIV century Byzantine emperor, who said: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” It also brought embarrassment and shame to Christians. The quote was totally ill-timed. The Pope is well aware of the present confrontation between Islam and the West, which is making war on Afganisthan and Iraq, and which openly supports the Israeli cause against the Palestinians, the great majority of whom are Moslems. In that context, that quote aligns the Pope with the strategic wars by the West. How can one not be upset by that approach?
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Analysis by Federico Bordonaro

ROME, Sep 25 (IPS) - Interior Minister Giuliano Amato proposed in August that Muslim organisations in Italy will need to subscribe to a Charter of Values to signal their readiness to be fully integrated into Italian society and its political culture.
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IRIN

KHARTOUM, 21 September (IRIN) - A top United Nations envoy warned on Thursday that the Darfur peace agreement was on the verge of collapse and lambasted the Darfur Ceasefire Commission (CFC), which is responsible for monitoring and implementing the accord.
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Marwaan Macan-Markar and Johanna Son

BANGKOK, Sep 22 (IPS) - As Thailand’s 18th coup ended its third day, the first cracks against a military solution to a political problem have surfaced. A small group of dissidents gathered to voice their opposition to the junta outside a swanky shopping mall here on Friday evening.

‘No to Thaksin, No to coup,’ read a protest sign held up by the dissidents, who numbered about 20. ‘’Don’t call it reform. It’s a coup,'’ said another.
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Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Sep 21 (IPS) - After a tense week with several U.S. allies breaking ranks with the George W. Bush administration on Iran, an agreement has been reached to give diplomacy a bit more time.
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Leonardo Boff
Philosopher
Earthcharter Commission

Now that the electoral campaigns have begun in earnest, a refrain is heard in the speeches, ritually recited by each candidate, not just here but anywhere in the world: «I promise economic growth, income distribution and social inclusion». The accent always is on economic growth because that is what makes the other promises possible.
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Kristin S. Schafer | September 2006
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Key Points

• The United States has failed to adopt two key treaties: the Stockholm Convention on eliminating chemicals the international community has agreed are extremely dangerous to human health and the environment, and the Rotterdam Convention, which controls the international trade of highly toxic chemicals.
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Johanna Son

BANGKOK, Sep 20 (IPS) - Many Thais are heaving a sigh of relief that Tuesday’s military coup against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra has so far been a non-violent one, but not far behind is the nagging question: Now what?
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Conn Hallinan | September 2006
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

The images most Americans have of the recent war in Lebanon are of shattered cities, dead civilians, and terrified people bunkered down in basements or picking their way through blasted streets. The carnage of modern war draws the media as ancient battles called forth the Valkyries.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 19 (IPS) - While his handlers worked assiduously Tuesday to ensure that U.S. President George W. Bush did not run into his Iranian nemesis, Mahmood Ahmedinejad, in the corridors of the U.N., a legendary fixer for the Bush family announced that the White House had cleared him to meet with a “high representative” of Tehran’s government.
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By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer

A recent House of Representatives committee report on Iran’s nuclear capability is “outrageous and dishonest” in trying to make a case that Tehran’s program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has said.
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Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Sep 18 (IPS) - The U.S.-Israeli embargo on Palestinians imposed in the aftermath of the electoral victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, in the occupied territories has lead to severe poverty and nonpayment of Palestinian workers, a new study by a U.S. pro-labour group says.
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by MUMIA ABU JAMAL

The woman’s voice on the phone was as plaintive as a tear, as she implored the non-responsive talk show host to please tell her, “Why do they hate us so much? Why?".
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Marwaan Macan-Markar

BATAM, Indonesia, Sep 15 (IPS) - Civil society organisations have fired an unprecedented salvo at the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by declaring a boycott of the annual meetings of the two financial powerhouses being held in nearby, authoritarian Singapore.
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Farrah Hassen | September 11, 2006
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

In June 2003, I made my first trip to Syria, home to generations of my family, the two oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth (Damascus and Aleppo), the final resting place of Kurdish leader Salahaddin and on a lighter note, purveyor of arguably the most decadent, mind-numbing syrupy sweets.

At the time, the aftermath of the Iraq war and lingering U.S. occupation loomed large in the minds of Syrians of all stripes–from intellectuals and government officials to storeowners and Bedouins picking cucumbers in Bosra, near the Jordanian border. With a U.S. military presence in neighboring Iraq uncomfortably close to Syria, many wondered: “Will Syria be next?”
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Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Sep 14 (IPS) - One morning in late August, a group of about 15 men from the Hizbul Mujahideen jihadist group walked into Lal Faqir’s home to congratulate him for the ‘martyrdom’ of his son Bahar Ali who, they said, had died after ramming an explosives-laden car into a NATO vehicle in Afghanistan.
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Analysis by Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Sep 13 (IPS) - The state of the global economy and efforts to fine-tune the decision-making process at the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to include a greater voice for developing nations will dominate the lenders’ high-profile annual meetings in Singapore next week.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission

