IPS interviews THEARY SENG, chief, Cambodia Centre for Social Development.

PHNOM PENH, Mar 31 (IPS) - Theary Seng, orphaned by the Khmer Rouge, believes in the invisible bonds that suffering weaves among people. She calls it the “fellowship of suffering".

When Theary started writing the story of the tragedy that befell her family, it was a quest for personal closure. But it has grown to be a powerful tool to communicate with other Cambodians because, as she says, “every person in Cambodia is scarred".
(more…)

ANSA

Benedict XVI asks for report on troubled religious order

(ANSA) - Rome, March 31 - Pope Benedict XVI has ordered an investigation into the activity of influential Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ after reports of sexual impropriety by its late founder.
(more…)

By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Mar 30 (IPS) - The weak governments in Hungary and the Czech Republic have fallen, raising questions on the future of liberal economic reform and the influence of the U.S., the European Union and Russia in the region.

Hungarians, as well as Czechs, are now negotiating whether the next government should be political or one of experts. The Czech Republic has decided that elections will take place in October.
(more…)

By Max Fraser - The Nation

March 26, 2009 .Finance ministers and national leaders are girding themselves for the upcoming G-20 summit in London, where they will have to overcome deep policy divisions to reach global agreement on the worsening economic crisis. The United States and Britain are calling on other wealthy nations in Europe and Asia to break the deflationary cycle through increased government spending.
(more…)

By Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Mar 26 (IPS) - As it gets ready to commemorate its 50th anniversary at an assembly in Medellín, Colombia, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has come under heightened criticism from civil society groups which argue that its financing often goes against sustainable development and effective measures to overcome poverty.
(more…)

Jeffrey E. Garten - NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Mar 30, 2009

When I was a trade official in the Clinton administration, I discovered that the British government was unusually talented at writing summaries after difficult negotiations. Their communiqués were not just eloquent, but managed to brilliantly paper over major differences among the participants. It is a skill that will be vital on April 2 when the heads of state of the G20 meet in London to coordinate policies for the worldwide economic crisis.
(more…)

Analysis by WillIam Fisher

NEW YORK, Mar 26 (IPS) - Human rights lawyers are proving to be a major headache for the new administration of President Barack Obama, stepping up court challenges on issues of prisoner abuse to test the reality of the president’s pledge to create a “an unprecedented level of openness” in government.
(more…)

By Catherine Mayer and Simon Robinson - TIME

For more than a decade, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been urging an overhaul of the world’s financial regulation and institutions in response to increasing globalization. The global economic crisis, which has hit Britain hard, has given him a rare chance to get his message across. In the midst of intensive preparations for hosting the G-20 meeting in London, he sat down with TIME at 10 Downing Street to discuss his hopes for the summit.
(more…)

By Sanjay Suri

Sanjay Suri interviews SALIL SHETTY, Director of the UN Millennium Campaign

LONDON, Mar 25 (IPS) - Governments made their pledges over the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000, but it is civil society that could, more than anyone else, hold them to that promise. Salil Shetty, a civil society man coming as the head of ActionAid to head the UN millennium campaign, believes civil society has moved in from the margins; it is now at the heart of the world campaign for delivering these, and other rights.
(more…)

by Dina Temple-Raston/ National Public Radio

March 23, 2009 · For months now, counterterrorism officials have seen signs that al-Qaida has been looking for new and innovative ways to recruit terrorists, including a new manual that has surfaced on the Internet.

Researchers at West Point recently stumbled on the 51-page manual while they were visiting a jihadi chat room, called Ecles. It’s a Web site that allows members to have interactive discussions, post videos and download manuals. Ecles is the second most popular jihadi chat room on the Web, and al-Qaida often posts things there. Because of that, it is a place counterterrorism analysts track regularly.
(more…)

IPS

LISBON, Mar 23 (IPS) - Political leaders, activists, scientists and even Catholic bishops all joined in the chorus of criticism against the stance taken by Pope Benedict with respect to the use of condoms to curb the impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

AIDS “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems,” the Pope said on a flight to Cameroon at the start of his first visit to Africa – home to 70 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS – which ended Monday in Angola.
(more…)

Michael Kazin - NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Mar 30, 2009

Do populist outbursts like the one sparked by the AIG bonuses represent a threat to capitalism—or an opportunity? Our essayists on populism and its discontents.

