By Stephanie Nieuwoudt

CAPE TOWN, Feb 27 (IPS) - According to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, the average annual return on investment in Africa is between 65 and 70 percent higher than in any other country, including China.

However, according to Peter Croll, director of the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC), the media often does not portray the correct picture of Africa. And this has negative consequences for the way potential investors view Africa as an investment region. The BICC is a German research institute promoting peace and development.
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Anna Nemtsova - NEWSWEEK

In establishing the Kremlin’s control, we lost our freedom of the press. Now the challenge is to expand democracy.

From the magazine issue dated Mar 2, 2009

In February a Moscow think tank run by Igor Yurgens, a liberal economist and one of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s closest economic-policy advisers, delivered a scathing critique of the government’s shortcomings in combating Russia’s deepening economic crisis—and a set of radical prescriptions for reversing Russia’s dependence on oil and reducing its crippling bureaucracy. The report sent shock waves through Russia’s establishment, not least because public policy debate over the Kremlin’s course has become so rare.
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By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Feb 26 (IPS) - In a stunning reversal, Britain’s government admitted Wednesday that it participated in the ‘extraordinary rendition’ to Afghanistan of two terror suspects captured in Iraq.

British Defence Secretary John Hutton told Britain’s House of Commons that the two individuals were captured by British forces in Iraq, transferred to U.S. detention and later moved to a U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan.
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By Tim Padgett - TIME

Washington started off on the wrong foot with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shortly after he took office in 1999. Embarking on his first international tour as head of state, Chávez took a call from a high-ranking Clinton Administration official, who told the Venezuelan leader that it would be better for his country’s relations with the U.S. if he avoided visiting Fidel Castro in Cuba. Chávez, a left-wing nationalist, had yet to develop his gushing friendship with Castro, but like other leaders all over Latin America — even those who dislike the Cuban leader and his politics — he took umbrage at Washington’s assumption that it could veto his itinerary.
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By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Feb 25 (IPS) - While human rights and legal advocacy groups applauded President Barack Obama’s decision to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year, many immediately raised another thorny question: “What about Bagram?”

The answer came as a shock. In a brief filing in federal court last week, lawyers from Obama’s Department of Justice said they would adopt the same position taken by the George W. Bush administration - that detainees held at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
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by Marcus Stern, ProPublica

February 25, 2009. Paramilitary agents for the CIA’s super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to “light up” targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes. This week the government acknowledged for the first time that some of SAD’s sensitive air operations were swept up in a fraud conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the CIA and cost the government $40 million.
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By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Feb 24 (IPS) - A leading human rights organisation charges that contrary to recent U.S. government reports that found prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba being treated humanely, they are in fact “deteriorating at a rapid rate” due to “harsh conditions that continue to this day, despite a few cosmetic changes to their routines.”
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By Eyal Press

This article appeared in the March 9, 2009 edition of The Nation.

In 1962, when David Grossman was an 8-year-old schoolboy in Jerusalem, his father handed him a Hebrew translation of Sholem Aleichem’s Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor’s Son, a collection of stories evoking the lost world of the Grossmans’ Yiddish-speaking ancestors. “Do you like it?” his father asked. Grossman was too young to understand it, but he managed to make his way through the book and was soon engrossed in a six-volume set of Aleichem’s stories, soaking up details about tailors, milkmen and matchmakers. He had come to grasp that his father’s gesture was an invitation. “I realized that for the first time, he was inviting me over there, giving me the keys to the tunnel that would lead from my childhood to his,” Grossman recalled in a recent essay.
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Mel Frykberg interviews Hamas Foreign Minister AHMED YOUSEF

RAMALLAH, Feb 23 (IPS) - At the eleventh hour, just as a permanent ceasefire painfully mediated by the Egyptians after weeks of intensive shuttle diplomacy was about to take effect, Israel suddenly changed its preconditions for a settlement with Hamas.

This has left the Palestinians, especially Gazans, the Egyptians, the Hamas leadership and even some Israeli analysts wondering just what will happen next. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza remains unresolved and the current tentative ceasefire looks increasingly fragile as intermittent violence continues.
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Reprieve

After a long battle with the US authorities, Reprieve is pleased to announce that Binyam Mohamed has been released from Guantánamo Bay and will today arrive in Britain.

