Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 31 (IPS) - A new “surprise” visit by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to Cuba served as a pretext to show images of his friend and host, Fidel Castro, up and about.
(more…)

Jason Yossef Ben-Meir | January 2007
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

The new strategy of the United States in Iraq does not include an extensive overhaul of reconstruction efforts at this critical time. Very little money is now being appropriated for reconstruction. As the Iraq Study Group Report explains, of the $21 billion to date that has been appropriated for the “Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund” (IRRF), $16 billion has been spent and the remaining funds have been committed. The administration requested $750 million for 2007, and President Bush’s new proposal is to add $1.2 billion to that.
(more…)

Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission

This year, 2007, marks 800 years since the birth of Jalal ud-Din ar-Rumi, (1207-1273), the greatest of the Islamic mystics, an extraordinary poet of love. He was born in Afghanistan, spent time in Iran, and then lived and died in Konya, Turkey. He was a learned professor of theology, fervent in his spiritual exercises. His life changed when he found himself in the company of the fascinating and mysterious figure of the vagabond monk, Shams de Tabriz. As Sufi tradition puts it, it was «an encounter of two oceans.» That mysterious teacher initiated Rumi into the mystical experience of love. His gratitude was so great that he dedicated to him a whole book of 3,239 verses, Shams de Tabriz Divan. («Divan» means, collection of poems.)
(more…)

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (IPS) - When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last week at the Herzliya conference that Israel could not risk another “existential threat” such as the Nazi holocaust, he was repeating what has become the dominant theme in Israel’s campaign against Iran – that it cannot tolerate an Iran with the technology that could be used to make nuclear weapons, because Iran is fanatically committed to the physical destruction of Israel.
(more…)

Mark Weisenmiller

TAMPA, Florida, Jan 29 (IPS) - The author of a best-selling “biography” of cod and a world history of salt has taken on the weighty theme of nonviolence movements in his latest book – why some thrive and others fail, and why the concept is so “profoundly dangerous” to the powers that be.
(more…)

“The fuel for a fire is in place".

By Colonel Sam Gardiner

Global Research, January 2007
The Left Coaster

Editorial Note

The following text by Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Retired) confirms our worst fears. The US is in an advanced state of readiness to wage war on Iran.
(more…)

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Jan 25 (IPS) - As the World Social Forum (WSF) draws to a close in the Kenyan capital Thursday, calls on international finance institutions to cancel debts owed to them by poor countries have grown ever louder.
(more…)

What It Would Take to Stop It

By VIRGINIA TILLEY
Johannesburg, South Africa

From its inception, the US occupation was a lose-lose proposition. Simply rolling into Iraq – a society of which the Bush neocons had so distorted a conception and US occupation commanders and foot soldiers had no grasp at all - was a formula for doom. But US policy in the Middle East has now advanced to a new stage and the risk to the rest of us has changed. For stopping an attack on Iran, which is the only way to avert final regional disaster, may require action in Washington that falls outside the parameters of what is normally politically possible. (more…)

JOHN CHERIAN

With the endgame nearing and the sectarian divide deepening, insurgent groups are making all-out efforts to take control of the capital.
(more…)

D. Ravi Kanth

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 24 (IPS) - The high-profile Davos meeting of the international political, business, economic and academic elite began Wednesday on the sombre note that globalisation is facing major threats due to worsening climate change, growing income disparities, escalating barriers to movement of people, and global political and economic instability.
(more…)

By Gideon Rachman

President George W. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq demonstrates the remarkable durability of neo-conservative foreign policy. Just a couple of months ago, the neo-cons were being written off. The Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq was advertised as signalling the triumphant return of the “grown-ups” and the “reality-based community". But the president chose to ignore Baker-Hamilton, reportedly dismissing the document as a “flaming turd".
(more…)

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 23 (IPS) - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has taken the initial step towards a significant restructuring of the United Nations Secretariat by realigning the organisation’s peacekeeping operations and bringing disarmament directly under his wing.
(more…)

By George McGovern
The Nation
January 2007

I’m glad to be back at the National Press Club. Indeed, at the age of eighty-four, I’m glad to be anywhere. In my younger years when the subject of aging came up, trying to sound worldly wise, I would say, “It doesn’t matter so much the number of years you have, but what you do with those years.” I don’t say that anymore. I now want to reach a hundred. Why? Because I thoroughly enjoy life and there are so many things I must still do before entering the mystery beyond. The most urgent of these is to get American soldiers out of the Iraqi hellhole Bush-Cheney and their neoconservative theorists have created in what was once called the cradle of civilization. It is believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden. I mention the neoconservative theorists to recall Walter Lippman’s observance, “There is nothing so dangerous as a belligerent professor.” (more…)

Stefania Milan

VICENZA, Italy, Jan. 22 (IPS) - The old airport Dal Molin is about the only green area left in the densely populated industrial district of Vicenza in Northern Italy. Soon the 450,000 square-metre area will be converted into a U.S. Army base.
(more…)

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
By DAVID LEONHARDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/16/cost-of-iraq-war-12-tr_n_38842.html
http://nytimes.com

The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.
(more…)

Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan (IPS) - The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) may have effectively closed up shop two years ago and its key neo-conservative allies in the administration, such as Scooter Libby and Douglas Feith, may be long gone, but the group’s five-year-old Middle East strategy remains very much alive.
(more…)

AIJAZ AHMAD

After West Asia and the Caspian Sea Basin, Horn of Africa is the next Great Game.