Don’t Let the ‘Big Men’ Win

Dorothea Lange traveled around rural America during the late 1930s, creating indelible images of the Great Depression. One day, she stopped outside a gas station and snapped a picture of a large sign. It read: THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY. DON’T LET THE BIG MEN TAKE IT AWAY FROM YOU. Seventy years later, citizens irate at the huge bonuses AIG paid out to top executives know just how that feels.
(more…)

By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Mar 23 (IPS) - The region that liked to see itself as the engine of European economic growth and as immune to the global economic crisis is now being pointed to as the next to hit the slump.

Foreign capital is fleeing the region, currencies are weakening, and a slowdown in economic growth or even a contraction of the gross domestic product is expected in the Central and Eastern European member states of the European Union (EU).
(more…)

By Andrew Becker (*) - The Nation

Unlike the traditional job-seeking migrants, whose numbers have dropped in part due to the slumping US economy and increased border enforcement, this new migrant class comprises business owners, executives and other professionals who choose safety in the United States–even if it means detention–over freedom in their own country.
(more…)

By Roberto Lovato & Josue Rojas

On March 15, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) became the first leftist party to clinch a presidential election in the history of El Salvador. By 10 pm, it became clear to Salvadorans and to the world that the former guerrillas had ended more than 130 years of oligarchy and military rule over this Central American nation of 7 million. In the streets, thousands of red-shirted sympathizers chanted “¡Si Se Pudo!” (Yes, We Could), while they celebrated the victory of the FMLN’s Mauricio Funes.
(more…)

From The Economist print edition

Doing harm in places where Catholicism should have a bright future

AFRICANS always give a visiting pope a hearty welcome. Thousands of finely dressed Cameroonians danced and sang at the roadside this week as Pope Benedict XVI arrived on an inaugural African tour that will also take in Angola. The Vatican is keen on the continent, home to around 135m Catholics. Pope Benedict delivered a compassionate message, recognising that Africa suffers disproportionately from food shortages, poverty, financial turmoil and a changing climate. Yet for all the mutual appreciation, he got one matter painfully wrong.
(more…)

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Mar 19 (IPS) - Based on testimony from Israeli soldiers who took part in the recent war in Gaza, Israel is being confronted directly with the serious charge that permissive rules of engagement allowed for the killing of Palestinian civilians and widespread destruction of Palestinian property.
(more…)

by Richard Harris - NPR (National Public Radio)

“We certainly don’t need a collapse of the ice sheet to cause major problems with sea level rise.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans, Potsdam University

March 19, 2009 · A huge chunk of Antarctic ice can’t withstand nonstop global warming, according to a new study published in the latest Nature magazine. And if it melts, the ice will raise the global sea level by 15 or 20 feet — or more.
(more…)

By Miren Gutierrez*

Miren Gutierrez interviews SAADIA ZAHIDI, head of the Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme at the World Economic Forum (WEF)

ROME, Mar 18 (IPS) - Denying women access to political and economic power is a “strategic waste", says Saadia Zahidi, co-author of the WEF’s Global Gender Gap (GGG) report in a telephone interview from Geneva.
(more…)

Reprieve

Reprieve welcomes Gordon Brown’s announcement on intelligence-gathering and new ISC report on Binyam Mohamed

March 18, 2009 .Reprieve welcomes the British government’s decision to publish guidance issued to intelligence officers and military personnel on the questioning of detainees held overseas, and the news that intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Peter Gibson will monitor compliance and report annually.
(more…)

By Hilmi Toros

IPS interviews IUCN Water Programme Head MARK SMITH

ISTANBUL, Mar 17 (IPS) - Whether through drought, floods, melting of ice or a rise in sea level, water will be the first to feel the effects of climate change, says Dr. Mark Smith, who heads the water programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest environmental network.
(more…)

ANSA

Benedict uses word in public for 1st time on Africa trip

(ANSA) - Vatican City, March 17 - Condoms are not the solution to the problem of AIDS in African countries but make it worse, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday, reportedly using the word ‘condom’ in public for the first time.
(more…)

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 16 (IPS) - The high-level scientific climate conference that concluded last week in Copenhagen warned that humanity is rapidly approaching an irreversible, 1,000-year-long climate catastrophe.

The good news is that this dark future has an escape hatch: make major and immediate reductions in carbon emissions.
(more…)

Fareed Zakaria - NEWSWEEK

Obama has made striking moves to fix U.S. foreign policy—and that has set off a chorus of criticism.

