Robert Pollin | June 2007
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Making credit accessible to poor people is a laudable aim. But as a tool for fighting global poverty, microcredit should be judged by its effectiveness, not good intentions.
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Interview with Hama Arba Diallo

Hama Arba Diallo

ROME, Jun 29 (IPS) - Water is not the stuff of business, it is a basic human right. Hama Arba Diallo, outgoing executive secretary of the Convention of the United Nations to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is convinced that the United Nations is about to formally recognise this principle, possibly by 2008.
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Democracy Now!

The Supreme Court has thrown out part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that placed restrictions on corporations and unions from buying television ads close to elections. Attorney John Bonifaz of Voter Action says that in granting corporations the First Amendment rights of individuals, the Supreme Court is undermining the election process. [includes rush transcript] The Supreme Court has dealt a blow to campaign finance reform by throwing out part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that placed restrictions on corporations and unions from buying television ads close to elections. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5-to-4 decision. He said that the prohibition against corporate ads mentioning a candidate’s name in the days before an election was an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of corporations.
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By Fabiana Frayssinet*

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 27 (IPS) - In under a decade, programmes providing universal free access to antiretroviral medicines have greatly decreased AIDS mortality in countries like Argentina and Brazil, but this progress is now threatened by the rising prices of new formulas patented by the big pharmaceutical companies.
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By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 (IPS) - A dramatic population explosion in the world’s urban centres will be the single largest influence on development in the 21st century, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) says in a new report released Wednesday.
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Sam Daley-Harris, Robert Pollin, and Felicia Montgomery | June 2007
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Foreign Policy In Focus asked the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s Sam Daley-Harris to respond to the question of whether microcredit is the solution to global poverty or whether its benefits have been oversold. Robert Pollin, who also provided this FPIF analysis of microcredit’s plusses and minuses, responds to Daley-Harris below. Finally, Felicia Montgomery also of the Microcredit Summit Campaign responds to Pollin.
Sam Daley-Harris
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The Record of the Newspaper of Record

By STEPHEN LENDMAN

Dictionaries define “yellow journalism” variously as irresponsible and sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It’s misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation and readership or serve a larger purpose like lying for state and corporate interests. The dominant US media excel in it, producing a daily diet of fiction portrayed as real news and information in their role as our national thought-control police gatekeepers. In the lead among the print and electronic corporate-controlled media is the New York Times publishing “All The News That’s Fit To Print” by its standards. Others wanting real journalism won’t find it on their pages allowing only the fake kind. It’s because this paper’s primary mission is to be the lead instrument of state propaganda making it the closest thing we have in the country to an official ministry of information and propaganda. (more…)

By David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Jun 26 (IPS) - The European Union is failing to prioritise health and education in its plans for spending aid in poor countries, according to a new study.
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By Christi van der Westhuizen

ROME, Jun 23 (IPS) - Development plans like the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are “just words” if financing is not made available to implement the plans, says Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University.
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Democracy Now!

A decade ago Dr. Linda Peeno made headlines when she told Congress about her work as a medical reviewer for the giant HMO Humana, where she says she denied a man life-saving medical care in order to boost company profits. She would go on to become one of the country’s best known whistleblowers about HMOs and the healthcare industry. [includes rush transcript] Our next guest is also featured in Michael Moore’s new documentary SiCKO. A decade ago Doctor Linda Peeno made headlines when she appeared before Congress to talk about her work as a medical reviewer for the giant HMO Humana. Michael Moore replays part of that testimony in his new film.
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Democracy Now!

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill joins us to talk about his new book, “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” Scahill writes, “Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the ‘global war on terror,’ with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 private contractors at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments.” From Iraq to New Orleans, Blackwater has continued to pull in multi-million-dollar government contracts, mostly without accountability and in near-secrecy. [
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By Gustavo González

ROME, Jun (IPS) - The main reason that Latin America is not making faster progress towards the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the international community in 2000 lies in the various forms of inequality that prevail in the region, former Dutch minister of development cooperation Eveline Herfkens told IPS Thursday.
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Eduardo Tamayo G.

Today, June 20th, is World Refugee Day. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of displaced people worldwide surpasses 40 million people, or one out of every 136 people is in this situation.
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Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jun 20 (IPS) - In a development that underlines the tensions between the anti-Iran agenda of the George W. Bush administration and the preoccupation of its military command in Afghanistan with militant Sunni activism, a State Department official publicly accused Iran for the first time of arming the Taliban forces last week, but the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan rejected that charge for the second time in less than two weeks.
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By Michael Deibert

PARIS, Jun (IPS) - In his successful bid to lead the country this past spring, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made reform of the country’s immigration system a centrepiece of his campaign, at one point telling a news conference that France was “exasperated by the dispute about national identity and by uncontrolled immigration.”
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The Removal of Private Healthcare Companies & Clinton’s Ties to Insurance Companies: “They’re into Her Pocket and She’s Into Their Pocket And I Don’t Expect Much From Her”
Democracy Now!
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Robin Hahnel, Michael Foley, and Matt Meyer | June 2007
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

In April, FPIF published an essay by historian Lawrence Wittner on the future of the U.S. peace movement. His call for a large, national peace organization generated a flurry of responses, which we published collectively in What’s Next for the Peace Movement. Here we publish three final comments from Robin Hahnel, Michael Foley, and Matt Meyer.
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By Clive Freeman

BERLIN, Jun (IPS) - In a powerful display of womanpower, more than a thousand businesswomen from 91 countries took part in the 17th Global Summit of Women in Berlin over the weekend. The central theme was “Global Opportunities and Challenges.”
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Stephen Zunes | June 2007
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

In a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory in the June 1967 war.
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By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jun 15 (IPS) - A customary Chinese greeting from the years of rations and shortages – “have you eaten yet” – is being jokingly resurrected here as the public watches the prices of key staples, particularly pork, soaring by the day.
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Néstor Busso

There are thousands of children who die daily of avoidable causes. There are some 36,000 people who die daily in the world because of hunger. That is “normal”.