He will be met by a doctor and his lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Gareth Pierce, together with family and friends who will take him to a quiet place to recover from his ordeal.
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By Stephen Leahy

CHICAGO, U.S., Feb 20 (IPS) - Earth’s two ice-covered polar oceans may be the most inhospitable places on the planet, but more than 12,000 species of animals have been found there, according to new research released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here.
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Raina Kelley -Newsweek Web Exclusive

Seven lies we tell ourselves about social networking.

Everybody loves to complain about Facebook. But I’ve been wading through all the nonstop commentary about the over the last few weeks and I’ve made a startling discovery. Everybody also lies about why they use Facebook. After exhaustive research, I’ve discovered the Seven Lies You Tell Yourself About Facebook.
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By Robert Dreyfuss - The Nation

This article appeared in the March 9, 2009 edition of The Nation.

For the first time in six years, it’s possible to see the light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq. Despite all their flaws–and there were many–the January 31 elections in fourteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces ratified the resurgence of secular nationalism. A large majority of voters repudiated the Shiite and Sunni religious parties and the Kurdish separatists. And in so doing, they broke free of the rigid confines of the ethno-sectarian politics that has dominated the Iraqi scene since 2003. The results mean that the Obama administration may soon have to deal with a vastly different cast of characters in Iraq–politicians less willing to tolerate a long-term US presence and firmly opposed to a special relationship between Baghdad and Washington.
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By Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Feb (IPS) - Worldwide demand for food is expected to grow steadily over the next 40 years, but 25 percent of the world’s food production may be lost to ‘environmental breakdowns’ by 2050 unless urgent action is taken.

This is the message in a document presented to environment ministers from more than 140 countries meeting in Nairobi, Kenya under the auspices of the United Nations Environmental Programme Governing Council to discuss climate change and other environmental challenges.
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by Olga Pierce

ProPublica - February 17, 2009

A few weeks ago, we cast a skeptical eye on the job creation estimates [1] the Obama administration had attached to the stimulus bill. Well, the White House has just released another set of estimates – and they’re just as fishy.
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Stanley Kwenda interviews TENDAI BITI, Zimbabwe’s finance minister

HARARE, Feb 18 (IPS) - Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe last week presided over the formation of a new unity government. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) secretary general Tendai Biti was appointed to the post of finance minister.

Biti faces the difficult task of transforming a moribund economy riddled with the following problems: a virtually dead manufacturing sector, a collapsed agricultural sector, a world-record inflation rate, a soaring rate of unemployment and mounting poverty levels. But Biti, a firebrand critic of Mugabe’s economic policies, is profoundly aware of the mammoth task that lies ahead of him.
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Analysis by Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Feb 17 (IPS) - Since being elected to office five months ago, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has often declared that Pakistan’s single biggest challenge stems from ‘religious’ militants.

These include the Taliban, the international al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s own home-grown ‘holy warriors’, cultivated during the 1980s Afghan war against the occupying Soviets.
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Analysis by Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Feb 17 (IPS) - Since being elected to office five months ago, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has often declared that Pakistan’s single biggest challenge stems from ‘religious’ militants.

These include the Taliban, the international al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s own home-grown ‘holy warriors’, cultivated during the 1980s Afghan war against the occupying Soviets.
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By Jeremy Brecher

The Nation - February 16, 2009

At the first Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference, held in Pittsburgh a year ago, advocates of green energy bemoaned their inability to get a modest renewable-energy tax credit through Congress over the opposition of the Bush administration. The idea of addressing the economic, energy and environmental crises through green jobs seemed a distant vision. So did the idea that a labor-environment coalition around green jobs could reach beyond the fringes of the two movements. But this year, things were different. Meeting in Washington, DC, February 4-6, speakers were reporting in from their BlackBerries on Congressional negotiations of the yet-to-be-approved stimulus package estimated by the Center for American Progress to include $80 billion for green jobs.
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By Adam Easton

BBC News, Warsaw

Twenty years have passed since the end of communism in Poland and there are signs that the institution that led the struggle against the regime, the Catholic Church, is under threat in the modern democratic consumerist society.