From the magazine issue dated Mar 23, 2009

As George W. Bush’s term came to a close, he had few defenders left in the world of foreign policy. Mainstream commentators almost unanimously agreed the Bush years had been marked by arrogance and incompetence. “Mr. Bush’s characteristic failing was to apply a black-and-white mindset to too many gray areas of national security and foreign affairs,” editorialized The Washington Post. Even Richard Perle, the neoconservative guru, acknowledged recently that “Bush mostly failed to implement an effective foreign and defense policy.” There was hope that President Obama would abandon some of his predecessor’s rigid ideological stances. But, the Post warned, “it won’t be easy to undo what Mr. Bush has done.”
(more…)

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 13 (IPS) - Thousands of Asian women flock to the affluent sheikhdoms of the Middle East annually, seeking jobs as domestic workers. For many this quest for a livelihood comes to a humiliating end when they test positive for HIV.

‘’The women learn about their HIV status when they go and get tested before their job contract is renewed,’’ says Malu Marin, director of the Manila-based Action for Health Initiative, or ‘Achieve’, a member of a regional non-governmental organisation (NGO) network dealing with migration.
(more…)

By Sophie Ragsdale (*) - The Nation

March 12, 2009 .There are two clocks ticking for the god-fearing climate-conscious among us. The first counts down to Copenhagen, where on December 7 representatives from 192 countries will hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol: a post-2012 global climate deal aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. The second hurtles us toward disaster, a “mankind-threatening juggernaut,” the point at which atmospheric carbon dioxide exceeds a concentration of 450 parts per million. To the extent that global warming is contingent on carbon emissions, the tipping point will be determined at the UN Framework Conference for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, the last stop on the Bali Roadmap toward what UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer has called “the most complex international agreement that history has ever seen.”
(more…)

By Ángel Páez

LIMA, Mar 12 (IPS) - “I became a journalist to find out how they killed my father, to discover where his body is, and to take those responsible for his death to court,” Boris Ayala told IPS. “I am not going to rest until I find out the whole truth.”

Ayala hopes the remains of his father, Jaime, will be found in the mass grave that forensic experts are exhuming in the cemetery in Huanta, a town in Peru’s southern highlands. His father, a journalist like himself, was seized by the military in 1984 and never heard from again.
(more…)

Richard N. Haass - NEWSWEEK

Things are changing in Cuba, however slowly. The United States should be a part of shaping their direction.

From the magazine issue dated Mar 16, 2009

There are signs that change may finally be coming to Cuba, 50 years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In a major shakeup, Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, fired several high-level officials last week. While Raúl did more to raise expectations than living standards in his first year as president, he may now be positioning the government to go beyond the tentative reforms so far introduced. Then again, he might merely be installing loyalists who share his view that the regime should keep a tight grip on society.
(more…)

By Marina Litvinsky

WASHINGTON, Mar 11 (IPS) - To be successful, poverty-reducing programmes must be informed by the lives and experiences of the millions of poor people around the world and emphasise economic opportunity, says a study released Wednesday by the World Bank.
(more…)

Tom Barry

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 drastically altered the traditional political economy of immigration. The millions of undocumented immigrants—those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas—who were living and working in the United States were no longer simply regarded as a shadow population or as surplus cheap labor. In the public and policy debates, immigrants were increasingly defined as threats to the nation’s security. Categorizing immigrants as national security threats gave the government’s flailing immigration law enforcement and border control operations a new unifying logic that has propelled the immigrant crackdown forward.
(more…)

By Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Mar 10 (IPS) - ‘Post-neo-liberalism’ - that mouthful of a word was making the rounds at an international congress on the economic turmoil in Berlin last weekend. Just another buzzword, as some participants thought, or something necessary to describe the world past the now exposed economics of neo-liberalism?
(more…)

By Robert Pollin - The Nation

March 9, 2009 - Socialism’s all the rage. “We Are All Socialists Now,” Newsweek declares. As the right wing tells it, we’re already living in the U.S.S.A. But what do self-identified socialists (and their progressive friends) have to say about the global economic crisis? In the March 4, 2009, issue, we published “Rising to the Occasion” as the opening essay in a forum on “Reimagining Socialism.” TheNation.com will feature new replies to their essay over the coming weeks, fostering what we hope will be a spirited dialogue.
(more…)