Several hundred die daily because of wars that are considered normal for assuring “democracy and freedom”
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By David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Jun 13 (IPS) - The European Union’s freeze on direct aid to the Palestinian Authority has led to sharp increases in debts owed by families in the West Bank and Gaza, the relief agency Oxfam has alleged.
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By David Bacon
t r u t h o u t | Columnist, June 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060907A.shtml

The Bush administration has no love for unions anywhere, but in Iraq it has a special reason for hating them. They are the main opposition to the occupation’s economic agenda, and the biggest obstacle to that agenda’s centerpiece - the privatization of Iraq’s oil. At the same time, unions have become the only force in Iraq trying to maintain at least a survival living standard for the millions of Iraqis who still have to go to work every day, in the middle of the war. (more…)

By Mithre J. Sandrasagra

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 (IPS) - The U.S. Coalition is the principal cause of Iraq’s current woes, charges a report released Wednesday by the Global Policy Forum (GPF), a New York-based watchdog group.
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Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 (IPS) - U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman’s call for cross-border raids into Iran appears to be the culmination of a two-week long campaign by proponents of war to put the military option centre-stage in the U.S. debate over Iran once more.
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By David Bacon
TruthOut/Report
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061107T.shtml

Within hours of the Senate vote to kill its comprehensive immigration reform bill, the lobbyist for software giant Oracle Corp. had already declared that Silicon Valley’s proposal for more guest workers was still alive. “We don’t think it’s dead,” Robert Hoffman told the San Francisco Chronicle. Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer threatened to move more high tech jobs out of the country if electronics corporations didn’t get more contract migrant labor. Other corporate spokespeople also announced they were looking for ways to revive the Senate bill in which they’d invested so much political capital.
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Oscar Ugarteche

The beginning of the 21st century has been characterized by a growing wave of intolerance as demonstrated by the Vatican, George Bush’s administration and radical Islamic groups. Put another way, there is a growing militancy in the West among members of the Catholic Church hierarchy and their parishioners, who have become willing to hit the streets in order to defend their point of view. They have done so repeatedly and, in some instances, have even resorted to violence in order to scare the citizenry. Nowadays being Catholic does not infer that one is a pacifist nor peace-loving, rather it stands for being part of a radical fight against abortion and same sex unions. All of this is taking place in the name of life, echoing Franco’s “Long live death” (“Que viva la muerte”). Equality and dignity, matters that once concerned Saint Augustine in his reflections as well as others such as Saint Thomas, have lost validity in the face of the erudite obscurantism practiced by the contemporary church currently presided over by Ratzinger (former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and previously by Wojzila, the radical right-wing Polish priest, who was anti-communist and very intolerant. Although under Ratzinger, the Vatican is distancing itself from neo-conservatives insofar as it is defending evolution and not reverting to creationism.
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By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Jun (IPS) - U.S. President George W. Bush this week discussed a U.S. missile base in Eastern Europe with Polish and Czech officials, but the results were merely words, and the two European countries showed some naivety as international players.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 7, 2007

By SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — Six human rights groups on Wednesday released a list of 39 people they believe have been secretly imprisoned by the United States and whose whereabouts are unknown, calling on the Bush administration to abandon such detentions.
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By Julio Godoy

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, Jun 7 (IPS) - The agreement reached by the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries on halving greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 is only a rhetorical breakthrough, for the United States and Russia only accept “to consider seriously” to join the other group members in the effort.
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By MICHAEL J. COPPS
NEW YORK TIMES
June 2007
Op-Ed Contributor

AS a member of the Federal Communications Commission, I often hear how
fed up Americans are with the news media. Too much “if it bleeds it
leads” on the evening news and not enough real coverage of local issues.
Too little high-quality entertainment and too many people eating bugs.
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Julio Godoy

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, Jun 6 (IPS) - The summit of the heads of government of the eight most industrialised countries opened Wednesday in this Baltic seaside resort, surrounded by impressive security measures, and dominated by a total cacophony on the group’s efforts to curb climate change.
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by Robert W. McChesney & Mark Weisbrot

To read and view the U.S. news media over the past week, there is an episode of grand tyranny unfolding, one repugnant to all who cherish democratic freedoms. The Venezuelan government under “strongman” Hugo Chavez refused to renew the 20-year broadcast license for RCTV, because that medium had the temerity to be critical of his regime. It is a familiar story.

And in this case it is wrong.
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Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

NEW DELHI, Jun (IPS) - Brazil and India are together sending out a clear message to the rest of the world – do not ignore us when it comes to discussing and resolving important issues such as global warming, peaceful uses of nuclear energy, bio-fuels, farm subsidies and United Nations reforms.
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Julio Godoy

ROSTOCK, Germany, Jun (IPS) - Over the last several weeks the German government tightened controls on civil society groups and leftist anti-globalisation activists in order to prevent, as the official lines goes, “violent disruptions” of the G8 summit of industrialised countries that Germany is hosting this week.
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Michael Shank | May 2007
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On April 26, Michael Shank interviewed him about the conflict between Congress and the U.S. president over Iraq and Syria, the scandal enveloping World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz, and the nature of foreign debt.
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