THE hastily confected judicial assassination of Saddam Hussein, the last President of independent Iraq, was part of an extraordinary three-month-long offensive that United States President George W. Bush has mounted on all fronts, domestic and international, since mid-October 2006. That offensive has now culminated in the invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian proxy of the U.S., massive U.S. bombings of Somali territory by huge U.S. cargo planes that have been turned into gunships, and the “invitation” by the puppet regime, which the Ethiopian proxy has imposed on Somalia, to the U.S. to send its troops to this newly occupied country. A “new” Eastern Africa is now as much a U.S. objective as is a “new” West Asia. An integrated offensive from the Caspian Sea to the Mombasa Bay, so to speak.
(more…)

Ann De Ron

BRUSSELS, Jan. 18 (IPS) - Most migrants from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would prefer to spend shorter periods abroad and then return home, says a new World Bank report.
(more…)

Raúl Zibechi

South American social movements face an unprecedented panorama: the majority of governments on the continent define themselves as progressive or on the left. This is a reality which these same movements contributed to shaping and which can either help them to grow or block their development.
(more…)

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 17 (IPS) - From Iraq to Nigeria, multinational corporations are ignoring human rights, entrenching a culture of abuse and impunity that is difficult to eradicate, a leading anti-apartheid activist warns.
(more…)

Michael Shank | January 2007
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

The United States, fearing a new Taliban had come to power in Somalia, recently did what many expected it would do: invade Somalia. Not directly though. In the final weeks of 2006, Ethiopian forces that were trained, financed, and outfitted by the United States pounded Somalia’s capital and port cities with air attacks, routing the poorly equipped militias of the Islamic leadership.
(more…)

Mohammed A. Salih

ARBIL, Jan. (IPS) - Iraqis have left a bloody 2006 behind, but the two opening weeks of 2007 do not bode well for the rest of this year.
(more…)

By NEIL A. LEWIS
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON — The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.
(more…)

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (IPS) - President George W. Bush’s seemingly aggressive Iran policy of taking direct action against alleged Iranian “networks” involved in attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, combined with the deployment of a second carrier group off Iran’s coast, triggered speculation that it is related to a plan for an attack.
(more…)

Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - President George W. Bush’s address on Iraq Wednesday night was less about Iraq than about its eastern neighbour, Iran. There was little new about the U.S.’s strategy in Iraq, but on Iran, the president spelled out a plan that appears to be aimed at goading Iran into war with the U.S.
(more…)

John Feffer, IRC

Capitalism and democracy go together like … like what? Peanut butter and jelly? Or a fish and a bicycle?
(more…)

Roger Howard
Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco, IPS
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Conjuring images of nuclear terrorism and the “annihilation” of the Jewish state, the spectre of an Iranian bomb readily haunts the Western imagination. But Tehran’s nuclear ambitions also pose a very different type of challenge to America. This challenge is not years from fruition, as a warhead still seems to be. It is instead already unfolding.
(more…)

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jan (IPS) - When the United Nations launched a probe into “misconduct and mismanagement” in U.N. procurement last January, it moved against eight staffers who were temporarily suspended – “on special leave with pay” – pending investigations.
(more…)

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD, Jan. 10 (IPS) - The U.S. administration continues to tout Iraq as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East, but press freedom in Iraq has plummeted since the beginning of the occupation.
(more…)

The ‘IoS’ today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years

The Independent
(more…)

ALAI

Last December 18, the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, adopted October 20 2005 during the 33rd General Conference of UNESCO, topped the goal of 30 ratifications needed for it to come into force, after a period of three months.
(more…)

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan (IPS) - Elites in the major countries of Latin America are increasingly bullish about their nations’ economies and increasingly alienated from the United States, according to a new survey by Zogby International and released this week by Newsweek magazine.
(more…)

Jim Lobe
IRC Right Web
rightweb.irc-online.org

Neoconservative hawks inside and outside the administration of President George W. Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during the conflict in Lebanon this past summer, according to a newly published interview with a prominent neoconservative.
(more…)

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

FALLUJAH, Jan. 8 (IPS) - Ten-year-old Yassir aimed a plastic gun at a passing U.S. armoured patrol in Fallujah, and shouted “Bang! Bang!”
(more…)

By Stephanie Hanes

Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - At the end of each school year, when she says goodbye and wishes her students success in high school, Martha Mohulo can’t help but worry. A veteran primary school teacher in Soweto, she knows the dangers lurking in this sprawling, struggling township - perils such as violence, AIDS, and teenage pregnancy.

So when Oprah Winfrey picked eight of Ms. Mahulo’s students to attend her lavish new girls’ academy south of Johannesburg, the teacher was thrilled.
(more…)

Execution Memories Refuse To Go Away
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD, Jan. 5 (IPS) - The footage of the execution of Saddam Hussein has generated controversy in Iraq that is refusing to die down.

Footage of Saddam’s last moments, taken by an onlooker with a mobile phone, shows the former dictator appearing calm and composed while dealing with taunts from witnesses below him. The audio reveals several men praising the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, founder of the Shia Dawa Party, who was killed by Saddam in 1980.
(more…)

Fulgence Zamblé

TABOU, Jan 4 (IPS) - It has been three years since Brahima Ouédraogo, a small-scale farmer from Burkina Faso, arrived in a little village in the Tabou region of south-western Côte d’Ivoire with his family, in search of arable land.

Initially residents of Klotou gave the newcomers a warm welcome. But, this warmth has since died away; in fact, some would even like to see the Ouédraogo family leave.
(more…)

By BERT SACKS *

“Imagine if a U.S. cruise missile were to land on a kindergarten and kill 165 children. Imagine now that it was launched knowing it would hit that kindergarten, and further, that one of these missiles was launched at a different kindergarten every day for a month. That’s 5,000 children.
“To kill that many children as a matter of state policy would be unspeakable. The American commander in chief would be condemned as a barbarian. And yet, that is what the economic embargo of Iraq has done.” (more…)