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 9 (IPS) - In the latest in a series of increasingly dire predictions, the World Bank Sunday warned that developing countries may need up to 700 billion dollars in external financing this year due to the squeeze in global credit markets which has seen a dramatic plunge in private investment.
(more…)

Reprieve *

UN REPORT HIGHLY CRITICAL OF RENDITION, TORTURE AND OTHER ABUSES SANCTIONED BY INTELLIGENCE SERVICES; SINGLES BRITAIN OUT FOR SPECIFIC CRITICISM

In a report that has far-reaching implications for the mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, Martin Scheinin (the UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Human Rights While Countering Terrorism) will present his report on intelligence agencies, and their lack of accountability on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 (it is previewed at
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/10session/A.HRC.10.3.pdf).
(more…)

By Joseph E. Stiglitz *

This article appeared in the March 23, 2009 edition of The Nation.

The news that even Alan Greenspan and Senator Chris Dodd suggest that bank nationalization may be necessary shows how desperate the situation has become. It has been obvious for some time that a government takeover of our banking system–perhaps along the lines of what Norway and Sweden did in the ’90s–is the only solution. It should be done, and done quickly, before even more bailout money is wasted.
(more…)

By Eva Bartlett

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza, Mar 6 (IPS) - Dates in the calendar to mark the rights of women mean little to Manwa Tarrabin (56) and her two daughters. They have lost home, and any rights to it.

Until Jan. 17, they were living in a small bungalow in the Al-Amal quarter of Beit Hanoun, within 200 metres of Gaza’s eastern border, in a region declared by the Israeli authorities a ‘closed military zone’.
(more…)

IPS interviews RUBY DHALLA, Canadian MP

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 (IPS) - Ruby Dhalla, a Liberal member of Canada’s Parliament, is also a community activist, doctor, and one of the leading progressive voices in North American politics today.
(more…)

Stephanie Hanson | Council on Foreign Relations

On March 4, the International Criminal Court charged Sudan’s president with war crimes. The Council on Foreign Relations explains the political backdrop.
(more…)

By Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Mar 4 (IPS) - The economic depression unfolding around the world has not touched trade in products from developing countries that certify respect for social and labour fairness, human rights and environmental standards, according to groups engaged in fair trade.
(more…)

IRIN

JOHANNESBURG, 3 March 2009 (IRIN) - South Africa is set to become the first country in Africa to provide its children with a life-saving vaccine that experts say could prevent the deaths of an estimated 5.4 million children globally in the next two decades.

Children are the main victims of pneumococcal diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia, and those who survive are often left intellectually impaired, suffer hearing loss or a legacy of seizures.
(more…)

IPS interviews STEPHEN LEWIS, AIDS and gender expert

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 (IPS) - After being blind for years to the needs and rights of women, the United Nations is finally well on its way to create a “fully-resourced” women’s agency, says Stephen Lewis, the former U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

A long-time vocal advocate for women’s rights, Lewis helped promote the creation of a billion-dollar gender institution, saying it is reasonable to ask for such an amount considering that the agency will deal with issues affecting half of the world’s population, and that the funding is just a third of that given to the U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF and a quarter of the U.N.’s Development Fund’s (UNDP) budget.
(more…)

by John Nichols - The Nation

Here’s the latest from the not-exactly-sure-whether-it-wants-to-be-loyal opposition:

Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s most verbose Republican, delivered a chest-thumping, eyes-popping denunciation of President Obama’s efforts to renew the economy on Saturday:
(more…)

Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Mar 2 (IPS) - “There’s no doubt there’s been a huge amount of damage done, including whole sectors of private sector buildings which have been razed to the ground and, in any event, given the numbers of people that have died, I find the conversation about proportionality not really a sensible conversation to have. What we’ve got to do is to find a way of ensuring this doesn’t happen again.” The pointed comment came from former British prime minister Tony Blair, special international envoy to the Middle East, during his first visit to Gaza after Israel’s offensive against Hamas.
(more…)

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL - The New York Times

Until recently, the idea that the world’s most powerful nations might come together to tackle global warming seemed an environmentalist’s pipe dream.

The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, was widely viewed as badly flawed. Many countries that signed the accord lagged far behind their targets in curbing carbon dioxide emissions. The United States refused even to ratify it. And the treaty gave a pass to major emitters in the developing world like China and India.
(more…)