I read three terrifying books a few weeks ago. The first, Our Final Hour, a scientist’s warning, by British astronomer Martin Rees, is about the environmental disaster threatening the future of Humanity. The second is The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis,by astrophysicist and physician James Lovelock, who formulated the theory of the Earth as a living superorganism, Gaia. And the third was a CIA Report, about how the world will look in 2020. The first two books are scary because they bring to our attention the systemic violence which our culture, now globalized, with its levels of production and consumption, is wreaking against the Earth and her ecosystems, in short, against life. We may not be in agreement with their basic pessimism, as if we were in the «last hour» (Rees) or «in a coma state» (Lovelock), but the data they present are objective and deserve to be taken seriously, so that we are not late in finding solutions. Both show a love of life, a concern for the Earth, and a caring for the human being.
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Alejandro Kirk and Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Sep (IPS) - The week-long 14th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) opened Monday with the usual suspense over whether or not Cuban President Fidel Castro would be participating, although heightened this time by the fact that he is recovering from major surgery and is the leader of the host country.
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by Stephen Collinson

Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al-Qaeda or slain operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the Iraq war, according to a US Senate report, contradicting repeated claims by President George W. Bush.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Sep (IPS) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to build new bridges with Africa on a tour this week - with development among its main pillars.
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John Rivera and Conn Hallinan
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

FPIF invited Conn Hallinan and John Rivera to debate the issue of food aid. Hallinan, the author of the FPIF piece “ The Devil’s Brew of Poverty Relief,” has been critical of the relationship between the food aid community and commercial interests. Rivera, a former reporter and editor at the Baltimore Sun, is a senior writer at Catholic Relief Services, where he works closely with his food aid colleagues.
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By Max Rodenbeck
1.
There are many ways to read the latest war in Lebanon. It may rightly, for instance, be seen as a proxy war, a nasty skirmish at the margins of a strategically bigger struggle. Like those cold war subconflicts in Africa, Indochina, and Central America, it pits adversaries equipped, ideologically inspired, and goaded by more powerful patrons. In this case, the patrons, waiting in the wings to see how their weapons and tactics performed, and hoping to frighten their bigger foes while limiting losses to themselves, are Iran and America, each using a pampered, martially minded client to defend against perceived threats to their interests in the region.
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Meena Janardhan

DUBAI, Sep 8 (IPS) - Saif Al Shaali, who was a United States resident since 2001, vows never to return to that country due to the shabby treatment that he, his wife and three children received at the Los Angeles, California airport in August.
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By Robert Malley

1.
On June 25, members of three militant Palestinian organizations, including the governing Hamas, attacked an Israeli military base, killing two soldiers and seizing a third. On July 12, militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah crossed into Israel, captured two soldiers, and killed three others. When Israeli troops pursued them into Lebanese territory, Hezbollah hit again, killing five more.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep (IPS) - Five years after “9/11″, the U.S. public is considerably less enthusiastic about projecting military power abroad, according to a major new survey, the first of a spate of polls that are likely to released in the run-up to Monday’s fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Sep (IPS) - The Taliban have regained control over the southern half of Afghanistan and their frontline is advancing daily, a group closely monitoring the Afghan situation said in a report Tuesday.
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Don Kraus
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

The world is holding its collective breath. Will the Lebanon ceasefire hold? Will war and ethnic cleansing escalate again in Darfur? UN peacekeeping, described by Secretary General Kofi Annan as “the only fire brigade in the world that has to acquire a fire engine after the fire has started,” will be key in both situations to preventing further death and destruction. Prompt UN protection of civilians in war-torn regions, however, requires a new institution: a rapidly deployable UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS).
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John Feffer, IRC |
Editor: Chuck Hosking, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

The United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) have enjoyed a close alliance for more than a half century. When South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun met with George W. Bush in November 2005, an official White House statement summed up the relationship between the two countries: “The two leaders agreed that the alliance not only stands against threats but also for the promotion of the common values of democracy, market economy, freedom, and human rights in Asia and around the world.” In other words, South Korea and the United States contend that they stand together not only for strategic military reasons but also because of a strong overlap in economic and political philosophies.
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Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily

RAMADI, Sep 5 (IPS) - The U.S. military has lost control over the volatile al-Anbar province, Iraqi police and residents say.

The area to the west of Baghdad includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns that have seen the worst of military occupation, and the strongest resistance.
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Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Sep 4 (IPS) - Almost every evening, Alina Díaz goes down to the sea shore in the Cuban capital to contemplate the deep Caribbean waters which, two years ago, swallowed up her son Abel. She still cannot understand why the 21-year-old student got involved in the adventure that would take him away from his family and cost him his life.
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Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission

Those who listen to what the candidates say on TV have to close their eyes and ask themselves: in what country do these people live? It is a Brazil straight from Thomas More’s Utopia: there will be high levels of growth, social inclusion, redistribution of wealth, complete agrarian reform, overcoming of endemic violence, revolution in education, and much more. That view is a pure sham and has nothing to do with the real Brazil, which lacks all ethics, whose people are increasingly tired of unfulfilled promises, and held hostage by a political class that is reactionary and incurably drugged by corruption.
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By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 01 September 2006

When Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited President Bush to engage in a “direct television debate” a few days ago, the White House predictably responded by calling the offer “a diversion.” But even though this debate will never happen, it’s worth contemplating.
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Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (IPS) - Lebanon is firmly en route to becoming the third nation in the Middle East after Iraq and the Palestinian territories to experience a devastating Washington-backed war and a massive influx of new illegitimate debt to cover reconstruction expenses, anti-debt activists say.
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