Under communism, becoming a priest was a step up the social ladder.
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By Daniel Luban

NEW YORK, Feb 16 (IPS) - Was the foreign policy of George W. Bush an aberration in U.S. history, a turn away from the traditional guiding principles of U.S. foreign policy towards messianic ambitions of permanent supremacy and universal democracy?

Or did the Bush years merely demonstrate, in exaggerated form, impulses that were already present in the U.S.’s dominant foreign policy traditions? Particularly, was the Iraq war an expression or a betrayal of the liberal internationalist tradition of President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)?
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Kelvin Kachingwe interviews MARSHA MOYO (*)

LUSAKA, Feb 13 (IPS) - Efforts to free fiscal resources for social spending over the past few years have started to pay off in Zambia, where government is reporting a positive trend of poverty alleviation and social development. But progress is uneven.

Poverty decreased from 72 percent in 2005 to 64 percent in 2008, according to the Central Statistic Office (CSO) Living and Monitoring survey, while the 2007 Demographic and Health survey results showed improvements in all of the country’s major health indicators, such as child mortality.
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ANSA

(ANSA FACT BOX) - Rome, February 13 - The following is a rundown of the national positions of Italy, the United States,Germany, Japan, France, Britain and Canada at the summit here of economy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7).

Italy is hosting the talks on Friday and Saturday in its role as G7 president for 2009.
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By Gustavo Capdevila

BERN, Feb 12 (IPS) - The global economic and financial crisis has raised questions about whether the level of official development aid from the rich world will be maintained in future, at a time when the needs of the developing and emerging countries are growing as a result of the crisis.
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By Barbara Crossette *

A pair of imminent decisions by the Obama administration will reveal how committed it is to engaging the world on universal human rights issues, and whether it is willing to stand up to special interests and a predictable conservative outcry in Washington. On the issue of human rights, bipartisanship will be even harder to achieve than on a domestic economic rescue package.
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By Nastassja Hoffet

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 (IPS) - The launch of a new international agency devoted solely to the promotion of renewable energy last month was applauded by many environmental groups, but left others wondering whether it is too little, too late.
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Reprive

02.11 (Reprive) At 5pm today, Parliamentarians, a member of Congress, a leading security expert and US military lawyer Lt Col Yvonne Bradley will testify at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Renditions. Here is a hint of what they will say:
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Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Feb (IPS) - The political maneuvering between President Barack Obama and his top field commanders over withdrawal from Iraq has taken a sudden new turn with the leak by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus - and a firm denial by a White House official - of an account of the Jan. 21 White House meeting suggesting that Obama had requested three different combat troop withdrawal plans with their respective associated risks, including one of 23 months.
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Jacob Weisberg - NEWSWEEK

One obvious point being lost: the vast majority of toilers in the financial vineyards had nothing to do with the meltdown.

From the magazine issue dated Feb 16, 2009. Not long ago, American culture abhorred lawyers, mistrusted journalists and envied bankers. Today we ignore lawyers, pity journalists and despise those who are connected to Wall Street—for undermining their own companies, trashing the global economy and being insanely overpaid. Public sentiment has judged the lot of them guilty as hell and sentenced them indefinitely to a mid-six-figure stockade.
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By Caryle Murphy - The Christian Science Monitor

From the February 9, 2009 edition

The move is seen as part of an effort to modernize the emirate and demonstrate traditional Islam’s tolerance.

DOHA, Qatar - When the Rev. Tomasito Veneracion arrived in this Muslim nation seven years ago, his Roman Catholic parishioners prayed in small groups scattered in apartments, schools, and one tiny makeshift chapel. At Easter, Indian Catholics gathered in one place, Filipinos in another, Arabs in yet another.
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Stanley Kwenda interviews THERESA MUGADZA, Feminist Political Education Project

HARARE, Feb 9 (IPS) - As Zimbabwe’s government of national unity begins its work, gender activists are pushing for a greater place for women in decision-making.

The early signs are not promising - the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC), the body which will monitor all parties’ compliance with the Global Political Agreement (GPA) was formed Jan. 30. Of its 12 members, only three are women, one from each party, strongly suggesting a token presence.
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Interview with THERESE DOOLEY, UNICEF sanitation advisor

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 (IPS) - While 2008 - declared by the U.N. as the “International Year of Sanitation", came and went with 2.6 billion people, including almost one billion children, still living without basic facilities, UNICEF’s sanitation and hygiene senior advisor, Therese Dooley, says there is reason for hope.

Hundreds of organisations are now working alongside governments and U.N. agencies to build safe, hygienic waste disposal systems, as well as to change cultural norms so that dangerous practices like open defecation are abandoned in the poorest communities.
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From The Economist print edition

A spectre is rising. To bury it again, Barack Obama needs to take the lead

Feb 5th 2009 MANAGING a crisis as complex as this one has so far called for nuance and pragmatism rather than stridency and principle. Should governments prop up credit markets by offering guarantees or creating bad banks? Probably both. What package of fiscal stimulus would be most effective? It varies from one country to the next. Should banks be nationalised? Yes, in some circumstances. Only the foolish and the partisan have rejected (or embraced) any solutions categorically.
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Comment By Naomi Chazan *

February 5, 2009 . These are bleak days for progressive Israelis. The offensive on Gaza, which should never have been launched, has left a trail of death, trauma, destruction and despondency. The after-effects of those horrible three weeks are most obvious in Gaza, where the monumental task of emotional and physical rehabilitation is an Israeli as well as a global responsibility. They are also evident within Israel, where bravado and intolerance threaten to eat away at the country’s democratic core and consume its internal moral compass.
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By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (IPS) - Despite a shrinking national economy and a record defence budget, U.S. neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks are mounting a spirited - if misleading - campaign to persuade Congress that the military should get a bigger slice.

They are calling on Congress and President Barack Obama to boost military spending next year even beyond the projections made by the administration of former President George W. Bush as to what would be needed.
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ALICIA GIL GIL *

Estados Unidos desea que países europeos, incluida España, reciban a internados en el centro creado por el Gobierno de Bush. Eso plantea serios problemas jurídicos de competencia y de validez de pruebas
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Análisis de Adam Morrow y Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

EL CAIRO, feb (IPS) - Israel se proclamó triunfador de su ataque contra el territorio palestino de Gaza, pero muchos analistas entienden que ese país no logró sus objetivos. La brutalidad de la agresión no hizo más que reflotar y validar la noción de resistencia armada entre los árabes.
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REPRIEVE PRESS RELEASE

British court asks that President Obama reconsider his predecessor’s repeated “threats” levelled against the judges who considered allowing the public to learn the details of American torture of Binyam Mohamed.
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Analysis by Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (IPS) - Even as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to deploy more military forces to Afghanistan - what he has called “the central front” in former President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” - a consensus on overall U.S. strategy there remains elusive.
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Ellis Cose - Newsweek

Steele’s task: transforming a party that likes the way it is.

Michael Steele’s color really shouldn’t matter. Yet it does. Virtually every story on his election as chair of the Republican National Committee led with the fact that he is the first African-American ever in that job. Part of why it matters is that the Republican Party has been on the wrong side of racial progress for well over a century.
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Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Feb 3 (IPS) - Despite declarations of victory by Israel, the military assault on the Gaza Strip failed to achieve its stated aims, many analysts say. The assault, and even its exceptional brutality, may only have vindicated the notion of resistance among the Arab public.
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By Liza Featherstone

This article appeared in the February 16, 2009 edition of The Nation.

“I said, ‘I see windmills,’ and everyone kind of gave me a strange look.” Vicky Sloan, a humanities professor at Clinton Community College, which serves a rural region in upstate New York, is describing a “visualization” session with a touchy-feely outside consultant, forced on the faculty several years ago by the administration. The consultant had asked the professors to close their eyes and picture their institution’s future. “It was so Dilbert,” interjects Sloan’s close friend June Foley, a professor who teaches psychology at the college. “It was!” agrees Sloan, who lives off the grid, in a log cabin, with her own power generator. “But when I closed my eyes, that’s what I saw.”
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By Alejandro Kirk

BELEM, Feb 2 (IPS) - The World Social Forum ended its ninth edition Sunday in Belém with its “Assembly of assemblies” adopting dozens of resolutions and proposals to be the subjects of a programme of mobilisations around the world in 2009.
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